Jiri Necas

Black Friday week is here, and we had to check - are there good deals? These days, it feels like there are more sales days than regular days, right? :) But Black Friday is the original sales day, making us wonder if it’s truly the best. So, I looked into it. I analyzed top-selling products (mostly in consumer electronics) and compared their Black Friday prices to their lowest prices throughout the year. The verdict? Black Friday prices are similar to other big sales days (like Amazon Prime Days). Most brands stick to a "sale" price that doesn’t vary much across events. That said, some categories, like Dash Cams, do offer real discounts—5-7% lower than their best prices all year. But others, like toaster ovens, are a letdown. For example, Ninja raised the price of their top toaster ovens by $40-$100 compared to last month! It seems leading brands often set the tone for others in their category. Before you buy, check if the category has good prices overall. A flashy 40% discount doesn’t mean much if the final price isn’t great. Also, make sure you really need the product and choose something good, so it’s worth it and doesn’t end up in the trash. The bright side? Most prices hover around their yearly lows, within -5% to +5%. Main takeaway: Don’t just trust discounts—check if the whole category offers real deals. Categories tend to behave consistently, so it’s worth looking at the bigger picture. Need help? Reach out via WhatsApp on our site - we’re happy to help. Happy holidays!

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You should start your employer branding from internal stuff. ✨ In the beginning, it's important that your employees understand how we do things in this company and why. You might be very customer-focused or want to build a great work-life balance. First, you want to engage with your current employees and ensure they are aligned with your chosen message. Employer branding needs to be truthful. Once your current people understand it and know what they are part of, they start speaking about the company to their networks and peers. From there, you build the external employer brand piece by piece. #EmployerBranding #InternalEB #CompanyCulture

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Bolt - 1 Year In I joined Bolt a little over a year ago to continue my passion for building products that make a difference in people’s lives. Looking back, here are my top 5 highlights at Bolt: Freedom in My Work: At Bolt, everyone owns their work. No one tells you what to do; you’re given the context, and the decisions are in your hands. This freedom has allowed me to find gaps and improve things beyond my “job description.” It feels great to truly own my work. Always Building Something New: We improve users' lives every day. We’ve launched new features and products continuously over this last year. For example, we developed Bolt Dine-in within a few months, a completely new product allowing customers to place orders via the Bolt Food App while sitting at a restaurant table. You can already find the Bolt QRs on tables in restaurants like LeBab. A Collaborative and Skilled Team: The people at Bolt are super nice, friendly, and collaborative. I’m never alone. I can always bounce ideas off others or brainstorm new concepts with anyone. Embracing Frugality: We strive to operate at minimal costs. Initially, this level of frugality was new to me, but now it makes perfect sense. This culture helps Bolt offer the lowest prices and remain accessible. We save every penny so customers can pay less. It has to come from within. Authentic Relationships (a.k.a. We’re not a family): At Bolt, we aren’t a family. We’re a group of passionate individuals working towards goals we believe in. We care for each other while challenging each other to grow, following the proverbial “challenge directly, care personally.” Honesty and respect define our interactions—no family involved. Is it all sugar, spice, and everything nice? Of course not. Things can and do go wrong. Nothing is perfect. But what I appreciate most about Bolt is the no-blame culture. When issues arise, we work together to find solutions. Good year 🌞

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10 Meetings a Year: Is That Enough to Be a Great Manager? Monthly 1-on-1s+(Vacations+Absences)=Barely 10 Meaningful Conversations/Year Is it just me, or are we perhaps a bit ambitious to talk about having trust and psychological safety on the team in this case? 🤔 Did you know that 70% of what makes a team engaged depends on the manager? 😤 Yet, Gallup research reveals that almost 80% of employees are still disengaged. Engagement is a Journey, Not a Destination. Gallup's Q12 model highlights four key areas of employee engagement: 👉 Basic Needs: Are your employees stress-free, heard, and valued? 👉Contribution: Do they understand their impact and feel empowered to grow? 👉Teamwork: Do they feel connected to colleagues and share a sense of purpose? 👉Growth: Are they challenged to develop skills and see a clear career path? Do you think monthly 1-on-1s are enough to truly engage your team? #leaderdevelopment #coaching Link to full research in the comments

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What is your favorite type of client? While all of them are equally important, I just love working with tech-savvy people! It’s always a great pleasure for me to have conversations with individuals who deeply understand technical specifics and can even challenge your knowledge of some details. And if they also possess great soft skills (especially open-mindedness), it’s a true find. Why do I love these features in my customers? Usually, such individuals know exactly what they need for their projects. Given that we are technical professionals too, it’s easier to identify the challenges that need to be tackled and find common ground. Birds of a feather flock together, as they say. Do you enjoy working with tech-savvy clients too?

