Google and Avoiding the Next Chaos Monkeys
October 8, 2020
Is Google nervous about what employees and contractors may say or do. “Google Contractors Allege Company Prevents Them from Whisleblowing, Writing Silicon Valley Novels” asserts:
Google contract employees are alleging the company’s confidentiality agreements prevent them from a range of legal rights from whistleblowing to telling their parents how much they make, according to a recent court filing. A California appeals court recently discussed a lawsuit accusing Alphabet’s Google and one of its staffing firms, Adecco, of violating a number of California labor laws, including free speech, by requiring workers to sign extensive confidentiality agreements.
The write up runs down a number of examples of Google taking steps to batten down its information hatches.
In the new distributed Silicon Valley, control and management of staff and part timers is difficult. For an outfit built on high school science club management methods, the job is probably Herculean or bigger. The fix? Impose tighter controls on all but the top tier of Google professionals. The company’s elite may recognize that the jazzy days of 2003 and 2004 are long gone, but there are artifacts littering the information superhighway.
These include dalliances in the legal department, an alleged suicide attempt by a marketing professional despondent after being discarded by a top Googler, and the unfortunate death from a controlled substance inflicted on Googler’s family.
Is the fix an improvement in the management methods? Maybe not. Imposing rules on those outside of the elite may be an easier, more logical path. By the way, how much did the Googler working on mobile phones get when he lost his “essential” label?
Enforcing a caste system appears to be an obvious solution to one skilled in the arts of the high school science club management methods.
Stephen E Arnold, October 8, 2020
YouTube Brings Back Checking an ID: Just Like a College Bar
October 6, 2020
In the face of criticisms and penalties, YouTube turns to machine learning to keep harmful content from young eyes. A very brief post at Axios reports, “YouTube Will Use Tech Updates to Better Enforce Age Restrictions.” Writer Sara Fischer lists the three upcoming changes:
“1. [YouTube] will begin using machine learning to automatically apply age restrictions to content on its platform around the world.
2. It’s using technology to identify age-restrictive content so that when viewers discover age-restricted videos embedded on most third-party websites, they will now be required to log in to watch those videos in order to verify their age.
3. It will start to request that some users in Europe verify their age with a valid ID or credit card, in response to new EU regulations, like the Audiovisual Media Services Directive.”
Let us leave aside the ease with which youngsters can get around age verification measures. We wonder how well this AI will be able to discern age-restricted content. Sure, a lot will be obvious, even to an algorithm. But how much harmful content will slip through? We hope the software does not give the company a false sense of security. On the other hand, we expect the number of channels wrongly censored to jump—will there be enough human moderators to flip their videos’ statuses back? Some people depend on this avenue for income, after all. AI can be a valuable tool, but human oversight is still needed. Now about those health department warnings at the “Do Drop Inn”?
Cynthia Murrell, October 6, 2020
Do Not Delegate What You Do Not Understand: Why Problems Are Proliferating
October 1, 2020
I read a marketing story called “US Tech Entrepreneur Urges Industry Leaders to Drive Not Delegate the Digital Transformation.” One possible synopsis might be “the buck stops here.” The idea is that a “leader” (whatever that means) must put his or her hands on the controls. The “leader” must be a decider. The “leader” powers the enterprise so that a digital transformation mostly happens. The assumption is that the transformation will work really well and produce swell results. I circled this passage:
Mr Siebel, CEO of C3.ai, author of Digital Transformation: Survive and Thrive in an Era of Mass Extinction, said that in businesses where digitalization is already succeeding, the “CEOs are taking personal responsibility for the initiative, driving the digital transformation with trackable projects which result in measurable and significant economic benefit.”
Looking at the financial performance of companies in the US, a small number of firms are generating “economic benefit.” The others, presumably investing in digitalization and following their “leaders” seem to be facing headwinds. MBAs, lawyers, and accountants may be ill suited to be Siebel-type leaders.
Stephen E Arnold, October 1, 2020
Quibbling over Quibi
October 1, 2020
Yep, quick bite. Just what investors needed. An money sucking mosquito draining financial blood from clueless investors.
