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Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley by Antonio Garcia Martinez complements the New York Times coverage of Ellen Pao and similar.

How do men and women (or “employees who currently identify as men” and “employees who currently identify as women”) get along at Facebook?

Picture the Facebook corporate scene for a moment: buildings full of young, emotionally inept male geeks, and sprinkled throughout them, maybe a 10 percent population of young women. What could possibly go wrong? Rather than harshly regulate every step of this sexual-legal minefield, Facebook preferred to lay down basic guidelines. Delicately, but unambiguously, our HR Man stated that we could ask a coworker out once, but no meant no, and you had no more lets after that. After one ask, you were done, and anything beyond that was subject to sanction. So you get one shot on goal, do you? I thought. Better use that one shot wisely.

An idle mind is the devil’s playground, as the saying goes, so in the meantime I got down to the serious business, as some product managers do, of trying to bang my product marketing manager. PMMess, as we’ll call her, was composed of alternating Bézier curves from top to bottom: convex, then concave, and then convex again, in a vertical undulation you couldn’t take your eyes off of. Unlike most women at Facebook (or in the Bay Area, really) she knew how to dress; forties-style, form-fitting dresses from neck to knee were her mainstay. Her blond hair was offset by olive skin, and bright blue eyes shone like headlights from her neotenic face. She had a charming perfectionism around email orthography and usage, despite the generally rushed illiteracy that reigned in Facebook corporate communication. We traded flirtarious barbs around whether CPM was an initialism or an abbreviation, and whether a needlessly flowery formulation of mine, written in response to some insipid corporate conversation, was a metonym or a metaphor. Like me, PMMess would lose herself in bouts of louche, ethanolic self-destruction that typically ended in some disinhibited act of carnality. A couple of times already, such behavior had involved me, though only at a relatively PG-rated level of barside making out.

What are employers missing by having more male employees than female employees? [Remember the question of “Should the SEC make it illegal for public companies to employ men?”] Martinez differs from Hillary Clinton here:

Most women in the Bay Area are soft and weak, cosseted and naive despite their claims of worldliness, and generally full of shit. They have their self-regarding entitlement feminism, and ceaselessly vaunt their independence, but the reality is, come the epidemic plague or foreign invasion, they’d become precisely the sort of useless baggage you’d trade for a box of shotgun shells or a jerry can of diesel.

What about after hours?

The runway for its accelerated particles travels alongside Sand Hill Road, under Interstate 280, and into the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains, which define the western border of Silicon Valley. Lastly, there’s a high-class brothel: the Rosewood Sand Hill, a posh restaurant and hotel complex wedged in between SLAC and the Sand Hill–Interstate 280 intersection. Thursday nights at Sand Hill are famous for serving as “cougar nights,” where older, lonely women (and younger ones explicitly on the clock) congregate to ensnare Sand Hill’s wealthy denizens.

Martinez chronicles his close association with one particular woman, whom he refers to as “British Trader” due to her former career as an oil trader:

The contemporary honeymoon of a several-week fuck-fest, consummated at the start of a new romantic liaison, played itself out comme il faut. No surprises really, other than British Trader’s taste for being physically dominated in bed, a bit of a surprise given her alpha-female exterior. To a woman, every girlfriend of mine has been intelligent, ambitious, and independent. Until very recently, all were vastly more successful and wealthier than me. And yet, come the pressing hour of physical need, so unfolded the countless boudoir scenes recalling Fragonard’s Le Verrou: a ravished chambermaid, half resisting and half yielding, violently seized in the arms of her predatory lover, who slams shut the bolt on the bedroom door.

She gets pregnant while they are dating and decides to have the child:

I invite anyone with a philosophical bent to witness a human birth and observe as unstoppable forces meet immovable objects, with neither yielding. Modern medicine does little to resolve this paradox made flesh. The only real differences between the bloody, screaming tableau before me and that of, say, my grandmother’s birth a century ago in rural northern Spain by candlelight, were the little plastic packets of mineral oil, like the salad dressing at a Denny’s, that nurses would regularly crack open and pour over the heaving, tumescent mass down south. It was a sweaty, white-knuckle affair shattered by piercing shrieks of pain that resonated across the maternity ward, and which the heavy institutional doors the nurses slammed shut did little to stifle. I quietly entertained bouts of Mad Men–esque nostalgia for a time when men simply paced nervously and smoked in some other room while the dirty business was completed. … After two hours of battle, old flesh yielded bloodily to new, and Zoë Ayala came into the world.

Martinez does not enjoy domestic life:

By the time AdGrok [a Y Combinator-funded startup] had managed to free itself from the existential crisis, my relationship with British Trader was suffering under stress and our mutual friction. I was done with her imperious hectoring and stiff upper lip. Living with her en concubinage with Zoë resembled less some bohemian family sitcom, and more a stint in the Queen’s army. … British Trader’s desire to be absolute captain of the ship was fine, but there’s only one captain of a ship or company. If she wanted the role, she could maintain the house herself.

