Jan05

Soft Skills for Dummies? As If! LOL

So, as I explained in my earlier post, I took the exam this morning to certify for TS for MOSS (SharePoint) configuration. Aside from the test dragging a whole bunch of skeletons out of my closet, it also left me feeling just a bit spunky. So, I guess I can't resist the urge to stick my middle finger up at somebody right now. Here’s something that came pouring out after I got all the self-immolation out of the way.

--fold--

If you have skills - if you are truly brilliant - people will find a way to try and put you in your place. There is some truth to the expression that “the nail that sticks up gets hammered down”. A lifetime of punishment for doing well has changed my behavior over time; it has made me learn not to shine too brightly. The Dao says that you should never forget the value of worthlessness - the gnarly tree by the side of the road does not get cut down for firewood. There’s some truth to that as well.

When you leave college, or after high school if you don’t go to college, hopefully you will be lucky enough to get a job doing what you like. After all, you're going to do it for half your waking life, so you'd better like it. But, something I remember from school is that there’s no short supply of people in the world for whom what they truly enjoy is putting other people down - or rather, establishing themselves in a group that is superior to others.

These people need to find jobs they like too, and while I don't think that every manager is one of these people, I’ve done some off the cuff counting of the ones I consider to be good managers vs. the ones that are not so good. I think it is fair to say that the career of management is at the very least an attractive option to these sorts of people. Once established on that track, they have learned to emphasize the areas of their personality in which they are strong and call them "soft skills", while they also downplay the role of "hard skills", perhaps sometimes almost without realizing that this is what they are doing.

What are hard skills, anyway? I suppose they’re the skills that actually let you get something measurable accomplished, whereas soft skills are soft because - like the soft sciences - they are as much or more fluff than quantitative or empirical and verifiable fact. If I were feeling more generous I might admit that at least the actual results of employing soft skills are more difficult (or impossible) to measure, but their use can produce real results.

So, what do I want to say by this? Am I saying these skills don't exist? Hardly! In fact, I myself have been in management positions at different levels, so I know that there are skills you can learn and that some people are indeed more socially adroit than others. But is there a certification exam for working with people? Is there a bar exam that you need to pass to prove that you are not someone who will poison the work environment at your company? No, not that I know of - the PMP certification teaches hard management skills, not social skills - just as an MBA teaches you tools and rules for running a business. But, an MBA can’t make you fun at parties all by itself – quite the opposite I would think!

To the best of my knowledge, there’s no finishing school for businesspeople. Maybe there should be. If there were, then many people who are too quick to point to a skilled developer and loudly comment about his "lack of soft skills" would have washed out long ago and become something a little easier to handle like being a hand sanitizer, salad bar spray barrier, or tire patch-n-repair kit.

After thinking about it for some time, I have come to believe that much of the discourse about soft skills that we take for granted as part of our working life is actually a myth. In fact, the truth is that we all have soft skills. We go home and have to practice conflict resolution with our families. We all develop different techniques for time management that work for us – however badly that may be. Many sports nuts would have a hard time fitting in at an anime convention - and being outnumbered might not feel too comfortable about it. I’ve seen very powerful people who were universally disliked by literally everyone at their company, but who didn’t even know it (though I believe they may have suspected it strongly). I’ve also seen executive managers in high levels jobs slink around as if they had been labeled “most likely to wear a pocket protector” because they were ostracized by their peers. Anyone kicked in the teeth long enough will begin to behave in ways that show they expect it, and the opposite it also true. Give a lowly developer a private office and they will start to behave more like they are 'in charge' as a result.

It is true that this is nothing more than my opinion, but I believe the myth of soft skills is a construction generated by the people who were the “cool kids” in high school, created for the purpose of indefinitely perpetuating their position in the social hierarchy. It has theory X written all over it. It has its roots in the same insidious class based elitism that causes us to say things like, "ain't isn't a word." even though you probably can't find a native English speaker alive who can't tell you what it means (and it's even in the dictionary!). There are real coping skills that people learn for dealing with each other, but to put up an imaginary straw man called "soft skills" and attach to it all your preconceived notions that nerds are socially inept is worse than wrong; it's pure and simple bigotry, and people who do it ought to be ashamed of themselves.

