Category: Personal Growth (Page 3 of 7)

Subscription Overlord… or Overload…

My first job as a child was delivering the Daily Journal newspaper. A subscription was a few dollars a week and people got a morning paper and on Sunday an expanded paper with coupons. This was the first subscription I knew about. I remember some other delivery services, Milk, Charles Chips, etc. But I didn’t think about subscriptions that much; well, I was a kid.  

The first subscription shock was cable television. I remember all the talk about who would pay for something you get for free. At that time, most people got television via rabbit ears. But by 1988 52.4% of US households had cable television, the notion of people willing to pay for a subscription was debunked.  

In the mid 80s technology subscriptions started. At any point in time, I had Prodigy, GEnie or CompuServe. These predate the open internet. I think the most popular of these was AOL. Some people I know still have and use their AOL email address. These services gave you access to a walled garden of activities, information, and entertainment. These were all killed due to the open internet and high-speed internet access, which was another subscription service. 

Amazon started it streaming service in 2006 and it grew with its Amazon prime. 2007 Netflix, a video DVD subscription company, decided to move to online streaming. Hulu was also announced in 2007, but was not popular until Disney plus, ESPN plus joined it in 2019, and 2018. Some of this growth was helped by Apple allowing apps to charge subscription fees, so now apps and services were given easy access to potential customers. 

Why all the history? I started writing this a few months ago but two of my favorite podcasts started to mention it. This Week in Google and The Big Technology podcast last week had stories about what I have been thinking, as it appears after covid many of the blogs, YouTube channels and podcasts are starting to create subscription tiers.  It started more during covid where a few musicians I enjoy could not make money touring, so they went to a tipping model, or in some cases a subscription model. WIth the subscription they would give you more access to them, zoom calls, access to private Facebook, Instagram feeds, lessons, etc.  

In 2005 I was commuting to NYC and found podcasts to keep me entertained on the hour or so bus ride there and back. There were free, some had advertising in the mix. Every podcast I listen to now has some kind of paid tier, TWIT (Club TWIT), Hidden Brain, Huberman Labs, No Stupid Question, The Big Technology Podcast, Factually etc. If I paid for all it could add up to two hundred dollars a month. This is more than I pay for cable television and internet! Next add artists, including writers, musicians that I would like to support, it could add to close to three hundred dollars a month. This does not include my cell phone subscription to receive the information also. And what about all the ‘app’ subscriptions and things like Peloton etc.  

My mind is trying to wrap my head around a few things that are conflicting. First, I do need to manage my expenses, second if I stop paying which services may not exist and third is this the end of advertising supported content. The first is easy, I need to make choices, understand what I spend money on (yes there is a subscription app that will even help you with that) and give myself a budget.  

The second two are a bit more problematic. Now I do not think that Netflix, Disney etc. are going to go out of business, but some of the smaller ones may struggle. And lastly, if everything goes behind a paywall, how useful will the internet be? If the better writers and authors want you to pay to see the best content, what is left is going to be ‘lower quality.’ I am going to ignore the fact that search and things like Chat GPT will be useless if everything is behind a paywall. LLM’s like Chat GPT will need a walled garden they have control over to train; this is another post in draft already.  

I try to spend my time finding and listening to (or reading) quality content. In my efforts to get better every day it is one of the things I find helps. Some blog posts have been influenced by them, and this one got pushed out faster due to two other podcasts talking about it. If it all goes behind a paywall the ability to grow will be diminished. TWIT and Huberman both have stated their content will always be free which is wonderful, but that does not mean they will be able to survive as a business. I almost wish there were a service where you could just pay $100 a month, get all the content needed and based on what you read or listened to would get a percentage based on some metric. Someone can start that, but I can see we just end up with 2-3 giant cable companies.  

Just a note for those who do not know economics. First there are very few creators/influences that make the big bucks. The platforms will push them to make it seem that it is possible. The people making money are the platforms, and a few of the creators. Which is why the subscription would allow them to create quality content. Until a few months ago, I did not pay as much attention to how many I subscribed to. Writing this was supposed to help me pick which ones I should. It did not, in fact I am still torn. Does anyone who read this have some way to pick?  

This opinion is mine, and mine only, my current or former employers have nothing to do with it. I do not write for any financial gain, I do not take advertising and any product company listed was not done for payment. But if you do like what I write you can donate to the charity I support (with my wife who passed away in 2017) Morgan Stanley’s Children’s Hospital or donate to your favorite charity. I pay to host my site out of my own pocket, my intention is to keep it free.  I do read all feedback, I mostly wont post any of them.

This Blog is a labor of love, and was originally going to be a book.  With the advent of being able to publish yourself on the web I chose this path.  I will write many of these and not worry too much about grammar or spelling (I will try to come back later and fix it) but focus on content.  I apologize in advance for my ADD as often topics may flip.  I hope one day to turn this into a book and or a podcast, but for now it will remain a blog.   AI is not used in this writing other than using the web to find information.Images without notes are created using and AI tool that allows me to reuse them.  

