Blame culture is prevalent in many growing organizations and can lead to counterproductive outcomes. A developer introduces a bug, a product manager incorrectly describes a feature, or the marketer sends the wrong message.

In my experience, the organization always looks for a person to blame, and in extreme cases they get fired. But it’s almost always counter-productive to the company. For every mistake a person makes, there are tons of good work they do that goes unnoticed.

We are eventually all going to be replaced by robots. So let’s use an impersonal scenario where each person is replaced by an application.

Imagine an issue arises where an email has been sent to customers, and instead of a link to check the new service, an incorrect link is sent. To make matters worse, let’s say the link points to the competitor's service instead. To develop this feature, the research team surveyed customers. The VPs drafted a product spec, the product managers created a flow, the designers designed it, and the developers built it.

Somehow, the email was already sent to customers when the mistake was caught. It’s an embarrassment to the company. The company becomes a target of ridicule on reddit, for copying their competitor's homework and then linking to it. This makes the executive team extra mad.

When people are responsible for each task, we look for who messed up and fire them. Not just for the mistake, but for the embarrassment.

On the other hand, if robots perform, the blame will fall on the process. We will look at each point of the process and investigate what information was communicated incorrectly to cause the issue. We would add additional steps to verify the process and test for errors. If the issue was introduced between product managers and developers, we will look for ways to improve the communication. For example, we will add some tests between the two robots to make sure they each understand the request from the other.

It should be no different for people. When a mistake is made, the best thing to do is to review the process. Then find ways to improve communication between the two parties involved.

Ultimately, improving the process is key — don't hate the player; hate the game.

Or the perfect subscriber

Netflix can only get so many subscribers. Imagine for a minute that they get all members of a nation to subscribe. That means, they would have reached their maximum level of solvency. But because of the nature of market forces, at least in the US, Netflix has to continue to grow. They have to increase revenue every month, or at least show that they are working on a plan to increase it.

When you can't increase revenue, no one else to sell to, the obvious thing to decrease cost. Netflix does spend a boatload of making new shows. They will reach a limit, and their only option will be to decrease the cost of those shows. And hopefully maintain a similar quality. But you can only save so much by cutting costs before your customers start noticing. At the threshold, customers will stop paying you.

Another option will be to save on bandwidth, by decreasing the number of servers you have running. But a buffering video will lead customers to a more reliable service.

Ads can increase revenue, but customers that are already paying premium won't be happy. They are paying specifically to not see ads. Now you've given them a reason to leave.

These are three problems that a customer can face that will lead them to your settings page and hit that "Cancel Subscription" button.

The ideal Netflix customer should be one immune to these three problems. This customer does not care about the quality of your movie. High budget, low budget, no budget, it doesn't matter. At the end of the month, they pay for their subscription.

This customer does not care if when they click on a movie it instantly starts. If the movie buffers every 5 minutes, they don't care either. In fact, if they check the service and it says "Come back tomorrow," at the end of the month they will renew their subscription once more.

This customer does not care that the movie is now interrupted by ads. In fact, he doesn't even care that you increased the cost by 20%. They continue to pay consistently. This is the customer that will help Netflix continue to survive in a market that they have completely dominated.

This customer has simply forgotten that he has a Netflix subscription. He consumes no bandwidth because he doesn't even know he has the service. He doesn't mind the ads, because he doesn't know there are ads now. He doesn't care that you use cheap unconvincing VFX in your shows. He doesn't care that all your actors are C list. He doesn't even care that you are charging his card every month.

This is the perfect Netflix customer. In our algorithm driven times, a formula will be developed to make us consume less without ever stopping our subscription. Planet Fitness does the same, they are happier when you pay and don't show up. Manscaped does the same. And every subscription service will look for a way to get you to forget about them.

I wished for a computer that knew everything about me so that it can act as a proxy of myself. It would anticipate my needs, and make my life easier.

Now I've got a computer that knows everything about me. But it won't stop telling everyone what I'm doing.

