Author: alearningaday

The problem with “Be humble”

This may be controversial – I’ve learnt that we cannot ask ourselves (or other folks) to “be humble” or, for that matter, to be grateful or to take things less seriously.

The notion that we can tell ourselves – “Hey, I know you think you are wonderful. But, it isn’t right to let people know you think that way. So, tone it down a bit so it looks more acceptable, will you?” – is flawed and comes across as fake.

All we can do is to help ourselves gain perspective and understand reality. And, when we do realize how little we actually know and that most of what is working in our life is a result of accumulated privilege and luck (my theory below), humility, gratitude, and a sense of humor flows easily.

Like many of life’s best things, humility is simply a by-product of a good product (perspective). The same holds true for gratitude and keeping a sense of humor.

(H/T: Kapil Gupta for an excellent articulation of the “be humble” problem/charade)

Unhealthy but comfortable – first and second order consequences

First and second order consequences are regularly in opposition. Unhealthy food, for example, has a good first order consequence (tasty) but a bad second order consequence. The effects of exercise or self reflection, on the other hand, are the opposite.

Most good things suck at first thanks to the inertia involved. This is why it is hard to keep adapting and evolving and why most people and organizations find it easier to be stuck in their old ways.

The big question, a question that we inadvertently ask ourselves when we make decisions, is – will we choose a painful but healthy route to progress or an unhealthy but comfortable delusion?

(H/T: Principles by Ray Dalio)

Gregarious Simulation Systems

As I think of technology waves in the post PC computing era, I like asking the question – “is this a fad or a foundational technology?”

Foundational technologies reach mass adoption – i.e. reach every available user of computing – and are eclipsed by the next wave. In many ways, mobile was the breakthrough foundational technology wave. By reaching nearly every adult on the planet, the mobile wave has made personal computing decidedly mainstream. Thanks to the mobile wave, every future foundational wave will have the opportunity to touch every human being on the planet.

Let’s take a moment to reflect on how incredible that is. The world has never been more accessible.

We’ve now moved from the era of mobile to the era of machine learning. Like previous waves, machine learning benefits from the fact that everyone carries a supercomputer in their pocket. And, like previous waves, it will only be a matter of time before machine learning will be ubiquitous.

All this brings us to the more interesting question – what lies ahead? Is it going to be the blockchain? Or, will the next decade be all about wearables or augmented reality?


Except we’re going to skip speculating about the next decade. Instead, we’re going to skip a wave or two and spend time on virtual reality. I am reasonably certain that the next decade isn’t going to be about virtual reality. But, I predict we’ll all spend plenty of time in virtual reality in the 2030s and 2040s.

Gregarious Simulation Systems
As I shared here, I read Ernest Cline’s bestseller “Ready Player One” over the holidays in December and have been mulling the dystopian view of the future portrayed in the book. If you are interested in mulling the future of technology and haven’t read the book yet, I’ll relay what the person who recommended the book to me said – “You can thank me later.” :)

The story revolves around a virtual world called “The Oasis” created by a successful global behemoth “Gregarious Simulation Systems.” A large portion of the population in the story spend their lives on “The Oasis” via their avatars – it even has its own public schooling system.

I had 3 reflections from the book –

1. Virtual reality is going to be the ultimate outlet for our desire for escapism. I’d written a post looking ahead at augmented reality two years ago. In it, I wrote about two potential use cases for AR – “fun + escapism and information + insights.” Of these, I think fun + escapism (i’ll refer to this as “escapism” going forward) is going to be the area virtual reality will come to dominate.

The industry for escapism is already huge. Think about the amount of time and money spent on television, social media, gaming, and casual (or non-essential) retail. If told someone in 1919 that we’d have humans spend 5+ hours everyday in front of a television, they’d have thought we’d be out of our minds. Now, if we found a way to explain the concept of video games, imagine their reaction if we told them we’d also be spending hours watching others play video games (eSports). We love escapism so much that we’re happy to watch others indulge in it.

Our current go-tos for escapism are Facebook and Netflix. But, why would you spend your time in 2D if you had the opportunity to escape in immersive 3D?

Next, while we’re at it, imagine the potential of virtual reality for more productive pursuits. E-Learning and meetings for remote workers could both be made possible with powerful implications.

And, what if we added the ability to travel – through space and time? What if we had the opportunity to spend time looking at the view from Mount Everest’s summit while also visiting medieval Florence?

Virtual reality is coming. And it is going to be big.

2. Corporations will, on average, become fewer, bigger, and more Orwellian. The antagonist in the book are representatives from a corporation called “Innovative Online Industries.” IOI is the largest internet provider and is portrayed as the stereotypical evil corporation.