Part 2: Can We Prevent Mistakes or Failure

Looking at my notes I thought ‘Part 2 is going to be easy to write.’ Every day this week I spent looking at the ideas, trying to put them in an order that makes sense, and it was not. I was failing and trying to articulate how to limit or eliminate mistakes. Guess what people, you cannot prevent mistakes and or avoid failure. It is going to happen whether you like it or not. The line from Apollo 13 ‘failure is not an option’ is untrue.   There is nothing you can do that will ever be foolproof. In fact, there is a saying that I learned while studying the User Experience that a UX designer’s job is to create a user interface that even a fool can use, and the Universes job is the create better fools. So, what are you to do? 

If you know mistakes are going to happen, failure is an option and there needs to be some process on handling it. Yes, what I am saying is plan your mistakes, mishaps, and failures. To me the plans come in two parts. 

First, if you remember after 9/11 in the US, the government called on movie writers to produce ways that the US could be attacked.  Start with the premise of being creative.  When I worked on cars at Camp Sky Crest, one counselor would ask another ‘what does Murphy say?’ (as in Murphy’s laws) The thought was to think of anything that could go wrong and try to front run it.   Now this is not that easy, how can you get people to be creative in all the mistakes that can happen. Guess what, practice it, eventually you will get better. If you never do it, I guarantee at least of the things you would have thought of will happen.  

Second part of planning to fail is ‘what to do when something fails.’  In technology there is this notion of setting up when a system goes down, but that is only one part of failure.  Projects fail, code has issues, business users do things wrong, and so on.  A process needs to be in place for any failures on how to recover and change so that it reduces the possibility of it happening again.  

This includes how to do the postmortem correctly.   Most cases people looking for the simple one mistake that caused the outage.  What I started to learn later was the blame never solved the problem. Bringing back my agile methods of development there is a practice called the five whys. This is a practice mostly used in requirements gathering to keep asking why, up to five times to get to the ‘real’ reason something is being done.  It could be a gorilla and bananas problem, a poor process problem, a people problem, a system problem, a management problem, a time to market problem etc. Unless you keep asking why, it is going to be hard to get to all the breakdowns to address.   

In last week’s writing I described one cause could be lack of reading emails. If an email is sent to too many people often multiple people think the other person reviewed it. In processes with say six or seven sign offs everyone thinks the other person read it, so I do not have to. The process is designed to make sure there are checks and balances, but too many checks people take the short cut, and no one checks.   

The other thing to make sure of is that all the small issues are included in the whys.  If part of the problem is reduced staffed so more workload led to the lack of people paying attention, it needs to be there.  There could be lack of documentation of the process, lack of knowing the process, and even lack of practicing the process so it is usable. Time to market often makes people take short cuts, incentives can drive behavior and egos can break things. Communication failures exist, whether it is a language issue, cultural issue, lack of people speaking up (silence is not always agreement) and simple different understandings of the same sentence.   If you do not work and find small breaks, build solid communication frameworks and practices misaktes and failure will still happen. 

If you are already good at postmortems, then doing the first part is the same thing. Look at your processes, look at what you are doing and challenge the premise that it is the right thing to do. But it becomes before versus after.  

Guess what I lied, there are not two parts but three. The third comes from Agile practices. Part one needs to be done often on some regular basis. In Agile Scrum, this is called a retrospective. Where the finished product is not what is being discussed but the process of how we got there. Mistakes are going to happen but understanding the cause of why things went awry and making minor changes reduces the changes of them happening.  

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” (Einstein) – But maybe it is also not thinking things can go wrong and planning on first how to prevent them, and second how to handle them when they do.  

This opinion is mine, and mine only, my current or former employers have nothing to do with it. I do not write for any financial gain, I do not take advertising and any product company listed was not done for payment. But if you do like what I write you can donate to the charity I support (with my wife who passed away in 2017) Morgan Stanley’s Children’s Hospital or donate to your favorite charity. I pay to host my site out of my own pocket, my intention is to keep it free.  I do read all feedback, I mostly wont post any of them.

This Blog is a labor of love, and was originally going to be a book.  With the advent of being able to publish yourself on the web I chose this path.  I will write many of these and not worry too much about grammar or spelling (I will try to come back later and fix it) but focus on content.  I apologize in advance for my ADD as often topics may flip.  I hope one day to turn this into a book and or a podcast, but for now it will remain a blog.   AI is not used in this writing other than using the web to find information.Images without notes are created using and AI tool that allows me to reuse them.  

Is a Failure always that simple..

You are healthy and fit, so you decide to have a cheat day.  That one day doesn’t hurt you and you are fine.  But then the next day you cheat again on your diet.  No big deal you will get back to it on Monday.  Six months later you find yourself completely out of shape.  You are wondering how that happened, what was the moment you went from fit to fat.  What was the day that you went over the cliff from being that fit to that fat person.  

I woke up one day and thought why I can’t fit into my skinny jeans and tried to pinpoint the day I got fat.  The problem was, there was not a ‘moment’ it was a six-to-eight-month small with hundreds of breakdowns that cumulated into a failure.  Now of course, I had to change course and get myself back into shape, but it made me start thinking about the cliff moment. In most cases there is no understanding of anything is wrong until it’s a bit too late.   

