I'm not feeling lucky

A couple of months after I moved to the Valley They Call Silicon, I realized that applying to Google was a complete non-starter. Even before you got to the interview stage, where they’re famous for demanding that you explain why manhole covers are round or calculate how many ping-pong balls it would take to fill up a school bus.

This is because the Don’t Be Evil crowd designed the process to conform to the principles of NHI. No Human Involvement. Use their applicant tracking system (ATS—which, to be fair, does have a better interface than Taleo), do not attempt to find someone there to intervene.

I understand why they do that—they’re Google; anyone with dreams of tech-hood aspires to be a Googler. They get bazillions of applications every day, and they can choose to speak with only those few whom their algorithm identifies as thinking exactly the way they do. They don’t want no stinkin’ diverse cuckoos in their nest, and they can ensure that they don’t get any.

So I don’t know what possessed me to bother, because cuckoo-ness aside, I’m really an enterprise, not a consumer, girl. But I applied for a position within Google Maps. I actually use and like that particular app, so why not? It was the usual ATS experience and I have no expectation that my details will make it past the machine. But I did get rather a kick out of their this-transaction-is-concluded pop-up:

Oh, the humanity! The faux humanity!

Check it out

I’ve mentioned before that the Santa Clara Library District (SCCLD) revamped its online system, and I initially wasn’t massively impressed with the new interface.

Well, there’s more. And I’m gonna give you a for-instance:

My objections?

Point No. 1: The screen capture was taken after I’d clicked the Submit button to place Re: Jane on hold. The “in progress” loop just goes and goes every time I request a book, so they don’t appear to have optimized for Firefox. (I haven’t tested it with IE or Chrome, but if they can’t make it work properly with Firefox they just aren’t trying.) Meaning, it just hangs there until I close out the pop-up window.

I only know that the request has gone through by trying to submit a second time, whereupon I get a snippy error message telling me that I’ve already requested it.

This is bad design and apparently non-existant testing. And I’ve encountered this every time I’ve requested a hold since they brought the new system up.

So, I guess at least it’s consistent. Bad, but consistent.

Point No. 2: Yeah, okay—technically, Re: Jane is indeed a “previous” result, although it’s actually the result I’m in the process of requesting, so I’m not sure what this bit of information does.

(Point No. 2.5: I’m guessing that at some point in the past I’ve looked up Major Crimes in the SCCLD, but that wouldn’t have been in the last several months, so it’s kind of creepy that it’s showing up here. Like Target spitting out coupons for things I’ve purchased in the past that they only know about because they’re tracking my credit card. Ever since librarians told the Feds to get stuffed when they came snooping for patrons’ reading habits, I’d thought that records of what I borrow from the library get expunged the instant I check something back into the system. Well, if so, that obviously doesn’t apply to my online activities and I find this troubling.)

Point No. 3: Why is their algorithm set to suggest that I might want to borrow…the exact same book I’m in the process of looking at/requesting? Not once, but twice? Is this a feature catering for patrons with multiple personalities?

I know it’s very “customer-centric” and all Amazony to suggest other purchase ideas, but to make this feature actually a useful benefit, you’d have to program your system with other choices that are somehow related to the current option. Without being, you know, the same thing I already have in my basket.

For books, this would require entering some sort of synopsis, with keywords, and I’d have thought that out of scope for libraries on tight budgets. So this is kind of an empty flourish.

And my initial response to the new system is confirmed. I’m thinking you should have had a product manager or two involved.

To Xfinity and beyond

Thirty minutes of my life that I’ll never get back were spent on the line (mobile, since being a Triple Threat Xfinity customer meant I had no phone, as well as Internet or TV service) yesterday with Comcast.

First of all trying to find out why the hell I had no phone, Internet or TV service. (According to Charles, some piece of equipment blew and hundreds of residences in the area were in the same sad, leaky boat with me.)

Then, after I told Charles that the instant I had connectivity I would be looking up satellite and U-Verse options to their crappy service, because I just then opened my cable bill to find they’d raised it $30 for no discernable reason. (As in: no added services.)

