Going at the roots of what makes the difference in the business game, Simon Sinek capture the essence of how to build sustainable business by playing the infinite game. If a rocket that was headed for the stars crashed, for example, we figured out what was wrong and tried again... and again... And even after we succeeded, we kept going. We did these things not because of the promise of an end-of-year bonus; we did these things because we felt we were contributing to something bigger than ourselves, something with value that would last well beyond our own lifetimes.

There are two kinds of games: finite and infinite. Finite games:<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">are played by known players </li><li class="ql-align-justify">have fixed rules</li><li class="ql-align-justify">have an agreed-upon objective that, when reached, ends the game.</li></ul> Infinite Games, in contrast: <ul><li class="ql-align-justify">are played by known and unknown players</li><li class="ql-align-justify">there are no exact or agreed-upon rules</li><li class="ql-align-justify">have infinite time horizons - in consequence there is no such thing as "winning" and infinite game</li></ul>

Finite And Infinite Games 

From the New York Times bestselling author of Start With Why and Leaders Eat Last, a bold framework for leadership in today’s ever-changing world. How do we win a game that has no end? Finite games, like football or chess, have known players, fixed rules and a clear endpoint. The winners and losers are easily identified. Infinite games, games with no finish line, like business or politics, or life itself, have players who come and go. The rules of an infinite game are changeable while infinite games have no defined endpoint. There are no winners or losers—only ahead and behind. The question is, how do we play to succeed in the game we’re in? In this revelatory new book, Simon Sinek offers a framework for leading with an infinite mindset. On one hand, none of us can resist the fleeting thrills of a promotion earned or a tournament won, yet these rewards fade quickly. In pursuit of a Just Cause, we will commit to a vision of a future world so appealing that we will build it week after week, month after month, year after year. Although we do not know the exact form this world will take, working toward it gives our work and our life meaning. Leaders who embrace an infinite mindset build stronger, more innovative, more inspiring organizations. Ultimately, they are the ones who lead us into the future.

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

business

Business

books

Books

leadershipandmanagement

Leadership & Management

From the New York Times bestselling author of Start With Why and Leaders Eat Last, a bold framework for leadership in today’s ever-changing world.   How do we win a game that has no end? Finite games, like football or chess, have known players, fixed rules and a clear endpoint. The winners and losers are easily identified. Infinite games, games with no finish line, like business or politics, or life itself, have players who come and go. The rules of an infinite game are changeable while infinite games have no defined endpoint. There are no winners or losers—only ahead and behind.    The question is, how do we play to succeed in the game we’re in?   In this revelatory book, Simon Sinek offers a framework for leading with an infinite mindset. On one hand, none of us can resist the fleeting thrills of a promotion earned or a tournament won, yet these rewards fade quickly. In pursuit of a Just Cause, we will commit to a vision of a future world so appealing that we will build it week after week, month after month, year after year. Although we do not know the exact form this world will take, working toward it gives our work and our life meaning.   Leaders who embrace an infinite mindset build stronger, more innovative, more inspiring organizations. Ultimately, they are the ones who lead us into the future.

Simon Oliver Sinek is a British-born American author and inspirational speaker. He is the author of five books, including Start With Why and The Infinite Game.

Simon Sinek

The Infinite Game

Your salary negotiation — which routinely takes less than 5 minutes to conclude — has an outsized influence on what your compensation is.That makes your negotiation five very important minutes. Indeed, you can trivially pick up $5,000 in salary negotiations just by sucking less.

The Importance of Negotiation

The reality is that rich, successful people negotiate. It is an all-day-every-day thing in much of the business world, which is where most rich people get their money.

Successful People Negotiate

Salary negotiations are very asymmetrical.  Companies know this and routinely exploit it. Job seekers don’t, perhaps because they think doing so would be unfair and the word “exploit” makes them acutely uncomfortable. So we often default by pretending that the employer is evaluating the negotiation like we would. This is not true, and acting like it is true will harm both your interests and the interests of your future employer.

Negotiations Are Asymmetrical

The job of recruiters is to get you signed with the company as cheaply as possible, but generally a recruiter is not super motivated to do so, because it is not spending its money to hire you. A recruiter is spending its budget.This is an interesting perspective that can be leveraged to increase the salary even by an “insignificant” number.

The Job of Recruiters

Only negotiate salary after you have agreement in principle from someone with hiring authority that, if a mutually acceptable compensation can be agreed upon, you will be hired.

