Can Algorithms Make Job-Hunting Suck Less?

---

Dave Slater got his tech start-up job the old-fashioned way. Slater was at the Burning Man music festival. As he directed the assembly of an “art car” from cast-off materials, a woman approached him. She’d admired his management of the group effort, she said, and wondered what he did for a living.

Fast-forward a few months and the questioner is now Slater’s boss at Sourcery, a tech start-up she founded.

Out with the old

For generations, the saying “it’s who you know, not what you know,” has applied to job searching. And the adage isn’t wrong: labor economists say that at least one third of all jobs are found through family and friends.

But some Silicon Valley companies claim they can take the subjectivity out of the process, and improve outcomes for both individuals and hiring organizations with new platforms and algorithms.

My 2015 in books : A self-indulgent year in review

I guess I read a lot in 2015, due to some combination of having the time and needing the sanity. This is a list of some books I got a lot out of, ordered approximately by when I read them.

--

Slouching Towards Bethlehem (Joan Didion)

I read this classic collection of essays while visiting California. I ended up moving here, although I wouldn't draw a causal connection. Didion's work conveyed 1960's California to the rest of the country with the clarity of a bizarre dream (or something like that; let Louis Menand tell it). Hers is a California defined by its origin stories -- both real and imagined.

Excerpt that I guess I bookmarked at the time:

Once, in a dry season, I wrote in large letters across two pages of a notebook that innocence ends when one is stripped of the delusion that one likes oneself. Although now, some years later, I marvel that a mind on the outs with itself should have nonetheless made painstaking record of its every tremor, I recall with embarrassing clarity the flavor of those particular ashes. I t was a matter of mis-placed self-respect.

The Elementary Particles (Michel Houellebecq)

I guess one thing I learned this year is that weird, reactionary French intellectuals can be just as fun as weird, progressive French intellectuals. The fun is in the French-ness and the intellectualism. Houellebecq has a particular diagnosis of what's wrong with modern life, one that I think will resonate emotionally with many who live it, even if his implied prescription seems worse than the disease. (In this, his first book, that disease is not Islam. The links between his earlier and later works are explored in the Adam Gopnik piece that introduced me to the book.)

Keepers of the Flame

Note: I wrote and reported this vignette as part of a UC Berkeley Extension Journalism Workshop course. The original date of the content is October 12, 2015.

An ember of Burning Man blazed on in the Dogpatch neighborhood of San Francisco on Sunday.

The daylong event, which was billed as a “Heat the Street FaIRE,” delivered live music, an array of creative costumes, and a sampling of the elaborate art installations for which the free-spirited desert festival is known. According to publicity material, this is the sixteenth year that San Francisco has hosted a “decompression” event following the week-long gathering in the Nevada desert, whose 2015 version culminated on September 6 with the ritual destruction by fire of a 60-foot-tall wooden effigy.

According to event organizer Dave Slater, who also goes by SuperDave, preparations were intense even for the smaller Dogpatch event. It took three months to work out acoustics for the six-block stretch of Indiana Street. Dressed in a purple tee shirt, black kilt, and a leather top hat with aviator goggles, Slater said that the decompression event, like Burning Man itself, was all about fun. “How can we have the most fun?” he posed, “Well, we can build a purple quesadilla-slinging machine.” Which indeed they had.

Jules, a young San Francisco social worker whose “burner name” is Monarch, said in a brief interview that, while she enjoyed the decompression event, some of her friends found it dispiriting for its inability to fully replicate the experience of the bigger festival, which she described as “like an alternate reality.”

Jules had just exited a pink-hued booth labeled “Freak Show,” whose interior was covered in mirrors at all angles and presented a message of self-love. Other set pieces at the street fair promised instant weddings, silent disco, and “forgiveness.”

For Ross and Steba, a forty-ish couple living in Hayes Valley who had never attended the Nevada festival, the event was a welcome piece of local culture.  “This is the closest thing to my Burning Man experience,” said Ross.

Facebook postings by event organizers urged consideration for neighbors and touted an environmentally friendly policy of not selling water in single-use bottles. But not everyone welcomed the Dogpatch event, which was scheduled to run into the night. One neighborhood resident, reached by text message, conveyed her plans to flee the area for the day.

“It happens every year,” she said, linking the Sunday event to broader debates about how tech industry money permeates the San Francisco social scene. “I hate Burning Man in general. It’s just a place for rich white people honestly.”

On the Tech Sector & Vocation

“Detroit hustles harder.” I saw this slogan on a t-shirt in San Francisco recently. This was in Hayes Valley, home of artisanal ice cream stands, a Warby Parker frame shop, and children’s clothing boutiques. The shirt resonated with me. Growing up in a Greater Cleveland that seemed ever lessening in commercial and cultural influence, I absorbed an imperative to do whatever one can to carve out a niche in the face of an uncertain and threatening economic future.

The real question, though, is Who Brands Better?
Image © Aptemal Clothing LLC. I make no claims to ownership.

It wasn’t always true, though, that America's rust belt centers stood for grit and determination. The downfall of the American automotive industry, at least in the cultural imagination, can be traced to workers who had achieved a level of job and economic security that left them unwilling to apply sufficient hustle.

