Robi Ganguly’s Big Ideas

Oh boy. This is about the funniest thing I’ve seen in a long time. I actually had to stop watching it b/c I was tired of laughing.

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Well, if you’re Microsoft, apparently the answer is “it’s increasing all the time.. right now we feel like $7.5B”. Apparently the ‘Softies have been feeling pretty good about the market ass-kicking they got when they said they’d significantly up their R&D spending (http://www.itworld.com/App/060531msrd/ ), so they’ve gone back to the well and upped the number..

Microsoft CEO forecasts $7.5 bln R&D spend in 2007: Financial News – Yahoo! Finance

So, I’m all for that. In fact, I think that’s pretty awesome – way to go Microsoft. Seriously, who else can look at people over lunch and say “Oh yeah, by the way, we’re spending more on R&D than we told you back in May. Guess we should have sent a memo or something..”

I found this part even more fascinating though:

“Ballmer said for years Microsoft had faced no competition
to recruit staff. “Finally, we have some competition (from
Google) for talent,” he said.”

Finally??? Finally??

I really want to know if that was just a flippant remark or if it was part of a detailed and serious comment. (Fine fine Scoble, I’m beginning to really believe you on this whole “video is the future” thing.. Yes, it’d be terrific if someone had taken video of this lunch. Why I didn’t figure this out after having worked at C-SPAN, I’ll never know..).

IF it’s actually true that MSFT has never really felt like they had to compete for talent before, can you imagine what the tech recruiting landscape is going to look like in a few years? Imagine, for a second, that talent was a product. Say, perhaps, that it was a browser. Then imagine that Microsoft is just resting on its laurels with IE for oh, 7 years or so. Then Firefox comes along…. 

Now, apply that logic to recruiting. If Microsoft wasn’t being forced to compete for talent before, you might want to be thinking about your “I’d love to work at Microsoft” pitch pretty soon…

Disclaimer: I was raised in Redmond. It was in the water. I can’t help it.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft, war for talent, R&D investing, making big bets for the future, managing the street

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In my former life as an i-banker, there would always be a viral sensation or two during the recruiting process. It seemed that as technology became more widely adopted, people would experiment with clip art and other capabilities in order to try and stand out from the crowd. I must say that a few were pretty interesting, but the ones that bombed really stood out and were passed on in the industry very quickly. This one, however, takes the cake:

How Not to Apply for a Job in I-Banking – IvyGate, the Ivy League blog

Shame on him/his friends for not realizing how viral this could become and how perfectly assinine it is. 

Technorati Tags: jobs, i-banking, hubris, stupid recruiting tricks, how not to apply for a job

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Check out this brain teaser and see if you can figure it out:
Petals Around the Rose

(In case you’re wondering yes, I did)

If you’re curious about it, check out this story about Bill Gates trying to figure it out, with a bunch of other geeks, back in 1977.

I love mind games

Technorati Tags: brain teaser, petals around the rose, bill gates and brain teasers

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Check this out:
Google Maps

What the hell is going on there? Very odd.

Technorati Tags: google maps bug, strange things happening in

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