Mar

18

The best thing I read today

Filed Under career, failure, fear, passion, perseverance, product management, quotes, self improvement, things to ponder about, things to remind myself, values | Leave a Comment

Question: Describe your job in one sentence.
Answer: The art of prospering between a rock and a hard place.

That reminds me of a quote:

There are really only two ways to approach life - as victim or as gallant fighter - and you must decide if you want to act or react, deal your own cards or play with a stacked deck. And if you don’t decide which way to play with life, it always plays with you.
– Merle Shain

Which reminds of awesome book I read titled “The Pathfinder” by Nicholas Lore–which I highly recommend. (Thanks for the recommendation, Becks!)

You can at any moment, take flight on new wings into an unprecedented life making a choice for vitality, for living fully, for LIFE spelled in capital letters. It is, however, an expensive journey. You pay by giving up the familiar, comfortable, everyday ways of living and thinking that are the wages and rewards of going with the flow of your programming.

The willingness to feel fear and keep going forward distinguishes the living from the merely breathing. In fact, it is not just the so-called negative emotions that are uncomfortable. When you choose to live fully, your palate of experiences, thoughts, emotions, and possibilities expands. This leads you onto new ground in other areas of your life as well. And, folks, all that newness swirling around just ain’t comfortable.

The question is not whether to take risks, but which ones to take. The peril of being reasonable is that you will miss all the fun. It’s not enough to cautiously edge your way towards the cliff. Learn to revel in taking risks for the sake of your soul. Every choice you make gives birth instantly to certain risks as surely as your shadow follows you.

Read more

Feb

20

Ridiculously sick work ethic

Filed Under career, changing the world, did you know, execution, goal setting, passion, people i like, perseverance, things to remind myself, values | Leave a Comment

I’ve never really viewed myself as particularly talented. I’ve viewed myself as slightly above average in talent. And where I excel is ridiculous, sickening, work ethic. You know, while the other guy’s sleeping? I’m working. While the other guy’s eatin’? I’m working. While the other guy’s making love, I mean, I’m making love, too. But I’m working really hard at it.

You can look at the first six episodes of the Fresh Prince and I was so hell bent on not failing that I memorized the entire script. And you can see in certain shots they try to cut around it as much as they can, but I am mouthing the other actor’s lines.

Nuff said, this guy is my hero and role model.

More from CBS.

Feb

14

The 3 kinds of (competitive advantage) data

Filed Under business, career, did you know, things to ponder about | Leave a Comment

I learned some interesting financial jargon today.

Competitive advantage, referred to in financial markets as alpha, only comes when you have information that others do not. (An earlier speaker, Eric Christiansen of Barclay Global Investors, made clear that people like him think of three types of data: data that everyone has that gives you no advantage, data that you need to know because it gives you no advantage but not knowing can really hurt you, and finally, data that only you have, and can (briefly) take advantage of.)

Interesting food for thought. I’m going to chew on this for a while, especially #2. What about me that I don’t know about, that other people can see, that can hurt me? (a.k.a. your blind spot)

Feb

9

Randy Komisar

Filed Under business, career, changing the world, innovation, mentoring, passion, people i like, quotes, self improvement, stanford, startup, things to ponder about, things to remind myself, values | Leave a Comment

Randy Komisar, when asked in an interview about how he would ever make his mark at VC firm like Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers when they have a track record of investment home runs like Google says,

It’s a high bar, there’s no question about it. But I don’t feel competitive against that. I mean I think that the goal for me is to help create great talent in great companies, and what I’m hoping that in the process, they create wealth and opportunities for others. That being said, trying to measure up against something like Google as an investment return, that would just make you anxious. I don’t feel very competitive with that. I just hope that I continue to do good work and contribute.

I think that’s great advice. It’s so easy to fall into the trap of benchmarking yourself against a rare one time astronomical success. It only makes you more anxious and cloud your judgement in decision making, spinning you into an uncontrolled perpetual fall downwards. The negative energy just feeds back into the system and snowballs.

I think I have fell into that trap of focusing on the wrong thing. I think the reason why I fell for that is because I am very competitive. It’s only natural that when I see someone doing better than me, that I only want to do even better–to win. I’m not a life-is-a-zero-sum game guy, but I am competitive.

I think the other reason is because sometimes I care too much about what other people think of me. And it is so easy for external parties to view you from the outside and say, “Why can’t he accomplish this feat? Someone else has already done it, and therefore it’s possible. If he can’t do it, then he must be a loser”. It’s easy to benchmark others against the best. Not so funny when others benchmark you the same way.

That’s exactly what happened in that interview. The interviewer asked Randy a question that same line of external judgement: “how do you think you are going to beat the record?” In my opinion, Randy’s answer was perfect, “Look, I know it’s difficult, but I don’t ask myself that every time I go to work, or in every investment decision I mae. I focus on what’s important really here: contributing, creating wealth and opportunities to the best I can” I think I would have bombed that test. I would have said something that displays my naivete like, “oh, that’s nothing–I’ll beat it.” Sounds Dilbert-ish.