“Why Quibi Failed” is one of those Silicon Valley management analyses I enjoy. The write up received wider distribution by its inclusion in the MSN news channel. Yep, a Microsoft real news operation, not to be confused with Bing news, the messages displayed in Windows 10, or the razzle dazzle about Surface Duo. Hey, I know. Combine the Duo with the quick bite thing. That’s an idea: A $1400 gizmo that plays Quibi content. Winner!
The “Why Quibi Failed” explains that has failed. The write up paints a dire picture:
Since its US debut in April, Quibi seemed destined for such an ending. It badly missed subscriber and viewership targets and in June was on pace to sign up only 2 million paying subscribers by the end of the year (its goal was over 7 million). It was forced to manage reports of mass layoffs and rumors that its founder, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and its CEO, Meg Whitman, were not seeing eye to eye. And now it’s fighting a lawsuit filed by a video company alleging Quibi infringed on its patented technology (Quibi denies this).
In point of fact, the outfit is chugging along and might pull off a sale to another company looking for magic; that is, content. Sounds like Quibi needs to upgrade its public relations unit.
Why has Quibi been bitten where the sun does not shine? The write up turns to one of the wizards leading the charge to the future of entertainment, Jeffrey Katzenberg:
Katzenberg blamed everything on the coronavirus.
The article explains:
Quibi could have invested more in content from celebrities its younger audience might actually appreciate, like YouTube, Instagram, or TikTok stars. Instead, it threw lots of money at the kind of names that older executives might imagine young people enjoy—Jennifer Lopez, Idris Elba, Tyra Banks, Usher, and every teenager’s favorite actor, 53-year-old Kiefer Sutherland.
The idea is that old school Hollywood thinking is not hip to the charms of Bad Bunny or the ever delightful video style of Gamers Nexus.
Other reasons for the alleged failure of Quibi include:
- Content (wait, not a strength)
- Lack of “shareability”
- The format of quick bites; that is, 10 minute chunks of juicy digital goodness.
But wait. There’s no fix, no options, no recommendations.
That’s a bit of a problem with Silicon Valley business thinking. Imagine. Figuring out next steps.
Several observations:
- A closer look at the management track record of the Quibi leadership would be helpful. Hints about “tension” are okay, but let’s dig into the facts like disastrous deals and massive flops suggest that headwinds have been blowing for years
- Quibi’s “chunk at a time” is out of step with the type of real-time, constant-click data available to an outfit like TikTok, Amazon Twitch, and (gasp!) Facebook Instagram Reels. Mismatch? For sure.
- Some information about the production deals for the magical content. With it content is often produced, edited, and distributed from a laptop in an RV camp or from an organic vegan coffee shop; for example, the antics of Kara and Nate and their interesting videos. Quibi did it the Hollywood 1980s way. That’s a money saving idea.
- A bit of digging into the “management style” of Mr. Katzenberg and Ms. Whitman could be complemented with actual interviews of people who knew how these two brilliant leaders interacted with one another.
There is a book waiting to be written about Quibi. If there were functional universities teaching business the old fashioned way, there is at least one case study. The legal antics of Quibi investors might enliven a law review if these print centric publications are still funded.
In short, the analysis like Quibi seems oddly appropriate even with Rona ready to accept the blame. Quick bite? Nope, big chomp in tender places. One may want to consider that Quibi is “actually quite good.” But for whom?
Stephen E Arnold, October 1, 2020
Technical Debt: Making Something Ignored Understandable to Suits
September 29, 2020
I have been fortunate to have been on the edges of a several start ups; for example, The Point (Top 5% of the Internet), a system ultimately sold to CMGI / Lycos in the late 1990s. When the small team began work on the product, we used available servers, available software, and methods based on our prior experience. When we started work on The Point in 1994, the task seemed pretty simple: Use what we know and provide an index to curated Web sites. At that time, it was possible to scan a list of new Web sites select ones which seemed promising. This was at first a manual process, but the handful of people working on this figured out ways to reduce the drudgery.
I learned (as one of the resources for hardware, software, and money) that those early decisions were both similar to established business economics and quite different in others. Let me give one brief example and then address the information in “Most Technical Debt Is Just Bullsh*t.”
For The Point one of the wizards on my team used Paradox. I know the Georgia Tech grade and Westinghouse Science winner asked me and I just grunted. Who cared? This was a mere test of an idea, not a project for an outfit like Thomson Corporation or the US government. My partner and I had worked on a CD of bird songs, and The Point seemed similar to that effort. Who knew in 1994? I sure did not.
