From time to time I'm invited to share insights about the "real world" with students at a local university. I always relish this opportunity, because it offers me the chance to interact with students about to enter the workforce. And to see what's changed, and what hasn't, since I was in school 20 years ago.
Last week, halfway into a 3-hour seminar, a student launched into a screed about any- and everything to do with the class. Hated the lectures, guests (aka, me) didn't get to speak enough, wasn't learning anything. And that was just the beginning. I never saw an outburst like this as an undergrad, or during two stints in grad school. On the drive home I contemplated the meaning of what I just witnessed because fresh in my mind was a talk by NYT columnist Frank Bruni about college admissions, higher education and our current crop of students. Bruni described a conversation with a psychology professor of 40 years. Asked whether students have changed over time, the prof said kids were more interested in learning four decades ago. Today, they want a recipe for success: just tell me what I need to do to get into grad school or land a great job. While teaching as an adjunct at Princeton, Bruni discovered, much to his dismay, that students seemed far more focused on getting into his class than learning once enrolled. He mentioned this to full-time faculty and was greeted with welcome to the club, students have been conditioned since ninth grade that it's all about getting in. This "getting in" hype is consistent with feedback from the head of a highly respected K-12 school in Dallas: uber-competitive parents hire tutors throughout high school, hoping to raise their teen's grades or test scores a smidgen and improve their odds of "getting in". Yikes! Back to the outburst and my musing. I disagreed with the student's approach to complaining, but it was refreshing to see an apparent interest in learning. I offered to mentor him on communication, which is a real world skill he needs to succeed, and gave him my card. We'll see how genuine his learning interest is. With a kid off to college soon, I've been thinking about what the spawn will do post-graduation. An entirely new landscape can emerge over four years, especially in technology related fields: 18 months ago a petroleum engineering degree was a sure bet, today not so much. The pace of IT change can be explosive, and it creates challenges for both students and employers. In the graphs below, a freshman taking up Hadoop in 2008 hits the jackpot with a 1,500X increase in jobs at graduation. Starting Java one year later, as demand peaks, lands a student on a very different trajectory in 2013. As companies introduce new technologies, people that long carried the torch may not be prepared to navigate the tech road ahead. Yet, they have established relationships and a deep understanding of the business that are valuable for solving problems, supporting clients or architecting to avoid issues. In my experience, companies don't do enough to retain business expertise as older technologies are retired, or to offer role appropriate training. At the same time, employees are often reluctant to invest personal time to learn new skills. This leads to a lose/lose situation for everyone. To the extent possible, I believe companies should communicate their technology road maps across the IT org. Awareness that a technology has a shelf life allows employees to decide whether to retool their skills with the hope of continued employment, or look elsewhere. Employers should also offer education tailored to the role. A program manager leading a Hadoop-centric initiative needs grounding in the technology. But odds are there's only one series available, and it's oriented toward developers. IT professionals should invest time in learning, just as other professionals do. And some of that time should be personal. Numerous low- or no-cost options are available via open courses, webinars (TDWI offers great ones), MeetUps, vendor websites or the local university to name a few. This piece has an underlying education theme, so let's end with a quiz. Which of these is not a big data technology? A) Cassandra B) Mongo C) Hive D) Vibrissa E) Kafka Anatomy buffs will probably know the answer, but if you're in IT and you don't, it's time to go back to school. No, it's not a headline from The Onion. But it certainly could be.
