Mar 13
lindsayrgwattRandom America, china, jobs, millennials
You wouldn’t think that young Chinese and Americans have too much in common, but two recent news articles suggest that they might.
The first article talks about Millennials in America entering the workforce:
Millennials want more vacation and time for themselves away from the job than young people did 30 years ago, and they also value compensation more, according to a recent study.
…
Millennials, the youngest generation in American workplaces, may see time off as necessary because of how hard they saw their parents work, said San Diego State University psychology professor Jean Twenge.
Today there’s an article talking about how young Chinese workers are getting pickier about the jobs they’re looking for:
Their attitudes and expectations are vastly different from those of their parents, who hunkered down onassembly lines for little pay and helped turn China into a manufacturing juggernaut. Many younger workers won’t do the sweatshop jobs their parents did. They grew up with greater prosperity in families limited by theone-child policy. They are more used to getting their way.
“It’s true that we’re less willing to eat bitterness,” Chen said with a chuckle, using a popular Chinese phrase for enduring hardship. “We’re better educated. We know we have rights. Times have changed.”
Very interesting to see these similar attitudes emerging amongst similar aged people in wildly different countries.
Mar 11
lindsayrgwattTechnology algorithms, fail, youtube
Yesterday I was listening to a podcast that referenced Cajmere’s Coffee Pot - commonly referred to as “Percolator” or “It’s time for the percolator”. I was wondering how the original song went, so I figured I’d listen to in on YouTube.
All good, but check out that “featured video” in the upper right corner. I’m guessing that YouTube noticed that people who looked at this video looked at that video – and therefore I might want to as well. But rest assured, I have little desire to copulate with animals.
Recommendation algorithms are hard, and this one’s not working yet.
Mar 04
lindsayrgwattBusiness behavioral economics, causeworld
Today an interesting Tweet from @umairh popped up:
opinions on causeworld? there’s something bugging me about it. http://nyti.ms/coFtpR
CauseWorld in a cause celebre (sorry, couldn’t resist) of the web world right now. The premise is hopeful: you use your phone to check in at various locations to earn “karma points” which you can then donate to a charity – and an advertiser pays for the donation.
Sounds like a win, right? In return for you giving up some privacy (you can be 100% sure that your check-in data is getting sold to advertisers), the world becomes a better place.
I’d argue the world actually becomes a worse place.
When you choose to give money directly to a charity you have to make two conscious choices: the cause and how much. Every person has their own complex calculus for arriving at the final decision, but it’s immediately clear to you what you’re doing as it’s your money and your choice.
CauseWorld changes this completely. The first aspect is that you don’t actually know how much you’re giving as they are purposely hiding the value of the “karma points”. For example, if you earn 30 karma points, you can donate clean water to one person in Sudan for one month. 30 karma points means that you have to check in probably about 6 times.
Now you can feel good because you’ve saved someone’s life for one month. And what’s that worth? Well, the brutal answer is, 30 cents. You could have gone to GlobalGiving.org and saved 100 people for $30:
Similarly, maybe you wanted to use 100 karma points to get 1 pound of food for monkeys in the Congo. That’s 20 check-ins. And worth a whopping $1. You could have gone to GlobalGiving and donated $25 to the exact same group to save the same monkeys (Jane Goodall Institute):
Let’s examine what your 30 cents means. You’ve generated six data points that have probably been sold to a company (the sponsor) and will likely be sold to more. You’ve given up a lot of your privacy as you’re now selling every single location you go to (each of your checkins corresponds to a geographic location; I’ll bet CauseWorld can pinpoint your home within six months of using their service). You’ve had to look at multiple ads for sponsors. You’ve also generated a tax break for the company that makes the donation because they are giving the cash instead of you.
What’s really bad, is that I’ll bet you’ll be less likely to donate your own cash to charity this year because instead you think you already gave via CauseWorld. Lets say that last year you gave $100 to a charity. That was a lot to give at once, but it didn’t take long and it felt good. This year, to do the same thing, you’re going to have to check in 2,000 times (each check-in in 5 cents). That’s a heckuva lot of work. I’ll bet that after the first thousand checkins you slow down – if you even make it that far. And this is where the damage occurs: you still think you’re giving to charity, but it’s at a much lower rate than last year.