Today’s tech scene seems to celebrate the opposite impulse—concepts like growth hacking or the minimum viable product bring with them instructions to “fake it till you make it,” that is to never stop hustling. And yet the San Francisco Bay Area offers something no longer accessible in the Midwest: secure vocational jobs to those who can train themselves up for them.

It comes as no surprise that I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the concept of “vocation.” For one thing, I was introduced to the work of sociologist Max Weber at the right time to permanently freeze his frameworks into my toolkit for understanding the world (Weber’s works include Politics as a Vocation and Science as a Vocation).

Plus, as a good Millennial, I’ve spent the past ten years hung up on the “what am I going to do with my life” question. And, as with many Millennials, I have parents who achieved success by picking a path early and sticking with it (mine are professors of American history).

So what is a vocation to me? I can think of a few ways to answer that question:

On Search Theory, Career Choice, and the Fear of Chance (A draft meditation)

by Max Kornblith

“If you don’t like what’s being said, then change the conversation” – Don Draper

In this essay:

Aziz Ansari on luck and dating

My “passion dilemma”

The unacknowledged co-conspirator in life

Living with messiness

The formula for love

In the midst of a course on probability, my college statistics professor revealed the “solution” to the problem of dating. He told us that, upon granting a few assumptions*, search theory—the statistical toolset honed for the rapid selection of a proverbial needle from a haystack—suggests an optimal approach to picking a mate. Proceed through one third of the maximum number of partners you expect to have the opportunity to date in life, he instructed, and then, having used this experience to set a baseline, settle down with the next candidate whose overall quality exceeds that of anyone you’ve already dated. This approach balances the risk of settling for what’s too easily available versus that of holding out too long for perfection.

The proposal may be computationally simple, but it raises irksome questions:

And now, for something a little different...

Stay tuned...

The Last Rolls: Photos from Uganda, South Africa, and Mozambique

It is fashionable these days to point out that Africa is not a country. Since I've returned to the US, mentions of living in Ethiopia have earned me questions about Ebola (nope, that's in West Africa these days), that movie about the young doctor and the dictator (that's Uganda under Idi Amin), and--of course--how hot it must have been (also off, 70's year-round fortunately).

Of course, many Americans have less inaccurate conceptions of Ethiopia. These are often centered around the food (they really do eat spongy bread and raw meat) or around interactions with those of Ethiopian heritage in the US.

This thread isn't really meant to go anywhere except to say that, while Africa is not one country, living in Ethiopia did provide an opportunity and jumping-off point to explore other parts of Africa. When my contract expired in May, I took the opportunity to add three countries to the list see a few more places before the long flight home.

Roll 1: Uganda -- Kampala and Gorilla Safari
1) View toward central Kampala from the Gaddafi Mosque.

2) Idi Amin's torture chamber at the palace of the Buganda king (head of one of Uganda's ethnic groups). Amin would stack victims in the rooms to the right as they awaited their fate, then flood the hallway with water charged with electric current to prevent escape...

The Texture of Bureaucracy

This post is a follow-up to my "Expectations, Revisited" post, available here:

The animate machine of the self-sufficient bureaucracy works toward establishing that ‘shell of bondage’ of which Weber spoke

            Jürgen Habermas, A Theory of Communicative Action, Volume 2

I was asked recently if I could provide a window on what it is like to work within the current government of Ethiopia, as this could be of some interest to various parties. Providing a direct account of my experience would violate the terms of my contract (as well as tax both my powers of memory and my ability to make the narrative at all interesting).

I was, however, recently reading one of the few English language books widely available in Addis (this is due to the limited size of the market, and not explicit censorship) and came across a passage that might be of interest.

The book is called Agony in the Grand Palace, and is written by Dr. Aberra Jembere, a mid-to-senior level bureaucrat in the government of Emperor Haile Selassie who was among those detained when the Marxist dictatorship regime of the Derg took power in 1974.

The passage describes Dr. Aberra’s participation in the government’s response to a 1973 famine which ultimately was among the destabilizing events that allowed the Derg to seize power. The description of the gears and workings of the Ethiopian government, and how decisions are made within it, still rings true to my ears today. This might be considered dispiriting, as the form of the later imperial government could perhaps be summarized as semi-constitutional feudalism.

It should be noted that Dr. Aberra, who clearly suffered greatly on behalf of his country under the Derg, presents this as his only comment on the 1973 famine—establishing that he fully carried out his personal bureaucratic duties is his point of focus, not trying to establish what went wrong, how severe the impact was, or how it could have gone better.

Without further delay, here is the somewhat lengthy account (with a few comments of my own at the end): 

Expectations, Revisited

A year ago I put down a set of expectations I held going into my time working in Ethiopia. These were based on the word of preceding international staff within my organization, as well as a two-hour jaunt around Addis on the day of my arrival (which, for an account of pre-formed expectations could also be known as “cheating”). I remember sitting in the deteriorating hotel room and reflecting on what I expected and wanted out of the coming year. A year later, though, what I put in writing at that time is not exactly a rich resource for reflection.

