adamyntium

Category: society

  • Getting hired by Google

    I recently noticed that a fellow Googler posted some thoughtful tips about interviewing at Google, and — now that I’m a bit more comfortable blogging about Work — I figured I’d contribute to the conversation a bit by offering my own, unofficial tips.

    Note the unofficial part. I work in Search Quality; aside from occasionally being asked to interview candidates (like most Googlers) — I have nothing to do with our recruiting, recruiters, etc., nor do I pretend to speak for the HR folks. The stuff below is based on my own observations and opinions.

    * * *

    Application and interview tips
    Broadly: be interesting, be humble, demonstrate outstanding competence in your direct area, briefly highlight your well-roundedness (academically, workwise, and personally), and clarify how you are an excellent
    fit with both the position you’re applying for and Google overall.

    Admittedly, with an insane number of applications a year, it is a bit of a numbers game.  Some outstanding people get rejected.  And, though I haven’t witnessed this personally, I’m sure some jerks get offers.  Luckily, Google’s been overhauling its hiring processes, and I’m optimistic that particularly the percentage of great people getting overlooked (in relation to the number of apps) will decrease.

    Some specific tips and notes:

    • Write a decent cover letter

      • Write with a tone that’s professional yet warm… not stiff or dry.  Your (discernible) voice should come through.
      • Keep it to one page (max!) or less.  Maybe even a lot less.
      • Convince Google of the fits described above — that’s critical!!!
    • Your resume can be in PDF, Word, HTML, or text formats (unless otherwise requested, of course!)

      • But note that it will be ultimately printed out.  This means that reasonable pagination can be helpful and also suggests that a comprehensive 20 page document is perhaps not a great idea.  When you want your recruiter and interviewers to know more about your background & interests, links are your friends. 

    • Respectful persistence can be appropriate

      • If you genuinely have another offer on the table, let your recruiter know! If the recruiter promised to get back with you in [x] days, and in [x+1 or x+2] days you haven’t heard back, politely e-mail them.
    • If you have a friend at Google who can articulately and sincerely vouch for you, that can work in your favor.

      • Your association / relationship with that person matters.  They’ll be asked how they know you and how well they know you (and your skills).
    • Passion matters and is skillfully perceived.  You’re probably wasting your time unless you really are
      excited about a particular position.
    • Getting turned down for one Google position does not mean you’re ineligible to apply for another position down the road.
    • General interview advice that probably applies for pretty much any company:

      • Ask thoughtful questions.
      • Allow time for traffic and parking and finding the right building. Google — at least the Mountain View campus — is a big place!
      • Dress one or two steps better than you expect your interviewers to be.  Less than that, and people may wonder about your judgment. More than that, and people may think you’re clueless or arrogant.

        • The “right” dress at Google probably varies by department. Engineering folks tend to be more informally dressed than sales folks.  If you’re interviewing for a senior management position, I’d probably dress a bit more formally than you would for an intern interview.  But the official advice also really makes sense here:  dress comfortably.  If you feel comfortable and confident, it’ll show.
      • Get a good night’s sleep the two nights before.  Sleep deficits are cumulative.  If you have a
        morning interview, make sure you’re getting up early the two or three mornings before to get yourself ready to be mentally and physically alert during your interview time.  On a similar health note, drink and eat smartly the day of your interview.  Hunger pangs are distracting.
      • Invest in a good pen to take to interviews.  The heft and reliability can be a real-even-if-small confidence booster.  Taking occasional notes can help you remember info or questions for later, and also might indicate a sense of thoughtfulness and interest to your interviewer.
      • On the whole, think of interviews kind of like first dates.  You don’t want to do all or even most of the talking.  You’re there to impress, to learn, to help determine whether there’s a good potential for a relationship.  First impressions are important.  Show you are caring and thoughtful by asking good questions.  Avoid having spinach in your teeth (floss beforehand!).

    Possibly-little-known factoid:

    No Googler — not even Larry or Sergey — can singlehandedly extend an employment offer to anyone.  While candidates don’t have to go through as many interviews nowadays, most candidates — regardless of level — typically interview with quite a few peers; team-fit is critical!

    * * *

    I expect to offer some more Google-thoughts in the future, but — as a reminder — this is my personal blog, and as such, I expect to generally blather on about anything I feel like discussing, ranting, dissecting, punning, lamenting, etc… which is more likely than not to be boring to the impatient sort.

    Oh, and one last thing: please keep comments on-topic as a courtesy not only to me, but to the cool folks reading my blog. Thanks!

    * * *

    Related entries:
    – A blunt note to HR folks and interviewers
    – How to evaluate your current job & career… and thoughtfully consider future options

    and lastly, for a blast-from-the-past… some perspective & a bit of cranky ranting…

    – What do you do? (self = job?) And how are you?

  • How much would YOU pay not to be obligated to tip?

    I’ve had it with tipping.  The more traveling I do—for business or pleasure—the more I despise the uncertainty, the uncomfortableness, the need to have petty cash on hand.  When will someone—an influential someone—say ENOUGH IS ENOUGH?!

