Month: January 2019

  • Evolving against entropy

    ​In the last fortnight, I had two interactions with customer care teams. The first was Kotak, for a bank account. There were failures at multiple levels, but the biggest takeaway was how difficult it was to get through to a human. Chatbots have their uses but this was extreme! Twitter DMs weren’t a help either. The second was Amazon, and that surprisingly included being put on hold for about 15 minutes and transferred 5 times! Thankfully, the problem was resolved in 30. But given the famed Amazon customer-centricity, this was a disappointment, and I wondered if at scale, it was inevitable. 

    What causes it? The best frame I have seen is entropy. (via) Yes, that physics and thermodynamics thing – the degree of disorder/randomness in the system. Though the meaning remains the same, the application changes. In the context of a business, it is the tax applied by the system between input and output. Just imagine the effort that is required to get things done in a corporate structure as against a startup. While it is theoretically possible for a complex system to have lesser entropy than a simple system, I have not seen it in practice. I can imagine why it is so – the randomness that can be generated by different touchpoints, and their optimization for following rules as opposed to providing solutions. What happened to me with Kotak and Amazon were examples of that.   (more…)

  • The Yellow Submarine

    Beatles, beer of the craft kind, and a 4.4 rating on Zomato. What’s not to like, we thought, and the long Dussehra weekend gave us the courage that one must have in the face of Bangalore traffic, especially when we have to get to the other half of the planet – Bannerghatta Road.

    We reached there by around 5.30, and got our first warning – the building has Big Bazaar on the ground floor. We were reminded of 3 Monkeys, Bangalore’s worst microbrewery in our experience. Even the Sarjapur ones couldn’t beat that one. The trip to the fourth floor, where the brewery is located, wasn’t really an uplifting experience either. The elevator had a capacity of 4, and was already full. So we took the stairs, and that was an olfactory assault that we barely survived.

    After the entrance hatch, things get a little better. The rooftop itself has two levels, and we chose the lower one. It has bar stools and regular seating, and probably thanks to the greenery across the road (IIM campus), there is a fair amount of wind. Later in the evening, when the yellow lights are switched on, the place does look pretty.

    From the beer menu, I asked for a Kölsch, partly because I had liked the version at Wanderers. D chose a safe Hefeweizen. When the waiter said “select starters”, I began doing just that. But it turned out that only select starters were available till 6.30 – fries, masala peanuts and the like. Thankfully, pizzas were available, so we ordered a BBQ chicken pizza. After a while, we began wondering whether he had meant that service in general would happen only after 6.30! We consoled ourselves that perhaps he didn’t want us getting the beer without anything to eat. Around then, we saw a pizza making its way from the kitchen to a serving table nearby. After an appropriate cooling time, it was allowed passage to our table. We casually enquired about the beer, and got a “really?” look in return. The beer mugs had obviously not seen cleaning for a while and we had to clean them ourselves. My beer, on the other hand, seemed like soap water! The Hefeweizen was a consolation. The pizza wasn’t bad, and they were nice enough to ask, after we had finished most of it, whether we needed any sauce! Aww.

    Only because there was a 2+2 on Zomato Gold, I asked for a Belgian Witbier. This one seemed to be from the initial batch – around the time they had started the place! 😐

    D merely repeated her drink! In the meanwhile, we were told that pasta also made the cut in the ‘select’ dishes available. The tri colour lasagna seemed like a patriotic must-do. The yellow lights had been switched on, so every picture took on a jaundice filter! The pasta was so-so, and by then it was 6.30. We chickened out of the Ghee Roast and ordered a Housemade (sic) Snicker Bar. This thankfully, wasn’t very bad.

    The bill came to around Rs.1350, mostly thanks to the 2+2 beers.  The service, from what we experienced, considers this a glorified bar. Masala peanuts is their go-to suggestion. They also have a very rule book led south Bangalore approach – only tiffin until 6.30! The music is classic rock, and that helped drown the sorrow of having traveled more than 20 km one way! It barely beat 3 Monkeys, so I wouldn’t recommend a visit.

    The Yellow Submarine, 4th Floor,SRK Towers (Big Bazaar building), Bannerghatta Road, Ph: 8722147555 (map)

  • Certain, simple frames

    I read an article recently on decision making, which among other things wrote about how instinct could beat analytical thinking. An insightful heuristic that I found in it was this – ..if you are in an uncertain world, make it simple. If you are in a world that’s highly predictable, make it complex.

    While the article focused on decision making in the business context, I could relate to it in the personal context. I see the world at large as an uncertain and complex place, and have spent a lot of time in the last few years trying to contain its influence on my own life. It has been an evolution. The expectations frame  I have written about does a fairly good job of reducing the variables, but it isn’t perfect. There are people and events that frustrate me, I sometimes lose my cool, and my remorse later doesn’t really change anything for anyone, including me. (example) (more…)

  • The Rise of the Robots

    Martin Ford

    The bad news – it would seem that the robocracy is inevitable. The good news – this is a very well written book!
    In most robotics and AI narratives, what gets lost is the nuance as folks very firmly root themselves in polarising camps on the future of our species. The reason why this book worked for me was because its focus was less on the dramatic headline (what) and more on why it would happen. It is a very well researched book and sets about debunking popular schools of thought in a very clinical manner. The author is also wise enough to call out the things he is not sure of and mention alternate points of view, as well as objective enough to not fall for the hype of everything that’s new and supposedly disruptive.

    Though he does begin with the now ascertained fact that the first wave of automation will take away the routine and predictable jobs, he also warns that it won’t stop there. Even what we would call the higher end jobs will be safe only for a while longer. He is clear that this is a wave of disruption different from what we have seen before because the cognitive abilities that get developed will be replicable and scalable. He also demolishes a couple of currently popular coping mechanisms – consistent re-skilling, and man-machine collaboration.

    The second half of the book focuses on the economic and societal implications of the rise of the robots. He predicts the fall of middle class demand as well as economic mobility, as incomes stagnate or disappear completely, and warns that economic growth would not be sustainable since robots cannot be expected to be consumers, and the plutocracy (top 5% of the population) which has the money can only consume so much!

    The solution he believes in is some version of a universal income which would ensure the participation of a larger segment of the population and give some semblance of prosperity to everyone. But he also sees several challenges in execution.

    Beyond the broader narrative, there are some fascinating statistics and anecdotes – the development of Watson, the scarily increasing time it takes for employment to regain its original levels after a recession, the sale price of Internet behemoths (YouTube, Instagram, Whatsapp) framed as a cost/employee, and so on.

    While the outcomes may not really be palatable to anyone who belongs to the species, it doesn’t take away from what a fascinating read this is!