Love this! It's very intuitive and fun to draw gears of different sizes and hook them together.
I'd love to be able to make more complex gears. I immediately tried to make a compound gear set with three gears and two different bands.
That got me thinking about "Incredible-Machine" puzzle features and how fun it would be to actually try to build working things like clocks, bikes and machines with this.
While Esri HQ is in Redlands, there are an increasing number of R&D Centers around the world. Portland, OR, DC, Scotland, Zurich and China all hire front end and back end devs, UX and visual designers. While it was uncommon to work outside of Redlands only a few years ago, there are more possibilities for that now. This is a pretty recent development, though.
While I follow your logic, there are a lot of companies out there like this. They're called "hidden champions" and modern industry has plenty of hidden stories like these. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden_champions
The main point here is that companies like this might not be as sexy as the short term vc-funded explosive growth companies that are always in the news, but like small stars, they burn for a much longer time and are much more stable than the massive stars that quickly run out of fuel and turn into dwarfs and black holes later on.
Source: our company was bought by Esri last year, and before then I didn't really know the company existed. I was looking for a way to grow our technology in the long term, not evaporate like so many other companies had before.
I'm not negative on the company, and am not taking a general stand for or against VC. (It's useful in some situations, but not all) It's just that what he presents as their secret sauce is also the formula for a lot of companies that never grow.
I'm intrigued by Esri, I just wish he'd give more detail on how they were truly different from those left behind.
Thank you. Initially I sent this to people I knew, and the responses were to be included in a book to be distributed to people interested in hearing stories from programmers. Some of this is mentioned on the survey itself.
I'll make a new survey with less questions that address your concerns and takes less time to fill out.
Your anonymity checkboxes need to be converted to either a single checkbox or a set of radio buttons. Right now you can select either or both options, which doesn't make sense.
The problem with categories like 'millennials' is that it generalizes an entire generation of people and makes it easy for people not within that group to say rude and untruthful things about an entire set of people. Instead of trying to understand where a group is coming from, it makes it easy for people to simply brush off any differences as inappropriate instead of understanding where a group might come from.
I've hired plenty of what you might call 'millenials', many via text, and they have been some of the hardest working, most professional people I've ever worked with. I've also been courted for an exceptional job via text, Twitter and Facebook. The hiring manager was in her 40s, and she understood those interfaces better than I did.
Hiring should be very personal, not cold and professional. Hiring is about getting to know someone that is the right fit for the team so that the hire brings passion and cleverness to the table. Even at a larger company this should be the case.
Hiring is changing, and has changed for many people. I don't think it's fair to force people into what someone somewhere considered a proper 'hiring process' if you end up hiring someone from a piece of paper and not for who they are. This kind of process can cause companies to lose talent, flexibility, and ultimately money.
I'm not suggesting that everyone hire in the way I do, but in the way that's most suited to the person you're trying to hire. Having empathy and attempting to understand and respect people on a case by case basis is important, especially when you'll be working closely with them.
I'm not a 'millennial' or whatever generalization buzzword some individuals use to make themselves feel more comfortable with the uncertainty of different people in a workplace, but I work with people of all ages and understand each of them as an individual, not as a generation. I communicate in the format they are most comfortable with. I text my boss, who is two generations above me, and email some of the more formal, younger members of our team. The college student in this post is not in the wrong in his communication methods. I understand that the author may be trying to teach him a lesson, but it's not that cut and dry across all industries, especially tech.
We ran a 4-5 person startup from our apartment (and had the servers running in the closet) for a year before we got free office space. I had a different experience where we worked longer and faster when we were all in the same room (my roommate and I slept in the back, which was our area and no one could touch). Once we got a little larger and had reasonable funding, we moved out and got a really nice office with the money we'd saved for a year.
I thought the same thing until I watched the video. It looks like she categorizes the business as "consulting", which both justifies the prices and irregular schedule of visits and charges.
Those who pay for her services see a record of purchasing a consulting service on their credit card. Though this seems clever, she will technically have PII data on all of her customers if she is somehow caught in the future, but the chances of someone like her being caught may be smaller than most.
