Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

In the age of the temporary job, the portfolio becomes important to us all.

For most of my life, I heard of the artist’s portfolio—the collected works of an artist. Well, welcome to the age of everyone-is-an-artist. Everyone needs a portfolio to show potential employers. Wikipedia has a few definitions of portfolio that I like.

This age of everyone-is-an-artist causes me to change a few things in my life. These include:

1. accept that I need a portfolio
2. keep my portfolio in mind as I do everything
3. how can this work be part of my portfolio?
4. put my work into my portfolio
5. keep my portfolio organized, i.e., keep my work organized
6. keep my portfolio available
7. do all my work knowing that potential employers will see it

Item 7 can be frightening. EVERYTHING I do will be seen by others. Yikes. Perhaps I should focus on each task a little better and produce high-quality work all the time—especially when I find the task to be mundane.

by Dwayne Phillips

Sometimes—make that almost all the time—the path from the problem to the solution is winding.

“We had a problem; we solved it. Let me describe how we found and implemented the solution.”—a satisfied problem solver.

Ah, nothing more satisfied than a problem solver just after solving a problem. Listen carefully. They will tell you a tale, probably a tall, tall, i.e., not quite true, tale of how they thought a moment and pushed straight through to the solution.

Solutions to problems, i.e., problems whose solution is worthy of a problem solver, rarely come straight. There are fits and starts (what’s a fit?), mistakes, incorrect assumptions, restarts (no re-fits), misdirection, misunderstanding, mis-this-and-that before reaching the solution.

This is normal. Do not panic, do not punish, and do not hold reviews to learn how to make a straight line.

This is why we do agile development. In that, we try to shrink problems to two (four, six, eight, whatever) weeks. The winding is reduced to those time boxes. Hence, the deviation from the mythical straight path is reduced.

Straight paths are for tall tales and myths. Winding paths are for adults in the real world. Choose the path according to your situation.

by Dwayne Phillips

I’m all for brief meetings, but sometimes we walk away too soon.

I’m an engineer. I work with engineers and scientists. You know, insert-you-favorite-derogatory-word-here’s.

We don’t concentrate on social skills. When we talk, and we admit that we have to talk with another human now and then, we state the facts, decide, and move. The conversation is over. We walk away. The shorter, the better. Right?

Not always. Sometimes, in our zeal to be efficient (or is it a zeal to not talk to another person?) we end the conversation and go. Maybe we didn’t cover all the details, but we both understood the gist, and that is all we needed. We will work out the details on our own. Right? I mean, we’re really smart.

Hint to us all STEM persons: pause a moment or two. Ask that question. Allow the others to ask that question. Consider that possibility that you don’t have all the information you need. It is possible.

by Dwayne Phillips

Of course no one agrees with me when we read, hear, see, etc. the same thing. We are in different places in different times while in the same place at the same time.

As a kid, the most enjoyable episodes of my favorite programs were the ones where they played one scene over and over with a different character narrating it. It seems that all successful TV series run this episode once as it was a tried and true script.

How silly the whole thing was—everyone was in the same place at the same time yet they all told wildly varying stories.

Life isn’t so silly, but life is exactly like this episode.

Note, for example, the Satir Interaction Model. (One description of it is here. There are many available online.) Each person intakes something different, even in the most equal situations. Each person applies their own meaning. Here is where a big variance occurs. What does “violet” mean to you? Probably something much different from what it means to me. What is significant about this? How do we each react?

We all come to the same place at the same time from different lives. We don’t agree on what we saw; we walk away differently.

And then we are surprised by it all. We shouldn’t be.

(1) Realize that we walk away differently.

(2) Don’t be surprised by (1).

(3) Don’t be upset by (1). There is nothing wrong with (1). It is normal.

As a manager, discover what (1) was for everyone. Adjust accordingly.

by Dwayne Phillips

Life doesn’t have an undo key. Isn’t that wonderful?

The Ctrl-Z key sequence (command-Z for the Apple universe) is the universal undo command. Type the wrong words? Press Ctrl-Z to remove them. Deleted the wrong words? Press the Ctrl-Z to bring them back. Did something regrettable? Well, you know.

Life doesn’t have an undo key. Too bad. There have been many times in my life when I did the wrong thing, said the wrong thing, or sat idly by with my mouth shut when I should have acted.

I wish life had an undo key, until I don’t.

There have been many times in life when I did “the wrong thing” and everything transpired better than I could have imagined.

A simple example: my two grandchildren (age 7 and 9) were attempting to roast marshmallows. The fire pit was all wrong. We built the fire the wrong way. We needed an undo key to start anew and build the fire correctly.

The two of them stood there with their marshmallows on the ends of their forks trying to roast them over a fire that wasn’t working. They chattered for twenty minutes the way siblings sometimes do when there is nothing else to do. They created a life-long memory instead of roasting marshmallows. Let’s see, life-long memory versus a couple of marshmallows. Hmmm, the mistake led to a much better place.

Simple examples are the best. Simple situations in life are often the most fulfilling. Seems like Ctrl-Z would remove the simple and keep the complex. It’s a good thing life doesn’t have an undo key.

by Dwayne Phillips

We can’t seem to shake this childish manipulation. Ask around enough, and someone will provide the desired answer. And it won’t be my fault.

I suppose we all did this as children. If Dad said, “No,” we asked Mom because there was a chance she would say, “Yes.” Childish behavior. We all grew out of that, right? Sigh.

A few words regarding the seeker, i.e., the one running around trying to find the desired answer. I want to do something. What’s more, I want permission to do it. Hence, if it all falls apart, someone is there to share the blame. I mean, they said it would be okay, okay?

