Ah, Facebook: High School Science Club Management in Action
November 23, 2018
In my high school, a person who did not relate to the math and science clubs’ superior humans might find their class notes defaced or something interesting in one’s locker.
I learned that “Facebook admits targeting George Soros after he criticized company.” Mature. I noted that the lean in executive Sandberg has revealed that the Definers relationship “crossed her desk.” Wait. I thought she did not know about hiring this outfit. I suppose the Washington Post is mistaken in its Switch column. Mistakes happen.
But that action was not the surprise I experienced when I read “Facebook Appeals Data-Sharing Fine ‘For Your Sake.” Nifty angle. “My sake.”
Stephen E Arnold, November 23, 2018
The Facebook Management Play: Not Much to Change
November 22, 2018
I read two articles this morning. I came away with the thought that Facebook is not eager to change.
The first article is “As Problems Pile Up, Mark Zuckerberg Stands His Ground in Exclusive CNN Business interview.” The main idea appears to be:
Zuckerberg resisted growing calls for changes to Facebook’s C-suite, reiterated Facebook’s potential as a force for good, and pushed back at some of the unrelenting critical coverage of his company after a year of negative headlines about fake news, election meddling and privacy concerns.
The second article is “The Punctured Myth of Sheryl Sandberg.” Yep, the lean in thinker and doer. The main idea struck me as:
Sandberg played a central role in nearly every misdeed at Facebook that’s described in the Times piece. Singularly focused on the company’s stock price and its advertising-based business model, she worked to minimize data abuse and election interference.
So what?
Three observations:
- Facebook is not likely to change without some outside encouragement
- Ethical behavior appears to be a dynamic concept. Expedient behavior may be a suitable synonym.
- A company founded on getting info about potential dates has morphed into an organization capable of taking down carefully constructed social assemblies.
Change may be difficult. Habit, momentum, and money can be barriers. We may have a digital turkey to monitor.
Stephen E Arnold, November 22, 2018
High School Science Club Management: The Facebook Method
November 16, 2018
I am not much of a Facebooker. We use a script to pump out the titles of the items we post in the Beyond Search blog. I try to ignore Facebook, but – I must admit – that has been tough the last few days. The New York Times finally jabbed its remaining investigative skills into the juicy, fat cables of Facebookland. My takeaway from the long newspaper story which has many atwitter is that HSSCM is alive and well. HSSCM means to me “high school science club management.”
What sparks me to write this fine morning in rural Kentucky is an essay by the chief lean inner at his link. To read this essay, I have been informed I have to log in. I did not. I assume I saw the full Monty, but who knows? In practice it doesn’t matter because the drift of the write up is:
What? Who knew?
Yeah, sounds about right. Who put “Great Balls of Fire” on the Woodruff High School PA system at 7 45 am in 1958? Those of us in the WHS Science Club said:
What? Who knew?
Here in frosty Harrod’s Creek, the stories from Facebookland reveal the basic workings of HSSCM: Say what’s necessary to make the annoying Mr. McDonald (our WHS principal) go away.
We were the Science Club. We are the future. We knew better.
Sophomoric explanations work fine when one is 15. Transported to a publicly traded company I grow weary.
Time for a change. Lean into that.
Stephen E Arnold, November 16, 2018
High School Science Club: Employee Walk About
November 1, 2018
High school science club management methods face an interesting situation. The science club has a hierarchy. The whiz kids on the lower levels of that hierarchy are not getting with the program. Allegedly a small percentage of Google’s work force are unhappy with handling of alleged sexual misconduct. Here in Harrod’s Creek, we assumed that members of the high school science club school of thought worried about math, Fourier transforms, and k-means. If “We’re the Organizers of the Google Walkout. Here Are Our Demands” contains accurate information, some affected by high school management methods have other interests; for example, fairness, respectful behavior, and other old fashioned ideas.
I learned:
All employees and contract workers across the company deserve to be safe.
Fancy that.
Here’s an outrageous demand:
A clear, uniform, globally inclusive process for reporting sexual misconduct safely and anonymously. The process today is not working, in no small part because HRs’ performance is assessed by senior management and directors, forcing them to put management’s interests ahead of employees reporting harassment and discrimination. The improved process should also be accessible to all: full-time employees, temporary employees, vendors, and contractors alike. Accountability, safety and an ability to report unsafe working conditions should not be dictated by employment status.
What’s next for practitioners of high school science club membership? Better business processes? Executives not given to dalliances with fascinating methods of motivation? More responsible decision making? Nah, HSSCM methods are just better.
Google’s implementation of such management methods is as interesting as the company’s progress on solving death.
