Generalists Vs. Specialist

Had a discussion with a coworker last night about approaching your career as a generalist vs. a specialist. We are taught in school/college to be "well rounded". But the truth is you don't need to be "well rounded" to be successful. You need to be able to adapt and react to change, but not "well rounded" in the sense of learning many unrelated subjects.

20 years ago it was about Microsoft, today it's all about Apple, 10 years from now it will be someone else. Or perhaps the world ends next week, and we need to become Survivor Man. That is the change you need to react to; not learning a bunch of liberal arts subjects that have no relation to each other for the sake of being "well rounded". The 50% unemployment rate of college grads under the age of 25 is proof that this strategy is a failure for most people and for society at large.

The truth is most people are not smart enough to do multiple thing well enough to be competitive at anything. Some people are. I'm certainly not one of them. Yet this is how schools educate us; teach us a little bit of everything that our knowledge is a mile wide, but an inch deep. That's why all these people are coming out of college and can't find jobs.

This is especially true in today's "winners'-take-all" world. I realized very early I wouldn't make it in life being educated in this way. My time, talents, and energy are all very limited. I need to spend them where I can be effective, and not spread myself too thin just for the sake of being "well rounded."

"You're so good at this you must be smart!" Umm...no. I'm so good at this because this is all I do. I do something until I am better than nearly everyone before trying to do something else. I don't care if someone's IQ is twice mine. If they're doing 10 things at the same time, and I'm only doing 1, there's a good chance I'm going to beat them at what I do, simply because I'm focused.

In the winner-takes-all world, it means you need to win against YOUR competition at what you do. Then you need to find and align yourself with people that win against THEIR competition. Working together independently, cooperatively, and competitively is how we are going to advance humanity to create a better world.

Perhaps you are one of the few people that can do everything better than everyone. They are certainly out there. But for the rest of us, this is a losing strategy in life.

Are People in LA Fake, Pretentious, Superfiscial?

The reputation of LA is that people are fake, superficial, pretentious, care only about money, your car, etc. They point to all the exotic cars, mansions, and plastic in women as proof of this.

I've been in LA 4 months now and I haven't found that to be the case. I'm sure people like that exist here, but I haven't been able to find them so far, and I went looking for them. It's like looking for cowboys and rednecks in Texas. They're there, but you have to go out of your way to find them. As someone that drives a really nice car, I can say with firsthand experience, nobody cares what you drive. Unlike in Texas, I don't get stopped by someone asking about my car every time I go out.

My impression of people here is that they are far more sophisticated, ambitious, and diverse than people in Texas. They are filmmakers, musicians, aspiring actors, models, engineers, writers, radio, TV, run a business/startup, in finance, int'l trade, or are techie's like myself. Nearly everyone I've talked to has a sense of purpose. There is a reason they are here. They may not be trying to change the world, but at least they are here to do well for themselves. They have a story to tell, a direction where they want to take their life, and the fact that they are here from somewhere else means they've taken action to try to make it happen. We've all heard of the aspiring actor/actress/model that comes to LA and can't make it. For everyone that makes it, there are countless here that don't make it. But for everyone of those that came and failed, how many countless more didn't even try and stayed at home?

Back in Texas and many other places, I can't count the number of people I've met that don't know what they want to do with their lives. The conversations when I meet someone new often go like this:"So what do you do?", "I'm between jobs/in school, etc.", "Well, what do you want to do then?", "I don't know, I'm trying to figure it out, etc." or some other weak answer. In downtown Austin, I'll have that conversation several times any night of the week. It's disheartening.

Hanging around west LA, I haven't had that kind of conversation yet. There's often a determined look in their eyes that says, "I'm going to make this happen." I know that look because I see it in myself. They may or may not succeed, but they are here to play to win. I think part of why this is the case is the high cost of living here. Everyone knows that Cali is so expensive compared to the rest of America. It's a very expensive place to be if you are still trying to figure out what you want to do with your life. That keeps those people out of the area. But for people that know what they are doing, there's opportunity here to do big things. And that's the California (and American) Dream...

Job Interviews: The .com bubble of the 90's vs. the Mobile Revolution.

