Entries Tagged 'Careers' ↓

Today I read the story of Terry Childs, a bonafide BOFH of the City of San Francisco. Apparently he was disciplined for poor performance and so he took matters into his own hands and changed everybody’s passwords on the system. Now San Francisco’s networks are in his control even though he has been arrested and the city has set a $5 million bail.

First of all, I find this whole story bizarre because since the perpetuator is in jail and the city has physical access to the machines then they are able to reset the passwords or reinstall the systems. Second, what the hell were they doing by giving this guy so much power over the network? It doesn’t even seem like he was the IT director from the report. Third, I find the city’s reaction to this mischief to be quite overblown. The network is still running, but other admins cannot access the system. This shows that perhaps the other admins ARE more incompetent than Childs. They could have resolved the matter in a more civil manner than arresting the guy. That probably just pissed off the guy more.

Anyway, this guy was paid $150k last year, and since he has pulled this stunt I doubt he will be getting any new job offers soon. I don’t know if he did this to spite his employer or to keep his job, but it is safe to say that he probably would be fired soon enough.

Instead of doing this, he could have just told his superiors the security flaws and problems he sees at work. If they don’t listen, then there are other jobs out there he could apply for. If I were really angry at an employer I would just pack up and leave. I have left jobs before where someone or something pissed me off, but I just don’t think it is worthwhile to plan some kind of revenge. Terry Childs may have embarrassed his employer, but he also embarrassed himself by being so unprofessional.

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Today I read an  article on the New York Times titled “Lure of Big Paycheck Tugs at Graduates Considering Public Service“.  The basic gist of it is that top colleges are trying to encourage students to enter non-profit sectors and take jobs in public service, but many students are burdened with huge loans that they have to pay off so a secure job with a fat paycheck is the path they end up taking.  I am not surprised at this at all, but here are some of my thoughts in working in public service.

Most people are idealistic when they are young and then get disillusioned later, but I think I am the opposite.  In highschool I knew people that were truly believed that they could change the world for the better, but I wasn’t one of them.  I knew that after college I wanted a high paying job, and I wanted to be financially secure. I know that sounds selfish, but I figured that I am just practical. I also said to my friends that I would never work as a teacher or work for the government.  Now after graduating and working for three years at fairly well-paying corporate jobs, I think my thoughts on public service has changed quite a bit.

First of all, I think America really has a shortage of great teachers.  Most of my immediate family members have been teachers and professors in China at one time or another, and I think my dad enjoyed it more than most people. So I know that it can be a very personally fulfilling job. Anyway, I think one of the main problems with finding quality teachers is definitely financial.  The starting salary for highschool teachers in the Bay Area is around $30000 to $50000 depending on the school district and credentials, but the new teacher might have a buttload of student debt to pay off.  Couple that with the extremely high cost of living here in the Bay Area, I don’t see how we could get good public school teachers.  Good science and math teachers are especially hard to find because people who study science and math could get much more lucrative jobs. I went to Albany High School and I had a bunch of excellent science and math teachers who graduated from UC Berkeley.  They are mostly retired now, but any one of them could have taken up a more lucrative job as an engineer. I had a physics teacher that almost completed his electrical engineering PhD at UC Berkeley, but decided to be a high school teacher, and he was a great teacher.  If we don’t have more public school teachers like them, then the next generation of children will suffer as a whole.  Anyway, I know of one classmate who gave up her lucrative job at a large web retailer to apply for Teach for America, and I hope she is still teaching.

Next, I think many young people do not realize how much of their souls they have to give up for that big paycheck at that corporate job.  There are plenty of high profit businesses that have less than ethical practices.  Additionally, many highpaying jobs require you to work to your bone.  There is also corruption in public service, but for the most part I don’t believe it is encouraged.  Granted, there are plenty of great jobs in the private industry, too, but in the article I read a lot of these Harvard students are going to hedge funds, which I think are mostly shady businesses because they have very little regulation or disclosure. Of course, a public service job might also be terribly boring, but if it’s a job that helps people and fulfills you, then it might not be as bad.

Finally, there are lots of perks in public service and non-profit jobs, too.  For example, I think government employees still get pension for the most part, and my mom will get her healthcare covered after she retires.  Sure, the pay might be  lower, but a perpetual pension is worth quite a bit. Additionally, non-profit organizations  usually give more time off than for-profit corporations so that is worth something.  Also, I feel that there is a bit more job security in non-profit and public corporations.  Someone told me once that the government never fires anyone.  There is quite a bit of bureaucracy involved, and so people stay in a job forever.

Right now both of my parents work for non-profits.  My dad really thinks he is changing the world through his work, and I think that’s pretty cool.  My mom just started at a state university after working in a for profit company for all of her career in America.  She is trying to adjust to all the bureaucracy and a huge pay cut, but I think in the end she will reap the rewards of paid health care and a small pension. Now with that said, lately I have thought about getting a non-profit job sometime in the future because now I do want to change the world  for the better somehow.  However, I think I would be happier to do the job for free when I am financially independent.  As much as I have warmed up to the concept of public service, I am still practical and selfish by nature.  So I guess I will just have to spend a few more years as a well compensated corporate cube dweller.

