Chaos works both ways

In the famous scene from The Dark Knight, the Joker tells the now deformed Harvey Dent, “The mob has plans. The cops have plans. Gordon’s got plans. They’re schemers, schemers trying to control their little worlds.”

He later goes on to note, “Nobody panics when things go ‘according to plan,’ even if the plan is horrifying. If tomorrow I tell the press that, like, a gangbanger will get shot or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics. Because, it’s all part of the plan. But when I say that one little old mayor will die, well then everyone loses their minds!”

To twist the Joker’s words just a little, we can apply it, with surprising fidelity, to events which similarly cause chaos in a different light:

“If tomorrow I tell the press that, like, an effective employee gets promoted or a CEO and founder will make millions, nobody rejoices. Because, it’s all part of the plan. But when I say that one little old lady wins a talent show, well then everyone loses their minds!”

The point is that it is never something expected which attracts the most attention, even if what is expected required the most effort or work. It is always the chaos, good or bad, which causes media frenzies, spectacles, and ultimately public consciousness.

Lincoln: the Video Game and Other Bad Ideas

I recently finished Goodwin’s awesome Team of Rivals, a multi-faceted biography of Lincoln and the people surrounding him. A lot has been said about the book already, including comments from President Obama. I’ll only add that I think the work could have been improved had it added more on the political dealings surrounding the war strategy and perhaps omitted the somewhat capricious details around Washington social life dealing with parties, soirees, and celebrations.

In the Wikipedia entry to the book, I discovered to my horror that it may be slated to become a movie directed by Spielberg working with–oh, no, not him–the horrendously overrated and verbose Peter Jackson. I strongly believe that the force of a message is very much inseparable from the medium in which it is presented. Books will almost always have the capacity for greater nuance and subtlety than a mass-market, digestible film; in turn, film generally will have greater capacity for said nuance and subtlety than video games. Some things should be left alone in their original medium.

So in the vein of disregarding authenticity, I can only imagine the types of taglines that would fly for Lincoln: the Video Game. Assuming the game tried to depict as much of the subtlety and not just be a military strategy game…

[CUE DEEP-VOICED ANNOUNCER AND IMAGES OF EXPLOSIONS]

ANNOUNCER: From the studios that brought you The Sims and Madden 2009 comes…LINCOLN!

[IMAGE OF LINCOLN SITTING IN A CHAIR THINKING]

ANNOUNCER: Balance the conservative and radical elements of your party…

[IMAGE OF LINCOLN WITH HAND IN THE AIR SURROUNDED BY CROWDS]

ANNOUNCER: Placate the masses with your oratorical skill…

[IMAGE OF SALMON CHASE, PLOTTING AGAINST YOU AS SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY]

ANNOUNCER: Navigate the dangerous waters of political intrigue within your own Cabinet!

I can already picture the crowds of enthusiastic gamers lining up or preordering weeks in advance. For some reason, real history just isn’t as interesting as video games.

Likewise, I sometimes wonder if the makers of games like Syphon Filter, Metal Gear Solid, or other such “espionage” games actually consulted history. Not like they should, lest they create a game like this:

[DEEP-VOICED ANNOUNCER AGAIN, WITH EXPLOSIONS]

ANNOUNCER: From the studios that brought you Lincoln: the Video Game and the stealthy espionage action of Metal Gear Solid comes…Competitive Intelligence: Corporate Espionage Action!

[GAMEPLAY OF YOU SNEAKING AROUND MICROSOFT OR GOOGLE'S CAFETERIA, SNEAKING UP BEHIND A RANDOM GUY GETTING HIS LUNCH, THEN CHOKING HIM AND INTERROGATING HIM TO GET VALUABLE TRADE SECRETS]

ANNOUNCER: You are the top spy of the world’s greater private espionage contractor (PEC). Infiltrate the ranks of the greatest minds in the search industry…and deliver illegal counterintelligence in this dangerous war of escalation in information retrieval.

[GAMEPLAY OF YOU FIGHTING A POWERFUL, CYBERDEMON-LIKE CREATURE]

ANNOUNCER: Evade the corporate park security and cross blades with high-ranking executives like Qi Lu, Marissa Mayer, Satya Nadella, and Hal Varian!

Once again, the realities of actual espionage fall rather short of depictions in successful video games. Always ask questions, but some things should just be left alone and appreciated for what they are.

The Public, Office Rumor Mill

Earlier tonight, I had dinner with a friend of mine who works at a large, very political company. His role as a sales engineering manager is more forward-facing than mine and involves dealing with customers, partner companies, and internal engineering and marketing teams.

There was a rumor that his organization would be cut in half, and he was visibly distraught through most of dinner.

