Bonus season begins

I'll be following how the bonus season plays out this year.  Most banks will apparently have huge bonus seasons.

Goldman, doing the best, will pay the biggest bonuses.  Back in August, the CEO told staff to refrain from ostentation. Didn't really work: bankers and traders are making giant purchases, just with lowered voices.

I'm reminded of the movie Goodfellas.  The guys pull off the biggest heist in history, and DeNiro (Jimmy Conway) tells everyone not to spend the money until the police heat turns down.  Instead, the next day, one guy shows up in a new pink Cadillac, the next guy's wife has a new mink coat. 

The most interesting aspect will be how the public responds.  Some predict public outrage, but I think it will brief and muted.  The Wall Street show will roll on.  Only strict regulatory overhaul has a chance to change things.

In Goodfellas, recall, the only thing that stopped the lavish spending was Jimmy Conway killing everyone off.

Facebook is hell

Jean-Paul Sartre wrote (taking lots of liberties in my summarization here) that having all your thoughts and actions observed by someone else would create a hell of shame and fear. 

Welcome to our always-on, interconnected digital world!

Facebook is quickly becoming the grand marshall of this world.  I'm not saying Facebook is evil or bad, I'm just saying its tools -- easy updates and posting, photos and videos tagging you, a feeling of privacy in a public space -- work well, and as a result, create a perfect situation for unintended bad results.  It's the metaphorical equivalent of someone picking their nose in their car (false feeling of privacy in public), but instead of just a few fellow drivers seeing it, it's posted on the web.

Canadian woman loses benefits over Facebook photo
Bank intern busted by Facebook
Facebook postings closing doors for job candidates

For years, we "adults" have been tut-tutting the kids with party pictures posted with comments like "Stupid kids, you'll regret it later when you try to get a job."

But this is the world that kids grow up in today.  I met some recent college grads on a Facebook alumni page, and they all had between 500 and 5000 friends.  Every one of them.  That seemed weird -- most people I know, older of course, have between 30 and 300 -- but then I realized they'd been adding friends from every school, every club, every summer camp they'd ever been to, all their lives.  From that perspective, 500 is probably the number of an introvert.

If you got very drunk at a party, you used to just reminisce about it with your friends.  Getting drunk or doing stupid things together and then reminiscing about it was one of the things that bonded you. 

Now, the reminiscing happens on-line.  That's just the way it is today; it's designed that way.  Even against your will, someone else might take photos (Michael Phelps), and often those end up in their Facebook album, with you tagged.  And then, lots of people you barely know -- that guy you took driver's ed with and your sister's friend's boyfriend's karate coach -- are all reminiscing with you.  Without the bonding effects, of course.

Privacy options help a little bit, but that's a finger in a leaky dam.  Our groups of friends and family and business associates overlap and intertwine.  These days, I share jokes and beers more often with co-workers than with "friends".

The only safe option is to never do anything stupid that might be embarrassing if someone took a picture and posted it online.  You never know who's looking, so assume that someone always is.  That sounds like Hell.

Microsoft paying for search content is unbelievable stupidity

Microsoft's impending deal to allow Bing to be the exclusive search engine for The Wall Street Journal and other Murdoch sites can only be described as stupid. 

Forget about whether the price is too high (reports peg it at $50mm), if it includes Fox News and MySpace, or if gating news can every work as a long-term strategy.

The real question is: what's in it for Microsoft?  Absolutely no one is going to use Bing more often because the results will include those sites, or a different search engine because they won't.

The die-hard WSJ and Fox readership will simply go straight to the source.  No one else will notice.  Maybe you could argue that the search quality will be infinitesimally lower quality on Google.  It's a weak argument, but still no one will notice.  Tomorrow there will be more free sources of news than there were yesterday.

By the way, I tried to use Bing exclusively when it came out, just to encourage industry diversity.  But after about a month I gave up. 

I liked the pop-up extra text when you hover.  Unfortunately, it takes a second to load, which doesn't sound like a lot, but every extra second or step is a disincentive, especially when you might have to scan through dozens of entries to find the one you want.  I frequently forgot to use it.  Then, the hover text usually didn't have enough info.  Finally, the little bar that prompts the extra text to pop-out is too small.  Again, another second wasted finding just the right spot.  Why not start caching all the hover text as soon as the page loads and then show the text automatically when you mouse over any part of the result?

The killer, though, was that I found I had to go through more entries to find "good" results.  I found myself paging to additional sets of results more often.

If Microsoft has $50mm to spend to improve their search position, how about improving the hover usability?  Or implementing some other innovations?  Or improving their algorithms?  These ideas are too crazy?