To be truly effective, any evaluation of soft skills would have to be based on measurable facts, and even psychologists and sociologists will tell you that generating this kind of verifiable and repeatable data [ethically] in human beings is challenging. Despite this, they do find interesting way to shed light on human behavior, and management science does sometimes find ways to translate this into the business world.

But, business itself could do much more. If we honestly expected the same quality of performance from people who had working with people as one of their primary job responsibilities, as we do from people who perform technically, then I don’t think it would be unreasonable to require from them the same kind of objective certification of their "soft skills" as is required for IT, medicine, law, accounting, or the building trades.

Perhaps such a test would be too costly in terms of time and "actors" to be feasible for new employee screening. Without being emotionally realistic, it would be incredibly easy to just fake it. But, at the very least I think we could all (technical and non-technical alike) benefit from some simulation exercises and training. Just as an example, I would like to see a salesperson or recruiter placed in the position of having to work overtime for several weeks straight, and then measure their social skills as their project is slated to be cancelled prematurely and they’re forced into the position of defending their investment in time. Or maybe they could be periodically graded on the way they deliver constructive criticism to employees who require negative feedback. I had some other ideas too, but they were starting to take on the characteristics of the Stanford and Milgrim experiments, so I’ll just stop. Again, ethics, challenging stuff.

Truly thinking about it now, I guess it's very complex and would require a lot of thought, but one thing I do know is that there aren't nearly enough people devoting resources into this area of testing or training as there should be. To say it is an order of magnitude less than the scrutiny given to IT skills would be a gross understatement, and it is only fair that somebody's feet should be held to the fire to make it happen.

Since that will probably never happen, maybe instead I’ll just write a science fiction novel about what it would be like if we did.

Published: Jan-05-08 | 0  Comment | 0  Link to this post

Jan05

And Speaking of Shoehorns

Just wanted to take a few minutes to bang out the post I meant to write last night, but was too tired after my caucus watching expidition.
 
My wife and I have this ongoing discussion that has been taking shape over several months, about this concept we call Little Sister.
 
The term is an overt reference to the orwellian term Big Borther, meant to symbolize the all watching eye of the government. Actually, the best way to describe it is that it is BBs counterpoint - the all watching eye of, well, everybody.
 
Little Sister is enabled by the cell phone camera. It waits for us to have our Macaca moment, then tells the whole words about it. Thus, we are assured through repeated examples of the failures of others that our own transgressions will be met with the swift dispassionate justice of the collective.
 
As an example, the other day I received an e-mail from a friend at work. It contained a video of a man crossing the street, wearing headphones. Then an SUV runs the light, and the resulting crash causes it to tumble inexorably towards the man, who is still blithely unaware of his impending doom. I can be sure of only three things: I will never knowingly run a red light, I will never cross the street wearing headphones, and there are many other people for whom seeing this clip will have a similar effect.
 
So it this how we acheive societal elevation? Is it a devolution into a world where the world privacy has no real meaning? Or, will we all become so used to the ubiquity of cameras that we simply learn to forgive one another of all but the most aggregious transgressions?
 
What do you think will come of this?
 
Update: Kudos to Cory Doctorow, who is quickly becoming my favorite author, for putting a eerily-similar-and-yet-completely-different spin on this timeless idea with his novel Little Brother. Amazing work as always! My wife, 11 year old son, and I all absolutely loved it.
Published: Jan-05-08 | 0  Comment | 0  Link to this post

Nov07

The War on Scarcity: It’s Not Just for Breakfast Anymore

So, in my previous post about [Great American Novelist] Cory Doctorow, I made an off-handed comment about the War on Scarcity. I turned to my cube mate, and asked him if he knew what the War on Scarcity was, which he did. (He's also a fan of Cory). So, I got to thinking. Where did I hear that term "War on Scarcity"? Why do some people seem to instinctively know what it means?

