Harrison Barnes » computer programmers

You Need to Stand for Something

Harrison Barnes — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 05:01:42 +0000

Today, I read a story in the Washington Post about a girl who recently resigned from West Point and is going to Yale. She resigned from West Point because she is gay and the school will kick her out if it learns that she is gay. Tired of compromising between what she believed was right and wrong, she resigned to protest the policy and be consistent with her own internal compass. When I started reading the story, I immediately thought—she’s probably transferring to Harvard or Yale. Sure enough, I was not surprised when I learned later in the article that that was where she was going. Why wasn’t I surprised? Because a school like Yale probably receives a couple of hundred transfer applications for every spot it has open (very few people drop out of Yale). In order to get one of those spots you need to stand for something. How memorable is it to have a good grade point average? Lots of people have good grades. Very few people stand for something. The people who stand for something are the ones who are remembered, and most often, the ones who get hired for the most competitive positions, get into the best schools and consistently have the most opportunities presented to them. I read stories all the time about people taking a stand for something and then changing directions in their careers and lives. Usually they end up doing exceptionally well. People who stand for something always do better than those who have not. Companies who stand for something always do better than companies who do not. In fact, the most important thing a company can generally do is to stand for something.

Coca-Cola makes coke. It does not make automobiles or computers.
Intel makes microchips. It does not make computers or refrigerators.
McDonald’s makes hamburgers and fast food. It does not make airplanes.

The most successful companies stand for something. They not only stand for something, but they are completely consistent with their core principles. I am willing to believe that companies like Coca-Cola and McDonald’s are presented with opportunities to do different things all the time. Instead of doing something different, they remain consistent with what they do. They stand for something. This is what keeps them going and this is what makes them successful. One of the most interesting things about reviewing resumes is that very few of them ever stick out. Instead of trying to distinguish themselves, most people put together resumes that are bland and similar to other resumes out there. This sort of homogenization of resumes has gotten out of control.

Most resumes contain tons of bullet points about this or that.
The resumes contain ”canned” sorts of descriptions about a person’s skills and so forth.

The people try and look like everyone else so they can ”fit the mold” of being a certain type of person. The problem is that looking like everyone else is not going to help them be remembered, or get a job. A couple of years ago, I was looking for a computer firm to help our company do some work. I will never forget the day I spoke with the owner of the company in Louisiana. Despite having an impressive computer science background from Berkeley, the guy was chewing tobacco and spitting while I was talking to him. ”Are you chewing tobacco?” I asked him. I was interviewing him to do some very important work for our company. ”Yes Sir, I am,” he responded without an ounce of hesitation. Then as I was speaking, I started to hear a bunch of motor cross motorcycles in the background. These motorcycles were loud and they were whining up a storm. The man started screaming into the phone: ”I am sorry!! I am at a motor cross race right now. Let me go into the trailer where I keep my motorcycles. It is quieter.” I realize that this may not seem like the best way to behave in an interview, but immediately I was able to connect with him and know exactly what sort of guy he was. I used to chew tobacco in my younger years and grew up with guys like him who did motor cross. Prior to speaking with him, he was just an average ”nerd,” good at computer science, and so forth. After speaking with him, he was the sort of person I was excited to go into a professional relationship with. Why? Because I knew the sort of person he was likely to be.

I knew that if he was bullshitting me, I would be able to pick up on it.
I knew that he was not overly concerned with how he looked to me if he was chewing tobacco and racing motorcycles during the day.
I knew that the guy with a Ph.D. in computer science from Berkeley, was brilliant as all hell, and if he was also interested in motor cross and chewing tobacco too, he probably was an incredibly interesting person.
I knew that if he raced motor cross, he was probably out of a blue collar background and thought that office politics and so forth were bullshit.
I knew that if he was towing a trailer full of motorcycles around, then he probably lived in a rural area where he could also keep his trailer (it is pretty rare to keep motor cross trailers in big cities and nice suburbs.
I knew that If he lived in a rural area, he probably had certain values as well (I have a lot of family friends who live on farms and small towns).
I knew that if he chewed tobacco, he probably was not too concerned with what others thought of him and tended to associate with a certain sort of person.

