Google and others have been playing around (quite successfully) with self-driving cars. Wouldn't it be great if we all had access to one of those? And while sitting in traffic, we could go ahead and do email, play on Facebook (or Instagram, or whatever is popular then), watch movies, etc. Or partake in any of these other activities?
However, I don't think moving to a primarily autonomous vehicle world would be as incremental as people think.
I've come to a similar conclusion as the linked article that individual car ownership would become obsolete. Even a heavy commuter only uses their car 2-3 hours a day, why would they pay for the other 21 hours if they didn't need to? If you no longer own your car, you wouldn't spend a bunch of money configuring it to your liking either. We'd probably end up with a smaller selection of vehicles in the world, primarily differentiated by size. Granted this is all on the pretty far end of the spectrum of possibilities, we may instead just see Uber-esque companies pop up that maintain a fleet that we can all share. Come to think of it, most usage would be in commuter hours, which would leave a lot of cars sitting around ... I suppose we'd see higher rates at those times.
All of the above would grow organically along some path. We can speculate all we want, but most likely it would just happen as it makes sense. What is a lot harder to figure out for me is the licensing model and responsibility.
If I buy a self-driving car, who is liable if it's found guilty of an infraction? I see two major possible models:
1. The company who created the software (or possibly shared with the automaker who put the software on the car). While some estimates state that accidents would reduce by an order of magnitude or more and fatalities would drop from 30,000 to around 1,000 per year, no company in the world would sign up for potentially being liable for all, some, or even any of those fatalities. So would the company make the consumer sign some blanket no-fault agreement? Would you, as a consumer, accept all liability when, inevitably, a bug causes a crash? This is essentially a central responsibility model and probably doesn't scale well.
2. The company who created the software sells a license to the user. The user then installs it and takes the robot to get a license. The robot is associated with the car and the person from an insurance and liability standpoint. The responsibility is shared somehow (though it's not quite clear to me how this would happen well).
Just musing out loud here, but I think the license/responsibility model is the biggest barrier to autonomous cars. That, and the lack of fun-to-drive-ness. Can software robots drive stick?
Sunday, October 26, 2014
Tuesday, October 14, 2014
Musical cars
So, you've been driving stick, eh?
Next level: do you do double-clutching and heel-toe-ing?
I find both to be useful, especially with the close-ratio gears for higher speed situations when I need extra torque. Heel-toe-ing covers the added scenario of brakes being involved, usually that means going through a turn.
Double-clutch
Scenario: Cruising 70mph in 6th and suddenly you want power. Downshifting to 5th isn't quite gonna cut it, so you probably want 4th. However, the ratio diff between 6th and 4th is too big for the synchros to handle cleanly.
Sequence: Clutch in, stick to neutral, clutch out, rev to match (or really slightly exceed) speed in 4th, clutch in, stick to 4th, clutch out.
Why it works: the clutch disconnects the engine from the tranny, whereas neutral disconnects the tranny from the wheels (but leaves the engine attached). Thus, you can use the gas in neutral to get the revs from the engine transferred to the tranny. The wheels are disconnected, re-engaging 4th with the revs now matched connects everything. Clearly you have to do it fast enough that your revs don't fall during the post-neutral steps.
Heel-toe
Scenario: you need to slow down but want max power right after, such as in a turn.
Sequence: operate brake with toes of right foot. Execute double-clutch as above, but using your right heel/side of foot (depending on pedal layout) to operate the gas pedal.
Why it works: it parallelizes slowing down and shifting to the lower gear.
This one is a mental cluster-fuck. Ironically the first time I ever tried it, I just nailed it. Then I started thinking about it and it all went to hell.
Like so:
Both of the above require matching revs, which you can do mathematically based on gear ratios, however, you won't ever do math while driving. I rely on a "feel" of how deep and long I need to hit the gas depending on how many gears I skip, but this is naturally intermittently successful. It is possible to map it to music though.
Example: My car can hit 55 in 2nd, 80 in 3rd, 105 in 4th, 130 in 5th, 160 in 6th.
In the above example of 6th -> 4th, the ratio is almost exactly 2:3, which is almost exactly the ratio of a root to 5th in a scale. So, make it sound like a power chord :) Extend.
Friday, October 10, 2014
Salary disparity
Yesterday's comments by Satya Nadella at Grace Hopper have gotten a lot of people in tech talking about the inequality of pay between men and women. There's also the commonly quoted gap in percentage of each gender in tech, but I think that's a largely (or entirely) separate issue.
So why do women make less money for the same work? Multiple possibilities exist, and likely all of these (and more) are factors:
1. They typically don't demand higher pay
a. they don't promote themselves as effectively
2. Hiring managers undervalue them
3. Hiring managers know they can exploit [1]
As with all things free(ish) market, there's the buyer's side and seller's side. These two must overlap for there to be a mutually beneficial outcome.
The seller (business)'s side:
The business's interest is in staffing a position with a qualified person for as little as possible. Considerations for as little as possible can range from literally the lowest dollar amount someone will take to long-term retention and fairness considerations. A business can:
B1. Treat women equally. All is well.
B2. Be fundamentally biased and value comparable women less than men
B3. Be aware of gender-based trends and try to lowball women because they just might get away with it
The buyer (potential employee)'s side:
The employee's interest (assuming all else equal) is to get the most money for the job they are doing.
This amount is the maximum the business would be willing to spend to staff the position.
E1. Employee knows their market value and will ask for it.
If an employee fails to get to this number it is because:
E2. The employee does not know their own value
E3. The employee knows their own value, but for whatever reason doesn't make a push to receive appropriate pay (this can be fear of losing the job offer, non-confrontational personality, ... )
We can now look at each possible combination. Suppose the position in question's salary is fairly market valued at $100k.
B1.E1. Employee is offered 100k. Hooray.
B1.E2. Employee is offered 100k. Hooray again.
B1.E3. Employee is offered 100k. The system works!
B2.E1. Female employee is offered 75k. She asks for 100k. Company doesn't think she's worth it, deal is off.
B2.E2. Female employee is offered 75k. She takes it.
B2.E3. Female employee is offered 75k. She dislikes it, but takes it.
B3.E1. Female employee is offered 75k. She counters at 100k. Company accepts. Hooray-ish.
B3.E2. Female employee is offered 75k. She accepts.
B3.E3. Female employee is offered 75k. She dislikes it, but takes it.
I've simplified a lot of the details, but I think this matrix is representative and instructive (there are various sub-divisions we can make, but I think the principles emerge. For example, whether or not every man would get 100k from B2 or B3 isn't really relevant so long as they get more on average). Of the 9 outcomes, 3 are ideal and driven by socially responsible companies. 1 other achieves the same pay, but is driven by the employee. 4 others result in lower pay. 1 results in no job.
I think there's not much more to say about the 3 ideal cases. B3.E1 is interesting though. While the female employee gets max pay, she's now also burdened with the stress of maintaining her pay growth (presumably B3 will not grow her salary at market rate without her negotiating for it). This at a minimum makes her work environment less pleasant and/or feel discriminatory, at worst it causes her to have diminished capacity to perform her best, causing a real drop in value to the company. The remaining B3 cases would turn out at least somewhat better if the employee knew to negotiate for fair market value. Nothing the employee can do will get her market value at B2.
So how can any of this change?
Ideally, companies would all do the socially responsible thing and fix their practices. However, there will still be a very real desire for them to pay employees as little as possible, and I don't think that will ever go away. With transparency of pay, the B2 group should become non-competitive. However, pay is unlikely to become transparent ... but prospective employees can address this by applying for more jobs or to companies with good reputations. The real headway needs to be made in the B3 group. If employees can gain an understanding of their market value, they can push the B3 group closer to the B1 group. While there's still the stress of maintaining market value over time, this is still a much better position to be in.
Some industries address this with unions. Unions have not been a part of the tech landscape, and I don't think they would stick for reasons I won't enumerate right now.
Athletes address this with agents. Would we be willing to have someone else negotiate our contracts for us for a fee? Agents would have more visibility into actual salaries because they would represent lots of people. Thus, they would know the actual market. On the flipside, we'd probably need to move to fixed-length contracts (like in sports) so that the agents have motivation to keep negotiating for us. Is the prospect of higher pay worth going to this model for? The risk of not getting re-employed after a contract is over? The possibility of a pay decrease if the market softens? I don't know, but it's an interesting idea.
So why do women make less money for the same work? Multiple possibilities exist, and likely all of these (and more) are factors:
1. They typically don't demand higher pay
a. they don't promote themselves as effectively
2. Hiring managers undervalue them
3. Hiring managers know they can exploit [1]
As with all things free(ish) market, there's the buyer's side and seller's side. These two must overlap for there to be a mutually beneficial outcome.
The seller (business)'s side:
The business's interest is in staffing a position with a qualified person for as little as possible. Considerations for as little as possible can range from literally the lowest dollar amount someone will take to long-term retention and fairness considerations. A business can:
B1. Treat women equally. All is well.
B2. Be fundamentally biased and value comparable women less than men
B3. Be aware of gender-based trends and try to lowball women because they just might get away with it
The buyer (potential employee)'s side:
The employee's interest (assuming all else equal) is to get the most money for the job they are doing.
This amount is the maximum the business would be willing to spend to staff the position.
E1. Employee knows their market value and will ask for it.
If an employee fails to get to this number it is because:
E2. The employee does not know their own value
E3. The employee knows their own value, but for whatever reason doesn't make a push to receive appropriate pay (this can be fear of losing the job offer, non-confrontational personality, ... )
We can now look at each possible combination. Suppose the position in question's salary is fairly market valued at $100k.
B1.E1. Employee is offered 100k. Hooray.
B1.E2. Employee is offered 100k. Hooray again.
B1.E3. Employee is offered 100k. The system works!
B2.E1. Female employee is offered 75k. She asks for 100k. Company doesn't think she's worth it, deal is off.
B2.E2. Female employee is offered 75k. She takes it.
B2.E3. Female employee is offered 75k. She dislikes it, but takes it.
B3.E1. Female employee is offered 75k. She counters at 100k. Company accepts. Hooray-ish.
B3.E2. Female employee is offered 75k. She accepts.
B3.E3. Female employee is offered 75k. She dislikes it, but takes it.
I've simplified a lot of the details, but I think this matrix is representative and instructive (there are various sub-divisions we can make, but I think the principles emerge. For example, whether or not every man would get 100k from B2 or B3 isn't really relevant so long as they get more on average). Of the 9 outcomes, 3 are ideal and driven by socially responsible companies. 1 other achieves the same pay, but is driven by the employee. 4 others result in lower pay. 1 results in no job.
I think there's not much more to say about the 3 ideal cases. B3.E1 is interesting though. While the female employee gets max pay, she's now also burdened with the stress of maintaining her pay growth (presumably B3 will not grow her salary at market rate without her negotiating for it). This at a minimum makes her work environment less pleasant and/or feel discriminatory, at worst it causes her to have diminished capacity to perform her best, causing a real drop in value to the company. The remaining B3 cases would turn out at least somewhat better if the employee knew to negotiate for fair market value. Nothing the employee can do will get her market value at B2.
So how can any of this change?
Ideally, companies would all do the socially responsible thing and fix their practices. However, there will still be a very real desire for them to pay employees as little as possible, and I don't think that will ever go away. With transparency of pay, the B2 group should become non-competitive. However, pay is unlikely to become transparent ... but prospective employees can address this by applying for more jobs or to companies with good reputations. The real headway needs to be made in the B3 group. If employees can gain an understanding of their market value, they can push the B3 group closer to the B1 group. While there's still the stress of maintaining market value over time, this is still a much better position to be in.
Some industries address this with unions. Unions have not been a part of the tech landscape, and I don't think they would stick for reasons I won't enumerate right now.
Athletes address this with agents. Would we be willing to have someone else negotiate our contracts for us for a fee? Agents would have more visibility into actual salaries because they would represent lots of people. Thus, they would know the actual market. On the flipside, we'd probably need to move to fixed-length contracts (like in sports) so that the agents have motivation to keep negotiating for us. Is the prospect of higher pay worth going to this model for? The risk of not getting re-employed after a contract is over? The possibility of a pay decrease if the market softens? I don't know, but it's an interesting idea.
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