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Currently I work at a startup that does some brilliant technical things with software security. Honestly, I would not have thought of the idea the founders came up with in a million years. The funny thing is that no matter how powerful or brilliant of an anti-hacking software product we create, we can’t prevent the physical theft of machines from datacenters with it. It is basically impossible for our software to jump out and club a thief on the head. This means that companies still need to hire security guards at sensitive datacenters to prevent the physical attacks of information thieves. I think what is interesting is that the idea behind a physical security firm doesn’t take a PhD to understand, but these security firms are just as vital as my company in preventing data theft.

So what I have realized is that many thriving businesses are actually based on fairly simple ideas. As long as there is a need for a service or product, there is money to be made. The problem with simple ideas is that they are easy to copy so there might be a lot of competition, but with enough research and great execution they can still be very successful.

When it comes to execution of a simple business idea, technical ingenuinity and techniques could propel the business quite a bit. For example, many steps in a retail business can be automated, and having a good online store gives the business a huge competitive advantage. Great internet marketing also helps many small businesses make their presence known in the entire world. These technological advances make simple ideas easier to implement and become profitable.

Another great advantage to simple ideas is that the business could be very easy to duplicate and having a few simple businesses that run off the same infrastructure is easier than working on a complex business idea with a high barrier of entry. So even though there may be more competition, as long as the amount of available business is huge there shouldn’t be any problems to making a simple business profitable.

I am looking into starting a business or two that can be easily automated and generates recurring income. I have a couple ideas, and they may seem silly, but I think as long as I follow through and execute them well they can be quite profitable. Ultimately, I will need to be selling something that people want, and it is my job to create a product that helps people at a great price point. We will see if anything pans out and I will definitely announce my progress as I get to it.

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I spent a lot of my time in college in the computer science and electrical engineering buildings of UC Berkeley -  Soda Hall and Cory Hall.  I preferred Cory Hall because the computer room actually had windows and it was just slightly less depressing than the dungeon in Soda Hall.  I also had a locker in Cory where I kept the textbooks I borrowed from the library.  Anyway, one day I overheard someone saying that Cory is where the Unabomber AKA Ted Kaczynski sent one of his bombs and once upon a time he was a mathematics professor at UC Berkeley.  It happened before I was  born, so I didn’t think much of it.  Recently while surfing Wikipedia I somehow landed on the page about the Unabomber, and I ended up reading his manifesto titled Industrial Society and Its Future.  I am not totally done reading it, but I find myself agreeing with many of his points.  It is tragic that he felt that he had to promote his work through cold blooded murder, but I really think that he said a lot of things people are afraid to admit. So today I shall highlight a few points  in his manifesto that really stuck in my mind.

The power process – Kaczynski lays down something he calls “the power process”, which has four elements: goal, effort, attainment of goal, and autonomy.  The problem he sees is that many people do not need to exert a lot of effort to attain their goals of physical needs these days, and that brings boredom, depression, and a variety of other problems.  Another point is that many people do not have autonomy to achieve their own goals so they align with a larger organization.  One passage that really hit me was this section of paragraph 73, “An example of indirect coercion: There is no law that says we have to go to work every day and follow our employer’s orders. Legally there is nothing to prevent us from going to live in the wild like primitive people or from going into business for ourselves. But in practice there is very little wild country left, and there is room in the economy for only a limited number of small business owners. Hence most of us can survive only as someone else’s employee.”  I think this lack of autonomy or freedom is a big reason why so many people hate their jobs.  I don’t believe that my calling in life is to work for someone else for 40+ years, but many people think that is the correct and right path to take because they are indirectly forced to do so. Kaczynski goes on to explain how people attempt to go through the power process and why some people seem perfectly content, but I won’t discuss those details here.

We are always manipulated to want more than what we actually need – Kaczynski talks about “indirect coercion” by the media fairly early on.  He says that the advertising and marketing industries “make many people feel they need things that their grandparents never desired or even dreamed of.”  In the footnote he writes, “Is the drive for endless material acquisition really an artificial creation of the advertising and marketing industry? Certainly there is no innate human drive for material acquisition. There have been many cultures in which people have desired little material wealth beyond what was necessary to satisfy their basic physical needs (Australian aborigines, traditional Mexican peasant culture, some African cultures). On the other hand there have also been many pre-industrial cultures in which material acquisition has played an important role. So we can’t claim that today’s acquisition-oriented culture is exclusively a creation of the advertising and marketing industry. But it is clear that the advertising and marketing industry has had an important part in creating that culture. The big corporations that spend millions on advertising wouldn’t be spending that kind of money without solid proof that they were getting it back in increased sales. One member of FC met a sales manager a couple of years ago who was frank enough to tell him, ‘Our job is to make people buy things they don’t want and don’t need.’ He then described how an untrained novice could present people with the facts about a product, and make no sales at all, while a trained and experienced professional salesman would make lots of sales to the same people. This shows that people are manipulated into buying things they don’t really want.”  I think this is a point most personal finance bloggers try to preach, but I think the Unabomber is more eloquent than me in stating this observation.