My day job is in technology (regular readers know that) and there are occasional outages or problems.  I am sure most people have been hit by an outage of either their cell phone, a software service or even their internet and wonder what went wrong.  Inside companies there is a range of reactions. The notion of finding the root cause and fixing it to restore service is the goal. Once service is restored then becomes the understanding of finding not just what went wrong, but why?  

Obviously, no one wants to admit that they made the mistake, but you will get called out if you were at fault. Let us assume that people do admit their mistakes and place in the analysis, what I have seen in thirty-five plus years of being in technology the answer is made simplistic. The goal is to obviously make it easy to display and then come up with a solution.  

Looking at most of the issues I encountered and now comparing it with weight loss, very few can be explained simply. most of them are a series of decisions and issues that lead to the failure. How do you tell someone that everything from hiring practice, location strategy, budget, architecture decisions, technology decision, time to marked pressure, poor communication, people not reading emails, lack of testing and more can lead to failure. These things are not easily repairable, so they are often ignored.  

The challenge in both personal and business situations is being able to figure out how to change. I am challenging myself to start looking at issues this way, and instead of blaming one thing look at everything that led up to the breaking point. If you don’t make your bed one day, a few weeks later your whole room is a mess, if the light on your car goes on, a few weeks later it dies, if you stop learning, years later the person next to you is smarter.  

How to we stop these failures? How do we make good decisions so that they do not add up to failure? I am going to dig into that next week, this week I think spending the time understanding how to see problems coming needs to be digested.

This opinion is mine, and mine only, my current or former employers have nothing to do with it. I do not write for any financial gain, I do not take advertising and any product company listed was not done for payment. But if you do like what I write you can donate to the charity I support (with my wife who passed away in 2017) Morgan Stanley’s Children’s Hospital or donate to your favorite charity. I pay to host my site out of my own pocket, my intention is to keep it free.  I do read all feedback, I mostly wont post any of them.

This Blog is a labor of love, and was originally going to be a book.  With the advent of being able to publish yourself on the web I chose this path.  I will write many of these and not worry too much about grammar or spelling (I will try to come back later and fix it) but focus on content.  I apologize in advance for my ADD as often topics may flip.  I hope one day to turn this into a book and or a podcast, but for now it will remain a blog.   AI is not used in this writing other than using the web to find information.Images without notes are created using and AI tool that allows me to reuse them. 

The Best Schools Are Failing to Teach…

First, this may be a post that will upset people. There is a larger problem going on in the Middle East, people are dying. It is someone’s parent, child, brother, sister, and friend that are paying a sad price. In no means do I want to lower the importance on the loss of innocent life, as I do not have a clue on how to help the situation. There are a series of good charities to help pick one I have. If you are living in a bubble reading this years later, on October 7th, 2023, Hamas engaged in terrorist attacks on Israel. Even saying that statement I know some people will immediately disagree. 

And that is what happened in some of the so called ‘Top’ Colleges in the US. Harvard, University of Pennsylvania, Columbia and others a series of events happened. At Harvard one student group authored a letter which has caused a lot of outrage. Companies rescinded job offers of students who signed it, donors have threatened the schools and even a previous president of Harvard spoke up against it. UofP is facing loss of donors and backlash for its festival that has speakers who are known antisemites. And there are widespread issues across campuses. While many see this as a disaster, to me the real problem is what the schools do not see as their mission. 

Schools exist to educate. Hopefully, their goal is to create well rounded adults who understand freedom and respect everyone. In the U.S. we have the freedom to speak. That implies is your enemy, the person you despise and has the opposite view of you has the right to speak. Freedom does come with both responsibility and limitations. Limitations include not being able to defame someone and not inciting violence. You are also responsible for your words and the possible actions and reactions that might happen. The worst is being cancelled. 

These institutions need to step up. Instead burying their heads in the sand and hiding and getting the students and even the public into the classroom. Use this as a teaching moment so that it is ok to raise issues of what is happening and ask for help, but the killing of innocent people is not the answer. Condoning the killing and blaming someone else for the actions is not. Instead of teaching people how to express themselves and get heard and promote change versus the ugliness that school campuses have turned into.  

In situations like this where anyone is suffering and the children of people you know are on the front line it is hard to be objective. I have said before you should not be responsible for your first thought, but you should be for your second. Schools need to use this as a teaching moment. The schools that do that are following their mission of education, otherwise they are just reacting. Doing nothing is doing something. Silence is an action… 

This opinion is mine, and mine only, my current or former employers have nothing to do with it. I do not write for any financial gain, I do not take advertising and any product company listed was not done for payment. But if you do like what I write you can donate to the charity I support (with my wife who passed away in 2017) Morgan Stanley’s Children’s Hospital or donate to your favorite charity. I pay to host my site out of my own pocket, my intention is to keep it free.  I do read all feedback, I mostly wont post any of them.

