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Archive for February, 2020

Role Model: Craig Newmark

Wednesday, February 26th, 2020

https://www.flickr.com/photos/cambodia4kidsorg/6298843358

Is anyone in tech truly immune from the lure of the big bucks that come from mining user data?

Not just in the short haul, but over the long haul — like 25 years?

Certainly not Google, with its management-trashed “don’t be evil.”

Or Facebook, that continually violates its users in the name of revenue.

but there is one site known to techies and the rest of us alike.

Craigslist.

Craigslist started as an email listserv in 1995, when early web enthusiasts were looking for a sense of community and DIY education. By 1996, it had become a website with job listings, apartment rentals, and personal ads. Almost as soon as the internet was becoming widely available—roughly 1 out of 5 households was online at the time—Craigslist was there to help people find roommates, look for jobs, go on blind dates, or sell used furniture.

Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster has been at the helm since 2001, and the founder, Craig Newmark, is still involved in the company. For years, Newmark did customer service, responding to design complaints and concerns about scams. Today, Craigslist has more monthly page visits than The New York Times or ESPN, and it’s been incredibly profitable.

Its profitability might come as a surprise to some. Many of those I spoke with thought Craigslist was a nonprofit or that it was community-run. In fact, Craigslist has always charged money for certain ads, such as job postings and classified ads. (By siphoning revenue from classified ads, Craigslist has been one reason newspapers across the country have struggled to stay in business.)

More recently, Craigslist has started charging for other kinds of ads, such as real estate listings from firms and car ads from dealers.

But regular users don’t have to pay a fee. The site doesn’t display banner ads, nor does it sell user data to third parties.

Way back when Craigslist was a startup I met Craig and found him to be a very nice, unassuming guy and it seems  he’s still the same, as reflected in a 20017 interview.

“Basically I just decided on a different business model in ’99, nothing altruistic,” he said. “While Silicon Valley VCs and bankers were telling me I should become a billionaire, I decided no one needs to be a billionaire — you should know when enough is enough. So I decided on a minimal business model, and that’s worked out pretty well. This means I can give away tremendous amounts of money to the nonprofits I believe in … I wish I had charisma, hair, and a better sense of humor,” he added in a completely deadpan voice. “I think I could be far more effective.”

Current entrepreneurs seem more focused on charisma, hair, and reaching unicorn status via multiple rounds of investment. A sense of humor is considered optional.

Image credit: Cambodia4kids.org Beth Kanter

Crooked Signs of the Times

Tuesday, February 25th, 2020

https://www.flickr.com/photos/newtown_grafitti/8353307428/

It’s a good time for crooks of all kinds.

Corporate shenanigans are a growth industry. Not since the days of the robber barons has white collar crime enjoyed such freedom.

OVER THE LAST TWO YEARS, nearly every institution of American life has taken on the unmistakable stench of moral rot.

Tax evasion siphons 10,000 times more money out of the U.S. economy every year than bank robberies. SOURCE: FBI; IRS.

And this clubbiness has human costs. Tax evasion, to pick just one crime concentrated among the wealthy, already siphons up to 10,000 times more money out of the U.S. economy every year than bank robberies. In 2017, researchers estimated that fraud by America’s largest corporations cost Americans up to $360 billion annually between 1996 and 2004.

Tech took a personal hit thanks to Warren Buffet’s partner Charlie Munger and his views on EBITDA, which stands for earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. Tech companies love to talk about their “adjusted EBITDA,” because it makes them look profitable — even a financial loser like Uber.

“I don’t like when investment bankers talk about EBITDA, which I call bulls— earnings,” Munger said at a recent company shareholders meeting. “Think of the basic intellectual dishonesty that comes when you start talking about adjusted EBITDA. You’re almost announcing you’re a flake.”

Tech workers aren’t faring well, either, even at the most hallowed companies.

Silicon Valley has often held itself up as a highly evolved ecosystem that defies the usual capital-labor dichotomy — a place where investors, founders, executives and workers are all far too dependent on one another to make anything so crass as class warfare. The recent developments at Google have thrown that egalitarian story into doubt, showing that even in the most rarefied corners of Silicon Valley, the bosses are willing to close ranks and shut down debate when the stakes are high enough. (…)  Workers weren’t just organizing to save the world from Google. They were also organizing to save themselves from Google, where those who didn’t fit the mold of the straight, white, male techie felt they could be too easily marginalized or dismissed.

