I founded my company back in 1991 technically. I was a "DBA" (Doing business as") from my college dorm room. In 1993, I incorporated the company (or technically, my mom actually did the incorporation). I was still about a year from graduation at that point. It was just me still. It wasn't until 1995 that I got an office and started hiring people to work with. And I can tell you, my training in Electrical Engineering did not prepare me for being an employer. Based on so...
..Once upon a time I wanted to be an electrical engineer. I would design the next generation computer CPUs. A job at Intel or Motorolla. But somewhere along the way I ended up writing some game for OS/2. I didn't even know how to program at the time. I bought "Teach Yourself C in 21 days" and a couple OS/2 programming books and wrote a game. I didn't get actually paid for that game because the publisher ripped me off. Took the money and ran. So fine, I would write software and p...
Whenever I talk to someone looking for a job, I'm amazed at how often they are down on their own abilities. What they don't realize is that the issue isn't always so much how good they are but rather how awful their competitors for many positions are. Since finding myself on the employing end of the business line, I've been shocked at how often people given every opportunity to succeed will still blow it. Even when the position requires just showing up on time (or close to it) and...
In my personal life I tend to be quick with a smile and a joke. I really enjoy trying to make people laugh and put them at ease. But at work, it's a very different story - most of the time anyway. When dealing with people in a professional setting one must try to have control of the perception they give off. Effective business people have to be able to instill confidence and trust in those they interact with. I don't always succeed in doing this since my natural ten...
Recently there's been an interesting discussion on WinCustomize.com about Stardock and PR. Simply put, Stardock's software is outstanding, but my outpsoken nature creates a lot of detractors for the company. If you think I'm in your face in politics or whatever here on JoeUser.com, you should see me in the "customization community". I'm very opinionated and vigorously defend our software. Long ago, when Stardock was just a few people, the "customization community" consisted of ju...
American college graduates are making themselves increasingly vulnerable to outsourcing. I'm not the only one who thinks this. A top Intel executive has expressed this concern too . The problem is that American technology workers have a lethal combination upon graduation: A sense of entitlement and a lack of skills. The sense of entitlement is the from the belief that simply graduating with a degree in engineering, computer science, information technology, etc. somehow should ent...
Quite regularly we get submitted a design document or prototype of some game or software idea or web concept from some ambitious young person. The proposal is usually quite vague but they insist it's a revolutionary idea that, once made, will make millions of dollars. They are quite..generous as well in their proposal offering to split the proceeds that their revolutionary product would make 50/50. Others generously offer to sell us the concept for a reasonable cost. "...
For those of you who are looking for an attorney in Michigan, we use Jerry Bagazinski who acts as our general counsel. He practice areas are estate planning, real estate, business planning, probate, powers of attorney, and business law. If you ever need to contact him his email address is gabpc@aol.com or call him at 734-522-2247. Tell him we sent ya.
Here's the dirty little secret I've picked up about successful business people - they have mastered the art of not just figuring out what the most important tasks are but, and this is key, figuring out which needed tasks to drop off. I don't claim to be a paragon of business. But I am coming to understand that each day, there are things that need to get done that I simply cannot get done. I haven't fully made the transition to doing this optimally as I still end up trying to do more things th...
If you've ever thought of getting a master's degree in Education or Educational Technology via on-line courses I recently heard from a friend that CMU has some excellent programs for doing that. CMU is one of the top schools in the country for degrees (particularly Masters degrees) in education.
Empathy is a strange thing. Someone with empathy can read in a lot from someone from what they write on an IRC channel. But someone short in empathy can meet someone, read what they write, and still not have any idea what makes that person tick. Learning you lack empathy is an important first step to trying to develop it. I know because for most of my life, I lacked empathy. Developing empathy is critical to success in business. It's absolutely critical in managing a company and i...
I wrote in this article about my fear that the Democrats were going to drive themselves to extinction due to its inability to encourage its extremists to find a different party to belong to. A new user called JTurnas responded: Now for some advice to you Draginol. Anyone running a business shouldn't post public political opinions. Its only going to cost you big in sales. Those liberals have credit cards, just like the moderates, its only logical they will take their money elsewhere. Yo...
Here are the top 15 most popular desktop enhancements this week at CNET: 1 3D Fish School popular Watch a lifelike aquarium on your screen. OS: Windows (all) License: Free to try 3 1 35,271 107,948 2 Turkey Shoot Screensaver popular Go hunting for your Thanksgiving dinner in this cartoon screensaver. OS: Windows 95/98/NT License: Free 14 1 27,042 88,137 3 WindowBlinds ...
The #1 reason that Stardock has done so well is relatively low turn over. On our games, everyone who worked on The Corporate Machine (2000) is with us on Galactic Civilizations II plus new people. On Object Desktop the leads on WindowBlinds, IconPackager, DesktopX, ObjectBar, WindowFX, and so on are all the same. Which is pretty meaningful given that some of these were released in 1999. And so we keep growing and growing. This month we brought on 4 new people into the office.&nb...
About a year ago a friend of mine was telling me how satellite radio was going to be the next big thing and that I should buy stock in a company called Sirius Satellite. I'm pretty conservative as an investor, but in a moment of recklessness my wife and I put a considerable chunk of our savings into the Siri stock. The stock didn't do as well as I had hoped but I continued to believe that I should stick with it. This past summer, I even had a screenshot of me lamenting my decision to...