A difference I noticed in job interviews now and the last tech boom of the late 90's is that there is far less emphasis on technical interviews. I remember interviewing during the Internet .com boom where I would face round after round of technical questions. I was also asked to give technical interview to candidates and to hit them as hard as I could to see where they would break. It seemed that was all anyone cared about. Employers wanted to get technically, the strongest candidate they could find. If you didn't break in your technical interview, you got hired on the spot. I THRIVED in this environment! I was an MS Access/VB/SQL developer back then. I specialized on Access. Over the next 10 years, I only met 1 person who knew as much about Access as I did. If it was an MS Access job, I was almost guaranteed to get it if I got the interview. I worked very hard to make sure I was the best at what I did, or at least the best that anyone would be able to find.

Fourteen years later, we are in another tech boom led by mobile. I've chosen to specialize in iOS and become the best general iOS developer out there. I've been doing this for 1.5 years now out of the 3 years the App Store and SDK has existed, written thousands of lines of code over a dozen different apps between my own apps and two mobile consulting firms. There isn't going to be anyone technically stronger in iOS than me unless they had either worked for Apple, have experience writing Mac apps, or expertise in specific areas like 3D graphics.

But the technical interview part is far smaller now. I don't need to talk for more than 15 minutes, show them a couple apps, a few hundred lines of code, and a short coding test. That's all they need see before they say, "OK, we're convinced you know how to write iOS apps. We don't need to see anymore. Let's talk about something else."

So what is something else? Well, the interview becomes more like dating at this point. First they talk about what they do. They're interested in whether or not I believe in what they are doing. For example, when I interviewed with a video game company, they spent a lot of time talking about if I liked playing video games, what kind of video games I played, and how many hours a week I spent playing video games. When I interviewed with a mobile CMS startup, the CEO spent almost two hours explaining to me what their product was and then wanted to know what I thought of it. At another interview, I spent over 1.5 hours on a programming brain teaser to test my general level of intelligence; kind of like an IQ test. Then they ask me personal questions, like what kind of hobbies I like to do, what I want to do with my life in 5 years, where I am from, how did I get here, and what I want to do with my life. I even get questions like am I a morning or night person, what do I like to eat, what hours do I like to work, what kind of place do I live, and other general lifestyle questions.

In other words, whether or not you get the job has very little to do with how qualified you are for it. It's much more about your personality and whether or not they like you. These dozen interviews over the past year have all been more like dating than going on job interviews. That has been a very odd experience for me since it never use to be this way. It is going to require me to prepare a different way. I don't need to fear that I'm going to be asked something I don't know. I know enough that I can force the technical interview to go in a direction where I am very familiar with. What seems more important today is realizing the type of people that are interviewing me, and trying to befriend them.

The War On Terror: What Are We Really Fighting?

As America continues down the road the Fascism in the name of security, I call on our fellow Americans to reconsider stance on the war on terror that is destroying us. It is not terrorism that is destroying us. It is the fear the terrorism generates and the war itself that is destroying America. We can debate endlessly about whether torture is justified, whether assassinations are justified, and denying basic human rights are justified. But let us take a step back and examine what our values are.

The first question I ask is, what exactly are we fighting? Let's define and understand who our enemy is. Our leaders spend considerable amount of time explaining that our enemy are not Muslims (Radical or otherwise) or Arabs, but terrorism. It's the "War On Terror" we keep hearing over and over. But we need to realize terrorism is not an enemy. Terrorism is a method and a tactic that is being USED by our enemy. We must realize that we can't win a war on terror because you can't wage war on a method or idea. Terrorism is a TACTIC and STRATEGY used by an enemy. Terrorism is an a CONCEPT, a STRATEGY, and an IDEOLOGY. We must realize is that we can not destroy an idea using weapons and our military. No matter how many bombs we drop, no matter how many terrorists we kill, the idea of terrorism will always be there because it's concept created by the human mind. Terrorism is not something tangible that we can destroy with military action. So how do you destroy an idea, strategy, or tactic? The answer is obvious. We must come up with a superior idea, strategy, and tactics making that idea obsolete. We are now trying to defeat terrorism by committing terrorism (assassination, torture, drone attacks,etc.) against the terrorists. But we can not defeat terrorism that way because we ourselves become the terrorists. If we defeat the terrorists using terrorism, doesn't that validate the effectiveness of terrorism as a strategy? Doesn't that embolden future enemies to use terrorism as a strategy again because it was effective in the past? We must defeat terrorism by coming up with a better ideology, so that people choose not to use terrorism because it is an obsolete idea and there is a better way. Ideas can only be defeated with better ideas. They can not be bombed out of existence.