The rot isn’t just trickling down, it’s a raging torrent. Student cheating is at an all time high across grades and globally is a billion dollar market.

Philemon is part of the global industry of contract cheating in which students around the world use websites to commission their homework assignments. (…)  Lancaster began studying contract cheating more than a decade ago when he noticed one of his own students posting assignments online. “I found one of my students who was putting up my assignment up for tender on an internet site. So, people were bidding different amounts of money to complete that computer programming assignment.”

Let’s hope the handbasket we’re careening down in is well made, so we can survive our trip to Hell and come out the other side in one piece.

Image credit: Newtown grafitti

Hat tip to KG for sending me the white collar crime article.

Golden Oldies: Quotable Quotes: Bertrand Russell on Fear

Monday, February 24th, 2020

Poking through 14+ 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.

I used to have a feature called Quotable Quotes and may bring it back. Bertrand Russell, 1872 – 1970,  (use the link if you aren’t familiar with him; it is a good use of your time) spoke on many subjects. Considering current societal upheaval and forces at work today, it seems like a good time to review his comments on fear. I find them extremely timely, probably even more so than when they were written.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

Most of us live with one kind of fear or another, although few of us admit it. Fear often masquerades as something else—envy, arrogance, failure, success—to name just a few. Bertrand Russell provides interesting commentary on fear in it’s many guises.

“Fear makes man unwise in the three great departments of human conduct: his dealings with nature, his dealings with other men, and his dealings with himself.” This explains much of what’s going on in the world today.

Fear not only paralyzes us it builds in our minds until it’s many times its original size; as Russell points out, “Until you have admitted your own fears to yourself, and have guarded yourself by a difficult effort of will against their myth-making power, you cannot hope to think truly about many matters of great importance . . .” I would add that ‘of great importance’ doesn’t necessarily mean global in scope or world-changing—unless you mean your own little corner of the world.

These days superstition is rampant and cruelty—physical, mental and spiritual—abounds in epic proportions at every level of human interaction. It’s worse now than ever before because technology has shrunk the world, given a louder voice to these evils and muted what wisdom is available. Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom . . .

Envy is another form of fear; fear that someone has more, but as Russell points out there is always someone with more… “Envy consists in seeing things never in themselves, but only in their relations. If you desire glory, you may envy Napoleon, but Napoleon envied Caesar, Caesar envied Alexander, and Alexander, I daresay, envied Hercules, who never existed.”

Fear feeds off fear and can be overwhelming. Fear of technology is usually well masked, but it can be substantially diluted if you remember that technology is finite, while humans deal in the infinite. There will still be things that machines cannot do. They will not produce great art or great literature or great philosophy; they will not be able to discover the secret springs of happiness in the human heart; they will know nothing of love and friendship.”

Fear drives ideology, ideology preempts thought and not thinking kills or, as Russell said, “Many people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.”

Russell didn’t name it, but he had a wonderful take on ideology, “The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.”

Image credit: Wikipedia

Fighting Tech

Wednesday, February 19th, 2020

Maybe it takes tech to beat tech.

Or founders who plan to walk their talk even after them become successful, unlike the “don’t be evil” guys.

More entrepreneurs are pursuing social or environmental goals, said Greg Brown, a professor of finance at the Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise at the University of North Carolina.

Companies like Toms, Warby Parker and Uncommon Goods have pushed this concept into the mainstream by creating successful business models built around helping others. This trend has led to the rise of B Corporations, a certification for companies that meet high standards of social responsibility. The program started in 2007, and now more than 2,500 companies have been certified in more than 50 countries.

Including Afghanistan.

Not all these startups make it and many are choosing to do it sans investors who often start pushing for growth and revenue, social mission be dammed.

And they are slowly succeeding.

Companies like Moka are a reflection of how consumers think as well, Professor Brown said. As people’s wealth increases, they think more about quality and less about quantity. They also consider the social context of what they’re buying.

Others are developing tech to defend against tech.

The “bracelet of silence” is not the first device invented by researchers to stuff up digital assistants’ ears. In 2018, two designers created Project Alias, an appendage that can be placed over a smart speaker to deafen it. But Ms. Zheng argues that a jammer should be portable to protect people as they move through different environments, given that you don’t always know where a microphone is lurking.

