Google: The Diversity Mix Up
August 7, 2017
Update August 8, 2017: The alleged author of the alleged essay about the alleged anti-diversity in the alleged area of the US known as “Silicon Valley” has allegedly been terminated. The alleged action means that the alleged individual is available for alleged “work”. None of that “rest and vest” malarky. See “Google Fires Author of Divisive Memo an Gender Differences.” Alleged gender differences do not allegedly exist. Allegedly that’s good to know before writing an essay and posting it so that alleged management practices are allegedly committed to a distribution system. This alleged activity is allegedly “real” news. Ah, science clubs. Ever entertaining.
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Update 2 August 8, 2017: Sundar Pichai, the fellow who is handling assorted hot tater tots for the Alphabet Google thing issued a memo called “Note to Employees from Sundar Pichai.” The write up said:
“This has been a very difficult time.”
Hey, great insight. That’s what makes Google a smart company. Well, sort of smart if one discounts the dust up in the European Union, the solving of death thing, and telling China it had to change. The point of the write up is that suggesting anyone who is biologically disadvantaged when a colleague is a bad thing. I noted this statement because I am stupid and I have to be told things multiple times. (Right, mom? Right, dad?)
“The pas few days have been very difficult for many at the company, and we need to find a way to debate issues on which we might disagree—while doing so in line with our Code of Conduct.”
There is nothing like a Code of Conduct? I wonder if Margrethe Vestager has a copy of that document?
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Beyond Search noted the diversity excitement at Alphabet Google, the legions of Google users, and the handful of folks who dare to take a stance against Google. Beyond Search has characterized Google-type companies as semi-adult science clubs. None of the write ups listed below reference this prescient and accurate parallel:
The Motherboard story about “Internal Viral.
The screed itself
The write up wanting empathy, just not for the author of the screed.
News flash. The likelihood of change is like a calculus problem with a student who is not into zero but not zero.
Our view in Harrod’s Creek is that one who does not comprehend the value of the Google-type of approach to actual practice and the subsequent PR infused activity may want to steer clear of a Google-type of company.
What is interesting is that this is another example of the increasing vulnerability of Alphabet Google. I could be like Elizabeth Barrett Browning and count the ways, but I will not. Ms. Barrett Browning was secretive and I thought that she might have been interested in laudanum. If true, she might have lifted a languorous hand to add to the Google diversity discussion.
But maybe not. She was into whipping up excitement for Italian politics, which may have been a comparatively more important topic.
The science club like thinker will reject Ms. Barrett-Browning’s interest. One cannot count, measure, or weigh passion. Interesting but not scientific. Talking is not counting, calculating, or analyzing real things, is it? Consider addomg emotional intellingence to screed’s about Google-like management methods and staff selection processes? Nah.
Stephen E Arnold, August 7, 2017
Google Develops a Job-Hunt Feature
July 17, 2017
Does the process of searching for a job really need an innovative update? Apparently, Google believes so, as Quartz reports in, “Google Is Testing a Job-Search Feature that Could Rival LinkedIn—and Facebook.” Writer Joon Ian Wong cites SEO consultant Dan Shure, who stumbled upon an apparent test-run of the feature. We learn:
Dan Shure apparently triggered the feature by entering ‘jobs online’ in the Google search box. This returns a specially formatted box containing a list of jobs above the main search results. Clicking these jobs leads to a portal where users can select tabs to display jobs by title, city, employer, and more. The page also shows jobs by industry, including health care, advertising and marketing, and retail. The jobs listed are attributed to third-party job sites, such as Internships.com and Catholic Jobs Online. …
The broad base of jobs available on the search feature suggests Google is going after the same general jobs market as Facebook is, with its own jobs function. LinkedIn is better known for its white-collar listings, but it, too, has been trying to cater to workers of all types, including blue-collar workers (paywall), in recent years.
Wong notes the company has also been developing Google Hire, a recruitment-management tool for the employer side, but with no fanfare. So it does seem that Google is stepping into the job-hunt & worker-search arena. Can it compete with LinkedIn, the niche’s veteran?
Cynthia Murrell, July 17, 2017
Mistakes to Avoid to Implement Hadoop Successfully
July 7, 2017
Hadoop has been at the forefront of Big Data implementation methodologies. The journey so far has been filled with more failures than successes. An expert thus has put up a list of common mistakes to avoid while implementing Hadoop.
Wael Elrifai in a post titled How to Avoid Seven Common Hadoop Mistakes and posted on IT Pro Portal says:
Business needs specialized skills, data integration, and budget all need to factor into planning and implementation. Even when this happens, a large percentage of Hadoop implementations fail.
For instance, the author says that one of the most common mistakes that most consultants commit is treated Hadoop like any other database management system. The trick is to treat data lake like a box of Legos and start building the model with one brick at a time. Some other common mistakes include not migrating the data before implementation, not thinking about security issues at the outset and so on. Read the entire article here.
