Janitors, Rogue Servers and Accountability

Accountability is the bedrock of effective leadership. This essay delves into the essence of accountability in management, exploring perspectives from Steve Jobs and Joel Spolsky, and examining a relatable scenario involving a software developer named Dennis. Through these examples, we’ll navigate the complexities of accountability within the leadership domain.

Steve Jobs, renowned for his demanding leadership style, had a unique way of conveying accountability. He’d deliver a thought-provoking speech to newly promoted Vice Presidents, framing it as the “Janitor and the VP.” Imagine a janitor unable to empty a VP’s overflowing trash bin due to a missing key. While the janitor’s excuse might be understandable, Jobs’ point was clear: as you climb the corporate ladder, excuses become irrelevant. Accountability transforms from simply completing tasks to owning the outcome, regardless of external factors.

This concept resonates with Joel Spolsky’s essay, “In Defense of Not-Invented-Here Syndrome.” Spolsky argues that minimizing dependencies can increase predictability and enhance accountability.

Dennis, a software developer, embodies the potential pitfalls of taking this concept too far. Tasked with managing a critical system, he opted to set up a personal computer as a server in his cubicle. This bypassed the IT department, ensuring faster troubleshooting (increased personal accountability) and complete control. However, Dennis’s well-meaning actions backfired. The IT department, with established server protocols and specialists, remained unaware of this setup. When Dennis left the company, his departure exposed the system’s vulnerability and the inefficiency of bypassing established processes.
Dennis was concerned about a frequent, minor inconvenience: the potential unresponsiveness of the IT department. But his solution introduced a much more serious threat – a low-probability, high-impact risk. Security vulnerabilities or patching issues, which the IT department would have addressed, became a significant concern.

Dennis’s situation presents a dilemma. He embodied the spirit of Steve Jobs’ philosophy by taking personal ownership for the system’s success. However, his actions highlight the limitations of Jobs’ analogy. Our greatest control lies in our actions and decisions. Control over personal equipment is less effective, and control over others diminishes further down the chain of command. External suppliers add another layer of complexity.

Taking Spolsky’s concept to its extreme eliminates dependencies, specialization, and outsourcing. Imagine a single person responsible for everything, from mining resources to building a car. Specialization has been humanity’s key to progress. While it increases efficiency, it dilutes accountability for the final product.

Modern organizations are intricate networks with external suppliers and numerous dependencies. An executive seeking a specific outcome might naturally want to hold a single person accountable within their team. The reality, however, is that this person likely relies on external specialists or suppliers outside their direct control. These complex dependency chains, reaching beyond an individual’s zone of influence, introduce unpredictability in both the quality and timeliness of results. This inherent complexity can lead to a loss of accountability for results – the very issue Steve Jobs despised.

Outsourcing tasks can increase efficiency, but it introduces a loss of control and potential communication breakdowns, impacting accountability. Effective leaders continuously adapt their strategies to navigate the trade-offs between efficiency, predictability, and risk-taking. By fostering a culture of ownership within clear processes, while encouraging calculated initiative, leaders can nurture an environment with innovation and operational excellence. The stories of Steve Jobs, Joel Spolsky, and Dennis offer valuable insights into the complexities of accountability in a dynamic organizational landscape. It’s the leader’s ability to navigate this spectrum that will ultimately determine the success of their team and the organization as a whole.

A Treatment for Intergenerational Resentment

I recently saw a TV skit making fun of the baby boomer generation for ensuring that they had first access to vaccines since that generation currently holds a majority of total power and wealth.  I suppose over the course of human history, intergenerational resentment has often been a problem in society, but this got me thinking.

Modern culture seems idealize kicking kids out of the house as early as possible, comparing this to birds having to force their babies to leave the nest.  Yet housing, whether apartments, condominiums or single-family residences, is out of reach for people making an average income in many places.  This problem is even more acute for young people who almost always start out their careers with a below average income.  To some extent the situation is improved if the young people can be subsidized by their older, wealthier parents, for example providing funds for a down payment on a house.