Yesterday's Bits blog covered Amino, a San Fran start-up that helps consumers find docs with the most experience treating a particular ailment. I generally agree with their premise that more experience leads to better outcomes, but a large number of patient interactions may also indicate unnecessary treatments. Amino's technology uses a "personalized, data-driven approach" that matches people with doctors based on the number of similar patients (condition, gender and age range) each has treated. Recommendations are based on 3.9 billion health care claims covering 188 million patients and 893,000 doctors. Curious, I gave it a try. Run-of-the-mill searches (internist, pediatrician) using Amino's inputs of physician type, patient sex/age/address, male/female doctor, and distance yielded reasonable results. So did a search for a nephrologist within 25 miles of a small town in North Dakota: none found, as expected. Amino falls apart when medical impossibilities are input, such as a toddler girl with prostate cancer or a 99-year old man with an ovarian cyst. In the first case, Amino returned three doctors for a rural community on Long Island; in the latter, 25 docs in Dallas including a psychiatrist. Like the North Dakota search, I expected zero results for the infant and geriatric cases above, yet there they were, suggestions for doctors to treat body parts not present. It seems that proximity dominates the search algorithm, which I find surprising given Amino's heavy hitter medical and public health advisors. I like where Amino is headed, however they have a ways to go with the user experience. The service could be a boon for relocations, ferreting out treatment options for aging parents or identifying surgeons for a complex operation. With a few tweaks, I believe Amino can become a great healthcare resource. It's National Cyber Security Month. You didn't know that? Shame on you. But then, I wasn't aware that January is Radon Action Month and June is both Dairy and Dairy Alternatives Month (what a street fight that must be in the grocery aisles).
One can never take cyber security too lightly, and no doubt the sponsors of Right Brainers Rule and Banana Pudding Lovers months feel the same about their causes. But every now and then a laugh is therapeutic. I hope this security-esque exchange I had with a caller lightens your day. Me: Hello Caller, in slightly broken English but not bad: This is Windows technical support. We have detected a problem with your computer. Me: Oh, that doesn't sound good. Caller: It is not. Your computer has a malicious germ that will affect its performance. But I will help you fix it. Me: Great, thank you. Do I need disinfectant? Caller: Do you see the key with the funny symbol on lower left of keyboard? You do, good. Hold it down and press the R key. What do you see? Me: A small box that says Run Caller: Good. In the small box type the following. I will spell it for you. Have you typed it? Good. What do you see? Me: It says I work for the National Security Agency and I've only kept you on the line long enough to pinpoint your location. A drone is on its way blow up you and your fake Windows technical support. Caller (screaming): EXPLETIVE! EXPLETIVE! EXPLETIVE YOU EXPLETIVE! Click. It's not as embarrassing as Ashley Madison. But there's a certain irony in the American Bankers Association (ABA), an organization headed by a former FBI agent, being hacked. In case you missed it, 6,400+ user names and passwords from the ABA's online shopping cart were compromised, and posted online.
This news comes on the heels of T-Mobile's revelation that names, addresses, social security numbers, dates of birth and identification numbers for 15 million customers were stolen via a breach at the credit reporting agency Experian. Experian described the incident as "isolated". The Chief Security Officer for a mobile payments company held a related position at Target, which recently agreed to pay $67M to settle claims from a 2013 data breach that exposed 40 million account numbers. Is the CSO taking a different approach at the payments company? Let's hope so. Over the summer, a former insurer notified me that its databases were broken into...but fear not, I'll receive two years of credit monitoring, gratis. And a class reunion service sent me a user ID and password in the same email. Yikes! It seems that everywhere one looks, there's another breach, or that companies don't do enough to protect entrusted data. Short of going off the grid, can we humans do anything to safeguard personal information and account numbers? Not much, according to a colleague in the info security trade. But he did pass on a few tips for practicing safe commerce (beyond the standard anti-malware protections), which I'm sharing here:
Oh good god, not another twist on the Nigerian prince, FBI money-laundering or Windows tech support ("you have a very dangerous germ on your computer") scams. That was my immediate reaction to an email from Bank of the West, since I don't do business with them. Delete.
