Whatever They Say...It's the Other Thing

Driving through Boston today and seeing a bunch of college kids moving out of their dorms, I reflected back a bit on how I think now, vs. how I thought then.

As far as interpersonal stuff goes, there are two quotes that pretty much nail it:

From Ralph Waldo Emerson: "The louder he spoke of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons," and from Margaret Thatcher: "Being powerful is a lot like being a lady.  If you have to tell people you are, you aren't."

The longer in the tooth I get, the more I see the wisdom in the above lines.  Whatever people tell you about themselves, they probably aren't.  As to why they feel the need to tell you?  Well, who knows.  But people who are something just sort of are it.   

Whether it's honesty, trustworthiness, loyalty, diligence, or whatever, if it's on display, it's there to be seen [and I will acknowledge that I bragged about my work ethic in my last post...so perhaps it's not as good as I say it is].

If someone tells you about someone or something they "don't care about," completely unprompted by you?  It's probably a really big deal.

If someone is yelling at you to "just calm down!" even though you just asked a basic question using your indoor, 45 rpm voice, they might need to chill out a bit.

If someone feels insistent about knocking you off a high horse that you're not on, and never said you were, they might need a dismounting of their own.

None of that would have been obvious to me 10 years ago.  10 years ago, I never really would've *gotten it* if you tried to explain to me that people with bumper stickers that said "Coexist" and "Try Tolerance" are some of the least tolerant people among us.  In fact, I would even be so bold now as to say that I'd expect an inverse correlation between actual open-mindedness and the presence of bumper stickers like these.

I've also had the fortune to be around some really high-performers, first at my initial duty station in the military, and then again in civilian life years down the road.  I never would've known that most really, really successful people don't need to remind others about it, and they don't try to tear other people down.  Whether it's because they're successful or whether it's what made them successful, they don't have a zero-sum mentality.  As hard of an audience as they might be to get, they're sometimes the most receptive to new concepts and possibilities.

Much like the paradox of the "Coexist" bumper stickers, this wasn't always so obvious to me.

So, for starters, props to Ralph Waldo Emerson and Mrs. Thatcher.  

What Eric Schmidt Said

I am about to wrap up a very, very busy period.

Probably equivalent to a deployment in terms of weekly workload, but far, far better in the sense that I go to bed and wake up in the same place as my wife and daughter each day.

Also, sometimes weirder: On a deployment, at least everyone around you knows you're deployed.  Here, when people see me unshaven in flip-flops at noon, and ask with an air of faux concern whether I'm employed, and whether everything's okay, I've run out of responses, so I just shrug my shoulders as I couldn't understand their question.  I might mutter something about school.  Nothing about four jobs, and nothing about a place that doesn't know what a gut course is, though.

Besides, the "four jobs" thing gets overdone, and now that I can technically say I'm part of that camp, I've got more power to call it out:  There are 168 hours in a week.  If someone works one extremely demanding job (let's say they're an associate at Choate Hall or Skadden Arps, or a consultant with Bain or McKinsey), you better believe they're working most of their waking hours.  It might only be *one* job, but it doesn't quite have the uphill-both-ways-in-the-snow ring to it the way it does when you can say "School full-time with four jobs."

Anyway, once I put the pen down on the Finance final at noon on Tuesday, I'm probably due for a long nap.

When I wake up, though, it's time to finally apply myself full-time to my start-up, which centers around online identity/digital footprint awareness and education.

Here is an excerpt from a book just published by Eric Schmidt, Chairman and former CEO of Google, writing about this very subject:

"School systems will also adapt to play an important role.  Parents-teacher associations will advocate for privacy and security classes to be taught alongside sex-education classes in their children's schools.  Such classes will teach students to optimize their privacy-and-security settings and train them to become well versed in the dos and don'ts of the virtual world.  And teachers will frighten them with real-life stories of what happens if they don't take control of their privacy and security at an early age."

It might not always be feasible for school systems to hire just for it, and they may not always have someone on hand to do it.  Sometimes, it might be easier, faster, and cheaper to bring someone in for just that amount of time that you need.

Who's going to lead this charge?  I think you could do worse than bet on someone with a 99%+ percentile work ethic, years of public speaking experience, and a background in education, security, and business.  

Go Program, Young Man and Woman!

I don't know if this bit of grad-season advice will go viral in the way last year's speech at Wellesley High did (You're Not Special!) but it ought to.

Kirk McDonald argued in the WSJ yesterday that people looking to get hired in ANYTHING related to media, technology, or related fields should learn just enough programming to be dangerous.  

