Tag Archives: high tech

Support Your Local Female Tech Professional

14 Tuesday Apr 2015

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STOP doing this! (Image courtesy of news.com.au)

I’ve written a few posts about women in high tech, and if you follow my blog at all you’ll know I’m pretty critical of how the high tech industry treats women and behaves around women.  I completely dismiss the argument—and you can see it practically anywhere—that women just have to “suck it up”, that they’re treated “just the same” as men, that they need to “fit in better” to the industry’s culture.

To which I say: Hooey.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot.  One thing that irks me about many columnists is that they spend a lot of time complaining about something, but then when it comes to making suggestions as to how to fix the problem they just spent 15 paragraphs identifying and excoriating, they bail.  “How this will resolve Remains To Be Seen.”  (“Remains to be seen” is a common sign-off line on TV news, and is basically the same as saying, “I have no effin’ idea where this is going, so this piece was pretty much a waste of time.”)  I try to suggest solutions to the things I talk about in my posts, even if the solutions seem silly.  After all, silly or not, any suggestion could get a conversation started, and that’s when better solutions may come up.

But my suggestions for the sexist culture in high tech and what to do about it have been pretty limp and unsatisfying.  At least to me.  Which is why I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and the more I do the more I realize that while yes, we have to get more women into STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) careers, and yes we have to help women throughout their path into these fields.  But we—and by “we” here, I men “we men of the male persuasion”—need to do a lot more than passive cheer-leading and supporting our daughters working towards their C.S. degree.

We need to be proactive.

Now before you become untethered, let me be clear:   I’m not talking about some kind of “affirmative action”/quota kind of thing—though I believe that’s needed—nor am I suggesting that people “carry” poor performers just because they’re women.  (Although I also firmly believe that way too many men use the “she’s a poor performer” excuse as a cover for sexism, similar to “she didn’t quite fit in” or “she was a distraction to the team” or “her style wasn’t compatible with the organization’s needs”, or some other BS excuse that boils down to “We’re a boys club and don’t feel comfortable with girls around”.)

No, what I’m saying is:  We need to be proactive.  We need to actively support the women with whom we work, rather than telling them that they’re “acting bitchy” or “need to suck it up” or “work harder to fit in”.  Or almost as bad, just sit there passively when we see blatant sexism acted out right in our faces.  Let me give you an example:

You’re in a meeting.  There are 10 or so people in the room, and maybe 2 of them are women.  One of the women—the QA manager, say, a relatively tall, quiet, middle-aged woman with over 20 years experience in high tech—speaks up about a problem she sees from her vantage point in QA.  Before she has a chance to finish, some 20-something guy interrupts her, and then basically expresses her exact point.  What do you do?

I’ve seen this hundreds, maybe thousands of times.  You know what usually happens?  Nothing.  Women have had it hammered into them since birth to be quiet, demure, to not object; when they get run over like that, they often just shut up and remain quiet, because that’s what society teaches them.  And if they speak up, if they push back, if they ask (respectfully) to please be allowed to finish, many of the 20-something men (and alas too many of other ages) will complain to their boss or co-worker about what a “bitch” they work with.  She’s “too aggressive”; they “don’t feel comfortable with her on their team”.

Right now, any woman who’s worked in high tech is nodding her head while reading along, thinking, “Well, duh!  You might as well tell me rain is wet.”  While I guarantee you the majority of guys—even the ones guilty of this behavior!—are thinking, “Well, I’m sure that happens sometimes, but I don’t ever do it!”  Yes, you do.  I think about this stuff all the time and sometimes I still blow it.  It’s easy to fall back on the socially-dictated patterns.

What should you do?  Dude, it’s so easy; ask the rude interrupter to please let the woman finish.  “Okay, Biff, but I’d like to hear the end of what Jill was trying to say.”  That’s what I mean by “proactive”.  Don’t just sit there and let some sexist dork be sexist; jump in!  It can absolutely be done without being rude, putting anyone down, or even implying Biff is being a sexist dork.

If you’re running the meeting, go even farther:  Make sure you actively seek the opinions of the women at the table.  Women in high tech have been so hammered on for so long that after a while, many stop trying.  Do you really want to write off 20% of the brainpower in your room?  That’s idiotic!  Ask their opinions!  And further, make sure they get the space to finish their thoughts.  It’s your meeting; if Jill gets cut off, tell Dirk, “Wait a minute please, Dirk; let Jill finish and then you can make your point.”  Not only does this get the opinions of the women out on the table, it also implicitly chastises people for rude and sexist behavior and provides them with a model for how to do it moving forward.

(I believe the person running a meeting should draw out opinions from all those at the table, no matter their sex, but that’s a different topic.)

But don’t stop there.  Recommend (qualified) women on your team for high-profile projects, projects that will give them visibility and responsibilities outside of their immediate job area.  Recommend them for training—management training, technical training, whatever.  Be active in helping them advance their careers.  Trumpet their accomplishments to the org at large.  Mention them to upper management.  And on the flip side:  Mention the negative, sexist behavior to management as well—though I would recommend on first offense to limit it to not mentioning the particular perpetrator.  Something like, “Mr. VP, I’ve been noticing some fairly bad sexist behavior among some team members.  Perhaps you could make some kind of overall policy statement about BigCorp’s policy of inclusiveness and having a friendly and non-hostile work environment?  Maybe an email, followed by a few words at the next all-hands?”  Everyone screws up once in a while, and someone should establish a pattern before being called on the carpet, IMO.  But of course if Mr. VP asks, that’s a different matter.

I would also recommend that, should you be in management, you take some time to educate yourself on how men’s and women’s socialized responses differ, and adjust your behavior and expectations accordingly.  For example, when men get pissed off, they frequently yell, punch things, throw tantrums, etc.  Most men overt the age of, say, 25 are more controlled than that, but if you’ve been in high tech for any time at all, you’ve probably seen it; some VP is frustrated, and he yells at someone, or cusses them out.  Or even throws things at the conference room wall.  I’ve seen it happen.

(Yes, I know this isn’t true across the board, and certainly not true for trans and gender fluid folks.  What I’m talking about here are what society and our culture consider “typical” male and female behavior and responses.)

Women, on the other hand, often respond to anger with tears.  These are not tears of sorrow; they’re tears of rage and frustration.  But many men viscerally respond to tears with a subconscious diagnosis of “weakness”, and of course in business, weakness is death.

Unfortunately, women are in a double-bind here.  If a woman yells, curses, and rages, she is “a bitch”, “too emotional”, “needs to dial it back”, etc.  So she can either act like a woman and be punished for it, or act like a man . . . and be punished for it.

