Refactoring writing

Being so steeped in software development, I tend to see a lot of things in terms of software processes. Sometimes the tools help, and often, they don't.

When I got through with a version two of a chapter for the book, my editor returned it with the most brutal comments to date. The thing had notes all over it, and she gave me longer, more general notes on the backs of the sheets. She wanted a return to something similar to what the first chapter's structure was like, and from there, many comments on the different sub-sections, and then almost infinite bugs on the smaller parts.

I've tried two ways to go through this so far. The first is the "build it from scratch" approach, where you tear up the old one and re-write. This is tough, if only because it requires you to do a lot of research again where you can't re-build off your citation index or whatever. It's time-intensive and wearying.

The next is the bug-fixing. Each comment's a defect in the original, and for each comment, you make a single correction. Typo, possible new wording, suggestion that two paragraphs should be moved up ahead of something else? Do them all, one at a time, and then put a check mark by the comment. This works fine when you're close to the finish, the structure, tone, and other high-level issues are resolved, and the adjustments are all minor, even if they're numerous.

On a chapter like this, that'd be equally disastrous. Moving everything around without fixing the larger structural issues doesn't help.

I've been on products like this. It sucks.

What I've ended up doing on chapters at this stage is refactor in place. I read all the comments and identify that the biggest points are. Structure was the big one. The revised structure for v2 had led to repetition of information, poor connections between subjects, and was responsible for many of the smaller issues as well.

So I fixed that: I built out a skeleton and then took all of the discrete pieces and slowly, in order, worked them in, writing new sections, deleting duplicate chunks as I found them, and as I built the structure and fleshed it out, flow came more easily, and I was able to adapt the things I'd already written to fit. At any point, though, my editor could have called and told me she needed a draft right away, and I'd have been able to turn over a chapter that was x% new, well-flowing writing and the remainder the old version 2, with no duplication between the two. It worked great.

When I was done, I had a dramatically improved chapter, but had only directly addressed the top-level complaint. So I went through and read the second-tier: move this paragraph here, this other paragraph here, and found that they'd all been resolved by the structure work. Then the sentence structure/corrections too -- the rewrite had fixed easily two thirds of those. The only remaining work was the request for new stuff (new features!) like a better description of a particular incident, and so on.

Those I still have to do. But ten years ago, I couldn't have managed it. Given a large number of comments on a short story (say, from a workshop), I would look through for some suggestions I thought would make it a little better and take those. If there were structural problems, or issues with characters, I'd either ignore them or if I agreed, use them as justification to tear the whole thing down and restart.

I used to beat myself up sometimes for not continuing to work as little as possible while continually honing my writing, but it's been interesting to see that the different things I have done, from baseball writing to screenwriting to the being steeped in methodologies of quality software development, have each given me tools to easily solve problems that once blocked me entirely.

It makes me want to go write that novel again.

eBay ignores preferences to spam me

I received an email from ebay today encouraging me to sell something I'd bought earlier. The email's got information about a prucahse I made, which meant it was unlikely to be a spam, and the headers etc check out as far as I can tell (included below). This kind of thing annoys me, and ebay's known for changing their privacy terms in order to better send you email (opt out? we've changed the categories and opted you into them all). I hunted through the email...

eBay sent this e-mail to you because your Notification Preferences indicate that you want to receive information about Special Events and Promotions. eBay will not request personal data (password, credit card/bank numbers) in an e-mail. You are subscribed as derekecom@speakeasy.net, registered on eBay.

If you do not wish to receive further communications, sign into "My eBay" by clicking on the "My eBay" link found at the top of the eBay home page and change your Notification Preferences. Please note that it may take up to 10 days to process your request.

Craaaaaaaaap, so that's it. I head off to ebay...



Nope. Moreover, I haven't done anything to my user preferences in ages, and certainly haven't done unsubscribed from email promotions in the last ten days.

eBay's not just opting me into emails and forcing choice on me: they're now actively ignoring my preferences so they can send me mail. Is this a violation of CAN-SPAM, in that eBay's not providing a working unsubscribe mechanism? Or does their business relationship with me get them out of that? If nothing else, it's a real annoyance.

I haven't heard from customer support yet. I'll be shocked if I do. For one, there's was no suitable category to submit this under, and the chances of getting a reasonable response are pretty slim even if there was.