If this deal goes down, it will be clear sign that Microsoft simply has too much cash that it doesn't know what to do with, and they should pay it out as a one-time dividend to shareholders.

Long-term gains

After I work out / swim, I feel great.  Yet, before I work out, I have difficulty starting and think of dozens of reasons why I can't.  Why is that?

Sleeping feels great also.  So great that, like lots of people, it's not easy to drag myself out of bed in the morning.  Yet, at night, when I should go to bed, other things that I could or should do seem to proliferate, and I constantly go to bed late.  Why is that?

I believe the answer also explains why bonuses fail as an incentive practice.

All the satisfaction from the workout and the sleeping come at the end.  Meanwhile, there are other activities that offer more immediate rewards.  Sometimes, as in the case of working out, the activity itself requires exertion, and just sitting and doing nothing can feel more satisfying, in the very short run.

Frequently, the only thing that gets you to do the "right" thing is discipline.  Tricks can help, too, like telling yourself, "If you work out, you can have dessert."  But that's discipline in another form, because you can obviously do what you want.  Automatic withdrawals from your paycheck into your 401k is another form of discipline -- actually, another example of a very beneficial long-term goal that we wouldn't have a chance of fulfilling due to so many short-term alternatives, without the aid of another trick: "out of sight, out of mind".

Similarly, if you work hard over the course of the year, you increase your chance of getting a good bonus.

Of course, that assumes that you work in meritocratic organization, one which has strong capabilities in tracking productivity and achievement, and finely calibrating bonuses accordingly.  It further assumes that you can ignore the fact that the company's performance, which you have little effect on, overwhelmingly impacts your bonus more than any of your personal accomplishments.  If any of this was not true, then clearly the possibility of the bonus would have little part in your decision to do a good job.

But, even assuming all that, how likely is it that your decision in April to put in extra effort, give up your weekend, risk making a fool of yourself, and wear yourself out, will be affected at all by some additional dollars later that year?  It's a struggle just to stay focused on the positive incentive of a work out an hour from now!  The benefit of a full night's rest just a few hours away, all of which accrues to you, is too far off to affect your decisions now!

The bonus is classic example of a long-term gain.  I might further contend it does more damage than good, but at the very least, it clearly has no impact on productivity and personal incentives.

Free software: IntelliJ

In case you missed it, IntelliJ is now free.  JetBrains has adopted the freemium strategy: a free version and a paid enhanced version.

At one level, the strategy responds to the fact that the arguably best two IDEs are already free.  So, the free version helps get their foot in the door, and maybe you'll get hooked.

JetBrains's free version is offered under an open source license, a critical factor.  Clearly, this is actually all about a user-developed add-ons strategy.  It's called "the community version" after all.

So, this isn't quite freemium, it's actually open core licensing.

The unanswered question about open core licensing is whether the original developer (JetBrains in this case) can offer enough additional bang to encourage users to pay.  At the same time, they want their users to donate valuable features for free. 

Open core licensing is a fairly new free strategy, and it involves walking a real tightrope.  On the one hand, a strong user community means a strong platform, but less likelihood that the the proprietary version stands above far enough to elicit upgrades.  Meanwhile, the core version looks better if the community doesn't add as much, but then the platform doesn't add up to much.

Firefox and iPhone has taught us that add-ons make the platform far more valuable than the platform by itself.  Chrome and Android will emerge as serious competitors, in large part because they will have serious add-ons as well.

Similarly, IntelliJ has to compete with Eclipse.  Trying to spark a community as robust as Eclipse's presents a major challenge by itself.  Unlike Eclipse, they also have to simultaneously try to keep ahead of it.  It will be interesting to watch how IntelliJ, and open core licensing, evolves.

Voice is destiny

Everyday, Pandora offers me songs I've never heard before, songs that are similar to the ones I have registered.  Some of the suggestions I like, some I don't.

Many of the songs I like have hard rock roots, like The Smashing Pumpkins.  Eventually, Pandora will a song that fits in the same category, except for one very specific trait: the voice will be deep and "monster-like".  Think Metallica.  As soon as I hear a voice like that, I thumbs-down the song. 

Think about the difference between Metallica and bands like the Pumpkins.  You could argue that both have a lot of talent.  Both do a lot yelling.  But the Pumpkins yell in a relatively higher pitch, while Metallica uses the monster voice. 

Even if everything else was equal, that small difference would make all the difference.  I suspect people who like metal are attracted to the low, powerful, almost threatening voice metal bands often use. 

This is a long way of getting to discussing one's voice at work.

