Mason Wong

Current Links

2022-12-18T14:58:00.006-08:00

There's quite a lot of drama happening on Twitter, so here's how you can find my public posts elsewhere.

Mastodon https://mastodon.social/@masonwong@mstdn.social

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/masonwong/

LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/masonwong/

I recently made my Twitter profile private and expect to keep it that way unless things unexpectedly turn around and stabilize.

It's been a few years already since I dropped my Facebook activity to a bare minimum.

Check out my cooking and other random content on Instagram.

Check out my LinkedIn profile for my professional info and occasional work related content.

We'll see if either Mastadon or Post.News achieves the critical mass needed to let network effects decidedly determine the future of microblogging.

My Favorite Podcasts: November 2019

2019-11-19T17:35:00.000-08:00

It's nearly the end of 2019 and I figure it's time to update my favorite podcasts list.

In descending order of preference.

1. Techmeme Ride Home It's become a personal daily ritual on my commute home from work to listen to Brian McCullough's take on the day's tech news. His New York City perspective on Silicon Valley is refreshing.

2. Upgrade Jason Snell hosts many podcasts, but this is the one that I find most interesting. Snell and his co-host Myke Hurley tackle the week's tech news, with an emphasis on Apple and the streaming wars.

3. Accidental Tech Podcast Three software engineers talk tech news, but sometimes go deep with certain topics and opinions. Their perspective on software development actually helps me with ideas on how to be a better business systems administrator and analyst.

4. The Talk Show With John Gruber John Gruber's podcast is consistently good, with each episode running well over two hours, which I always listen to in its entirety. His opinions and insights on Apple are solid. He almost always has a guest, so I've found the range in quality of his episodes depend almost entirely on the quality of his guest.

5. The Well: A Podcast about Creative Inspiration with Branan Edgens and Anson Mount is a very personal, yet well produced program with interesting guests from many walks of life, with an emphasis on the entertainment industry. Anson Mount is best known for his portrayal of Captain Pike on Star Trek: Discovery, but also his leading role on AMC's Hell on Wheels.

6. 60-Second Science by Scientific American offers bite-sized episodes covering a wide range of science topics in a light and breezy format, without any risk of going too deep. I enjoy listening with my kids in the car.

7. The Chad & Cheese Podcast: HR's Most Dangerous Podcast Setting aside the fact that Chad & Joel recently published an entire episode interviewing me, this firmly remains my go-to podcast for keeping up with the recruiting tech industry. Their production values have noticeably improved and they've diversified their show formats, ranging from their weekly news roundup, to startup pitches (Firing Squad and Death Match), news briefs (The Shred), practitioner interviews, and a recently launched series of marketing industry episodes (Cult Brand), in which the boys put away their usual swear words and deliver exceptional business interviews.

8. 16 Minutes on the News by a16z. Sonal Chokshi astutely interviews key players from Andreessen Horowitz on a variety of tech news topics with a nice balance of depth and brevity, and an interesting Silicon Valley venture capitalist firm perspective.

9. Subspace Transmissions: A Star Trek Podcast I've tried listening to various Star Trek podcasts and none stay as focused and insightful as Cam and Tyler. While I admit I skip over sections or even entire episodes when they discuss VOY or ENT (the two series I have yet to watch and don't want spoiled), I am eager to hear what they have to say with Short Treks and the upcoming Picard series.

10. I Drink Two Beers and Try to Tell You How To Run Your Business Gary Chou's first, sponsored podcast is exceptionally good right out the gate. Gary is a social acquaintance of mine who has blazed a unique path in his professional career. After listening to only the first three episodes, it's clear to me it's worth recommending.

11. Deconstructor of Fun This podcast's content is amazingly insightful for those interested in the world of video game production. Console, PC, and mobile games are a tumultuous industry with plenty of stories to reveal from between the lines of weekly news articles. The biggest knock on this podcast is the production value is very inconsistent, with lots of undecipherable cross-talk, embarrassing extended periods of silence, and clearly no effort to edit the raw recording.

12. WSJ Tech News Briefing I only started listening to this podcast when their weekly tech news podcast, Instant Message, was abruptly canceled (on hiatus?). This daily podcast has a good round of tech news, with an emphasis on the corporate and investment perspective, as you would expect from the Wall Street Journal.

Honorable mentions to

Land of the Giants Excellent documentary mini-series examining Amazon.

Talent Makers Studio by Greenhouse Software, for publishing an episode interviewing me.

6 months at Lyft

2019-08-19T07:48:00.000-07:00

Having reached 6 months of working at Lyft, it seems a good time to share why I joined and how things are going.

Back in December, as my year long consulting project at a global pharmaceutical company was scheduled to wrap up, I got a call from a Lyft recruiter, asking if I would consider taking responsibility of the company’s applicant tracking system. My independent consulting practice had focused on applicant tracking systems projects, so I appreciated the call, but would I consider a full time, in-house staff position? Normally, I would have immediately declined. Without any warm project leads in hand yet, I proceeded to interview with Lyft.

I was already aware of Lyft’s warm and fuzzy brand, but it was during my interviews that I learned how large and rapidly the company was growing in employee population size. It seemed Lyft was entering the realm of storied, emblematic Silicon Valley tech employers, particularly those of the FAANG cohort, with decades long reputations for epic hiring campaigns and respected recruiting teams. Better still, among current major tech brands, Lyft had mostly avoided controversy, especially when compared to its primary rival.

