Author Archives: admin

Do not Call People “Resources”

Managers: if you call your people “resources”, they get to call you “overhead”. Calling people “resources” must be one of the worst habits of the different kinds of managers. Yeah, that is the terminology used in the Project Management Professional … Continue reading

Posted in Career and Leadership, Communication skills, Management, Skills, Tips and tricks | Comments Off on Do not Call People “Resources”

Duck Explores West Coast: Portland to San Francisco

Duck the Photographer, who previously crossed the continent and who has been exploring the East Coast, recently went on another adventure – a 7-day West Coast road trip, from Portland, OR to San Fransisco, CA along the Pacific Ocean.

Posted in Duck the Photographer, Road trip, Travel | Comments Off on Duck Explores West Coast: Portland to San Francisco

Escape from Alcatraz 2014

What a great race! Even better experience the second time around (my first one was in 2012); truly an experience of a lifetime. This race is on many people’s bucket lists for many reasons. The course is tough – swimming … Continue reading

Posted in Outside of the Lab, Sports, Training | Comments Off on Escape from Alcatraz 2014

Duck Explores East Coast: New Adventures of The Duck

Duck, who previously traveled across the continent, has recently been busy exploring the East Coast. First of all, he traveled to Canada! It was his first foreign trip – other than his trip here from China where he was originally … Continue reading

Posted in Duck the Photographer, Road trip, Travel | Comments Off on Duck Explores East Coast: New Adventures of The Duck

Value of Meetings

Recent results from a study on how one hour of executives’ meetings propagates to hundreds of thousands of hours across the organization are not at all surprising, but its good to see the actual numbers beautifully visualized. The Guardian has … Continue reading

Posted in Communication skills, In the news, Management, Skills | Comments Off on Value of Meetings

Nike Will Stop Making Wearable Hardware

Oh, Nike, – really?! Nike’s Fuelband Hits the Wall Nike fires majority of FuelBand team, will stop making wearable hardware A company with such rich history of innovation surely could have tried harder to gain and preserve its strategic positioning … Continue reading

Posted in Consumer technology, How the world is changing, In the news, Industry trends, Sports, Technology, Wearable computing | Comments Off on Nike Will Stop Making Wearable Hardware

Microsoft’s Data Culture – and Fully Analytical Products?

For data enthusiasts everywhere, this is exciting news:  New CEO Nadella pushes data culture at Microsoft Great stuff. Surely there will be many lessons learned in transforming corporate culture like this. Microsoft is big enough and established enough to make … Continue reading

Posted in Data science | Comments Off on Microsoft’s Data Culture – and Fully Analytical Products?

Lessons Learned from Running Streaks

Running streaks – which I define as running at least 1 mile per day for a large number of consecutive days – are surely an interesting thing to be doing. My longest one so far has been 100+ days: I ran every single day … Continue reading

Posted in Achievement, Running, Sports, Tips and tricks, Training | Comments Off on Lessons Learned from Running Streaks

Data Empathy

I recently went to an amazing Data Science meetup which I highly recommend to all New York-based folk interested in all things data – Data Driven NYC, hosted (and generously catered) by Bloomberg in their beautiful 59th street office. Founder … Continue reading

Posted in Career and Leadership, Data science, Industry | Comments Off on Data Empathy

Post-Ph.D. Job Market: Timelines

I recently gave a talk at a WimNet group meeting regarding my post-Ph.D. job market experiences and lessons learned. A version of the slides that is not Columbia-specific and applicable to many EECS students is available below: Slides from the … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Career and Leadership, Data science, Graduate school, Industry, Ph.D., Tips and tricks | Comments Off on Post-Ph.D. Job Market: Timelines