Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Questions without answers are the easy ones to ask and discuss.

I recently saw a movie about folks building bombs. Large parts of the movie were discussions among scientists and engineers about building devices that kill people, but also save lives by stopping the killing.

Those discussions were easy, much easier than the tasks they had at hand (physics, chemistry, engineering, etc.).

The questions were easy because they had no answers. They could talk and talk and talk all day and no one was right or wrong.

Questions without answers are that way, they are easy because they have no answers. It is easy to talk forever.

Is that what you are doing at work, talking forever about things that have no right or wrong answers? That’s okay for a coffee break, but are you discussing those in meetings? If you are, that is a waste of everyone’s time.

Let’s do better. Table them, “Let’s discuss that at lunch or at the coffee shop before work or the bar after work.”

by Dwayne Phillips

I stumble on something that everyone else in the world has already heard. It is still brilliant.

The only apology is changed behavior.

I heard that on TV the other day. It seems that in various forms, it goes back to ancient times. It was new to me. Still, it is brilliant.

“I’m sorry, I was trying to do good and got confused…”

That is not an apology, that is justification.

“I’m sorry, I will seek counseling and be a better person.”

That is not an apology, that is some sort of bet that I will forget what you did.

“I’m sorry. What I did was wrong. I ask your forgiveness.”

I like that better.

“I’m sorry. What I did was wrong. It will never happen again.” AND IT NEVER HAPPENS AGAIN.

Changed behavior. I like that even better.

by Dwayne Phillips

Some endeavors are so complicated that headaches are expected. Most endeavors, however, have headaches that are caused by the people involved and are unnecessary.

Some endeavors are complicated. That is their nature. Concentration, lots of it, sometimes brings me a headache. I have worked in complicated endeavors and endured the natural and expected headaches.

Then there are endeavors that are not so complicated, but lack of organization and discipline brings headaches. You find yourself balancing on one foot while juggling with one hand and tweaking a knob with the other while holding your dog’s leash with your elevated foot. That is really hard to do without falling and hitting your head on the concrete. Headache.

Hitting my head on the concrete is an unnecessary headache. At my age, I avoid them. Best of luck and call me when you are ready to act like rational adults.

by Dwayne Phillips

It is simple math: the more words presented the more errors present. Rats.

There is a big benefit to brevity: fewer errors.

One way to consider errors is to look at the number of errors per the number of words. Something like five errors per one-hundred words. That is 95% correct and is pretty darn good.

Given 500 words on a typed page, that means 25 errors. Seems like a lot, huh? Well, if our piece of writing is two pages long, that is 50 errors. Three pages? 75 errors.

Aha, a simple way to reduce 75 errors down to only 25 errors: delete two of the three pages.

But, but, and but. No buts. It is simple math. Don’t ya’ just hate simple math? There must be a trick or a catch here, right? Nope. Simple math prevails.

Brevity reduces the number of errors.

by Dwayne Phillips

Meet me at the big oak tree outside of town at dusk. They said something like that in the old Westerns. It makes sense to still do this.

There was always a showdown or something in the old Westerns. The big oak tree a mile outside of town at dusk. How did they know how far a mile was? I never could understand that. They always made it though.

That big oak tree was a landmark. Everyone knew where it was. Dusk was a specific time. You couldn’t miss it. A specific place and an specific time.

“Let’s discuss our understanding of the requirements Friday.” A specific place (requirements understanding) and a specific time (Friday).

In some respects, that isn’t flexible or agile or DevSecOps or some other recent thing that we’ve convinced ourselves is better. A landmark never moved. There was only one big oak tree a mile outside of town. Dusk was dusk—no flexibility.

The landmark, however, removed a lot variables. All that was left was to discuss the complex items that would lead to a successful endeavor. All those variables out of the way. The landmark is a big eraser, a big trash can, some other metaphor that helps us to great things. Find the landmark and use it.

by Dwayne Phillips

Philosophy and utopia are great until reality punches everything in the nose—philosophically speaking of course.

Philosophical discussions are great. They may stretch the mind to see other points of view or possibilities. They may lead to better ways.

Philosophy, however, is philosophy and not reality. We need to keep that in mind. A recent article shows that some billionaires are once again trying to build a new place where they can live anew without the technical and other debt that exists in all other places on earth. Great stuff—the stuff of dreams and the outcome of some philosophic discussions.

There is one significant problem with the new utopia envisioned: it all comes to an end when someone else drives a column of tanks down Utopia Ave and says, “Your money or your life.”

No, in order to survive in reality, Utopia needs a Utopian Armed Forces or something to defend what it has. The barbarians at the gate will eventually knock down the gate and do what barbarians have done for centuries. They will pillage, plunder, and do that third thing, too.

Philosophical discussions are great. Sometimes reality collides with the outcome of philosophical discussions.

Okay, Utopia needs a lever. Utopia needs knowledge of something that the rest of the planet needs to exist. Utopia can use that lever to keep the barbarians outside the gate. That’s what the Swiss have done, right? No one attacks the Swiss because everyone’s money is in the Swiss banks. Maybe, but the Swiss also have a large, well-trained, and dedicated civilian defense force. The Swiss defense forces are good enough or have a good enough reputation to make invading Switzerland too costly.

