Most of HR isn’t about finding the right candidate

A friend in the UK recently told me: I read how companies say they cannot find anyone to fill their roles, and I have a bunch of very talented, highly qualified friends who are out of work who can’t find anything. Having looked into this locally, it’s far from being a strictly UK problem. I […]

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Like communist dictatorships, Google and Facebook threaten Australia

You know the US tech giants have way too much power, unencumbered by their own government and their own country’s laws, when they think they can strong-arm another nation.    From Reuter: Alphabet Inc’s Google said on Friday it would block its search engine in Australia if the government proceeds with a new code that […]

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Life inside Google—an ex-Googler airs the dirty laundry

In amongst all the political fallout of the National Party this week—what I’m dubbing (and hashtagging) ‘caught in the Rossfire’—was a series (well, over 100) Tweets from Morgan Knutson, a designer who once worked for Google. Unlike most Googlers, especially the cult-like ones who refuse to help when you point out a fault with Google, […]

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The graffiti issue

One voter says, ‘Hi, when I show people around Wellington I feel really ashamed of how our beautiful city has been covered in graffiti.’ And she is right. So what can we do?    I responded in an email: You are right, and believe it or not, $500,000 of our rates are going toward the […]

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Why do the major parties insist on holding us back?

  In 2002, I did something really stupid. I bought a brand-new, 750 Mbyte Zip drive.    After all, I had had three years of use out of my 100 Mbyte one, and since 750s looked like the way of the future, I had one installed.    I can still count the number of times […]

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A bad choice of word, but what does the gay community actually think?

While I was out, I had noticed on Twitter a news item about an octogenarian, working for American Airlines, who was sacked for his use of the word faggot.    I despise words like that, just as much as chink or nigger, but the question arises: should he have been sacked, losing some of his […]

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Parts of Japan are decimated, and I think back to my grandfather

My grandfather, Col. Tung Wan Yan, of the Chinese Constitutional Army, had a very interesting war.    He was on a Japanese hit-list and was hiding in trees when some soldiers opened fire on him with automatic weapons. By some miracle, he escaped unharmed.    It’s one of the close calls he had in China […]

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It’s time to consider open source

Certain media are reporting the city’s [debt] in the $200 million–$300 million mark but our outside-council research reveals this is a very conservative estimate. It’s likely to be more.    Regardless of whether it’s $200 million or half an (American) billion (scary just saying it), any deficit that’s nine digits long can’t be good for […]

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Wellington wants free wifi

While I’ve been a LinkedIn member for many years—my LinkedIn ID has six digits, which gives you an idea of how long ago—I have to confess that I did not browse the brilliant Wellington, New Zealand group till quite recently.    And free wifi is being talked up there, too, as something Wellingtonians genuinely want. […]

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The 2010 mayoral election is about job creation and transparency

The Fairfax Press has been talking about how Wellingtonians are expected to bail out some loss-makers, such as the Karori Wildlife Sanctuary. And that the decision to do this has been made behind closed doors. The city’s debt is over $200 million—we were looking at very similar numbers at the time of the 2007 local […]

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