Towards the end of the interview, Randy was asked what his recommendation was for people who starting out and looking for a profession. The interviewer asked if he would recommend his own career trajectory he took, for instance. Randy says,

You should question authority, question convention, question other people’s expectations. We live in a day and time when all things are possible for people who have the raw intelligence, energy, and dedication to reinvent things. And that includes reinventing themselves. The shame of it is when smart people conform to conventional expectations and miss out on the opportunities to live a creative life. Within that confine, almost anything can be a great profession and can be a good and purposeful life’s work. But first and foremost, it’s gotta be important to you.

Randy Komisar one of the mentors at the Stanford Technology Ventures Program.

Dec

23

Persistence and keeping your eye on the prize

Filed Under career, goal setting, perseverance, regular reads, things to remind myself | Leave a Comment

Looks like Marc Andreessen has been sharing a lot on the books he has been reading. Which is great, because he’s filtering out the less interesting stuff and only sharing the good stuff! :)

This story on persistence inspires me. I’ve quoted Vinod Khosla a lot on this already, but I’ll write it to remind myself: Part of entrepreneurship is persistence. When you run into an obstacle, you either plough through it or you give up (and do something else).
Read more

Dec

22

Facts about helplessness at work

Filed Under career, did you know, fear, passion, things to remind myself | Leave a Comment

I have held previous jobs where I felt just absolutely shitty and felt just completely helpless, not knowing how to dig myself out of the deepest trench in my life. Out of challenging moments and difficult times, you always learn something out of it. Consider it character building–the tough way. I read this today and am sharing this here to remind myself in future:

Among small-business owners and employees, those with a stronger sense that they control what happens to them in life are less likely to become angry, depressed, or agitated when faced with conflicts and strains on the job. But those who feel little control are more prone to getting upset or even quitting.

In a study of 7,400 men and women in London civil service jobs, those who felt they had to meet deadlines imposed by someone else and had little say in how they did their work or with whom they did it had a 50 percent higher risk of developing symptoms of coronary heart disease than those with more job flexibility. Feeling little control over the demands and pressures of the work we have to do holds as a great risk of heart disease as risk factors like hypertension.

That is why, of all the relationships we have at work, the one with our boss has the greatest impact on not just our emotional health, but also our physical health.

Read more

Dec

16

The invisible skill

Filed Under career, regular reads, self improvement, things to remind myself, time management | Leave a Comment

Interesting thing I read today: Much like how a sculptor’s work is the result of what is taken away, self-control can also be described in the same manner.

Self-control manifests largely in the absence of more obvious emotional fireworks. Signs include being unfazed under stress or handling a hostile person without lashing out in return. Another mundane example is time management: Keeping ourselves on a daily schedule demands self-control, if only to resist seemingly urgent but actually trivial demands, or the lure of time-wasting pleasures or distractions.

From the book, Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ

That sounds to me like people who constantly repeat self-destructive (but addictive) behavior, such as gambling, drinking, .. <insert vice here>. Although it doesn’t even need to be that severe. These days, addiction to TV and mindlessly surfing the wonderful internet aimlessly, squandering precious time is also an indicator of lack of self-control.

It was a painful decision at that time, but I did give up TV. I haven’t replaced the remote’s battery and have been TV-free for more than half a year now. Do I miss it? Only if I start again I will. Have I missed out on the world? Not at all. I’ve also come to accept *not* completely finish reading all my RSS feeds. Even with my carefully culled list of RSS feeds, there’s just way too much information out there, more than I can consume, more than I have the time to separate wheat from chaff. Surfing the web for the pleasure of surfing, I have kept to a bare minimal.

The demon I am fighting today is waking up early. I’m more of a night owl, not really a morning person. But I have taken measures, including external accountability (with friendly bets with friends on how early I will wake up the next day, which if I fail to do, I buy them lunch). Sleep is a waste of time, I am trying to keep that to a minimum. I hate myself for indulging in it.
Read more

Dec

13

You must want a big success and then beat it into submission

Filed Under business, career, changing the world, goal setting, passion, people i like, perseverance, quotes, regular reads, things to remind myself | Leave a Comment

I love quotes! And here’s a good one I picked up today from Marc Andreessen’s blog post today:

Marcus Loew, founding father of the motion picture industry and founder of Loews Theatres and MGM:

Ambition!

You must want a big success and then beat it into submission; you must be as ravenous to reach it as the wolf who licks his teeth behind a fleeing rabbit; you must be as mad to win as the man who, with one hand growing cold on the revolver in his pocket, with the other hand pushes his last gold piece on the ‘Double-O’ at Monte Carlo.

As quoted in Neal Gabler’s outstanding An Empire of Their Own.

On another note, today I learned that OLPC’s Linux-based operating system was available for download, and so I wanted to check it out for myself. It’s pretty neat. Now I know what my blog looks like when rendered on an OLPC:

times-jliew-olpc
Also interestingly enough, when I uploaded the above screenshot on Flickr, the admin of a group (on Flickr) for the OLPC: One Laptop Per Child group asked if I could use this picture, to which I said yes. Do check out their gallery for more pictures of this laptop.

Dec

11

Commiting to execution and excusitis

Filed Under career, execution, goal setting, perseverance, self improvement, things to remind myself | 1 Comment

The secret to success boils down to three simple words: Dream. Plan. Execute. It’s in committing to that last part–executing–where people often fall short. You could spend hours and hours envisioning a glorious life for yourself. You could outline on paper every single step you need to get there and every person who can help. But if you can’t commit to working the plan, regardless of how long it takes, you may as well take that piece of paper, crumple it up, and throw it in the recycle-bin.
– Nicholas Aretakis, author of No More Ramen

Love that quote. This resonates with me. Reminds me of Guy Kawasaki’s term for this: people suffering from “excusitis”. Don’t you just love people who talk and talk but *never* frigging deliver (but continue to paint their bold and supposedly forward thinking vision)?