As much as I would have liked to comfort him, a long time ago, I had read the pointer “90% of the time the office rumor is true,” which my experiences so far seem to confirm. This was in the pre-internet era, when word spread even more slowly, though still incredibly quickly in comparison to, say, executive communication that actually pertained to business. I could not muster much sincere reassurance to my friend now faced with the prospect of unemployment.

Nowadays, especially at large companies, rumors are basically instantaneous, and the office rumor mills are basically public domain. It’s quite frightening to learn from friends that their first knowledge of many big corporate changes happens from the media. Information first leaks out, and then the media disperse the information widely. Ironically, it even finds its way back into the organization from whence it came and sometimes even unpleasantly surprises insiders.

Repost: The Modern Myth of Corporate Loyalty

I had originally blogged the following post in September 2006. Back at that point, Google where I was working was still the king of the valley and Facebook was not yet the emerging new guy everyone was so enamored with. In light of the defections of Google executives like Sheryl Sandberg, Tim Armstorng, and most recently Priti Choksi, I think my original post has become especially relevant now that a new king of the valley has very apparently emerged.

A question I don’t ponder in this post is the broader theme of how to keep a company enduringly great. If great people consistently move on according to trends, how does a company attract, develop, and fill its ranks with great talent? That is a broad question I have never seen a full, comprehensive answer to. Anyways, here’s the post:

At career fairs, talks, guest lectures, communications, email, etc. people make it sound like everyone there has this incredible, strong sense of loyalty to one’s employer.

Sure, people like certain companies more than others. The idea that employees are loyal to their company is, in general, a complete and utter myth perpetuated by HR departments, recruiting, and the self-serving yes-men out to improve their reputation inside their firm and use it to leverage their way into bigger and better things later in life.

As a relic who believes in my work, my industry, and certain companies, I find this actually quite disillusioning. I would like to believe that there exists a sentiment that draws people together into a common, albeit corporate, cause that transcends mere individual ambition. In journeying through the insides of technology companies on the West Coast, I have not yet found this “transcendent union” anywhere.

I question whether what I hope for is necessarily what is best, though. Perhaps, through the overwhelming victory of personal ambition, companies as a whole become stronger. I have a hard time believing this, as the case of working in Japan was entirely different. Even if corporate loyalty were a modern-day myth, though, I would like to believe otherwise.

Great Quotes about Working at VMware

A dialogue:

Me: “How are your options doing?”

Friend: “Yeah…they went up to $120, thought I was going to retire early. Then they dropped to around $20 and were underwater. It’s now kind of above water. I’ve been through the emotional roller coaster watching.”

“And Mendel [Rosenblum] and his wife aren’t with the company anymore?”

“Yeah, you heard the story?”

Dr. Rosenblum was the respected VMware founder and CS professor who taught the viciously difficult CS140 operating systems course to the kids at Stanford. For a tad while, it was the hottest stock on the market.

Interview Class

In a week or so, I’ll take the “interview training” class for Microsoft. Having gone through the interview loop dozens of times, I find it an extremely intriguing, if not entertaining, subject.

At companies I’ve worked at, the interview policy spans the entire gamut. There are some companies who pride themselves on their ruthlessness in interviewing. Making candidates cry, humiliating them, causing convulsions, or pushing them to the edge is the type of practice which earns interviewers praise. On the other spectrum is the warm, fuzzy, “I made up my mind to hire you already so I’m here to convince you to work for us” sort of place.

The ideal, as was explained to me, is somewhere in between where it is a test of competence but also a corporate sell. It makes a lot of sense, but I admit, I find the alternative of grilling the candidate so much more entertaining.

In any case, I am very curious what will happen with PM interviews, as my experience before, both as an interviewer and as an interviewee, was as an engineer. Exactly how does one determine if a candidate would make a good PM?

Again, I’ve seen a span of questions in attempts to determine this, but my experience is nowhere near as strong as for the arguably more challenging but more straightforward realm of reversing linked lists, graph problems, and trivial programming exercises. I’ve seen folks ask areas of the resume for expertise, some design questions, or some questions pertinent to a specific market. How does one determine how disciplined a candidate is with his communication or his time and project management? And in the case of Microsoft, how does one determine this mythical idea of potential during the course of something like an interview?

The Book Problem

Starting at the beginning of 2008 immediately after I graduated, I began a reading spree. School had not given me the time I wanted to read the “modern-day classics.” I’m not talking about good fiction (though I’ve had time to read that too) but rather the sort non-fiction (biographies, business books, topic guides) that everyone and their mother seems to talk about and proselytize.

Initially, buying and reading these books didn’t seem so much a hassle. I had an abundance of space on my bookshelf, and I was largely buying books that caught my eye at bookstores (way overpriced and sometimes I made bad purchases…don’t do it!). The sustained financial impact of doing this on a weekly basis wasn’t immediately apparent.

