BlogSat

The scaling of education really could change everything

noreply@blogger.com (Satyajeet Salgar) — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 02:22:00 +0000

I enjoyed a series of articles that Vinod Khosla wrote on TechCrunch this weekend. His final one on education reminded me of just what a suboptimal situation we've gotten into with education (not just education until high school which he focuses on, but even most professional education.)

What was supposed to help you prepare for your future, has somehow become to many just another box to check on the way towards it. As a society, we've lost the plot a little bit.

"I've never let schooling get in the way of my learning" - Mark Twain

Its understandable how we got here, but the technology we have at our disposable now gives us little excuse to stay put or continue in the same direction.

Assuming someone wants to learn (i.e. is willing to study, learn etc.), most education (in fact everything that excludes academia and research), finally comes down to three things that you expect from an institution:

Instruction: - i.e. teaching you and telling you what to read and how to learn
Support: - i.e. help with material, rituals, regimen as you learn
Certification: - i.e. tests and finally a degree/certificate confirming to the rest of the world that you indeed did learn whatever you were supposed to

Today, all of these come tightly grouped together, and we've come to point with education where the incentives are to always focus on the certification - you try insanely hard to get into a school; if you get in you pay (increasingly more and more!) for it, and then try to get the best grades you can - in the process hopefully you learned well!

But most of us, from personal experience, know that this often doesn't work. There are a few different reasons for this.

Instruction: Most teaching sucks. A lot of the discussion above may seem US-centric, but the problem is orders of magnitude worse in most developing countries where teachers are even more underpaid, and are able to get away with doing even lesser.
Support: Same as above.
Certification: when time becomes the forcing function (i.e. we have a limited amount of time and a certain date to prove ourselves by, on the margin we choose to either optimize grades or gravitate towards systems where the learning itself isn't important, but getting the right grade is.) In my own experience, I've seen people take classes (or more often drop classes) based on maximizing their grade rather than what they actually wanted to learn or what they knew was the right thing to do.

In some systems, even those that should believe the certifications no longer do. For example, most software companies in India have a 3-6 month training programs in software engineering for recent college graduates. They know that the lack of Instruction and Support has meant that students aren't actually ready though they've picked up the Certification that says they are.

Think of all the wasted time (i.e. those 3-6 months and perhaps even most of the 4 years spent in college) and all that wasted effort!

Even worse, think about how much effort students put in, into getting into good schools vs. actually learning. We're missing the point!

Which is why model that the Khan Academy proposes and is deploying so successfully is so promising (video below.) Students, learning at their own pace from quality instruction via video and re-enforcing what they're learning through online exercises that are better with repetition. They use the classroom to ask questions and do homework. The model could easily apply to most education including college and arguably most post-graduate professional education.

Think about the things that we know the Internet does well:

Democratizing access to information: we already have some of the best teaching materials, and increasingly teachers available online, and with the right incentives it allows the best teachers to scale. The best teachers no longer need to be available to those that can afford it or get lucky. They can (almost) scale to the entire world.
Allowing people to collaborate and learn from each other: Arguably not enough in itself for supporting students, but helpful. However, software is (literally) infinitely more patient as a teacher than humans. It won't hesitate to ask you to repeat things when you get them wrong, and will keep doing it (hopefully guiding you along the way) until you do. - these are problems we know we can solve.

Given the tools we have today, we know we can radically change Instruction and Support for the better - making the best of these available to (eventually) everyone that can access these resources. Its silly to pretend this completely democratizes education - there are huge societal hurdles to making sure people have the time and then the motivation to learn, which we currently solve by sending children/adults off to school, but the building blocks to improve education are now available to everyone with access to a decent Internet connection.

The most challenges remain with Certifications - but that will follow.

Will schools admit someone that purely learned online? - I believe they soon will and some already do.
Will people hire folks whose educations and credentials were earned online? - Yup.
And what do schools and colleges look like in this world? What do they focus on? How do they add value? What does their business model look like - That will be more complicated.

I've been raised to believe that nothing is more important than education when you're growing up. My parents worked hard, and sacrificed many, many things to help me get a good education, and their parents even more so. In their mind, learning, was the key to future happiness, and they had remarkably similar models for what it meant to get that learning (school, college, grades, studying hard, good teachers etc.)

It seems to me though, like the revolution has begun and my experience with my kids will be very different. The future will be fun. :-)

New Year Resolutions!

noreply@blogger.com (Satyajeet Salgar) — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 07:36:00 +0000

Happy New Year!

I finally wrote my resolutions for the year down. Hey, the first week of the year is a totally acceptable time frame to do it in! :-)

While I have a nodding sympathy for (i.e. I will politely smile and nod at people who say this) the "there's nothing special about the New Year.", "Resolutions are silly", "You can make one at any time." sayers in our midst, I think any ritual that makes you take stock of where you are and plan for where you want to be is worthwhile; and the power of the ritual increases as more people do it.

So, I wrote mine down and hope to do a half-decent job revisiting and tracking them. And while I understand the power of public commitment, this year I decided to keep mine private.

Good luck with your New Year Resolutions!

Quick book review: Shantaram

noreply@blogger.com (Satyajeet Salgar) — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 02:31:00 +0000

I finally finished Shantaram! - just in time for the end of the year. :-) I started the book over the summer and then abandoned it around page 300 until picking it up again in the middle of this month.

I loved the book - both the story and the writing. Both the author's true story and the skill with which he weaves incidents from his life into a Bollywood-style saga are incredibly impressive.

I was curious and intrigued enough to read more about the author and definitely recommend the first few of the following videos (a speech that the author, Gregor David Roberts gives) and if you read the book, his interview on Pooja Bedi's talk show.

I have more Klout apparently.

noreply@blogger.com (Satyajeet Salgar) — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 18:58:00 +0000

I'd forgotten about my Klout account for a while, until I got an end-of-year-recap type email from them, which was prompt enough for me to log in to the service.

