He interned at the DoD when he was a college student. Maybe you are thinking of the NSA? Though the NSA is part of DoD, I don't think it was ever confirmed that Matt worked for the NSA.
Another trait, it took me a while to notice. I noticed the following facts about people who work with the door open or the door closed. I notice that if you have the door to your office closed, you get more work done today and tomorrow, and you are more productive than most. But 10 years later somehow you don't know quite know what problems are worth working on; all the hard work you do is sort of tangential in importance. He who works with the door open gets all kinds of interruptions, but he also occasionally gets clues as to what the world is and what might be important. Now I cannot prove the cause and effect sequence because you might say, ``The closed door is symbolic of a closed mind.'' I don't know. But I can say there is a pretty good correlation between those who work with the doors open and those who ultimately do important things, although people who work with doors closed often work harder. Somehow they seem to work on slightly the wrong thing - not much, but enough that they miss fame. -- Richard Hamming
It's slightly amusing that everyone seem to miss the huge difference between:
A. Individual office with open door
B. Open plan office
I'd imagine the ideal would be individual offices with no doors:
This would create a good enough sense of intimacy and would be obvious to people that when they pass the space of you non-existing door they are entering your space so they should have a reason to do it and you acceptance. And of course, having an actual separate ceiling atop your office is important - the visual part matters, we need the feeling of "private cave" even if we agree to share it most of the time. And open space above only brings anxiety and makes you feel that you are in an open savannah and a predator can jump at you from behind the bushes anytime.
But of course, we live in a plentiful age, obsessed with efficiency (oh, the bitter irony of the contradiction...), so all that wasted space and extra paid on rent because open-office spaces are probably cheaper is a no-no...
It's slightly amusing that everyone seem to miss the huge difference between: (A) Individual office with open door
(B) Open plan office
Exactly. And Hamming didn't work in an open plan office at Bell Labs. The fact that he writes about open vs. closed doors implies that they had offices with doors.
"I'd imagine the ideal would be individual offices with no doors"
Doors are very useful to have, even if they remain open most of the time:
- Closing your door allows you to have a meeting with a couple of people in your office without disturbing your neighbors.
- If you manage people, you'll need to be able to have private conversations with them (e.g., performance reviews).
- Sometimes, you really need to concentrate on a difficult problem without interruptions.
- You'll occasionally want to be able to have private, personal phone conversations, e.g., with your doctor.
Then I'd use them as some kind of status token, to gamify things a bit. Mangers would have offices with doors by necessity, for private conversations with employees etc. And for the rest, if you are a lead developer, or tech lead or senior developer, than you get a door added to your office. Otherwise the hinges stay, but no door... like a hint of "when you'll get better, you'll get that door" :)
An "incentivise the workforce through privacy deprivation", eh? I'd probably take it a step further - open plan toilets. Some employees spend far too long on the John. You can't stop them from going, that would be gross and impractical. But you can use social engineering to help them remember they are there to work and to do so collaboratively.
I can't tell you how much time I've lost to the porcelain throne! (I never measured it) but I do know that I want to get ahead, and when I get to do a crap in a cubicle with a door, I'll have made it!
P.S. This is why wifi and laptops are so great. A lot of thinking time can be had on the dunny. To really get your creative juices flowing, encourage your employees to think about direction on the bog. You could get your next Gmail there. Think of it as 10% time, without need to allocate the 10%. Your employees will thank you!
I find that 50% of my work I can do in an open plan or open door environment and for the other 50%, I need quiet and a distraction-free environment. Open plan definitely doesn't provide that, but I'm not convinced that open door does either -- it very much depends on the floor layout (eg how busy is the corridor outside the office?)
If its a quiet-low-traffic work environment, then open door is perfectly fine, but if not, then it won't provide the quiet that a closed door does. I don't care about privacy, I care about (lack of) noise and distractions.