I know I suffer from mild excusitis sometimes–so I’m putting this out here for everyone to see. You can call me out on this if you see me talking but not delivering (tell me to STFU). I’m doing this because I never want to be like that.

Dec

2

20 questions (only!) personality test

Filed Under career, self improvement, things to ponder about | Leave a Comment

Speaking of self-awareness, I had just recently sent out an email survey to some close ones to ask for good and bad feedback on myself. I recently stumbled upon this test from Penelope Trunk’s post and decided to give it a shot. I don’t exactly fancy tedious lengthy questionnaires, and this one was only 20 questions, Penelope recommended it, so I figured I’d give it a shot. Pretty insightful, I recommend it; it tells you how you interact with other personality types. Here is the link to J.T. O’Donnell’s Interaction Style Assessment Test.

Now on some of the questions, they were basically polarized yes/no types, with no in-between answers like “sometimes” or “depends”. That was tough, so just shoot from the hip and go with your gut. First thing that comes to mind is probably right, so don’t think too hard on these questions.

Below is my report card. This is just for my personal reference to remind myself. Take your own test here:

Based on the results of the ISAT, you are an….ENERGIZER!

Full of persuasive energy, ENERGIZERS are natural people-persons. You know how to strike up a conversation and keep it going. Take a look at the following grid to learn more about your professional strengths as they compare to the other three Interaction Styles:

Interaction-Style-Chart

Every Interaction Style is valuable in the workplace. However, the key to being successful on-the-job and as part of a work team is to understand your Interaction Style so that you can A) choose a role on the team that leverages your style’s strengths, and B) understand the other styles on your team so you can communicate with them effectively.
Read more

Sep

16

Continuously make conscious tough choices

Filed Under business, career, failure, fear, self improvement, things to remind myself, values | Leave a Comment

The world can shape you if you let it. To have a sense of yourself as you live, you must make conscious choices. Sometimes the choices are really hard, and you make a lot of mistakes.
– John Donahoe, President of eBay Marketplaces

Aug

14

Don’t wish the ride was smoother and keep smiling

Filed Under business, career, failure, fear, passion, quotes, self improvement, things to remind myself, uncategorized, values | Leave a Comment

Corollary to the quote I posted yesterday, a Google search for that quote yielded this page with a priceless story and timeless advice:

Last week I had the pleasure of meeting a man who, despite a severe speech impediment, had become the top salesman at his company. It was such an unlikely story that I asked him how he’d done it. He joked, “with a lot of bruises and scars.” He went on to say, “Not surprisingly, the road was terribly tough for me. I was awful in the beginning — and it lit a fire under me. It made me work harder than everyone else. I resented it then, but I’ve come to realize it was a blessing in disguise.”

Consider this:

In life, it’s the rough patches that build your strength and character. They test you. They make you dig deeper, think harder, and risk more. Use them to your advantage. Don’t play the victim. Get up and get creative. It’s what you do when the going gets tough that defines you.

Try this:

When you hit a rough patch:
1. Don’t wish the ride was smoother - it’s not supposed to be.
2. Use the challenge to get smarter.
3. Tackle one thing at a time - don’t overwhelm yourself.
4. Keep smiling throughout.

Question: How have you used rough seas to your advantage?

Jul

11

Psychology Today on Procrastination

Filed Under career, execution, regular reads, self improvement | Leave a Comment

Psychology Today has this great top 10 on procrastination — a favorite topic of mine, because I hate procrastination, and I know I suffer from a little of it.

These are my favorite points:

3. Procrastination is not a problem of time management or of planning. Procrastinators are not different in their ability to estimate time, although they are more optimistic than others. “Telling someone who procrastinates to buy a weekly planner is like telling someone with chronic depression to just cheer up,” insists Dr. Ferrari.

Procrastination is actually a serious problem, we as society just don’t view it like it’s that bad. To me, procrastination deserves the attention drugs, alcohol, and all the likes deserve. Ok so I went overboard a little, but you get the point. We only have a finite amount of time, all the money in the world can’t buy you more time — wasting time is an irreversible process.

4. Procrastinators are made not born. Procrastination is learned in the family milieu, but not directly. It is one response to an authoritarian parenting style. Having a harsh, controlling father keeps children from developing the ability to regulate themselves, from internalizing their own intentions and then learning to act on them. Procrastination can even be a form of rebellion, one of the few forms available under such circumstances. What’s more, under those household conditions, procrastinators turn more to friends than to parents for support, and their friends may reinforce procrastination because they tend to be tolerant of their excuses.

I’m not a parent, but I think that’s why too much parenting is bad.

7. Procrastinators actively look for distractions, particularly ones that don’t take a lot of commitment on their part. Checking e-mail is almost perfect for this purpose. They distract themselves as a way of regulating their emotions such as fear of failure.