Can you guess when they started incorporating Google+ into their stats? :-)

Hmmm..does this means I get free stuff now? :-)

Whimsy! LinkedIn's holiday greeting.

noreply@blogger.com (Satyajeet Salgar) — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 01:28:00 +0000

I'm a fan of whimsy (when done well!) in products - I think many products could use more of it.

There are some companies people have come to expect this from, e.g. Google.

However, I've never expected whimsy from LinkedIn, which is why I was surprised so see that my linked profile was viewed by Snow E Mann. :-)

Screenshots below:

Nicely done, LinkedIn! :-)

The Internet keeps making me a liar!

noreply@blogger.com (Satyajeet Salgar) — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 07:41:00 +0000

Yesterday night within one hour, I publicly said two things (or rather endorsed them) which were incorrect (or at least I didn't believe to be true.) I lied.

The first was my re-share of this post on Google+ - it seemed to imply something that as soon as I examined the facts a little more closely I decided wasn't true.
The second was a re-tweet of this tweet - which got one fairly important fact completely wrong.

I regretted both really quickly (within minutes.)

In both cases, I attempted to backtrack. commenting on the Google+ post and editing my annotations on the re-share. I undid my re-tweet as well, but it felt too late.

I mean, imagine doing this in the real world! Going around a crowded repeating something that was wrong, and a few minutes later mumbling "never mind" in the corner. By then a bunch of other people are telling your friends what you just said; some even believing it and jumping to their own wrong conclusions. Imagine how pissed they'll be (or what they'll think of you) when they find out they were spreading falsehoods! OK, enough with the over-dramatizations. :-)

Now: there are a few things happening here:

Speed (or rather immediacy) has never been as important in communication: Being the first to say something has always had its benefits (real and perceived), but its never been more important or harder since everyone and anyone can post/tweet, and our set of technologies make apparent who really got there first.
We're becoming an endorsement culture: +1ing, linking and favorite-ing (I think I got all the endorsement verbs :-)) are used by people not just to express their relationship with what's been shared, but with the person sharing as well.
Our attention spans are at an all-time low and our propensity to share is at an all time high: Name 5 things you +1ed/favorited last week. I rest my case - and if you actually do remember, you didn't do enough for the rest of the week. :-)

As a result, we've exacerbated exponentially what has always been a problem with communication, and communication on the Internet. While we're generating a lot more signal, there's a lot more noise to deal with as well. So...

Bad information spreads quickly and often unchecked.
Social proof makes us even more likely to believe bad information, and there's pressure to amplify these signals (e.g. I should "Like" this because this person I think is awesome did) - so we spread the bad info too.

So remember kids. Its not just "Don't believe what you read on the Internet"; its now "Don't even believe what you said on the Internet."

Why campus recruiting was great this year... for me.

noreply@blogger.com (Satyajeet Salgar) — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 08:54:00 +0000

First a warning: A few friends have recently noticed my blog (in addition to being incredibly sporadic) has also become far too Google-centric. This only continues that trend of posts, though I'm hoping to break that and return to the usual programming soon. :-)

The week before last, I visited Chicago to help with MBA recruiting. I enjoy chatting with students in general and MBA students considering Google in particular. Business school was a transformative experience for me, so I have really fond memories of the Chicago GSB and am always glad to help there.

But what talking about Google non-stop (a dinner + two 1.5-hour presos + ~2 hours of open-to-all chats) really did for me was remind me how lucky I am to work here. Its easy to forget the big picture when you get caught up in the nitty-gritty of the day, and telling stories about

how awesome people here are
how amazing the culture is
what an incredible opportunity we have each day to impact people's lives

is a great reminder of why I love coming to work here.

Replaced by a robot unicorn. :-)

noreply@blogger.com (Satyajeet Salgar) — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 02:48:00 +0000

I'm traveling on vacation next week, so in preparation my teammates (or more specifically Max Cooper) modified his Interactive unicorn (video below)

to basically replace me.

It keeps saying "Ship it." so matter what you say. :)

except when you ask it to have dinner at Google cafe's that don't have burritos or Indian food.

The soul of a product

noreply@blogger.com (Satyajeet Salgar) — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 09:03:00 +0000

I ended up reading this great article about the design behind Ice Cream Sandwich over the weekend, and the one word that stayed with me was "soul."

More specifically the idea of attempting to define the "soul" of product, and how that had informed some of their design choices. The more I thought about it, the more I realized just how much finding, defining and then communicating the "soul" of your product can help you ship considerably better products.

Why?

Product managers and designers try to build products by thinking about the user:

what users really need
how they'll think
and then how those needs can be best served by the product's design.

Putting the user first is the right thing to do, but thinking about the point of view of the product - i.e. its soul - can help you do last bullet significantly better.

Its the "soul" (or personality, if you prefer) of the product that decides if you decide go with a fail whale or just put up a standard 404 page and call it a day.

But where does that soul come from? And how does it manifest itself?

In a smaller company, or even if its a larger company but with a particularly opinionated and empowered design leader, the personality that the product is imbued with often comes from that person (occasionally persons.)

The product finds its "soul" in the sensibilities of individuals. In a larger company, or with an established product, this is harder to do and often the lack of a strong point of view means designs follow templates, the easiest path gets taken, there's a hotch-potch of ideas, and originality is missing because its hard and its risky. 'Standard' is hard to get wrong and is harder to fault.

Hence:

The importance of defining the soul. Just as a mission statement provides a shortcut to individuals to help them make decisions consistent with the long-term goal of a team or a company, defining the soul of the product and communicating it helps people make product and design decisions that helps give the product a point of view and that serves users better.

I haven't really thought about it in this way until the last week, but I went through the mental exercise of defining the soul of the last few things I'd worked on and realized it would have helped us ship a better product each time; in some case significantly so - and we'd have had a lot more fun doing it.