Independent consulting for over 6 years allowed me to make a satisfying impact with many clients and grow my expertise from working in so many corporate recruiting environments. Being my own boss also afforded me some personal flexibility to spend quality time with my family. Was I really ready to go back in-house?

The specified work at Lyft was on target to my expertise and I had confidence I could succeed in the role. It was when I realized that this would be a pivotal learning opportunity that my choice became clear. The chance to partner with a recruiting team an order of magnitude larger than I had ever worked with, to work closely with and learn from some of the best Workday HCM and Tableau BI analytics practitioners, and to have my expertise impact an impressively high volume and fast paced recruiting operations, were all serious considerations.

An even bigger factor was the opportunity to learn the Greenhouse platform hands-on in one of its most demanding settings, after having spent over a decade deep within the Jobvite ecosystem. (I am often asked how long I had used Greenhouse before becoming in charge of it at Lyft. Most are stunned when I say I was hired without ever having touched it!)

What sealed it for me was my onsite interview experience, which was the most organized and welcoming I had ever experienced (I’m well aware of how difficult it is to consistently deliver such a candidate experience). Meeting my potential new manager and colleagues was wholly compelling.

I started at Lyft in mid-February and appreciated the time and space given to let me ramp up with Greenhouse, Lyft’s Talent Team, and the company. My new hire orientation involved 60 other new hires and a strong emphasis on the critical importance of Lyft’s drivers to the business. Even though my role does not directly involve drivers, I was given a clear perspective of how everyone’s work affects what drivers experience and how they are central to the company’s success. Further, the first of Lyft’s three core values, Be Yourself, really resonated as someone not looking to compromise my perspective or priorities while joining a large corporation.

In taking charge of Greenhouse, I learned how its product design was very similar to other competing platforms, as well as how it differs. We all know there is no perfect system and they all have strengths and weaknesses. I also learned how it had already been implemented at Lyft to impressively support a recruiting operation that hires hundreds of new employees every month. I began to take inventory of improvements needed in the system configuration and the business practices involved.

With Lyft’s IPO in late March, I was asked to be a project’s key contributor to help prepare the company’s operations for an important process change. It felt great to provide expert advice at the beginning of the project and to execute the system changes on schedule. This was my first experience with an IPO. I had prior experience at both pre-IPO and post-IPO employers (from which my advice was based on), but never the actual IPO.

My role is on the People Analytics Technology Strategy team, which includes Workday and Tableau practitioners, and I work closely every day with stakeholders from throughout the 250+ member Talent Team. Having prior career experience as a tech recruiter, a college recruiter, and as the head of global recruiting at a handful of Bay Area software companies, I believe I bring an understanding to the business processes that Greenhouse supports, as well as an empathy to the recruiters who come with many questions and concerns, often with the urgency of a candidate offer to be made or a hiring manager who needs prompt answers.

There is much still to do with scaling up Lyft’s recruiting systems, setting up integrations between internal and third party systems, and driving user adoption and training. As we support the company’s ambitious growth plans, we also have a shot at building a world class, reknown recruiting operation with some of the most innovative systems practices.

Many thanks to my manager for offering me the job, to the Lyft recruiter who found me online, to the recruiting coordinator who organized such a welcoming onsite interview, to the TalentOps and PATS teams for ramping me up, to the entire Talent Team for putting their trust in me, and to the company as a whole for being a place of rapid growth and evolution. I am grateful for the opportunity.

My Favorite Podcasts

2019-01-01T10:15:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year!

Let's welcome 2019 with a list of my favorite podcasts from the end of 2018, in descending order of preference.

1. The Talk Show With John Gruber There's just something about Gruber's voice that beckons me to look through my Overcast favorites for a new episode, which usually comes once every two weeks. Almost always with a tech pundit guest, Gruber never conducts an interview, but instead simply converses from beginning to end at a relaxed pace, often resulting in two, three, and on rare occasion, even four hour long episodes, without any music intros or gimmicky sound effects. Enthusiasm for Apple is the regular topic, with commentary on a wide range of other related tech topics. Apple bias: 9 out of 10.

2. Techmeme Ride Home The perfect blend of tech headlines and brief, sometimes snarky commentary, this daily episode is the excellent round up of tech news that I was looking for a few years ago. Recorded in New York City, it brings an East coast perspective to what is often Silicon Valley focused news. Apple bias: 5 out of 10.

3. Accidental Tech Podcast The best thing about ATP is the trio of hosts who bring a great mix of technical depth, clearly articulated opinions, and a dynamic of humorous banter. Apple bias: 7 out of 10.

4. Upgrade A few things set this tech podcast apart. There are named, regular segments to the show, and co-host Jason Snell seems to straddle dueling roles of primary guest and secondary host. Snell is the primary host on many other podcasts, but this seems to be his weekly forum for being interviewed. Apple bias: 7 out of 10.

