The no excuses culture - <AUTHOR> https://steveblank.com/2017/03/08/the-no-excuses-culture/ <comment><USER2> Excuses happen because people don't want to be blamed. If your team had an excuses problem, it's a response to a blame problem: when a problem is identified, people aren't looking for solutions, they're looking for someone to blame.

Saying "no excuses" and "we're holding people accountable" might fix the excuses problem, but it exacerbates the blame problem. "Holding people accountable" is just blaming people harder and hoping that will pressure then into perfection. It might work for a little while, but it's unsustainable. People will crack. This is especially bad in this story because it's literally coupled with a threat of termination.

The real solution, I think, is to not play the blame game. Instead of "whose fault is this" you can just operate in facts: "what happened", "how can we fix it", "how can we avoid it in the future". Sometimes the facts reflect badly on someone ("he showed up high and made the wrong decision") but more often there's no blame needed to address the problem ("he made the wrong decision because nobody trained him"). Instead of creating a culture where people turn against each other to "hold each other accountable" for problems, you want to create a culture where people team up to _solve_ problems.

The story here is a success story, but I don't think it can be attributed to the "no excuses" rule--I've seen similar policies fail miserably. Instead, I'd attribute their success to their encouragement to identify problems early and ask for help. But that probably could have been done with less friction if they had addressed the blame problem.

<comment> crooked-v The treatment of airplane crashes comes to mind here for me. Crash studies look for cultural and technical improvements that reduce the risk of the same thing happening again, as even "pilot error" ultimately points to some problem in education or work environment.

<comment> m-j-fox That, and the pilot is rarely around to take any blame.

<comment><USER3> But there is the flight recorder which let's you both see the state of the plane and what the pilots were doing. Thinking about it many roles where people make major decisions independently have a concept of records being kept either automatically or as close to the event as possible for later forensic use.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is an example of a dangerous one-size-fits-all silver bullet philosophy

First, this creates selection for a culture that punches below its weight. Never willing to stetch itself. Underperformers apply here.

Second, this is fine when you don't have external dependencies who you can't simply fire. You may have to work at the speed of an organization that doesn't share these values and this becomes the rate limiting step to your growth.

Third, if your company is a rocketship and you have a lot of leverage over your employees, you may be able to pull this, but in practice you're going to have to pick your battles. Failure to create a safe work environment can erode trust and make for a toxic and fearful workplace.

<comment><USER5> _Failure to create a safe work environment can erode trust and make for a toxic and fearful workplace._

Having a safe work environment isn't the same thing as not holding people accountable.

<comment><USER6> No of course not. The whole problem that Steve is talking about here stinks of mismanagement of some sort tho, that isn't really fixed by telling people "stop giving me excuses on delivery day". Something is wrong with the whole organization, but he isn't able to figure it out, so he's telling people to put up or shut up. He's attacking the symptom, not the cause.

Read on the Toyota Production System for alternative solutions.

<comment><USER5> _Something is wrong with the whole organization, but he isn 't able to figure it out, so he's telling people to put up or shut up._

I think for any of us to try and go into specifics on that particular case, without a lot more information (unless we were there), is an exercise in pointless speculation. I think it goes without saying that all generalizations are flawed, and I'm sure the company did need more than just "stop giving me excuses". But a culture of no accountability can be a cause that needs to be addressed.

 _Read on the Toyota Production System for alternative solutions._

I devour everything on TPS / Lean / Kaizen that I can get my hands on. :-)

<comment><USER7> I agree. I very much enjoyed this article. Even though Steve's situation may not fit every organization perfectly, I think the core concept holds true.

The way I see it, the symptom is giving excuses the day of, and the problem is people thinking they are entitled to a job with only putting forth minimal effort.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Whatever kind of person Steve Blank is as a person is being discussed to death in the comments. I think that what this shows is that most people on HN have a lot of scar tissue from bad management. Bad management will say "tell me your problems before they become excuses" but then ignore you, then, berate you when the deadline comes due. "Why isn't the project done?" "Well like I told you last week..." "Don't give me excuses!" We've all been there.

What Steve Blank writes here is the outer dialog and what seems to be missing is the inner dialog - listen to what your reports say! When an engineer says to you, at the end of the day, "this component just doesn't make any sense and I don't know what to do to make it work" don't just slap them on the back on the way out the door and say "I'm sure you'll figure it out, just try a little harder," maybe you as a manager should engage a little more then in the moment.

<comment><USER9> It's all about bad management. But it's about how they make plans and deadlines in the first place.

If they don't spare a thought for what future problems can come up and make allowances and contingencies for these risks then they can't manage. Who cares if you tell them about problems early if there's no ability/wiggle room to change directions?

If management don't want surprises, try thinking ahead. It's called risk _management_. Who is to blame when a predictable issue eventuates? Not engineering. If you have no slack in the schedule get ready for shit to hit the fan.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've always been struck by an odd irony in academia: People tend to have left- wing political beliefs, but maintain an organizational culture that is decidedly authoritarian.

Perhaps this is necessary: I can't think of how else to manage a classroom than to have hard deadlines for things like homework assignments. Even in college, by definition, the work is finished when the semester ends.

I'm personally guilty of missing deadlines at work, and if I were permitted to be honest about it (or if it even mattered), my three excuses would be:

1\. Managing the complexity of my job is over my head, because there are too many internal dependencies.

2\. I'm going to miss this deadline because x[n] didn't happen, and I can't make those things happen.

3\. I was kind of hoping the task would vanish, as roughly 75% of urgent tasks seem to.

<comment><USER11> There is no contradiction between left-wing and authoritarianism. Communists as they were rising to power and in power were all about that.

<comment><USER12> Similarly, there is no contradiction between right-wing and authoritarianism. We've seen this in Greece, Latin America, ....

<comment><USER11> Absolutely, I agree. I wrote about left wing, because OP specifically mentioned left wing somehow being incompatible with authoritarianism.

I think that only wing incompatible with authoritarianism is pro-democracy crowd.

<comment><USER13> And libertarian-ism!

<comment><USER12> Libertarianism or libertarianism?

The Libertarian Party has had no problems with nominating authoritarians: Bob Barr comes to mind. Gary Johnson willingly sent people to prison for drugs as governor. The LP is more of a flag of convenience for protest votes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is a piece of positioning. It's not so much Blank giving any serious solution to the solution of 'no accountability' as him saying 'look at how tough and uncompromising I am.' He literally says he thinks 'creating a culture' is the same as 'I hung a sign on the door.'

Well no. A lot of management thinking (5 Whys etc) has gone into breaking down problems into micro-blockers.

If your graphic designer is constantly sick, then that is a problem, and it doesn't mean that your VP deserves to be fired for failing to open up Photoshop himself. It's not the VP's job to do as it as the VP is not a graphic designer. The VP isn't a hero for having a go- what the VP produces is likely to be shit.

'No excuses' cultures tend to, far from raising accountability, attract the kind of mediocre performers who want to be told what to do, don't want to stretch themselves (as they're frightened of failure) and are looking for the next person to throw under the bus. No thanks.

<comment><USER15> Perhaps you didn't make it to this part of the article:

> By accountable I meant, "We agreed on a delivery date, and between now and > the delivery date, it's OK if you ask for help because you're stuck, or > something happened outside of your control. But do not walk into my office > the day something is due and give me an excuse. It will cost you your job." > That kind of accountable.

> The goal wasn't inflexible dates and deadlines, it was to build a culture of > no surprises and collective problem solving.

<comment><USER14> Ah the 'I'll fire your ass if you give me an excuse on the due date but of course an attempt to maintain an open line of communication between now and then will be met with sunshine and rainbows.'

Let's call this disingenuous bullshit what it is - management by fear. Don't tell me you're about 'collective problem solving' in an environment where people are constantly fearing for their jobs.

<comment><USER16> Heh, I think it made sense upto the point where he threatened firing people. I agree that is too extreme: you're gonna quickly lose a lot of people who perform best when they're not under constant pressure.

<comment><USER17> I disagree. Strongly.

A common attitude of effective managers as documented by _First, Break All The Rules_ can be summed up by, "I never waited too long to make the right hire. I never fired the wrong one quickly enough." Having the wrong employee is very toxic for your organization and culture.

The rules that Steve laid out do not actually put pressure on people. They amount to, "Be accountable for what you say, try to make it work, and let people know quickly once you hit a roadblock." It is about effort and communication, not achieving results.

People who don't put in effort and don't communicate can't be made to, and can't stay. But people who do, can. And, on average, this will work out well.

<comment><USER18> >> The rules that Steve laid out do not actually put pressure on people. They amount to, "Be accountable for what you say, try to make it work, and let people know quickly once you hit a roadblock." It is about effort and communication, not achieving results.

Just want to clarify: It's subjective perspective. It is pressure and it is about achieving results, but it's not unreasonable or unexpected for any business. I pay you, you do work. Period. Or the company fails.

>> People who don't put in effort and don't communicate can't be made to, and can't stay.

Depends on the personality of the individual. Make sure you work with them first and figure out if you CAN get them to cooperate. If you don't bother trying but just put up the rules and say "follow this", there is the possibility you'll dump a good employee and have to spend the next 6 months getting HR to replace him/her.

