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    1. Lets talk about audio connectors (TRRS 4-Pole, OMTP, CTIA)

      To summarize, I am annoyed that there are two different standard for 4-pole audio connectors. For those curious I mean this. You have OMTP and CTIA, the difference is they swap the mic and ground...

      To summarize, I am annoyed that there are two different standard for 4-pole audio connectors. For those curious I mean this.

      You have OMTP and CTIA, the difference is they swap the mic and ground pins. This is irritating because Apple vs Android use them differently. This becomes especially annoying when you want a feature like an inline mic mute switch (one designed for CTIA for example will disconnect the ground pin on OMTP instead of mic)

      This has been an ongoing frustration for me for a while. I really enjoy a good pair of headphones because I use Discord and I work from home which necessitates using headphones for extended periods of time to listen to music, take calls, chat on discord.

      I just want there to be a device that does OMTP/CTIA swapping AND include the ability to physically mute the mic. Like this but with something that will break the mic pin. Im currently designing something in fritzing that will allow both direction switching as well as selective muting.

      /rant

      Has anyone else had any similar experience or frustration with this problem?

      4 votes
    2. Advice on Google's OKR Framework

      I've hard a lot of great results using Google's OKR (Objectives and Key Results) framework in my roles leading technical and product teams. I've been tasked with bringing this framework across my...

      I've hard a lot of great results using Google's OKR (Objectives and Key Results) framework in my roles leading technical and product teams. I've been tasked with bringing this framework across my organization, including to teams like marketing and business development.

      My main issue recently has been around defining the key results of the projects that our teams are going to be pursuing. All of the advice I've gotten in the past has been to ensure that KRs are quantitative, NOT qualitative. This has been at odds with some of the projects the marketing and business teams are planning on working on. These are projects like...

      • create a new marketing plan given the new budget constraints
      • audit the distribution process to increase our information about the retail sales process

      The push back I am getting is along the lines of "when I create the new marketing plan, the project will be complete, and therefore it's just whether or not I finished the plan that matters." i.e. if the objective is finished then the project is a success. My point of view is that ALL projects should have metrics attached to them, and if we can't measure the progress then we cannot show the added value to the business as a result of our effort.

      The natural response is: what metrics would you attribute to projects like these? And THAT'S where I could use help. Coming from a product/tech background, my understanding of marketing, biz, and operations leaves something to be desired.

      For the marketing plan, I suggested a metric could be to reduce the monthly marketing budget from $current to $future. For the distribution audit, I suggest we track the # of insights/recommendations we produced as a result of the audit. The pushback was that these metrics "didn't really matter" and that "how can we set a goal on insights - even one good insight could be worth a lot, but I could come up with 4 crappy insights just to achieve a numerical goal."

      I'm a bit at a loss. I understand their point of view, and I really feel in my heart that we need to be pursuing measurable KRs. Do you have any advice?

      6 votes
    3. The ~tech wiki

      As mentioned here @Kat has made a wiki for our communities to be able to have some resources, and something to point at. There's the ~tech bit to it, that I've started working on a tiiiiny bit. I...

      As mentioned here @Kat has made a wiki for our communities to be able to have some resources, and something to point at.

      There's the ~tech bit to it, that I've started working on a tiiiiny bit. I was curious what sorts of topics you'd like to have there. Not just things that you know a lot about (by all means, if you have knowledge throw it in there!), but also if you need more info or something, or would like more resources! Maybe we can help each other out a bit in this thread, and codify things into the wiki if there's some resolution?

      10 votes