A few days later a second email, and shortly thereafter a third. When I clicked on the third to report it as spam, I encountered a surprise: BountyJobs.com submitted me to BOTW for a position in California. Curiosity piqued, it was time for some sleuthing. First, what the heck is BountyJobs.com? CrunchBase described it as a "website where employers post descriptions of the type of employees they are looking for with the "bounties" they will pay if [recruiters] fill them". WSJ.com characterized it as "aim[ing] to level the playing field for boutique recruiters." The BOTW emails listed a position title. A quick inquiry at the company website showed a matching role, so I investigated further and found an applicant ID tied to my name. I used that applicant ID to retrieve a password, and logged in. Fascinating. Someone, or something, had scraped info from my LinkedIn profile and partially filled out an application. Which explained the second email from BOTW, a request to complete a full work history; and the third, notice that I was dropped from consideration due to an incomplete application. I'm not sure if this was tech gone wrong (bot) , an unscrupulous headhunter hoping for a payday or a variant of identity theft. But it was certainly tech enabled, and opened my trusting eyes to the possibility that any LinkedIn member's career aspirations could be sabotaged via an unauthorized use of data. "But that's not my User ID." That was my response to the customer service agent when he asked about my online banking User IDs. And it was also the first clue.
Like many people, I use alerts to notify me of unauthorized attempts to access my accounts. A few days ago I received notice that this occurred at a bank where I have two accounts. I immediately fired up the laptop and went to the logon screen. Entered credentials, and bingo, I was in. WTH??? No, they could not possibly have mixed up two accounts. So I jumped to the second account. Access denied. Yep, it happened: I received alerts for the wrong account! I dialed customer service. The first agent said she couldn't help because it was an online banking issue, and transferred me to tech support. Tech support directed me back to customer service to handle issues unique to that account type. So I called the number for my second account. Another transfer. Thoughts of the movie Ground Hog Day filled my mind. I convinced the fourth agent I was not drunk or insane, and she worked with me...to an extent. She asked if I had trouble accessing either account in the past. Nope. She asked again, in a different way: so using logon ID xyz123 has never been an issue? A light went on: a third account was in play. For many years I've had two accounts at my main bank, each with its own User ID. A few months ago an account with another firm was converted to this bank. It looks like the conversion went awry and selected data for the active and converted accounts was mixed up. But that's just speculation at this point, based on my knowledge of banking systems: no one has actually offered to resolve the issue. Technology gone wrong at its finest, though I think I have a close second, of a different flavor, for next week. With the quasi-end of summer here, and my child back in school, I thought I'd write about this classic topic. It's probably not what you think. No Instagram pics scaling Denali, or Facebook albums of lunch with the Pope. I went to school, in a sense, and immersed myself in the Dallas startup community.
Why on earth do that, you may ask. Well, Alcuin School, where I'm a trustee, received a $1 million gift to launch a youth entrepreneurship program. So I figured I better know more about what's happening in this arena. I attended 1 Million Cups, a program developed by the Kauffman Foundation, at the Dallas Entrepreneur Center. It's a kinder, gentler version of Shark Tank where entrepreneurs pitch their ideas for six minutes, followed by 20 minutes of audience questions. I saw niimbi, a company addressing the high cost of insurance claims in the car parking industry. In social services, a new tech-driven business model from Cariloop to identify resources and manage healthcare for your older loved ones. iWaiter, an app to order drinks or request your server. And many more. Through Startup Grind I caught a fantastic discussion with Dale Carman, founder of Reel FX, a pioneering company in digital visual effects and animation. I discovered it's easy to start a tech company without writing any code, using an assortment of tools to create logos, screens and prototypes. And I had great conversations. At Health Wildcatters, a healthcare startup accelerator, with the co-founder of a social media/publishing venture targeting nurses. With a fledgling competitor to Apple Pay. An advisor to Youth Trade. And very recently, with two early-stage marketing ventures mining social media. Wow, what an experience!! I love learning, and this was education at its finest: real people, passionate about their dreams, and a fly-by of numerous industries. I encourage everyone to check out their local startup scene. You'll be amazed at what you find. A recent collection of Forbes articles about liberal arts vs STEM education and Tech careers caught my attention. As a trustee of an independent school, parent of a student off to college in a year, and liberal arts grad working in Tech I have a few thoughts on the matter, but at the K-12 level.