5. The Chad & Cheese Podcast: HR's Most Dangerous Podcast After listening to many HR recruiting related podcasts, I found myself always coming back to Chad & Cheese. They do their homework, they get interesting guests, they are consistently snarky, and most importantly, the show has gotten better over time. They have room to further improve (audio volume levels still inconsistent, the sound effects are still overused, overemphasis on vendors instead of practioners), but this is the go-to podcast for keeping up with the recruiting tech industry. Their heavy use of swear words means I can't listen while my kids are in the car.

6. Vector with Rene Ritchie The Apple analysis from Rene is always deep and rational, although his bias in favor of Apple is sometimes a bit much, even for me. Most of his episodes are scripted audio versions of his YouTube show, which are not as enjoyable as when he is in a more conversational setting. Most of his podcast guests are fascinating, although he has had a few snoozers. Listen for the occasional, brief and very subtle Star Trek: The Next Generation references. Apple bias: 10 out of 10.

7. Pocketnow Daily I find Jaime Rivera's broadcaster voice quality more compelling than the show content, because the very brief, daily episodes are mostly about Android smartphones which I will never buy (I use a carrier-less Huawei P20 Pro as my primary camera and my last ever Android device). He does cover Apple mobile tech, but with a somewhat healthy skepticism and occasional disdain. Apple bias: 3 out of 10.

8. Subspace Transmissions: A Star Trek Podcast This is my favorite Trek podcast that is still in production (Engage: The Official Star Trek Podcast with Jordan Hoffman, my all time favorite Trek podcast, was unfortunately canceled). The co-hosts are dedicated fans of all incarnations of Trek. They were a bit more critical of Star Trek: Discovery than I would prefer, but their views are always fair and thoughtful.

I welcome your recommendations for other podcasts to try, especially those hosted by women.

Seeking new consulting projects for 2019

2018-11-21T16:15:00.000-08:00

Hello masonwong.com readers,

I am now scheduling new consulting projects with kickoff dates in Q1 / January 2019. If you know of any companies who could benefit from my expertise, please message me. Successfully completed projects include:

- Jobvite optimization, reconfiguration, implementation, integrations, training (worldwide)

- Advanced custom reports training, development & analysis of Jobvite data (worldwide)

- recruiting operations & process improvement (U.S. nationwide)

- interim head of global talent acquisition (SF Bay Area)

For more information, please see http://zwd.com

Thanks very much in advance for any leads on new projects.

-Mason

Mirror, mirror, on the wall

2018-01-13T01:14:00.001-08:00

Excellent summary of Star Trek’s Mirror Universe along with the major plot threads of the latest #StarTrekDiscovery episode. https://youtu.be/c0Wq36aHT6A

Hungry FDA Official Orders Massive Pot Pie Recall

2017-03-31T19:10:00.001-07:00

An oldie but goodie.

http://www.theonion.com/video/hungry-fda-official-orders-massive-pot-pie-recall-14223

Astronomical Odds Against Us

2017-03-31T19:04:00.004-07:00

Computer illustration by Dana Berry, commissioned by National Geographic magazine for its July 2013 issue cover, depicting the formation of the Earth's Moon in a scientifically plausible visual style.

The prevailing theory is the young Earth collided with a Mars sized planet in a manner that caused much of the Earth's material to eject out and eventually coalesce into the Moon, initially in a nearer orbit than today.

I find it fascinating to learn that things we consider stable or permanent on a human timescale, such as the orbit of planets, the distance to the Moon, or even something as fundamental as sunshine, are themselves subject to gradual or sometimes devastatingly dramatic change.

Life is precious, the Earth is sacred, and we are not just made of star stuff and a way for the universe to know itself, but we are also a unique opportunity to feel and show gratitude for having come into existence despite literally astronomical odds against us.

The Next Big Thing in Tech

2016-10-26T10:23:00.001-07:00

There is now a set of emerging technology that are competing to be the "next big thing" in tech.

Back in the '90s, the Internet rolled into all our lives, growing from a computer network used mostly by universities, government, and the military, to a full blown social, economic, and political revolution. It hardly surprised anyone. We could see it coming. There were even AT&T television commercials depicting everyday life with Internet powered services that we take for granted today.

Also during that time, we clearly could see that mobile technology would be big. Cell phones were proliferating, especially the Motorola flip phones. We knew that one day, computers would be handheld and merged with the phone. But we didn't know exactly how soon, nor how ubiquitous mobile tech would become. Of course, mobile tech extended and vastly expanded the reach of the Internet revolution.

Now we have some newly emerging technologies that are vying for attention. Namely, virtual reality, augmented reality, artificial intelligence, chat bots, and driverless cars.

Virtual reality (VR) promises to immerse the senses of the user, in a manner most easily associated with playing video games. VR tech from decades before were heavy, slow, and expensive, but those constraints have been overcome, largely due to the advances in mobile tech. Sci-fi movies have glorified the promise of VR, yet today's news media regularly portrays users of VR as people acting clumsy in the real world while wearing VR headgear. Having to shut out the real world while using VR has its obvious disadvantages, which makes usage of VR a very intentional and inherently isolating act, not something to do for a few seconds or even a minute here or there, like glancing at a smartphone or casually playing a mobile game app.

