*Too Big to Fail* by Andrew Ross Sorkin

Too Big to Fail gives a good view of how executives and managing directors live: on call 24 hours, breaking off family vacations to deal with company business, showing up hours late to meet your future son-in-law. 

True, rushing back to the office requires getting in a limo with your personal driver or, in one case, a helicopter.  True, the broken family vacation started at a 5-star exclusive island getaway, and they fly back on private jet.  True, you host your guests in your unbelievably large mansion, and when you arrive, you can regale them with unique stories about how you just got out of an all day meeting with the Secretary of the Treasury and the head of the Fed.


So, forget having a family life if you want to make it big in the financial industry, though you will have any comfort money can buy.  Most people would probably make that trade-off, but after reading this book, I realize I couldn't.

I developed even greater appreciation for the government workers heading the Treasury and the Fed.  These guys worked just as hard or harder, but without the perqs or big bonuses.  Of course, Paulson made hundreds of millions already, but why would he want the job?  At one point, he vomited in the trash can next to his desk, due to exhaustion and stress, then immediately got on a call to save AIG.  He and Geithner performed as incredibly tireless servants of the government; Geithner never worked on Wall Street, so he never made the huge bucks.  Meanwhile, the public scrutinized every move of theirs, and when they made mistakes, as surely they did, their critics ripped into them.  Again, I had to wonder about the benefits of the job, and who would want it?

Almost all of the execs and leaders impressed me with their stamina, quick minds (despite the pressure and the lack of sleep), and depth of knowledge.

Interview techniques: best man for the job

 Sometimes, literally:

The other question I ask is if they’ve ever been in anyone’s wedding party. If someone has asked them to stand next to him on the most important day of his life, at least one person thinks they are responsible. It means they’ve been able to establish and continue a relationship. It’s not always true, but if you build strong relationships with people, you tend to go into a management meeting or a negotiation and come out of it with some respect.

An offbeat idea, to be sure, but at least it catches people in a moment of honesty, and it provides a reasonable minimum personality requirement.  Not to mention, it beats the heck out of the standard way, which Seth Godin neatly and swiftly destroys.

Your company may not do the trial / intern thing, and for technical jobs, a coding test should be 100% standard.  I don't necessarily go for a 10-line program like Jeff Atwood -- I like more open-ended, longer tasks -- but I prefer any real coding task over asking very specific questions about language syntax, which, to me, are the job interview equivalent to "What did Huckleberry Finn eat for lunch?" questions my English teacher would ask on tests to try to make sure you read the book.  Even if someone knows the answer, what does that prove she learned about the story?

Apple vs the world

Apples lawsuit against HTC / Android is old (well, a week old) news, but this may be the only good part of it:

not everyone is convinced that Apple's strategy is a wise one, and many are concerned this battle is another example that the US patent system—especially where software patents are concerned—is fundamentally broken.

One can only hope that the visibility of this fight will lead to change.  Maybe Apple wins points on legal basis, but the whole point of patents was to encourage innovation -- the idea that someone won't invest in something unless they get some benefit out of it.  There is some truth to that, which is why Thomas Jefferson eventually established the patent system, but he would be deeply opposed to this lawsuit.

So, perhaps this fight will lead to a rallying cry, much like Amazon's 1-click patent eventually slowed down the silliness going on in e-commerce.

Unfortunately, Apple has always been short-sighted in its understanding of its market.  Today we don't have any Mac clones because Apple wanted 100% of that pie.  Despite having a product out years earlier, it was dominated by IBM's open architecture system.

It is not always appreciated just how fast the rise of the IBM clone market was, and the degree to which it took the industry by surprise. 

Think about how much smaller the PC market would be if we had continued down a path of only proprietary systems.  Meanwhile, IBM has built entirely new businesses around the exponentially larger computer market of today.

Android parallels IBM in that it invites the entire industry to participate.  Apple parallels, well, Apple, in that they seek to own all the revenues in a market where they own all the vertical businesses. 

As usual, I'm pulling for the network, the open market, the combined power of the entire industry, not just the geniuses at one, focusing on turning a small market into a gigantic one.  The end of Apple's reign is inevitable, though the lawsuits may make that painful for the rest of us.