A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here.

Unlike most folk, when tech types want to improve their sex life they assume there’s an app for that.

If there isn’t they create one.

[Jakub] Konik’s foundational story is a simple one: he was having sex with his girlfriend, and he started wondering how many calories they burned during one particularly memorable session. Stunned to discover there were no existing apps that could answer that rather specific question, he came to the conclusion that he should create one.

Wow! It doesn’t take much thought to see how connected sex toys can make a difference.

And before you laugh, know that at least a couple of the companies received funding.

So, give a cheer for this sexy version of ‘change the world.’

Image credit: HikingArtist

I went camping this past weekend with some buddies of mine. We went zip lining, rock wall climbing, as well as some hiking. The entire experience was designed to leave the phones behind, spend some time reflecting and form deeper bonds.

It gave me a chance to take a pause in my busy life and truly reflect on my meaning and what my passion should be. Did it culminate in a vision that I can carry forth? Absolutely not, however I did lay a foundation.

I think often about the grand journey of it all. When I fantasize about winning the lottery I truly think it will be great to finally have time off to climb the Seven Sisters, the highest mountain on each continent. I am less interested in stuff and more interested in experiences. The idea of climbing alone or going on a sprit quest has great appeal for me.

Why? I have thought about that, too. The closest idea I can come up with is that I am unsatisfied in my current state.

I lack the vision, so instead I seek an experience where I will be alone to receive it. But isn’t that shortsighted? Instead of waiting for our passion or vision, shouldn’t we just act and move toward it?

I think it may be a combination of both. When Jeff Bezos started Amazon he had a vision for something greater than just selling books, but I’m sure he didn’t envision what it currently is. Successes build upon each other and passion can too. So maybe we just need a small sample that we can turn into the finished product.

Where do you seek your passion?

Image credit: pirate_renee

is not always sufficient.

In 2008, the psychiatrist Stephen Greenspan published The Annals of Gullibility, a summary of his decades of research into how to avoid being gullible. Two days later, he discovered his financial advisor Bernie Madoff was a fraud,…

Why would an expert in gullibility be so gullible?

The answer, according to David Dunning, a University of Michigan social psychologist, is simple —

We are always most gullible to ourselves. (…) “To fall prey to another person you have to fall prey to your belief that you’re a good judge of character, that you know the situation, that you’re on solid ground as opposed to shifty ground,”

I read about Dunning’s research on incompetency way back in 2000, when he was at Cornell, and wrote about it in 2007, so learning how closely gullibility was related to incompetency made a great deal of sense to me.

A body of research has also established what scientists call “egocentric discounting”: If participants are asked to give an estimate of a particular fact, such as unemployment rate or city population, and then shown someone else’s estimate and asked if they’d like to revise their own, they consistently give greater weight to their own view than others’, even when they’re not remotely knowledgeable in these areas.

There lies the greatest danger, as well as the greatest challenge, for every manager when hiring outside of their own expertise — which is most of the time.

The easy part of the solution is to have team members with specific expertise included in the interview process.

The truly difficult part is to put aside your “egocentric discounting” and give credence to those more knowledgeable than yourself.

Image credit: ArrrRT eDUarD

What does a company like PwC do when it faces “crisis-level attrition” combined with little-to-no interest from new grads — their workforce lifeblood?

Run a study, of course. What else would a consultant do first?

Millennials, they found, did not object to long hours outright. They were as committed to their work as older colleagues. But they were also more willing to question long-held assumptions about how that work should be done. Given the abundance of connectivity, why was it necessary to be in the same physical building for 15 hours (on a good day) to get a job done? Why couldn’t they work from home when a project allowed?

No surprise there; the surprise came from a different segment of the 44,000 strong global workforce.

But here was the real surprise: Non-millennial employees wanted exactly the same thing. Virtually identical percentages of millennial employees and non-millennial workers said they would prefer to be able to shift their work hours to schedules that could accommodate both their personal and professional obligations—heading home early for family dinner, for example, in exchange for an early start or signing back on once the kids were in bed.

The only difference was that millennials were willing to speak up about their dissatisfaction, and to opt out when problems couldn’t be resolved. Over and over again, the results of the survey made clear: work was important, but a personal life was, too.

Duh. That “surprise” isn’t exactly rocket science.

For a company that makes its living from its intelligent counsel and problem solving skills, they really blew it. Beyond that, they seemed to ignore others’ research.

Research has found that productivity drops significantly after about 50 hours per week of work. Long hours come at a cost to employee health (paywall), which in turn leads to absenteeism, loss of productivity, and higher insurance costs for employers. It’s a game no one wins.

Every list I’ve seen, since millennials started working, describing what they wanted in the workplace more or less duplicated what I’d heard from other candidates for more than 30 years.