I still need to think about the best way to communicate this to others (without sounding like an idiot), but I'm now looking forward to thinking about that. :-)

But they called my baby ugly! (why you need to be disciplined when dealing with criticism)

noreply@blogger.com (Satyajeet Salgar) — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 23:18:00 +0000

A couple of days ago, on an email thread amongst friends I felt a familiar emotion. A friend criticized a product I once worked on, and my immediate response was "Ok, so you really don't know what you're talking about."

I'm pretty convinced I was right on the details, but I wasn't objective or analytical in my immediate response. I felt genuinely offended. It was like someone called my baby ugly (btw, I don't have a kid but I'm pretty sure I'd be immediately livid if you did... even if the facts agreed with you. :-))

I didn't have time to even process why the person felt that way or had come to the conclusion, my immediate response was defensive and aggressively so.

This is bad - for a few reasons.

First, for me its pretty uncharacteristic.

Second, it doesn't help anyone and only makes both you and the other person feel worse and take the effort to root themselves even more strongly in your contrarian positions.

Third, a overly strong defensive response (especially in person) prevents the person expressing their idea completely. Even if you are convinced the idea is mostly wrong there are often little pieces of feedback that you can glean from it. Yup, this extends even to the idiots that call your baby ugly.

To achieve the best outcome, asking the person to explain themselves further (e.g. 'Can you tell me more?' or even 'Why do you say that?') can lead to either

more information for you
or have the person talk them out of their own stance.

Things to remember for the next time around...

Rest In Peace, Mr. Jobs

noreply@blogger.com (Satyajeet Salgar) — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 06:41:00 +0000

I teared up while driving after dinner today. I was on my way back to the office after dinner, hoping to finish a couple of things up, and suddenly I found I was wiping my eyes repeatedly as I pulled up to a traffic light. Back at my desk, I tried to watch some of the YouTube clips of his speeches and the "Think Different" ad that people had shared online, and found that I simply couldn't watch them for more than a few seconds.

While there was obvious sadness at the passing of a genius who has deeply affected so many aspects of our lives with his work, my reaction (and frankly the haze I've been in since) surprised me.

Some sadness and regret was completely understandable, but I couldn't immediately understand why I felt this sense of loss.

The tragic circumstances of his passing was perhaps one.

The second and more likely reason was that I just realized that I'd come to feel like I knew him.

His numerous keynotes (which I'd watched more a few times sometimes simply because I wanted to hear "One more thing"), hundreds of YouTube clips of his speeches and interviews, as well as reading his biography and so, so many press interviews by, and about him, over the years had made me feel like I'd known this icon - personally.

Not just for his immense contributions to the world, but him personally - his personality and impact was such that I'd come to feel like I knew the man.

I didn't of course, but still thats why the loss hurts like a truly personal one would.

All I can do is have those with deeper personal connections to him, particularly his family, in my thoughts tonight.

Rest In Peace, Mr. Jobs

Here comes Siri!

noreply@blogger.com (Satyajeet Salgar) — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 05:31:00 +0000

The Internets think Siri gets its big unveil with a re-bradning tomorrow. :-)

I've always been surprised that Apple hasn't pushed the technology more since the acquisition more than a year and a half ago. I can only assume that it was because they were waiting to get the experience just right - or to Jobsian standards. :-)

Knowing its coming from Apple, its likely to

solve a few use-cases incredibly, incredibly well
be closed (i.e. have some providers for each of those use-cases)
but be incredibly useful.

The event tomorrow should be fun.

Things to strive for in an engineering team: A "culture of product"

noreply@blogger.com (Satyajeet Salgar) — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 07:01:00 +0000

One of my favorite phrases came from talking to someone at Facebook many, many months ago. When describing the way he thought about the Product Manager job he said "I think of this as a culture of product - everyone feels ownership of and thinks about what we're building."

The phrase in particular - a "culture of product" stuck with me.

I like the suggestion that everyone thinks hard about how and why every pixel and action matters. The PM's job isn't to come with ideas and make decisions, as it is to make sure all of this thinking and input, is filtered transparently into action.

It formally implies that everyone on a team thinks hard and naturally, about the user experience and what matters to users. I like to think that the teams where people feel this culture is real, are the ones that build the best stuff.

Beware the "it'll get done in 2 weeks"!

noreply@blogger.com (Satyajeet Salgar) — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 05:58:00 +0000

Well, the "I should blog more often" thing didn't get that great a start, but I had a good excuse.

Stuff like

this
and this.

I also literally, still can't bear to watch myself on video. I find that after "Hi, my name is ", I do exactly what I do when something embarrassing is going happen to a character on a TV show that I like, i.e. I instinctively just turn it off.

Anyway, on to the topic of the day.

So I've had variations of this happen to me before, but this time it hit me harder than usual and I dealt with it worse than I usually.

Imagine the following conversation between me and an engineer not on my team:

- Me: "Hey, We need you to do blah blah blah"

- Him: "Sure. We need to do blah blah anyway. It should be done in 2 weeks."

- Me: "Cool! 2 weeks works."

- Him: "Great."

1.5 weeks later

- Me: "Hey, are you close to getting blah blah done?"

- Him: "Oh...not yet. We haven't started yet because of this other blah blah."

- Me: "Oh..."

- Him: "But it'll be done in two weeks as soon we finish ther other blah blah."

Another week later

- Me: "Hey, so..."

- Him: "Blah blah is now really 2 weeks away. We're going to start on it."

Another 2 days later

- Me: "About blah blah..."

- Him: "Oh yeah...we're almost there. Just another two weeks."

The next day

- Me: "You're at least a day less than two weeks away now right?"

- Him: "Well... yeah. two weeks."

