Category: just thinking out loud

I’m running my second half-marathon tomorrow. Goals are:

• Don’t walk over the 13.1 miles
• Finish in under 2:10

Stay tuned, and I’ll update tomorrow as to what happens.

Dear Netflix,

Looks like the competition is heating up. In the words of Gandhi, the fight has begun. It’s been quite an impressive ride though. Your stock price. How you’ve pushed the competition to bankruptcy. Quite impressive.

If you want to win the next round (which by the way is probably the final round of this bout), then you have to massively improve discoverability.

Netflix does a few things very well.

1) Netflix is on all devices
We moved to Roku just about one year ago. It’s fantastic because between Hulu Plus and Netflix we have almost everything we need. Yeah we’ve added Amazon Instant for some newer releases, but I know those are coming to the previously mentioned channels.

On top of that my PC has Netflix. My iPhone and iPad have Netflix. If I hooked up my XBox to do TV, then that would have Netflix. It’s a truly universal platform, and that’s awesome.

2) Netflix recommends wonderfully
Between the fact that I watch a bunch of documentaries and cop TV shows, and the fact that Micky watches a lot of cheesy Rom-Coms, Netflix has us figured out. Their selection isn’t great today (see next point), but of what they have they are able to categorize and relate it to what I’ve seen.

Netflix hosted a massive competition to improve their recommendation engine by 10%. It took 3 research teams over a year to put together the right algorithms, but they did it. It has definitely proven to be a competitive advantage for Netflix, and hopefully the million dollar prize has treated the competitors well.

3) Netflix is very aggressively going after content
Netflix just signed an extremely big deal with DreamWorks and is demonstrating a clear desire to increase its streaming catalogue. The competition is heating up, and so the price  is going to increase as well, but based on CEO statements Netflix is up to the battle.

This is really going to make the platform that much more compelling. However, the one thing that you do horribly is discoverability.

A movie platform, to be successful with discoverability, has to make it easy to search in any dimension that I want that I associate with the movies even after I discover the movie that I think I’m looking for. Movie title, actors, directors, genre are the obvious search topics that are most obvious. Today, you can search on those dimensions, but for Netflix search and discoverability are not the same thing. It’s not delivering the content that matters. Right now the web interface sucks, but it still gets the movies in front of me.

It’s all about how I interact with the content once I’ve had it presented to me. Give me cross-links on top of the movie that I’m looking at. Is it the actor that I’m interested in? Is it the location? What about the writer? Or the style of comedy?

How can you, Netflix, not have this data? And beyond that, how can you not encourage me to build such verticals into queues which are, “Melih’s Caribbean Instant Queue” or “Melih’s Witty British Humo(u)r Instant Queue”. I can have a movie night around self-categorized, self-discovered films, and, oh by the way, it makes Netflix that much smarter.

Also, please make this available on the Roku. Discoverability is even worse on devices than it is on the PC. But that’s a topic for another day.

Very interesting clip about Ataturk, and early Turkish history, from the point of view of the US.

Well it’s slowed down here a lot, and so it became clear that an update was in order. What has life brought me in July?

• Wendy & Raif visited

  We had a whole slew of visitors come through the first half of the month. Our far, far away family descended to meet baby Amelia. Unfortunately for Wendy (and Geoff) she had to be re-admitted to the hospital due to an infection. She had a bright red inflammation underneath her oemphalocele, and it took a 10-day course to knock it out. Once she was home though, it was all magic! 

  My dad being in town was nice except he smokes too much. It caused a lot of problems in that Micky kept getting upset, and I think he realized it and got upset as well. We also put him up in a bed & breakfast in the Castro district of San Francisco which I think he enjoyed (even though he got relocated to the “garden suite”). I’d highly recommend the Parker Guest House to anyone who has folks in town.