This one, I particular hate — because I suffer from a minor form of it. Yes, I admit. Which is why recently I just cut myself off completely from e-mail. Literally. I won’t have my e-mail client running in background while I’m doing something, with that corner alert popup when a new message arrives. It’s just too damn distracting. I open my e-mail client once every few hours or so. If it’s so urgent, then someone can just call me. That’s what phones are for. In fact, I block off a few hours to focus on work and refrain from e-mail, and reserve checking email as a reward for my working a few hours. It’s a great method.

I think most corporate workers waste time on checking e-mail. Checking email and replying fast gives you that sense that you’re accomplishing something, it’s a form of instant-gratification like for impulse shoppers. If you reply enough emails fast enough all day, it feels like you’ve done work all day. I know I’ve felt like that, but it’s a lie. All day looking busy, but actual net work done = zero. It reminds me of people who like to “look” busy and work hard to be “busy” .. but are honestly just not productive — whether they realize it or not. I rather be productive and be calm and in control of things. Sure that may look like I am not busy, but I actually did real work.

8. There’s more than one flavor of procrastination. People procrastinate for different reasons. Dr. Ferrari identifies three basic types of procrastinators:

* arousal types, or thrill-seekers, who wait to the last minute for the euphoric rush.

* avoiders, who may be avoiding fear of failure or even fear of success, but in either case are very concerned with what others think of them; they would rather have others think they lack effort than ability.

* decisional procrastinators, who cannot make a decision. Not making a decision absolves procrastinators of responsibility for the outcome of events.

I used to suffer from the second category of avoiding fear of failure/success. I was a bit of a perfectionist, but I am no longer one. Perfection is sometimes overrated. More often than not, my striving for perfection instead leads to my inaction — which is against my value of being a person of action. I rather fail from action, than fail from inaction. As for worrying about what others think of you, I think going overboard there is also unhealthy. At the end of the day, I will be the judge of whether or not I have done myself justice.

Jul

1

I will always do the right thing (core value of mine)

Filed Under business, career, self improvement, things to remind myself, uncategorized, values | Leave a Comment

Recently, a good friend of mine commented to me about how someone (let’s call him Mr. X) that I used to work with and I disliked, isn’t so bad of a person as long as one did not work with him. My friend said that because I had a bad experience with Mr. X, I’m not his friend today, but for those who have never been a colleague of Mr. X, they would be his friends. The point my friend was trying to make was that this guy was not a jerk outside of work, only at work, and that I would be Mr. X’s friend if I had never known him at work.

My reply to that was that, assuming that I never worked with Mr. X before, and became his friend, if I at a later date found out what a jerk he was at work, I would be lesser of a friend. Eventually becoming a non-friend. I rarely part ways like that with friends, but it has happened before. Relationships are two way streets. Last year I parted ways with a friend (in a less than desirable term), because I was giving up too much, and the relationship was just too lop-sided. That was someone else, not Mr. X.

Back to Mr. X. Why would I not be his friend, if he was only a bad person at work, and he wasn’t doing anything bad to me?

The answer was simple, and I didn’t even have to think hard. The values Mr. X stand for, and the actions that he exhibit, are against my personal core values.

I have a set of core values, and core values to me, are a standard that I will hold myself to, NO MATTER WHAT. My core values are carefully selected, and I will continue to practice my core values, even if the world shuns them. That’s an important test. When you build your set of core values, remember that they must pass the “popularity test”. If something you do suddenly becomes unpopular, and you decide to no longer do it, then that’s not a good core value. A core value is immutable, so carefully pick them.

One of my core values is: Doing The Right Thing

If that sounds vague to you, then what about Google’s core value of “Do No Evil”? Anyway, this value of mine basically means that, given a particular situation that I am in that requires my action, I will act according to what I think is the right thing to do. And this is something I will do, even if means that I have to make an unpopular choice. This is my standard that I have set for myself, feel free to bookmark this blog post and hold me accountable to what I have just said, should I future forget, and make a decision that’s not right.

Back to Mr. X. In my opinion, he does a lot of things at work to other people, that are not the right thing to do. But it’s not exactly blatantly wrong either, so he continues with his behavior. But deep down inside of me, it’s not right by my books, and I’m glad I don’t work with Mr. X. anymore.

The great thing about bad experiences, is that you learn from them. Granted, I haven’t learned what to do from Mr. X, but I have learned what NOT to do. Lots of it. I’ll describe my thoughts of an ideal person that I strive to be, and the things that I don’t want to be (and strive NOT to do).

Authenticity, transparency, and consistency

I like people who are authentic. The reason why I rank backstabbers worse than serial killers, child rapists, etc. is because backstabbers do it behind your back, while pretending to be your friend. To me, this is kind of like the Sarin attacks on the Tokyo subway. Those poor victims never stood a chance. The Sarin liquid is colorless, tasteless and has no odor. If those bad guys had the balls, they should have used guns or something. If someone is to kill me, do it to my face. Don’t do it behind my back. You declare war on a country before attacking. You don’t attack before declaring war.

Anyway, Mr. X was not exactly a backstabber, but he was a two-face bastard (in my book, a two-face bastard is not a full-fledged backstabber, but is on the right track to becoming one). Mr. X’s relationship modus operandi at work could be summed up as: If you were higher ranking than him at work, or if he thinks that you could help him, or indirectly do something to help him, he would be nice to you. Maybe even kiss your ass. However, if you are lower ranking than him, or if he knows there’s no way you could help him, or indirectly help him, he treats you like a second-class citizen. He’s not outright rude or anything, but a tad dishonest, sometimes even doing something to prevent you from advancing faster than him.