Now there were a number of reasons this happened, and they're amongst the typical ones:

Two weeks (especially if you think of it as including two weekends just-in-case :-)) seems like a ridiculously long amount of time.
People (always!) over-estimate what they can do in a given time.
People work on a bunch of things and something that's not due immediately doesn't seem as urgent and can slip.

So what do you do?

Many awesome PMs at Google have told me: "You need to have a date to aim for. Always. For everything"

The "Always. For everything" part is important. There are many reasons to tell yourself this does not apply to a particular situation, e.g "But this is research" or "But, we're not going to do anything for a while." etc. etc.

The trick to doing this well is

always setting a date
always setting a date that makes sense (i.e. is determined by the person who is actually doing the work)
knowing at what granularity you need to set dates, and what the deliverables for those dates need to be.

My rule of thumb for this team is that if I don't have a deadline for any project in a week, I'm deliberately choosing to make a mistake.

The details of the methods varies with teams, companies and projects, but I think the rules always hold.

Nesting...

noreply@blogger.com (Satyajeet Salgar) — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 08:25:00 +0000

Of course things got nuts and I'm slow on blogging again. I'm resolving to change that ..yet again.

Hey, public resolutions are the best motivations there are! :)

We've spent the last couple of weekends trying to use the spare time we have to set up the place we just rented. Its meant a lot of shopping (argh!), cleaning (double argh!), unpacking (triple argh!) and some screw-it-its-taking-too-long-lets-take-a-break (yay! :))

Its been a while since we were both in home where we knew we were going to be for a while, which has meant we've been able to put our nomadic but-we'll-move-soon-and-we're-in-two-cities-now-anyway existence away. Its meant we've finally bought furniture we like and can think about decorating our place, because we'll be there to enjoy it without ridiculous amounts of travel and some possibility of permanence.

I've been shocked that despite our efforts to minimize the "stuff" in our lives, just how much stuff we managed to accumulate. Obligatory Carlin "stuff" clip below :)

We got rid of a lot, will donate some more, and keep even more in the storage in our house knowing fully well we may never use it. We're still at least a couple of weekends of shopping and cleaning away from making the place truly livable...

But as much as I miss the energy of New York and enjoyed the bustle of Harvard Square when visiting Cambridge, I'm enjoying knowing that I'll just be in one place for a while and that we really can try to make it a more comfortable place for the both of us.

Its been a few years since we've been able to do that. We're finally nesting... even if we're finding a way to procrastinate while doing it. :-)

Quick FAQ since its MBA recruiting season: What's your job like?

noreply@blogger.com (Satyajeet Salgar) — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 16:06:00 +0000

Q: Why this post?

For the last few years, every Fall as students head back to campus to start recruiting season, I get a similar set of emails from students at my MBA alma mater.

Either students look me up in the Chicago MBA Alumni directory, or through friends of friends ask me for 15-20 mins of my time to discuss my job, Google or product management in general. I've done at least about 7-10 calls like these around Sep-Oct every year for the last four years. Last year, I tried to get a little efficient by asking folks to schedule a conference call with 4-5 students at once, and still ended up talking about 20-25 second-year students or recent grads on the phone.

I really like doing these calls, even though I think I'm only slightly helpful to most people. I know what it feels like when you're in school and trying to figure out what to do next and the future seems like a bit of a mess and highly uncertain. Every piece of advice (even if its just reenforcing something that you already know) is helpful.

But this year, given everything that's happening in my life, I'm not going to be able to spend time on the phone doing these.

The overhead of scheduling these calls + the unpredictability of my schedule + my annoying tendency to not refuse others since I already helped one person mean that this is up to a good 15-20 hours over the next 2-ish months that I'd like to use elsewhere, especially since I actually see the number of people pinging me increasing dramatically.

So I'm going to try to answer, the most frequently asked of these questions here, since I end up saying the same few things pretty often. I hope this helps a few people, and apologies in advance to the folks that think I'm a self-important, pompous idiot for responding to your email with short reply and a link to this post.

I'm helping with Google MBA recruiting this year again though, and expect to be on campus later this Fall where I'll be happy to answer any of your questions in-person.

Q: How do you like working at Google?

I f-ing love it!

I didn't think I'd last past two years (cos y'know, everyone does a startup in two years :-)) ; suddenly its been just over four - and I barely noticed.

Q: What keeps you working at Google?

The people

working with people smarter than I'll ever be, is energizing
most of them are really nice too - which is just as important
they're deeply committed to their products and the company. Many understand that they truly can change the world, and they care deeply about what they're doing - which is even more important.
the leadership is filled with people that I look at and go "Wow..that's what I want to grow up and be." or "Wow... I'll never be that good"

The company

this sounds a little corny especially if you haven't worked at too many places, but the company culture matters, and ours is unmatched: you're proud to work for a company with this set of values
Google is incredibly internally transparent and committed to its employees well being

The ability to have an impact:

this is biggest reason to come to Google is the impact that you can have on the world.

Q: What is it like to be a PM at Google?

Its awesome.

I'm going to paste my quora answer on what its like below.

The summary I use when people ask me about the role is

you're responsible for getting "success" defined for your product

and then responsible for getting your team there.

The expectation is that besides that tingling "product spidey-sense" you have the fuzzy ability to get things done without formal authority but through influence, enthusiasm and because its the right thing to do. You need to think big, but break that down into a discrete set of product requirements, go-to-market plans, marketing tactics, business conversations etc.

Building and shipping products is a team sport so there is always a cross-functional team (i.e. BD, marketing, Sales, Operations etc.) working together but recruiting and staffing-up that team and then being the glue that holds it together is part of the day-to-day with the role as well.

Most PMs at Google have a technical background and work very closely with the engineers on their team.

There are a bunch of great posts about being a PM that apply to being at PM at Google.

Here are two really good ones:

the classic Good PM, Bad PM by Ben Horowitz and
a great post from Hunter Walk, a PM Director at YouTube

Q: Is being a PM at Google like being a CEO?