Millennial workers were just the first generation to call the game out as bullshit, in numbers large enough to force the rules to change.

Big mouths and a willingness to walk got McKenzie management’s attention, but the difference between McKenzie and other companies with similar cultures is that McKenzie admitted the problem, found the cause, crafted solutions and followed-through implementing them.

There are plenty of others still in denial.

A recent Vanity Fair profile of Goldman Sachs’s president and probable next CEO David Solomon praised his commitment to “healthy work-life balance.” At Goldman this means working no more than 70 hours per week—so long as no pressing deals are in the works.

And forget law firms.

Industries that bill by the hour have no financial interest in adopting a leaner workweek. “Many people will say, ‘Diminished returns are better than no returns’.”

I think that, too, will change as Generation Z follows the Millennials with even more willingness to walk — if they even choose that path in the first place.

Image credit: PwC

Poking through 11+ years of posts I find information that’s as useful now as when it was written.

Golden Oldies is a collection of the most relevant and timeless posts during that time.

People Like Me is probably one of the most important posts I ever wrote. Additionally, 12 years ago I said,

A workforce that homogenizes along any lines is a workforce that will either miss, ignore, or be unable to reach a part of their market.

And in 2007 I wrote,

Keep in mind that true diversity includes MAP and mental function, not just race and gender. I’ve known managers whose organizations were mini-UNs with equal numbers of males and females, but they might as well have been cloned from the boss, their thinking was so identical.

I call it “homogenizing,” which is the polar opposite of diversity, which includes race, gender, religion, ethnicity, and MAP. Research has proven that while diversity pays, homogenizing will kill you.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

A CEO (who wants to stay anonymous) called me today and said, “If charm causes bad hires, what causes “wrong hires?” He defined a wrong hire as one where a good person with good skills that seemed to fit the req was hired, but didn’t add the expected strength to the team. So I explained comfort zones and he said, “You should put that in the blog,” so I am.

I first wrote about comfort zones back around 1999 (Hiring in Your Comfort Zone) for msdn (Microsoft Developers Network, where I used to have a column) and the idea hasn’t changed a lot.

Our comfort zone is where we all prefer to do things. People want to spend their time with people like themselves. This isn’t about simple labels, such as race, religion or gender, which are more society’s labels. Our own subjective labels have more to do with schools (Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, etc.), specific professions (not fields), and especially companies (think McKinsey). It’s how we choose a way to connect, because, true or not, MIT grads believe they have more in common with MIT alums than with Cal or Columbia. Doctors hang out with doctors, usually those with the same, or similar, specialty or employer, but rarely with nurses or radiology techs. We like enough knowledge commonality so we don’t feel ignorant, but can still learn. It all boils down to, “people like me (PLM).”

And that maybe fine in our personal life—but not so fine in our professional life, especially not for managers responsible for hiring. The broader the PLM definition the longer it takes to become noticeable, but it’s there if you look for it.

I’ve known the following (often more than one who fits the profile):

• Director of system development who came from a software background, hired hardware engineers with extremely strong software experience, although it wasn’t needed.
• VP of marketing with a Harvard MBA whose team were all “Ivy.”

Think of the articles you are constantly seeing of new CEOs who hire the majority or their team from their previous employer with the express purpose of getting the same mindset. Bob Nardelli, the new CEO of Home Depot is a great example of PLM hiring. And sometimes it works, at least for awhile.

But the long-term cost to companies can be high.

• When the choice is between the best applicant and PLM, PLM usually wins out, slowly lowering the quality of talent.
• PLM homogenizes the staff, reducing diversity of both thinking and thought (methodology and result) and it’s that diversity that supplies strength and creativity.
• PLM can wreak havoc on retention efforts and drive out legacy knowledge.
• PLM hiring can involve just one part of a company or create a ripple effect, e.g. slow product development, which delays delivery, crimping sales and keeping the company from achieving its revenue goals.

Yes, all of this and much more are a product of a PLM mindset.

Image credit: Jurgen Appelo

The number tech CEOs who have been caught manipulating, lying, cheating, and other bad actions, all while claiming to be good guys, has skyrocketed.

Perhaps the result should be an additional title: CHO

While there are many (at all levels) who deserve the title, none has a higher profile than Mark Zukerberg.

His talk about caring for user privacy, security, etc., is common and constant, although results are negligible.

Hopefully, this time his blatant hypocrisy will come back and savagely bite him and Facebook.

Zukerberg stayed silent after the news broke that Cambridge Analytica covertly gathered data on 50 million Facebook users that was used by the Trump campaign for targeted advertising.

Then, on March 21, in a CNN interview he said, “I’m not sure we shouldn’t be regulated…”

He was referring to pending congressional legislation,

Honest Ads Act, a bill proposed in October 2017 that would require social media companies with more than 50 million monthly users to disclose information about any political advertiser that spends more than $500 pushing ads on their sites.

