The RubeTube

With help from a timely 20-percent-off-on-all-items sale at Powerbooks, I was able to get myself a copy (the last one!) of one of the hottest business/management books today: The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't by Robert Sutton. I found out about The No Asshole Rule from Guy Kawasaki's blog. There's also an "Asshole Rating Self-Exam (ARSE)" that you can take to find out how much of an asshole you are; I scored a 4, which makes me a non-asshole.

I haven't finished reading the whole book, but so far, it's been worth every penny. The book tackles the problem of assholes in the workplace, and discusses their damaging effects and ways to mitigate their impact. I love how the author is unafraid to use the word "asshole"; I agree with him that there simply is no better word to label those jerks who make the world a drearier place to live in.

One of the best sections I've read so far is the one listing the factors that contribute to your organization's "Total Cost of Assholes", or TCA. The argument is that tolerating the presence of assholes will end up costing your organization a lot, even if the asshole is always one of the top performers. Here are some of the ways that an asshole can kick your ass:

• Damage to victims and witnesses: distraction from tasks, loss of motivation, absenteeism
• Damage to the asshole him/herself: humiliation, job loss, long-term career damage
• Consequences for management: time spent "cooling out" victims, time spent replacing departed assholes

While I was reading the book, I couldn't help but feel tremendously fortunate to be working at such an asshole-free environment like the one at HP. Let me repeat that: no one at HP is an asshole! Surely, there have been some cases of "temporary assholes", but I haven't met any "certified assholes" so far. If there are any certified assholes at all among us, then they are most definitely first-class assholes to be able to hide their asshole-ness behind a sweet, non-asshole exterior. I'm proud to say that we are very efficient at weeding out assholes and making sure they don't infest our workplace.

But if there are no assholes at HP, then why did I buy the book? Aside from the in-your-face title and eye-catching cover, I just wanted to find out if I was an asshole myself. So am I one? You tell me. (Am I being one right now?)

(P.S. If you work for an asshole-infested organization, it's probably not a good idea to let your officemates know you're reading The No Asshole Rule... or this blog entry, for that matter. They may not easily realize it or admit it, but deep down inside, assholes just know they're assholes.)

Labels: assholes, books, HP, management, work

I was invited by Dr. Rodrigo to be a mentor for the Ateneo teams joining in this year's Imagine Cup; more specifically, to the three teams joining the Software Design invitational. As a participant in the in IC 2004 (finalist in Brazil) and IC 2005 (didn't make the finals), I was more than happy to contribute what I can to the teams: project ideas, technical expertise, and lessons learned from the contest.

The theme of this year's Imagine Cup is "Imagine a world where technology enables a better education for all." Pretty tough theme, in my opinion. I had but one decent idea and it didn't quite pass the "for all" clause. If you'd like to help us out (Atenean or not), email me at punzki@gmail.com and I'll be glad to pass along your idea to the group.

As a mentor, I attended the Imagine Cup Philippines launch party last Saturday night at the Hard Rock Cafe in Glorietta 3. I got to meet the teams and share some of my ideas. I'm pretty excited about the students; they've got loads of potential and I can't wait to see what they come up with. (And the food at the party was good, too!) The party also brought back some bad memories which I shall leave unmentioned in this blog entry.

One of the activities was a game where each table was given a sheet of Manila paper and a couple of crayons and was asked to draw a symbol that represented Korea (South Korea, the site of the finals). Our table's symbol was easily the best among the entries. How could you lose with the geekiest Korean symbol possible: a poorly drawn "screenshot" of Starcraft, which is like Korea's national sport or something (for 7 years now!). For our efforts, we drew huge laughs from the judges and I scored a brand new paperback copy of Writing Secure Code ($32.99 at Amazon.com). Sweet! The others in our group either got that, or Code Complete, which I already have.

The whole Starcraft thing was my idea, but Wil Li (a CS freshman) did most of the hard work. I wish I'd taken a picture of our drawing, but I guess you'll just have to settle for a picture of the book cover:

Labels: :D, books, contests, Imagine Cup

Miguel gave me this link: World eBook Fair. Free e-book downloads until August 11. Says that they've got "1/3 million e-books", which means they have a non-discrete number of e-books.

I didn't actually find anything I like there... well, nothing that I want to read right now (was looking for some good computer books to read). There's a lot of trashy material like this Adobe Premiere 6.5 New Features Highlights press release (it's an e-book?) that makes it hard for anyone to find a real gem, but you might be able to pick up a good e-book if you look hard enough.

BTW, please let me know if you find something there that's particularly interesting. Or if you find that 1/3 of an e-book that's left over.

Labels: books, free