Experimenting with SPAM callers - 17 June 2025

We have a landline.  We have it for A Reason, so do not shame me.  We have had it for 30 years with the same number.   We get buckets of SPAM calls on the landline and have for years.  We originally subscribed to Caller ID so that we could know when a "real" person is calling, but that has its limits.  Most of the time, we have ignored the calls and let them rollover to the voicemail recorder.  Over the last two to three years, the SPAM calls stepped up and we now get one or two per hour.  This is annoying.  I have noticed that a lot of them are silent calls - no evident caller, just silence. As an experiment, I recently I started to answer these calls.  Many are still silent and hang up after 10-15 seconds, but some are actual callers: still SPAM, but a real person calling on the line.  I ask these people to remove me from their list and tell them we are on the Washington state do-not-call registry, but that does not seem to affect them; they usually just hang up and I am only hoping that they stop calling.  This practice has done little to reduce the SPAM calling rates.  I have even tried calling back the numbers on the Caller ID, but that usually goes nowhere and I believe the Caller ID info from spammers is pretty thoroughly spoofed.

So I started a new experiment this week:  I answer the calls but say nothing.  Ideally, I would mute my end, but that is buried in some menu and I am too lazy to find it, so I just listen.  No response from me, just silence.  Our house is quiet enough that it really is silent.  My theory is that the calling system will hear the silence and conclude that ours is a dead number (e.g., that they have discovered another outbound-calls-only spammer).  I hope this encourages them to start removing our number from the spammer lists.  We shall see.

If there is an actual caller that comes on the line, I will ask some key questions - who are they calling, who are they, and so on.  This usually reveals some business just rolling through the (proverbial) phone book looking for business - calls from realtors who want to flip the house, from builders who want to do some remodeling, or some other damn thing.  I have just been asking for them to remove us from their call lists, but I am now going to try to collect enough informationt that I will be able to identify them.  I have not decided what I will do with this information (report them to the WA Attorney General, name-and-shame them on social media, perhaps something else).  We shall see.

Photo: Gargoyle, Hospices de Beaune, France, 2025.

Jeff Bezos buys Bond, James Bond - 22 February 2025

With all the other crap going down, this is an issue that we can all agree on.  After a couple years of tug-of-war, it was announced this week that Jeff Bezos had cut a deal with Broccoli et al to take full ownership of the James Bond franchise, probably via the Amazon Studios house.  Of course, we are all excited to hear about this after the enormous success of Amazon Studios with the Lord of the Rings franchise.

For those having trouble hearing in the back - this is satire.  My prediction:  James Bond is now a dead franchise.  Bezos and Amazon will milk it for a few years, then it will decay and fade into reruns of the original films. 

Jury Duty Across the Years - 20 June 2024

I have had several calls for jury duty in multiple states across multiple decades.  My early jury duty was in Chicago in the 1980s, then there was a long blank period in Massachusetts, and then three calls to jury duty in Washington.  Each of them contributed to my understanding of the legal process in the United States.  Although not entirely pleasant, I strongly recommend that everyone serve on a jury duty at some time in their life, earlier if possible.

The first jury duty call was in metro Chicago.  Chicago had a one-day-one trial jury process.  We reported for jury duty for one day, and if not empaneled onto a jury, we were done.  If we were empaneled, we served for one case.  

For this case, we waited in a pool for the morning and were released for lunch.  When we came back from lunch at 1pm, we were told that the defendant had accepted a plea deal and we were dismissed.  Evidently this is common.

The second jury duty call in Chicago was for a drug case.  I was put on a jury for a drug case.  A defendant had been found in a basement apartment, fleeing from police officers.  An officer came into the room to see the defendant sitting on the bed in skimpy clothing (I no longer recall the details, but "underwear and a man's shirt" would not be too far off).  Searching the room, the officer found a syringe in the wastebasket.  The officer arrested the woman on drug possession charges.   A lab report (submitted in evidence) later confirmed the presence of an illicit drug on the syringe.  The officer told the jury that the defendant must have been holding the syringe when the cops burst in, she dashed to her bedroom and tossed the syringe into the wastebasket.

