Category Archives: News

My Answers to the 13 Weirdest Interview Questions You’ll Hear in 2014, Part 2

In yesterday’s post, I started to answer some of the weirdest interview questions you’ll hear in 2014 as chosen by Mashable. Today, hopefully, I’ll get through the rest of ’em. Let’s get to it!

7. Describe to me the process and benefits of wearing a seatbelt. – Active Network

When one sits down inside a car, in most cases, there’s a belt that they can fasten across their lap and/or over their shoulder. If you enter on the right side of the car, the seatbelt will normally be found on the right side of your leg/shoulder. If one enters on the left side of the car, the seatbelt will normally be found on the left side of one’s leg/shoulders. To fasten the seatbelt, pull the belt across your body/lap and insert the metal fitting into the buckle, until you hear a *click*. Then, if you have a lap belt, you’ll need to pull the strap until the belt is snug — but not too uncomfortable — over your body. The primary benefit of a seatbelt is to ensure that your body is in the optimal position, in the event of a collision. If one weren’t wearing a seatbelt and one’s car was in a collision, one’s rate of injury is extraordinarily higher than if one were wearing a seatbelt.

8. How does the Internet work? – Akamai

Very well for some. Two very good examples: Justin Bieber and Carly Rae Jepsen. Without the internet, there’s an extremely low probability that Bieber’s eventual manager finds Bieber’s YouTube account and sees him singing. And without Justin’s manager finding him through YouTube, his world, and the world of many “Beliebers,” would be quite different today. Building on that is Carly Rae Jepsen. Jepsen had made a name for herself in Canada, but when Bieber tweeted a YouTube video of her song, she became an international star.

9. If you were a pizza delivery man, how would you benefit from scissors? – Apple

If I were a pizza delivery man, it’s probably only because that’s my cover for being a spy. As a spy who’s walking around as a pizza delivery man, the scissors would come in handy when I needed to cut the electricity to house that I was delivering pizza to, but I needed to do so under a cloud of darkness.

10. Why is a tennis ball fuzzy? – Xerox

When people play tennis, they usually hold more than one ball at a time and in order to do this, sometimes they’ve got some sort of velcro like receiver on their hip. The makers of tennis balls found that as a way to ensure that tennis balls didn’t fall off of the velcro on player’s hips and to ensure their safety, they needed to make the balls fuzzy. [Note: I’m almost 100% sure this isn’t the reason why tennis balls are fuzzy because tennis has been around for a lot longer than velcro, but it was the first thing that came to mind and better represents how I might have answered if I were surprised with this in an interview.]

~

That last question from Xerox kind of threw me off a bit, so I’m going to put this on pause and come back tomorrow to finish up the last three questions.

My Answers to the 13 Weirdest Interview Questions You’ll Hear in 2014, Part 1

Yesterday, Mashable published a listicle of the 13 weirdest interview questions you’ll hear in 2014, along with the origination of the questions (i.e. in which company’s interview they were [or will be] asked). I thought it’d be fun to go through and answer the questions as if I were in an interview with that company. I specify in an interview with that company because that would change the way that I answer the question. One last thing: I didn’t read the questions before answering them. That is, I’ve tried to maintain the element of surprise that the companies were trying to have in answering these kinds of questions. Here we go!

1. Are you more of a hunter or gatherer? – Dell

I know it’s clichéd to say this, but I like to think of myself as a hunter and a gatherer. There are times when I’d consider myself a gatherer, for instance, when trying to collect information to make an important decision on green-lighting an aspect on a project/product or when I’m trying to build support for a project idea in an upcoming meeting. In this way, I’ve got to use my skills at working around the edges — gathering — the right data or the right employees. There are also times when I’d consider myself a hunter, for instance when I’m looking for the right junior employee to motivate with an important project. In this way, I’ve got to use my prowess — hunting skills — to find the right employee for the job.

2. What is your least favorite thing about humanity? – ZocDoc

Without a doubt, it’s how mean we can be to each other. It can be so jarring to watch someone ‘hate’ another person either with words or with actions.

