It’s clear the Job’s deathbed playbook has long since been used up. The Apple devices are getting worse and worse year over year, but Tim Cook has managed to drive shareholder value despite that. Apple is the most valuable company in the world – no one can take that away from Tim Cook; but Apple has fallen from grace, and as captain of the ship Tim Cook bears all the blame.

Them: Hey there

Me: Hi

Them: I see you have a Bullwhip there

The term “Artificial Intelligence” transitioned from Science Fiction to Product Marketing with very little time in-between to consider what exactly qualifies as “AI”. While tackling this definition has been done ad nauseam for hundreds of years, I believe that the modern definition of “AI” and those from Science Fiction are worlds apart. This is my attempt to bridge that gap.

Recently I’ve been talking to companies that want me to improve staff productivity. The opening conversation tends to be about the same: they pitch me on their company and what a “great place to work” it is. They brag about how smart the people are, how much fun everyone has, and how it’s more like a family that a bunch of co-workers. They describe all the perks like massages, video games, beer-on-tap, coffee bars, and how much everyone loves them. “Sounds like you have it all together,” I say after hearing all of this. “Well,” they reply, “I just wish we could get a bit more out of them.”

In my previous “An Attempt at a Pragmatic Framework for Defining a ‘Senior Engineer’”, in the “A Process to Estimate Work” section I said:

“It is beyond the scope of this post to describe everything that goes into making a good estimate, but suffice to say a senior engineer views estimates as a difficult challenge to be surmounted, and as a result will normally ask for dedicated time simply to come up with the estimates.”

A commenter asked that I write an article on estimation, and this is my feeble attempt to do so.