If you’re going to be a dick, by all means be a dick to everyone. Be a dick to people who you know can’t ever help you, and also the people who you know can help you. If you’re going to be a nice person, then be nice to everyone. Be nice and kiss your boss’s ass if you must, but also be nice to those who you know cannot help you. In short, don’t be a two-face bastard. Be consistent.

Mr. X would sell you something he himself wouldn’t buy. I simply can’t trust Mr. X, even when gives me advice, because sometimes the advice he gives me, is really in his own interest, not so much for me. Sometimes the so-called advice for me, really has nothing in it for me. It’s kind of like when someone says to you, “Hey, would you like to wash my car? It’s a great work out, and you look like you need a tan.” But phrase that in such a way that it looks like it benefits the person washing the car, not the owner of the car. “Hey, seriously, if you don’t do as I advice you to do, it’s really just bad for you. You should do it for your own good.”

Please. I wasn’t born yesterday. How about you do it first, and I’ll do it after I see you do it?

Authenticity helps build trust. When we trust each other, we can move forward and get real work done. We don’t spend time second guessing each other for a hidden agenda. I was constantly second guessing Mr. X. I can’t describe what a pain it is, living such a life of having to constantly second guess the people around you. Just to contrast, my current VP of Security Research Dan Hubbard is an awesome guy — I don’t second guess what he says. He tells it like it is, no beating around the bush, no having to look for double meanings. The team moves forward faster, without distrust. How do you unify a team to tackle a challenge with each member not trusting each other, and looking out for themselves only? YOU CAN’T.

Helping others succeed

Mr. X played the corporate big company political game of “playing your cards close to the vest”. Matter of fact, he regularly stole my best cards to be played as his, and amazed everyone with his winning streak. He hoarded valuable information and disseminated them based on the importance of the recipient to him, arguably an unfair but effective method of gaining control. The only problem is, he couldn’t find any valuable information on his own, so the valuable information he disseminated to others, were basically cut-paste jobs from my emails I sent him. Oh, the cut-paste email job conveniently strips out all indications that it he got the information from someone else.

In my opinion, that era of information hording to be powerful in the corporate work place is over. Look at the Web 2.0 phenomenon. Everyone is sharing information. The person who shares the most to benefit society, is considered the more powerful. They help others succeed. The person perceived to be full of valuable information but could possibly be a phony, IS NOT AS VALUABLE as the person who can actually deliver some value to you. If I knew you need something to be successful, and if I could not personally deliver it to you for your success, but if I knew of someone who can, I would introduce you both. I will admit I can’t help you with my own two hands, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t help you by connecting you to someone I know who can.

Given the choice of being perceived as someone true but not, and actually being someone true, but not necessarily perceived as such — I would pick the latter. If you’re a fake, eventually people will find out.

Also, I rather help others by giving them the ability to help themselves, rather than to force them come to me every single time. This is the “teach a man how to fish” philosophy. I rather teach you how to fish, than you give you a fish. I’ll give you a fish if you want, but that’s only a short term immediate benefit, and not sustainable in the long run for either of us. To contrast this with Mr. X, he would give you a fish for today, because he knows you will have to come back to him tomorrow. And he will do his best to actively prevent you from learning how to fish on your own.

They say that the people around you rub off on you. If you surround yourself with successful people, you too, would be successful. If that is so, then if I make the people around me successful, I too would be successful. Mr. X saw it as a zero sum game (if you win, I lose; so if I see you moving faster than me, I will slow you down). I disagree with that.

I observed that it’s mostly the little people who try to display their rank and power. The people with rank and power already know they have it, and don’t waste time proving it to their rank-and-files. Mr. X was slightly above rank-and-file, but he definitely made it known to others about whatever little power he had. I guess he forgot to check his ego at home before coming to work today. Again. Mr. X would be much more successful if we were back in the WWII era.

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.
– Mark Twain

To sum up, I knew about Mr. X’s two-face bastard attitude, my core values were mutually exclusive of his (some even conflicted), I could NOT operate autonomously, and our unfair lop-sided relationship resulted in my constant uncertainty and fear. He was impossible to read, was full of hidden agendas, and I had to constantly second guess him. That sealed the deal, my deal to resign, that is — and I left.

Hopefully I have not painted the picture that I am a saint — for I am not. I did have my naive moments, which I have since learned from. One of the great things about working with assholes, is that it builds character. I know that might sound cliche, but I speak for myself.

One of the reasons why I first started blogging, was to improve myself. I quickly found out that blogging provides transparency, as in, the internets will know what I’m about, and they can decide for themselves what they think of me (which I totally respect, good or bad). That reinforces that I need to be good, or else people would know that I’m actually bad, pretending to be good.

The other aspect I like about writing my blog, is that anybody reading my blog, can hold me accountable for what I say. Granted, I might sometimes write something when I’m half asleep, so that might not make much sense — but if you do the right thing, and judge me only by the well thought out articles that I really poured my full honest judgement into, .. then feel free to hold me accountable to what I say.