3. If you could throw a parade of any caliber through the Zappos office, what type of parade would it be? – Zappos

A sock party. Quite simply, socks are the unsung hero of Zappos’ business. Yes, some people don’t wear socks with their shoes, but the vast majority of people [Note: if I had statistics, I’d quote it here!] still prefer to wear socks with their shoes. We should appreciate what the sock has done for shoes.

4. How many square feet of pizza are eaten in the U.S. each year? – Goldman Sachs

[Note: I’m familiar with this kind of question. After having completed an MBA, I’m quite familiar with the types of questions that you might get in interviews with investment banks like Goldman Sachs or management consulting firms. A question like this is trying to determine how you solve this kind of a problem — not whether you know how many square feet of pizza are eaten in the US each year. To do this, you’re meant to talk through the problem aloud, so…] To begin, the US population is approximately 300 million. Let’s say that about every 2 out of 3 people eat pizza and of those 2 people, the average person will eat pizza two times every month (or once every other week). In eating pizza, some may eat quite a few pieces, while others will eat far less, so let’s say the average person will eat approximately 2 slices every time they have pizza. This amounts to 4 slices of pizza a month, per person. Now, let’s say that the average slice of pizza is 6 inches across at the crust and 12 inches long, then each slice of pizza is approximately 36 square inches. So, four slices of pizza amounts to 144 square inches of pizza, which also happens to equal the amount of 1 square foot of pizza (144 square inches is 12 times 12). So, one person will eat approximately one square foot of pizza each month. We can then say that there will be 200 million square feet of pizza eaten each month — multiply this by 12 months, and we get 2.4 billion square feet of pizza eaten each year in the US.

5. It’s Thursday; we’re staffing you on a telecommunications project in Calgary, Canada, on Monday. Your flight and hotel are booked; your visa is ready. What are the top five things you do before you leave? – ThoughtWorks

1. Find out if anyone else on the project team has lived in Calgary for any amount of time (questions regarding weather, things to do in Calgary).
2. Find out if Calgary is still dealing with the aftermath of the floods and if there’s a way I could volunteer to help while I’m there.
3. Find out how far Banff is from Calgary for a weekend trip.
4. Find out if there are “tours” to see the Canadian Tar Sands.
5. Book a weekend train ride to through the Rocky Mountains.

6. Have you ever been on a boat? – Applied Systems

Yes. In fact, I’ve lived on a boat. When I was living in Victoria, British Columbia, I was fortunate enough to live in a floathome. It is exactly what it sounds like — a house that floats. It was an experience that took some getting used to, but it was absolutely amazing to be able to open my eyes in the morning and see the Pacific ocean (!) right outside my bedroom window.

~

It took a little longer than I thought to answer the first 6 questions, so I’ll save the next 7 questions for tomorrow.

Could There Be No Poor Countries in 20 Years? Bill Gates Thinks So

Screen Shot 2014-01-21 at 1.10.10 PMThis is probably one of my favourite headlines I’ve had to write so far this year, especially on the heels of yesterday’s post about less than 100 people having more wealth than half of the world. In the Bill and Melinda Gates’ Foundation annual letter, Bill Gates is optimistic, to say the least:

I am optimistic enough about this that I am willing to make a prediction. By 2035, there will be almost no poor countries left in the world. (I mean by our current definition of poor.) Almost all countries will be what we now call lower-middle income or richer. Countries will learn from their most productive neighbors and benefit from innovations like new vaccines, better seeds, and the digital revolution. Their labor forces, buoyed by expanded education, will attract new investments.

By current definition of poor, Gates clarifies that he means that, “almost no country will be as poor as any of the 35 countries that the World Bank classifies as low-income today, even after adjusting for inflation.”

WOW!

Can you imagine a world where this happens? And Gates thinks that this could happen by 2035 — that’s 20 years from now! Twenty years!

A few months ago, I wrote a post considering what might be my generation’s version of racism:

I’ve spent a lot of time talking about my generation in comparison to generations past, but the true purpose of this post is a juxtaposition of the generations to come. As I said, it seems that past generations had a harder time than mine digesting the mix of cultures. For kids growing up today (in certain countries), it’s abundantly clear that there are people who look different from them and it’s just normal to grow up and be friends with people like this. My question, what is it that my generation will have a hard time with that future generations will see as natural?