However, that statement, along with his similar comments in Wired, are pure poop, as the money spent lobbying against it proves.

Lobbyists for the company have been trying to dissuade senators from moving the Honest Ads Act forward, some Congressional aides say.

Facebook’s argument to Congress behind the scenes has been that they are “voluntarily complying” with most of what the Honest Ads Act asks, so why pass a law, said one Congressional staffer working on the bill. Facebook also doesn’t want to be responsible for maintaining the publicly accessible repository of political advertising, including funding information, that the act demands, the staffer said.

Facebook spent nearly $3.1 million lobbying Congress and other US federal government agencies in the last quarter of 2017, on issues including the Honest Ads Act according to its latest federal disclosure form. It also signed on Blue Mountain Strategies, a lobbying firm founded by Warner’s former chief of staff, an Oct. 30, 2017 filing shows.

Per normal, Zuk says, “I’m really sorry that this happened.”

So.

Apologize, say “it’s hard” and “not really our fault.”

Tell the public you support political transparency legislation.

Simultaneously spend millions to defeat it.

Hyper-pure hypocrisy.

Mark Zukerberg, Chief Hypocrisy Officer.

Fight back in the only way that matters: money. #deletefacebook, here’s how

Image credit: Ludovic Toinel

This week I was reading a post about the top companies to work for. The usual were on the list, Alphabet, Facebook, Salesforce and others. Amazon topped the list for a variety of reasons.

In the news as well is the Chapter 11 Bankruptcy that Toys R Us is filing. As I dug deeper, I also learned that Amazon is considering buying up some of the prime locations that will now be vacant, so they can move further into brick and mortar retail.

I found it pretty amazing that for all the news about retail being a dying segment it’s not actually the case. Instead, we are seeing a right sizing and elimination of poor performers across industries. Amazon is willing to move into direct retail in a way that Toys R Us or others never did. In my mind there are a lot of factors that go into it, but one thing is sure, the culture of a company will determine its outcome.

Now I’m not here to dissect what failed at Toys R Us; in fact I have fond memories of it as a child. As an adult, I was less than overwhelmed when I stopped in and I am not that heartbroken that they are closing.

From an economist’s standpoint I applaud the invisible hand working. However I also realize that decisions made years ago, such as a leveraged buyout, made Toys R Us susceptible to market failure.

What lesson can we pull from these two somewhat unrelated events?

On one hand, you have a top ranked company that wants to move further into brick and mortar retail. On the other hand, you have a major player leaving and many others struggling.

Is our future one where we have only a few spots to shop, Walmart, Amazon and perhaps Target? In that same breath do we also have three competing delivery systems now that Target acquired Shipt?

It probably won’t be that simple, but it does make one think how can we make a positive impact in our own industries.

Are we innovating? Are we looking at the needs of our customers and anticipating the future? Are we digesting data in ways not currently mainstream? These all can lead to greater returns and profits.

Now we just have to execute.

Image credit: drivebysh00ter

A few years ago I ended a post about youth and age with these words,

Everybody in tech focuses on the importance of “data driven” decisions—until the data doesn’t support the decision they want to make.

That’s when they start talking about the importance of “gut instinct” and “unconscious pattern recognition.”

Data only matters when it supports prevailing prejudice.

Everywhere you look you’ll find well-researched data that proves diversity significantly improves companies’ financial results no matter how you measure them.

Real diversity, however, means more than hiring women and minorities.

It means hiring them — men, women and minorities — at all stages of life.

Because, simply put, experience comes with age — wisdom is supposed to, but there’s no guarantee that it will.

In 2015 Google celebrated it’s experienced people.

The doll, a special edition of Google’s Android mascot, was a jokey tribute to the Greyglers, a group for the 40-and-over crowd at Google, and the doll hinted at how it felt to be an older worker in tech: funny, self-conscious, a little out of place.

That description certainly doesn’t fit Greyglers such as Sundar Pichai, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Susan Wojcicki to name the most obvious.

Satya Nadella was 47 in 2014 when he envisioned a new Microsoft. Not only envisioned it, but is orchestrating it into existence.

No way a twenty-something could have done either.

Age has enormous value, especially in fast-moving industries like tech.

The value at all levels comes not only from understanding the need for flexibility and developing it, but also the learning curve that comes from learning/using/discarding/repeat languages, etc. at the speed of tech. Not to mention the empathy that sparks innovation and usually (not always) comes with time and living.

Beyond the norm, the value of age/experience increases exponentially when it come to enterprise products.

Innovative/creative solutions to enterprise challenges resonate more clearly when building on a historical knowledge base than when starting from scratch.

