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Archive for October, 2019

Maybe Not a Geek — But Definitely a Slave

Wednesday, October 30th, 2019

https://www.flickr.com/photos/psd/8297424100/

No matter how much you earn you are still a slave.

A slave with many masters.

Enslaved by free stuff.

And sold to a myriad of buyers.

Image credit: Paul Downey

Tech’s Biggest Lie: Evolution

Tuesday, October 29th, 2019

https://www.flickr.com/photos/httpoldmaisonblogspotcom/2917049234/

As we saw yesterday, staying highly skeptical of all cyber-information, from friends/followers through speeches and videos is a necessity these days.

But the question arises,

Where did we get the idea that tech meant progress and that it’s inevitable.

Neither are true, especially the inevitable part.

The tech world loves to claim that technology is like evolution, therefore inevitable.

Technologists’ desire to make a parallel to evolution is flawed at its very foundation. Evolution is driven by random mutation — mistakes, not plans. (…)  Evolution doesn’t patent things or do focus groups. Evolution doesn’t spend millions of dollars lobbying Congress to ensure that its plans go unfettered.

What a crock, but people have bought into the mindset.

You can see it playing out in all the smart (hackable) products.

People claim they want the convenience, but that so-called convenience is killing creativity.

Humans make choices.

Tech bosses are human.

And it’s us humans who will pay the price for the supposed inevitability of tech evolution.

Image credit: Charles LeBlanc

Reviews, Followers and Friends

Monday, October 28th, 2019

Poking through 13+ 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.

Since this was written in 2012 things have gotten much worse, with deep fakes, audio and video, fake news and misinformation in general added to everything described in the post. Caveat emptor (let the buyer beware) is more true now and more important than ever before.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

Do you look for peer reviews, such as those on Yelp, Amazon and most consumer sites, before buying the product, visiting the restaurant or booking the hotel?

Before the Internet we asked our friends and checked critics’ comments in newspapers and magazines, in order to increase the odds for a favorable experience.

These days we check the Internet.

The wheels of online commerce run on positive reviews,” said Bing Liu, a data-mining expert at the University of Illinois, Chicago (…) Mr. Liu estimates that about one-third of all consumer reviews on the Internet are fake.

Consumer reviews are powerful because, unlike old-style advertising and marketing, they offer the illusion of truth. They purport to be testimonials of real people, even though some are bought and sold just like everything else on the commercial Internet.

Do rankings based on the number of followers people have influence your trust level or opinion of them? But how do you know they are real?

And it’s not just ego-driven blogger types. Celebrities, politicians, start-ups, aspiring rock stars, reality show hopefuls — anyone who might benefit from having a larger social media footprint — are known to have bought large blocks of Twitter followers.

Are you impressed when someone’s Facebook wall is filled with beautiful people?

They are for sale, too.

His idea, he said, was “to turn cyberlosers into social-networking magnets” by providing fictitious postings from attractive people. The postings are written by the client or by Mr. Walker and his employees, who base the messages on the client’s requests.

If having to choose between being a chump and a cynic isn’t up your alley, perhaps the best advice when it comes to reviews, followers and friends is ‘buyer beware’ and ‘if it seems to good to be true it probably is’.

Flickr image credit: Psychology Today

Origins of Entitlement

Wednesday, October 23rd, 2019

https://www.flickr.com/photos/thedailyenglishshow/16760477796/

I was going through some very old cuttings and this one jumped out at me.

I want all of my rights immediately, but have no urgent need of my obligations.

It was originally written about teenagers.

These days it seems to fit a lot of folks in the tech world and beyond — way beyond.

From sea to shining sea and on to Wall Street, then south to DC and the halls of Congress and the White House.

Image credit: studio tdes

The Power of Early Adopters

Tuesday, October 22nd, 2019

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/07/12/28-of-americans-are-strong-early-adopters-of-technology/

Have you ever wondered what makes a new app fly?

Have you heard of early adopters?

Would it surprise you to know that they make up only 13.5% of the population?

But that small percentage dictates what new products and services you will be able to do on your phone, tablet and computer.