May

13

Building a career by trials of fire

Filed Under career, things to ponder about | Leave a Comment

Wow, I just read this today and it’s just an amazing insight to what _the_ Bill Gates is like, as a boss. I guess I’m relatively young and my only real recollection of Bill Gates from the media (as far as I can remember) is that he’s a really soft spoken quiet guy. And oh, rich.

Anyway, so this was an interesting read to me about how Bill Gates grilled his subordinates. Imagine a presentation to your boss that goes something like this:

Billg typically has his eyes closed and he’s rocking back and forth. He could be asleep; he could be thinking about something else; he could be listening intently to everything you’re saying. The trouble is all are possible and you don’t know which. Obviously, you have to present as if he were listening intently even though you know he isn’t looking at the PowerPoint slides you spent so much time on.

At some point in your presentation billg will say “that’s the dumbest fucking idea I’ve heard since I’ve been at Microsoft.” He looks like he means it. However, since you knew he was going to say this, you can’t really let it faze you. Moreover, you can’t afford to look fazed; remember: he’s a bully.

Pretty brutal, IMHO. But I agree with the conclusion of the blog post’s author Tom Evslin, that

Some people flourished in this trial by fire atmosphere. In fact, that is exactly what billg was doing. As smart as he is, he had no way to know most of the time whether the person presenting to him was right or wrong (unless their logic was obviously confused in which case they deserved whatever happened to them). So he tested us. Since you knew you were likely to be tested on anything, you really did think long and hard about what you were doing and what you were presenting.

As brutal as that may seem (the disadvantages of doing that aside), I do see the value in that. In fact, to generalize, that’s how open source coding works — weak inferior code are called out and corrected, all done in a public setting; so there’s no such thing as “saving face”. Public embarrassment is the punishment.

Reminds me of what they call “parental love”. Where I grew up, kids were spanked/caned/physically punished by their parents for being bad. The punishment was harsh, but it was done for the long term benefit of the kid, and the parents only want the best for their kids.

Dec

17

The media industry, and content creators

Filed Under business, career, innovation | Leave a Comment

Brandon Peele from Generative Transformation has written about the media industry, that I think is a great explanation of what’s happening there. It’s a long read so I’ve summarized it in short below, with some observations I feel are relevant to anyone in tech whose interests are in building a career and innovating.

In the media business, there are two forces competing for the same piece of pie. On one side of the ring, you have the content creators (artists, writers, actors, etc.) and on the other side you have the content enablers (think infrastructure – the cable service providers, cell phone carriers, satellite TV networks, etc.). The enablers take 50% of the revenue, and the starving artists duke out the other half with overhead costs such as talent agents (middle-managers and what not), production costs, etc. – so in reality, actual content creators get less than half the profit.

Since the cost of delivering actual content is so high, only a tiny subset of all creative talent actually sees some action. However, the cost of distribution and technology is constantly decreasing (see Moore’s Law) and Web 2.0 apps such as YouTube have significantly lowered the barrier to entry for these independent content creators. Anybody and their dog can submit a video to YouTube without filing a whole lot of paperwork and getting through a long line of gatekeepers who make thumbs up/down decision based on their own subjective yardstick. If it’s really good, it will get eyeballs; and these days, venture capitalists are aggressively after anything that can get lots of eyeballs. Where the attention of the masses go, you will find money to be made, so the saying goes (in the advertisement business anyway). And to find out if we’re headed for another technology bubble, follow the venture capital money, but I digress.

The punch line of all this is if you are in the business of being a gatekeeper to the medium of how information is distributed (i.e. TV, radio, cell carriers), you will eventually be undercut by someone else who can bring people the same content at a lower price – like YouTube. Technology expedites commodity. Hence, the diminishing returns on investment in yesterday’s technology used by content-enablers. Similarly, if all you do at work is cut-and-paste person A’s words into an e-mail to be forwarded to person B, and then cut-and-paste person B’s words into an e-mail to person A (behaving much like a parrot), then you’re just a speedbump in disguise who is not helping create any new of value. <Insert scene from Office Space where Tom Smykowski tries to justify to the consultants Bob and Bob why he has to physically transport a piece of paper from person A to person B>. But I digress.

Content is king, and if you think about it, it is much harder to be creative and come up with something new (writing a new joke, writing a new story everyone will like); than it is to simply re-apply well-known engineering practices (which is what the infrastructure guys are just really doing). It ain’t rocket science, it’s more about applying proven principles / methods / laws / theories. Obfuscating code to make your code look more complex and confusing makes you look smart to stupid people, but stupid to smart people, but I digress.

Brandon’s article quote Thomas Friedman, who observed that not only call-centers, telemarketing, and other mundane business processes but now even high-end knowledge work such as software development, legal and financial research jobs are going out to whoever is qualified to do it, at the lowest price – and that usually means, outside of the US.

In the interest of creating, consuming, and managing knowledge, the following line meant a great deal to me:

The extent to which an individual or organization thrives is governed by innovation and values, such that they can create faster than their creations are commoditized. Thus, a particular technology / product / service, or even portfolio of technologies / products / services, are not as important as the processes which produce them.

Appears to make perfect sense to me, that if you innovate slower than the rate of commoditization of your inventions – you will become a toasted dinosaur. So, to stay in business, out-innovating your competitors is the name of the game.

