gawker

By nice, I meant that the presentation was nice and clean. And I understood each individual piece of data but I am unsure if I was supposed to identify a trend amongst teams or not.

Very nice - although I'm not too sure what it's trying to communicate to me.

Btw, did you have to pay for your stats?

Forcing people to be in the office will not boost morale and productivity. There's probably a reason why personal and "side projects" are being done by her employees. Their work probably does not motivate them enough for them. And there's nothing wrong with dedicating some time for activities outside of the company - if it makes a happier employee, I'd say go for it.

Agree with the point that humans are fallible. We should always have back ups. A company with 1000s of paying customers should at least take steps to protect itself from this sort of catastrophe.

Startups have limited amount of funds to invest in their human resources so they will always be look for the best, the ones who take initiative, who goes all out to make something done right. I wouldn't give up hope just yet - start building something outside of what's formally required of you. Make an app, publish it, sell it and talk about it. You'll need to wear multiple hats in a startup so in addition to coding, if you can do the other stuff, you'll be a huge asset.

I definitely commend you for taking the effort :) If I had a company, I would love to have you on my side to help me point out my flaws.

Your manager needs a reality check to realize that while he's good at starting a company, he can't really manage it.

Agreed. I feel like it's more of an exercise to have some sort of vision but in reality, it's really difficult to predict what the environment will be like in 4 years.

Looking at what I have learnt just 2 years ago, some of it is already starting to get irrelevant!

I think you've outlined just how undervalued managerial skills actually are. I have seen many that have claimed that they can take up a manager's position yet can barely manage relationships with their friends.

I think that relationship skills are key to being a manager, in addition to all the other planning etc.

I'm not sure how approachable your manager is but it sounds like he needs help from you to bring moral up. A leader does not necessarily have to be a manager but of course, with everything, do at your own discretion.

Sure but they have their R&D arm and they easily have enough cash to acquire upcoming companies. Granted of course, they will need to be smart enough to spin money out of those things but they aren't in a dreadful position like Kodak was.

Beautiful! Thanks! I'm probably going to fork it at some time to add something. I've been dreaming about this for a while.

You would probably lose more than just a few banks if they didn't get some sort of money. The financial markets need confidence to survive as well.

The company is still afloat and still profitable - he's doing a much better job than quite a few CEOs out there.

Yes, they seem to express great shock when it's simply just capitalism at work.

Hi Pierre,

Would you be able to comment on how your process and decision on picking a speech engine company?

Thanks