Career Notes #4: WFH and Remote Work - 30 January 2024

Someone said something on the radio and I am upset.  There is probably only one motive more stupid to write about than "someone said something on the Internet and I am upset", and that is the subject of my first sentence.  Someone said something stupid on the radio and I am upset.  However, I have always barged in where angels fear to tread, so I will share my thoughts on the recent resurgence of the RTO push for workers to return-to-office.  Since shortly after COVID began, there has been a vibrant discussion about the merits of working in an office compared to working from home (WFH).  It is the fodder for serious commentators as well as for the comics.  After hearing someone potificate on the radio this morning about managers who will have to learn how to support and encourage people who are WFH, I rather got to the end of my tether and -- I have thoughts.  I should say up-front that I retired as a senior manager in engineering at a high-tech company and I managed mostly highly educated people (nearly all had PhD degrees from major universities in the US).  These were (are) bright, educated, talented, and highly  motivated people eager to advance their careers and advance the fields of engineering.

When COVID began, there was a medical reason for everyone to avoid crowds and that included avoiding the shared office.  When I decided to close our local ABC Corporate office (a branch office of about 100 people and anonymized), I expected that it would be for 2-3 weeks until the pandemic abated.  I think it was pretty commonly understood that closing offices and sending people home was temporary and we would return to normalcy in a month or so.  As time went on and people continued to die from COVID, it became clear that our initial estimates were naively optimistic and that WFH (work from home) was a long-term state, verging on a year.  

While a high proportion of ABC Corporate workers could be sent home to work, there were key jobs that needed to continue on-site and in the office.  In our branch location, there were about 10 employees that needed to be in the office daily and 2-3 more that would come in occasionally.  The 10 folks needed access to labs and equipment that could only be on-site and could not be taken home.  The 2-3 folks varied each day from the 90 who were WFH - they were not usually the same individuals, but there were consistently 2-3 of them in the office.  

In our group (about a third of the 100 people in the branch), we had long-standing key metrics (KPI - Key Performance Indicator - is a common industry buzzword, but we did not use the phrase KPI).  The primary metric among these was the continued delivery of high-quality results as promised in the schedules and contracts.  As a general rule, the team was able to maintain successful delivery of all the group metrics.  From this, one might conclude that WFH was acceptable as a stable, long term strategy for the team.  After all, the overall team was spread across four primary sites already, so dispersing to homes was of marginal impact, right?  Wrong, but I have gone on too long in this posting and will reserve further thoughts for a second posting.

Although the key metrics, including consistent, timely, high-quality deliverables continued to be met, these are all "hard" metrics.  These are hard metrics because they are countable.  The deliverable was provided or it was not; the deliverable was on time or it was not; and the customer accepted the deliverable or they rejected it.  However, there were other, less countable metrics that were not always met, and many of these "soft" metrics are also on a scale, but hard to quantify.  Without covering all of the next post, consider "innovation".  There is no good measure of innovation.  There are simple measures (e.g., the number of patents authored) of these soft metrics, but simple measures can easily miscount or mislead (e.g., an idea can be patentable but it may be kept as a trade secret instead).  A more critical measure is readiness for promotion or other recognition, which is very hard to measure.

Until next time when I discuss soft metrics.

Moving Close to the Office - 29 January 2024

In a recent decree, IBM has announced that all employees must be in the office for at least three days a week, or they should plan to separate from the Company.  There is a big debate today about the value of in-office work.  A weak string of responses in Slashdot gives the usual responses of people trying to be clever, but resistence is futile.  For better or worse, IBM management has decided that this shall be and so it shall be.  Comply or pursue a voluntary separation.  

Of course, some people could try to delay in the hopes that plate tectonics will come to the rescue as the New Pangea reassembles itself.

Talking to Executives - 27 January 2024

An underappreciated skill, learning how to talk to executives can boost your career.  This sounds trite, but it is true.  Many an engineer has capped out because they talked too much.

These boil down to a short list.  In this list, I lump "manager" and "executives" together.  With a manager, you are more likely able to bend these rules, but the higher you go in the manager-executive chain, the more you want to adhere to these rules.

1. Be succinct,
2. Actionable,
3. Focus on results and impact,
4. Define the problem but always offer a solution,
5. Subject lines - meaningful (not just "FYI" or "interesting event"), and
6. Be terse - yes, redundant with succinct because it is that important.

If engineers as a group have a fatal flaw, it is the failure to be succinct.  Ideally, when they ask a question, a manager or executive wants to hear "yes" or "no", to hear a single number or date.  Answering with a "yeah, but..." is not going to succeed.  In many cases, you can respond that you will get back to them with an answer, but be succinct.  And if you promise to get back with an answer, give them a date for the answer and meet that date.

In a bit of cognitive dissonance, managers are creatures of action and of delay.  On the one hand, managers want to get things decided and done, minimize delays, minimize waste, eliminate idleness.  On the other hand, managers will wait if promised more information, but it must be high-quality information that will inform a better decision.  Balancing these two is hard, but it is what managers are paid to do.  In the end, advance actions and options.

