the Filipinos learn English in school, do not tend to be entrepreneurial (thus are less likely to steal ideas), and are culturally service-oriented.
This is actually a very illuminating article about how individuals -- just like multinationals -- can hire people for less than minimum wage "offshore" effectively.
Swapping selection for value turns out not to be much of a tradeoff. Customers may think they want variety, but in reality too many options can lead to shopping paralysis. "People are worried they'll regret the choice they made," says Barry Schwartz, a Swarthmore professor and author of The Paradox of Choice. "People don't want to feel they made a mistake." Studies have found that buyers enjoy purchases more if they know the pool of options isn't quite so large. Trader Joe's organic creamy unsalted peanut butter will be more satisfying if there are only nine other peanut butters a shopper might have purchased instead of 39. Having a wide selection may help get customers in the store, but it won't increase the chances they'll buy. (It also explains why so often people are on their cellphones at the supermarket asking their significant other which detergent to get.) "It takes them out of the purchasing process and puts them into a decision-making process," explains Stew Leonard Jr., CEO of grocer Stew Leonard's, which also subscribes to the "less is more" mantra.
I really like Trader Joe. Too bad there isn't one in Toronto.
Now, one of the funny thing was that whenever I am at a Trader Joe, I never really notice that it wasn't a fully stocked supermarket. Yeah, something in the small part of my brain sets off that ... "where do they put the sponges?" ... but, y'know what? Not really. It was just so cool.
Besides, who really needs 40 different types of peanut butter? Looks like freedom of choice is becoming a marketing mistake.
More than a year after the official end of the recession, the overall unemployment rate remains consistently above 9.5 percent. But this is just the official figure. When adjusted to include the people who have already given up looking for work -- or are barely surviving on the few hundred dollars they earn with a part-time job and having to use their savings to supplement their income -- the real unemployment figure jumps to more than 17 percent.
What? 1 in 8? wow.
What is this way, then, that Mozillians view the world? Throughout my many discussions, I noticed a number of recurring beliefs (many of which are general to engineers and developers, and not just open source communities):
- There’s always a right answer. Unlike most professional designers, I noticed that developers like to use the word “right” a lot when designing solutions. Understandings of tradeoffs seem to be limited.
- My answer is right. Most of the Mozillians I met like to believe they have the right answer. There appears to be a joy on defending this position as well.
- If a rationale argument can’t be made for a solution, the solution is invalid. Rational thought is the only valid means of obtaining knowledge or solving a problem.
- Proof by existence, not by evidence. Prototype it and then I’ll believe you.
- Ambiguity is unacceptable. Messy or noisy problems need not be solved. Solve the solvable problems.
Another recurring stance I noticed was that developers are special, privileged class. Obviously this isn’t the first time I’ve see this, but it did make me wonder where it comes from. So I probed. What I found was that every story of how someone learned to program and become part of the community was one of competitive selection. It’s hard to learn to program, it’s hard to get into CS, it’s hard to get a development job, and it’s hard to become a Mozilla developer. In fact, many told me that with all of these trials by fire, they learned quickly to act confident, to act certain, and to act as if one is right. One developer described this as a form of elitism, which brings with it a disdain for other view points and other more easily acquired skill sets (hence the apparent lesser status of localizers, testers, and support).
This essay is for the rest of you, the ones who freely admit to having been seduced by a serendipitous volume of Jamaica Kincaid's Annie John glimpsed on a potential girlfriend's living-room shelf or by a spine-broken copy of Robert Lowell sitting atop that boy's nightstand. Maybe that was your first time in the apartment, you had been reluctant to go, and now you wanted to linger a while …
