Earth

Written during a Lighthouse workshop in 2017.

Mona and I grew up together in a field outside of Fresno. She was in my row. We first noticed each other in late January or early February, and we hit it off. She used to call me the ‘tall orange one’, which was funny because it was dark as dirt down there in the sandy loam, and you couldn’t see any colors. And I was pretty sure she was growing faster than I was.

For the next couple of months, we’d spend the warm days just talking and being bored and the cool nights soaking up the wetness that seeped down from the sprinklers above. We didn’t really talk to any of the others in our row.

Mona hated the really hot days. The hot sand made you itch like mad, and you were helpless about it. “Get me out of this hell,” she’d say, but all you could do was wait for it to cool off at night. We had no idea that a worse hell called refrigeration was waiting for us.

Starting in the middle of March, occasionally, one of the others would just suddenly disappear without warning – plop – and leave an elongated hole that slowly re-filled with soil from above until it seemed as if they’d never been there. One day we heard a loud rumbling somewhere above us. It sounded different from the sprayers we’d had to endure every couple of weeks. The noise got louder and louder, and everything started to shake. There was screaming from further up the row. Suddenly huge blades sliced through the dirt within inches of us, and something lifted us up. There was a flash of blue and green. A huge, noisy thing was wrenching us from the soil by our tops. Mona was still next to me, a clump of dirt keeping us together. The machine kept pulling us along and slammed us against a series of metal rollers thunk, thunk, thunk until the dirt that held us together came loose and fell away.

I was still being pulled up and up toward the blinding blue. Ahead of me, there was something whirring and glinting in the sun. I could make out green tops flying to one side and orange bodies disappearing into a chute on the other side. I yelled for Mona, but there was no way off this roller coaster. Soon I was falling end over end down that chute. I landed in a bin on top of hundreds of others. I didn’t know where Mona was.

I was inside that bin for hours, with more and more of the others falling on top of me as the machine kept slashing and mauling its way across the field. At the end of the day, when the bin was full, the machine veered off toward a building and dumped all of us into a giant holding tank. There were millions of us in there. I called out for Mona. Everyone was calling out names or else whispering desperate prayers.

The next day, we were scooped up in batches, and there were more blades. Choppers, peelers, slicers, sorters. Some of the others were cut into neat, uniform sticks. A few unlucky bastards got julienned. I got lucky, just a chlorine bath and a light shave. Then a machine stuffed me and about a dozen others into a plastic bag labeled “Medium, 2 lbs” and boxed us up with a bunch of other bags. A forklift wheeled us into a huge fridge. I felt so cold and alone. I wished for dirt. I longed for Mona.

Then a miracle happened. Somehow Mona was in the bag with me! She stirred and smiled and said, “What are you doing in the medium bag, tall orange one?” God, I had missed her. In that bag inside of that box, we talked quietly for the rest of the night about blades and sand and warmth. She said, “it’s going to be OK.”

The next morning all of the boxes were loaded on a truck, and for two days, there was only the noise and smell of the road. Then we were unloaded into yet another fridge, then out to a well-lit cooler in the produce aisle next to the parsley. That same afternoon someone picked up our bag of “Medium, 2 lbs”, turned us over a few times, and tossed us into their cart. An hour later, we’re in another refrigerator. At least Mona was there. It was going to be OK.

But it wasn’t OK. An hour later, they took our bag out of the fridge, ripped it open, and took out four of the others, including Mona. I remained in the bag on the counter. I heard the worst sound in the world, the shick, shick, shick of a peeler. They hadn’t gotten to Mona yet. I yelled, “roll away!” She shouted back, “I love you!” and again I heard shick, shick, shick and then silence. I heard wine being poured into a glass, and then thwack, thwack, thwack, and everything was over. I couldn’t bear it. I would have spent a thousand years in a freezer to save Mona. I awaited my turn, but eventually, they threw the bag back into the drawer in the fridge.

I grieved for Mona in the dark. Days went by, then weeks. Then in about the first week of June, they finally took our bag out of the drawer. The nine of us were not in great shape. They gave us a quick squeeze and a sniff and tossed us directly into the trash. What a waste, but at least it was warmer in here.