Rather than every nuclear family in their own single family residence (SFR), I feel like the model of having a big house or duplex/triplex/quadriplex is a good way for a multigenerational family (including grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, grandchildren) to save money in aggregate, especially if there are common areas.  It also increases family propinquity which, I believe, will tie the family closer while still allowing privacy.

Having these dwellings serve as the basis of suburbs in a city rather than SFRs would be a way to increase density without (hopefully) making people feel more tightly packed.  Increased density is a way to make transportation more efficient.

If the wealthiest generation is the oldest, as is often the case, then allowing everyone to live in their property is a good way to share the value of wealth rather than overtly giving it away. This situation is ideal if ownership can be kept in the family over the course of many generations.

For all these reasons, I believe a city full of multigenerational, extended families living in triplexes and quadriplexes would be a much more efficient and happier place to live.

COVID-19 Silver lining

For the human race as a whole, COVID-19 has been a nightmare. It has killed millions and perhaps subjected millions of survivors to permanent organ damage. And for me personally COVID-19 has felt like a sword of Damocles, wondering if, despite all my precautions, I would still catch it.

Despite the fear, despite an 8% pay cut, despite suffering and death around me, COIVD-19 has been the single best thing that has ever happened to me . COVID-19 has been a little dark cloud with a huge silver lining (Yes, I am a selfish monster). Why?

• My office allowed me to telecommute
  • Saves me at least 2 hours per work day
  • Eliminated the considerable stress from my commute
• No contagious illness for a year
• No jury duty
• No obligations and pressure to attend in person social events, weddings, funerals etc.
• Air quality has improved
• Less traffic when I do have to go out
• Gas prices have been reduced
• Much less wear and tear on my car
• A huge opportunity to stress test my stock portfolio and shore it up (unfortunately I didn’t have enough money to take full advantage)
• My mental health has not been so good for years

How to build a Taxonomy

Sometimes you need to take a set of items and convert it into a hierarchy or tree of categories. Here are some steps to do so.

• Enumerate all your content
• Gather a group of people
• Select 30-60 examples at random
• Collectively brainstorm all the words that describe the items
• Individually break out and tag the items by the words identified
• Consolidate so you have created a tree, ideally no more than 3 layers deep and 7 across
• Attempt to take another random sampling and fit it into the tree
• Refine the categories into appropriate phrases

The depth limit of 3 is because people seem to have a hard time understanding hierarchies deeper than that. Expanding the number of sub-categories within one category beyond 7 means that a search will be required within the category and the whole point of a taxonomy is to avoid that. Speaking of that, why don’t you consider using tags and a search instead of a taxonomy?

High Standards – a Red Flag

Some people speak with pride about holding others, over whom they have power, to a high standard.

Cultivating contentment is more important than cultivating perfection in skill.  Neither is obtainable, but one results in happiness.  No matter how good you are at something, there’s always about a million people better than you (even if they’re hard to find).

There is practical value in holding people to high standards if those standards provide real value.  For example, we want surgeons to be held to a higher standard than the stocker organizing the cans at a grocery store for good reason.  The stakes are dramatically different.  Creating a psychological game to artificially increase the stakes is cruel and unnecessary.

There can be legitimate differences in opinion about what the standard is for any particular skill, whether in academia or employment, but whenever someone uses the words “high standard” it is a big red flag.

* Strangely, in software development, economics seem to push managers into preferring quantity and speed over quality.

Sleep

How much would you be wiling to sell 15 IQ points for?  For me, it would be valued in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.  Can you imagine selling it for an evening of TV watching, video games, or web surfing?  That’s what you’re doing when you don’t go to bed early enough to get a full eight or nine hours of sleep.  A full night’s sleep is vital to maximizing cognitive function in addition to making you feel your best.

When you are young, a good night’s sleep comes easily.  As you get older, it comes with increasing difficulty.  However old you are*, you’ll never be able to sleep better than you do right now.  Take advantage, do everything you can to get a good night’s sleep.

 

*Get your picture taken!  You’ll never look better than you do today!