Perhaps the next vision of Utopia will have such a lever that philosophers have discussed for centuries. Perhaps not. We shall see.

by Dwayne Phillips

We want AI systems to act like us. Or do we? Perhaps we want AI systems to act like some of us. But who is “us” and who is “not us?”

Testing shows that the latest and greatest large language models will generate bad information about political campaigns. That is wrong; those systems need to be fixed. Right? Maybe.

This brings to mind a research paper I read recently: is the objective of these AI systems to mimic human behavior. Is the objective to teach facts?

If the system is to mimic humans, now and then it will say “the world is flat” and “the moon landings were faked.” That is because, sometimes some of us will say some of those things.

That, however, is ridiculous. Systems shouldn’t repeat those foolish things that some foolish people say sometimes. Of course “foolish” is subjective, and what I consider foolish is perfectly rational to some other folks.

That is the human condition. Is the system supposed to be like us or just some of us? To be like all of us means foolish statements come from the system on some occasions. To be like some of some of us means the statements agree with what some of us would say. Things said by some of the other folks will be barred.

And then we have to decide who is “us” and who is “not us.” Simple, those folks not in the room with me are “not us.” Everyone of us will agree with me. Right? Wrong.

Funny, our inventions are like us, and we have to decide what our inventions will do. We are an odd lot.

by Dwayne Phillips

History is filled with great accomplishments accomplished by people who shouldn’t be able to accomplish them. While not accomplishing great accomplishments, I find that I was almost always under qualified.

I read history. Some would tell me that I read and reread too much history. One item I read repeatedly is someone is chosen to or pushed into an endeavor for which they are (seemingly) under qualified. After some time, these under-qualified persons achieve beyond all reasonable expectations.

Perhaps the expect-ors, i.e., those who expect these people to fail, are simply miserable at expecting or predicting the future. The great majority of us fail at predicting the future.

Perhaps the under-qualified persons don’t understand their lack of qualifications. Perhaps they accept the challenge with an “Oh yeah? I’ll show you!” attitude. Ambition is an amazing thing.

Another amazing thing is confidence instilled by a chooser of the under qualified. “I am choosing you to accomplish this as we all need this accomplished, so go accomplish it.”

Me? Yes, you. You CAN do it.

But I am under qualified to inspire the under qualified to accomplish what seemingly they cannot accomplish.

I think we are back at the beginning. Under qualified? Go accomplish it anyway.

by Dwayne Phillips

Stretching the mind is generally a good thing. There are many ways to do this, so just do it.

Over the years, I have spent hours playing the guitar. If I spend half-an-hour a day playing day after day, what I play starts to resemble jazz. I have some sort of lifetime membership to Next Level Guitar. The idea there is I open a new lesson, can’t play a bit of it, but work on the lesson for a week. A few weeks later, I come back to it, and I can play it.

At this time, once a day, I go to Cornell University’s arXiv site and read most of a paper. These are pre-publication research papers. As such, they stretch the current state of the art. I don’t understand everything that I read, but I find that a few weeks later I can discuss the topic of the paper. Somehow, time and more papers have increased my brain in some way.

I just picked up “An Introduction to Statistical Learning.” I bought this a couple of years ago, read the first 100 pages, but became side tracked with something else. I am reading again. I don’t understand everything, but as above, I am learning more than I realize.

These are next-level exercises. I try to do something that is beyond what I can do. I am stretching. I find that to be a good thing. Perhaps I don’t “get it” all, but I seem to understand more.

This can be quite rewarding to me. This can also be quite annoying to others. I need to learn to exercise and stretch and not tell others too much about it. Thank you for reading.

by Dwayne Phillips

We often use the vocabulary and ceremonies of a prescribed practice without actually doing anything worthwhile.

Daily standup, peer review, prototype, minimum viable product, agility, AI, agent, etc.: examples of vocabulary that makes it appear as if something good is happening.

Do they have a minimum viable product? Is there product much more than the minimum? If, “Yes,” they are merely repeating vocabulary without meeting any definition of such.

“Of course we have daily standup meetings,” said someone when asked about what they do each day.

Attend the daily standup meeting and scratch your head. They actually meet daily and they are standing up. Are they, however, doing anything that accomplishes work?

If the answer is, “No.” that is a ceremony and nothing more.

There is some old saying about what we are told to do, what we document that we do, what we tell people when they ask about what we do, and what we actually do. The point of the old saying is that, “We do what we want, when we want, and how we want. And stop bothering us, we have work to do.”

This is real life on real projects worked by real people. These real people are told the vocabulary and ceremonies they are assigned. Sometimes these real people really use those items as assigned. Sometimes they don’t. These real people aren’t evil. They are busy and are really trying to accomplish real work.

The question I ask is, “Why are we telling these well-meaning people to lie?”

These well-meaning people know the vocabulary and the ceremonies. They would like to be in a project where they could try this vocabulary and these ceremonies. Real-life disturbances always seem to disturb real-life, and they do what they can.

Let’s have some honesty and candor without punishment. “We want to use these words and perform these tasks as prescribed. People push us in other directions. We bend because we are told to. We don’t resist because we need the paycheck (I do have a mortgage and braces on a child’s teeth). Sorry.”

Let is be acceptable for such honest and candid speech. That is something that us managers can do. I think the word is “agile.”