<comment><USER17> _Just want to clarify: It 's subjective perspective._

Right. Whether there is pressure is a subjective judgement. But the fact that you feel pressure DOES NOT make it an objective fact that someone else is putting pressure on you.

To get to an objective fact, you would need to find fair and neutral third parties. Neither of the two people directly involved can actually judge.

As a neutral third party, my impression of Steve Blank is that he is probably a very good person to work for. I have been in environments similar to the one that he described. And I found them very good environments to be in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Sounds to me like the real problem is that Steve Blank does not have a system to get enough context from individual contributors to know that a project is slipping well before the deadline. This is a management problem being cast as a individual contributor problem (we need to fire those lazy, incompetent employees who don't ask for help when they should /s), what a bizarre inversion of reasoning.

Edit: Management should be the ones held accountable for projects slipping their deadlines. The individual contributors don't just auto-assemble into on- time results.

<comment><USER13> You miss the point that "no excuses" is exactly that system.

A manager shouldn't have to ping every subordinate every day for status updates, that's annoying to both and should be unnecessary. Management only works through delegation, you need to trust your subordinates to do delegated tasks without hand-holding, but you also need to give them a protocol for exceptions, which is exactly what this is.

Managers usually have other work besides managing people, from their own projects to strategic planning and budgeting. If you are required to also micromanage the projects of your subordinates, you have the wrong subordinates.

<comment><USER20> I abhor status meetings with the round-robin format. As an individual contributor I love to collaborate with anti-meeting managers. The catch is to get the IC's to provide timely information on successes and blocks. I like the idea of asking that all the IC's email announcements of their successes as they happen. There's one less reason for the "status" meeting. The rest of the equation is to get people to automatically network about their blocks. That takes care of another major, routine component of status meeting. Now it can be valuable to workshop or otherwise, in one place, collaborate about a problem. I once had a manager who supported classic-form scrums. He was the one who had the Outlook fu for scheduling a meeting on the calendar, so he scheduled the scrums, but he did not appear at the scrums. He did circulate among his reports, but he didn't have to have long conversations with them, because all the other mechanisms were getting the work done.

A regularly-scheduled meeting tends to become the ONE channel for communication, and with such a meeting on the calendar it is a little unconvincing for a manager to say that they want to hear about blockers before the meeting instead of during it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The whole problem is 'hands off management'. Just get out of your jacket and work along periodically with the people that are below you in the org chart. That will create an atmosphere of being in it 'together' and it will work wonders for team spirit. It will also help to convey that you actually know your stuff (which will cut down on bullshit excuses like nothing else). Miraculously, even when you're in meeting with higher ups or other departments, the work will continue (who would have thought).

Of course that would require management to be able to actually _do_ something. The best managers I worked for did just that, and I copied their style as much as possible.

Managers that isolate themselves from their department are the very worst kind. One guy I knew literally had a code-lock on his door to make sure he wasn't bothered when he was doing 'important' stuff (which was all the time, his door was always closed). Guess what happened to productivity in that particular company.

</comment><comment><USER22> Having worked at a few places in my career now, I've found two dominant styles of management. Either you trust your team, listen to their "excuses", and try to help them unblock themselves (and come up with learnings to increase future velocity), or you _don't_ trust your team and constantly hold the stick above their heads. The former style lends itself to cautious team growth and views each employee as having a valuable skillset, emphasizing low churn. The latter seems to engender a hypergrowth strategy, where employees are seen as "resources" rather than important cornerstones of the company.

Consider the following. Asking for help ends up blocking other employees _also_ laboring under their own deadlines, which incentivizes most employees to ignore requests for help.

</comment><comment><USER23> Funny, I was just thinking about this and Steve Blank.

Early at IMVU we really struggled with our crash rate. It was a 3D desktop application for _mainstream computers_. This was back before Windows 7 and everyone had terrible onboard graphics chips with equivalently terrible drivers.

During a board of advisors meeting, our CEO presented our crash metrics and justified it by saying "We might not be able to improve these metrics much - we're one of the only applications shipping 3D graphics on almost every computer."

Steve Blank immediately ripped into him: "That's an engineer's justification! Figure it out!"

I felt pretty guilty because I was the one who'd planted that idea in our CEO's head just days before.

Of course there _were_ ways to improve application reliability in the presence of driver crashes. You just have to move the rendering code into another process like Chrome does, detect when it crashes, and restart. :)

<comment><USER24> > _" That's an engineer's justification! Figure it out!"_

I find that I like Steve Blank less and less.

You might as well yell at your lawyers, your accountants or a physicist. Some things _are_.

The problem is that, once in a while, a professional opinion is wrong. So the Blanks of the world remember only the occasions where they bullied someone and lucked out -- then assume their Non-Excusing was the magic ingredient.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I guess I shouldn't be surprised that most people on HN don't like this attitude. I used to think this kind of thing was stupid too. "Oh, management by fiat, that will never work". I see comments here talking about management by fear, or, ironically, making excuses as to why this won't work most places.

I've worked in numerous Fortune 500's, and without a doubt the biggest piece missing from the dysfunctional teams is always accountability. Or lack of responsibility and ownership (said another way). The high performing teams don't tolerate excuses or abdication of responsibility. They may not come right out and say it explicitly, but between the lines of success, that's what's going on. If you're on a team that sucks, it's probably because no one cares about doing a good job.

There are many ways to increase accountability and responsibility, but sometimes people do need to lose their jobs. Trying hard is not sufficient when you're making six figures a year. Steve Jobs (I think) had the quote - "Somewhere between the janitor and the CEO, excuses stop mattering". In my world, that's once you start making 100% more money than the median. I've never seen a big organization that couldn't lose 25% of its people and not miss a beat. In some cases 50%.

Anyways, our culture has moved beyond responsibility and accountability. People joke about participation ribbons and "everyone gets a trophy" \- but speaking generally, most of the younger employees I've encountered don't know what it takes to really succeed. They don't understand how hard you actually have to work to be better-than-competent at something. I know it sounds very "get off my lawn" \- but the change (generalizing of course) is real enough.

<comment><USER26> This may work, but only if the culture of accountability goes all the way to the top.

It rarely does. It's more usual that once you get past a certain level, the Jobs Rule is reversed. Project failures and corporate problems are mysteriously and inexplicably never caused by bad management or poor executive decisions, and blatant incompetence stops being an impediment to promotion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> This was a good post and an interesting idea with some nice conclusions.

One of the commenters, however, nailed it and got to the heart of the difficulty: _getting people to do what they say they will do_. Period. Full stop.

You can wrap excuses, or culture, or other corporate vocabulary around the matter, but it boils down to that fundamental thing of people doing what they are asked and delivering what they say they will.

Managing people is difficult and if there's an organization who has had more experience organizing people to execute objectives than most anyone else, it's the military. They are damned good at it and there exists a lot of manuals and writings to this end.

The commentor brought up an essay from 1899 that is still brought up in today's military training. It is clearer and more to the point of the fundamental need of _people who can do what you ask and deliver what they say_.

It's only three pages and it's wonderful. A Message to Garcia by Elbert Hubbard:

[http://www.benning.army.mil/infantry/199th/ocs/content/pdf/m...](http://www.benning.army.mil/infantry/199th/ocs/content/pdf/message%20to%20garcia.pdf)

There's an extraordinary amount of laziness and entitlement in today's businesses; technology is no exception. It is truly rarer and rarer to find someone who will simply: "carry a message to Garcia."

<comment><USER28> I find it an odd idea that the military (at least the US military) is the paradigm of efficiency or organization.

It's true they do have ways to get people do do what is directed but they aren't very efficient and organization at the micro level might be good but not at the macro.

There is a reason the military is so absurdly costly and apparently has trouble decisively ending conflicts. Because all the parts are in place doesn't necessarily mean organization at a higher level.

I also offer as evidence the growth of the use of contractors. Because we apparently can't put three guys in a rowboat for less than a million bucks. That's not organization, even if all uniforms are pressed to specification.

The successes the military does enjoy are more a matter of literal brute force and a big budget rather than organized long term planning IMOP.

<comment><USER29> >I find it an odd idea that the military (at least the US military) is the paradigm of efficiency or organization.

People in the military usually talk about it being a clusterfuck on the macro level. I think most of the people with this mental model of the military are just office middle managers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I feel a little skeptical. One of the hardest and important parts of management is maintaining trust between you and your team. It's very easy to communicate something in a way that's misunderstood, and kills the morale. What then happens is that few people leave, and overall productivity of your organization plunges.

Note that he spent about a third of the post explaining `I didn't mean "deliver or else."`. It's an indication that it's hard to pull off.

I have no opinion on this this strategy as such (i.e. I think it sounds pretty good), but please don't try this in your org unless you are very experienced, and feel confident that you can communicate it well.

</comment><comment><USER31> If you to treat your employees as children, you will end up with a culture of excuses. If you give and take responsiblity for both your own work and the work of helping others do their work, you will realize that excuses won't be needed. People will inherently know they are either messing up or have messed up and will volountarily ask for help from others, who will help.

Not trusting and respecting in your employees will corner them to behave like children and you will eternally (be unhappy to) be their parent. Treat people with trust and respect and expect the same. It will make for a much more happy and a much better performing team and ultimately, company.

