James L Adams—People and Products

The digital world and white collar jobs

 The Schumpeter article in the May 35-31, 2013 edition of The Economist deals with white-collar unemployment, a topic of increasing concern.  In 2011 Brynjolfsson and McAfee at MIT’s Sloan Business School wrote a book entitled “Race Against the Machine”in which they predicted that many knowledge ("white collar") workers were facing future problems because computers would continue to take over more jobs than they would create.  The Economist article references this book and also a study by the McKenzie Global Institute, entitled “Disruptive technologies: Advances that will transform life, business, and the global economy”, which takes the more popular line that this will be good for us, because as computers take over more repetitive tasks, workers will be free to become more productive, although it does admit that increased inequality, social exclusion, and backlashes may result, and that present institutions may have trouble keeping up with these advances.

I am with Brynjolfsson and McAfee. Perhaps that is partly because I grew up in a small-farm agricultural environment, went to a large vocational high school, and have worked in oil fields and machine shops, been in the military, and now spend time in California’s Central Valley, which is quite different than Silicon Valley. All of these contain people who don’t seem likely to smoothly transition to becoming knowledge workers dealing with complex problems, and who are now knowledge workers whose jobs contain much that is becoming increasingly automated—the same is true of Silicon Valley, but people don't talk about it as much.

In my experience, the human race not only contains a large number of people who don’t want to be knowledge workers, even if given the opportunity, but an equal, if not larger number of knowledge workers that either already are being replaced by computers, or will be in the future.  Many of these folk  don’t seem to want to be “educated” to do less routine work, because after all, there is pleasure in being an expert, whether at growing corn or drawing up trusts. Despite the biases or those of us in the education business, many people do not seem to love learning new tricks and do not consider working on intractable problems as captivating.

As examples, of imperiled white collar jobs, much of the contact I have had with attorneys has been over common issues— simple wills and trusts, and a straight forward divorce (California, a no-fault, community property state). Although I liked the attorneys personally, much of this might have been simpler without them. For instance, when the divorce process began, a friend gave me a sheet of paper with the average settlement in marriages of our type in our county as a function of length of marriage, income, number of children, etc. I proposed we use this to my then wife, and she seemed to accept it, but some of her friends cautioned her to get a “tough” lawyer, because surely otherwise, she would be ripped off by me. I talked to a friend who was then Dean of the Stanford Law School, and he suggested that I get an attorney to negotiate with her attorney, except I didn’t need a “tough” one, because this was all routine.

The result was a year of jousting personally and by mail, increasingly bad feelings between me and my then wife, and worry about what the result might be, culminating in a trial. The judge, surprised that a resolution had not been reached, summoned both attorneys to his chambers, and they returned looking a bit chastened and holding the same piece of paper I had been handed by my friend a year earlier, which turned out to be the finding of the court. Jeez. It seems to me that a piece of software could have done the legal work without nearly the trauma, and there is adequate trauma and expense in divorce without adding to it by injecting battling attorneys.

Similarly, I have had quite a bit of unwanted contact with people wanting to charge me for planning my financial future, who I suspect are relying on financial planning software to do so, and people wanting me to pay them to figure out my income tax, undoubtedly using MacinTax or equivalent. So yes, I think we have a problem. As the public becomes more computer literate and software becomes easier to use, we are going to have increasing difficulty in providing satisfying and reasonably paying jobs to lots of white collar workers as well as factory workers, and probably the result will be even louder outrage as the situation affects people who are capable of making more noise.

Perhaps this is underestimated by people at McKenzie and in the media, because they probably got good grades in school, like working on problems that do not have right answers, are good hustlers, and are confident that most white collar workers are like them and can always find satisfying and lucrative jobs as computers continue to encroach upon their territory.

An Outstanding Product – the Porsche 911

The first Porsche model 911 was sold in 1963.  Although it has been upgraded many times, and the model number internal to the Porsche company has changed several times, it is still sold as the model 911.  The photographs show the 1963 model and the 2013 model and  illustrate the slow and steady change of something that Porsche had gotten right in the beginning. Over 800.000 of the model 911 have been sold, The 911 is discussed on the automobile page of the May 26 New York Times, in an article entitled "Timeless, but Not Frozen in Time”  It is here.  you want more history, click here for the Wikipedia page. 

