Kudos

טוב חברים וחברות, השבועות עוברים ביעף. קשה להאמין אבל אנחנו אוטוטו פה כבר 3 שנים!!

אני זוכר שכשעזבנו את הארץ לפיליפינים, ישבנו ליטל ואני במטוס אל-על להונג קונג והיתה לי מן תחושה בבטן של יציאה לדרך חדשה, התרגשות וחרדה.

רובנו כל כך אוהבים את אשליית השליטה בחיים שלנו. שהכל מוכר וקל, ואנחנו יודעים מה אנחנו אמורים לעשות ואיך לעשות את זה.
יש כל כך הרבה דברים שצריך ללמוד מחדש כשעוברים למדינה אחרת, שלרוב אנשים לא מדמיינים. השאלות הקלות הן איפה הפקקים ובאיזה שעות. איפה כדאי לאכול. מה זה מחיר נורמלי לעגבניה ואיפה קונים כלי בית.

אחר כך נתקלים בשאלות הקשות שקשורות ביכולת לזהות מתי עיסקה היא טובה, על מי אפשר לסמוך ומה מומלץ לעשות ולא לעשות.
למדתי מאז, בכל מיני דרכים, שרוב האנשים לא מוכנים לעשות את הצעד שייקח אותם למדינה אחרת. הם יכולים לדבר על זה ולעשות קולות של כמעט ובסוף ימצאו את התירוץ לסגת. אבל מי שמעוניין וגם מצליח במעבר כזה מקבל פרספקטיבה מעניינת על העולם, שהופך להיות מקום מאוד מאוד קטן.

ועכשיו אנחנו עדיין פה, ובפעם הראשונה אני מרגיש כמעט בנוח. אמנם הפיליפינים עדיין משגעים אותי יומיומית ואני לעולם לא אתרגל לטמטום, אבל לפחות יש לי בועה די נוחה ובשביל מישהו כמוני לאמר משהו כזה זו הקרבה של עקרונות, לא פחות!

קנינו מיטה לתינוק בשבוע שעבר וכמעט השלמנו את רכישת כל הרהיטים. היום סיימתי קצת עבודת בית על הרמקולים שתלינו בסלון והסאונד של המערכת מעולם לא נשמע טוב כל כך. נחמד.

ישנם מספר אנשים שאנחנו מכירים שעוזבים את מנילה בקרוב וזה קצת מבאס. חיים במקום כמו מנילה, שבו לרוב לא משתקעים לתמיד, משמעותם שעד שהתחברתם עם אנשים חלקם כבר עוברים למקום הבא. אבל מצד שני אנחנו מכירים עכשיו אנשים שנמצאים בכל מיני מקומות בעולם.

נסעתי להונג קונג לפני מספר ימים לפגישות עבודה. הפגישות היו טובות ובערב הראשון הלכנו להופעה של Tears for fears, שהיתה נחמדה מאוד. אחד מאיתנו אירגן לעצמו משלוח של מכשירי iPad שהגיעו מארצות הברית, ובהחלטה של רגע שאלתי אותו אם הוא רוצה למכור לי אחד. אז אני עכשיו בעלים של מכשיר iPad חדש ומאוד מרוצה ממנו. דמיינו את היכולת לשבת על הספה עם לוח דק שפותח חלון אל כל העולם, בצבע וצליל.

יש אפליקציות שנותנות עושר של מידע בבישול ויש כאלה שביין, או חדשות או מוזיקה. יש למשל אפליקציית מוזיקה שאפשר לזמזם או לשיר לה והיא מזהה את מה ששרת ונותנת לך לקנות את האלבום או לראות את הקליפים ביו-טיוב ולאתר מוזיקה דומה באינטרנט. זה לא חדש, כבר יש דברים דומים ל-iPhone אבל מדהים שזה עובד חלק.

ניסיתי לשיר את One Caress של דפש-מוד וליטל התחילה לצחוק בקול רם (היא טוענת בלהט שהשירה שלי כל כך גרועה שצריך לאסור אותה בחוק. אני מסכים איתה בלב שלם, השירה שלי כל כך גרועה עד שהאדם היחיד ששר גרוע ממני זו היא).

בכל אופן, שרתי לאפליקציה של ה-iPad. התוכנה חשבה כמה שניות – והחזירה לי רשימת שירים ביפנית. ליטל כמובן ראתה זאת כהוכחה למה שהיא טוענת כבר שנים. אבל אז במבט מקרוב גיליתי שהשיר הראשון (!) ברשימה היה השיר ששרתי. רק שירים שתיים ומטה היו ביפנית. מדהים! ניסיתי עוד כמה שירים והתוצאות היו פחות אקזוטיות ומדוייקות לחלוטין. פלאי הטכנולוגיה.

