Daily Reading - Monday, June 24 2013

I challenge myself to answer the following questions in everything I read:

Has this taught me anything new and valuable? (If not, move on quickly)

How can I apply insights from this article today? (Wait and I’ll forget)

When have I applied the ideas from this post? Where have I not, but could have? (What was the difference?)

Why Hiring Seasoned Sales Reps May Not Work

One of the biggest mistakes early-stage startups making is hiring 'seasoned' sales professionals too early.

Effective Technical Leadership

Most successful projects have a single engineer responsible for driving the project forward while ensuring that strong technical decisions are made with confidence. Typically, that person is referred to as a Tech Lead. They often don’t manage people, but instead coach them to do their best work.

Using Promises in AngularJS Views

iOS App Icon Template

Instagram’s pivot into complexity

Instagram’s core strength relied on a similar principle. It was just photos you could scroll through. Nothing more, nothing less. You could open Instagram for 10 seconds and check what’s new, or for 10 minutes and get lost in the universe of people’s lives. And you always knew what you were going to get: an endless stream of photos. Just keep scrolling.

Now there’s no way to tell if you’re going to see a photo or a video. When you do happen upon a video, you have to stop scrolling and wait for it to load. And if you happen to check Instagram during a meeting and forget to turn the sound off… well, awkward.

that it’s just the latest example of our obsession to add as many features as possible to products out of fear of losing traction. Instead of lateral shifts into additional functionality, I’d like to see more companies double down on the features they already have, and continuously improve the experience around those features.