I drove a 1959 model 356A Porsche for 20 years, and loved it, although it had some shortcomings.  It was a souped up and more luxurious Volkswagen Beetle, and inherited the Volkswagen swing-axle suspension, which could become a bit scary at times.  The engine had been modified to include aluminum cylinders and pistons, which wore enough to produce an unacceptable amount of piston slap (I replaced them with iron) . I never made the switch to the 911 because of burgeoning family and possessions, but the 356 was sure fun, and I have from time to time admired the 911.  My older son had a 911 for a while, and now has my old 356.

The reason I admire this car is the success of the original one followed by a slow progression of changes which has allowed it to retain its position for 50 years.  The original 911 was a much better car of its type (sports car) than was the 356, which was in turn considered outstanding if compared to its competition in its early days.  The 911 had a much improved suspension, a 6 cylinder rear mounted air-cooled engine designed for the job, and other improvements, although it obviously was a descendent of the 356.  Since that time it has become a bit larger, a bit heavier, and “modernized” to include many features that continually improve its performance and satisfy the modern-day customer. Some features have been lost (air cooled engine), but it still retains its unique personality and its 6 cylinder flat rear mounted engine.

I cannot help but be impressed by an automobile that has been a leader in its class for 50 years and retained as much of its identity and appeal.  Many other sports cars available in 1963 are no longer manufactured.  The Corvette was around then, and is certainly still available, but has never quite been considered a sports car.  It  goes fast, but never has had the charisma or agility of the Porsche.  When I bought the model 356, it was considered by many to be the best sports car available within the reach of people like me (aerospace engineer).  It still has that reputation among enough people to maintain its mystique.  A tribute to Ferdinand Porsche and the often admired “German Engineering”.

 

Product Quality and Working With the Hands

The happy person in the photo is Dave Beach, Professor at Stanford and founder and proprietor of the Product Realization Laboratory in the School of Engineering.   I have written about Dave and the Lab in previous posts, but an excellent short (3 minute) video about the lab has just been released that is well worth watching.  It will make you feel good.  It is here.

 The students who make use of this lab design and  build things themselves—not by sending them out to professional design and manufacturing people.  This process involves working with their hands as well as their minds.  And I  believe it contributes greatly to the ability to produce high quality hardware products.  There is such a thing as tacit knowledge, which is usually learned by doing.

 As I have mentioned in previous posts, working with the hands is one of my main pleasures – quick feedback, satisfaction, and confidence that if it is broken, I can fix it, and if it doesn’t exist, I can make it.  It  has beautifully balanced the more traditional professorial and domestic components of my life.  If you want to read a book about the importance of hands and of using them, try The Hand, by Frank R. Wilson (Vintage, 1999).  At the time he wrote it, he was leading a hand clinic at the UCSF medical school.  A large number of his clients were musicians, who obviously cared deeply about their hands, because they are their livelihood as well as the secret to doing what they love. 

 The students involved with the Product Realization Lab are overseen not only by  people on the permanent lab staff, but by a number of teaching assistants, who have demonstrated their ability to not only work in the lab, but supervise people who usually begin their work in the lab with little, if any, training or background in shop work.  These TA’s tend to be an impressive lot indeed, for their abilities to design and manufacture things, their ability to teach others, and their overall creativity and confidence.  Were I still working as an engineering manager, I would make an attempt to hire as many of them as I could.

 I find that since I have retired, I have been drawn more and more to people who have always loved to work with their hands, whether they have been company founders, executives, physicians, engineers, artists,  machinists, or whatever.  In fact many of them had reached a point where they had enough money, energy, and intellectual background to do practically anything they wanted to after retirement.  They could have spent their time reading great works, traveling to exotic locations,  seeking the finest in food and drink, listening to fine music and absorbing outstanding theater, or otherwise focusing on vicarious pleasures. Instead, they have chosen to spend much of their time domesticating such things as knots in the wood, chattering tool bits, hot steel, and uncooperative welding rod, and seeking replacement parts and no-longer- made fasteners. 

 It’s the only way to live!

 I will talk more about this in future posts.  In the meantime, if you did not watch the video, do it now.