Complication #1: The officer did not see the syringe or any drugs in the hands of the defendant, and she testified that the drugs belonged to her boyfriend (not present at the time of the arrest).  

Complication #2: her fingerprints were not on the syringe.

If convicted, this would be the third drug conviction for the defendant and she would be sent to prison for a long, long time (10 years or longer).

The officer told the jury that a group of officers were responding to a report of domestic violence when they came across the defendant.  When she ran, they chased her into the basement apartment.

Complication #3:  The defendant did not live at the address associated with the domestic violence.  The police were at the wrong address. 

Given a choice of conviction or release, the jury did not find enough evidence of a crime by the defendant.  

The next jury duty call was in Massachusetts.  The MA rules were for two-days-one-trial and my first day in the pool was uneventful.  I was selected on the second day for a workman's compensation case.  A man working as a plasterer was standing on a moveable scaffold when it collapsed, injuring the man.  He had been studying to become a mycologist, and the injury meant that he was incapable of performing the physical duties of raising mushrooms (hefting heavy bags of compost, etc.).  The man was suing the scaffold company for lost wages and lost opportunities.  Each side brought in witnesses and experts to present their story.  The dueling experts were professors, one explaining that the caster would fail in a way to cause the injury, and the other explaining that the caster failing could not happen without damage to the caster (therefore the scaffolding company would not be liable and someone else would be).  Everyone agreed that the accident happened and that a failed caster contributed; the question was the cause and timing of the failure of the caster and the answer would point to a different party.  Some miscellaneous facts that I recall:  the scaffold was discarded after it failed and the claimant had to return to the worksite to pull it from the on-site garbage pile; there was no chain of custody of the scaffold;  and the casters were to be inspected each day before use by the workmen before they used the scaffold.  

It was a hung jury split down the middle, six and six.  We were told after the trial that the injured workman had already been covered for medical expenses under Workman's Compensation (fund, laws).  We were not told this and only presented with a question of liability and the damages (if any) were to be based on liability and lost income.  This was also the second trial; the first trial had also resulted in a hung jury.  I do not know if the workman went for a third trial.  

I was called for jury duty since then, but my wife received the call and explained that I had just served for a week of jury duty withn the year, and the clerk marked by records so that I would be exempted for two years.  That was twenty years ago and I have not been called since.

As citizens, we have few formal duties.  Follow the laws, vote, and serve on juries.  Service on a jury gives deep and personal insight into how the laws are applied and how citizens are deprived of their liberty.  We should each welcome jury duty.

I Became a Boomer Today - 24 April 2024

An interaction on social media (SM) today convinced me that I am no longer a person but am a boomer.  Sadness ensues.

It started this morning when a well-known SM personality opined that YouTube had done her a disservice.  To quote her question, "did the algorithm just fuck me over?"  Seeing someone somewhere on the Internet making a mistake, I was compelled to query in response,

“Never assign to malice what mere incompetence can explain” - does that apply here?

The SM personality replied,

I didn't suggest malice. I just said it's weird.

Confused by this, I replied,

I apologize if I am being argumentative, but your wording is stronger: “but did the algorithm just fuck me over?” I do not think I am being thin-skinned or puritanical. 

But back to my point, I suggest it is an inept programmer acting under deadlines rather than a focused attempt to fuck over or protect any individual. I have no data to support this beyond anecdotal experience.

The SM personality replied,

when comments are off, the algorithm stops recommending your video and therefore views go down. calm down, you're being weird

I was puzzled by this because I was not being weird or un-calm, I was quoting the SM personality.  My confusion was magnified when someone else replied to me,

it sounds like you are being both thin-skinned and puritanical tbf

that's a perfectly reasonable thing to say and not imply malice

So, the word "fuck" is now an ordinary verb and polite conversational manners are passe.  Thus, I have become a boomer.  I did think of several clever responses but I decided that they would fall on deaf ears and so I just walked away from the stupidity.