    Tip too little, and you risk imperiling the quality of service you receive in the future from that person… plus you may look like an idiot or a miser in front of friends and business acquaintances.

    Tip too much, and you look like a chump… and your wallet is made thinner (sometimes much thinner).  And you feel like a moron for being taken advantage of.  Heck, in some countries, you risk really offending someone!

    This is one of the many reasons why I love Europe: you typically round up to the nearest euro when you eat out, and that’s that.  Adding to the coolness… for takeout food and pretty much else, what you see on the billboard or pricetag is what you pay.  15EUR?  You pay 15EUR; taxes, fees, etc., all included.

    Now, back to the insanity that we endure in the States… Here’s just a sampling of recommended tips from a recent AAA (Automobile Association of America) article:

    $2-$3 to your shuttle driver, $2 per suitcase to the skycap, 15-20% for the taxi driver, $2-$3 for a shoeshine, up to $5/night to your hotel maid, $5/day to a pool attendant (?!), up to $3 per round to the bartender and $20 (!) to your sommelier.

    Sick yet?  I am.  After all, where’s the $5 we should be giving to our professor after a fine lecture, the $3 to the garbage man when he picks up our smelly refuse, $5 to the guy who trims our garden, $4 to the busboy in your work cafeteria, and $10 for your colleague after he helps you draft a memo.

    But that’s ridiculous, you note.  Isn’t the colleague already getting a salary?  Why should you be responsible for bribing him to do a job that he’s already supposed to be doing?

    And you may further argue, hey, but the waiter is getting a crap salary… if it weren’t for our tips, he’d practically starve.  But, I’d retort, why the hell is it OUR (awkward) responsibility to make up for employers’ cheapness?  And who the hell picks 1) who gets tips and 2) how much a “proper” tip is by profession and location?

    Don’t get me wrong:  I think that everyone deserves a living, decent wage.  And I’d be quite pleased to have 15% or whatever automatically tacked on to my restaurant bill… so that the cost of my meal actually covered an appropriate salary for all involved with the occasion.  What about crappy service?  I’d do what I do when I encounter crappy service or products anywhere else:
    – Firmly yet politely complain to the right people.
    – If the matter remained unresolved, simply refuse to patronize the establishment again and warn my friends.

    …and, of course, the opposite for good service (yes, I *do* write “thank you for the outstanding service” letters, sometimes by hand… and I wish more people did this).

    Frankly, I doubt most folks are primarily motivated by money in their jobs anyway.  Does giving the waitress an extra $1 cancel out the urgent and occasionally rude demands we sometimes inflict upon her?  Not to her, I’d bet.  In fact, I’m pretty sure she’d rather we stuffed the dollar back in our wallet and treated her with respect and patience.

    By extension, one could even see tips as demeaning… suggesting that “those kind” of people are only apt to do a good job if they’re thrown fish (dollars) like trained seals.  You don’t see people giving tips to lawyers and doctors, and no, it’s not purely a pay thing.  Frankly, I’m betting my bartender friends make quite a bit more per hour than most of my lawyer friends… honestly.

    Of course, with all this said, I’m not only angry, but also rather resigned and un-optimistic about the crappy tip-required culture of ours ever being reformed.  I mean, what would it take?  If Our Goddess Angelina stopped tipping tomorrow, she’d just be vilified in the Enquirer and nothing would change.  If Bush didn’t tip next week, people would just (probably correctly) assume that he was unable to compute the tip even using a calculator.  No, I think it’d take an act of God, or maybe a good-looking denizen from outer space.  Until then, I guess I better just remember to keep a lot of ones in my wallet and just grit my teeth when I say “thank you.”

  • How I blew off Google… and more pre-Google career tidbits

    Happy Googleversary!
    As I was getting ready to board the Google Shuttle home recently, a colleague (who started at Google on the same day I did) poked me and jokingly wished me a “Happy Googleversary!”  Right then it hit me that, yeah, I had been at Google for a full year.  Wow!

    Also in the last few weeks, coincidentally I presume, many folks — particularly fellow alums — have been e-mailing me to ask about what it’s like at Google, how they can get a job there, etc.  I will be e-mailing all of
    them back (sorry for the delay!), but in the meantime it’s prompted me to do something I’ve been planning to do for a while:  write a few (okay, maybe more than a few) words on how I ended up at Google and what my thoughts are about working there.

    How I blew Google off
    As many of you likely know, I was fascinated with Google for years before I started working there.  In fact, in 2000, I featured Google in a department newsletter I wrote for the then-high-flying high-tech PR firm — Niehaus Ryan Wong (“NRW”) — which I worked for as an Interactive Strategist.  In 2001, my entire department was laid off and so I got to Google for “how can I save my pride and find a cool new job?”  I ended up using my online communication skills to keep me sane and mostly in the black doing consultant / contractor stuff.