As an aside, some managers get confused.  One type of manager will made decisions fast in the belief that any decision is better than no decision.  Another type of manager will kick the decision down the road in the hope of avoiding blame.  Both of these are wrong.  Each decision will be different - some will invite immediacy and some will demand delay - but a manager that always leans one way or the other is wrong.  Either that, or they have no authority (delay) or they have no understanding (immediate).  End of digression.

Results are what a manager seeks.  Negative results are often called consequences.  Ultimately, the manager is not as interested in the work, but in the results or impact of the work.  A particular proposal may require an engineer to work nights and weekends, but the manager is interested in avoiding impact on the customer, and impact that might cause the customer to change to a competitor.  

Clarity in defining the problem is critical.  If an engineer delivers a perfect technical solution to the wrong business problem, it is not a solution, it has no value.  

As a particular point of communication, email has become a dominant way to communicate with managers, and the first line if that communication is the Subject line.  Write your subject lines to be clear, concise, and meaningful.  Bad examples include, "that answer you wanted", "FYI", or "suggestion".  A journalist would say that you have buried the lede.  You want the Subject line to be relevant to the  manager and give them something of value, something to catch their attention.  Subjects like "solution for Jones case", "Q4 capital request", or "retention problem" are going to catch their attention.  Your email is not a mystery novel - state the key inforamtion up-front, name the murder in the first sentence.  Sometimes you need to temper this for confidentiality, and so some vagueness is in order in the subject line.  You want to say "retention problem" rather than "Jones about to quit" in case someone is reading over the manager's shoulder.

Be terse.  This bears repeating because being succinct is critical.  All your work to craft a brilliant three-page document will be wasted if no one reads past the first paragraph.

There are managers and executives that will try to isolate you from the "next level up" and even peers will try to squeeze you out in an effort to out-compete you.  If you work to become a good communicator with executives, they will seek you out.

Ron & Vivek drop out of Republican presidential nomination - 21 January 2024

To the surprise of absolutely no living person, Ron Desantis and Vivek Ramaswamy have dropped out of the primary process to be the Republican nominee for President in 2024.  We also got news that Chris Christie had dropped out recently.  As to Desantis, NBC blamed "Muddled messages, hiring too many staffers and even a puzzle."  There are probably similar defenses of Ramaswamy as a candidate.  Both of these argument threads miss their respective points.

Desantis is just a wannabe dictator.  Why go with the wannabe when you can get the real thing in Trump?  Desantis was a money-fueled distraction from the main event and no one wanted tickets to an also-ran.  In the end, he has endorsed Trump.

Ramaswamy was  a tech-bro who drank his own coolaid.  He got lucky in business, parlayed that into a little bit of political success, and started inhaling his own gaslighting.  Like Desantis, he presented himself as a Trump without the baggage.  What Ramaswamy calls baggage, we would call a history of recorded and reported statements, policies, and actions.  But I digress...  Ramaswamy was another sideshow and no one wanted his also-ran tickets, either.  On leaving, he has endorsed Trump.

Chris Christie is more of a question mark.  He clearly sees Trump for what he is and is willing to state it, but Christie is too little, too late.  But even if he were the right amount and on-time, he is running on a negative-Trump platform rather than a content-filled platform of his own.  No one knows what Christie stands for outside "not MAGA".

For all intents and purposes, this leaves Nikki Haley.  She is but a pale imitation of Trump (pun intended), and the only real question is whether Haley will pull out before Trump falls over from bad health.

But we can be a bit relieved because we are now free of the Ron-Vivek virus.

P.S.  Yes, Trump continues to bounce among his various legal cases.  I think there are four, perhaps a fifth that I lost track of, and still 91 felony counts hanging over him.  He has been recently making more and more verbal mistakes in the press.  Confusing Nikki Haley and Nancy Pelosi is the most recent one, but they are coming in a steady flow.  Trump is still the unchallenged favorite to get the Republican nomination.

Trickle-down Economics is Really Trickle-Up - 20 January 2024

Inflation has been a key concern of many in the USA for the last year, perhaps longer.  FOX News [sic], in particular, has been banging on President Biden and his "failure" to control inflation, rating it one of the key problems that Biden "must solve".  However, now a more complete truth is coming out, backed by actual data and studies rather than gaslighting (from FOX).

Much of the recent inflation is due to increased corporate profit-taking.  Yeah, I know some will be surprised at this, and even contradict it.  In their effort to stream more profits, the companies are simply hiding behind the headlines and blaming their own actions on the inflation boogey-man.  Here is the behavior laid stark -

The report, compiled by the progressive Groundwork Collaborative think tank, found corporate profits accounted for about 53% of inflation during last year’s second and third quarters. Profits drove just 11% of price growth in the 40 years prior to the pandemic, according to the report.

Note that second sentence - profits are driving almost 5x the amount of price growth that has been historic.  