Augmented reality (AR) trades the immersive aspect of VR with technology that overlays computer generated visuals with a view of the real world. While avoiding the isolation of VR, the use of AR introduces additional complications, such as distractions from real life hazards, and expensive see-through display technology. I think in the long run, AR has more potential for both business and personal applications, than VR. Perhaps there will be a future hybrid AR/VR device that can easily switch between the two modes.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been envisioned for over half a century and has become viable as computing technology has accelerated in processing power and affordability. Many different emerging technologies are closely related to AI, including learning networks, speech recognition, natural language processing, speech synthesis, foreign language translation, and predictive analytics. There is a common fear, also frequently portrayed in sci-fi films, of AI, especially when combined with robotics, resulting in apocalyptic destruction and death, driven by soulless vengeance and limitless ambition for power. Some predict the Singularity will occur, when the machines develop their own intelligence faster than humans can control. Such fears may limit the trust consumers have with AI, which I predict will give initial prominence to AI related applications that only partially automate things, where people feel they still have some control, but enjoy some benefits of AI assistance.

Chat bots are a mashup of text messaging platforms and some aspects of AI. The shift in attention from disparate mobile apps to the stickiness of mobile text messaging platforms allows for software providers to refocus the entire user experience of an application to a text based natural language processing user interface. Customer service functions are leading the way. Other functions will likely follow. Chat bots, especially if voice recognition is mixed with the text interface, could possibly become the channel for AI to be accepted into daily mainstream use.

Driverless cars have garnered a lot of media and industry attention the past few years. Such vehicles are already in limited use under narrow conditions. Partial automation is also in use in Tesla cars, resulting in some fatal accidents. Truly autonomous vehicles which can navigate all roads under all conditions are still decades away. Fog, snow, and other foul weather hinder the sensors. Navigation maps are not always accurate or up to date. But the impact to the transportation industry will obviously be massive. It is yet to be proven there will be less traffic, but it is hoped that overall traffic safety will improve, while levels of car ownership, already on a downward trend, will likely continue to drop with both the convenience and cost of driverless cars.

What is possibly the most tantalizing idea is the likelihood that the next big thing might not be any of these things. It would not surprise some people, especially those of us in Silicon Valley, if some entirely new technology, built by a previously unknown, innovative teenage girl in her parents garage or basement or bedroom corner, rapidly emerges as the next big thing to change the world.

7 Steps to Turn Every Employee into a Super Recruiter

2016-01-21T21:43:00.003-08:00

Jobvite asked me to be a guest blogger, focusing on some consulting material that I have provided to my clients on building a robust employee referral program. Please check it out:

7 Steps to Turn Every Employee into a Super Recruiter

Replacement to traditional resumes/CVs

2015-10-10T18:20:00.001-07:00

Like it or not, it has become abundantly clear that LinkedIn profiles are the only viable online replacement to traditional resumes/CVs.

The "death of resumes" certainly is not imminent, but for all the many different proposed / launched alternatives, LinkedIn has won, hands down.

John Lasseter remembers Steve Jobs on Charlie Rose

2015-10-10T17:31:00.001-07:00

https://www.facebook.com/CharlieRose/videos/10154040317767923/

How Not to Be a Networking Leech

2015-10-10T17:27:00.001-07:00

How Not to Be a Networking Leech: Tips for Seeking Professional Advice: http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/09/27/jobs/how-not-to-be-a-networking-leech-tips-for-seeking-professional-advice.html?referer=

Jobvite Reawakens

2015-05-08T23:02:00.001-07:00

Today's Jobvite Summit 2015 customer conference in San Francisco revealed that at least in terms of product development, the company has reawakened from a bewildering and detrimental slumber over the past few years. Live demos of the new homepage dashboard, the "candidate centric" profile format, and most importantly, the new data reports platform, proved that Jobvite is finally responding to its most vocal customers and impressively gearing up to once again fully compete in today's fast evolving recruitment technology market.

For many years, customers have shared feedback of feature wishlists and functional pain points, only to be told development for many such ideas would remain in the undetermined future. As Jobvite's market share and aspirations for larger and geographically disperse deals has grown, the pressure to address their products' functional gaps have become more pronounced and are now impossible to ignore.

While always facing a variety of competition, the recent emergence of spunky, VC funded, new startups, such as Greenhouse and Lever, who intentionally designed product functionality and marketing messages to target the specific concerns of disillusioned Jobvite customers, has provided healthy motivation for Jobvite to both catch up and renew timely innovation with its products.

Organizationally, Jobvite has also experienced some transition, with its own latest round of VC funding allowing Jobvite to recently beef up its own engineering team (and, accordingly, its in-house recruiting team), directly adding badly needed product development capacity. In addition, some changes in its senior management ranks has allowed for new and existing players to step up and briskly execute on long languishing initiatives.

For at least two years, Jobvite struggled with stamping out numerous bugs from its newer "blue" user interface overhaul, transitioning its application hosting to Amazon Web Services, constructing a complicated new analytics and reporting system based on a third party business intelligence tool, and fending off expectation-lowering competition from low-cost, feature-light system providers. All the while, frustrations from a distinct minority of its customer base were often left unresolved by a lack of product functionality development, customer success resolution, or both. Some of those customers have since switched to eagerly beckoning competitors, permanently lost from the Jobvite ecosystem. It really seemed that Jobvite was asleep at the wheel, or at least unable to step on the gas.

