I was sent out to do beta testing of the company product on the field. Altogether 4 persons, we drove around the industrial zone and acted as users. The outcome was entirely discouraging. First was the product sucked so big time it would be a pain to use, and honestly, it borders on useless. I wonder if anybody will fork out US$4k to get one piece of crap.
Next, the engineers were all clueless. I won't blame them as they were relatively young and inexperienced (2 years at most), but the problem solving skill and framework are not there. I had to nudge them to do the tests properly. Well I guess this was why my boss asked me to go with them at the first place.
#2: Email & Knuth
Donald Knuth is one of the semi-gods in terms of algorithm analysis. His books "The Art of Computer Programming" remains the holy grail to algorithm wizardry. But by merely reading his books proves nothing, the gems are the exercises. If you are able to solve most of his difficulty rating of 40 and 50 problems, I think solving interview questions from Google or Microsoft will be a piece of cake for you.
Years ago I came across his FAQ on Email and he says he stopped using email since 1990. The following quote is very illuminating:
Email is a wonderful thing for people whose role in life is to be on top of things. But not for me; my role is to be on the bottom of things. What I do takes long hours of studying and uninterruptible concentration. I try to learn certain areas of computer science exhaustively; then I try to digest that knowledge into a form that is accessible to people who don't have time for such study.I find myself unintentionally drifting to his stand on emails and other communications devices. Now I only hang on MSN messenger sporadically, and starting to cut down on Google chat gradually. For emails I check around a few times per day and no longer it is forever on.
The first thing I need to clarify is I do want to talk to you, my dear friend. I am not shutting you down. But asynchronous tools like these really don't let me concentrate to the fullest. Having these tools in operations, my mind will unconsciously tend to poll them once every 5 - 10 minutes. This is a huge time waste.
3 comments:
There's no need to poll. Outlook or Messengers interrupt you by popping up an icon, or forcefully putting a chat window in your face :)
My company doesn't allow me to use the standard messenger client, so my web-based messenger client won't interrupt when a msg arrives, so I have to poll it. :( Outlook is usually on twice per day because not many emails flying around in my office
4k for a piece of crap is OK :) It's MOT MOT crap after all.
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