Well, Google says that the only references to the term "War on Scarcity" online are references to a 2004 speech by Tim Sanders (Steve's 2 Cents has a retelling of it here), and are self improvement related in nature. Basically, in this use it is a call for people to reject modern consumerist thinking. Appreciate what you have and not what you lack.

But, the War on Scarcity is really much larger than that, and it is only just beginning. It is not something that you can solve simply by becoming a Buddhist and rejecting your material desires. It is a drama that has been unfolding for thousands of years. It has been smoldering - not a full-fledged war - but there have been skirmishes. You see its echoes in history: the Magna Carta, Marxism, and DRM. It's part of what it means to be a human being. While just as there are pacifists in any war, individuals may turn away from materialism, the conflict will continue to unfold around them.

We are now at a critical nexus in this drama. There are signs that the opening salvos of the true war to come have already been fired, and the events that take place in the next 50 years will have a profound effect in that they will tell us the nature of the conflict that will likely continue for a thousand years into the future.

But, to understand a War on Scarcity, one needs to understand the nature of Scarcity itself. Scarcity has been with us since man first walked the earth. Historically, and perhaps ironically, we are accustomed to having an abundance of scarcity. We have always struggled to have enough resources to go around, whether it is food, land, raw materials, fuel, money, or energy. As man has progressed, we've continually found ways to produce resources in great abundance. So, we shift our attention to solving the problems of scarcity at a higher level. Instead of struggling for food, we start wars over oil. But, do we take the abundance that we create and truly eliminate the scarcity?

Think about it. As just an example, there is now enough food in the United States to feed a large part of the world - so much so that the government has an active interest in propping up the price of basic foodstuffs like corn. Corn itself is now so cheap that we find corn starch and corn syrup are added to practically every type of packaged food product we eat. Corn is now cheap, so the masses can now have it is quantities that are greater than are healthy. We slurp down corn laden Coca-cola with our Doritos, and get fat. Our bodies are not evolved to eat large amounts of empty corn calories every day. One might even say that the scarcity was better for us in some ways than the abundance.

Instead, we could feed the starving masses of the world (and, to our credit, sometimes we try), but by and large any attempt to do this is impeded by the systems we have in place around the world to prevent it. We call those systems governments. Ostensibly, we set them up to ensure justice and provide for the common good, but often they just act as a machine for perpetuating unnecessary scarcity. Whether the corn is rejected for being genetically engineered or is stolen by warlords really doesn't matter; either way the result is that someone goes without a meal.

Where the scarcity is resolved, new scarcities arise. Some people, who have more money than others, choose to buy steak (raised on corn) or whole and organic foods. Is there a scarcity of cows that not everyone can afford steak? Is there a scarcity of vegetables grown without pesticides? And what of the scarcity of paper money that causes some people have enough of it to overcome these scarcities while others can't? Some scarcities are real. There is only so much land after all. Some are manufactured. As long as someone is paying farmers to grow more corn than they really need (or can profitably sell), then there will be less for cattle and carrots.

Some are entirely imaginary.

And that is where things get very interesting. If you look at the course of human history, you can easily get the sense that at least some of us are very comfortable with scarcity. We now have systems put in place all around us that perpetuate and even celebrate scarcity. We have a money system based entirely on faith, investment markets composed entirely of rules and too complex to truly understand, and bank vaults full of notes that no human will redeem within our lifetime. We have erected a cadre of laws for intellectual property that makes it a crime to take something from another human being while at the same time also allowing them to keep it. Given that in the whole sphere of human knowledge each success rests upon the accomplishments of those who came before us, this idea is itself so tenuous that half the world considers it a fallacy. We endow corporations with the rights of living men, while consciously overlooking that they are immortal giants who nearly cannot help thinking of "ordinary" men as mere insects. We are categorized: employee, customer, consumer - competition.

