Brendan's Reflections

  • Google’s Project Oxygen

    Today slate had an excellent article on Google’s management: The Happiness Machine: How Google became such a great place to work.  One thing they mention is Project Oxygen, a data-analytics based approach to examining the management factors that improve performance.  As part of the project they ranked the factors (behaviors): Lots of good stuff in…

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  • New Year Resolution: One Painful Task Each Day

    I’m not usually one for New Year Resolutions – mostly because I’m happy to try out new resolutions (and build new habits) any time of the year.  But the timing for my lastest resolution happens to be now, so I’m calling this my new years resolution: To accomplish one painful task each day. What is…

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  • Coursera and Credentialing

    Earlier I wrote that the problem with online education is credentialing.  It looks like Coursera is starting to tackle issue: Coursera recently announced another route to help students earn credit for its courses — and produce revenue. The company has arranged for the American Council on Education, the umbrella group of higher education, to have…

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  • Achieving Your Way to Mediocrity

    (Photo: PublicDomainPictures) I’ve been thinking about goal setting recently.  Bazaarvoice is in the process of rolling out a goal process – a variation of Management By Objectives (MBO) and Objectives and Key Results (OKR). One dilemma that always seems to come up in these systems is whether the goals should be achievable or not.  SMART…

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  • Download / Scrape Salesforce Reports in 4 lines of Python

    Python Code: import requests l = requests.get(“https://login.salesforce.com/?un=USERNAME&pw=PASSWORD”) d = requests.get(“https://na3.salesforce.com/REPORT_ID?view=d&snip&export=1&enc=UTF-8&xf=csv”,cookies=l.cookies) print d.content References: http://sfdc-heretic.warped-minds.com/2006/04/10/progmatic-access-to-salesforcecom-reports/ http://docs.python-requests.org/en/latest/user/quickstart/#cookies http://www.techsmog.com/index.php/2011/02/08/parsing-real-time-salesforce-com-reports-via-perlcgi-html-tables/

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  • A review of “One More Time: How Do You Motivate Employees”, by Frederick Herzberg

    This is the second article in the volume “On Managing People” in Harvard Business Review’s collection of Must Reads. Frederick Herzberg This article was originally published in 1968.  Herzberg begins by examining the classic Kick In The Ass (KITA) as motivator.  Both physical, and psychological KITAs are examined, and of the latter he notes “since…

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  • A review of “Leadership That Gets Results”, by Daniel Goleman

    As a sort of poor-man’s MBA I’m planning to work my way through Harvard Business Review’s “HBR’s Must Reads”, a 6-volume collection of curated articles on business.  Since I’m relatively new to management and find myself building and managing a new team, I’m starting with the volume “On Managing People”. The first article in the…

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  • That’s the word! Credentialing.

    I love it when I discover a new term for something that’s floating around in my head.  Today it’s credentialing. Phase 1 of the online learning revolution is all about self-guided learning.  There are tons of resources out there to help a motivated individual to really learn things.  A few examples: Wikipedia MIT Open Courseware …

    brendansterne

  • I’m Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59 by Douglas Edwards

    Hooray!  I can now sync the highlights that I make in books from my Kindle Fire. I just finished “I’m Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59″ by Douglas Edwards.  Prior to reading this book I didn’t really know much about the history or culture of google.  I enjoyed the narrative.  I noticed…

    brendansterne

  • 6 Tips for Making the Most of a Tech Conference

    At Bazaarvoice it’s policy that we send our developers to at least one major tech conference of their choice each year.  Since we’re based in Austin TX, that usually means flying across the country.  The costs (flights, hotel, transport, food) are substantial, but the opportunity cost is even higher.  I’ve always been thankful for the…

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