    I think it was in early 2002 that I made a pretty big mistake, however. The conversation went something like this:

    Friend:  Hey… I got a job at Google… you know, the search engine… it’s really great!  I think it has some huge potential, you should work here!  Want me to submit your resume?

    Me:  Congrats!  But… it’s in, what, Mountain View or something?  And — no offense — how interesting could working on search really be?  And I’m doing just fine on my own, but thanks!

    Yes, I now rank that as one of my most severe and painful bouts with cluelessness.  I wised up not too long after that and applied for a couple of jobs at Google; got some interviews and the recruiters ultimately told me
    politely and firmly that I had a good attitude, fine credentials blah blah blah, but wasn’t a good fit for the positions.  And looking back, it’s clear they were right.

    The good life… and how I grew weary of it
    Over the next few years, I enjoyed working as a consultant / contractor with some super companies, a bunch of great people, and some understandably demanding but usually interesting clients.  But despite the cool projects and decent money and improving professional reputation, I grew weary.  I missed having a set of regular colleagues I could banter with and learn from face-to-face.  I missed having a mentor.  I wanted, also, to mentor others… and not just online.  I got tired of flying back and forth to Los Angeles for a client; ’twas a nice client, but I hated the city and the traffic that plagued it.

    Most of all, I felt wistful about never having worked for a medium/big company, never getting to really have a feeling of ownership in a company that provided products/services internationally.  I wanted to be even a small part of something big but not faceless, have an impact, have significant room for growth careerwise and otherwise.

    As you’ll see below, I am thankful to have found this in Google.  It’s not a utopia; there are things about the company that greatly frustrate me, there are days in which I feel overwhelmed and stressed.  But these days are few in number and gratifyingly dwarfed by the days in which I am very, very happy to be surrounded by people I respect, doing things I see as valuable, for a company that excites me and treats me ridiculously well.

    A few words about companies I worked with or even just interviewed with pre-Google
    Before I talk more about Google, I thought I’d share with you a few quick personal thoughts about some companies.

    Some companies I worked with before Google:

    • Plaxo: Very smart people. Collegial office conveniently served by a shuttle from Caltrain. Fascinating problems to solve. And their core product is hugely useful, increasingly well-designed, and truly has no equals. No need to send out “update my info please” notes; just enjoy the network effect of having lots of addressbook info updated. My interviews here were friendly, hands-on (“Okay, show me how you’d do this…”), and challenging.
    • Intrapromote:
      Friendly, hard-working, supportive folks who’ve been doing SEO for quite some time… and who happen to have one of the more concise, unpretentious, and underrated SEO blogs around. Through Intrapromote, I got to work on some pretty huge online campaigns with major Fortune 500 companies and the experience opened my eyes to a lot of tough issues that large sites face every day. The
      interview process with Intrapromote was refreshing: very open, informal, and sensible (no lame questions, no useless under-pressure crap).
    • Virgin Digital:
      I’m saddened by how this service flamed out in the U.S. The execs I worked with here were admiringly passionate about music and about enabling people to share their love of and insights about music with each other. They were motivated by the right ideas but — given that the service didn’t survive — unfortunately hobbled by either a lack of resources, bad luck, poor execution or all of the above. My
      interviews were… well, not really interviews. This was a case of, hey, Adam, we know your work, we’ve had some good chats, when can you start on this project? That’s not to say that Virgin’s consultant/contractor hiring was haphazard or careless, but rather that the President (who hired
      me directly) was pragmatic, efficient, and no-nonsense… operating on an intuitive (and, I humbly think, accurate :-P) sense that I was a decent and appropriate fellow to work with.

    And companies I interviewed with and received offers from immediately prior to
    working for Google:

    • Art.com: Classy and friendly people, very nice office overlooking the bay, and a damn neat product. The recruiter I dealt with was helpful and instantly likeable. All of my interviews were comfortable, reasonable, and — most importantly — truly two-way… conversation, not interrogations.
    • Microsoft’s MSN AdCenter: The MSN AdCenter campus is in beautiful Redmond (nice!) near one of my favorite cities (Seattle… yay!) but… located adjacent to a shopping mall away from the main MS campus (yuck!). Interview questions tended to focus on what I’ve done, and how I might handle client situations. Not terribly surprising. Suggestion to the AdCenter team and all other companies, for that matter: If you’re having a final-stage candidate do a full day of interviews, invite him to lunch with some of his potential-future colleagues. Giving him a box lunch to eat alone in an office is not only a bummer for the candidate, but robs you of the opportunity to see how he or she relates to others… and that sort of interaction, IMHO, can be quite revealing ;-). On a more positive note, I was relieved and pleased at how thoughtful my MS recruiter was throughout the process. When I told the guy I had an offer from Google, the fellow didn’t throw any chairs, but rather was extremely kind and supportive and urged me to take the time to make a decision that was best for me.

  • Check out this outstanding microloan site! (and join me in supporting a library in Kenya)

    I’m usually a firm believer that charity—like praying—is best a private affair.  In particular, I have an especially high admiration for generous folks who give anonymously.

