During the last 1-1 with a direct report who will transfer to another team, I found I prefer talking to him as a friend than as a manager.
I wonder if this reflects my style of influencing.
October 12, 2020
Vertical versus horizontal colleague
August 5, 2020
Popularity contest
A group of interns posted their projects on an internal expo and solicited popular votes with ferocity last seen in the 2016 Republican party presidential primaries.
Meanwhile, one intern submitted a paper to a top venue even before the start of the internship, and is now spending time revising the conditionally accepted paper, filing a patent, and collaborating with a product team, instead of campaigning for popularity among other interns.
Our time is very limited. As a research mentor, it is my responsibility to guide you towards what is important and steer you away from what is less so.
August 4, 2020
Marc Levoy joining Adobe
It was great to (virtually) meet with my PhD adviser after all these years. I was trying to discuss collaboration and he told me that he just wanted to catch up.
I have been bumping into the same group of people throughout my career; maybe we are a small community.
June 23, 2020
Anniversary dinner
The appetizers (corn mezzaluna, Spanish mackerel) and entrees (striped bass, duck breast) were pretty light until the chocolate souffle, which was much more fulfilling than the size would suggest and continued to roll in my stomach until deep into the night.
Drawing helped me to not only remember the experience (than, say, photography) but (counter-intuitively) also better engage in conversation.
This is my last celebratory meal before I manage to regenerate a losing body part considered to be irreversible by all doctors I have consulted so far.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CBztNAlHXd7/
May 26, 2020
A school bully
A student greeted members of her PhD defense committee via an email, and got scorched by one of the examiners for trying to schedule her own oral defense, using a “buddy” tone (including the use of emojis), sending from a non-school email account, and not addressing the examiner with a professor salute.
I like to tell this student that (1) a person is measured by the size of things that matter to him/her, (2) do not become such a person in the future.
May 8, 2020
Deep journey and genuine experience
There are these tourists who just want to visit as many places as possible to take (or even fake) photos without spending enough time experiencing the local life and culture with sufficient depth.
Researchers who abuse authorships are like such tourists.
They pretend having all the fun without actual experiencing much.
Life is a deep journey, and genuine experience is what matters the most.
May 3, 2020
Impact
A few days ago I read an article about an open-source ventilator that can be built with $400 in readily-available parts.
Today I saw a Facebook post discussing an article titled “Do top conferences contain well cited papers or junk?”.
Our impact is measured more about what we do for others (e.g., solving a social issue, curing a disease, saving the environment) than for ourselves (e.g., ego or career).
I would care much more about developing useful products or services than counting the number of papers or citations.
April 21, 2020
Mimetic desire
It takes intelligent and independent minds to desire what are really wanted.
April 16, 2020
Putting dollar values on human lives
Concrete numbers and data can help rational discussion of issues, including the trade-off between lives and jobs in the current lock-down situation.
April 1, 2020
Peak Asian American
This is the best time to be an Asian American.
Half a century before, it was better to be an American.
Half a century after, it would better to be an Asian.