Office of the First Lady.

So much has been said and written already about a lot of President Trump's policies that I will prefer to keep off of those topics.

Today my topic is about the role of Ivanka Trump in her daddy's presidency. It seems to many that her (and perhaps her daddy's administration's) intention is to sweep aside Melania Trump, who seems more than willing to be swept aside as First Lady and instead create a role of a "First Daughter". A lot of comments on Twitter show that this is the popular  sentiment - some comments chide her saying "What the hell are you doing meeting with a foreign leader" and "Unelected women should not get a seat at that particular table". While I completely agree with that sentiment, what I dont get is why people think it is acceptable for a president's wife to join him in his official duties but not the daughter.

I came to America soon after Obama won his first election - and one of the first things I noticed was how much coverage Michelle Obama got on television. She seemed to go with him everywhere, her wardrobe got a lot of attention, and I also realized that prior to him being elected, she even made speeches on his behalf at the Democratic National convention (and so did his opponent's wife). Why are spouses so important to the presidency?

Where I come from, I dont think the spouses of Prime ministers have any role to play - sometimes a picture of them might crop up in a newspaper because they happened to be close by, but its usually just an accident. No one usually bothers even interviewing them, except maybe in a memoir or  an occasional magazine article, perhaps after the tenure is finished.

Here though, its a different game altogether. There is an actual "Office of the First Lady"; they are supposed to be fashion icons, and of course they better be good speakers because they are going to be making speeches all along their husband's tenure. To top it all off, there is the inherent sexism in the title itself, which suggests that the spouse will always be a woman.

It is interesting to note the history of this role. It started with the spouses wanting to be addressed as "Lady", "Mrs. President" etc - it seems to me they were trying to emulate the role of a queen in a country where monarchy was non existent, perhaps trying to mirror the social setup of other countries at the time. But as monarchies elsewhere collapsed and have given way to democracies and none of the other countries have such an "office" for the spouse of their country's premier anymore, does it not make sense to abolish this whole "First Lady" thing and move on? Like Ivanka's criticizers pointed out, they are not elected and should not have a seat at the table. If they have political aspirations, certainly, they can do what Hillary Clinton did - maintain her own political career and try her own hand at the elections.

The existence of such an office only seems to allow the president's immediate family to create a political career of their own if they wish to do so - and that should not really be the case in a true democracy.

Wishful Thinking

I learned recently that it is easier to go through pain yourself than to watch your children be in pain. Anyone who has held their own eight month old baby while a nurse was drawing blood will know what I am talking about. My baby was screaming his head off and trying to get out of my iron grip, all the while looking straight into my eyes as if to ask me "Is this what you reward me with for all the trust I place in you?"

I felt like I had let him down.
And I can tell you, its much harder than letting yourself down.
Or letting your parents down.

 And then I remembered Theranos. That little company I had read about whose founder hated to have blood drawn and so was launching this company that could stop this whole process and conduct tests with blood from just pin pricks. Just what I am looking for. Just what any parent will be looking for.

I couldnt resist looking up how much progress they had made once I came back home. Unfortunately they dont seem to be doing that well. I hope they turn around though - such a shame to have to insert needles into every baby just to have them tested :( 

The trouble with "doing your own research"

For the last few months I have been hearing the words "do your own research" quite a few times. It was given to me as sensible no nonsense advice by a few colleagues when I was pondering over some medical issues I was having at the time. Usually the advice means "ignore what the doctor is saying, go and read some medical literature yourself".

I was surprised by the suggestion, because from my perspective, the doctor knows best. I rarely question their opinion and authority, if I think a particular doctor is not good enough I just go to another one after checking their credentials. In no circumstance would I bother to sit and read medical literature all by myself. Yet that is what folks around me seem to do - they search and find the latest research on any given medical issue, spend a lot of time understanding whatever those conclusions are and then accept that as the truth. They seem to think that it is the right way to make decisions - by reading all available material on their own exhaustively and then coming to a conclusion on their own. In my mind, this is nonsensical, because to me that is what the doctor is supposed to do - I am paying the doctor so they will do all this for me. What then is the point of me spending all that time reading stuff up on my own? And what makes people think that they can somehow know better than someone who went through years of specific training to be able to make these types of decisions?

Yet here we are - more and more people insisting that they know better than doctors because they have "done their own research". I wonder what causes them to depend so much on their own research. I wonder if they have paused to think about what "doing my own research" really means. To me if one really had to do one's own research, one would have to set up a lab, devise a scientifically sound experiment to prove or test whatever it is that one is curious about and get the funding and carry out the experiment on your own. None of the folks talking about "Doing one's own research" is doing that. Instead they are simply reading published papers and believing that it is the absolute truth - how do they know it was not cooked up? Why is reading the paper somehow "doing one's own research"? Dont they know that a lot of experimental results are fabricated anyway?

I wish people would give more thought into what they call "research" before labelling their literature survey as "research".

The Price of Progress

Its hard not to think about what the future holds for us. In the last fifty years we have seen nearly every sector disrupted because of technology, and it doesnt look like that process is going to stop anytime soon.

One of the things I think about are people who make a living driving. We use Uber pretty often, and I sometimes talk to the drivers to see how and when they started out as Uber drivers. There are some folks who say they gave up their day jobs because this was paying more. One that I was talking to just a few days ago said she had not had any other job for more than one and a half years. And she has a Masters degree from NYU! She talked about how difficult it was to find a decently paying job, and that no one cares about her degree. It was sad to listen to her because I know that sooner or later she will find herself out of this job as well - my guess is that in five to ten years, unless this country puts regulations in place, we will have a self driving car service that will be way cheaper. And these guys will unfortunately not be able to compete against those, and will soon have to find something else to do. Its the same with truck and bus drivers.

Another area where disruption is going to happen is delivery services. All those delivery service folks who are raking in money now because of the popularity of the rise in demand for delivery will sooner or later find themselves out of a job - when the drones figure out how to do it faster and cheaper.

There are so many areas like these where change is happening. Folks who make this kind of progress happen think they are doing everyone a service - it takes away the need to have people engaged in work that can easily be automated, freeing people to engage in more creative pursuits. Their reasoning is : no one should have to sit behind the wheel of a truck for hours at a time to earn a living. Instead, we should have folks who create software that can drive cars around automatically.

Unfortunately, the question arises: what can these folks do instead that will not require specialized skills? The trouble with all the progress we are making is that it removes large numbers of jobs that dont need a lot of skill and adds a few jobs that are extremely specialized and skill based. The folks whose jobs got taken away will never be able to hold the jobs that got created by this type of disruption. We will eventually eliminate the need for unskilled / low skilled labor and only have a market open for smart, creative, skilled and extremely competitive folks who are willing to work round the clock to keep their jobs. And because these jobs are going to be few in number, they will have to work harder and harder to make sure they are not taken away by someone else. And obviously, their work is going to make more and more jobs irrelevant as time passes by. Essentially, we are progressing in a direction where we will eventually put most folks out of a means of livelihood, and the gap between the rich and poor will increase further. The only difference will be that the everyone will have the opportunity to try to get one of those few jobs; the ones who dont will only be able to blame their genes and upbringing.

So what am I proposing? That we call the world to a halt and stop all progress? Grind growth and subsequently the economy to a halt? Where would that leave us?

For a long time I had this post written up until here and I felt I couldnt post it because I had no answers. I thought the answers will come to me in time, but it hasnt. So I am going to post this, hoping the answer will arrive afterwards and it can be added in as an update later.

Update as of Aug 2017: There is a company called Humu that is attempting to solve this problem. There is also some research into Basic Income that Ycombinator is doing, that seems like it is attempting to solve the same issues. Happy to realize that I am not the only one thinking this way and that we are hopefully going to make some progress on this problem.