A few words about the permission givers. I am tired. I had a hard day. I am trying to watch something that takes my mind off of things that require my mind’s attention. Why are you asking me to engage my mind again. Can’t you see that it is mind-resting time? Go ask someone else. Their mind must be rested and engage-able.

We are all seeking to spread any blame that needs to be spread. Rare is the person who stands and proclaims, “This is me. This is mine. If this doesn’t work, blame me 100%.”

by Dwayne Phillips

I have a failing in that I like to call things what they really are. Hence, I take on the recent AI financial boom.

AI is everywhere (too bad we don’t seem to feel that real intelligent people are everywhere, but that is another topic). AI drives our cars. AI reads our medical test results. AI approves or disapproves our loan applications. AI…well.

Much of what is called AI—see above examples—isn’t an artificial being displaying intelligence or original thought. It is, instead, a pattern recognition algorithm that assists a person in performing a task. Someone is still sitting behind the steering wheel of the car. Someone is still at the doctor’s office glancing at the results (I hope). Someone is still at the bank.

And someone, thankfully, looks at enough of the results to note that we aren’t fully recognizing people of some races, creeds, or colors.

The algorithm churns through millions of data points. The coefficients adjust so that the correct answer (if anyone knows what that is) is identified some high percentage of the time. That percentage is usually higher than an expert human, but the expert human can only function expertly six hours in every 24.

Viola’. We have artificial intelligence.

No, we have an algorithm-assisted system. Let’s be honest. Let’s be smart. Let’s be intelligent.

by Dwayne Phillips

Election day is upon us. Let us pause a moment as adults and state the obvious.

Let’s state the obvious: of course “foreign actors” are hacking political campaigns.

In the old days you would throw toilet paper all over their front yard trees or hit their house with rotten eggs. That took physical access.

Now you can sit in your crummy little apartment in Life-is-crummy-istan and hack someone’s website 12,000 miles away. What fun.

And some persons are surprised and shocked about this.

I trust the adults are taking a more adult view of all this.

by Dwayne Phillips

Will the solution solve anything? Will the solution make the situation worse?

“Let’s fix that!”—the cry of the optimistic solution-er.

Will the solution improve our situation or only make it worse?

A long-time colleague once described a situation he faced decades ago. Things at home were a mess. His wife and kids were a mess. His house was a physical mess. When he came home from work he wanted to immediately return to “the office” because the office wasn’t such a mess. Life was a mess.

A solution: become a manager at work. Be paid more money. Hire a maid to remove the mess at home.

Let’s think this through. His home was a mess because he and his spouse couldn’t manage it. Becoming a manager at work would be a disaster because, as he just admitted, he was a lousy manager. If he became a manager at work, the office would be a mess, the home would still be a mess, there would be no non-messy place to hide.

The solution would make the situation worse.

Think. Thinking it through is often less costly than running an experiment (like my colleague becoming a manager at work). What about the situation makes me think I should bring a solution? Ask again and again and ask deeper each time.

For my colleague: the home is a mess.

Who is in charge at home? Me. I am the home mess maker.

Where is the solution? At home, with me.

But I want to make more money and hire someone to fix me at home.

Am I qualified to make more money? No, when it comes to a group of people, I am a mess maker.

What am I qualified to do? Fix me. Well, maybe I am. Maybe I need a little help from someone else to fix me.

Where can I find someone to help fix me?

Aha! We finally reach the question we should ask. Seek help to fix me. Then work back through the situation. Perhaps, just perhaps, one day my home won’t be a mess, and I can take a new job at work and earn more money if that is still what I wish.

Other examples:

No one comes to our volunteer organization any more. There are all sorts of solutions, but maybe the primary issue is that no one wants to be in a room with me. What can I do to fix me so that others want to be with me?

No one gives to our charity any more. There are all sorts of solutions, but maybe the primary issue is that no one sees a good reason to put their resources in my hands. What can I do to fix me so that others want to share with me?

Perhaps the solution to the situation almost always begins with solving myself. Perhaps that is why I try all the wrong things first.

by Dwayne Phillips

Have we sunk so low that we give prizes to those who teach that lying and theft are wrong?

Back in medieval times when I was in college and used punch cards for computer input…professors used to joke about (or so it went),

“So and so was a programmer for such and such big money profitable company. The big money fat cats at the big money profitable company fired so and so one day for nothing at all. So, to get even, so and so wrote a program that day-by-day erased all the software that so and so had written for the big money profitable company.”

Everyone in class actually perked up (yes, even computer science and engineering students can be perky at times), took note, listened, and wrote it all down on our engineering pads with our Pentel .5mm mechanical pencils.

The professor concluded the story with,

“That taught ’em (those dastardly folks at the big money profitable company) to treat programmers better!”

The professor failed to mention that so and so programmer was paid a salary by the big money profitable company. Hence, all software that so and so wrote at the office was owned by the big money profitable company. Hence, deleting that software was theft by so and so meaning that so and so was a thief. Perhaps it was lost along the way that being a thief was a profession to be disdained instead of honored.

Lying and theft are W R O N G.

If no one has told you the above before, I apologize for several generations of college professors. Somewhere along the line, we (and I mean ALL of US) went wrong in how we hire, encourage, oversee, and retain college professors and other influencers of youth and the otherwise influence-able.

Mozilla has just introduced a competition for ethics in computer science. They will reward—with $$$—professors who have great ways to teach the still teach-able that lying and theft are W R O N G. What Mozilla is doing is a good thing (I am not naive. I do expect that someone will find a way to make it a bad thing.). That Mozilla or anyone has to do this is a terrible thing.

Pardon the ranting of a bitter old man who spent much of his life trying to prevent destruction instead of trying to incur million$. And recently, I was asked—by a person who should know better—to lie about what users of software were doing to cover for errors in the software. It isn’t any fun working with people who came to admire instead of admonish the actions of so and so.