Vishol Ingole, July 7, 2017
IBM Bans Remote Work
June 22, 2017
The tech blog SiliconBeat reveals a startling development in tech-related employment in, “IBM: So Much for Working from Home.” Thousands of professionals who have built their lives around their remote-work arrangements are now being required to come into the office. For many, the shift would mean packing up and moving closer to one of the company’s locations. As writer Rex Crum puts it:
That’s right. Find your way to an office cubicle, or hit the bricks. The Wall Street Journal reported that IBM began instituting the new you-can’t-work-from-home policy this week, and that the company is ‘quietly dismantling’ the program that has been in place for decades. The Journal said the retrenchment on its employees working remotely was being done so that IBM could ‘improve collaboration and accelerate the pace of work.’ It also happens to be taking place not long after IBM reported its 20th-straight quarter of declining year-over-year revenue. Legendary all-time investor Warren Buffett also said this month that Berkshire Hathaway has cut its holdings in IBM by one-third from the 81 million shares the company owned earlier this year.
But will herding all their talent into their buildings really solve IBM’s financial woes? Not according to this Forbes article. Crum recalls that Yahoo made the same move in 2013, when Marissa Mayer put a stop to remote work at that company. (How has that been going?) Will more organizations follow?
Cynthia Murrell, June 22, 2017
Editorial Controls and Data Governance: A Rose by Any Other Name?
June 16, 2017
I read “Why Interest In “Data Governance” Is Increasing.” The write up uses a number of terms to describe what I view as editorial controls. The idea in my experience is that an organization decides what it okay and not okay with regards to the information it wants to process. The object is to know what content will be processed before the organization kick starts indexing, metadata tagging, or text analysis.
The organization then has to figure out and implement the rules of the game. Questions like “What do we do when entities are not recognized?” and “Who goes through the exceptions file?” must be answered. Rules, procedures, processes, and corrective actions have to be implemented in the work flow. One cannot calculate costs, headcount, or software expenses unless one knows what’s going to happen.
The write up explains that data governance is important. I agree. The write up hooks the notion of editorial controls and editorial process to a number of buzzwords. I don’t think this type of jargon catalog is particularly helpful. Jargon distracts some people from focusing on Job One; that is, putting appropriate controls in place before nuking the budget or creating the type of editorial craziness which Facebook and Google are now trying to contain and manage.
The notion that an organization has to perform “data program management” is fine. But this is nothing more than hooking the editorial rules of the road to the responsibilities of the people who have to set up, oversee, and change the work flow.
Jargon does not help implement editorial controls. Clear thinking and speaking do.
Stephen E Arnold, June 16, 2017
Google and Its Learnings: Hiring, Meeting Productivity, and Product Failures
June 11, 2017
I am not too keen on podcasts. I did read a summary of a podcast called “What Google Learned Fighting Hiring Bias, Bad Meetings and Failing Products.” The information struck me as, well, remarkable and semi-interesting. Here are the highlights I noted:
- Google created a “hiring algorithm” that skewed to men. Wow, anyone who has been at a Google facility might have been able to figure out that men were plentiful. But now Google admits is has a “bias.” That should fire up some thinking among legal eagles worrying about possible actions on behalf of aggrieved Xooglers. Well, maybe not. Google doesn’t want “to be discriminating.” There you go.
- Make people participate in meetings by asking those who do not speak a question. Good idea. But what about Googlers in meetings who [a] don’t pay attention, [b] play with their mobile phone, [c] fool with their laptop computer, [d] all of the above. Asking questions can be useful. But what if the person is not paying attention or chooses not to answer? Hmmm.
- “Hope” cannot save a product from cratering. Now that’s an insight I find interesting. I thought data was behind Google decisions. I must have missed something as did the people responsible for some of Google’s most fascinating attempts to disrupt; for example, solving death.
Ah, Google. A management terrarium.
Stephen E Arnold, June 14, 2017
Google CFO Loves Some Data More than Other Data
June 6, 2017
I read “Why Alphabet CFO Ruth Porat Was the Perfect Fit at Google.” I know that CNBC is a “real news” outfit. Its reporters work tirelessly to get the facts and connect the dots for its legions of fans.
However, I noted one very tiny oversight in the story about Google’s data loving chief financial officer.
First, a bit of history. Recode reported in “Google Refuses to Hand over Salary Data to the US Government.” I assume that Recode’s self assured “real news” folks have their facts lined up. In that write up, I learned that Google does not have data about how much it pays its employees. The reasons cited in the article strike me as a bit along the lines of “the dog ate my homework.”
Now consider the CNBC story about Alphabet Google’s data loving CFO, Ruth Porat, a professional from the estimable firm of Morgan Stanley. I learned:
“The most valuable thing you can have as a leader is clear data,” Porat said Wednesday [May 31, 2017] , in describing her role at the company.