He's not saying everyone should go out and try to become a NASA-level programmer...and he realizes that's not an achievable goal.  But he is saying that everyone should at least have a sense of how the software development process works, what it generally means to *code* something, etc.  Even if you are looking for a separate role, the knowledge of how that back-end stuff works is invaluable.  

We frequently hear about how many twenty- and thirty-somethings (and maybe everything-somethings) are unemployed or underemployed.  But there are also thousands of jobs going unfilled because of the skills gap.  Some of the biggest money in Silicon Valley is going into political lobbying to support comprehensive immigration reform because we lack the home-grown talent to get the work done.  

No one can claim that the knowledge is inaccessible or too expensive to attain.  Look at OpenCourseWare.  Look at Coursera.  Udacity.  Stanford Engineering Everywhere (SEE).  Khan Academy.  EdX.  Not a single one of those platforms charges its users a single dime.  

I mentioned this to the guy sitting next to me in a "Business of Software" class yesterday, and he concurred.  He even added, "MBAs aren't that special.  This applies to us, too."  He and I are both taking programming MOOCs this summer.

Just to re-emphasize the point, this really matters.  Quoting Dr. Seuss' "Oh the Places You'll Go" is wonderful, and quoting the Wellesley High speech is even more wonderful.  But neither is specific enough to be able to extrapolate real, practical lessons from.  

The advice in that op-ed, though, is a different story.  Learn some Python.  Learn some Java.  Play around with APIs.  Get better...gradually.  Kai-zen, my friend.

Put it on your resume, get those words on your LinkedIn profile, and suddenly become more employable than all the self-described "gadget freaks" and "ideas guys" who can't install networks or write a line of code.  

Worcester's Problem, Everyone's Problem

I understand that Worcester City officials are extremely frustrated right now -- the police details outside the funeral home are costing them roughly 10k/day.

They want something to be done, but the entire reason why it's so complicated is that no municipality would want to take on a cost like that indefinitely.

Robert Healy is a very smart man (Has to be...he was a Mayor's Aide in Lowell, right?)  His decision not to allow for the plot usage in Cambridge wasn't rooted in intolerance or hatred.  It may have been rooted in respect for the victims, however...AND the practicality issue.  If he says "Yes" then he's dealing with the strange brew of MANY daily protesters mixed with a few daily shrine-worshippers indefinitely (or at least until he passes the torch to Rich Rossi).

But the point is that this is complicated.  As time goes on, we'll have a better playbook to draw from.  For now, there's way more to it than just saying that certain people are being idiots, or that others are being intolerant (oh, but the people mistakenly taunting the families of mourners in Worcester who have nothing to do with the bombers are idiots).

It's obviously not a simple issue.  

Exhaustion v. Burnout

Someone once explained to me that "burnout" is what occurs when you lose motivation to work.  You might be too physically tired, you might be too discouraged, you might be too distracted, etc.  But basically as long as the desire to work > desire not to work, you're not burning out.

I think its cousin, exhaustion, is what happens when you basically overdraft your account at the sleep bank.  You start to notice things not really making sense.  You catch yourself saying things that might not be totally coherent, you get a bit shorter in conversations, and your edit button breaks at inopportune times.  As long as you're aware that it's happening, though, you're sort of protected from real disaster.

Something just past exhaustion would be what happens to SEAL trainees during Hell Week.  It's also what's similar to what happens during the first stages of hypothermia.  It's delirium when you're doing stuff that you don't even realize makes no sense.  When you really think you're writing a letter home, but you're really just tapping on your buddy's back, you're probably there.

When you recognize real exhaustion, you need to rejigger your priorities just enough to where you can grab that one great night's sleep that eludes you when too much else gets in the way.

And on that note, good night.  Semester ends May 21.  Two weeks is more of a marathon than a sprint, so for right right now, projects can be put on hold.  

Underdogs and Overdogs

I voted for Gabriel Gomez yesterday, and will vote for him again in June.

I understand that many people across Massachusetts -- including many good friends of mine -- will vote for Ed Markey.

I respect their decision, just as I would hope they would respect mine.

One point that I think needs to be clarified, though, is that Ed Markey is the 1927 New York Yankees.  He is US Steel, he is Ivan Drago, and he is the Super Bowl III Baltimore Colts.  Pick whatever sports or historical analogy you like, but the point is that Markey is the heavy odds-on favorite.

Many Dems wouldn't deny this, and some would even celebrate it.  Fair enough -- it's always nice to be on the side that's favored to win.