Maybe a tangential answer to that question is poverty. Maybe in my lifetime, poverty (as we know it) will be eradicated. That’s certainly a wild idea given the current state of the world, but I for one would be thrilled to see this come to pass as I imagine others would be. With that being said, I could see how some folks might not be as accepting of this change and that’s not to say that they wouldn’t want poverty to be forever changed, but just that they might be a little less comfortable with the change.

As an example, let’s use technology. Generations before mine had technology that was quite different from what we use today. That is, the invention of TV was amazing. Now today, we can watch TV on a device that we can carry around in our pocket. Some folks from past generations are amazed by this and might still have a hard time adjusting to this reality.

That’s how I’m trying to superimpose the possibility of the eradication of poverty for my generation. Some folks might have a hard time adjusting to this reality. Regardless of the comfortability of some folks with this potential reality, I think it’s great that the Gates’ have wrote a letter helping to debunk some of the myths in developmental economics:

  1. Poor countries are doomed to stay poor.
  2. Foreign aid is a big waste.
  3. Saving lives leads to overpopulation.

I definitely recommend checking out the whole letter, which you can read here.

85 People Have As Much Wealth as 3.5 Billion People

Just think about that headline for a second… 85 people have as much wealth as 3.5 billion people. Eighty-five vs. Three and a half billion. Maybe looking at the words isn’t enough, let’s look at it in numbers. 85 vs. 3,500,000,000. If I were graphically inclined, I’d make a quick “infographic” showing 85 people on one side and 3,500,000,00 on the other side. That’s an astronomical difference.

The article in The Guardian where I first read it had a good analogy:

The world’s wealthiest people aren’t known for travelling by bus, but if they fancied a change of scene then the richest 85 people on the globe could squeeze onto a single double-decker.

This isn’t the first time I’ve written about wealth inequality and it probably won’t be the last. There are two posts that come immediately to mind. The first is the one from a couple of years ago where I shared a graphic that came from a paper by two researchers studying the wealth distribution in the US. Most notably from the graphic was that the perception of American was way off from reality. Americans thought that the top 20% had approximately 60% of the wealth and they wanted the distribution to be that the top 20% was closer to 30%. In actuality, the top 20% (at the time) had close to 90% of all wealth in the US.

The second post was just under a year ago and it took a deeper look at the graphic that I shared in the first post. Someone animated the chart, that is to say, they made a video of the information to make it more accessible to people and it was shared heartily across the internet — it’s currently over 14,000,000 views.

So what does all of that have to do with today’s information? Well, as is pointed out in the article in The Guardian, the World Economic Forum is starting in a few days, so talking about these kinds of issues are important. That is, reminding folks that the people in attendance at Davos will make up well over half of the wealth in the entire world. 

The image I’ve used for this post comes from that same article and it’s how I’d like to finish today’s post. Take a look at the United States. In 1980, the top 1%’s share of the national income was 10%. In 20 years, that’s doubled to 20% (of the national income). There’s been movement in other countries, but none as great as the US. I’m not picking on the US, but it’s quite clear that if you’re interested in being part of the wealthiest sect of the world, the US is a good place to do just that.

My point in sharing this image is to forward the conversation on this matter. People have very different opinions on how money should be spent, especially when that money is tax dollars. I’m not necessarily trying to trumpet one opinion more than the other, but I think it’s important to highlight this massive disparity and question whether this is how we want to live in the world.

The Problem With Facebook: Young People Really Are Social Networking Elsewhere

Remember yesterday when I was talking about Facebook’s “young person” problem? It turns out, there’s actually data to back this up. It turns out, there was actually an article in TIME that I didn’t realize had data when I was writing my post yesterday:

According to iStrategy, Facebook has 4,292,080 fewer high-school aged users and 6,948,848 college-aged users than it did in 2011.

That amounts to more than 11 million users gone in the past 3 years. While Facebook has more than 1 billion people, so 11 million might not seem like much, but is it a trend? That is, should this be something that the folks over at Facebook should be worried about. Well, there’s a handy graphic that can also be found in the TIME article, (but it comes from iStrategy):

Two of the cells I want to draw your attention to are already conveniently highlighted in red: the ages 13-17 and 18-24. If you’ll notice, both of these age groups are experiencing negative growth. Of particular noteworthiness is the 13-17 age group, which is down 25% over the last 3 years. Again, as I said earlier, Facebook’s user base is rather large right now, so it might not have that big of an effect anytime soon, but it is something to watch out for.