Ms. Porat finds the moniker “Ruth Vader” fantastic.
She allegedly said:
The best thing I can do is give them accurate data. It’s really about the data.
Doesn’t it seem logical that the CFO of Alphabet Google would know what the company pays its employees?
Well, pilgrim, that’s not the type of data the company tracks.
Doesn’t the omission of salary data from the CNBC story seem to be a bit careless.
Pretty remarkable for Ruth Vader to only be interested in some company wide data. Love is selective just like deciding what dots to connect.
Stephen E Arnold, June 4, 2017
Alphabets Employees Feel Empowered
May 29, 2017
Discrimination at the workplace is a real issue, including Alphabet, the parent company of Google. Employees now are trying to fight this off by curating complaints and circulating it within the company using weekly newsletter.
According to an article published by Bloomberg titled At Google, an Employee-Run Email List Tracks Harassment and Bias Complaints, the author says:
Yes, at Google tracks allegations of unwelcome behavior at work in an attempt to make the company more inclusive, said the employees, who did not want to be named because they were not authorized to speak about internal company matters.
The list is allegedly managed by a group of employees who redact the personal information before circulating the content. Google though is aware of the list, the company is silent on it considering the fact that no one really knows who is running the list.
So far, the list has yielded positive results. Behavior by employees that do not adhere to company policies or are offensive towards certain sex or people of ethnicity has been handled by the company through regular channels.
Vishal Ingole, May 29, 2017
About.com Still Running Google Adwords
May 18, 2017
I read “After 18 Years, About.com Is Changing Its Name and Shutting Down Its Website — Its CEO Reveals How It All Went Down.” The main idea is that About.com, a weird list of curated sites by topics, is dead. However, I noted this ad on May 15, 13 days after the struggling About.com took a bullet for the good of current information.
The ad appeared in a list of search results for sentiment analysis, not market sentiment analysis, but when someone is spending money to promote a terminated Web information service, that someone either is [a] blessed with oodles of cash, [b] oversees a crew of with it managers, or [c] does not know how to turn off Adwords.
Perhaps this approach to fiscal and marketing methods provides some insight into why the About.com Web site slumped to the moist early summer earth? Definitely a plus for the Google sales professional handling the dead company’s account.
Stephen E Arnold, May 18, 2017
Forrester: Enterprise Content Management Misstep
April 14, 2017
I have stated in the past that mid tier consulting firms—that is, outfits without the intellectual horsepower of a McKinsey, Bain, or BCG—generate work that is often amusing, sometimes silly, and once in a while just stupid. I noted an error which is certainly embarrassing to someone, maybe even a top notch expert at mid tier Forrester. The idea for a consulting firm is to be “right” and to keep the customer (in this case Hyland) happy. Also, it is generally good to deliver on what one promises. You know, the old under promise, over deliver method.
How about being wrong, failing, and not delivering at all? Read on about Forrester and content management.
Context
I noted the flurry of news announcements about Forrester, a bigly azure-chip consulting firm. A representative example of these marketing news things is “Microsoft, OpenText, IBM Lead Forrester’s ECM Wave in Evolving Market.” The write up explains that the wizards at Forrester have figured out the winners and losers in enterprise content management. As it turns out, the experts at Forrester do a much better job of explaining their “perception” of content management that implementing content management.
How can this be? Paid experts who cannot implement content management for reports about content management? Some less generous people might find this a minor glitch. I think that consultants are pretty good at cooking up reports and selling them. I am not too confident that mid tier consulting firms and even outfits like Booz, Allen has dotted their “i’s” and crossed their “t’s.”
Let me walk you through this apparent failure of Forrester to make their reports available to a person interested in a report. This example concerns a Forrester reviewed company called Hyland and its OnBase enterprise content management system.
The deal is that Hyland allows a prospect to download a copy of the Forrester report in exchange for providing contact information. Once the contact information is accepted, the potential buyer of OnBase is supposed to be able to download a copy of the Forrester report. This is trivial stuff, and we are able to implement the function when I sell my studies. Believe me. If we can allow registered people to download a PDF, so can you.
The Failure
I wanted a copy of “The Forrester Wave: ECM Business Content Services.” May I illustrate how Forrester’s enterprise content management system fails its paying customers and those who register to download these high value, completely wonderful documents.
Step 1: Navigate to this link for OnBase by Hyland, one of the vendors profiled in the allegedly accurate, totally object Forrester report
Step 2: Fill out the form so Hyland’s sales professionals can contact you in hopes of selling you the product which Forrester finds exceptional
Note the big orange “Download Now” button. I like the “now” part because it means that with one click I get the high-value, super accurate report.
Step 3: Click on one of these two big green boxes:
I tested both, and both return the same high value, super accurate, technically wonderful reports—sort of.
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