Stephen E Arnold, November 1, 2018
Advice for High School Science Club Type Managers
October 25, 2018
I spotted an interesting quote in “Aramark Exec: ‘Trying to Explain AI and Machine Learning to the C-Suite Is a Waste of Time’”.
Here it is:
“Trying to explain AI and machine learning to the C-suite is a waste of time,” said Pavan Arora, Chief AI Officer at Aramark. “Instead, show them what you can do. In doing so, you need to figure out your metric for this work. For example, if you’re looking at labor and optimization, the metric is about reducing over time and data optimization.”
Is this attitude one of the reasons companies like Facebook and Google take a more general approach to explaining exactly what their systems are doing?
High school science club management theory: Explaining why one puts a motorcycle on the roof of the high school is a waste of time. “They” would not understand. Now about those MIT pranks?
Stephen E Arnold, October 25, 2018
Facebook Founder: Flagged for After Class Detention?
October 18, 2018
I read a interesting and unintentionally amusing item in the UK newspaper (famous for real news too) called “Facebook Under Fire As US Officials Back Removal of Zuckerberg As Chairman.” My recollection is that Marc Zuckerberg owns the school, but the idea is still intriguing.
The idea is that smart money, four state government officials, and some of the “only” 30 million people whose credentials were breached think it is time for a change in leadership at Facebook.
I noted this statement:
The move comes as Facebook was presented with a new legal challenge. The technology company has been accused of misleading advertisers by inflating the viewing figures for videos on its site. A group of US advertisers launched a fraud claim against the social media giant on Tuesday, stating that it had overstated the average viewing time of advertising videos on the site by between 100 and 900pc before reporting them in 2016.
Does this mean that Facebook shaped facts? Let’s let the legal process chug along.
I also highlighted this passage:
“For years, Facebook has graded its own homework to the benefit of its shareholders and to the detriment of its advertising partners and a healthy marketplace,” said Jason Kint, chief executive of Digital Content Next. “This unfair and deceptive behavior underscores why industry and policymakers should have zero trust in the leadership of Facebook.”
High school science club management? Well, sort of. I anticipate some “I’m sorry. Really, really sorry” outputs.
Since I don’t use Facebook, I am not qualified to comment on the service, its advertising approach which baffled me when I tried to buy a $25 ad for “Dark Web Notebook,” and the numerous friends Ben and Tess (former pet boxers) attract on Facebook. Neither dog posts, but we do allow a software script to put up information about my antics on occasion.
My problem with the story is the word “leadership.” I am not confident that Facebook possesses this operational process. But, hey, I live in rural Kentucky. What do you expect from a bourbon loving, squirrel hating 75 year old?
Stephen E Arnold, October 18, 2018
Google: Is Technical Erosion Taking Place?
October 17, 2018
Two interesting reports caught my attention.
The first concerns the access problems experienced on October 16, 2018, with YouTube and YouTube Music. The details appear in “Back online. It’s Not Just You, YouTube and Other Google Services Are Down.” The write up states:
According to downtime tracker DownDetector, most people who are seeing the YouTube outage are in eastern and western United States and the UK. The site is seeing a very notable spike in reports of the web’s most popular video hosting site being down. Readers as far spread as Canada, India, Australia and Brazil are also reporting being affected.
Google’s infrastructure is large, complex, and subject to anomalies. Google was on top of the problem. The write up reports that Google dispatched “a team of highly trained monkeys” to rectify the glitch. Understandable, but YouTube is an ad revenue machine. The outage may have had an impact on Google Play, the pay-to-use-it service which will be available in the European Union soon. A YouTube outage is difficult to ignore even for monkeys. Did a monkey cause the problem or was it an annoying human user or a bad actor?
The second issue is related to Google’s self driving automobiles. “Google Engineer Triggered Self-Driving Car Accident That Went Unreported” asserts:
Google never publicly reported multiple autonomous vehicle crashes.
Let’s assume that the statement is accurate. The notion of a “failure to report” echoes the information in “Alphabet in the Soup for Keeping Quiet about Google Plus Data Leak Bug.” The article says:
Alphabet also failed to make investors aware that the company’s security measures “had failed recently and massively”; that they had been breached “due to employee error, malfeasance, system errors or vulnerabilities”; and that security protections had not shielded personal user data.
Google’s technology is quite good. Maybe there is no deterioration. What seems to be surfacing are examples of management decisions which are situational. I will pass these articles to the Beyond Search team compiling data about high school science club management methods.