Had I observed no new changes in the company's trajectory with its product development from what seemed to be happening since around mid-2014, this blog post would likely be describing a vendor in the early stages of a tech startup death spiral.

However, what the Jobvite team accomplished at today's conference was to show its reinvigorated innovation feathers and a light at the end of what has been a long and dark tunnel for its customers. It must actually deliver to its customers the demo'd new features and do its best to gain strong user adoption. That would represent Jobvite finally catching up on its lost couple of years. And only then will it be in position, by building and shipping even greater product features, to retake its market leadership role in which its customers are once again truly delighted by their chosen provider of recruitment technology.

Mason Wong is the founding principal of ZWD Recruitment Management and Independent Jobvite Consulting.

Peak Genesis

2014-11-21T00:04:00.001-08:00

The original live version of "Tonight, Tonight, Tonight" was the peak of Genesis, in my opinion. I am a fan of all the many eras of Genesis, but my first favorite era was the mid-'80s.

This song and it's arrangement is powerful, ethereal, atmospheric, and even a bit gratuitous, sort of emblematic of the 1980's and its MTV driven consumerism and ambition. Phil's voice was still fully intact, allowing for the original aggressive delivery of the lyrics, and the song to retain its original key, as well as Tony Banks's mysterious sounding synth keyboard bridge, none of which would ever be repeated in subsequent live tours.

http://youtu.be/pthU2RLmxqE

CVS Takes One Step Towards Extinction

2014-10-25T21:47:00.003-07:00

Twitter is lighting up with Apple Pay fans upset at CVS and RiteAid for pulling the plug on their NFC payment devices to prevent iPhone 6 users from paying with Apple Pay (as well as Google Wallet users), in anticipation of the 2015 launch of ConnectC, an insecure, customer data gathering, virtual coupon cluttering, QR code image scanning scheme, that a number of major retailers are hoping will work to beat out the banks as well as Apple and Google.

CVS in particular is getting singled out - many are threatening to boycott CVS until they restore the ability to pay by Apple Pay.

Walgreens accepts Apple Pay. I already shop there anyways.

http://daringfireball.net/2014/10/nfc_apple_pay

Favorite Quotes

2014-09-28T03:00:00.000-07:00

I've previously shared these on my Facebook profile, which is not publicly accessible.

"America, our moment is now... In this moment, let us reach for what we know is possible: a nation healed, a world repaired, an America that believes again." -Senator Barack Obama, campaigning in Iowa, November 2007

"I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed." -Michael Jordan, Nike commercial "Failure"

“Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard, and you’re kind, amazing things will happen." --Conan O’Brien, "The Tonight Show" final episode as host

"Evolution is a fact, not a theory. It really did happen." -Carl Sagan, "Cosmos", ep 2, "One Voice in the Cosmic Fugue"

“It makes good sense to revere the sun and the stars, because we are their children.” -Carl Sagan, "Cosmos", ep 9, “The Lives of The Stars”

"The scientific world view is so much more exciting, more poetic, more filled with sheer wonder, than anything in the poverty stricken arsenals of the religious imagination." - Oxford professor Richard Dawkins, February 2002

"Nothing is too wonderful to be true, if it be consistent with the laws of nature" - Michael Faraday

"Science always wins over bullshit." -Dick Rutkowski

"God is right here. God lives between the skin and bones... of a [roast] pig." - Anthony Bourdain, "No Reservations", Romania episode

"Tastes like it died screaming." - Anthony Bourdain, "No Reservations", San Francisco episode, while chomping on a Red's Java House hamburger, lambasting Alice Waters and anyone's concern for how the cow lived before becoming a beef patty.

"Just eat. The rule and law here [in Singapore] is: Bring the food to your mouth as fast as you can, without irritating your neighbors." - KF Seetoh, "No Reservations", Singapore episode

"The more relaxed you are, the better you are at everything: the better you are with your loved ones, the better you are with your enemies, the better you are at your job, the better you are with yourself." - Bill Murray, fall 2012, speaking to members of the Screen Actors Guild, with a NY Times interviewer

"So there's no such thing as work-life balance. There's work, and there's life, and there's no balance." - Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook COO

“I have three messages: One is we should never, ever give up. Two is you never are too old to chase your dreams. Three is it looks like a solitary sport but it takes a team.” - Diana Nyad, 64, upon swimming Cuba to Key West without a shark cage, for 110 miles in 53 hours, on her 5th attempt in 35 years

"I believe that what is wrong with our schools in this nation is that they have become unionized in the worst possible way. This unionization and lifetime employment of K-12 teachers is off-the-charts crazy." - Steve Jobs, February 2007

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition... Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." -Steve Jobs, commencement speech at Stanford, June 12, 2005

Why Elon Musk is No Steve Jobs

2014-05-27T22:11:00.002-07:00

Recently there was an online article proclaiming Elon Musk as the current day version of Steve Jobs, with a quote from a former colleague of Musk going as far as saying Musk far exceeds Jobs's capabilities. There's also a popular Quora discussion on the topic.

I admire Elon Musk. He has achieved great things in admirable, go-for-broke situations while leading very cool companies: PayPal, SpaceX, SolarCity and Tesla. On his own, he deserves respect and attention. And given his age, he will likely innovate and impress for decades to come.