To repeat:  The solution is to educate yourself and be more cognizant of how sexes respond differently.  I think one of the best books on this topic is Deborah Tannen’s “You Just Don’t Understand”, but there are plenty of good ones out there.  But if you’re too lazy to read a book, all you have to know is:  Men and women frequently react differently.  Learn to roll with it, and stop putting the women on your team into an impossible double-bind.  Further, when you see them being so defined by others, point it out.

I’ve gone on at length here (and haven’t even touched on other land-mines like how women are supposed to dress, and how men can get away with flirting at work but women can’t, and many other areas), but the bottom line is actually pretty simple:  As men, we’re too lazy and been too passive, and we need to get off our flat behinds and get involved.  We need to work to help women be treated equally.  We need to act.  It’s on us, too.

So get out there, and act!

PS: For some of my other opinions regarding women in high take, feel free to surf on over to:

Business Meetings: Minimizing their Pain

10 Friday Apr 2015

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Dilbert copyrighted by Scott Adams, all rights reserved

On LinkedIn, Jeff Denneen had a post wherein he opined that we should Kill the Weekly Meeting.  In it he talks about the time wasted in pre-scheduled, regular weekly meetings, has a couple of suggestions for making meetings less painful in general, and at the end asks, “Do you have other techniques for making meetings more effective?”

Oh hellz yes; I have a list.

I have long wondered about high tech’s love of regular meetings.  It’s something I noticed almost from the beginning of my career, and a part of the industry that I came quickly to genuinely hate.  But as a modern, 21st Century guy who’s spent plenty of time with various therapists, rather than sit back and seethe and simmer in my meeting rage, when I had the opportunity to run my own meetings—either through being a project lead, a manager, or just because no one else in the room wanted to take charge—I came over time to learn some tactics and techniques to make things better.  At least, I think they do.

In huge, cross-team projects involving dozens or even hundreds of people, all working toward a specific goal of releasing on a given date, you do have to have some regular meetings just so everyone is on target.  Really, you can’t avoid it; you can’t do everything by email or IM.  But when you are forced to have those suckers, make them as painless as possible.  Here’s some ideas to chew over, play-tested out in the real high tech business world:

  • Have an agenda, or at least a list of topics that you need to cover in the meeting, even if it’s only scribbled on a piece of scratch paper.
  • Avoid the “round-table status review”. I’ve been in high tech for 27 years and, while I have on occasion needed to know what my coworkers were doing, I never needed to know what they were doing on a low project level. Round-table status is too often used for people to simply puff up their own importance, and tends to waste time.
  • Start your meetings on time. This should be obvious, but alas it is not. (Don’t be a jerk about it like George W. Bush was, though, who apparently locked the door at the appointed time. That’s childish.)
  • Keep track of the time, and help folks be aware of it at need. “We need to pick up the pace in order to finish.”
  • Avoid going down conversational rabbit-holes, finger-pointing, and arguments. If there are disagreements that can’t be resolved in a reasonable (few minutes) amount of time, table the discussion and figure out another way to resolve them.  “Let’s take this off-line” is the common phrase in high tech.
  • Make sure to recognize and draw out opinions from the shyer folks in the room. This is a learned skill, but you have to watch for subtle clues that someone wants to talk, but is too shy or reluctant to “interrupt”. But they’re in the meeting; if their opinion wasn’t wanted, they shouldn’t have been invited. So be sure to try to spot them and give them the space to talk.
  • Deliberately make extra effort to pull the women in the room into the discussion, and protect their speaking time from over-bearing, interrupting, ‘mansplainin’ men.  Our business culture is flamingly sexist, and women are often ignored, interrupted, dismissed, and otherwise relegated to “outsider” status. Don’t let it happen; plenty of times, they’re the smartest ones in the room.  They usually haven’t had a choice; like minorities, they’ve had to be better than most just to get a place at the table.  Get their opinions!  (For more on my take about sexism in high tech, feel free to read High Tech Sexism.)
  • Related to the three previous items: Don’t be afraid to be a bit tyrannical in running your meetings. Don’t let people ramble on to no purpose–cut them off. Don’t let folks be rude or obnoxious to other folks in the room–cut them off, too, with a warning that that kind of thing isn’t productive. Shut people up when they interrupt a speaker who hasn’t finished making her point.  Keep people focused, on task, and ready to listen.  You don’t have to be a douche about it, but be firm.  Very firm.  Exceedingly firm.
  • Let meetings end early. In fact, make it a personal goal to end meetings early. There are few things in business that make people happier than ending a meeting early.
  • Before ending the meeting, go over the action items that came up during the meeting. Make sure people assigned to action items are aware of them. All action items should have a priority associated with them, and a time-frame for completion.

And on a personal note:  Learn how to take notes.  Everyone finds a different note-taking style that works best for them, so find yours.  Mine is based on my observation that for me, meetings have three things I need to keep track of (four if it’s a “bad” meeting):  General notes, questions I want to ask but don’t want to interrupt, and action items I’m given.  I usually start out each meeting by creating three sections in my notes file (I use Evernote) for these three areas.  (The fourth area is “Comments”, i.e. snarky comments to myself that come to mind while being stuck in a terrible, boring, endless meeting from which there is no easy escape.  This section keeps me sane in those situations, especially those where you can’t, for example, play Infinity Blade III or check your Twitter feed or whatever.  You know what kind of meetings I’m talking about.)

Like everything else, running a meeting is a skill. Some people have a natural flair for it, and others struggle with it. But as far as I can tell, everyone needs more practice. Think about some of the above points the next time you call a meeting. Believe me: You end a meeting early with clear action items, people will love you.

We Need More Women in High Tech, Dammit!

18 Thursday Dec 2014

Posted by in News, Opinion, Uncategorized

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Michelle-Meyrink
Jordan from “Real Genius”, who I adored
(Image courtesy of the Cult Film Club)

Note: This is longer than my usual blog-post.  It’s on a topic that is both complicated, and one I think is really important, but it may strike you as tl;dr.  I’m okay with that.  For the rest of y’all, read on:

Despite the fact that it is a trite observation that “women and men are different”, and bearing in mind that gender is both more fluid and less binary than we are taught growing up, these differences–which permeate basically every facet of our lives–have been and continue to be an important area of study for psychologists, sociologists, and even relatively unimportant schlubs like me. (One of the best books on this topic that I’ve read is Deborah Tannen’s “You Just Don’t Understand”, which I highly recommend.)

Now, the reasons behind this are up for debate. Some–radical feminists, for example–say that it’s the patriarchy’s method of keeping women subjugated. Other theories abound (“It’s due to religion”; “It’s a holdover from the Middle Ages”; “It’s a holdover from the hunter/gatherer era”; etc.). But I’m not interested in exploring any of that.