Yes, but without the fame, money, glory or any real authority over people actually doing the work.

Q: Isn't being a PM at Google really like being a coach?

Yes, too many think you're replaceable and that almost anybody else could do your job better.

When things go south, everyone wonders what the PM is doing. When things are going well, everyone wonders what the heck the PM does anyway.

Q: Are you kidding in the two questions above?

Yes.
Kinda.

Q: Is being a PM at Google still an awesome job?

Yes, without a doubt. I seriously can't imagine a better one for me given my background and interests.

Q: What did you think about working in Partner Solutions at Google?

I loved that too. Partner Solutions is an engineering team within Google that works on Google's most strategic partnerships. The role there involved both building partner-specific tool and systems, and helping Google's partnerships scale.

Its was an incredible set of products and challenges, and a pretty spectacular group of people (even within the Google cohort) to boot.

Q: Is there anything you'd warn people joining Google about?

Yup. One of the things that folks said to me while I was interviewing here and I've heard many people say since is "If you're the kind of person, who likes structure or needs hand-holding this is probably not the place for you."

Folks say this like this is a good thing - like there's something wrong with you if this doesn't work for you. Its not.

I do think that's the one place as a company we can get better at: providing more structure and guidance for new people joining the group. Right now its too dependent on the style of your immediate manager. Sometimes you get lucky; sometime you don't.

I think one of the reasons former entrepreneurs do well at Google as PMs is they're used to dealing with ambiguity and forging their own path.

Q: What are the hours and lifestyle like?

A lot of MBA students considering careers in companies in general and wondering in particular about Google, naturally compare them with the hours and lifestyle of common MBA careers like consulting and investment banking.

I get asked this a lot, so if you're expecting a cushy 9-to-5 gig because this is a "big company", this probably isn't the job for you. There's a lot to do, so you may need to spend a lot of time doing it.

However, the company has a strong respect for work-life-balance and little interest in people that try to create the appearance of working, so I work pretty long hours but don't think twice about things like what people think if I step out for a couple of hours in the middle of day to attend to a personal matter.

Q: Should I apply to Google? What if it isn't for me?

Yes! You should apply, even if you think you might possibly interested.
You'll find out more about the company as part of the interview process, and can make an informed decision then.

Q: What if Google isn't recruiting on my campus?

Do two things:

Apply on the website - http://www.google.com/jobs ! Make sure your resume is tailored for the role you're applying for
There are a lot of people that apply that way, so the most important way to distinguish yourself is if a Googler who has worked with you can give you a referral for the role.

Unlike a lot of other MBA recruiting, Google isn't as big on pre-interview networking so don't worry if there isn't an opportunity to do that.

I'll continue to add more questions to this FAQ as the questions for me come in

Return of the blog... and me :-)

noreply@blogger.com (Satyajeet Salgar) — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 08:52:00 +0000

I just realized that the last time I'd blogged was just over 4 months ago; I've had blogging hiatuses before, but this one was different. The news that Blogger had a new interface, was sufficient motivation for me get over my procrastination from earlier in the week and revive the blog.

BTW - Really like the new interface so far! :-)

This blog has been important to me not just to express myself, but I've really liked it was a way to clarify my own thinking on things that have been on my mind, in a public forum.

Generally, when I've stopped blogging its been because:

I got lazy
I got busy
I got lazy and busy at the same time - yes, this is possible.

This time however, while being busy was part of it, for the last few months I really didn't feel like saying or thinking much publicly.

Professionally, the last few months have been a blast. Personally, they've been the most difficult for me ever. The fact that the two have overlapped in timing has in some ways been a blessing.

I thought that at least for most people I know this wasn't something they could read, but some actually did.
Anyway, the good news is that I am feeling more like myself again - and reviving the blog seemed like a good step to help with that. :)

Quick book review: In The Plex

noreply@blogger.com (Satyajeet Salgar) — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 04:57:00 +0000

I finished "In The Plex" by Steven Levy over the weekend.

I wasn't expecting to try to read the book, but a comment from a long-time Googler that Steven Levy "probably knows more about Google and its history than almost any Googler" was enough to get me interested.

I was very, very pleasantly surprised. Even controlling for the fact that its the most recent book on Google, I do think its the best book ever written about the company (and there have been a bunch!)

I read a couple just before I was going to join the company nearly four years ago, and I'd assumed that my time here and my general curiosity and pokiness (I know - not a word) meant that I knew a lot about the company, its history and a lot of our businesses but I learned a lot reading Levy's book - what helps make it extremely readable are the anecdotes and the details - little nuggets like why Scott Hassan re-wrote the crawler in Python; how Eric Veach thought about the ads system, the dynamics and personalities in the early days and GPSes etc.

The things that I knew about (search, infrastructure, the ads system, YouTube, Android etc.) I enjoyed incredibly accessible explanations for and interesting anecdotes about ...and the things I knew just a little about I learned so much more about (especially China, the interactions with the government and about the Books Settlement.) Its also fun having a few people that you know or work with show up in a book.:)

There are a couple of minor errors that threw me off (like a couple of PMs being referred to as engineers and few product/name typos here and there), but hopefully those get fixed in the reprint.

If you're looking for a detailed, balanced, accessible and extremely insightful look into the company this is the book to read. What I was left with though was a portrait of some truly incredible individuals: particularly Larry, Sergey and Eric - but also many, many of the incredible people they drew into this company.

The sheer ambition, ability and vision of these people, combined with the values they have maintained left me feeling incredibly proud to work here, and just as excited about the future.

What's in store for the stores? Or how will all these App stores evolve?

noreply@blogger.com (Satyajeet Salgar) — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 02:56:00 +0000

Last week pictures of Microsoft's coming App Store leaked. The line that stood out for me in this TechCrunch commentary was

It looks almost as if Microsoft is ripping off Google ripping off Apple

The commentary is both accurate and a little unfair. On the surface, the claims seems valid. You could probably throw the Amazon App Store for Android into the mix as well. The stores have similar elements.