Not 100%, obviously, but close, especially if you are an entrepreneur without “connections.”

Doubly so if you are a woman and triple (or more) for a person of color.

That 13.5% dates back to 2012. Two years later it had doubled to 28%, according to the Pew Research Center.

Still not much considering the outsize impact.

Image credit: Pew Research Center

Golden Oldies: Entrepreneur: Change the World

Monday, October 21st, 2019

Poking through 13+ 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.

It’s interesting that so many of the entrepreneurs whose ideas could actually change the world are either still in school (not college) or at the other end of the spectrum. It also seems that most of the 20s/30s/40s crowd are primarily interested in changing their financial status and burnishing their brand. Oops! Seems like I’m getting cynical in my golden years.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

I frequently see comments on blogs and social sites along the lines of “I know I could be an entrepreneur if I just had a good idea” or “I want to be an entrepreneur and change the world.”

Sadly, it seems that most are looking for ideas to make them the next Groupon or Foursquare and while that might make them rich, it will hardly change the world.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, but it won’t change much or get you into the history books.

You change the world by tackling real-world problems, often with hard science.

But you don’t need to be a scientist; self-taught Gary Cola invented the world’s lightest, strongest steel that takes less than ten seconds to make.

In fact, you don’t have to be an adult. Take a look at the winners of the first Google Science Fair and you will be blown away; none are 18 yet and none of their ideas involved the Internet.

Here’s an idea; if you want to change the world look for problems with global impact. Blake Mycoskie is changing the world with shoes and glasses, while Anthony Capone, CEO of Nimbus Water Systems, is changing it with inexpensive, solar-powered, portable water purification systems.

Then there are toilets.

Yes, toilets.

That handy gadget that we take for granted (unless it isn’t working) and that many parts of the world only dream about.

“No innovation in the past 200 years has done more to save lives and improve health than the sanitation revolution triggered by invention of the toilet.” –Sylvia Mathews Burwell, president of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s global development program

And the Gates Foundation is putting its money where its mouth is.

Look around; think about changing the world by reinventing or innovating something that addresses a basic need.

You may not end up as rich as Mark Cuban, but I guarantee that it’s the sexiest, most exciting, rewarding, feel-good thing you’ll ever do.

Image credit: Kate Ter Haar

47 Billion to Almost Zero in Just Six Weeks

Wednesday, October 16th, 2019

https://www.flickr.com/photos/southbeachcars/30059814877/

Top bosses can create/ruin more than a company’s culture, they can literally destroy the company.

How much damage can one person inflict?

Ask Adam Neumann, founder and ex-CEO of WeWork.

Just six weeks ago, the coworking giant WeWork was the US’s most valuable tech startup.

How valuable? Try $47 billion, based on it’s last funding round.

Then it tried to go public.

Almost immediately, all hell broke loose. A steady stream of rapid-fire headlines detailed Neumann’s self-dealing, mismanagement, and bizarre behavior. Within 33 days the offering was scuttled, WeWork’s valuation plummeted 70% or more, and Neumann, who believed he would become the world’s first trillionaire, was ousted as CEO. What was supposed to be Neumann’s coronation as a visionary became one of the most catastrophically bungled attempted debuts in business history.

Hard to believe, but it seems a lesson has been learned and the so-called magic of Silicon Valley is waning. Visions and charisma are no longer enough.

Investors, reporters, and analysts, chastened after seeing Theranos revealed as a massive fraud and watching Uber fail to live up to the hype, didn’t let another visionary founder pull the wool over their eyes.

Without new funding, and with the IPO shelved, WeWork could run out of money by Thanksgiving and be forced to file bankruptcy.

Founders and CEOs aren’t gods.

They are mere mortals; human beings just as capable of screwing up as anyone else.

There’s an old Italian proverb that says it all — after the game, the King and the pawn go into the same box.

Image credit: Phillip Pessar

It’s the Boss, Stupid

Tuesday, October 15th, 2019

https://www.flickr.com/photos/vuhung/12461011705/

It’s said that people don’t leave companies, they leave bosses, but now and then it’s the top bosses, the ones who control the culture, who create the circumstances that incite an exodus, as opposed to an immediate manager.

