I sat in a meeting the other day where someone said, “well, computer scientists are obsessed with determinism and refuse to recognize non-determinism.”

And it got me thinking, again, about something I wrote about many, many years ago (2012).

What I wrote was that the history of thought was about moving from a universe where everything was understandable to a world where everything could not be understood. And that article can be found here https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2012/06/04/why-would-anyone-want-to-work-for-zynga/#7846a1cb658d. There are a lot of things that I wrote that are embarrassing. I was naive. I was optimistic. And yet, I was right in echoing the thoughts of much smarter people.

Later on, I synced up with an old friend, and we wrote an essay on the limitations of human understanding. That, homo sapiens are inherently limited in their ability to understand the universe. And that limitation makes revelation, the intuition of truth without the ability to prove the truth, not a failure of reason, but an indication of its limits.

And so ten years later, I found myself giving a talk to a bunch of engineers about desired state systems.

The core of the discussion was that planning algorithms that attempted to search a state-space exhaustively were inherently flawed, if the system was exposed to unknown external inputs. When trying to change the state of such a system, if you assume you know how to go from the current state to the desired state, you are wrong because the current state is invalid at the time you made the plan.

30 years ago, I remember sitting in a class learning about planning, and recent research on machine learning, POMDP, and thinking what does this have to do with anything.

It turns out, everything.

When I started my career, I was a mercenary. I cared about the money and the puzzle. I didn’t give a damn about what the stuff I built was used for.

My first job was at SGI, and my first bit of tech helped design stuff at Labs that were so secret I couldn’t ask any questions. All I knew was that every question was, “I’m sorry we can’t tell you.”

My next job was at NetApp, where I built streaming media caches. The first use of those systems was for porn. The whole point of the internet at that time was porn. I used to find it amusing that I helped people see porn and enjoy porn.

Twenty-one years ago, porn was seen as – well – bad. And being a sex worker was seen as -bad-. And I’ve changed that point of view. But back then, I liked being part of the bad industry and being able to claim, like Albert Speer, my position is apolitical.

My mom would ask me what I did, and I would stare at her mischievously and tell her that I helped people.

My line was, “I am a professional. If the problem was how to build baby torture devices, and it was interesting, and the pay was good, I would do it.”

But somewhere, in the back of my head, the story of Albert Speer scared me. See, Albert Speer was the guy a whole generation of Europeans used to justify their silence and blindness in the face of the Holocaust. He was just a technocrat. A man that you could almost admire.

In my head, he was the guy who made the evil possible. He was the representative of the worst kind of human being, who was the professional without whom the madmen would never have been able to kill at scale.

One thing about growing up is that you can sometimes have two contradictory thoughts in your head until revelation happens.

In my case, it was a rebirth of my Christian faith. And a realization that being that professional was wrong. Those actions mattered.

But revelation and action take a long time.

And over time, I have started to make decisions about who I work for and where I work based on the principles of leadership and their willingness to take action on things I care about.

My Christian faith makes it impossible for me to expect Saints, but it also demands that I look for better leaders.

After I left NetApp, I went to Zynga. And there, I discovered Mark Pincus, who, despite all of his flaws, showed that being a principled leader was possible. I won’t forget his decision to insist that the Mafia Wars design team delete a creepy scene from Mafia Wars II. There were other decisions, but that one still sticks out.

And my personal success makes it possible to take risks that others can’t.

I don’t want to be Albert Speer.

Growing up, I couldn’t understand how people would worship that man. And the lesson I had learned was that you could have it all if you knew how to ignore the evil you helped create.

He was the consummate professional. And I could have it all if I were like him. I could be a technologist bereft of a moral compass and have it all.

But as I grew up, I became disgusted with myself for being like him, and I started to change.

In the back of my head, the fact that his reputation survived galled me. It meant that amoral professionals never got their due.

It’s with great satisfaction that the latest biographies of Albert Speer make it clear he was evil and should have been hanged. It’s with great relief that I see his reputation crumble, and the people who fell for him have their reputations crumble alongside him.

It’s 2020, and we technologists enable systems that create harm, like Facebook. Without us, Mr. Zuckerberg could not choose to allow hate to spew. Our systems allow him to make choices that are questionable at best, evil at worst.

And Mr. Zuckberg is not alone. There are others. Our personal morality can not be entirely divorced from our profession. Being a professional doesn’t absolve you from not knowing.

And if we think history will be kind, let’s remind ourselves of Albert Speer. History was not kind.

The only rule in tech is you never, ever, ever, rage quit.

What’s rage quitting?

It’s getting so pissed off, that you walk out the door and take whatever next job you find.

Now, let me point out there are circumstances where rage quitting is the right thing to do, and that’s where there are moral and ethical lines being crossed that you can not abide. Or where someone does something that is truly horrible. I have no experience in those kinds of circumstances, and I offer no useful advice. All I can say is – do what you need to do to be safe, and talk to a labor attorney.

