Roberto Sobachi Blog

Buddha

February 22nd, 2012

An insincere and evil friend is more to be feared than a wild beast; a wild beast may wound your body, but an evil friend will wound your mind.

Steve Jobs

February 3rd, 2012

- What are the factors of success for young people today? What should they avoid? - I get asked this a lot and I have a pretty standard answer which is, a lot of people come to me and say "I want to be an entrepreneur." And I go "Oh that's great, what's your idea?" And they say "I don't have one yet." And I say "I think you should go get a job as a busboy or something until you find something you're really passionate about because it's a lot of work." I'm convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance.

Comics app discontinued

January 26th, 2012

I was silent for a long time and I feel it is the right moment to make this announce. I've decided to discontinue Comics.

It is something I really loved and this decision touches me deeply, but it is time for major changes. Perhaps, under other circumstances, I would consider this differently, but because of my commitments with my current job and personal goals to achieve, it became harder for me to constantly improve Comics. Perhaps one day I'll come back to this project, but now I have to look forward.

I cannot thank enough all Comics' users for their support. Thank you.

Steve Jobs

January 26th, 2012

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

Drew Houston - Dropbox

January 17th, 2012

Failure Is Not The Worst Outcome, Mediocrity Is

Jessica Hische

January 9th, 2012

The work you find yourself doing while you're procrastinating is probably the work you should be doing for the rest of your life

Berlin

January 4th, 2012

Before visiting Berlin, it always reminded me of the movie Christiane F. I watched when I was a boy at school in the early 90s. I liked the movie, but I'm not a fan of those dark districts, and I was afraid that I would be frightened by that dark atmosphere. Stupid nightmares. The movie is so far from the real Berlin City of the twenty-first Century. Berlin is an aggressive, vibrant, and astonishing city. You can enjoy some of the pictures I've taken during my trip to Berlin the early 2011.

Václav Havel (1936 - 2011)

December 19th, 2011

Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good.

Steve Jobs' Vision of the World

December 1st, 2011

When you grow up you tend to get told the world is the way it is and your life is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family, have fun, save a little money. That's a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use. Once you learn that, you'll never be the same again.

Stand-up meeting is boring

November 30th, 2011

Since I always thought stand-up meeting is boring and pointless to the attendees, I took my time to study this practice to uncover its arcane secrets.

Paying close attention to every daily meeting I attended, I noticed that all stand-ups look like school recitals, there are always latecomers, participants usually don't recognize projects in which others are engaged, and no one raises problems.

Based on my research and my personal experience, I found some interesting points I want to share with you.

Don't take it too seriously

The rules shouldn't be fixed. Attendees add questions, raise problems, and do anything necessary to always get useful answers. This is what a stand-up meeting stands for, it's not just as a status report. It doesn't matter when and where the daily stand-ups are held. Flexibility gives attendees the opportunity to be at their ease, and the stand-up acts more like a common meeting with friends, making people comfortable to speak and expose their problems.

People have the power

The success of a stand-up meeting depends on the attendees. Having motivated people is mandatory to achieve better results in every field. It also applies to single short daily meetings. This is not just because motivation leads to better productivity but perhaps because it leads to a more human and respectful work environment, in peace with your job and your colleagues.

We are not going to create a better product or being a better team thanks to the stand-up meeting. Good products come from good teams and good teams are built everyday by regular communication, respectful, helping and knowing each other.

If you have the right people at the meeting, you can be effective whether the participants are five or hundreds, sitting down or standing up. Start building your daily meeting out of the meeting.

Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

November 24th, 2011

“Perhaps,” Oshima says, as if fed up. “Perhaps most people in the world aren’t trying to be free, Kafka. They just think they are. It’s all an illusion. If they really were set free, most people would be in a real pickle. You’d better remember that. People actually prefer not being free.” Jean-Jacques Rousseau defined civilization as when people build fences. A very perceptive observation. And its true – all civilization is the product of a fenced-in lack of freedom.