    With that said, however, I’m going to share with you a business that I just helped fund… and I hope you will join in!

    UPDATE: I’m thrilled to note that within 24 hours after I posted the original business profile here, that business was fully funded!  See the comments on this entry for more details.  The profile now shown below is selected randomly (on each page view) by Kiva.

    —

    After evaluating many possible businesses / business people to invest in, I decided to support Ms. Wamaitha in Kenya in her drive to expand her current library and continue her support work fighting HIV/AIDS.  You can learn more about her and her efforts by clicking the photo above, and in the meantime, here’s a relevant snippet:

    She is requesting a loan of US $ 2,000. Her budget is: US $ 1,000 to purchase assorted education books, journals and magazines, US $500 to purchase furniture for the reading space, US $ 300 to decorate the library and build shelves and US $ 200 advertise and acquire necessary license. This will increase her income to an average of US $ 100 per week. She plans to utilize the income to keep her children in school and to expand her business further. Jane is hard working and will be able to repay the loan.

    You can make a loan for as little as $25… and in about 2 minutes via credit card (it’s done through PayPal, but you don’t need an account with them, just a credit card).  It’s also interesting to note that 100% of loans made through Kiva so far have been repaid in full!

    *  *  *

    Unlike with my most recent post, I’m not going to tag anyone.  But I think it’d be a marvelous meme—SEO-blog or otherwise—having this opportunity propagated throughout the blogosphere.  So feel free to reverse-tag me and support Ms. Wamaitha or another worthy businessperson from Kiva, post about your contribution on your blog, and encourage others to do the same.  Let’s see if we can meet her modest business loan need by the end of this year, and—even better—see how many other businesses we can support :-D.

    Lastly, props to my friend Huy (yes, the awesome Huy of Orkut fame :-P) for letting me know about this wonderful site.

  • Second Life — Amazing, beautiful, compelling… and not for me

    What if you could build a better world, from the ground up?  What if you could even start “yourself” over… You.v2 or even New You; a different hairstyle, thinner, maybe even a different race or gender?  What if you could escape the hellish aspects of our world whenever and for however long you liked?  Glamorous, confident, rich, powerful, whimsical, witty YOU.  What if you could, indeed, have yourself a Second Life?

    You can.  Via the amazingly powerful and immersive Second Life world online, you can build or even just experience your own 3D world… with thousands of other people from around the world in real time.  Music, art, religion, geekery (of course!), and (duh!) sex.  It’s all there, and discovering—even participating in it—is practically as easy as pointing and clicking.  When I first tried out Second Life (“SL”) years ago after meeting one of the founders of Linden Labs (Second Life’s creator), I was floored by the fluidity of the experience, just how easy it was to join, get around, meet people, and actually have interesting and entertaining conversations.

    But after exploring SL for about ten hours over a long weekend, I grew wary… and have infrequently returned.  I’ve thought quite a bit about SL since then, and have been reluctant to voice my thoughts; as a geek who has indeed made some true friends (and, yes, even met stunningly brilliant and beautiful members of the opposite sex) via online interactions even back in the 80s, I worried that I’d seem hypocritical discussing my dismissal of SL.  However, an essay today by Ted—“Second Life? How ‘bout getting a First Life”—has prompted me to blather on a bit about my thoughts on virtual reality.

    Ted does a fine job describing what SL is, beginning with this:

    Second Life isn’t a game, a chat room, an eBay knock-off, a social networking site, a Starbucks, or a media service—it’s ALL OF THEM COMBINED. Second Life is, in a nutshell, a reality simulation (oxymoron?) that attempts to synthesize, using a 3D audiovisual user environment:[…]

    In the end, Ted admits this:

    Is it fun? You bet your butt it is. Did it foster human interaction when I tried it? Sure. Did it foster artistic appreciation? Sure. Did I want to go back to 2L as soon as I logged off? Yup. In fact, I was so compelled about it, I was thinking about it when I woke up this morning. And I don’t know if that’s healthy.  I think that’s the reason why I won’t be logging back on to 2L for a while. I can see it ruining peoples First Lives. One of the players I talked to on Second Life said he had been on twelve hours a day since September 6. OUCH.  I went ahead and deleted it from my Macbook.


    But I might be reinstalling it.

    In between his expressions of admiration and his cautionary note, he touches upon the concern highlighted in his post’s title; basically, with such a rich Second Life, what can happen to one’s First Life?

    Now, mind you, I’m the first to roll my eyes at all the scary-stories-of-the-day from clueless journalists and nincompoop congresscritters and all who talk about banning various games because “of the harm to the children!” What a load of crap. And indeed, I concede that Ted’s final paragraph is edging a bit uncomfortably close to the alarmist for my taste.