</comment><comment><USER32> I don't like that article. I believe that it's entirely backwards actually.

If you actually do everything right in your organisation, you'll end up with a "no empty excuses" culture anyway. If you try to enforce a "no excuses" culture without doing all the other things right, then your team is likely suffering and often won't get the chance to express themselves in actually pursuing what they think needs to be done instead. Sometimes, your team members have an equally good idea about where you should be focusing your efforts to get the most value out of them or avoid future pain points, despite what most management people think.

So if you go about this wrong, you might lose that, but what's worse you might end up losing the wrong people. Sometimes things are out of your control. And even when you can get help, when everyone is focused on doing their best to avoid being fired, help from someone else is hard to get.

So if you fix everything that would make following such a management strategy a huge disaster, you quite possibly end up not having to enforce such a strategy, because you got people willing to help each other and people who know what matters and what needs to be done.

You end up with a "no excuses" team after you fix all these, but that's an emergent fact not the fact that got you all your success.

<comment><USER33> While I agree with everything you wrote about "no excuses" being a side effect of a healthy frame of mind, and that in an ideal situation things should be motivated by passion and not by fear, I wonder if perhaps sometimes the amount of damage created from long exposure to a bad environment is not something that can be easily undone and one has to revert to the stick to achieve results. I wouldn't want to manage or be managed in such an organisation, , but I can imagine there are situations where discipline needs to be enforced when the culture is too far gone due to past mistakes. Using the analogy to human personality, you probably won't fix deep rooted pathologies or self destructive habits overnight by motivation talks. Maybe sometimes things have to be artificially straightened out because the time for a natural fix would just take too long.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> That's the Curtis LeMay approach to management.[1] He was famously into management by fear.

We see this problem in software, especially in DevOps and "agile" shops, because the process is so forgiving of delay. In a manufacturing plant, no product comes out until all the component parts are ready. So there's a "no excuses" culture about running out of parts, or having an assembly line station down unexpectedly. Software rarely has that.

Organizations with real "no excuses" cultures have spares and reserves. They have a backup plan if a key person is sick or unavailable, or something important doesn't show up. They have slogans like "two is one and one is none". This is seldom seen in software development.

[1] [http://www.au.af.mil/au/afri/aspj/digital/pdf/articles/2014-...](http://www.au.af.mil/au/afri/aspj/digital/pdf/articles/2014-Mar- Apr/V-Meilinger.pdf)

<comment><USER35> > _He was famously into management by fear._

The article you linked to says precisely the opposite and is more in line with the blog post. LeMay made it clear that results were expected and got them.

<comment><USER26> LeMay almost started WWIII. I don't think he's a good example in this context.

I'm in the "tone deaf management bullshit" camp. It starts with the assumption that your people are basically incompetent losers and it's up to you to stomp around and whip them into shape.

It doesn't work in most areas, and it _especially_ doesn't work in software dev.

If your people aren't acting like responsible professionals, either your culture is broken, or you're hiring the wrong people for the wrong reasons - or both.

Given the chance most adult professionals will be adult and professional. Some will even take pride in doing a good job.

If that's not happening, unprofessional management won't fix it.

<comment><USER13> You just argued for Steve Blanks approach. Trust your people to work independently and bring problems to your attention in a timely manner. And if they can't do that, release them back into the wild.

I ran a 40 person development organization that never missed a schedule with that philosophy. Everyone empowered to bring problems up for help, everyone trusted to work independently.

<comment><USER36> Steve Blank's actual approach is to shout at people who bring issues to him ahead of time: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13846800](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13846800)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Sounds very similar to one of my old bosses. He had one rule and one only: no surprises.

Soon as anything is a potential issue raise it, find a mitigation and move on. Simple and works surprisingly well both on an individual basis and at scale.

</comment><comment><USER38> My father was a professor teaching business at a small college. On his first semester teaching, he assigned an essay due in a couple months. He said any papers turned in a day late got docked one grade, two days two grades, etc. He said no excuses would be accepted, because they had two months to do the work.

The due date rolled around, and half the class turned in their papers late, and got docked grades accordingly.

The next semester, there was only one paper late one day.

<comment><USER10> Now try a new experiment:

* There are 60 students, all taking 5 classes, with multiple assignments due at random time points in each class.

* To finish any assignment, the student needs several tasks to be performed by other students in different disciplines.

* The exact amount of effort required for any of those tasks is unknown.

* The college has ordered the professors to assign just a bit more work than can possibly be completed, or equivalently, has under-estimated the number of students needed to complete all of the assigned tasks.

<comment><USER24> I take it you spoke to my professors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I'm surprised that nobody here realize that this marketing team has reinvented part of agile and lean managment? Making devs accountable but not holding responsible, group solving problems and Andon, prioritizing tasks, a bit about handling external dependencies, kind of sprints, visibility, staying on budget...

They're obviously not following Scrum in Action at the letter, but I really saw a striking resemblance with the "agile & lean" company where I work

<comment><USER11> I would not say so. In agile, individual developer does not have personal responsibility for anything. In this system, individual person had own task and was accountable for that task completion. It also sounds like they were working independently and wouldn't get help unless they asked for it.

"I will fire you if deadline is suddenly not met and no one else is there find out before if you don't say so" is on the opposite extreme from agile "everything is collective task, we check up on you every four hours and you are neither autonomous nor responsible".

<comment><USER5> _In agile, individual developer does not have personal responsibility for anything._

Where in the world do you get this idea? For one, there is no such thing as "agile", in the sense of a prescriptive methodology that would make such a declaration. There are just individual methodologies that claim varying levels of adherence to the Agile Manifesto[1]. And even then, the popular "Agile" methodologies like Scrum, XP, etc. never say that no one has personal responsibility for anything. Some say that teams are self-organizing and that you succeed or fail as a team, but I think everybody understands that that later part doesn't mean you can just come in and stare at the walls all day with no consequences.

 _we check up on you every four hours_

If someone is "checking up on you every four hours" it's almost 100% certain that whatever process you're using has absolutely nothing to do with "agile".

<comment><USER40> Are you sure? Daily standups = checking up on you every 8 hours, and then you have tons of checkups in-between. Retros, sprint planning, ticket management. Agile methodology is designed for a tech lead to know what each member of the team is doing.

Agile methodology is not "here's a large task, I don't want to hear from you again until it's completed".

<comment><USER5> None of that stuff is "Agile". Those things are artifacts / ceremony related with specific methodologies which are only "agile" to varying degrees. Read the Agile Manifesto, there's almost nothing prescriptive in there at all.

 _Agile methodology is designed for a tech lead to know what each member of the team is doing._

That might be the case for some specific "agile" methodology, but if there's a core essence to Agile, it's about embracing and responding to change... nothing to do with tech leads.

<comment><USER40> How, exactly, is embracing and responding to change going to happen if there's not frequent communication? What form of agile methodologies have the developers going off on their own for weeks without oversight? How do they 'respond to change'?

A strict literal reading of the agile manifesto doesn't include daily standups, yes, but if you read it at anything other than the most superficial level, frequent communication is necessary.

<comment><USER41> > How, exactly, is embracing and responding to change going to happen if > there's not frequent communication?

Frequent communication doesn't have to be synchronous, prescheduled, or in- person, though, and it doesn't have to be through a heirarchy (team lead).

Also, the phrase "Agile methodology" is almost an oxymoron (and absolutely incorrect in terms of most of the methodologies it is applied to); a development methodology in the usual sense cannot be Agile, though a team's higher-level methodology that controls choice of and change to the development methodology can be.

<comment><USER40> I didn't say it had to be any of those things, and mentioned ticketing as well, which is none of those things. The comment I was responding to was about being checked-up on frequently. And regarding tech leads, once you get above the size of a single very small team, how many of those don't have some form of technical lead?

Besides, the Agile Manifesto _explicitly_ states at least one form of daily interaction: _Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project._ Having this in the list and then pretending that having standups are the functional opposite of "what Agile _really_ means" is just nonsense.

Every time I see one of these "Ah, but Agile doesn't _have_ to be that way", it makes me think of lynx and w3m. There's the way the majority of browsers work, and then there's ones like these. Yes, you can make the correct _technical_ argument about what a web browser is, and then there's the way that almost everyone thinks of when the word 'browser' is used. File a bunch of bugs about how your front-end is failing in w3m, and then sit back and watch the WONTFIXs roll in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> This sounds somewhat aligned with the culture that my manager has fostered where I'm working - just spun a different way:

We come up with a target that we plan on achieving in 6 weeks and then we have said 6 weeks to execute on that plan. For example, if our goal is to add four features to a product we write it down and the intent is to deliver in six weeks.

That being said, no excuses. When it comes time to deliver we should be able to deliver on anything that we committed to. BUT - and I think this is what Steve does a poor job of spinning - it's not that we have to have our original plan fully executed; rather, if we found a problem along the way it's expected that we raise the issue and course-correct. If one of those four features turns out to hit a snag we alert the PMs and generally just cut back our scope.

The thing is that we are accountable for our work. Accountability does not mean that you'll necessarily accomplish everything on your plate - it just means that at the end of our timeline we don't throw up our arms and say that it didn't get done. We've been transparent with our stakeholders the entire way and so when something goes awry they knew about it well ahead of time and could do their own expectation management with whomever their stakeholders are - thus putting everyone in a much better position.

