eBay confuses, lies

I log in to sell something. Every time I sell, it prompts me to sign up for automatic payments. If I cancel, I'm dumped out of the process.

There's no notification anywhere that I have to sign up. But I do. There's no other way.

No big deal. I sign up. PayPal's page then tells me that

"You can review this billing agreement or cancel automatic PayPal payments at any time by going to your PayPal Profile and clicking the Preapproved Payments link or by modifying your eBay Seller Account preferences."

Except that I can't: there's no link anywhere on the ebay seller account to do this.

I don't understand how stuff like this goes live: do they seriously not have anyone doing QA at all to look for cases like "instructions point to non-existant option" and "user is able to sell something"?

And now, of course, ebay's got a hook into my wallet. Which is reassuring because they are so trustworthy and all.

Why executives order reorgs

In my job, a reorginization kills my productivity for months and directly hurts my pocketbook. After a reorg, I've got a new team that doesn't know how to work well together, a new boss who doesn't know me or how to make my life easier (or how hard I'm going to make their life), and now the developers, testers, business customers, and operations people I've built good working relationships with are all replaced with new versions who I need to start over with. Often, everyone now has to work two jobs half-time, supporting whatever they used to be doing and trying to pick up their new jobs.

I don't do my job really well until months after a reorg. This means for those months, the company isn't getting as much out of me for what they're paying, and that's a poor choice. My annual review will then include a period of months where -- despite my best efforts -- I wasn't as good as I normally was. And if my review goes:
Q1: Star
(Reorg)
Q2: Good after a period of largely ineffective
Q3: Outstanding, getting back to stardom
(Reorg)
Q4: Good but not particularly effective

There's no way I get the "star" review score (and raise, and bonus). And it's the best people, who invest in building relationships and doing the best work, who are inordinately hurt. Someone who's just okay and goes through two reorgs is going to look fine. Someone great through a similar wringer will look erratic.

Every reorg costs every top-quality peer-level person in the company thousands of dollars. And there's never any attempt made at compensation, either directly ("We know this reorg's going to hurt your review scores, so everyone gets an extra 1% on their bonus") or indirectly ("Review scores will be based on months unaffected by the chaos of the reorg").

At each level, the pain is lessened, both by having broader goals and by the ability to have those goals thrown out. For instance, when I was at AT&T Wireless, when the company would post horrible results that missed goals, the board would lower those goals so that the executive leadership could get their bonuses and millions of low-priced stock options. The grunts, of course, didn't get comperable treatment.

No wonder people on the ground level have such negative views of these things.

For managers, it's a little better. Since they're not held to the kind of "get x features into production" review standards a grunt is, and their networks wider, they're better adapted for change. A manager who works on, say, the retail line-of-business applications and gets moved into working on customer-facing applications is going to find far more of their immediate contacts stay the same compared to a grunt-level worker.

However, managers get hit when the people who work for them change. People with a new boss are reluctant to rate their boss highly, especially on qualities that take a long time to establish ("My boss is honest with me..." and so on). And conversely, it can help mitigate bad scores for bad bosses, since employees are reluctant to rate a boss extremely badly if they've only worked for them for a month or so.

The more they're evaluated on their ability to manage their employees, the more they're harmed by reorgs. And even if they're not, they're still far less effected compared to an exec.

Soon, you're at the level of the vice president of IT, and you have entirely different motivations. Your goal for the year isn't "ship x widgets" though you may have some high-level initiatives you're charged with getting out the door. It's more likely "address supplier concerns" and the goal's met if the suppliers rate the IT organization is "responsive or highly responsive" on the year-end survey, a dramatic improvement from "sometimes responsive".

From your perspective, it makes total sense to order a reorganization around suppliers. Each supplier now gets their own team, with dedicated resources, and they'll all do the projects that supplier wants! Ad-hoc teams will form around releases for each product! Sure, there'll be a few months of depressed productivity, but after that, it'll be great!

It works. The supplier's overjoyed that you're willing to go through this to better serve them. They understand that it'll be tough at first, and you get a pass. During that initial honeymoon, as their new dedicated teams start to fight, the supplier's going to be happy -- look at the little ants go at it! They're so cute, and the red ones are fighting for me!

The "highly responsive" box gets filled in. As the VP of IT, this stunning success gets you a huge bonus and a pat on the back.

When the annual employee survey results come out, and morale is down, people are mad about how bad communication is, express frustration with the direction of the company, with the competence of the leadership, there's a ready excuse for you: the grunts are understandably frustrated because they've had to switch teams and bosses, and things will look better once they've settled down.

Then your boss realizes that actual productivity has ground to a halt because every team's fighting every other team. Your reorg doesn't get blamed -- you get a new goal for next year, to streamline planning and build a unified build platform, or some such thing.

That clearly requires a reorg.