As a shareholder, I am delighted, but as a consumer, hang 'em all!  And the next time you consider the "benefits" of trickle-down economics, remember this, and ask yourself if the explanations of trickle-down economics are complete or if they are masking a deeper strategy better described as trickle-up.

Truffle Feast Tonight - 19 January 2024

Long, long ago, before COVID-19 was known as a scourge of the globe, we visited a specialized farm in France.  Les Pastras is a family farm that provided traditional goods from Provence.  They have olive trees to make olive oil, grape vines to make wine, beehives to make honey, and oak trees to grow truffles.  Although they run it as a farm, they offer tours centered around the various agricultural products, and we did a December hunt for black truffles.  Our hosts were modern in that they used dogs to hunt for the underground morsels.  Pigs are the older tradition, but pigs like truffles and so they compete with the farmer for the truffles, sometimes to the point that the farmer loses a finger.  Dogs, on the other hand, like the treats presented after finding truffles and could care less about the truffles themselves.  And so modern hunters use dogs.

We followed the host out into the orchard (is that what one calls it?) of oak trees that had been innoculated with truffle spoor in the hope that truffles would eventually grow.  Truffles are wild things and so this is far from a certain thing.  They have to overplant oak trees to get sufficient truffles.  I call them "trees" which is botanically correct, but I think it would be better to think of them as saplings.  Wild truffles are found in the forest, but growing truffles only need oak roots.  

After the hunt, we retired to the farmhouse patio and gorged on truffle specialities, from simple sliced truffles on buttered bread, to truffle oil (olive oil infused with truffles), and truffle honey on ice cream.  The last is pretty novel but it works very well for those seeking truffle immersion.  One of our party was not thrilled with the truffles, so he satisfied himself with the local charmant (champagne made outside the appellation area).  

In the end, we quite enjoyed the whole experience and we "adopted" a truffle tree.  This gives us rights to truffles each year.  Our truffles shipped from France on Monday (harvested on Sunday), and promptly ran into bad weather in the U.S.  Expected on Wednesday, the truffles arrived today (Friday) and we are gathering for the feast.  Truffles have a short shelf life, so one eats them as soon after harvesting as possible.  We get enouhg truffles to have a couple of nights of truffle delights and even a couple of breakfasts.  These are proper black truffles, not the chemicalized variety that comes in jars with chemical additions, so we take care to make dishes that are simple and allow the flavor of the truffle to shine.  We never cook the truffles except as they are warmed by the cooked dish when they are served together.

Anticipating the truffle shipment has become an annual tradition for us, and we usually expand the event with foie gras and other gems.

  

Innovation keeps rolling, Part 2 - 18 January 2024

Previously, I wrote about a patent idea I had at IBM that had been declined by the internal IBM patent review committee, and that a company had recently announced binoculars that used a strongly similar idea.  Let me return to the more general intellectual property (IP) arena in this note.

The success of new companies of the world is highly dependent on diligently and daily applying innovation to their products and processes.  Bookstores were simple repositories of books until Amazon unleashed technology on the selling and shipping of books and more.  Cars were glorified wristwatches until hybrids and then full electric vehicles (EVs) caused a reinvention of the automobile.  Even companies like Intel were glass manufacturers until ARM, Apple, Nvidia, and AMD showed that fabless semiconductor companies could be a thing.  You can debate specific examples, but the clear trend of business from 1924 to 2024 shows that those failing to apply technology have been left as footnotes; at best, they are quaint companies turning out homespun crafts.  

In recognition of this innovation force, companies set up internal procedures to generate patents.  IBM is probably the cannonical example.  IBM has long had an internal process that collected IP ideas, evaluated them through a committee process, and awarded IP "points" to inventors on patent filings that could be turned into cash and prizes.  (No kidding - my prize for one set of points was luggage.)  Little mafias and cliques grew up within IBM to keep churning out patents.  If your idea had the right co-inventors, you got points.  Even ideas that did not deserve filing were "published" and the authors got IP points as a result.  Perverted results aside, the system worked well, and IBM was the largest patent producer in the world for decades.  The innovations of IBM were world-class as demonstrated in their products, and IBM ruled the computer world.  Somewhere along the line of history, IBM reduced their emphasis on IP and technological excellence and pushed financial engineering.  While other companies continued to grow, IBM sold off parts of the company and shrank.  As I write this, the market capitalization of IBM is about $150 billion, while Apple and Microsoft are each (each!) $2.9 trillion.  

In the last few days, IBM has announced that they are terminating the old program  (that would issue cash and prizes) for a new program that issues BluePoints.  It is unclear what one can do with BluePoints, but cash awards for accumulating points seems to be elimiated.  Combined with other changes over the years, it is not clear that IBM has figured out how to exit their death spiral.  Cold days ahead for innovation at IBM.  Sad. 

