Closer To The Ideal

Whether we are talking about the evolution of finches  in the Galápagos Islands  or the evolution of the software projects that we work on, my sense is that diversity offers its greatest benefit during  a crisis. The worst thing about monoculture is the powerful reward it offers to pathogens. Or, as Wikipedia says:

The dependence on monoculture crops can lead to large scale failures when the single genetic variant or cultivar becomes susceptible to a pathogen or when a change in weather patterns occur.

Extending that as a metaphor for business, groupthink (a monoculture of thought) can lead to catastrophic failure when some foundational assumption of the group is proven wrong. A monoculture of thought offers a powerful reward to pathogenic behavior. Consider the meltdown at Enron, where top executives all agreed on the profitability of reckless energy trades, and they continued to agree with each other almost till the very moment company declared bankruptcy. Likewise, the top executives at AIG were certain that they had distributed risk in a such a way that the downside of that risk would never catch up with them. – people with dissident viewpoints were squeezed out of their jobs. Or consider the 40 year decline of the United States auto industry, an industry that has suffered more than most from groupthink and inaccurate assumptions. The executives of the 1970s and 1980s felt, despite the gathering evidence, that price was more important to Americans than quality, and that quality automatically meant expensive, and so they lost a generation of car buyers.

A corporate culture that values homogeneity is at grave risk of punishing non-conformists. A good manager is always on guard against the kinds of social bullying, however subtle, that can cause people to censor their opinions. This is a basic task of risk management: reduce risk by challenging core assumptions. Make sure divergent view points are heard.

I should add, if you are working at a new start-up, struggling to find its place in the world, you should treat every day as a crisis.

Genetic diversity allows a population multiple avenues to move forward when a radical change in the external environment dooms the existing species, in their current forms. Genetic diversity helps facilitate the transformation of sub-sections of those populations to evolve into new forms. Likewise, when a corporation faces a crisis, having a diverse range of opinions is healthy, and the more those differences of opinions reach down to core assumptions, the healthier. In boom times, such diversity of opinion could potentially be viewed as annoyingly disruptive of the good times, but in a crisis, what’s needed is the maximum of diversity: in viewpoint, in history, in current circumstances, in goals, in future expectations, etc.

In theory, a genius of a manager could possibly assemble a team made up solely of white males, which still had enough diversity of opinion to perform well in a crisis, but as a practical matter, the most reliable way to put together a diverse team is to recruit people from different backgrounds, different genders, different races and, where possible, different countries.

I regard the cultivation of diversity on a project as a fundamental survival technique, so I devote a lot of time to recruiting newcomers to the field of programming. And so, I read with interest Kirrily Robert’s discussion of recruiting women to work on an open source project (what follows is from Robert’s blog post):

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I surveyed women on the Dreamwidth and AO3 projects and asked them about their experiences. You can read a fuller report of their responses on my earlier blog post, Dispatches from the revolution.

One of the first things I asked them was whether they had previously been involved in open source projects. They gave answers like:

I’d never contributed to an open source project before, or even considered that I could.

I didn’t feel like I was wanted.

I never got the impression that outsiders were welcome.

I considered getting involved in Debian, but the barriers to entry seemed high.

Those who got a little further along still found it hard to become productive on those projects:

It’s kind of like being handed a box full of random bicycle parts: it doesn’t help when you don’t know how they go together and just want to learn how to ride a bike.

People without a ton of experience get shunted off to side areas like docs and support, and those areas end up as the ladies’ auxiliary.

But on Dreamwidth and AO3…

What I like most is that there isn’t any attitude of “stand aside and leave the code to the grown-ups”. If there’s something that I’m able to contribute, however small, then the contribution is welcome.

And this one, which is my favourite:

Deep down, I had always assumed coding required this kind of special aptitude, something that I just didn’t have and never would. It lost its forbidding mystique when I learned that people I had assumed to be super-coders (surely born with keyboard attached!) had only started training a year ago. People without any prior experience! Women! Like me! Jesus! It’s like a barrier broke down in my mind.

