Samsung has become a toxic cesspool in technical division- Korean counterparts try to steal good projects from engineers abroad and try to sell it as their own. They track with hawk's eye on who is doing what. As soon as they see if there's anything special going on, they swoop and try to snatch it.
Another set of issue is dominance- Learning department and security depart dominate over engineers. Engineers' belongings are checked when they are leaving, and not when they enter the building. If anything is found, engineers are humiliated and blamed as if they were "stealing" anything. Learning department imposes yearly coding tests, and people are given dedicated time for weeks to compete through that.
All these issues together drove away the cream of the engineers, resulting in the politicking ones staying in, and the quality of software going downhill.
What lessons were learnt from Vista? Windows 8 and 8.1 were horrible messes in themselves, even the microsoft employees didn't use it on their machines. People in the org got a mail saying that if they didn't use 8 in at least one of our machines, they'd be marked as employees not aligning to microsoft's business priorities. Despite this, what many of the managers, and their employees installed it on Hyper V and deleted the instance! So, technically, no one wanted 8.
What lessons were learnt, were learnt half heartedly- PM (Program Manager) org wasn't defined neatly- they could pick up any task, so they picked up nothing- only conducting scrums which would be often be two hours long. What kind of scrum would it be? "I'm blocked at X point" "Because of who are you blocked?" and the finger pointing witch hunting would begin.
What lessons were learnt when MS teams didn't learn the art of working together? What was lacking? the dev culture. The Ballmer's regime had seen lots of privacy keeping tactics developed within teams- people didn't want to lag behind in the stack ranking race, knowing that someone who scores less than 3 would never be able to make up.
Lessons which were learnt were not circulated to top management. No workable strategies were defined, no steps were taken to improve work culture and no grass-root level changes were incorporated in the working of teams. Losing teams were always fire fighting and managers and program managers would keep on asking the SDEs and SDE IIs about what features could they add. It was chaos everywhere. Why did this happen? because the top management wasn't clear of the goals. They couldn't break the goals into small, workable chunk, always blaming the reportees that they were not able to break the work chunk. Even in the article, the author mentions about product being monolithic- why would a product be monolithic? because the higher ups didn't have the structured thinking to break down the issue (read "design") at hand.
The author conveys that he's not ashamed for the handling of affairs at that point of time- the fact that the CEO himself had to pay attention to WinFS file system itself is a signal that things are going towards grave, and there's a need to go back to drawing board.
The problem is not about managing thousands of people for a product, the problem is sitting together, and discussing openly who'd do what, and stick to that plan. Wherever there's no plan, chaos fills in the gaps. This was what was happening at Microsoft in many of the orgs. The HR policies, combined with oldies trying to be new blood, and ignorance / arrogance combined with lack of structured thinking was and is still killing the company which got in spotlight for a while.
Why wasn't the time spent at the beginning of the cycle, and close monitoring, and meticulousness maintained are never the questions on which the author ponders! When you are not pondering, you are not ashamed. When you're not ashamed, you don't learn. And then you rant. Even here the vision is not 20/20 in hindsight.
I would suggest, read his memo again. Nowhere does he say women are inferior to men. Mostly he claims that they might not be interested, etc. He says they are different from men. I don't think being different is crossing the line. Difference is like vector, it has components, and can not be compared directly!
In one of the companies where I was employed, the HR was always ready to chop engineers' necks if even a slight issue happened. I wonder what good do they do, apart from hiring good talent!
Or, he's too smart, and either knew he could wake up the system, or probably knew he could fool google into believing he was being sexist, when he was on fringes, and then sue for multi million dollars?
We all know of products that don't work if you're left-handed, or have a strong Scottish accent, or some other thing created by a homogenous group of designers making unconscious assumptions.
Let us take any group. If there is a value added by including that group, I agree, include them. But from where does the number X% come from? Where does the code of conduct come from? In India, the scene is- Hindus and Muslims are uncomfortable talking (even good) about each others' religions. Men and women, likewise, feel uncomfortable discussing their differences or deficiencies. Why should they, when they are anyways going to be penalised. Management should either ask everyone to not raise the sex related topic, or let everyone discuss it freely. "We are progressive, but we act in haste" is a bad logic to work on.