Headers:
From - Sat May 27 12:17:00 2006
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From: "eBay"
Reply-to: eBay-US.29843852.63877.0@reply3.ebay.com
To: (me)
Subject: Sell these items you bought on eBay--and get something new!
Date: Sat, 27 May 2006 09:23:57 -0700
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Dread and dessert

I lose my office tomorrow. We're having a knock-down going-away party. I'm baking a nice apple cake. Mmm. And then next week, I'm going to be assigned to work in an open space, which will drive me insane, hopefully to move to cubicles (wait, not cubicles -- the Herman Miller cubicle, the Action Office or the Resolve, maybe) in July.

I gotta say -- and I say this knowing people from work read HLWT -- I don't think I'm going to make it to the part with the fancy cubicles. I can't work in two feet of table space, and I don't understand why someone would make me do so.

My apple cake is really good, though, and it's going to be nice, even if it's the last time, to host an Arpan & Derek Friday Party in the House of Sarcasm 2 and make margaritas for everyone.

Swiftboating climate change and Lincoln-Douglas

(... since I don't want to further flirt with Expedia-related whining)

It's been strange these last few days to see the counter-attack on Al Gore and the "Inconvenient Truth" documentary that's coming out. There are paid press-releases, unintentionally hilarious commercials, and all kinds of good stuff.

I mean, really, what do we know? Global temperatures are up. This goes along with a massive change in how much carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases like methane we're putting into the atmosphere (and there are some other things, like jet contrails and stuff, but ignore that for a second). The overwhelming consensus (right or wrong) is that pollution's changing the earth's climate. The rational opposition argues that we don't really know, and there's no point to doing anything if it's all the sun's increased output or whatever (the increase in diet soda consumption since the invention of Tab, it doesn't matter).

But to me, if you're looking at this like a patient, say, and they're about to experience kidney failure because of many factors, some of which you definately control, you don't walk away from treatment because you don't potentially control them all.

Especially since, and I'm digressing, a great deal of pollution is caused by waste. Like incandescent lightbulbs compared to the new flourescents -- they're huge energy hogs, for no real point. Poor car standards, and so on. If we decided to make a huge push in the US to not pollute, not even for green reasons but because it'd help wean us off Mideast oil, the actual cost per-person wouldn't be that great and we'd reap all kinds of great benefits (cleaner air = better health, even if you don't think it'll help global warming).

Anyway. The point's that what frustrates me about this kind of debate isn't that there are people going after Al Gore using somewhat spurious attacks because they're being paid to, but that I feel like as a country, there are a million really good arguments, from climate change to improving our health to improving our national security, to come up with a better way, and this kind of crap-throwing contest keeps everyone from realizing that probably 75% of us could agree on good things to do and start there.

What's interesting is that while this kind of all-fronts media blitz is a relatively new tactic, the whole thing didn't get invented by Karl Rove a couple years ago. The old days of politics are frequently held up as a shining example of how great things used to be, when politicians would debate each other seriously and whatnot.

That's not what happened, though. If you go back to the Lincoln-Douglas campaigns, even, there are all kinds of spurious charges made against the other person, often based on misrepresentations of what their opponent said, conspiracy claims are thrown about, and they're supported by an active political press on both sides eager to attack the other and support their own guy ("Here's what our guy said.... and what the other guy said isn't important."). Lincoln argued in favor of a middle solution against Douglas, arguing that slavery should be contained, and was charged with being a radical abolitionist. Douglas was charged with participating in a conspiracy to turn the nation all-slave (which, in fairness, he wasn't).

I'm sure that had Al Gore toured the country in 1854 giving speeches at any lyceum that would let him on stage, the political parties of the time would have carefully watched him, poked at him with some questions, and then after much back-room discussion, taken strong positions on him and started slinging attacks of the time.

This is both disheartening, in that we haven't come far, and hopeful, in that despite the horror and chaos of political life, things get done, and progress gets made.

Sprint over, sprint starts

I got the chapters done, they seem really happy with them, which is great. If they'd sent them back for another set of massive revisions I'd have snapped, I think -- I was edgy and stressed all week.

Meanwhile at work, I start working on a scrum team (it's a development methodology, where you try and deliver small chunks in two-week increments) this next week, and at the end of the week I lose my lovely office, which I share with a dude I really like, and go to work in a giant room with tables and no shelves or anything, because... I don't know. I haven't heard a good explanation yet. Essentially, someone made a very early decision that the new project team would have its own space and Expedia's extremely complicated politics related to office space made it unworkable, so they bought space.

