Why Apple Profits Pack Such Punch
Posted by Jonathan Ng | Filed under Personal
Quoted from this article over at BusinessWeek:
The company is expert at outsourcing the rudimentary work to suppliers and manufacturing partners. “They’re mainly in the business of defining architectures,” says Kathleen Eisenhardt, an engineering professor at Stanford University. “We’re talking about a small number of people—maybe ten—that think about how all the pieces go together. [Apple is] more the thinker bees than the worker bees, and that scales a lot better than trying to do everything yourself.”
Get the point?
While you’re over at BusinessWeek, go check this report: Why Small Tech Companies Aren’t Outsourcing. Makes you feel kinda relieved if you’re in the IT industry, but then again, only if you’re the “thinker bee”.
The Golden Rule: Keep It Simple
Posted by Jonathan Ng | Filed under Technical
Yet another thing I’ve seen at HSBC is a rule that Apple swears by - to keep things as simple as possible, hold true.
When I was developing a system, I tried to add some features to it so that the user can better maintain the system. The big mistake was: it required quite a lot of changes/coding on our end, which ultimately backfired when I made some errors in the coding.
Worse of all, as the user interface wasn’t one that was well thought out, or ideally “fool-proof”, the user didn’t really understand how to use it, and entered erroneous data.
This could all have been avoided if I stuck to a really simple system design. Yes, maintenance of the system from the user’s end would have been tedious, but at least it wasn’t rocket science.
Sometimes, it isn’t about the wow-factor. It’s about being simple.
Substance - What am I Made of?
Posted by Jonathan Ng | Filed under Personal
It’s been so long since I’ve blogged, so I don’t even know how to summarize my thoughts this past weeks.
First off, went over to Microsoft’s auditorium for a, uh.. something like a get-together cum briefing. As usual, Vico (aka Santa Claus) had some freebies to give out, like a keychain he got us from his trip to Bali.
We also finally got our MSP bag and a t-shirt. Looking at the previous batch of MSP’s bag, I can’t help but feel disappointed with mine..
More importantly, 4 of the previous MSPs passed lengthy interviews and are now working in Microsoft as interns!! What really struck me that night, was what Harvin, one of the interns said: “at Microsoft, it’s all about substance. People judge you for what you are. It’s about what you’re made of”. Steven even told me during dinner “you see all those leng lui under Sales, driving BMW.. all very ‘geng’ wan, very strong..”, and I guess he’s trying to say they’re not “shallow” at all.
So what am I made of? Am I passionate enough?
I seem to have varied passions. I have always had interest in programming. I’m also kind of “in-to” web design and development, usability and that sorta thing. Looking at my feed reader, I don’t subscribe to any pure programming/development kinda blog, and I mostly ignore posts from alistapart and 456bereastreet. To make things worst, I’m developing more and more passion for photography, and especially flash photography. I subscribe to Digital Photography School and am reading the Strobist blog, though the “Flash Photography 101″ is itself quite technical. The rest of my feeds are mostly news blogs - technology/business news.
Heck, I think I’m going a little off topic here. I talking bout interests rather than substance. But hey, I still wanna pick something out and focus solely on it. I only have 24 hours in a day and hence there’s only so much I can do.
So what will I be made of? Answers soon..
Privileged
Posted by Jonathan Ng | Filed under Personal
Feel privileged. Yesterday, my colleague brought to office his “prized possession”, a Yashica camera, dating back to the 60s.
The “coolest” thing about it is: manual focus! Yeah, you have to slowly focus on a subject - one thing that you would never learn in this day and age. I don’t know what’s the exact term for it, but the viewfinder has a dot in the middle, where you will see a mirrored image if the subject is not in focus. Simply turn the lens until you see a clear picture in the dot.
One thing I didn’t really understand is, how the heck it can have the exposure setting on the lens??
Last but not least, me with the camera.
Pictures taken with my friend’s camera phone.
Lessons in Life
Posted by Jonathan Ng | Filed under Personal
There some lessons in life, that you’ve heard others telling you, but you just shrug it off, most probably coz you’ve never faced something like that, or you think you’ll never face things like that.
But thankfully, I’ve kept those lessons in mind.
Fact of life #1: you’ll always meet difficult people. These “difficult” people gets much, much more “difficult” when they know they’re difficult, and they couldn’t care less about it, ’cause they’re your boss.
Procrastination kills: it really, really kills. We humans are always over-confident. We always think “hey, that’s easy lah.. 2 days kau dim”. But there’s always some pesky problem or challenge, lurking, waiting to pounce on the unwary.
One’s base personality, never changes. That’s what my cousin told me when asked why do some employers look at an interviewee’s SPM results. An employer can look at one’s youth, and come to the conclusion that there are some habits/attitudes that may resurface, or that one is more prone to. The better your present track record, the less one will be worried ’bout your base personality.
Last but not least, there’s a Cantonese/Mandarin saying that goes something like a day passes if you’re happy, and a day passes if you’re unhappy too. There’s no point in being angry, frustrated and harboring all those stress you get from difficult people.
Some things you can learn from a book. Some things, you can’t. Some things have to be learned from observation, from thinking “what have I learned during industrial training? What would I learn, if I did industrial training again?”
