Martin's Blog

A friend of mine recently brought to my attention the use of performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) in the workplace, especially in Silicon Valley.  I suspect this is not limited to the software field and probably either has or soon will bleed over into other “knowledge worker” fields.  Caffeine is now a gateway drug.

The sports world has something to teach us here.  Back in the 70′s, bodybuilders and power lifters started experimenting with steroids and 40 years later it’s hard to imagine a sport that hasn’t had a PED scandal.  It’s not hard to see why athletes were (and continue to be) so easily tempted:

1. Their careers are relatively short.
2. Their earning potential after their athletic career is often limited, so they want to maximize their earnings while they can.
3. Their short career can be cut even shorter at any time by injuries, which can be either prevented, ignored, or recovered from faster through the use of PEDs.
4. At the highest levels, incremental increases in performance are rewarded with exponential increases in compensation.

There are circumstantial similarities, but they aren’t as exaggerated in knowledge worker industries.  For instance, a sudden industry shift can shorten or redefine your career.  This recently affected many hardware engineers working for hard drives manufacturers.  A repetitive stress injury or back issue can make it difficult to work at a computer for long periods of time though I’m not aware of any workplace injury for programmers that is on the same level as a blown ACL in terms of either frequency or impact.

The money angle matches up the best, but really only for people that are able to “exit” an equity position.  In sports, the parallel would be for those exponential earnings increases to come only if your team wins the championship.  For company founders in a tech exit, the money can be as good or better as an elite athlete.  At many companies though, a senior engineer who is “twice as good” makes less than twice as much money.

There are other competitive advantage issues in sports though, and many of the others aren’t so clearly “cheating.”  For example, Tiger Woods had Lasik eye surgery.  Twice¹.  I’ve never heard any suggestion that this was improper, and I’m certainly not suggesting that now.  Still, his surgically enhanced eyes make him a better golfer.  Say that last sentence out loud.  Now, say it again but replace “surgically” with “chemically” or replaced “eyes” with some other body part.  It doesn’t seem like it would take much for this sort of thing to lead to serious objections from people in both sports and medicine.

I would now like to introduce you to Oscar Pistorius:

Oscar Leonard Carl Pistorius (born 22 November 1986) is a South African sprint runner. Known as the “Blade Runner” and “the fastest man on no legs”, Pistorius, who has a double amputation, is the world record holder in the 100, 200 and 400 metres (sport class T44) events and runs with the aid of Cheetah Flex-Foot carbon fibre transtibial artificial limbs by Ossur.

Oscar’s record times in the three primary sprinting events (100, 200, and 400 meters) are within 1-2 seconds of the world records in those events by runners with legs.  There is a debate surrounding him and his running blades concerning whether or not he should be eligible to compete in an open competition like the Olympics and whether or not these blades constitute an unfair advantage.²  That debate is complicated, I think, by the fact that the Olympics have generally allowed advanced technologies to be used in competition in ways that absolutely destroy existing records.  Two recent examples of such technologies are the LZR Racer swimsuits and Clap Skates.  In both cases, almost every related world record fell in the first Olympic Games where those technologies were introduced. For any readers that find Oscar’s story interesting, check out Anthony Robles.  he is a disabled athlete who has won in open competition.

Provigil seems to match the profile of sports-related PEDs like steroids and HGH.  There are both short and long term side effects.  There are potentially additional long term effects that are not known or understood yet.  People who use them illegally generally have a low likelihood of criminal prosecution.  Because of these similarities, I’d like to make the following predictions regarding how this is going to play out:

1. Leadership will initially have tacit approval of such things, and may even encourage it in some cases.  Ultimately, this will fade because companies will not want to expose themselves to the legal liability resulting from creating a culture that pressures their workforce into using illegal drugs and exposing themselves to long term health consequences.

2. Even though the average employee would probably rather not take such drugs, nor would they enjoy competing against other members of the talent pool, there will be resistance to drug testing in this area.  This will happen because the workforce will not want to grant control and leverage in this area to leadership.

It won’t stay that simple for long.  There’s enough money involved, that it’s not hard to imagine a market for designer drugs³ for knowledge workers.  There could be surgical and mechanical options too, just like in sports.  If you are one of the many people that missed the fine documentary Johnny Mnemonic, I recommend you track down a copy to see a completely reasonable possible future.