So let us go back to the original question. Who or what is our enemy? It's not terrorism because it's only a tactic as I've explained above. Osama Bin Laden is dead, so he's no longer our enemy. Let's look at Al Qaeda which is something we can define as an actual enemy because it is an organization that is seeking to destroy America. Why is Al Qaeda using terrorism to fight and kill us? What is their motive? This is another area where we are being misled by our leaders and our ignorance of history. Al Qaeda does not hate us because we're Americans. They do not hate us for our freedoms. This all nonsense because Osama himself told us exactly why Al Qaeda wants to destroy us. They seek to destroy us for religious reasons. Specifically, they seek to destroy America for our invasion and occupation of Saudi Arabia in the first Gulf War. They consider foreign troops in Saudi Arabia desecration of their Holy Land. You can agree or disagree with them, but let's understand what is their real motive to kill us.

If Al Qaeda is our enemy, how do they seek to destroy us? We must realize that there is no possible way Al Qaeda can directly attack us in a way to destroy America. No matter how many planes they hijack and fly into buildings or suicide bombers they send to kill us, or IED's they plant on roads, or even God forbid, even get their hands on a nuclear weapon or dirty bomb and nuke an American city, they do not have the means to directly attack and destroy us. As Americans, we have to have faith and confidence that no matter how our enemy kills one of us, no matter what they destroy, we can always rebuild what they destroy and come back stronger than we were. This is hopefully obvious to all of us.

So why are they still attacking us? It is absolutely pointless to fight and die fighting an enemy you have no chance in defeating. Why is it they still have no problem recruiting people to their terrorist ideology to go die fighting an enemy they have no hope in defeating? Let's think about terrorism in terms of a strategy and tactic instead of as an enemy. Before we can defeat Al Qaeda, we must realize and understand the strategy (terrorism) they are using against us. What is the purpose of terrorism? To create terror and fear. Why would you want to create terror and fear in your enemy? How do you use terrorism to defeat an enemy?

Terrorism is about getting your enemy to COMMIT EXCESS RESOURCES to combat a threat that seems far bigger than it actually is. Terrorism is about getting your enemy to BELIEVE IN A THREAT THAT DOESN'T EXIST. Your enemy will then waste his resources against an imaginary enemy and weaken himself to point where he collapses under his own weight. Or he gets so scared that he relents and caves to your demands. This is how terrorism works. Osama himself said he would destroy America because for every $1 he spent committing and plotting terrorism, America would spend $10 million fighting him. This is how Al Qaeda is trying to destroy America. He wanted to bankrupt us FINANCIALLY and most importantly, MORALLY. Al Qaeda wants to destroy America by destroying the IDEAS and PRINCIPLES that we believe in. This is the only way Al Qaeda can win a war against America. It is to create enough fear that we end up destroying ourselves and each other. As FDR said, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

When Bin Laden said we are weak, what was he referring to? He's not referring to the strength of our military. He means we are UNPRINCIPLED and WEAK MINDED. All Osama had to do is create a some fear, and we would abandon everything we believed in as Americans and bankrupt ourselves trying to defend our selves because we are cowards. Why does Bin Laden say we are cowards? Because it is very clear that Al Qaeda is WILLING TO FIGHT AND DIE FOR WHAT THEY BELIEVE IN. Americans are NOT! We are willing to give up our most cherished possession, RIGHTS and FREEDOM because we are SCARED and FEARFUL that a bogeyman ("terrorist") might kill us. After 10 years and wars, spending an ungodly amount of money on 2 wars against countries that didn't attack us, and giving up the freedoms and rights we believed in, HE'S RIGHT. This is why Benjamin Franklin said, "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