In the article, the author also points out that part of the reason people advertise with Facebook isn’t necessarily for the volume of its users, but because of all the information that it has on its users making microtargeting that much more effective. Maybe this information is enough to overcome the decline in new users, who knows. As I said yesterday, if I were part of Facebook’s team, I would be worried about the continued decline in my user base — especially because it’s the younger folks who are leaving. Why?

Pretty soon, these young folks are going to be reaching those prime marketing age groups (18-34) and if they’re already not using Facebook, that could be bad news. In fact, if they’re not using Facebook, they’re probably using some other social network to communicate and that is where the marketing dollars are going to go. I suppose only time will tell.

Quick Thoughts on Last Night’s Golden Globe Awards

Last night was the 71st Golden Globes. They’re a little behind the Academy Awards who are on their 86th taking place in about a month. Anyhow, I usually like watching these awards shows, especially if I’ve seen some of the movies that are in contention. This year, I had the chance to see a few of the movies that had garnered a number of nominations: American Hustle, Her, 12 Years a Slave, Captain Phillips, Gravity, and Dallas Buyers Club.

I really liked American Hustle, but after watching Dallas Buyers Club and 12 Years a Slave, I was torn between who I thought deserved the awards in some categories. I thought that Jennifer Lawrence had a great performance in American Hustle, but I also thought that Lupita Nyong’o had an excellent performance in 12 Years a Slave. I think they’re both talented and terrific actresses, but with the underrepresentation…

… I’m torn.

I wish that this weren’t an issue in our society. I wish we could judge/award movies/performances on their merits and not worry about whether we’ve been fair in accounting for diversity. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely know and understand that because of our history, white people have a decided advantage when it comes to events like this (and life, in general), but I wish I could just be happy for Jennifer Lawrence and not wonder about Lupita Nyong’o. Unfortunately…

I was also torn when it came to the Best Actor in a Drama category. I’d seen three of the films for which actors were nominated in that category and in my opinion, it would be a toss up between Chiwetel Ejiofor (Choo-it-tell Edge–ee-o-for) and Matthew McConaughey. I thought they both gave excellent — excellent — performances. When Jessica Chastain announced Matthew McConaughey, I was happy, but as was the case for Jennifer Lawrence, I was a bit sad that Ejiofor didn’t win (or, for that matter Idris Elba, who I’ve read gave a great performance in Mandela).

~

I don’t have a solution to this dissonance I feel, but I wanted to express my desire for a time when feelings like these needn’t be had. Maybe it will come in 10 years, maybe it will come in 100 years. When it does, I will welcome it with open arms.

Can an Holacratic Organization Be Successful?

Because of some of the work that I’ve done, one of the things that really interests me is organizational structure. I like peeking into the ways in which an organization functions because I think that we can learn a lot about how and why they succeed. As a result, when I heard that Zappos was going to be transferring over to an holacratic organization, I was very interested:

During the 4-hour meeting, Hsieh talked about how Zappos’ traditional organizational structure is being replaced with Holacracy, a radical “self-governing” operating system where there are no job titles and no managers. The term Holacracy is derived from the Greek word holon, which means a whole that’s part of a greater whole. Instead of a top-down hierarchy, there’s a flatter “holarchy” that distributes power more evenly. The company will be made up of different circles—there will be around 400 circles at Zappos once the rollout is complete in December 2014—and employees can have any number of roles within those circles. This way, there’s no hiding under titles; radical transparency is the goal.

Typically, when people think about organizational structure, three systems come to mind: divisional, functional, and matrix. [Note: as an aside, I wrote an answer for a question on Quora a couple of weeks back about how organizational structure can support an organization’s strategy.] A divisional structure is one in which there is a degree of redundancy to the organization (each division has their own HR, accounting, etc.). A functional structure is one in which there are “shared services,” such that there would be only one HR, accounting, etc. Lastly, a matrix structure is a hybrid of the two.