When there's a need to be filled, there are SME (subject matter experts) who know what customisation would be needed in current design to suit the other party. For example, by just hiring women developers, or hiring 50% women, one can not make products which are women oriented. A woman can partly be true about herself, but she can not know what exactly goes where.
Google misfired on this one. They wanted to create an open world where women, if they will, would get into CS without any oppression too. What they created was a secluded world where women are the holy cows and by questioning (which is fundamental to democracy) one would become a villain.
Also, people should be allowed to think, but they should be guided to corroborate their thoughts with evidences and facts. When the issues are emotional, facts become best guides. They may hurt for a moment, but eventually, you come to terms with the truth. In this poor guy's case, if he was wrong, probably, he'd take it to heart and will not improve much, thus the egalitarian world idea was defeated for this and many such individuals.
My assumption is that this guy is a PhD, and from Harvard, and working in G. He has sufficient brilliance to understand where the line is drawn. Instead of discussing his train of thought, and showing him "WHY" along with "WHERE" he was wrong, he'd have understood.
Code of conduct is written by people- and it can have issues. Let's not hurry up saying that the rule is cast in stone and will never change. May be there's an issue, may be not. But when a person (probably a thinking person) spent 3400 words' worth of time penning the article, he might have spent some time thinking.
If sexism is the thought that needs to be eradicated, it must be shown where is the issue in that, again and again, whether it's hundred or thousand times, immaterial.
Firing the person has done what, you have seen that. The whole situation turned lose-lose. It was the worst resolution ever.
Also, why should there be a number, like X% women (or put any other name of group, like Chinese, foreign students, aliens, blacks / browns etc) must be in this org?
What the people want is a fair world towards everyone. For that, the rules and discipline should be inculcated, rather than fixing a number. Let the number be flexible, as in a free market. Those who feel good about the cause will come and join. This will show the real picture of how many women are interested in say, literature vs Computer Science vs say, just being home makers? Ideally, this should be the case. Numbers are constructs which force people without reason.
"Our co-workers shouldn’t have to worry that each time they open their mouths to speak in a meeting, they have to prove that they are not like the memo states, being “agreeable” rather than “assertive,” showing a “lower stress tolerance,” or being “neurotic.”
Had they shown him the psychology journals and that the studies show otherwise, he'd have stood corrected. Probably with a warning to write substance backed claim, he'd have a better depth. What did that guy learn? What message was passed to the world and other employees?
PS: I still maintain- only the people (remember, people, not men or women or cats or aliens) who bring value to a certain profession should be allowed to enter there, not just because they are of certain other qualities, which will not help the field to prosper.
How does one being a woman or an alien or Chinese help the computer science? Being meritorious and creative does. It's this simple. Just because some people can shout loud and don't have clarity of vision, doesn't mean we'd never have renaissance!
I'm certain that we haven't heard the last of this dude's persecution complex.
By any chance, are you meaning that the guy's ideas are less founded than the VP of XYZ and Sundar's Ideas, without listening to them in completion? So if someone takes up a charged issue for debate, and he's in minority, instead of listening and then convincing him why he's wrong, should we sharpen our pitch forks and start the witch hunting game? And we expect that the thought of the world would change by this action (also called threatening someone)?
This makes no sense to me.
First off, Sundar Pichai was on holiday. Nobody should be expected to write a press release while on holiday. And nor did he; he wrote an internal memo which leaked. The "people of the world" as a whole were clearly not the intended audience, merely that subset who are already supposed to be aware of what the Code of Conduct says.
He's a CEO of the company and being paid millions, as compensation. Do you know why we call it compensation? Because of such discomforts borne by the people. When you are the CEO of a company, you are never on leave and regular privileges do not apply. You signed on the dotted line that you'd be 24x365 present for the company. If people feel that breaking their holiday is a non-negotiable thing for them, they are free to not take the responsibility of CEO. After all, it's a free world!
But when it comes to rewards and jobs, there should be only meritocracy.
Of course. Many younger programmers don't really understand what constitutes "merit" in this field, though. Engineering is the craft of solving human problems through the intelligent and appropriate application of science and technology. If you can't deal with the "human" part, this isn't the business for you.
And if you don't promote merit and don't let people choose freely of what they do, then it's autocratic and there will not be any new ideas. Also, you are not dealing with the "human" part of thinking out of the box.