But if you aren’t in one of those really bad places, why is rage quitting a bad plan?

First, it’s a bad plan because your next job is probably not going to be the next job you actually want. And so you’ll be looking for another job pretty soon after that.

Second. it’s a bad plan, because the person who pushed you to rage quit, is forcing you to leave on their terms, not yours.

Third, because it puts you in a vulnerable position. A lot of very bad people can tell if you are the kind of person who will rage quit. They will exploit that, to get you to quit. They will push your buttons, and get you so angry that you will quit.

And they don’t get to run your life, you get to run your life, and surrendering that much control to them is never a good idea.

So you are angry, and furious and pissed off and want to quit, what do you do?

First, take some time off. You can take time off at work, you can take time off at home, you can find the mental space to not be angry. As Joe Beda said, don’t rage quit, rage vacation.

Once you are done with the vacation, then figure out what the right next move is. Be honest with yourself, and determine what you want. In some cases, it’s going to find another job. In other cases, its talk to your boss or his boss about the fact you wanted to rage quit, and see if a change is possible.

But figure that out.

And then go get it.

Over the years my teams have gone through waves of attrition. And typically those waves of attrition hit me like a punch to the gut, because every time they have happened, I was asked to do a dive and catch.

I was asked to try and convince someone to not take a job that they had already accepted. And that’s a tough place to be.

And it sometimes worked, but most often did not.

And even it did, they probably quit within 6 months.

And especially for senior people, their departures at critical phases of a project or business was very disruptive.

So if you get int that situation, what can you offer?

1. Offer more money

2. Offer another title

3. Offer time off

4. Offer a new project.

But the problem with these offers is that you are just buying yourself some time. Whatever underlying issues caused the person to quit will resurface after 6 months.

And what really upset me was that I was always felt they were leaving, not going. That we failed to show them the opportunity and deal with their real legitimate grievances.

So why bother? Because you get six months to figure out, on your terms, what the transition plan should be.

And that brings me to what you actually have to do.

From painful personal experience, I learned that 1×1’s are the best path to ensuring that folks are feeling connected to the organization.

The more 1×1’s you have across the org, the more people are connected to the team, the more you can deal with problems earlier rather than later.

Sometimes people leave, and that’s okay. Change is not a bad thing. But you owe it to your team for them to feel that there was a better opportunity somewhere else, and that they are not fleeing a bad place.

And so in my latest gig we mandated that our teams and leads do 1×1 and report the number of 1×1’s. And our attrition rate dropped to historic lows. Yes, part of it was the awesomeness of the Project Pacific, and our stock price, and part of it was that folks were feeling very connected to the mission as a whole.

And I am doing a lot fewer dive and catches these days….

Mark, as always, does it his way. His recent announcement to relinquish control of Zynga is quintessential Mark, doing what he thinks the right thing is.

As an ex-Zynga employee, I am well aware of many things that we did that we are not proud of, and there are many things I wish we could have changed. And this is not the moment to rehash everything.

I wish the biggest problem in social media today was that we had too many cows. I really wish the world today had a game that 100 million people were playing. And that game was about a city where everyone was friendly. I wish we had a founder of a social media company who was more concerned about getting people to play together and having real social connections, not just randomly driving growth numbers.

And when we launched Zynga, the amount of hate we got from the gaming industry surprised me.

And after gamergate, I wonder if the problem that Zynga had was that we were the first company to build games that I could play while my kid was awake.

And when one of our games crossed the lines, Mark told them to go back.

For all of our flaws, we did not let our platform be a place you you could stalk or promote hate.

We did not let our games be sexist, misogynistic, etc.

We just wanted people to have fun,

Mark did it his own way.

Godspeed.

The past week I finished “Straight to Hell”.  The book describes the debauchery and decadence of the lives of the bankers in the pre-Lehman’s era. The stories are amusingly written, and horrifying. Although it’s easy to demonize an entire group of people because of a salacious book, the book does force you to ask the question: if you were in a similar environment what would you do?

And this past week, with the discussion of a boycott of Twitter, I thought to myself, maybe I am in such an environment.

Over the last several years, I have been a devoted user of Twitter. I enjoyed the ability to participate in conversations about the Montreal Canadiens. I enjoyed learning in real-time about the chaos of the world.

I found people who were really interesting. Lauren Duca and Teen Vogue. I learned about the Death of Expertise. I learned about how Snowden was a Russian tool from the very beginning.

I learned about Russian counter-espionage.

I learned about Deep Tech, following Matt Ocko.

I saw daily art.

And at the same time, I saw how Twitter refuses to police its own platform. Twitter allows the President of the USA to speak to people in a way that if he was in my house, I would ask him to leave.