Below are five expectations I laid out:

1. I anticipated an obstructionist bureaucracy – Very much the case. Attempting to push a new idea into and through the Ethiopian civil administration seems to be like wading through a field of something semi-viscous (melted marshmallow, say, or salted caramel). I’ll have a little more on this in a brief encore post.
2. I expected to encounter a lot of social ambiguity, particularly friendly people whose real perspective may not be clear from the surface – This was bourn out as well. A minor example that comes to mind: if I heard my senior local coworker describe someone we’d be dealing with as a “good friend,” it meant they had repeatedly encountered each other before in a professional context, but they might not know the first thing about each other personally, and it was still possible they couldn’t stand each other.
3. I anticipated more cold and rain than most images of “Africa” would allow for – Right for the first three months. But after I got rainy season out of the way, I am not sure I have every lived anywhere with more comfortable and temperate year-round weather than Addis.
4. I envisioned a lack of certain goods and comforts whose absence might be the first time they seem so integral (my list included diet soda and fitted sheets) – True as well. Seafood turned out to be very high among what I spent time missing, a few trips to countries blessed with ocean access notwithstanding. Though, the marshmallow and caramel mentioned above would also be on this list.
5. I anticipated not seeing large parts of Addis due to its density – This was right as well. Although I under-estimated the concentration of places of “interest” (by which I mean mainly the upscale places to eat and shop, as well as traditional tourist sites) and my own lack of adventurousness as factors that would lead to the same outcome.

So I guess I got everything right. There was no need to even live through the year. Could’ve just asked a few people about it and gone home, huh?

Well, here’s a few things I didn’t anticipate:

1. What I perceive, but still don’t have full confidence to diagnose, as a general suspicion toward foreigners – I have heard some tie this deeply into the Ethiopian historical psyche, as leftover pride from having never been colonized. On a day-to-day basis, not only can you never escape the cries of “ferengi, ferengi,” but I perceived random acts of hospitality to be less likely than other places I’ve traveled. In addition to which, Ethiopians like their food, their music, their language, and even the youth seem as if they aren’t in a rush to adopt American culture.
2. The degree of antipathy toward democracy of the current Ethiopian government – see here, or here, or here, or here. It could be said on this count that maybe I didn’t do my research in advance, although the participation of so many seemingly reliable arbiters, from the Gates Foundation (backing my organization) or the World Bank to my own friends and peers at ATA, minimized any impulse to doubt. (It has been noted to me that by joining I of course contribute to this legitimization. And this is not to say that in the absence of the current Ethiopian government that I think the likely replacement would be better on this score, a question on which I really have no basis to judge).
3. Correlated to the above, the paucity of available news analysis, and the lingering sense that over the long-run things may not be as stable as they feel – two things you will never read about in the paper in Ethiopia are ethnic factionalism and the military, and yet if the political situation ever really gets, uh, interesting, there’s almost no doubt that it will be driven be on by one if not both of those forces.
4. The interpersonal dynamics of being an expat generally and in my work setting in particular – This includes the understandable but sometimes counter-intuitive thirst for comfort and luxury among those who choose to forgo the comforts of home, including myself (e.g., if what you really wanted was fine wine and nice chocolate, why are you in Ethiopia?), as well as the impact on the mindset of spending so much time with former management consultants.
5. As is obligatory to mention, the growing Chinese presence in Africa – They’re there, constructing buildings, roads, rail. Even non-Asian foreigners can regularly expect to have “China China” yelled their way on occasion (supposedly it is now seen as the generally word for foreigner in some more isolated spots). 

This superficial post, of course, will in no ways do justice to everything I may have learned and experienced in my time in Addis. I expect it would take years to be able to really say what the biggest impact (on me) of my experience was.

However, stay tuned for one more “serious” post, which I expect to be a reflection on my first fulfilled expectation—the shape and texture of Ethiopian bureaucracy (update: see here). This might also provide insight into why I am reflecting mainly on how the experience I had in Ethiopia changed me and not how it (even incrementally or imperfectly) changed anything in Ethiopia.

I also expect to be back with more pictures, to include gorilla tracking and Idi Amin’s torture chamber in Uganda, the Cape of Good hope and Nelson Mandela’s cell in Cape Town, and a week enjoying delicious seafood while relaxing on the beach in Mozambique.

Photo dump, part 6: Tigray and the Danakil Depression

Going to these two places over six days in late April/early May was probably the coolest trip of my time in Ethiopia. I am maintaining the minimalist commentary because I have to give my (employer-provided) computer back in under two hours, but if you make one trip to Ethiopia, this should be a part of it.

Roll 1: Tigray, northern Ethiopia. Includes the monumental 4th-8th century stellae at the ancient capital of Axum, churches of Axum including that said to hold the Ark of the Covenant, shots of the Arizona-like Tigray landscape, Debre Damo monastery which is reached by climbing a rope up a cliff (the founding saint apparently climbed up the tail of a snake), stone churches of the Gheralta cluster notable for their inaccessibility (the path basically becomes a rock-climbing expedition) and ancient paintings: