Mindfulness Meets High School Science Club Management Methods
October 23, 2020
I read “Silicon Valley’s Corporate Mindfulness Hypocrisy.” I found my “mind” full of thoughts. The main point is that consulting savants are booking engagements and billing for educational sessions which teach employees how to be mindful. (No, I don’t know what that means, and, to be frank, I am not particularly interested in the snake oil coated academic guruish explanations.
The essay contains an interesting sentence:
Corporate mindfulness is a poor substitute for organizational change. By reframing structural and systemic problems as an individual-level pathology, by putting the onus of responsibility all on individuals – telling them, “Just do this mindfulness practice” –is akin to victim-blaming.
The bound phrase which I noted is “organizational change.”
Why on earth would a Silicon Valley company making money, keeping the funding sources at bay, and employees working from home want substantive change.
The purpose of high school science club management methods is to institutionalize anti-adult behavior. Entitlement, money, and Clubhouse fame are goals. The other stuff like the well being of the lucky people who get paid to filter content that semi smart software cannot be trusted to block is not a big deal.
In my opinion, HSSCMM are the norm, and they seem to be working for some outfits. Change is hard. Let the employees learn how to channel their inner demons. The top dogs want to check out the new Porsches.
If you don’t get it, you don’t belong to the science club, and you probably won’t be noticed.
What’s the science club saying about the upcoming Congressional hearings in late October? Scary, right?
Stephen E Arnold, October 23, 2020
Google: Simplifying Excellence
October 22, 2020
Almost everyone knows Google. I spotted an eclectic write up in Entertainment Overdose (an estimable publication). The article “Eric Schmidt, Who Got YouTube for a Premium, Assumes Social Media Networks Are Amplifiers for Idiots” contains a quote. This is an alleged statement attributed to Eric Schmidt, the overseer of Google until 2018.
Here’s the alleged pearl of wisdom:
The context of social networks serving as amplifiers for idiots and crazy people is not what we intended.
But it happened with YouTube, right? Who was running the company at this time? I think it was Mr. Schmidt.
It seems that Mr. Schmidt’s social world view is divided into those who are not crazy (possibly Google employees and those who share some Google mental characteristics but are in some way in touch with reality) and those who are crazy. Crazy means mentally deranged, which may be a bad thing. Plus, the “crazy” group uses social media as “amplifiers.” This seems to suggest that anyone using social media falls into the crazy category. Is this correct?
Note the “we”. The royal “we” appears to embrace the senior management of Google.
Now check out the Rupert Murdoch “real” news Wall Street Journal for October 22, 2020. The story to which I direct your attention is called “Google Ex-CEO Hits DOJ As Antitrust Battle Looms.” [When the story is posted to wsj.com, you will have an opportunity to purchase access. Until then, hunt for the dead tree edition and look on Page A-1.]
The write up reports that Mr. Schmidt said:
There’s a difference between dominance and excellence.
Is the idea may be that operating like a plain vanilla monopoly not acceptable. This suggests that monopoly delivering “excellence” is a positive for everyone.
Is YouTube dominant or excellent? Are those who post links to children’s playgrounds to the delight of individuals with proscribed tendencies idiots? (There are other, more suitable terms I believe.)
Quibi and Its Open Letter: An Idea Probably Not Considered
October 22, 2020
I spotted Quibi’s “An Open Letter…”. The write up states: “…we are winding down the business and looking to sell its content and technology assets.”
I circled this passage: “… we’ve considered and exhausted every option available to us.”
Every option. That’s a categorical affirmative. No black swans, please.
Think of this brilliant observation: “The price of inaction is far greater than the cost of a mistake.” Who said that? Maybe Meg Whitman?
How will those who bet about $1.75 billion on quality content delivered to a mobile device react to my idea which I don’t think the dynamic team of Katzenberg and Whitman thought about?
But here’s the “script” of the overlooked idea. It is very Hollywood-Silicon Valley with graphics, audio, and jazzy Hollywood techniques.
KATZENBERG: We need to do a follow up to my 1992 smash cartoon Aladdin.
WHITMAN: What’s the title?
KATZENBERG: Aladdin 2: Magic Just Happens.
WHITMAN: Dear Jeffrey, what’s the title?
KATZENBERG: Picture this:
1. A poor but motivated duo (that’s us, the dynamic management and creative duo of Katzenberg and Whitman) lose a brief red ink battle with the sinister Dr. Tik Tok.
2. At a yard sale, we (that’s us, the dynamic duo of Katzenberg and Whitman) are looking for quality knick knacks. Whitman spots a copper lamp.
3. A coffee shop in Westwood, perspicacious Meg stroke the lamp.
4. Flash of light. A magic genie appears and orders a cappuccino
5, The dynamic duo gets one wish: To undo the Titanic failure of Quibi.