This Blog is a labor of love, and was originally going to be a book.  With the advent of being able to publish yourself on the web I chose this path.  I will write many of these and not worry too much about grammar or spelling (I will try to come back later and fix it) but focus on content.  I apologize in advance for my ADD as often topics may flip.  I hope one day to turn this into a book and or a podcast, but for now it will remain a blog.   AI is not used in this writing other than using the web to find information.Images without notes are created using and AI tool that allows me to reuse them. 

What do Bullies, Snacks and News Have in common.

One of the things I was told when I was a child was that if someone picks on you, they are afraid of you or jealous. Years later, it was to make them look bigger or more important, they themselves are struggling or even they want to be part of the “in crowd” by picking on someone they may are ones not picked on. I had to take this all-in stride and move forward. I was told when you get older these kids would grow out of this behavior.  

Fast forward and I am working at a bank in the 90s and what I saw was most of the same thing. In fact, I found myself almost surrounded by it. It was much different than childhood, instead it was done without the person around. People would put others down or complain about them. I did not recognize it back then, but now I see it. It was behavior that was no better than high school behavior.  

What is worse though the behaviors are commonplace and played out either in news media or social media. Instead of understanding what is going on, people are very quick to immediately find some way to put anyone or even any group down in hopes of making them appear ‘right.’ This is like the bully putting someone down to make himself feel more important or be part of the crowd. Most people do not recognize it that way, but if it is the ‘group’ we belong to we believe it, if it pointed toward us, we often respond with anger.  

Originally this was limited to a few elite media being one sided. The use of the excuse that the show was entertainment not news was the excuse. But with the growth of social media, it started to carry to individuals. One thing I noticed is that the first mover advantage combined with confirmation bias turns the initial statement into widespread belief. I have yet to see anyone not only apologize and retract this first reaction, but for the truth to be agreed upon. No one is immune to this, even me. I can guarantee there are multiple instances where if you look back on something you heard was true, wanted to be true and still believe it but it is false.  

First, I do not have a solution for this, but this week I was thinking about this in something that should not have a side. The weight loss drug semagultide has seem to be a miracle drug. For those on it there have been minimal side effects but helping them lose weight. First no I am not taking it, nor do I have an investment in it. What I saw this week was an article about the potential impact on food purchases and the companies who sell food.  One snack company went as far as to say that they were not going to stand still and go after it. The CEO says he will do whatever it takes so people continue to eat the unhealthy snacks they sell. I take this as he is going to create an information campaign to drive opinions of people that these weight loss drugs are not good for you. 

If a snack company is willing to do this then what is to say anything we hear from any company, any news agency etc. is not rooted in the same desire to change people’s minds. I did state I do not have a solution but now I need to read everything with the notion of who wrote it, and what is the goal behind writing it. I wrote recently that I need not judge myself on my initial thought, but my second thought is I now need to apply this to information that comes out. I should not believe the first report ‘reason’ (the base fact is ok but the reason not) and wait a few days to see if the reason or why something happened. I also need to look at who is repeating the initial information to see if they are smart enough to dig and get answers. My initial reaction can be what it is, but I need to start to think and make sure my second thought is based on quality information not a bully trying to make themselves feel more important. 

This opinion is mine, and mine only, my current or former employers have nothing to do with it. I do not write for any financial gain, I do not take advertising and any product company listed was not done for payment. But if you do like what I write you can donate to the charity I support (with my wife who passed away in 2017) Morgan Stanley’s Children’s Hospital or donate to your favorite charity. I pay to host my site out of my own pocket, my intention is to keep it free.  I do read all feedback, I mostly wont post any of them.

This Blog is a labor of love, and was originally going to be a book.  With the advent of being able to publish yourself on the web I chose this path.  I will write many of these and not worry too much about grammar or spelling (I will try to come back later and fix it) but focus on content.  I apologize in advance for my ADD as often topics may flip.  I hope one day to turn this into a book and or a podcast, but for now it will remain a blog.   AI is not used in this writing other than using the web to find information.Images without notes are created using and AI tool that allows me to reuse them. 

Motivation, Rewards and Struggling to Succeed

I struggle to be successful in everything I do, and I want to dig deep into the why so I can understand how to keep my team, family and friends motivated. Whether it is cutting my lawn, work, being a parent, losing weight or even writing this blog there are times were getting motivated to be perfect. Previously I have written that perfection is the enemy of good, and yes, I need to remind myself, but it is more than that. Sometimes during the journey, I get demotivated and not only do not do my best, but often not even good.  

Currently I am on several journeys including one to drop weight again. After having several mental challenges which pushed me to eat more, and then several health challenges that prevented me from working out and eating more, I found myself in a shape I did not like. I had to almost demand myself to build a strict diet and even further keep myself to it.  

One of the things I started doing was weigh myself every day and keep it going good and bad. Yes, I forgot a few days (tired etc.) but that does not bother me. In the beginning of any diet, you lose weight fast. If you look at all ‘pop’ diets they push to have do a lot in the first two weeks to get the motivation going. Realistically the best way is slow and steady versus giant drops. I set my goal and started tracking. The days I lost I got this dopamine hit, but there were days that I know I hit my calorie differential that I was either flat or even up and I gained weight. I had to fight through those days to keep at it. In fact, those days where I was sure I would be down and gained were hard days. 