    Personally, I worry less about virtual reality games being a danger to society… and more about the tradeoffs they pose to me. It’s all about personal responsibility, and I know that, hell, I barely have enough time to deepen, much less expand the number of my own friendships… barely enough time to keep my friggin’ apartment clean… barely enough time to call my Grandpa, compose new music, meditate in the beautiful parks nearby, finally take up yoga, lose those 17 pounds that are weighting me down, and become conversant in Spanish and/or French. In my FIRST LIFE!

    In a nutshell, then, time that I spend in Second Life is time taken away from my first life. And — again, speaking for myself at least — I need fewer distractions, not more.

    Sure, you could argue “Look, ya dumb luddite, what about those hours you spend watching TV? Playing video games? Reading blogs? Writing your own useless blatherings? How is that crap any different than blowing off some steam or having some harmless fun in an imaginary world?” For starters, I don’t watch TV (except for the occasional Simpsons episode or the satellite TV on JetBlue), nor do I play video games. So that saves a huge chunk of time ;-). But even those passtimes are fundamentally different than virtual reality participation.

    You see, when you’re in SL, for instance, unless you’re a total hermit crocheting in the corner, you’re interacting with other people. Other HUMANS. And, I’d guess, you’re likely to form attachments or at least become part of the social fabric for others. As a once a month visitor, it’s a non-issue, but if you drop by weekly or even daily, I envision it becomes like a bar: people know your name, they’re happy you came, yadda yadda. The more time you spend, the more you become a part of this world and the people in it, and the more they become a part of your personal life.

    Think this is nuts? Have you not read the studies which show how we humans not only identify with fictional characters on TV, but actually become emotionally attached to them? Feel that they are an integral part of our lives… feel sorrow at their losses, joys at their accomplishments? Have you been living in a cave whilst millions of people became enthralled with OJ and JonBenet and countless other folks who are no more real (as in, someone you have met, have talked with, have interacted with in ANY way) than avatars representing real people online?

    * * *

    So, by participating in SL, it’s not only easy, but perhaps unavoidable to find acceptance, friendship, and attachment within the new world… such that it becomes perhaps almost required to sustain or even deepen those relationships. You miss playing your video games for a week, no sweat. You miss a TV show here and there, and you can always bittorrent it or have a friend fill you in on what happened. But virtual reality is different, no?

    * * *

    I firmly believe that all of us have limits of emotional inclusion. While some can cultivate and sustain more relationships, I don’t think anyone’s ability in this context is infinite. At some point, people you relate to, care about, and regularly interact with by necessity substitute either for others you have or have had a relationship with, or — perhaps more critically — others you COULD relate with or get to know better.

    And here’s where I am most likely to potentially create a firestorm of controversy: I believe, with all my heart, that online relationships in the aggregate are worth less than in-person relationships. Mind you, I happily and meaningful maintain a number of friendships with folks online and I value them (both the friendships and the people behind them). But — again, on the whole — there’s undeniably too much missing. While I’m often wary of statistics in this context, I do believe what I learned in Communications Studies in college: more than 90% of communications are non-verbal. The way one positions his arms… how someone looks or doesn’t look you in the eye… a person’s posture… how they touch you, how they shake your hand. Logically, so little of this makes sense, but emotionally and spiritually, it is near-everything.

    It is for this reason that — as I have grown up — I have made the personal decision to leverage online communications as a means to an end: specifically, in the personal (non-work) context, interactions are typically intended to sustain, enhance, clarify, or even create relationships in the flesh. Life — okay, my First Life — is too fleeting to think and plan otherwise.

    * * *

    And so we return — quite circuitously, I admit — to my personal objections to Second Life. It’s not that it’s not real enough… it’s that it’s just real enough to serve as a quasi-substitute for life-in-person. And furthermore, it’s designed not to reflect, much less improve or enhance, one’s existing relationships (a la the ideal of Facebook, IMHO), but rather to create an alternate albeit real reality that necessitates tending to.

    * * *

    There’s a place for SL. First and foremost, I don’t wish to be judgmental towards those who find value (or friendship or love or financial profits or whatnot) in SL. The service itself has clearly been designed with passion, with care… and it’s something I greatly admire and respect. And I can absolutely see the worth of SL for many folks and in many contexts: artists wishing to create, to share. People who, for reasons of geography or physical handicaps or family obligations or anything else, find the social aspects of SL more compelling and available than what they have in their FL. Or folks who are entirely comfortable developing, to quote Fight Club, single serving friends. Or researchers, hackers, shy people… the list goes on.

    Second Life is a fascinating world, a truly amazing accomplishment in virtual reality, an engaging experiment in every respect. It’s just not for me.

  • What makes a blog a community? And are such communities indeed highly fickle?

    I’ve spent much of this weekend dealing with my blogfeeds.  I have well over 200 (haven’t bothered to count ‘em exactly), and I’m tens of thousands of posts behind.  Some feeds I’ve just had to (often regretfully) unsubscribe from, others I’ve “reset to zero” (admittedly just masking a larger problem), but—most interestingly to me—I’ve become more acutely aware that some blogs have a thriving community and others do not.

