A month ago KG shared an article about how Facebook rummages through your life in pursuit of profit using and algorithm called People You May Know. The results are beyond creepy (emphasis mine).
A woman whose father left her family when she was six years old—and saw his then-mistress suggested to her as a Facebook friend 40 years later.
An attorney who wrote: “I deleted Facebook after it recommended as PYMK a man who was defense counsel on one of my cases. We had only communicated through my work email, which is not connected to my Facebook, which convinced me Facebook was scanning my work email.”
Still creepier, but great for profit, are Facebook’s shadow profiles.
… built from the inboxes and smartphones of other Facebook users. Contact information you’ve never given the network gets associated with your account, making it easier for Facebook to more completely map your social connections. (…) Because shadow-profile connections happen inside Facebook’s algorithmic black box, people can’t see how deep the data-mining of their lives truly is, until an uncanny recommendation pops up.
Many people realize that smartphones track their locations. But what if you actively turn off location services, haven’t used any apps, and haven’t even inserted a carrier SIM card?
Even if you take all of those precautions, phones running Android software gather data about your location and send it back to Google when they’re connected to the internet…”
Chamath Palihapitiya, Founder and CEO Social Capital, who worked at Facebook for seven years and became vice president for user growth, is the most recent social media veteran to publicly apologize, “I think we have created tools that are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works.”
“The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops we’ve created are destroying how society works,” he said, referring to online interactions driven by “hearts, likes, thumbs-up.” “No civil discourse, no cooperation; misinformation, mistruth. And it’s not an American problem — this is not about Russians ads. This is a global problem.”
Palihapitiya’s isn’t the only one feeling guilty.
Palihapitiya’s remarks follow similar statements of contrition from others who helped build Facebook into the powerful corporation it is today. In November, early investor Sean Parker said he has become a “conscientious objector” to social media, and that Facebook and others had succeeded by “exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology.” A former product manager at the company, Antonio Garcia-Martinez, has said Facebook lies about its ability to influence individuals based on the data it collects on them, and wrote a book, Chaos Monkeys, about his work at the firm.
The forces at work behind social media are also money-driven.
In his talk, Palihapitiya criticized not only Facebook, but Silicon Valley’s entire system of venture capital funding. He said that investors pump money into “shitty, useless, idiotic companies,” rather than addressing real problems like climate change and disease. Palihapitiya currently runs his own VC firm, Social Capital, which focuses on funding companies in sectors like healthcare and education.
I doubt any of this is going to change your social media consumption.
But never forget that these companies are not your friend. Their primary purpose is not to make you or anyone else happy.
Their purpose is to make money.
Period.
Anything else that happens is plain old serendipity.
Buffet believes the retailer is a sinking ship and retail as a whole is being completely disrupted. Now by all accounts Wal-Mart is still hugely successful. They sell more than Amazon, are profitable and growing.
Looking at these factors alone it would seem that there is nothing to be worried about, however a man much smarter than myself thinks otherwise. How can that be changed?
Now, this post is not about Wal-Mart per say but more on the retail experience as a whole. I can look throughout my house right now and say that a large majority of what I have purchased in the past few years has been from online.
I have twin girls and my family may singlehandedly keep Amazon in business by all the items we need on a day to day basis.
Recently Wal-Mart began a service in my area where you can pick out all of your groceries online and pay, then you just drive to your location and they load your car with the groceries. You never go in the store and you have everything you need at a great price!
I can tell you that the service would be extremely helpful to my family but I have never once considered it.
Why? Culture.
I am not a snob, in fact I prefer a good burger over whatever hot dish is on trend right now, however I have a hard time considering Wal-Mart or other similar retailers for most of my purchases.
The main reason, for me, is the culture of those locations.
I feel that retail employees are paid too low and not given opportunities for advancement. Is this true? Sometimes, but also it’s a perception thing. The culture would appear to be one of hardship.
On the other hand Amazon has commercials for drone delivery and cutting edge technology. Is the apple I get from Amazon any different than the one from Wal-Mart? Not one bit, but my perception is. I feel pleased that my money is being well spent with one while depriving from the other.
Is retail a sinking ship? Maybe, but quite frankly I do not have enough information to support such an argument. However I can tell you that my emotions are directly connected to my perception of the culture at each company and that is what determines where my dollars go.
Culture is deeds, words and actions. It is the sprit that inhabits a person and an organization. It must be jealously guarded as it could quite possibly be the most valuable thing owned.
My personality is my culture.
The company I work for is an aggregate of all combined to make up a unifying culture.
Do I have an answer on how to fix the ship? I would think it starts with the leaders and then moves down. Perhaps it can also start with the individual?
What fuels that person? What helps them determine right from wrong? Is there a right or wrong?
These are all questions that will determine an individual’s identity and ultimately help them determine their course in life.
Tuesday I commented on the ‘duh’ factor in relation to Amazon finally eliminated forced ranking reviews, AKA, rank and yank, recognizing that they did nothing to foster teamwork or improve retention.
Like I said, “duh.”
Today we have Facebook offering up another duh moment.
Facebook is trying to accommodate millennials and its younger predecessor by talking to each worker and figuring out how their individual skills can be used to make a more personalized career path, not something more traditional and cookie cutter-like.
Definitely duh.
I defy you to think of anyone who works at any job and any level who doesn’t prefer this approach.
Millennials may walk faster than Gen X and Boomers when they don’t like the culture, but that, too, will change as they take on more responsibilities, such as kids, mortgages and aging parents
Whenever I hear how different the needs of millennials are compared to previous generations I’m reminded of these words from Socrates.
“Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of exercise; they no longer rise when elders enter the room; they contradict their parents, chatter before company; gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers.”
Give it a rest.
You hire individuals and need to manage them as such.