Ellen Pao vs Kleiner Perkins

In the last few weeks there has been so much going on in terms of gender all around me. I dont know if I am seeing more of it because I am more attentive to these things or if it is really just a coincidence. The first one was the comments from the Delhi rapist about how the victim really was to blame. If it was just that, I might have let it go, because after all I am aware that the prevailing notion among a large proportion of Indian men are somewhere along those lines. Having grown up in India, I would be stupid to think that a large portion of Indian men thought otherwise. But then there was a former Googler who publicly stated that she was sexually harassed while still working for the company and the rape and death threats that she has been facing since the public disclosure. And then there was Ellen Pao vs Kleiner Perkins, showing how regressive even a country like US is when it comes to women's work rights. On top of all this, I am reading Lean In currently, which I guess has made me especially sensitive to the small issues that women face while trying to be in the workforce.

This post is about the trial and what I think are some of the mistakes KPCB made while dealing with Pao. My own thinking about the trial has been muddled, because of conflicting press reports that seem to favor one or the other side. Like in all cases, without knowing the absolute truth, all one can do is form your own judgement. This is my way of clearing up some of my thinking... It is not a full or fair account of the trial, it is just some things I noted about the trial and the firm that surprised me. I have been following their investments for a while now, and I always looked on them with respect, but this trial changes things a lot.

There are several things about that trial that surprised me.

The first one was what the firm's line of defense was. Even in this day and age, in a country as progressive as this one, the way one conducts a lawsuit against a powerful woman who is alleging gender based discrimination is by character assassination. She gets portrayed as an overbearing and aggressive bitch who no one can get along with, the intention being that the jury would be traditional enough to consider likeability of the woman in question more than whether there was gender bias involved or not. In my view, her likeability should not be discussed at all. Whats relevant is whether there was bias or not, and just because a woman is not very likeable doesnt make gender bias any less of an issue. Powerful women only get there because they are tough and are willing to be assertive enough not to back down when others try to push them over. Unfortunately, cultures around the world portray these women as "bad" women. It is less in the US, but it is still there... a woman who is assertive is just not "nice" too. Men simply dont face this problem, they are just seen as powerful and assertive because that is what we expect men to be.

The second one was how the firm in question dealt with someone against whom two of their female employees levelled sexual harassment charges. When the first complaint was made by Pao, he was talked to, but not really reprimanded. The firm says his bonus was cut, but his biggest "punishment" was that he was told the firm's most senior leader had lost faith in his ability to lead the firm. The following year though, he was given a promotion and made senior partner because they thought "he would be a good investor". Only after a second complaint was made by a different employee was he finally let go of.  So in the man's case, all that mattered was whether or not he would be a good investor, and how he behaved with female employees at the firm was not looked upon seriously, whereas in the woman's case (Ms. Pao's) she couldnt be made senior partner because she was too aggressive and difficult to get along with. No wonder Pao is suing them.

The third one was how the women in firm were assigned their traditional stereotypes even in their written performance reviews: Pao's reviews before she levelled harassment charges against them consistently contained "encouraging" words such as "quietly effective" and in an email she was mentioned as having a , "quiet, tenacious leadership". In cases where improvements were suggested, it contained words such as "We encourage you to soften your style". Referring to another female investor at the firm, the same email contained the words "patient, firm, savvy, and mother of two young kids", whereas the same email when describing a male investor did not mention his family status in any way despite him having children as well. While it is fine to describe the family status of employees, I think it definitely is not necessary to call that out only in case of women. In a separate email, while talking about another female employee, the same partner writes : "Her willingness to travel works, unless / until she becomes a mom".

The fourth surprise for me was the "unwritten guidelines" that were applied unequally to men and women. Apparently junior partners were expected to only sit on one board. This was told to women who had the opportunity to be on more than one board, but most men were exempted from the guideline.

The fifth surprise was that the firm seem to have had differing policies w.r.t. offering work to men vs women. Pao worked to hire and mentor another man who was given the opportunity earlier to invest and prove himself. Pao's opportunities to do so were however limited since she was asked to mostly spend time writing press releases and speeches, with her being told that she was being assigned that stuff because she was good at it. Obviously, she would not have been foolish enough to think that writing press releases and speeches for the majority of the time was not going to make a case for her promotion. Eventually the man that Ellen hired and mentored got promoted before she did. The other major incident that comes to light here is that another male senior partner was given a board seat for a company that she primarily did all the groundwork for, because "he needed a win" and because it was "her job to support her senior partners".

