The Good Executive Officer

Winning by Failure It is the year of the Lord 2002, and corporate executives are being accused of fraudolent behavior left and right. And if it is not outright greed that pushes men and women over the edge, it seems that there is a whole world of incompetence that has pushed to the top and has been wreaking havoc over the past years. Every day, it seems, another multi-billion conglomerate implodes in a conflagration that will leave entire cities without jobs, causing pain and suffering to large populations, but seemingly not harming those who caused the problem. Continue reading

The Factory vs. the Workshop

The Factory vs. The Workshop Who wasn’t smart enough to know that Internet startups had to disappear sooner or later? We all thought the situation had gotten completely out of control, and we somehow wished the pull of gravity would get those highly egomanic startup captains of venture crashing to the same place from which they had soared. No doubt a lot of the rise and fall of the dot.com era was inherently due to fundamental economic factors that hindsight so easily knows about. Continue reading

The Curse of the Competent

Cursing the Competent As long as the Internet economy was happily bubbling ahead, the Peter Principle reigned supreme: Peter joined a startup and got promoted quickly. Invariably, he would land in a position where he not only started failing, but dragged the entire startup down with his incompetence. Which of course didn’t quite matter, since the Peter Principle was (and is) democratic and made everybody else look just as stupid as Peter himself. Continue reading

Essays

[The Curse of the Competent ](/2005/01/the-curse-of-the-competent/) Ok, there is another task, and there is this one guy that is really, really good: never makes a fuss about getting more stuff piled on, never needs any check-in, always delivers above satisfation. This guy (or more frequently, gal) will end up doing a disproportionate amount of the work for no extra charge and no advantage… S(he) is hit by the Curse of the Competent! Continue reading

june

sitting on a starry night high above my windows watching all those stars quietly go round. now how often did i sit on the hill on the green or grassy buena vista looking up the tired and trite signs of centuries of yore. beam me up, antares! my guiding light of dusk and wrestle with my loved one for the privilege of blood. beat me up, polaris! you fixest of the suns Continue reading

february

oh, how i love this wondrous city, atlantis on the rocks; one third is ocean spray, uncommon sense another, the rest, the hottest fruits. look, how it hurt to live its winter season, the aches, the pains, the treasons and betrayals; and yet, awake, gone are those worries; would i drown in the sea of sun that cascades through the window. that little twig seemed dead ten days ago robbed by the chill of any little life Continue reading

january

1. the main purpose of life is the achievement of happiness. 1.1 it takes two to be happy. 1.2 happy is made of smiles, of laughs, of play, of fun; 1.2.1 of tender kisses under the november moon and sweaty nights under the august sun; 1.2.2 of frosty fingers under cuddly winter blankets and of hunting butterflies in the skies of spring. 1.3 there is no such thing as a sad day. Continue reading

july

life by water the fog crawls over the mountain like the chilling glove of the sea it captures, it raptures my heart chained in the land of the free cold are the streets, the avenues dark then the sand, then the waves and japan somewhere behind them the sun sets land of the rising sun – another koan. there is no space, no time by the sea the smell in the air, the sound of the halcyon wave Continue reading

Months in the City

A collection of short poems intended to encompass twelve total. These trifles were born out of a creative spurt after I left the startup world and started enjoying the City by the Bay again. The collection is incomplete, and currently encompasses only four poems: {moscontentlink:january}is the original text of a personal ad I put up. I got great responses, several of whom said they liked my ‘poem’. January was never meant to be a poem, but became so by people’s choice. Continue reading

Writing - Overview

Months in the City A collection of short poems intended to encompass twelve total. These trifles were born out of a creative spurt after I left the startup world and started enjoying the City by the Bay again. Essays A collection of short essays on management matters. These essays focus on my personal experience in the work environment, although they try to be as general as possible.