These may not be the solution, assuming there is one, but this definitely isn’t.

Rather than building individual defenses, Mr. Hartzog believes, we need policymakers to pass laws that more effectively guard our privacy and give us control over our data.

You have on to consider tech’s actions in Europe to know that laws don’t stop tech.

There’s another potential positive brewing in tech — actually a disruption of sorts.

That’s the long-time coming move away from current ageist thinking.

As brilliant as young coders are, though, the industry can’t survive on technical chops alone. Last year, Harvard Business Review shared that the average age of a successful startup founder isn’t 25 or 30—it’s 45 years old.

Call it a miracle, but investors, the majority over 40, are starting to value the experience that comes with age.

Hopefully, in the long-run, the potential for success will outweigh the hang-up on age.

As a whole, entrepreneurial communities also need to do more to bring diverse groups to meet-ups, panels and speaking engagements. The importance of having more voices at the table can’t be diminished.

Let’s just hope it isn’t too long.

Image credit: Ron Mader

Is Tech Unstoppable?

Tuesday, February 18th, 2020

If, like me, you wonder if there is anything to stop tech from its all-consuming forward march, there may be.

Tech needs two things to keep going

  • workers and
  • users

So what happens when those segments start rebelling?

There’s a tech backlash best seen in the newest crop of workers.

“Working at Google or Facebook seemed like the coolest thing ever my freshman year, because you’d get paid a ton of money but it was socially responsible,” said Chand Rajendra-Nicolucci, 21, a senior at the University of Michigan. “It was like a utopian workplace.”

Now, he said, “there’s more hesitation about the moral qualities of these jobs. It’s like how people look at Wall Street.”

“It felt like in my freshman year Google, Palantir and Facebook were these shiny places everyone wanted to be. It was like, ‘Wow, you work at Facebook. You must be really smart,’” said Ms. Dogru, 23. “Now if a classmate tells me they’re joining Palantir or Facebook, there’s an awkward gap where they feel like they have to justify themselves.”

Audrey Steinkamp, a 19-year-old sophomore at Yale, which sends about 10 percent of each graduating class into tech, said that taking a job in Silicon Valley is seen as “selling out,” no different from the economics majors going into consulting who are “lovingly and not-so-lovingly called ‘snakes.’”

“The work you do at a place like Facebook could be harmful at a much larger scale than an investment bank,” Ms. Dogru said. “It’s in the pockets of millions of people, and it’s a source of news for millions of people. It’s working at a scary scale.”

Oops, seems that the moral considerations of where to work are of much more importance for both college and grad students.

Agriculture is supposed to be a market “ripe for disruption,” including tractors that do everything except scratch your back.

You’d think farmers would be cheering.

Instead they are searching out tractors made in the 1970s and 80s that are more profitable to use.

Tractors manufactured in the late 1970s and 1980s are some of the hottest items in farm auctions across the Midwest these days — and it’s not because they’re antiques.

Cost-conscious farmers are looking for bargains, and tractors from that era are well-built and totally functional, and aren’t as complicated or expensive to repair as more recent models that run on sophisticated software.

And it’s the “sophisticated software” they don’t want.

But tractors from the 1970s and 1980s aren’t so dramatically different from tractors produced in the 2000s, other than the irksome software, and at a time when farmers are struggling financially, older tractors can make a lot of business sense.

Both are good news.

Constricting the worker pipeline at one end and a user rebellion at the other are two of the few things that can act as Daniel to tech’s Goliath.

Image credit: Roger W

Golden Oldies: Miki’s Rules To Live By 22

Monday, February 17th, 2020

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.

This Oldie doesn’t need commentary. It was valid when I wrote it in 2006, it’s even more valid in today’s world of social media and will still be valid at all times in the future.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

I frequently tell clients and readers to slow down; unwire themselves; learn to say no.

So my next rule may sound counterproductive, but it’s not.

Don’t live with the brakes on!

Taking off the brakes isn’t about going faster, it’s about taking time for the stuff that stops when you move too fast—such as creativity.

So take the brakes off your imagination; take time to dream; make more time for doing nothing and watch your world expand and sizzle.