The sixth surprise was : The firm was approached by Google Ventures asking whether they could recruit Ellen Pao for themselves. At the time Kleiner Perkins did not want to let her go, because they felt she was valuable enough as an employee and had spent a long time developing her. So they decided to offer her a position on their "digital team" so Google Ventures would not hire her away. Google Ventures realized what was happening and it looks like they finally did not make an offer. (It must be noted that their attorney later twisted this out of context to say that she was "rejected" by Google Ventures.) A couple of years after this they decided that her performance was not good enough and that she will never make general partner. She sued the firm after this, while still employed there, and waited until they terminated her employment.

To me, if in fact all of this is true, there has been harassment. It wasnt exactly one particular event of harassment, it was more death by a thousand cuts (although I will say that some cuts were pretty deep here). Compounding these issues together makes for an unfriendly workplace for women, and I believe that (and some financial compensation) is what Pao is fighting for. It must be obvious by now that I am on Pao's side. Regardless of what the verdict is from this trial, I think from now on I will think of KPCB as on old school firm that has fifties style value systems. I expected them to be different, mostly because of what I had heard of John Doerr's non investing work (which by the way was mentioned in the trial, perhaps to improve his likeability, just the way the defense tried to reduce Pao's likeability stating that she was too assertive to be likeable.). I now see that as just the creation of a public image to benefit his business. It is even likely that it is mostly his wife who manages it; while he stays as the public face of it.

A trial is a tricky thing to handle; most of it is he-said, she-said, with documents to prove some of them, although even the best documented proof can be misleading when taken out of context. I hope the jury is able to wade through the legal battle that is going on and make a just decision. I hope this brings some change into the tech industry, which, although perhaps the most supportive of diversity, is still not supportive enough. Good luck, Pao!

The Indian Startup Scene

Yahoo shut down its development offices in India recently. I think most large software development companies with most of their teams in the US will eventually come to the same conclusion and do the same thing. My guess is that the only ones that will remain are the ones that make their teams there strictly independent and focused on problems facing the Indian market.

Unfortunately, that is not how those offices typically operate - they usually end up doing small projects that people in the main offices in the US think are safe to be handled overseas. It is not like they think the folks in India are less capable or dedicated - it just makes more logical sense to have everyone working on important projects to all be in the same timezone, located more or less close by geographically and able to communicate well with each other. Since that is not easy to do between the US and India, even if a project of importance happens to have arisen at the Bangalore office, it eventually gets moved to the US because it is too important to be done by a team that no one has much contact with.

Also, folks sitting in the US do not have as much perspective on the Indian market (or any other market for that matter) so they tend to miss opportunities that people there would normally see.  Typically I have not seen these offices solving too many problems for the developing world. Historically, I think the number of new solutions that came out for the Indian market from these large companies has been low, especially from an engineering viewpoint. All the new ideas such seem to have come from small startups and not from the smaller offices of the established companies. Even when the established companies do come out with solutions for the local market, it seems like the initiatives originated from Indian employees in the US, not in India.

So from the perspective of the large companies, it makes sense to close down operations in India - if they are unable to innovate for the local market, and it is known that communication can be a problem, why keep these offices running? I know some folks do it because it is cheaper there - but that gap is quickly reducing..people's starting salaries have nearly doubled in the last 5-6 years. It is already nearly half of what folks make in the US, so it seems like in the next 10 years or so the gap in salaries will be mostly gone. So it wont make much financial sense to keep engineers there either.

So is this a bad thing? Are we moving in a direction where unemployment for engineers will once again become a problem? I dont think so - I think India will have its own strong startups coming out soon. There are already quite a few that seem to be doing well, and it will get better over time. The startup scene there is heating up, and college grads there are increasingly opting to work at one of those rather than join a conventional large company with a big name. Eventually we will have our own big names, perhaps ones that will compete or surpass the likes of Google and Facebook. China is already moving in that direction and I believe India will soon catch up. In fact I think most countries with strong engineering education will develop its own version of a Silicon Valley with startups churning out innovative solutions for their people.