The following Tuesday, we got rolled out to the curb and then heaved up and decanted into yet another truck. We rumbled off and bounced around for the rest of the day before; at sunset, our truck backed up to a cliff, tilted its back end up, and sent our bag of “Medium, 2 lbs” down the cliffside along with fifteen tons of garbage. We tumbled for a long time until we landed with a thud next to half a salmon and a crumpled pair of underwear (Medium).

I miss Mona. Maybe somewhere below this giant blister of garbage, there is some earth, a sandy field where we can meet again and talk and be bored on the warm days.

The distributed opportunity

A new reality

After a surge of optimism about re-opening the world and all of its offices, we’re now in uncertain times again with fourth waves of Covid-19 raging in many countries.

In March and April 2020, many knowledge workers were suddenly thrust into a new way of working. For some, this meant having to work at the kitchen table while taking care of young children — not an ideal environment for doing your best work or for taking the best care of your children. For others, it meant suddenly having a lot more autonomy over how to weave their work into their life and being able to create an environment that truly lets them do their best work. Some moved to different cities or countries to be nearer to family or just to live in a place that works better for them.

There was high variance, too, in how teams adapted to suddenly being distributed. Teams that already had high levels of trust and autonomy likely had smoother transitions than teams that already struggled with alignment and decision-making when they were co-located. These teams were already broken in the office.

Don’t waste the opportunity

Some anxious execs are eager to get their staff back into the office where they can be “collaborative, innovative, and productive”. I think it’s worth examining that claim and whether it might just be code for “Help, I don’t know how to lead a distributed team!”

It’s true that leading distributed teams is harder. It requires more empathy, more asynchronous communication, better tooling, and some emotional intelligence. It’s also true that there are as many ideal working environments as there are people in your company, and asking everyone to work in the office because some of your leaders don’t know how to lead distributed teams ignores a massive opportunity to let everyone do their best work by choosing their best work environment. If and when the scourge of this pandemic subsides, don’t waste that opportunity.

I’ve been working in distributed teams for almost twenty years, including a few years of consulting, five years as a founder, ten years at Automattic, and now at community and events company Bevy. I have not worked full-time in an office since the last millennium.

Create sparks, then execute

I understand that some people get energy from working in the office. Being in person with your co-workers is energizing. Sometimes creative sparks happen easier and faster when you’re together. But if we’re honest, work is not about letting creative sparks fly most of the time. It’s about turning those sparks into goals and then designing and executing and iterating and shipping. The sparks to execution ratio is maybe 1:50, so don’t over-optimize for sparks!

You also don’t need an office for making sparks. Being in an office all day every day is a one-size-fits-all environment that is exhausting and decidedly un-sparky for many people. Instead, bringing your distributed team together in meetups (week-long [Monday-Friday] in-person gatherings) is great for unleashing bursts of creativity and creating strong relationships that fuel distributed work for the rest of the year or quarter or whatever the cadence of your meetups is. Doing activities and having meals with your colleagues is better for forging human connections than hanging around the proverbial or real water cooler at the office. To me, the connections I’ve made with my remote colleagues at in-person meetups are deeper than ones I’ve created in the office.

Different people thrive in different environments. Some people need social interaction more than others, but I’d argue that for most people, spending the majority of our work time in an environment that’s quiet by default and affords flexibility and autonomy leads to better work and healthier, better-functioning teams.

I realized that even though I’ve been leading distributed teams for more than fifteen years, I haven’t written much about it. I’m still learning, but if I have time I’ll share some advice in future posts.

Up or down

America was a roller coaster over the weekend.

Watching a SpaceX rocket lift off from launch complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center and deliver two NASA astronauts to the International Space Station was exhilarating, even more so because my son worked on the spacecraft. I’m glad that America hasn’t given up on space, as it looked not too many years ago. Public-private partnerships are saving money and accelerating timelines, and I’m heartened that even when we agree about almost nothing in politics, we can still fund (some kinds of) science.

Watching Americans protest police brutality and systemic injustice was also heartening. Watching heavily armed police confront peaceful protesters was heartbreaking. Watching the president once again come up empty on empathy and ratcheting up the combative rhetoric on Twitter was pretty much the only predictable thing that happened all weekend.