So whether you are focusing on diversity hiring because it’s the right thing to do or for the financial gain, remember that true diversity goes beyond gender and race to encompass age.

Image credit: Search Engine Roundtable

Poking through 11+ years of posts I find information that’s as useful now as when it was written.

Golden Oldies is a collection of the most relevant and timeless posts during that time.

Last week looked at various recruiting and hiring scenarios and will looking at more this week.

Ignorance and bias have always played a role in all human endeavors. However, when they are known, recognized and yet still done, they deserve the label of stupid.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

On March 25^th I read an article on the newest perk, teaching employees how to start their own company, being used to lure talent; I choked and saved the URL for today’s post.

A few days later I read Bill Taylor’s reaction to the same article at HBR. To say that Taylor, who is a co-founder of Fast Company, is a big booster of entrepreneurial efforts is like saying Google is a modest success, but his reaction was the same as mine.

Rather than rehashing what he said (click and read it) I want to point out why jumping through hoops to hire from a certain tiny percentage of available talent is insanely stupid and tomorrow I’ll offer alternatives.

Insane because, as Einstein so aptly put it, “insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.”

Stupid because there is a wide range of talent available that would work its butt off for the right reasons.

Why it’s insanely stupid

1. The candidate who joins a company primarily for money, stock or whatever is hot du jour will quickly leave for more money, stock or hotter du jour. In other words, when joining a company is “all about me” there is nothing invested in the company, its values/culture, products or even its success, so when (not if) the going gets rough there’s no vested reason to stay.
2. Many companies and managers hire as much for bragging rights as for need. In other words, do you really need to hire god or will an angel or even a mortal do the job just as well?
3. One manager’s star is another manager’s failure. In other words, past achievement is an indicator, not a guarantee, of future performance.
4. Candidates have definite cultural ideas and needs. In other words, people perform based on how synergistic their cultural and managerial needs are with the same elements in their employer.

(Note: although the focus here is on software development, I’ve seen the same insanely stupid hiring in most fields and industries at one time or another.)

Companion posts,

• Insanely Smart Hiring
• Insanely Smart Retention and Stars

Image credit: Riccardo Bandiera

After reading about Gusto’s approach to diversity, I posed this question to a male founder I know and a friend of his, also a founder.

As a founder, what would you do if a top performer asked for a one-on-one meeting because she was uncomfortable and being treated poorly as the one woman on a team of 18 men.

The responses weren’t surprising; one was disappointing and the other disgusting.

One said he would do what he could, but also tell her that she’d be better off if she toughened up.

I don’t know the second guy very well, but it turned out that he is much more a bro. He said he’d tell her to stop whining and “grow a pair” and if it still bothered her maybe software engineering wasn’t where she belonged.

Compare them to Gusto cofounder and CTO Edward Kim’s, response.

Kim, Lee says, was extraordinarily receptive. In fact, he made it a personal project to study the gender breakdown on the engineering teams at other tech firms. The numbers he found were dismal.

Only 12% of the engineering staffers at 84 tech firms were female…  He also read a 2015 McKinsey study showing that companies with diverse workforces outperform financially. “The fact that no one else in tech was able to really crack the gender diversity nut and solve it represented an opportunity for us,” Kim says. “If we want to reimagine what HR is like for the very diverse workforces of our small-business customers, we ourselves have to build a diverse workforce.”

Boston Consulting published findings similar to McKensey’s in January. (Well worth reading.)

Kim’s and Gusto’s efforts have paid off handsomely.

• Gusto’s women-only recruiting effort lasted six months. It stopped, Kim says, because “we exceeded our goals.”
• Though hiring women engineers took more time, Kim says, Gusto never dropped its standards. “It bothers me when people say that prioritizing diversity lowers the bar in terms of the caliber of talent you’re able to hire,” he says. “That is simply not true.” Nor, he says, was there any pushback from inside Gusto.
• Gusto also addressed its compensation policy. Since 2016 its salaries have been audited by Mercer, a human resources consulting firm, which has found no gender pay disparity. Benefits include 16 weeks of paid leave for a primary parent, plus an additional $100 a week for groceries and food deliveries, $100 a month for six months of housecleaning and up to $500 for a baby-sleep coach.
• Now that 17 of Gusto’s 70 engineers are female, it’s getting a little easier, says Gusto’s HR head, Maryanne Brown Caughey. “It’s kind of a domino effect,” she says. “Women know they’re joining a welcoming community.”

While Kim is pleased with the results, he isn’t resting on his laurels.

While Gusto has made progress, its engineering team has no Latinos and no African-Americans. Kim says Gusto has two hiring goals in 2018: senior women and racial diversity in engineering. “The way we make progress is by focusing on one problem,” Kim says, “and then we move on to the next.”

Role model, indeed; techdom needs a lot more founders like Kim.

Image credit: Gusto