Innovation keeps rolling - 15 January 2024

Employed by IBM as an engineer means that there will be continuous opportunity and pressure to create intellectual property, specifically patents.  I was exposed to this during my time there from 2001-2005.  It was one of the better parts of the job.  Engineers would write up an internal document that proposed and described a patent idea.  These proposals would be reviewed by teams of senior engineers under the guidance of an internal patent lawyer (external patent lawyers would be used for the process of drafting and submitting the patents, and the internal lawyers would oversee them).  

Among the patent ideas I wrote in about 2003 or so was the idea that a camera should combine GPS information with compass readings and focus data to determine what someone was photographing.  If you are standing in a particular location (GPS data) and pointing your camera in a particular direction with a focus point about 200 yards away, then you are probably taking a photo of the Eiffel Tower.  And so on.  Clearly this did not work for photos of people or pets, but you would at least be able to say that the Eiffel Tower was in the background of your photo of little Fee-Fee.  This was in the days before AI - long before something as small as a camera could carry the training set or network of a large language model (LLM-AI).  

Sadly, the idea was denied by the local patent team.  They felt it was too easy to fake using false GPS transmitters and the like (as if anyone wanted to disrupt your photos of Fee-Fee such that they would spend thousands of dollars and risk arrest to disrupt your GPS signals.  But I digress.)

Recently, Swarovski has announced new binoculars that will identify birds.  The Swarovski product is a variant of my idea - the one I could not patent.  (Viz., to use geospatial and image data to deduce situational information when taking or viewing an image.)  I wish them well.

Because we do not already have enough nuclear waste dumps - 14 January 2024

Nuclear power from fission, good old Uranium-powered sources, have an on-going level of support that continues to amaze me.  I was previously a supporter of nuclear power, so perhaps my perspective is more intense than it might otherwise be.  This is not an unusual phenomenon;  I know ex-smokers who are vibrantly anti-smoking, more against smoking than people who have never smoked.  But, as an engineer, I try to be practical.  As a modern engineer, I try to understand the full life-cycle of an idea.  And nuclear power may succeed as carbon-free in the short term, but it fails in the long-term safety of the by-products.  We have failed to solve the disposal problem of nuclear power.  We do not know what to do with the continuous stream of low-level waste coming from nuclear power plants - as far as I can tell, we just bury the stuff.  We do not know what to do with the regular pulses of high-level waste coming from nuclear power plants - we just store it in swimming pools and post guards.  That is about the best we can do.  Yucca Mountain failed totally; political or technological, it was a total failure.  There are attempts to reprocess nuclear waste, but those processes create new nuclear waste, albeit more concentrated.  And, go ahead, tell me how concentrated nuclear waste is better than the regular flavor.  Yes, it can create new nuclear fuels, but those will eventually become high-level waste, so it is but a temporary solution.  Finally, the Swedes (I think) are burying the stuff, but, again, that is only temporary.  

Ultimately, nuclear power is a poisonous gift to our descendants, not a solution to anything.

And when the supporters are done arguing (fruitlessly) against these arguments, nuclear power is expensive.  Solar and wind are already cheaper, so nuclear has lost the war.  

We do have a continuing nuclear-waste problem with smoke detectors.  They contain a small amount of Americium (I think it is) to generate ions that help detect the smoke.  Instead of being properly disposed of, instead of being recycled, the bulk of these units are simply discarded in household waste.  That means all of our garbage dumps are becoming nuclear waste dumps.  Clever that.

Recently, some researchers in China announced the development of a 50-year battery...that is nuclear powered.  Oh, joy.  In the article,  Chinese-developed nuclear battery has a 50-year lifespan , the researchers use an isotope of Nickel to generate power for small devices (e.g., phones).  The article reports that "Betavolt says its nuclear battery will target aerospace, AI devices, medical, MEMS systems, intelligent sensors, small drones, and robots – and may eventually mean manufacturers can sell smartphones that never need charging."  Even though the batteries may last 50 years, the small devices will only last a couple years (I found numerous Google articles that quoted 2-3 years based on actual studies).  Let us assume the 50-yr batteries will double the lifetime of the average cell phone to six years.  That still means that millions of little radioactive devices will be discarded every year; more likely tens of millions or more.  All of those devices will be dumped into landfills and garbage heaps to add to the radioactivity of the smoke detectors.  

That is a lovely gift for our descendants.  Lovely.

The Plague Continues - 13 January 2024

Paraphrasing Pharyngula, the plague continues.  We have many choices of on-going plagues, but the one I am thinking of would be COVID-19.  The J.1 variant seems to be the dominant strain.  The good news is that the prior vaccinations seem to work well against the J.1 variant.  The bad news is that most of the country (and the world) are treating COVID as over.  Vaccination rates are way down and almos tno one is masking.  Testing for COVID is now done mostly at home or not at all, so how do we know that COVID infections are up?  Wastewater testing.  Although the CDC has stopped testing individuals, there is still regular testing for microbes in the wastewater of cities and towns.  From this, we know that many of the "excess deaths" (current death rate minus the pre-COVID death rate) are due to COVID.  Influenza (flu) and RSV (Respiratory Syncytial Virus) are measured at high rates, but COVID is the killer. Research is showing that COVID is more than a viral infection, it leaves long-term organ damage, the symptoms of which we are starting to call "long COVID".  A few people have serious cases leaving them incapacitated, but most people have symptoms such as long-term exhaustion or "brain fog".