When I came to the U.S. as a student in the 1980s, I was an idealistic young nerd coming to the country that had flown humans on the moon and vanquished racism in the aftermath of the civil rights movement. I was not a fan of Reagan, but I was a fan of people who worked hard for progress and justice. That’s what America meant to me. The U.S. in the late ’80s was the right choice for a computer nerd, but it took me about three days to realize I’d been wrong about the vanquishing racism part. The civil rights movement of the ’50s and ’60s had many successes, but there is much more work to do before we can talk about vanquishment.

Just like last weekend, two of the things I admire about America — a commitment to space exploration and the pursuit of social justice — have intersected before. On the eve of Apollo 11’s flight to the moon on July 16, 1969, Reverend Ralph Abernathy led a protest at launch complex 39A. Abernathy said that money spent on the space program should be sent to alleviate poverty instead:

What we can do for space and exploration we demand that we do for starving people.

Promises were made and mostly forgotten. Within a few years, the moon program was defunded (not re-allocated to fighting poverty), the civil rights movement shifted into a lower gear, and the country became pre-occupied with Vietnam, Watergate, oil, hostages, and just getting through the 1970s. Today, poverty rates in the United States are still shamefully high, income inequality is rising, and the economic effects of the coronavirus pandemic could be far worse than the 2008 financial crisis.

Some people say we shouldn’t be sending rockets into space when there is so much injustice down here. I think that’s a false choice. I’m not a historian or economist, I’m just a nerd and you know my bias since the second sentence. The U.S. must have the capacity to solve more than one problem at a time. We must make a real commitment to a just society, and I believe that neither story is done.

Space is hard. This is harder, but we must address it. We have to fix oversight and accountability of police. We have to include more voices in the political process and find leaders who will not only serve themselves. If we directed one hundredth of the energy that goes into Twitter punditry into inclusive, collaborative policy-making, we could put some constructive energy toward fixing our democracy. For example, take all of the brainpower that was wasted on interpreting Rudy Giuliani’s accidental tweet on Saturday and apply it to a real policy problem, like smart and just allocation of pandemic relief spending.

Human spaceflight is a model for cooperation in the face of ideological differences. You have to focus on the job, or it won’t get done. If you watched the arrival of the astronauts at the ISS on Sunday, you witnessed Americans working side by side with Russians. Million of people watched Saturday’s launch, and there are up to a hundred thousand people in the whole supply chain of the project. As Ralph Abernathy also said:

On the eve of [humans’] noblest venture, I am profoundly moved by the nation’s achievements in space and the heroism of the three men embarking for the moon

A just society lifts us up. Space exploration inspires us. All of us have to solve more than two problems in the course of every day. Our government should do the same.

Word Sequentialization

In some ways, “data visualization” is a terrible term. It seems to reduce the construction of good charts to a mechanical procedure. It evokes the tools and methodology required to create rather than the creation itself. It’s like calling Moby-Dick a “word sequentialization” or The Starry Night a “pigment distribution.”

It also reflects an ongoing obsession in the dataviz world with process over outcomes. Visualization is merely a process. What we actually do when we make a good chart is get at some truth and move people to feel it—to see what couldn’t be seen before. To change minds. To cause action.

— Scott Berinato, Visualizations that Really Work, HBR.org.

Unfairbnb – avoid host “A.C.” in L.A.

I’ve used Airbnb for personal and business travel.  I’ve been a fan.  Airbnb used to be the future, and it used to be cool.  Recently, I had an experience with a corporate host that was not cool, and was not handled well by Airbnb.  The host is called Air Concierge.  They manage Airbnb properties in Southern California.

Planning a family reunion

This story starts in October, when we realize that our son, who lives in Los Angeles, is going to be too busy at work to come home to Colorado for Christmas.  We start planning a trip to visit him, and I convince my parents to make a rare visit from Germany to join us as well.  Next step, find a place to stay for 5 people.  It’s only October, but there’s not much available.  I manage to find a nice but expensive rental in Venice on Airbnb.  I book it, make a payment of 50% plus fees, and make a mental note of the strict cancellation policy (48 hours for a full refund), and over the next couple of days keep looking for something closer to where our son lives.