    Some examples of blogs I perceive to have strong communities:

    What indicates a strong community on a blog? (I’m not counting “meta” sites like Digg, Slashdot, MeFi, etc., by the way)

    • Entries tend to have many comments.
    • Commenters tend to stick around over time (there aren’t just a lot of one-off commenters on individual entries).
    • Commenters aren’t just “talking” to the blogger, but also to each other.

    So what helps establish and maintain a strong blog community?  Some guesses:

    • Reasonably frequent posts (2+ a week)
    • EASY commenting (e.g., no insane captchas, required registrations, etc.)
    • A fixed topic that fascinates a lot of people (politics, gossip, sex, techie stuff, etc.)
    • Many readers (though, perhaps unsurprisingly, this is clearly neither necessary nor sufficient)
    • Popularity of the blogger in real life (due to career, good looks, large friend base, perceived influence, etc.)
    • Popularity of the blogger online.

    The last item is complex enough to merit its own subitems ;-).  Popular folks online recursively attract more popularity because:

    • Their blogs are linked from many other sites (more traffic, greater perception of “importance”)
    • Commenters (rightly) perceive that posting on their blogs will attract attention to *them* (the commenters).
    • Additionally, commenters (again, often correctly) assume that A-listers may notice them and think more highly of them, link to them, etc.

    Note, by the way, that “compelling, original content” and “engaging writing” don’t seem to correlate with the strength of blog communities.  I have plenty of blogs in my feed list that have amazing content and feature outstanding writing… but are devoid of any measurable sense of community.  Conversely, I’ve seen quite a few blogs (no, not the ones I listed at top!) that tend to offer somewhat stale writing and uncompelling content, yet still feature a thriving community.  I suppose it’s much like the Entertainment world at large, eh?  Popular megab(r)ands rake in the fans and the bucks while many independent artists starve for funds and attention.  But I digress.

    *  *  *

    I do have a somewhat obnoxious theory, though.  I think about 2% of blog readers account for 98% of blog comments.  The LC:  Loquacious Commenterati.  Often un- or independently-employed, quite often geeky (sitting at a computer all day and often into the night). 

    Why does this matter?

    1. Blog communities are likely to be less diverse than one might wish.  My very-smart-and-interesting parents, for instance, do e-mail, send IMs, read newspapers and look at photos online, but I am fairly certain they’ve never commented on a blog.
    2. Blog communities (like any communities, I suppose) can be fickle, both due to selfish reasons (A-lister no longer works for Impressive Company, cute blogger is no longer single) or more extrinsic reasons (commenters get demanding full-time jobs, start getting laid, start having families—though not necessarily all at once!)
    3. Blog communities can pressure bloggers to alter the frequency, topical focus, transparency, monetizeability, and other aspects of their blog, even when such modifications are not necessarily in the bloggers’ interests.

    With all of that said, I must nonetheless insist that I am not attempting to denigrate all LCs (of which, admittedly, I am often one myself).  Many are my kind friends, colleagues I greatly respect, and so on.  But in the aggregate, I still find the seeming-capriciousness of blog communities and LCs to be both fascinating and occasionally disconcerting.

    *  *  *

    So now, in a rather ironic but not-unexpected twist, I welcome your comments below.

    • Why do some blogs boast a thriving community, whereas others are commently-baren?
    • If you’re an LC, what motivates you?  Do you feel that motivates most LCs?
    • Are blog communities and LCs really as fickle as I suggest?  And if so, is that even a bad thing?

  • Crouching Tiger Hidden Charges

    On a recent business trip, I ended up staying at the Hilton London Islington Hotel, since it was next to the business centre hosting the conference I was attending.

    Though by this point I shouldn’t have been shocked, I was nonetheless outraged that a colleague and I paid $57USD for one night of Internet access in our room and also we were expected to pay about $5.50 per minute to call another colleague on his London cellphone from our room phone.  Oh, and adding insult to injury:  we discovered that we had to pay separately for wireless Internet access downstairs; it wasn’t included in the $57 we had just paid.

    So this got me to thinking:  Why do hotels charge so much for such ridiculously minimal (and actually low-cost) incidentals and—more critically—how do they get away with it in a free marketplace?  And what other industries feature such utterly obnoxious gouging?

    As you can imagine, when I came across this article recently—The Hidden Economy—I was fascinated to read some justifications from economists about this very subject.

    They explain that primarily two different types of people patronize establishments and services with cheaper up-front costs but higher per-use or incidental charges:
    – The clueless n00b (except they politely call this person “myopic”) who simply doesn’t expect or even notice the high incidental charges at the “cheap” place or with the “discount” service.
    – The savvy planner (someone who aims to be aware and beat the system by substituting others’ cheaper offerings to replace the main provider’s usuriously-charged services); this person reasonably believes he or she can actually save money overall by being a tightwad and purchasing incidentals elsewhere.

    But what this article fails to address is the apparent inelasticity of business purchases.  That is to say… even as the price rises, purchases of a business good or service often do not fall off proportionally.

