Having been in various leadership roles, I'll say that the thing I valued most as a leader was having good people who wanted to just work. No agenda to have a better role, etc., they just did their jobs well. As far as responsibility, the hardest thing I have found is giving someone a task and then having to leave them alone for a month because I don't have time to watch them. When I come back and they are done, in my eyes, they have demonstrated great responsibility.

I have also found that people who think everyone should be leaders generally aren't and don't understand leadership at all. Typically, they are egotistical and lord over others for their own gratification.

Remember, when you interview, you are also assessing a potential employer. If they ask you stupid questions or make demeaning remarks during an interview, that is your cue to move on.

I've been around for quite a while, but I have kept my skills up, with four kids, to boot. I feel your pain. Often, these programmers aren't able to go to the next level. At the same time, I've seldom seen Management do anything about them. Here's my advice. Stay away from these people. You do not want to be associated with or influenced by them. Focus on your own work and doing it as well as you can. Unless you are in charge (meaning you have hire/fire authority,) don't concern yourself with the overall situation. BTW, you'll start feeling much better once you've given up hope.

This reminds of the Scrum fad at many local development shops. Unfortunately, the only part of the Scrum actually implemented is the daily meeting. From where I sit, the problem is that Google, Scrum, etc. are predicated on the idea that an independent group of individuals will produce good results. This works when the group is made up of high-performing individuals who naturally fulfill different roles needed to accomplish the task at hand. In my experience, these individuals are the exception, and only elite organizations are able to recruit and retain them, and only for elite tasks. As much as I hate to admit it, the rest of us need some managing to get the more mundane (and abundant) projects done. Only only wish there were more more skilled managers.

"But still guys, it's pretty 80s"

Seriously? I've seen more creativity from the 1880's. B.C.

LOL! #3

Another LOL!

LOL!

"Einstein said "As simple as possible, but no simpler". Notice how there are two parts to that sentence. The Gnome 3 crew designed by the first part of it only."

You nailed it right there. Fortunately, with Ubuntu 12.04 and some stable extensions, I find it possible to get past that. But I cannot conceive of a reason to take away the ability to do basic configuration.

I've met a lot of egotistical developers in my time, but I've never seen any so insensitive to feedback. The forums have been flooded with feedback, a lot of it constructive, from the start. It's almost as if, in some sort of Dilbert world, the Gnome team decided they hated everyone who was using their work and wanted them all to go away.

M$ has relatively little at stake here because, in Corporate Land, Windows 7 is still in the adoption phase. There are still a lot of Win XP installations out there waiting to move to Windows 7. Many other companies have just moved to 7 and have no intention of an upgrade, as Windows 7 is more than good enough. M$ could (they won't) afford to simply drop Windows 8 if it is a bust, or they can split Windows into desktop and tablet. This is NOT their intention, but if Windows 8 catches on in the tablet world but proves to be a bust on the desktop, then it is certainly an option. So is dropping "Metro" from the desktop Windows 8a. Meanwhile, M$ will continue to sell new Windows 7 corporate licenses, and Joe Beer Guy, or whatever he is called this election cycle, will simply live with whatever M$ foists off on him, or Dell et. al. will install Windows 7. M$ already has huge credibility problems, and a gamble on Windows 8 could turn that around. On the other hand, it won't make things appreciably worse. In terms of Corporate Land, where M$ seems to get mosts of its revenue, Windows 8 will be non-factor.

Thank goodness for 12.04! I was holed up on 10.04 and wondering what I would do next. I actually considered installing Win 7 (I run it in a VM for my "legacy" app.) Unity isn't perfect, but it is quite usable now, and there is quite a bit I like about it.

"so MS is grabbing on to it like a shipwreck survivor grabs onto anything that floats"

Anchors don't float. On the other hand, that's a poor analogy, because anchors are useful for something.

As a software engineer, I hear that response (or, "I hate it") all the time when discussing design points with other engineers. So much for objective evaluation of criteria. Personally, when it comes to that line of reasoning, I hate it.

The masses are switching to Chrome for several reasons, most of which have to do with "it's more cool," whatever that means. They don't care about the tech or the JavaScript performance or the memory usage or even the extensions. And they certainly don't care if the browser tells them to upgrade, if all that means is pressing a button and allowing it to restart in a couple of minutes. Most of all, they don't love OR hate Chrome, they just like it. And the new UI and frequent upgrade cycle are nothing more than Mozilla trying to keep up with Chrome. The masses were already leaving. Mozilla's problem is that their core constituency is passionate about their browsers. Without geeks who care deeply about technology (open standards, in particular,) Mozilla wouldn't even exist. Now, they are trying to please their core while maintaining mainstream appeal. The problem is, the other browsers, including IE 9 (which I still hate,) are doing the tech piece just about as well. In some ways, they have done their job too well. They raised the bar (with the support of their core,) and M$ and Google have responded. Mozilla is trying to please everyone, and we know how that goes. My vote: stop changing the UI, focus on the technology, standards support, and flexibility, and forget about market share.

I don't really care about the average temperature or the height of the seas, as long as they stay the same. What I do care about is sudden, definite climate changes occurring around the world. Modern humans have concentrated themselves in a number of relatively small areas, based on the (unconscious) assumption that those areas are and will remain habitable. If an area, say California, suddenly becomes arid, the regional impact would be enormous. And if that happens to a number of regions around the world, given that there are too many of us as it is, the consequences could be dire.

Personally, I use my pinned applications 95% of the time. However, I use the Start button a couple of times a day. They have to have something to take its place that is about as easy to access...