A list of interesting articles that I read and shared in 2020.
Why visionary leadership fails: This article reminded me of the oft-quoted “Vision without execution is hallucination”, which apparently some trace to a Japanese proverb, which goes “Vision without action is a daydream”. https://hbr.org/2019/02/why-visionary-leadership-fails
Ben Evans: "On the Shoulder of Giants": I enjoy Ben Evans' writing (https://www.ben-evans.com/). This presentation analyzes the areas I spend a lot of time on, in my professional life: retail, entertainment, TV, and devices. The presentation also covers regulations and speculations about the next S-curve. The part about content moderation ("There is bad stuff on your platform -- take it down") seems prescient now. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/50363cf324ac8e905e7df861/t/5ed23bd3bdbbdb299cb6aa9f/1590836452410/2020+Benedict+Evans+Shoulders+of+Giants.pdf
A Guide for working (from home) for parents: My observation is that working spouses with kids less than 10 years of age had to bear the biggest stress of working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic. A few suggestions for them. https://hbr.org/2020/03/a-guide-for-working-from-home-parents
Meet Xenobot, an Eerie new kind of programmable organism: As a teenager, I remember watching a science-fiction comedy called Inner Space. The article reminded me of that movie, but it was a fascinating read. An artificial organism, built from the skin cells and heart cells of frogs is being used to understand the mysteries of cellular communication. I think this has tremendous potential in not only understanding bio-chemistry at the cellular level, but in developing medicine and medical delivery methods that operate at the cellular level. Do watch this research area. https://www.wired.com/story/xenobot/
Engineering promotions: An interesting twitter thread by Niall Murphy, ex-Google, ex-Amazon engineering leader on the good, bad, ugly of the Google engineering promotion process, from the perspective of a promoting manager. I reached out to him after reading this and had an interesting conversation with him. What's more interesting for me is in this context is if the business is promoting individuals that are creating the business impact, if the system is removing subjectivity and bias from the process, and if the promoted individuals work out well in the new role. https://twitter.com/niallm/status/1338083643902873600
The App Store debate: the story of ecosystems, by Steve Sinofsky (ex-President of the Windows Division at Microsoft), a tweet-storm that was later moved to a blog. Steve does a whirlwind history tour of the evolution of Windows OPK (OEM Porting Kit) and the PC ecosystem to justify why the Mobile App Stores are a good thing. But as he says in the last tweet, "the discussion is nuanced." https://medium.learningbyshipping.com/the-app-store-debate-a-story-of-ecosystems-938424eeef74
Reconstructing India's population history. This (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2842210/) is a fascinating paper from a research team lead by David Reich into the genetic history of today's Indian population. More than the conclusions (none of which were surprising to me, at least) the mathematical method fascinated me. There are more details in https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3522152/, and the research team has made the data and their software package available.
Transition to Extinction: Pandemics in a connected world, Yaneer Bar-Yam, of New England Complex Systems Institute wrote this article in 2016 to warn all of us about a pathogen, spread by humans through air travel, causing a global pandemic. https://medium.com/complex-systems-channel/transition-to-extinction-pandemics-in-a-connected-world-153867fe98f4
It's time to build, by Marc Andreessen, is an inspirational call to action to all builders to build, in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. https://a16z.com/2020/04/18/its-time-to-build/
Say no to triangulated feedback: This article, by Esther Derby, a management consultant, showed up on my twitter feed a few months ago. It describes the messiness of triangulated feedback, where the boss is expected to play the middleman between two feuding team members. The conclusion of this article resonates with my own approach where I encourage team members to talk to each other directly instead of expecting me to pass the feedback along. https://www.estherderby.com/no-more-middleman-avoid-triangulated-feedback/
How to get noticed by your boss' boss: I sent this out to my team as a set of suggestions on how to get what I jokingly call Vitamin V (V for Visibility). I am myself conflicted about putting too much importance on visibility, or on getting noticed. In an ideal world, everyone gets measured by their achievements (and not activity, or self-advertisement) and the best way to get noticed is to keep doing one's job well. But in the real world, as the article suggests, raising your hand, building relationships, and challenging old ways does go a long way. https://hbr.org/2019/10/how-to-get-noticed-by-your-bosss-boss
When machine learning goes off the rails: There wasn't anything profound in this article, but a good checklist of things that can or will go wrong when letting machine learning algorithms make decisions. https://hbr.org/2021/01/when-machine-learning-goes-off-the-rails
Are you an ethical leader: This is an interesting conversation between two Stanford GSB professors (Ken Shotts, Neil Malhotra) about building the mechanisms to lead ethically. https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/are-you-ethical-leader
A fun twitter thread on software estimates: This thread, unsurprisingly, generated a lot of discussion on the internal work email list when I forwarded it. The ideas on this thread, at the micro-level, is consistent with my thinking that in a software project, there are four variables (features, resources, quality, and time) and the end-result is a function of how the team controlled all four. But the key is to get the teams to see the big picture as they plan and execute https://twitter.com/matryer/status/1313089174321405958
DNA seen through the eyes of a coder: I read and re-read this article multiple times and I learn something new every time I read it. The author (a computer programmer from the Netherlands) has been updating this post since he first wrote it in 2001. The biggest surprise the first time I read it: 97% of our DNA is "commented out". But there are more surprises: https://berthub.eu/amazing-dna/