Any software engineer can program. That’s the easy part. You just pickup a book on whatever the new shiny programming language is, learn its syntax, and off you go. You can start building something in that new red-hot language. The tough part is, what is that something that you are going to build? Will it be useful? Is it of any value to others? Will your customers want it? Two programs that do that same exact thing but written in two different programming languages is about as valuable as having two $5 dollar bills instead of a single $10 dollar bill. Who cares. I don’t even use cash anymore, I use plastic cards and sometimes virtual cards.

How do you keep that creative innovative juice flowing? If innovating itself is difficult, then attempts to mechanize and automate such a process must be even more difficult. And we know it is difficult, also because VC’s have yet to find an algorithm that will accurately identify winning companies (e.g. Google) from losing companies (e.g. petfoods.com), consistently over time.

I have not actually thought this through long enough, so this is actually a good exercise for me. This is what I have done so far, whenever I find myself stuck in a mental roadblock, unable to think outside the box.

  1. Work from a remote location. Working at home is sometimes too distracting, I find myself unable to contentrate with a TV remote so near by, noisy room mates, etc. Working remotely from a sit-down coffee shop with free wireless internet is my favourite. I frequent places like Panera Bread and the Living Room in La Jolla, Calif. There’s a supply of snacks, caffeinated beverages, free wifi (and access to an electrical outlet), and perhaps more importantly, the ambiance (college students studying for finals, professionals having small ad-hoc meetings). Kinda nice to have in the background, I just sort of tune them out anyway. Also, sometimes I bring work to the beach – working from inside my car on my laptop. West coast sunsets are beautiful, the sound of the waves, birds, and the view of the ocean is just relaxing. Occasional random hotties are a plus. The only drawback to that is I don’t have wireless internet, but hopefully that will change soon when I get Cingular’s Samsung Blackjack and tether my laptop for internet access.
  2. Read my stash of RSS feeds. Yes, that’s right. Reading what others have written sometimes spur new ideas, and I start thinking about how to solve new problems, sometimes identifying a problem that I was previously unaware of. Sometimes, that’s all it takes to get me motivated. Someone writes something I find inspirational, that gets me into the flow, that “go, go, go!” feeling will make me stop at nothing.
  3. To be decided.

The full article from Brandon Peele is available here.

Questions:

  1. What problem are you going to solve next? The bigger the problem, the better. To quote Vinod Khosla, a well-known VC in silicon valley, “Any big problem is a big opportunity .. Nobody will pay you to solve a non-problem“. I just love that quote.
  2. After identifying the problem, how are you going to implement a creative solution to that problem? How about a solution so creative that it doubles as a barrier to entry to would-be competitors? What do you do to get your creative juices flowing? (you don’t have to ask yourself this question if you’re a “content-enabler”).

Nov

20

What will happen if you try and do not succeed?

Filed Under business, career, innovation, passion, quotes, self improvement, startup | Leave a Comment

For some reason, many times I catch myself not taking an action for fear that I might not get what I want, for fear of being rejected or laughed at. Then, I fail because of my inaction, rather than action. It happens over and over. So therefore, sometimes I find it extremely beneficial to couch the projected end result in terms of complete total failure (as in, the mission was not accomplished).

I ask myself “Seriously, if I failed miserably at this, how bad can it be?”. More often than not, the answer is “I will still have my arms and legs”. So it’s really not that bad at all. And I go do it. And if I do fail, I will have no regrets because I failed by action, and not inaction. Yes, I’m a person of action. I will not look back and say, “See, you shouldn’t even have tried”.

At my hockey practice with my buddies, we usually cheer when one of us fall and crash hard on the ice during practice. It’s actually pretty funny, because someone usually yells “.. AND HE’S OK!!” (insert scene from Austin Powers where mini-me falls and then gets up OK) It’s our way of reminding each other that “Hey, you did good, and you are learning! Keep on doing it!” And the truth is, when learning to skate, if you aren’t falling, then you’re not trying hard enough. I have completely let go of the notion of “not crashing”.

I’m going for breakthrough improvements. Little incremental improvements over time are ok, but not fast enough for my tastes ;) When I’m passionate about something, I push myself to attempt something that scares me, which usually result in me falling down. Fail fast, recover fast. No pain no gain (yes, that was a complimentary worn out cliché).

And with a mentality like that, I admire those _still_ around me. Thank you for putting up with me, and helping me in one form or another, with your words of wisdom. For those those who didn’t like or agree with the way I see things, I’m glad we parted ways because I am a product of the people around me and I too, wouldn’t want to be around birds from a different flock! Not to say that I’m always right, but I acknowledge my mistakes (and attempt corrective measures) when they are pointed out to me.

No one wants to fall short or be laughed at. What will happen to you if you try and do not succeed? The same thing that has happened to pretty much every successful person in history. You will get up and try again. Then you will probably fail again at some point in the future, yet continue to persist through setbacks. Every failure offers valuable lessons that you can’t learn any other way.
– Dave Lorenzo, author of Career Intensity

Career Intensity: Business Strategy for Workplace Warriors and Entrepreneurs

Nov

13

Reinventing yourself

Filed Under career, passion | Leave a Comment

Today, people at work rely more on their knowledge than skill. Knowledge and skill differ in that skills tend to change slowly whereas knowledge changes faster and quickly obsoletes itself. Therefore, a knowledge worker quickly becomes obsolete if he/she does not strive to learn and reinvent himself/herself.