But Elon Musk is no Steve Jobs.

1. No product demo aura. Steve Jobs mastered the product demo announcement event format like no other. No one cares that it sounded scripted and rehearsed and was always full of hyperbole. It amazed and stunned audiences just often enough to make fanboys want more. Musk is obviously not known for his product demo skills.

2. No legion of bitter, discarded former colleagues. Steve Jobs was known for being a total dick with many colleagues, including some very talented people. Regardless of whether it was justified, we all know and secretly admire that Jobs often got his way by mercilessly disparaging and firing people.

3. No hero's journey monomyth life story of acid induced visions, early victories, temptation, downfall, banishment in the desert, atonement and triumphant second coming. Along the same lines, Steve Jobs even lived a buddy story with The Woz. Musk's life story is instead punctuated with two divorces, betting the farm on his companies, and taking big government loans.

4. No affiliation with adored products used by generations of children who are now grown adults. Musk has no parallel with the exposure and impact that the Apple IIe and original Mac had on kids and schools.

5. No iconic clothing. The black turtleneck and jeans were quirky, but a necessary ingredient in the recipe of the Steve Jobs legend.

6. No impact on the creative class. Artists, musicians, photographers, videographers, and so many others have had their crafts deeply affected by Apple technology over the decades. Perhaps there will be a day when many of us will drive Tesla cars or fly into orbit on SpaceX rockets, but as of today, despite the retro-Sci-Fi cool these companies represent, they have not yet revolutionized something as fundamental as the arts.

Only because others have already compared Elon Musk to Steve Jobs that it is fair to then measure him as such.

And it is clearly no comparison.

ZWD Recruitment Mgmt and Jobvite Consulting

2014-05-27T21:58:00.004-07:00

I own and operate ZWD Recruitment Management and Jobvite Consulting.

http://zwd.com

In a nutshell, I ease the pain of companies trying to scale up their recruiting.

The services offered can be roughly categorized as

Independent Jobvite Consulting and Training
Search and Placement of High Performance Recruiters
Recruitment Management Consulting

Check out the site for more info.

Opening Theme to Cosmos

2014-03-06T01:54:00.001-08:00

“The Cosmos is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be…

"The Cosmos is full beyond measure, of elegant truths, of exquisite interrelationships, of the awesome machinery of nature…

"Some part of our being knows, this is where we came from. We long to return. And we can, because the Cosmos is also within us. We are made of star stuff. We are a way for the Cosmos to know itself.” -Carl Sagan

One of my favorites aspects of the original Cosmos on PBS was the beautiful opening theme music by Vangelis, titled “Heaven and Hell,” paired with some gorgeous animated paintings of distant stars and galaxies.

The music and Sagan's monologue still gives me tingles down my spine.

Gluttony 8 Years Ago

2014-02-24T00:42:00.000-08:00

I've always loved food, but 8 years ago, before getting married and having kids, gluttony was a frequent experience. A lengthy entry on my old blog on tribe.net captured one such period of overindulgence.

Originally posted Monday, January 16, 2006

The past few days have been another period of gluttony!!

Part of the reason was because for just over a day, my gf had a friend from out of town visiting, so we did a little food exploration around the city.

But mostly, I just went out and ate a lot!

Let's see, starting last Thursday night, I worked very late at the office, so I ended up at Ozone Thai on Polk at Sutter. I've read elsewhere that they serve authentic Bangkok style Thai food, so I gave it a try. The rice porridge with a side of Chinese broccoli and slow roasted pork was quite tasty. I was surprised how well they had decorated and expanded the space, since the previous tenant of the location, also a Thai place, was quite drab.

Friday morning, before work, I stopped by Mexico au Parc at South Park for a breakfast burrito, the mushroom and egg variety. It ended up being a rather large burrito, since they stuff it with rice and refried beans by default. With their spice salsa, it was quite a start to the day.

Friday lunch, with little time for a lunch break, but also with a previously scheduled lunch with a friend, we ended up at Mexico au Parc for my second consecutive meal there. The grilled chicken burrito with avocado (not guacamole) was pretty good.

Friday happy hour, I grabbed a few beers with a former colleague and also some buffalo wings (ordered extra extra crispy) and a plate of fried calamari over at Nova bar on 2nd Street at De Boom St.

Later that night, my gf and her friend picked me up to go to a late dinner, as we had reservations at Isa on Steiner at Chestnut in the Marina. The food was quite good - we had the dungeness crab salad, then the endive and escarole salad with blue cheese, then the grilled calamari, then the seared foie gras with huckleberries and a port sauce, the risotto with wild mushrooms, and finally the roasted rack of lamb. Service was friendly but not exactly attentive. The place was packed and quite loud. It's worth a visit for a semi-special dinner, but I'm not sure I'll be itching to go back, given the availability of similar quality food elsewhere in a more comfortable atmosphere.