Now, Zappos is throwing all that out the window and is adopting a new kind of organizational structure: holacracy. To be perfectly honest, I have no idea if they’re going to be successful. I don’t think anyone can honestly say whether Zappos will be successful in this change and in fact, I don’t think we could definitively say that this organizational structure works (or doesn’t) based on how Zappos performs under this structure. However, it’ll certainly give us a window into how a bigger organization (1500+) functions in this kind of structure. From what I’ve read, this is the biggest organization to attempt to use a holacratic system.

One interesting tangent I find to this discussion about holacratic organizational structure is this idea of holons and who’s associated with this idea. I first heard about “holons” in conjunction with Ken Wilber. I’ve written about Wilber only a few times here, but he’s someone who’s certainly worth checking out, if you haven’t already. He presents some fascinating ideas on a number of topics. That’s not to say that he’s right or wrong, but he’ll certainly present a perspective that you likely hadn’t considered. And if you’ve been reading me long enough, you know that I’m a major proponent of perspective. With regard to Wilber, I’m, in particular, thinking about the work he’s done with Spiral Dynamics. That is, I wonder if, in order to ensure that an holacratic organizational structure is successful, would the “participants” of said organizational structure need to be from 2nd or 3rd tier of development or the “yellow” or “green” memes in spiral dynamics.

How Our Culture Failed Women in 2013

I’ve written before about my affinity for the documentary Miss Representation and its “brother” film that’s coming out in a few weeks The Mask You Live In. Well, a few weeks ago, the organization responsible for those movies put out a wonderful — well, in some ways — video detailing the ways in which the media has failed women in 2013. At first, it lists some of the great achievements that women have had this year and then… the video turns a bit sour.

We see a time lapse of a woman being airbrushed on the cover of a magazine, very sexist advertising (magazine and commercial), oversexed music videos, movies, tv shows, and then it turns to how the media cover some news events. There are — seemingly — ignorant men (mostly) patronizing women either in person or talking about women in patronizing ways. However, there are some really powerful moments. There’s a segment from Rachel Maddow where she’s discussing how women can have all of these ticks in the boxes and still get talked to in a negative way. There’s also — and this is my favourite — a video from this past summer when the Texas legislature was trying to ram a bill through that severely limited the rights of women regarding abortion.

I realize that for some, this can be an issue that incites a lot of passion in one direction or the other, but my preference for the video has nothing to do with that issue and everything to do with this woman, this strong and powerful woman, standing up for herself and for women to what is a room and a profession dominated by men. I remember when the now famous Wendy Davis filibuster was first starting to take shape in June and I remember turning on the stream sometime in the evening and having it running in the background. And then as they got closer to the end when things were really getting interesting. I remember trying to understand some of the wonky ways that procedure was being applied and then I remember Leticia Van de Putte…

It was one of the most powerful things I’d ever seen live. And if I recall correctly, I think these words were enough to motivate the gallery (the visitors sitting up above watching) to make noise until the clock ran out and the filibuster worked. Again, I want to make it clear that I’m not arguing in favour or against the merits of the filibuster, but just to draw your attention to that moment when Leticia Van de Putte said those words and the crowd erupted. I wish it weren’t, but it seems an apt metaphor for so much of how the world works today.

~

On a slightly happier (?) and stranger point, in an edition of The Economist from late last year, someone pointed out that Angela Merkel, the Chancellor (kind of like a President or Prime Minister) of Germany, appointed a female defence minister. And not only was this defense minster going to be a woman, but also that she is a gynecologist, entered politics at age 42, and has 7 children.

I think it’s great that Germany has appointed a female defence minister, but I wish that it weren’t news that Germany appointed a female defense minister. I look forward to the time in my life where the fact that someone’s been appointed to high political office or has been crowned the CEO of a big corporation and happens to also be a female is not newsworthy.

Note: You’ll notice that I made the title of this post about “our culture” and not “the media” and that’s because I don’t think it’s necessarily fair to pin the failure all on the media. There’s a feedback loop between our culture and the media. Yes, the media could certainly end that feedback loop, but so could the culture. In a way, everyone deserves a bit of the blame.