How do you win a war against Al Qaeda, then? We must understand that winning a war against an enemy is much more than just our military is better than their military or our weapons are better than their weapons. You only need to look at history to understand this. Even with the most powerful military the world has ever seen, we were defeated in Vietnam. We couldn't win in Korea. Bin Laden himself was massively out gunned, but he defeated the Soviet Union with some help from his friends at the CIA. Hannibal defeated the Romans in almost every battle he fought against him and he lost the war in the end. We must realize that no matter how many Al Qaeda members we assassinate, they can always recruit more. We must DESTROY the IDEOLOGY of Al Qaeda, the same way Al Qaeda is trying to destroy the idea of America. The only way to destroy an ideology is to create more appealing ideology. As Americans, we have to realize that this is not a war we can win with just our military. Our military can not kill every radical Islamist that want to harm us. If we ask them to try, we must realize it will be our own military that destroys us both financially and morally.

We must defeat Al Qaeda, by showing the world that our vision is better than theirs; that our way of life is better than theirs. That we stand by our principles, values, and freedoms, and we do not fear them. We are not going to scared and fearful and bankrupt ourselves trying to protect ourself from a threat that barely exists. And yes, some of us may die. Are we willing to die for those freedoms? That is a fundamental question we must ask ourselves. Are you willing to give up your freedom and rights for protection from terrorism? Are you willing to give up your rights and freedoms because there is a risk that a radical Muslim somewhere in a cave on the other side of the planet is plotting to kill you? Are you willing to support and become a terrorist in order to protect yourself from other terrorists? Are you willing to bankrupt your future and your country because you fear that this terrorist might kill you? Remember that these terrorist CAN NOT destroy us as a nation. But they may be able to kill you personally like if you were one of those unfortunate 3,000 Americans killed on 9/11.

Are you willing to take the small chance (less than the chance of being struck by lightning) that you may die at the hands of a terrorist for your rights and freedoms? If not, Al Qaeda has defeated America....

Time Machine

Time Machine is one of the many reasons I pay 3 times more for a Mac. It saved my butt again from my latest HD crash. This is my 2nd hard drive crash in the past 3 months. Moving your data, apps, and configuration between computers or between hard disks is a breeze compared to Windows. No need to reinstall your apps, copy your data, and reconfigure your machine. Just backup your old machine, restore to the new one, you're done. Everything is left exactly as it was. I no longer have to fear about getting a new computer because you can easily move everything to a new one and everything is exactly as I left it.

Singapore Ultra Modern City

Singapore is one of the most ultra modern, high tech, rich cities I have ever been to. It's perfectly clean, no homeless people, and has an almost a sterile feel to it. They are rich like in Switzerland or Norway. But the difference is they flaunt in an almost extreme way. There are endless ultra modern high end shopping malls. The money is everywhere to be seen like expensive cars, shops, buildings, restaurants, etc. Think of Vegas with shopping malls instead of casinos.

We (America) Are Morally Bankrupt

I've used the term "morally bankrupt" many times in my post and I'd like to define what that means. Financial bankruptcy is easy enough for most people to understand, but I should clarify what I mean when I say we as a society and nation are morally bankrupt.

A morally bankrupt person or society is one or more of the following:

1. They don't know what they WANT in life. More importantly, they don't understand and accept the tradeoffs of their goals in life. Life is full of tradeoffs and compromises. They don't understand the consequences of these decisions.

2. They don't know WHO they are. They aren't able to articulate what their life is about or what they STAND for. They do things just because they have to in order to exist.

3. They don't know WHAT they believe in. They have no principles that they follow. Since they don't know what they believe in or have principles that they follow, they always do what is least painful or easiest to do at the moment. They are guided purely by emotion, comfort, and what is good for just today.

4. They don't know WHY they believe in these principles. They can't make rational arguments on why they believe in the principles that they do. A lot of religious people fall into this category. They can't make rational arguments of why they believe in God, Allah, Buddha, whoever. They believe just because they believe and it makes them feel good. They call it "faith".