Unlike the War on Poverty, the War on Drugs, and the War on Terror, the War on Scarcity was not declared by any government. Actually, calling it the War on Scarcity is perhaps a bit perverse, because it was really started by those who favor scarcity. But, like those other "wars", it does have an enemy which is partly – if not entirely – make-believe. However, this does not mean that the stakes are not high or that the consequences of the conflict can't be felt by you and me.

I can't sit on my soap box and pretend that I know all there is to know about the War. Perhaps I will be able to articulate that at some later point in time. For now, it was my hope that I can convey a general sense of the idea that is represented by the term. As a way of doing this, I would like you to consider a few thought exercises.

Suppose that tomorrow a very smart man develops in his garage a means for creating virtually limitless energy. If this is too hard, imagine that he merely finds a way to get much more use out of the energy sources we already have – say triple our efficiency. Suppose that man has a choice: he can choose to publish his method to the entire world, or he can keep his method secret and instead sell the fruits of his labor - namely the energy it produces or saves. If he does the latter, does he benefit more from selling more energy more cheaply, or does he benefit more from selling less of it at a higher price? Suppose he wants to take the first option instead. Do we live in a society that would celebrate this man as a hero, or like John Galt would we make him learn to regret his generosity?

There are now 3D printers that can create products out of plastic from plastic powder using only a CAD drawing. It is not so difficult to imagine a future, not unlike the one in Printcrime, where we have such devices that are capable of making virtually anything out of common raw materials like metal, paper, plastic, or wood. Suppose you had such a device in your home. Is there anything that you should not be allowed to make in it? What if you wanted to make a pistol? What if you wanted to make a grenade? How about a box full of grenades or a basement of weapons? Suppose you had a much larger version of such a device in your garage? Would you make a car with it? If you had or could easily download the blueprint for a '66 Camero, what would car companies have to offer you to convince you to pay $30,000 for one of their blueprints instead? What about the time period where not everyone has a garage sized printer? Would you sell a car to your neighbor or give it away? If you didn't have one, how would you feel if you knew that GM or Toyota were actively trying to keep you from getting one?

What does it mean for a copyright to be infinitely renewable? If a corporation can live forever, and the intellectual works of its employees are the intellectual property of no single man, but only of the organization, then does that mean that they remain copyrighted indefinitely? Is it right that Walt Disney was able to transfer the copyright for Mickey Mouse to a corporation that under the DMCA will continually renew it for all time to come? Should the Public Domain encompass the works of William Shakespeare but not Steamboat Willie? Didn't both have a profound impact to human history, and was Walt cheating death this way or only cheating himself?

The next time you download a song for free over the Internet, or hear people debating that topic after a story on the evening news, you should think about this. We are getting smarter – collectively. We are solving problems of technology at a rate that is increasing exponentially. But, we are adapting to our new abilities much more slowly, because the concept of not having enough is very deeply engrained into the human consciousness. We are, after all, living and mortal beings with physical needs. But just as it is now not entirely impossible to give practically every human being alive a complete box set of the works of Paul McCartney on MP3, it will someday be possible to give every human being a TV, and X-Box 360, a car, a house, and a diamond ring.

Some people will ask what will compel people to work in a world where they can have anything they desire at virtually no cost. Others will say "Who cares, because we'll have practically anything we want." The answer will either be wonder or fear. The more we try to prop up scarcity today, the more we are delaying and magnifying the inevitable conflict to come. And, I am certain that we will be very lucky indeed if it does not eventually come to people killing each other. That is the essence of the War on Scarcity.

Published: Nov-07-07 | 0  Comment | 0  Link to this post

Nov07

Overclocked: A Collection of Stories by Cory Doctorow

This blog was getting a bit SharePoint heavy. I can't have everyone thinking that all I do is code. :-)
 
Lately, I have been reading stories from Overclocked. Monday, I finished When Sysadmins Ruled the World, which left me with great difficulty getting to sleep. Let's just say, "Creepy!" and leave it at that. Anda's Game, which I finished last night was much more uplifting, but longer than I expected. This morning I was starting I, Robot. But, I have no opinion of it yet, as I only read a few pages into it.
 