6. Poof. The genie makes Michael Lynch, founder of Autonomy plc, the cause of Quibi’s failure.
7. A court room: A “Law and Order trial” and — Mr. Lynch guilty.
8. Cut to.. A charity event to fight global warming at the Top of the Mark. The dynamic duo pays investors back.
WHITMAN: Winner!
Yes, an idea possibly not considered. But it may be too late for a quick bite. Lights out.
Stephen E Arnold, October 22, 2020
Let Us Not Quibble over Quibi
October 14, 2020
I am not a video type. Sure, we create a short video every couple of weeks. That’s part of our learning process and a flaccid attempt to keep some of the younger members of the team semi happy. One of the future video stars called my attention to “Apple Has No Interest in Purchasing Failing Short-Form Video Streaming Service Quibi.” My reaction was, “Bad Apple.” Not Apple the fun loving app store operator; bad apple as in the phrase “one bad apple spoils the barrel.” The Quibi thing is the exact opposite of TikTok: TikTok relies on user created content within a surveillance shell. Quibi produces 1980s Hollywood content in chunks of 10 minutes or less. No surveillance, no nation state lobbying to keep the programs flowing. No international PR visibility.
The loss of the Apple dream is not surprising. I recall reading “So Here Are the Real Reasons Quibi Failed.” To refresh your memory that May 2020 write up identified these Semel Yahooesque issues:
- Name quick bites to Quibi
- No sharing in the Rona era of sharing
- Mobile sharing.
The write up also dances around the subscription angle, which remains a problem or an opportunity.
The write up does nail the Quibi management team’s explanation of failure on a billion dollar scale: The pandemic.
The reasoning seems to be that Quibi was designed for people with jobs who commute and want Hollywood 1980s style content.
Maybe.
The reality boils down to many missteps, including the odd couple of Katzenberg and Whitman or more colloquially The Meg and Jeff’s Management Review YouTube program.
Who will care? Probably the investors and at least one of the DarkCyber research team. I am not that empathetic fan. The Quibi caregiver on the DarkCyber research team is, however, lamenting what looks like the streaming equivalent of the 2004 flop “The Alamo.” Remember it?
Stephen E Arnold, October 14, 2020
Bad Decisions Explained: Was This a Good Decision?
October 14, 2020
DarkCyber tracks a number of topics related to cyber crime. Why do some individuals abandon the straight and narrow and practice crime, regular or deluxe? The reasons are explained in “Common Causes of Very Bad Decisions.” Here’s an example of the reasons:
An innocent denial of your own flaws, caused by the ability to justify your mistakes in your own head in a way you can’t do for others.
DarkCyber’s jargon for this characteristic is HSSCMM or the high school science club management method. Could examples be found in the management actions at companies like Amazon, Apple, Facebook, or Google? The article does not illustrate each “cause.” That’s too bad.
Here’s another reason for a really terrible decision:
Too much extrapolation of past successes leads to overconfidence, stubbornness, and a narrow view of future risks.
It would have made the write more than an earthworm list if some examples had been included. But “color” and “case examples” are not part of the document. The reader is left to insert the missing information. In today’s business environment there so few bad decisions, the lack of detail is understandable.
Stephen E Arnold, October 14, 2020
Google and Avoiding the Next Chaos Monkeys
October 8, 2020
Is Google nervous about what employees and contractors may say or do. “Google Contractors Allege Company Prevents Them from Whisleblowing, Writing Silicon Valley Novels” asserts:
Google contract employees are alleging the company’s confidentiality agreements prevent them from a range of legal rights from whistleblowing to telling their parents how much they make, according to a recent court filing. A California appeals court recently discussed a lawsuit accusing Alphabet’s Google and one of its staffing firms, Adecco, of violating a number of California labor laws, including free speech, by requiring workers to sign extensive confidentiality agreements.
The write up runs down a number of examples of Google taking steps to batten down its information hatches.
In the new distributed Silicon Valley, control and management of staff and part timers is difficult. For an outfit built on high school science club management methods, the job is probably Herculean or bigger. The fix? Impose tighter controls on all but the top tier of Google professionals. The company’s elite may recognize that the jazzy days of 2003 and 2004 are long gone, but there are artifacts littering the information superhighway.
These include dalliances in the legal department, an alleged suicide attempt by a marketing professional despondent after being discarded by a top Googler, and the unfortunate death from a controlled substance inflicted on Googler’s family.
Is the fix an improvement in the management methods? Maybe not. Imposing rules on those outside of the elite may be an easier, more logical path. By the way, how much did the Googler working on mobile phones get when he lost his “essential” label?
Enforcing a caste system appears to be an obvious solution to one skilled in the arts of the high school science club management methods.
