I would like to thank everyone who has given me the energy, either positive or negative, to become a better person.
2013-11-28
2013-11-24
2013-10-17
Automation
A capital crime for computer science is manual repetition of uninteresting tasks. You will be happier and more productive by proper automation, which, coincidentally, is a main job for computer scientists.
For example, instead of sitting up all night tuning parameters of an experiment, you can write a script to try over a million settings over night while you go home sleep or have a fun time in Lan Kwai Fong.
2013-10-14
Brainstorming
I stumbled upon this article about group brainstorming today.
It echoed well with my own personal experiences and my general take that meetings are almost always completely useless for research/creative works.
I do meetings only when absolutely necessary, such as resolving major confusions or conflicts among multiple team members, evaluating live demonstrations of a UI design, and interviewing (i.e. reading) people.
Some managers and administrators like meetings. Fight them with all your power. Do not let less intelligent people waste your time or reduce your effectiveness.
2013-10-01
2013-09-28
The Klingons
Imagine you are a Klingon warship commander. After going through some hyper-warp to arrive at an alternative space time, you find that all Klingons are in gentle servitude to humans.
This is what I felt about the HK technology industry as a SF bay area computer scientist.
PS
If you are a Klingon in that alternative space time, work with that commander so that you will not turn into a pussy.
2013-09-25
How to deal with flight delays when you are already onboard
Flight delays suck. But what sucks the most is when you are already on board, so that you are trapped on that narrow seat and you cannot even walk around in a terminal.
If you are on a plane with in-flight entertainment system (stay away from those airlines/airplanes that do not even offer this basic service to all cabins) and the captain is smart enough to turn it on, start watching your favorite movies. This directly converts painful delays into extra entertainment time. At least it beats sitting there whining and worrying.
I realized this while getting delayed on board by a super typhoon a few days ago. It was a short haul flight, so the normal fly time is not even enough for an average movie. But it turns out to be enough after adding the delay. I got to watch a movie not available on Netflix.
Job season
I am in a constant process of helping students and postdocs landing jobs.
One thing I find very common and extremely interesting is the discrepancy between self-perception and reality. That is, candidates tend to have a higher estimation about their own qualifications (and thus higher expectation about the job offers they will get) than what reality would warrant.
This is just human nature. There is very little I can do; few took my advice, and many learned the hard way. But I guess this is how life works.
Humility is a virtue that we all learn eventually, one way or another.
Bureaucratic engineering
Doug Burger, my last MSR manager and a former UT professor, shared with me some very valuable personal experiences when I was heading the opposite way.
One of these, as quoted from him, is: there are pockets of inefficiencies in a school that are rarely seen in a company.
After witnessing some of such pockets myself (you are absolutely right, Doug), I realized that the right approach, as any good engineer would do, is to accommodate these inefficiencies into the design of my products and processes, so that I would not be negatively impacted under any circumstances. It is basically the same as, say, designing hardware processors which can tolerate a range of temperatures, and software interfaces which can deal with different user inputs.
Self: Good engineers never assume optimal conditions. Rather, they build things that can function under a wide range of possible scenarios.
I guess this could be a fundamentally different mentality from people with pure academic background.
🙂