The Chevy Volt has been around for as long as Tesla (Roadster) has been available to the public.

Revenge of the Electric Car [2] is a great follow-up to Who Killed the Electric Car.

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenge_of_the_Electric_Car

There's been some interesting research on what characteristics successful founders have (actually, the research was on what successful VCs look for in founders, so maybe the extrapolation is unwarranted, but... research!)

Here's Geoff Smart's Phd thesis (Management Assessment Methods in Venture Capital: Toward a Theory of Human Capital Valuation): http://www.ghsmart.com/media/press/methods_in_venture_capita...

And a simpler overview [pdf]: http://www.ghsmart.com/media/press/human_capital.pdf

And, he wrote a book called "Who", but he generalized the research to hiring anybody. Still a good book.

TL;DR: VCs who hire people that have successful experience doing what they plan to do end up getting the best ROI. VCs who hire people based on their gut ("I like the cut of your jib!" keeps popping into my head as I write this) do worst.

The simpler overview is interesting reading.

I listen to 'Stuff You Should Know' by Chuck and Josh at HowStuffWorks.com. The topic is usually very interesting and the hosts are very entertaining. While it is usually very well researched, I like that it is light enough that I don't have to pay attention to every sentence.

Who Charted and Doug Loves Movies are pretty good 'brain off' entertainment as well. And I've listened to Planet Money and This American Life for years and years and years.

Kensho | https://www.kensho.com/#/careers | Primarily: Boston, MA (Cambridge). Case-by-case: New York (NYC) | ONSITE | FULL TIME

Kensho is applying machine learning and quantitative algorithms to timeseries, graph and unstructured data to make computer driven insights faster, more accessible, intuitive and beautiful.

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+ Software Engineers -- Create beautiful web apps, dynamic visualizations, meaningful and non-flaky tests, composible and scalable infrastructure, cutting edge site reliability (SRE), neatly flexible operational frameworks, thoughtful APIs, practical yet robust security, and powerful frameworks for data analysis.

+ Machine Learning Engineers and Scientists -- Create advanced machine learning pipelines, NLP systems and new algorithmic techniques at scale using python, R or similar.

Who We Interview:

You stand out due to your work at a top technology company, research, and/or open source contributions.

Our Interview Process:

* We hope you'll share a project, paper or resume with us that highlights where you shine, with a short note so we can appreciate you as a person. Please say hi at jobs@kensho.com or https://www.kensho.com/#/careers

* As a small team, we'll reach back out to a few individuals to chat with a team member via phone, video or, if you are local, in person--to show and discuss your work, projects and code

* We may ask you to do a programming or data science challenge (<= 4 hours)

* We'll invite you to our Harvard Sq. headquarters to meet more of the team, where we hope you'll interview us too

* We'll discover we are peanut butter and jelly together, and wish we'd met sooner

* Having made you a non-exploding offer, we think you'll want to sign it

* You'll join us and have a lot of fun, get to play with fascinating data, algorithms and technology alongside delightful, hungry and creative people

* Something about being on a mission to change the world (hey, we're a start up)

Stack: Functional javascript (react, canvas), python (numpy, pandas, scikit-learn et. al.)

> Retrospectively, Mr. Shih, the former VP of Kodak thinks that the company “could have tried to compete on capabilities rather than on the markets it was in” like Fujifilm did but “this would have meant walking away from a great consumer franchise. That’s not the logic that managers learn at business schools, and it would have been a hard pill for Kodak leaders to swallow.”

It's a classic case study best told in the book, "Who moved my cheese?" Walking away from the consumer business would have been an abrupt about-face and forced a massive shift within the sales and marketing teams... they very people responsible for maintaining the Kodak brand.

1. "An Elegant Puzzle - Systems of Engineering Management" by Will Larson. His blog & "Staff Eng" posts are helpful as well. https://lethain.com/tags/staff-eng/

2. "The Phoenix Project", "The Unicorn Project" (novels), and "DevOps Handbook" by Eugene Kim, on how different parts of a tech + non-tech organization come and work together.

3. "High Output Management" by Andrew Grove on overall technical management.

4. "Measure What Matters" by John Doerr on setting objectives and measuring their progress.

5. "The Checklist Manifesto" by Atul Gawande on thinking through replicable processes.