Why do you want everyone to think the same? Why not make them the better them instead!
By kicking Damore out of G, they have bolstered his hypothesis that other ideas are absolutely not welcome. Sundar Pichai should have clarified on what points is the author wrong, and how. Given that the author's post had got out of company and is circulating in WWW, people of the world should know and get clear on what G's ideologies are, rather than just writing "He violated the code of conduct".
IMO, if these people feel women are purposefully kept out, the idea is to break the social norm by having reforms where such discouraging (towards women) behaviour should be reduced. Also, the example of women (anonymous, but names available on request) in this field should be provided.
But when it comes to rewards and jobs, there should be only meritocracy. Those who bring value to the table should be allowed to join rather than focussing on genders and sexes. It was exactly the issue with Damore's essay too. He was trying to focus on sexes and their characteristics while he should have enforced meritocracy and secularism in his group. That would have been a better example.
Also, I don't believe in the fact that X% of population MUST be female to prove that they are as good. They may be as good, but less interested, yes? Or could it be that they are actually bullied? or could it be that the field looks too complicated to them to scare them?
The radiation coming out of black hole will have lots of particles, normalising any information into practical randomness, hence increasing the entropy of universe. it'd take a hell of an effort to find out which photon will carry the information of electron.
Surprisingly, I didn't hear anything. What was it that you heard? Are you sure it was Microsoft and not Amazon (i'm talking about last month when Amazon was in news for workers alleged they mistreated them)?
Also, learning the discipline of discipline happens at college. For example, interacting with professors teaches a lot about the thinking pattern to solve a particular problem, be it taking 2x the load in structures (civil), or imagining accurately for computer science, or visualizing real analysis in math or CFD in aerospace, all require presence of teachers, as the topics discussed tend to diverge a little resulting in large understanding.
Irrespective of how many times the video is played, it would stop making much sense after a limit.
Slashdot Mirror
Samsung has become a toxic cesspool in technical division- Korean counterparts try to steal good projects from engineers abroad and try to sell it as their own. They track with hawk's eye on who is doing what. As soon as they see if there's anything special going on, they swoop and try to snatch it.
Another set of issue is dominance- Learning department and security depart dominate over engineers. Engineers' belongings are checked when they are leaving, and not when they enter the building. If anything is found, engineers are humiliated and blamed as if they were "stealing" anything. Learning department imposes yearly coding tests, and people are given dedicated time for weeks to compete through that.
All these issues together drove away the cream of the engineers, resulting in the politicking ones staying in, and the quality of software going downhill.
What lessons were learnt, were learnt half heartedly- PM (Program Manager) org wasn't defined neatly- they could pick up any task, so they picked up nothing- only conducting scrums which would be often be two hours long. What kind of scrum would it be? "I'm blocked at X point" "Because of who are you blocked?" and the finger pointing witch hunting would begin.
What lessons were learnt when MS teams didn't learn the art of working together? What was lacking? the dev culture. The Ballmer's regime had seen lots of privacy keeping tactics developed within teams- people didn't want to lag behind in the stack ranking race, knowing that someone who scores less than 3 would never be able to make up.
Lessons which were learnt were not circulated to top management. No workable strategies were defined, no steps were taken to improve work culture and no grass-root level changes were incorporated in the working of teams. Losing teams were always fire fighting and managers and program managers would keep on asking the SDEs and SDE IIs about what features could they add. It was chaos everywhere. Why did this happen? because the top management wasn't clear of the goals. They couldn't break the goals into small, workable chunk, always blaming the reportees that they were not able to break the work chunk. Even in the article, the author mentions about product being monolithic- why would a product be monolithic? because the higher ups didn't have the structured thinking to break down the issue (read "design") at hand.
The author conveys that he's not ashamed for the handling of affairs at that point of time- the fact that the CEO himself had to pay attention to WinFS file system itself is a signal that things are going towards grave, and there's a need to go back to drawing board.
The problem is not about managing thousands of people for a product, the problem is sitting together, and discussing openly who'd do what, and stick to that plan. Wherever there's no plan, chaos fills in the gaps. This was what was happening at Microsoft in many of the orgs. The HR policies, combined with oldies trying to be new blood, and ignorance / arrogance combined with lack of structured thinking was and is still killing the company which got in spotlight for a while.