That Paradox decision created technical debt. The database was okay, but it was not designed for multiple humans and software systems to update the files on a continuous basis. We could not do real time because the cheapo Sparc server I had was designed to run an indexing system called STAR. We figured out how to make Paradox work, but those early decisions had lasting impact.
I realized that making a database decision was similar to Henry Ford’s River Rouge. That concrete and building built at one end of the giant complex was not going anywhere. First, Mr. Ford was busy making cars. Second, Mr. Ford needed the resources to be directed at making more cars. Third, Mr. Ford had to make decisions about now problems, not problems that were not fully understood at the time of making fresh decisions. As a result, River Rouge became a giant thing that was mostly unchanged and unchangeable. The same observation can be made about Google-type companies. (Think of new features as software wrappers, not changes to the plumbing.)
That’s technical debt. The focus, resources, and understanding to change what has been put in place and actually working is not a hot topic for a robust discussion of “Let’s do this over again.” Nope.
The Louwrentius article dances around this reality in my opinion; for example, recasting Ward Cunningham, who coined the bound phrase, the write up states: Technical debt exists:
as a form of prototyping. To try out and test design/architecture to see if it fits the problem space at hand. But it also incorporates the willingness to spend extra time in the future to change the code to better reflect the current understanding of the problem at hand.
The write up ends with this statement:
Although Cunningham meant well, I think the metaphor of technical debt started to take on a life of its own. To a point where code that doesn’t conform to some Platonic ideal is called technical debt. Every mistake, every changing requirement, every tradeoff that becomes a bottleneck within the development process is labeled ‘technical debt’. I don’t think that this is constructive. I think my friend was right: the concept of technical debt has become bullshit. It doesn’t convey any better insight or meaning. On the contrary, it seems to obfuscate the true cause of a bottleneck. At this point, when people talk about technical debt, I would be very skeptical and would want more details. Technical debt doesn’t actually explain why we are where we are. It has become a hollow, hand-wavy ‘explanation’. With all due respect to Cunningham, because the concept is so widely misunderstood and abused, it may be better to retire it.
My personal view is:
- Technical debt is a bad way to say, “A software product or service is like a building that can either be a money loser or be torn down.” As long as it works — generates revenue — do as little as possible to keep the revenue flowing.
- Technical debt is fungible. It is like the poorly designed intake infrastructure for River Rouge. The bricks and concrete are not going away without significant investment and disruption.
- Technical debt is poorly understood. Humans are not very good at not knowing what one does not know. I suppose that Paradox-like. Who knew?
The good news is that CMGI’s check cleared the bank and The Point is now mostly forgotten like its technical debt. Who paid it off? I didn’t.
Stephen E Arnold, September 29, 2020
Silicon Valley CEOs Called Psychopaths
September 28, 2020
“Why Silicon Valley CEOs Are Such Raging Psychopaths?” calls Silicon Valley CEOs psychopaths. That’s not new, but the idea that these skilled managers are “raging” is a novel twist. The article states:
According to the Hare Psychopathy Checklist — the universally accepted diagnostic tool used to assess this disorder — a psychopathic personality includes traits such as a grandiose sense of self-worth, a lack of remorse or guilt, poor behavioral controls, pathological lying and a lack of empathy. These attributes aren’t just present “but celebrated in Silicon Valley,” says Gavet, who once held the position of executive vice-president of global operations for Priceline Group, among other roles.
The Gavet is, as if you did not know, is the author of a new book called “Trampled by Unicorns: Big Tech’s Empathy Problem and How to Fix It.” Maëlle Gavet worked at Priceline and tallied 15-years in Unicornville. The article states:
Research by the FBI found that companies managed by psychopaths tend to have decreased productivity and low employee morale. In fact, Silicon Valley’s psychopathic traits “trickle down through entire organizations,” says Gavet. “In effect creating psychopathic companies.” This is enabled by an “infantilized culture” at many start-up companies, where employees become accustomed to working in “hyper-privileged bubbles where their every whim is catered to and every need anticipated,” she writes.
Amazon takes a punch as well:
She sees evidence of it happening already. Tim Bray, a celebrated engineer at Amazon and their onetime vice president of Web Services, quit his job in May because of the “toxicity running through the company culture,” as he wrote in a blog post. “I choose neither to serve nor drink that poison,” he wrote.
DarkCyber notes that the publicist who nudged the New York Post to write an article and book marketing use case deserves a Google mouse pad. DarkCyber wonders if Rupert Murdoch’s other New York are property will provide similar dead tree coverage of the book?
Will Mr. Murdoch purchase a copy, or will the wiley John Wiley provide the esteemed publisher with a complimentary copy? This has been a tough year for trees. First Bolton, then Rage, and now the psychopath thing. Trees, be aware: There is Kindle to save you someday, maybe?
Stephen E Arnold, September 28, 2020
Facebook: Fine Thinking
September 26, 2020
I read “Former Facebook Manager: We Took a Page from Big Tobacco’s Playbook.” The main idea is that a former Facebook professional revealed how the gears meshed within the Facebook distributed intelligence machine. For me, the allegedly truthful revelations add some color to my understanding of what I call high school science club thinking.
The write up quotes the actual factual testimony of Facebook’s former director of monetization (good title that), quoting a certain Tim Kendall as saying:
“We sought to mine as much attention as humanly possible… We took a page form Big Tobacco’s playbook, working to make our offering addictive at the outset.”
What’s interesting is the way in which Ars Technica approached the story. The article lets Mr. Kendall’s own words and some facts about Facebook’s fine manager-employee relations beef up the write up.
What’s interesting is the way in which Ars Technica approached the story. The article lets Mr. Kendall’s own words and some facts about Facebook’s fine manager-employee relations beef up the write up.
Facebook continues to capture the attention of the savvy US elected officials. The social media company opened for business in 2004. That works out to more than 15 years ago. Now after controversies with alleged “co-founders”, the pompous Etonian, and interactions with the clear-minded European union officials, Facebook is getting scrutinized by the US government.
What if Mr. Kendall is making Facebook look different like a reflection in a fun house mirror? What if Facebook is a happy, happy place? What if Facebook has contributed to social comity?
What if Facebook is the best thing one can say about 2020?
Stephen E Arnold, September 26, 2020
Facebook and Digital Partitioning
September 18, 2020
I am no expert on managing the Gen X, Y, and millennials creating must have services for thumbtypers. The services, like the young wizards, puzzle me. I don’t worry about it, but for Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, he worries and tries to remediate what seems to be a management Sudoku.
“Facebook Issues New Rules on Internal Employee Communication” explains new principles “to guide debates and conversations within Workplace. This is Facebook’s social network for employees. The article points out that Google moderates its internal message boards.
I live in rural Kentucky, but it seems to me that “principles” and humans who are digital content guards are an interesting development. The approach is even more interesting because Facebook has expressed a keen desire to facilitate social interactions.
I noted this passage in the CNBC write up:
The company will also be more specific about which parts of Workplace can be used to discuss social and political issues. This change will be so that employees do not have to confront social issues during their day-to-day work. Facebook’s new principles also ask that employees communicate with professionalism and continue to debate about the company’s work but do so in a respectful manner.
How does partitioning work in day-to-day communication? In computer speak, a partition is a chunk of a storage device. That data space is a separate logical volume. In a house, a partition divides one space into smaller spaces; for example, a big house in San Jose may have a “safe room.” The idea is that a person can enter the separate area and prevent an intruder from harming the individual. In the case of the storage device, a person or software system operates as the decision maker. the partition is created. The “user” gains access to the storage under certain conditions, but the user does not decide. The user just gets rights and lives with those rights.
The safe house is a different kettle of intentions. The safe room is entered by an individual who feels threatened or who wants to escape a Zoom call. The user locks the door and prevents others from getting into the safe room.
What’s the Facebook partition? Who decides? These will be interesting questions to answer as Facebook pushes forward with what I call “imposed adulting.” The partitioning of Workplace is an interesting step by a company which has been less than proactive in making certain types of decisions about social behavior within the Facebook datasphere.
A related question is, “How does partitioning work out in a social setting?” I napped through lectures about historical partitioning efforts. I vaguely recall one of my history professors (Dr. Philip Crane) expounding about the partitioning of Berlin after the second world war. My recollection is very fuzzy, but the impression I can dredge up from the murky depths of my memory is that it was not party time and pink balloons.
