firelock

I’ve got news for all of you who think that seeing “butts in chairs” is the best metric of productivity: It isn’t. If you don’t have a way of telling if someone is productive remotely, then you don’t have a way of telling if they are productive in the office. And monitoring when they log-in and how much time their computer is active is not a good way of determining this either. Instead, managers and supervisors should have clear goals, tasks and expectations for each employee that are  tracked in a project management system. If they achieve these metrics they are productive. If they don’t, then they aren’t. But what time they logged in on their computer and number of keystrokes recorded on their computer is irrelevant to this determination. In fact it puts a lot of undue pressure on employees to make sure that they are doing meaningless busy work so that keystrokes metric is met.

I’ve been managing people for more than 30 years and some of the least productive people would always end up logging the most time on projects. Also, some of the most productive—and profitable—people spent the least time on a project. I had a designer who could create an amazing logo for pretty much any idea that you had in just a few hours. The fact that she only logged a few hours on a project didn’t make her less productive than another designer who spent all week working on an inferior idea. Whenever we are able to release people who we know are less productive, project hours go down dramatically and usually we are able to shorten the timelines. In other words, often the employees who logged the most hours were actually reducing efficiency rather than getting more done.

Knowledge work is not the same as factory work. In a factory there is simple and fixed formula for how many widgets each employee can make an hour, therefore the more hours at work equals the more widgets made and the more profitable the company is. However, knowledge-based and creative work doesn’t work that way and never has. We have to get out of, as Seth Godin put it, “the factory mentality.” If a knowledge worker says that they can get more done and have a healthier work-life balance working remotely, then employers would be wise to listen to them.

I don’t know who wrote this petition at Apple. Maybe they are just “whiny malcontents.” I will only observe what others have which is that companies that allow for greater remote work flexibility will have a competitive edge over those that don’t in the future. They will get the best job candidates and they will be able to have lower expenses due to their not building billion-dollar campuses that are really monuments to executive egos.

mr lizard said:

“A magnetic wallet that sometimes stays on and sometimes doesn’t depending on your clothing is a valid criticism. Implying or pretending that it isn’t a problem at all is just pointless.”

I’ve been using a MagSafe wallet since it became available. I thought I would use on rare occasions but it has actually become my main wallet. I can testify that many early video reviews essentially make a lot of false or at least misleading claims about this product’s supposed failings, presumably for clicks and views. While I don’t wear skinny jeans, my clothes are in no way “baggy.” They are normal fitting jeans, slacks, and shorts. I’ve never had an issue where the wallet has become detached unintentionally.

I do have some complaints about the product, but none are related to its build quality or its ability to stay firmly connected to the iPhone. I wouldn’t mind having a little more capacity in the wallet, as I can only fit about 3 cards in it. Also, it would be great if Apple (or some third party vendor) could figure out a way to stagger the cards so it would be easier to retrieve the specific card that you need. As it is right now, I can only easily retrieve the backmost card, if I need one of the other two I have to remove all the cards from the wallet to get them out. That said I find these to be relatively minor complaints about a product that has surprisingly become something I use with pleasure nearly every day.

In the case of cars, I’d say that Tesla was the disruptor in the automobile space. (You don’t have to like Tesla cars or Elon Musk to see that this is true.) About the only thing that could possibly disrupt automobiles more than Tesla has already done is to have a breakthrough self-driving AI that is orders of magnitude better than what the other manufacturers offer, or some new battery technology that allows charging in minutes rather than hours. I’m not sure that anyone believes that Apple has anything revolutionary ready in these two areas. But I guess we’ll see.

My first thought when I heard the Hyundai/Kia deal fell through was that Nissan might be a good substitute for Apple. That is because they are a solid manufacturer that has been struggling lately due to some bad business decisions and scandals. It seems likely that Nissan would not have been Apple’s first choice for the same reasons, but it may be that they have exhausted their first tier picks and now are looking at manufacturers that need Apple as a White Knight. They certainly have the production capacity and technical know-how.

Leaving the Labodet price aside, I like the arrangement of the multiple card pockets and the fact that the pockets are shorter, which should make it easier to get the cards out of the wallet.

Regarding the Apple wallet: I had expected to use it on occasion, but it almost immediately became my main wallet. It sticks perfectly fine to the back of the phone, despite all of the hyperbolic videos on the Web claiming otherwise. The only thing that bothers me is that it is difficult to get the cards out if the card you need is not the backmost one. If I am in line at the store and need anything but the backmost card, I have to pop the wallet off of the phone, hurriedly spill all three cards out, fumble for the one I want, then dump everything in my pocket to be reassembled later.

It looks like the Labodet wallet solves these issues with individual staggered pockets for the cards that have more area to grip them, so it appears you can leave the wallet on the phone, and then just slide out the exact card that you need. As much as I use my wallet that convenience might be worth $300. However, the fact that it only holds two cards is probably a nonstarter for me. It was tough enough to force myself to pair down to three cards. Two may be a bridge too far. Also I really dislike the metal emblem on it. There should be an option to remove it.