While I would refrain from calling this a "no excuses" culture - which sounds really dickish and annoyingly managerial - I would say a culture of accountability is an extremely strong and empowering thing. It puts the onus on you to execute but enough latitude to express when execution is no longer feasible within the expected window.

</comment><comment><USER43> "Excuses are the nails used to build the house of failure," or so the saying goes. A teacher used to repeat this phrase to any grade-school students who failed to turn in homework. He didn't care what the excuses were; no amount of excuse can undo the passage of time and the truancy of students.

The bulk of the post is about compensating for the lack of excuses with compassion and teamwork, and avoiding creating a culture of blame. This is important. Excuses hide accountability, but blame makes communication impossible.

<comment><USER44> Never did my homework.

I'd rather stayed at school an hour longer than doing homework in the afternoon.

Lowered my grade in every class, but my free time was totally worth it.

In the end I still got to study computer science, like I always wanted, so I don't see their point in retrospect...

<comment><USER45> Same here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> At first I was really resistant to reading this. "No excuses" sounds like something someone who has never been responsible for impossible engineering deadlines gets to say. But, I really like the way Blank defines it as "be in communication and ask for help so there are no surprises." That is great: I often find myself avoiding being in communication because I'm sure someone will offer uncomfortable solutions. But, those are the difference between a mediocre organization and a superb one.

<comment><USER15> +1 - I think this is key: "be in communication and ask for help so there are no surprises."

The title of the article would probably be more palatable as "No surprises" since by "No excuses" he really means no _bullshit_ excuses a day before the deadline. Then again, an article titled "No surprises" probably wouldn't have gotten this many upvotes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> _" [Steve] Jobs imagines his garbage regularly not being emptied in his office, and when he asks the janitor why, he gets an excuse: The locks have been changed, and the janitor doesn't have a key. This is an acceptable excuse coming from someone who empties trash bins for a living. The janitor gets to explain why something went wrong. Senior people do not. "When you're the janitor," Jobs has repeatedly told incoming VPs, "reasons matter." He continues: "Somewhere between the janitor and the CEO, reasons stop mattering." That "Rubicon," he has said, "is crossed when you become a VP."_

[https://www.macstories.net/news/inside-apple-reveals- steve-j...](https://www.macstories.net/news/inside-apple-reveals-steve-jobs- anecdotes-apples-little-known-facts/)

<comment><USER48> I've heard this from a lot of business-management types, but I've always felt they have the causality backwards.

It's not that "reasons don't matter", so therefore you can know your job is now in the executive suite.

It's rather that once you're an executive, you are (presumably) granted enough _power_ and _authority_ to actually _fix_ problems on your own initiative, before they become visible to the people above you. So if a problem becomes visible to the people above you, it means you didn't _exercise_ all that power and authority at your disposal to prevent that.

I think this causal direction is more useful, because it suggests that there sometimes still _are_ "reasons" that can matter as justifications for failure—as long as those "reasons" are things outside of the reach of the executive's power+authority. For example, a COO won't usually be fired if an political/military emergency grounds all flights and so nobody's stuff gets delivered—because there's nothing they really could have done about that, no amount of planning that would have circumlocuted the problem.

<comment><USER49> No, I think the OP is correct.

My father and ex husband were career military and I was a full time mom. Both the military and parenting have this in common: You may not be in control of certain things, nonetheless, you are responsible for the outcome.

In other words, kids are autonomous beings and may do things the parent does not want them to do. When the law says money is owed due to the child breaking something, they come after the parents. In the military, if you are in charge, you take the fall when things go wrong, even if it wasn't your fault.

The world gives us endless obstacles between us and our goals. If you want to make excuses, there is never any shortage of them to be found. But if you want a thing to happen, at some point, you just have to decide that "The buck stops here" and not accept excuses.

<comment><USER48> > When the law says money is owed due to the child breaking something, they > come after the parents. In the military, if you are in charge, you take the > fall when things go wrong, even if it wasn't your fault.

Ah, but these are both situations where, to my phrasing, there could have been "enough planning [to] circumlocute the problem." In other words, the punishment falls on the parents or the officer who _trained_ those who failed, to complete the feedback loop back to _their training style_. If they had trained their children/soldiers better, the event in question _perhaps_ could have been prevented. And it might be prevented in the future, due to that negative feedback.

A CIO of a large corporation usually _would_ be fired if the company's business halts for 48 hours (losing money) because a datacenter got hit by a meteor. This is not because the CIO could have seen a meteor-strike coming, but rather because they _could have_ put processes in place for fault- tolerance/high-availability, such that any random act-of-god that takes out the data-center wouldn't have mattered to the business.

It's not the CIO's fault if a datacenter blows up, but it _is_ the CIO's fault if "a datacenter blowing up" is able to halt their business, when there is something they _could_ have thought of that and put in place, long ago, that would have interrupted that causal chain in the present.

But a parent, or a military officer, or a corporate executive, usually isn't blamed for what amounts to "enemy action"—where something intentionally malicious out-thinks every preparation you've made and goes ahead and ruins your day anyway. Parents, for example, aren't blamed for what their children do when they've been _told_ to do that thing by another authority figure. Executives aren't blamed for rival companies' industrial sabotage. Generals aren't blamed if a sudden trap is sprung during a retreat, turning it into a rout.

<comment><USER49> _But a parent, or a military officer, or a corporate executive, usually isn 't blamed for what amounts to "enemy action"—where something intentionally malicious out-thinks every preparation you've made and goes ahead and ruins your day anyway. Parents, for example, aren't blamed for what their children do when they've been told to do that thing by another authority figure. Executives aren't blamed for rival companies' industrial sabotage. Generals aren't blamed if a sudden trap is sprung during a retreat, turning it into a rout._

High ranking officers can be relieved of command for doing the right thing, but breaking the rules to do it, a la this based-on-a-true-story movie: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behind_Enemy_Lines_(2001_fil...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behind_Enemy_Lines_\(2001_film\))

I pulled my kids at homeschooled when it turned out the public schools were a mess where we moved for one duty station. I am "The buck stops here" kind of parent. Other adults being assholes and fucking up my kid is not an acceptable justification for letting my kids get fucked up.

My kids are intensely loyal to me. They know I can be trusted to do what is in their best interest, _no excuses._

<comment><USER48> > Other adults being assholes and fucking up my kid is not an acceptable > justification for letting my kids get fucked up.

To be clear, I wasn't talking about things that have negative impacts _on your child_ , but rather things that society _blames_ your child for, and then redirects that blame to you.

An example: if your 10-year-old child just grabs a loaded gun off a table and shoots someone, whether this ends up deemed "accidental" or not, whether someone else is to blame for leaving a loaded gun there or not, people will still (at least partially) blame _you_ for that—for (presumably) not instilling gun safety rules into your child.

But if your 10-year-old child is _handed_ a gun by another adult, and _told_ to shoot someone, blame for that would _never_ land on you: society would deem that _coercion_ , due to the power-imbalance between adults and children, just as much as if an adult were told to shoot someone with a gun held to their own head.

You might blame yourself for the trauma your kid suffers from having shot someone, sure. But, in the situation above, I don't think even you would think you somehow held ultimate causal responsibility for the shooting occurring in the first place. It'd be like blaming yourself for a drunk driver driving through the front of your house and killing someone you love: essentially an "act of god" that happened to have been performed by another human being.

<comment><USER49> My original example of a kid breaking something and the law coming after the parent was chosen in hopes of not getting into this kind of conversation. It was chosen as something that should be obviously true and not arguable.

I try really hard to be careful about talking about parenting because I am aware that I was fortunate to be in a position to insist on _no excuses._ I was able to be a full time mom, in part because my ex was career military, and also my parents were very big on the idea that kids need a full time care taker, so they helped make it possible for me to put my kids first.

But I am talented at certain kinds of insights and one of my rules was that if my kid did not like someone, they were not left with them. So, I did feel responsible for making sure they were generally not left in the care of some dumbass nutcase who might hand them a gun. Nothing as extreme as you describe ever happened, because I was incredibly vigilant about details like vetting folks whom I left my kids with.

So, your example really does not work for me and I imagine we are not going to see eye to eye on this point.

<comment><USER48> I was trying to intentionally create an example that avoided any case where "vigilance" would have made a difference, but I guess I wasn't clear.

I don't know the age of your children, but speaking of them in a general sense (i.e. they'll still be "your child" until they're 18), I presume they will at some point go to a store on their own, take public transit, etc.? That is, they will be out in public without you, if just for a few minutes, and an adult _will_ be able to just wander up to them and coerce them. Homeschooling doesn't do much to stop this; only bubble-boy paranoia can (and even then...)

But really, even then, people can still break into your home. (Or, as I said, hit your house with their car.) You'd have to live in a bunker.

<comment><USER49> My oldest will soon be thirty.

I fundamentally do not agree with you. My sons were raised with real agency and genuine respect from the get go. They did not cave to bullying by adults, even as children. When away from me in public school, they inferred that they were entitled to enforce the standards I had set at home and they were not inclined to take shit off anyone.

This is not an argument you will "win" with me.