Stephen E Arnold, October 8, 2020
YouTube Brings Back Checking an ID: Just Like a College Bar
October 6, 2020
In the face of criticisms and penalties, YouTube turns to machine learning to keep harmful content from young eyes. A very brief post at Axios reports, “YouTube Will Use Tech Updates to Better Enforce Age Restrictions.” Writer Sara Fischer lists the three upcoming changes:
“1. [YouTube] will begin using machine learning to automatically apply age restrictions to content on its platform around the world.
2. It’s using technology to identify age-restrictive content so that when viewers discover age-restricted videos embedded on most third-party websites, they will now be required to log in to watch those videos in order to verify their age.
3. It will start to request that some users in Europe verify their age with a valid ID or credit card, in response to new EU regulations, like the Audiovisual Media Services Directive.”
Let us leave aside the ease with which youngsters can get around age verification measures. We wonder how well this AI will be able to discern age-restricted content. Sure, a lot will be obvious, even to an algorithm. But how much harmful content will slip through? We hope the software does not give the company a false sense of security. On the other hand, we expect the number of channels wrongly censored to jump—will there be enough human moderators to flip their videos’ statuses back? Some people depend on this avenue for income, after all. AI can be a valuable tool, but human oversight is still needed. Now about those health department warnings at the “Do Drop Inn”?
Cynthia Murrell, October 6, 2020
Do Not Delegate What You Do Not Understand: Why Problems Are Proliferating
October 1, 2020
I read a marketing story called “US Tech Entrepreneur Urges Industry Leaders to Drive Not Delegate the Digital Transformation.” One possible synopsis might be “the buck stops here.” The idea is that a “leader” (whatever that means) must put his or her hands on the controls. The “leader” must be a decider. The “leader” powers the enterprise so that a digital transformation mostly happens. The assumption is that the transformation will work really well and produce swell results. I circled this passage:
Mr Siebel, CEO of C3.ai, author of Digital Transformation: Survive and Thrive in an Era of Mass Extinction, said that in businesses where digitalization is already succeeding, the “CEOs are taking personal responsibility for the initiative, driving the digital transformation with trackable projects which result in measurable and significant economic benefit.”
Looking at the financial performance of companies in the US, a small number of firms are generating “economic benefit.” The others, presumably investing in digitalization and following their “leaders” seem to be facing headwinds. MBAs, lawyers, and accountants may be ill suited to be Siebel-type leaders.
Stephen E Arnold, October 1, 2020
Quibbling over Quibi
October 1, 2020
Yep, quick bite. Just what investors needed. An money sucking mosquito draining financial blood from clueless investors.
“Why Quibi Failed” is one of those Silicon Valley management analyses I enjoy. The write up received wider distribution by its inclusion in the MSN news channel. Yep, a Microsoft real news operation, not to be confused with Bing news, the messages displayed in Windows 10, or the razzle dazzle about Surface Duo. Hey, I know. Combine the Duo with the quick bite thing. That’s an idea: A $1400 gizmo that plays Quibi content. Winner!
The “Why Quibi Failed” explains that has failed. The write up paints a dire picture:
Since its US debut in April, Quibi seemed destined for such an ending. It badly missed subscriber and viewership targets and in June was on pace to sign up only 2 million paying subscribers by the end of the year (its goal was over 7 million). It was forced to manage reports of mass layoffs and rumors that its founder, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and its CEO, Meg Whitman, were not seeing eye to eye. And now it’s fighting a lawsuit filed by a video company alleging Quibi infringed on its patented technology (Quibi denies this).
In point of fact, the outfit is chugging along and might pull off a sale to another company looking for magic; that is, content. Sounds like Quibi needs to upgrade its public relations unit.
Why has Quibi been bitten where the sun does not shine? The write up turns to one of the wizards leading the charge to the future of entertainment, Jeffrey Katzenberg:
Katzenberg blamed everything on the coronavirus.
The article explains:
Quibi could have invested more in content from celebrities its younger audience might actually appreciate, like YouTube, Instagram, or TikTok stars. Instead, it threw lots of money at the kind of names that older executives might imagine young people enjoy—Jennifer Lopez, Idris Elba, Tyra Banks, Usher, and every teenager’s favorite actor, 53-year-old Kiefer Sutherland.
The idea is that old school Hollywood thinking is not hip to the charms of Bad Bunny or the ever delightful video style of Gamers Nexus.
Other reasons for the alleged failure of Quibi include:
- Content (wait, not a strength)
- Lack of “shareability”
- The format of quick bites; that is, 10 minute chunks of juicy digital goodness.
But wait. There’s no fix, no options, no recommendations.
That’s a bit of a problem with Silicon Valley business thinking. Imagine. Figuring out next steps.
Several observations:
- A closer look at the management track record of the Quibi leadership would be helpful. Hints about “tension” are okay, but let’s dig into the facts like disastrous deals and massive flops suggest that headwinds have been blowing for years
- Quibi’s “chunk at a time” is out of step with the type of real-time, constant-click data available to an outfit like TikTok, Amazon Twitch, and (gasp!) Facebook Instagram Reels. Mismatch? For sure.