You can tell a lot about a person based on them standing for something. When someone does not stand for anything you cannot tell a lot about them. After talking with the motor cross computer programmer, I hired him. He has done a great job and made a good deal of money working for us. You can tell a lot about the girl who resigned from West Point because she was gay as well. I can almost 100% guarantee you that any discussion about her by Yale admissions officers did not revolve around her grades or extracurricular activities: It revolved around what she stood for. I am in Washington, DC, interviewing people for a position this week. I have reviewed a ton of resumes for this position. While some of these resumes stick out, for the most part I cannot remember most of them. One of the biggest problems that I am having is that everyone looks pretty much the same. Most people have similar experience and fairly similar backgrounds. No one I am interviewing seems to stand for anything. They may have had good jobs in the past, or good experience — but they do not really stand for anything in particular. If you do not stand for something, you typically do not get remembered. I have decided in light of the resumes I have reviewed that one of the most important things on a resume is to stand for something. It does not matter in particular what you stand for (unless it is incredibly offensive). Just standing for something

Makes you more interesting.
Makes you stand out.
Makes people interested in hearing about your interest(s).

This morning I interviewed someone I found quite interesting (although he was not a good fit for our company). This man had a commitment to something called ”diversity recruiting,” which is filling positions in law firms that lack diversity. I found this quite interesting and had never seen a resume like this. He wanted to do nothing but diversity recruiting. The gist of our conversation was that he would be interested in speaking with me further, provided I had a job for him doing diversity recruiting for our company; however, if I did not have a diversity recruiting job, he would look elsewhere for a job. There are, of course, not a lot of positions out there I can imagine for someone to do nothing but diversity recruiting, compared to recruiting in general. By limiting his search to just ”diversity recruiting” it seemed to me that he was limiting himself; but in reality, I believe he was actually opening up a lot of doors. If someone needs a diversity recruiter, he will almost certainly get interviewed and called. He will stand out among other recruiters not committed to diversity. He will probably do very well. One of the biggest problems that people have is that they try and fit in and try to be all things to all people. To some extent, this is how we are programmed:

Schools reward people who are good at math, science, languages, social sciences, and more. The ability to be good in all disciplines is rewarded.
If someone is a good student in all disciplines and a good athlete, or good at an instrument, or theater as well—all the better. The more things people are good at the better!

Historically, the most positive feedback goes to people who are good at all things. However, in reality the best thing you can do is to be good at one thing and stand for one thing. One of the largest problems that people have in their career is when they diverge from what they are good at. Everyone is good at something, and diverging from your true strengths (and what you stand for) is something that almost always backfires. When you do not stand for something, you divert from your true strength and will not do well, not get as much recognition, and will not rise as fast as you are capable of. Everything begins to crumble and slowly fall apart when you are not doing something that you are really good at and do not stand for. The biggest success comes when you stand for something and are good at it.

Increasing Efficiency is Your Best Route to Employment Security

Harrison Barnes — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 05:37:20 +0000

