Interesting approach to bin packing problem and traveling sales man problem

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bin_packing_problem (aka https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knapsack_problem)
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/5a73/5b0159c689c6fe3bc6d3e676d9b8c6475edb.pdf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travelling_salesman_problem
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant_colony_optimization_algorithms
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/1226090

Best interview question ever

Best interview question ever
"So, tell me why nobody likes you."

Predictions of now year old job

A year and a few months ago I posted some predictions of the new company I joined. Some things have changed since then.

CEO and COO have been removed. New CFO and President pulled in from the board. All very sudden like. Guestimates at before change runway were ~6 months, President claims that they're bringing in 6 million. We have a ~5M annual burn rate so from this point we have another year from May (so ~20 months from now). They have already started to implement 'cost-saving' measures in that they're 'bringing the whole team under one roof', in that they are closing the second office and moving everyone into the much smaller 'fraternatory'. Could start downsizing in order to cut more costs.

President is socially ungraceful. They're going to be quickly disliked by the majority of the team, partially just due to change, partially just due to demeanor.
President doesn't seem like they know how to run a business, clearly stating that they were happy with the company because they 'walked past the office while out getting drinks with a friend and saw that there were people here working', indicating a typical backward expectation that 'more is more' in terms of hours to productivity. This could lead to a push for more work-theatrics such as being at a desk at certain hours or being seen at the office doing 'stuff'. Could implement more pedantic policies around agile/scrum and jira boards. Vacation time could be more closely scrutinized. Definitely will be more 'calibration' of current team members, with members ranked and judged, which could lead to layoffs. Software calibration:
w/n
l/r
z/f/g/fr
lp/p
a/j/e/jd
If layoffs are implemented, they will probably exploit the fact that most of the eng-team here are grossly underpaid and offer them seemingly huge bonuses contingent on them staying on for another year. The bonuses will only come up to the equivalent that they would make if they were making roughly market value for their skills.
President has stated that they have investments in ~300 companies, which at least looking at crunchbase, is a lot. Most firms only have investments of 10-30 companies. 300 could indicate a spammer approach to investment, which would indicate a desire for quick returns and a short-term 'day trader' approach to investments.
President states that they are impressed by the quality of the team (which is very good), but still could 'install' people into the team that they feels can 'fill gaps' that they believe exist within the team. Could 'install' people into spots vacated by downsized members.

Annoying social ills as explained by an educational psychologist

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Why are some people deliberately mean and rude?
Being mean is often described as the deliberate intention to be hurtful. While some meanness can be attributed to organic causes such as personality disorders or differences in cultural norms, most explanations of mean behavior can be ascribed to a feeling of personal dissatisfaction with ourselves and how we are perceived by others. For instance, individuals may develop low self-esteem because they doubt their capabilities. In turn, they project their negative feelings onto other people to feel better about themselves. The consequences of spiteful and hurtful actions are immense with research indicating that “incivility” decreases work effort, increases turnover, lowers productivity, and inhibits performance (Pearson & Porath, 2005).

Lack of self-control is also related to the exhibition of hurtful behaviors. Like most aspects of human existence, sustained task effort and motivation to achieve a challenging goal gradually diminishes unless we allow time to recover and replenish (Goldberg & Grandey, 2007). This means repeated attempts to control our potentially inappropriate behavior will gradually weaken, resulting in the eventual loss of self-control. If you have unruly children, annoying colleagues or a nagging partner, you certainly know what I mean as evidenced by the idiom “the straw that broke the camel’s back.” Eventually, we lose our patience and emotion prevails, resulting in what many people will perceive as being mean-spirited, rude, or uncivil.

Why do some people always think they are right?
Do you know someone who regardless of the subject or type of experience has what appears to that particular individual as a highly informed and educated opinion? Often labeled as “know-it-alls,” these individuals are super-confident in offering irrefutable expert advice even in the face of disproving evidence. In a scientific sense, being an expert in multiple areas is nearly impossible and requires 10,000 hours for topic mastery to develop (Ericsson & Charness, 2000). However, the rigid thinker who believes they are always right contends to know more than the type of information you can Google. Their purported knowledge applies to various types of everyday experience, including opinion-based things such as the best way to cook a burger, what’s the ideal route from Boston to NY, or why their favorite TV show is better than yours.

Sometimes referred to as “absolutist” thinkers (Buehl & Alexander, 2001) these individuals operate under the maxim of “my way or the highway,” showing little interest in changing perspectives, often passionately refuting the ideas of others. The absolutist is firmly convinced there is only one way of doing things, their way. The inflexible thinking and presumption of certainty happens when individuals portray “myside bias” (Stanovich & West, 2008), which happens when individuals stake claims and evaluate outcomes in favor of existing opinions, not upon the actual results observed or available evidence. The only way to debate these folks is with irrefutable evidence from bonafide experts. Don’t get your hopes up though, absolutists rarely admit being wrong, and any apparent change in opinion is often short-lived!

Why do some people take pleasure in the anguish of others?
Schadenfreude (a German word) is generally defined as achieving pleasure based on the misfortune of others (Ouwerkerk et al., 2018). While absolutist thinkers may debate that anyone really feels good when others suffer, neurological evidence confirms that our brains’ pleasure centers are activated when we feel superior. Examples of superiority include winning at a game when others lose (Dvash et al., 2010), or when we think we have more or better worldly possessions than someone else (Takahashi et al., 2009). Survey evidence aligns with the neurological findings and suggests that the success of reality television is based on the joy we get when seeing contestants lose (e.g. American Idol, Dijk et. al., 2012) or when high-status celebrities make fools of themselves (known as the "tall poppy syndrome," Feather, 1989).

The most common explanation for schadenfreude is that the misfortune of others enhances a person’s positive self-views. All individuals have an innate need to feel competent and worthy and comparatively seeing someone worse off fortifies our lofty self-impressions (Taylor & Brown, 1988). The superiority effect is more pronounced when misfortune befalls an outgroup (another race or culture than our own), and especially when a low self-esteem individual has doubts about their own group dominance (Ouwerkerk et al., 2018). Many times, individuals evaluate their worth through direct comparison to others. If the evaluation turns out poorly, low self-esteem may follow, which amplifies schadenfreude. Individuals who see themselves negatively are more prone to feeling inferior when making “upward” comparisons, thus they forgo envy and feel empowered when high-powered or wealthy individuals are scandalized (e.g., Jeffery Epstein) and hit rock bottom (van Dijk et al., 2015; Wantanabe, 2016).

Why do politics enrage people?
Have you ever been irritated by something you heard on the news or read on social media? Invariably, we know someone who was either “defriended” on Facebook or who went berserk on social media because someone harbors opposing political, religious, or cultural beliefs. Topics like Donald Trump, abortion, or immigration policy consistently generate strong opinions. However, for some people nothing matters more than ardently defending their politics and convincing adversaries that their point of view is superior and should be embraced. The dominance of our beliefs (defined as knowledge that is unsupported by scientific evidence) is so influential that it determines where we focus our attention and on what information we consider the fact. Subsequently, our beliefs steer us toward material and people that support our opinions and flatter our preferred culture, while ignoring or negating opposing views (Appiah et al., 2013).
A primary reason people will ardently defend their beliefs is that beliefs comprise a substantial portion of our personal and professional identities. This means that when we evaluate who we are and how we want to be viewed by others, certain values and morals take priority. While there are substantial between-person differences concerning what we choose to include as part of our identities, one thing is for sure--people passionately defend their perspectives and for some disagreement is a personal attack akin to insulting one’s mother. A strong social identity allows a person to relate to others with similar points of view, promotes positive assessments of their unique perspectives, and satisfies the basic human need to affiliate and be embraced by harmonious, like-minded others (Hogg, Abrams, & Brewer, 2017).