Stereotype aside, however, it did spur a few reflections. The strength of today’s largest corporations are driven, directly or indirectly, by network effects. These network effects have given rise to a world with power law dynamics at a global scale (Alex Danco’s post on the topic from 2015 is excellent) and these dynamics are not going away any time soon. Unless we see a massive change in the global trade change leading to every nation closing its doors – unlikely even if it can’t be ruled out – we are going to continue to see massive global corporations who have access to large amounts of user and employee data.

Taking this idea to its logical conclusion, we’re going to see few large global winners across industries. And, just as today’s winners use data to experiment in ways that might have been described Orwellian two decades ago, future global winners will use this data for social engineering in more obvious ways.

This doesn’t have to be all bad. Some of this social engineering may actually work out good for us and help “nudge” us to make better decisions. Some, but not all – we’re human after all.

3. I(/we?) should read more fiction. :) The experience of immersing myself in Ernest Cline’s 2045 version of the world brought virtual reality to life in a way no article on VR ever did. So, here’s to reading more fiction in 2019.

PS: A big thank you to everyone who responded to my previous note asking for fiction recommendations. At my current rate of reading fiction, I think I’m set for the next few decades thanks to your list. :)

The challenge with behavioral interview questions

If we want to understand how fit we are, the best way is to test is to play a game or go for a run. It definitely doesn’t involving asking ourselves to describe our fitness. And, yet, if we walked into interview rooms around the world today, we’d hear behavioral questions that do exactly that.

In the ideal world, we’d have interview processes that focus on delivering real work. But, few organizations can do that at meaningful scale. So, cases/live problem solving tends to be a good substitute.

And, I find that behavioral questions can be woven into cases with a bit of extra preparation work. For example, if we wanted to understand how someone deals with a conflict or a challenge, add a dash of conflict to the case and see how the interviewee responds.

Perhaps the first step is accepting that interviews aren’t the perfect window into how a candidate will function in a job. Most of us don’t have the sort of spidey sense that translates a behavioral answer into reliable signal.

So, the best we can do as interviewers is design systems that reduce bias by focusing on how they would actually approach the job and how much they enjoy the process of doing whatever the job is about. Folks who enjoy problem solving, for example, will have their eyes lit up even when problems are thrown at them.

When in doubt, design interview systems that enable us to ignore what people say and watch what they do.

Complicated systems and complex systems

If you want to change the tires of a car, you can do so without worrying about the consequences of doing so. The average non-electric car is an example of a “complicated system” with 2000 parts. There may be a lot of parts but you can deal with them without worrying about the rest.

The human body, on the other hand, is an example of a complex system. You can’t just change an organ that isn’t working – you need to understand the whole body as parts of the system interact with each other. This is why we talk of the idea of balance with nature’s ecosystems – fixing them isn’t as simple as changing a part. But, when they work, they function as a whole that is far greater than a sum of the parts.

It turns out that learning to identify complicated and complex systems has powerful implications to shipping valuable products too – especially in larger organizations. If we are in a splinter group/”start-up” within a larger organization, we can treat it as a complicated system and just focus on optimizing our silo without worrying about much else.

But, on the other hand, if we are working with an ecosystem of functions and customer offerings, we make far more progress when we take small steps together because the interactions in the ecosystem magnify the impact.

This is why making progress in ecosystems can be slow (and why solving climate change won’t be straightforward). But, when done right, it is far greater than the sum of its parts.

Finding your Someone Like You

Singer and songwriter Adele often starts her live renditions of her now legendary song “Someone Like You” with the story behind the song.

While there’s the story of the break up that led to the song, she also talks about her search for a song that moved her personally. She had recorded 8 songs for her second album and was searching for that one elusive song that would give her the conviction to release the album.

When she then wrote and sang “Someone Like You,” she knew she’d found that song – a song that was uniquely hers and that she knew would resonate with people.

Of course, there’s no way she could have guessed the impact the song would go on to have.

The fascinating thing about that story is that it speaks to the struggle so many of us go through with our work. Deep within us lies the artist who seeks to create work that resonates with us, that is uniquely ours, and that we hope or know will resonate with those we care about.

Every once a while, we might be lucky enough to stumble onto our version of “Someone Like You.” Regardless of the outcome though, it matters that we don’t give up on that artist within. It matters that we persist in our attempts to do work that matters – by our own standards.

Because if we don’t, who will?

PS: Here’s a lovely version of the “Someone Like You” story + rendition combo.

Same and different

All human beings are 99.9% identical in terms of our genetic make up. Despite being virtually the same, we’ve found ways to let that differing 0.1% get in the way of belonging and cooperation.

We’ve been successful in finding arbitrary differences – some biological, most made up – as justification to be cruel to one another. In some cases in our history, this cruelty was due to a competition for scarce resources. In most cases, especially those in our recent past, even the scarcity was manufactured.

While we are undoubtedly progressing as a species in our ability to put that 0.1% in perspective, there is a lot more work to be done.

