Mike Lee

Someone is Wrong on the Internet

Mon, 27 Jun 2011 03:15:33 +0200

After pulling off the greatest launch party ever, Appsterdam has gotten quite a bit of press, leading to the usual litany of naysaying and dick measuring in comments around the Web.

Since a lot of these comments contain wrong information—50% income tax in the Netherlands? That would suck!—and because I believe in addressing your critics where they address you, I took on the onerous task of descending into the unmitigated hell that is Internet comments.

Hacker News has this really annoying feature where at some undefined point any attempt to post another comment simply tells you: “You’re submitting too fast. Please slow down. Thanks.”

This is the smarmiest, most swear-inducing error message I have ever seen. Not only does it sound like a David Spade character, it doesn’t actually give me any information. How fast is too fast? Do I have to wait? For how long? Did my message post? Is my data lost? What do I do now?

They could have saved some characters by just having the message say, “Dear user, fuck you.”

After some sleuthing, I figured out the message didn’t post, and since this is someone I’ve accidentally offended with my American brusqueness, I feel I must make immediate amends.*

The original comment, from ianterrell:

> Now that Sofa has been acquired by Facebook, the company’s team (ironically enough) will be moving to Palo Alto. But Lee said he doesn’t expect that to affect on Appsterdam’s future...

If the founders don’t believe in their own product enough to use it, it’s going to fail.

I responded:

You are, if you will pardon the expression, talking out of your ass.
I brought Appsterdam to Sofa. I kept Appsterdam when Sofa left. Even if I died tomorrow, Appsterdam would continue. This isn’t a product. It’s a movement. Its power doesn’t come from its founders, it comes from its people, and our people are amazing.

ianterrell responded:

Well, regardless of how it’s framed or the metaphor I used, some of your amazing people just went to Palo Alto.

I wish you all the best, even if you do choose to be impolite.

Whoops! Darn me and my colorful expressions. Just yesterday I confused someone by telling them I couldn’t hit the broadside of a barn. Now this! And so, I present, my humble clarification.

Sorry if I came across as impolite. Like I said, pardon the expression. It may have been inappropriately colorful. All I meant was that you’re talking about things you don’t know anything about.

I had the idea for Appsterdam and got things rolling. Sofa wanted to help out, but then they got offered a lot of money to move to the Valley. That’s great for them, and great for us, because that means we’ll have that many more Appsterdammers with Valley experience and investment money.

To suggest that their move in anyway represents a lack of faith in Appsterdam is just wrong. They don’t think that. I don’t think that. Nobody thinks that, except for you.

It’s also meaningless. Sofa did not found Appsterdam. I did. Sofa did not build Appsterdam, our army of volunteers did. Sofa designed our logo and website, but we get to keep those when they leave.

So even if they hated Appsterdam with the fire of a thousand suns, it wouldn’t doom us to failure. It wouldn’t even slow us down. We didn’t get to work together long enough for their leaving to impact us at all.

So your premise is wrong, and your conclusion is wrong, because you are working on no knowledge. You made a venomous statement that misrepresents things for no other reason than to be a naysayer.

Then, when you got caught by the people whose lives you are actually talking about, you tried to pass it off as a metaphor, even though that makes no sense at all, unless we accept the unlikely conclusion that you don’t actually know what a metaphor is or how to construct one.

That’s all I meant. I didn’t mean to be rude. Sorry if I offended.

* Because what else is a blog called “Motherfucker” for?

Victimhood

Tue, 14 Jun 2011 14:53:23 +0200

This is not going to be a good essay. This is going to be a terrible essay, which you should not read, for two reasons. First, I am extremely upset by the continuing accusations of misogyny and white male privilege. Second, the things I am going to talk about now are unpleasant. I do not talk about them. In fact, some of this stuff, I have never publicly talked about.

Stop reading now.

Before my 10th birthday, I had already been the victim of molestation, incest, and torture. I was raised by my mother, with two sisters. My father once picked me up, held me over his head, and dropped me. My first step-father beat and tortured me for sport. My second step-father punched me when I was sleeping, and kicked me out of the house before my 18th birthday.

When my mother divorced my first step-father, my life was in such jeopardy that I was sent to live with my grandparents in Mississippi. While there, I was the victim of racism, called things like “gook” and “chinaman” because of my Japanese father, which was ironic, because growing up in Hawaii, they called me a “haole” because of my white mother.

I took home economics both years I was in Mississippi. I was the victim of sexism and homophobia, forced by the school to take shop because my interest in cooking and sewing was judged queer. I was the only boy in school to join the Future Homemakers of America, where I was barred from events because I was a boy, despite paying the same dues as everyone else.

When I came back to Hawaii and went through puberty things only got worse. My mother recognized my father in me, and hated me for it. She would mock my genitals, and encourage my sisters to do the same, saying things like, “you know what they say about Asian men.” My nickname at home was TWP, which stood for “teeny weeny peeny.”

After high school, I tried to leave, moving to Florida to live with my dad. His wife kidnapped me at gunpoint, forced me to write a series of false “confessions,” which cost me my relationship with my father, then threatened to kill me if I spoke a word. I moved back to Hawaii, but the victimization continued.