Right around when the Adchemy drama was winding down to its victorious conclusion in late 2010, I decided I had had enough of the British barracks room I was living in, and announced I was leaving the household, and British Trader.

Out of nowhere British Trader informs me she is once again pregnant; the calendar math takes us right back to my move-out imbroglio in December, our last tryst after a breakup desert of nonintimacy. After a brief debate, British Trader confirms her desire to keep the child, whatever my thoughts on the matter.

It occurred to me that perhaps this most recent experiment in fertility—and the first—had been planned on British Trader’s part, her back up against the menopause wall, a professional woman with every means at her disposal except a willing male partner—in which case I had been snookered into fatherhood via warm smiles and pliant thighs, the oldest tricks in the book.

Perhaps due to the California child support guidelines extending to infinite levels of income and being applied rigidly by judges, the biological parents avoid litigation. Consistent with “Parental Responses to Child Support Obligations” (Rossin-Slater and Wust, 2016), based on Danish data, as the mother’s profits from child-ownership are increased the father’s non-financial investment in the child is decreased:

Informally, British Trader and I worked out a payment schedule that complied with recommended California state child-support levels. Like the Civil War draft, in which the wealthy could pay a commoner to take their spot on the firing line, I paid my way out of fatherhood, mostly out of fear of the compromise to freedom it represented. I retained visitation rights, but those would be conditional on my always rocky relationship with British Trader. It would suck, but I was ambiguous about my suitability as a father anyhow (as was British Trader).

Martinez fits this into a more comprehensive theory:

What’s my big beef with capitalism? That it desacralizes everything, robs the world of wonder, and leaves it as nothing more than a vulgar market. The fastest way to cheapen anything—be it a woman, a favor, or a work of art—is to put a price tag on it. And that’s what capitalism is, a busy greengrocer going through his store with a price-sticker machine—ka-CHUNK! ka-CHUNK!—$4.10 for eggs, $5 for coffee at Sightglass, $5,000 per month for a run-down one-bedroom in the Mission. … That’s the smoldering ambition of every entrepreneur: to one day create an organization that society deems worthy of a price tag. … These are the only real values we have left in the twilight of history, the tired dead end of liberal democratic capitalism, at least here in the California fringes of Western civilization. Clap at the clever people getting rich, and hope you’re among them. … Is it a wonder that the inhabitants of such a world clamor for contrived rituals of artificial significance like Burning Man, given the utter bankruptcy of meaning in their corporatized culture?

[What would the price tag actually have been for the use of British Trader’s body and her services as a mother? Martinez says that she was out of the oil game and earning only a standard MBA’s salary ($250,000/year?). Martinez discloses that his own pre-tax compensation during his best years was close to $1 million (mostly in Facebook stock). If we plug those numbers into the California child support calculator, using the default of 20 percent time with the father, British Trader gets $97,248 per year, tax-free. ADP Paycheck calculator shows that she would have earned $149,945 after taxes. Thus if her pre-tax salary had been $250,000 per year, by obtaining custody of two children British Trader increased her after-tax spending power by 65 percent.]

Martinez is gracious regarding at least two women in the end-credits:

Thanks to British Trader, who not only bore most of the burden of raising our children but also provided invaluable counsel during the most trying times. Shame that a household, like a ship, admits only one captain. Thanks to Israeli Psychologist, my long-suffering mate during the Facebook half of this book, without whose warm ministrations I’d never have survived that infernal experience. As your people once wrote: “A woman of valour, who can find? For her price is far above rubies. She openeth her mouth with wisdom; and the law of kindness is on her tongue.” Your endless kindness deserved a worthier target.

More: read Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley

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The September issue of AOPA Pilot has a story about a guy who bought a four-seat Piper Cherokee for $1,000 and is now flying it, having spent a total of $3,500 on the airplane and required maintenance. This certainly seems to prove that Americans can afford to fly… they just don’t want to (or at least they don’t want to fly like a 1950s GA pilot).

AOPA also describes a flying marriage proposal gone somewhat wrong. (If the happy couple ends up with some children and the wife ever decides that she would prefer to have sex with other people, the pilot will likely be sorry to have settled in Maryland rather than in neighboring Delaware or Pennsylvania.)

Meanwhile the August issue of Professional Pilot shows that Embraer is now #1 among business jet manufacturers in product support, ahead of traditional leader Gulfstream for the 2nd year in a row. Embraer also beats all of the turboprop manufacturers. Journalists threw rocks at the Brazilians for how they prepared to host the Olympics but it seems as though they can make airplanes…

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Packing up for the trip to Reno and Las Vegas I decided to take advantage of the Verizon FiOS network here at home to make sure that all software was up to date, thus avoiding crawling downloads on America’s creaky public/hotel WiFi.