Quality and Multi Purpose Products

Alligators are pretty good on land and in the water, but they can’t compete with monkeys on land, or sharks in water.  “Amphibious vehicles” have historically had a similar problem.  They are neither as good as trucks and automobiles on land, or as boats or ships in the water.

 This seems to be the case with most multi-purpose products.  The photo shows a combination toaster oven and toaster.  It has resided in my kitchen for a while, but tomorrow it will change its residence to a “free” pile in front of one of my kid’s houses.  It has been in my kitchen because it theoretically takes up less room than a separate toaster and toaster oven, was the same color as my wife’s favorite and classic Kitchen Aid mixer , and sported the name of a long established maker of appliances. 

 But it has a number of problems.  The least important one is that the heat generated within has faded the color so that it no longer matches my wife’s mixer.  Most of the important ones are in the electro-mechanical details – I’ll say the design.  Ideally, one could choose between using it as a toaster oven or as a conventional, drop-the-bread-in toaster.  It works okay as a toaster oven, but it is taller than the usual toaster oven, in order to make room for lowering the bread slices to the heating elements, and the usable space is smaller.  The especially wide slots seem attractive, but it only holds two slices of bread, and when the handle is pushed down to toast them, a wire frame closes in to hold the bread, thus making the wide slots no longer wide.

 Worse yet, the wire frame work does not go all the way to the bottom of the bread slices, because if it did, it would take up necessary  room in the toaster oven volume.  The result is that when the holder at the bottom of the bread slices is lowered, there is room at the bottom of the wire frame-work, which does not hold the bread or other material to be toasted tightly, to allow it to slide out of holder down into the toaster oven, which, if the removable pan is not installed (usually), causes it to snuggle up to the heating elements, thus turning a very dark brown and producing smoke.

 Should this happen (often) it becomes very challenging to remove the remains, because they become caught between the wire frame and the rising holder, and eventually become a pile of charred fragments stuck various places within the device, which usually burns one when trying to remove the fragments, because by then one has become a bit impatient with the whole mess.

 At one time, it was possible to remove the bread in early smoking condition by moving the control from “toaster” to oven, but that option failed early in the life of the device, leaving no option but to watch the process in action.  Happily, there is a sign on the front of the device that helpfully proclaims “If Contents Ignite, Keep Door Closed and Unplug Oven”.

 As to the maker of the appliance, I am not worried because I have lots of options.  Hopefully they do too.

Soon we will have a separate toaster oven and toaster.  I can hardly wait.

 

Product Quality - Bicycles

My wife and I recently had dinner with a couple of friends who are in their late 80’s, and move slowly in their walkers, but still ride their bicycles.  In fact one of them still has an office at Stanford and and regularly commutes there to work on his bicycle.  I was talking with him about good products and bad products, and he stoutly maintained that the common bicycle is one of the all-time great products – that people had gotten it right many years ago, and give or take new versions, new materials, new approaches to such things as brakes, gears, saddles, and pedals, and challenges from such things as recumbents, the bicycle has not changed significantly in his memory.

 This made me think, and I realized that I have ridden bicycles ever since I can remember, and probably now take them for granted.   I Started with a balloon tired, single speed, typically heavy version, which took me to school and back, and let me ride with my friends until it was eclipsed by a car (although the bike still hangs in my basement).  I then left bicycles until after college and the Air Force, but rediscovered them when a friend and I spent a few months  touring Europe on duplicates of a bicycle that had done well in the Tour de France the year before.  After I became use to riding a bicycle again, to say nothing of ten speeds, very light weight, an initially  painful seat, dropped handlebars, and an entirely new bodily position, I fell madly in love it (it hangs in my older son’s garage).  I have ridden bicycles consistently ever since, and am now dependent on them for getting around the local area, riding in the hills for exercise, and especially getting around the Stanford campus.  And I must admit I find it satisfying to ride past automobiles that are fighting their way through local traffic.

 Without bicycles, Stanford would not work nearly as well.  The campus is large and continues to expand, administrative offices are far apart, dormitories are far from classrooms, and although classrooms are far apart, the University still clings to ten minute class breaks.  Although retired, I maintain an office on campus and still attend various meetings and functions.  Walking everywhere might be good for me, but life is short.  Bicycle traffic on campus is heavy and seems disorganized and perhaps hazardous to those not riding, but actually is surprisingly free of accidents and fun to be part of.  The bicycles cover the spectrum from high performance to low and expensive to junk, and from single speed to many.