The cheapening of any article in common use almost immediately results in a largely increased demand for that article. Take the case of shoes, for instance. The introduction of machinery for doing every element of the work which was formerly done by hand has resulted in making shoes at a fraction of their former labor cost. Now almost every man, woman, and child in the working classes buys one or two pairs of shoes per year, and they wear shoes all the time. Formerly, each workman bought perhaps one pair of shoes every five years, and went barefoot most of the time, wearing shoes only as a luxury or as a matter of the sternest necessity. In spite of the enormously increased output of shoes per workman, which has come with shoe machinery, the demand for shoes has so increased that there are relatively more men working in the shoe industry now than ever before. The workmen in almost every trade have before them an object lesson of this kind, and yet, because they are ignorant of the history of their own trade, they still firmly believe, as their fathers did before them, that it is against their best interests for each man to turn out each day as much work as possible. Under this fallacious idea, a large proportion of workmen deliberately work slowly so as to curtail their output. Almost every labor union has made, or is contemplating making, rules which have for their object curtailing the output of their members. Those men who have the greatest influence with the working people, the labor leaders, as well as many people with philanthropic feelings who are helping them, are daily spreading this fallacy and at the same time telling them that they are overworked. -Frederick Winslow Taylor, The Principles of Scientific Management (1911) From the time I was 18 until I was about 27, I spent most of my summers working as an asphalt sealant and maintenance contractor around Detroit, Michigan. One of the main jobs I did involved putting an asphalt sealant on parking lots and driveways. At the beginning of my first summer doing this work, I used to purchase the sealant in five-gallon pails. Then I starting purchasing the sealant in 55-gallon drums and installing a pipe on the drums to drain the sealant out. After a few years, I did so much asphalt sealing work I had a trailer custom made to hold 550 gallons of the sealant. From the beginning of my second summer through my third, I had two people working for me whose job was to assist me in putting down the sealant. Their names were Larry and Jake. Larry was Jake’s father. Jake was mentally disabled but not overly so. He understood what was going on and followed instructions. He never really said much, however. Neither Larry nor Jake cared much for the work they were doing. While they had decent work ethics and put up with me literally walking into their homes and getting them up for work each day, they were not extremely concerned with the quality of the work they were doing. They frequently cut corners and I needed to watch them pretty carefully. Larry was a guy I remember and respect a great deal because I think deep down he was a really good person. On Sundays, I used to have to wait in front of his house until he got back from church with his wife and children. Larry was a smart man who had made some mistakes throughout his life but worked when he could. He was hungover every day, and I bought him Gatorade after Gatorade at convenience shops to keep him going. We would fill up five-gallon pails from the barrels and then walk the sealant over to an area of the asphalt we wanted to seal. Then, we would spread it around on the asphalt with either squeegees or a large brush. Without going into a lot of detail, this was excruciatingly difficult work because the sealant gets on your skin and burns. You are also outside, and the sun burns you because you are on black asphalt all day, and the sealant is a very heavy tar liquid that you need to pull off your skin at the end of each day. It often takes layers of your skin off when you remove it and needs to be removed with gasoline and a steel wool-like material. As this business grew, I started getting better and better equipment for it. I will never forget the moment I purchased and installed a pumping system and sprayer on the tank. With this new pumping system I was able to pull up to any parking lot or house and, after blowing all the debris off the driveway or parking lot, turn on this spray machine and complete sealing the asphalt without hardly getting dirty at all. Best of all, I did not need to fill up the five-gallon buckets. I simply needed to turn on my sprayer and walk up and down the driveway. One day I pulled up to a driveway that Jake and Larry were working on around 5:30 in the afternoon and turned on the sprayer. They were in the middle of working on the driveway and, by the looks of it, would be working for at least another 35 to 40 minutes. I told them to stop. Then, wearing khaki pants and a fresh shirt from the dry cleaner, I completed the entire job in less than five minutes. I could see they both looked somewhat astonished. They also looked frightened because I think they believed this new sprayer was going to put them out of a job. “This thing does not give as good of a coat as doing it by hand,” Jake said. This was the first time I had ever heard Jake say anything about the quality of the work we were doing. “Yeah, it does not look as good,” said Larry. The strangest thing happened over the next few weeks. Weird things started going wrong with the pump and we never made it through a full day. Belts would suddenly fail. Start switches would break off and disappear. I began to suspect after a week or so of this Larry and Jake were sabotaging the pump because they knew it could put them out of a job. After a few weeks of this I insisted I be the only one allowed to operate the machine, and I made sure I was. While I still have no proof of it to this day, I think Larry and Jake were sabotaging the machine. Change is something that creeps into every single business, and the objective of every business is to lower costs because lower costs mean more profits. This means they are always looking for ways to eliminate your job. That’s right. Your very job is a threat to your company and its profits. When I started in the Internet business in the year 1999, the world was a far different place. One of the most interesting things I witnessed involved computer programmers. In the late 1990s through 2001, computer programmers were like gods to companies in the United States. They could demand six-figure salaries and jumped around between companies at an alarming rate. Everyone wanted to hire them because there were so many Internet companies and businesses believed the Internet was the next great frontier. At our small company we practically needed to beg programmers to work for us. We would offer them pizza and other incentives when they were not on other projects. In some cases, we would pay them as much as $100 an hour to do the work, and then they would stop working after four or five hours because they thought