Why do people procrastinate?
Speaking of beliefs, people have beliefs about procrastination too, including beliefs about why they defer important tasks and if deferral is or is not a productive work strategy. Some people swear that procrastination enhances their work product and makes them more productive because there is no time to relax. Schraw, Wadkins, and Olafson (2007) asked students about the reasons for their delay tactics and found that procrastination was often planned because students believed that task deferment promoted a more efficient thinking process and the pressure of tight deadlines motivated performance. However, little if any scientific evidence supports the contention that procrastination of work or academic tasks results in better outcomes compared to slow, deliberate, and paced investment of effort over time.
Causes of procrastination include lack of topic interest, limited topic knowledge, or rejection of the controlling environments imposed by deadlines. While these explanations have merit, the root cause of procrastination is based more on the self-assessment of our capabilities and the potential development of doubt concerning what we can accomplish. Very few individuals are satisfied when self-evaluations come up short, which in turn decreases feelings of self-worth. When evaluating self-worth, individuals often stake their personal reputations based not upon what they specifically achieve, but on subjective reactions to their accomplishments. The person who procrastinates and fails often blames the failure on waiting too long to start a task and not on the questionable evaluation of their capabilities.
Hoffman (2015) revealed that procrastination acts as a psychological mask, taking pressure away from negative self-evaluations. The strategy allows the individual to “save face” by shifting blame for  outcomes to factors external to the self. If the individual fails at the task or misses the deadline, the person rationalizes the disappointment as being caused by the procrastination and thinks “if I didn’t wait until the last minute, I would have done much better.” If the individual succeeds, feelings of self-worth are elevated because desired results were achieved despite putting off the task. Regardless of the outcome, elevated self-worth remains largely intact.

Making a difference
Thus, while educational psychology effectively answers many specialized and process-oriented questions such as the best way to teach mathematics to a group of restless fourth graders, how to design instruction to motivate disinterested learners, or how to decrease anxiety when preparing for a high-stakes presentation, the profession also reveals the motivation and thinking of people in a variety of everyday situations. Anyone considering a career in the profession should also realize that educational psychologists are also often experts in collecting and analyzing data in order to make evidence-based decisions. If you have a love for learning, enjoy teaching others and want to make the world a better place, maybe a career in educational psychology is just right for you!

References

Appiah, O., Knobloch-Westerwick, S., & Alter, S. (2013). Ingroup favoritism and outgroup derogation: Effects of news valence, character race, and recipient race on selective news reading. Journal of Communication, 63, 517–534. doi:10.1111/jcom.12032

Buehl, M. M., & Alexander, P. A. (2001). Beliefs about academic knowledge. Educational Psychology Review, 13 (4), 385-418.

Dvash, J., Gilam, G., Ben-Ze’ev, A., Hendler, T., & Shamay-Tsoory, S. G. (2010). The envious brain: The neural basis of social comparison. Human Brain Mapping, NA–NA. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/hbm.20972.

Reducing subvocalization

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Are You Hearing Voices in Your Head…While Reading?

When you were initially taught to read, you were told to read out loud. Once you were fluent enough, your teacher probably told you to start saying the words in your head. This is how the habit of subvocalization usually originates. Most people continue reading this way for the rest of their lives. But if you want to start reading faster, you need to minimize this habit.
You don’t need to say every word in your head to be able to understand what you are reading. When you were younger, it was absolutely necessary to say each and every single word, but now you can extract the meaning of words by simply seeing them. You don’t need to pronounce them (out loud or in your head) to get that same understanding.
However, there are situations when you read without saying words in your head. For example, think about when you’re driving. When you see a stop sign, do you actually subvocalize the word “STOP” in your head? You may have done so right now while reading the words in the sentence, but when you see a stop sign while driving you’re unlikely to say the word. You see it and automatically recognize that it’s a stop sign.
If you’re like most readers, you probably subvocalize all or most of the words in your head. But you don’t always subvocalize everything you read. Here’s another example of this: if you were reading and came across the year “1977”, you probably wouldn’t say in your head “Nineteen Seventy-Seven.” You would be more likely to understand the year by just seeing the number. Or if you saw the number “3,472,382,977”, you probably wouldn’t subvocalize the words “three billion, four hundred seventy-two million, three hundred eighty-two thousand, nine hundred and seventy-seven.” That’s a mouthful. For a number like that, you see it and know it’s a big one. The understanding comes quickly. You don’t subvocalize it. If you did, you’d be staring at that number for a while without making progress through the sentence.

It Isn’t About Words, It’s About Ideas

Reading isn’t even about words, but rather about extracting ideas, absorbing information, and getting details. Words by themselves don’t mean much unless they’re surrounded by other words. When you read the words “New York City”, do you even think of it as three words? Most people would equate those three words (New York City) to a city. NYC would mean the same thing, right?
Many of the words we see are simply there for grammatical purposes (the, a, an). They don’t provide you with the same kind of meaning as words like “university”. We have to minimize subvocalization in order to boost our reading speed. Why do we have to do this? Because subvocalization limits how fast we can really read.
Think about it this way: if you are saying each word in your head, doesn’t that mean that you can only read as fast as you can talk? If you’re saying every single word in your head, your limit is going to be your talking speed.

Reading Speed = Talking Speed for Most People

The average reading speed is about 150-250 words per minute (wpm). And the average talking speed is exactly the same. Because most people say words in their head while reading (subvocalization), they tend to read at around the same rate as they talk. You can test this out for yourself if you like. Try reading for one minute normally, and then try reading out loud for one minute. If you’re like most people, your reading speed and talking speed will be similar (within 50 words higher or lower).
If your reading speed exceeds your talking speed, that’s a good thing to notice. We don’t want to be limited to our talking speed.
Why do most people read between 150 and 250 wpm and not above 300 wpm? Because it’s hard to talk that fast. Unless you do disclaimers at the end of commercials, it’s difficult to talk over 300 words per minute. So subvocalization must be minimized because you don’t want to get stuck reading as fast as you talk. You’re capable of reading as fast as you can think.
Changing the habit of subvocalization is easier said than done. You can’t just turn this voice in your head off. Instead of eliminating this habit, you want to minimize it. For example, let’s say you’re reading some text that said, “The boy jumped over the fence.” To minimize subvocalization, you might just say in your head, “Boy jumped fence,” three words rather than six words in that sentence. Some people think this means skipping words, but you aren’t actually skipping them. Your eyes still see all the words. You are simply just saying a few of the words. This is how you minimize subvocalization.
Keep in mind that there are a lot of words in sentences and paragraphs that are not essential to the meaning of that paragraph. We are reading for ideas, not words.

How Subvocalization Can Sometimes Be Useful

Saying words in your head can sometimes be helpful. For example, when you are reading material that has technical terminology or vocabulary that you are not familiar. In situations like this, saying words in your head, or even out loud, can be a useful way to improve and expand your vocabulary.
Here’s another way subvocalization can be useful. If you have to memorize something word for word, subvocalizing the words or saying the words out loud would be helpful. How do you think actors and actresses remember their lines? Reading out loud can help you memorize something word for word, but when you normally read, you very rarely need to know something word for word. Most of the time you are reading to extract information, ideas and details.
To boost your reading speed, you need to minimize subvocalization by saying only a few words per line. If you say every word, you’ll be limited to your talking speed.
How do you know if this habit is changing? If you start reading over 300 words per minute, you are probably not saying every word in your head (because you can’t talk that fast). If you are going over 400 words a minute, you are definitely making progress and probably just saying some of the words in your head.

5 Ways To Minimize Subvocalization:

1. Use Your Hand to Guide Your Eyes While Reading

We keep on emphasizing the importance of using your hand to guide your eyes. It’s a central principle to all speed-reading techniques and it’s something that will help you minimize subvocalization. Using your hand to guide your eyes will also help you grab groups of words while reading, helping you avoid another common reading habit, fixation.

2. Distract Yourself

To minimize subvocalization, try distracting yourself from saying words in your head. How should you distract yourself? There are a couple of ways to do it. One way is try to chew gum while you read. If you chew gum while reading, it will distract you from saying the words in your head.
You can also distract yourself from saying words by occupying that voice in your head with another voice. Try counting from one to three while you are reading the material (example: “one, two three” line-by-line). While you are doing this, try fixating your eyes somewhere at the beginning of the line, somewhere in the middle of the line, and somewhere at the end of the line. While you are looking in those three places you want to be counting “one, two, three.” By doing this you will also be fixating on three groups of words, rather than each and every single word. You can count “one, two, three” out loud (maybe whispering) or in your head. Either way, you’ll distract yourself from saying the actual words you are reading. With some practice, you’ll find it easier to avoid saying all the words in your head as you read.

3. Listen To Music While Reading

This will not only help you minimize subvocalization, but listening to music may also help you concentrate better. However, keep in mind that not all types of music are going to help you concentrate. You want to avoid listening to music with lyrics or anything with a strong beat because it is going to throw off your concentration. You may also want to avoid listening to songs that remind you of other things (your high school sweetheart, a fight scene from a movie or anything else that might further distract you).
Listen to something that is instrumental. Classical music usually works best. That will help you to improve your concentration and it will also help you to minimize your habit of subvocalization.

