I've got ALS (MND). Completely agree UX is the problem, gazing at a keyboard on a screen designed to stop multiple keys clogging (QWERTY) feels wrong.
Some ideas
- gesture based eye movements, maybe two sweeps on a nine by nine grid, which map directly to phonemes
- enormous 4k 75inch tv with thousands of words or ideograms or phrases
- "writing" with your eyes then doing line to text AI to clean up
- standardish keyboard with massive LLM prediction and clean UX for autocomplete/throwaway with branching options
Ideas are cheap so no clue if these work. Also Tobi split between cheap good non-hackable gaming eyetracking and medical products doesn't help. Finally, with ALS you want to communicate about different things and are more tired.
The math for cheap amazon microscopes is often based on the ratio of a digital image. So use a 60" monitor rather than 30" you have an extra 2x magnification. But not better resolution!
Did this in a shortlived startup 20 yrs ago. Other cofounder was the ideas guy. Pitch was to roll up granular, factual project achievements up into reporting data , and cascade objectives down. This avoids the red/amber/green fictional layer between PMs and sponsors.
Learned two interesting things
- if your tool mandates a philosophy or process, you massively shrink your market
- real pms , sponsors and engineer s buffer their risk by selectively disclosing information. They don't want a permanent record of open, granular outcome information unless they are in a very mature company.
Agree with this. The Lib Dems had an existential crisis at that time (2010) as Labour and the Conservatives were both fighting for the centre ground and it seemed that would become the norm (deeply ironic given Corbyn, Brexit and Truss later).
So Clegg rolled the dice on getting proportional representation rather than first past the post to solve this and lost. He also had a go at being less of an opposition party (where you oppose) and more of a coalition party like in Europe to get things done (post the financial crisis). This failed.
Everyone hates him for tuition fees, but apparently George Osborne told him to vote against the huge raise. Had this happened I doubt people would remember him with the malice they do.
Finally, he always seemed an ethical person (Lib Dems usually are excepting local election shenanigans), so the charges seem odd and out of character, but so did the move to facebook.
Management is about sensemaking. Management provides the last answer (if one is needed) for 'Why are we doing this?'. It carries accountability for calling 'when to stop', and in the obverse provides belief and is the backstop that 'this can be done'. It therefore also has accountability for changing constraints (money, scope, resource, time) if needed when asked.
Management ties contexts together, so other individuals don't have to ask infinite 'whys', they trust the manager has this covered.
Management can be done by individuals, within the team, or hierarchically. All can work.
Personally strongly disagree with 'managers typically have no skin in the game'. I find it is necessary to care about the outcome and the team and the customer when I work, but YMMV. Do agree that management is a support, though I prefer to use the analogy that it is the 'glue' role
It's always ok to leave a company - if they can't survive without you, you are doing them a disservice.
But it's an interesting question - I've been intrigued throughout my career (5-25 person project management)
"Which 'reality disconnects' are important and need addressing, which can be left to lie, and which ones are fatal?"
Still don't really have the answer but my guidelines would go like this
- There has to be at least one part of the project (hopefully the most important) that is functional and grounded in reality to grow from. If there isn't then scrap the project/ do a new project. ( In consultancy a question to ask a new client was - Tell me about your last project that succeeded and your last project that failed - sometimes they had no successes - that was worth knowing)
- Fight the small battles all the time - How do we know what done is? Are the tests good? Is that code understandable? Are the specs and interfaces understood? Are we shipping sh*t?. You need to keep your principles here or you can't mentor and good people won't follow/ trust you
- Some of the big battles especially the political ones can only be fought in very specific contexts (changing budgets, team structure, new cultures). Put down a marker you'd like to see improvement there, but also state that now is not the time till the fundamentals are done.
- At the end of the day imagine yourself as a new hire in your team. If the new hire thinks 'My boss isn't the right person to lead the team' then think about leaving/changing roles. If they think 'Wow this is a tough job but I can see how we get there' keep on going. If they think 'I respect my boss but no-one can fix this mess' then think about re-negotiating to what can be done(either leave or help re-base things). If the 'junior you' isn't going to stay in your team, then things aren't going to work.
Strongly recommend Rands in Repose - Bits, Features, Truth