Why wasn't the time spent at the beginning of the cycle, and close monitoring, and meticulousness maintained are never the questions on which the author ponders! When you are not pondering, you are not ashamed. When you're not ashamed, you don't learn. And then you rant. Even here the vision is not 20/20 in hindsight.
The idea is - we have too many battery blue prints to work on. None of them are practical enough to be produced.
Do they want to monetize Twitter, using ads? This may be one reason for 280 character limit. Probably they may try to be a seller platform.
"except where impractical." This is where celsius and kelvin become irrelevant and gallons become relevant
I feel this is a new wave of changes coming up with new CEO. Looking forward to changes in Uber.
Agreed. The merit must win, and if there's anything else that is made a proxy to merit, then the institution is bound towards doom.
I would suggest, read his memo again. Nowhere does he say women are inferior to men. Mostly he claims that they might not be interested, etc. He says they are different from men. I don't think being different is crossing the line. Difference is like vector, it has components, and can not be compared directly!
In one of the companies where I was employed, the HR was always ready to chop engineers' necks if even a slight issue happened. I wonder what good do they do, apart from hiring good talent!
Or, he's too smart, and either knew he could wake up the system, or probably knew he could fool google into believing he was being sexist, when he was on fringes, and then sue for multi million dollars?
We all know of products that don't work if you're left-handed, or have a strong Scottish accent, or some other thing created by a homogenous group of designers making unconscious assumptions.
Let us take any group. If there is a value added by including that group, I agree, include them. But from where does the number X% come from? Where does the code of conduct come from? In India, the scene is- Hindus and Muslims are uncomfortable talking (even good) about each others' religions. Men and women, likewise, feel uncomfortable discussing their differences or deficiencies. Why should they, when they are anyways going to be penalised. Management should either ask everyone to not raise the sex related topic, or let everyone discuss it freely. "We are progressive, but we act in haste" is a bad logic to work on.
When there's a need to be filled, there are SME (subject matter experts) who know what customisation would be needed in current design to suit the other party. For example, by just hiring women developers, or hiring 50% women, one can not make products which are women oriented. A woman can partly be true about herself, but she can not know what exactly goes where.
Google misfired on this one. They wanted to create an open world where women, if they will, would get into CS without any oppression too. What they created was a secluded world where women are the holy cows and by questioning (which is fundamental to democracy) one would become a villain.
Supporting free speech is the best option.
+1
Also, people should be allowed to think, but they should be guided to corroborate their thoughts with evidences and facts. When the issues are emotional, facts become best guides. They may hurt for a moment, but eventually, you come to terms with the truth. In this poor guy's case, if he was wrong, probably, he'd take it to heart and will not improve much, thus the egalitarian world idea was defeated for this and many such individuals.
My assumption is that this guy is a PhD, and from Harvard, and working in G. He has sufficient brilliance to understand where the line is drawn. Instead of discussing his train of thought, and showing him "WHY" along with "WHERE" he was wrong, he'd have understood.
Code of conduct is written by people- and it can have issues. Let's not hurry up saying that the rule is cast in stone and will never change. May be there's an issue, may be not. But when a person (probably a thinking person) spent 3400 words' worth of time penning the article, he might have spent some time thinking.
If sexism is the thought that needs to be eradicated, it must be shown where is the issue in that, again and again, whether it's hundred or thousand times, immaterial.
Firing the person has done what, you have seen that. The whole situation turned lose-lose. It was the worst resolution ever.
Also, why should there be a number, like X% women (or put any other name of group, like Chinese, foreign students, aliens, blacks / browns etc) must be in this org?
What the people want is a fair world towards everyone. For that, the rules and discipline should be inculcated, rather than fixing a number. Let the number be flexible, as in a free market. Those who feel good about the cause will come and join. This will show the real picture of how many women are interested in say, literature vs Computer Science vs say, just being home makers? Ideally, this should be the case. Numbers are constructs which force people without reason.
"Our co-workers shouldn’t have to worry that each time they open their mouths to speak in a meeting, they have to prove that they are not like the memo states, being “agreeable” rather than “assertive,” showing a “lower stress tolerance,” or being “neurotic.”