When To Negotiate

If you think about it, you’ll quickly reach the conclusion that the company has spent thousands of dollars just talking to you, and that doesn’t even count the thousands they spent deciding to talk to you instead of whoever isn’t in the room right now.For this reason, they really want to reach an agreement with you.When you have the offer, you are now in control of the company, because they want you and spent a lot of money to arrive to you. Thus, it is in their interest to hire you.

The Company Wants to Reach an Agreement

You are an expert in your own skill set, life story, and (ideally) value you can create for the company. However, the person you are talking to is not.If they ever resist about something which you want, consider reaching into the treasure chest that they are buying mostly blind and revealing one of the many glittering jewels inside. They are going to get them all anyhow if they buy the chest, but each one you bring out decreases the perceived risk of buying it and therefore increases its perceived value.

Reveal Your Glittering Jewels

“Interesting” is a wonderful word: it is positive and non-commital at the same time. If they tell you a number, tell them it is an “interesting” number, not a “wonderful” number.

Micro-tip

We are used to think that negotiating salary is bad and we tend to compare it to exploitation, however, the sooner we realize that this is objectively false the better.

Salary negotiation advice, mostly for engineers. Running total of raises negotiated due to this essay: $9M+.

career

Career

moneyandinvestments

Money & Investments

teamwork

Teamwork

Salary Negotiation: Make More Money, Be More Valued

I've basically just go recursive improvement on schedule, with feedback loop. Did this make it go faster? OK. If it didn't, we're going to need to fix it.

It would be an incredible adventure. And life needs to be more than just solving every day problems. You need to wake up and be excited about the future.

The extreme difficulty of scaling production of new technology is not well understood.

The answer was we thought it could be done.

Falcon One is going to be the lowest cost per flight to orbit of any production rocket.I think the reason it’s cheaper is, first of all, we are a private entity and we have a very lean system here. What we have been able to do here at SpaceX is to cherry-pick, you know, the top one or two percent and give them, you know, capital to execute well and a clear mission, which is low cost, reliable access to space, and no other constraints.Well, I have tried to learn as much as possible from prior attempts.

I think we’ve got the risks pretty well characterized. I think we are at least avoiding the mistakes that have been made in the past.

I want to be able to make sure that we have enough capital to survive at least three consecutive failures.

I like to be involved in things that change the world. The Internet did, and space will probably be more responsible for changing the world than anything else. If humanity can expand beyond the Earth, obviously that's where the future is.

Starting and growing a business is as much about the innovation, drive and determination of the people who do it as it is about the product they sell.

My approach is simply to seek out very talented people, ensure that the environment at SpaceX is as motivating & enjoyable as possible and establish clear & measurable objectives.

Rocket engineering is not like ditch digging. With ditch digging you can get 100 people and dig a ditch, and you will dig it a hundred times as faster if you get 100 people versus one. With rockets, you have to solve the problem of a particular level of difficulty; one person who can solve the problem is worth an infinite number of people who can’t.

I think it is a mistake to hire huge numbers of people to get a complicated job done. Numbers will never compensate for talent in getting the right answer (two people who don't know something are no better than one), will tend to slow down progress, and will make the task incredibly expensive.

If the design takes a long time to build, it's the wrong design. This is the fundamental thing. Over and over, the tendency is to complicate things. And I have another thing which is, the best part is no part. The best process is no process. It weighs nothing, costs nothing, can't go wrong. So, as obvious as that sounds, the best part is no part. The thing I'm most impressed with, when I have the design meetings at SpaceX, is:"What did you undesign?"  Undesigning is the best thing. Just delete it. That's the best thing.

Possibly, the most common error of a smart engineer is to optimize something that should not exist.

Everything works in PowerPoint; but if you have the physical item or some demonstration software, that's much more convincing to people than a PowerPoint presentation or a business plan.

There need to be things that inspire you, that make you glad to wake up in the morning and be part of humanity.

technologyandthefuture

Technology & The Future

15 Elon Musk ideas - Wikiquote

We used to dream about this stuff. Now we get to build it. It's pretty great.

Steve Jobs 

We're gambling on our vision, and we would rather do that than make "me too" products.

Steve Jobs

Real artists ship.

Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.

Humans are tool builders. We build tools that can dramatically amplify our innate human abilities.

Going to bed at night saying we've done something wonderful... that's what matters to me.