Institutional ism

I had my resume on Monster.com briefly a while ago, when I'd quit my job before finding a new one, and before I decided to stay and fight. Despite having a good resume, I got no hits at all for a couple days. Nobody even read it. Then I realized that I should go through and fill out the different education/qualification fields, even though they were on my resume.

First offer came in the next morning, and kept coming until I took it down. Here's why that sucks, beyond the obvious cautionary tale.

I just finished reading "Last Shot: City Streets, Basketball Dreams" by Darcy Frey. It's about basketball but also the horrible conditions for kids growing up in Coney Island, and the institutions that exploit those who can play basketball.

Here's the bind for a kid, even one who can play well enough at the high school level that they're chased by recruiters: they have a crap education, so they can't pass the SAT barrier required by the NCAA. If they're amazingly talented, they can go pro out of high school. If they're lucky, they can attend a junior college and hopefully transfer to a four-year school from there. Or they can get tutoring that tries to cover the gaps in their horrible education before they take the SAT tests.

Mostly, though, when the recruiters realize they're not going to get a high enough SAT score, they're dropped, and that's the end of them.

Now for a second, imagine if they couldn't play basketball, and all they got was the horrible education. Even if they were smart and dedicated, they're screwed. They have to get out into the workplace, work their way into a full-time position (which is a difficult road) and find somewhere that'll help with tuition. So that's years before they've got a shot.

By contrast, take me. I grew up in the Kent-Renton area, attended schools in the Kent School District, which is no great shakes but compared to any account of the horrible state of inner-city schools (and, in "Last Shot" the Coney Island ones) seems like a paradise. Everyone I know in my class with half a mind to going to college managed it. If you were reasonably smart, you went to Western or the UW or some obscure college in Minnesota, and if you weren't, you went to WSU (or, in fairness, if you wanted a good communications degree). Even those of us who went to public in-state universities and still took out
Stafford loans and worked in the library or other hapless jobs for a penny over minimum wage ($4.26) made it work.

Compared to the kids in Coney Island, our advantages were huge. From better-quality teachers and (as crappy as Kentridge was) facilities to community characteristics like better libraries* to read and study at.

Our background spotted us enough points that we were guaranteed to get in somewhere, which in turn meant x% graduated and then dominated the job marketplace.

But back to the topic at hand: the prejudice in favor of college degrees in an environment where college admission is hugely tilted towards affluence, and where a college degree means better job prospects and more money, is effective and sustainable discrimination against those who start out with less. This is exacerbated when the state of public education ensures that the different people start out on massively unequal footing.

What's worse, I think, is that even if it's unintentional and a recruiter's means to cut down the available applicant pool to something more managable, it's clear that not only are they not even looking at qualified resumes without a degree -- they're not looking at ones that have a degree if they can't easily sort on that. I could have taken an entirely different path and worked my way out of a call center, with the same experience and the same abilities, and no one would be interested. But because I have a four-year degree from the University of Washington, where I learned that I can't handle Southern Comfort, I am.

I don't argue that everyone should enjoy equal results, and I don't have any good solutions on how to solve it. If you'd told me I couldn't go to the UW because someone from a horrible school system had put up substantially worse grades and SAT scores and bumped me out, I'd like to think I'd have understood, but I don't really know.

If nothing else, the value the marketplace puts on college degrees makes it clear that barring widespread societal change, equality in early education -- equality of opportunity -- would make a huge difference in getting a more diverse group into colleges, and from there, into the workplace, which would in turn help end this discriminatory cycle.

* which are totally being screwed up, but that's another post.

I don't get Google

So we started throwing AdSense up on USSM, and it's been totally bizarre. For contextual advertisements, they're remarkably bad, which is weird because Google Mail is remarkably good at that. USSM ads tend to be for:
- the Mercury Mariner
- 1st Mariner Arena tickets (in Balitomore)
- Navy or nautical supplies
- Mariners or general sports

Needless to say, those ads don't do a lot for us, since they're pretty much useless to our readers as a group. So we're not making any significant amount of money.

Stranger still, I discovered something today:
Google will take ads for wine, but not beer or whiskey.
Pipes, but not tobacco, or cigarettes.
No guns, but generic ads on some gun brand names (Glock, no, SIG-Sauer yes)
Marijuana, but only some ads, which leads to hilarity like this:



Actually... I bet they don't.

And of course, alllll kinds of porn-related keywords.

Why wine but not vodka? Why is "home brewing" cool (and includes an ad for homebrewing Absinthe) but not beer normally? Why are some legal, controlled substances okay but not others?

Ah, weather

When I tell people who are up here in the summer that it rains all the time and they shouldn't move here, they think I'm being funny and trying to discourage people from clogging up the roads. Which is fair, because that's what I'm trying to do. But it's not as if it's not true.