If you are 18 and this describes you, I would say you are immature, you still need to figure things out, and you still have time to figure things out. But if you are over 40 and this still describes you, then you are morally bankrupt.

A morally bankrupt person/society will never be able to comeback from a setback. Once they go down, they stay down, they are done for good. Think of Roman Empire, or USSR. Haven't you noticed that there are some people that can lose everything, but somehow they almost seem like they can come back from the dead and be even stronger than they were before they had their tragedy or setback?

Lance Armstrong is a good example of this. Regardless of whether or not you think he cheated/doped, he lost everything, almost his life. He went "bankrupt" as an athlete because of cancer. But because he was still morally strong (regardless if you agree with his morals/character or not), he could come back from the dead (almost literally) and be an even greater bicycle racer than before he had cancer.

Shit can happen to anyone and even smart people make big mistakes sometimes because they are still human. But because they know what they ARE, they know what they WANT, they know what they BELIEVE in and WHY, they also know what needs to be DONE. People like Armstrong can comeback from terrible tragedies and be even greater than what they were before.

An example of a countries that went financially bankrupt, but was still morally strong are the Asian nations (South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, etc.) during the Asian financial crisis of '97. They made some serious mistakes in the previous 10 years and everything collapsed that year. But they recognized what they did wrong, they knew what they had to do, they understood the principles they believed in. They made very painful decisions that were really going to hurt them in the short run. But less than 14 years later, they are back, and their economies are stronger than it was before that crisis. Contrast this with Japan, where everything collapsed in the early 90's. They tried to take the easy way out and 20 years later, they are still not able to recover.

Let's look at ourselves at a nation because the 4 points I have listed are exactly what we have become as a nation. We are now even arguing what our Constitution means; our most fundamental and supreme law. When you argue that law X is unconstitutional because of this Amendment, they come back and say the Constitution is ambiguous and is a "living breathing document" subject to whatever interpretation they want it to be. If you point to an Amendment, say the 2nd or 10th one, they argue that it's ambiguous because the words "militia", "the States", "power", and "people" are ambiguous and subject to "interpretation". This implies that we have no principles, we have no rule of law, and we allow our politicians and appointed officials to do whatever they wish because they can "interpret" the law anyway they want to, down to the meaning of every individual word. We might as well elect a dictator every 4 years and let him dictate whatever he wants to do than making him go through the trouble of "interpreting".

We can also see this in the actions of our elected officials. Most have no principles and will take actions that are politically easy, rather than what is best for their constituents. The situation America is in now are just a symptoms of the underlying problems. We are morally bankrupt, as I have defined it here.

The "Working Holiday"

The "working holiday" is something that only Europeans, Australians, and New Zealanders seem to do. I haven't met any Americans or Asians doing this. It's an oxymoron to Americans. If you are working, you are not on vacation and if you are on vacation, you are not working. "Working Holiday" exists here because travel is very much part of what all young people in Europe, Australia, and New Zealand do. It's part of the culture there.

They travel for a year, sometimes more. Most of them either just finished high school or university. Very few of them have enough money to travel for a year or even a few months. Therefore, they came up with this idea of work-to-travel. The governments of these countries support this by granting "working holiday visas" to people under 30 to spend up to a year in their country where they are allowed to work and make money, so they can travel. I met a few people here, where they spend multiple years on a "working holiday", spending a year working and traveling in a country, then getting another working holiday visa in a different country and working there.

Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Melbourne is actually a great city! I say that after being here 4 nights. Melbourne is a huge city with many different districts. Each district has a distinct atmosphere to it. Melbourne reminds me of Berlin in the that there are a lot of street sculptures. Check my photos in either my Facebook or Flickr. They make interesting photo ops. Look for them.

In the city center, you have buildings with old Victorian architecture. Chinatown is here as well with a lot of Asian eateries. Federation Square is here and it is "Melbourne's meeting place". You can get tourist information here and it is located right on the Yara River. Swanson Street is most likely the first street you will encounter as you start exploring Melbourne.