I haven't read as much of Cory as some people have. I came onto the scene a little late. My wife introduced me to it; she's an avid SF reader and aspiring writer (I say "aspiring", because she is currently in recovery from a decade long addiction to writing fan fiction, and now has several very promising stories in the works). Also, I don't read very often or quickly on account of my bad eyesight. But, I know a good thing when I see it, and once I pick up one of Cory's books, I have a very challenging time putting it down again on the same day.
 
If you haven't read any of Cory Doctorow's work, you are in luck, because he makes everything available for free download under the Creative Commons. Now, I like the feeling of getting away from my PC with a great page turner, so I guess I'm doing my part to keep food on his table. Hats off to Cory for figuring out that you can give away your work and thrive as a result.
 
In fact, I'd like to go on record as saying that I think Cory Doctorow will become one of the classic writers of our time. By "our time" I mean the early 21st century. I believe that teachers - if they are not doing so now - will be making dispondent sixth graders read his books twenty years from now. (If you're a teacher dfoing this now, I'd love to hear from you.)
 
Why do I think that? Because I think that he writes using elements and themes that are both essentially important to people of our era, and yet also timeless. As we stand on the doorstep of the 21st century, we hear the earliest shots in the War on Scarcity whizzing over our heads, and we wonder what they are. When that war has been fought and lost - when the corporate giants are brought down by a mountain of ants - then maybe we'll look back on the works of Cory Doctorow as mere historical curiosity. More likely we will see them as the first notes of a rising chorus of thought, and in the intervening thousand years between then and now, I think his influence will be felt again and again.
 
The more I read, the more I continue to find Cory's insight into human nature as it relates to the conflict between property rights and individual freedom very enlightening. Perhaps some day soon I will try to put more of this philosophical thinking down in writing. For now, just go read some for yourself. At the very least, when your kids need help with it in middle school, you'll be able to lend a hand.
Published: Nov-07-07 | 0  Comment | 0  Link to this post

Sep19

D-War: It Was Better Than Cats, I Would See It Again and Again...

Okay, so I decided to ignore the early reviews and just go see this movie for its own sake. After all we've been spoiling for an apology for Reign of Fire, which for a movie about dragons had suprisingly little footage of dragons in it.
 
I can say with some certainty that everything I heard about this movie was absolutely true. The acting was sub-par, the story line simplistics, and the plot full of holes you could drive an aircraft carrier through. For story, I'd say it was around the level of He Man and the Masters of the Universe. Your kids won't mind.
 
IMHO, the best acting was done by the gentleman who played the zookeeper who saw a dragon eat a half dozen elephants. Hopefully, he'll find other work after this. Many of the extras were also very much in character. I can't really blame anyone else for a mediocre performance because I think it really starts with the script. Perhaps Mr. Shim may do better and accomplish some more sophisticated stories in the future?
 
But, I admit I didn't go for the story. I went to see dragons fight tanks and helicopters. I was not dissappointed. Though everything else about this movie made it difficult to watch, the CG was simply nothing less than spectacular. The fight scenes were full of action and lots of eye candy, and occassionally there were even a few well choriographed moments. The dragons and other accompanying hordes were very believable and watchable, often more so than their human counterparts.
 
Still, I'm sorry to say I couldn't resist adding my own soundtrack to the movie, a la MST3K, as it lent itself very well to wise cracks. "I wish... I iwsh... I wish to bring Goku back to life!" comes to mind. If you don't want to spend the entire movie annoying the people behind you, I recommend that you bring your iPod so you don't have to hear any of the corny dialog - it will make it a more enjoyable experience.
 
My son's biggest complaint - no western style dragons. Ya crybaby! lol
Published: Sep-19-07 | 0  Comment | 0  Link to this post

Sep13

A Little Bit About Alara's Current Book Project

It may not have a cool code name, like Cloverfield, but it's pretty awesome anyhow!
 