That’s what’s going on at Google, according to James Whittaker, who left Microsoft for Google and then left Google to return there.

The Google I was passionate about was a technology company that empowered its employees to innovate. The Google I left was an advertising company with a single corporate-mandated focus.

Googlers have left because of harassment, retaliation, various governments’ contracts/projects, treatment of contractors, and other ethical considerations.

Google’s bosses are also some of the biggest hypocrites in tech. Worse even than Zuckerberg at saying one thing while doing the opposite covertly — especially something that negatively affects the entire planet, not just people’s privacy.

Despite making noises about becoming more environmentally friendly, Google has been quietly funding organizations which say climate change isn’t real [emphasis mine].

Fortunately, all the clandestine stuff keeps surfacing and people are coming to the realization that Google is anything but benevolent.

All these things fall under the culture umbrella.

A culture controlled by Google bosses.

Image credit: Nguyen Hung Vu

Golden Oldies: Ducks in a Row: Bosses Different as Night and Day

Monday, October 14th, 2019

Poking through 13+ 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.

CEOs screwing up their company culture isn’t new. And, one way or another, CEO ego is usually the cause; what differs is what they do now vs. then. Before, it was rotten decisions based on dinosaurian mindsets coupled with a god complex. Now the screw-ups tend to be grounded in rotten decisions based on hard-to-believe immaturity coupled with a god complex.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

Edicts by Steve Ballmer and tweets by David Sacks do not a culture change.

Changing culture doesn’t happen overnight and takes a lot of damn hard work.

But it can be done.

And for CEOs willing to take the time and do the work, the payoff is ginormous to the 10th power and goes well beyond money — for the company, the employees, stakeholders and last, but certainly not least, for themselves.

Just ask Satya Nadella or Lou Gerstner, who turned around IBM and said it best.

“I came to see, in my time at IBM, that culture isn’t just one aspect of the game—it is the game.”

On a funny, or should I say ironic, side note.

As I looked through past posts and articles I realized how similar in name Nadella is to his complete cultural and managerial opposite, [Robert] Nardelli.

Separated by two letters and a mental chasm that dwarfs the Grand Canyon.

Flickr image credit: jphilipg

Why Liberal Arts Boost Tech Careers

Tuesday, October 8th, 2019

https://www.flickr.com/photos/53272102@N06/28972252900/

Yesterday’s redux was about the importance of liberal arts in a tech-gone-crazy world.

New studies, with hard salary data, bear out this truth.

Yes, tech starting salaries are higher, but that difference goes away relatively quickly.

Not only that, but the tech skills needed today, especially the “hot” skills, didn’t exist 10 years ago, or even three to five years ago, so a tech career requires a willingness to constantly learn the newest whatever that comes along.

That translates to 40 years of racing to keep up with the newly minted competition.

Even staying current won’t assure a good career path, since if you want to go higher more soft skills, such as written and verbal communications, are required.

And in case you are part of my millennial and under audience, written skills don’t refer to proficient texting, while verbal skills mean competently carrying on face-to-face conversations.

Liberal arts can (should) open your mind to other experiences and viewpoints increasing your EQ and SQ, which is critical to getting ahead (and getting along).

There’s another reason liberal arts is even more important now and in the future — AI.

Techies are so enamored with the technology they haven’t given much thought to the fact that AI is best at repetitive functions — like coding.

AI apps like Bayou, DeepCoder, and Commit Assistant automate some tedious parts of coding. They can produce a few lines of code but they can’t yet write programs on their own, nor can they interpret business value and prioritize features.

The stuff AI can’t do isn’t found in a tech education, but liberal arts provides the foundation to do them.

Sometimes a cliché is useful. The bottom line is an education that combines tech skills for the short-term and liberal arts for both short and long-term is the real career winner.

(Note: Although the image above says liberal arts is for sales and marketing, it’s even more crucial for techies.)

Image credit: Abhijit Bhaduri

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