With the unemployment rate well up in NZ it seems odd that it’s been so hard to find good people, but it is; particularly in the technology / media space. We’ve just tweeted an article via VentureBeat in the states that talks about the scarcity of technical talent around silicon valley and other new media hotspots in the US. At the risk of being a little off topic from our usual fare of advertising whimsey I thought I’d relate our recent experiences in the recruitment market. We’ve just hired four young-guns into the business and the entire process from woe to go has taken around 6-months. We don’t have a single regret with the hires we made, but man it’s been tough finding the right fits.

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Here’s an extract from Jason’s email where he published responses to his post about what he learned from Zuckerberg’s mistakes (original post is here):

Responses to Jason’s “What I Learned from Zuckerberg’s Mistakes”

1. Eric Stephens of Etsy: “traditional model of product development is broken…”

2. Joe Ranft: “…do yourself a favor, don’t create a developer only culture”

3. David Doolin: “Anytime I hear the words ‘code monkey’ it feels like a slap in the face”

4. Paul Reinarz: “<FAMOUS FOUNDER> mentioned this…and it changed our development process”

5. Paul May: “we push releases… EVERY DAY… knowing… we’re going to… f$%k things up”

6. Chad Williams: “This is like saying a food company should just put food out without thinking about if it might kill a few people”

7. Josh Borthwick: “I’m going to take those recommendations into our sales-driven culture”

8. Misha Manulis: “unless a person is a psychopath, doing the right thing is simple”

9. German Vargas: “I find that people who are willing to move sideways…are useful”

10. Kevin Foxe: “let the guys who know how to make it, make it and get out of the way”

11. Terry Chapman: “we at times get caught up in our own cleverness and create things that our wives…hate”

12. Kade Dworkin: “You never stumble upon an opportunity by standing still”

1. Eric Stephens

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One of the key points for me in this interesting research project around Baltimore, produced by the Pew Research centre, was the fact that 62% of web news was garnered directly from press releases and posted word for word. Particularly on twitter feeds and blogs.

This makes you appreciate the worthiness of news organisations like the BBC who put so much funding into their journalistic efforts.

You can find out more about the Pew research centre and their funding here and read the full report below, thanks to the Center for Media Research and MediaPost Publications:

The News Ecosystem Fosters Repetition

A new study by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism reports that while the news landscape has rapidly expanded, 95% of what the public learns is still overwhelmingly driven by traditional media, particularly newspapers. The study, examining all of the outlets that produced local news in Baltimore, Md., for one week, finds that eight out of ten stories studied simply repeated or repackaged previously published information.

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