אז עכשיו אנחנו בסוף שבוע ארוך מכיוון שיש בחירות בפיליפינים מחר, וזה יום חופש. ייעצו לנו לא להסתובב יותר מדי בחוץ כי יש לפיליפינים, שבדרך כלל הם עם רך, נטיה לרצוח את המועמדים שלהם ולא כדאי להיות בסביבה כשזה קורה. אז נראה, אולי אני אנצל את הזמן כדי לשחק קצת עם הצעצוע החדש. הכל תלוי אם אצליח לחלץ אותו מידיה של אישתי היקרה – אני מביא הביתה מכשיר שמגדיר מחדש את חוויית המשתמש הדיגיטאלית והיא לא מוכנה להפסיק לשחק עליו סוליטייר. הגיוני.

Euan referenced this post by Andy in his blog. I’m just copy pasting here:

“Imagine a machine that you can put into any country and when you turn the handle, generate jobs. Not regular jobs, but microjobs: short jobs that you can do at home are done and when you are paid you go on a short holiday and you have the certainty when there is another microjob waiting for you. That is living a la carte.”

Andy is referncing Pajamaproject as his example for a microjobs marketplace. I think Amazon’s Mechanical Turk is very similar, and could be expanded to include human generated jobs.

But comparisons aside, what I really like about the microjobs concept is that it makes me think of Grid Computing.

Grid computing relies on a master machine that delegates jobs to worker machines. The program is built in a highly multi-threaded design so that each thread could be run under a process on one of the workers. The master is in charge of delegating the jobs and collecting results. 

Sounds to me that’s how your normal workplace would function. You have a boss that delegates tasks to his employees. The employees work really hard and the boss takes all the credit. Maybe we’ve finally found a way to realize the work-from-home methodology that was so hot during the late 90’s.

What would it take to make a Human Grid? Could a Human Grid make the workplace obsolete? Will we all work occasionally from home, and spend our lives hopping from vacation to vacation, as Andy suggests?

I really hope so, but don’t hold your breath.

The reason workplaces have not fragmented into home based employement is because many corporate tasks require that employees know about the corporate’s:

• Cluture, ethics, brand and ethos.
• Infrastructure, regulations and policies
• Partners, other employees, competitors and customers

Also, there are many practical reasons, starting with Information Security and ending with access to hardware, applications and tools.

For example, I dont see any corporate delegating creation of graphics for it’s website to a transient home worker if that means the whole world can know what tomorrow’s marketing strategy is going to be.

Microjobs are cool, but if you’re looking for a career with the bigger companies don’t count on it happening just yet.

I’ve read lately that retail chain Best Buy is far into a new pilot program where employees get to work whenever they want. They can come and go as they please, as long as their targets and task deadlines are met. There is a hidden bonus here (aside from boosting employee engagement) – targets and tasks need to be thoroughly defined and tracked for the program to work. Both managers and employees have a good incentive to work those parameters out.

The pilot is being expanded from HQ staff to the retail floor. The assumption is that today’s workers can manage their own time, coordinating shifts with fellow employees and working together to meet store targets.

I find the experiment to be very interesting in a Web 2.0 kind of way. What Best Buy is basically doing is to shift power to the worker down the chain. That’s exactly what W2.0 does for the internet user. It shifts power down the chain, making each person a contributor.

Because of this conceptual similarity, I’m wondering how Web 2.0 (or Enterprise 2.0, to be exact) can facilitate this transition at Best Buy. The article didn’t include any data on the kind of IT in place to support this shift in employment dynamics, but it stands to reason that such infrastructure is required.

Furthermore, the assumption that employees have the responsibility and capability to manage themselves as contributors is very exciting to me. Is this shift in mentality that characterizes today’s younger employee the result of growing up into a social internet? Or is the social internet a result of these attitude changes, and if so what caused them in the first place?

Seems there’s uproar on account of the AAP suing Google for scanning books from libraries. Publishers insist on an opt-in approach, while Google insists that scanning and indexing is fair use, and that publishers can opt out.

Those who are for Google’s approach comment that due to costs most of the work created during the 20th century is not undergoing digitization and that Google’s project will help reduce the amount of creative work that is lost (considering whatever is not on the net is ignored by a majority of the population in this day and age).

Those who are against say that Google is consistently violating copyright and thus undermining incentives to create.

Tim O’reilly has a great post on the matter, where he defends Google and crushes the opposition with some very good arguments. As O’reilly notes, there are 32,000,000 books out of print, existing only in libraries. Digitizing those books and making them available on the web can only create demand (which will put money into the hands of publishers and authors – assuming the authors are not dead).

Trying to stop this project is just another stupid (yes, plain stupid) move by blind bureaucrats that are always 5 steps behind the obvious evolution of society. It truly pisses me off.

However, copyright and economics are not the real issue here. Seeing as every single creation today is originally created in digital form this is a problem that will cancel itself out very quickly. In the coming centuries billions upon billions of creations will come to life. All of them will be catalogued and indexed in digital form (or whatever future technology is used by then). The 20th century’s legacy will be but a fraction of that work.

We should be talking about the responsibility to preserve our creations for future generations.

I’ve read an article on Ynet that describes the future of jobs, as resulting of Web 2.0. I have a strong disagreement with parts of that article.

To those of us that don’t read Hebrew, here is a summarized translation of what was written:

In the late 90’s decision makers failed to predict the growth in demand for employees of the new generation; programmers, ERP implementers, knowledge managers and others. As a result, public professional education lagged behind market demand.

