02.17.10
skillz
Real skill isn’t about knowing all the answers. Any idiot can memorize a list of facts out of a book. True expertise is in asking the right questions.
02.11.10
angry villagers – a bedtime story
This scenario has, to date, played out three times in my short professional career:
Management accuses me of being opaque and arbitrary.
I produce a logbook detailing activities and notes on my recent work, and offer to walk them through my decision chain.
Management’s eyes light up. “Aha!” they say to themselves, “Here is his secret recipe book! We must possess this power! With the processes documented in here, we won’t have to rely on him anymore! Hahaha!”
Management demands a photocopy of my logbook. I happily oblige – it’s their project, after all. It’s completely worthless to me outside the context of their job. They have every right to this information.
Management skims my notes and finds them incomprehensible. Because my job can rarely be expressed as a simple “Do A, then B, then C.” Defeated (for now!), Management quietly files the copy away in a drawer (We will decipher this someday!), and I return to my work. And it’s always on paper, in a physical drawer. That seems important for some reason.
The bitch of it is this- if they handed my notes to another specialist, that specialist probably could follow them. Reinforcing the idea that we’re all in on the conspiracy together.
angry villagers
Was looking at this Professor Obama post linked by Will the other day. Here was my response-
I haven’t found this attitude to hold true for the academics I know. Their failing is in assuming that people who make claims relevant to their field are a) up to speed on the latest research and theories, b) rational, and c) using the same static word/phrase definitions that their field uses. If anything, I’ve found that academics initially treat anyone who challenges their ideas as a rival academic.
I don’t think Volokh is wrong, but maybe that’s not the whole story. I work in a fairly technical field: web design. It’s not rocket surgery, but it requires a fair amount of knowledge specific to the field. We also work fairly closely with people who aren’t experts in the field: clients who want their messages posted to the Internet.
I’ve noticed a tendency, especially among clients and managers who are middle aged and older, to resent needing us. Sometimes we have to go back to clients with the bad news that their content won’t work well on the Web – image resolutions are too low, text won’t fit inside a box, hyperlinks won’t pass credentials for unprivileged users, etc.
To someone frustrated by their ignorance of technical details but desperate to get their message out, I think it can seem like we’re an elite priesthood governed by whim and secret, arbitrary rules. I’ve actually been criticized for “forcing people to dance through hoops and ask for things in a certain way before I will help them” (really, I don’t). I frequently face legalistic arguments against strictly technical problems: “You guys did it for this other site, so just copy and paste that for mine” when their data architecture is completely incompatible. Bargaining: “Just try doing it anyway. Maybe it will work.” I’ve also been called “opaque” and “uncooperative” when I cite substantive reasons for not trying these things or suggest alternatives they don’t like.
So, I’m stuck. If I go back to a manager and tell them I would rather not pass credentials in a GET or embed validation logic on the client side of a data transaction or that their links are malfunctioning in the preview but will work in production because they are coded relatively rather than absolutely, I’m accused of throwing out a cloud of jargon to dodge work. On the other hand, car analogies can only take an explanation so far.
At a certain point, a specialist must say: “You must trust my recommendations on this problem.” The entire economic basis of specialization depends on this trust relationship. A lay person may choose not to follow their recommendations because of factors external to the problem you hired them to solve, but it is deeply uncool to question the expert’s judgment and motives simply because the lay person doesn’t like what they say.
This holds true regardless of whether the specialist is a climate scientist, a web designer, a surgeon, a plumber, a banker, or a dog groomer.
I mentioned that these cries of “elitism” tend to come from an older crowd. I suspect it’s a generational divide. Perhaps the older generation grew up in an era when people had an expectation of mastering decisions in the world around them. Perhaps the younger generation is used to diving in, going with the flow, learning just enough, just in time, to get by, and moving on when that knowledge becomes obsolete. I suspect the frustration the older generation feels comes out as these cries of “elitism.”
See if this holds water:
Specialists act as the gatekeepers of success. (You rely on them to accomplish things.)
Specialists are bound by complicated rules governing their fields. Sometimes these rules are human (tax codes, standards, laws). Sometimes these rules are physical (logic, mathematics, physics). Sometimes the outcomes of these rules are unpredictable, and therefore seem arbitrary.
So, it’s natural to read personal or political motives in the decisions of specialists when one can’t figure out their decision-making process. It’s really tempting to see them as some kind of priesthood, conducting secret eldritch rituals, reading tea leaves and chicken entrails to tell you that the really expensive server you bought last year needs more gobblehurts and the wocky array won’t handle the next sherbanging.
It’s not the specialist’s fault.
07.04.09
nvidia driver rodeo
I came up with this term to describe the sport of installing an nVidia driver and attempting to stay with that version as long as possible before you have to upgrade or downgrade to play a different game.