I have kept up my vaccinations, adding RSV and seasonal flu vaccinations to the string of COVID vaccinations.  I mask on airplanes and often in airport waiting areas.  But I confess that I am pretty lassaiz faire the rests of the time.  I have not been masking in retail establishments but the numbers are starting to concern me, and I may start masking in stores.

Career Notes #2: Attach Yourself to Strategy - 12 January 2024

Revenue is the top priority at most companies.  If it is not the top priority at your company, wait until corporate revenue starts to fall and then check again.  Based on this deep insight (hah!), I recommeded yesterday that one of the best ways to insulate your career from a layoff is to "attach yourself to revenue".  I do not mean to suggest that the Engineering Department should transfer en masse to the Sales team, but that each engineer should be sure that their work is related to revenue-generation that is key to the corporation.  While this remains the most important advice, it sometimes happens that positions connected to revenue enhancement are not available.  For example, maybe you find yourself in the Research department.  Or maybe you do not want to spend a lot of time in the maintenance and support departments (assuming you are working on important products).  Since Research is connected to future revenue, and often speculative at that, it can be risky to work in Research.  You can still increase your odds of surviving a layoff if you attach yourself to strategy.

You will need to study and analyze to understand the corporate strategy.  This is good advice in general, but I am encouraging you to leverage what you know and learn.  For example, I worked at a chip company at a time in which "virtual reality" was the stated goal, the stated strategy of the corporation.  Those familiar with the timeframe around 2019 will recognize instantly that "virtual reality" fizzled.  A bunch of people working on virtual reality features and products were laid off.  This does not contradict my advice because "virtual reality" was never really the corporate strategy.  Press releases and CEO speeches would proclaim "virtual reality" as a major focus of investment.  Press analysts sucked it up and proclaimed it to be "the year of virtual reality".  Serious people would nod when others predicted that virtual reality would generate billions of dollars in sales in the coming years.  But "virtual reality" was a tactic, and a half-hearted tactic at that.  When "virtual reality" collapsed, bitcoin was the Next Big Thing.  A similar story can be written about generic bitcoin and blockchain technology.  The bubble may have been a bit bigger, but bitcoin mining crashed quickly.  It is still struggling to survive as I write this, but the obituary is written and the casket has been built.

The technologies of "virtual reality" and "bitcoin" were never strategic to anyone (outside the huckster-con community).  While people were distracted with them, server computers were growing as substantial strategic thrusts.  Further, although the details are still playing out, artificial intelligence (AI) and generative AI appear to be rising as valid strategic thrusts.  The difference is that AI actually accomplishes tasks and makes work more efficient.  There are plenty of problems yet to solve (hallucinations, for example), but solid progress has been demonstrated.  Servers were clearly a strategy as smartphones exploded in popularity.  Phone and internet companies (e.g., Verizon, Google) needed one server per 100 smartphones.  As time went on and smartphones continued to grow in capability, that dropped (grew?) to one server per 10 smartphones.  That kind of substance and growth is a sign of strategy at work.  I choose high-tech examples because of my work experience; you need to choose examples that come from  your profession.  

Having identified key strategies, to reduce risks, you should seek out positions that support those strategies.  Become a key contributor (creator or manager) of a component of those strategies.  The strategy will become a revenue source and you will continue to be well positioned having attached yourself to revenue, but youcan start with attaching yourself to strategy.

Career Notes #1: Attach Yourself to Revenue - 11 January 2024

Google and Amazon are in the headlines again, for layoffs, again.  Initial reports about Google indicated a few hundred affected people, and newer reports are estimating more than one thousand.  Amazon is at similar levels, perhaps a bit higher.  Although Amazon is firing some of the creative folks in Amazon Studios, most of the people affected are "core engineering", mostly software developers.  Being told that your job is no longer needed, that you are no longer employeed, is traumatic.  Some people bounce back quickly, but most people are stunned by the news and take several days or a week to process and absorb the change.  Anger is often a quick response, but anger, confusion, or sadness are all the same in that none of them change the fact that you have been laid off.  Psychologists will talk about the five stages of grief, and entrepreneurs will tell you that it is a blessing in disguise.  Set this aside.  There are several ways to recover, but I would like to look at the root causes - to look at makes one a layoff candidate and what can one do to prevent it.

There are several reasons that make one person or another a candidate for a wave of layoffs.  Outside your control are reasons like corporations filing Chapter 11 (one form of declaring bankruptcy).  If a company folds, there is not much one engineer can do about it.  Or your company may be acquired.  The acquiring company is a bunch of strangers (to you) and, again, you really cannot do much about it.  