I mention this right up front as a preface to what I’ve seen, and what I think about what I’ve seen, with women and the reactions of men in the high tech world. I’ve written about some of that in another post, so I won’t rehash that in depth. Instead I want to focus on “typical” male and female reactions to certain situations, and how that affects the advancement (or lack thereof) in that environment.

A former manager of mine, Margaret Dawson, has written an excellent post (Seriously: read it!) on this topic, and if I’m successful this will be a good companion piece to her thoughts and observations. You might even read her post first, if you have a mind to.

These are generalizations, of course. I recognize that. And I recognize the fluidity of gender and its potential impact on these observations. But I have seen too much of what I note below to think this stuff isn’t widespread, so I hope you can read with an open mind.

“Men Don’t Cry”

This is a stupid trope that has been around as long as I’ve been alive. Heck, it’s in some literature–science fiction literature, no less–that I still enjoy. “Don’t cry in public”; “Make sure you’re alone in the bathroom if you have to cry”; “Crying shows weakness”; even “There’s no crying in baseball”. All macho baloney of course, but it’s deeply stuck in the culture.

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Oy, enough already with the yelling!

Why mention it? Well, when men are angry, they yell. We’ve all heard stories about high-tech executives who behave like–let’s be honest here–spoiled little children. Yelling, screaming, throwing things, calling people names, cursing up a blue streak that would cause a sailor to blush. (Well, maybe.) Men get mad, and they yell.

When women get mad–and again, this is a generalization, but one I’ve seen many many times and had it confirmed by many women–they cry. It’s their emotional response. It doesn’t matter why–Deborah Tannen probably has a whole book on it–it only matters that it happens.

Add that to the fact that many men have very strong responses to female tears; embarrassment, shame, anger, even (so I’ve read) sexual excitement. (It’s never affected me that way, but I can believe it.)

Now mix it together. A woman gets angry during a meeting, or in a 1-1 interaction; what happens? She’s a weakling, she “can’t take the heat” and should “get out of the kitchen”. She needs more and bigger balls. She needs to toughen up. This is business, not personal, and business isn’t bean-bag toss. It’s tough; you need to be tough, too. Etc.

(As a side note the only time I ever hear “It’s just business, it’s not personal” is when someone has either just screwed you over, has screwed over someone else, or is planning on screwing someone over, and they want to salve their ego. And in my view, it’s epic baloney.)

There are really only two options here: Force yourself to learn another set of emotional responses to external stimulus (it can be done, but it’s hard), or teach men to be respectful of the different ways in which women respond to situations that make them angry. Neither of these is an easy solution, but these are emotional reactions, for most folks below the conscious level; it seems unlikely we’ll see a lot of advancement for women in high tech executive positions until both are addressed. Both, not just one or the other.

Men Expect Advancement as Their Due

One thing in Margaret’s post was that has long struck me was her recounting how many of her fellow women executives wondered how to advocate for themselves, how to get the advancements that they seemed to earn, how to ask for it. What hit me most of all were the women who advanced rapidly or highly, and were considered “heroes” for doing so.

You shouldn’t have to be a “hero” in order to advance. Reasons to advance someone in a hierarchy are various, but most folks expect the value of their work to be recognized, and for them to advanced based on that recognition. But you also have to advocate for yourself, because your manager–no matter how good he is–may not know of your goals, or advocate strongly for you, or think you want advancement. Only you can avoid being trapped in a position because “that’s where you excel”.

As a rule, men advocate for themselves; it’s expected, it’s not surprising, and it’s not denigrated in the least. Indeed, a number of managers have told me that it was good I did.

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Hoo boy

Women on the other hand are in a double-bind. While it’s made advances since I was a kid, society still treats girls and women to “be seen and not heard”, to be demure, quiet, not strong personalities. (My partner and I have gone out of our way to avoid our daughter being inculcated with this idiotic trope.)

If a woman follows this line, she doesn’t advocate for herself, expecting (reasonably) that her efforts will be justly rewarded. And as I already alluded, a lot of time that simply doesn’t happen (unless, ironically, a male co-worker goes to bat for them–which I have done myself on a number of ocassions).

But if a woman does have the temerity to advocate for herself, it’s almost impossible for her to do so in a way that doesn’t mark her as “pushy”, “grasping”, or “a real bitch”. She can be asking for her due in a far less direct manner than her male co-workers and still be branded as “a pushy bitch”, despite how enormously unfair this is.

Are there male executives out there who don’t behave this way? Sure. But as Margaret’s post shows you, they’re in short supply.

Nerd Culture is Inherently Sexist

If you had any doubt about this, one can only hope that “gamergate” changed your mind, as gamers are very similar to nerds and the two overlap quite a bit.  (If you don’t know anything about it, Google it; it’s too long to summarize here.)  Or you can read my brief overview of the problem in a previous blog post.  But a few details of that culture are relevant and I wanted to mention them.  (And I tell you three times and what I tell you three times is true:  I am well aware that these are generalizations.  But I’ve seen them demonstrated so often it would make your head explode.)

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Turnabout is fair play, mo’fos!

Nerds wear jeans and t-shirts.  Yes, it’s superficial and at base a silly observation, but it hints at something deeper, and is another double-bind for women.  If they dress like a nerd in jeans and t-shirts, they’re not being feminine; they’re being butch, they must not like guys, they must be the female equivalent of self-hating Jews, etc.  You won’t believe some of the nasty things I’ve heard (mostly younger) nerds say about women who actually dress the part.  But by the same token, if you dress nicely, you’re a “distraction”, you’re not a real nerd, you’re paying more attention to your clothes than your work, etc. etc.

Guys swear, girls don’t.  As I mentioned in my other blog post, if a guy swears, he’s just being a guy. If a woman does, it’s inappropriate.  I have seen CEOs, Senior VP’s, “distinguished engineers”, and other men at high levels behave in a manner that is, shall we say, unacceptable outside a locker room.  In meetings.  Yelling, swearing, banging on things; it’s all okay.  But if you are a woman, oh my land, do the Mrs. Grundy’s of the world come out.  “How shocking!”  “Not acceptable!”  “Inappropriate!”  “What a bitch!”  Etc.  And of course if you don’t swear, or use alternatives, you sound as ridiculous as Ian McShane would saying, “Well drat it all!” on “Deadwood”.

Guys watch sports.  Look, just because a lot of nerds didn’t play sports doesn’t mean they don’t watch them.  (Though of course many nerds did and do.  I’d still be doing sports if my body hadn’t collapsed on me.  Another story.)  Fantasy football.  Baseball.  Football.  Soccer.  “Hey, did you see the Sharks game?”  “Do you have tickets to the Spurs?”  “Are the ‘horns ever going to the Rose Bowl again?”  Etc.  This filters into the language, where as many feminists have pointed out makes sports metaphors pervasive.  “We have to swing for the fences”; “It’s fourth and one and we need to go for it”; “We need a home run here”; “We’re going to have to punt”; etc.