At some point, though, as they continue to build out open space, they're making a business decision that

"collaboration" + cost savings > productive employees in private/shared offices

The big issue I have with this (well, besides working in offices with doors that close being a big reason I joined the company) is that it assumes that everyone works the same way: that someone like me, who tends to do really well at things like writing specs quickly, coming up with eight random implementation ideas, research, whatever, all things that require me to sit around and concentrate for a while, is going to be just as well-off as the team leader who loves working in open environments and isn't bothered at all by constant distraction because they're not working on stuff that requires that kind of sustained thinking.

This is all ridiculous to me. The cost of having a tech worker is easily $100,000/year in salary and benefits. Getting more out of your tech worker dramatically improves the return on that investment. Office space is not that much more expensive than raw cube space.

Anyway, this has all been studied and documented and whatever, and companies still do this. I'm not even surprised, though.
"We need to put 80 people in a tiny space."
"Let's make them all stand! Standing takes 20% less space than sitting. We can give each person a 18" wide countertop for their computer and then 18" in depth off the countertop..."
"Perfect!"

Hey, that's great, instead of requiring 8'x 8' for a cube, you're down to 2'x 1.5' !! How outstanding! And I'm sure everyone buys into whatever corporate cultural argument you're making, so morale will go up, too.

Every person who quits over this stuff costs the company a ton of money. Turnover's amazingly expensive. Every person who is 10% less effective costs the company $10k/year at least.

Madness.

Turnarounds

I'm deep into book re-writes now, which so far as I can tell, works like this:

- I get edits back
- I spend a ton of time rewriting the chapter, doing new research to fill in gaps, etc
- I send the chapter back
- I get another full set of edits back in 1-2 days
(repeat)

Right now I'm sprinting to try and get some chapters ready to go out as samples to people, excerpts of what a great book the whole thing's going to be. And hopefully that'll be great.

But this cycle of revision hurts.

25% down

Expedia's stock dropped 25% on some pretty brutal earnings numbers. I was at AT&T Wireless for the IPO and long slide from a high of 32 to sustained $6-8 valuations, and this was worse. Most of us sensed this was coming: our last financials were not good. Morale's been bad in general, and the things that everyone knows are bad aren't getting any better.

But 25% -- that's amazing. That's "Our CEO, who is supposedly only four years older than me, is indicted on charges he doctored financial disclosures" or something.

Following the drop, all of the execs ran around and held emergency meetings with each other, which strikes me as ridiculous, because -
a) they all knew that the results were coming and the market would freak
b) if they didn't know the causes of our ennui, running around talking to each other's not going to help

My company's got problems, but we've also got the best group of people I've ever worked with. We're ridiculously smart. Everyone knows what's wrong, we just don't do anything about it, and why we don't do anything baffles the employees and doesn't inspire confidence in our leadership.

Take an example. Working at Expedia is increasingly political and back-stabby in a way it wasn't at all a couple years ago. Part of it's the direction of the company and the increased pressure to be business-led (instead of tech-driven), but a lot of it is from people who've been brought in over the last few years who enjoy using their knives. Those people need to be fired, or... all put in a room together so they can stab each other to death while everyone else enjoys their jobs again. It doesn't happen.

Take another example. There's an exec at Expedia needs to get fired. I'm not going to name them, but if you took a survey of the top 10 (heck, 5) people Expedians thought deserved to be fired for their work in the last two years, I'd bet they'd get on 90% of the ballots easily. People openly discuss when they'll be the next to leave "to spend time with their family" or whatever. As an executive, they've made massive errors that would get any employee canned.

Worse: now that I've written that, I realize it applies to more than one person.

But they're still there, still running their piece of the company and participating in emergency meetings to discuss what's going on, and what to do about it.

I predict layoffs.

Throw yourself into the deep end

I went on a 70m bike ride today, and a pretty hilly one I had no reason to believe I'd be able to complete. I did, and for the most part, I hung with the five other fastest riders out of the group ride, which was cool.

I'm in a lot of pain now.

One of the things I've done to great success in my Expedia career is to throw myself at the hardest thing I didn't think I could do, and then work my way out of it. I take on projects I don't think I'm quite technical enough for, I sign on for workloads I don't think are rational... and then I have to struggle to complete them, but I'm smarter and better for having done them.