Well, after he told me that they were “sending some guy out to replace this equipment”, and that they wouldn’t commit to an ETA for resumption of service, he asked if I wanted to talk with someone in Customer Loyalty about my account. What the hell—not like I could watch reruns of Law & Order: SVU or check whether that Minnesota dentist who shot Cecil the lion illegally has been sighted anywhere in or out of the crosshairs.

The upshot of my call is that Comcast is graciously condescending to offer me the same rate I was paying for the last year (“That was a special offer, for one year only.”), but which now includes “premium” (not really) channels I’d been paying an extra $10/month for, and they’re sending me a new DVR which is presumably better than the five-year-old one I have. And it’s $10 less per month.

So, basically, because I called them on their greedy monopolistic arrogance, they’re being the good guys because they’re not screwing me as much as their business model calls for. But I’m sure they’ll make up for it by screwing someone else; probably 40 someone elses.

(As an aside, I was somewhat surprised but not a little pleased to discover that one of my neighbors not only has an unsecured "guest" Wi-Fi network, but that they're also clearly not using Comcast as their ISP. So I was able to follow the tweets about that lion-murdering bastard after all.)

But that’s not really why I’m writing this. My all-too-typical conversation with Comcast reminded me of something I saw a couple of weeks ago around Sunnyvale:

I see plenty of security service notices in the yards of million-dollar houses here in the Valley They Call Silicon. But this is the first one I’ve ever come across from Comcast. And my first thought when it registered in my brain was, “Wow—who’d contract with the company with the crappiest customer service record ever to provide a critical, time-sensitive response service? Who?”

(This is precisely what I wonder every time I see a TV commercial for Comcast home protection services.)

Plus—if these people’s alarm system is connected to the cable infrastructure, it was kaput along with everyone else’s phone, TV and Internet.

Capital campaigning

You know, the ways of non-profit fund raisers are just amazing.

I don’t know how my grad school tracked me down, but I get the alumni magazine now, along with various solicitations periodically. (I’ve managed to elude my undergrad crowd.)

And of course, there was that incident when Wake Tech Community College reached out after a couple of decades to invite me to contribute to their endowment, on the basis of a single programming class I took there.

But now it’s the culture vultures.

Back in the 90s, I was a member of the Phillips Collection’s Contemporaries supporters. I like their museum, the membership didn’t cost a whole lot, and it got you into many great events—openings, parties, Thursday evening nibbles and culture mingling. (One of the stand-outs was their 75^th anniversary celebration held at the French Ambassador’s residence. Honestly, I felt like Eliza Doolittle when I got back from that one.)

Well, it’s been almost 20 years since I was known to them, but blow me if a couple of weeks ago there didn’t appear in my queue this come-on from their development department, inviting me to give them boatloads of money.

It’s entirely conceivable—well, it’s obvious—that I used that email account at some point in communicating with them. But I assure you that, if so, it hasn’t been for a good eight years. So what’s just amazing is that all of a sudden they’ve done some harrowing of their once-and-future supporters and come up with moi and bunged this over to me.

Sadly, it’s going to have the same outcome as the billet-doux from Wake Tech, although for different reasons. But at least they’ve only expended a few electrons in the attempt.

Gallant effort, though.

Gratitude Monday: Fashion awareness

I heard this story on NPR Saturday morning while on my first walk of the day. And it just made me light up: clothing that’s both functional and fashionable being designed for people with various disabilities.

I loved the process involving Air Force vet Anna Smith and Fashion Institute of Technology student Erika Morales—how Morales’s first effort fell short of Smith’s notion of style, and how it evolved from a poncho into something the reporter on air describes as being like origami.

Damn—I’d like to wear something that looks like origami.

Factoring in such things as the different measurements that come from someone seated in a wheelchair (as opposed to standing up), coverage for various degrees of amputation and textiles—this to me is the most magnificent melding of applying technology and design to solve a human problem. And in the process of solving it—of creating something beautiful that confers dignity on the wearer—everyone involved is connected in a new way.

This is indeed something to be grateful for, and I am.