Sure, there are plenty of women who like sports, and can fit in with this, but not all of them.  To push it to the other extreme, while there are some metrosexual guys out there who might feel comfortable speaking about upcoming software projects in terms of makeup, if a female project manager started saying things like, “We used the wrong shade of lipstick on that; we went with a pink and we should have gone with a deep red”, I have to think there’d be a lot of uncomfortable squirming around the table and guys talking to each other afterwards saying, “What the FUCK was she talking about?”

And that’s exactly the point, kids.

Now What?

I’ve always hated articles, books, blog posts, or what have you that point out some problem in society and then say various versions of, “How this all plays out in the future . . . remains to be seen.  I’m Biff Clicherstein, CBS News.”  No.  Suggestions, thoughts, ideas; if you’re going to kvetch about something, the least you should do is propose a solution or two, no matter how ridiculous it may sound.  As people in high tech say, put something up there so you can shoot arrows at it.  That’s the only way to make ideas arrow-proof.

So what do I think?  I think a few things, most that have been proposed before, some of which will be, to put it mildly, hard to implement.

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Kaylee from “Firefly”, who looks best w/ engine grease on her

  • Start ’em young.  In the 70s, a lot of people made fun of attempts to produce gender-neutral toys.  Yeah, okay, sometimes the 70s went a bit far, but why not?  And why not market toys to the entire spectrum of kids?  My boy loved his sister’s Dorothy costume ruby slippers; why not?  We gave my daughter dolls and Mack trucks.  Girls can’t love the LEGO Millennium Falcon?  Why the heck not?  Don’t limit your kids.  Now, just because my daughter turned into a girly-girl who loves pink doesn’t mean we didn’t work hard to give her options.  And that’s the point; she made her own choices.  Don’t make them for your kids; let them make them.
  • Similarly, be aware that gender is not binary, that there are more options than The Manly Boy and the Girly Girl.  There are girly-boys, and boyish girls, and little boys who will grow up and decide that they were girls all along, and all kinds of variants all over the spectrum.  Be aware of it, and don’t force your kid into a mold.  The mold of the Barbie, pink-wearing, “math is hard”, I can’t fix engines type is a trap.  Sure, they can choose that, but the key is giving them the choice.  Trust me on this:  Not every “Firefly” fan is stuck on the “classic” beauty Inara; Kaylee and River and Zoe have plenty of fans, too.  Don’t force your girl to be Inara if she wants to be Kaylee.  (Yes, I am a nerd, too.  Sue me.)
  • More video games with female heroes.  And with a greater variety of body types, please.  Humans come in all sizes.  Yeah, soldiers are going to be more buff, but all women don’t have D-cup boobs and trust me on this one, those that do don’t usually go around in skin-tight spandex.  Use some imagination here.
  • More movies with female heroes.  How many people kicked up a fuss when they talked about Black Widow not being in the second Avengers movie, huh?  Don’t tell me there’s no market for it.  Two of the best science fiction shows on TV are “Orphan Black” and “Lost Girl”, both with female protagonists (and both with bi and lesbian characters, I might add; start clutching those pearls, Mrs. Grundy!).

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The stars of “Lost Girl”–not the “female stars”, the stars

  • Enough with the fucking sports metaphors.  I’m a guy and I’m tired of them.  Can’t we come up with something a little more imaginative?  We have access to almost all the knowledge of human history through our effin’ phones and we have to stick with sports metaphors?  C’mon!
  • Positive encouragement of girls in STEM classes all through K-12.  This has to be a priority.  Kids learn early what their roles are, and we keep letting girls get shunted into the “girly” tracks right from kindergarten, we are dooming ourselves.  How many potential female engineering geniuses are dying on the vine because of sexism?  My mother’s side of the family is hella smart.  Really smart.  And with what result?  My grandmother attempted suicide; her mother suicided, and so did her mother.  I don’t know the reasons, but it couldn’t have been easy to be a smart, strong-willed woman in an era where that was strongly quashed.  We need all our brainpower; let’s not quash it.
  • Affirmative action for women in college STEM programs; and yes, that’s right you right-wing jerks:  I’m talking about quotas.  When the playing field gets leveled, maybe we’ll change it back.  Right now, with what, 13% of high tech engineering jobs filled by women, you want to whine about quotas?  That’s just plain stupid.  We need to crank our butts into gear, get women in STEM, and keep them there.
  • In these last two, we need to treat sexism with the same level of intervention as bullying is now treated (and boy I wish we had had that anti-bullying stuff when I was in school!).  Have sexist jerks be brought before the Vice Principal and read the riot act, given detentions and suspensions.  Stop that kind of nonsense in its tracks.

Just like how in the end it wasn’t necessary for gays and lesbians to “act straight” in order to start getting equal rights, I see no reason why women should be forced to “act like nerds” in order to make it in high tech.  High tech doesn’t need women acting like nerds; it needs women acting however they act, and everyone getting over it.  If a woman swears, she swears; get over it.  If she dresses in a low-cut top, get over it.  If she uses some kind of metaphor that isn’t sports-related, get over it.  If she cries instead of yelling and throwing things when she gets angry, GET OVER IT.  You cried when Spock died in “Wrath of Khan”; she cries when you acting like a jerk-weed in a meeting.  Deal with it.

And in the meantime, let’s get cracking, shall we?  And if you have any ideas, let’s hear ’em!

Meetings, Smartphones, and You

01 Wednesday Oct 2014

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Image courtesy of Mobility Digest

Recently I read an interesting post/piece of advice on LinkedIn about smartphone use during meetings in the corporate environment. The author, Travis Bradberry, provides a number of observations (mostly negative) and recommendations (ditto) regarding the use–or non-use, I really should say–of smartphones in meetings.  It’s a thoughtful article, but it misses a few points and, because I’m a blowhard, I thought I’d share.

I’ve been in high tech for a long time, and as you might expect from a bunch of nerds, we like to have the latest gear.  (I remember vividly a meeting in the late 90s, when the first PDAs came out; the meeting concluded, and then every nerd in the room gathered around the guy who had a new PDA, peppering him with questions, wanting to play with it.  We love our tech, we nerds.)  The point being that smartphones probably filtered into the meetings I attend in advance of, say, Wall St. banker meetings or Madison Avenue ad team meetings or whatnot.  By 2008, every nerd in high tech probably had an iPhone or a not-unreasonable facsimile.  So I’ve had plenty of real-world experience on how tech use and meetings collide.