    Take the example of hotels, for instance.  Contrary to the inverse relationship exampled in the article (low price hotel has high incidental charges and visa versa), my experience has shown a rather wacky but ultimately understandable proportional ratio of base charges to incidental charges.  Specifically, the pricier the hotel is, the more outrageously high their incidental charges are while, conversely, places like Best Western have relatively low base charges and give away stuff like local calls and Internet access for free.

    So why do companies—even generally thrifty ones—still often book their employees into the expensive-all-‘round hotels?  I don’t think it’s for the amenities or overall comfort (frankly, I’ve found the “cheap” hotels often scoring better on both issues!).  Rather, I’ve found that it seems to come down to proximity issues.  The hotels attached to or near conference centers just seem to be damn expensive in general.

    Of course, this shouldn’t be so surprising, eh?  Time is productivity is money, and time spent schlepping from the conference center to one’s cheaper-but-distant hotel particularly takes time away from in-person networking opportunities and/or naps and so on.

    *  *  *

    With that said, though, I do wonder what would happen if there was greater transparency in hotel charges.  If corporate booking agents for large companies—undoubtedly reasonably cognizant of cost control issues and cost/benefit analyses—were able to quickly compare total expected business-related costs for a stay (e.g., Internet access + breakfasts + a bit of printing or photocopying), might the difference finally tip the scales in favor of the slightly-more-distant hotel?  Or ultimately even result in slightly more sane incidental charges at the near-conference-center hotels?

    For instance, say it’s $270 a night at the Hilton and $170 at the Best Western.  Okay… a thoughtful manager or travel planner might weigh the difference and decide… hmm… I can see my employees, especially if sharing a room, gaining well over $50/day productivity and serendipitous networking encounters by being “close to the action.”

    But after meals and incidentals, if the costs are respectively $350 and $175, then the choice becomes a bit more difficult, right?

    *  *  *

    I suppose the same question of the value of transparency could be asked for other industries in the context of business, but at the moment, it seems like other choices are generally already more transparent.  When we move into the realm of consumer purchase choices, then I agree partially or largely-hidden charges are far more common (in credit cards, telecommunication services, etc.), but in that case I think the base price compared to incidental charges more closely follows the gameable inverse relationship noted in the article above.

    So, then, some questions for you…

    1) What are some other examples of largely-hidden charges in popular business or consumer services?  Do you think greater transparency of these these charges will result in them being lowered over time, or will something else reduce them (gov’t intervention?) or will they remain relatively high?

    2) Other than business-area hotels, what are some other examples of relatively inelastic service/product purchases with high incidental charges?

    3) And on a more fun / less wonky note… what’s the most ridiculous amount you’ve paid for an item or service in the context of a larger product/service? (Mine has to be an $11USD pineapple juice at the top of a large building in Singapore.  I was excited that the base price—for traveling up the elevator to the site-point—was free!  But the incidental cost associated with being required to make a purchase at the top was a bit shocking to me, especially given that I had just enjoyed many glasses of fresh-squeezed juice for 50 cents each that same day :-P)

  • Being under the microscope

    I’ve been at Google about four months, and it’s been a hell of a great ride so far.  I really need to write more about this later, but in a nutshell… my colleagues rock, the flexible and trusting environment is awesome, and I’m very excited about what I’m working on.

    However, I do have to admit to sometimes being a bit freaked out :o.

    I spend a good chunk of my morning reading relevant industry news and also thoughtful blogs from Webmasters and others all around the world.  I glean a lot of great ideas (and yes, sometimes also bugs) that I share with colleagues here at Google. 

    A few days ago, I came across a pretty untraditional note, and I thought, hey… wouldn’t it be kinda funny if I actually went ahead and mailed Al a Tylenol packet?  So I did.  I figured he’d get a chuckle, maybe share it with some friends or even post a quick update on his blog.

    I had no idea that something this silly would capture this much attention!

    Anyway, yeah, this little mailing was indeed sent on a whim from a random Googler (me!), and though I’m a bit shocked by the response, I’m glad that my letter ended up entertaining not only Al, but also lots of other people.

    Along with many others here at Google, I’m working on some very cool projects dealing with Webmaster communications.  But aside from all of that official stuff, I’m reminded that it’s clearly the little things now and then that give a human face to this company.  Not to mention that when one of us Googlers decides to be a bit wacky, it’s far from a private moment 😛

  • What I like about being an American and living in America

    I’ve recently written some things a bit critical about America and American culture (particularly pop culture), and—seeing as how it’s nearing our Independence Day—I figure I ought to share a more positive vibe.  Therefore, I’m offering a few things below (in no particular order) that make me happy to be an American and living in America :-D.  I know that not all of these things are unique to my country or nationality, but I think—in combination—they highlight a positive uniqueness.