Suffice it to say that I acknowledge that I am fortunate to have had latitude and insight that many parents do not have. I try like hell to not blame other parents when they fail and, instead, to empower them to do better. But my children are grown, I know the results of my handiwork and I basically am a kickass parent.

We should probably just end this discussion here. No one ever wants to believe that any parent can meet the standard I consistently set for myself as a parent.

<comment><USER32> No one has a hard time believing you are a good parent. And I doubt anyone really cares much, as we've gone far beyond the point of providing a personal anecdote to help with arguing a point, and instead we're at the point of almost bragging.

The point is:

You argued people get deemed responsible for things entirely outside their control, and as an example you pointed out parents are expected to pay for something their kids broke.

The first person to responded pointed out that you're usually not deemed accountable for things entirely outside your control, and in the case of a kid breaking something, you're expected to pay because you have a large amount of control over your kids habits, and you certainly have a large amount of control over your kids whereabouts, so them throwing a stone to break a window is something you could have avoided.

And no one deems you responsible you for things that you couldn't truly control about your kid. As an example, if your kid hits someone with a medicine ball after their gym teacher instructs them to use them in a slightly dangerous way, no one would have you pay the other kid's hospital bill.

<comment><USER49> I am not trying to brag. I am trying to communicate.

In insurance and legal settings, you are not responsible for "acts of God." Obviously, no one can control everything. But trying to figure out where to draw that line separates the wheat from the chaff, the ordinary businesses from the good ones.

Parenting is where I have substantial experience. And it gets all kinds of push back. It is a subtle form of sexism: My experiences do not count because they are mom experiences. It is kind of like the use of the dismissive term "mommy bloggers." I never hear the term "daddy bloggers."

Einstein said something once like "Talented people solve problems. Geniuses prevent them." A healthy _no excuses_ culture is one where the emphasis is on preventing them. I did that as a parent.

But feel free to give me yet one more BS excuse as to why my point of view and examples are somehow invalid, as if that is clever and nothing I have ever heard before.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> As usual with business people, the author seems to believe their [simplified strategy] (no excuses) is what caused the outcome they describe. I think it's more likely from the article that the organization simply became more efficient as a result of said "no excuses culture", but it isn't actually the lack of excuses that did much. Why isn't it OK to just say "it's complicated; here's what we did" instead of trying to reduce it into some meaningless phrase.

I think this pretty much says it:

> By accountable I meant, "We agreed on a delivery date, and between now and > the delivery date, it's OK if you ask for help because you're stuck, or > something happened outside of your control. But do not walk into my office > the day something is due and give me an excuse. It will cost you your job." > That kind of accountable.

\---

What's an excuse? Most dictionaries define it as some variant of "justifying" an event. Some editorialize and use words such as: apologizing for, or making light of. Let's just take the essence, justification.

Therefore, a "no excuses culture" is a culture in which there's no justification for events. Such a culture will likely fail in the long run as it fails to acknowledge the blind spot it's purposely ignoring. I doubt any business people would be proud of _not_ knowing why they're missing targets...

<comment><USER11> I think that successs had nothing to do with excuses and a lot more to do with "my groups inside of marketing had become dumping grounds for projects from both inside and outside of marketing – with everything being "priority one." [...] We quickly put in a capacity/priority planning process."

I bet a hat that it was primary the prioritization and planning process that did the trick.

<comment><USER29> Yeah, he rallied around the "no excuses" mantra because it felt good. And sure enough, halfway down the page he says the department dramatically reduced the amount of work intake.

Gee.

It seems like most of the excuses could be boiled down to "Well, you told me to complete a project, but then later you told me _not_ to complete it, so I didn't."

<comment><USER11> That is another thing. The maximum total amount of work I can do is incompatible with making sure I always do everything on time. E.g. when I see deadlines as super important, I am more risk averse in terms of how much I attempt. I will spend less time helping colleges if my deadline may be in danger. I will refuse unplanned urgent tasks. I may finish on time but with lower quality and will leave myself buffers in planning. That may be good thing if promised deadline is really important.

If the total output is more important, I will do what is the most effective action now. E.g. instead of spending time pressing on third parties to give me information, I will work on what I have information for now and leave them proceed at their own pace. Again, that may be good thing if deadline is less important then effectivity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It seems that original problem was that importance of deadlines was not communicated to the team. For example: "the January ad had to be moved into February because my graphic artist was sick, but I didn't tell you because I assumed it was OK." does not sound like an excuse to me. It sounds like the person genuinely did not seen the event as important and may be surprised over this being big deal suddenly.

It sounds to me that previous management did not valued deadlines and did not even made deadlines possible, so naturally employees did things previous management valued.

</comment><comment><USER51> Some blue collar guys I used to work with had a saying: "Shit rolls downhill". Years later, I realized that had a lot to do with the way orgs with bad management deal with tech/dev: everyone likes to talk about accountability when it goes downhill to the devs, but no one wants to talk about accountability for having a clue about what they want. You could plug in space heaters in a circle in a conference room and it would have about the same effect.

</comment><comment><USER52> I've tried to stick to "no excuses" ever since I watched Rising Sun in the mid '90es. When Wesley Snipes' character is late he starts making excuses to Sean Connery's character who promptly tells him to stop making excuses and "don't be late". It's not a very prominent quote from the movie or anything, but for some reason it just resonated with me. Perhaps because I tended to make a lot of excuses.

</comment><comment><USER53> I'm of two minds on this.

As many of the commenters on the original piece note, the idea of a "no excuses culture" will be familiar to anyone who's familiar with the culture of the (U.S., anyway) military, and generally speaking it works quite well there. It helps cut through B.S. and keep everyone focused on the idea that results are the thing that matter, which is important when results can literally mean the difference between life and death. And while it can sound to an outsider like a cruel standard, I personally found my exposure to it freeing -- it means not having to deal with the blame-seeking and post-hoc litigation of small mistakes that we all have to struggle with every day in other contexts. So in that respect, I'm all for it.

The thing is, though, in the context of military culture "no excuses" isn't a stand-alone principle the way it's presented here. It's embedded with a bunch of other, complimentary principles that help sand off its roughest edges.

An example would be the principle that _responsibility flows uphill_ : leaders are responsible for failures of their units, even in cases where the failure is entirely due to mistakes by subordinates -- mistakes that they may not even have known were being made. (Because why _didn 't_ the leader know those mistakes were being made? It's their _job_ to train their people to do the right things, and to make sure they're actually _doing_ them.)

This compliments the "no excuses" idea, because it limits its usefulness as a tool for powerful people to push ones farther down the food chain to do unethical things. You're responsible for the things your people do, so there's a strong incentive to make sure not just that they get results, but that they do so in ways that you would be comfortable being judged by.

Without that, "no excuses" becomes a kind of blind eye standard -- "get results, I don't care how." Which can put immense pressure on the person on the receiving end of that directive to cut corners, fudge evidence and cross ethical lines if they have to in order to get those results. And if they do, the leader can then feign innocence: "I never told them to do those horrible things!" Well, yeah, but you put them in a position where the horrible things were they only things they could realistically do. You set them up to fail.

So while I applaud the general idea, I worry that in the absence of complimentary values "from now on showing up with an excuse the day the project is due will cost them their job" becomes just one more way for bad managers to push blame that should rightly go to their own incompetence down down the org chart.

<comment><USER11> On one hand, I agree that responsibility flowing uphill can help with the pushing down unethical things. However, when dev leader felt so much responsibility for all tasks, he attempt to micromanage us all to absurd degree. I strongly preferred when I was responsible for what I was doing, because then other people don't try to constantly control details of what I feel responsible for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> This story being about a marketing department might seem like it's not applicable to a software company, but when it comes down to it, we still break down our work into bite-sized stories that can/should be accomplished in a timeframe that's estimated ahead of time. Some shops have more nebulous tasks because they've never done something before, I get that. But for the build the thing we know how to stuff? We should be able to deliver consistently. It comes down to your ability to break down the work into small enough pieces such that you know how long it will take. If you don't know how long it will take, it's not broken down enough.

Now to play devils advocate - I'm generally in favor of carrot not stick.

<comment><USER32> I believe this just isn't possible for a whole lot of projects. Codebases tend to grow so large, and people tend to come and go, so people don't really know most parts of the code, so then a lot of the time estimates are inaccurate to the point of being useless.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Manager has piss poor communication then "solves" it by threatening to fire people. Genius.

</comment><comment><USER56> He's in disagreement with himself.

See point #3: [https://steveblank.com/2012/05/14/9-deadliest-start-up- sins/](https://steveblank.com/2012/05/14/9-deadliest-start-up-sins/)

</comment><comment><USER45> Sounds great, if the boss is not somehow magically delivered from being a responsible party, and as long as the boss's reasons for not meeting commitments are not considered somehow different and therefore "not excuses", i.e., acceptable.

<comment><USER57> Yeah, that's a great way to destroy moral, ie, have your underlings hate your guts. Parents do this kind of crap to their kids all the time, too, then wonder why them don't get respected.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> No surprises. Agreed. Consequences. Agreed. Firing people. Bad idea. If the biggest lesson you teach people is the one they learn as they leave your organization, then I think you're wasting a good crisis.

