Karmona`s Pragmatic Blog

Dunbar’s number is the supposed cognitive limit to the number of individuals with whom any one person can maintain stable social relationships.
In a 1992 article, Dunbar used the correlation observed for non-human primates* to predict a social group size for humans and using a “simple” regression equation on data for 38 primate genera, Dunbar predicted a human “mean group size” of 150 (with 95% confidence interval of 100 to 230).

Dunbar’s Friends is my definition (and trademark ;-) to those few “real”, trusted and known people in your huge** online social network***.

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* Primatologists have noted that, due to their highly social nature, non-human primates have to maintain personal contact with the other members of their social group, usually through grooming (and not “poking” as you might be expecting :-). The number of social group members a primate can track appears to be limited by the volume of the neocortex region of their brain.

** Did you know that Robert Scoble is following 21,060 people in Twitter, 2,992 in FriendFeed and only 71 “lousy” friends in Flickr…

*** Social Network for Dummies - Lee and Sachi LeFever (a.k.a. the CommonCraft’s family :) have created a wonderful video explaining social network in plain English.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau Y2K statistics (accuse me for being nostalgic but this is as good as it gets until 2010)

* 7 most common Americans surnames are Smith, Johnson, Williams, Brown, Jones, Miller or Davis.

* 4 million surnames  are held by only one person.

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* This can be very helpful when you are trying to guess someone name… with ~2,376,206 Smiths, I suggest Mr. Smith.

* This could be problematic when you are looking for Mary or James Smith and all you have is the name…

* Moti Karmona isn’t even there ;-)

I have an old, sentimental newspaper-article-cut claiming “pessimistic hi-tech employees are more productive than their optimistic peers” hanging on my office wall.

In this context, last summer I wrote, coined and trademarked the Pessimistic Developer Paradigm.

Early this week I have interviewed a very interesting dude* who saw this old article hanging on my office and introduced this amazing poem by Robert Graves which I must share in this pessimistic context…

In Broken Images (by Robert Graves)

He is quick, thinking in clear images;
I am slow, thinking in broken images.

He becomes dull, trusting to his clear images;
I become sharp, mistrusting my broken images.

Trusting his images, he assumes their relevance;
Mistrusting my images, I question their relevance.

Assuming their relevance, he assumes the fact;
Questioning their relevance, I question their fact.

When the fact fails him, he questions his senses;
when the fact fails me, I approve my senses.

He continues quick and dull in his clear images;
I continue slow and sharp in my broken images.

He in a new confusion of his understanding;
I in a new understanding of my confusion.

* Thanks Tomer and Good Luck!

During the weekend I have finished the book “Born on a Blue Day” by Daniel Tammet

This unique first-person story opens a window into the mind of a 27-year-old autistic savant with Asperger’s syndrome.

Daniel is capable of incredible feats of memorization and mental calculation. Besides being able to effortlessly multiply and divide huge sums in his head with the speed and accuracy of a computer; Daniel, learned Icelandic in a single week and recited the number Pi up to the 22,514 digit, breaking the European record (3-14-2004 Pi Day)

Daniel also experiences synesthesia which is an unusual neurological syndrome that enables him to experience numbers and words as shapes, colors, textures and motions.

“I was born on January 31, 1979 — a Wednesday. I know it was a Wednesday, because the date is blue in my mind and Wednesdays are always blue, like the number 9 or the sound of loud voices arguing. I like my birth date; because of the way I’m able to visualize most of the numbers in it as smooth and round shapes, similar to pebbles on a beach. That’s because they are prime numbers: 31, 19, 197, 97, 79 and 1979 are all divisible only by themselves and 1. I can recognize every prime up to 9,973 by their “pebble-like” quality. It’s just the way my brain works.”

“The number 11 is friendly and 5 is loud, whereas 4 is both shy and quiet — it’s my favorite number, perhaps because it reminds me of myself. Some are big — 23, 667, 1,179 — while others are small: 6, 13, 581. Some are beautiful, like 333, and some are ugly, like 289″

“One of the most common questions I was asked … was: Why learn a number like pi to so many decimal places? The answer I gave then as I do now is that pi is for me an extremely beautiful and utterly unique thing. Like The Mona Lisa or a Mozart symphony, pi is its own reason for loving it.“

Daniel stated in his book that it wasn’t easy to find enough (digits) Pi in the web, so inspired from his book, I have created an online “backup”* for the first 10 million digits of Pi @ http://pi.karmona.com

3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971693993751058209749

44592307816406286208998628034825342117067982148086513282306

64709384460955058223172535940812848111745028410270193852110

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* During August 1995, Dr.Takahashi and Dr. Y.Kanada have managed to calculate pi up to 4,294,960,000 decimal digits (current world record) using a supercomputer at the University of Tokyo - The University ftp server was Daniel’s (& my backup) source…

“The major problems of our work are not so much technological as sociological in nature.” (Peopleware, 1987)

I think that human capital is the silver bullet* for successful software projects – productivity, personalities, teamwork and group dynamics will make or break a project.

Picking the right people is maybe the most important managerial task so on your next interviews please remember** that knowledge can be easily acquired but personality is there to stay.

Don’t spend 90% of your interview time on knowledge when personality (and potential) is the real key for successful recruitment.

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* Although “Peopleware” have a full chapter on how there is no silver bullet… but I partially agree since I never said it will be easy to get to the human capital silver bullet…
** Also remember: Somewhere today a project is failing… and I can personally guarantee that people were somehow involved in its failure!

Green Managers - Five top common mistakes with two cent tips.

Vision???
Managing is more then juggling day-to-day tasks – Make a difference, lead to change… Construct a vision, set goals and encourage innovation.Delegation-less: “Never mind, I will do it…”
Simply start delegating like hell!

Sagemet – (Hebrew Slang, The sickness of a green officer in IDF) - You don’t let yourself be human and you fall in-love with your new title.
Remember, management title does not elicit automatic respect and obedience and just because you are the boss doesn’t mean you can’t be human – Feel free to laugh, show emotion and you can even make an occasional mistake ;-)

Mr. Know-all – You think you know everything.
Be sure you don’t know everything is maybe is maybe the most important part of getting into new managerial position. Listen to the people around you and keep an open mind.

Ooops, employees…
As a manager you must remember the three most important success factors: 1. People 2. People and surprisingly enough 3. People
Listen to your employees, take the time to know them, empower them, tell people what you want, not how to do it, don’t put policies ahead of people etc.

Good Luck!