Something opens up much closer, I realize that I’m coming up on the 48 hours, so I hustle to my computer …  except, I missed the 48-hour cut-off by about 20 minutes!  I shouldn’t have played it so close.  I check with the host on refunding anyway:

Hi A.C., I just found out that another place is available down the street from where our son lives. I missed the 48-hour window by 20 minutes. Any chance I could still cancel the reservation with you? Thank you.

I get this reply:

Hey there Martin,
If you wanted to cancel now, the dates will be opened up.
And once we get those dates rebooked we can refund you the appropriate amount. Unfortunately we must stick to our strict cancellation as this is our companies policy that we are unable to bypass.

20 minutes

Missing the cutoff is my fault.  20 minutes earlier, and a refund would have been automatic.  That’s frustrating.  But it’s still 67 days before the check-in date, so I’m optimistic that they can rebook the property and then I can get my money back — after all, it’s sunny Venice at Christmas time, and they’ve got more than two months to do it.  So I cancel the booking, knowing there’s a chance that they can’t rebook, but convinced that if they can, they’ll refund me.  I set myself a reminder to check their availability calendar every couple of weeks.

After a few weeks I see that they’ve rebooked the property for all of my original dates.  It’s still 6 weeks before my original check-in date.  Piece of cake.  I message the host:

Hi, I see that you have my original dates rebooked. I’d be grateful if you could process the refund. Thanks.

No reply from the host.  I try a couple more times over the next 2-3 weeks, without any reply.  The host has gone silent and apparently changed their mind about refunding me what I’d paid.  I get curious about this host who is starting to seem like a jerk.  It turns out “A.C.” stands for Air Concierge.  It’s a company that manages 150+ properties in Southern California.  They specialize in managing, designing, photographing, and pricing properties.  And apparently in being jerks and reneging on promises.

With the host being unresponsive, I get in touch with Airbnb customer service to explain the situation to them, and invite them to read my message history with Air Concierge.  I get this:

I have reached out to your host to resolve the refund to get this taken care of! I will follow up when I hear back from them! 🙂

That sounds promising, but after a few days I get this:

I reached out to your host and requested the refund for you. I requested the amount you desire, and the host denied and agreed to $25 refund. I understand this was not what you wanted, however, the host stated that they would provide a refund of the appropriate amount. They deem that $25 was the appropriate amount as normally you would not receive any of the $4,793.73 for this cancellation. I am sorry this was not the amount that you wanted refunded to you. However, the $25 will be in your account within 3-15 business days.

Not appropriate

Wow!  Twenty-five bucks on almost $5k ???  And this after you rented the property to someone else within a few weeks of my cancellation and 6 weeks before the dates?

At this point, they’ve technically upheld their promise and issued a refund.  We’re just really, really far apart on the definition of “appropriate”.  I think Air Concierge is confusing a cancellation policy with a business model.  I find the offer of $25 insufficient, offensive, condescending, and abusive, and I tell the case manager at Airbnb as much:

Thanks for your reply. I have to say that I find their offer of a $25 refund not only insufficient, but actually offensive, condescending, and abusive. Consider the facts:

  • I cancelled after 48 hours and 20 minutes. 20 minutes earlier, there would have been no question about a full refund.
  • When I cancelled, it was still 67 days before check-in day.
  • They promised a refund if they can rebook the property (see my message history with the host).
  • They were able to rebook, so they’ve incurred no economic loss, one more reason I find their position unnecessarily rigid and abusive.

I’ve been patient throughout this with the host, but I’d like to ask you to escalate this issue within your department. Apparently the host is a corporate host (Air Concierge), and I find that this behavior reflects poorly not only on them, but also on the platform.

The next day, I get a message from a supervisor at Airbnb apologizing for the inconvenience and thanking me for my patience and … blah blah blah …

Regrettably, at this time you agreed to the terms of this reservation and the terms of the cancellation when it was processed. Again, I sincerely apologize for the inconvenience this has caused you but thank you so much for your patience throughout the process. I hope that I have been able to clear things up and alleviate any concern or confusion you may have had.

Half-time reminder: I’m not arguing that the cancellation policy does not apply to me — although, yes, a human rather than a corporate host might have given me a break right on the spot, considering the timing.  I googled it, and it happens: humans being human on Airbnb.  The issue is that Air Concierge promised a refund if they rebooked the property — they rebooked the property and then reneged on that promise.  Also, 20 minutes.  Come on, be human.