Net net: Partitioning a storage device is a god mode function. Partitioning in a social space is a less tidy logical operation. And when the computer partitioning meets the social partition? Excitement for sure.
Stephen E Arnold, September 18, 2020
Google: WFH Engineers with Zero Hands On Real World Knowledge Are an Amusing Group
September 17, 2020
The Google thing is a meh to me. The dumpster fires at YouTube are a source of amazement. Odd ball behaviors in Gmail allow email to appear and disappear with merrie abandon. So be it. We noted “Google, Nobody Asked for a New Blogger Interface”, an interesting essay which tackles a facet of Google we have not paid attention to for years — Blogger.
The write up explains interface changes and behaviors of the editor. Most Blogger users may not care. The author of the TenFourFox Development essay does. As a result, there is a believability and emotion in the write up. Here’s an example:
By switching into HTML view, you lose ($#@%!, stop indenting that line when I type emphasis tags!) the ability to insert hyperlinks, images or other media by any other means other than manually typing them out. You can’t even upload an image, let alone automatically insert the HTML boilerplate and edit it. So switch into Compose view to actually do any of those things, and what happens? Like before, Blogger rewrites your document, but now this happens all the time because of what you can’t do in HTML view. Certain arbitrarily-determined naughtytags(tm) like <em> become <i> (my screen-reader friends will be disappointed).
There’s more, including the clunky workaround the TenFourFox Development author has figured out.
Welcome to the new and improved Google?
Several observations:
- Changes at Google often emerge before someone with actual hands on experience is aware of the changes. Don’t you love those rippling changes across time zones from Google search professionals? Same deal. Make a change. Go forth. Catch up later? Maybe. Maybe not.
- With less human-to-human Foosball interaction, advice is not shared casually. Consequently young entitled wizards do things and without rules or effective management, stuff happens. Case in point: The introduction of changes without considering 360 degree impacts. What 21 year old thinks beyond a single point of focus: Hey, this works. Not many.
- When managers are involved, those individuals often have their sights set on the next big thing; that is, a lateral arabesque to a task that will deliver fame, glory, and a bonus or a promotion. The utility of a change from a user’s perspective is not part of the job description.
For that reason, YouTube throttling, ad injection, and irrelevant search results seem to be the new normal. Don’t you love entering a query with a phrase in quotes. Google happily displays results with a required word excluded from the results list. Hey, those are really unhelpful fixes in my opinion. The policies burn through the ad inventory and annoy “customers”, don’t they? No. I think I understand.
Net net: DarkCyber has concluded that work from home engineers with zero hands on, real world knowledge are an amusing group. Just another task for the affable Google senior management to tackle. Unfortunately disconnects in Blogger are examples of an interior deterioration of bits and basics. That’s not amusing.
Stephen E Arnold, September 17, 2020
Palantir: Planning Ahead
September 4, 2020
I read “In Amended Filing, Palantir Admits It Won’t Have Independent Board Governance for Up to a Year.” The legal tap dancing is semi-interesting. Palantir wants money and control. I understand that motive. The company — despite its sudden interest in becoming a cowboy — has Silicon Valley roots.
What’s fascinating is that the company was founded in 2004, although I have seen references to 2003. No big deal. Just a detail. The key point is that the company has been talking about an initial public offering for years.
The write up explains that after submitting an S-1 form to the Securities & Exchange Commission, Palantir submitted a revised or amended S-1. For a firm which provides intelware and policeware to government agencies, planning and getting one’s ducks in a row seem to be important attributes.
Did Palantir just dash off the first S-1 at Philz Coffee? Then did some bright young stakeholder say, “Yo, dudes, we need to make sure we keep control. You know like the Zuck.”
After 16 years in business and burning through a couple of tractor trailers filled with cash, it seems untoward to submit a revision hard on the heels of an SEC S-1 filing.
Careless, disorganized, or what the French call l’esprit d’escalier strikes me as telling.
Observations:
- The resubmission suggests carelessness and flawed management processes
- The action raises the question, “Are these Silicon Valley cowboys getting desperate for an exist?”
- For a low profile outfit engaged in secret work for some of its clients, public actions increase the scrutiny on a company which after a decade and a half is not profitable.
Interesting behavior from from Palantirians. Did the seeing stone suffer a power outage?
Stephen E Arnold, September 4, 2020
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