When applying for a job, I'm tempted to write 26 years of experience in the tech field. The reality is I started even earlier, but 26 years ago is when I got my first paycheck.

I first encountered computers in 1992 when I was 5 years old. I became fascinated by them and would lurk in my father's office after school, waiting for him to finish his work so I could have a turn. I can't imagine how or why my father trusted a small child with such an expensive machine, but I am forever grateful.

Several times, I bricked the computer. The only solution was to reinstall Windows 3.11 from scratch. My father's files were carefully backed up on floppy disks. Every time I destroyed the computer, I learned something new. I learned about installing software, the importance of .ini files, making backups, MS Word and Excel, the hard drive, the optical drive, and everything in between.

A few years later, as computers were becoming even more popular, my father's office decided to install their own. They skipped hiring a technician and instead called on the one person they knew who could handle it—me.

It wasn't an official summons. I was playing outside with my friends, covered in dust and wearing flip-flops. "Hey kid, come here."

That was it. I installed the computers in every office, receiving no pay but plenty of thanks. My father was proud. He knew something they didn't: just because you have a computer doesn't mean you know how to use it.

It didn't take long for the Embassy to call my parents looking for me. On one of those calls, my mother joked about getting me a suit and tie so I could go to work, saying she would use my first paycheck to buy it. It wasn't a joke, of course—they had to pay me for my service. And that's how I got my first paycheck.

That was 26 years ago. If anything, I'm grateful. I'm grateful to my father, who put so much faith in me, and to my mother, who was the invisible hand negotiating on my behalf. Now, I have to turn around and put this faith in my children.

I was close enough to smell the grass. The lights turned the evening into day. Thousands of fans were screaming in unison, drumming my ears into a brown hiss. The players made their way to the field, and I was looking for one person. Just one person. When he entered the stadium, even the opposing fans screamed his name: Gabriel Batistuta.

In 2002, the Embassy of Burundi in Cairo found itself with five spare tickets to the upcoming game of AS Roma vs Al-Ahly. My friends and I salivated over the opportunity and went to see the game. And yes, we saw Batistuta. One of my friends swore that after Batistuta kicked the ball, he could still steer it into whatever direction he wished.

At the stadium, a few seats behind me, there was an idiot. I understand football fans can take it a bit too seriously, but this one was not watching a game. He was watching a battle between enemies. If his team had lost, he might have done something regrettable.

Any time AS Roma got the ball, he would get visibly mad. He would get up and scream—not uncommon in a stadium. But this guy would also kick chairs. At one point, Ahly fumbled a corner kick, and this man grabbed a bottle and threw it into the field. Luckily, the bottle was open and spilled its content before it fell limp on the grass.

All eyes turned to the man. The guy on his left smacked him on the head. The guy on his right pulled him back down into his seat. They physically dominated him, and he knew they could overpower him in an instant. He remained in his seat. We turned back to the friendly game.

Now he started screaming obscenities. Mind you, he was loud, but of the reported 85,000 people at the stadium that day, maybe a dozen or so people paid him any mind. His screaming went from just an annoying fan rambling to a madman making disturbingly graphic threats. I turned around and saw the four or five people surrounding him, grabbing him, and drowning his voice. Not a minute later, Ahly scored the first goal.

After the celebrations, I turned back and the man had turned completely normal. In fact, it was hard to say that he looked crazy only a few minutes before. The game ended 2-1, with Al-Ahly victorious. I was disappointed. But the rumor at the time was that the Egyptian government wined and dined AS Roma and asked them to throw the game. That second goal that Batistuta missed was totally suspect. And of course, Totti had a "training injury" and couldn't play. But isn't that what everyone says when their team loses?

This was more than twenty years ago. As far as I can tell, the event with that idiot was never documented. I can't even remember the exact words this man was yelling. All I remember was being shocked. Who knows, he probably is a changed man today or isn't even into football anymore. So this is the only account of the event. Other than the dozen or so people around him, no one even saw it happen.