</comment><comment><USER59>
      No excuses for failures given, just facts and requests for help
      No excuses for failures accepted, just facts, and offers to help
      Relentless execution
      Individual honesty and integrity

Wow! I didn't know that the political aspects of small in-groups was so simple!

We can just proclaim "PROBLEMS BE GONE!" and so it shall be! It's also so clear to me now!

What a load of crap. I've been on at least six developer teams, and the one thing that's proven true every time is that third party externalities will always find a way to hobble progress, introduces stalls in productivity, and wear down morale.

But there are deeper issues, particularly with software development, and undisprovable beliefs about which implementation of technology is THE ONE TRUE WAY.

People will always use that as a wedge, to alleviate the amount of work on their plate, and declare efficiency as the driving principle. But then! Non- technical people, clueless as ever about the machines that govern their livelihood (as glorified CRM receptionists) fail to understand, the truth is that it's just technical people pushing work around, spreading it in different arrangements, according to their liking.

      Let's bind everything to UNIX users
      and LDAP permissions, that way the
      system administrators can control
      progress, and must be aware of all
      tangential events.

      Gee, I can't create a folder structure
      on this file system, because I have to
      wait for a sys admin to provide permissions
      just so I can create an index.html file
      at the location I need.

      How about we throw everything in a MySQL
      database, and persist our data over there?

      Awesome, but wow, our table schema is
      getting kind of huge. Managing it is
      a chore unto itself.

      Let the DBA team control every aspect
      of the RDBMS, so that every change to
      the database schema requires their
      involvement. This way, we'll always
      have to ask them for permission to
      introduce a new table or column.

      Okay, how about we just design our
      tables, to be gigantic structured
      text blobs, of unlimited size, so
      that we don't have to wait for a DBA
      to respond to our schema change
      requests? Sounds great! It's less work!

      NoSQL vs. SQL. Which is the one TRUE way?

      Man, this CGI programming is really
      hard, and our PERL codebase is tough to read.
      Let's try PHP since it's so much easier to code.

      Wow, our PHP code is so disorganized.
      We should organize it into classes.

      That didn't help. PHP permits too
      many ambiguities, and it's counter-productive.

      Javascript everywhere, at all times?
      Why not a full re-write of the entire
      system, because all we know how to use
      is one client-side technology?

      Object Oriented Programming or Functional
      Programming. Which is the one TRUE way?

      I'm having trouble sorting out which
      functions are in scope, because there
      are so many modules in this file tree,
      and I can't easily discern which file
      references which, and in which order.
      So many functions are similarly named,
      and many developers are simply overriding
      namespaces to control scope. We should
      restrict who can create new files in
      this tree, so the library stays sane.

      Let's bind everything to UNIX users
      and LDAP permissions, that way the
      system administrators can control
      progress, and must be aware of all
      tangential events.

And so on...

</comment><comment><USER60> Yet another person blind to greed, so focused on money and profit they miss out on life</comment>


Facebook to stop stalking you off-site – but only if asked - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-49410371 <comment><USER2> Well that's not especially credible.</comment>


Why Banks Miss Out on Talent - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@johnny_reilly/why-banks-miss-out-on-talent-61ee5660ce5d <comment><USER2> Maybe it is a good thing that banking isn't more attractive to developers.

While banking is important I doubt it is the best allocation of resources. Banking accounts for 20% of GDP in the US. [1]

As Warren Buffet once said: _" It has always been a fantasy of mine that a boatload of 25 brokers would be shipwrecked and struggle to an island from which there could be no rescue. Faced with developing an economy that would maximize their consumption and pleasure, would they, I wonder, assign 20 of their number to produce food, clothing, shelter, etc., while setting five to trading endlessly on the future output of the 20?"_ -Warren Buffet [http://wannapreneur.blogspot.com/2007/05/top-10-warren- buffe...](http://wannapreneur.blogspot.com/2007/05/top-10-warren-buffet- quotes.html)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_services](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_services) "As of 2004 the financial services industry (finance industry) represented 20% of the market capitalization of the S&P 500 in the United States.[citation needed]"

</comment><comment><USER3> I think that lack of flexibility in tools is a _lot_ more important than dress codes, although I'll be honest: I'd _like_ to wear a suit & tie every day, and I really dislike seeing dirty feet in my office.

Not being able to run Linux, not being able to run emacs or vim, not being able to use decent programming languages — those are all very good reasons I'm not interested in working for a bank or most enterprises. I don't really care that much about the presence of dress codes.

Are other folks really that different? Would you _really_ choose not to work someplace that required slacks & button-down shirts?</comment>


Using some good old obsolete HTML to create JavaScript-free animations - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@mjtweaver/using-some-good-old-obsolete-html-to-create-a-javascript-free-carousel-animations-7b5f1d6b428 <comment><USER2> Highly recommend svg for animations too. Totally JS-free, self-contained files, supported by all browsers but Microsoft (can just show static svg)... Once you get the hang of the syntax and svg layout, animating is pretty straightforward.

Here's a fun 404 page I made that shows just how extensive an animation you can accomplish (let it play for > 1 minute) - [https://app.astronomer.io/404](https://app.astronomer.io/404)

(You can open the image in a new tab and take a look at the svg code (it's --pretty printed)

<comment><USER3> The problem with SVG animation is it seems to be abnormally resource intensive. I noticed it on a project I worked on recently -- simply pulsing a few <circle>s larger and smaller pegged a CPU core at a constant 40% on my work machine. Indeed, opening your (very cool) 404 page shows a constant 30% CPU usage.

Fine for a 404 page which people are unlikely to stick around on, not fine for a screen that someone is going to spend a significant amount of time on.

<comment><USER4> I'm working on speeding this up via the Pathfinder project, for Firefox. :)

<comment><USER5> awesome - I enjoyed reading up on your work! stuff like this makes me wonder if variable fonts will become a popular method for animating certain things on the web (maybe in the context of UI kits like font awesome, ionicons, etc).

it still kind of blows my mind how quickly we all moved to abandon adobe flash once HTML became viable. I'm not a fan of the attack surface that flash presents, but in retrospect, especially thinking about the hardware I was using 15 years ago, it almost seems like advanced alien technology when contrasted with the state of vector animation on the web today.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The irony is that I needed to allow Javascript from three different domains (medium.com, embedly.com, codepen.io) to see the demos of these Javascript- free animations.

</comment><comment> f- Yeah - you can actually implement surprisingly complex motion by nesting <marquee> tags with different directions, speeds, etc.

I posted this long time ago: [http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/marquee.html](http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/marquee.html)

</comment><comment><USER7> The thing that surprised me most about this is that the marquee element is still supported: I'd just assumed it had long since gone the way of the blink tag.

And then this got me wondering whether, if you'd done this back in say the year 2000, would it have been possible to animate images in this way back then? I certainly saw plenty of uses of the marquee tag (although my recollection was it got a fairly comprehensive slagging even in the HTML4 book I had at the time, published in 1998, so it was already pretty heavily discouraged) but it was always text, never images. I also don't remember seeing any sites with nested marquee tags, but I wonder if that would have worked too?

Interesting piece anyway.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'd be really interested in seeing examples of the most dynamic websites can get with HTML only. Penalties for using CSS but that's fine, too. Does anyone have pointers?

<comment><USER9> In theory... not interactive at all. HTML is supposed to be structure only. There are a few exceptions (blink and marquee tags), so this page pretty much shows the extent.

(If you allow CSS, you can do pretty much anything JavaScript can do.)

<comment><USER10> Fun fact: neither the <marquee> element or the <blink> element have ever been part of any HTML specification.

<comment><USER11> It's in HTML5 (described as obsolete, but defined)

<comment><USER10> Yes. I was waiting for someone to bring that up. It's there for the sole purpose of marking it obsolete as a warning so browsers can eventually remove it. No, you won't find a definition for that element anywhere with WHATWG though the W3C has one.

<comment><USER11> I was actually surprised how detailed the WHATWG specification is for something that's been "not recommended" for ages, but I guess they document everything that's still implemented: [https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/rendering.html#the- ma...](https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/rendering.html#the-marquee- element-2)

(I believe <blink> support has actually been dropped by at least some browsers)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Fun to remember but obviously useless at this point thanks to CSS animations — which are eased, interactive and more complex than x/y movements.

</comment><comment><USER13> Obligatory:

[http://shouldiuseacarousel.com/](http://shouldiuseacarousel.com/)

...but a carousel using the marquee tag?

Definitely. Maybe throw in some inline CSS for good measure, maybe sticking to web safe colour gifs too.

<comment><USER14> I don't know if they did it intentionally, but that was one of the worst implementations/uses of a carousel i've seen yet -- scrolls every like 2 seconds, so you can't even finish reading a sentence; have to keep hitting back to try and read each block.

After looking at those "studies", it really seems like nobody is using it appropriately, not that carousels are actually bad: too fast; not clear its a carousel; broken implementations; being surprised when people click the first item, despite that probably being the item they were looking for.

To add, if only 1% are clicking the first item, perhaps reconsider what people care about and are looking for, because clearly they don't :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Interesting to say the least!</comment>


Google told mystery barge 'needs to move' from San Francisco Bay - <AUTHOR> http://business.financialpost.com/2014/02/04/google-inc-mystery-barge/?__lsa=334f-a16d

<comment><USER2> It's not really a "mystery barge" anymore is it? That makes for a good headline, but it's been a couple months since Google revealed it's actual plans for it [1].