4. Use the AccelaReader RSVP Application

AccelaReader uses Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP) to help you boost your reading speed and minimize subvocalization. The application is simple to use. You simply paste the text you want to read into a textbox. Set your reading speed and press play. The words then blink on the screen at the speed that you set. You can also choose how many words you want to blink at a time.
I recommend setting a speed of at least 300 words per minute. Any speed above 300 wpm will help you avoid subvocalizing all the words. The faster you go, the less words you will be able to say in your head. With some practice, you’ll find it easier to minimize this habit of subvocalization.

5. Force Yourself To Read Faster Than You Normally Would

Let’s say you normally read 250 wpm. Try going a little faster (maybe 300 or 350 wpm). If you force yourself to go a little faster than you normally read, you’ll minimize the amount of words you say in your head. In addition to minimizing subvocalization, you’ll also improve your focus because you have to pay more attention when you read a little faster. Again, the more you practice pushing yourself faster, the faster you will get.

Conclusion

As I mentioned earlier, many speed-reading programs tend to exaggerate what is possible by falsely claiming that you can eliminate subvocalization. Your goal should be to minimize this habit, not eliminate it. The five tips mentioned above will help you minimize the habit of subvocalization so you can start reading at the speed of thought.

Free Code Camp for various exercises

https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/

How to negotiate an offer

source

So you’ve maneuvered through the initial offer conversation. You’ve lined up counteroffers from other companies. Now it’s time to enter the actual negotiation.
Naturally, this is the part where everything goes horribly wrong.
But don’t worry. I’m going to turn you into a superhero negotiator. (Or at least an eccentric billionaire negotiator, which is sometimes better?)
Seriously though. In this article, we’re going to deep-dive into the negotiating process, and discuss my final 4 rules on how to negotiate a job offer.
If you didn’t read my first 6 rules, you can read them here (or you can just skip ’em and keep reading):
Right. Let’s start from the top.
What does it take to be a good negotiator?
Most people think negotiating well is just looking the other person in the eye, appearing confident, and asking for tons of money. But being a good negotiator is a lot more subtle than that.

What Good Negotiators Sound Like

You probably have a friend or family member who’s infamous for refusing to take no for an answer. The kind of person who will march into a department store and bullheadedly argue with the management until they get a purchase refunded.
This person seems like they often get what they want. They make you cringe, but perhaps you should try to be more like them.
Rest assured, this person is actually a terrible negotiator. They’re good at being difficult and causing a scene, which can sometimes convince a waitress or shift manager to appease them. But this style of negotiating will get you nowhere when negotiating with a business partner (that is, an employer).
A good negotiator is empathetic and collaborative. They don’t try to control you or issue ultimatums. Rather, they try to think creatively about how to fulfill both your and their needs.
So when you think of negotiating a job offer, don’t imagine haggling over a used car. Think more like negotiating dinner plans with a group of friends, and you’ll fare much better.

Slicing up the cake

Another important difference between good and bad negotiators is that bad negotiators tend to think of a negotiation as a zero-sum game.
Imagine we’re negotiating over a cake. In a zero-sum negotiation if I get one more slice, you get one less. Any gain I make comes at your expense.
This seems obviously true with cake, right? So what makes a job negotiation any different?
Ah, but it’s not actually true for cake. What if I hate corner pieces and you love them? What if I really like the cherries? What if I’m full and you’re starving, but you’ll agree to treat me to my favorite cake next time?
Of course, when I posed the question I didn’t mention anything about cherries or my feelings on corner pieces. It might seem like I just made stuff up.
But this is exactly what good negotiators do. They bend the rules. They question assumptions and ask unexpected questions. They dig to find the core what everyone values and look for creative ways to widen the terrain of negotiation.
While you were thinking about how to haggle over slices, I’m thinking about how to give both of us more than just half of a cake.
Different parties in a negotiation almost always have different value functions. We may value the same things — we both care about cake, after all. But we don’t value them in exactly the same way, so there’s probably a way to give each of us more of what we want.
Most people go into a job negotiation thinking they need to stubbornly haggle over salary like slices of cake. They don’t ever stop to ask — hey, what do I actually value? Why do I value it? What does the company value? Why do they value that?
There are many dimensions to a job negotiation:

• salary
• signing bonuses
• stock
• year-end or performance bonuses
• commuter benefits
• relocation expenses
• equipment
• an educational stipend
• a childcare stipend
• extra vacation time
• a later start date
• getting a dedicated hour a day to work out or study or meditate or play solitaire.

You could choose which team you’re assigned to, what your first project will be, what technologies you’ll be working with, and sometimes even choose your title.
Maybe you’re a frosting person, and the company is more into cherries. You never know if you don’t ask.
Hold onto this mindset.
Okay.
Let’s pick up the negotiation where we left off. All the offers are in, and recruiters are eagerly waiting for you to get the ball rolling.
Let’s start negotiating.

Phone VS Email

Your first decision is whether you want to negotiate over the phone, or keep correspondence over e-mail.
Talking on the phone not only signals confidence, but more importantly, it allows you to build a strong relationship with your recruiter.
Talking on the phone enables bantering, telling jokes, and building connection. You want your recruiter to like you, understand you, empathize with you. You want them to want you to succeed. Likewise, you want to care about your recruiter and understand what’s motivating them.
The best deals get made between friends. It’s hard to make friends over e-mail.
However, if you don’t have confidence in your negotiation skills, you should try to push the negotiation to e-mail. Written, asynchronous communication will give you more time to strategize and make it easier to say uncomfortable things without being pressured by a recruiter.
That said, recruiters will always prefer to get you on the phone. It’s essentially their home turf. They’re also well aware that negotiating is easier over e-mail, and they have little interest in making it easier on you. They’ll often be vague about the offer over e-mail and only offer to discuss specific details on the phone.
If you want to stick to email, you have to push back against this. There’s no secret to it: just be honest and ask for what you want.
Tell them:

“Hi recruiter, I hope your day is treating you well!

Re: your previous e-mail, I’d prefer to discuss the details of the offer over e-mail. I sometimes get nervous during important phone calls, so discussing the offer over e-mail helps me to keep a clear head and communicate more clearly. I hope this is okay with you. :)”

No BS, no huff-puffery. Just telling the truth and asking for what you want.
There’s tremendous power in honesty and directness. Take advantage of it.
(Also, note how I wrote “discuss the details of the offer” rather than “negotiate.” Never describe what you’re doing as negotiating — that sounds immediately adversarial and haggley. Describe it instead as a discussion, and they’re less likely to recoil.)

Having Alternatives

I mentioned before how essential it is to have multiple offers. I’ll reiterate again — it’s very, very valuable to have multiple offers.
With other offers on the table, if your negotiation doesn’t work out, they know you’ll just accept another offer. Your negotiating position suddenly becomes a lot more credible because they know you’re willing to walk away.
This effect is strengthened if you get an offer from a prestigious company. And the effect goes through the roof if you have an offer from a company’s primary competitor (now they’ll really want to poach you from the big bad competitor-corp).
Some of this behavior is stupid tribalism. And some part of it is rational in trying to deprive competitors of talent. Either way, take advantage of it, and be tactical in which companies you aim for.
But what if you don’t manage to get any other offers? Does all the negotiating just go out the window?
Not at all. What’s important here is not actually having other offers. More specifically, it’s in having strong alternatives. Which is why Rule #6 of negotiating is: have alternatives.
A negotiation needs stakes. If there were no risk and you knew for sure the other side would sign a contract, what incentive would you have to offer them anything more?
Your alternatives are what give a negotiation its stakes. By signaling your alternatives, you allow your interlocutor to develop a mental model of when and why you’ll walk away from the negotiation. Your alternatives also have an anchoring effect on how much the other side thinks you’re objectively worth.
In negotiation literature, your best alternative is often referred to as your BATNA (Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement). Basically, it’s what you’d do if you walked away.
I like the term BATNA a lot, mostly because it sounds like a gadget Batman would lob at bad guys.
So what’s your BATNA if you don’t have other offers? Do you even have one?
Of course you do. Your best alternative might be “interview at more companies” or “go to grad school” or “stay at your current job” or “go on sabbatical in Morocco for a few months” (as it was for a friend of mine who was deliberating between joining a startup and gallivanting through North Africa).
The point is, you don’t need to have another offer to have a strong BATNA.
Your BATNA’s strength comes from:

1. how strong the other side perceives it to be, and
2. how strong you perceive it to be.