the work was “boring.” Some of the programmers I interviewed even requested stock options just to show up for work. I was baffled by the programmers I worked with and my inability to get the programmers to do any work really held me back. Due to the difficulty surrounding this issue, we started building an office in India. We had no problem getting people to do the work there. In fact, people were enthusiastic about getting the work and wanted more of it. While there were lower costs associated with the work, the real reason for getting the work done abroad was that people were enthusiastic about doing the work. All we wanted was to get the work done. After the dot com crash and the events of September 11, 2001, all of a sudden those American programmers were out of work. Tens of thousands of American programmers were let go in a very short time, and Internet companies dropped like flies. I remember putting an ad out in late 2001 for an in-house programmer and getting overwhelmed with applications. I received so many applications, literally, one every few seconds, that I had to make changes to the settings in my Microsoft Outlook. I ended up hiring one person to work in our Los Angeles office who had just received a PhD from Caltech. I practically could have hired anyone I wanted in the world. There was simply no work for programmers. It had all dried up. The economy did eventually recover. However, I still did not grow our base of programmers in the United States. I had such a bad experience the first time and, in the interim, had built a large group of programmers in our company in India. This was all I needed. I cannot imagine how many jobs went to India due to this. Our company is not alone. Many companies do all their programming in other countries now. It simply makes more sense for them from a financial standpoint. They are not interested in doing work in the United States anymore due to the cost, hassles, and the fact the people are not as enthusiastic about doing the work. There are tons of jobs in the United States and around the world right now that are under fire and are likely to disappear in the near future. There are many reasons jobs disappear, but the main one is because they can be done cheaper elsewhere. Every company and organization is constantly striving for greater efficiency. If your employers can do your job cheaply elsewhere, then they will. There is no reason for them not to. The more cheaply they can produce a product or service, the more they can potentially sell of that product or service. The more of the product or service that’s sold, the more the company will grow and expand. What does this mean for you and your job? It means the best use of your time and skill is finding jobs and employers where your role is one of increasing the efficiency of the company’s work. You always need to embrace efficiency and increase the output of the company at the lowest cost possible. If you fight efficiency, you will be seen as an enemy of the company and its growth. If this happens, you will most likely be looking for a new job shortly. In the past there have been a number of phenomena I’ve watched with great interest: -The emergence of China as a major economic power -The massive decline of the American automobile industry -The rise and massive success of various American companies like Intel, eBay, and Oracle -The huge rise of jobs in places like India China emerged as a force to be reckoned with because they can produce goods more cheaply. People will work for less money in China, and this makes it cheaper to produce products there. Incredibly, it is still cheaper to produce products in China even after accounting for shipping the products on boats all the way to the United States. All over the United States, hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs have disappeared due to the emergence of China as an economic power. If you are someone working in a factory in the present economy, you need to realize your job could be replaced very, very easily. The American automobile industry has experienced a long and steady decline. Cars can be produced more cheaply elsewhere. American unions have set wages and benefits higher for American workers than for competitors. This has given competitors a huge advantage and also given American automobile companies less money to invest in improving their products. The products have continually gotten worse and worse. The companies able to produce the product at the lowest cost are winning. The companies that have done the best in the United States over the past several decades are the companies that are increasing efficiency. While I could go into considerable detail about this, companies like Oracle, for example, creates database software which allows companies to save money by operating more efficiently. The efficient operation of these companies creates huge value. A company like eBay creates efficiencies by allowing people to trade goods without having to travel or do extensive research. This, too, creates efficiency. Companies like Intel make microchips that have not only aided the rapid spread of personal computers, but have also enabled companies to use computers which allow them to operate more efficiently. India has been absorbing many American jobs for decades. They have call centers, programmers, and even legal work is being done there. The country has a lot more people than the United States and a corresponding level of talent. There is another advantage: people are willing to work more cheaply there for most jobs. It only makes sense for American companies to hire people there. These are all examples of efficiency in action. You need to understand the world and your job are constantly being pushed to be more efficient. When you take a job at any company, you are entering an environment where you are at war. You are at war with the fact your employers are doing everything within their power to make their businesses more efficient. That means they want to save money on you and your work to the maximum extent they can. The smartest thing you can do in your career is find companies that are increasing efficiency in the market and go to work for them, or find a company where you can increase the efficiency of what is being done. You need to embrace efficiency. If you fight efficiency, you will ultimately lose your job. We are not secure in our jobs and cannot be secure if we don’t embrace efficiency. The war for and against efficiency is something that is going on in every company and every organization. The employees and people who win this war are the ones who fight to make things more efficient. THE LESSON Companies are constantly striving for greater efficiency, and jobs tend to disappear because they can be done cheaper elsewhere. Consequently, you must constantly seek to improve your own efficiency in order to retain your value to your employer. Work to always increase the company’s output at the lowest possible cost. You will succeed if you find a position where your role is tied to increasing the efficiency of the company’s work.