When you grow up you tend to get told that the world is the way it is and your life is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family, have fun, save a little money.That's a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.

We live in an information economy. The problem is that information's usually impossible to get, at least in the right place, at the right time.

Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn't really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That's because they were able to connect experiences they've had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they've had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people...

A lot of people in our industry haven't had very diverse experiences. So they don't have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one's understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.

I found that there were these incredibly great people at doing certain things, and that you couldn't replace one of these people with 50 average people. They could just do things that no number of average people could do.

Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. ﻿Everything else is secondary.

I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking. Don’t settle.

And one more thing…

Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.<a href="https://youtu.be/GEPhLqwKo6g">﻿Think Different </a>

Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become.

motivationandinspiration

Motivation & Inspiration

startup

Startups

15 Steve Jobs ideas - Wikiquote

In the working environment, storytelling fills in as an essential, powerful tool for successful communication.It gets people excited around a thought, or maybe some drier information that probably won't have been as intriguing before.

Motivation behind Storytelling

Incredible stories uncover a piece of yourself. Ask yourself:What compels you care about the work that you do? Which part of you beyond your work is available within that world? If in financial services, for instance, what is it behind the numbers and information that are at the emotional core of your work?

Make it an individual story

The characteristic of an extraordinary story is that the shared experience has changed the person in some way. Basically, it can be a change of perspective or support for a belief or an idea.First, ask yourself what change you would like to see in your audience. When presenting a new idea to people, start in a place they can relate to and understand why they are skeptical or uncomfortable. Confirm that, then use the story as a guide for where to land them.You have given them a step-by-step process to get to your common point of understanding.

Exhibit change

What's so interesting about what you're talking about?If the audience knows why you are interested, they will have a reason to care about them. In other words, the story must have value. And they don't have to be significant.You can create a great story from little things if the storyteller is interested in it.

Show passion while you're recounting a story

You always want to think carefully about what you are leaving your audience with.What is the theme of your story, what is the big idea? Your story will be full of details, of course. In fact, one of the best things about storytelling is that the details create the world.So, the more detailed you are in the story, the more global the story becomes. But think about how all the details of your story relate to the big idea.

Focus on one Theme/Big idea

Storytelling help leaders to inspire employees, sharing a vision, defining company values, teaching necessary concepts, and even helping employees to get to know their leaders better.

How leaders can use the right story at the right time to inspire change and action This revised and updated edition of the best-selling book A Leader's Guide to Storytelling shows how storytelling is one of the few ways to handle the most important and difficult challenges of leadership: sparking action, getting people to work together, and leading people into the future. Using myriad illustrative examples and filled with how-to techniques, this book clearly explains how you can learn to tell the right story at the right time. Stephen Denning has won awards from Financial Times, The Innovation Book Club, and 800-CEO-READ The book on leadership storytelling shows how successful leaders use stories to get their ideas across and spark enduring enthusiasm for change Stephen Denning offers a hands-on guide to unleash the power of the business narrative.

communication

Communication

How leaders can use the right story at the right time to inspire change and action This revised and updated edition of the best-selling book A Leader's Guide to Storytelling shows how storytelling is one of the few ways to handle the most important and difficult challenges of leadership: sparking action, getting people to work together, and leading people into the future. Using myriad illustrative examples and filled with how-to techniques, this book clearly explains how you can learn to tell the right story at the right time. <ul> <li>Stephen Denning has won awards from Financial Times, The Innovation Book Club, and 800-CEO-READ</li> <li>The book on leadership storytelling shows how successful leaders use stories to get their ideas across and spark enduring enthusiasm for change</li> <li>Stephen Denning offers a hands-on guide to unleash the power of the business narrative.</li> </ul>

Stephen Denning

The Leader's Guide to Storytelling

As engineers, we put a lot of value on our skills. We tend to judge others and decide if we respect them based on their skills and expertise.This becomes more apparent when you're in a technical leadership role. Your engineering expertise has a major influence on whether people respect and follow you.It's important to stay up to date and remain an expert in a domain of your preference. If you don't stay up to date, you run the risk of becoming an expert with 10-20 years of experience who gets technically challenged by junior people, which in turn costs you the trust of the engineers you lead.