A rotating, image-rich banner on the top to promote new/notable/preferred/interesting apps.
Lists and modules to show the right slices of apps - a mix of curated and generated collections
Individual detailed pages for the apps.
The ability to dive into categories
Most have reviews and ratings
Some support evangelizing/sharing (i.e. tweet/share on facebook etc.)

The differences right now are mostly cosmetic (icon design, font sizes, banner designs, graphic elements, consistency with existing products etc.)

The comparison that keeps coming to my mind is the similarity to stores in the real world. The line in the article above is the equivalent of saying

Safeway is ripping off Target is ripping of Walmart

- in the real world (not their online stores :))

Its accurate from a distance, but misses a bunch of things.

To start with, this isn't a bad idea. All the stores in the physical world have roofs, walls, aisles and follow similar rules when it comes merchandising, displaying prices and promotions. Over time, each store has done their research, tweaked things from what they learned, and found and refined their own visual identity.

For app stores, Apple was the first to the game. They looked at the numerous existing stores on the Web - they had tons to look at including ones from Yahoo! and a bunch of gaming sites -and they figured out where the doors, aisles and windows needed to be for an App store, and being Apple, they found prettier doors and polished them for much longer.

Everyone that followed took a similar approach, and as the article above points out, they look more similar than different as each looked at those before them (or occasionally those that came after) to figure out how to improve their designs.

But that's certainly not the ways things need to be or the way things will stay. There's tons of stores on the Web that do things differently: Steam is cited very often as a store that does a bunch of things differently...and right.

Just like in the physical world, stores will find different ways to distinguish themselves, and I think they'll learn a lot from eCommerce where there's been tons of innovation in design, pricing and merchandising (particularly for soft goods) as well as the real world.

The deals/discounters:

These will be sites that do the equivalent of flash sales (like Gilt Groupe) or have a deal-of the day model (like woot) Alternatively, some will simply be known as the place to get the best deals/discounts everyday (think your near-by WalMart - except the visual difference at first glance between store optimized for experience, and store optimized for cost isn't that large online.) Some will differentiate on offerings and exclusive windows (e.g. a game available first only in their store, e.g. Angry Birds with GetJar and then Amazon)

Community:

These'll will be smaller stores, which will work because they're focussed on a particular niche or will cater to a particularly passionate community (think Etsy or even Kickstarter.)

Atmosphere:

There will be stores that people come to simply because they're beautiful and delightful to browse. There are physical stores where people (even someone as loathe to shopping as I am) feel like spending time simply because the building is elegant or the store design is unique (think the Apple retail stores) The closest online are some fashion stores - I remember a bus ride from Boston to New York where the young woman next to spent the entire 4-hour bus ride on the Prada website.

These stores will have a combination of great visual design + the ability to immerse yourself in the products being sold - for clothes this had meant high-fidelity images and the ability to come as close as possible to touching them and visualizing yourself in them - and for or apps this is likely to translate into videos and the ability to try the app out or get high-fidelity highlights.

The service:

Think Zappos for app stores, and what that would be like.

I haven't been to the equivalents in the US, but when we were shopping for wedding clothes in India I remember being blown away by the service at one place - where we were asked to take a seat on a very comfortable sofa, and were offered sandwiches and soft drinks as a particularly enthusiastic sales person asked questions about our personal styles and suggested tons of stuff for us to try.

Social/Recommendations/Personal:

It goes without saying these days, but for completeness the pieces that do make this more interesting online is that we have more data and can bring more personalization to bear than in the physical world (think Amazon and Netflix-like recommendations and Facebook-inspired "Your friends liked this", paired with incentives like coupons and discounts specifically tailored to you.)

This is an incredibly interesting time to be in the business of online commerce, and hopefully there's going to be tons of experiments and innovation in store design and merchandizing. I'm curious to see how it all pans out. What're you expecting?

Instrinsic and Extrinsic motivators- or how to screw up a good employee

noreply@blogger.com (Satyajeet Salgar) — Sun, 17 Apr 2011 16:52:00 +0000

I recently had two nearly identical chats with a couple of engineers I'd worked with in the past, and remember a similar chat with a colleague a year or so ago....

Him: "I had a conversation with my manager about my bonus the other day. It was a bad talk."
Me: "Why?"
Him: "As long as I have enough for food and rent I don't really care as much about how much I make. I just want to work on something I like - But he kept trying to tell me that the bonus was important. I felt awkward."

Substitute "bonus" for "salary" or "promotion" and I've come to realize how often this conversation takes place.

I like the break-up above between "Extrinsic" and "Intrinsic" needs.

Why this happens:

As a manager or a management team, the direct "extrinsic" reward is the most natural thing to focus on to reward an employee - getting a bonus/promotion/increase takes effort on your part and feels like something really tangible and quantifiable you did.... and sure, to many employees this matters a lot!
As a management team, that feels like the right way to reward and retain your top performers; (to be clear - sometimes, for some teams it can be, but that's not likely to be a great engineering team or a team that builds great things)
However:

Why focussing on this is bad in the short-run:

Most people, especially engineers, don't care so much about extrinsic rewards. Financial rewards - particularly if the numbers doesn't significantly impact the lifestyle you can afford and you come form a culture where money isn't valued as much (which is especially true for younger/single people in tech; not so much Finance or Sales) - just don't mean that much and aren't that memorable, i..e you respond more to "Intrinsic" motivations than "Extrinsic" ones.
If over time management communicates rewards only through "Extrinsic" motivators (i.e. money, promotions, titles), people start substituting the measure of "Extrinsic" motivators for intrinsic ones - e.g. your self-esteem/social stature becomes much more tied to your title and salary in your own mind.
This brings relative rewards much more sharply into the picture. If you hand out praise it tends to be handed out relatively equitably and lavished on those who deserve it; no one really minds if someone gets a little more or less than they thought was deserved - but money (or promotions) are ruthless in their specificity and allow very direct comparisons.
In one particular case, after a surprisingly low amount handed out as a bonus I had a colleague come up to me and say "I thought I did a lot for that project. I thought it was important to do, but this trivializes it. I know they weren't intending this, but I wish they hadn't bothered at all. Now, I'm mad, that I worked that hard."