• Soccer/Fitness

  Still too fat and slow. I have however started to really lose weight. A trio of us at work are making it to the gym 3 times a week, and I’m loving it. Hop out for 1 hour as if we were going to coffee, and get in some exercise. Rotating muscle groups, but now I need to put some more time into aerobic. I’ve started that this week 

  My goal is to reach 180 pounds by my one year wedding anniversary. I’m at 195 lbs right now. I’m feeling pretty good about my chances.

• Work

  I think all in all, this may be where things are best right now. 

  I got to present at this month’s board meeting, and that went really well. I’m sure for most folks that’s a non-event, but I wonder if folks who have entrepreneurial  aspirations if your first board meeting is like your first time with a girl? It was about as exciting :-p

  Product team is buzzing with too much to do, and not enough time to do it. Everyone keeps saying that’s a good thing, but I’m pretty convinced that that’s just a convenient story to tell oneself to make it all make sense. I think we’ve got an awesome few months ahead of us at the ‘Box.

• Vacation

  Which leaves me with what I’m doing right now. We’re on vacation at an amazing house in Tamales Bay. We’re on the water, and we’ve spent the last few days grilling out, hanging out with Amelia and just re-establishing our family. It’s been awesome! Photos to come soon.

I didn’t know what to ask when I was coming out of school of potential employers. Having been in the job world for a few years now (going on three which is one part amazing, one part soul destroying), I think I’ve got a set of questions that I think college students need to ask. As my younger brother is on the verge of graduating, these might be useful to him, but hopefully they are useful in general to anyone who runs into them.

The questions are:

1. What is the company culture like?
2. Who will my mentor(s) be?
3. How will this company make me better in 3 years? in 5 years?
4. What motivates you to stay at the company?
5. How much time is dedicated to experimentation, execution and process?

The questions serve the following roles:

1. What is the company culture like?
   As far as I can tell, culture is the single biggest prohibiting factor at a company. Having a great culture can’t make a company, but having a poor culture will sink a company. I don’t know if anyone will openly admit that things are wonderful or horrible in an interview, but deep dive into their answer. Are people motivated to work? Do people go above and beyond the call of duty? I think what the college student wants to find out is if they are around a group of people who are motivated by the same things that they are. The company should also be trying to figure this out about the student, but not all companies put in the effort to have culture be part of the interview process.
2. Who will my mentor(s) be?
   I think that this question is the biggest one that I missed. In the formative years of one’s career, don’t go through and try to figure it all out on your own. It only leads to failure and frustration.Having a strong mentor figure early in one’s career can really help establish how successful years 5 – 10 will be, and those years can only be successful if the foundations for success have been set in years 1 – 4.The thing to  really learn here is how cross-functional a group of individuals there are for one to learn from. Don’t just expect that your boss will be your mentor. Ask someone from marketing, product or sales to be your mentor when your job function is in fact an engineer. Understand where you want to be, and find someone in that role to help you understand the path between you and them. In fact, it’s probably better if your boss isn’t your mentor because it’s scary to be honest with your boss about your relationship with them. I got really lucky in that I felt that, after a hurdle or two of the opposite, Yang and I could really be honest with each other about everything, and it led to a really great relationship. That said, I would say that I look to Yang as a mentor more now than I did when he was my boss, as an example.
3. How will this company make me better in 3 years? in 5 years?
   I actually think that this one is more important for the applicant than for the answer. The applicant should sit down and think about where they want to be in 3-5 years, and understand what it takes to get there. If they don’t know, then ask. I think introspection is a big part of having a successful interview. If you don’t know what you want, then you can’t gauge if you’re succeeding in getting it or not.
4. What motivates you to stay at the company?
   I’m curious to understand why the person that I’m interviewing is still at the company. In the Valley especially, anyone who has a modicum of skill can jump ship, and find a new job pretty immediately. Especially at the junior engineer level, where folks are probably underpaying you, and just throwing some stock at you to make you feel better about yourself.