- Some information about the production deals for the magical content. With it content is often produced, edited, and distributed from a laptop in an RV camp or from an organic vegan coffee shop; for example, the antics of Kara and Nate and their interesting videos. Quibi did it the Hollywood 1980s way. That’s a money saving idea.
- A bit of digging into the “management style” of Mr. Katzenberg and Ms. Whitman could be complemented with actual interviews of people who knew how these two brilliant leaders interacted with one another.
There is a book waiting to be written about Quibi. If there were functional universities teaching business the old fashioned way, there is at least one case study. The legal antics of Quibi investors might enliven a law review if these print centric publications are still funded.
In short, the analysis like Quibi seems oddly appropriate even with Rona ready to accept the blame. Quick bite? Nope, big chomp in tender places. One may want to consider that Quibi is “actually quite good.” But for whom?
Stephen E Arnold, October 1, 2020
Technical Debt: Making Something Ignored Understandable to Suits
September 29, 2020
I have been fortunate to have been on the edges of a several start ups; for example, The Point (Top 5% of the Internet), a system ultimately sold to CMGI / Lycos in the late 1990s. When the small team began work on the product, we used available servers, available software, and methods based on our prior experience. When we started work on The Point in 1994, the task seemed pretty simple: Use what we know and provide an index to curated Web sites. At that time, it was possible to scan a list of new Web sites select ones which seemed promising. This was at first a manual process, but the handful of people working on this figured out ways to reduce the drudgery.
I learned (as one of the resources for hardware, software, and money) that those early decisions were both similar to established business economics and quite different in others. Let me give one brief example and then address the information in “Most Technical Debt Is Just Bullsh*t.”
For The Point one of the wizards on my team used Paradox. I know the Georgia Tech grade and Westinghouse Science winner asked me and I just grunted. Who cared? This was a mere test of an idea, not a project for an outfit like Thomson Corporation or the US government. My partner and I had worked on a CD of bird songs, and The Point seemed similar to that effort. Who knew in 1994? I sure did not.
That Paradox decision created technical debt. The database was okay, but it was not designed for multiple humans and software systems to update the files on a continuous basis. We could not do real time because the cheapo Sparc server I had was designed to run an indexing system called STAR. We figured out how to make Paradox work, but those early decisions had lasting impact.
I realized that making a database decision was similar to Henry Ford’s River Rouge. That concrete and building built at one end of the giant complex was not going anywhere. First, Mr. Ford was busy making cars. Second, Mr. Ford needed the resources to be directed at making more cars. Third, Mr. Ford had to make decisions about now problems, not problems that were not fully understood at the time of making fresh decisions. As a result, River Rouge became a giant thing that was mostly unchanged and unchangeable. The same observation can be made about Google-type companies. (Think of new features as software wrappers, not changes to the plumbing.)
That’s technical debt. The focus, resources, and understanding to change what has been put in place and actually working is not a hot topic for a robust discussion of “Let’s do this over again.” Nope.
The Louwrentius article dances around this reality in my opinion; for example, recasting Ward Cunningham, who coined the bound phrase, the write up states: Technical debt exists:
as a form of prototyping. To try out and test design/architecture to see if it fits the problem space at hand. But it also incorporates the willingness to spend extra time in the future to change the code to better reflect the current understanding of the problem at hand.
The write up ends with this statement:
Although Cunningham meant well, I think the metaphor of technical debt started to take on a life of its own. To a point where code that doesn’t conform to some Platonic ideal is called technical debt. Every mistake, every changing requirement, every tradeoff that becomes a bottleneck within the development process is labeled ‘technical debt’. I don’t think that this is constructive. I think my friend was right: the concept of technical debt has become bullshit. It doesn’t convey any better insight or meaning. On the contrary, it seems to obfuscate the true cause of a bottleneck. At this point, when people talk about technical debt, I would be very skeptical and would want more details. Technical debt doesn’t actually explain why we are where we are. It has become a hollow, hand-wavy ‘explanation’. With all due respect to Cunningham, because the concept is so widely misunderstood and abused, it may be better to retire it.
My personal view is:
- Technical debt is a bad way to say, “A software product or service is like a building that can either be a money loser or be torn down.” As long as it works — generates revenue — do as little as possible to keep the revenue flowing.
- Technical debt is fungible. It is like the poorly designed intake infrastructure for River Rouge. The bricks and concrete are not going away without significant investment and disruption.
- Technical debt is poorly understood. Humans are not very good at not knowing what one does not know. I suppose that Paradox-like. Who knew?
The good news is that CMGI’s check cleared the bank and The Point is now mostly forgotten like its technical debt. Who paid it off? I didn’t.
Stephen E Arnold, September 29, 2020
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