The evils of technology – In a previous article about selling eggs, I expressed my fear of bioengineering, and Kazyncski shares that same concern.  He wrote in paragraph 123, “If you think that big government interferes in your life too much now, just wait till the government starts regulating the genetic constitution of your children. Such regulation will inevitably follow the introduction of genetic engineering of human beings, because the consequences of unregulated genetic engineering would be disastrous.[19]“  This is just one detail in the many ways technology could potentially limit our freedom.  Kaczynski also made the point that in the past when people lived within a natural environment the environment did not change very much and thus it provided security, but our modern society is changing rapidly because of technology.  Older workers have to be retrained and this constant change brings more stress and despair to people.  Ultimately his conclusion is that we have to absorb all the good and bad things technology brings, and it is impossible to separate the benefits and detriments.  I agree with this hypothesis because I feel that technology is changing our lives so rapidly that sometimes it is hard to keep up. I also work in a software security firm and through the training/propaganda of my own employer I have a good idea of how technology can be misused to harm others.  It is much easier for an entity like the government or a ruthless criminal to control your life through technology in present times.  So in that aspect, technology does limit freedom.

Overall, it is a pretty depressing document because I can just feel helplessness and frustration ooze out of it, but its observations about our modern society  are not without merit.  I think anyone who works in science and technology should read it and truly examine why they are doing their work. Also, anyone who is confused about their direction in life should also read it to see if their problems are simply stemming from a lack of autonomy. Kaczynski’s choice to  bomb  his fellow scientists is definitely criminally insane, but he is also brilliant in his observations.  If he didn’t kill people, perhaps he could have been a respected philosopher and mathematician akin to a modern Henry Thoreau. Then again, we are in a society where people are more interested in  the breakdowns of Britney Spears than the presidential election and Kaczynski knew this as he wrote, “If we had never done anything violent and had submitted the present writings to a publisher, they probably would not have been accepted. If they had been accepted and published, they probably would not have attracted many readers, because it’s more fun to watch the entertainment put out by the media than to read a sober essay. Even if these writings had had many readers, most of these readers would soon have forgotten what they had read as their minds were flooded by the mass of material to which the media expose them. In order to get our message before the public with some chance of making a lasting impression, we’ve had to kill people.” It is chilling to read these words, but I find it hard to argue with his logic. Would I be reading his essay if he weren’t the Unabomber?  Probably not.

Have you read the manifesto? What are your thoughts?

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Recently I have seen a few blog posts about this article stating that women have a pretty tough time working in science and technology due to a “pervasive macho environment”. Ironically, this article was published in the “Fashion and Style” section of the New York Times, and that raised the ire of some more women. The article stated that 53% of the women surveyed said they have to “act like a man” in order to succeed and that 63% of women experience harassment on the job. Sadly, as a woman working in technology, I have to say that this really isn’t news. Here are some of my thoughts and experiences surrounding this issue.

I have to say that I am pretty used to “acting like a man”. When I entered the EECS program at UC Berkeley, my class was only 18% female and I remember that in one particular class there were only two girls. Consequently, all my friends and project partners ended up being guys. I think one thing that makes being a man easy for me is my name. You can’t really tell whether I am male or female from the name Xin (in Chinese it’s a name appropriate for a man or woman). It is funny to me when people assume that I am male from my resume, though. One time a recruiter called me and I answered, “yes, this is Xin”, and he actually said, “Oh, I’m pleasantly surprised that you are a woman”. I think my name makes people who read my resume and emails comfortable because they generally assume that I am another faceless immigrant man working in technology.

Another thing that helps me is that I am pretty immersed in the geek culture so I have common interests with the guys and I know how to communicate with them. For example, at my first company I met guys that watched the same SciFi shows as I did and played the same games. Then I made friends at work at the second company I worked for because I posted a list of games I liked. Suddenly some engineers that never spoke to me before started to talk to me. It has been my experience that most women are not as nerdy and dorky, though, so they tend to be outsiders in a majority of game loving and young hackers and alienation is never a nice feeling. For most of my school and career, men have treated me like one of the guys, and I am pretty sure that has spared me a lot of harassment. So once again, I think I am validating the original article’s point that you need to be like a man to be accepted in a man’s world.

Finally, another point in the article that I have thought about a lot is the attrition rate of women from science and engineering jobs. I wrote in a previous article that female engineers with children are somewhat disadvantaged because they are supposed to work the weird hours like everyone else, but their kids don’t allow them to, and as a result resentment brews. Just as the article pointed out, a lot of women drop out of science and technology between the ages of 35 to 40 because these women don’t have the luxury of a wife that takes care of the kids. This is actually one of the reasons why I want to make enough dough in seven years and quit working full time in the tech industry.

Right now I am actually in a pretty good company where approximately half of my team members are female engineers. The company seems to be really supportive of its employees in taking care of their personal issues.  When a teammate went through a personal tragedy everyone allowed her to have as much time as she needed to recover.  I find this quite rare and somewhat endearing. It gives me hope that perhaps I would stay a long time here and more companies will work on retaining their female talent with flexible schedules and moral support.

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