Monday, November 21, 2011
Winter is coming!
I have always loved the simplicity of winter. Naked trees and cleanly intersecting lines of branches against the grey-white sky are so easy to understand. Monotonous amounts of snow makes every street look the same street in a snow-globe. Even the cold is simple because it drives me indoors, to where I probably want to be anyway. Winter's cold is such a clear and unambiguous antagonist. All of the subtlety and variety in life, whether through food or company or television, takes center stage in winter because there's such a limited color palette outside. Winter is dinner party weather; spring and summer are cookout weather, but their delicate interplay between mosquitoes and darkness and heat and rain inevitably complicate the process. In winter, it's cold and snowing, so the focus is inside. We do indoor things, and we don't have to rake leaves or paint the steps. Spring and summer make me feel bad when I'm not outside enjoying the weather; in winter I can enjoy the entertainment inside and be glad that I'm not outside. In fact I like to be outside in the winter, just so that I can then come back inside.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Who is the marginal student in 2011?
Listened to another great podcast from EconTalk at the gym tonight. Russ Roberts interviewed Tyler Cowen about Tyler’s new book, “The Great Stagnation”.
The major theme that stuck out was one of Cowen’s three potential causes of our current economic stagnation, namely the difficulty in educating the marginal student. In the 1950s when college enrollments in the US shot up, it wasn’t that hard to educate the marginal student. Because college enrollments were so much lower, there were plenty of talented potential students who could be easily educated.
However, now that college enrollments are fairly high, the marginal student has changed. How difficult would it be for me to turn my C students into A students? Much harder than turning my C students from high school graduates who are not attending college to C students in college. One challenge in education may be that we've actually done a good job finding potentially talented students and gotten them into college, so it's now harder to find that hidden talent, or to get contemporary high school students with no plans for college into college.
This is a spin on education I hadn’t really thought about, and it makes sense that it would be more difficult to improve the educational experience of the marginal student today than 60 years ago. In a way, it means that we did a good job in the mid-20th century, but it certainly implies that additional gains from education will be tougher to come by in the future. As usual, more food for thought from econtalk.
The major theme that stuck out was one of Cowen’s three potential causes of our current economic stagnation, namely the difficulty in educating the marginal student. In the 1950s when college enrollments in the US shot up, it wasn’t that hard to educate the marginal student. Because college enrollments were so much lower, there were plenty of talented potential students who could be easily educated.
However, now that college enrollments are fairly high, the marginal student has changed. How difficult would it be for me to turn my C students into A students? Much harder than turning my C students from high school graduates who are not attending college to C students in college. One challenge in education may be that we've actually done a good job finding potentially talented students and gotten them into college, so it's now harder to find that hidden talent, or to get contemporary high school students with no plans for college into college.
This is a spin on education I hadn’t really thought about, and it makes sense that it would be more difficult to improve the educational experience of the marginal student today than 60 years ago. In a way, it means that we did a good job in the mid-20th century, but it certainly implies that additional gains from education will be tougher to come by in the future. As usual, more food for thought from econtalk.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Hair Salons, Economics and Software Engineering
Last night I listened to another outstanding econtalk podcast that featured host Russ Roberts interviewing Wafaya Abdallah, a small business owner who runs a hair salon in Maryland.
Abdallah’s hair salon is unique in a number of clever and insightful ways: To foster teamwork, the employees are paid a salary instead of per appointment; everyone gets a bonus if the salon hits target numbers for the month; stylists with an empty chair work on promotions or decorating or other tasks; during downtime at work they read books like The Alchemist and The Five Dysfunctions of the Team for knowledge, inspiration and conversation topics with clients; two to three stylists interview prospective employees rather than just Abdallah herself, and so on. It sounds like an incredibly well-run and sucessful business that operates with a different incentive structure than many other hair salons.
One thing stuck out for me as a software engineer. Check out this exchange around the 15-minute mark of the podcast:
Roberts: Do you have weekly sessions where you talk things out?
Abdallah: It's informal. But we do have daily huddles, which are kind of pre-day meetings, inspiration, rah rah, cheerleading, here's our goal, how are we going to get there, here's what everyone needs to know; and then we have monthly meetings.
Roberts: How long does the daily meeting last?
Abdallah: Maybe 5 minutes? So that's basically where you are, trying to inspire them a little bit.
These quick, informal daily huddles are very similar to the daily status meetings used by agile/extreme development teams! Glad to see that the rest of the world is catching up to software engineering! Or more likely, that software engineering finally adopted the effective practices of other successful businesses...
Abdallah’s hair salon is unique in a number of clever and insightful ways: To foster teamwork, the employees are paid a salary instead of per appointment; everyone gets a bonus if the salon hits target numbers for the month; stylists with an empty chair work on promotions or decorating or other tasks; during downtime at work they read books like The Alchemist and The Five Dysfunctions of the Team for knowledge, inspiration and conversation topics with clients; two to three stylists interview prospective employees rather than just Abdallah herself, and so on. It sounds like an incredibly well-run and sucessful business that operates with a different incentive structure than many other hair salons.
One thing stuck out for me as a software engineer. Check out this exchange around the 15-minute mark of the podcast:
Roberts: Do you have weekly sessions where you talk things out?
Abdallah: It's informal. But we do have daily huddles, which are kind of pre-day meetings, inspiration, rah rah, cheerleading, here's our goal, how are we going to get there, here's what everyone needs to know; and then we have monthly meetings.
Roberts: How long does the daily meeting last?
Abdallah: Maybe 5 minutes? So that's basically where you are, trying to inspire them a little bit.
These quick, informal daily huddles are very similar to the daily status meetings used by agile/extreme development teams! Glad to see that the rest of the world is catching up to software engineering! Or more likely, that software engineering finally adopted the effective practices of other successful businesses...
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