Why this is even worse in the long-run:

I have never, ever found myself working really hard or pushed myself because of extrinsic rewards. Its because I've either thought it was something that was so exciting I just had to do it or because it was something that was my responsibility or because of my respect for my colleague or (back when I worked at a startup) because I thought it was just necessary to survive.
If management starts training employees to value extrinsic rewards over intrinsic ones - over time you are going to kill the motivation which brings great people to work at tech companies. You will lose those employees to companies that seem to appeal to their intrinsic motivations (e.g. independence, control etc.)

What do to about it?:

I recently told someone at work after a project, "Be generous with praise, be thoughtful and conservative with everything else." I should've added "Err on the side of keeping extrinsic equal rewards within reason (i.e. bands of rewards rather than ranking.)"
Focus on the value of intrinsic rewards (i.e. tell people they did something amazing; have important people or people with important titles tell people they did something awesome; send out emails; tweet it - whatever is appropriate) over just the extrinsic rewards (do it, but do it much more quietly like it doesn't really matter as much.) Think hard about appealing to all aspects of the Maslov's hierarchy of needs through soft tools available to you.

How well management or a manager can keep this in mind can determine the happiness of a team and a company.

A couple of Jack Dorsey talks - the next Steve Jobs?

noreply@blogger.com (Satyajeet Salgar) — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 02:10:00 +0000

A couple of weeks before Jack Dorsey came back to Twitter, a friend im-ed me a link of a talk Dorsey had given at Stanford earlier in the year.

The line before the link to that talk was "He is the next Steve Jobs." Ever the skeptic, I responded with "Hmmm....really? I'll be sure to check the video out." I did early next week.

I was particularly curious, because for months I'd admired both the execution of and the product design at Square, the company Dorsey had founded; and I'd loved his Golden Gate talk (embedded below.)

There's a lot of interesting things he said there, but the part that really resonated for me was the point he made about building something beautiful:

The idea of "Let's build the Golden Gate bridge. Something memorable and you can be proud of - not some crappy bridge that may work but no one remembers or drives on" - particularly since as he says, so many people are ok with building crappy bridges. How can anyone that builds things not respond to a call-to-action like that?
I couldn't help recalling Steve Job's considerably less politically correct "They have no taste....and I don't mean that in a small way. I mean that in a big way." comment (below)
He also makes no bones about the fact that doing that takes a lot of hard work, and patience.

So I sat down a couple of weeks ago to catch his earlier-mentioned Stanford talk. Its long, but I came away very, very impressed.

He's not just smart and motivated with a great personal story, but he's clearly thought very, very hard - not just about the importance of design and good products, but how to be a leader and a CEO. He's also clearly developed a sense of theatre, and he hints at that as well.

I probably found the Q&A more interesting than most because I work in payments, but the talk itself was incredibly impressive and interesting.

I'm not going to try to summarize, but here were some of my favorite quotes and points:

CEOs/Leaders as Editors: Choose what's important. 1000 things you can do - only 1 or 2 are important. Edit people, products, communication and ideas in (and out!)
Payments are a form of communication
Power of a story: tell great stories. Focus on user narratives, and understand the importance of epic stories.
"1.) Make every single detail perfect. 2.) Limit the number of details"
Expect the unexpected, and whenever possible be the unexpected.

To boot, he has an incredible personal story and if this picture (below) is indeed his, he seems like a pretty nice guy to boot - which is rare enough for entrepreneurs.

As someone mentioned to me the other day, you can't help root for the guy! :)

Make it all about something bigger; or why does reading the Economist make me want to cheer?

noreply@blogger.com (Satyajeet Salgar) — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 20:48:00 +0000

There are times while reading the Economist, that I've felt like getting up and cheering. That's right.

Standing up, fist-pumping with my lips pursed determinedly and going "oh, yeah." (Look at yon baby pic attached.)

Yes, I know I'd look ridiculous.

I've wondered why, and my answer was generally because

the magazine consistently says smart things with solid reporting and great insights
I often agree with a lot of their views and analysis
their sense of humor and whimsy (oh, its there!) works for me.

I'd always believed that the main reason the magazine was able to elicit this response was because they often took a stand - not the writers - the magazine.

Articles back people, or condemn policy, or make recommendations without equivocating. They always phrase it as "This magazine supports..." or "The Economist strongly condemns..." or "We affirm that .."

But watching the Jack Dorsey Golden Gate bridge talk made me realize how they're able to do this and why this is so important.

I'd completely missed the importance of not having bylines in the Economist. Everyone understand they're committed to working for the Economist and not putting their own name on the articles. As a result, two things happen:

there's considerably less hesitation in involving others in helping with the articles, likely leading to better work.
you can then put the weight of the brand behind positions much more easily which is so much more powerful.

If you do this well enough, often enough, the brand of the magazine improves and credit for every brilliant piece of work accrues completely to the brand of the magazine. - which is one of the points in the talk: focus on making it all about the company and not the individuals.

Cool!

Google eBooks bookmarks!

noreply@blogger.com (Satyajeet Salgar) — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 06:35:00 +0000

Increasingly, Google does some truly delightful marketing. :)

I got these in the mail today:

I thought this was cool! It was unexpected and delighted me - always something good to do to your users. Compliments to the eBooks folks who came up with this!