   So find out why this person hasn’t jumped ship, and found the next big thing. What about the current company inspires them to stick it out, and make this the basket in which they put their proverbial eggs? If the answer is that it’s a job, then you’re probably in trouble.

5. How much time is dedicated to experimentation, execution and process?
   This is a big one for me, because I really feel as if I burned myself badly here. If you’re a hacker, or you just like building things, and there’s no room for experimentation, then it’s the wrong company for you. If you’re unorganized, and you can’t find your elbow from your shoulder, and there’s no process, then this is the wrong company for you.

   Again, introspection comes into play, as you have to really understand what makes you tick, but if you’re confident that what makes you tick is someone giving you a spec, and you drilling the hell out of it, then find a company where execution and process are more highly valued than experimentation. It just makes everything easier from getting motivated to being the person who is excited about what they do, selling the company and being a good advocate.

Those are my five questions that I wish I had known to ask before starting a job out of school. They may not be immediately relevant to everyone, but I do think that some piece of each one is relevant to understanding whether a job that you’re interviewing for is really one that you want. It’s the rest of your life, 8 hours a day, 5 days a week… do something you love.

I had a really great three-day weekend. Micky and I did a lot to get the nursery started. The walls are white, with one aqua colored wall. We moved a bunch of stuff in storage with the help of One Big Man, One Big Truck, and moved a couch and trunk out of storage and into the baby’s room. My red couch escapes!

I got to play some soccer this weekend, worked out today and hacked on some stuff that I’m really starting to get excited about (hopefully more on that coming soon).

The big win this weekend though was getting to do dinner with Saket. We’re at very similar places in our careers, and in a lot of ways our lives (Saket isn’t married with a kid on the way, but in general). I noticed on Saturday night that Saket and I meet in social situations a lot. We have to “share” each other per se. Saturday we just guy bonded, and it was really excellent.

It was a really awesome chance to reflect on myself while reflecting in Saket’s experiences. We talked about the naivety of college kids (which will be my next post), management styles under which we’ve worked, the frustration of the current political system and the situation in the Middle East.

I miss having conversations like that, and I feel as if I’ve lost them in some sense since leaving school. The problem is that it’s all we did in school, so relatively it’s a complete loss. The late night IHOP, going to Waqaar’s house and smoking hookah, being in Watauga Hall and up til 2am talking. I realized Saturday night that those moments and conversations are really important to me.

Now, I feel as if people do things in bigger contexts. Dinner parties with lots of people. Going to the games. It just feels big. The intimacy of one-on-one time with a friend is lost. I don’t know why that is. Are we too busy? Are we just trying to multi-task friendships as well? I hate to sit down and actually answer those questions because I don’t think I’ll like the answers.

But this weekend, I got it back, and all was well again. Even if the wall is aqua and not orange.

So the proverbial tomorrow of blog writing has finally arrived, and here is the last of my three part series on motivation. I can finally speak to the final piece, the keystone as it were, of the motivation puzzle in my mind. Simply put, it comes down to validation.

From dictionary.com:

val·i·date

–verb (used with object), -dat·ed, -dat·ing.

1. to make valid; substantiate; confirm: Time validated oursuspicions.
2. to give legal force to; legalize.
3. to give official sanction, confirmation, or approval to, as elected officials, election procedures, documents, etc.: to validate a passport.

It’s as simple as a good job from someone who notices what you’ve done, or a feeling before you go to bed that you’re the man. There isn’t a single formula across which validation works for everyone, but it is something that everyone needs.

The really interesting bit is that for some it’s an internal validation that they’ve accomplished something. I think there’s a real luck to this kind of person because they can find something that they love, and be happy doing it, and that’s the extent of the validation loop. The effort, blood, sweat and tears are all summed up in that feeling at the end of the day that they’re proud of themselves. End of story.