I did give myself short term goal and once hit that pushed that goal further. The goals I set were very intrinsic. I chose not to set up extrinsic rewards and it has taken me a while to figure out why. You can google what they type of rewards are, but the thought of not going for extrinsic rewards as I felt if I did that it has being continuously diminished, and they no longer work. By using intrinsic reward, I value that success at such a higher level than buying myself a gift for hitting the goal.  

So why are extrinsic rewards so diminished? If every time you hit a goal, you are rewarding yourself i find a few things happen. First the reward must grow, if it’s not better than what you just gave yourself why would I push, I already got a reward. It is not possible to continuously escalate rewards possibility. Also not hitting the goal in the period can feel like I am punishing myself. This can demotivate me quickly. I get lazy as I can pick easy goals and get them as a reward myself thus reducing the value of the reward even more. Guess what, studies show the same thing. 

Take for example participation rewards. If these are given often at some point the people participating are there for that extrinsic reward. There is no longer the journey is important but this notion of the reward at the end. If the reward disappears, participation will also. This is not to say all participation rewards should go away, but the notion of how and when to give them should be well thought out. Allowing someone to find intrinsic rewards encourages longer term participation.  

One other example of extrinsic rewards gone wrong, at a previous company (and many others) I was working one thing that was done at key milestones we got a gift. A Lucite that had the release and date info on it. The first time it was done people thought it was cool. But it got to a point it became a participation reward as that other groups were demotivated who did not get one. Not all projects have key milestones etc. This spiraled into what was more of a competition to see who had more Lucites on their desk. Thank God that there was a market downturn and cost cutting and one thing that went away was to remove this.  

Yes, I know extrinsic rewards can be important also. For me, the extrinsic rewards are ones that are not self-given. For weight loss it is others noticing (without prompting) it is fitting into an outfit that did not fit both are non-self-created extrinsic goals. A Lucite for an achievement that was exceptionally large also can be well received. In fact, the drive for something that takes a lot of effort, well beyond a day-to-day job, is what should be recognized. The downside again is making sure that people all understand it is something that really is beyond as it can demotivate others who also put in extra effort.  

What else demotivates me? Instant rewards that require little or no effort. Take for example scrolling through TikTok, Instagram or other short social media. These quick cool things give my brain a dopamine hit (reward.) If I do not give myself a break from these, what happens is that again my brain struggles with other rewards. Yes, there are wonderful things on social media like food prep meals, new workouts, cool science fact etc. that are wonderful. Just like other rewards though they diminish, the next one must be so much better, and it relates to other goals I am trying, like weight loss and work.  

Ok this sounds too much to take in to hit some goals. Yes, it is, it is why I struggle. I do have too many goals, yet I need them. I need to set goals at work and personal goals. I need to ensure I have my own intrinsic rewards to hit them and let others who pick the extrinsic rewards do what they think works. I need to look at those extrinsic rewards as just external to me. If you are wondering where I am on my weight loss journey, in two and 1/2 months I am down 23 pounds which is a little off my target but still good. I am on my second goal after hitting my first one and looking forward to hitting a reach goal at some point. I have not rewarded myself yet for any weight loss, and I’m not sure I will. At work there are few stretch goals I wanted but have not gotten them and need to push myself as there is only one quarter left to hit them.  

As for you, I ask you to look at what motivates you and figure out if the extrinsic rewards have lost value and what rewards you need to reach the goals you set for yourself. 

This opinion is mine, and mine only, my current or former employers have nothing to do with it. I do not write for any financial gain, I do not take advertising and any product company listed was not done for payment. But if you do like what I write you can donate to the charity I support (with my wife who passed away in 2017) Morgan Stanley’s Children’s Hospital or donate to your favorite charity. I pay to host my site out of my own pocket, my intention is to keep it free.  I do read all feedback, I mostly wont post any of them.

This Blog is a labor of love, and was originally going to be a book.  With the advent of being able to publish yourself on the web I chose this path.  I will write many of these and not worry too much about grammar or spelling (I will try to come back later and fix it) but focus on content.  I apologize in advance for my ADD as often topics may flip.  I hope one day to turn this into a book and or a podcast, but for now it will remain a blog.   AI is not used in this writing other than using the web to find information.Images without notes are created using and AI tool that allows me to reuse them. 

What the Return To Office has taught me about the Ultimatum game..

Pre-Covid, the role I was in had some flexibility. For starters, when I first took on this new role, I was told I could work remotely as many days as I wanted to remote. This was due to adding 30 minutes more to my commute and the fact I had a team in Shanghai, India, and the US. I quickly realized the flexibility was more idealistic than realistic. While other people in the office rarely showed up, I found it hard to be more productive than with my team if I was fully remote. The business team I supported were in my old building and my team as stated were mostly remote with a few in my building. 