An engineer worked for me.  Let us call them "Chris" (not their real name).  The company we worked for had just be acquired and there were many rumors of layoffs coming.  Chris came to me and asked, "What are the safe jobs?  Can you transfer me to a safe job today?"  I told Chris that there were no "safe jobs", but that individuals can be safe or at risk.  I told Chris that there are three primary things you can do to make your job more secure.  Not "safe", but more secure.

The primary rule is Attach Yourself to Revenue.  As engineers, we all love to work on "cool" technology, on cutting-edge stuff.  It is rewarding, challenging work, but it may not be important to the corporation.  As engineers, we all love to deliver "cool" solutions, clever stuff that impresses other engineers.  It is rewarding to solve a challenging problem and show an insightful answer, but it may not be important to the corporation.  Furthermore, we can do cool, insightful stuff, but if we proceed in a manner that annoys our managers or causes them extra work, we will not be marked as important to the corporation.  Thus, before all the advice to be highly productive, highly creative, highly communicative, you want your most visible contributions to be important to the corporation.  Revenue is the more important thing in a typical company, so the conclusion is to contribute most visibly to results that generate revenue (and do not annoy managers).  When it comes time to name names for cutting, your name will be less likely to come up because losing you would (potentially) reduce revenue.  This works at salary-and-bonus time, too.  You do not have to be the most clever person on the team, you do not have to be the most productive person on the team, but you do want to try to generate the most revenue.

In this sense, "revenue" can take on many forms.  It may mean, simply, sales.  You may create or develop a feature that makes money for the corporation.  Or it may mean savings.  You identify a way to reduce costs for the corporation, savings that can be retained, passed to customers, or passed to shareholders (dividends).  This latter category can include reduced production costs or reduced support burdens.  

Working hard, being clever and innovative need to be focused on the right things.  If you improve a product that no one is buying anyway, it does not affect revenue.  Conversely, you may be working on some dull maintenance task that leaves little room for creativity, but that IS important because it is for the primary corporate product, the product that generates a lot of revenue for the corporation.  

This means that personal benefits coming from hard, clever, innovative work may not pay off.  Stay alert when new opportunities come up.  Evaluate them as if you were the CEO.  If you are a risk-loving adreneline junky, you might want to chosse the cool new project.  But if you are seeking to be "safe", you might want to select the job that has the greatest revenue opportunity and attach yourself to that project.  It may feel less satisfying to work on such a job, but you can channel your creativity into other areas of your life.  

Never Underestimate the Power of a Demo - 9 January 2024

Early in my career, I worked for a guy named Dave Harms.  Dave supervised a hardware development group at Bell Labs and he was energetic and inspiring.  Furthermore, Dave was a builder and the group was designing a laptop.  We did not really have that word "laptop" at the time as all personal computers and workstations were desktops or "luggables", but Dave was not content with those form factors.  He wanted a laptop built around our new Mac-32 chip.

To illustrate the design concept, Dave went into the lab with the parts list from the design.  He grabbed a printed circuit board that was about the right size; the standard printed circuit board used in the Bell System at the time was about 8x10 inches (roughly) and all the possible hole positions were drilled out.  (A key challenge during board layout was to find enough room to run the signal paths between all the holes.)  Then Dave went into the parts inventory room and picked out parts that were the right size as called out on the parts list.  These were not the right parts, they were just the right sizes - 14-pin, 16-pin, 24-pin, and so on, as described on the parts list.  He put the parts into the printed circuit board (remember that all the holes were already drilled), assembling a simula of the ultimate design.  He bent the pins a bit so that they would stay in place in the board but still be usable on other projects.  Then Dave went to a meeting to propose the project.

Dave started out with the usual slides.  At the time, these were all hand drawn, but he went through the various points for the design.  The size, who would buy it, the computing and display capabilities, and so on.  People were interested but not very.  They were polite.

Then Dave pulled out his "demo" board and passed it around.  The room was electrified.

When people could "see" the "actual" board, not just slides and talk, but a physical mockup, they went from polite interest in the idea to supporting the idea.  It was like a switch was thrown and the lights came on.

The lesson from this experience was clear to me and I carried it forward.  Never underestimate the power of a demonstration.  People want to put their hands on the idea, and a demo can give that to them.

ETA: What triggered this little story?  A recent news article in FastCompany reports that "recently, Microsoft built a clock."  A research group in the Microsoft Quantum department went out and bought an off-the-shelf clock and "dressed up its enclosure by adding the logo of Azure Quantum Elements".  And...

The point of this little DIY project was to prove the batteries worked in a visceral way: "You want to have a wow moment," explains Brian Bilodeau, the head of partnerships, strategy, and operations for Azure Quantum. And the person the quantum team hoped to wow was Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. -- FastCompany article.

So there you have it.  The research team wanted to put the batteries on display, so they built a demo using a cheap clock and some artwork, then presented it to the CEO of the corporation in order to get his attention and support.  The Power of a Demo, right there.