The test is to ask yourself if you are confident that whatever knowledge and skill you have accumulated up until today be enough to carry you over the next 50 years of your working life. Finding a new supply of energy only goes so far and you are not growing younger each day. You have to make something different out of yourself.

Oct

28

The inevitable learning curve

Filed Under career, quotes, self improvement | Leave a Comment

* 11/19/2006 update: Shoutouts to Career Intensity readers. Welcome!

This past week I started as a security researcher at my company’s R&D dept. a.k.a. Websense Security Labs or known more internally as Security & Technology Research. As with any new job or career, the question is not whether or not there will be a learning curve, but how steep the learning curve will be. Hypothetically, even with a job whose essential functions you already know like the back of your hand, there will still be some variables outside of your control, such as getting to know the people you will be working with. The classic story of the rockstar programmer who can’t get along with all his peers and eventually pisses everyone else off comes to mind — which for the record, isn’t a cool thing to do.

In my case as an example, I’m trying to figure out departmental boundaries lines for task coordination, so that effort isn’t duplicated and nothing is missed because each thought the other person was doing it. How many times have you heard “Oh, but I thought you were working on that?”

Anyway, I’m not going to pretend I’m a know-it-all. The one thing competent people in my field can smell from a mile away is people who fake to know it all. I won’t go into the excruciating details of how people cover up their incompetence or personal insecurity with layers of carefully crafted politically-correct-but-not-quite nonsense because I’d rather talk about something else that isn’t a waste of time — like adaptation skills.

I like to pride myself in my polymorphic adaptation skills. “Polymorphic” is a term borrowed from computer science; “adaptation”, referring to the ability to just adapt. Aside from sounding really cool (heh), it just really means that you adapt to whatever environment you suddenly find yourself to be in — be it the deserts of Sahara or tall forests of the Amazon. You morph into whatever you need to survive in the hotzone you are dropped in, and morph as many times and take as many forms as necessary (wear as many hats), to get the job done right.

Here’s my checklist to address the inevitable learning curve with any new career:

  1. Be upfront of what you know, how well you know what you know, and what you don’t know. Admitting what you don’t know and what you know little about isn’t a sign of weakness, but an acknowledgement of your shortcoming. Nobody is perfect, everyone is bound to lack something in some area, and admitting your weakness is the first step. You won’t take the time to address a problem, if you don’t acknowledge that the problem exist. Personally, I think it’s also a sign of confidence — that you are not shy and insecure about your shortcomings, and you are willing to take on your problems head on (vs. covering it up with political nonsense and pretending to know everything). Pretending and covering up is actually a serious problem for the company. Imagine you got away convincing others of your ability to build a rocket, and they put you in charge of building a rocket that will fly all of mankind to a new planet. Hmm. What will you do then? Will you still try build the rocket and cross your fingers when everyone gets on board?
  2. Take on whatever role you need to get the job done. Wear multiple hats and morph into whatever best suits the current environment. To develop a web application, put on your web programmer hat. If the web application requires some knowledge of server system administration, then put on your sysadmin hat and work out the system problems. If the system is fine but the network is down, put on your network administrator hat and troubleshoot the connectivity problems. It’s easy to place the responsibility of getting things done on others by providing some politically-correct-but-retarded excuse like “Oh, but my job description didn’t say I had to do this-that, so technically I don’t have to. Why can’t Joe do it? It’s his job anyway. I can’t get my job done because Joe needs to do his job first. I’ll wait ’til Monday.” — but that’s not we call “going the extra mile” is it? Take on the responsibilty if it is within your means, save the excuses for your dog. Delegate when you need to but be prepared to do the groundwork if someone drops the ball.
  3. Determination to do whatever it takes. Put in the hours and effort, and give it your absolute best shot at attacking the problem. Read up on whatever the subjects you need to know (techies usually say RTFM) and ask for help from co-workers when you just need someone to explain to you how some internal processes work. Another way to think of this is in terms of supply and demand. In a free market economy, you pay more for what is scarce, and less for what is abundant. If your job were easy, then everyone would be doing it (since it’s easy to do), thereby making the labor pool abundant, and driving down the cost of the job. Still want an easy job?
  4. Do not fear the unknown. It’s how a person reacts to the unknown, and how he reacts to the things that he is uncomfortable with, that makes the person. Don’t shy away from challenges — take some time to figure out if it is a battle you care about winning, and if it is, throw everything at it and hammer away. If it isn’t, why waste your time? Move on to identify the next challenge to take on.

We can never really be prepared from that which is wholly new. We have to adjust ourselves, and every radical adjustment is a crisis in self-esteem: we undergo a test, we have to prove ourselves. It needs subordinate self-confidence to face drastic change without inner trembling.
– Eric Hoffer

The Learning Curve

And if you are a super achiever, your graph looks more like this:

Oct

24

Why haven’t you done it?

Filed Under career, passion, quotes | Leave a Comment

Persons with mediocre accomplishments are quick to explain why they haven’t, why they don’t, why they can’t, and why they aren’t.
– David J. Schwartz, The Magic Of Thinking Big

What is your excuse today, for not taking a step, no matter how small, towards your goal?

The Magic of Thinking Big

Next Page →