Monthly Archives: March 2013

Careless, Reckless, Using Excessive Force

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And as I am in the mood, let me post something else. Again in English. I type faster in English 🙂 In my favorite topic – soccer.

So yesterday, there was a game between teams that are not so dear to me. One of them, playing in red, being the mortal enemy and all other soccer cliches for my favorite team and the other, having the luck of being managed by the most annoying soccer manager ever. So I didn’t watch the game. Just watched some highlights as I usually do when I don’t care who wins or loses but still think the play itself will be and worth the 5-10 minutes of watching.

And then it started – first it was the so called commentators on the telly, then it was my FB friends and then the English soccer media. All of them with the endless narrative of “this player was shown an unjust red card”. For this challenge:

nani

So I thought. Let’s read the rules of the game. And I did: http://www.fifa.com/mm/document/afdeveloping/refereeing/law_12_fouls_misconduct_en_47379.pdf:

“Reckless” means that the player has acted with complete disregard of the danger to, or consequences for, his opponent: a player who plays in a reckless manner shall be cautioned
“Using excessive force” means that the player has far exceeded the necessary use of force and is in danger of injuring his opponent: a player who uses excessive force shall be sent off

Look at the picture (or just find a video in the net). Read the two lines above. It is that simple.

The problem with the two lines above is not that they are wrong. The problem with the above two lines is that soccer referees are not following them consistently. The rest is media and fan talk. But please – before talking, read the rules. Reading shall set you free.

PS. In the meantime, Nigel De Jong sues Nani for copyright infringement.

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Exclusive: End of the world approaching – Yahoo! employees required to work in the office

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It has been a while since I posted here. And here is a post in English 🙂

So there has been great disturbance in the force recently. Or so they say. The sith lord(ess) of Yahoo!, Darth(ess) Marissa issued a decree that hereby orders her subjects that they work from their Yahoo! office and no from the cozy location of their homes. In short, the end of the world is approaching.

I mean, really???

Reading the tech press, FB blog posts, even a random post in Internet that triggered my deeper thinking on the topic and eventual posting here, you would believe that that the current Yahoo! CEO is the devil in disguise who bestows some hellish practices on her noble subjects.

I mean, really???

I guess I am old fashioned. Both in my managerial and regular-life thinking, but I can help but wonder, when did working from home became so important? When did working in the office became evil? But most importantly, when did we, the outsiders, became so self assured and so self important to cast (and shout loudly) our views upon those “in the know”? When?

Conventional wisdom… Entitlement… Self importance… Modern media… Memes…

There we have a CEO of a company in deep turmoil just less than an year ago. A company that has been going down since it heydays, more than 10 years ago. Imagine that. Going down for ~ 10 years. Now imagine that you are hired to turn around the trend. To make a company, still huge, that has been “the loser” for some odd 10 years, join the exclusive winners club. Are you going to do some bold decisions? Do you think bold decisions are needed?

And then this huge outcry for something so small. So logical. So boring should I say. Both – the decision and the outcry 🙂

When you are steadying the ship, you are supposed to start with the sailors, aren’t you? I mean, the ship is just a wood. It goes where sailors take it. So I would just guess. A little guess. That having the sailors around the captain’s deck and ON THE SHIP will actually help. You know, talking to them. Have them talking to each other. Having them knowing each other. Rough them up a bit…

It doesn’t *seem* to have anything with productivity, creativity and any other buzz words one must think of. It *seems* related to the old fashioned steadying the ship… And hell, Yahoo!’s ship surely needs quite steadying.

So here I am writing my first post in my blog for a while on a topic that seems so unimportant that it is pretty funny. But yet fascinating for me. So I thought of writing something 🙂

Anyway, my point – I believe in giving people the chance to do their own mistakes. Marissa Mayer is the one accountable for Yahoo!’s fate and if she thinks that this decision is best for the company – so be it. No one from us, the outsiders, know the details why this decision was made. And the trick is always in the details and the specifics. For any negative of her decision, there can be a positive. But they mean nothing without the details and the context. So let’s just relax and watch the show. Unless we own (I don’t :)) Yahoo! stock. But if this is the case, I guess we already hate Jerry Yang for not selling to Microsoft anyway 🙂

PS. And here is what, according to Quora, Yahoo! employes think about the WFH ban. Not a big deal but still interesting data point.

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