Today, Web 2.0 is again causing radical changes to the job landscape. People are talking about Second life marketing experts, PHP ninjas, Interface hackers, open source programmers and others.

Early retirement will befall CSRs (who will be replaced by the users themselves, as creators of support knowledge), brand developers (because the ‘long tail’ enforces a move from brands to tags) and we’ll see demand for Crowdsourcers, You Tube/flicker training experts etc.

Researches beginning in the 80’s show a decline in “traditional” industries, and a switch to advanced industries such as telecom and software. Traditional industries will need to incorporate knowledge workers into their production cycles if they wish to survive.

Globalization dictates that today’s third-world countries (such as India and china) will be the producers and service providers while first-world countries will specialize in high-end R&D, marketing and design. So, as a self proclaimed first-world country we need to invest heavily in the skill sets that will enable our workforce to integrate into the above mentioned first-world niches.

Phew, breathe out.

I don’t have a fundamental argument with the writer or the trends he describes. However, I have a strong disagreement with the totality in which he describes the coming changes. I resent a vocabulary of revolution and advise that we adopt a vocabulary of evolution.

It is quite plausible that viral marketing will be another tool to be used by a marketing manager. But the role of ‘marketing manager’ as we know it today will not vanish.

I agree that wikis and blogs are invaluable tools for customer care, but call centers are far from fading into the night.

It just might be that a company will reach a strategic decision to contribute some of its intellectual property to the open source community, but that does not mean you need an “open source programmer“. What you need is a programmer who can submit and collaborate with the open source community; a skill set that can be acquired within a week.

Current employees need not fear the revolution, but rather need to evolve along with the market and the advances in technology and society. The need to evolve is not new. People who work in high-tech learn new technology all the time. So do doctors. So do marketing people. So does almost everyone, with the rate of learning depending on his line of work.

Do we need to have our public education system adapt? Of course; our teachers are no different from marketing managers. If they don’t adapt they will become non-relevant. That is not to say that others will not fill the gap. It only means that the public system will become irrelevant as it was during the first bubble where we saw a proliferation of private institutes such as John Bryce college and Sivan (incidentally, I taught courses at John Bryce at the time).

‘Interface hacker’, or ‘PHP ninja’ are just goofy ways to carry a message across as to the skills and attitude required of the candidate. There is nothing “new” about those jobs. A good programmer is a good programmer. If she doesn’t know everything required for a specific task, she’ll sit and read a book, get some guidance – and do her job.

First and foremost, Web 2.0 is an emergent system. Emergent systems are by definition impossible to predict. Not a single soul managed to predict where Web 2.0 was going, and not a single soul will be able to predict where it will head. All we can say on Web 2.0 is that within it are created new systems that are better as more people use them.

It is the revolutionary (bon) tone that unleashes the demon of hype. Hype begets loss of rationality and loss of rationality begets a bubble. We really don’t need another bubble.

I call to the stop of the dreamy eyed prophets; they are scaring all the sheep.

A few years ago I’ve read a book by Roger McBride Allen in which he presented a concept he named knowledge breakdown. McBride predicted that as technology and science continued to advance, the human society would reach a point in which it could no longer effectively use any new information it created.

His argument was that the length of time needed to train a given professional would be so long, that it would require most of his professional life, and would result in cases where people went straight from training to retirement without actually working a single day.

I found knowledge breakdown to be a very cool idea, and not one that is impossible to envision in the far future; After all, training times are becoming longer. Furthermore, the time an employee needs in order to settle down in a new company is also becoming longer, as her tasks become more complex.

Last July I attended Microsoft’s Partner Conference in Boston and had the pleasure of sitting in a session presented by Beverly Kaye, the owner of Career Systems International. She spoke of employee retention in an environment where skilled employees are becoming both scarcer and less easy to motivate.

Mrs. Kaye presented research that indicated a global trend towards employee dissatisfaction which results in 70%-80% of employees being either not engaged (not enthusiastically pursuing their goals and targets) or disengaged (actively poisoning the workplace atmosphere). Only 20% of employees were happy, motivated and full of drive (engaged). As a manager I can attest that it is more difficult to engage and drive your team forward, when the job market is sizzling with new offers on a daily basis. The result is shorter average employee tenure.

Combined with the ever increasing amount of time it takes for a new employee to integrate into the workplace I am reminded again of McBride’s Knowledge Breakdown, with a twist; If increasing employee integration time collides with ever decreasing tenure, the result could be a Production Breakdown, where an employee leaves her job for a new one before producing enough to cover the expenses of recruiting her in the first place. Sounds like something that will never happen? That’s what they said about global warming.

The marketplace will have to adapt to these trends. Businesses will demand proof from candidates that they have a high average tenure; perhaps sign contracts that include fines for early quitting. Employees that can show a track record of holding down a job will have an advantage and would probably get better terms.

The crunch of it is that although businesses consider the candidate’s average tenure in the past as a factor when hiring, we will see a drastic increase in the importance given to this parameter in the future.