Meetings are hard.  Not “hard” in the sense that working 14 hours in the heat of a tobacco field is hard, or down in a coal mine, or even driving a truck.  But the purpose of a meeting is to get agreement on the items this particular group of people has to decide on, or relay some critical information to a group.  And the hard part is getting those done without petty bickering; boring the majority of the people (all at once or in turn as topics come up that only one or two people care about); pedantic descent into arcane details (engineers do this a lot); not getting agreement; losing control of the meeting so the key information isn’t relayed; and on and on.

By far the biggest risk for a meeting attendee–particularly when you’re attending a meeting run by someone several levels above you in the hierarchy–is massive, profound, unbelievable boredom.  This isn’t anyone’s fault; if executives didn’t meet with the “individual contributors” (as we working stiffs are called), they would (rightly) be seen as “out of touch”, so they need to “address the troops” on some kind of regular basis.  The problem with this is your typical executive sees the world from such a rarefied level, where everything is corporate profit and loss, meetings with other executives at other companies, trips to give talks at various industry events, meeting with high-level politicians, etc., that to an IC they are speaking of stuff that has very little to do with an IC’s day-to-day (or even year-to-year) life.  Sure, it’s important that they’re out there doing that stuff, getting government contracts, and so on, but you’re writing code/error checking code/writing documentation/creating marketing collateral/selling to other companies/doing IT work/etc., and that stuff, well, in a very real way it simply doesn’t matter.

Even when an exec is meeting with a small group, it’s important to remember that he (it’s almost always a “he”) has very little idea of what the people in the room with him do day-to-day.  In my field, I’ve met with many executives who had no idea what a tech writer even was, let alone what I did every day.  So as you might imagine, there’s a pretty big disconnect between the executive and the ICs in that room.  The executive wants to make contact, but the people are bored.  And what to do is always a challenge.  And your typical IC is constantly aware that every minute he or she spends in that room is one minute less spent fixing code/writing content/doing IT work/etc.  What to do?

Back in the day, people took notes in notebooks, on memo pads, on graph paper, etc.  Some physical method of keeping track of things.  And in those boring meetings, you could simply doodle, or work on your novel, or write sarcastic notes to yourself, or maybe polish off that thank-you note to granny.

Laptops, tablets, and smartphones are an absolute boon to the boring meeting issue.  If you can get away with bringing a full laptop–and this has become more acceptable over the years–and the meeting is such that your participation is unneeded other than your physical presence in the room, you can get work done, check your email, and even discreetly web surf (if you have the nerve).  That meeting time is much less wasted.  Yes, there was a big push to get people to leave their laptops behind for meetings, but over time people have recognized that a) It didn’t do much good, and b) Plenty of people take their notes on their laptops.  (In my case, I used an elective at age 12 in order to take typing, writing was such a laborious chore for me.)

(The “Agile stand-up”, by the way, is one attempt to battle this from two directions. On the one hand, these meetings are limited to 15 minutes, guaranteeing to the participants that any boredom will be short-lived.  And since you’re literally supposed to be standing up, using a laptop is pretty much impossible.)

But smartphones (and Blackberry’s back in the day) allow you to do Internet stuff anywhere, with a tiny device.  And as we’ve reached the saturation point with smartphones in the population (and you can guess how saturated the high tech industry is!), people have come to use their smartphones instead.  And this is really honking off some people, as Mr. Bradberry points out.  Unfortunately, some of the suggestions he makes, and the assumptions behind them, bear a bit more examination.

For example, Bradberry points out “The more money people make the less they approve of smartphone use.” Alas, the more money people make, the higher up they usually are in the corporation, and those folks tend to use their smartphones more during meetings than anyone.  (Some of them seem to be using them as another way in which execs show their importance to the peons–“Your puny meeting is not nearly as important as my daughter’s Instagram pic that she just texted me, but please do carry on.”)  There are a couple of issues here, the most obvious of which is the blatant double-standard.

But to be blunt, one issue is that meetings are too frequent, too long, too boring, and include people that they don’t need to. Executives and directors live by meetings–it’s a major part of their job–but individual contributors don’t, and forcing them to attend a ton of meetings is not an efficient use of their time. Certainly some amount of attendance is necessary to coordinate work, but in my experience the amount of meetings and meeting length is excessive. People break out their laptops, tablets, and smartphones in self-defense.  If you want to continue to see “productivity increases”, Mr. or Ms. Executive, you shouldn’t squawk when your employees are trying to squeeze in work during boring meetings.

Should people be playing Tetris or Minecraft of checking their Twitter feed while the VP is lecturing?  No; it’s rude.  But on the other hand, if the room falls asleep because the exec is speaking so far above their heads they can’t even see his tail-lights, that’s even more rude.  If you see a lot of smartphones out, might want to reality-check your agenda, or engage with your folks more directly.

So the second part of this is: Executives need to recognize that individual contributors are not thrilled to be taking time out of their day to watch power-point presentations and listen to (as Peter put it in “Office Space”) “eight different bosses drone on about mission statements”. Keep your meetings to the point, concise, and as short as absolutely possible. If you can end a scheduled 1-hour meeting in 20 minutes, your people will love you, and smartphone, tablet, and laptop use will plummet.

Bradberry cites some stats that I think are important to keep in mind:

  • 86% think it’s inappropriate to answer phone calls during meetings
  • 84% think it’s inappropriate to write texts or emails during meetings
  • 66% think it’s inappropriate to write texts or emails even during lunches offsite

I have to agree that people answering calls during meetings seem rude.  But you know: I’ve done it.  Because my boy had injured himself and I needed to respond right away, or because my wife was in a dire situation because her car had broken down on the freeway.  I would like to see some stats, but I don’t get the sense that people answer their smartphones for any reason other than critical ones during meetings.  And (again in my experience) they leave the room so as to provide minimum disturbance.  In high tech, this doesn’t seem to bug people very much.  And honestly I think that’s because tech folks are more used to tech, and they have started to create etiquette to deal with the new smartphone reality.

Smartphone etiquette is still evolving. It was once verboten for folks to bring laptops to meetings; then we went through a period where it seemed that everyone was bringing their laptops but no one was paying attention; then a period where laptop use in many companies expressly forbidden during meetings (which was hell on me as I noted above). But now some people bring them for note taking, presenting information, etc., and some don’t, and those that do seem to better recognize that they need to practice active listening even when the lid on their device is open. Soon, it won’t be an issue. Smartphone use in meetings will evolve similarly, I predict. Smartphones are really only 7 years old; it will take a little time.

So in short, yes, ICs need to be aware that it honks people off to be seen taking out your smartphone, even if you’re using it for note-taking. But managers and execs need to also recognize that meetings are seen by ICs as (at best) a necessary evil, and do their part to keep them short, to the point, and infrequent.

That’s my worm’s-eye view, anyway.  (And I’m not the only one who feels this way.)