[1] [http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/06/tech/innovation/google- barge-s...](http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/06/tech/innovation/google-barge- statement/)

<comment><USER3> Thank you for posting this, I honestly wasn't aware of this yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The story I heard about this barge not mentioned in this article or in the one in joel's comment: they're going to use it as an office space for employees who can't legally work in the US, either because of visa issues or something else. It makes sense Google wouldn't want this to be public information.

<comment><USER5> Also, that suggestion is pretty silly.

<comment><USER6> Indeed, there are Google offices in countries with much more ... liberal ... immigration policies. The only convenience a barge would offer is timezone issues, but who wants to live on a barge just to be in the same time zone as Mountain View? I'm guessing nobody.

<comment><USER7> There are other advantages. For example, American employees could visit them in person any day necessary, and then go home to SF or Mountain View, or alternate between the offices a couple days a week.

There would also likely be staggering tax benefits.

<comment><USER6> Hmm, that's true.

I worry about the logistics. What if there's some condition where the barge needs to be evacuated (storm, etc.). Since nobody has visas for the mainland, where would they go?

Also, let's say you have 1000 engineers living and working there; where are you going to get all that network bandwidth? Wireless?

Finally, families?

<comment><USER7> As usual, just follow the ST:TNG playbook.

<comment><USER6> Install four lights and try to convince people that there are five?

<comment><USER7> Okay, for reals this time:

> What if there's some condition where the barge needs to be evacuated

Whatever a cruise ship or airplane does.

> Also, let's say you have 1000 engineers living and working there; where are > you going to get all that network bandwidth?

Undersea cable, attached to a buoy. Or yeah, wireless. Have a local copy of as much as possible to allow development with a minimum of ship-to-shore packet transmission.

> Finally, families?

They live there too. Just like Star Trek.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why the fuck are they even referencing the shuttle protests in that article? What does that have to do with anything?

<comment><USER9> The Google barge is displacing thousands of cubic meters of water, some of which has been in the bay for decades.

<comment><USER10> "Ocean tides flow through the Golden Gate four times a day -- twice coming in and twice going out. The quantity of salt water in motion between high and low tides averages 390 billion gallons." or about 1.5 billion cubic meters per day.

<comment><USER6> Doesn't matter. The barges should be driving their cars to work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Why is a minor zoning and permitting issue getting this much attention? It doesn't even have anything to do with Google per se, this is an issue between a few regulatory bodies.

I get that this pushes the narrative that SV/SF is 'fed up' with Google, but can we stop with the linkbait?

</comment><comment><USER12> I predict these barges will end up being scrapped as a misbegotten folly. There are these venues called "exhibition halls." They work well enough.

<comment><USER13> > __ _There are these venues called "exhibition halls." They work well > enough._ __

Without the ability to prove that you can float the load, supply the power, deal with the legal entanglements, garner interest, weather the... weather, etc...

Screw your static non-visionary approach to testing.

If I want to test the idea of a barge based floating environ, the last thing I want to see it demo'd in is a warehouse.</comment></comment>


Critical security flaw in Apples iOS Mail app already exploited - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/22/21231454/apple-iphone-zero-day-exploit-security-flaw-mail-app-ios-zec-ops <comment><AUTHOR> The German BSI (Federal Office for Security in the Information Technology) send out a recommendation to disable synchronisation or delete the app until Apples fix (currently in beta) is released.

Source: [https://translate.google.de/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https%...](https://translate.google.de/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bsi.bund.de%2FDE%2FPresse%2FPressemitteilungen%2FPresse2020%2FWarnung_iOS- Mail_230420.html)

</comment><comment><USER2> I like how the reaction to this is so disproportional on hn as we've seen it so many times with Apple fuckups.

This is the thread with most attention: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22944690](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22944690) Just 270 points. It's not even on the front page. How is this possible? This thing has been on the news in Germany.</comment>


Writing a 2D Game in Nim - <AUTHOR> https://hookrace.net/blog/writing-a-2d-platform-game-in-nim-with-sdl2/# <comment><USER2> This is really great stuff. I've been working on a small 2d SDL project in C++ and this has given me a lot of pointers, as well as opened my eyes to the power of Nim for tasks like this.

It seemed somewhere in between C and Python. Really cool.

</comment><comment><USER3> Awesome - I've got to reread more thoroughly when I have more time at home. The cross-platform distribution and cross-compilation stuff at the end might be some of the most valuable.

</comment><comment><USER4> Thank you very much for this. It's very informative.</comment>


The forgotten history of human zoos - <AUTHOR> http://www.the-open-mind.com/deep-racism-the-forgotten-history-of-human-zoos-1/ <comment><USER2> I have a pet-peeve about articles that tries to paint a bad thing even worse.

This is bad enough as is. You do not need to exaggerate and call fences cages.

The Paris world fair is also a bit of a (dark) gray area. If you read the wikipedia article, it seems less clear that these are people who are kidnapped into a zoo and more like people hired to enact a stereotypic view of their culture.

Moreover, the 1931 exhibit was setup to show cultural diversity and compassion towards the colonies. It was obviously a marketing stunt, attempting to legitimize an illicit sovereignty, but it is not unfair to expect those participants to be treated better and not die within the year.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Colonial_Exposition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Colonial_Exposition)

The article also focuses heavily on white peoples explotation, but again wikipedia points to the oldest known human zoo from the 1500's in Mexico. Interesting stuff.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_zoo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_zoo)

<comment><USER3> Thanks for making those points. A lot of the articles on the linked site seem questionable (to put it very very mildly).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> And yet we're still smug about the fact we're so 'enlightened'.

Meanwhile, this was happening not even 100 years ago.

Maybe a little historical perspective is needed next time we demonize others for what we consider overly-conservative values, in light of the fact that western society hasn't exactly been particularly progressive throughout the ages...

<comment><USER5> You only have to look at the present to see that we aren't properly enlightened yet. Look at the range of sexualities that are still criminalized: pedophilia, bestiality, incest. We make a show of being accepting of homosexuality, but it's a farce when we realize that we only accept it because it's been repeatedly promoted by bold members of that group willing to risk it all in an attempt to change society. People (in the UK at least) are still being imprisoned for having consensual sex with their adult relatives. It's still a common fear that pedophiles shouldn't be left alone with children in case they rape them. Much like the fear of homosexual men was 50-odd years ago (turns out not all gays are rapists after all). Farmers regularly rape animals for profit, but if they do it for pleasure, it's a crime.

<comment><USER4> Well that escalated quickly.

I was thinking more along the lines of not being too harsh on those with more 'traditional values'. Like our Muslim neighbours, or those who think women should stay at home, or maybe are uncomfortable with modern ideas of gender and sexuality.

Not sure I'd throw in paedophilia (since minors are unable to legally consent to sex with adults), or bestiality (animals definitely can't consent to that), or incest (if it results in a child it can have severe consequences for said child).

Regardless, while it's great that we now recognize people of other races are equal (at least nominally), we shouldn't be too smug when denouncing others who aren't as 'progressive' as we are (see all the propaganda regarding homosexuality in Russia - where it's actually legal; versus India where same sex relations are illegal).

<comment><USER6> >Not sure I'd throw in paedophilia (since minors are unable to legally consent to sex with adults), or bestiality (animals definitely can't consent to that), or incest (if it results in a child it can have severe consequences for said child).

I don't remember asking the cow if it wanted to be made into a burger.

Also, we don't ban those with genetic disorders from having children. We educate them and try to help them, but we ban them.

As for the first one, it is a harder topic to deal with, but look at the things we ban that don't hurt children that could potentially serve as a substitute.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> seeing "1931" in there is so depressing. I realise we've made progress since then, but that still isn't very far on a "cultural mentality" scale

<comment><USER8> Australia, 1967. Aborigines are finally recognized as persons and granted rights under the Constitution. Up until then, they were to be treated as 'native fauna' \- i.e. animals.

[http://www.creativespirits.info/aboriginalculture/history/ab...](http://www.creativespirits.info/aboriginalculture/history/aboriginal- history-timeline-1900-1969)

<comment><USER9> I've heard of the forced removal of children from their families but this timeline paints a really dark picture for me of Australia's history. Makes early 20th century Australia seems comparable if not worse than apartheid South Africa.

<comment><USER8> Its a dirty little secret, but Australia is still a very racist and intolerant place. Basically, Australia got away with its own "slow and steady" apartheid - a true travesty, to this day, and which still causes untold pain and suffering to a portion of its population. Alas, this is the price paid by generations for the luxury most Australians enjoy today. As an ex-pat, I hope to see things change, but I'm very much afraid that the more things get swept under the rug the more they stay the same.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> They still exist.

Across the world we have many locations(Amazon and some islands) where we have 'quaint' tribes living in isolation, with people from the outside more or less forbidden from visiting them so the rest of the world can still have the wonder of real life tribes living amongst us.

The fact there is quite a movement(often amongst the left) to encourage tribal societies to stay technology backwards shows people still think it's ok to keep others as entertainment.

<comment><USER11> I think the discussion on whether to bring these tribes into the 21st century or not is an interesting one.