But if this were today, the man would have probably tweeted his comment. As insignificant as it was, writing the words down would have amplified his voice in a way that forced the equivalent of the entire stadium to pay attention. There's no equivalent of smacking a tweet on the head. Instead, we'd argue about free speech.

The web is fast and loud, but when you slow down, you can hear every single individual voice. The smartest voices are drowned out by comments from the gut. While this event faded from collective memory, a foolish tweet stays up forever. It can be a time sink, and sometimes it can even destroy the author who might have since changed.

In these new times, we need to develop skills suited to our circumstances. In an age of real-time public communication, the ability to pause and think before speaking—or tweeting— has become crucial. Restraint can be a powerful tool, and sometimes, the smartest move is knowing when to stay silent.

AS Roma game

The premise is simple, when you are being watched, you change your behavior. Imagine a survey that tries to collect data on extra marital affairs in the US. It asks, have you been faithful to your spouse? The answer, whether positive or negative, is unreliable. The whole point of an extra-marital affair is that it is a secret. Only a very small minority will admit it on paper.

Every interaction we have online is monitored. Whether it is talking with a friend, scrolling, or typing a search query, everything is monitored. Not only for nefarious reasons, but it is the medium by which the internet works today. This transparency of our lives is "breeding a society where self-censorship and risk-aversion are the new normal." (socialcooling.com)

This sounds true in theory, but what does it actually look like in practice? There is a video that resurfaced recently that fascinated me in more than one way. It showed that this social cooling is not only already happening, but kids are growing up with this as the new norm.

The video is of a hunter passing through a neighborhood after killing a deer. Some kids and their father confront the man in his barbaric ways. This is all too normal. Most people have a hard time reconciling that the fresh meat we eat comes from an actual animal that was alive. Where I grew up, it was custom to slaughter a few lambs in our backyard a few times a year. These were animals that I had played with before they met their end. I quickly became accustomed to it.

But the interesting part of the video wasn't that the kid was sad to see a dead deer, it's this statement that he made:

You are using a weapon to un-alive an animal.

I had to watch it a couple times before I grasped it. This is a child out in the real world, not creating content. In fact, the kid was in an extreme emotional state where he was dropping F-bombs. Why did he choose to censor himself at that moment? Un-alive? Was he trying to make sure the algorithm doesn't flag him? Why is he saying "un-alive" instead of kill? It's like he was optimizing for SEO out in the real world.

I'm not very much in touch with pop culture these days, but clicking on the trending tab on youtube will give you a good view of this trend. Where the SEO optimizers of yesteryear kept their tricks a secret, the youth openly say why they avoid certain words. They don't want to be demonetized. I felt old trying to decipher words like SAed, grape, and PDF.

But still, this kid was not the one filming the video. He was not an activist fearing of being canceled for voicing his opinion. He was not "creating content". He was merely voicing his emotions and right then and there he decided to self-censor. 15 years from now, when he is looking for employment, his future employer will find this video but still hire him. All because he didn't use the word "Kill."

Social media is full of people posting how awful dating apps are. I wrote about what the dating app I won't build will do. Instead of swiping, the goal will be intentional. Put users on training wheels and help them navigate the world of relationships. 

But I quickly gave up when I started asking questions to my friends in the dating market. One answer in particular threw me off-course. “I like this app, I had some pretty good dates there.”

By definition, a good date should be final, right? But not only was it not final, the same person had several good dates. My premises were wrong. My definition of dating was incorrect. The more people gave me this answer, the further I steered from my original goal. It is still true that people are having a hard time in the dating market, but it is a different market.

Rather than training individuals how to date, we need a cultural shift. We need to consider that online dating is the only option left for a majority of people.

It's still useful to help people navigate through ghosting, first interaction, no interaction, or hookup culture. However, what will be more effective is explaining the importance of our immediate surroundings. We go online to look for strangers while we are surrounded by people. It's harder to approach people today. It's scary. Mainly because we don't know anything about them, and we can't tell if they are interested.