Books I Read in 2023 (sez Kindle) - 7 January 2024

Reading books had fallen off my list.  I was reading lots on the Internet and lots of magazine articles, but had rather dropped books.  This was not a particular plan, but I have long been a reader but I dropped significantly.  When COVID hit, it got even worse, worse to the point that it worried me.  Somehow, I was viewing reading as a Bad Thing, a Poor Way To Spend Time.  I will blame a boring, unrewarding job and the isolation of COVID (which are probably proxies for something deeper).  

In response, I resolved to read more.  I used the innate accounting of Kindle to keep track and I pretty much gave up on paper books.  Some would say I am behind the curve, but I have always liked the physical sense of holding a book and turning the pages, so moving to a Kindle was quite a revolution for me.

So to recap 2023, Kindle says I set a goal of 30 books (I did), of which I read 48.  Not bad.  As of 7 Jan 2024, I have read for 90 weeks in a row ( 17 April 2022 - 6 Jan 2023, inclusive) and have a continuous daily reading streak of 154 days.  I object to the 154 days because of the way that I believe that Kindle works.  I could complain to Amazon and suggest they add a feature to give readers a way to edit the days-read statistics, but it is simply not worth the effort to them or to me.  My complaint about Kindle comes from my experience as a traveler.

My experience suggests that Kindle only counts days-read when you are in WiFi or cellular contact.  If you are out of contact, it does not matter how much or when you read, Kindle does not count it.  There are a couple of 1-2 day gaps in my record as kept by Kindle, and these happen to be travel days, days when we were out of the US and out of WiFi range.  Furthermore, I am not convinced Kindle handles time zones correctly, a sort of Kindle jet lag, but I do not have very much experimental data on that claim; the no-WiFi-no-cellular bug is more obvious.  As a result of Kindle's behavior, I claim my reading-days streak is much longer than Kindle reports.  So be it.  I will work on the weeks-read streak because it is unlikely I will be out of WiFi or cellular service for an entire week.

List of books I finished in 2023:

1. Hide, Tracy Clark
2. Number Go Up, Zeke Faux,
3. The Spy Coast, Tess Gerritsen
4. The Crossing (Bosch Legacy), Michael Connelley
5. The Burning Room, Michael Connelley
6. Black River, Matthew Spencer
7. Slow time Between the Stars, John Scalzi
8. Just out of Jupiter's Reach Nnedi Okorafor
9. The Long Game, Ann Leckie
10. Falling Bodies, Rebecca Roanhorse
11. Void, Veronica Roth
12. How it Unfolds, James S.A. Corey
13. Lookin gGlass, Andrew Mayne
14. slow Horses, Mick Herron
15. Agent to the Stars, John Scalzi
16. Stargazer, Anne Hillerman
17. Spider Woman's Daughter, Anne Hillerman
18. Eternity, Greg Bear
19. Eon, Greg Bear
20. The Reversal, Michael Connelly
21. The Brass Verdict, Michael Connelly
22. The Lincoln Lawyer, Michael Connelly
23. Sharpe's Revenge, Bernard Cornwell
24. Sharpe's Rifles, Bernard Cornwell,
25. Going To The Sun
26. the Black Box, Michael Connelly
27. Desert Star, Michael Connelly
28. Noumenon
29. Dark Sacred Night, Michael Connelly
30. Quantum, Patricia Cornwell
31. Fields of Fire, Marko Kloos
32. The Overlook, Michael Connelly
33. Kaiju Preservation Society, John Scalzi
34. The Drop, Michael /connelly
35. Abadoon's Gate, James S.A. Corey
36. 9 Dragons, Michael Connelly
37. Caliban's War, James S.A. Corey
38. Leviathan Wakes, James S.A. Corey
39. Red Moon, Kim Stanley Robinson,
40. Murder Theory, Andrew Mayne
41. Under Enemy Colors, S. Thomas Russell
42. Echo Park, Michael Connelly
43. The Closers, Michael Connelly
44. The Narrows, Michael Connelly
45. Lost Light, Michael Connelly
46. City of Bones, Michael Connelly
47. Bandwidth, Eliot Peper

Security is the responsibility of the vendor - 6 January 2024

23andMe is in the headlines because they suffered a security break-in that revealed private information for their users.  23andMe has taken to the headlines to claim that their users are the reason, the cause of the failure.  In short, 23andMe claims that users reused their passwords from other sites, thus enabling hackers to break in.  

This is stupid.  23andMe is responsible, not their users.

You do not believe me?  23andMe cannot be that stupid?  Then follow this link from Wired magazine with the headline, "23andMe Blames Users for Recent Data Breach as It's Hit With Lawsuits".  Or google for your own sources.  

I do not know why I have to say this, but if you (corporate or person) collect information from me for a specific purpose, then you have the responsibility to protect that information from other users and hackers, and you have the further responsibility to use that information only for the purposes under which it was collected.  