Remain a technical expert as you grow into leadership roles

📣Join us for a new edition of Talks, Talks #134! ⚙️The journey starts with Daniel Rizea, Director of Engineering @ Fitbit, that will introduce us in Technical Leadership. He will be followed by Marian Staș, Chairman @ Leaders for the Third Millennium Club, that will drive us through Real Leadership in Action.

computerscience

Computer Science

📣Join us for a new edition of Talks, Talks #134!
⚙️The journey starts with Daniel Rizea, Director of Engineering @ Fitbit, that will introduce us in Technical Leadership. He will be followed by Marian Staș, Chairman @ Leaders for the Third Millennium Club, that will drive us through Real Leadership in Action.

Softbinator Foundation is an NGO designed to support the developer community in Romania, through events, meetups, workshops and training sessions encouraging networking and good practices exchange between professionals. Talks by Softbinator events were initially organized in Bucharest and since 2019 have been extended  to other cities like Brasov, Constanta. Iasi. The Foundation has full rights over Talks by Softbinator brand.

Softbinator Foundation

Talks #134 Let's Talk About Leadership with Daniel Rizea and Marian Staş

Talks #134 Let's Talk About Leadership with Daniel Rizea

Be alone, that is the secret of invention; be alone, that is when ideas are born.

Every living being is an engine geared to the wheelwork of the universe. Though seemingly affected only by its immediate surrounding, the sphere of external influence extends to infinite distance.

Anti-social behaviour is a trait of intelligence in a world full of conformists.

Of all things, I liked books best.

The present is theirs; the future, for which I really worked, is mine.

Let the future tell the truth, and evaluate each one according to his work and accomplishment.

The scientific man does not aim at an immediate result. He does not expect that his advanced ideas will be readily taken up. His duty is to lay the foundation for those who are to come, and point the way.

Instinct is something which transcends knowledge. We have, undoubtedly, certain finer fibers that enable us to perceive truths when logical deduction, or any other willful effort of the brain, is futile.

Of all frictional resistances, the one that most retards human movement is ignorance, what Buddha called ‘the greatest evil in the world’. The friction which results from ignorance can be reduced only by the spread of knowledge and the unification of the heterogeneous elements of humanity. No effort could be better spent.

My method is different. I do not rush into actual work. When I get a new idea, I start at once building it up in my imagination, and make improvements and operate the device in my mind. When I have gone so far as to embody everything in my invention, every possible improvement I can think of, and when I see no fault anywhere, I put into concrete form the final product of my brain.

There is no energy in matter other than that received from the environment.

Peace can only come as a natural consequence of universal enlightenment.

It is paradoxical, yet true, to say, that the more we know, the more ignorant we become in the absolute sense, for it is only through enlightenment that we become conscious of our limitations. Precisely one of the most gratifying results of intellectual evolution is the continuous opening up of new and greater prospects.

Misunderstandings are always caused by the inability of appreciating one another’s point of view.

I do not think there is any thrill that can go through the human heart like that felt by the inventor as he sees some creation of the brain unfolding to success, such emotions make a man forget food, sleep, friends, love, everything.

The desire that guides me in all I do is the desire to harness the forces of nature to the service of mankind.

My belief is firm in a law of compensation. The true rewards are ever in proportion to the labor and sacrifices made.

We are all one.

The gift of mental power comes from God, Divine Being, and if we concentrate our minds on that truth, we become in tune with this great power.

My brain is only a receiver, in the Universe, there is a core from which we obtain knowledge, strength and inspiration. I have not penetrated into the secrets of this core, but I know that it exists.

May his quotes inspire you to be the inventor of your dreams.

Nikola Tesla was a Serbian-American inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, physicist, and futurist who is best known for his contributions to the design of the modern

20 Inspirational Nikola Tesla Quotes

IC track<ol><li>Engineer</li><li>Senior engineer</li><li>Staff engineer</li><li>Senior staff engineer</li><li>Principal engineer</li><li>Distinguished engineer</li></ol>Technical leadership track<ol><li>Engineering manager</li><li>Senior manager</li><li>Director</li><li>VP</li><li>CTO</li></ol>Both tracks have similar levels of prestige, influence and power.

The IC and technical leadership tracks mirror each other all the way up

On the leadership track you don't have enough time to manage a large organization and maintain the same level of technical depth. However, you need to stay technical in order to maintain your technical decision-making sharp, and to gain the credibility of your team. This credibility helps your team understand and respect you enough to want to follow the vision and strategy you want to lead them toward.