If it were another company, I might complain that

I don't read physical books as much anymore. :(
even when I do, and despite years of my mother telling me to, I fold the page instead of using a bookmark. I suspect I'm not alone.
the eBook store doesn't even sell physical books and by their very nature ....
Bookmarks are not seen by others - the automatic evangelizing of the product doesn't happen. Sending this out will make people momentarily happy (Good!!), some like me will blog about it cos they're excited and create buzz (also good!!) but it ends there.
Stickers are great for that viral push - especially if people put them on their tablets and phones and laptops (y'know on which they read those eBooks we just sold them!) How about some stickers thrown in as well?

But its not another company, so I won't complain.

Oh..

Additives to engine oil and other lubricants still worth more than Twitter and Groupon.

noreply@blogger.com (Satyajeet Salgar) — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 03:58:00 +0000

The return to New York meant I started catching on my magazine reading this weekend.

The first thing that caught my eye was this- Warren Buffett's Berkeshire Hathaway just bought Lubrizol.

- Fine, I thought. It probably is a castle, and has a moat.

- They bought it for $9.7B. What the?? What the hell does this company do?? Here's Lubrizol's Wikipedia blurb.

.. a provider of specialty chemicals for the transportation, industrial and consumer markets. These products include additives for engine oils and other transportation-related fluids, additives for industrial lubricants and additives for gasoline and diesel fuel.

So they're in the business of optimizing the performance of a fuel and/or lubricant. And they were just valued (by Buffett - so someone very smart thinks its can be worth even more) for more than either Twitter or Groupon or both combined (give or take a billion or two; or a rumor or three...whatever your prefer.)

I like these intermittent reminders - as important as the things I assume the world revolves around are, they're still less valuable (purely in terms of money) than many, many other business and activities in the world.

So to ground myself yet again, I went over the Fortune 500 (ranked by revenues) and the FT Global 500 (estimated market cap - a little outdated.) On the revenues list, its a while before you hit the first tech company (Samsung.) Its a much earlier on the market cap list (Apple and Microsoft are in the Top 5) - but it gets a little sparse after that.

Of course, this list will change radically over the next few decades. Take a look at the S&P from even 25 years ago - but how radically? In the next 100 years, I don't see us commuting less, constructing less, or needing less engine oil additives (or their equivalents.) for whatever it is that powers our machines. They will continue to be a significant part of our economy and will be larger than they are today, but I'm willing to bet that innovation means they are a slightly lower percentage of the economy.

What might Twitter and/or Facebook have cost us if they were invented earlier (or should some things stay deliberately un-social?)

noreply@blogger.com (Satyajeet Salgar) — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 01:21:00 +0000

So I was reading an ebook last week, and came across a quote that I liked. My first thought wasn't "I should write this down", it was "I want to tweet this." My ebook reading software wasn't equipped for it, and it wasn't trivial to do so I didn't, but I expect most ebook reading software will be updated to do this in the next couple of releases and probably encourage me to as well.

Why should reading be left behind? Twitter is already saving live TV. As I look back on the last week watching the Cricket World Cup, a huge part of it for me was watching my Twitter and Facebook feeds for reactions and being part of them. My parents were the only ones that actually called me during the match, but I felt connected to so many more people through FB and the Big T.

Wether you're shopping, eating out, playing games, even searching... apparently "everything gets better with social." We all have a very human, internal urge to express ourselves and our opinions, and connect with others (friends or otherwise) over them. The tools now exist to allow us to do so more easily than ever before - anyone can take/post a video/photo or more likely write a sentence or a phrase as a tweet or a status update from anywhere. Societal norms also now make it permissible to put things out that aren't particularly important ..or interesting so we all feel less inhibited doing it. Yes, I know I'm more guilty than most. :)

I had 2 friends recently tweet in the middle of a movie. I thought this was simultaneously awesome and annoying. It helped me decide that I wasn't going to watch the movie later that evening, but then I'm the guy who shushes people when they try to whisper to me during a movie - even did it all the time to my mom while watching TV when I was younger. It didn't matter as much in this case since the film was crap, but indulging in this activity did take away from their focussing on the movie - never mind the distraction to others.

We know that we suck at multi-tasking. There's no debate about this anymore. When you do two things you do each slightly worse than you would if you were doing just one. The act of tweeting requires some cognitive/mental energy - even if its finding your phone and editing the text to under 140 characters.

In many cases (like tweeting during a bad movie or putting the TV on while doing rote work), the overall result makes this ok, but is there a downside to this? I know for a fact that I work slower and have fewer newer ideas when I work with the TV on. I still do this from time-to-time out of habit - something I try to stop if what I'm working on is particularly important.

I recently sat in a class where the professor encouraged students to tweet - in fact I remember being on a couple of panels now where the audience was tweeting what the panelists said seconds after we said it. Worked great for everyone we thought (the students and the panel got the publicity, the rest of the world got the information) but did we or the students/audience lose something there in the quality of discussion that could have taken place in that room of the thinking that could have sparked in the audience's mind?

I compare this to a note from a professor in business school that encouraged us to actually not take notes in class because it meant we weren't actually paying complete attention to the lecture. His point was since the notes were available later, we'd get more out of the class this way if our mind was focussed on nothing else.

Let's think about this. If something happened to you, and your first thought after that was to broadcast it, are you losing something?

Would Isaac Newton have discovered the Law of Gravity, if he'd instead felt compelled to tweet "Damn....apple just fell on my head. Why doesn't someone cut these trees?" instead.

How much are we limiting our ability to process and think deeply, or even appreciate things more fully by publishing so often? Are we missing out on the nuances or emotionality of great movies? Or great books? Are we limiting the chances for those Eureka moments to come to us because instead of thinking about something and its implications, we're more focussed on thinking about how to weave that into our always-on Twitter stream? (Note: I say Twitter, but refer to all the forms of social interruption from texting, email to FB updates.)

Probably! But how and when will be know for sure? And what will be the cost by then? I'm long on humans so I think we'll figure it out after a while, but still...