Steve Ballmer’s Dilemma
Napier & Son was the most successful British manufacturer of aircraft engines in the 1920s and 30s with their 12-cylinder Napier Lion powering 163 different types of aircraft between 1918 and 1935. Over that 17 year period the Lion grew from 450 to 1350 horsepower and was, for awhile, the most powerful aircraft, boat, and car engine in the world, holding world speed records in all three venues at the same time. And then the Napier Lion was suddenly gone — a lesson from which Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer could benefit if he and his company don’t repeat it.
Napier perfected their Lion engine over those 17 years, improving it in every way until it was the […]
The H-1B visa program was created in 1990 to allow companies to bring skilled technical workers into the USA. It’s a non-immigrant visa and so has nothing at all to do with staying in the USA, becoming a citizen, or starting a business. Big tech employers are constantly lobbying for increases in H-1B quotas citing their inability to find qualified U.S. job applicants. Bill Gates and other leaders from the IT industry have testified about this before Congress. Both major political parties embrace the H-1B program with varying levels of enthusiasm. But Bill Gates is wrong. What he said to Congress may have been right for Microsoft but was wrong for America and can only […]
I struck a chord with my recent column on H-1B visa abuse, so I’ll be following later today with an enormous post that tries to explain the underlying issues. But before then here’s something I came across that doesn’t quite fit that theme but was too interesting to let pass unnoticed — how companies like IBM intimidate employees and discourage them from speaking up.
As anyone with a heartbeat knows, Apple has a product event coming on Tuesday the 23rd in San Jose at which we’ll certainly see the iPad Mini, perhaps a new MacBook Pro, and maybe some new iMacs. But whatever is being introduced I think it’s fair to say that the event is still in flux, because Apple late Wednesday canceled another corporate event in Arizona scheduled for the same time, this one at The Phoenician resort.