Being in the office I was able to walk the floor, talk to the team informally and really get insight into things that were going on. I was also building rapport with people on other teams (that were willing to go into the office) and get understanding of how things ticked. One challenge was the team in Shanghai, which I changed the way they worked from them having calls when they got home to me having calls late at night during their morning. That whole reform could be another store. But burning the candle like that was not easy so I did take some time to work at home to get sleep. 

Bring on the Pandemic and I no longer had a team in Shanghai but now my team is in NY, India and Montreal. Everyone was forced remote. There were a few stops and starts and at some point, coming to the office was ‘optional’ but encouraged. My thought always was it should really be a team-by-team thing, as well as the need for the time in the office to be productive. Going into the office and spending 8 hours on a zoom call does not add to productivity. There were pluses to being back as well as some negatives. 

As the pandemic started to be further in our rear-view mirror there was more pressure from some companies to be in the office. The One company demanded five days, another if you don’t make your 3 days a week for 6 consecutive weeks is automated termination. Hence the start of the Return to Office Ultimatums. 

Now for those who don’t know what the Ultimatum games is, it is a psychological experiment in which there are two participants. The first is given a sum of money, say $100.00, and he is to split it with another person known as the responder. The first person is to split the $100.00 between him and the responder. The responder knows that the other person was given the $100.00 and when he is offered his share of the money can accept or reject the offer. They do not get to negotiate, and if they reject the offer the first person can keep the whole $100.00. Now when this experiment is done with people who are known to you (social groups etc.) the split is usually around 50:50. If the experiment is done with a stranger, the split is often less. 

Now people are often given ultimatums from people they know, take example things like a partner asking you that if you are not engaged by a specific time that they will break up with you, or a parent demanding grades on children or if you do this, I will never talk to you again. It is amazing how many of these we get in our lives once we take the time to reflect. Some worked out well, others were empty.  

The Return of Office Ultimatum spans the gamut of threats of firing, HR conversations, used in reviews etc. Companies can pick what they hope will achieve their goals. I am not an expert on what tactic works best. My previous statement still holds it is team-by-team, possibly a employee-by-employee and in some cases a company-by-company scenario. 

What I see as reactions from employees in my company and others is how they react to the ultimatum. In this case the expectation is that the company is part of your social group that is in effect giving you an ultimatum. As the experiments showed people in our social group, we would expect a fair 50:50 split. But most companies are leaning towards 100:0, 80:20 splits. Which the employees see as ‘unfair.’ Thus, we see a lot of pushbacks, anger etc. But unlike some of the ultimatums, this one comes with the loss of your job. Something that unless you can replace your income is easy. The notion that someone in your social circle is doing something so unfair is painful but it is the company you work for really your social circle. Please note, there are many jobs who had to be in person through the whole pandemic and they never got this choice or ultimatum. 

There are those who chose to find another job, some lucky people who get exceptions or others who just walk out. What I read in the news and through conversations is that employees just abide by the ultimatum, well in spirit. As a person who manages people my thoughts turn to what I can do so that people are not just following in spirit but finding how to make that time more positive. Unfortunately, I do not have the magic answer as I am still trying to figure it out.  

Companies, managers, and employees should understand why there is anger, resentment, and challenge to the ultimatum. There is a saying about expectations if you have low expectations, you can be happier. This was not the case. Understanding the ultimatum game has at least let me figure out at least one key reason for the backlash. Now what to do with that understanding? 

This opinion is mine, and mine only, my current or former employers have nothing to do with it. I do not write for any financial gain, I do not take advertising and any product company listed was not done for payment. But if you do like what I write you can donate to the charity I support (with my wife who passed away in 2017) Morgan Stanley’s Children’s Hospital or donate to your favorite charity. I pay to host my site out of my own pocket, my intention is to keep it free.  I do read all feedback, I mostly wont post any of them.

This Blog is a labor of love, and was originally going to be a book.  With the advent of being able to publish yourself on the web I chose this path.  I will write many of these and not worry too much about grammar or spelling (I will try to come back later and fix it) but focus on content.  I apologize in advance for my ADD as often topics may flip.  I hope one day to turn this into a book and or a podcast, but for now it will remain a blog.   AI is not used in this writing other than using the web to find information.Images without notes are created using and AI tool that allows me to reuse them. 

The next time I hear “Nothing changed on our side…”

Just a reminder that I have worked in the IT field for 25+ years (ok everyone say it. you are old.) and in that time there are things that come up often. This time it was a production outage of one of our internal build software products. The developer’s immediate reaction was “Nothing changed on our side” When something stops working the immediate reaction is ‘it worked yesterday.’ It could be your car, the fridge, your cell phone, anything. In technology the notion that if a piece of software is in production that means it is bug free. One side note, in the 90s I heard a story from a large tech company that bug free was designated on software if something had less than 50,000 known bugs.  

On this day we had a production issue with something that had been running for a long time. The first thing most managers ask (including myself) is “has anything changed?” And in a chorus what do you think the answer is? “Nothing on our side…” The first thing about that statement is pushing blame on someone else. It immediately is saying that you had nothing to do with something ‘you’ did.  