Glitches and judgment could become the metaphorical equivalent of peanut butter and jelly, ham and eggs, or pressure and cracking in Inconel tubes.
Stephen E Arnold, October 17, 2018
Guess Who Has Not Been in an MIT Dorm for Men?
October 16, 2018
I know that Wikileaks is an interesting source of information. I usually do not mention the organization, its founder, or its information in this blog. However, I read “Leaked Memo: No Internet Until You Clean Your Bathroom, Ecuador Told Julian Assange.” Good stuff. So, let me make an exception to my minimalist approach to Wikeleaks.
I noted this statement in the write up:
London’s Ecuadorian embassy has slapped WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange with a nine-page memo of house rules to follow if he wants to see the internet again under their roof.
The nine page memo contained this passage, which strikes me as a classic administrative response to a guest who has undesirable habits:
In order to safeguard the sanitary conditions of the Embassy facilities, Mr Julian Assange and his visitors will conserve the cleanliness and hygiene of the bathroom and other spaces that they use inside the embassy. For the same reasons, Mr Julian Assange will be responsible for the well-being, food, cleanliness and proper care of your pet. If the pet is not given due attention, the Head of Mission will ask Mr Assange to deliver the pet to another person or an animal shelter outside the Diplomatic Mission.
Yep, the cat is likely to be a pivot point.
However, what the memo reveals to me is that no one in the Ecuadorian embassy has had an opportunity to live in an MIT men’s dorm, spend time with some of the professionals participating in hackathons which require around the clock coding, or checked out the garbage left on Starbuck tables at 175 East El Camino Road.
Mr. Assange may be behaving in a manner which seems normal and—quite possibly—expected of a person with technical expertise.
Ecuador, however, does not seem to understand the cultural context of Mr. Assange’s approach to maintaining self, pet, and domicile.
What happens when an irresistible force meets and immovable object?
Trash and slovenly behavior escalate. Entropy takes numerous forms.
Stephen E Arnold, October 16, 2018
HSSCM: Organizing for Success in Google Plus
October 16, 2018
I continue to collect examples of high school science club management methods. My thought is to extract the “principles” of this approach. With MBA programs looking at a decline in student enrollments, perhaps these ideas will spark some new thinking at these august institutions.
The source of this example is the write up “Now That Google+ Has Been Shuttered, I Should Air My Dirty Laundry on How Awful the Project and Exec Team Was.” The author worked at Google for eight months, if LinkedIn contains accurte information. These observations date from the period in 2011 and 2012. I pegged the Golden Era of Google as ending in 2006, so these observations come as Google’s trajectory to the “new and improved era” indicate the direction of movement at the online ad company.
I highlighted a handful of items from the essay, which I have edited to remove the language which might be offensive to some of the more educated residents of Harrod’s Creek, Kentucky:
Statement 1: “I’m still #%*/! about the bait and switch they pulled by telling me I’d be working on Chrome, then putting me on this god forsaken piece of #%*/! on day one.
Beyond Search goose observation: Ah, has. Get hired. Get assigned. Then condemned to prowling the Google internal comms system for teams you might want to join. In short, bait and switch or—more likely—disorganization within the Google personnel hobby shop.
Statement 2: The [Google interview] process felt very haphazard.
Beyond Search goose observation: Ah, disorganization. The implementation of “we’re so smart, whatever we do will work out”. High school science club members are quite confident their ideas are better than those generated by the doobies on the student council.
Statement 3: The CEO didn’t just have an office. The entire floor was his [the person with the four corner office is Larry Page, the flying car entrepreneur].
Beyond Search goose observation: One needs room in which to operate, to fly new ideas like Loon balloons and cars which take wing. HSSCM principle: Get the biggest: Company, money, online ad system, etc. The wrestling team can occupy a squalid corner of the locker room. That’s the area with splintered benches, bent lockers, and slime on the green and yellow tile.
Statement 4: During the 8 months I was there, culminating in me leading the redesign of his product, Vic [Gundotra, the former head of Google Plus and once a Microsoft wizard] didn’t say a word to me.
Beyond Search goose observation: Communication is for goofs. If you are Googley, you know what’s what. Don’t get it? Become a Xoogler or work on scripts for updating indexes in the building near the lawyers. HSSCC principle: Telepathy is a functional way to coordinate work.
Statement 5: If your team, say on Gmail or Android, was to integrate Google Plus’s features then your team would be awarded a 1.5-3x multiplier on top of your yearly bonus. Your bonus was already something like 15% of your salary. You read that correctly. A #%*/! ton of money to ruin the product you were building with bloated garbage that no one wanted.