We frequently have discussions with users and business managers about deadlines that need to be met, deliverables that disappointed, features needed yesterday.  Your voice will make a big difference in how the conversation will turn out.

Occasionally, a powerful, threatening voice might work, but usually, you want to cultivate teamwork and mutual empathy.  Soften your voice, and try to persuade, not control.

And, as a side note, smile as much as possible, in direct proportion to how much trouble your message might stir up.  Unless you're singing in a hard rock band.

Wanted: software developers

Behind the $65bn Madoff ponzi scheme: two programmers.

Mr. Madoff coped with the flood of new accounts by using computer programs “written, maintained and updated” by the defendants.

Those programs allowed Mr. Madoff to mimic a legitimate investment advisory business — although prosecutors contend the two programmers knew no actual trades were ever being made.

The programmers are accused of designing the software that generated thousands of fake customer account statements as well as fraudulent trading confirmations from the London Stock Exchange and fictitious clearinghouse records showing transactions that had never occurred.

These days, any operation of scale requires systems, so the days when you could perpetrate a massive scam just using laborers, such as shipping actual bricks instead of hard drives, are over.  Advances in regulation and auditing of systems also means taking advantage of software errors, such as making millions with false trades, are also over.

So, now it comes down to programmers being in on the game.

Mr. Madoff averted [the programmers'] rebellion by ordering Mr. DiPascali to give them whatever was required to keep them quiet. The two men received 25 percent pay increases and bonuses of about $60,000 -- and maintained their silence, according to the complaints.

We can surely expect to see increasing numbers of cases where people will lean on software developers, who know the back-doors into their systems, to help out their crime.  Often, these will be very senior people.  With lots of money to share, in addition to being able to ruin careers.

I don't know what 25% of their pay adds up to, but I'm sure all of it and more will be going to lawyers as they attempt to avoid 30 years in jail.

Clean code = clean hands

Here's a situation you surely have seen in the past:

You're building a new app, and your code starts out pretty uniform.  You follow some basic coding conventions.  You need to bring in another pair of hands, so you hire someone.  He does good work -- but all his code completely ignores the existing coding conventions. You've prodded him about coding conventions, but to no avail.  Now you've got database columns of TradeId in 5 tables, but trade_id in his new table.

What do you do with this guy?  Like I said, his work is otherwise good.  There's a good chance that a replacement would not be as good as him.  In baseball statistics, you'd say he has a solid VORP.

Do you micro-manage him?  Make his life hell?  Or, on the other hand, should you just accept this flaw as part of the package?  Perhaps his brain does not accommodate thoughts of coding conventions, and to impose it would greatly affect his productivity.  Some people could be like that.

Code reviews might catch these kinds of problems.  But, every place I've ever worked had such extreme deadline pressure that code reviews always got chopped.  I don't think they're a long term solution.

Perhaps a code czar can be appointed to to make sure all code fits in with the master plan, like George Lucas does to ensure consistency in the Star Wars canon?  Almost always, such a czar is disdained by the other coders, or gets carried away and becomes a bottleneck.  People you'd want to have in that role smell the no-win nature of it and avoid it.

My usual solution has been to prod as much as possible, using all the motivational tools in my belt, but ultimately letting it go if that all proves useless.

But, today I witnessed something that totally changed my mind.  This event had nothing to do with code.

In the bathroom, someone was in the stall doing their thing, using the toilet paper.  As I was washing my hands, this person came out of their stall and then proceeded to walk straight out to the work area. 

Yes, I was disgusted.  I was also shocked, because this person was a fairly high member of the department, and known to be a good guy, excellent worker, etc.  I don't know if I can look at this guy the same way now.

Strange mind that I have, I immediately related this to coding conventions. 

Would I eventually get rid of someone who consistently refused to wash their hands after, you know, using the toilet paper?  Absolutely.  Social pressure should work (and probably would in this case).  But if he didn't, he's gone.

You might argue that clean code is not as big a deal as clean hands.  But, as far as your code is concerned, it is.  If one person's code sticks out so clearly, then he's creating a bigger problem.  Like a virus, it will indeed degenerate your code into unmaintainable, unreadable goop.

Clean code = clean hands.  This basic level of social behavior and decency should be expected.  There's no excuse for doing otherwise.

Honoring all veterans

I don't usually write "commemorative" posts on holidays.  But I liked Dave Winer's recent advice to Let the World Change You, and the message fits in nicely with Veteran's Day.

I have a problem with entrepreneurs who say they want to Change The World... The best we can do is make a few other people happy for a while, make ourselves happy, and if you do that, and leave the place a little nicer for having been here, I say -- Job Well Done!