Image credit: Paul Fris

AI As Blunt Force Trauma

Wednesday, February 12th, 2020

https://www.flickr.com/photos/mikemacmarketing/30188200627/in/photolist-MZCqiH-SjCgwQ-78gAtb-4Wrk4s-Dcx4UC-24s3ght-2dZfNaQ-8nBs97-5JpQEE-4GXcBN-RNNXQ4-2eo1VjR-29REGc9-3iAtU2-8SbD9g-2aDXanU-dYVVaB-5Pnxus-29Jabm7-2em8eRN-24DS86P-4KTiY4-87gbND-TnPTMx-UWXASW-fvrvcc-9xaKQj-2dviv8X-7Mbzwn-4WrkmQ-EPaCDj-dWTnJy-4zWGpJ-2fuyjjE-23y8cHC-4HEcBa-585oYX-jR9gc-dZ2ueo-dZ2v6o-2etej9U-dZ2A5J-4vuuEb-TrNV8b-dYVQKp-4HCFvt-6kBMSR-7JvXoF-3Ym8Sz-ShBxCm

While AI can do some things on its own, it’s a blunt force, ignorant of nuance, but embracing all the  bias, prejudices, bigotry and downright stupidity of past generations thanks to its training.

Using AI to make judgement calls that are implemented sans human involvement is like using a five pound sledgehammer on a thumbtack.

Yesterday looked at what AI can miss in hiring situations, but candidates at least have more choice than others do.

AI is being used extensively around the world by government and law enforcement where its bias is especially hard on people of color.

The algorithm is one of many making decisions about people’s lives in the United States and Europe. Local authorities use so-called predictive algorithms to set police patrols, prison sentences and probation rules. In the Netherlands, an algorithm flagged welfare fraud risks. A British city rates which teenagers are most likely to become criminals.

Human judgement may be flawed and it does has the same prejudices, but it’s not inflexible, whereas AI is.

As the practice spreads into new places and new parts of government, United Nations investigators, civil rights lawyers, labor unions and community organizers have been pushing back.

Now schools are jumping on the bandwagon claiming that facial recognition will make schools safer, but not everyone agrees.

“Subjecting 5-year-olds to this technology will not make anyone safer, and we can’t allow invasive surveillance to become the norm in our public spaces,” said Stefanie Coyle, deputy director of the Education Policy Center for the New York Civil Liberties Union. (…)

Critics of the technology, including Mr. Shultz and the New York Civil Liberties Union, point to the growing evidence of racial bias in facial recognition systems. In December, the federal government released a study, one of the largest of its kind, that found that most commercial facial recognition systems exhibited bias, falsely identifying African-American and Asian faces 10 to 100 times more than Caucasian faces. Another federal study found a higher rate of mistaken matches among children.

So what do the kids think?

Students 13 and older are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff…

Read the Q&A to find out.

Image credit: Mike MacKenzie

How AI Can Kill Your Company

Tuesday, February 11th, 2020

https://www.flickr.com/photos/mikemacmarketing/30188200627/in/photolist-MZCqiH-SjCgwQ-78gAtb-4Wrk4s-Dcx4UC-24s3ght-2dZfNaQ-8nBs97-5JpQEE-4GXcBN-RNNXQ4-2eo1VjR-29REGc9-3iAtU2-8SbD9g-2aDXanU-dYVVaB-5Pnxus-29Jabm7-2em8eRN-24DS86P-4KTiY4-87gbND-TnPTMx-UWXASW-fvrvcc-9xaKQj-2dviv8X-7Mbzwn-4WrkmQ-EPaCDj-dWTnJy-4zWGpJ-2fuyjjE-23y8cHC-4HEcBa-585oYX-jR9gc-dZ2ueo-dZ2v6o-2etej9U-dZ2A5J-4vuuEb-TrNV8b-dYVQKp-4HCFvt-6kBMSR-7JvXoF-3Ym8Sz-ShBxCm

Yesterday included a post about how tech has sold itself as the silver bullet solution to hiring people.

Algorithms actually do a lousy job of screening resumes and companies that rely on them miss a lot of great hires.

Why?

Because the only thing an algorithm can do is match key words and experience descriptions. Based on 13 years of tech recruiter experience I can tell you that rarely does anyone change jobs in order to do the same thing somewhere else, unless they hate their manager or the culture.

Not things that an algorithm is going to pick up on. Nor will the initial phone call usually made not by the hiring manager, but by someone who know little about the job other than to match the candidates responses to a list of “preferred” answers.