There’s another issue here, too. When you pick the charity, you’re donating to your agenda. When you do it via CauseWorld, you’re only donating to their charities. There is zero chance that any of their selected charities will go against the agenda of their advertisers.
We’ve seen this before: it’s called the health care system. Your insurance company (CauseWorld) gives you a service that’s paid for by your work (advertisers) and you never see the price it costs for a doctor to fix you (the charities) – and you can only see certain doctors. As a result you use too much health care, the price goes up all the time and you frequently can’t see the doctor you want/have to go out of your way to find a doctor.
CauseWorld is going to do the same thing to charities: you think you’re giving more because you’re spending more time ‘donating’, but really you’re not and you’re also not giving to the charities that really matter to you.
PS
If I was CauseWorld my response to this would be:
a) We make it easier for people to donate during tough economic times. This rings hollow. No one knows if charitable donations are going to be down due to this recession, but America has gone through many recessions before and charitable giving has grown faster than the economy.
b) We open up giving to a new audience that normally would not donate. This is not likely true either. The article in the link above estimates that 70-80% of American households donate money. These are the same people who are going to use CauseWorld (if this was not the case, P&G, Citi, etc. would not be lining up behind CauseWorld). Therefore there just aren’t that many of them who aren’t already donating. And, if you believe my logic above, they’re now probably going to actually donate less.
Mar 04
lindsayrgwattRandom
I came across this photo today. It’s from backstage at a recent Fashion Week show. Easily the toughest map to follow ever.
Mar 02
lindsayrgwattTechnology google, search, test
You may or may not know, but Google tests hundreds of different versions of their search service every day. They’ve turned their users into a giant set of unwitting testers who are constantly providing them feedback on how to improve their product. This unparalleled ability to conduct tests is one of the skills that makes them currently unsurpassed in search.
Yesterday I turned into one of those testers. While searching for a particular term at work, I came across this design:
Here’s what the same search looked like when performed in a different browser:
What can we glean from this? Well, a few things:
Google’s test index (the number of documents is queries against) may be much bigger than it’s current index. The test page returned 5.2M documents vs. 1.3M for the normal version
Location is going to become more important in your search (no surprise in an increasingly mobile world). Note that in the test version, I can change my location from NYC. This is important, as if I search for “Zanzibar”, I get returned the bar in Hell’s Kitchen as the first result, not the beautiful island off the coast of Africa
Finally, Google thinks that they type of content you’re looking for is as important as what you’re looking for. If you were to click “More” under “Everything” in the test version, a list showing Images, Videos, etc. would have opened up (this normally appears at the top of the page). Just like my employer or Best Buy, Google’s trying to make it easier for you to find info using faceted search.
Why type “Zanzibar photos” when you could type “Zanzibar” and then click “images”. While that takes two steps, it allows you to easily flip between different types of info about Zanzibar, rather than having to re-type your query.
This is an interesting way for them to start to integrate all their different search properties together (Google, images, YouTube, scholar, books, etc.), and I hope it makes it into the real world.
Feb 28
lindsayrgwattHistory, Random Complexity
Wen and I are fortunate to have great friends. A few of them (randomly) ended up giving us gift certificates to Gramercy Tavern when we got married and we finally made it the other night. As we were basking in the glow of a ridiculously good meal, Wendy mentioned “how did we get here?” I couldn’t help but think of how, at least for me, a couple of decisions that – at the time – seemed irrelevant have massively shaped who I am today. (Note that this is not an original notion; complexity scientists call it path dependence). Here are a couple of those events:
When I was in high school, you applied for three different university programs in descending preference. I didn’t get into my first pick – computer engineering at the University of Waterloo. Instead, I did engineering at Queen’s. If I’d gone to Waterloo I likely wouldn’t know my current set of friends and almost certainly be married to Wen. In fact, I’d argue that not getting into Waterloo is the best thing that ever happened to me (and that’s no knock to Waterloo as a school).
