Month: September 2018

The World Cup, Google, And The Omnipresent Sorting Theory

France were crowned the new world football champions in the summer. Croatia were the runners up.

The interesting question, then – can we confidently say Croatia was the second best team in the tournament? Would they have beaten Belgium or Brazil if either team had been in their half of the bracket?

While it is likely to be just a battle of your opinion versus mine, I’d hazard a guess that Belgium and Brazil were probably better teams. The challenge is that elimination via brackets does a good job identifying the winner. But, it does a poor job of finding second place. The best approach to finding the stack rank of the teams would be to do a comprehensive round robin where everyone plays each other – equivalent to the English Premier League for example. But, we don’t have time for that in the world cup. So, brackets are the way to go.

Sorting theory
In Computer Science, a sorting algorithm puts the elements of a list in a certain order. Computers, in many ways, are just sorting machines. They take vasts amounts of data and find ways to sort them intelligently and make them available when we need them.

Sorting theory is a key part of introductory computer science and it tends to be a popular interview question topic. Barack Obama was famously asked a question about the most efficient sorting algorithms in an interview at Google. That’s how mainstream sorting questions are. :-)

The efficacy of sorting algorithms is judged by the big O notation. It is the worst case scenario of time taken to sort “n” items. The first sorting aglorithms had a worst case performance of N^2 square. This means the performance gets really bad as the number of items increases. As a result, sorting and, by extension, computation was very expensive.

This was until the Merge sort came along.

Merge sort and life applications of sorting theory
The merge sort has legendary status among sorting algorithms because it made “linearithmic” sorting possible. The worst case is NlogN – effectively MUCH faster than previous sorting algorithms. (Wikipedia has a simple illustration of how merge sort works – if you are interested)

Merge sort is what you do when you split a large pile of laundry, split it into little piles, sort those piles, and then merge them together. The process of elimination in competitions via brackets is, thus, a variant of merge sort.

As Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths share in their book “Algorithms to Live By,” there are plenty of other such life applications of sorting. For example, sorting theory teaches us to never sort email into folders if searching is easy. Sorting is expensive (read: giant waste of time).

Sorting theory also teaches us to use “bucket sort” when possible. Bucket sort or bin sort is what you do when you just separate your laundry into various “bins.” Assuming a small number of bins, it gets sorting done in linear time.

We also see sorting theory play out in every organization via the pecking order. Pecking order was first observed in a brood of chickens who figure out their leadership order by pecking away at each other. The most powerful peckers are higher up in the order. Humans do it too – it is called politics and usually just requires two humans, a room, and some incentives.

Okay, so what does all this have to do with technology and the future?
Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths have a couple of intriguing questions for us here – What is Google? The default answer would be “search engine.”  But, is it really a search engine? Or, should it be called a “sort engine?”

The power of Google is not just in the searching but in its ability to do the sorting. In fact, we could make the argument that it is the efficacy of their sorting algorithm that makes Google the massive money making machine that it is. Google rose to power sorting results into pages with 10 relevant results. Over time, they added ads to the side and then on top and became one of the most valuable companies on the planet.

Let’s take a look at what Google’s sorting looks like right now. These are screenshots as I scroll down for a search for “mattress” – I’ve captured 8 screenshots from beginning to end and I’ve encircled the ads in red.


3 observations –

1. It took me 2 entire screen scrolls before I saw the first completely organic result.

2. I counted roughly 16 organic results/groups and 7 ads.

3. I don’t think I ever scroll past screen 2 – my guess is that I’m not the exception here.

Google, then, is still a sort engine. For most retail searches, however, it just sorts more ads these days than organic results.

Who gets to do the sorting for you?
There are two lucrative marketplaces on the internet – attention marketplaces and retail marketplaces. The biggest leading indicator for the success of a marketplace is whether or not they do the sorting for you.

If Facebook gets to sort the information you see through the course of a day (and, for a majority of the world’s adults, they do), the attention marketplace is theirs. And, if Google gets to sort the results of your retail searches, then they win big as well.

Understanding this truth about sorting explains a lot about the state of the big technology players today. Facebook – including Instagram, Whatsapp, et al – sorts the information the world sees every day. But, they’re working hard to invest in video because they don’t want Netflix and YouTube to sort what you watch.

The New York Times homepage used to be the most prestigious display of sorting two decades ago. It isn’t anymore. Old world publishers are, thus, falling by the wayside. The smarter ones are realizing that the only place they can do the sorting of information for their users is email. So, they’re doubling down on email and building subscription businesses on that (quaint?) piece of technology.

Disney, 21st Century Fox, and the like don’t want Netflix to sort the shows you want to watch. They’re scrambling. So are large telcos who’re finding ways to get in on this action.

Google, on the other hand, is targeting a different kind of foe. Google makes a lot of money off retail searches. But, increasingly, people are starting their retail searches on Amazon. Worse still, they’re able to do so by just talking to Alexa. From a monetization standpoint, that is an existential threat for Google. Google’s $550M in Chinese retailer JD.com is just the tip of the iceberg for Google’s marketplace ambitions. Expect plenty more to follow.

One thing is for certain – In all these moves and the many more to come in the future, sorting will be omnipresent.

(Also posted elsewhere as part of the “Notes by Ada” Project)

Avoiding the inconvenient no

I find myself reflecting frequently about the number of times I say no to our ~2 year old. It is the easy default response to the things she wants to do – explore away by turning everything upside down without any regard for her own safety.

After months of attempting to strike the balance, I’ve recently found a better approach that’s helped me make peace with this process. Now, I ask myself – Am I saying no because it is dangerous for her (e.g. playing with something very heavy or hot) or because it is inconvenient for me (e.g. something that will result in a mess that I need to clean up)?

