I feel in the urge of commercializing it, the builders have forgotten or wondered away from its primary goal.
So, thinking about what its goal could be
(1) Connecting professionals of same interest - to some extent it has succeeded but not fully
(2) Help recruiters find authentic talent - it has failed
(3) Help expert employees to build credential portfolio/profile that can be trusted by future employers - It could have done a lot on that front but doesn't seem to be
Some of the feature I personally used and felt frustrated because of its incompleteness:
1) Adding professional contact - for many of us, colleagues are from different companies e.g. client side team working with us on the same project. There is no relevant option to add these contacts which would say "worked together on a project"
2) Polls - Don't know what's wrong; may be many things, but never got it working as I could liked it to be.
3) Status update - why does this site need one? Have you seen a single person posting updates regularly through this feature and telling people what he is working on?
4) Travel Info - What's the point? If you are travelling to a city, what was the site expecting? People would come receive you at the airport? Or schedule a business meeting with you without any prior talks? Or plan something like that? Would you find time, if so?
5) Misused by HR people.
My observation is it tried to do many things without having a clear goal and so haven't succeeded in any of it. I am not measuring 'success' by number of active users but how well it satisfies those users with everything they want to achieve through this platform. Whether it failed or not that's a debatable question; but some focused business goals and then technically making the site 'usable' would help it a lot.
One credit that it should definitely get is trying to do something for which there is a great real-life need and no other better alternatives.
Less than a year on HN. So does that qualify for less brainy? Or you mean, I should have joined HN directly out of mother's womb?
Most realities are harsh to accept; but that doesn't change anything. Don't you see that some non-sense posts are making at the top here? And that is happening more too often?
I don't deny that today HN has the best of Internet and Techie crowd; but it is also a fact that there is also some junk. So let's accept it.
And yea guys, thanks for the down rating; much appreciated.
It is obvious to notice that, this is yet another useless research stat.
Everything is equally important for life to survive, breathing, drinking water, food, sleep, exercise. How does it matter if breathing is more important that exercise? It is common sense; you obviously breath more than you do exercise.
1) No communication, whatsoever, when somebody is expecting an answer - especially, during recruitment process. All I meant is just a confirmation - "We have received all the documents we needed to prepare the offer; kindly allow us till Monday evening to get back to you."
2) Mistakes (Name/Joining Date/Designation) in official correspondence. Larger companies might be getting this correct by having a central database driving everything; but those with less than 500 employees act really bad here.
3) Not intimating enough in advance about events. E.g. I received a mail about a next morning's get-together just the evening before; and that day I had left office 15 minutes early and obviously didn't check the office mail that night (I never do) - thereby completely missing the get-together; many people in the office did. This happens often. I know, it might not be very common across many companies; but I am just giving specific examples of 'bad functions'.
4) Last minute preparations. Some time ago I had to travel abroad. After reminding almost every day during the final week before traveling, I was handed over all the document just a couple of hours in advance. The tickets, too, were booked with unnecessary delay; leaving me with very little scope for advanced planning. The hotel bill wasn't settled so I had to use my credit card on arrival and then claim reimbursement. Again, just giving an example of what happened with me - I am sure, other people might be experiencing similar things.
5) Attitude. I understand, HR is an important function in any organization. But one needs to understand that, especially in IT industry (or any manufacturing industry), non-technical departments are just support staff. They are there to facilitate the technical guys to make the production happen. The HR people should be highly accessible and easily approachable; very hard to find.
I can give few more examples, but I hope you might have got an idea of what I wanted to say.
You can hardly call that a 'marriage'. Its just another adjustment you would do even with your roommate.
I've been married for last 8 years and also have a kid. I feel, the best of marriage is lived when you share everything - talk out every feeling - help each other achieve the small dreams - LIVE together! Every relationship, even a mother-child/friends/brother-sister - they all have conflicts - and most of it because of expectations. Without 'expectations' there cannot exist a relation. The key is to achieve the balance - try to give enough space/freedom to each other so that both gets to do the things they enjoy the most - try to find your happiness in the same, if you can, or at least support it in some way.
For household responsibilities, it should be equally and mutually shared. But 'don't talk so much' is definitely not the approach to avoid conflicts. We are not machines; the whole point of 'living' is to 'share'; and Humans Do Need to Share. What else do you need to marry for? Better stay bachelor, if you don't think you can shoulder the responsibility to 'share' and handle 'expectations'.
Ok. I think this might be trouble mainly because of touchpad. We need to see for more comments from those who use more of touchpad than mouse. Anybody?
So, thinking about what its goal could be (1) Connecting professionals of same interest - to some extent it has succeeded but not fully (2) Help recruiters find authentic talent - it has failed (3) Help expert employees to build credential portfolio/profile that can be trusted by future employers - It could have done a lot on that front but doesn't seem to be
Some of the feature I personally used and felt frustrated because of its incompleteness: 1) Adding professional contact - for many of us, colleagues are from different companies e.g. client side team working with us on the same project. There is no relevant option to add these contacts which would say "worked together on a project" 2) Polls - Don't know what's wrong; may be many things, but never got it working as I could liked it to be. 3) Status update - why does this site need one? Have you seen a single person posting updates regularly through this feature and telling people what he is working on? 4) Travel Info - What's the point? If you are travelling to a city, what was the site expecting? People would come receive you at the airport? Or schedule a business meeting with you without any prior talks? Or plan something like that? Would you find time, if so? 5) Misused by HR people.
My observation is it tried to do many things without having a clear goal and so haven't succeeded in any of it. I am not measuring 'success' by number of active users but how well it satisfies those users with everything they want to achieve through this platform. Whether it failed or not that's a debatable question; but some focused business goals and then technically making the site 'usable' would help it a lot.
One credit that it should definitely get is trying to do something for which there is a great real-life need and no other better alternatives.