Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Once again, the price of tools has fallen dramatically. This has shifted the place of work, and we are struggling to adapt.

A few weeks ago, I went to a seminar where I connected a $100 gadget from Nvidia to a four-year-old $1,000 portable computer from Apple, used a bunch of $0 software, and ran machine learning experiments from a motel ballroom. Then I went home and did more machine learning experiments from my kitchen table.

I can’t bring this into the office for show and tell because of various IT and other policies.

The more powerful and interesting “work” things are at my kitchen table.

Thirty years ago, I used a couple of supercomputers via high-power workstations to do interesting “work” things. These tools were at “the office” (we called it “the lab”). The price of the tools was far beyond my means.

Many of the engineers and scientists spent many extra hours in “the lab,” because that is where the tools were. That is where the toys were. Interesting things were in “the office and the lab.”

Now the interesting things are on the kitchen table or anywhere that has WiFi (McDonald’s, Starbucks, local coffee houses, and bars). Yes, geeks and nerds perform science and engineering experiments perched on bar stools feeling sophisticated while still looking like geeks and nerds.

We in the professions haven’t adapted. We want top talent to come work with us. They don’t because those various IT and other policies prohibit the more interesting work in our offices and labs. Working from startups and former startups allows interesting work with interesting persons in offices, labs, McDonald’s, and from bar stools.

Give us stodgy old characters a while longer. We will either adapt or retire to “if they would have only listened to me” while sipping coffee in the old-man section of McDonald’s.