Never Fib or Stretch the Truth on Your Résumé or in Interviews

Harrison Barnes — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 05:20:30 +0000

No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar. -Abraham Lincoln

Don’t exaggerate your qualifications on your résumé or in your interviews. The fact of the matter is there is no good reason to do this. I have a secret to tell you, and it is something far too many people fail to understand when they are conducting a job search. It is something that can change how you approach your job search forever. Before I share this with you, however, I want to tell you a quick story. It is a story that has stuck in my mind for a long time, and it relates to why you never need to exaggerate in interviews or on your résumé. Several years ago, I was once interviewing with a New York law firm for a position. I went out to lunch with a group of associates and they told me that the attorney I would be speaking with after lunch “did not like anyone.” They also made some statements about how strange the guy was. When I went into the attorney’s office (he was a tax attorney), I immediately noticed that the chair he asked me to sit in was turned at an odd angle to where he was sitting at his desk. Essentially, this meant that I had to turn my head very awkwardly to the side in order to speak with him. The sight of me sitting in such an awkward position probably would have appeared freakish to any onlooker. Given the extreme order of his office, I realized before I even sat down that I should not move the chair. I understood that this attorney had a sense of order that could be considered obsessive, and that I should not disturb that sense of order. Around this same time I had read a book about neurolinguistic programming (NLP), which discussed how we tend to like people who are like us. The meaning of NLP is much more complicated than this; however, it essentially states that we can better relate to people by “modeling them” in terms of their posture, body movements, breathing, language, and so forth. I liked what I read about NLP and believe that, in some respects it did work in terms of helping me gain trust and get into the minds of other people. Sitting there in that chair, I tried to imagine why this guy would want me seated in such a strange posture. I looked at his desk and noticed that everything was very well centered. The books were in excellent order. I realized after a short time that he probably liked me sitting the way I was because of the fact that it made him feel like he was in control, and that I could not make any sudden movements towards him. It made him feel like he was guarded and protected. In my interview I spoke about the importance of order, the importance of protecting oneself (in general terms) by doing good work, and other topics I thought he would appreciate, in response to his questions. I could tell this made him very comfortable, and it seemed to make him like me a great deal. What I realized right then and there was that it did not really matter how good my qualifications were or how good my résumé was. What mattered most was that I was likable to this interviewer. Over the years, having worked with thousands of people as a recruiter and having spoken with thousands of individual employers about their interview experiences, I do not think I have heard more than a few times of an interviewer complaining about someone’s qualifications. What I have heard employers complain about, however, is that an interviewee was awkward, rude, or bragged too much. This response, which I have heard from numerous employers, has shown me how important a candidate’s likability in the interview is–over his or her résumé. A few years ago I was interviewing a potential manager for our company. Everyone around this manager thought that he was exceptional in all respects. His mind picked things up very well and he was always able to rapidly recite various statistics about his department. All of his statistics were accurate and he had, by all accounts, a lot of potential. When he interviewed, I had left the decision of whether or not to hire him to other managers at our company. The other managers made the job offer to him, and then came back to me stating that the individual (who was already very highly compensated) would not accept a new job unless he was paid an additional $200 a month. His justification for this demand was that he was changing jobs to make more money than he was currently making with another employer. I told the managers right then and there that I did not approve of this hire. I told them the manager would probably leave for a higher-paying job the second it came along. The man also told me he was leaving his current job because he needed to gain more experience. All of these reasons signaled to me that the guy would probably be doing the same if he worked for our company, regardless of how the job went. Despite my protests, the manager was hired. The manager started and, after a year, he was doing very well. I was spending a lot of time with him discussing various projects. One day I asked him how he liked his job. “I am getting very good experience here,” he told me. “Which is good for my résumé.” When I heard this I knew the manager would not be around for much longer. I was reminded of the events that had happened when he was hired. I realized that this was a person who would simply move on, in order to gain more experience or better pay. Every few months, I get calls from former employees asking for references. I want nothing more than success for my former employees because their success is a reflection on me. In these telephone calls, the former employees often ask me to lie about their experience and responsibilities at the company. I have had people who work in my call center ask me to say that they were computer programmers for our company. I have had people who were recruiters ask me to say they had previously worked for us, managing a team of twenty people. Of course, this was not true either. What is so sad about these telephone calls is, deep down, I know that the employee must feel a profound sense of inadequacy. I have always cautioned employees and job seekers to be truthful. People are typically hired because they find common ground with an employer and they are likable, not because of some isolated accomplishment from their past. Achievements are important. What you have done is important. The most important thing, however, is how likable you are. This is generally why people are hired. Your achievements can be shaded any way the interviewer wants to shade them. The thing that upsets me most about people who lie on their résumés or exaggerate their achievements is that they are missing the boat. All of us are human, and no one is perfect. You don’t need to exaggerate. Potential employers will either sense in an interview or find out shortly after you are hired that you do not have the skills or experience you boasted about. My career advice is that it is more important to be yourself and to present yourself as a likable individual and a team player. The most important thing you can do when going into interviews and writing your résumé is come across as someone who is interested in trying hard and making an effort. Someone who learns from mistakes. Someone who is going to help the company and be very loyal. Someone who is going to be a stable addition to the company. Your résumé is what it is. There is no need to embellish it. There is no need to try to make yourself out to be more than you are in an interview. You want people to like you. You do not want to be seen as insecure or pushy. You want the company to like you. Being caught up in a lie or exaggeration is not in your best interest and it weakens your case dramatically in the eyes of an employer.