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Over the years of managing talented developers at COXIT, I’ve seen firsthand how the proper workspace setup can significantly boost productivity and job satisfaction. Based on my personal experience and that of our developers, here are a few suggestions: My personal productivity boosters: - Quality keyboard and mouse: I use the Numphy Air V2 keyboard and Logitech MX Anywhere 3s mouse, and I couldn’t be more satisfied with them. - The right music choice: For me, it was Dubstep between 2011 and 2015, and since then, it has been a few Drum and Bass playlists. - Physical routine every few hours: Doing 20 push-ups and 20 squats makes the heart beat faster, stimulating the brain. - A 1-hour power nap: I try to split my day into two, so my productivity is revived after the first half-day sprint. Here are some more practices I try to maintain: - Keep physical and digital workspaces tidy (especially challenging when working from home). - Wear protective glasses and take regular breaks to look away from the screen every few hours. - Add greenery to both the office and personal workspaces. (This is something we've embraced at COXIT.) - Plan tasks ahead of time using sticky notes or handwritten reminders, a method I prefer. The goal is to create an environment that supports deep work, which is challenging considering the short attention spans many of us have these days. Explore other elements that might work for you—meditation, aromatherapy, power naps, or a standing desk—and incorporate them into your routine. Now, I’m curious about you. What’s your favorite working music or work equipment? How have you customized your environment to boost productivity?

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THE PATH OF A WILDLY SUCCESSFUL STARTUP 1️⃣ Hard Work 2️⃣ Attention to Customer Feedback 3️⃣ More Hard Work, and then 4️⃣ ⚡️Disrupt⚡️ an Industry Marko Jak and his teams at Secta Labs have bootstrapped their way to thousands of LinkedIn profile photos, and they're just getting started. This week they rolled out body🕺🏻 shots, great for when you need more than just a headshot view. They're fantastic🌟... but in looking at the new model, I see just how far this team has come in terms of photo-realism... My 🙃 smile lines are alllll there, but a half-dozen other sticky issues have been solved. This is good 🤖 technology, my friends. For those I've pestered and stalked to replace your outdated, worn-and-weary headshots (you know who you are - and yes, I'm talking to you 👀)... You've seen me after Barre class and at campfires; the shots below were modeled on 🤳🏼selfies taken during the pandemic... after campfires.🔥 I don't own any of those clothes or 💍 jewelry, and I certainly didn't get fixed up for the photos 📸. Legend is, all my pix were uploaded while in my pajamas drinking a cup of Lady Grey tea late one night. We all deserve to present ourselves in the best possible light, but few of us have patience to chase the details of getting proper photos taken. Everyone should try Secta Labs and see for themselves just how far #AI photography has come.✨ Tell them Tonya sent you... I'm their biggest fan, as long as I don't have to arm wrestle Victoria or Kelli to prove it. 🫶🏼 🐦‍⬛ Quantum Crow Advisory 🐦‍⬛

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The last week was literally mind blowing. 🤯 What happened? 1. DearFlow launched its public store and with it a remake of our websites face! 2. You can test use cases on the fly without signing in! 3. DearFlow docs were released, for both developers and normal users. Stay tuned for our public API reference soon! https://docs.dearflow.ai 4. Mini SaaS apps that actually perform actions on your behalf, can now be created in minutes and be published, shared and even embedded into your own full white label solutions. 5. Besides text we now allow many file types including video and audio as well as websites as knowledge documents to use throughout every workflow. The team is starting to work like a well oiled machine. Thanks Henry Diep Le Van Thien Do Dat