But I think it's a wee bit absurd when I hear rhetoric coming FROM the Markey side about how it's "the people versus the powerful" or the "battle to save us from special interests," and so on.

Backs-to-the-wall rhetoric is one of the most tried-and-true ways to rally support for a cause.  A shared enemy -- just like shared misery (i.e. boot camp or three-a-days) -- is how you build a team.  So in a sense, I get that.  People love to tell themselves those kind of stories, too: that's why everyone you've ever met grew up poor (anecdotally, I've learned that the national poverty rate prior to 1970 was 100%), every beautiful celebrity was an awkward nerd in high school (but they somehow managed to dazzle at the Oscars by age 20), and every brilliant musician "never had one lesson."

If you support Markey, awesome.  I'm not going to try to change your mind.  If you think he would represent us better in DC, great.  Whatever.  Just don't tell me that you're on some kind of rogue mission when you're lining up in the dugout behind Koenig, Ruth, and Gehrig.  

Jason's Courage

I'm not the basketball fan I once was, but I still very clearly remember meeting Jason Collins way back when.  I was 17 and had just seen him play in the Final Four, which, like, must have totally, been,  like, the coolest thing...ever.  Anyway, what made him memorable was his legitimate down-to-earth manner "Hey dude, I'm from North Hollywood and went to high school at Harvard-Westlake.  What about you?" as opposed to the "No, really, it's not a big deal," humblebragging that I've come to loathe in celebrities, pseudo-celebrities, and other self-important types since.

Anyway, one of the first things that came to mind today when I heard he had come out was that it was a courageous move.  I don't use that word lightly, and in fact don't use it much at all.

Collins is getting a ton of support from current teammates, former teammates, future Hall of Famers (i.e. Kobe Bryant), Chelsea Clinton, and everyone in between.  So in that sense it's no big deal.  But by coming out as a professional athlete, when many fellow ballplayers are not so accepting (even if they will be wise enough to keep their thoughts to themselves), he is subjecting himself to certain inevitable taunts, judgements, and stares, not to mention possibly-innocent-but-stupid personal questions that no one would ever ask a straight athlete.

Someday it won't be a big deal.  But today is not that day.  By coming out while still in uniform, Collins has made it easier for #2, #3, and so on.  The candid, matter-of-fact, apolitical approach he took with the SI interview was a perfect first step -- not just for him, but for gay athletes and future gay athletes everywhere.

By contrast, I'm getting tired of politicians (esp. conservative ones*) cloaking themselves in the language of courage and heroism by coming out in favor of gay rights, to include marriage rights.

The reason why?

As a TIME magazine cover recently declared, the battle for gay rights is essentially over.  Yes, embers from the battle are still glowing, and gays can't marry everywhere, and they can even legally be discriminated against in 34 states.  But that's not the point.  The point is that the tide has turned, and it ain't turning back.  Look at support for gay rights broken down by age groups, and the demographics are too powerful to miss.

When the next Senator Portman comes out to support gay rights, the question should be more to the tune of "What took you so long?" and less to the tune of "How did you muster the courage?"

Being pro-gay rights before it was cool is noble.  That's where Bill Weld gets serious props.

But thinking you're somehow anomalous or brave because you think gays should be able to do whatever straights can do just isn't all that special.  In fact, I bet you that if you sampled thirty-something conservative white males in the Northeast it would be rarer to find DOMA supporters than marriage equality supporters.

Supporting a position when it can land you in physical harm (i.e. marching in Selma) or when it can bring you professional harm (i.e. Gary Johnson's position on drugs while serving in NM) is noble.  Taking the popular side at all times (i.e. Bill Clinton signing DOMA in office, and then condemning it in 2013) is not.  See the difference?  One takes courage, and the other is kind of like a wingtips-on-the-podium, impassioned speech in the City Council chamber that precedes a clearly-developing 9-0 vote.**

* I could've gone after either side there, but chose to single out conservatives because I think we're more guilty of thinking we're somehow being *special* or *anomalous* by supporting gay rights.  We're not.  Joe Biden isn't special for calling for marriage equality in a late-night TV interview, Joe Kennedy isn't special for marching in the Gay Rights parade...but neither is any GOP 'leader' or 'thinker' who 'lays it on the line' to say that gays deserve equality.

** A Home Run Derby: (free cuts for the fences with meatballs coming across the plate and no one trying to get you out).  A hypothetical example: "A resolution to declare that the City supports immigrants from all backgrounds."