It has been an extraordinarily long time now that I have not posted. I have been working on a very important project at work with an extremely tight deadline - so tight that I had to cancel my long planned overseas vacation :( .
I had a very successful meeting on Tuesday though where the entire engineering team re-evaluated our plans and goals and where we are headed. It was determined that some deadlines cannot be met and so they were pushed back. I am sure this upset a lot of people in my company especially those in the upper level of management. Pushing back a product deadline is not something that will help the company's stock price especially if the announcement comes the week the stock starts trading.
This incident made me think about the difference between successful and unsuccessful companies. What really differentiates a google from a ask jeeves? Why are some companies successful in the same space that other companies have come and gone?
I guess I should start by defining what I really mean by success. To me, success is when you capture 30-40% of the software engineering world's attention. It is when software engineers are familiar with the capabilities of your product and under the right circumstances are willing to use your product.
I hope to be able to answer this question soon. If anyone has any thoughts feel free to comment