The next question is, has anything changed on outside systems etc. This could be the operating system, user desktop, upstream feeds etc. Of course, in many cases there usually are a few changes. There are always security fixes to server and desktops, so changes happen. Upstream systems can do updates (hopefully they test with you but sometimes they do not) but that is always a possibility. 

Next step in debugging, can we reproduce it in a test environment? Try to figure out how to setup a test environment exactly like production and see if you can replicate the error. Sometimes it works, sometimes it does not. But hopefully it will help the team figure out what is wrong or point in the direction of debugging. If you are lucky and have unit tests you can run them, and if you are lucky (I am not) you have UI automated tests and can run those. All to see if you can find the issue. 

Now if you are not bored already as technology people are like “tell me something I do not know” and non-technology people are thinking “what does this have to do with me.” Read on, and it will. 

In the beginning I mention that every day people see this when their fridge breaks, the car stops working or the cell phone dies. What I did not say is about yourself. When you are not feeling great, injured, sick, struggling or just not working the way you should what are the steps? Our first reaction is often blaming some outside force. We can blame work, our partner, our kids, something we ate etc. Our mind instantly defends ourselves and looks for the outside force that is to blame. 

I mentioned previously being wrong is like being punched, and as soon as you feel a certain way your immediate reaction is to figure out what punched you. I also stated previously when I take my dog to the veterinarian when she is not well, they often ask ‘What are you feeding your dog?’ but a doctor only asks what is wrong. Where am I taking you? 

As this blog is introspective, I am asking this about myself. I found myself not in the shape I wanted to be, and I stated the list of excuses: I was sick, my daughter was asking me to go for ice cream a lot, I was going out to eat a lot with friends/family etc. Where I had to back away from my first thought and dig deeper. I was the one picking my meals (sick or healthy) I was the one who chose to get ice cream and they are all choices I made. Comparing myself to the production piece of software, my body was the same thing as it was long ago. The change that was going on was the choices I was making.  

I realized something simple is that I should not judge myself on my first thought. That I need to be more responsible for my second thoughts. My second thought was how I did this before and started to make those changes again. And in making those changes I found myself heading back in the direction I wanted. I am not there yet, but I am chugging away at it.  

Now back to the technology issue, there was code written a long time ago and as would be our luck had no unit tests as well as difficult to replicate. The problem was with our code. The team’s first thought was to blame others (nothing changed comment) but our next actions were to dig and find if it is. I know people often get frustrated, but getting the team away from the defensive mode into the debug mode is what a good manager does.  

The next time you hear the following with something goes wrong “Nothing has changed on our side.” Do not make yourself responsible for your first thought, but hold yourself responsible for your second, third etc. thoughts. And it is those thoughts that need to drive you to solving problems. 

This opinion is mine, and mine only, my current or former employers have nothing to do with it. I do not write for any financial gain, I do not take advertising and any product company listed was not done for payment. But if you do like what I write you can donate to the charity I support (with my wife who passed away in 2017) Morgan Stanley’s Children’s Hospital or donate to your favorite charity. I pay to host my site out of my own pocket, my intention is to keep it free.  I do read all feedback, I mostly wont post any of them.

This Blog is a labor of love, and was originally going to be a book.  With the advent of being able to publish yourself on the web I chose this path.  I will write many of these and not worry too much about grammar or spelling (I will try to come back later and fix it) but focus on content.  I apologize in advance for my ADD as often topics may flip.  I hope one day to turn this into a book and or a podcast, but for now it will remain a blog.   AI is not used in this writing other than using the web to find information.Images without notes are created using and AI tool that allows me to reuse them. 

Use your vacation…. but as a vacation!

For the longest time managers have always told me to make sure I use my vacation time. In fact, many of the times I knew it was more company line than what they meant. With the amount of work that we had to get done, the hours needed to put in taking vacations often were not something the manager wanted us to take. Over the years finding the right job and manager vacations were something that were taken, but often with the words to ‘recharge’ or ‘prevent burn out.’ 

Now let us think about that. Taking a vacation to do those things means that your job is so overwhelming or stressful, that the only escape is to leave and go away. More importantly, going on vacation is somehow magically repairing the damage that has been done at work. Wow, that better be some magical vacation, it better be the vacation of your dreams, no delays, no issues etc. On the day of your return somehow all the problems are gone, and you can hit peak performance at work. 

Somehow that just sounds stupid writing is it and I am sure it sounds worse reading it. I am going to make a simple statement, there is no such thing as work life balance, there is just life. Any thinking otherwise is the same as believing the magical vacation will bring you back. Your work is as much a part of your life as so is your home life, where you volunteer, the friends you see and the places you go.  

There are a lucky few who love what they do so much they do not work for a day in their life. For others we work to provide for our families, try to have a better life or even just pay the bills. Now instead of dreading that and trying to find balance if we inject that it is life, what differences can happen?  

