Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

One of the differences between hardware and software is that hardware requires some design before building begins. Software, however, can begin at any moment without design.

I was a bit surprised the other day at work, but people were debating the differences between building hardware and “building” software. (I guess that is a topic for another day, i.e., do we “build” software? “Write” software? What is the correct verb?)

There are many differences; the difference I recognized that day was:

Design

I contend that I have to design hardware before I can build it. I contend that I  can write software without any design.

Consider hardware. I cannot build hardware without parts. Depending on the job, the parts may be as small as resistors, capacitors, solder, and so on. The parts may be as large as A/D converter, USB interface, power supply and so on. Parts don’t appear magically. I have to buy or borrow or whatever to possess the parts. I can’t buy or borrow or whatever without having a list of parts. I don’t have a list of parts without some design.

Consider software. I don’t need any parts. I can start writing software at any moment. Yes, I must have a computer and a piece of software like a compiler or interpreter or the like. Those needs, however, don’t differentiate me from the hardware case as I need a computer and some design software for hardware as well.

by Dwayne Phillips

Computers are cheap. The people required to buy and install them at a company are not. Maybe it is time to treat the computer at work like we treat office supplies such as pens and paper.

The title is correct. Computers are too darn cheap. Desktop machines are $500 and less. Laptops are about the same price. These things are basically free.

At one time in computing history,

• Hardware – 95% of all costs
• Programmers that would keep the computer busy – 5% of all costs

At one time in computing history,

• Hardware – 5% of all costs
• Programmers that would keep the computer busy – 95% of all costs

Now, the hardware and the software in computer are so cheap, we don’t even write the bullets like those above. The computer is $500, and that is one day’s salary for a programmer. The computer will last a couple of years.

The “problem” today, is

• Computer hardware and software – 5% of all costs
• All the people in the company needed to buy a computer – 95% of all costs

What? Yes! Add the salaries of the people who order, invoice, process the bills, receive, unpack, install, and so on for a $500 computer. You have a mess. You have a lot of expense.

Computers are like office supplies – pens, pencils, pads, and such. We buy that stuff and set it on shelves in an unattended room. When people need something, they  walk in and grab it. No one counts that stuff. We  buy it every month and put it on the shelf.

Is it time to treat computers that way? Maybe not desktop machines because someone with a little skill and knowledge needs to connect all the wires. Maybe we should treat laptop computers that way. Put them on the shelf in a room and let people grab them when they need one.

by Dwayne Phillips

I find that there are three levels of knowing something. (1) understanding (2) using (3) explaining. Take care when assuming more than we know.

I know a lot of things (there are many more things that I don’t know, but that is another matter). Over the years, I have been privileged to meet many knowledgeable people. I have observed three levels of knowledge.

Know something well enough to:

1. understand it
2. do or use it
3. teach or explain it

This seems to make sense. Problems, however, occur when I am at one level and assume that I am also at another level. For example, I understand how to program in the Java language. I have written a couple of simple, short Java programs. I can’t teach Java programming, and just because I have done a couple of example programs, I cannot profess to be a professional Java programmer.

I work with a lot of resumes. I sometimes wonder if claims on resumes tend to go several levels more than they should.

I now tend to explain these levels to people when I ask them about what they know. I also tend to explain these levels when people ask my what I know. Many people find these explanations irritating. They want one level of knowledge. I suppose one level simplifies the situation, but it doesn’t improve the understanding.

by Dwayne Phillips

Many problems are solved; many others are not solved. And then there are problems that are not solved, but they just go away with time.

The United States Postal Service, otherwise known by the often disdainful name of “the post office,” had a big problem. They had millions of envelopes a day that had to be sorted by people. This was slow and expensive. The post office undertook a massive project to build a machine that could read the various handwriting styles from millions of Americans and sort the mail “automatically.” Some of the history of this is chronicled in Wikipedia. There was some success in this endeavor. Much of the success was that companies or commercial mailers printed their address on envelopes in limited fonts. Early optical character readers worked fairly well.

Of course, this did nothing to solve the original problem – sorting all those envelopes adorned with hand-written addresses. People just wouldn’t write addresses by hand in nice, optical-character-reading characters. The machines didn’t work; the problem wasn’t solved. Efforts continued. Surely, one day, someone would solve the problem.