How to Buy Anything at the Best Price

Let’s say that we have decided to buy a new refrigerator in the next three years (let’s assume negligible inflation for simplicity’s sake), obviously you want the best price.  The correct strategy is to wait about a third of the time, one year, and reject all the refrigerators that we find for sale, but note the lowest price we see during that period.  After the year, we then should purchase the refrigerator for any price lower than that.  This situation is called the secretary problem.  It can apply to hiring people, dating, or buying houses.

Groceries are a major cost of living for all of us.  The best way to shop for groceries is what is known as “price points.”  That is you establish a price you are willing to pay, for example, $0.99 for a 6 oz. can  of soup, and purchase it in bulk when the price is reached and not purchase it otherwise.  $0.99 is your price point for soup.  Optimally, you have a set of mental prices for every kind of routine purchase.

In the case of the soup, the period of time you have to work with is the length of expiration of the soup can, which is probably about two years.  So to follow the strategy, you wait about 9 months and then buy the soup after that.

Seasonality and other factors

Unfortunately, this strategy is complicated by the games that stores play.  There may be a particular time of year when the product you want to buy is usually on sale.  If you have a three year expiration period on the product, the strategy works well for figuring out price points, otherwise, experience will have to guide you up and down in establishing them.

Rewards Bucks

Another complication with price points is rewards like CVS ExtraBucks.  In this scheme, when you buy the right amount of the right items, the retailer gives you a gift certificate for your next purchase with a relatively short expiry date.  If you treat these rewards as if they were cash, you will definitely overspend, which is the whole point of the scheme.

In order to properly value your rewards and decide whether buying the initial items is worthwhile, you can start by simply comparing the items with their price points is worthwhile.  Usually it isn’t.

Probably the best strategy is to figure out what you could buy with the rewards in the same visit to the retailer.  You would use two transactions: one for the initial items to get the rewards, and one to spend the rewards.  Then sum the price points of all the items you want to buy and compare it to the sum of the totals for both transactions.

	Item	PricePoint	Price
Transaction 1	Toothbrush	$1	$1.00
	Toothpaste	$1	$2.00
	Floss	$1	$1.50
	Rewards	–	($3.00)
Transaction 2	Can o’ Soup	$1	$1.50
	Milk	$2	$2.50
Total		$6	$5.50

In this example, even though every item was purchased at or above it’s price point, the transaction still makes sense to do with the rewards dollars.

Skink

I’ve seen several species of this type of skink, they seem to be shy and, unlike most lizards who like the sun, mostly nocturnal.

Helium Crisis Update

As I mentioned in a previous article, the world has very limited supplies of helium.  The helium we have is close to irreplaceable and necessary for industrial and health-care applications.

Very recently, a discovery in Tanzania was announced of additional helium supplies.  There are perhaps 54 billion cubic feet of helium.  The world consumes 8 billion cubic feet per year so this gives the world an additional 6 years worth of the precious gas.  Considering that the U.S. has the world’s largest known reserves at 153 billion cubic feet, it’s a substantial addition.

Researchers find game-changing helium reserve in Tanzania

Power of Helium

British Columbia parade bans helium balloons

What’s the point of neck ties?

I’ve always hated inefficiency.  Among the many things that I have, at one time or another, wanted to eliminate included:

• Words that do not convey information (e.g. Please)
• Bed making (Clean sheets are important, but not specially arranging them when they’ll just be messed up again in a few hours)
• Clothes folding (especially underwear & socks)
• Neck ties
• Combed hair

There was a fashion called “bed head” years ago that I had hoped would catch on.  What’s the point of neat hair any way?  The problem was that socially acceptable “bed head” actually required a lot of time put into it.

My workplace virtually requires neck ties for men.  Won’t they ever change that pointless, unwritten policy?

Probably my wish to eliminate these pointless things will never be granted.  Why?  What psychological or anthropological principles underlie these apparently pointless social conventions?

I believe the answer lies in communication.  The neck tie is a way of communicating that you care about the people you are working with and the job you are doing.  It’s about building relationships. It effectively says:

“Look at all the time I spent just to tell you (in a subtle way) that I respect you.”

So according to this theory, if neck ties were to be eliminated, they would be replaced by some other activity that would be equally effortful, unpleasant or impractical because that’s the whole point!