If your recruiter thinks that going to grad school is an awesome thing to do, then they’ll see you as having a very strong alternative, and the stakes of the negotiation will be raised.
But even if they think grad school is ridiculous — if you convince them that you’d be totally happy to go to grad school — then the burden is on them to make this deal more attractive to you than going to grad school.
Thus, you need to communicate your BATNA. This doesn’t need to be ham-fisted, but you need to make it a background to the negotiation. (Note: usually whenever you signal your BATNA, you should also re-emphasize your interest in reaching an agreement).
Examples:

“I’ve received another offer from [OTHER CORP] that’s very compelling on salary, but I really love the mission of [YOUR COMPANY] and think that it would overall be a better fit for me.”

“I’m also considering going back to grad school and getting a Master’s degree in Postmodern Haberdashery. I’m excited about [YOUR COMPANY] though and would love to join the team, but the package has to make sense if I’m going to forego a life of ironic hatmaking.”

Note: one of the biggest mistakes I see here is from people who are currently working. If you already have a job, staying where you are is often your BATNA.
This means if you tell your interlocutor that you hate your job, then they know your BATNA sucks, and have no incentive to negotiate with you (on top of potentially thinking that you’re a negative person). Always emphasize the pros of your current company, your seniority, your impact, and whatever else you like about where you currently work.
You should make your decision seem like a genuinely difficult one — then it will appear to be a strong BATNA.

What a Job Negotiation Means to an Employer

I’ve kept saying that in order to be an effective negotiator, you need to understand the other side. So let’s take a look at what it’s like to negotiate as an employer. (I’m going to have to use the tech industry in my examples here, but the details will differ by industry.)
First, we have to rewind and understand what brought us to this offer in the first place. What kind of resources have they spent so far in trying to fill this position?

• Writing and posting a job description on all appropriate channels ($300)
• Reviewing ~100 or more resumes ($1,250)
• About 15% of those resumes need to be phone screened, so roughly 15 phone screens ($2,250)
• Around 75% of those initial phone screens warrant a technical screen, so roughly 11 technical screens ($9,000)
• About 30% pass through to an on-site, so roughly 3 onsites. These onsites require the coordination of 6–7 employees ($10,800)
• Finally, they make one offer. The recruiter (and potentially the executive staff) need to spend time on the phone with the offeree convincing and negotiating. ($900)

Numbers nabbed from here.
All-in-all this process took about 45 days from start to finish.
Now say you end up turning down their offer. They’ve spent over $24,000 just extending this single offer to you (to say nothing of opportunity costs), and now they’ll essentially have to start over from scratch.
This is what a company faces if you turn them down.
Realize what a gauntlet they’ve been through!
Realize how important it is that you’re the one!
Out of the droves and droves who’ve shown up on their doorstep, you’re the one they want. They want to usher you into their tribe. They went through so much crap to get you here, and now they’ve found you.
And you’re worried that if you negotiate, they’ll take it away?
Further yet, understand that salary is only one part of the cost of employing you. An employer also has to pay for your benefits, your equipment, space, utilities, other random expenses, and employment taxes on top of all of that. All-in, your actual salary often comprises less than 50% of the total cost of employing you.
Which means they expect that your value to the company — in terms of the revenue you’ll generate — to be more than 2x your salary. If they didn’t believe that, they wouldn’t be hiring you at all.
So, this is all to say: everything is stacked in your favor. It doesn’t feel that way, but it absolutely is.
Realize that, while you are agonizing over whether to ask for another few thousand dollars, they’re just praying with bated breath that you’ll sign the offer.
If you don’t sign the offer, they lose. Losing a good candidate sucks. No one wants to believe that their company isn’t worth working for.
They want to win. They will pay to win.
And yet, you might worry: “but if end up negotiating more, won’t they have higher expectations? Won’t my boss end up hating me for negotiating?”
No, and no.
It’s your role that will determine your performance expectations, not how much you negotiated. Making 5k more or less in salary doesn’t matter at all. Your manager will literally just not care about this.
Remember how expensive it is to even employ you in the first place! Nobody’s going to fire you because you’re performing 5K worse than they expected you to. The cost of firing you and hiring someone else is a lot more than 5K to begin with.
And no, your boss won’t hate you now. And in fact, at most big companies the person you’re negotiating with won’t even be your boss. Recruiting and management are totally separate departments, completely abstracted from one another. And even if you’re at a startup, trust me that your boss is used to negotiating with candidates and doesn’t place nearly as much significance on it as you do.
In short: negotiating is easier and more normal than you think. Companies are completely willing to negotiate with you. If your intuition tells you otherwise, trust that your mental model is wrong.

How to Give the First Number

In part 1, I mentioned how valuable it is not to have to give the first number. But there are times when you just can’t avoid it. In these situations, there are ways to give the first number without actually giving the first number.
If a company asks you “what are your salary expectations?” you might say:

“I don’t have any particular numbers in mind. I’m more interested in learning whether this will be a good mutual fit. If it is, I’m open to exploring any offer so long as it’s competitive.”

Sounds good. But they push back, “I understand that, but we need to have a clear idea of what you think is competitive. I need to know whether it’s worth going through the interview process. We’re a young startup, so I need to make sure we’re on the same page as far as compensation.”
That’s a strong push. But you can still push back.

“I completely hear you, and I agree it’s important that we’re on the same page. I really have no particular numbers in my head. It all depends on the fit and the composition of the offer. Once we decide we want to work together, I think that’s the best time to figure out a compensation package that makes sense.”

Most employers will relent here. But there’s a small chance they push further: “Okay, look, you’re being difficult. Let’s not waste each other’s time. What’s an offer that you’d be willing to take?”
This is a decision point. They’re trying to take away your negotiating power and pin you to a premature decision.
That said, you probably will have to say a number at this point, or risk damaging the trust in this relationship. (They are making a valid point that startups can’t offer the same kind of cash as large companies, nor should you expect them to. They might be sensing that you’re not aware of this.)
But you can give a number here without actually giving a number.

“Well, okay. I know that the average software engineer in Silicon Valley makes roughly 120K a year in salary. So I think that’s a good place to start.”

Notice what I did here. I didn’t actually answer the question “what’s an offer you’d be willing to take,” I merely anchored the conversation around the fulcrum of “the average software engineer salary.”
So if you’re forced to give a number, do so by appealing to an objective metric, such as an industry average (or your current salary). And make it clear that you’re merely starting the negotiation there, not ending it.

How to Ask for More

An offer is out there, and now you want to improve it. As always, be direct and ask for what you want. Here are generally the steps you should take.
First, reiterate your interest in the company. This is as simple as “I’m really excited about the problems you guys are working on at Evil Corp…”
Now frame why you’re asking for more. There are two choices here: you can say that you’re on the fence and that an improvement might convince you, or you can go stronger and say that you’re outright dissatisfied with the offer. Which approach you choose depends on how much leverage you have, how weak the offer is relative to your BATNA, and whether you have other offers (the weaker your negotiating position, generally the more tentative you should be).
Either way, be unfailingly polite.
If you’re dissatisfied with the offer, you might say something like “I appreciate the work you guys put into constructing this offer. But there were a couple things I was unsatisfied with.”
If you want to be more reserved, you can say something like:

“The offer you guys extended was strong. Right now my decision is basically between you and [XYZ CORP]. It’s a genuinely difficult decision for me, but there are a couple of dimensions where if this offer improved, it would be much more compelling.”