So put away the cookie cutter and provide everyone, no matter their age, with an environment in which to grow and flourish and the tools needed to do it.
Yesterday’s Golden Oldie referenced Jack Welch’s responsibility for the atrocious forced ranking system followed by so many large, and even not-so-large, companies.
… a review process known as “stack ranking” or “rank and yank” in which employees are rated against each other as opposed to how well they meet their job requirements. (…) Using it long-term tends to create a dog-eat-dog kind of culture.
That changed drastically under Jeff Immelt, GE’s current CEO, as described last year.
According to Raghu Krishnamoorthy, the head of GE’s in-house management school,
“Command and control is what Jack was famous for. Now it’s about connection and inspiration.”
But not at Amazon, because Jeff Bezos walked in Welch’s shoes on many levels, including reviews.
… the review process was described like “choosing sacrificial lambs to protect more essential players.” (…) Bezos believed managers needed to raise the performance bar with every new hire so that the only employees that rise through the company would be the ones considered exceptional.
As Labor Day approaches, and a single day of rest from all the hours we Americans spend on the job is upon us, people can’t seem to stop talking about the crazy hours they work.
One of the most-read articles on the Wall Street Journal’s web site last week was a piece about how 4 a.m. — a time so ungodly there’s even a TED Talk about how surreal it is — has become the most productive hour for go-getters.
That’s in spite of research that excessive hours quell innovation and creativity, reduce productivity, increase errors and can cause serious health problems.
Yet research, time and time again, shows the problems with overwork — on people’s health, on turnover, on absenteeism, on productivity. Studies have shown that after about 50 hours a week, productivity actually decreases, and it plummets after 55 hours, leaving no detectable difference between those who work 56 hours and those who work 70 — or 130, as Mayer suggested may be needed for successful startups.
Many years ago a smart senior manager, who became a serial entrepreneur, commented that the need for 50+ hour weeks was a sign of bad management.
I can already hear the arguments, because I’ve been hearing them for years (decades, actually).
So here’s proof from someone who’s not an academic or researcher who doesn’t understand, because they don’t work in the real world.
Last Wednesday, Amazon announced it was preparing to launch a pilot program in which a few dozen employees would log only 30 hours each week. In return they would receive 75% of their normal salary and retain full benefits. (…) By offering employees more flexibility, Amazon sends the message that life outside the workplace matters. The new policy also indicates that the world’s second-largest retailer is acknowledging the limits of human cognition, whether or not that was the Amazon’s intent.
Apple CEO Tim Cook sat down with NPR to talk about privacy, and described it as a “fundamental human right.” The comments come after Apple updated its website to make its stance on privacy clearer, something Cook describes as “a values point” not “a commercial interest.”
Whereas Larry Page’s recent comments when asked about the new name Alphabet indicate a totally different mindset.
The point, according to Larry Page, the Google co-founder who will be Alphabet’s chief executive, is for the separate parts to be independent and develop their own brands. That would never happen with all of them under the Google banner, given that many associate the name solely with a consumer search product. Many of the companies operating under the Alphabet umbrella, artificial intelligence and robotics, for instance, may never be consumer-oriented.
Mr. Page, in a blog post announcing the move, took the opportunity to note some wordplay in the name. “We also like that it means alpha‑bet (Alpha is investment return above benchmark),” he wrote, “which we strive for!”
The article claims that the difference can be explained by the fact that Apple sells things, while Google and Facebook depend on ads, but Amazon (which is not mentioned) generates its revenues selling stuff and still tracks (stalks) its visitors.
Everybody is talking about the NY Times article detailing little-known aspects and actions of Amazon’s culture.
There is a plethora of discussion, commentary, vehement agreement/disagreement on the information presented in the article and I don’t plan to add more.
And it’s easy to understand employer paranoia regarding proprietary information, trade secrets, customer lists, etc.
Intel’s legendary Andy Grove built its culture on the idea that “only the paranoid survive,” but Jeff Bezos’ paranoia makes Grove look like Mister Mellow. That paranoia really shows up in the 18 month non-compete clause for hourly and seasonal workers.
“[Workers can not] engage in or support the development, manufacture, marketing, or sale of any product or service that competes or is intended to compete with any product or service sold, offered, or otherwise provided by Amazon (or intended to be sold, offered, or otherwise provided by Amazon in the future) that employee worked on or supported, or about which employee obtained or received confidential information”
Even more bizarre is the definition of “competitors,” which include physical retailers, publishers, e-commerce retailers, media companies, payment processing and information/computing storage.
Granted, it’s never been enforced and the company says they are removing it, but it certainly gives a window on Bezos’ paranoia.
And while it could be the product of an unconstrained law department, but given Bezos’ well-known micro-focus that’s doubtful .
“I sometimes say things — just stupid, little remarks — and expect people to just ignore them. They will not. They will not. Every little thing you say is something that will stick in people’s heads.” –Amazon CTO Werner Vogels
Livefyre CEO Jordan Kretchmer, said that he’s made a “benign comment that pissed off the whole sales team.”
Chief product officer of Interaxon, Trevor Coleman, said that once at a happy hour he joked about taking the company in a completely new direction. The following day, an employee asked him — quite seriously — what the next steps for that change would be.
LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner said that every offhand comment he made would turn into a “massively disruptive fire drill…”
Entrepreneurs face difficulties that are hard for most people to imagine, let alone understand. You can find anonymous help and connections that do understand at 7 cups of tea.
Crises never end.
$10 really does make a difference and you’ll never miss it,
Looking for a product idea?
I read an article today about Warren Buffet. His company, Berkshire Hathaway, 
Non-compete agreements are the bane of workers, especially those whose skills are industry-specific and don’t travel well — such as semiconductors — and 