Before anyone solved the problem, time bypassed it. Electronic mail snuck in the door, and so did cell phones with their plans where long-distance calls were treated just like local calls (one day I shall have to  blog about the disappearance of the term “long-distance call”). The reason for sending a personal letter has just about disappeared. The envelope with a hand-written address has just about disappeared. I received two thank-you notes this week. Those were the only two envelopes that I received all week with hand-written addresses. I received about 50 or 60 other items in the mail – all from companies, all with address labels printed by machine so that a machine could read them.

I supposed all that money spent trying to solve the problem brought about some good. They money never solved the problem. Time passed it by.

by Dwayne Phillips

Smart and caring people do stupid things. I do stupid things. I advocate going out and finding these stupid things. Knowing they exist helps to prevent and plan for them.

There is a lot of stupid out there in the world. Otherwise smart and caring people doing things that are just plain stupid. Here are a few examples (I may have blogged about some of these before):

Meetings with no other reason than the calendar – If it is the first Tuesday of the month, we have a meeting. We don’t have anything to discuss, we don’t have any decisions pending, but it is the first Tuesday of the month, so we stop working and have a meeting.

Deciding budgets without reason – Some people cut items out of a budget without any context. They will remove all funds for flour in an apple pie budget not knowing that flour is a necessary ingredient.

Keeping people ignorant so you can hurt – In an organization, one section of people is supposed to do their part. They don’t know how to do it, so another section does their job for them. The section doing all the work is, well, doing all the work and suffering from fatigue and anguish. The managers refuse to have the responsible section of people learn to do their jobs because they want to be able to blame that section for all the fatigue and anguish in the organization.

I could go on…

What I advocate is that we go out and see what stupid things people are doing. There are a couple of reasons.

First, until I realized some of the stupid things mentioned above, I never planned to avoid them. How in the world could smart and caring people ever do some of these things? They do. When I realized that people did these things, I was better able to prevent them.

Second, when I see the stupid things that other smart and caring people do, I am better able to see the stupid things that I do. Yes, I do stupid things as well. Finding stupid helps me to see my own stupid.

by Dwayne Phillips

One of the few things I remember learning in high school is that if I keep quiet about some privilege I have, no one minds.

I guess I learned a lot of things in high school. I remember that I learned how to play a couple of musical instruments and march in a marching band. I suppose I learned a little math and science, enough to sneak into college. There must have been lots of other things I learned in high school, but I can’t remember them. One thing I do remember from high school is the title of this post.

I played on the baseball team in high school – started three years. It was a small high school and a small baseball team. We played some of our games at 1 pm on school days. On those days, there was a logistics problem of how to eat some lunch before the game. We had to be on the field at noon to warm up. The cafeteria was not open at 11 am. Where to eat?

We sneaked away from school and ate at The Malt Stand. Believe it or not, that is what we called the Loranger Drive-In. It wasn’t much of a place, but they were open at 11 am and they had good hamburgers and fries (the staple of our diet).

The key word from above is “sneaked.” We were not permitted to leave school to eat lunch. It was a small baseball team; we were not big men on campus (but that is another story). Coach Housely knew that is where we ate lunch on game days. He also knew that we didn’t have permission to do so. He also knew that he didn’t have the authority to permit us to leave school grounds. And he also knew something that many of us didn’t know yet:

If we would keep quiet about it, no one would mind.

He had to repeat this lesson to us at the start of each baseball season. A few of the ninth graders would come in to the team and join us for lunch at The Malt Stand. They also had to tell their friends how they could get away with this. The word would spread, it was after all a small school, and we wouldn’t be allowed to sneak away any more. One time was usually all it took for the lesson to sink in. Yes, it was an obvious lesson, but yes we were teenage boys with thick skulls.

Well, Coach Housely was right about The Malt Stand. We would keep quiet about it, and no one minded. I learned from his lesson, and that is one of the very few things I remember learning in high school.

I heed Coach Housely’s advice to this day. I have a few privileges  in my job and in a few other circumstances in my life. I don’t really have permission, but as long as I keep quiet about them, no one minds.

by Dwayne Phillips

Do you want to reduce the anger that people feel coming from you. Don’t stop shaking your fist; stop pointing your finger.

Each culture seems to have its own form of an angry gesture. The one that comes to mind in my own culture is the fist. Shake a fist at someone – they seem to get the idea that you don’t like them or are at least angry at them. The unspoken words, “I’ll punch you in the nose” or “I’ll plaster your face” or something like that comes across.