I was not allowed to finish college, because my mother wanted me to work, whoring me out to anyone who needed some holes dug or some rocks moved. During this period I was nearly murdered by a carjacker. After being diagnosed with PTSD, I was denied treatment, and lived in constant fear, only able to leave the house in the middle of the night.

How could so much bad happen to one person? Because victimization leads to victimhood, and victimhood invites victimization. As a victim, I was always looking for someone to save me, but every savior that came along was just another victimizer. This cycle is well known and heavily documented phenomenology.

I broke the cycle when I worked at Alaska Airlines. On the ramp, I was stuck between the union and the company. I tried being a union man. I tried being a company man. Then one day some union members attacked me, spray painting epitets on the front door of my apartment. The company didn’t care. I realized I was alone in the world, and that nobody would ever save me.

That job was dangerous, with a 100% injury rate. I had two friends die at work, and several close calls. I taught myself to code because I needed a less dangerous job. I sacrificed everything to go work for Wil Shipley, to get where I am today. Nobody ever saw the talent in me and gave me a chance. My life, and my career, were paid for in blood.

I broke the cycle by refusing to let victimization turn me into a victim any more. I have since passed that hard-learned lesson on. That is, in fact, what my last essay was about. You don’t get to decide what life hands you. You don’t get to control what other people do. The only person you can control is you. You have to decide how you are going to deal with things.

As a side-effect of all this, I have come to hate two things: people who victimize others, and people who are false victims. The first one is obvious. Most of the time when I get really out of control angry, it’s because someone has kicked a metaphorical puppy. The second one is more subtle. It’s best illustrated with a story.

I believed you.

Back in the day of landlines, before things like call waiting, you would get a busy signal if you tried to call someone who was on the phone. You could, however, call the operator, and have them break into the call with an emergency interrupt.

One day my mom was on the phone and a female friend of mine broke through on an emergency interrupt. My mom handed the phone over to me, but she was furious, saying that it had better be a real emergency, whereupon my friend blurted, “I was raped.”

I responded with, “I believe you.” If you think that sounds weird, I think so too, but in school they taught us that if anyone ever tells you they were raped, you should tell them “I believe you.” I did believe her. I was terribly upset. I wanted to call the police, to take her to the hospital. It quickly became clear, however, that she was not raped, and in fact had just said that to get my mom off my back.

She didn’t see a problem with that. Our friendship ended there. The reason they have to teach kids to believe people who say they were raped is because of people like her. Faking victimhood is not an innocent game. It causes far-reaching and long-lasting damage to real victims.

This was the thrust of my first essay about the Violet Blue hubbub. To crash a party, act horribly, then position yourself as a victim is a disservice to real victims with real problems. It also sets the terrible example of dealing with life’s imperfections by casting oneself into victimhood.

I spent most of my life as a victim, but I am not trying to make this a pissing match of misery. I am trying to make the general point that, whatever horrible things life hands to you, letting your victimization define you as a person only makes things worse. This is not the theoretical rambling of a privileged white male. This is hard-won, first-hand advice of a non-privileged non-white victim.

We need to stop being -ists who beat each other over the head with our -isms. These are walls we erect that separate us from society. We need to be people who take care of ourselves and each other. We need to work together to solve specific problems. We need to give up our very real right to be offended, not because we don’t deserve it, but because it’s not helpful.

If you think that makes me misogynist over-privileged white man, I think that makes you an asshole with a reading comprehension problem who is over-compensating by projection. I have no more time or energy to spend on people who are wrong on the Internet.

Uninvited Empathy

Tue, 14 Jun 2011 10:21:08 +0200

Empathy is our greatest meme. It is the lynchpin of society, the source of morality, and the one thing that truly makes us unique as humans. Empathy is so important to us as a society that we label those who cannot feel empathy as “psychopaths.”

I can imagine what it’s like to walk a mile in your shoes. Maybe your shoes are spiked heels and mine are work boots, but at the end of the day, we both have a hammertoe. We can rub each other’s sore feet, or at least recommend a good podiatrist to each other.

Or, you can tell me that I have no idea what it’s like to wear heels, that I cannot begin to fathom the pressure society puts on your feet, and that thousands of years of fetish have put you and your feet in a separate, victimized group that we work boot people couldn’t begin to understand.

And you’re right. You can certainly feel that way. You can always draw finer and finer lines. We can always split society into smaller, more specific groups. In fact, it’s easier if we do. Easier to label people. Easier to “understand” them without ever getting to know them.

Lots of people agree with you, too. Consider HP, which realized that the problem with computers is that they are designed for men by men. Since men cannot possibly understand what it’s like to be a woman, they got a woman—dress designer Vivienne Tam—to design the first laptop for women.

What makes it “for women”? Well, for one thing it’s got a butterfly on its case. It’s also about the size of a large pocketbook. Best of all, though, is that the screen is super glossy so you can use it as a mirror to check your makeup. That’s a woman’s computer: a pretty makeup mirror.

When they debuted this, my jaw dropped. I find this not only offensive to women, but offensive to product engineers. Compare this to the iPad for women—which doesn’t exist because Apple is one of the few companies that realize products should serve everyone, not just some market segment.