Then I noticed as I began doing this through the year, books were just plain accumulating in my place without adequate place to put them. My car soon filled up with stacks of books, some completely read, the others skimmed or practically finished, the value of which I had already sucked out from the words in the tree carcass.

I got a little smarter and have started using the Mountain View and Microsoft libraries as much as possible. Yet, as my job picked up steam and I got busier, I noticed books consume a lot of time, in addition to money and space. Technically, most of this problem is, of course, the fact that to get something from the book, I have to read the book which obviously takes time. Yet, the more frustrating aspect about how books take up my time is how hard it is to find (1) a library that carries copies of books I want to read without having to wait months in line behind 50 people or get out of work early to pick up a book from and (2) a nice, comfortable location outside my home that offers a place to spend time reading at any hour of day or night.

Now, I like books. I like the way they feel, the weight they have, the simplicity of writing in them, and the easiness of referencing them later. But the problems of money, space, and time are really starting to be a drag on me. A library solves the problem of money. A Kindle solves the problem of space, but textbooks and certain field-specific works I read still come at full price. This is besides the point that it’s not a physical book I can annotate with stuff that is hard to input like tables, graphs, or mathematical symbols. Finally, folks like PaperSpine, BookSwim, or BooksFree are great and probably the most promising solution I’ve seen so far to all three problems. Still, they do not offer the complete end-to-end package with the ability a physical location has–things like a comfortable environment to read or the ability to preview the book.

What I’m looking for would be a business that did the following:

• It’s a 24-hour “library” that is minimally staffed but keeps great electronic records and catalogs and has an electronic checkout system.
• The “library” is a large, comfortable place with lots of seating, chairs, and Internet. Also, there is a coffee shop inside that makes espresso-based drinks.
• The collection is huge and extensive, especially focusing on textbooks and new releases. Books are still checked out and returned as in a normal library.
• If, for whatever reason, the book is unavailable, a DRM’d digital copy is available for your computer, phone, or e-reader, and your name is added to the queue for the physical book.
• If a customer demands a physical book that is either not yet available or completely checked out, the “library” would have a special relationship with Amazon or whomever is the cheapest seller to rush the book on 1 or 2-day air shipment. The “library” would split the cost of the book 50/50 with the customer, amortizing eating this cost with other proceeds from the customer over time.
• To keep the business running, the “library” would not technically be free but charge a monthly subscription service to customers. There could be varying levels of service, e.g. charging more for things like Internet access and digital book copies, and adjusting the cost sharing percentages.

Such a place, if the fees were nominal, say, $20-30 a month, would definitely get my business.

Recessions and Grad School

These two go hand-in-hand like corkscrew and decanter. It’s no big surprise that as recessions get awful, grad school admissions get substantially harder. In 2001 and 2002, some of Stanford’s Master’s programs  saw low single-digit acceptance rates and the rejection of completely sterling applicants with all the top credentials. It surprised even my advisor who commented about it to me.

And that was in 2002, when things weren’t nearly as bad. So it is in that light that I congratulate a couple friends of mine who got into top grad school programs and will soon be on their way to a comfortable education and strong recovery when the economy gets back to normal. Grad school (note: not professional school) is the holy grail of places to be in dark times; I salute you on making your ambitions real.

Location Based Services are Not a Game Changer

Location-based services have become increasingly common on mobile devices, especially after the introduction of Apple’s App Store. Companies like Loopt, Pelago, and Sense Networks have been at this problem in this space for many years, and their vision of a future of socially-tagged, location-aware data stores is ambitious. Despite the promise of this vision, they face very serious challenges from players like Google, mySpace, Facebook, and Yelp who have already aggregated large sets of useful, social content. Unfortunately, LBS social or content networks, while interesting, are at best an incremental innovation, an innovation that established web companies can leverage their user base into and dominate almost by default.

The Vision of a Location-Aware Data Store

Sam Altman, the founder of Loopt, has a very ambitious vision for his company. Besides being a social network that shares location, recent iPhone releases hint at some of the possibilities. Loopt Mix enables users to connect—in a privacy-conscious manner—with other users nearby. Users can find places nearby on Yelp and in addition, find what their friends on Loopt are saying about those places.

Although Loopt’s content is quite sparse and isn’t terribly useful yet, it indicates two fundamental applications that all location-based services are now trying to conquer:

1. Connecting users to each other using location in addition to other social filtering parameters.
2. Connecting users to information, using location as an additional input to search.

Some services, like ChaCha, merge the two somewhat by connecting users to a human expert.

The vision, when taken to its completion, creates a tremendous amount of utility for users. Love the restaurant you just ate at? Review it, post it online, and alert everyone (or just your friends) nearby to try the place, all while you’re waiting for the check. Want to ask what barber shop is good in Mountain View, California? Ask a question, direct it only to users in downtown Mountain View, and be alerted when you receive an answer from someone there. The immediacy, intimacy, relevance, and quality of such a service make the possibilities very exciting for consumers.

