With all the money sloshing around looking to find a home, startup funding might be a bit of a sellers market: Venture capitalists are now relatively less in the business of choosing the best startups in which to invest, and relatively more in the business of getting the best startups to choose them as investors. Money is plentiful and good startups are relatively (relatively!) scarce, and so the startups can be picky.

These US-based layoffs are part of a broad round of job cuts around the globe this month, said to range from 500 to 14,000 at the database giant. The biz employs about 140,000 worldwide. All the articles say it’s in the cloud business. Source: Oracle swings axe on cloud infrastructure corps amid possible bloodbath at Big Red

These US-based layoffs are part of a broad round of job cuts around the globe this month, said to range from 500 to 14,000 at the database giant. The biz employs about 140,000 worldwide. All the articles say it’s in the cloud business. Source: Oracle swings axe on cloud infrastructure corps amid possible bloodbath at Big Red

An impressive 72% of millennials are more likely to be loyal to a brand that responds to feedback on social media. As an old, I too would like to not use the phone. Source: Please Hold

An impressive 72% of millennials are more likely to be loyal to a brand that responds to feedback on social media. As an old, I too would like to not use the phone. Source: Please Hold

I get asked to talk with “executives” more and more. That’s part of why Pivotal moved me over to Europe. People make lots of claims about what executives want to hear, the conversations you can have with them as a vendor. They don’t have time. You have have to be concise. They don’t want to hear the details. They just want to advance their careers. None of those are really my style, even part of my core epistemes.

I’m too wordy when I reply to reporters. This is mostly true everywhere I produce content. I don’t like trite, simple answers. Brevity and clarity makes me suspicious, especially on topics I know well. As a consequence, I don’t think this interview by email was ever published. What’s a DevOps advocate? If you mean what I do, it means studying people and organizations who are trying trying to improve how they do software, summarizing all those, ongoing, into several different types of content, and then trying to help, advise, educate people on how they can improve how they do software.

The best board meetings are discussions and debates about the business yet many executive teams spent their time wanting to walk through hours of slides on how great they’re doing. Humans do much better when they’re participating than when they’re being lectured to. The most value you’ll get out of your board is when they’re speaking and offering you feedback and experiences from others companies in which they’re involved. I recommend that executive teams send materials out 72 hours in advance.

The best board meetings are discussions and debates about the business yet many executive teams spent their time wanting to walk through hours of slides on how great they’re doing. Humans do much better when they’re participating than when they’re being lectured to. The most value you’ll get out of your board is when they’re speaking and offering you feedback and experiences from others companies in which they’re involved. I recommend that executive teams send materials out 72 hours in advance.

On the top layer there is rapid change. On the bottom, change happens at a glacial pace. It's this combination of everything, from seconds at the top, to millennia at the bottom, that give resilience to the system. And: A key concept to this is that each layer has to respect the pace of another. Source: The Fast and Slow of Design