From the weather service:

THE PUGET SOUND AREA HAS RECEIVED ALMOST DAILY RAINFALL SINCE THIS
WET WEATHER PATTERN BEGAN ON DECEMBER 19TH. SOILS REMAIN SATURATED
AND THOSE ON STEEPER SLOPES ARE PRIMED TO GIVE WAY IN LANDSLIDES.

Chance we'll go a full day without rain, based on current forecasts:
Monday: 0%
Tuesday: 6%
Wednesday: 21%
Thursday: 50%

Soooo there's a reasonable chance during some 24-hour period this week we'll break this streak. Whoopee! Wring me out and call me a sponge.

There were 229 suicides in King County in 2004 (King County Medical Examiner's Office 2004 report, which has some really morbidly interesting statistical breakdowns). And you'll note the criteria for determining if it's suicide are pretty strict: if you offed yourself and didn't leave clear evidence, well, who knows?

By method:
95 firearms
44 hanging
41 drugs/poison

(women, btw, all about drugs and poison)

I have to say, hanging? Really? Is it because it's such a classic suicide method?

Anyway, the CDC offers this:

* Most popular press articles suggest a link between the winter holidays and suicides (Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania 2003). However, this claim is just a myth. In fact, suicide rates in the United States are lowest in the winter and highest in the spring (CDC 1985, McCleary et al. 1991, Warren et al. 1983).

229 out of 1,700,000 (ish) for King County = .0135% chance someone kills themself
~31,000 out of 287,000,000 for the US as a whole = .0108% chance someone kills themself (and that's 2000 numbers)

Okay, so there's a lot of room for variance, since the rate is so low that a couple in either direction can throw the local numbers off, but that's a pretty dramatic increase.

Enough for the morbid thoughts, though.

Cinder Cone Red is back!

Wooooooooooooooooooooooo!

I love this beer!

I got into Descutes beers because while at was working at AT&T Wireless, my team would go out on Fridays to a bar in downtown Bothell (such as it is) and drink Black Butte Porter while we bitched about the week, joked, and argued about random stuff. There were other beers available I liked more, but that was the group beer, and over time I grew to appreciate it. Every time I get it now, I think about those dudes, and how I miss working with them.

I saw a 12-pack of the red for under $12 this week. If you have the chance, I highly recommend it.

Continuing Seattle suicide watch

From the NOAA:

Sunday: Showers likely. Highs in the 40s. Southwest wind 10 to 15 mph.
Martin luther king jr day: Rain likely. Highs in the 40s. Southeast wind 10 to 15 mph.
Tuesday: Rain...windy. Highs in the mid to upper 40s.
Wednesday through Thursday: Mostly cloudy with a chance of showers. Highs in the 40s. Lows in the 30s to lower 40s.
Friday: Cloudy with a chance of rain. Highs in the mid 40s.
Saturday: Cloudy with a chance of rain. Highs in the 40s.

(sobbing)

I hate my city and want to die

I've lived here almost my whole life and there still comes a time each winter when I go outside in the rain, look at the clouds and start screaming "Stop! What do you want from me? I give up!"

28 days in a row with rain. Hey, is that going to get any better?



I get to wait until Sunday before there's a decent chance it won't rain.

When the free market doesn't provide

I read an argument recently that showers (and other water-consuming devices) shouldn't be flow-constrained through legislation, and that water should just be priced much higher.

Here's the problem with that: water, while a renewable resource, is at any time limited (unless someone invents cost-effective desalinization).

So say there's 350 gallons of water available every morning for... five families, with four people in each.
1 makes $20k
1 makes $30k
1 makes $40k
1 makes $60k
1 makes $100k

That's not far off the actual income distribution in the US, even though I'm fudging a little for the sake of this example.

Each house uses about 65 gallons of water a day if they're using low-flow showerheads, toilets, and everything else. That leaves about 30/gallons a day in this random example, but everyone's needs are met, and while the fixed cost of water hits the poorest home the hardest, it's not as if they can't afford to drink.

So let's say you allow houses to use as much water as they want, and throttle demand based on the market. Set the initial cost at $1/gallon. Out of the gate:

$20k uses 65g, pays $65
$30k uses 65g, pays $65
$40k uses 65g, pays $65
$60k uses 65g, pays $65
$100k uses 65g, pays $65

With 30g left over. The richest house gets super high-flow showerheads and starts taking longer, luxurious showers, because heck, they can afford it, and who doesn't love a good shower?

$100k uses 90g, pays $90

The surplus has already gone entirely. The $60k house then decides they'd love to have equally luxurious showers... except now we're in trouble: we have to hike the prices on water to get another 15g in the system. The 100k house is almost immune to price hikes, of course... and it's the 20k house that gets really beat up when you double the price:

$20k uses 55g, pays $130
$30k uses 60g, pays $130
$40k uses 65g, pays $130
$60k uses 90g, pays $180
$100k uses 90g, pays $180

And so on. The increase in water price hurts the poorest household 5x as much as it does the rich one. They're jumping in and out of the shower, skipping days, and generally being smelly and miserable... because at the high end, the resource they need is being used for luxury items.