Saturday morning started with a trip to the Ferry Building Farmer's Market, despite the light rain. Unfortunately, about 1/3 of the booths normally present decided to not show up, including one of the dried fruit purveyors that we hoped to see. Within minutes of arriving, we had a multitude of baked goods in our hands and mouths (sugary bread stick, peanut butter cookie sandwich, croissant), and then a spicy Aidell's sausage in a bun (three of us shared one). A quick taste of the durian flavored smoothie from the hippie smoothie guy did not turn into a sale (I usually buy one vegan sushi roll from him, but not today). We spied the mushroom sellers as well as the Cowgirl Creamery for all the cheeses on display. I sampled some olive oils and vinegars with sample pieces of bread. In the front, we shopped for some fruits and vegetables, while sampling some blood oranges and regular oranges. I picked up a bottle of fresh squeezed, unpasteurized orange juice - quite good. We also picked up some unpasteurized apple juice and some broccoli and organic fuji apples. There was surprisingly few people around, especially for a Saturday morning, but I guess the rain kept a lot of people away. Closer to 11 am, we picked up a roast chicken from the Roli Roti truck and munched away while watching the crowd get a little bit bigger. We saw Martin Yan and a video camera person and a show producer walk by - he as wearing a bright blue shirt and just looking around. One passerby stopped him to shake his hand. We wandered back out through the booths but the rain had started back up, so we ended up leaving, to find a hefty parking ticket on the car at the 30 minute meter! Ooops!! The ticket was issued almost 90 minutes after we had parked, guess they really were checking!!

While heading towards Golden Gate Park, we stopped by the KK Cafe on Divisidero Street at Haight to say hi to Jack and Margaret who serve up a product they invented, called Signs & Wonders peanut milk. We enjoyed a peanut milk smoothie (include blended apple and banana), a peanut milk coffee, and a bottle of fresh peanut milk. It was nice to see how busy the small place was with local regulars, coming by to enjoy lunch or just a coffee.

After an enjoyable but lengthy visit to the newly opened de Young art museum, we drove through the outer Richmond and made a quick, entirely unplanned stop at Shanghai Dumpling Shop on Balboa and 34th to pick up some freshly made xiao lung bao (steamed pork dumplings) to go. Since it was so cold and breezy, the steamed dumplings were a hit as we munched them in the car.

We then attempted to get Vietnamese banh mi sandwiches from Le Cafe on Clement and 31st but they were closed, apparently still shut for the holidays.

So instead, we headed to the commercial area of Clement Street, first to pick up three live dungeness crabs from the New May Wah Asian supermarket, and then to grab a few pieces of dim sum from Good Luck Dim Sum on Clement at 9th. At this point, our friend from out of town thought we were quite nuts going all around town for so much food.

Still, we made a stop at Trader Joe's to pick up some snack foods and other items.

We drove back to my gf's place where we proceeded to cook up a hearty meal of Singaporean Chili Crab (using two of the live crabs), simple steamed crab using the one remaining crab, plus some steamed broccoli and brown rice, and some easy to drink chardonnay (Indian Wells). OK, even though this meal was relatively light compared to much of the other food already consumed, we were thoroughly stuffed. We dropped off our friend at the airport and retired for the night totally exhausted.

Sunday, we thought would be a bit of a break from all the consumption, but after attempting to locate a Vietnamese noodle shop in "downtown" Redwood City and instead finding a ghost town on a Sunday morning, we stumbled upon Naranjos Taqueria on Broadway near El Camino Real. It was the only place that was packed at lunch time on Sunday, where every place else, including a more modern and spacious place called Mexquite that was nearly empty. There were almost all local Mexicans packed into this narrow taqueria, mostly eating soft tacos. My gf and I felt we had discovered a place we would have never heard of on our own. We ordered up soft tacos with carne asada, al pastor, and lengua, as well as a burrito with lengua. The food was excellent, flavorful, sizeable, and the pastor was spicy and greasy-good. OK, it was another heavy meal, but after strolling through a ghost town trying to find a non-existent noodle restaurant, a tasty taqueria is just fine in my book!

Later, we shopped for a few special food items from Draeger's and Suruki Japanese Foods.

Finally, for a late Sunday dinner, we ate a light meal, putting together a salad with mixed field greens tossed in a Japanese soy and sesame sauce, with home toasted sesame seeds, some unsalted roasted cashew nuts, some Trade Joe's pomegranate seeds, some TJ's blue cheese, thinly sliced fresh organic fuji apples, and some dry roasted sunflower seed kernels. We also ate some spicy bean curd skin which came from the soy stand at the farmer's market the day before.

Wow! What a weekend of gluttony!! I'll try to take it easy this week...

How Star Trek: Titan Could Be Made Today

2014-01-29T00:07:00.000-08:00

So, never mind that Paramount has already rebooted Star Trek with two hit films by J.J. Abrams and a writing/producing team that might get tapped to bring Trek back to TV someday, presumably in the rebooted timeline.

Hard core Trek fans would much rather see more done with the previous casts and characters, such as DS9, TNG, and Enterprise. But the challenge is so many years have elapsed that the actors have aged significantly and the residual audiences are likely too small to sustain a new TV series based on the past series.

I have an idea that could conceivably address all these concerns.

First, I would choose to pick up the TNG storyline from the end of Star Trek Nemesis of Will Riker, leaving the Enteprise-E, now promoted to Captain of the starship Titan, with his wife Deanna Troi on his crew. Thus, the series title would be Star Trek Titan. There already are Star Trek novels which pursued this storyline, which I must admit I have yet to read. So, there is already a basis for new characters and plotlines readily available for revision into episodic television.