This photo is me on my present bicycle returning home from my office (a short trip).  I realize I am not wearing a helmet, which is stupid and dangerous, but unfortunately I take many short trips while on campus, am not used to wearing a hat, and therefore tend to lose helmets and generally spend too much time putting them on and taking them off. I wear them when riding longer distances fast on roads full of cars, and endure the censure (especially from grand children and my wife) of not wearing one all of the time.  The only person I have ever known who wore  his helmet all of the time (including while lecturing and in meetings) is a Nobel Laureate.

 The ideal campus bicycle is rugged, performs well, and shows enough wear not to be considered worth stealing.  Mine qualifies.  It needs to be a bit more beat up, but will get there.  It is a mountain bike, even though I do not ride it in mountains, but it has the advantages of outstanding brakes (very important), does not mind jumping curbs (convenient), and is highly maneuverable.   It has more gears than I need, but that was part of the package.  I bought it new for a very reasonable price because it was painted green, and apparently the dealer had difficulty selling it, because green was not cool that  year.

 And I agree with my friend.  Granted that they vary over many parameters, bicycles in general are an outstanding product.  Traffic and air pollution were much more reasonable in Beijing before cars began replacing bicycles.  And people probably got more exercise and reached their destinations more quickly.

Electrical Storage Batteries —An Improving Product

Electrical batteries, attributed to Alessandro Volta, have been around since 1800  (although Benjamin Franklin apparently applied the term to a pile of charged glass plates before then). When I first became aware of them as a kid, it was mostly in the form of flashlight batteries (then carbon-zinc), and automobile batteries (lead –acid).  It is a testimony to their advantages that they are still being used in pretty much the same  form, although we are becoming a bit more careful about throwing them away.  There was a shelf in my grandfather’s shop, which contained a few automobile batteries in various stages of health, some distilled water, a battery hydrometer, some baking soda for cleaning, and a charger.  There is a very similar shelf in the modern farm to which I escape, except the hydrometer has been replaced by electronic testing equipment and the charger has become “smart”.   But being in California, the dead batteries no longer not end up in land fills (although one still sees occasional piles of them, hopefully waiting to be re-cycled).

 It was not until my Jet Propulsion Days in the late 1950’s and 1960’s that I was first exposed to other types of batteries.  The Ranger and Mariner spacecraft were powered by solar panels and rechargeable sealed silver-zinc batteries (spacecraft definitely like sealed batteries).  But I remember one time when my group was developing a Mars hard lander capable of handling a 10,000 g impact from a speed of 500 miles per hour (the payload was shrouded in crushable material – the program was later cancelled).  I tried to find a battery capable of handling that level of shock, and failed.  But even more interesting, I found that only a few battery companies existed, and there were few, if any, university programs or research efforts in advanced battery technology. 

 But now we seem to have gotten the message, not only because of the demand for small rechargeable batteries for our electronic devices, but also because we are finally  understanding the advantages of electric cars and alternate forms of energy which require the storage of electricity.  JPL, like Tesla, is using lithium ion batteries, and there is a large amount of work going on in both universities and industry in new approaches to batteries, both primary (single use), and secondary (re-chargeable.).  An interesting comparison of energy storage is here, and more details on an early Tesla battery here.

 It is about time that we get more serious about electrical storage.  Assuming that electrical generation continues to become cleaner, we will continue to change from petroleum-powered devices to electrical and we will need improved ability to store electricity not only in these devices, but also for “alternate” energy generation approaches.  Although new technologies are sometimes more challenging (note Boeing 787 and Sony past lithium ion battery problems), times are changing. I certainly am now hooked on battery-powered tools, which would be much less fun if powered by lead-acid or primary batteries. I am looking forward to breakthroughs that are bound to come from present research.  Biological batteries?

Product Quality and Service

Are you ever impressed at how few people seem to work in “big box” stores?  I was at one time entertained by Home Depot ads that featured mellow older clerks who were expert in some field of building (plumbing, wiring, framing, etc) and who would be pictured patiently explaining the process to less expert customers.  I would like to find a big box store like that.  In many, one is lucky to run down any employee in the store, and if one succeeds, there are usually several people trying to get their attention, and one is lucky if they even know where things are, much less how to use them.