Don’t just say something like “Thanks for the offer. Here are some ways I think it could improve.” This makes you sound like an ass. Be polite, and if you want to strengthen the offer, tell them clearly how you feel about it. This builds trust and conveys seriousness.
Let’s say you want to raise the salary. Now that you have a specific ask, it’s time to employ rule #7: proclaim reasons for everything.
We all implicitly know the catch-22 of negotiation: if you say you want more salary, you’ll sound greedy. And no one likes greedy people, right? So why would they want to give more money to a greedy person?
I suspect this is the primary reason why so many candidates recoil from negotiating. They don’t want to feel greedy. It goes against all of their social conditioning. And yet, there are some situations in which most people would be totally fine negotiating.
Specifically, when they have to.
If you had to raise your salary or you wouldn’t be able to afford rent, or if you had to negotiate health insurance to cover a medical condition, you’d negotiate without a twinge of regret. The difference? That you have a reason for what you’re requesting.
It’s kind of a brain-hack, both for yourself and for your negotiating partner. Just stating a reason — any reason — makes your request feel human and important. It’s not you being greedy, it’s you trying to fulfill your goals.
The more unobjectionable and sympathetic your reason, the better. If it’s medical expenses, or paying off student loans, or taking care of family, you’ll bring tears to their eyes. I told employers that I was earning-to-give, so since I was donating 33% of my income to charity, I had tonegotiate aggressively to leave myself enough to live off.
But honestly, even if your reason is inane and unimpressive, it will still carry this effect.
Just saying “can you improve the salary?” sounds like you’re boringly motivated by money. But if you say “I really want to buy a house within the next year; what can we do to improve the salary?” This suddenly seems a lot more legitimate.
If they turn down your request now, they’re implicitly telling you “No, Jennifer, you can’t buy your house. I guess you don’t deserve one.” No one wants to do that. They want to be the one who says, “All right Jennifer, I talked with the director and I made it happen. You’re getting that new house!”
(Of course, it goes without saying that you want money so you can spend it on things. I know. It’s stupid. But it works.)
Just go with it, state a reason for everything, and you’ll find recruiters more willing to become your advocate.

Assert your Value

One effective move you can make in a negotiation, especially after an ask, is to emphasize the unique value you’ll be bringing to the company. Example:

“Blah blah blah, I want X, Y, and Z.

I know that you guys are looking for someone to build out your Android team. I believe I bring a lot of experience leading a team of Android developers and I’m confident that I’ll be able to bring your mobile offerings up to parity with your competitors.

Let me know your thoughts.”

Be confident without boasting or trying to hold yourself to specific metrics (unless you’re supremely confident). Whatever you assert should be something you’ve touched on earlier in your discussions. But it’s okay to repeat it now as a gentle reminder. It reminds them of the carrot, and shows that you’re still excited to add value.
This is not appropriate in every negotiation, especially for very junior positions, where it’s harder to differentiate yourself. But later in your career (or for more specialized/consulting roles) this can be a really valuable nudge.

What to Ask For

This brings me to rule #8: be motivated by more than just money.
Note, this is not code for “if you seem like you’re motivated by more than just money, you’ll get more money.”
There is no bigger turn-off to a company than somebody who only cares about money. This is something you’re not going to be able to fake.
Actually be motivated by other things. You should be motivated by money, too, of course, but it should be one among many dimensions you’re optimizing for. How much training you get, what your first project will be, which team you join, or even who your mentor will be — these are all things you can and should negotiate.
Among these factors, salary is perhaps the least important.
What do you really value? Be creative. Don’t try to haggle over slices of cake when there’s so much more on the table.
Of course, to negotiate well you need to understand the other side’s preferences. You want to make the deal better for both of you. That’s why rule #9 is: understand what the company values.
How do you figure this out? Well, there are a few good rules of thumb.
First, salary is almost always the hardest thing to give, for a few reasons:

1. It must be paid year after year, so it becomes part of a company’s long-term burn rate.
2. It is almost always the thing that people gossip about, so paying someone significantly more salary can cause unrest.
3. It tends to be the most tightly constrained by pay bands, especially at large companies.

So if you want more financial compensation, you should think about structuring as much of it as possible outside of salary. A signing bonus, for example, is easier to give than salary. A signing bonus has the advantage of only needing to be paid once. It gets the candidate excited about joining (because everyone likes wads of cash), and it’s generally not as public.
Remember that you can always get salary raises as you continue to work at the company, but there’s only one point at which you can get a signing bonus.
The easiest thing for a company to give though is stock (if the company offers stock). Companies like giving stock because it invests you in the company and aligns interests. It also shifts some of the risk from the company over to you and burns less cash.
If you are genuinely risk-neutral or early in your career, then you should generally try to assume as much stock as possible. If you aggressively trade cash for stock, you can end up with a higher expected value offer (albeit with higher risk).

A Brief Primer on Equity

You can skip this section if you’re already pretty familiar with how equity works. I’m going to speaking to the totally uninitiated here, because too many people get swindled when it comes to valuing stock.
First, understand there are two completely different classes of companies: public companies and private companies.
If the company is public (i.e., it has IPO’d and is listed on the stock market), then its stock is as good as cash.
You will usually be granted RSUs (Restricted Stock Units), which are just shares like you can purchase on the stock market. Once these shares vest (that is, are released to you), you can turn around and sell them on the stock market. This is how they turn into money.
If the company is private, then things get a lot more complicated.
For private companies, most of the time they will not actually issue you stock grants. Usually, they will issue you stock options. An option is a pre-agreed right to purchase shares of stock at a frozen price.
It’s important to note that when you want to leave a company, if you have options, your life becomes really complicated. You may have to pay a bunch of money to actually exercise your option (that is, buy your pre-agreed upon stock at the previous frozen price, or risk losing it), with no way to actually sell it yet. The only way to truly liquidate your options is when the company IPOs or is acquired. And many companies don’t ever do this.
Thus, options are very risky. It’s easier to get screwed by options, especially on tax implications. For a lot more information, see this post by Scott Kupor of a16z.

Equity Shenanigans

Many companies will try to play mind games with you when it comes to equity. Several companies pulled these on me.
A common one is presenting the total value of the stock grant rather than the annualized value, despite the stock not vesting evenly, or vesting over 5 years instead of the standard 4.
But the most egregious thing that companies will do is tell you absurd stories about the value of their stock. They’ll say: “okay, we’re worth this much now, but at the rate we’re growing, we’re going to be worth 10X that in a year. So really, the value of your options is many millions of dollars!”
To not mince words: this is cynically dishonest BS. Don’t buy it even for a second. I got this a few times, and the only reason I didn’t walk away from the offer immediately was because it was always a recruiter pulling this crap. If it was a manager I would’ve turned down the offer outright.
Here’s why this is infuriatingly stupid: a company’s valuation is determined by investors. These investors see the financials and the growth rate of the company, and invest at a price that reflects the current growth rate of the company.
In other words, they invested at a valuation that already took their 10x growth rate into account. Investors are not idiots. And unless you (or your recruiter) think you have privileged information or insight that the company’s investors don’t, you should probably take the investors’ word for it.
Also, a company’s nominal valuation is almost always inflated due to preferred shares, debt, and survivorship bias. But let’s ignore that for now.
So if a company gives you this hock of crap, fire back and tell them thank you, but you’ll be considering the stock at the same valuation their investors valued it at.
I mean, be nice. But don’t let them try to strong-arm you into accepting this garbage.
A job is not a suicide pact. Choose a company that is judicious and transparent, and you’ll be much more likely to find yourself respected and taken care of.

Other things you can ask for

Because I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out a few other things.
Relocation expenses often come out of separate budgets at big companies, so this is generally very easy to get.
Look for creative benefits that would be particularly valuable to you. Maybe it’s covering your commuter expenses, asking for dedicated volunteer or learning time, getting sponsored for conferences, or even charity donation matching.
Don’t assume anything’s off the table until you’ve tried bringing it up.
That said, don’t throw the entire kitchen sink at them. A negotiation can quickly become cumbersome for an employer if you bring up a litany of changes. Keep the changeset as pithy as you can.

