BlogSat

Someone sent around this list of humorous 404 links . Its an entertaining way to admit to a mistake. The first humorous 404 message I remember is Orkut's " No donut for you. ". It was funny for a while, like the Twitter whale and like all the messages listed above; until I saw it too often. At that point I was just pissed at the site, and the attempt at humor annoyed me even more. Humor works; I'm a big fan of using it as much as possible if its part of the way you think. However a couple of times I've had a rein people in from trying to be funny in an apology email. There are a few reasons for this  No one is ever as funny as they think they are. Sure, humor can make the message more "interesting", but if you're sending an apology there's a chance that people are pissed off,  and I'd like to minimize that chance of the fringe getting marginally more pissed because of an attempt at humor. There's opportunities aplenty to be funny when th...

They say "big companies can't move as fast as startups." I've always kinda accepted that, nodding my head whenever "they" said it. Anecdotal evidence and logic seemed to suggest it was true. Also, I suppose being someone who'd only ever been around a startup or two (until now), I was only too happy to agree with the premise. :) But I never really understood exactly why...until now. When people say this about larger companies they seem imply something about the people that work there. They seem to believe that working in a large company seems to make them employees (or attract employees that are) complacent; less hungry... There is no way I'd believe that about anyone at the current place of work. Most people around me are ridiculously, even frighteningly smart, driven and motivated. But now I do have an understanding ....or at least a theory on why despite that, bigger companies will always be at a disadvantage at the pure speed game. I think it bo...