I tried one more time to focus the Airbnb case manager on the issue — the promised refund is now there, but it’s not anything close to appropriate.  I get a reply sympathizing with my frustration and letting me know that “At this time, A.C. An Airbnb Property Host has not agreed to a full refund and wants to uphold their strict cancellation policy” and that “Going forward, this case is now considered closed.”

I don’t really have more time to spend on this, but there are few things that annoy me more than people and companies being jerks — like Air Concierge and Airbnb.  Call it what you want, but I’m a stickler for fairness and keeping your promises.  I’m so annoyed that it’s making me think out loud on my blog, which hasn’t happened in … years!

So what’s next?

My family (probably) won’t starve if I don’t recover the money from Air Concierge.  And we’re going to have our family reunion at the other property I booked — which is owned and managed by a human, we talked on the phone the other day to confirm check-in details.

I’m weighing these options:

  • Arbitration per section 19 of Airbnb’s terms of service.
  • Dispute the charge with my credit card.  Apparently there’s a category of complaint called “claims and defenses,” although since I paid the charge (in good faith that Air Concierge would uphold their promise), it’s not clear I can use this.
  • Something else?  Any advice from any Airbnb guests who’ve been in a similar situation?

I’ll post updates here.

Thanks for the memories, Softpro Books

Before moving to Denver 17 years ago from Silicon Valley, I used to spend hours every weekend at the Computer Literacy bookstore in San Jose.  I was a student and this store embodied a world of possibilities.  I’d thumb through, and often buy, books about what was then still unselfconsciously called AI; or books about numerical methods, graph theory, UNIX, C, Smalltalk, or Perl.  Before blogs, Google, Stackoverflow and eBooks, books were an important part of learning.  At least, they were for me.

Computer Literacy was on the (very short) list of things I knew I’d miss about the Valley.  Imagine my joy at discovering Softpro Books within a week of moving to Denver.

softpro books

I feel like we grew up together, Softpro and I.  I bought dozens of books there every year, even when I couldn’t really afford it.  It was an investment in my craft.  At first it was C++ and more UNIX, then the Web started eating the world and there was HTML, ASP, PHP, MySQL, Python and Java.  And there were always the books from the “esoteric” section, my favorite section at Softpro.  These were books on genetic programming, neural nets, data mining, and machine learning.  I don’t think I finished many of them, but as a favorite professor of mine used to say, you can get a damn fine education by reading the first few chapters of a lot of books.

When I ran out of space in my office, I gave away books to make room for more.  Out with you, Oracle Performance Tuning and XSLT!  Make room for Lucene and R.

Computer Literacy closed in 2001.  Next week, Softpro will be closing its doors.  There will still be an online presence at softpro.com, but this is the end of the browse-and-buy era.  The last 17 years have seen amazing changes in how we use and program computers, and in where we get information and learn.  I feel just a little bit old, but I also feel very lucky to be in this business and hungry to keep learning.  I’m sad I’ll have to do that without Softpro.

Jim and Eric – you’ll be missed; thanks for being there all of these years.

Running is like Roomba for your brain

Roomba roams around your space, apparently aimless, picking up old or new detritus from hard-to-reach places under the furniture.  Often when I’m running, my brain roams around the space of my work, life, and relationships to bring back long-forgotten memories, things that fell off my todo list, or even brand new ideas (formed from bits of stuff that were hiding under the furniture of my brain).

“Seven Roombas in the dark” by ibroomba

Many people experience some kind of meditative state while exercising. It doesn’t happen to me every time I run. It happens more often on longer runs. It never happens when I’m not moving. Learning how to meditate has been on my list for ages, but I’ve never managed to create time or space for it.  I just can’t relax.

I’m terrible at those biofeedback video games where you arrange stones in a Zen garden by calming your breath or something. My mind starts to race, the stones fly off in all directions instead of settling into a neat stack, and pretty soon I’m tearing the biofeedback sensors off my fingers and flinging them across the room.

The roomba effect is the closest I get to meditation. With my body and breath doing their rhythmic running thing, my brain somehow disconnects from my immediate physical reality and starts to roam freely in search of loose ends, until my battery runs out.