I saw a live demo of this stuff at a trade show two weeks ago, and it was truly amazing. It put any other coating I've ever seen to shame (such as RainX).
While they had a shirt and a shoe on display, the demo was mainly focused around commercially licensing it as a coating for stuff that you don't really want to clean, such as bedpans and toilet plungers.
> There's a reason most companies don't talk pay with people - if somebody else makes more, it's going to bruise feelings and ruffle feathers and screw up morale.
I don't think thats quite right... The reason most companies don't talk pay with people is because most companies fall into the "pay as little as we can get away with" category. In that category, some people are bound to be getting paid unfairly when compared to others, so its not surprising that feelings would be hurt and feathers would be ruffled if the truth came out. If everyone is paid fairly to begin with (regardless of whether or not pay is usually public), then by definition no-one should get upset if they do find out the pay of others since it would be fair.
The real difficulty is getting everyone to agree with the same idea of "fair." For example, software engineers should be able to fairly evaluate their relative pay against other software engineers doing similar work, but they may have a difficult time fairly evaluating their pay relative to sales people.
You won't even get developers agreeing, most people think they're worth more than they are and better than they are. Pay could be perfectly fair and people will still be insulted because they don't believe developer X is really better than they are even if everyone else believes so.
The only thing I've ever seen that makes people not feel this way is an objective ranking system and pay scale, such as the military. You pass text X and have Y years in service you get Z dollars, with the test generally meaning more than years in service so as not to prevent stars from rising but still allowing lesser talent to earn rank with time in service. Such an atmosphere ends up divorcing pay from the job in such a way that people tend to do work for pride rather than money.
> The reason most companies don't talk pay with people is because most companies fall into the "pay as little as we can get away with" category.
You're right to some extent, but it's not that cut and dry. Lots of companies want to pay their stars, to retain them and set a good example, it's just a little harder to evaluate talent and consistency of talent than you could imagine. Even if a guy is stellar, if you give him a huge raise, is he going to keep up his production?
For instance, an acquaintance of mine had an estimator who was absolutely brilliant, but an alcoholic. Whenever he got too much money, he'd get into hard drinking and flame out and disappear for a while, then come back later and apologize. His boss was careful not to give him too much overtime or the guy would get extra cash and flame out. (It was quite a blue collar business) So there's considerations like that. This was one of their best estimators though, when he was sober. Lots of talent.
> If everyone is paid fairly to begin with (regardless of whether or not pay is usually public), then by definition no-one should get upset if they do find out the pay of others since it would be fair.
You think a 10 year veteran is going to feel happy that some brilliant young college dropout is making the same money as him, because they're objectively producing the same amount? This is just simply not the case.
> The real difficulty is getting everyone to agree with the same idea of "fair." For example, software engineers should be able to fairly evaluate their relative pay against other software engineers doing similar work
A truism from project management - when a project is worked on by multiple people, if you ask a person what percent of the project they completed, the total is always greater than 100%. Everyone thinks they're more important than they are. Unfortunately, less talented people actually think they're better than they are. And on top of it, lots of elite brilliant people have huge ego and chips on their shoulder, so you'd see lots of jockeying to be "the highest paid" and so on.
It's not at all that simple. "More transparency" sounds good in theory, but if it really did work better, companies would switch to it. And yes, everyone wants to pay what they can, but truly, remotely smart managers want to pay and reward and take care of their stars and reward production and pay people. You keep your best people by paying them. Figuring out exactly what they're contributing is by no means easy, though, and people are never objective about the quality of their own work. Hence, ego and morale concerns.
We use FogBugz with about 60 users. Its been interesting seeing its growth over the years. The recent Fogbugz 7 release seems to be one of the most significant though with the addition of plugin support enabling a lot more customization.
The $99 fee is basically the same as what it costs to become a developer for the iPhone. The $50 fee for being listed in the official App Catalog is different, and feels like a good alternative to me since they also have the free distribution option. This should help avoid the App Catalog getting over-crowded with a ton of really poor cheap/free apps, and hopefully means the App Catalog will attract developers producing the higher quality applications.
I think you are right on the effect. I bet a developer who hands over $50 will be a lot more uptight in delayed deployment of that app.
My main problem with the iTunes App Store from a customer point of view is I feel like I have tunnel vision and can't really see the app and comments. I wish I had something like the Amazon shopping experience.
While Palm is definitely skating on some thin ice with their approach, I can't blame them for wanting to use iTunes as their synchronization engine... Probably the majority of the market they are going after already uses iTunes. Why force those customers to install yet another application to handle the synchronization of their music and photos to their phone when they already have one that they are familiar with? Unfortunately, their customers are getting stuck in the middle of this cat and mouse game, but it may help them to get a bunch more early adopters on the platform and allow them to eventually build an better and more reliable solution.
I find it interesting that the majority of the comments on this post seem to focus on "how this article got the rule wrong." Sure, it may be true that the way the author interprets a version of the 80/20 rule may not be the same as as everyone else, but its just an interpretation so relax a bit and see that he does make a interesting point:
Many people go through life putting in "just what it takes" to get the job done and be "good enough" without failing. You can certainly choose to live your life that way, but you will probably end up being stuck with mediocrity. However, if go the extra mile, you may be more likely (but not guaranteed) to achieve greatness in whatever it is that you do.
Maybe I'm also interpreting it differently and over-generalizing, but this seems a lot like what what many startups are doing just by the nature of starting up... many companies are started by founders that weren't happy with competing products currently available in their market, and they feel they can do better. Even though its a lot more effort to do this than just getting by with what is currently available, it can lead to some really exciting new opportunities.
While they had a shirt and a shoe on display, the demo was mainly focused around commercially licensing it as a coating for stuff that you don't really want to clean, such as bedpans and toilet plungers.