STEM programs focus on Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. A true STEM approach is interdisciplinary: biology class, for example, may integrate concepts from chemistry or statistical analysis from math. STEM education begins in elementary school and continues through 12th grade. Many metropolitan areas have specialty STEM high schools. Companies and governments emphasize STEM, but for different reasons. Manufacturers need people to operate increasingly complex equipment, or design snazzy new products (think IoT). Governments need engineers to build eavesdropping technology, or geologists to evaluate oil & gas resources on public land. STEM careers tend to pay well, which also translates into more tax revenue. Advanced Placement (AP) courses cover college-level material in high school. Classes, which are offered in science, math, language, humanities and the arts, focus on a single subject. Students can earn college credit or advanced standing with a strong score on an AP exam, and can also earn an AP International Diploma, which denotes academic excellence. AP’s creator, The College Board, maintains that a transcript rich with AP classes provides an edge in college admissions; and that students enrolled in AP classes perform better in college. A 2013 study by Denise Pope, a researcher affiliated with Stanford, questions these assertions. International Baccalaureate (IB) is a holistic approach to K-12 education recognized in more than 140 countries. 11th and 12th grade students conduct independent research, write a 4000 word essay, serve the community, exercise, and engage in the arts in addition to academics. A number of states confer benefits to students that earn an IB diploma and attend in-state public universities. Texans are awarded 24 credits, California guarantees admission to its flagship school UC Berkeley, and Florida covers the full cost of college. In addition, IB students are twice as likely to be admitted to Princeton, Stanford and Yale as non-IB students. So, is there a preferred choice? I favor IB because it best develops the critical thinking skills students need to succeed in college. It also provides a strong foundation for later study in a STEM field, and helps with admissions. IB is available at public and private schools, as are STEM and AP programs. I encourage parents to look into IB programs should they be offered in their community. Disclosure: My child attended a middle school IB program, attends an AP high school and has an interest in STEM Sunday’s NYT article about Amazon got me thinking about the “personalities” I’ve reported to, or worked with over the years. It’s the weekend, so to get started on a lighter note, a few true stories for your amusement.
Jake was a lumbering, bespectacled endomorph. From time to time he made women in the group cry. His career came to a screeching halt after emailing the entire department’s performance ratings to his team. “Oops”, to quote Rick Perry. Penance led him to a small west Texas outpost where he could do no harm, and subsequently, the armpit of Africa. Cyrille (think Uncle Fester with a moustache) hailed from Cajun country. He always had a stogie in his mouth, and spoke in metaphors related to crawfish. Once, his wife joined us on a business trip. She carried a can of Lysol and a pistol in her purse, and said that if she couldn’t kill the toilet seat germs with Lysol, she’d get ‘em with the gun. Life is different in the bayou. Igor had thick silver hair and a disaffection for geriatric drivers. He dubbed them “raisins” (old and dried up) and often, with frustration, blurted out “G*d-d**n raisins, why do they have to drive on the road!!” when behind a slow moving car. I thought roads were a reasonable place to drive, raisin or otherwise. Always in a hurry, he once ran over a goose rather than slow down to let it pass. Jonah’s cranium was dotted with hair plugs and he was exceedingly round shouldered, certainly not GQ material. At parties, he frequently tried to pass off his much younger wife as his daughter. My most common interaction with him was fixing the formulas on his golf spreadsheet, and while captive, getting unsolicited advice on dating. Leo was a surly old driller on an offshore oil rig. For some reason he liked the late shift, but for some reason didn’t like me. He phoned at 3am night after night, just to tell me he was awake, so I should be too. I was on the verge of getting a voodoo doll, but then he was fired. Amen. *Names changed in the interest of privacy |
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November 2015
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