Evidence that Liberals and Conservatives Can Have Civilized Conversations on Climate Change

This past summer, I talked about a segment on a cable news show in the US called, “All In With Chris Hayes.” I first started watching Chris Hayes when he started his weekly weekend show, “Up With Chris Hayes,” (that has since been renamed for the new host, Up With Steve Kornacki). I really liked his show because he often had guests on the show who were of differing ideologies. For some cable news networks, that’s big, but what was even bigger was that the people that were on the show — rarely — would scream at each other to make a point. That’s not to say the arguments never got heated — sometimes, they did — but there was still an element of civilized conversation. It’s what I imagine good political discourse should look like.

When Chris’s show moved to primetime, he tried to bring some of those same elements. There was a graphic a while back (this is the closest I could find) that showed Chris Hayes’ weekend show (or was it Melissa Harris-Perry’s? I don’t quite remember) was — by far — the most welcoming show for non-white male guests. Meaning, proportionally, the show had far more women and non-white people on the show than any of the other shows on cable news.

Anyway, back to the segment from this summer.

In the segment, Chris Hayes had on Tim Carney — a noted conservative. They were talking about what was a bit of a hot button issue at the time, but the two of them were able to actually participate in a civil discussion. No one tried to yell over the other and as a viewer, I left the segment feeling more informed about the issue from both perspectives.

A couple of days ago, Chris had Tim on the show again — this time to talk about climate change. When Chris first introduced the segment, I wondered if the discussion might descend into a yelling match, but I was pleased to find that wasn’t the case. In fact, someone of a liberal ideology (Chris Hayes) and someone of a conservative ideology (Tim Carney) were actually able to have a civil discussion about climate change. It was kind of amazing to see. In fact, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a cable news segment where that’s happened on the matter of climate change.

The end of the segment was my favourite part:

If we get to the point, Tim, if we get to the point where James Inhofe goes to the floor and says, ‘you know what the world is warming and carbon emissions are contributing to that warming, but the liberals are wrong with their solution’ and [Matt] Drudge goes on the front page of Drudge [Report] and says the world is warming, but the liberals are wrong about their solution,’ … nothing would make me happier.

In case you’re not very familiar with the climate change “debate,” there’s a sect who purport that climate change isn’t real. Usually, the ideology of people who makeup these kinds of groups are conservative, (but that doesn’t mean they speak for all conservatives or that they’re the only ones). As a result, this tends to make conservative politicians — as a way to cater to these voters — espouse the same kinds of opinions (Senator James Inhofe from Oklahoma being one of them).

That’s why Chris is saying that nothing would make him happier than to see noted conservative outlets (the Drudge Report) submit that climate change is real, but that the liberals are wrong about how to fix it. As far as I can tell, this is what many liberals have been wishing would be the case for some time. That is, ‘it’s okay if you don’t think we have the right solution, but can we at least agree that this thing is real and we have to do something about it?’

Over 40% of the World’s Population Will Vote in 2014

A few days ago in a post about global museum attendance, I mentioned that there were going to be a number of people voting across the world this year. In fact, that number is almost 3 billion. That’s right — over 3 billion people will be voting in an election this year. The total world population only broke 3 billion in the 1960s.

The Economist had a great graphic showing the different elections there was going to be this year and I thought it was worth taking a closer look at.

For instance, as you might expect there are nearly no elections taking place during the summer months. In fact, from May to September, there are only 2 elections taking place, whereas, aside from December, there is only one month that has only 2 elections (January).

Any election is important and has lasting repercussions, but one of the elections that I’m most interested to see the results of is the election in South Africa in April. This past November, South Africa opened voter registration and had over 2.5 million people register. Of those 2.5 million, 1 million were new voters. There will be another voter registration taking place in February of this year. There are quite a few people expecting the current party in power (African National Congress) to lose quite a bit of their support. Since 1994, all the Presidents of South Africa have been from the African National Congress (ANC).

Currently, the African National Congress has almost 70% of the seats in the National Assembly. The polls are predicting the ANC to lose some of their seats. In fact, support is expected to drop nearly 10%. If this hold true, the ANC would still have a majority of seats in the National Assembly, but there are still many days between now and the election in early April. If that support were to dip below 50%, it would be the first time since 1994 that the ANC had less than 200 seats.