07.02.09
it’s right to lie
I’ve come across a weird case lately.
A friend of mine was involved in an incident that has been carried on local and national news. The details of the case aren’t too important, and I’d rather protect his privacy, but it involves a police incident with a political candidate, and allegations of brutality.
Among those of us who know the guy involved, we know it’s highly unlikely that he’s guilty of most of the things he’s been accused of. Taken in context with other recent, highly publicized brutality cases – the New Years BART shooting, for example, he isn’t even accused of much.
I saw a video clip of a well-known cable news host doing a brief segment on the incident. During the segment, he literally made up some facts about the incident, turning a simple arrest into a politically motivate rampage. There’s no evidence of this, and my friend is mostly apolitical. It was pretty clearly done to drum up outrage and appeal to the audience.
So, yeah, liberal media bias. I’ve heard of it. I’ve seen media bias both ways, though this is the first time I’ve seen it in an incident I had some personal connection to.
That’s not the issue, though. The question is: how can we get news that’s unbiased. Is unbiased news possible?
The news agencies are private companies competing in a free market. They broker the attention of their viewers to advertisers. More viewers -> more value for their advertisers. The AP, Reuters, the Washington Post, the New York Times, Fox News, CNN – they’re all filling different niches in the same marketplace. Check out the stories they deliver, and you’ll probably see an ad for mattresses, or cell phones, or a new movie.
It follows, then, that every news outlet has a profit incentive to sensationalize stories to increase circulation. Man Bites Dog becomes White Man Mauls Black Dog or Local Christian Defends Self from Vicious Mongrel or whatever, based on the tastes of the audience. When one outlet sensationalizes their stories, others must follow or lose subscribers. It’s a very simple business decision. The media is biased, toward whatever maximizes their subscribers.
But – what should be done about this, and can anything be done about it?
Among liberals I ask, or whose articles and blogs I read, the solution is to seek alternate news sources. Other blogs, “citizen” journalists, Twitter feeds about ongoing events, “alternate” news sources, foreign news agencies like Al Jazeera or the BBC. I think it’s kind of humorous that liberals are going for what’s basically a free market solution – picking and choosing from many competitors.
Conservatives I ask have a vague “someone should do something about it” or “there should be a law against lying in the news” reaction. Also humorous – the conservatives demanding some kind of explicit government control over a free market. I really enjoy watching the cognitive dissonance when I point this out*.
Both views, when presented with evidence of media inaccuracies or outright fabrications, claim that the media is biased against their side. But why shouldn’t the media be biased? Appealing to morality: “It’s wrong to lie!” is a cute rebuttal, but the market clearly says otherwise. Newspapers that sensationalize gain market share, and live. Newspapers that stick to only the verifiable facts lose market share, and die. Why should they choose to die?
*I think I’ve come across a neat definition for the liberal/conservative split. Liberals say “The government should regulate everyone.” Conservatives say “The government should regulate everyone else.”
03.21.09
retail
Look, if you intercept me on the way to the shelves, then follow me around the store while asking every thirty seconds if I’m looking for anything, that’s not good customer service. I know that you think I’m a shoplifter. I know this because I know people with retail training, and this is a standard technique for confronting a suspected thief in a non-confrontational manner. It especially doesn’t work if you stand four feet away and pretend to rearrange merchandise, always conveniently a few feet away, just out of sight, when I move to another section.
Yes, I’m swarthy. I get it. I look, I dunno, Mexican or Arab or I dunno, just up to no good and you can’t put your finger on it but your gut tells you I’m up to something but no you’re not racist you just have a funny feeling no you’re not being silly you just have a hunch. I’m sorry that makes you uneasy. I get it. But that’s your problem, and you’re making it my problem. It’s not even just that – it’s that you’re also aggravating an (in your mind) potentially armed robber over… $6 worth of merchandise? This little stunt would be a bad idea even if your hunch was correct.
My credit is excellent, my wallet is full of cash, and I’m taking my business elsewhere in the future.
synthesis
Was pondering this post for Conway’s Game of Life. I wonder if this sort of thing could be used to teach students about processes in molecular biology like, say, protein synthesis.
12.12.08
Documentum is…
by far, the worst tool that I’ve ever had to use in any circumstances. It’s riddled with bad design and engineering decisions. It’s flaky like a hammer made out of baklava. Standard operating procedure is: 1) try to follow the process in the manual, 2) call IT because that will irrevocably break something in the system. The people who bought this system should be sacked. The people who installed this system should be sacked. Their families should be sacked. The people that sack them should, themselves, be sacked, because of the contamination risk. That’s how bad it is.
/rant