I protect my personal information at home and I surrender that information only for purposes that I choose.  I expect you to protect my personal information in exactly the same way.  This is made explicit in HIPAA laws in the United Stated and in personal privacy regulations elsewhere (e.g., GPDR laws in the EU).  Should you fail to protect my information, you are subject to liabilities and consequences.  

Furthermore, I provide my information only for specific purposes (again, see HIPAA and GPDR for examples), and you need to limit yourself to those purposes.

Companies and individuals set up security protections for these very reasons.  Everything from firewalls to encryption and more are technologies for security and protection of systems and information.  For 23andMe to turn around and blame users for any data breaches is absurd.  23andMe bears full responsibility.

Why do we have to say these things?  Are there no adults running 23andMe, no adults who can guide the rest of their company to do the right things?  

Rant over.  The photo is of a 10th-11th Century castle built for protection in Portugal.  

 

Musing on Generative AI (ChatGPT, Bard) - 4 January 2023

Generative Artificial Intelligence (Generative AI) has hit the big time.  As evidenced by ChatGPT by OpenAI or Bard by Google, the massive growth of available compute resources has allowed large language models (LLMs) to start working their way into daily use.  Some people use LLMs to generate product descriptions or speeches, some publications use LLMs to generate articles, and others are using LLMs to create novel images and movies.  The Internet is being slowly poisoned by the creeping influence of LLM-generate data.

Leading commentators are claiming this is the end of work.  Everyone from journalists to artists to writers to physicians will be replaced by LLM-driven AI.  In my professional area, people will describe what they want and AI will write the code, displacing millions of programmers.  Poof!  On the dole they go by the millions.  

This is silly and people should know better.  To borrow a concept from (I think) the Gartner Group (GG) consultanting group, LLMs are approaching the Peak of Inflated Expectations in the GG Hype Cycle, and we will soon see the Trough of Disillusionment.  For more details, the reference is in the Gartner Group Hype Cycle chart.  How can I, a mere pleb, a common person, claim this to contradict the great Gartner Group geniuses and the wisdom of the great commentators of our time?

One word:  Hallucinations.  The LLMs we use today commonly inject massive errors into their results, errors that are commonly called hallunications in polite company, and 🐄💩 in more direct company.  You can feed good stuff into an LLM and get garbage out (aside, the new meaning of GIGO for AI is Good Input Garbage Output).  So hiring poor programmers or non-programmers to run your great LLM Programming Machines will tend to generate garbage that only experienced programmers will be able to detect and fix.  Programmers are not going away, at least not because of LLMs.

Goals without plans are just wishes, or not - 1 January 2024

Annual cycles are common in nature.  The migration of whales and birds.  The leaves that drop in the Fall and come anew in the Spring.  Snow skiing gives way to water skiing gives way to snow skiing.  Corporations across America have employees complete a self-assessment of the prior year and start to write goals for the coming year.  In many situations, at the beginning of a new cycle, we are encouraged to think of goals for the coming year and we are reminded that "goals without plans are just wishes", but I choose to challenge this supposed wisdom.

We are told - without proof - that goals can only be achieved by careful planning so that we can follow that plan to success.  Random motion can only lead to stagnancy or regression.  If the drunk starts from a lamppost and proceeds along a random walk, they can only end underneath the same lamppost.  But this is not so.  Science tells us this is silly.  Practicality tells us not to expect to follow a plan.  Military strategists tell us that a plan is perfect until the first shot is fired.  Planning has its place, but it is far from a guarantee.  Let us explore a bit.

It is a common joke in research science, mathematics, and engineering that the most interesting results come when someone says, "Huh, what's that?" when they notice an anomalous result.  Clearly, science and engineering try to create predictable results most of the time.  However, it is not the expected results that are interesting, but the unexpeceted results that lead to new questions, new answers, and new insights.  Thus, one can plan a series of experiments or design stages, and they will often play out, but the results are not always very interesting.  When the results stray from the plan, they create moments of insight - aha!  This does not mean that someone should head off with no ideas, skip over some degree of planning - afterall, one has to assemble the right equipment to make any progress - but the planning does not ensure success.  In fact, an interesting result will often cause the investigator to toss the plan and follow the new results to uncover the insight.

Similar tales abound in the military world.  All the soldiers line up and go at the enemy, but most plans are quickly replaced with improvisation after the first engagements.  In fact, the enemy will put great effort into creating surprises to distrupt the plans of the opponent.  Yes, this is planning, but it is also likely to be quickly tossed if the results are not as desired.  

In short, make a plan, but be prepared to ditch it.  the plan is not required for success nor does it provide any assurances of success, even petty success.  So where does that leave us with goals?

Goals should describe the desired results.  The goal should describe a faster process, a cheaper process, a better position, and may identify some of the steps to get there.  There are many guidelines about how to write good goals - "S.M.A.R.T." is common and well-know - but nowhere is there any requirement for a plan in the goals.  Aha!, you say, that is because goals and plans are separate things! and I will agree.  That is precisely why goals without plans are still goals, not wishes.