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Maybe your weakness is your strength?👀 I'm having one of my more chaotic weeks, with an onboarding, multiple projects, many meetings, and an even more intense focus on growing the community. Switching between all the tasks, I realize I still got a lot done and I feel quite excited and satisfied. Weird, because I've always considered my 'messy perfectionism' - the need to switch between multiple tasks - as a weakness. Because I know that each time I start a new task, another gets forgotten or get neglected. On the contrary, focusing on one task at a time and getting it done in one sitting doesn't always work. Especially when it's a large task. But during this chaotic week, I have gone from task 1 to 2 to 5 to 3 and back to 1. Within one day. And suddenly, I was fully focused on one of the tasks, got into a flow state, which helped me finish all the tasks. I felt like I'm overthinking, procrastinating and distracting myself less. What I'm going to try for myself, is setting 5 tasks for myself each day but not minding going back and forth between these tasks. Perhaps, I really thrive on chaos. Let's find that out. Do you have any weird work habits that work for you?

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𝗧𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀 𝗛𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲𝗱 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗠𝗲 🔄 Just a year ago, my job was packed with meetings, planning sessions, and biweekly check-ins. Now, as I'm deep into coding and AI development, my focus has radically shifted. It’s all about intense focus time—paradoxically less and more complex at the same time. Neither better nor worse. Just different. 🧠 What remains constant, however, is the need for an 𝗲𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝘀𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗺𝘆 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸 𝗽𝗿𝗶𝗼𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗲𝘀 to offload my mind. Supporting me every single day. From a plethora of tools like Miro boards, project lists, and OKR planning tools, I’ve now streamlined to a system perfectly tuned for my current situation.  I simply don’t need that overhead anymore, saving me most probably a workday per month. 𝗔𝗱𝗮𝗽𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝘀 𝗞𝗲𝘆: What worked yesterday might not fit today, and what fits today may need to evolve tomorrow: ↳ Be ready to change. ↳ Don't hold on too tightly to what's working today. 𝗦𝗶𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗶𝗰𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗶𝘀 𝗖𝗿𝘂𝗰𝗶𝗮𝗹: But even more importantly, avoid over-complicating things.  In my coaching experience, I’ve seen many overly complex systems reach the point of inefficiency. ↳ Don't fall into this trap. ↳ Keep things as simple as you can, but not simpler. 𝗤𝘂𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗬𝗼𝘂: How have your work tools for managing your priorities evolved with your career? Share your setup or a story of how simplifying has helped you! ➡️ Let's inspire and help each other to find what works—today and tomorrow!  Know someone looking to streamline their workday? 𝗧𝗮𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗺 𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲! ________________ My passion is all about helping people achieve stress-free productivity. If you found this useful, please follow for more insights and share it within your network! Let’s democratize productivity together! ♻️ #Productivity #AI #WorkflowOptimization #TechTrends #DigitalTransformation

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First things first on Monday. Fixing some UI/UX bugs - Improved URL search and now it is ridiculously easy to check any startup URL. Who are competitors, where they are based, have they raised. And also Check investors who are investing in these kind of companies. Thank you Swotzy for being my go to test company to check if there are relevant investors and similar companies :) p.s. Also fixed annoying result page reloading. Minor bug for men, major annoyance for humanity.

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How did the Deckster launch go? ⬇️⬇️⬇️ Me and my partner launched https://deckster.pro/ on Monday. Since then we got 11 signups and 2 paying customers. And it's a big deal. Why? https://www.finpra.lv/, which we launched earlier this year has not generated any paying customers. We launched Deckster much quicker, in a very raw state, and we got paying customers on the very first day. What did we learn this time? Show the product to the world as early as possible. I knew that, but I learned that it could happen way earlier. 🔹 Our app link is this - [decksterpro-d35a64fa8c28.herokuapp], and we decided not to spend time setting it up on the domain. 🔹 UI is not responsive. 🔹 We have only one use case working. And even that one is limited. 🔹 We have simple email authorization, no google, no apple 🔹 There is only one feature - first chat creation. Despite these limitations, we managed to acquire 2 paying customers on the first day. Why? Because we focused on a key component that adds the most value. In our case, with a chatbot, it is the knowledge base. Everything else was considered unimportant. 🚀 Now, the goal is to get 5 customers by the end of June.