Beyond Search goose observation: In the handbook of HSSCM, it is not necessary to obtain information from potential user and actual users of an online service. The idea is to make decisions motivated by compensation. Combine this with the Microsoft method of soliciting feedback and then ignoring, and the HSSCC approach ensures a certain distance between what’s created and what users actually want. I don’t want to go “William James” on you, gentle reader, but this type of disconnection is important to effective HSSCC methodology.
Statement 6:
Everything being produced felt disjointed or siloed. Not part of the whole. The M.O.[modus operandi, a Latin phrase in case you did not recognized the acronym] was build and copy as much #%*/! as possible.
Beyond Search goose observation: HSSCM principle: If an employee does not understand the objective, the employee is not Googley. Obviously the failure to tune into the correct wavelength proves the inferiority of the humanoid.
Statement 7: None of this stuff was tightly integrated. More of a layer on top of everything. I wanted to change that. This was Plus when I joined. Lots of sections. Lots of junk. Bad navigation.
Beyond Search goose observation: Notice the duplication. In the HSSCC approach, everyone can do his or her own thing. (Yep, even my science club in 1958 had a female member. She changed schools, probably because of the general behavior of the advanced class toward those in “regular” classes. Welcoming is not a word associated with HSSCM methods. Operative concept: Wrappers, fixes, and good enough plus telepathy. Excellent guidelines.
Statement 8: They [fellow Googlers] didn’t care about what was better.
Beyond Search goose observation: HSSCC management does not require excellence. Membership means recognition. Stomp on others in the club so you get the recognition. Cue the theme music from Fame. Excellence? When one is a Googler, that’s like water to a fish. Ergo: Kill the other fish. Get the water.
Onward to management effectiveness.
Stephen E Arnold, October 16, 2018
HSSCM Method: October 13, 2018 Update
October 13, 2018
i read “Google CEO Refuses to Answer Detailed Questions on China in Letter to Senate.” CNET is a real news outfit, and I assume the information in the article is accurate. Perhaps Google’s information was not understood by the Senate. I do not think it is possible for the Senate to remain far from a political quasar.
The write up states that the Google letter included this statement:
We are approaching these issues deliberately, and whether we would or could release a search service in China remains unclear. Accordingly, we are not in a position to be able to answer detailed questions.
That seems pretty clear to me, but I live in rural Kentucky. This fact may give me a different appreciation of the English language. For me, the passage quote above means something along the lines:
I am not going to provide information to you. So there.
I think this approach is characteristic of a high school science club refusing to explain to the chemistry teacher where the concentrated hydrochloric acid went.
I recall one of our chemistry aces, whom shall remain nameless, saying to Virgil Shepherd, our estimable chemistry teacher:
I don’t know. Maybe the regular chemistry class used it instead of vinegar.
Mr. Shepherd did not buy the statement. But what could he do? The science club contained a published author, most of the top 20 students in the school, and knew that the regular chemistry students would lack the insight to stonewall.
Hey, did Mr. Shepherd want Illinois State Scholars, students who also attended local universities to rack up college credit from leaving high school, and and people who just rolled over when nobodies like chemistry teachers asked semi informed questions?
Of course not. He wanted a rubber chicken dinner just like the other teachers who had half a clue.
Now back to the letter. It is my content that it demonstrates the HSSCM method of talking down to lesser mortals.
This behavior is a core principle. Those who are in a more rarified atmosphere do not have to grub in the polluted atmosphere of dullardness.
Back to the article, the letter allegedly was “sent” on August 31. Well, that is a long time when measured in Internet minutes.
What’s the outcome?
First, it is now October 11, 2018, and the letter is ancient history when viewed from a science club’s perspective. Time’s a wastin’ when you are disruptin, some say.
Second, anger is not a trait one expects from august elected officials. Anger demonstrates a lack of judgment, patient, and rational thought. Logic and data are essential, unless one decides to do something due to a “feeling”. See this HSSCM example for a logical exception. The idea is, I believe, “we make the rules we follow, not some ageing group of former student council members.” Thus, the outcome will be more aloofness and objectivity from the author of the letter.
Third, nothing. Stalling is a known method of thwarting lesser mortals. These non Googlers often struggle to maintain focus. When delayed, the lesser mortals fight among themselves. The high school science club continues on its merry way. Science club members, we knew, were the future.
What’s the punishment? Detention in the library? A fine? Okay, parents will pay. Pull out of College Bowl (the TV show) or drop out of the state’s Quick Recall competition.
Hardly.
Today as it was then? Yep. High school science club management methods—works every time. Usually.
Stephen E Arnold, October 13, 2018
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