This may not end up manifesting itself on a person-by-person basis either.  With the global economy, certain countries could specialize in offering a “performance enhanced” workforce.  It seems dark, but there were such high levels of exploitation when manufacturing became a global market, why would it be any different here?

There’s no point in making specific predictions though.  That’s already been done, and done well by creative minds of science fiction.  In a comment to Attention to Detail, Hacker News user 6ren brought up the Verner Vinge novel A Deepness in the Sky and the “Focus” he was referring to can also be used as an example here⁴.  Further examples are left as an exercise to the reader.

1. I was reluctant to use Tiger again so soon, but it fit too well.  I’m not nearly as interested in Tiger you would guess based on my initial articles [↩]
2. Note: He current status is eligible.  The Wikipedia article I linked lays out the details clearly [↩]
3. In the sports world, the best example of this is BALCO [↩]
4. This is also a favorite of mine.  Nice work to unknowingly choose an example that ties together consecutive articles [↩]

Perhaps you have been a party to the following conversation:

Person A: Remember in <substitute movie> when <subtle event happened>?

Person B: I watched that movie just last night and I didn’t notice.

If you are not the creative type, then allow me to substitute a fun example for you:

Person A: Remember in Toy Story when Mr. Potato head kisses his butt with his own lips, to mock the slinky dog?¹

Person B: I watched that movie just last night and I didn’t notice.

Now, if you don’t have children, and don’t spend a lot of time around children, you’ll have to take my word for it on this one.  Every other conversation you have with a child is like this.

This takes some time to sink in if you haven’t lived it.  I’ve chosen to buy you a little time with a filler paragraph bereft of any useful information or subtle transition.  Parents especially will appreciate this break, I hope.  I’d also like to take this time to dispel any confusion regarding my choice of example.   The fact that I used a kids movie² is not relevant to the point.

Bill Watterson really nailed this concept in so many of his strips.  Unfortunately, there is no legitimate Calvin and Hobbes archive for me to link to.  Roger Ebert also expressed it with great clarity in his original review of Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory:

“Kids are not stupid. They are among the sharpest, cleverest, most eagle-eyed creatures on God’s Earth, and very little escapes their notice.”³

I recently had an experience with my children that illustrates the point perfectly.  We were  playing Plants vs. Zombies together⁴.  They need a little help planting enough sunflowers and defending in the early part of each mission, so I get them going and then they take over.  We’ve unlocked all the plants, so they get to choose from the full arsenal at the start of each mission.  It’s ok if you don’t follow.

Their favorite plant is what we call “The Chomper.”  This presents a problem as it is a sub-optimal purchase and offends me as both a gamer and a game developer.  I try to support my children’s decisions though, even the suspect ones.  The way it works is it “eats” the first zombie that approaches it.  While it is chewing on the zombie (which takes a minute or so), an arm sticks out the side of the chomper’s mouth and it is vulnerable to attack.⁵

Almost all of the zombies are the same size, except for two.  One is a giant that the chomper cannot eat and the other is a mini guy that the chomper can eat.  In one of our games, a chomper ate a mini guy.  This is  such an unlikely occurrence that it has only happened to us once.⁶

So there’s all this stuff flying around the screen, and in the middle of the action a chomper eats a mini zombie and right away, my daughter asks me why the arm sticking out of the chomper was a normal-sized arm, when the chomper had only eaten a mini zombie.  Recall that the entire point of relating the story is that this sort of thing is not exceptional for a child.  This sort of thing happens all the time.

There’s something powerful here that feels familiar when you think about it.  I’m sure people in many fields have contemplated the issue, but of course I have the most personal experience in my own field.

Programmers struggle at times to grasp subtle details, even those right before their eyes.

This can manifest itself in so many ways.  The nuance of a word choice in a requirement can be lost during development.  A programmer can stare at a screen, knowing something is wrong (and where), but not being able to put their finger on it until someone leans over their shoulder to help.  Consider just a few things a software organization might do to mitigate these issues:

1. Pair programming⁷
2. Putting “extra eyes” on a problem when progress slows.
3. Mixing young energy with veteran leadership/talent.

The loss of an eye for detail could be a result of any number of things.  It might be as simple as the same numbing effect that results from proofreading your own work⁸.  Maybe children have an eye for detail because everything is new to them.