My ideal setup would provide a communal quiet library-rules room with couches; sound-proofed meeting rooms with doors; breakout areas for groups to sit and talk; hot-desking space; and 1-man offices with doors. Then allow people to use them as preferred or necessary for the work they're currently doing.
Failing that, at a minimum have open-plan + plenty of silent "library rules" space.
> "when you'll get better, you'll get that door"
So, you want to sabotage my work quality until I produce better quality work?
EDIT: Forgot to say that movement (seeing people walk past out of the corner of your eye, for example) can be just as distracting as noise.
I've been thinking about that quote from time to time for a while now, and what strikes me is that his generalization does sound very plausible, but we have to remember that his experience is from a very specific context. To me it seems like having an open door at Los Alamos or Bell Labs back then, is akin to hanging around HN, certain IRC/Slack channels, and so on, today. At least for the vast majority of us, who wouldn't be exposed to such bright people otherwise.
Although I wouldn't count myself as successful by any metric, I still think I've picked up a lot of interesting and useful stuff though osmosis, stuff that a lot of people not exposed to the same things only realize a few years later when it hits the mainstream and becomes part of the zeitgeist of Western culture (and so much else that never hits a more general audience but still holds promise within their respective niches if one can connect the dots).
I think doored offices have the nice property of supporting both modes (open and closed). Closed-door mode is for getting work done, deep thought, or reflection. Open-door mode for allowing/encouraging communication with others, encouraging collaboration, yet comes with an understanding that you may be interrupted.
Open office plans force the open-door mode, and make the closed-door mode quite hard (if not impossible for some people) -- not everyone is comfortable wearing headphones all day, people will interrupt you anyway with headphones on, etc.
In addition to the ability to shut the door, the office limits noise and sights to one direction - in front of you. And it limits it to when people actually have something to say to you specifically.
Open office has you surrounded, including people behind you and in your peripheral vision. It's much less comfortable and causes a little anxiety. And your attention constantly gets ripped around in every direction.
I hope you're not suggesting this as a defense of open-plan offices. Moreover, though I think Hamming said a lot of right and useful things, this isn't really one of them. DeMarco and Lister, in Peopleware, even have a whole chapter called "Bring Back the Door" -- I'd rather take productivity advice from people who actually study productivity. Such folks support the ability to close doors and gain privacy when you need it. Hamming, in this matter, is just a Monday morning quarterback. His name and awe don't mean I have to venerate everything he says. Same with Feynman, or anyone else, and especially when they are talking out of their own depth, as Hamming is here.
> Over the weekend, he sent some messages that were inappropriate ... on Whatsapp
So, not during working hours, not using work-related tools, he send some inappropriate messages. It's not a big deal.
> these things aren't acceptable in the company we're building.
Sure. But this conversation did not happen in the company, not during work hours, and not using work tools. You were made privy of a very personal conversation happening between adults outside of work.
> The employee came to me in confidence
And you posted about it in great detail on Hacker News, making it a topic of water cooler conversation of about 80% of startups world-wide.
> she'll know and it will be a violation of the trust she placed in me
Exactly.
> So what do I do HN?
Preferably nothing at all. Don't make a big deal about what your employees do in their spare time.
> she shouldn't have to deal with it
She shouldn't have confided in you, because you can't seem to handle it. This dude is poison now. He may as well be fired. And your employee made it a business issue, which is a big thorny issue. You shouldn't have to deal with it, but now you do.
Such as the April 2013 Boston Marathon bombings. Or the rise of ISIL and Boko Haram in early 2013.
I still think the study was well executed, but the instant effect seems to disappear when you remove the 6-7 months before mid june 2013.
The long-term effect they claim to observe is more shaky. (I think one can find "statistically significant" groupings of say, Harry Potter articles, that show a similar peak and decline around the Snowden revelations.)
The marketing industry is moving beyond trackers and cookies. Hastened by the mobile/tablet revolution (users switch devices way more often) and the stricter privacy laws in Europe (anti-cookie laws).
Now they either require you to login to get the "mobile" experience, like Facebook or Twitter, or they use probabilistic statistics to identify you without cookies.
That guy reading a newspaper in the park with a paper bag over his head and 4 goons on the lookout, feeding us uninformative/unlikely data, that guy is with 90% certainty Jacques Mattheij.
(When cookie-tracking was more common we set up a cookie-swap program. Stopped after a few months out of security concerns.)
This is - unfortunately - spot on, and there is much worse to come.
It's funny how a law that actually confirms a right that is solidly anchored in the declaration of human rights would result in technological circumvention rather than - the expected outcome - compliance.
Apophenia is the _human_ tendency to see patterns in random _data_. Predictive _analytics_ is a machine that pulls non-random patterns out of data and presents this as _information_.
To say that other tools have a bad track record may count as a valid argument, but to me, it is a weak and fatalistic one. Judge each tool on its own merit or discard all tools as useless seems like an easy choice.
Predicting crime works in practice and theory. These models are not black boxes, they can be introspected. Bias can be detected and removed.
COINTELPRO was a program to infiltrate and disturb organizations that the state viewed as unwelcome. Monitoring social media activity is common detective work. The modern equivalent of an officer peeking over the fence in your back garden to see a stolen motorbike. Now they can use Google Maps for that. This is public information: The criminals feel free and safe enough to post and brag about their crimes on Facebook.
Removing or combating criminal elements in any community will improve that community, regardless of skin color. Black youth is helped, not suppressed, when gang recruiters are identified and punished.
Predictive tools are already used as probable cause. Prisoners in Guantanamo Bay can get a brain-wave reader test. This device will tell you what someone is thinking about and may reveal the plans of future terrorist attack.
> Apophenia is the _human_ tendency to see patterns in random _data_. Predictive _analytics_ is a machine that pulls non-random patterns out of data and presents this as _information_.
Yes. I know that. Apophenia is the correct term. Your fancy machine that predicts crime is only as good as the data it is fed and is made worse by the person who interprets the results. Both of these are easily biased.
> Bias can be detected and removed.
Just like how they removed the numerous biases, assumptions, and bad methodology that are well-known problems with breathalysers? Even if the model was theoretically accurate, the implementation can (and will) be wrong. You seem to be using a just-world assumption that doesn't have lazy, incompetent or malicious people.
> Monitoring social media is common detective work
It can be both. While these methods may be useful for going after stupid criminals, you're ignoring that it is also useful when targeting activists, political dissidents, etc. If you think this doesn't happen, you haven't been paying attention.
You're problem is that you are assuming it is only "criminals" that are targeted, but you live in a world where, to use an obvious example, some people assume that any black person is a "criminal".
Indeed. But remedies exist. Statisticians can examine the validity of the data, analysts and detectives can be trained to interpret the results correctly, and social scientists can point out the dangers of relying solely on computer systems.
I have no strong view for or against breathalysers. I'll concede that there may be some errors in those tests. Does that completely invalidate these tools in judging if someone is too drunk to drive and may cause harm to self or others? Should we only opt for rigorous methods like drawing blood samples? My view is: no, we should not. These are valuable tools that work for the large majority of times and help save lives (at the inevitable cost of some errors and inconvenience).
In my world I believe in just intentions. Breathalysers are not introduced to imprison sober drivers, they are to combat drunk ("lazy, incompetent or malicious") drivers on our roads.
These methods are useful for catching the savvy criminals too. I am not ignoring that these systems are also useful to target activists and political dissidents. That's basically what they were build for in the first place (well, that and the terrorists, see DARPA LifeLog). It's just now that these tools are adopted by local Police departments.
A weapon stick can be used to subdue a suspect through non-lethal force, and it can be used to choke a peaceful protester. It will succeed in both tasks. It's not a stupid ineffective tool we should take away, because it can be used in bad ways. We should make sure to avoid the bad usage, and provide police with the best weapon stick possible for the good usage.