Like Dave's dad, my dad is a veteran, and I got to see first-hand how his service took a physical toll on him, for not a lot of money.  Whatever you might think about what our military does around the world, the vast vast majority of the men and women in our armed forces are trying to leave the world a little better, and putting themselves in personal danger while doing it.

Something to think about as we contemplate our own careers and possible dissatisfactions while sipping coffee in air conditioned buildings and fretting about bonuses.

Why Pandora should allow user-provided content

Youtube got big on free user-provided content.  Later, after they had millions of eyeballs, they found they had to add professional content as well, so they started paying for that.

Music differs from video in critical ways.  Everyone makes videos all the time.  I probably have several hundred hours of videos of my kids.  (A few might be youtube-worthy.)  Meanwhile, like most people, I have never made a single song recording, much less of an original song.

So, if you were going to set out to build a youtube empire for music, you'd do it in reverse.  Start with the professional content.  Once your user-base stabilizes, then expand into the fringe.

Music marches (inevitably, I believe) to its future where most music will be free.  Some bands have tried MySpace pages and personal websites to find an audience, but they lack scale.  Musicians are still looking for the right venue.


Pandora is uniquely positioned to become the big player in the middle.  First, they are a leader in on-line music broadcasting.  Second, one of their missions is to introduce its listeners to new music.  They have the listener base, and the right listener base, to build on. That combination creates an entry barrier for would-be competition. 

Allowing users to upload content fits in perfectly with their strengths.  Pandora can continue to be the go-to site to hear your favorite music.  And they'd become the go-to site get introduced to the newest music.

Free software: Pandora

Now that I listen to music again at work, I've been using Pandora heavily.

Pandora offers free music through freemium and advertiser strategies.  As you listen to songs, Pandora recommends structurally similar songs.  The ultimate idea is to introduce you to new music, something the founders are deeply concerned about.

Despite what I'm about to say, understand that I have greatly enjoyed using Pandora, and will gladly pay the $1 monthly fee.

Two aspects of Pandora's business, as described in a recent article, really surprised me.

First, their entire playlist only numbers 700,000 songs.  Even though some competitors have many more, it doesn't seem to be a limiting factor yet. 

More surprising is that they don't use or even plan to use the "wisdom of the crowd".  As a listener, I vote on whether or not I like the songs that are chosen for me.  If the users who liked "Stairway to Heaven" also tended to like "Paranoid Android", you could use that information to drive recommendations.  Pandora can use these links between songs, created by its user crowd, to build their song trees, just as web site linking builds the search lists on Google.

Instead, Pandora has professional musicians who decompose the structure of each song in hundreds of elements.  The next song recommended to you will have a similar structure. 

To me, that sounds ridiculous.*  

Mainly, I think Pandora is thinking too small.  They need to break away from thinking of music as driven by the record labels and more driven by music listeners.  Music is being decentralized like everything else, and they're in a unique spot to take advantage of it.

Pandora should just start adding songs with some high level categorization, let the votes roll in, and create links between songs that way.  Categorization could be done by letting its users tag songs.

Once you do that, there's an opportunity to become the youtube of music.  Small bands could upload their recording, tag it, and if enough people like it, slowly get more "airtime".  If people dislike it, it will fade into oblivion. 

Now, you're really introducing people to new music.  You draw people in with the established acts, and they end up listening to some genre-defying garage band from Podunk.  You can also scale up your playlist very quickly.

If you add a donation button, some mainstream acts would likely upload their songs too, particularly the vast, not well known middle tier.  Eventually, instead of paying 50% of their revenues to the record labels as they do today, record labels will be coming to them.

And if Pandora doesn't do it, someone else will, and will eat Pandora's lunch.

------
* The manual labeling reminds me of the Open Directory Project -- an effort to create a "definitive catalog of the web" using manual labor.  While ODP, aka DMOZ, has been successful so far, I'll frankly be surprised if it's still around in 10 years.

How We Decide

Imagine you have two decisions to make: one which is complex, having a lot of variables to consider, and one that is much simpler, with only a couple of variables.  An example complex decision might be choosing which car to buy, while a simple decision might be what color.

Which decision will benefit more from thinking through the options logically?

Jonah Lehrer's How We Decide instructs us to use reason for simple and new decisions, but rely on our instincts for more complex ones. 

In other words, thinking about what color will probably make sure you get the best choice (for you), but thinking and comparing the cars will likely prove futile.  The book shows us that our brains can only actively consider a few variables at once, and decisions that have more variables end up being a crap shoot and often worse because we end up over-weighting less important factors.  (Yesterday's post might be an example of the latter.) 