The Windows 10 laptop hadn’t been powered up for about four days so it needed two hours of operating system updates from MSFT. I returned to find a plain text notice on the screen: “An operating system wasn’t found. Try disconnecting any drives that don’t contain an operating system.” BIOS tools show that the hardware is all working perfectly. My files are still there on the hard drive as well.

The iPhone and iPad were updated to iOS 10. The iPad upgrade went smoothly. The iPhone hung indefinitely in an “updating iCloud settings” screen. Power cycling did not help. I was able to get the phone working by power cycling and skipping setting up iCloud.

The iPads that we use in the aircraft needed to get updated with the latest version of ForeFlight plus some data. The new iPad that we use to send text messages and email (“Hi, Mom”) via Iridium from the aircraft needed some app and data updates.

Software is supposed to drive our cars over Massachusetts roads with lane markings that were worn away back in the 1990s yet somehow it can’t update itself without hours of human intervention? (Maybe “days” in the case of the Windows 10 machine that is now a brick?)

[Speaking of Windows 10, the computer in question is about 4.5 years old. So HP isn’t responsible for it anymore, right? What about Microsoft? Do they have to fix this under a warranty if I bring it into one of their stores? Maybe the answer is “no” because I paid them for an OS 4.5 years ago. But maybe the answer is “yes” because they broke it yesterday with software that they distributed yesterday? https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/contactus/ doesn’t say if there is a time limit on Windows 10 support starting on the date of purchase (does that even make sense with Windows 10 since it is free? How does it work in the Apple world? If an OS update from Apple breaks a 5-year-old computer can you bring it into the Apple Store and they will fix it for free?]

 

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I’m packing up for my first trip to the Reno Air Races. I’ll be there Thursday afternoon through Sunday. Happy to meet up with readers! Just email me (philg@mit.edu).

Alternatives: tomorrow (Wednesday) evening after about 6 pm in Grand Junction, Colorado; Monday or Tuesday in Las Vegas (visiting the Papillon helicopter operation).

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Peter the Great: His Life and World says that “What [William III] most disliked about the English was what he regarded as their naïve disregard of their own long-term interests and their selfish lack of concern about what happened to Europe.”

Perhaps things haven’t changed that much since 1700…

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My Facebook friends aren’t too worried about Hillary’s health. Here’s a typical posting:

I would vote for Hillary Clinton for president if she was in a permanent coma that she could never wake up from. #ImWithHer

Aside from showing the death of the subjunctive, this posting presumably shows that the voter is presumably comfortable with the Democrat’s VP candidate actually doing the Presidential job. That led me to wonder if Americans in general wouldn’t be happier with both headline candidates withdrawing from the race. Would that automatically lead to the VP candidates facing off?

At that point both parties would have fairly generic and inoffensive candidates, no? The Democrats wouldn’t have the spouse of the former leader (go Argentina!) and a person who’d banked (some of it in a family-run foundation) $1 billion as a result of serving in politics . The Republicans wouldn’t have, well, Trump.

What do readers think? Could everyone relax a bit if the current Presidential candidates stepped down in favor of the VP candidates?

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“What Programming’s Past Reveals About Today’s Gender-Pay Gap” (Atlantic) is kind of interesting because a journalist without apparently any programming experience writes about what programmers do and why one candidate might be preferred by an employer over another.

Here are some excerpts:

During the 1940s and 50s, it was primarily women, not men, who were developing code for the nation’s first computers, and the accompanying pay and prestige were both relatively low. But as the century progressed and the field of computing became male-heavy, compensation and esteem both rose precipitously—despite the fact that the substance of the job remained similar.

How did programming transform from a feminine field into an occupation synonymous with young men wearing hoodies who collect generous salaries for hacking and disrupting things? The story behind the fluctuations in programmers’ salaries and cultural status—as well as those of other professions whose gender composition has shifted over the years—sheds light on how and why women’s work is, across the economy, considered to be less valuable than men’s work. It also provides a rebuttal to the common argument that the gender-pay gap exists because women tend to choose less demanding jobs that pay less.

Aptitude tests and personality profiles, which were the primary mechanisms used to screen and rank job candidates in programming in the 1950s and 60s, helped accelerate the profession’s shift from female to male. … The type of math questions on these multiple-choice exams—requiring little nuance or context-specific problem solving—were often testing skills that men were more likely than women to have learned in school at a time when girls were more likely to be steered away from STEM subjects.

Coders: What do you think of this article? Can it be the case that IBM’s hiring practices in the 1950s are determining the composition of the modern programming workforce?