There is an appeal to packaging people in a neat box we can filter by interest. We then swipe left or right as if the nutritional info will tell us all we need to know. You may look for drinks with sugar content less than 10 grams in your area, but the main and only ingredient for people is Natural Flavors. Nobody knows what natural flavors are.

The cultural shift is making people less afraid of each other. Now that is something I don't have an answer for. However, it doesn't hurt to learn how to talk to each other... in person. Let's call it Speak Dating.

Ah, the Westinghouse Radio Hub. An Internet connected radio, cd player, and weather station. I was unboxing merchandise at an old job when I arrived at this box. I stopped on my trail and contemplated putting it aside for myself before any customer sees it.

In our upcoming sale, I spied on customers eying my device. They picked it up, read through the plethora of internet connected features, then put it down. I made several prayers that were all answered because every single one put the box back on the shelf. When the sale ended I used my 10 percent employee discount to get this marvel of technology.

At home, I placed it in my closet then somehow forgot all about it.

A long time later, I was rummaging through my closet when I found this box buried under old clothes. I stopped on my trail again, interrupting whatever else I was doing and opened the box. How I wish I had a picture of this device to show you. It’s nowhere on the Internet.

When I took it out of the box, I was stunned by the elegant design. A silver cylinder with flushed speakers on each side behind a soft black fabric. On the top, the disc reader opened futuristically on the press of a mechanical eject button. On the front a tiltable 5 inch back lit LCD screen. Jony Ive would have been proud.

But then, my first disappointment. This internet connected device wasn't wireless. You had to plug an ethernet cable to enjoy its promises. But this was the 2000s, of course I had an unfathomably long ethernet cable laying around somewhere.

Plug it to the router, plug it to the power, hit the power button and the screen lights up with one word: Initializing.

When you have waited long enough, the screen changes to Network error. Must be a problem with my router of course. I unplugged it from the router, then connected it directly to the modem. Nothing beats raw unfiltered Internet data.

Initializing... Network error.

I unplugged it from the modem, then plugged it back on the router. I loaded my network debugging tools and started my investigation. The domain it was attempting to connect to was no longer resolving.

So much for the Internet features for me I guess. At least it was still a Radio and a CD player.

Let's tune in to the radio. Automatic station search. Apparently, that requires the internet as well. After you wait long enough, Network Error.

Well let's go with CDs then. I was a big fan of Linkin Park. Pop the disc housing open, Hybrid Theory goes in, close it and the cd audibly starts spinning.

Album info... Oh you don't have an internet connection? Network error it is. Then the disc stops spinning.

I spent months trying to get this device to work. It became a night project where I'd sink my precious time that could have been better spent sleeping. The device served as a conversation piece on my desk for some time. But one day, out of spite, I threw it in the garbage.

Can't have long lasting hardware with Internet Powered Nonsense!

The job post is auto-generated, the interview is auto-generated, and the final decision is automated. Every step of the way is automated, from the job post to the final decision, to auto scale the hiring process.

No human required.

It’s only natural that candidates outsource the process, automate themselves into a company, and get a ping on their phone when they land a new job. I check my inbox and I see an email from a real company looking to hire. I plug the content into chat gpt and it generates a response that places me on a schedule to interview.

My lines are fed, the video feed is analyzed, and I am auto-rejected. It’s only a matter of time until my video feed is auto-generated, then I will only get a ping on my phone that will tell me I have a new job with a steep increase starting Monday.

Great questions are dumb questions in disguise: they have been refined.

I often tell programmers to formulate their questions to get yes or no answers. The first iteration of programming questions never make sense. They contain unnecessary elements, they contain frustration, they are designed to fail. That's exactly how they are supposed to come out.

The trick is to take the time to refine the question. Trim the fat, go straight to the point, state what your expectations and your result. A well written question answers itself.