Even choosing which box of cereal to buy can overwhelm us.  Because most of us don't buy cars too often, if you can narrow it down to three, just getting the cheapest one probably works best.

If you deal with complex situations frequently, create frequent practice opportunities to sharpen your instincts.  Flight simulators have worked wonders for pilots.  Also, take the time to reflect later on your satisfaction with your decisions and thoroughly understand what happened -- why you succeeded or failed.  (Reminds me of deliberate practice.)

The lessons of the book are pretty straightforward.  Its real strength comes from the fascinating stories and research examples.

Its conclusions can also be useful if you flip the decision around: when you're trying to convince someone else of a decision. 

As developers and engineers, we often try to convince our customers, our audience, each other by laying out intricate arguments while highlighting caveats.  Instead, identify the top priorities and focus on those.

How much is a year worth?

Suppose your job has become slow and boring, but you're planning to go to med school in a year.  You could stay at your current job, or take a more interesting one-year job at a non-profit for 1/3 less pay.  Or, your company put you through school, and if you leave within the next year, you owed them $30,000. 

In these cases, do you stay at your job even though you aren't learning anything?

The question boils down to a year is worth to you. 

One-third less pay, or $30,000, whichever works for you, sounds like a lot of money.  On the other hand, sitting around not learning has three very real costs: 1) being bored sucks, 2) your skills are actually declining, and 3) you're foregoing the chance to branch out to new areas.

Our brains can quickly grasp the value of 1/3 of our paycheck, but the other costs, though more numerous, remain vague and thus valueless.  We end up calculating this as $30,000 vs nothing.

Of course, that's completely wrong.  First of all, all learning comes to use.  Second, think of how much more satisfied you'll feel at the end of each day.  And third but not least, you can use the year at a new job to take risks that could blow up -- oh, so that's what happens when you frankly tell VPs when they're wrong in a meeting -- or could turn out to be amazingly successful.  You can take the risks because, at worst, you'll end up out of a job in a year, which is where you'd be anyway.  At best, you might end up shocked at what you accomplish.

Unless you're retiring soon, or you're living on steamed rice and frozen vegetables and you literally need every dollar of your paycheck to get by month-to-month, the intangible costs will be far more valuable in the long run.

Minimum job requirements

Today I noticed that a project manager who sits near me never got up from his seat, never had any meetings, never discussed anything with the developers or the business analysts.

Even though he appeared to be working -- didn't notice any web surfing on the occasions when I walked by, seemed to be doing some spreadsheets and paperwork -- I would say he flunked the minimum requirements for his job.  Almost all jobs require personal interaction, except maybe the most basic programmer on a really heavy coding day.  Senior coders, managers, and certainly project managers should spend their time mostly on personal interaction on most days.

What I think this project manager did today was spend the day using tools to communicate.  Chat, email, documents.  All good stuff, but they're the supplement, the seasoning, not the meat.

We sometimes fall in love with the tools.  They make our lives so easy.

Major, major mistake.

Jonah Lehrer talks about how doctors who use MRIs to diagnose back pain do a much worse job than doctors who don't.  They start seeing things in their scans and draw conclusions that their training and common sense would contradict.

On a project that a colleague was on, he would get informed of his assignments through the issue tracking system, which was Jira.  When he transferred to the project, he actually got an assignment from Jira before his project manager ever contacted him.  I never found out who his manager was, because he would always reply "Jira" when I asked him.

Collaboration tools make a big difference and in fact are essential to a well-run project, but you can end up with too much use of them.  They keep the cranks turning, but they don't ultimately deliver anything. 

On the other hand, you can never have enough personal attention -- your personal touch, your time and involvement face-to-face or at least on the phone.  Fostering team identity, motivation, confidence, priority / urgency, appreciation.  These and many other things can only be done personally.

Discipline takes discipline

Sometimes, the only thing that gets you through what you need to do is discipline.  Reasons why you can't do it, lack of confidence, low energy, environment distractions, personal disruptions, and simple procrastination bombard you at various times, and at particularly bad moments, all at once.

In times like that, you have to rely on your discipline.  The catch is, you don't even realize you're relying on it. 

It's similar to how the extra muscles you've developed in your arms helps you avoid back strain, even though you don't think about it.  You build those arm muscles slowly, never sure when you'll reap the benefits, but something heavy always comes along.

The important things you do regularly because they need to be done, or they help you bring order to your chaos -- you'll rely on them to maintain during bad times.  Every time you do them when you don't really need to, while things are going okay, you're building your discipline.  You slowly build your ability to act, despite any obstacles, and you'll be ready when bad times come along, as they always do.