Working Remotely has Problems - 23 April 2024

WFH, or Work From Home, has gotten a lot of support since COVID-19 started to ravage the US and the world.   When some people decided to move their homes greater and greater distances from the traditional offices, the WFH concept was been expanded to include working remotely and a cottage industry has grown up to advocate for remote work.  In the articles I have seen the analysis is shallow and focuses on two things, the benefits to the employee (reduced or eliminated commute costs, etc.) and the benefit to the corporation being mainly reduced rent for offices that are not longer needed.  But we need to get real.  

Working remotely has problems, big problems.

In a recent news article in The Stranger, a Seattle popular newspaper, a report was posted:

Texas Attorney General drops challenge of Seattle hospital: In December, a Seattle hospital filed a lawsuit against Texas AG Ken Paxton after he demanded the hospital turn over the medical records of Texas children who receive gender-affirming care from the hospital. Paxton dropped the request for medical records as part of a settlement agreement with the hospital, according to KOMO. However, the hospital also had to drop its registration to do business in Texas. That won't affect children receiving gender-affirming care, but it may be annoying to the hospital employees who live in Texas and work remotely for the hospital. [23 April 2024 as reported by Ashley Nerbovig]

To recap briefly, the Texas AG (Attorney General) had demanded medical records from a Seattle hospital based on Texas state laws and the hospital sued the Texas AG (I do not know why they did not simply ignore the demand, but that is not material.)  They settled the suit and mutually agreed to drop everything.

As part of the agreement, the hospital cancelled its registration to do business in Texas.  I do not know what else a Seattle hospital might do in Texas, but the Seattle hospital can no longer have employees based in Texas because the hospital no longer is registered in Texas.  I deduce from the report that the hospital must have have employees in Texas or plans to have employees in Texas.  A company (or hospital) that has employees in a state must usually pay taxes and provide benefits for the employees to that state, and that implies some sort of registration process so that the state knows who the employer is and what reports and payments are required.  Texas has no state income tax but they do have unemployment tax and other state-specific fees and taxes, therefore the hospital  must register as an employer if they have anyone working in Texas.  (Attendance at conferences, business meetings, and training events and other business travel are usually exempted from the definition of "working".)  

As a result of this decision to drop the case and drop registration, the Seattle hospital must move or terminate all employees in Texas because they no longer have a business registration there.

This is a consequence of working remotely that most employees do not see and most analysts do not include.  If a complay has even one employee in a state, they must be prepared to withhold taxes, pay taxes, and pay for benefits in that state.  If a company has health insurance for employees but the insurance company is not registered to work in a particular state, the company cannot offer benefits in that state without a special contract with another insurance company(s).  This is a burden that most companies would take only reluctanctly (read that: only for VPs or perhaps Directors, but not for regular employees below an executive level).  The situation is made yet more complex and expensive is "remote" includes other countries.

At the end of the day, this requirement for registration in every state is one of the key reasons that working remotely is a bad idea.

Does this make me antisocial? - 12 April 2024

The Kardashians have been on TV for 20 years or so, and I have never seen a single episode.  I was reminded of this by the death yesterday of O.J. Simpson, the footballer-criminal.  The Simpsons has been on TV for over 20 years.  I have seen two or three episodes, maybe.  The Apprentice was on TV for a decade and I have seen zero episodes.  Shows like The Voice, America's Got Talent, the various dating shows, the Survivor series of series, and American Gladiator - I have seen none of these.  Not a single episode.  

Does this make me antisocial?

Ratcheting as a Management Technique - 26 March 2024

I have experienced ratcheting, a subtle management technique that is easy to apply and hard to detect.  I do not recommend it - in fact, I abhor it - but there are some defenses.

