Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips Things are the way they are. But why? An old saying explains much of the reason. There is an old but little known saying, “Things are the way they are because they got that way.” Pause to consider. Yes, of course the saying is correct. We are here because everything and everyone […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Take care with the messages you send job interviewees if you really want to hire someone. Another job interview, another headache. Some organizations use this process in a job interview. There are N people sitting around the table. Each person has a sheet with N questions on it. Person #1 reads question […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Meta understanding is understanding about understanding. This is rarely practiced. That lack of practice is perilous. I once worked with a man who had a high school diploma and nothing else as far as formal education. Still, this person rose in the ranks of government service to the level of Senior Executive […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Sorry, we (you and me) don’t “know” as often as we like to think. When I ask a person a question and their eyes look up, that means… Hah! Silly notion. I know what this means. I know what that means. I know what the other person is doing and thinking and […]

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by Dwayne Phillips We predict the future poorly. We know we do. What we don’t seem to realize is how often we predict the future. We predict the future poorly. Very poorly. Very, very poorly. Which among us predicted ChatGPT would arrive? And then become that fastest adopted system ever? I am waiting. Okay, I […]

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by Dwayne Phillips New problem? Need a new solution. First, try the simplest thing. It happened again at work the other day. We have a new problem (new day, new problem). We need a new solution. What will we do? Hmmm, there are so many options. Each option with its good things and bad things […]

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by Dwayne Phillips The experts devise a better way to do things. The rest of us attempt to follow their expert lead. We flop. Object-oriented programming flopped. Microservices and serverless computing flopped. I guess I could think of a few other great ideas that flopped. How about teaching kids to read via that total method […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Let’s curb our enthusiasm about these chatbots and large language models multiplying productivity and costing jobs. I just saw another article about how ChatGPT and the like are being used in yet another field of endeavor with giant gains in productivity. We won’t need half the people we have in the office […]

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by Dwayne Phillips The old ways of doing AI are still better than some of the new ways in some cases. The answer, of course, is to combine the best of all to do something better. Feed the following into a chatbot: “The cow jumped” The chatbot will finish with “over the moon.” That is […]

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by Dwayne Phillips The passing of time is usually insufficient for a person to move from task to another. Sorry. Hopes and wishes are not plans. I have seen this time and again. A person is hired for one job with the qualifications needed for that job. A few years later, that person is moved […]

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