Key Points » Work

Craigslist model

lawnz — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 20:02:51 +0000

I am working for a high tech company, the founder owns one patent for our product, we have a great team of engineers including some with PhD degree, one of my coworkers is still in graduate school, he probably knows more than most of his professors, our products consist of both hardware and software, especially very sophisticated software, many of us could not figure out why we have only one customer for the last year, I remember one time in the meeting, someone in marketing said she has hard time to tell people what our product is, because this is a new revolutionary product. today I was thinking what about Craigslist, when they started business, it sounded like non-profit organization, all posts were free, their web software supported very limited features, not the greatest software to me, developers could not even parse URL links correctly, sometimes URLs are clickable, sometimes not, took them a while to fix a simple parsing, it is not to parse unicode yet, so why their business is successful, I think they had a killer app and knew how to enter the market, with only product features that users want to use, simply to use for all computer users, continue adding advanced features useful for users, another interesting thing is Craigslist never did any advertisement for themselves, their marketing is done mouth by mouth, many high level managers overlook a model like Craigslist, in my opinion we can learn a lot of things in business from Craigslist model.

why so hard for new graduates to get a job

lawnz — Sun, 15 May 2011 17:23:04 +0000

On the KQED radio, I listened to one new graduate complaining about job market situation for new graduates, she said BS or BA degree used to guarantee a job for new graduates, but not anymore now, they have to get advanced degree or work hard to have impressive experience in resume. why so hard for new graduates to get a job? there are many reasons like outsourcing, one reason I see is from the companies I have worked for, I look around there are a lot of old people still working, even they are in their retiring age, I think most of them don’t have enough saving, inflation is chasing them, health care system is another problem for them, it is always good to have more income to feel secured, I see 65 year old software engineer away from his families in Texas, working in bay area California. The ratio of number of available jobs to demand has been decreasing.

What kind of engineers a company should hire

lawnz — Sat, 02 Apr 2011 20:23:01 +0000

If companies make legacy products, they can hire “legacy” engineers, a lot of experience is enough for the companies, or experience and degree come as top criteria for hiring. but if companies make new products, they should hire engineers who are creative, experience or degree comes as second criteria.

Work post here

admin — Sun, 12 Dec 2010 19:47:09 +0000

Work post here