I think though that the more relevant case for me is an external validation. Not necessarily in words, but in body language. I want to see in your eyes that you get it. I want to hear your heart beat a little bit louder because you’re excited. I want to see the chill across your skin when you realize what a game changer I’m sharing with you. It’s that instant moment of, yup, we just did that, that makes the journey so sweet at the end.

You want to motivate me… give me the chance to blow your mind.

My younger brother called me today to let me know about his LSAT score. He studied pretty much non-stop from mid-May through mid-October for this test. It’s on the margin where test scores make a difference, and based on a chart of law school acceptance scores found here, the difference between #1 and #10 is pretty significant. The results are really great for both him and our family in that he’s opened the doors to any school he wants to go to with his test result.

Really, the win there more than anything else is that there’s something to being surrounded by the kind of people who appreciate and  live on the margin between #1 and #10. Being surrounded by people like that is a very strong form of motivation. It was this section that I found the most appealing from Newcomb’s blog post.

Super A = a(a), a=a, super B=c(c), b=c and c=0 – Various sources but probably mostly Peter Thiel and a little bit of Luke Nosek.

There really is something to being surrounded by the all-stars of your trade. The question I have though is how to do so outside of the crowding that happens at large companies that seem to swallow talent. My friend Jordan O’Mara told me the other day that he’s the worst on his team, which he considers one of the best inside of Red Hat corporate. Fantastic! He’s going to learn like crazy, and he’s going to be a LOT better for it. That said, there has to be a way to get that talent out of the door, and into the proverbial garage.

Having thought about this all day, I think the answer is quite simple actually.

Create, or be part of creating, something that is in and of itself such a cutting edge idea that you become the attraction to the top-level talent.

I think that’s the key indicator that there is a lack of truly great ideas coming out of the Valley of late. The fact that everyone wants to go to Facebook instead of building their own says something. The great ideas are missing.

And so I’ve come down to the idea that there needs to be a great idea, a sense of control to the journey and a community of the best with which to make it all happen. There’s a lot of motivation in all of that, but I still think it’s missing something big. That I’ll speak to tomorrow.

I’m not convinced that motivations are well understood, least of all by me. You see, I was taught in economics that perfectly rational people will respond to a set of incentives in a perfectly rational way. While I’m sure that that makes sense in a textbook, and of course for the graphs and models which derive from that axiom, it doesn’t make sense as a framework through which to observe life nor make decisions regarding the advancement of it.

And so comes forth the challenge of understanding what motivates.

Since a large-scale operation to discover isn’t an option, I found it most pertinent to find the answer in myself. Instead of comically interviewing myself on the subject however, I’ve been looking for others ideas of motivation to see if it is something to which I can subscribe.

It lead me to an article on Steve Newcomb’s blog about building a cult culture at a startup. Steve Newcomb was the founder of Powerset which is now a part of Bing.com. This paragraph here really got me:

The best way to prove to yourself, potential investors and to any potential future employees that you have a killer idea, is to get a number of A-level engineers to join full-time with equity-only deals.

Would I ever do an equity-only deal? That’s a pretty awesome question. Does that mean that the idea motivates you so much you know it’s going to succeed? Or is it that the money you make is irrelevant in the short term versus the ability to cash out in the long term? Does it mean committing to a project for 2-3 years to vest enough of the equity such that if there is a liquidation event then it’s all worth it?

One million and one questions flew through my mind in an instant. And I came back to the original which was, “Would I ever take an equity-only deal?”

I quickly realized that the answer was no. Not because I’d want money instead of the equity, that’s not the problem. I think the problem is that the motivation doesn’t come from the expected result, but by the journey that gets me there. Having the equity doesn’t give me the power to control, in some shape or form, the journey. I know that no end result is guaranteed, but I do know that I have to get from point A today to some point unknown in the future, and that I want to enjoy it while I go down that path.

Nonetheless, there was much more in this article to glean from, and so I’ll return to it tomorrow. Maybe the answer lies here, but really what the answer isn’t lies here, and the answer lies somewhere else.