And, when the answer is the latter, I do my best to stay silent.

Reflections from the billionaire war of words

There’s been a massive war of words between a few current and former Facebook billionaires that’s commanded a ton of media attention in the last few days.

I get that they’re attempting to prove their ideologies and actions right. As Yuval Harari might say, we have a strong need to believe in our own myths. But, it just comes across as childish and petty while also proving that having plenty of wealth does not guarantee happiness. Far from it.

As they continue to snipe and call each other names, I find myself wishing they’d switch the focus of their fight to an arbitrary topic (any topic, really!) that actually matters – how to better use their billions to help people whose lives are impacted by the very technologies that made them rich or how we can do better to tackle climate change.

We need more attention on that stuff.

The blessing and curse of packet switching

One of the core innovations behind the internet was the switch from circuit switching to packet switching. Pre-internet, if someone wanted to communicate with you, they either found time with you in person or called you on a phone/”landline.” And, when they called you on the phone, no one else could interrupt as the “line was busy.”

Packet switching, on the other hand, breaks communication into packets that reach a destination without worrying about busy lines. While phone lines used to be either free or busy, our destinations today (email accounts, social media accounts, phone inbox) deal with packets all day along. There is no concept of idle time since people and services send us packets through the day and wait for us to acknowledge them.

Consequently, idle time has disappeared in our lives too. The constant presence of packets means we check our phones in the bathroom or when others are trying to communicate with us (the irony) in a generally futile attempt to be packet-zero. While packet switching has its many benefits, its curse is that it is built to serve the communication system and not us.

There’s a Tahitian saying that tourists have watches but Tahitians have time. While we can definitely look at packet switching as a cause for that, there’s also a deeper implication. If we don’t take control of how we consume and respond to these packets, we’ll be surrounded by communication – but will have forgotten how to communicate.

(H/T Algorithms to Live By by Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths – for the inspiration)

Our work won’t speak for itself.

Our work won’t speak for itself. On a good day, it may just do 70% of the talking required. But, it still needs us to make the effort to package it and make the case for it.

But, it bears repeating – it won’t speak for itself. And, even if we build it well, they may not come. In fact, unless we put in the effort to sell it, they most likely won’t.

A useful assumption, then, is that quality work will do half the talking. The rest is up to us.

The world and the places we work seem fairer places once we internalize that and do the work to make sure our efforts count – after we do the work.

PS: The note to self version of this started with – “To my intense disappointment, I’ve come to realize that our work alone won’t speak for itself.” :-)

Hard skills and real skills

In a conversation with a friend who is in the midst of building out a team, I asked about the the top skills he was looking for. Two observations –

1. The top three skills that he spoke about at length were – attitude, mindset, and self awareness (especially about blind spots).

2. We spoke about a few skills which were contenders. But, not one was a “hard” skill – analytics, problem solving, etc.

I was reminded of a post by Seth Godin to stop calling skills “soft” just because they weren’t easily defined. This conversation reminded me that it is these “real skills” that matter – they make great organizations and noteworthy careers possible. Or, as Seth put it  –

Imagine a team member with all the traditional vocational skills: productive, skilled, experienced. A resume that can prove it.

That’s fine, it’s the baseline.

Now, add to that: Perceptive, charismatic, driven, focused, goal-setting, inspiring and motivated. A deep listener, with patience.

What happens to your organization when someone like that joins your team?

Relentless

When Jeff Bezos was searching for domain names for his soon-to-be-created e-commerce website, one of the names that was strongly under consideration was “Relentless.” They eventually went with Amazon.

I saw this quote in a recent interview with Bezos that reminded me of the “relentless” story –

“Friends congratulate me after a quarterly-earnings announcement and say, ‘Good job, great quarter,’ and I’ll say, ‘Thank you, but that quarter was baked three years ago.’ I’m working on a quarter that’ll happen in 2021 right now.” | Jeff Bezos in a recent interview with Fortune.

I’ve shared many lessons from Jeff Bezos’ wisdom over the years. I think I’ll be adding this quote and the reminder to keep plugging away on building for the future to the list.

Learning manners

I remember chuckling when I read this line a while ago – “Take your dog to obedience school. You’ll both learn a lot.”

I find myself going through a similar experience as we aim to teach our daughter to say “please,” “sorry,” and “thank you.”

We know by now that she does most of her learning by watching what we do. As a result, the upside of all of this is that I’m learning to never skip saying please, sorry, and thank you.

A good reminder of the idea that a great way to learn something is to try and teach it.

Friday connect-the-dots time

Here’s an idea for today/Friday. Take 10 mins – or maybe 30 – today and just invest in connecting the dots for yourself or others.

What does connecting the dots even mean? We are, for the most part, working in places that are matrixed and cross-functional while dealing with problems that are multi-faceted. So, you can think “dots” as the people in these places or ideas that constitute the many facets of the problems we face.

Here are some examples –

People: Find time to get to know two colleagues you work with personally, block an hour to have a get-to-know conversation with your manager (under the pretext of career development if needed), or organize a lunch or activity for your team.

Ideas: Take the time to delve into a hard problem, map out your development goals, start a monthly internal newsletter sharing insights from your customer conversations, or interview someone who is either insightful or productive.

Start with a small idea today. Then, rinse and repeat next week and the week after until connect-the-dots time is a fixture on your calendar.

Every one of our workplaces and jobs thrives on connection – between people and ideas. These connections make workplaces more collaborative, productive, and smart. While it might seem like we’re spending time on “extra-curriculars,” it is the unsaid bullet in all our job descriptions.

And, tiny, consistent investments in making these connections can transform our outputs and outcomes.