6. "Who" by Geoff Smart on hiring.

7. "Start with Why" by Simon Sinek and "The Culture Code" by Daniel Coyle on creating culture and reasons for why people do the work. It's an important part of any management process, double import because of how often it is lost in technical management.

> show improvement within 90 days

any (senior) executive who changes things in the first 90 days has got it completely wrong. And if who hired them expect sweeping changes in 90 days then they got it even worse.

Anything that a new hire can do in their first 90 days can be done, and better, by whoever that new executive will report to.

E.g.: if you hire me to fire the people you want fired then there is no reason to wait for me and you should do it yourself. The moment you hire me to get help you have to give me the time to decide for myself who to fire and who not to and it will take more than a few weeks to make sensible decisions.

And yes, that's the exact conversion I had when I found myself in that situation and it's not valid just for SMEs, see 'Who Says Elephants Can't Dance?' for basically the same idea in a place as big as IBM (when he talks about everyone expecting him to come up with a brilliant strategy fast)

I tried tricking it a bit, and here's what I got:

Does P=NP: Something about rare earths, then a couple books that mention the problem. https://books.google.com/talktobooks/query?q=Does%20P%3DNP%3...

Who are you: Looks like Books is shy. https://books.google.com/talktobooks/query?q=Who%20are%20you...

Why are fire trucks red? Apparently, there are different answers, and none mention the Monty Python one. https://books.google.com/talktobooks/query?q=Why%20are%20fir...

What is 1+1? 1, apparently. The same query without a question mark gives the right answer. https://books.google.com/talktobooks/query?q=What%20is%201%2...

Which company used to have the motto "don't be evil"? Not Google, it seems. https://books.google.com/talktobooks/query?q=Which%20company...

Do you have any citations to say that Quakers were particularly disposed to capitol punishment during the colonial era? While people of their time what I've been able to find indicates the opposite: [Who Should Die?: The Evolution of Capital Punishment in Pennsylvania, 1681-1794](http://preserve.lehigh.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2390&...)

The above seems to show that Quakers resisted the use of capitol punishment and its use increased as Quaker control of the colony waned.

TheLadders -- Software Engineer -- New York, NY

- What We're Looking for -

TheLadders (http://www.theladders.com) is looking for full-time lead software engineers with experience building backend systems using JVM technologies. You will be responsible for helping to set the technical direction of the team, mentor other engineers, and contribute to the design and development of our products. If you're interested, email me at aturley@theladders.com.

- What We Do -

Our mission at TheLadders is to help people advance their careers by providing access to information and intelligence about jobs, jobseekers, and their professional networks. From the user's perspective this is accomplished through our websites and mobile apps. Under the hood, we have a technical infrastructure that uses Java, Scala, RabbitMQ, Storm, Clustrix, Couchbase, and a variety other technologies to deliver useful information to our users.

- Who We Are -

Our engineering team is committed to growing and improving. We like to share things that we've learned on our developer blog (http://dev.theladders.com/), each engineer is given a yearly conference budget, and we have a weekly meeting called The Conclave where engineers share what they know and what they've learned in the last week. We also take care of our engineers, with unlimited vacation, comprehensive health insurance, and competitive compensation.

TheLadders -- Software Engineer -- New York, NY

- What We're Looking for -

TheLadders (http://www.theladders.com) is looking for full-time lead software engineers with experience building backend systems using JVM technologies. You will be responsible for helping to set the technical direction of the team, mentor other engineers, and contribute to the design and development of our products. If you're interested, email me at aturley@theladders.com.

- What We Do -

Our mission at TheLadders is to help people advance their careers by providing access to information and intelligence about jobs, jobseekers, and their professional networks. From the user's perspective this is accomplished through our websites and mobile apps. Under the hood, we have a technical infrastructure that uses Java, Scala, RabbitMQ, Storm, Clustrix, Couchbase, and a variety other technologies to deliver useful information to our users.

- Who We Are -

Our engineering team is committed to growing and improving. We like to share things that we've learned on our developer blog (http://dev.theladders.com/), each engineer is given a yearly conference budget, and we have a weekly meeting called The Conclave where engineers share what they know and what they've learned in the last week. We also take care of our engineers, with unlimited vacation, comprehensive health insurance, and competitive compensation.