Martin Luther King Jr said “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” In saying so, he acknowledged the challenges involved with changing minds. But, he also reminded us that – “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”

No challenge is an excuse for us to take action for causes that matter.

The Robo Advisor follow up – 4 approaches to investment management

I spent some time through the holidays in December doing research on Robo investment advisors. Below is what I learnt from the research. For folks outside the US, the specific examples won’t be applicable – but, I hope the framework is helpful.

I think there are broadly 4 approaches to managing investments:

1. Financial advisory (High cost, Low effort): A financial adviser typically charges ~1% of funds under management in addition to the fees from individual funds. There are broadly three benefits. First, the financial adviser helps guide your entire financial life including helping you rein your expenses. Second, advisers ensure you have a few basic hygiene factors in place – emergency funds, life insurance, wills, etc. And, finally, since they manage investments for a living, they have access to a lot of information about the markets and presumably have plenty of data to make good decisions.

Now, on the flip side, disciples of John Bogle would tell you that the passive investing approach is a better, safer, bet than active management. The research would be on their side. But, on the other hand, there are many who work with financial advisers to get their financial life in control before branching out themselves. Financial advisers can also be a boon if you have a high net worth as they can help optimize your portfolio for taxes.

Finally, I lump “Personal Capital” into the financial advisory zone. Even if they claim to be a Robo advisor, fees of 0.89% are in the “high” territory. While I wasn’t on the look out for a full blown financial adviser, I did meet with them to understand their approach (I use their free product). I am admittedly a tad skeptical about their approach as I didn’t find much research to back it up. That said, 1) I’m clearly no expert :-) and 2) I’m looking forward to checking back in a few years to see how their strategy plays out over time.

2. DIY complex investing (Zero cost, High effort): This is for folks who love the art and science of investing. These folks have read the books and the research, follow investment managers and trends, manage their portfolios carefully, read SEC filings of acclaimed investors, and have earned investment experience through years of experience. Most important, their eyes light up when they talk about investing and diversification.

While this would be “high effort” for most people, folks who go down this path tend to do it because they enjoy the process. It definitely isn’t for everyone.

3. DIY simply investing (Zero cost, Medium effort): Folks in this bucket just work with a simple portfolio of Vanguard funds and invest/re-balance on a monthly/quarterly/half-yearly basis.

There are two keys to success in this approach. The first is a threshold level of interest in investing to make sure the overall strategy makes sense. And, the second is discipline. Most folks on forums like “Bogleheads” fall in this category. While I’ve seen folks in the Bogleheads community use phrases like “anyone with half a brain can do this,” I think they often mix interest and ability in their judgment of how easy this approach is to follow in the long run.

And, again, the importance of discipline and consistency in the long term success of this approach can’t be overstated. The biggest long term challenging to DIY investing success is managing your own psychology.

4. Robo advisers (Medium cost, low effort): I think there are two categories of Robo advisers. The more popular category is led by Betterment and Wealthfront. I think of both of them as Vanguard++. They take your Vanguard account, overlay it with a fancy UI that restricts you to a few index funds, optimize the mix for your long term goals, automate the process, and perform tax loss harvesting. Both claim they more than make up their 0.25% fee thanks to tax loss harvesting. Most folks who use these services seem happy – so, I think they’re doing a good job.

The second category is Vanguard’s Personal Advisory service. This service is a marriage between the robo advisers and the financial advisers. The main downsides to this service (versus Betterment and Wealthfront) are the absence of tax loss harvesting and a minimum of $50K in investments. But, on the plus side, you get access to a human advisor for 0.3% in fees. The human adviser can, thus, help you craft a reasonable overall strategy for your investments and ensure you stay disciplined.

We weren’t in the market for a full blown financial adviser as we tend to be pretty disciplined about our expenses and didn’t feel this would be as valuable. I have experimented with DIY simple investing (2013-2015, 2017) and attempted a version of DIY complex investing (2018). But, I realized that it isn’t something that I enjoy doing. While it may have been fun to spend time and learn more, time is a constraint with two kids. So, I was in the market for robo advisers for 2019.

After reading most of the reviews in the first few pages of Google searches for Betterment/Wealthfront and Vanguard PAS, we decided to experiment with Vanguard this year. We really value the presence of the human adviser and thought it would be helpful to have conversations about our overall strategy versus maximizing returns on one account. These conversations over the past 3 weeks have turned out to be very valuable and are well worth the fees in our book.

Finally, we love the simplicity of keeping investments in Vanguard as it makes it easy to just discontinue the service if we think we aren’t seeing value or believe we’ll be able to do what they do ourselves.

Looking forward to seeing how this automated approach works out in 2019. I’ll keep you posted.

PS: A big thank you to those of you who responded to my post with your approaches and notes. As always, it was much appreciated.