Some folks may already know that my wife, Alara Rogers, is a well known fan-fiction writer, or that she has a couple minor sci-fi publications and has always aspired to make writing a full time occupation. What you may not know is that she recently made a decision to go on a fanfic hiatus (more or less) to devote herself full time to a new book.
 
This book concept is very important and exciting to me. Partly, this is because I have not seen her so enthusiastic and excited about something like this in many years. Also, this story concept has it's origins in a five hour long conversation Alara and I had on a Thanksgiving trip to see her parents in New York.
 
I think it's an amazing and very entertaining story, and I don't want to miss the chance to be the very first person to hype it up. I think it will amuse nearly everyone, and will probably not fail to offend somebody as well.
 
So, without further hesistation, here is a little about what she is writing. Keep in mind that I know how this book ends already, so I will be trying VERY hard not to provide any spoilers.
 
The main character of this novel, John, is a member of a species of an omnipotent and omniscient alien race called the Aleph. (Don't worry, this is something that I know she is not keeping secret even on page 1.) His working name was originally John the Mongoose, but he has finally settled into the canon name John Deere (as he might say "like the tractor, not the animal"), which he has taken in a manner not too different from - though less silly than - that of Ford Prefect.
 
Anyone who follows Alara's writing will understand that the seeds of this idea were first sewn with her interest in the character Q from Star Trek: TNG. There's a lot that Alara wanted to do to explore the internal mechanations of the Q continuum, but it's not really possible to do this anymore largely because the writers of the later series ended up taking things in a different direction. Also, I think she just likes to write people who are arrogant and snarky.
 
If one were prone to gross oversimplification, one might say that John is a little bit of Q and a little bit of Harry Dresden. I also personally believe that John is also a touch of John Crichton, as he can be a bit like a fish out of water at times.
 
John begins his story "slumming it" on Earth. He spends a lot of time hanging with his rock star friend who happens to play a lot of X-Box. (Or, was it his X-Box playing friend who happens to be a rock star? I forget, anyway...) How they meet is an interesting story but I won't spoil that.
 
John's purpose on Earth is simple - revenge, redemption, or one of those other R words. Once upon a time, John was involved in some important business back home that went horribly wrong. A powerful and politically connected member of his own people threw him a lead weight instead of a life preserver, and they have been "best friends forever" ever since. *sarcasm*
 
Actually, he's seeking information that could reaally get the guy in hot water - even bring him down for good. It's a plus that this information might help explain the circumstances that ruined John's own career and help return him to a position of some dignity. Revenge can be sweet, but it's sweetest of all when it's also a public service.
 
Needless to say, what he's after has been carefully hidden, and it won't be easy to get it without his omniscient opponent finding out about - and putting a stop to - his plans. John is unable to use many of his abilities most of the time for fear that they will attract undue attention. For John, this is a sneaking mission. Like Solid Snake, if he gets caught, well then he'll probably get shot - a lot.
 
But he's not entirely without resources. In addition to his rocker/gamer buddy he has another friend who is living on Earth that also happens to be an Aleph, but suffers from a disability that makes him unable to use their higher powers. Also, John has a decent paying job as an investigative reporter, which makes good cover when you need to travel all over creation - or at least our little corner of it anyway. As such, he works with a photographer, who follows along on his misadventures so he'll have somebody to talk to.
 
Without going into too much detail, I can say that this story takes John and his camera guy across the far corners of our modern world. John also travels to other points in human history and distant places in time and space. A lot of energy is going into the details about how a society of god-like aliens can actually function, or dysfunction.
 
So, what do you get for the guy who has everything? The Truth. In the mean time, the rest of you will just have to hope that I can coax a couple of snippits out of her. I know a lot about this story that I'm not telling, and believe me when I say I think this is one of the freshest story concepts I've heard of in the science fiction genre in a long, long time.
Published: Sep-13-07 | 0  Comment | 0  Link to this post

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