Here's where my idea gets potentially interesting.

To win back all the hard core trek fans, Star Trek Titan would star the original TNG actors Jonathan Frakes and Marina Sirtis. Both are still active in their respective careers. Of course, they have each physically aged beyond what their characters would have looked like during the Titan years. To account for this, I suggest the new show takes on two special formats:

1. Each episode opens and closes with The Rikers already in early retirement, perhaps on the planet Betazed or back on Earth on a ranch in Alaska, depicting them many years after the starship Titan adventures. They have young children (or perhaps just the neighbors kids regularly visiting), who pester The Rikers to tell stories of their adventures in outerspace. Reluctantly, The Rikers begin telling the kids about the time when...

2. Then the show transitions to a highly stylized, computer animated format, with the voices of Frakes and Sirtis giving life to age appropriate Will Riker and Deanna Troi characters on the Titan, with their mutli-species crew, encountering fantastic, and perhaps embellished stories of discovery, adventure, conflict, survival, and the like. Animation not only allows Riker and Troi to be depicted, but any of the TNG and DS9 (and oh alright VOY too) characters to make cameos, voiced by their original actors, without concern of their current day appearance. As each episode's story wraps up, the animation transitions back to the live action depiction of The Rikers, finishing their story telling to the children.

Perhaps some of the original actors and their aged characters could even visit The Rikers.

Imagine the unusual and even psychedelic worlds the Titan would visit. And finally, a Star Trek series that was not dependent on the weekly parade of humanoid aliens.

The animation would also be how the series could garner a large youth audience who may not know about TNG, but would enjoy the Star Trek universe essentially as a cartoon, albeit a well produced, computer animated series.

And no time travel. Please.

I think it could work.

Maybe on Netflix.

Or a web/YouTube thing.

The Slow Motion Lynching of President Obama

2014-01-05T00:46:00.001-08:00

Times like these are why I am glad to not affiliate myself with any political party, while also continuing my support for President Obama. America is great, but the way our president has been treated is a clear sign, to me, that America is not an exceptional country. We should do better. For ourselves today, for our kids tomorrow, and our nation's values forever. I don't expect everyone to agree with me or this linked opinion piece by Frank Schaeffer, but dammit it's time to say something about how America still has a long way to go for there to be justice for all.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/frankschaeffer/2013/12/the-slow-motion-lynching-of-president-barack-obama/

10 Books That Have Stayed With Me

2013-12-23T01:04:00.000-08:00

A low-intensity Facebook meme is going around, asking people to share ten of their favorite books. Here's what I posted two days ago, with Amazon (mostly Kindle) links added here.

In your status line, list ten books that have stayed with you in some way. Don't take more than a few minutes and don't think too hard. They don't have to be, "right" or "great" books, just the ones that have touched you. Tag five or more friends including me, so I can see your list.

- The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence by Carl Sagan
- The Fountains of Paradise (Arthur C. Clarke Collection) by Arthur C. Clarke
- Neuromancer by William Gibson
- The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene
- The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change (25th Anniversary Edition) by Steven Covey
- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig
- Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain
- The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan
- Startup: A Silicon Valley Adventure by Jerry Kaplan
- The Working Life: The Promise and Betrayal of Modern Work by Joanne Ciullla

American Science Fiction Inflection Point: The Challenger Explosion

2013-11-16T19:03:00.001-08:00

The Discovery Channel is heavily promoting a cable television documentary to begin airing tonight on the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster that took place January 28, 1986. The day ranks among the handful of inflection points in the American psyche, right up there with the JFK assassination and 9/11.

At the time, the prevailing American vision of the near future included the idea of its citizens enjoying the spoils of the "space age," as thematically characterized by Disneyland's Tomorrowland (before it was revamped with a Jules Verne / Buck Rogers retro-style), and to a lesser extent, Arthur C. Clarke's landmark 1969 film, "2001: A Space Odyssey," and even The Jetsons cartoon series. Promises for what life in the U.S. would be like in 21st century America was especially emboldened by the momentous Apollo lunar landings and the advanced technology of the space shuttle fleet.

That optimistic, ambitious, and seemingly inevitable vision of the future was literally and figurative shattered the day the Challenger spectacularly exploded up high in that sunny Florida sky, and on millions of televisions around the world for the remainder of that day. Our collective expectations for the future was never to recover.

The Challenger disaster not only killed seven brave astronauts, including the first teacher to be launched towards space, and halted the aerospace industry and the planet's largest national space agency, it also brought about a decline of space-travel as the dominant theme in science fiction. Another victim was a sense of optimism in America's future in science fiction.

Precedent setting films such as Terminator 2 and The Matrix ushered in newly dominant themes of oppressive artificial intelligence, imprisoning virtual reality, ubiquitous militarization, and a crumbling, dismal dystopia. Dreams of the future began to reflect the rising enthusiasm for computer technology and the concurrent fears of society in dramatic decline.

More recent shifts in science fiction towards global epidemic terrors, environmental chaos, and zombie apocalypses, are marks of a continuing trend in America's changing fears, first sparked by the televised fiery explosion of the space shuttle Challenger nearly 28 years ago.