Negotiating Jiu Jitsu

Recruiters love trying to trick you into ending the negotiation early. They’re going to do this relentlessly. Don’t fault them for it — I suspect they can’t help themselves.
Just keep breaking out of their shenanigans. Don’t let yourself be pressured into ending a negotiation until you’re actually ready to make a final decision.
This is especially grave if you have multiple offers, and you let one company pressure you into canceling the others. Companies succeed in doing this all the time, so I want to equip you with the skills to jiu jitsu out of these techniques.
Here are two situations you can break out of. These are both real situations that happened to me during my negotiations, though the numbers and details are invented.
Situation 1:
I ask for a 10K increase in signing bonus. The company gets back to me and says, “That’s really tough for us to do. I’m going to try. I think you’re worth it. But I can’t really go to my boss and fight for you unless she knows you’re going to sign. Are you going to sign if I get you that 10K?”
You should be thinking: ah, this person is trying to force me to a decision point and take away my negotiating power.
I respond, “Okay, so what I’m hearing is that you’ll have to expend some personal reputation to get me a 10K bonus. If you end up going to bat for me, are you confident you’ll be able to get that 10K?”
“I think I can, it just comes down to you Haseeb. If you’re serious about joining us, then I’ll go fight for you. But I need to know for sure you’ll sign.”
Great. Time to jiu jitsu.
“That makes sense. Unfortunately I can’t commit to signing yet; I’m not yet at the stage where I can make a final decision. Like I told you before, this weekend I’m going to sit down with my family and talk things over with them. Choosing the company I’m going to spend the next few years at is a commitment I take really seriously. So I want to be sure I’m making a well-considered decision.
“But since you’re confident that you can get an extra 10K, let’s do this instead: in my mind, I’ll pretend this offer is [X + 10K] and as I’m considering my final decision, that’s where I’ll value it. I know it’s tough for you to go and get that from your boss, so I don’t want you to do that until I’m certain I’m going to sign.”
They then vaguely recant and promptly get approval for the 10K bonus.
Situation 2:
I ask for a 20% increase in stock package. The hiring manager, knowing that I’m negotiating with other companies, then fires back: “I want to get this stock package for you. And I know I can, we’ve got the budget. But before I do that, I need your word on something.”
“What’s that?”
“I need you to give me your word that if I improve your offer, you’re not going to just turn around and take our counter-offer to [COMPETITOR_COMPANY] to improve your offer with them.”
You should be thinking: so basically they’re asking me not to negotiate.
“Let me see if I understand what you’re saying. You are willing to improve my offer, but only if I agree that I won’t tell [COMPETITOR] what you’re offering me. Is that correct?”
“Well no, I can’t legally do that. What I mean is… what I mean is, look. I like you. But if I improve your offer and you just take our offer to [COMPETITOR], you’ll be violating my trust.”
“Okay, let me be sure I understand you here. If you give me this offer and I tell [COMPETITOR], I will be violating the trust under which you’re granting me this improved offer. Is that correct?”
“Uhh… Look. How about this. In my mind, I’m going to go get you this stock package okay? And in my head, I’m going to do it with the assumption that you’re the kind of person I think you are, and you’re going to consider our offer in its own right and not just shop it around. Fair enough?”
I nod. He gets the improved offer. I continue to negotiate. Antics averted.
(In case you’re wondering, if he had said “yes,” I would have turned down the proposal.)

The Path to Signing

It’s not enough to just continually ask for stuff. Companies need to sense that you’re actually moving toward a final decision, and not just playing games with them.
Your goal in a negotiation is not to be difficult or elusive. True, you should assert your value and carefully consider your options, but you can do so in a way that’s respectful and considerate toward the companies you’re talking to.
Don’t go dark on people. Be open and communicative. I keep saying be honest and I mean it — be honest.
Aside: I keep talking about honesty, and you might protest that this is antithetical to my earlier rule of “protect information.” It’s not. True, you should protect information that might weaken your negotiating position, but you should be as communicative as possible about everything else (which is most things).
Negotiating is all about relationship, and communication is the bedrock of any relationship.
This brings me to the final rule, Rule #10: be winnable. This is more than just giving the company the impression that you like them (which you continually should). But more so that you must give any company you’re talking to a clear path on how to win you. Don’t BS them or play stupid games. Be clear and unequivocal with your preferences and timeline.
If there is nothing that a company could do to sign you, or you don’t actually want to work for them, then don’t negotiate with them. Period.
Don’t waste their time or play games for your own purposes. Even if the company isn’t your dream company, you must be able to imagine at least some package they could offer you that would make you sign. If not, politely turn them down.
It costs each company money to interview you and to negotiate with you. I didn’t negotiate with every company I received an offer from, but if there was one key mistake I made in my job search, it was that I still negotiated with too many (in large part because I didn’t think my job search would be successful).

Making the Final Decision

Okay, it’s decision time.
(Yes, you do have to make one.)
Three things to keep in mind here:

1. be clear about your deadline
2. assert your deadline continually
3. use your final decision as your trump card

When you start negotiating, you don’t have to be clear about your timeline because you probably don’t have one yet. But once you get into intermediary stages, you should set for yourself a deadline on which you’ll sign. It can be for an arbitrary reason (or no reason at all), but just pre-committing to a deadline will allow you to negotiate more clearly and powerfully.
“A weekend with the family” I found works nicely, as it has the added benefit of roping other decision makers in. Then when companies push you to end negotiations early, you can re-assert this deadline.
Companies should all be totally aware of when you’re going to make your decision. This will raise the stakes and galvanize negotiations as the deadline approaches.
This deadline also lets you defer your decision while still improving offers. Your narrative should basically be “I want to see the strongest offer your company can muster. Then I will go into my cave, meditate for 10 days, and when I emerge I will have decided in my heart which company to join.” This gives you enormous power to avoid any on-the-spot decision points or premature promises.
Eventually, deadline day will come. Try to make this a business day (say, a Friday or a Monday) so that you can communicate with recruiters during this day. If a hail mary is going to happen, it’ll happen here.
Even if there’s only one company in the running, you should always always wait until the last day to sign your offer. Yes, even if you’re certain you’re going to sign and even if it’s your dream job. I’ve seen many scenarios in which offers spontaneously improved as deadlines approached, or a fallen player gets up and presents you the holy grail in the 11th hour. Either way, there’s no harm.
Finally, your trump card. Save this for the very end. Your trump card is these words:

“If you can do X, I will sign.”

Note, this is NOT “If you give me X, the offer will be more compelling blah blah blah.” We’re past that. It’s time to make a promise.
Every company that’s still on the table, let them know what it would take to sign you (unless there’s nothing they could do). And when you make the final ask, don’t forget reason-giving, even if it’s the same reason as before!

“Hi Joel, I’ve been thinking it over and it’s genuinely a really tough decision for me. I loved everyone at [COMPANY] but the one thing that makes it hard for me is the salary. As you know I’m trying to pay off my student loans so salary is really important to me right now. If you can improve the salary by 10K a year, then I’ll be totally ready to sign.”

With luck, they meet you half-way. Or, with a little more luck, they’ll meet all of it.
And just because I know someone will ask — yes, once say you’re going to sign, you should always sign. Never go back on your word. It’s a small world. People talk. These kind of things will come back to haunt you. (More importantly, never go back on your word because you’re the kind of person who never goes back on their word.)
Tell all of the other parties that you’ve made your final decision. Thank them for the negotiation. If you did it well, they’ll usually thank you back, tell you to keep in touch, and to reach out again in a couple years next time you’re on the market.

Most Damaging Biases

source

The six most damaging biases:

• confirmation bias - the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one's preexisting beliefs or hypotheses

• fundamental attribution error -t he tendency to believe that what people do reflects who they are

• the bias blind spot - the feeling that one is less biased than the average person

• the anchoring effect - an individual relies too heavily on an initial piece of information offered (considered to be the "anchor") when making decisions

• the representativeness heuristic - assessing similarity of objects and organizing them based around the category prototype (e.g., like goes with like, and causes and effects should resemble each other)

• projection bias - the assumption that everybody else’s thinking is the same as one’s own

How to Be Resilient in the Face of Harsh Criticism

source

Most of us have been “feedsmacked” at some point in our life. In the midst of a meeting, an innocent walk down the hallway, or a performance review, someone delivers a verbal wallop that rocks our psychological footing. We looked at 445 such incidents when we conducted an online survey asking people about the hardest feedback they ever received.
Some of the comments were downright harsh (“Think about leaving — I need warriors not wimps” and “You only want to be right. You are manipulative. You don’t care about others”) and others were less intense while still direct (“When you lose your temper, it can make others feel less respected” and “You need to improve your emails by only stating facts and not making them so flowery or soft”).
Many respondents to our study were still haunted by a harsh comment they received decades ago. I know this feeling from personal experience. I still feel a tightness in my chest and a sense of profound dread when I recall an episode where a colleague who didn’t like the way I handled an email called me a “f—ing idiot” and threatened to destroy me.
My hunch was that those who received such high-octane criticisms were likely to feel worse than those who received gentler comments. But, surprisingly, people who received less severe comments reported being just as overwhelmed and upset.
I was also surprised that few in our study became combative in the face of criticism, regardless of its severity. In fact, close to 90% described their immediate emotional response with words like dumbfounded, flabbergasted, shocked, stunned, or numb and 40% described a “shame”-related emotion like: embarrassment, worthlessness, hurt, sadness, and self-doubt. A scant 15% reacted with feelings that focused on the other person: anger, betrayal, or violence.
Why would anodyne observations create just as much agony as scathing assaults? The answer is this: we all crave approval and fear truth. And critical feedback feels traumatic because it threatens two of our most fundamental psychological needs: safety (perceived physical, social, or material security) and worth (a sense of self-respect, self-regard, or self-confidence).