Linking it to human zoos is just stupid. It's apples and oranges.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The emergence of modern zoological gardens is intimately tied to colonialism; given the prevailing mentality at the time (the world is a God given property to the white man), these horrors are sadly unsurprising. I really recommend the book "New Worlds, New Animals: From Menagerie to Zoological Park in the Nineteenth Century" for an in depth history of zoos amd treatment of that colonialism connection, it's fascinating.

</comment><comment><USER13> Much of this was terrible. Some of it was little different from Epcot Center - a cross-cultural experience arranged for mutual benefit.

</comment><comment><USER14> Did I mistakenly go to Tumblr?</comment>


Imaginary Interfaces - <AUTHOR> http://www.hpi.uni-potsdam.de/baudisch/projects/imaginary_interfaces.html

<comment><USER2> The elephant in the room seems to me to be camera placement. Current smartphones probably already have good enough cameras, they probably can already run the software and within a few years they might also have the batteries required to keep such a sophisticated system running for longer periods of time.

But how do you get there to be a camera where you need it to be? Size isn't even the problem, smartphones are already small and light enough. But are people supposed to cut a hole for the camera in their shirt pocket? Will we suddenly start to wear clothes with electronics in them? (The technology to make that happen already exists but we don't seem to want to.)

This seems like a neat additional feature that would be pretty cool. If it wouldn't add any extra hassle. It seems to me to be a very hard problem to get a camera to where you need it to be without adding any extra hassle for the user.

<comment><USER3> It seems to me it might be easier to put localizer gloves on the user instead. They wouldn't even have to be gloves in the traditional hand-covering sense, just enough to stay on the hand and provide orientation, just little skeleton things.

It seems like the real insight is the creation of a gesture system with spatial persistence by using one hand as a reference point shared by both the computer and the human, rather than the lapel-camera. The way in which the innovative gesturing system gets into the computer seems less important than the gesturing insight in the first place; this is the first gesture system that I've seen that seems like it might actually be useful. And now that someone's had the base idea, a couple of iterations of refinements and we might actually be somewhere.

(It seems like the gestures in Minority Report represented what people thought this would look like, but those always seemed almost impossibly floaty; one metric I use to determine how well a computer could possibly perform is "could a motivated human even figure out exactly what you meant?" and I'm not convinced the Minority Report interface meets that; pointing is a pretty imprecise thing, more than you might realize because the average person's 3D model of space is shockingly bad in some ways. Anyone who has learned to draw late enough in life to be able to observe the process of learning to draw, as I am fiddling with now, quickly learns that.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> very interesting how making an L-shape with the left hand somehow makes the imaginary space more concrete in the user's mind. You can really see and understand that the user percieves the interface as existing, moreso than if they were interacting in an unframed way. In other words, I think the L-shape is key to grounding users, it gives a rudimentary starting shape to the interface.

Fasinating research, I'd love the opportunity to play with it. Obviously it's very early stages, but I wonder how long before we will realistically see stuff like this in production. 10 years? Sounds a lot but there's a lot of work to be done not only in terms of polishing the technology, but also in preparing the market for this kind of interface.

</comment><comment><USER5> For consumer electronics, this seems like it could find very appropriate applications on minimal-UI devices like the iPod Shuffle.

<comment><USER6> I think you hit the nail on the head.

First step would be to establish a few simple gestures that everyone can learn rather than try to create an entire OS with it.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you keep track of your ideas? - <AUTHOR>

I've never found a solution that I like for tracking and then later revisiting ideas.  I have Google Docs, spreadsheets, folders, and scraps of paper.  Are there web apps for idea tracking that you guys trust, and that hopefully allow both public and private ideas?  I'm also starting a Twitter feed for random ideas that I have: http://twitter.com/ideaperdiem <comment><USER2> I like workflowy.com, the outline format is nice to keep things in groups.

<comment><USER3> thanks for this, hadn't seen it before

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have a section on my desk for all my scraps of paper, I prefer paper, because it is physically in front of you reminding you of your ideas and to take action on them.

Plus writing seems to be less mechanical and more creative, which helps me get the juices flowing when I come up with a new idea.

</comment><comment><USER5> i never keep track of my ideas. i only have a few that really stand out and those i never forget. if your ideas don't come back to you over and over again, then those aren't good ideas. also, i try to be proactive about finding out whether they're good ideas by talking to people - anyone - old bosses, old friends, new friends, guys who hit on me at coffee shop, etc.

Why do ideas have to be private? if you have an idea, you can be sure that you are probably not the only one who came up with them, so feel free to discuss openly.

there's nothing worse than being paranoid about keeping your ideas to yourself.

<comment><USER6> How do you balance that with the culture of patenting and fear of ideas being stolen?

<comment><USER7> While that's possible I would say that's extremely unlikely, so you're better off getting the feedback.

Think of this way, on the spectrum of loathing to loving your idea, they have to be on the top end and have either the resources or technical knowledge to execute, and now they have to pass you who has a hypothesis already and is looking for feedback. They don't know how much or what you've already gotten, so if they flat copy/paste based on what you've spoken to them about they could be heading off in a different direction. If that's the case they're not really competing with you because they're somewhere else in a different niche.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I have been trying to find an optimal solution myself for a while. I used to have a google spreadsheet before. I like evernote/springpad. But all 3 are blocked at my work location and that's where I get most ideas that I want to record. IPhone form factor/keyboard doesn't allow for a quick note typing. For now, I am using a plain Google tasks list to record all ideas. I can access it from gmail or calendar and the google calendar is not blocked at my workplace. I would love to use evernote extensively, but till I get access to it at work, Google tasks does it for now.

</comment><comment><USER9> Have you tried Evernote?

Is fantastic. I can't imagine not using it.

<comment><USER10> No concerns regarding privacy and trusting a 3rd party with your ideas?

<comment><USER9> Not at all. I'm not sure they are reading my notes and even if they did I'm not sure they are worth much without execution.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I use pivotal tracker works great. I like pivotal more cause i just attach the documents ive written and come back to them later on and its better organized. Recommend you do that.

</comment><comment><USER12> A combination of things that isn't optimal: \- Text files, named by date, in a directory called "notes" \- Items in my to-do list in Astrid (app for Android) \- For things I've thought a lot about, either text files of their own or pages of a notebook (the latter being rare).

I was actually thinking about building an app to deal with this. However, EverNote looks appealing and I should try it out . . .

</comment><comment><USER13> If the idea seems viable I'll put it in my personal Kanban board (in a "Waiting" swim-lane). This Kanban board is a project level queue - one card per project.

If my "Active Projects" kanban swim lane has some space, I'll pull from the "Waiting" swim-lane.

This way I can schedule those ideas, if I have some time (shown by the swim- lanes on the Kanban Board)

</comment><comment><USER14> I would suggest that if your ideas are so numerous that you need anything more than a simple notebook to track them, you're probably working on the wrong problem.

Ideas die in a vacuum. Don't be the guy that retires with a notebook full of ideas that no one ever tried. Talk to people and develop your ideas. If it doesn't work, toss it and move on.

</comment><comment><USER15> I found Google Wave really useful for keeping track of ideas, especially to share with other people.

Google Wave of course is being shut down at some point, but it will carry on in some form: [http://www.google.com/support/wave/bin/answer.py?answer=1083...](http://www.google.com/support/wave/bin/answer.py?answer=1083134)

</comment><comment><USER3> I use <http://www.google.com/notebook>, however it is closed to new signups and has no new development being done.

I'll probably move to Evernote or checkout some suggestions in this thread.

</comment><comment><USER16> Evernote + Google Docs. Thats it.

When ideas include sketches, I just draw it on a paper, and take a picture of the paper with evernote, and throw the paper away, that way I get the best of both worlds.

</comment><comment><USER17> I use a text file and I have an 'ideas' folder in dropbox. One folder per idea. If I need to add more information like photos or a business model canvas. I just put into that folder. It's works for me.

</comment><comment><USER18> Ideas are very important. Sometimes too important to digitize. I bought a black covered, blank, hardbound book that I use to write and draw out my ideas. And I lock it in a safe.

</comment><comment><USER19> A Springpad memo. I always tray to describe the idea at lease in 3 key points. Problem, Solution, Business model.

Then I write down everything else.

</comment><comment><USER20> i used to have a draft message in gmail, but it grew too unwieldy.

now i use a private github repo and have all ideas in one markdown file that's easily editable via github's web editor. i already spend a good amount of time in github for other projects, so this is pretty good for me.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> And I put up a website too: <http://ideaperdiem.com>

</comment><comment><USER21> I email myself from my iPhone and #tag the email with the topic in the subject line.

</comment><comment><USER22> I use GQueues, project management loosely integrated with your gmail account.

</comment><comment><USER23> ideas.txt and dropbox is my primary system.

I've also played around with Simplenote on iOS plus the mac software Notational Velocity. They sync nicely.

</comment><comment><USER24> I have been using trello lately.

</comment><comment><USER25> Email to myself, tag with "idea".

<comment><USER26> I use this and will often reply to the emails whenever I want to expand an idea. It allows me to track the growth and trends of specific ideas.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> the same thing that im using for planning and keeping my notes - ToDoList, similar to evernote, but much more customizable. freeware obviously.</comment>