I want to discuss what I consider a far more prevalent and more angry gesture – the pointed finger.

I’ve seen people literally point a finger at another person. The pointed finger usually accompanies various statements that all seem to be a variation of:

It’s your fault.

I have met people who are so clever that they can point a finger at someone else while keeping both hands in their pockets. They are able to point at someone by just saying a few words.

But what’s the big deal? We are just assigning responsibility for a bad situation. That is a legitimate thing to do, isn’t it? Let the person who is responsible for a problem know of their responsibility so they can go about remedying the mess they created. Yes, I agree. That is a legitimate thing to do.

But that won’t change the world. The status quo will continue. Those who make the mess should clean it, but instead, what if I would extend all four fingers and the thumb of my right hand, a.k.a., a hand shake and say something like,

Let’s work together

or

Sometimes bad things happen, let’s move on

or

I’m your friend (or husband or father or colleague), let’s talk about this.

Why do we have to continue to point a finger. I believe the pointer finger was created to denote things, not people.

by Dwayne Phillips

Cook a meal, invite someone to eat it with you, and listen.

I wrote about this topic earlier. I had forgotten about that earlier post until I started writing this one. I guess some ideas are harder to get out of my head than others. They keep bouncing about in my brain as if there is more to the message than I have expressed.

I find that many people have  such ideas bouncing about in their heads. The ideas are not a blessing, but a plague. The ideas scare away sleep, keep other work from happening, and generally drain energy. They need an outlet; they need a person to sit and listen so the ideas can be freed.

Then there is the meal. Yes, there is hunger in the world. No, there aren’t many people in my part of suburbia that haven’t eaten a thing in three days. Still, we eat and some chemical and biological processes kick in while we eat. I don’t understand all that. I have, however,  experienced that people seem to relax a bit and talk more while eating.

There are plenty of commercial places to eat in my part of suburbia. Inviting someone to one of these places for a meal and to listen can change the world. If possible, though, cook the meal yourself, invite the person into your home, and listen. The ideas will flow; energy will return, and the world will change a little bit.

by Dwayne Phillips

Solutions to problems don’t always work. A person can change the world by being available to another no matter the outcome.

The situation is fairly common. One person comes to another with a situation that requires some assistance. The second person provides instruction for the situation. The first person is about to go their way, when the second person changes the world by saying:

If that doesn’t work, call me back and we can try some other things that might work. Here is how to contact me.

Life isn’t predictable. Solutions to problems don’t always work, even if those same solutions have solved those same problems many times before. Someone who provides the if-that-doesn’t-work response is anticipating those odd circumstances. They are also telling the other person:

I am available

Being available to another person changes the world.

by Dwayne Phillips

I have met a few people who I describe as competent, straightforward, and candid. I like them. I also find that most people are off balance around them.

I describe my current boss as

• competent
• straightforward
• candid

I have worked for a few people in my life who had these same characteristics. I have noticed one thing about such people:

I takes a while for other people to grow accustomed to them.

It seems that this is an unusual combination of traits. It also seems that each trait by itself is unusual and throws people off balance.

Competent: Most people aren’t very good at what they do. Probability and Statistics teaches us that half of us are below average. That means that half of us are above average, but perhaps above average doesn’t always mean competent. Competent people know things (declarative knowledge for those of us who have delved into artificial intelligence) and know how to do things (procedural knowledge for the same AI crowd). I think we rate competent people as being in the upper 10% or maybe the upper 1% of some scale of goodness.

Straightforward: Life is a mystery novel for most people. Personal stories and explanations tend to wander about until they circle back to the answer. This means that some people require ten minutes to tell you what time it is, and by the time they finish, they are wrong by ten minutes. Straightforward people make life a non-fiction headline. Here is the answer, now let’s move on. Somehow straightforward people seem to be no fun to the rest of the world.

Candid: Honesty means telling the truth. I have adopted a habit from a colleague that whenever someone says, “Well, to be honest…” he replies with “You mean you have been dishonest with me up to now?” Candid goes beyond honest. Candid is when someone says, “That outfit doesn’t look good on you.” Candid is not blunt. I consider blunt to carry a bit of “I will tell you the truth and I hope it hurts you a bit.” Candid is “I will tell you the truth with the best of intentions towards you.” Still, candid startles most people.

I like competent, straightforward, and candid. I strive to be all three everyday. I don’t have the energy to do otherwise.