    1. The freedom to fail and make a comeback (or comebacks!)
      I know of no other countries where folks can fail—go bankrupt, make their companies go bankrupt, do something really stupid or dastardly in public—and still have such high chances of redeeming themselves with later, more favorable actions.  Sure, there’s still often some stigma to failing, but it’s not fatal or absolute.
    2. The encouragement to be creative and innovative
      I’ve lived in Europe, I’ve traveled to at least two dozen countries around the world, and I’ve never seen a culture with such an openness to wacky, outlandish, and yes, impossible dreams.  This, among admittedly many other factors, is why America has been and remains the center of dot.com bold insanity and brilliance.
    3. The opportunity to get world-class and well-rounded university educations
      Yes, I think many other countries offer better and more comprehensive primary education systems.  And yes, I also know (and envy) that colleges in many other countries charge students $200 USD or less per year! 😮 But with that said—from personal experience and the experiences of my international friends—I truly believe that our universities offer exceptionally top notch educations in both practical and unpractical fields.
    4. The freedom to speak our minds
      In print, on the street corner, and on the Internet.  Within some limits, we can hold up signs depicting our public officials in Nazi regalia, call major CEOs imbeciles and tyrants, and even (confirmed recently) burn our country’s flag.  Though bearing a female nipple is (usually) out, we have a freedom of speech and assembly that billions of others around the world can only dream about.
    5. The environment which straddles superficiality with friendliness, often with charming results
      I’ve cynically derided the American tradition of “How are you?” as a symbol of superficiality.  But when it comes down to it (and again, this is confirmed by many of my international friends), it’s easier to start a friendly random conversation with folks in America than in a great many other countries.  Whereas a former non-American colleague of mine looked baffled and a bit uncomfortable in an elevator when a fellow rider struck up a conversation with him, such goofy friendliness—even if initially superficial—is something that’s often much appreciated and yet also taken for granted.

    *  *  *

    I know this just scratches the surface.

    What things about being American and/or living in America make you happy?

  • A blunt note to HR folks and interviewers

    I wrote this quite a while ago, both to vent my frustrations and also to sincerely urge HR folks and interviewers to improve their practices.  I’ve had pleasurable experiences with most of the companies I’ve interviewed with in the past, but there has still often been quite a bit of room for improvement.  Also, I figured my rant below might make for a useful counterpoint to the plethora of interviewee-advice pages out there :-D.

    *  *  *

    Dear HR folks and interviewers:

    Write or call back when you say you will.  If you don’t, apologize.

    Don’t ask us about our salary history.  That’s rude and completely irrelevant.  Perhaps we were working for the Peace Corp.  Maybe we were wildly underpaid at our last job.  Or crazily overpaid.  Instead, tell us (at least a range of) how much your position is paying and we’ll let you know if that’s aligned with our expectations.

    Make job descriptions descriptive… complete with some day-to-day details.  Cut the jargon and market’y crap.  When your Craigslist ad contains verbiage about “best of breed solutions” and “every customer is #1” and “we offer GENAROUS [sic] benefits! [ahem, such as?]” we don’t know whether to laugh hysterically or run screaming.

    Make the interview day pleasant.  Let us know the names and positions of each person we’ll be interviewing with.  Don’t have us sitting in a room alone for 45 minutes wondering what’s going on.  Maybe even take us out for coffee or lunch with a potential colleague or a group of colleagues if we’re one of the finalists for a particular position.

    Consider starting off with at least a brief bit about your background to help establish a friendly rapport.  Help us see you as a (real, well-rounded) person we’d like to work with, not an adversary or mere interrogator.

    Be respectful of us and our time.  Don’t manage your scheduled phone interview call time on a “+/- 20 minute” basis.  Don’t be on a speakerphone.  Both of those behaviors scream to the candidate “You’re not very important and I really don’t want to be interviewing you.”

    Don’t be cheap-ass about reimbursements.  Reimburse us (promptly, please) for our transportation from the airport, for crying out loud, and the sandwich we grabbed in the terminal so we wouldn’t be starving when we sat down with you at the office.

    Make sure you have our latest resume, not one that you got from the recruiter 6 months ago.

    Remember that interviewing is a two way street.  You’re not just there for grilling us, you’re there to make us excited about your company and the position we’ve applied for (or you’ve recruited us for!)

    Cut it out with the stupid “strengths and weaknesses” questions.  Ask us to tell you about a favorite project or least favorite project, talk to former managers about us, anything where you’re bound to get more interesting and less fake commentary (e.g., “My weakness is that I tend to get too into my work and forget to eat lunch sometimes…”)

    Do share some of our key answers and info with future interviewers at your firm so we’re not asked the same question 5 times in one day.

    If someone at your company is consistently an unpopular or lousy interviewer, don’t have them interview people!

    Ask what we like in a job and work environment.  Ask what makes us happy.  Ask what stresses us out.  This is the sort of thing that’ll help determine if your job is a good match for us (and visa versa).

    And, for the love of God, if at all possible… please don’t make us fill out an application—by hand!—after we’ve already given you a detailed resume and other documentation with all the same info on it.  At least let us type it… please?  We’ll all be much happier 😀