I'm starting to do that with my bike riding now: I'm picking off goals I don't think I'm quite ready for, and if I fail, I've learned a lot. Like the Mercer Loop -- I can get from Expedia World HQ across the water, around the loop, and back in just an hour and change, but I hadn't really challenged myself on the loop itself, so I tried to match a time my friend Joel (who kicks my ass at climbs) and his former boss (a competitive biker) put up when they were trying to grind each other down. I was a minute off (on a 17.4 mile loop). And I think I can get that down even further.

The result of all this is that I looked at riding RAMROD (Ride Around Mount Rainier in One Day, one of the hardest rides in the northwest) with some fear and doubt, and now I think if I get a ticket, I can absolutely do it -- and I'm thinking about running REDSPOKE (Redmond-Spokane) this year. I don't know when I'm going to fail, but it's going to be an interesting riding season.

Pay to Play... Xbox 720

I have, because I went through high school with it, an irrational emotional reaction to Nirvana music. It's too teenager-y to get into, but I would be willing to bet ten, twenty years from now you could play even a less-famous song with one of those amazing hooks ("Scentless Apprentice" for instance) and I'd stop whatever I was doing and look up.

I realized today that it's probably only a matter of time before a Nirvana song is used to sell cars, or something. Courtney Love, when she's not trying to claim credit for Kurt's music (see: the "Old Age" controversy), funds her downward spiral on her share of the Nirvana royalties, and would probably sell "Lithium" to sell Lincoln Navigators tomorrow. The issue's whether Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic can hold out forever.

As far as I know, yes.

But for the rest of their lives, as long as they hold out and go about their lives (their cell phones purring with the calls from Love's lawyers asking about potential deals) there'll be this temptation that follows them, offering millions of dollars if they'll consent to use of "Love Buzz" in an energy drink commercial.

The advertisers will dog them forever, because for people like me, it's a cue to pay attention, already emotionally vested. This is why Led Zepplin was such a perfect way for Cadillac to attack aging Boomers with disposable incomes, why today bands are co-opted almost immediately (M.I.A. with all their radical politics selling Hondas, Postal Service tunes hawking whatever): you form your emotional connections to music, and then they're available for easy switching to a commodity of choice.

Hold out, Krist. Please.

Life of a good idea 5: the wait

I got a bunch of really good feedback on refining it and my one-page pitch is now a strong 1.5 page pitch, and I'm baffled at how I can get it back down to one without chopping some persuasive stuff.

I'm frustrated I can't discuss the idea itself without risk yet, but I'm really hoping in a month or so I'll be able to write at length about how awesome it is and what the larger implications are.

There's an opportunity to get it in front of a much wider audience this week, so I may be forking the attack and going wide as well as trying to get the big wigs a chance.

Man, if this doesn't work it's going to break my heart.

Life of a good idea 5: the long pass

I worked out a refined one-page summary of the idea today in preparation for having it pitched to the big execs. Now it's got a five-second summary, a 30s pitch, and a nice set of high-level "what does this do for us" explanations. I'm happy.

People who've seen it keep mentioning it -- even people I didn't distribute it to directly. This keeps me happy as I pound the idea out. I feel like I'm making a katana the old-fashioned way, banging a piece of metal flat, folding it over, banging the folded sheet flat, folding it, over and over so that when someone gets their 5s or 30s or 10m with the president the idea will be perfectly formed.

I scan the news every day looking for announcements that someone else has done it. If we don't get this out soon I'm going to show up for my next physical with a blood pressure spike that'll scare the nurses.

The embarrassment of concession

There's this guy that I've had a fairly hard time working with, for a whole set of reasons that are unimportant here, and on this one thing (see, this is why writing about work sucks) he took the position that one thing was going to turn out to be important to how user testing went, and I just didn't see it. So we started showing the widget to users today, and he was totally right -- the users would be going along, see real-looking fake data and screech to a halt: I know that hotel's not there... that's not how much that room costs. Totally took them out of using the widget. I'd figured if you're testing a piece of functionality, it wouldn't much matter if it said "fake hotel A" or whatever, as long as they could turn the dial back and forth and talk about using the dial. I wonder, as I type this, if that might not be true -- if you either have to present plausible data if you make it look real or you have to go all the way and make it obvious it's fake so they shouldn't expect anything.

Anyway.

When I had the chance, I conceeded the point. I said "you were absolutely right, when they see this stuff... blah blah blah..." and that was it. I didn't get a reaction at all. I don't know if he didn't know what I was talking about, or thought it was natural that he'd be right, or didn't hear me... Doesn't matter.

So here's what bugs me: now I'm embarrassed. I went out of my way to concede a point, and for what? I feel like instead of making a good-natured overture I now look like I was kissing up or something.