You assume that this system will be used to justify police brutality and that this system will be used by people who think that any black person is a "criminal". I have a higher opinion of the people who join the police. I rather reserve such judgment to the criminals themselves.
Yes, when the error is this large and so easily manipulatable. (breathalysers are notorious for being incredibly broad in what the detect (bad false positive rate), and they are required to assume a 2100:1 ratio when estimating blood concentration from the measured breath concentration. In reality, there is a lot (up to +/-800 for some people). There is a good, science-based reason for that ratio involving the partial pressure of EtOH. The reason is valid, it simply ignores the (large) minority of cases where other factors complicate the analysis.
You may suggest that it would be easy to use modern techniques to find a better formula that accounts for these variations. That would work... but it has always been possible. You don't need anything particularly fancy to add a few corrections. These problems - and how to correct them - have been known for decades, yet breathalysers haven't changed. Why? Because an inaccurate tool gives police the leeway to target a much larger set of people (if they want to - selective enforcement is a powerful tool).
> Should we only opt for rigorous methods like drawing blood samples?
Yes, absolutely, and I (and many defence lawyers and civil right organizations) recommend insisting on a blood test should you ever asked to take a breathalyser because of how inaccurate and manipulatable the breath test is in real-world situations. (disclaimer: this can vary between states; see a local lawyer for proper advice)
> at the inevitable cost of some errors and inconvenience
A necessary feature of a free society is the assumption of innocence until proven guilty. Law enforcement is deliberately given a harder task, because errors are not simply an inconvenience. Errors risk charging an innocent person with a crime. You would not call being arrested because of a false-positive an inconvenience.
> You assume that this system will be used to justify police brutality and that this system will be used by people who think that any black person is a "criminal".
I don't need to assume anything. These things are already extremely common today without the need for advanced data processing techniques. If for some reason you doubt these facts, you may want to look up the per-capita incarceration rates by race and compare that to stuff like the drug use rates for the same groups.
> I have a higher opinion of the people who join the police
I prefer to keep my opinions based in reality.
While I'm sure only a minority of police are abusive, the rest are aiding and abetting by not reporting the crimes committed other officers. Misprision of felony is still a crime in the US (18 U.S. Code § 4) ( https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/4 )
> While I'm sure only a minority of police are abusive, the rest are aiding and abetting by not reporting the crimes committed other officers. Misprision of felony is still a crime in the US (18 U.S. Code § 4) ( https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/4 )
Misprision requires concealment and not reporting; not reporting by itself is insufficient, concealment is active. See, United States v. Johnson, 546 F.2d 1225 (5th Cir. 1977) [0]
I should have been more precise; you're quite correct about the requirements for misprision. Police absolutely are concealing the crimes of the "bad apples" in the department. To be precise, I'm sure we can easily find candidates of for all levels of involvement (it's a big country).
There is no shortage of police that are giving cover for the murders in their department, and most of the rest still look the other way.
They probably needed the software for this indeed. My local police department did not even cooperate with other local police departments. Profiles and reports for a criminal vanished, once they settled somewhere else. That is just throwing information away. This problem still exists in Europe. A sex offender from Belgium can move to Germany and become a janitor at a school.
Software is expensive to develop, but once developed it is actually very cost-effective. It can be copied over to other departments at a fraction of the cost of a detective salary.
Software will continue to eat the world. Criminals use new technology to stay ahead of the police, so the police has to stay up-to-date too. Data mining software helps the police do their jobs more efficiently and honestly. Factors don't lie, machine learning actively combats bias. While human intuition can be flawed and biased.
There is a danger than humans grant too much authority to computer systems, but there is also an opportunity to remove or dampen cognitive bias.
There may both be some cognitive dissonance and a difference between open government data (funded with tax money) and closed company data (funded with revenues).