High Tech Sexism

26 Tuesday Aug 2014

Posted by in Opinion

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Image courtesy of Business Insider

The high tech world is kind of a funny place.  (Aside from the fact that it’s populated by geeks, I mean.)  On the one hand, nerds don’t really care much about you so long as you’re a nerd.  Black, white, Asian, Indian; male, female, trans; gay, straight, questioning; monogamous or polyamorous; kinky or vanilla; sci fi or fantasy or romance or “lit-ruh-chure” or detective novels; it doesn’t really matter to a computer nerd.  If you can code and fit in with the nerd coding culture, you’re fine, you’re golden.

On the other hand, that culture was created largely by young, straight, white, middle- and upper-class men, even boys (maturity-wise).  So the only way to fit in is to model the behavior of that group.  Which for me–as a straight, white, middle-class male who got a degree in computer science from UC–wasn’t that hard.  But for a lot of others?  Well, the problem here is obvious.

For my entire career it’s been clear that there’s rampant sexism (among other inherent bigotries) in the high tech culture.  As this culture has developed heavily from nerd programming culture, when you think about it, it’s not very surprising.  And lately, there has been a lot more focus on this.  Articles on how women are treated in high tech; articles on the low number of women taking engineering degrees; articles on how few women stay in the engineering track in the high tech industry; articles on the dearth of female high-tech CEOs; articles on women being intimidated and pressured when they speak out about the obvious sexism.

None of this comes as a surprise to me.  What does surprise me, frankly, is how so many folks are trying to either defend this aspect of the culture, or wave away the accusations.  I think the nature of these defenses can be summed up by this person’s (a white male, naturally; probably straight, Christian, and middle-class too) comment on an article in HuffPo about how 40% of female engineers leave the field:

Most male engineers have similar complaints, and leave the profession too. As the old saying goes; “If you can’t stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen”.

Look:  I’ve been in high tech my whole career, over 27 years now.  I love it.  I love the people, and the cool new tech I get to see all the time; I love being on the “bleeding edge” of tech development; I love that the world has come to recognize the value of what my nerdly brothers and sisters are doing, and to even give us acclaim.  I wouldn’t want to do anything else.  But I have to say to folks like the gentlemen above:  STFU.  I have seen unbelievable, rampant sexism in this culture.  At all levels, from executives down to junior hackers, in ways both blatant and subtle, from giant multi-nationals down to tiny startups, it’s an anti-female culture, and it’s disgusting.  And to wave off that fact is doubly disgusting.

Before you make flip comments, create false equivalences about how it’s “just as bad for male engineers”, pretend that there’s really no sexism, how about you do this:  Spend several years having the first thing out of people’s mouths be a comment on your clothes, hair, or appearance (When was the last time you heard a guy at work tell another guy, “Hey, nice blouse!” or “I like what you did with your hair”, or “Are you wearing makeup”?).  Go to dozens of meetings over the course of a decade or two where every time you tried to speak or bring up a topic, solution, or idea some guy spoke right over you or the moderator basically just ignored you.  Endure years of snarky, snide, or derogatory comments about how often you’ve had to come in late, leave early, work at home, or take vacation days to deal with family issues (while your male co-workers simultaneously get praised as being “good dads!” for doing exactly the same things).

How about you spend years or even decades receiving 10-20% less salary than male co-workers doing literally exactly the same job?  How about you suffer through a few months of dealing with the hostility and anger of your co-workers because of your need to take time off after you give birth (not to mention ignorant comments about how you should “just deal with it” while suffering postpartum depression).  Or maybe enjoy the delightful emotions of watching men with less experience and qualifications promoted over you multiple times.

I have seen all this, consistently, everywhere.   At meetings large and small, in companies huge and tiny, all the time.  It’s consistent.  Yes, you can squawk that this is “anecdotal evidence”, and it is.  Of course, it’s completely validated by every single woman in high tech I’ve ever spoken to on the topic, from low-level folks toiling away on front-line phone support to high-powered VPs.  Often when I make these observations they snort or roll their eyes; it’s so obvious to them, it’s like they can’t believe it’s news to the likes of me.  That’s how prevalent it is, how entrenched.

I’m proud–incredibly proud–of what my industry has and continues to contribute to the country and the world.  I love the attitude so many of us have that every problem can be solved, if we just apply enough brainpower and tech to it (as misguided as that sometimes can be).  I love working in this industry.  But that doesn’t blind me to the rampant, horrific sexism (and often racism, homophobia, and other bigotry) that it contains.  So instead of trying to wave it away, or pretend it’s not so bad, or arrogantly and condescendingly telling women to “suck it up,” we do something about it?

And folks, the first step on “doing something” is to admit we have a problem.  Until we do that, we ain’t getting nowhere.  So let’s admit the problem, and get going, shall we?

Avoiding Subsidizing Overpaid Ass-Clowns in an A La Carte Consumption World

08 Sunday Jun 2014

Posted by in News, Opinion

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Image courtesy of zenshaman.com

For about half my life, roughly, the media that I consumed was essentially collectivized.  That is to say that everything I saw or read or listened to was from a very limited set of corporate producers.  The individual content was from a huge mass of folks of course, but they were collected under the heading of “The TV Networks” or “The Big Publishers” or “The National Newsweeklies” or “The Big Record Companies” or what have you.

Over time, the collectors changed somewhat–cable and satellite TV became big business; the phone company was broken up, acquired media properties, and started consolidating; big players in one industry (Warner, e.g.) bought big players in other areas (Time, record companies, etc.).  But from the consumer perspective this all had the appears of deck chairs shuffling around on the Titanic; we were all still sailing on the USS Media Collective, where a very limited number of companies controlled a huge percentage of what we these days call “content”.  And it was in the interests of these big media companies to become even bigger, to acquire even more properties, leading us to a place like the current proposed Comcast/Time-Warner merger.

I was thinking of all this recently because of a big push by the New York Times to try to get people to subscribe to just their opinions section.  The New York Times opinion section is immensely popular, so much so that about 10 years back, they tried to put a paywall in the way of people who wanted to read just that content.  And like the vast majority of pay walls, it was a monumental failure and they gave it up.  Now they’re trying again.  But the thing is, I don’t want to pay some monthly subscription fee and get stuck with their idiot columnists like (shudder) David Brooks or Maureen Dowd or cliche-thrower & metaphor mixer Tom Friedman or right-wing anti-sex moron Ross Douthat; I just want to read Paul Krugman whenever I like. So I’m not going to subsidize people I consider overpaid ass-clowns just for that. And I doubt very much I’m alone in that regard.

And this got me thinking about how much the Web era has changed our expectations, how we consume (and want to consume) content, and the effect that’s having on these big–but terrified–media companies.