First, we can build good relationships at work. When I was learning how to manage bands (yes, I took classes in that) there was this notion you needed to network. One thing I learned well working at Loria Music was building relationships. When I started at a large bank I used these skills, and in my current job there is a running joke ‘Larry knows a guy…” What the network has turned it to is not a business set of contacts but good relationships. What I originally thought was necessary to get ahead in life was more becoming part of my life. 

Next, we can change how we think about stress. For years I though stress was a killer and a problem. This is how I thought about work stress, as in trying to be an athlete, stress, or pressure as it is called was used as a motivator. And to win one needs to handle the pressure and use it as a positive instead of a negative. Stress should be a motivator at work, it should bring out the best in you. There are studies that show, yes stress is just that. If you learn stress is positive, you will start treating it that way.  

Finally understand how to deal with failure. My previous post I talked about succeeding at everything means you are not taking any risks. But there is something even more important (and needs its own post) that failure is not treated the right way. Failure in some cases is not an option (aka a surgeon) but sometimes they do. Failure needs to be treated in a straightforward way of how we prevent it from happening again or reduce the possibility of it happening. If we find the wisdom in failure, instead of coming home from work saying you had a difficult day you come home with the thought more of I learned something and need to work on applying it.  

To get back to my original point, a vacation should be just that a getaway to enjoy yourself. It should not be something to recharge. There needs to be something that you do (it is not your company/bosses’ role) to recognize your life and to make the most of it. It is not easy, unlearning the bad history of work will take effort and time but the reward at the end is wonderful. I was asked this past week why I stayed at the company so long, it was easy to answer. Leaving for other places means leaving the community I built, the ability to use the challenges at work to get better and know how to improve myself from mistakes. Now the stressful thought is where should I go? 

This opinion is mine, and mine only, my current or former employers have nothing to do with it. I do not write for any financial gain, I do not take advertising and any product company listed was not done for payment. But if you do like what I write you can donate to the charity I support (with my wife who passed away in 2017) Morgan Stanley’s Children’s Hospital or donate to your favorite charity. I pay to host my site out of my own pocket, my intention is to keep it free.  I do read all feedback, I mostly wont post any of them.

This Blog is a labor of love, and was originally going to be a book.  With the advent of being able to publish yourself on the web I chose this path.  I will write many of these and not worry too much about grammar or spelling (I will try to come back later and fix it) but focus on content.  I apologize in advance for my ADD as often topics may flip.  I hope one day to turn this into a book and or a podcast, but for now it will remain a blog.   AI is not used in this writing other than using the web to find information.Images without notes are created using and AI tool that allows me to reuse them. 

AI is more like humans than we think… Ok in one aspect

Over the past few weeks there have been articles about regulating AI (well Large Language Models but honestly only the tech people care.). There are also a few articles about people asking to have their information removed, other lawsuits from authors saying their information were used in training, would they ask for their data to be removed. Now not going to get into is permitted use, but more about how the AI is human like in one thing. 

Humans have something that is causing lots of issues, not just now but appears to be for the longest time. Unlearning is a struggle. When people learn something and for years that learning is reinforced it gets embedded in their brains. When there is a change, or even challenge to that knowledge there is an instinct to push back against it. The point when someone is told they are wrong it feels like they are being punched.  

Now Large Language models cannot feel pain, but they do have an issue. When ingesting information (web page, document etc.) they are converting the text into ‘tokens’ and giving those tokens a numeric representation. Those numbers get linked together. Reversing that information out to find that exact point of some text and removing it is well impossible. So LLMs struggle to do the same thing that humans have, unlearning.  

So, one option when it comes to LLMs is to train it from scratch all over again. This could be costly. For humans there is an art of unlearning, and it is a skill that we should work on. Just like learning it is something that we need to practice getting good at it. Now, LLMs the unlearning of things is a bit more difficult. There are a few studies, here, here and here. I am not going to deep dive into them, as I will leave that to the reader to deep dive. 

It really is amazing that LLM and the GPTs that are built on top of them can produce sentences, paragraphs, and code. What is surprising is that both struggle to unlearn. And though there are now studies and ways for humans to unlearn, the only apparent way for an LLM to unlearn is to start from nothing. To reach GAI do machines need to be able to unlearn? Have we stumbled on an update to the Turing test? Or is it possible that our brains are not powerful to understand our own brains? 

This opinion is mine, and mine only, my current or former employers have nothing to do with it. I do not write for any financial gain, I do not take advertising and any product company listed was not done for payment. But if you do like what I write you can donate to the charity I support (with my wife who passed away in 2017) Morgan Stanley’s Children’s Hospital or donate to your favorite charity. I pay to host my site out of my own pocket, my intention is to keep it free.  I do read all feedback, I mostly wont post any of them.

This Blog is a labor of love, and was originally going to be a book.  With the advent of being able to publish yourself on the web I chose this path.  I will write many of these and not worry too much about grammar or spelling (I will try to come back later and fix it) but focus on content.  I apologize in advance for my ADD as often topics may flip.  I hope one day to turn this into a book and or a podcast, but for now it will remain a blog.   AI is not used in this writing other than using the web to find information.Images without notes are created using and AI tool that allows me to reuse them. 

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