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Founder: "Maros, we need to hire 20 software developers." Me: "Sure, we can do that step by step in 5-6 months." Founder: "No! We need them in 2 weeks - Hire! Now!" Me: "Ooookay." 🫠 In my former company where I worked as Head of IT I often got tasked to do a miracle like mentioned: "To onboard 20 developers (and more) ASAP." On top of this - I couldn't use external agencies. I had to do it with our internal HR team of 5 people. So I sat down with Head of HR, wrote all the JDs (thanks ChatGPT) submitted all job postings to get CVs, screened 1000s of them, invited 100s of selected candidates to first round interviews and repeated myself like a parrot just to hire 2 developers. Hence, we had to do the process all over again. And again.. And again... till we got the people. I can tell you, it was just impossible to successfully complete this mission. And of course, it took us months to finish it. Not need to mention that even when I got the candidate that accepted offer there were these notice periods that had to pass (30-60-90 days). This is real example how hiring right IT team could be overwhelming, costy and time-consuming. Not just for me, but for the whole HR department as well. Please... if you are this Founder... just stop immediately! You are giving tasks with unrealistic expectations then blame others for failing it. Or... if you are really in urgent need of IT professionals you should consider utilising team augmentation. Only this can give you such amount of skilled IT people in matter of just a few days or weeks. If you need it, send me a DM here. 👍

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If you want your employee advocacy program to be a success… Don’t think of it as a direct marketing tool to be filled with company-centric content. Remember: a program is an employee-led initiative, so you need to provide them with content that they want to share and not just content that you think they should share. You need to provide your employees with plenty of third-party content and other industry news. This empowers them to build more trust with their audiences by highlighting their areas of expertise: not just advertising your company but educating by sharing useful information and industry insights. It also keeps your employees engaged. You need to consistently provide your employees with new content to help them build a habit of posting on social media. That said, your company won’t always have new content that you can provide employees with. Finding something new from a third party ensures that their content supply stays fresh, even when there isn’t new company content available. Clip taken from a recent episode of DSMN8’s podcast: https://lnkd.in/gCBYJRpG #employeeadvocacy

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𝑾𝒐𝒓𝒌𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏: 𝒊𝒔 𝒊𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒏𝒆𝒘 𝒘𝒐𝒓𝒌 𝒕𝒓𝒆𝒏𝒅? It seems like everything is moving so fast 🚀 I can't keep up with it all. I recently noticed that work-life balance has been replaced by work-life blend. Then I came across an article about workation 🙈 In short, it's a combination of work and vacation. I've also seen the term "woliday." With remote work becoming more common, this no longer seems distant. ➡ 𝘞𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘥𝘰𝘦𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘮𝘦𝘢𝘯? It means you take your laptop and go to the Carpathians or any other city or abroad (if possible) and work. In other words, it's the same work, just in a different place 💻 🏔 So, if you decide to work from a country house for a while, you can call it by the trendy word "Workation"🏡 𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐝𝐨 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐤 𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧? 𝐈𝐬 𝐢𝐭 𝐚 𝐬𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐛𝐥𝐞 𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐚𝐜𝐡 𝐭𝐨 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤, 𝐨𝐫 𝐝𝐨𝐞𝐬 𝐢𝐭 𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐤 𝐛𝐥𝐮𝐫𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐬 𝐛𝐞𝐭𝐰𝐞𝐞𝐧 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞 𝐭𝐨𝐨 𝐦𝐮𝐜𝐡? 🤔 #recruiting #ITrecuiter #workation #worktrend #ITtrends #remotework

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17 seconds. With Affix API, that's all it takes for you to extract and convert all historical HR/Payroll data from your customer's former HR or Payroll provider. Not 17 hours. Migrations are now infinitely scalable.

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The Magical Number 7 ± 2: How to Improve Onboarding 🧙 Make your onboarding a pleasant walk, not an exhausting mental challenge. Which is easier: lifting a 5 kg dumbbell 10 times or lifting a 50 kg dumbbell once? 🥸 According to Miller's Law, our short-term memory can simultaneously hold between 5 and 9 items. How to apply this in onboarding: ✅  1. Focus on the essentials Show only the key controls that the user needs right now. ✅  2. Break information into steps Instead of one large tutorial, use several short screens or prompts. ✅  3. Animation for easier perception.  Show objects one by one in the sequence you need. 🤓 By considering human cognitive capabilities, you'll make onboarding more effective and enjoyable for the user. 

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