Big media companies want to continue to force you to purchase things collectively.  You know how it works:  If you want HBO, you have to get a cable or satellite subscription, and you have to pay for some kind of “premium” package, forcing you to buy dozens (or even hundreds) of channels of programming you don’t give a rip about just so you can watch “Game of Thrones” for three months out of the year.  Or you have to get a ruinously-expensive “add-on” package to the premium package if you want to watch, I dunno, hockey or football or whatever beyond what the networks offer “for free”.

It’s the same with newspapers; you may just wants the sports and comics (or in the case of my bff the rocket scientist, the comics and the technology section), but you also have to pay for the ads, the obits, the opinion section, the business section, and whatever else they put in there.  Or in the case of the New York Times and their brilliant new Opinion Subscription strategy, they want me to subsidize people I consider overpaid ass-clowns just to get the one or two people I think are worth actually shelling out dough for.  And every newspaper has that issue to some degree.

Hell, it’s even the same with music; they want you to pay $10-20 for a whole album, not just buy the one song from that album that you’re interested in.  Do you really want the entire “Despicable Me 2” soundtrack, or do you just want “I’m Happy”?  And media companies want you to spend $15 just to get your personal dose of Pherrell.

Now, there are reasonable arguments to be made for forcing people to pay way more than they want for packages of stuff they’re not interested in so as to subsidize quality “minority”-level content.  But about 20 years ago, something funny happened that started us moving toward an a la carte world:  Mosaic, the first legitimate Web browser, was introduced.  And that, combined with the Net Neutrality-induced low bar of entry to publishing content, opened the content floodgates.  Mix in things like Amazon, iTunes, portable media players, iPads, and whatnot, and you have a world where not only are people familiar with buying only what they want, when they want, to consume at their own leisure, they expect it.  People get irked when their favorite podcast is late, or when they can’t download this week’s episode of “Mad Men” the day after it is broadcast.  (Not to mention the insanity of companies like HBO trying to force you to wait nearly a year to watch programming like “Game of Thrones”–a topic I go into in boring detail in other post.)

Now there is an entire generation–a generation as familiar with YouTube and NetFlix and Amazon Instant Video and iTunes as I was with the flavors of Slurpees available at my local neighborhood 7-Eleven–that has grown up with that.  (And don’t even get me started on social media!)  My son doesn’t care that the episodes of MythBusters he’s watching were filmed 7 years ago; my daughter doesn’t give a rip that the Anime she is enjoying were broadcast originally in Japan in 2003; they are products of the Internet age, and don’t care.  And for me, a long-time nerd, that the episode of “Top Gear” I’m watching was made in 2004 matters to me not a whit; it’s still fun to watch.  These are the times we live in, and the big media companies simply don’t get it.

Used to be, when I moved someplace new–and when I lived in Santa Cruz, I did it on an almost-yearly basis–I did three things immediately:  Unpack and set up my stereo, get out all my books and put them on the shelves, and subscribe to my newspaper of choice.  Getting everything else set up took a back seat–even the phone.  But music, books, and news were critical.

Now?  Now, I take out my iPhone, iPad, and Mac, and I have all three immediately.  I haven’t subscribed to a newspaper in nearly a decade.  My books are all in boxes.  I don’t even have a stereo.  My entire music and book collection I carry with me all the time, and the news I can access whenever I like, wherever I like.  For the media companies, this is of course a monumental disaster.  For the consumer, it’s unbelievably convenient and wonderful.  Talk about overcoming the PITA principle!

Until such a time as media companies like HBO and Time Warner and Comcast get on board with the fact that not only do we live in an a la carte world, but that denying people that access is counter-productive not only to their business model but also to their bottom line, we’ll continue to get pushed to sign up for things like the New York Times’ new Opinion-section Only Subscription App.  And I’ll say it again:  I doubt I’m the only person in the world who doesn’t want to subsidize overpaid ass-clowns just to get the content I want.

It’s an a la carte world, media companies; time to get over it and move along.  Or you’ll get run over.

 

The PITA Principle

14 Wednesday May 2014

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Image courtesy of Wiggins Marketing

OK, yes: I should be flogged for such a bad pun.  I beg forgiveness.

I’m in high tech, and in high tech we love our acronyms.  We love them so much, we even have an acronym for them:  TLAs, or “three-letter acronyms”.  Sometimes you get longer ones, but often they’re three letters.  But in this case we have a four-letter acronym: PITA.  “Pain in the ass”.  And I want to share a theory with y’all about why certain things get adopted by the public and world at large, and other things don’t.  I call this The PITA Principle.

The PITA Principle is simple:  The more of a pain in the ass something is to do, the less likely people will do it.  This seems obvious, right?  But the thing is, when you look at a lot of things that seem confusing from a rational perspective–why don’t people buy electric cars more often?–it’s because of The PITA Principle.  Having an electric car is more of a PITA than a gasoline car.  The world infrastructure is designed around gas cars that can be refueled in a few minutes, every 300 miles or so.  Gas stations are distributed accordingly.  People plan their trips based on this.  Their subconscious expectations are all geared towards it.  So why would you switch from something that goes 350 miles on a single refueling, said refueling taking less than 5 minutes, to something that goes less than 100 miles on a single charge, and recharging takes hours?  Even if doing so is cheaper, and more environmentally sound?  The PITA Principle, baby; it’s easier.  I think it’s that simple.

This explains the adoption of a ton of things that might–especially to curmudgeons–seem weird.  Why email rather than physical mail?  It’s easier!  The PITA Principle!  You can email in seconds, from your laptop, wherever you are; to mail something physical requires stamps and envelopes and licking and walking to the mailbox and paying money.  It’s not much of a PITA, but it’s more of one than sending email.

Which also explains why teens text so durn much; it’s even less of a PITA than email.  And furthermore, it’s less of a PITA (for a teen) than talking on the very same phone!  “Why?” you might reasonably ask.  Because when you talk on the phone, you have to be in a location with a reasonable amount of privacy, as does your calling partner; you have to deal with the emotional content of their voice, and correspondingly control your own vocal dynamics; you have to hang up or put the person on hold if interrupted, and so do they; and on and on.  It’s more of a PITA.  Texting is easier.  Teens text.

Or move on over into the political realm.  Despite the fact that the Republicans’ platform is out of step with more than 2/3 of the country (seriously; look it up), they continue to be competitive, are in charge of the House of Representatives, numerous states, may grab the Senate, and continue to be competitive in Presidential elections.  How is that possible?  Democrats far outnumber Republicans; Democratic positions (raise the minimum wage; increase Medicare and Medicaid coverage; improve Social Security; get government out of doctor/patient decisions; etc.) are wildly popular compared to Republican positions.  How do they keep winning?  Yes, incumbency; yes, Gerrymandering; yes, cheating.  But I also believe the PITA Principle plays a big role.  What’s easier?  Voting for the guy (or woman) who you’re familiar with, whose name you know, who you are used to.  “The Devil you know.”  The PITA point is lower.  Incumbents win because voting for them is easier.  The PITA Principle.