So, what can we learn from this? Well, one thing I’ve learnt is that if anyone says, “Women just aren’t interested in technology” or “Women aren’t interested in open source,” it’s just not true. Women are interested, willing, able, and competent. They’re just not contributing to existing, dare I say “mainstream”, open source projects.

And this is great news! It’s great news for new projects. If you are starting up a new open source project, you have the opportunity to recruit these women.

This is a rather stunning example of the rise of China and the decline of America. At least for one month, China was a larger market for automobiles than America.

Unit sales for the month were the fewest since December 1981, while the annualized sales rate was the lowest since June 1982, according to Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey-based Autodata. The last full year of fewer than 10 million sales was 1970, according to trade publication Automotive News.

GM said it was the first time that the sales rate and volume in the U.S. were less than in China, which had a rate of about 10.7 million vehicles and unit volume of about 790,000.

This is extremely hard to believe:

No automakers have been spared in the brutal global sales slump, and Japan’s Toyota Motor Corp could report its first annual parent-only operating loss since the company was founded more than 70 years ago, Japanese media reported on Friday.

Toyota shares fell 2 percent in Tokyo ahead of a year-end news conference on Monday, where the world’s biggest carmaker is expected to revise down its profit forecasts. Toyota last posted an operating loss in its first year of operation in 1937/38.

Toyota reported a profit in 1944? And in 1945? What do you call it when another nation bombs all of your factories flat? Accelerated amortization?

Michael Arrington has some advice for the auto industry. All of his advice is stupid and poorly reasoned:

But there’s a reason why the car companies can’t build the iPod of cars. It’s because they’re so weighed down with all the logistical nightmares of actually building the stuff that goes into those cars.

Translation: “I like idea companies like Apple so why do car companies do boring stuff like manufacture stuff? Wouldn’t it be cool if cars were made by young 20-somethings who sit around in garages and dream up visionary new softwa… uh, I  mean, cars? The car industry, as it actually exists, puts me to sleep, but if they gave up making stuff and focused in on ideas, I might almost find that industry interesting.”

Who’s the Intel of engine manufacturers? Why isn’t there one?

Translation: “Each industry should have companies that are just like the companies in the industry that I cover. I deplore the way the auto industry has a history, culture, cost structure, product and customer base that is different from the computer industry, and I want them to stop immediately. I will not tolerate variations among different industries, but, instead, I demand that all industries be exactly the same.”

The best way forward for the automotive industry is to rip itself apart and start doing things sensibly, like the PC industry does. It won’t make any one company more stable, of course. In fact, it means competition will regularly drive companies at every point in the process out of business. But none of those companies will be in a position to drive our economy south if they do go out of business. Someone better will just take their place.

Translation: “I don’t know anything about the auto industry. I do know a lot about the computer industry. I don’t want to think about problems that are unique to the auto industry because that would make my brain hurt. Even worse, I might have to think new thoughts. I’d prefer it if every industry was exactly like the computer industry, because that is the industry that I’m comfortable with.”

It won’t make any one company more stable, of course. In fact, it means competition will regularly drive companies at every point in the process out of business.

Translation: “I sort of realize that my bad advice will make car companies even less profitable and, yes, I am directing this advice to General Motors, which is almost bankrupt and which actually needs more profits, not less. But I don’t want to confront the contradictions in my reasoning because then I would have nothing to write about and, anyway, I love the sound of my own voice so I need a good reason to keep talking.”

 There’s a counter argument, that Toyota is the most vertically integrated car company in the world, and also the largest and healthiest. I argue that they’re the only ones that can do it profitably over the medium run in such an inefficient market because they have scale. If the market changes, which it is, that vertical integration model will fail.

Translation: “It’s important that people stop paying attention to the world’s most successful manufacturing company and start paying attention to me, even though I don’t know anything about manufacturing. The companies that I cover are cool and sexy and fashionable and manufacturing companies are retarded and I hate them so, clearly, my opinion needs to be listened to by decision makers.  I realize that Toyota has been gaining market share steadily for 40 years, and some morons will be distracted by that fact and thus fail to listen to me, so I now, boldly and in a visionary way, predict that next year Toyota will finally stop being successful and anyone who doesn’t do what I say will be really, really sorry.”