Ratcheting is a simple method of management in which a manager continually asks for more and more work in less and less work time, often sliding into uncompensated overtime.  The most obvous technique is to simply assign more work or more complex work while holding a deadline steady.  I will not be able to cover all techniques with examples, but some examples will help explain the practice of ratcheting.

"Hey, about that report on router efficiency - can you include some analysis of the file servers, too?"  

"I was thinking about that analysis of router efficiency.  Can you also apply some regression analysis and give us some idea of the problems caused by each primary traffic type?"

Alternatively, the manager can pull in the expected delivery date.

"The meeting to present the report on router usage got pulled up to Thursday, so be sure you are ready for that."

"I have a preparatory meeting with the VP, so I need your preliminary numbers by noon, tomorrow.  Keep working on the final numbers, but be sure there are no surprises in the interim."

The obvious defense is to agree and then ask what other work can be dropped or delayed to compensate.  The ratcheting response is to minimize the work or the disruption.

"It is just an Excel sheet, so you should be able to pull in that deadline."

"The changes are pretty simple and the text editor / word processor program should handle most of the work."

The offered techniques for work simplification usually do not affect the workload.  The "automated work" is often just a fraction of the total workload.  In my work, the bulk of my energy was usually spent in collecting and cleaning the input data while the analysis was pretty mechanical;  filling in the gaps required thought and not just typing.

Finally, the ratcheting causes some sort of breakdown.  The employee explodes or rejects the new work and the manager backs down.  A little.  This is when the ratcheting technique makes clear its value.  Now that the employee is used to the higher level of work, the manager pauses a little bit, and then resumes the ratcheting when the employee has calmed down.  The employee gets a day or two of relief and then the ratcheting starts all over again.

Complementing the ratcheting technique is the continuous offer of benefits or a threat of consequences.  The manager promises the extra effort will "help your career" in some non-specific way that never quite materializes, or lack of the extra effort will put the employee behind the curve of the rest of the team and their bonus or promotion prospects will suffer.  This latter has then benefit that the employee feels they are disappointing the rest of the team and so the extra work is required as a matter of group loyalty.  None of this is true and none of it ever happens, but the employee is now acclimated to the new work level.

If you feel stressed at work, take a moment to look for evidence of ratcheting.

Washington 2024 Primary Election Day - 12 March 2024

Today is the Washington primary election day and The Stranger, a local progressive newspaper, is recommending that Democrats vote for Uncommitted.  I have thoughts.

Vote for Uncommitted in the Dem primary? That has got to be the most mealy-mouthed idea I have heard since Nader was running. "Uncommitted sends a message" because of Gaza? Because of student loans? Because of inflation? Because your milk turned sour before the sell-by date? A clear message! NOT!

You could instead write a letter to the White House and your congresscritters that explicitly and clearly expresses your views. And how could The Stranger imply that TFG is even remotely acceptable?

You don't tug on Superman's cape,

You don't spit into the wind,

You don't vote Uncommitted on the Dem ballot,

And you don't give TFG a win.

The iPhone is the new transistor - 4 March 2024

Human history is a series of quiet periods interspersed with revolutions.  So, too, science is a series of quiet periods interspersed with revolutions.  In the 1947, the invention of the transistor changed the world and in 2007, the iPhone smart phone changed the world.  It took a while for the transistor to go from laboratory curiosity to common use, but the iPhone moved into common use more quickly.  More recently, people have thought virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), bitcoin (BTC), blockchain, and artificial intelligence (AI, LLM) would be the next revolutionary step.  AI may yet change the world, but the others are racing for the dust heap of history.

Some would claim that the Internet, the World Wide Web (WWW), or computing have changed history, and these have left their marks on life, but nothing has become as pervasive and as impactful as the smart phone.  The Internet, the WWW, and computing have contributed to the march of the smart phone, but so have many other technologies such as NFT, Bluetooth, and Wifi, but the smart phone is the agent of change.