Directly south of the city center is the Royal Botanic Gardens. It is a huge park, with lots of green space and interesting monuments to see and take photos of. It runs right along St. Kilda Road. I spent 2 nights in a God awful hostel in the South Yara area about a 25 minute walk from the city center. There seems to be a lot of hostels around this area and the one I stayed at was awful. It was old, dirty, and smelled. I felt so dirty afterwards, I had to check into a 4 star hotel to clean myself. I am staying at Urban Central now. This is a modern hostel and it is much better. It's cleaner, has air condition, an elevator, and is located closer to the city. They even have electrical outlets in the lockers so you can charge your laptop while it's in there. Nice! Finding electrical outlets for your phone and laptops is a problem at many hostels. There were a few issues with the elevator and the light bulb in the bathroom was out. They were nice enough to change me to another room. Overall, I don't think you can't expect much more for $40/night here.

The Queen Victoria Market located on the corner of Queen and Victoria Street is another site worth looking into. It is a flea market and the oldest market in Melbourne. There's fresh produce, meats, clothing, wigs, hand bags, and various merchandise at cheap prices.

St. Kilda is another area worth checking out. There area has lots of beaches and people hanging out. Also check out the nearby Acland Street with it's many cake and coffee shops. I had coffee and cake (which was way too sweet) with my friend Sunny and her family here. Luna Park is here, which is an amusement park and a place to take your kids if you need to keep them busy. There are boardwalks and plenty of bike and running paths for you to jog, skate, or ride along the St. Kilda harbor.

Docklands is a brand new district where much of it is still under construction. The area is modern with shopping, eating, office and residential. It is the live, work, play model of urban planning that is getting popular all over the world. Many new high rise buildings are being built here. It will be Melbourne's next high end water front district. Costco has also made it to Australia and there store is located here.

Three Weeks With The MacBook Air 13"

It's been 3 weeks since I've had my MacBook Air and I have to keep raving about it. This is the future of notebook and portable computing. There is a massive difference in portability between a 6 lb. traditional notebook and a 2 or 3 lb. one that is only 1/3 of an inch thick and based on an instant on SSD flash drive. As a portable device, I find myself carrying my sub 3 lb. Air to more places than I would my 5 lb. MacBook. My skeptic friends will note that they can get 3X to processing power for a third of the price, but at twice the weight and thickness. I would respond that the most powerful computer in the world is useless if you don't have it with you. It's guaranteed that you will have the 11", 2 lb. MacBook Air with you far more often than a 5 or 6 lb. notebook. The 15 second boot time and instant on from sleep also make it far more useful in a mobile environment. The Air isn't underpowered for common tasks like Atom based net books running Windows. For the tasks that the Air can not well, you would be better served by the desktop iMac with 2X-3X processing power for 2/3 of the price. I would argue that the tasks you can not do on the Air, the MacBook Pro won't be great either.

I know the temptation. People will compare the specs and say you can buy brand X and get two or three times the spec sheet as a MacBook Air. I did this myself. But what isn't on the spec sheet is the engineering, design, and customer service that goes into Apple products. None of Apple's products are the cheap plastic that is so pervasive in consumer electronics today. Most products today look cheap, feel cheap, and are cheaply made. But all of Apple's major products are made of aluminum and glass with the bottom of the line plastic MacBook being the only exception. The finish is impeccable. It feels good in your hand, the stiffness and durability of metal over plastic gives you confidence, and it's great to look at aesthetically. The MacBook Air is no exception, constructed of solid, stiff, aluminum unibody frame, yet weighs less than 3 pounds. It makes an immediate impression to just about everyone I hand this to.

If I was not going on this multi month trip to Australia/New Zealand, I would have gotten the 11" as a companion to my 24" iMac. It is even smaller, lighter, cheaper, than the 13", but still has a full size keyboard. It can do just about everything you would want to do while on the move.

I would get the $999 11" over an iPad. The iPad has several serious limitations, especially with Flash that is so pervasive on the web. Also, once you add in an external keyboard, the iPad's size and weight advantage disappear. The iPad experience is different with the large touch screen, but for sheer utility an 11" MacBook Air is far more useful at virtually the same size and weight if the keyboard is taken into consideration.