Comfort with Big Data or You May Not Be Hired
April 5, 2019
I read an interesting essay in Analytics India Magazine, a source I find useful in explaining how managers from that country think about certain issues.
Case in point: What makes a good employee, presumably of a company operating in Analytics India’s home territory or managed by a person who devours each issue in search of data nuggets.
The article which caught my attention? “Why Everyone In The Organization Has To Be Comfortable Dealing With Data.”
I noted this passage:
For a successful functioning of an organization, it is necessary that everyone in an organization is comfortable dealing with data.
I like the categorical affirmative: Everyone.
I like the notion of not being informed, good, or competent. Comfortable only.
Now the questions?
- Does the argument require the HR (personnel) to define “comfort” and then measure that quality?
- What happens to those who perform certain services like greeting visitors, providing administrative support, or chauffeuring the owner to his or her private jet? Outsourcing perhaps? A special class of workers removed from the Big Data folks?
- What happens to employees in countries which graduate individuals from a university lacking desired numerical skills? No jobs?
I enjoyed the recommendations for addressing this requirement. Educate and upskill (presented as two action items but to innumerate me these are one thing. Then “every department has to realize the power of data.” I love the “every” and the sort of adulty phrase “has to realize.”
But the keeper is this statement: “Adopt methods for data cleaning.”
Yeah, clean data for Big Data. Who does that work? Obviously employees who are comfortable. Yep, comfort will deal with data issues like validity, consistency, etc. etc.
Stephen E Arnold, April 5, 2019
Alphabet Google Ethics Board: Planning R Us
April 5, 2019
I found this item amusing: “Google Cancels AI Ethics Board in Response to Outcry.” Google’s attempt to get — in the words of a PR expert I once knew — in front of the building tsunami of government push back against the online ad company is no more. That which made me laugh was that Facebook’s call for regulation did not seem to stimulate such robust activity. I assume that someone younger and brighter than I might make a case that public opinion is discriminating against Facebook.
The write up states:
Google told Vox [my real news source] on Thursday that it’s pulling the plug on the ethics board. The board survived for barely more than one week.
Each time Amazon launches a new service, there’s an expectation that the oddly named and almost monikers will continue to chug along no matter what the online bookstore does. Sure, Amazon killed its mobile phone and a bunch of third party sellers. That’s not quite the pace of ideas-killed-off for the GOOG.
Let’s set aside the notion of people who wanted to help Google figure out AI ethics for a moment. The key fact for me is that high school science club management methods are in use.
Planning? Check.
Efficiency? Check.
Staff management? Check.
Participant recruitment? Check
What could go wrong? Apparently quite a bit.
Stephen E Arnold, April 5, 2019
Silicon Valley: Are Its Governance and Innovation Showing Signs of Deterioration?
March 30, 2019
I was zipping through the news items which assorted filter bubble robots fire at me each day. I noticed three items, which on the surface, appear to be unrelated. I asked myself, “What if there is a connection among each of these items?” Let’s take a look.
Was this driven by a Silicon Valley bro or smart software?
The first item is Apple’s admission that it cannot create a viable wireless charging device. The company has labored for years and admitted that it cannot pull off this “innovation.” “Apple Kills AirPower Charging Station, but Here Are Some Alternatives (for a Single Device)” states:
Citing technical difficulties in meeting its own standards, Apple has issued a statement announcing the long awaited AirPower wireless charging mat will not ship, ever. AirPower was announced alongside the iPhone X with a pending release date, and now, more than 550 days later, it has been cancelled.
Apple has people. Apple has money. Apple has failed. Problems exist with the butterfly keyboard. What’s happening?
The second item is about disappearing emails and messages. Some might describe these digital artifacts as evidence. The article “Some of Mark Zuckerberg’s Old Facebook Posts Have Disappeared” reports:
the social network accidentally deleted some of Zuckerberg’s old Facebook posts, including all the ones he made in 2007 and 2008.
This is interesting because I thought backups were mostly routine. Apparently this was not the case at Facebook. What’s happening?
The third item is about a failure to get one’s act together. I read “Google Accidentally Leaks Its ‘Nest Hub Max’ Smart Display.” I learned:
in a leak on its own website, Google might have accidentally revealed an upcoming product called the Nest Hub Max.
What’s happening?
Now let’s consider several hypotheses which may help me creep a bit closer to the thread linking these apparently isolated events.
- The three companies are not able to govern their commercial empires. A failure to deliver a product, an egregious and difficult to believe statement about “losing email”, and an inability to organize a news item—the problem is governance of the business process.
- The three companies seem indifferent to the implications of each firm’s individual actions: Apple’s misstatement about a device, Facebook’s continued dancing around information, and Google’s PR flub—each illustrates a deeper issue. I term it “high school science club management method.” Bright folks see what they see, and not what others see. HSSCMM at work.
- The three companies demonstrate the inherent weaknesses of the Silicon Valley approach: failure, ineptness or duplicitous behavior, and taking one’s eye off the ball.
Just a series of hypotheses, mind you. What if these examples are the tip of a fast melting iceberg?
Stephen E Arnold, March 30, 2019
Quote to Note: HP Boss and the HP Management Style
March 25, 2019
I read “The Tech Lawsuit of the Year: HPE v Mike Lynch and Sushovan Hussain.” The write up contains a remarkable passage. The sentences in the article include a quote to note. Here’s what I circled as memorable. Your mileage may vary, of course:
In court filings seen by The Register, Lynch accused HPE chief exec Meg Whitman of responding to concerns he raised in HP management meetings shortly after the Autonomy buyout by “playing country music to the meeting [and] instructing the senior executives attending to take the meaning of the country music songs and apply them to their own management methods”. Lynch also claimed that he was “placed on gardening leave for six months” after telling Whitman that “we are now rapidly losing a lot of good people”.
For me the description of management approach sounds a chime of truth. Here is the statement next to which I placed an exclamation point and a note to myself saying, “Yes”:
playing country music to the meeting [and] instructing the senior executives attending to take the meaning of the country music songs and apply them to their own management methods“. [emphasis added]
As I considered this observation, two songs in the genre of country, particularly the Wild West of Silicon Valley, activated:
- I’d Be Better Off in a Pine Box
- I Bought the Boots That Just Walked Out On Me.
HP and its management methods?
Stephen E Arnold, March 25, 2019
New CIA Chief Information Officer: Watson, Who Is It?
March 19, 2019
The answer comes not from IBM Watson. “CIA Announces New Chief Information Officer” reveals that Juliane Gallina, an IBM professional has landed the job. DarkCyber finds this interesting for three reasons.
Aurora, which means dawn and $500 million for one system, may be a new technology the CIA explores.
First, Amazon’s policeware found some traction in that government agency. IBM covets US government work. Amazon may find that Gallina may ask different questions in her tenure.
Second, IBM Federal Systems is the poster child for old-school government contracting. The idea within some sectors of the US government is to find a new-school approach. Gallina may have some interesting ideas about how next-generation systems are selected, shaken down, and made operational.
Third, Gallina has intelligence sector experience. Presumably that experience will make it easier to determine which units can best be served by specific technologies. Will that insight match the diverse community of interests within the CIA?
The appointment is going be one closely watched by those within and outside the Beltway. Perhaps there will be a new technology dawn at the agency. Aurora, it’s called.
Stephen E Arnold, March 19, 2019
Google Adds to Its Fancy Dancing Repertoire
February 21, 2019
I assume that someone at Google learned about the UK report hashtagging Facebook as a “digital gangster.”
Google is almost certainly aware that regulatory scrutiny of the firm’s practices is likely to increase in 2019. One of Google’s easier dance moves is reported in “Google Exec Reorganizes Policy Shop as Global Threats Loom.” Nothing solves problems like influencers, insiders and money. The write up asserted:
“Public Policy,” will become “Government Affairs and Public Policy.”
Ah, wordsmithing.
Tougher to explain is the report is another wave of advertisers (many of which have no other way to promote their products and services) are finding themselves taking a mor-tical stand. (That’s a combo of moral and ethical, a neologism for online marketing.)
I noted “Nestle, Disney Pull YouTube Ads, Joining Furor Over Child Videos.” The sometimes source free Bloomberg reports:
Walt Disney Co. is said to have pulled its advertising spending from YouTube, joining other companies including Nestle SA, after a blogger detailed how comments on Google’s video site were being used to facilitate a “soft-core pedophilia ring.” Some of the videos involved ran next to ads placed by Disney and Nestle.
Bloomberg, true to real news norms, adds this statement:
YouTube on Tuesday released an updated policy about how it will handle content that “crosses the line” of appropriateness.
I don’t want to dwell on appropriateness, lobbying, or the cycle of surprise, apologies, and remediation which seems more like a visit to the previously owned and lightly used shop.
Like Facebook, Google has some interesting methods of generating revenue as it continues to avoid the “digital gangster” moniker. Inappropriate kiddie content is, however, problematic for any organization. How? Why? How much? Who? — Questions which may warrant answers some day. Maybe.
It may be time for the founders to distance themselves even more from the online ad giant. The quite valuable 25 year old teapot may be reaching it limit for safe operation.
Stephen E Arnold, February 21, 2019
Elsevier Excitement: Not an Oxymoron
January 16, 2019
Professional publishing – the information designed for lawyers, accountants, scientists, technologists, and their ilk – is usually a quiet place. Notice that I did not say, “Dull.”
Now one of the leaders in this small club of gatekeepers has evidenced some actual management excitement at least here in Harrod’s Creek.
According to Inside Higher Education:
The entire editorial board of the Elsevier-owned Journal of Informetrics resigned Thursday in protest over high open-access fees, restricted access to citation data and commercial control of scholarly work. Today, the same team is launching a new fully open-access journal called Quantitative Science Studies.
Most of the folks outside the STEM world of publishing are unaware that many professional publishers rely on a very reliable business model. Some of its features include:
- Work with august academic institutions to make sure the paper based “publish or perish” model is required for anything close to a tenure track or a jump in pay
- Charge the authors for various things. Remember. The authors have to publish in esteemed journals which are in theory reviewed by hard working peers. The idea is to make sure those fudged data are identified and stopped before the vetted paper is published. Non reproducible results? Let’s not talk about those.
- Charge the academic institutions with the tenure track and aspiring scholars to subscribe to these peer reviewed journals.
- Recycle the content in different ways to generate downstream revenue from online databases and services.
- Work with vendors who create digital or microfilm versions of the older versions of the publications to generate royalties.
Most of these methods are little known and only partially understood by individuals who don’t pay much attention to a $2,000 for four issues paper publication.
Now the revolt is indeed exciting. The write up does the normal journalism thing. The good stuff is the business model, the somewhat generous money generating mechanisms from which the authors and the institutions are excluded, and the fact that scholarly information is only available to those with the money to pay for these documents.
Is this the beginning of the end for Elsevier-type outfits and their close cousins, the Reed Elsevier type outfits?
To me this is an interesting question.
Stephen E Arnold, January 16, 2019
Google and the Revolt of the Science Club Within
January 15, 2019
I know I said I would cover more DarkCyber topics, but I read a remarkable article called:
With a headline like this one, let’s look at a couple of the statements set forth in the write up as factualities:
The [Instagram and Twitter] campaign is another example of the growing movement of tech employees publicly critiquing industry-wide practices they say are leading to inequality in the workplace. The tech industry has for years seen abysmal diversity statistics related to employment of female and underrepresented minorities in its workforce. Supporters of the campaign say that ending forced arbitration is a key step to creating a fairer workplace culture that will help curb such disparity.
The point to note is that Google which has largely failed at social media has employees who use the services the online ad giant was unable to understand, me-to, and make successful. Interesting. A disconnect signal perhaps?
Another statement from the write up:
As part of the effort, the group organizing the campaign researched the contracts of around 30 major tech companies and 10 of the biggest suppliers of contract employees for major tech companies. Not a single tech company met their basic criteria for protecting employees’ rights to pursue legal action against their companies for workplace issues, the group said.
Hmm. The “30 major tech companies” include outfits like Boeing, Raytheon, IBM, and similar giants? I don’t know. My hypothesis is that the “major” are outfits which are in the San Francisco-San Mateo area.
What is clear, however, is that giant companies which have acted as if they were countries now have governance problems to go along with their management challenges.
I have termed the broad approach to managing Yahoo-type outfits (I use Yahoo as an archetype, not a functional company) the HSSCMM or high school science club management method. The approach operates in ways that can be baffling to those not in the science club; for example, the junior prom is stupid. Only dorks go. The notion is that by exclusion one becomes more exceptional.
Now we have a terrarium in which to watch a science club go to war with its very bright, very elite, and very sciencey members.
Exciting? Nah. Interesting? Maybe. Financially significant? Oh, yes.
Stephen E Arnold, January 15, 2019
Google: Is Unionization an Possibility?
January 3, 2019
While some companies are being called out for sexual misconduct, Google is being called out for an ethics violation along with sexual harassment. The Verge reports on how Google is breaking its ethical code of conduct in the article, “A Looming Strike Over Project Dragonfly Is Putting New Pressure On Google.” Project Dragonfly is Google’s attempt at launching search in China. The problem, however, is that China operates behind the Great Firewall and censors all Internet content.
Google workers or Googlers are against their projects being thrown under China’s governmental thumb, thus forced to censor search results. This is not the first time Googlers were unhappy with their company. In November 2018, Googlers staged a walkout in retaliation for Google ignoring sexual harassment claims. The walkout was successful and forced Google to react. If Google refuses to change its business tactics on Project Dragonfly, Googlers might do more than stage a walkout. They will have an old-fashioned strike and are already collecting funds to help strikers pay for daily expenses.
“What would trigger a strike? [Liz] Fong-Jones suggested that Google would have to cross a red line — launching Dragonfly in China without a proper review of Dragonfly’s privacy implications, for example. “I firmly suggest that my current fellow colleagues think about what they’d do if the red line were crossed and an executive overrode a S&P launch bit, or members of the S&P team indicated that they were coerced into marking it green,” Fong-Jones wrote, referring to the company’s security and privacy teams. How far away are we from that red line? …reports that at one point, the Dragonfly team was told to prepare to launch between January and April of next year. Given the current controversy — and the ongoing US trade war with China — that timeline almost certainly has been pushed back.”
Googlers have way more power than factory workers striking against their manufacturing plant shutting down. They are smart, know how to use social media to their advantage, and could cripple Google in more ways than one. It is nice to see Silicon Valley standing up for ethical practices, but how long will they last?
Whitney Grace, January 3, 2019
King Zuck: Above the Law? Yeah, Maybe
December 20, 2018
Though today’s major tech companies can, willingly or accidentally, make startling impacts on society, corporate executives are still primarily accountable only to their shareholders. And in the case of one of the largest and most beleaguered companies, Vox informs us, “Mark Zuckerberg is Essentially Untouchable at Facebook.”
Reporter Emily Stewart begins by recounting some recent criticisms lobbed at the company. First, the New York Times described Facebook’s deliberate efforts to downplay controversies from the Cambridge Analytica data breach to the spread of Russian propaganda on their platform. Then there is the Wall Street Journal’s report that Zuckerberg considers his company to be “at war,” and that both morale and stock prices are in decline. And yet, the digital king remains untouchable. Stewart writes:
“He reiterated the point in an interview with CNN Business this week, saying that stepping down as chairman is ‘not the plan.’ And the thing is, no one can make him. Even before the latest scandals, there have been questions about whether too much influence within Facebook has been placed with Zuckerberg and, among some investors, pushes for him to renounce his position as chair of the board. But because of the way Facebook’s shareholder structure is set up — and the number of shares Zuckerberg holds — there’s no way for anyone to force him out. Facebook may be a publicly traded company, but Zuckerberg pretty much makes the rules.”
The write-up outlines the reasons Facebook’s corporate structure means Zuckerberg always gets the most votes, and notes most corporations are set up this way. (See the article for those details.) It continues:
“That means that whatever shareholders are voting on — typically at Facebook’s annual meeting, usually in May — Zuckerberg and those closest to him are always going to win out. Bob Pisani at CNBC estimated earlier this year that Zuckerberg and the group of insiders control almost 70 percent of all voting shares in Facebook. Zuckerberg alone controls about 60 percent.”
Not that shareholders are silently accepting this status quo. A number of them have made proposals that would limit their famous CEOs power, including bringing in an “independent” board chair. Mysteriously, though, none of those proposals have received enough votes to pass.
But in the back of my mind is the sharing of private communications, the loss of private images, and the orbital sander approach to helping an ethical compass find true revenue.
Cynthia Murrell, December 20, 2018
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