In my smart phone, I can carry my wallet (except for cash, and even Venmo would object to that exception), my keys, my identification, my theater tickets, my shopping list, my maps, and the only things I need carry now are a pocket knife and a handkerchief.  Most people do not even carry handkerchiefs anymore.  And all this fits in one pocket.

We do not always recognize the revolution when it starts; in fact, we rarely do.  Transistors were big, chunky things with poor gain (a measure of transistor quality).  Horseless carriages were hard to start and broke down easily - and they needed roads to get somewhere.  Steam trains were noisy and smelly, too.  Medicine was glorified speculation until germ theory.  

The transistor continues to change our modern world, but the smart phone has surpassed it.

Leap Day Babies and New Years Eve Babies - 2 March 2024

Babies born on Leap Day are always presented as being at a disadvantage.  Supposedly, a Leap Day baby only has birthdays every four years.  This strikes me as wrong.  The proper concern is the babies born on 31 December in a Leap Year.  Let me explain.

Simply, babies born today (as I write, it is 29 February 2024) are being born on the 60th day of the year 2024.  Your annual birthday is based on rotation about the sun and therefore it falls on the same day each year, at roughly the same angular rotation point around the sun.  This year, that falls on 29 February and next year the 60th day will fall on 1 March 2025.  No big deal.   It is the calendar that is faulty and that causes the 60th day to fall variously on 1 March and 28 February.  I see no problem.  The 60th day is the 60th day - and happy birthday to those who celebrate.  In 2025, the babies born on the 60th day will use 1 March to describe their day, but it is still the 60th day whether in 2025, 2026, or 2027.

A problem does arise at the end of the year.  In 2024, the last day of the year is the 366th day, 31 December 2024.  In 2025, 2026, and 2027, there are only 365 days in the year, therefore there is NO 366th day.  This leaves those New Years Eve babies as the ones with an issue.

Career Notes #4b: WF, Remote Work, and Soft Metrics - 7 February 2024 (original) - 1 March 2024

Someone said something on the Internet and I am upset.  

When last I wrote about WFH, I was upset at the radio, but I have now returned to being continuously upset about what someone said on the Internet.  I am a creature of habit.  As to subject matter, I was complaining about Work From Home, WFH, also known as Working Remotely.  I had spoken about "hard metrics" and was about to discuss "soft metrics".  Allow me to reestablish the rant, uh, conversation.

In the classic goal-setting process of management-by-objectives (MBO), the emphasis is on specific and measurable goals (part of the larger "S.M.A.R.T." framework for goal setting).  A classic goal is "deliver a report to the customer by the end of the quarter".  This is much more useful than "be a good employee" or "do good work" and it has the welcome attribute that there is little argument because the report gets delivered on-time or it does not.  What can one argue with?

Well, one can argue with this because of the soft metrics.  I can deliver a "report", even a long report, that is on-time but full of garbage.  The word "report", even qualified with some number of pages, is a soft metric, and so we see that metrics can be misleading and metrics can be gamed.

WFH or remote work has virtually the same problems as SMART.  It is overly fixed on things that can be measured and these things are often a narrow part of the job.  If the job is full of rote processes, then WFH can be perfect.  A customer service agent (first-line) can answer calls and reset passwords or refund orders with little supervision needed.  The rare problems can be handled with voice recordings of the customer transactions and depend on the customers to escalate situations to higher levels of support.  But not all jobs are rote and simple metrics are usualy inadequate.  Engineering, software, business and accounting positions require at least spreadsheet or database work, and art positions require lots of computer interactivity, thus many positions now include some sort of computer programming.  All of these (engineering, software, business, accounting, art) require some degree of originality and inventiveness, perhaps within bounds but still require novelty.   The behavior we want to encourage is more than just words and formulas on a page, requiring human judgement beyond simplistic metrics.  

But that human judgement often requires exposure and observation.  Management can often tell a difference in actions when practiced at the office that is not visible when working from home.   I management cannot see the individuals as they practice their expertise, it rapidly becomes hard to evaluate the level of expertise.