Leaders must stay technical to gain the credibility of their teams

<ol><li>Be a voracious reader — Consume technical articles, books, videos, or podcasts.</li><li>Hire well — Hire good technical people because they will teach you things faster than if did on your own. Also, they will eat less of your time than bad hires that are not aligned with the team.</li><li>Review PRs & Clear out bugs — This gives you a ground view on the processes and development environment your team uses daily.</li><li>Create a team of tech advisors — Have a group of people you can discuss technical topics with.</li><li>Code as a hobby</li><li>Participate in hackathons</li></ol>

Tips to stay technical as an engineering leader

Shopify CTO Allan Leinwand explains how to stay technical as an engineering leader while balancing the demands of people leadership.

softwareengineering

Software Engineering

Six Tips for Staying Technical as a CTO

<ul><li>How to master my emotions</li><li>The importance of a meditation practice</li><li>To not take things so seriously</li><li>How to find joy in any situation</li></ul>

The Power Of Now

<ul><li>A spiritual take on the state of modern masculinity.</li><li>This is for those with a masculine edge that want to master their relationships, pursue their purpose, and harness their masculine energy in the modern world.</li></ul>

The Way Of The Superior Man

<ul><li>A compilation of Hermetic teachings based on the 7 principles originally explained by Hermes Trismegistus — the scribe of the gods.</li></ul> <ul><li>This book will give you a foundational understanding of reality, and the material world, and aid you on your spiritual journey.</li></ul>

The Kybalion

<ul><li>I didn't find any teachings that were inherently different from the ones in the books previously mentioned.</li></ul> <ul><li>Alan Watts is just an incredible storyteller. The way he presents his teachings are poetic. They will put you in a proper headspace.</li></ul>

The Wisdom Of Insecurity

<ul><li>The books prior to this are a bit hard to interpret and apply to your life if you haven't dove into the spiritual side of things before.</li></ul> <ul><li>Awareness will make everything "click," allowing you to mentally and spiritually navigate your own suffering.</li></ul>

Awareness

Everything started to click for me after reading this. Why myself and others became obsessed with certain areas of life, went all in, and turned it into our lifes work. This book gives you the step-by-step info you need to do what you love for life.

The Art Of Impossible

<ul><li>Similar to #6 (he references it a lot), Flow will give you a foundational understanding of the "flow state" and how to tap into a degree of it at any moment.</li></ul> <ul><li>A similar goal of most spiritual teachings, but Flow dives into the practical science-based applications.</li></ul>

Flow

7 books that will change your life (that you've probably never heard of):

If you are a business that makes or sells products, it is important to be able to tell the difference between the cake (the product's core features) and the frosting (the product's extra features). The cake is like the foundation of a building - it might not look very pretty, but it is what makes the product work.

Cake vs. Frosting

A tap is a household item that delivers water. It can be a simple, old tap, or a more elaborate tap with special features. The important thing is that it delivers water to your hands.There are all sorts of different taps, like bronze, gold-plated, copper, marble, and tap with motion sensors. But, at the end of the day, they are all just taps that deliver water.<ul><li>A tap delivers water. That’s cake.</li><li>A tap may look like a work of art. That’s frosting.</li><li>The tap is still a tap without the frosting.</li><li>The tap is no longer a tap without the cake.</li></ul>

Using Tap as an Analogy 

Building a product can be exciting and fun. Sometimes, people get excited about the frosting (or the features) instead of the cake (or the main goal of the product). This can be dangerous because the frosting might not be the most important thing.

Product Management Using the Analogy of Cake

Some people focus too much on making frosting that looks good, instead of making a cake that tastes good. This is also true for investment pitches and sales pitches. People can be easily distracted by the beauty of a pitch deck or website, without realizing that the engineering might not be good.

Frosting Sells

The fancier the frosting, ask more about the quality of the cake.<ul><li>“What’s cake, and what’s frosting here?”</li><li>“Let’s see the plumbing instead of the PowerPoint.”</li><li>“I don’t care how great it looks. Tell me how it works.”</li><li>“Forget the frosting, show me how good the cake is.”</li></ul>﻿You might buy a cake for the first time because of the frosting. But, you’ll buy it again because of the cake.

Demand the Cake, Not Frosting

A great comparison is drawn between cake and frosting in Priya Narasimhan's explanation of product management.

Cake represents core functionality, the product features that actually provide the value that the user is looking for or that the user benefits from. Cake often looks plain, unprepared for the…

product

Product & Design

Leave the frosting. Take the cake.

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