This is not to mention applications to advertising, which are equally exciting to the other side—local stores, clubs, restaurants, and organizations wishing to find and recruit new customers. Recording trails of a user’s day-to-day life gives a much deeper understanding of consumer habits, an understanding which can increase the value of advertising on a location-based service. Mobile contextual advertising is already de rigeur, but location has the potential to make mobile advertising more relevant, more personalized, and even more effective.

Adding location on top of traditional information sources online gives further opportunity for companies to personalize their content to users. This applies equally to online recommendations (where a user’s intent for content is implicit) and to search (where a query makes explicit a user’s intent for content).

Why Location-Based Services are an Incremental Innovation

The two fundamental applications, connecting users to each other and connecting users to information, make LBS a particularly difficult space for startups to occupy. While the possibilities of LBS are exciting, achieving these two applications requires surmounting very high barriers. There are several major obstacles:

1. Users do not want to transfer networks: connecting users together will be difficult if they are too entrenched in already established networks. The social networking space is already nearing saturated, at least in the US and the UK.
2. Building user-generated content from scratch is difficult: without a large data store of location-tagged content, there is no value to a location-based service. Yelp, CitySearch, and others have the advantage here with their large data stores of reviews, listings, phone numbers, and shop information, indexed by location.
3. Building effective mobile search is difficult (and this will affect monetization): location-based or not, search is a difficult problem, one that will require large infrastructure and heavyweight algorithms and design. Startups in the web search space have had a hard time gaining traction because their products are not decisively better than the incumbent—Google. Mobile search, location-based or not would have to vastly improve upon the current state of web search to conquer the space. Latitude already signals Google’s intent to bully their way into this space, and given the strong link between search and contextual advertising, this will eventually bode ill for mobile ad networks too.
4. The case for big brands: especially with something as private as location, users at large are not accustomed to sharing it the way they do phone numbers or email addresses. Trustworthy, well-marketed brands will really matter here, to break the ice and introduce new users beyond the early adopters.
5. The case for big iron: new content and inputs also provide new opportunities for spam, system gaming, and fraud which startups in the space generally do not have the infrastructure to tackle completely.

Given these factors, the dominant players in the market, when the dust clears, are liable to be the current companies like Facebook, mySpace, Google, and Yelp that have built their networks, their content, and their search. Location will serve as an additional input and provide interesting new applications, but these applications will fundamentally leverage the assets already out there on the web.

A Way Out

LBS startups, squeezed by pressure from bigger players with bigger leverage, may be able to find a way out. I believe there are a few options:

1. The mashup strategy: already the direction a lot of services like Loopt and Where are taking, providing content from larger web services like Yelp, EventBrite, and CitySearch will help get past the cold start problem and connect users to valuable information immediately. That said, what is preventing these web services from entering the mobile space themselves now that phones are increasingly becoming an open platform?
2. Killer search: it may seem unlikely, but the next disruption in how users retrieve and interact with information may be through an innovative use of location. When Google began pushing their search engine, many had already felt that Lycos, HotBot, Yahoo, and AltaVista had saturated and conquered the market and furthermore that that market possessed no means for monetization.
3. Killer monetization: location adds an additional dimension to how companies will come to understand their users. It may be possible to use this, in conjunction with all the other information collected, to provide substantially better advertising that users love. Or perhaps location will introduce a whole new paradigm of monetization that is not ads-based at all.

I strongly believe LBS is part of the future, and I do enjoy hearing about scrappy, ambitious startups succeeding as much as anyone. The road ahead will be long and difficult, though, and we may find ourselves in a future that knows where we are but looks remarkably the same.

On Latitude: Proof of Incremental Innovation

ReadWriteWeb wrote two interesting pieces on Google Latitude over here and over here. I don’t have a whole lot to say about the product’s workings itself, but I’ll try it out soon, especially once the iPhone version comes out.

I follow the location-based services (LBS) space very closely and was even a big enough supporter of LBS as to write up an article on the iPhone release for Loopt, one of my favorite companies. Although I’m finding myself increasingly building a case against the success of LBS and mobile social networks against established players, I really do want to believe in small, scrappy, interesting startups like Loopt. They’re just really cool, and for a second–just one sweet moment–I believed that in this space there was the possibility of a real disruptor, a game changer to overturn even Google itself, the empire-like monopoly of our current generation.

I’ll give more thoughts on this later, but the gist is that I see LBS more as an extension of established services rather than a fundamentally new market. Borrowing  from Christensen’s Innovator’s Dilemma, LBS could be called more an incremental innovation rather than a disruptive one. And that bodes ill for the upstart, rebel alliances in this sector out there.