I know at some level that this is the way of the world. But it seems clear that when dealing with a limited resource that everyone needs to live, universal consumption restrictions are just and beneficial to the whole.

I know it's marketing, but...

XM on the debut of Howard Stern on Sirius:

"Our content has not changed," said Eric Logan, XM's executive vice president of programming. "We have a platform targeted at mainstream America. There are more and more people who find Howard Stern repulsive and offensive and will go away from anywhere he is."

XM offered Sterm a $30m/year contract, which he turned down for Sirius. It's not as if XM wanted him to host a series of children's programs or something.

Southwest v Alaska, pt 2

Round-trip to San Jose this weekend:
Lowest fare: $290 SW, $312 AS
Fully refundable: $300 SW, $372 AS

I can see where you'd pick Alaska if you were hung up on frequent-flier miles and advance seat assignment (and unaware of what's going on with them flying out of Seatac).

21st-22nd
Lowest fare: $238 SW, $258 AS
Fully refundable: $300 SW, $372 AS

...

Feb 11-12
Lowest fare: $158 SW, $183 AS
Fully refundable: $300 SW, $317 AS

Two reactions:
I'm surprised that SW is actually less competitive as date-of-travel approaches. I'd have thought Alaska would really squeeze those travelers and SW would have a huge cost advantage, but it's not showing up. But it actually looks like you have to get further out, where Southwest's crazy internet-only specials are available, before they start to beat Alaska on price.

Alaska's cost to operate a flight is so much higher than Southwest's I don't understand how this is possible. I wonder how the two evolved in pricing to compete on this route, and why each is where they are. Also, I wish I could look up what their loads are... baffling.

Southwest vs Alaska on Seattle to San Jose

I've flown Alaska a lot on Seattle to the Bay over the last couple years, and in particular the Seattle-San Jose route (for business, sometimes one-day but frequently multi-day roundtrips). I don't think I ever got out of San Jose on time, and I had some bad experiences trying to get out of Seattle too.

I flew Southwest to San Jose to see my brother, and here's what happened:
- ticket was half as expensive
- Southwest people were as cool or cooler than Alaska people (and I've really liked some of my Alaska crews)
- Seating was easy, even on a fairly full flight, and the seat seemed a little more comfortable than I remembered Alaska's being
- departed on time for both flights
- arrived early for both flights
- Southwest has nice gates in San Jose, with available seating and normal airport amenities, while Alaska's gates are pretty wretched (especially when overflowing with passengers from late and cancelled flights).

Southwest was like a machine, everything smooth and pleasant. I've had one Alaska round-trip that didn't involve a cancelled flight, significant delays, or some other problem in the last eighteen months, when I started flying down regularly (though, in fairness, I may well have forgotten some).

Right now, if Alaska solved all their problems: they started to run on-time, they stopped having planes rip open mid-flight, all the rest of it, I'd still book Southwest on that route.

And I have to wonder, then -- if someone like me, who's been flying Alaska for as long as I can remember, and has always tended to chose them over similarly-priced competition (and paid a premium to book instead of United in some cases), has decided to give up on Alaska, how are they going to compete for passengers?

Fares? They can't beat Southwest.
Service? Nothing differentiates them from United or anyone else flying around here, and Southwest's pretty much just as good.
Routes? To Alaskan destinations, sure, but otherwise it's not as if they have anything special compared to their peers.

The only reason I can think of is that Alaska's fleet, since they have to fly out of Juneau, Anchorage, Fairbanks, and Ketchican, are all well-equipped for really foul weather flying and their pilots, you'd expect, get more experience in those kind of conditions. But if that peace-of-mind is negated by the safety issues they're having flying out of Sea-Tac, what's left?

Criminals run wild

If I announced, every day, that I was going to go steal a car off of a dealer's lot, and then I did it, and left a business card with my fingerprints on it and a picture of me stealing the car, how long would it be before I was thrown in jail? A day? Two days?

But if you're a spammer, or a fax spammer for that matter, you can get away with this. I'm baffled as to why this is the case.

USSM got beaten up recently when a spammer (or group of them) used an exploit in our site's software (Wordpress) to send out all kinds of horrible advertisements. This required our hosting company to shut us down, patch the server, after which I had to put down the beer bottle and book I was reading and go upgrade the whole site to a new version.

In a sense, it's like having someone break into your house -- you've got to go fix the window, go through the inventory... except that the cops don't care.

This amazes me. I know they don't really do a whole lot to catch a car thief, but it's as if they steal your car and use it to drive around holding up convenience stores, and the cops are okay with both the theft and the hold-ups.