Working at VMware, I am made aware of how leadership style and tone are crucial. Pat Gelsinger is an amazing leader and a man of high moral standing. And what I admire most about him, is that he doesn’t tolerate the use of crude language in his presence. And as a result, this percolates down.

VMware is probably the least profane place I have ever worked at.

And that makes VMware special.

And that got me thinking about Twitter and this book I just read.  Donal Trump sets the bar for what is acceptable on Twitter. If the President of the USA can use ethnic slurs (Pocahantas Warren),  then so can Spencer. If David Duke can tell a woman like Lauren Duca to go back into the kitchen, then so can every asshole on the platform.

And I was morally conflicted. On the one hand, Twitter has enriched my life. On the other, I can no longer ignore the tone of Twitter. And when I routinely see Twitter refuse to remove violent language from its feed, it tells me who Twitter wants to hang out with.

And because I hang out on Twitter, Twitter’s decisions reflect on me.

My grandfather who was a very moral person, would have looked at Twitter, and said: I thought I raised my daughter better. He would have been so appalled with my choices, that he would look to my mother for her choices and how she raised me.

And that made me stop and think.

In my life, and I want to work with people like Pat. I want to interact with people who value civility and decency.

Going off Twitter isn’t a permanent thing. There is a lot that I value. And I learn a lot. And I am just one lousy irrelevant person.

But the company I choose to keep says a lot about me. And so I’ll walk away for a while.

Facebook is one of the most important new developments in human history, providing an efficient mechanism for people to connect with other people and find other people.

Facebook makes it possible for a Santorinian ex-pat like myself to connect with his fellow Santorinians on a regular basis.

I love the platform, I am a devoted consumer of Facebook’s. And I want them to succeed.

However, Facebook’s business model has a problem.

In many ways, their model reminds me of the story of the horse and the scorpion. The scorpion asks the horse to cross the river. The horse says: You will kill me. The scorpion says: If I do we will both die. The horse takes the scorpion on his back, and then halfway across the river, the scorpion poisons the horse. The horse says: But now we will both die. And the scorpion says: It could not be helped, it is in my nature.

The scorpion is people full of hate who want to destroy the people creating Facebook.

There are some who argue that that would be a case of cutting off your nose to spite your face. And as someone who comes from the Balkans, I know a lot of people with no nose.

But enough with analogies.

Facebook makes money from selling ads to companies that want to find specific people.

And there are two kinds of ads: political and commercial.

Political ads come in two flavors, products that are bought, and stories that are designed to go viral and spread a message.

Facebook’s mission is to connect the world. And the business is to profit from that connection by selling those connections.

To be a universal platform, Facebook must allow anyone to connect to anyone.

And here’s where things get messy.

The bad actors use those connections to push their bad product.

Facebook’s default response is that the consumer must protect himself. The danger is that this kind of thinking created The Third Reich.  The consumer can be manipulated and exploited.

The consumer can be manipulated and exploited.

And there is a staggering amount of science that enables bad-actors to do that predictably. At Zynga I met a firm that specialized in exactly that.

And so Facebook must choose to either control the content when it comes in or after the fact.

At Zynga, I watched how I could exploit Facebook channels to get consumers to do whatever I wanted.

Facebook, finally realized that algorithmic approaches to dealing with our exploitation of their channels was impractical and just forcibly shut down our channels.

The problem with shutting down Zynga for Facebook was that it may have alienated some users who only used Facebook to play games. Facebook did a cost-benefit analysis and came to the correct conclusion that the number of people playing games was less than the number of people who would use Facebook and moved on.

Right now they have a similar problem with the Russian Spies.

There is a large audience for hate and lies. And that large audience wants to consume hate and lies. And that hate is being directed to political objectives.

If Facebook were to shut down that content, they may lose users. They would enable the creation of another platform for people who want hate and lies. And their value as a business would decline.

Even if they didn’t lose users, they would lose ad revenue as the spies would use other media to reach people: mail, phone, etc.

On Facebook, I have met an anti-semite who wants all Jews killed. I have seen vile anti-Muslim hate. I have seen comments about Obama and people of color that are appalling.

I will never forget the white female executive unfollowing friend after friend on Facebook because she said: I am not those people.

And the question for Facebook and their team is:

Is growth of the platform worth providing a platform for hate?

And the broader question for the coastal elites creating growth-at-any costs social media platforms:

Are we creating the platform that will destroy us?

And how accountable are we?

In the big media era, I met press barons who said that they would rather have fewer readers and a paper that they could read from cover to cover to their children than have more readers and not be able to read their paper to their children.

I wonder if a universal social media platform is desirable?

And finally, I wonder if this matters at all?

Haters will hate.

People who want to exploit their hate will exist.

And Facebook cannot change that.

As is tradition!