Had they shown him the psychology journals and that the studies show otherwise, he'd have stood corrected. Probably with a warning to write substance backed claim, he'd have a better depth. What did that guy learn? What message was passed to the world and other employees?
How does one being a woman or an alien or Chinese help the computer science? Being meritorious and creative does. It's this simple. Just because some people can shout loud and don't have clarity of vision, doesn't mean we'd never have renaissance!
I'm certain that we haven't heard the last of this dude's persecution complex.
By any chance, are you meaning that the guy's ideas are less founded than the VP of XYZ and Sundar's Ideas, without listening to them in completion? So if someone takes up a charged issue for debate, and he's in minority, instead of listening and then convincing him why he's wrong, should we sharpen our pitch forks and start the witch hunting game? And we expect that the thought of the world would change by this action (also called threatening someone)?
This makes no sense to me.
First off, Sundar Pichai was on holiday. Nobody should be expected to write a press release while on holiday. And nor did he; he wrote an internal memo which leaked. The "people of the world" as a whole were clearly not the intended audience, merely that subset who are already supposed to be aware of what the Code of Conduct says.
He's a CEO of the company and being paid millions, as compensation. Do you know why we call it compensation? Because of such discomforts borne by the people. When you are the CEO of a company, you are never on leave and regular privileges do not apply. You signed on the dotted line that you'd be 24x365 present for the company. If people feel that breaking their holiday is a non-negotiable thing for them, they are free to not take the responsibility of CEO. After all, it's a free world!
But when it comes to rewards and jobs, there should be only meritocracy.
Of course. Many younger programmers don't really understand what constitutes "merit" in this field, though. Engineering is the craft of solving human problems through the intelligent and appropriate application of science and technology. If you can't deal with the "human" part, this isn't the business for you.
And if you don't promote merit and don't let people choose freely of what they do, then it's autocratic and there will not be any new ideas. Also, you are not dealing with the "human" part of thinking out of the box. Why do you want everyone to think the same? Why not make them the better them instead!
By kicking Damore out of G, they have bolstered his hypothesis that other ideas are absolutely not welcome. Sundar Pichai should have clarified on what points is the author wrong, and how. Given that the author's post had got out of company and is circulating in WWW, people of the world should know and get clear on what G's ideologies are, rather than just writing "He violated the code of conduct". IMO, if these people feel women are purposefully kept out, the idea is to break the social norm by having reforms where such discouraging (towards women) behaviour should be reduced. Also, the example of women (anonymous, but names available on request) in this field should be provided. But when it comes to rewards and jobs, there should be only meritocracy. Those who bring value to the table should be allowed to join rather than focussing on genders and sexes. It was exactly the issue with Damore's essay too. He was trying to focus on sexes and their characteristics while he should have enforced meritocracy and secularism in his group. That would have been a better example. Also, I don't believe in the fact that X% of population MUST be female to prove that they are as good. They may be as good, but less interested, yes? Or could it be that they are actually bullied? or could it be that the field looks too complicated to them to scare them?
The radiation coming out of black hole will have lots of particles, normalising any information into practical randomness, hence increasing the entropy of universe. it'd take a hell of an effort to find out which photon will carry the information of electron.
I'm already anonymous. also, I'm not saying anything against MS.
Surprisingly, I didn't hear anything. What was it that you heard? Are you sure it was Microsoft and not Amazon (i'm talking about last month when Amazon was in news for workers alleged they mistreated them)?
He said the same to me. He was so happy that my son died. He was very clear that he didn't want Microsoft employees to have children.
Also, learning the discipline of discipline happens at college. For example, interacting with professors teaches a lot about the thinking pattern to solve a particular problem, be it taking 2x the load in structures (civil), or imagining accurately for computer science, or visualizing real analysis in math or CFD in aerospace, all require presence of teachers, as the topics discussed tend to diverge a little resulting in large understanding.
Irrespective of how many times the video is played, it would stop making much sense after a limit.
btw, some people live only by copying and finally build the whole economy on it :)
How about using infrared beams to disrupt or just plain simple water sprinklers (using some heavy oil) to make the fins too heavy to fly?
You made me wiser today! Thanks! If I had been mod today, I'd have this answer modded up!