When I was at Queen’s every engineer did a common first year and then had to pick a discipline to specialize in over the next three years. I had no idea what I wanted to do, but knew that I liked computers and math and physics. Each discipline made a presentation and the Engineering Physics department invited a grad named Kamal Hassan to present. He talked about how he had studied Eng Phys and learned lots of interesting math/physics/engineering but didn’t want to be an engineer and therefore became a management consultant. I had no idea what a ‘management consultant’ was, but the program sounded like something interesting so I decided to do Eng Phys. The training I received there continues to help me on a daily basis. (And, in a weird twist of fate, I ended up becoming a consultant like Kamal and, freakishly, ended up at the same business school he went to)
After my 2nd year of school, I went overseas to London on a work exchange program. There was a central organization that helped you find a job. A list of positions were posted; you applied; and if you were to be interviewed, a notice was placed for you in a book (this was pre-cellphones). This book had a very odd structure. There were tabbed pages (by students’ last names), but the tabs weren’t rigid and you could open the book but it would be collapsing under its own weight if your last name started with a “w”.
One morning I went to check if I had any interviews and I had one-for a 150 quid/week job at Merrill Lynch. However, due to the collapsing book, I missed one for a 250/week at some publishing company. When I found out I missed out on a job that paid 66% more I was crushed (and I spent the summer living in pernury) – but years later I was in a job interview and saw “Merrill Lynch” circled on my CV and knew that it had been worth it (if you ever meet me, ask me about that job at Merrill).
Finally, I didn’t get into any of the American grad schools I applied to. Instead, I ended up at INSEAD. Again, I met some truly unique people who I otherwise would not know. More importantly, I got a special chance to work with a serial investor and startup in Silicon Valley. This gave me the confidence to strike out on my own after school, and while that business wasn’t a success, it directly led to me getting my current job.
All of which led to us having dinner at Gramercy Tavern. I don’t pretent that the only reason I was able to have dinner there was because of the decisions made above (after all, there are an infinite number of paths that could have led to me eating there), but at least I know which points in my life have made the biggest impact.
And as for the meal. It was delicious. The appetizer was a lamb papardelle with olives, lemon confit and swiss chard.
This was followed by venison loin and sausage in a Bourbon sauce and with a potato pancake:
We quaffed it down with probably the best bottle of wine I’ve ever have – a 2001 bottle of Oddero Barolo:
Finally, they gave us a little amuse bouche for the next morning – a piece of cocount cake with pear inside:
Feb 26
lindsayrgwattNYC photos, storm, weather
It’s been snowing for over 24 hours now in NYC, so I thought I’d post some photos. If I had cross-country skis, I could have probably skied to work today.
Here are some shots of snowy Carroll Gardens:
This is the intersection of Union and Clinton; it would normally be awash in taxis, school buses and delivery trucks:
Absolutely no one is to be seen at 8th and 15th:
And, of course, someone seems to have panicked and thinks we’re having an emergency. This guy is wearing his “Red Cross Emergency Worker” outfit. Please; it’s just a snowstorm:
And finally, a shot of what it looks like from work. That awkward looking grey phalange is the Empire State Building…
Feb 17
lindsayrgwattNYC Music, subway
The other night I was in the 2nd Ave subway station and a busker was playing the saxophone. It’s a total New York cliche – the echo eventually drowned out by the roar of a train – but it still sounds great. Here’s a snippet:
Saxophone in the Subway
Jan 31
lindsayrgwattTechnology google maps, maps
In my opinion, one of the greatest innovations of the past five years is how location has become a part of everyday life. Google Maps or its equivalent has become a standard tool in many people’s life. When you’re looking for directions, a place, etc. you simply call it up; no more guessing where you are.
We’ve come a long way in the past five years, but a couple of recent experiences reminded me of just how far there still is to go.
First one: I can walk from NYC to Ottawa in 5 days.
As Wen and I were going home for Christmas, I decided to see what the directions would look like ‘by foot’. I was impressed that it would only take about five and half days to do that. That’s about 72 miles a day.
You get a great sense of how Google’s algorithms work here. The average human can walk about 3 miles per hour. There are 24 hours in a day. Ergo, 72 miles per day and 5.5 days to Ottawa.
My second moment came when I stumbled upon this nameless street when trying to find a cafe:
Of course, this street does have a name (Greenwich). And this example speaks more to the power than limitation of online mapping tools: they’ve become such a part of my life that a part of me almost questions why the street has no name, rather than thinking there’s something wrong with the program.
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