And now I'm mad it even bugged me. Soon I'll be frustrated I spent that much energy on it. And then I'll go biking or something and feel fine about the whole thing.

Bleah.

Life of a good idea 4: infection vectors

Got another director today, and we may have a way to get a chance to pitch right to the top. Other iterations on things we can do with the idea have come up, some of them unexpected.

Getting a chance to pitch the big boss would mean I don't reduce the mini-spec to 1 page but instead, as I heard today, "5 perfect slides". No pressure, though.

It's cool too to toss around potential impacts of the idea, as well -- I think our competitors have to copy it immediately, and it might well spread outside of the industry really fast and make an even larger secondary impact on other industries outside of ours. Everyone who flips over the idea when I pitch it seems to have a follow-up reaction of "and wait, I've been thinking about this, and it's potentially much larger than this--" to which I smile and nod.

Further iterations and refinement, and maybe I'm pitching the folks at the top soon.

Life of a good idea 3: the idea spreads

More people saw it, and more people volunteered. The short spec's been refined with some feedback.

It looks like the next barrier's going to be finding executive sponsorship. Some people have been concerned that the idea's going to be denied because it doesn't fit well enough with the brand concept of the day, or whatever.

The next step's going to be distilling it down into a one-pager that can be presented to exec types and win them over. There's no mechanism at Expedia for small, cool ideas to percolate up (and again, I've fought this for a long time), so I need to find someone in power and say "here's how this idea helps Expedia and you" and hope they bite.

That convincing executives is different than shopping the idea to my peers and having everyone want to volunteer to build it is a understandable but a little depressing.

Life of a good idea 2: first reactions

I began sounding people out today, looking for ears sympathetic to... uh... the general area of concern. It's a biased sample, of course, but everyone so far loves it, which is great. Better still, it seems like it's sticking in their heads, bothering them to come up with ways to help.

At this point, I've got what amounts to a 2-page mini-specification: here's the idea in summary form, here's what we'd have to do (very little) and here's the good stuff that happens if we do it.

What I'll face later this week, after I get some more feedback and refine the mini-spec a little, is a common Program Manager dilemma:
- I can go through the project initiation process
- Network -- build a groundswell of support, hopefully including an executive sponsor and others who can help

The problem with the first is that projects like this (small, awesome, with potentially huge jaw-dropping impacts that haven't come through standard processes and stamps of approval from the people who normally start up projects) is that they're extremely likely to get dumped out of a process at that point, no matter how good they are.

This is stupid, but it's the truth, and it's been the truth anywhere I've ever worked (if you work at Google, and read this, you suck). Now, I'm stubborn and dogged and I can be persuasive if the occasion calls for it, but I think I'm going to have a real hard time getting this through the giant sausage-maker.

The other option appeals to me as a wanna-be revolutionary. It has the added benefit that at some point I may be able to convince an exec that it's their brilliant idea, and then it'll get built. I'll give up credit if it'll get this done, though obviously I'd like the attaboy and pat on the head.

Plus, I feel that if I recruit enough people, it makes it much easier to go into the process and fight it out.

Now with enough people, I could potentially skunkwork the software side, but my idea requires some business process and relationship-building. It's not something I could get built and have show up on Expedia.com tomorrow without there being some big trouble (which I think we could get away with, but... it'd be large enough I think it might be as much trouble for me personally as it good for the company and the world). I'd be willing to make that sacrifice as well, but if I get it out and it gets pulled immediately and I get fired, I haven't won anything.

The downside to continuing to recruit quietly and then build up ground-level support is that you risk being perceived as running a rogue operation -- even if you aren't -- and you have to fight past that when you do go into the process.

And if you're wondering if I'm frustrated that this is the case, and that I can't just throw the idea out to everyone, have people flip out and then get it built in a wave of joyous togetherness -- I am. I've fought for ways Expedia can be more innovative for a long time, and I think I'll leave it at that.

For now, I'm going to keep recruiting, and try and find some more sympathetic ears in the company to talk strategy with. Hopefully I'll track down at least one big fish in the next couple of days. If not, I'll have a larger ground operation working.

Depressing and horrible read

So I've been boderline obsessed with global warming most of my life, which is part of why I have this nuclear anti-social streak. This article was pretty chilling, particularly in illustrating "if we managed to cap emissions at today's levels, or even 1990 levels, that's still not enough".

Anyway, this ties into the Great Idea thread, which I'll update tonight.