No discretionary knowledge based on the manager’s experience or the candidate’s potential.

We all know that management loves to save money and many of them feel that AI will allow them to reduce the most expensive item of their fixed costs, people — including managers.

Imagine an app giving you a quarterly evaluation—without a manager or HR rep in sight—and you have an idea of where this is potentially going.

What management forgets is that a company isn’t an entity at all. It’s a group of people, with shared values, all moving in the same direction, united in a shared vision and their efforts to reach a common goal.

It exists only as long as people are willing to join and are happy enough to stay — excessive turnover does not foster success.

So what do workers think about the use of AI/algorithms?

However, workers don’t necessarily like the idea of code taking over management functions—or hiring, for that matter. Pew research shows 57 percent of respondents think using algorithms for résumé screening is “unacceptable,” and 58 percent believe that bots taught by humans will always contain some bias. Nearly half (48 percent) of workers between the ages of 18 and 29 have some distrust of A.I. in hiring, showing that this negative perception isn’t going away anytime soon.

They are right to be distrustful, since AI is trained on historical datasets its “intelligence” includes all the bias, prejudices, bigotry and downright stupidity of past generations.

This is bad news for companies looking to “increase efficiency,” but great news for companies that recognize they aren’t hiring “resources” or “talent,” but people, with their infinite potential and inherent messiness.

Image credit: Mike MacKenzie

Golden Oldies Twofer: MAP — Your Silver Bullet and Technology Alone Can’t Save the World

Monday, February 10th, 2020

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.

Way back in 2006 when I wrote “MAP—Your Silver Bullet” the world was a different place. Tech hadn’t yet sold it’s story that it would save the world and human bosses were still the key to performance and productivity.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

MAP—your silver bullet

I’ve got a secret to share. Most managers spend time, energy and money (their company’s and their own) in an effort to grow from manager to leader. They study examples and best practices, read books, attend seminars and classes, take advanced degrees, check out software, turn to the spiritual (if so inclined)—you name it and it’s been tried.

The dream is to find a silver bullet; the reality is various levels of incremental improvement; the payoff is enormous—both tangibly and intangibly.

Now for the secret. You already possess the closest thing to a silver bullet that exists and it’s right in your mind.

That’s right, it’s your MAP and, like a snowflake, it’s totally unique—yours, and yours alone. And the magic that turns the bullet from lead to silver is your ability to consciously choose to change your MAP through your own awareness.

How cool is that? The very thing that frees you to soar and it’s not only yours, but also within your control. Who can ask for anything more?

Never forget! You are the silver bullet!

Fast forward nine years and tech had sold business on the idea that it could do anything and fix everything. When I saw the article by Kentaro Toyama I thought it was time to revisit the subject.

Technology Alone Can’t Save the World

According to Kentaro Toyama, the W.K. Kellogg Associate Professor of Community Information at the University of Michigan School of Information and self-described “recovering technoholic,” technology isn’t the panacea it’s cracked up to be.

“Technology works best in organizations that are run well to begin with. (…) The technology industry itself has perpetuated the idea that technology will solve the world’s problems. (…) Everyone wants to believe the work they do is good for society. But a lot of people in the industry have drunk a little too much of their own marketing Kool-Aid.”

What is often ignored is that people are a necessary ingredient for the Kool-Aid to actually work.

The tech eco-system forgets a lesson driven home by Bill Gates in the 1995 book The Road Ahead.

“The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.”

Aetna Insurance found this out when they first equipped their claims processors with their own terminals connected to the mainframe (before the advent of personal computers).

The effort was considered ground-breaking and was touted as a way to streamline the claims process.

It failed miserably, because the process itself wasn’t redesigned.

In short, claims had multiple steps with approval required at each. Because the process stayed the same, i.e., claims stalled in electronic form when someone in the approval process was on jury duty or out sick just as they did in the paper version.

Once people redesigned the process the desired efficiencies were reaped well beyond expectations.

Technology is a tool, not a silver bullet; the only real silver bullets are found within the human mind.

Ultimately the right thing is for us to find the optimal use of technology — not to eliminate it, but also not to assume that it can replace human skills.

Flickr image credit: Jason Rogers

Don’t Be a Fool

Tuesday, February 4th, 2020

Image credit: BrainyQuote

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