This is reflected in a lot of high tech success stories.  Not all, but some.  Why did Apple sell a b’zillion iPods, when there were so many other MP3 players out there?  Because by browbeating record companies and artists and publishers and making iTunes pricing very consistent, and making the downloading process easier and simpler than the competitors, Jobs lowered the PITA factor to a point where it was significantly better than his competitors, and thus won the market.  Why do people still buy more iPhones than Android phones?  Lower PITA point.  (Though Android is now very, very close, and in some ways better.)  Why do iPads continue to outsell other tablets?  The PITA point, which not only takes in the tablets themselves, but how they interact with iTunes, your computer (particularly if you’re using a Mac desktop or laptop), and the other iPads, iPhones, and Macs in your home.  Apple’s products, in the main, have extremely low PITA points, and they charge accordingly.

You can also see this, very much, in a business environment.  For example, at a previous job at [formerly awesome company that no longer exists], one team was performing software source control using a very sophisticated, graphical interface tool, while another team used a very rough-and-ready, command-line tool for their source control.  The graphical tool was more powerful, more technically sophisticated, did a better job and ensuring source security, was superior at preventing source collisions and workflow errors . . . and people hated it, and we all eventually moved back to the command-line tool, kludgy though it was.  Why?  The graphical tool was way more of a PITA to use and maintain, and the command-line tool was simpler and easier to use (and easier to spoof when something went wrong, too).  The lower PITA point won out, even though the company was actually selling the graphical tool!  A lower PITA point buys you a lot.

I’m sure someone smarter than me, with better math, economic, sociological, and business knowledge, would be able to put together charts, graphs, figures, and PowerPoint slides to make this into a true scientific study.  I’m sure there’s some kind of way to enumerate PITA values for particular products or processes, and correlate PITA points to prices and profit margins, but I’m not that guy.  John Nash could probably do it and win another Nobel Prize.  But I’m just a humble writer.  A humble writer who sincerely hopes someone smarter does take up this gauntlet, and see where it goes.

A Brief Meditation on Software Obsolescence

27 Sunday Apr 2014

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Dead too soon, far ahead of its time

I have been fascinated with high tech stuff as long as I can remember.  Growing up in the 60s right in the middle of the Apollo mission push, tech permeated the culture, and I sucked it up like a sponge.  The first book I ever had, bought by my dad as a bribe so I would read the school’s execrable “Dick and Jane” readers (Yes, I’m that old) was titled, simply, “Space”, about outer space and exploring it.

So I’ve been doing tech for a long time.  And I’ve been in the high tech industry my entire career, from before there was a Web, and when the Internet was young.  I’m used to it.  I’m familiar with it.  And one of the things you get used to is the ridiculously fast pace; you take a year off, you miss a couple of updates, and you’re screwed.  You get accustomed to it; you get so you expect it.  And in general, it’s a good thing; those bugs that annoy the crap out of you, or the slow speed of a particular app, or that lack of functionality that really drives you nuts, well, just wait a bit and hey, presto! it’s fixed.

But that has a down side.  For example:  One of my favorite PDA devices of all time was a combined PDA/game device designed for the Palm OS called the Tapwave Zodiac.  This was a sweet gizmo, with all the functionality of a high-end Palm PDA, but with game buttons and a small analog joystick, on which you could play music, manage your calendar and contacts, take notes, and every other thing you could do with your iPhone except make phone calls.  It had a beautiful, full-color touch screen (stylus required), felt great in your hand, a couple of SD slots to expand the memory space . . . it was a damn fine piece of work.

In 2005.

Two years later, the iPhone would hit the market, and to my eye it was basically an improved Tapwave Zodiac with no expansion slots that didn’t require a stylus and let you make phone calls.  The big difference was that it was backed by Apple.  The result:  iPhones are everywhere (despite Steve Ballmer’s idiotic predictions) while the Zodiac is known only to  a few obsessive enthusiasts such as myself.  It is obsolete.  And alas, all the software on it–some of which was quite wonderful–is obsolete as well.

And that’s something that is often overlooked in our fast-moving high tech environment:  The stuff that is lost.

Now don’t get me wrong:  I love living in this world.  I love the fast pace; I love the sense that we’re only one or two revisions away from an iPhone that comes with a jetpack or a transporter or something.  But sometimes you lose stuff along the way.

One of my favorite games on the Zodiac was “MicroQuad“, a cart racing game not dissimilar from MarioKarts.  If you were to see it in action, you would note the close resemblance to the iOS game Cro-Mag Rally.  But it’s not the same on the iPhone without the analog controller; if you’ve played any iOS games that require a “virtual” controller, i.e. one on the screen, you know that it’s just a weak imitation.  (I keep hoping someone will invent a plug-in piece of hardware that allows you attach buttons and an analog controller to an iPhone for some real console gameplay.  Seven years and still nothing, though.  Sigh.  Somebody do a Kickstarter for it, okay?)  So MicroQuad, a true favorite, is obsolete.

Similarly, in the early years of iOS, a company called Glu created a slow-moving, almost meditative “action” game called Glyder.  You’re a (female!) hang glider pilot in a mysterious world, collecting jewels and the like.  It wasn’t face paced; nothing died; you didn’t shoot anything; and I just loved it.  It was popular enough that they made a sequel.  But iOS never stays still, and Glu decided, for financial reasons I’m sure, that continuing to update Glyder to keep pace with iOS changes didn’t work for them.  And now Glyder is obsolete, and I can’t play another of my favorite games.

A simliar fate has apparently befallen Sandlot Games’ title “Glyph“, which was one of the very, very few games I enjoyed during my brief foray on a Windows phone (the HTC Universal, a wonderful phone that was stuck with a truly miserable operating system).  I was thrilled when Glyph was ported to iOS.  And then I was much less thrilled when it was summarily eliminated.  A victim of Sandlot’s acquisition by Digital Chocolate?  A pure financial decision?  I don’t know; all I know is that I can’t play Glyph any more, and it bums me.

Hell, there’s even a term for this:  Abandonware.

Obsolescence is something we live with all the time, with all the gadgets around us.  We expect it.  But somehow it feels even more brutal and arbitrary in the software world, a world made up of bits, of ephemeral zeroes and ones floating in a virtual world, stored for the most part in “the cloud”, so many layers of abstraction away that it’s hard to track.  And when something goes away, you can’t even pull up a picture on Google or find it on eBay.  It’s gone.  Obsolete.  And it gives me a little pang.

I guess even in the beating breast of the most hard-core techie, a bit of a romantic luddite lurks.