And that is why WFH only works for rather rote role and starts to fail as one moves through a career.

Note: I got stalled and distracted by this note.  It took multiple tries to edit it down to something readable and focused.  Therefore, there are multiple dates on the title line.

Dell is telling the truth about remote work - 23 February 2024

A recent article from The Register reports on consequences of a recent return-to-the-office (RTO) program at Dell Computer.   From the article:

The implications of choosing to work remotely, we're told, are: "1) no funding for team onsite meetings, even if a large portion of the team is flying in for the meeting from other Dell locations; 2) no career advancement; 3) no career movements; and 4) remote status will be considered when planning or organization changes -- AKA workforce reductions." 

The last three points are the most significant.  The first point is optional - some companies will fund team meetings and some will not.  I think Dell is wrong on this point, but it is their company so they make their rules.  

The most important point is - no career advancement.  Let us say you are the manager and you are faced with a key decision, assigning important tasks, choosing a promotion candidate, or simply assigning bonus budget.  You have two employees, one who is often in the office where you see their work, see their interactions with other team members, and see their presentations, and a remote employee that you see intermittently, see no interactions, and see only video presentations.  Which one are you going to select for rewards and the best assignments?  Pretty obviously the on-site person.  If you think that is wrong, ask your mother if it is OK to just call from now on, and you will stop your in-person visits.  Ask yourself if you would rather put your kids to bed and read them a story rather than read a bedtime story over the phone.  No mother or kids?  What would your dog think?  Expanding on this, no career movements is a reasonable extension.  As a manager, you can choose a local candidate that you see routinely or you can choose someone who is always at the far end of a phone line.  Not hard to choose.  Finally, the old rule is "out of sight, out of mind" and that will trump over "absence makes the heart grow fonder" - when it comes time to downsize, it is far easier to lay-off someone on a phone line compared to someone you see routinely in the office.  It just is.

Note that "routinely in the office" includes hybrid and full-time office sightings.  Seeing someone Monday-Wednesday-Friday is closer to Monday-Friday than never or rarely.  I am not arguing against work-from-home, simply stating boundaries.

Furthermore:

Another employee said: "Choosing to be remote does indeed put career advancement at a standstill."

As one advances up the ranks, there are more and more leadership and team skills required to work on larger projects.  If your job is one person (you) in one place (your home or office), then advancement within these constraints is possible.  But if your job requires interactions and teams, that is best done in-person.  To advance, you need to demonsrate those leadership and team skills, and you cannot do that sitting alone in your home-office with the dog.

So if you want to be a Lyft driver or work on small projects for the rest of your life, work from home.  But if you want to advance in the corporate environment, get to the office.

Privacy and the Internet Giants - 1 February 2024

Twelve years ago, Facebook went public as a multi-billion dollar company.  On today's market, Facebook (now META) has a market cap of $1T and a user base between 2 billion and 3 billion, depending on who is counting what.  This suggests that the value of a Facebook user has gone up from about $6 to about $333 (very roughly).  Why such a significant rise?  Does Facebook offer more value and function to you today than it did a decade ago?  Not really.  55x more value and function?  Far from it.  The stock market has assigned the price, so where does this value come from?

In a recent report from Consumer Reports, "Using a panel of 709 volunteers who shared archives of their Facebook data, Consumer Reports found that a total of 186,892 companies sent data about them to the social network. On average, each participant in the study had their data sent to Facebook by 2,230 companies."  And as noted by Bruce Schneier, "This isn’t data about your use of Facebook. This data about your interactions with other companies, all of which is correlated and analyzed by Facebook."

This is not Facebook/META alone - this is all the big Internet companies, including a bunch you do not know about like Palantir Technologies.  You are not a hapless victim.  Contact your representatives and senators to demand protection.  Consumer Reports probably has some good suggestios of where to start.

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.

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.

  

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.