Albert Einstein

November 20th, 2011

The person who reads too much and uses his brain too little will fall into lazy habits of thinking.

Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

November 17th, 2011

But who can say what's best? That's why you need to grab whatever chance you have of happiness where you find it, and not worry about other people too much. My experience tells me that we get no more than two or three such chances in a life time, and if we let them go, we regret it for the rest of our lives.

A good employee

August 7th, 2011

After 9 years spent as employee in the IT field working for huge, big, small Companies, I think I can say my personal opinion on what I've learned so far: the perfect Company doesn't exist and you should find your way by your own.

Luke: "What's in there?"
Yoda: "Only what you take with you"

Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

Motivate and Convince

Motivating is the most important thing in every professional job, but without the ability to convince it's nothing. Learn how to explain your choices and being good in convincing your audience. Sometimes people reject your ideas with valid or even invalid reasons, or just because of their position in the Company and a solid point of view. Even if you don't have to argue to convince, explaining your choices gets you more chances to get right, and sometimes you have to convince yourself too.

Focus on Process

When I was at school I found fantastic how Mathematics was so clear and left no doubts on the process that brings you to the solution of a problem. You can also have many ways to solve a single problem but any choice brings you to the same result. If it doesn't happen, you did a mistake. A solution is wrong until you correct the mistakes in the process. A bad process brings you to a wrong result thus, if you focus on the Process you'll gain better results.

Gain Experience

One of the most important things to improve is to stay up to date with the news in the field. You can accomplish this in several ways: reading articles online with tips and advices, buying books and going to exclusive Conferences to share your knowledge with other talented people. Not considering all these things it's like claiming to be a good player without the proper training.

Seek fot the Good Company

It mostly depends on your job, your Company and the work you gonna do, but don't be scared to leave a Company to join a new one, instead do it often, at least at the beginning of your career, or you'll never know what's new out there. Working for a big company is not the best way to quickly improve, gain experience and build an enviable Curriculum Vitae. Big doesn't mean Good. Changing Company, colleagues and even city helps you to quickly improve your skills with new viewpoints, works, challenges and sharing your knowledge with other new people.

These are only few points of an endless list. If you think you have other good points to discuss, say yours.

Steve Jobs, Apple Commercial

July 16th, 2011

Here's to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes... the ones who see things differently -- they're not fond of rules... You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can't do is ignore them because they change things... they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.

My first article

May 25th, 2011

Hi, I'm Roberto and this is my first article.

English is not my natural language, but I think my articles will be quite understandable to all.

I want to start my blog telling you two things.

Why English?

There are many reasons to use English as your main language for blogs, business and other general communications.

Italian (lingua italiana) is my first language. Based on Wikipedia, Italian is spoken as mother tongue by [..] 65 million people. Instead, English language only in the United States is spoken by 251 million people. Wikipedia reports English as first language for 309-400 million people in the world.

This is incredible. Due to on-going globalization on all fronts, English has been set as the language of multicultural communication and to reach the world audience English is the right choice. It well fits in many professional and unprofessional fields.

Italians: loved or hated.

It's more than 1 year and half that I live in Prague (Czech Republic). I started this personal adventure to improve my skills as professional programmer in the IT field. During this period I met many foreigners, and the first impression is almost the same: many people don't know Italy, Italians and the Italian culture.

There are too many prejudices on the Italians, some because of the interpretation of the actors during some mafia movies and their strong use of the Sicilian accent, or because of the ridiculous Italian politics or the well known high consume of pasta.

It's very common for me to meet people who start imitating the Brad Pitt's accent in the movie Inglorious Bastards or reciting the funny video The Italian Man Who Went To Malta. Anyway, Italians are the most successful brand recognized around the world, just don't forget the deep culture and diversity that characterizes us. There are things you really understand only living in a foreign country and this is also true in Italy. Italy remains a fantastic mixture of many cultures and traditions.