I am curious how the next 5-10 years will play out in India, startup-scene-wise.

Dealing with Complexity

Have you paused for a moment to marvel at some of the things we have been doing lately?

Self driving cars.
Drones that deliver packages.
Contact lenses that can measure eye pressure.
Gadgets that take pictures when you just think about taking pictures (yep, that exists).

Only fifteen years ago, I would not have thought this kind of stuff would come about while I was still alive. While I see the upside of all this - in fact I make a living out of the upside, I also see some downsides. This post is mostly about the downsides. It does not mean I am anti-technology. I am very much pro-progress, and I definitely think we are better off today than we were just 60 years ago. I also think that is true on most fronts - we have better medical care, better technology and definitely a better political climate. But I have my times of doubt, and this one such moment.

The first problem I see with such complex systems is the need for specialized knowledge before one can contribute anything. The more sophisticated the stuff you make, longer someone has to spend trying to learn all the basics before they can add on top of it. And once they get all that training, they are not going to easily adapt into another job, because they will need a bunch of retraining. Not many companies are willing to hire just "smart" people and pay they until they get up to speed. Most are looking for specific skills that they can start applying on day one on their new jobs. Instead of valuing experience, most places will hire people who have been "ready-made" for the specific roles they have. Once that ready-made position is no longer relevant, heaven help them if they need a new job.

The second problem is avoiding absurdities in the system. When building something complex, it is always difficult to make sure that all the parts make sense together. In the medical system here, it has come to a point where if you dont have medical insurance, you cannot see a doctor. And the number of times you are allowed to see a doctor for any reason whatsoever is also dictated by medical insurance. Take one of my experiences for example: I had a skin problem, which was on my face and my back. I wanted to see a doctor, and called a skin specialist to fix an appointment. They told me that the doctor could only look at one part of my body during one appointment (apparently the insurance restricts the doctor from looking beyond one specific problem). So I asked for 2 consecutive appointments so I could show my face and my back and avoid another trip to the same doctor on another day. Again, insurance prohibited the same doctor from seeing the same patient in two appointments on the same day. The only thing I could do was take appointments on two different days. What kind of nonsense is that?

The third problem is conveying this knowledge to common people. Take the financial system. I dont think anyone understands the entire system, fully, including the people who designed it. And because people like you and me dont understand it, you are supposed to get yourself a "broker" or a "financial planner" who will understand these things for you and make your life smooth. I recently attended a panel discussion organized by financial planners. Their biggest advice was to get yourself a financial planner and invest as much as you can in your 401k. When asked what a financial planner did, they said it is a "halo person" who talks to your accountant, lawyer, broker, doctor, nanny, knows your family and relatives and decides what the right financial decisions are for you. Apparently they control the actions of all these people on your lives so that financially, it all makes sense. What they dont mention is that they charge thousands of dollars in fees, just like all these other people in your life that they are supposed to "work" with, such as lawyers, accountants and so forth. A lot of people came out of that panel discussion feeling like they had a "lot to catch up on and do". I came out deeply concerned that (a) our system was so complicated that something so simple as "inheritance" required working with a financial planner, a lawyer and an accountant. Its something everyone has to do, so why dont we make it as simple as possible? Why make the system such that there is one loop hole that you can go through to make sure your money goes to your children without paying too much in taxes, but for that you need to do this complicated trust fund thing? Why not just offer everyone the same thing instead of limiting these options to those people who are educated enough to navigate the laws and have money to pay lawyers who know how to deal with it?

Of course, financial planners did not mention the fine print that they charge thousands of dollars for their services. I wonder if them and the IRS setup this system so that the IRS can take a cut out of all the money from people who dont know the system, and the financial planners can take the money out of all the people who learn a few things about the system..

When I was at IITM, there was a T shirt that was made by the students of the CS department that read "Complexities Simplified for Everyone". The complexity they had in mind when they made the Tshirt must have been the algorithmic kind... but that phrase indicates what we need on almost all fronts on which we have made progress. I wish all the new grads coming out of college in the coming years will figure out a way to simplify the various systems around us so as to make it more understandable to the common man instead of introducing more complexity when they join the workforce.