[Readers would be disappointed if I didn’t point out that a woman in a lot of U.S. states (including here in Massachusetts) who wanted to have the spending power of a programmer could simply have sex with three programmers and then collect child support plus, if she did choose to work at a job more enjoyable (to her) than programming, park the children in daycare at the defendants’ expense (on top of the child support cashflow).]

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What was London like circa 1700? Peter the Great: His Life and World has the answers.

The London that Peter visited and explored on foot was rich, vital, dirty and dangerous. The narrow streets were piled with garbage and filth which could be dropped freely from any overhanging window. Even the main avenues were dark and airless because greedy builders, anxious to gain more space, had projected upper stories out over the street. Through these Stygian alleys, crowds of Londoners jostled and pushed one another. Traffic congestion was monumental. Lines of carriages and hackney cabs cut deep ruts into the streets, so that passengers inside were tossed about, arriving breathless, nauseated and sometimes bruised.

London was a violent city with coarse, cruel pleasures which quickly crushed the unprotected innocent. For women, the age of consent was twelve (it remained twelve in England until 1885).

For intelligent men, life in London centered on hundreds of coffee houses where the conversation could center on anything under the sun. Gradually, the different houses began to specialize in talk about politics, religion, literature, scientific ideas, business, shipping or agriculture. Choosing the house by the talk he wished to hear, a visitor could step in, sit by the fire, sip coffee and listen to every shade of opinion expressed in brilliant, learned and passionate terms. Good conversationalists could sharpen their wits, writers could share their dilemmas, politicians could arrange compromises, the lonely could find simple warmth. In Lloyd’s coffee house, marine insurance had its beginnings. At Will’s, Addison was to have his chair by the fire in winter and by the window in summer.

Don’t like your tenants? It could be worse…

But it was not until the Russians had left at the end of their three-month stay and Evelyn came to see his once-beautiful home that the full extent of the damage became apparent. Appalled, Evelyn hurried off to the Royal Surveyor, Sir Christopher Wren, and the Royal Gardener, Mr. London, to ask them to estimate the cost of the repairs. They found floors and carpets so stained and smeared with ink and grease that new floors had to be installed. Tiles had been pulled from the Dutch stoves and brass door locks pried open. The paintwork was battered and filthy. Windows were broken, and more than fifty chairs—every one in the house—had simply disappeared, probably into the stoves. Featherbeds, sheets and canopies were ripped and torn as if by wild animals. Twenty pictures and portraits were torn, probably used for target practice. Outside, the garden was ruined. The lawn was trampled into mud and dust, “as if a regiment of soldiers in iron shoes had drilled on it.” The magnificent holly hedge, 400 feet long, 9 feet high and 5 feet thick, had been flattened by wheelbarrows rammed through it. The bowling green, the gravel paths, the bushes and trees, all were ravaged. Neighbors reported that the Russians had found three wheelbarrows, unknown in Russia, and had developed a game with one man, sometimes the Tsar, inside the wheelbarrow and another racing him into the hedges. Wren and his companions noted all this and made a recommendation which resulted in a recompense to Evelyn of 350 pounds and ninepence, an enormous sum for that day.

Peter loved his time there:

Although he never returned to England, Peter had enjoyed his taste of English life. He found there much that he liked: informality, a practical, efficient monarch and government, good drinking and good talk about ships, gunnery and fireworks. Although he was not intimate with William, the King had opened every door, he had given Peter access to his shipyards, mint and gun foundries, he had displayed his fleet, he had allowed the Russians to talk with everyone and make notes. Peter was grateful and carried away the highest respect not only for English ship design and workmanship, but for the island as a whole. In Russia, he once said to Perry that “if he had not come to England he had certainly been a bungler.” Further, continued Perry, “His Majesty has often declared to his lords, when he has been a little merry, that he thinks it a much happier life to be an admiral in England than a tsar in Russia.” “The English island,” Peter said, “is the best and most beautiful in the world.”

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Today is typically a day for Americans to reflect on stuff that was brought down. Recommended reading for today: “A Monument to Outlast Humanity: In the Nevada desert, the pioneering artist Michael Heizer completes his colossal life’s work.” (New Yorker)

[Separately, the location of this art installation might be a good destination for drone and/or helicopter pilots. Based on the description in the article, who can find it on Google Maps and post a link in the comments?]

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Sony knocks it out of the DxOMark park with their 85/1.4 lens, which has an only slightly crazy price of $1,800: review with a score of 49. Worth reading just to see what Sony can do with their own designers (presumably) and under their own brand name rather than in partnership with Zeiss. Only about 1% as exciting as the iPhone 7, presumably, despite the vastly superior image quality. I guess that is fair considering that you’re not going to get this lens into your pocket.

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