Let’s address safety first. There are times when feedback does include financial threats (“I’m going to fire you”), relational threats (“I’m going to leave you”), or even physical threats (“I’m going to hit you”). In these instances, fear is the right response. But our analysis of the 445 episodes people reported in our study showed that immediate threats are a rare exception. In most cases, it is our defensive, combative, or resentful response to feedback that puts us at risk more than the feedback itself.

Now let’s talk about worth. If learning truth is beneficial, why would its reception provoke shame, fear, and anger? Because we live with an undercurrent of terror that we aren’t worthy and feedback risks pointing this out.
Many in our study argued that feedback hurts worse when the messenger has malicious motives. In truth, motive is irrelevant. The reality is that most of us crave the approval of powerful people. Our secret hope is that their positive endorsement might finally quiet feelings of nagging inadequacy. But it doesn’t.
I’ve spent much of my life believing that the best way to help people receive and act on negative feedback is to help those who are delivering it to improve their message. But I’m now convinced I was wrong. Rather than focusing on saying things the “right” way, we need to all get better a finding truth in negative feedback, no matter how it’s delivered.
I’ve witnessed first-hand how people can do this by taking responsibility for their own safety and worth. For the past three years, I have studied and worked with a nonprofit called The Other Side Academy (TOSA) in Salt Lake City, Utah. Approximately one hundred adult men and women with long histories of crime, addiction, and homelessness live at TOSA in a self-reliant community that thrives on feedback. Their fundamental belief is that relentless exposure to truth is the best path to growth and happiness.

Twice a week, students engage in a process called “Games,” which is two hours of nonstop feedback. It can be loud. Vocabulary is sometimes raw and colorful. And a single student can be the focus of relentless attention for 20-25 minutes from as many as two dozen colleagues. Peers present you with evidence that you are dishonest, manipulative, lazy, selfish, or mean. There is little emphasis placed on diplomatic delivery of the message. Instead, they focus on helping the individual learn to “take their game.”
A few students react to their game defensively. They’ll withdraw, deny, or lash-out against those who are telling them things they don’t want to hear. But most don’t. They quickly learn that they are the primary source of their own safety. Reassuring themselves of their own efficacy is the fastest path to peace, and the best way to increase their self-efficacy is to scour the feedback for truth. The feedback is either true, false, or more often, a mix of the two. And if the truth is going to hurt you, it is more likely to do greater damage when you don’t know it than when you do. So, learning it is always beneficial.
What I’ve learned from the TOSA students is that we need to build our resilience in the face of criticism. Here are four steps you can try the next time harsh feedback catches you off-guard. I’ve organized them into an easy-to-remember acronym — CURE — to help you put these lessons in practice even when you’re under stress.

1. Collect yourself. Breathing deeply and slowly reminds you that you are safe. It signals that you don’t need to be aroused for physical defense. Noticing your feelings helps, too. Are you hurt, scared, embarrassed, ashamed? The more connected you are to these primary feelings the less you become consumed with secondary effects like anger, defensiveness, or exaggerated fear. Some students collect themselves by consciously connecting with soothing truths, for example by repeating a phrase like, “This can’t hurt me. I’m safe.” or “If I made a mistake, it doesn’t mean I am a mistake.”
2. Understand. Be curious. Ask questions and ask for examples. And then just listen. Detach yourself from what is being said as though it is being said about a third person. That will help you bypass the need to evaluate what you’re hearing. Simply act like a good reporter trying to understand the story.
3. Recover. It’s often best at this point to simply exit the conversation. Explain that you want some time to reflect and you’ll respond when you have a chance to do so. Give yourself permission to feel and recover from the experience before doing any evaluation of what you heard. At TOSA, students sometimes simply say, “I will take a look at that.” They don’t agree. They don’t disagree. They simply promise to look sincerely at what they were told on their own timeline. You can end a challenging episode by simply saying, “It’s important to me that I get this right. I need some time. And I’ll get back to you to let you know where I come out.”
4. Engage. Examine what you were told. If you’ve done a good job reassuring yourself of your safety and worth, rather than poking holes in the feedback, you’ll look for truth. If it’s 90% fluff and 10% substance, look for the substance. There is almost always at least a kernel of truth in what people are telling you. Scour the message until you find it. Then, if appropriate, re-engage with the person who shared the feedback and acknowledge what you heard, what you accept, and what you commit to do. At times, this may mean sharing your view of things. If you’re doing so with no covert need for their approval, you won’t need to be defensive.

It turns out that the misery we feel when “feedsmacked” is a symptom of a much deeper problem. Those who acknowledge and address this deeper issue don’t just get better at these rare startling moments of emotional trauma, they are better equipped for all of life’s vicissitudes.

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What is REST

REST is acronym for REpresentational State Transfer. It is architectural style for distributed hypermedia systems and was first presented by Roy Fielding in 2000 in his famous dissertation.
Like any other architectural style, REST also does have it’s own 6 guiding constraints which must be satisfied if an interface needs to be referred as RESTful. These principles are listed below.

Guiding Principles of REST

1. Client–server – By separating the user interface concerns from the data storage concerns, we improve the portability of the user interface across multiple platforms and improve scalability by simplifying the server components.
2. Stateless – Each request from client to server must contain all of the information necessary to understand the request, and cannot take advantage of any stored context on the server. Session state is therefore kept entirely on the client.
3. Cacheable – Cache constraints require that the data within a response to a request be implicitly or explicitly labeled as cacheable or non-cacheable. If a response is cacheable, then a client cache is given the right to reuse that response data for later, equivalent requests.
4. Uniform interface – By applying the software engineering principle of generality to the component interface, the overall system architecture is simplified and the visibility of interactions is improved. In order to obtain a uniform interface, multiple architectural constraints are needed to guide the behavior of components. REST is defined by four interface constraints: identification of resources; manipulation of resources through representations; self-descriptive messages; and, hypermedia as the engine of application state.
5. Layered system – The layered system style allows an architecture to be composed of hierarchical layers by constraining component behavior such that each component cannot “see” beyond the immediate layer with which they are interacting.
6. Code on demand (optional) – REST allows client functionality to be extended by downloading and executing code in the form of applets or scripts. This simplifies clients by reducing the number of features required to be pre-implemented.

lego sorter project

https://spectrum.ieee.org/geek-life/hands-on/how-i-built-an-ai-to-sort-2-tons-of-lego-pieces

Swap caps on systems without x11 or xwindows

swap caps on systems without x11 or xwindows

ESRGAN

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https://kingdomakrillic.tumblr.com/post/178254875891/i-figured-out-how-to-get-esrgan-and-sftgan

Inclusive Leaders

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Companies increasingly rely on diverse, multidisciplinary teams that combine the collective capabilities of women and men, people of different cultural heritage, and younger and older workers. But simply throwing a mix of people together doesn’t guarantee high performance; it requires inclusive leadership — leadership that assures that all team members feel they are treated respectfully and fairly, are valued and sense that they belong, and are confident and inspired.
Inclusiveness isn’t just nice to have on teams. Our research shows that it directly enhances performance. Teams with inclusive leaders are 17% more likely to report that they are high performing, 20% more likely to say they make high-quality decisions, and 29% more likely to report behaving collaboratively. What’s more, we found that a 10% improvement in perceptions of inclusion increases work attendance by almost 1 day a year per employee, reducing the cost of absenteeism.
What specific actions can leaders take to be more inclusive? To answer this question, we surveyed more than 4,100 employees about inclusion, interviewed those identified by followers as highly inclusive, and reviewed the academic literature on leadership. From this research, we identified 17 discrete sets of behaviors, which we grouped into six categories (or “traits”), all of which are equally important and mutually reinforcing. We then built a 360-degree assessment tool for use by followers to rate the presence of these traits among leaders. The tool has now been used by over 3,500 raters to evaluate over 450 leaders. The results are illuminating.

