Technology executives are notorious for their out-of-proportion egos and hot-headed tempers. Michael Dell, Larry Ellison, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs-- even Andy Grove--are all members of a long list of distinguished high-tech executives who are famous for not suffering fools lightly, among other things.
But what happens when they're the fools? What happens when a high-powered executive has his head up his you-know-what and has lost all sense of objectivity? What happens when a gutsy employee speaks up? Well, in many cases he gets his head chopped off for his trouble. In shrink speak this is called transference, which in this case means unconsciously taking one's own feelings of inferiority and guilt out on another.
Given a choice, the vast majority of people would rather forgo the whole decapitation thing rather than declare that "the emperor (or should I say executive) has no clothes." Not surprisingly, this phenomenon is rampant in the technology industry. ... Read more
Ever wonder how we got along without cell phones, BlackBerrys, notebook computers, and fax machines? How did we manage to have fun without video games, MP3 players, and DVRs?
Come to think of it, how did we ever survive without the Internet?
I don't know how, but we did. And you know what? I don't remember ever thinking I was missing something. I played records, wrote letters, used the phone book, and shopped at stores.
As for work, well, the business of designing chips was a bit archaic back then. Still, at Texas Instruments we did manage to get our designs done and out the door. In fact, TI's venerable TMS320 Digital Signal Processor--the chip inside most of the world's cell phones--was invented back then in the early '80s. How about that? ... Read more
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