 I often meet people, who having heard about the service sector domination of the economy (it is estimated that 70% of all wage earners work in the service sector, as opposed to manufacturing or such things as agriculture, fishing, and mining) wonder why “service” is so lousy in the U.S.  My wife happily quotes a comment she read at some time, that in England service is a tradition, in Japan it is an honor, and in the U.S. it is an insult. But such comments and reactions are based on the belief that service is about helping ordinary people through the day, not running a derivatives firm on Wall Street.

 I have an unabridged Webster dictionary, which I love.  It has two thousand and some pages of very fine print (three columns per page, ten words per line in each column), and I love it partly because of the amazing amount of effort that had to go into compiling it.  But also, because it contains the common meanings of words, and these days we seem to be happily trying to re-define words to fit our contemporary needs. This dictionary contains almost two columns under service, and almost 50 definitions.  The definitions in the first half column do in fact refer to people helping people.  Only in the middle does one come across such things as “useful labor that does not produce a tangible commodity”.  Here we move into the economic realm.  But I think most people consider service to be help from other people, whether it be in person, in manuals, on the internet, or whatever.  And I agree we could do much better.

 Without help, we tend to buy the cheapest product, which may be of the lowest quality.  I notice when I shop for tools with a friend who has spent his life as a mechanic, I spend more money and get better stuff. I no longer buy the cheapest house paint, because I don’t like to paint the house that often.  The internet is becoming less trustworthy as it becomes more commercial, so I have switched to asking house-painters about paint quality.  It would be better if I could trust sales people in paint stores to give me the straight poop.  Somehow they are all convinced that their paint is the best.  I bought a combination (always risky) toaster oven-toaster a while ago and it is a disaster, even though the sales person raved about it.  In retrospect, he probably wanted me to buy it and knew nothing about it.

 Higher quality requires more informed and honest information about products.  It doesn’t have to come from personal contact, but personal contact is nice, and would make a lot of jobs.

Quiet (by Susan Cain), Problem Solving, and Product Quality

  Everyone should read this book, but especially those working in companies developing products. Click on recommended books to the right for more information on the book.  It goes into Introversion and Extroversion in fascinating detail. And it is a terrific read (it has been on best seller lists for a while).

 I was using the Myers-Briggs type indicator (MBTI) in the 1970’s in classes on problem-solving and design and in my consulting for a number of reasons, and I sure could have used this book.  If you are not familiar with the MBTI, it is based on the theories of Carl Jung, and separates those who take it along four axes, one of these Introversion/Extraversion (an alternate spelling) .  More details  on the MBTI here if you want them.

 I quit using the MBTI because it was becoming so popular that people were using it for purposes for which it was never intended, but I have been interested in cognitive styles ever since, and Quiet is a fascinating summary of what introversion and extroversion are, and of the strengths of those solidly in each camp (introverts in thinking and sensitivity, and extroverts in getting things to happen.) The author of Quiet feels that if we do not value both of them, we all lose but especially if we undervalue the quiet introvert. 

 Cain begins the book by discussing the high value that is placed on extroversion in the U.S., particularly in business and education, and why.  She then discusses the nature and role of introversion and extroversion and the benefits of each.  When I was using the MBTI, psychological theory believed heavily in nurture, rather than nature—we were born blank and programmed through our experience.  Due to much research and focus on DNA, the theory has swung to believing that both are important, and in fact you often hear people talk of half-and-half. Cain is up on her theory and hypothesizes that as far as introversion and extroversion are concerned, most of us are naturally dominant in one, but able to do the other.

 One viewpoint I found particularly interesting is based on experiments she describes showing that the dominance is probably built into our limbic system (the portion of the brain particularly responsible for emotions), but offset by the cerebrum (the “thinking part”).  For instance, She feels that people who are naturally introverted learn to offset this because of educational, public, and professional values and pressure to the point that we may lose some of their valuable ability to think and to interact with other people—or at times lead extroverts when problems are particularly complicated and issues are subtle.

 Part three of her book has to do with introversion and extroversion in different cultures, and the final part focuses on how one should balance introversion and extroversion, how members of the opposite type should communicate, and the raising of “Quiet” kids.

 All and all a wonderful and timely book.