These are the six traits or behaviors that we found distinguish inclusive leaders from others:
Visible commitment: They articulate authentic commitment to diversity, challenge the status quo, hold others accountable and make diversity and inclusion a personal priority.
Humility: They are modest about capabilities, admit mistakes, and create the space for others to contribute.
Awareness of bias: They show awareness of personal blind spots as well as flaws in the system and work hard to ensure meritocracy.
Curiosity about others: They demonstrate an open mindset and deep curiosity about others, listen without judgment, and seek with empathy to understand those around them.
Cultural intelligence: They are attentive to others’ cultures and adapt as required.
Effective collaboration: They empower others, pay attention to diversity of thinking and psychological safety, and focus on team cohesion.

These traits may seem like the obvious ones, similar to those that are broadly important for good leadership. But the difference between assessing and developing good leadership generally versus inclusive leadership in particular lies in three specific insights.
First, most leaders in the study were unsure about whether others experienced them as inclusive or not. More particularly, only a third (36%) saw their inclusive leadership capabilities as others did, another third (32%) overrated their capabilities and the final third (33%) underrated their capabilities. Even more importantly, rarely were leaders certain about the specific behaviors that actually have an impact on being rated as more or less inclusive.

Second, being rated as an inclusive leader is not determined by averaging all members’ scores but rather by the distribution of raters’ scores. For example, it’s not enough that, on average, raters agree that a leader “approaches diversity and inclusiveness wholeheartedly.” Using a five-point scale (ranging from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree”), an average rating could mean that some team members disagree while others agree. To be an inclusive leader, one must ensure that everyone agrees or strongly agrees that they are being treated fairly and respectfully, are valued, and have a sense of belonging and are psychologically safe.
Third, inclusive leadership is not about occasional grand gestures, but regular, smaller-scale comments and actions. By comparing the qualitative feedback regarding the most inclusive (top 25%) and the least inclusive (bottom 25%) of leaders in our sample, we discovered that inclusive leadership is tangible and practiced every day.
These verbatim responses from our assessments illustrate some of the tangible behaviors of the most inclusive leaders in the study.

• Shares personal weaknesses: “[This leader] will openly ask about information that she is not aware of. She demonstrates a humble unpretentious work manner. This puts others at ease, enabling them to speak out and voice their opinions, which she values.”
• Learns about cultural differences: “[This leader] has taken the time to learn the ropes (common words, idioms, customs, likes/dislikes) and the cultural pillars.”
• Acknowledges team members as individuals: “[This leader] leads a team of over 100 people and yet addresses every team member by name, knows the work stream that they support and the work that they do.”

The following verbatims illustrate some of the behaviors of the least inclusive leaders:

• Overpowers others: “He can be very direct and overpowering which limits the ability of those around him to contribute to meetings or participate in conversations.”
• Displays favoritism: “Work is assigned to the same top performers, creating unsustainable workloads. [There is a] need to give newer team members opportunities to prove themselves.”
• Discounts alternative views: “[This leader] can have very set ideas on specific topics. Sometimes it is difficult to get an alternative view across. There is a risk that his team may hold back from bringing forward challenging and alternative points of view.”

What leaders say and do has an outsized impact on others, but our research indicates that this effect is even more pronounced when they are leading diverse teams. Subtle words and acts of exclusion by leaders, or overlooking the exclusive behaviors of others, easily reinforces the status quo. It takes energy and deliberate effort to create an inclusive culture, and that starts with leaders paying much more attention to what they say and do on a daily basis and making adjustments as necessary. Here are four ways for leaders to get started:
Know your inclusive-leadership shadow: Seek feedback on whether you are perceived as inclusive, especially from people who are different from you. This will help you to see your blind spots, strengths, and development areas. It will also signal that diversity and inclusion are important to you. Scheduling regular check-ins with members of your team to ask how you can make them feel more included also sends the message.
Be visible and vocal: Tell a compelling and explicit narrative about why being inclusive is important to you personally and the business more broadly. For example, share your personal stories at public forums and conferences.
Deliberately seek out difference: Give people on the periphery of your network the chance to speak up, invite different people to the table, and catch up with a broader network. For example, seek out opportunities to work with cross-functional or multi-disciplinary teams to leverage diverse strengths.
Check your impact: Look for signals that you are having a positive impact. Are people copying your role modeling? Is a more diverse group of people sharing ideas with you? Are people working together more collaboratively? Ask a trusted advisor to give you candid feedback on the areas you have been working on.

There’s more to be learned about how to become an inclusive leader and harness the power of diverse teams, but one thing is clear: leaders who consciously practice inclusive leadership and actively develop their capability will see the results in the superior performance of their diverse teams.

Stress + Rest = Growth

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As an athlete, if you want to improve something—your 100-meter time, say, or your deadlift PR—you’ve got to apply a challenge, some sort of “stressor,” and then follow it with a period of rest and recovery. Too much stress without enough rest and you get injury, illness, and burnout. Not enough stress plus too much rest and you get complacency, boredom, and stagnation.

Stress + Rest = Growth. It’s as simple and as hard as that.

Since Peak Performance was published a little over a year ago, no theme from the book has garnered as much attention as that equation. And for good reason. The American College of Sports Medicine, the country’s premier body on the application of fitness science, has officially endorsed training in this manner to increase size and strength. Meanwhile, a 2015 study published in the journal Frontiers in Physiology found that best endurance athletes in the world all have one thing in common: they oscillate between periods of stress and rest.

And yet the more feedback I get from readers, the more I see how that equation can be beneficially applied not just to fitness but to all areas of life. Below are a few of the most common examples, along with some practical advice on how to make what I’ve come to call the “Growth Equation” work for you.

Grow Your Career

When I’m coaching non-athlete clients who are striving to excel professionally, I start by asking them where they want to be in their careers and what they are doing to get there. In my experience, people in the workplace—myself included—tend to fall into one of two traps: either getting stuck in a rut where they are just going through the motions or taking on so much hard work at once that they become completely overwhelmed. Neither is conducive to long-term progression.

I encourage my clients to systematically challenge—to stress—themselves in the direction they want to grow. And then I ask them to follow those challenges with rest and reflection. What went well? What didn’t go well? What could I do differently next time?

Career progression is generally more complex than going from a 6-minute mile to a 5:45 mile; or from squatting 200 pounds to 210 pounds. It’s harder to dial in the right amount of “stress.” On a scale of one to ten—with one being "I could do this in my sleep" and ten being "this is giving me panic attacks"—I ask my clients to take on projects that they’d rate a seven; assignments that they think they’d get right seven or eight out of 10 times, but not every time. These are just-manageable challenges.

Another way to think about stress in the context of career growth is something I got from my co-author on Peak Performance, Steve Magness. He says: “Ask yourself, ‘What’s the next logical step?’ And then do that.” For example, if you’re used to presenting to middle managers, try to create a situation where you’re in front of a vice-president. If you manage a team of five, talk with your boss about trying to expand that to seven or eight.

Just make sure you don’t go from challenge to challenge without giving yourself some time to catch your breath. Much like a muscle grows in between challenging workouts, career growth is more sustainable if you respect the need to rest, recover, and reflect in between challenging projects.

Grow Your Team and Organization

What do Kodak, Blockbuster Video, Borders Books, and the Cleveland Browns have in common? They were all busy doing things the same old way over and over again when the world around them was changing; they neglected to “stress” themselves in the direction of growth. The first three are out of business and the Browns are perennially at the bottom of the NFL.

What do Google and the San Antonio Spurs have in common? They all continue to evolve their strategies to stay ahead of the competition. Google does this by extending into new markets—think: from an internet search-engine to self-driving cars. The Spurs do it by constantly evaluating and adjusting their style of play, including overseas recruiting of little-known players who become hard-to-guard stars. An area of business research called Organizational Ecology says that organizations that are forward-looking, reflective, and challenge themselves to grow tend to survive and sustain their performance over time.

Grow Your Relationships

I am by no means an expert on relationships, but something that comes up repeatedly in the Q and A part of my workshops is how the growth equation tends to apply here, too. Be it friendships or romantic relationships, people in audiences always call this out. Bonds strengthen after two people experience a challenge together and then openly reflect on it. A handful of experts think the same. But just like in the other contexts, too much “stress” without enough rest and the relationship can flame out.

Make the Growth Equation Work for You

• Pick an area of your life.
• Reflect on where you currently are and where you want to be.
• Think about whether you ought to be in a state of stress—taking on just-manageable challenges—or in a state of rest, recovery, and reflection.
• Align your behavior accordingly.
• Check in every few weeks, just like you would for any other training program, and evaluate your progress.