There is a company named Specialist People Foundation⁹ that deals extensively with issues in this area.  They employ people with Autism and similar disorders and leverage the different nature of their employees’ perceptions to tackle a variety of problems.  I like a lot of things about that organization, but I think the most impressive is how effectively they created a strength from something that is perceived as a weakness:

“Our consultants have a passion for detail that is second to none, and bring unique competencies to tasks that most company employees are less motivated to perform, and therefore more prone to errors. The unique characteristics of autism and similar challenges mean that our consultants actually enjoy tasks that most employees find boring, repetitive or difficult due to the level of detail and concentration required.”

You are overlooking any number of details (at this moment even), and your ability to capture them is probably declining, not growing.  Since you only get so many chances to consume something before you’ve totally lost the eye for detail, you want to bring as much energy as possible to each attempt.  I’m not aware of any better way to approach things, unfortunately.

Of course, what you decide to do with those details after you notice them is an entirely different discussion.  Clearly though,  you can’t make meaningful decisions about things you’re not aware of.

1. If you doubt me, start watching at 7:25.  It is also listed in the parental guide for the movie at IMDB. [↩]
2. Toy Story is not a kids movie.  If you agreed with that classification then watch it again. [↩]
3. You can go read the rest if you want.  It is not very long. [↩]
4. If you are not into steam for some reason, here is an Amazon Link. [↩]
5. No, really, this is a good game for kids.  I think. [↩]
6. It turns out that you can easily reproduce this in the puzzle levels where you control zombies against plants setup by the computer. [↩]
7. This is not an endorsement of pair programming. [↩]
8. Note the built-in excuse here for any proofreading errors. [↩]
9. I linked to their United States operation for my readers, the real deal is Specialisterne based in Denmark [↩]

Younger readers may not realize this, but there used to be a golfer named Tiger Woods who dominated the sport so completely that they literally changed the layout of every professional golf course in the world to prevent him from rewriting the record book¹.  He rewrote most of the record book anyway, and he would have rewritten all of it had it not been for his unexpected fall from grace.

For those of you who don’t care for golf or can’t remember that far back, let me briefly paint a picture of the original Tiger.  Tiger would step up to the tee on a long hole.  He would whip out a big club.  He would then proceed to smack the logo off the ball.  It was almost like he didn’t care where it went.  Sometimes Tiger would drill the ball and it would carry more or less as he intended and land somewhere good.  Other times, he would drill the ball and it would end up off the fairway.  It might end up somewhere bad: on solid dirt, in the sand, or in the root structure of a tree.

Fans of the game and fans of Tiger, when this happened, would often wonder why he didn’t ”take a little off” the swing.  Sacrifice some of his power for a little more control.  Work to keep the ball in the fairway more often.  Play more conservatively.  It almost offended some people that he didn’t seem to care.

I must admit that I’m speculating here, as I never discussed this personally with Tiger.  However, I strongly suspect that Tiger considered a more conservative strategy.  He considered it and he rejected it, and he kept on smacking it as hard as he could.  He had no delusions concerning his rate of success off the tee.  He just didn’t care about where the ball went nearly as much as the fans did.

Tiger’s thought process was simpler than people realized.  His approach was to hit the tee shot as far as possible, then hit his second shot on to or near the green².  The beauty of this strategy is that it doesn’t get all bogged down worrying about where the ball lands after his first shot.  It doesn’t matter, for instance, if the ball bounces off a cart path and lands behind a TV tower.  He would just address the ball wherever it was, and hit it onto or near the green.  Jaws would drop.

Exceptional performance is easier if you aren’t distracted by the fear of negative outcomes; that fear makes it harder to perform, increasingly so as pressure mounts.  To get there, you need to have a strong repertoire of skills to deal with those situations effectively, and it certainly never hurts to have fought your way through them a few times.  The decision making is easy for Tiger because he had such a strong foundation of skills to build his game around.  Getting there was hard for Tiger.  He worked at it for most of his life and took full advantage of his natural gifts.

Therein lies the lesson.  The difference between risky behavior and aggressive behavior lies almost entirely in the operator.  So, regardless of your field, if you feel that you have the skills, just relax and let ‘er rip.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiger_Woods#Tiger-proofing [↩]
2. Fans of physics will recognize this strategy as similar to the Feynman Algorithm [↩]