No doubt there are women who would love to have a laptop that looks like a purse—Vivienne Tam for example. The mistake she and HP make is in assuming she represents all women. Solipsism—assuming the world conforms to your experience of it—is also a very common mistake among engineers.

The solution is not to separate ourselves into exclusionary groups based on victimhood. This is why it upsets me when people say it’s so much harder for women in technology. They have their challenges, yes, but so do all of us. Sometimes, we actually can relate to each other.

One problem a lot of women have is being seen as objects instead of people. Someone, perhaps a potential employer, does not see or value the mind, but only the physical aspects of the body. It sucks to be judged like that. It sucks to have your career ruled by that.

How do I know? Because my hugeness has caused the same problem. For most of my life, employers saw me only as a source of physical labor, completely ignoring my mind. For example, I once applied to be a translator, and was made a stock clerk, not because my Japanese was bad, but because my body is strong.

Another time I got a job making kadomatsu, the traditional Japanese new year’s decoration. Within a day, I was moved to another job that involved hauling bundles of raw bamboo up a muddy hill. I was demoted from craftsman to packmule, not because of my craftsmanship, but because of my size.

We can work on this very real problem together, or you can tell me that as a white (not) anglo-saxon (not) middle-class (barely) man (yes!) I have no right to even participate. You can tell me that the only thing I should feel is bad for how hard “my” group has made things for you.

I have gone through some shit to get to where I am, but I don’t whine too much about life being hard or unfair, and I have little respect for people who do. Such things always make me think of my first WWDC, when I saw a quadriplegic coding by typing with a pencil gripped in his teeth.

Why can’t you do this again? Objective-C? Memory management? Provisioning profiles? App review? Some under-socialized drunk asked if you were an escort? Every excuse just seems like so much bullshit when I think about that guy, tapping away patiently with his pencil. Compared to his situation, we’re all walking on sunshine.

Maybe that’s not fair. Not only can none of us compete with that guy, it’s a segment violation because he’s a guy. Then I think of some of my female heros growing up. Elizabeth Blackwell. Amelia Earhart. Alison Jolly. These are women who had a hard time breaking into an industry.

These are people who ignored setbacks, and who refused to wear a badge of victimhood. That is something all of us, each and every one of us, should learn from—regardless of the color of our skin or the shape of our genitals.

When I build a team, I want people who are passionate, creative, and hard-working. I don’t care if you went to school, who you love, or who your parents were. Being a woman isn’t going to hurt you here, but being a victim, a whiner, or arrogant will.

Don’t let who you are turn you into what you aren’t.

Not Helping

Mon, 13 Jun 2011 19:44:06 +0200

When I was a teenager, I used to play this game where I would tell somebody something, watch them react in good faith, then mock them for it. As you can imagine, with asshole antics like this, I didn’t have a lot of friends when I was a teenager.

Some people have not grown out of this. Sex columnist cum technology hangabout Violet Blue is one of those people. Her pot-stirring article about what a sexist yawn-fest WWDC was demonstrates that.

The yawn-fest part was just stupid. I have yet to meet an actual shipping developer who isn’t completely bowled over by iOS 5 and Lion. I don’t get pissed off about stupid people saying stupid things about Apple. That has always come with the territory.

What pissed me off was the way she conducted herself, acting like a vacuous twat, then acting offended when people came to the natural conclusion.

It’s possible people assumed you didn’t know how to code “because you were a girl.” It’s likely, though, that they assumed you didn’t know how to code because most people don’t know how to code. The vast and overwhelming majority of people in the world have no idea how computers work. There is no gender imbalance there.

Ah, but this was a party after a tech conference. You wouldn’t assume people there didn’t know how to code unless you’re sexist—or know anything about our platform. Indeed, the tremendous growth means that neophytes and onlookers outnumber experienced developers even at a tech conference.

I advise every speaker I train to assume people in the audience have almost no technical knowledge. You have to, or you will lose people who are there to learn by overwhelming them with details. Your job as a speaker is first to entertain, then to inspire, and only then to teach.

Her behavior was unforgivably rude and short-sighted. It’s scary enough to talk to strangers at a party. You have to suppress your insecurities, and A-listers like Gruber and Shipley are no exception. Imagine meeting some women at a party who don’t seem to know a lot about computers, but seem curious.

I would definitely take that opportunity to drop some knowledge. I would think it was so cool that they were there, that they were curious. I would do anything I could to help them see what a great place this was for them, to make them feel welcome, to help them.

What then happens when that person turns around and mocks you for your effort? Even goes so far as to call you a sexist pig? How likely are you to approach another woman at a party? Or anyone, for that matter? How is this helping the gender imbalance in our industry? How is this helping anything?

There are some people who this sting operation will reach. These are the people who feel not puzzled, but guilty, about the lack of women in the industry, and who let that guilt motivate them to do things they hope will help, but that actually make things worse.

Anyone can learn to code, but it takes a certain rare and aberrant personality to actually pursue a career in software engineering with the seriousness it requires. It is a terrible mistake to push someone into something they are not going to enjoy or be any good at.

It is worse—much much worse—to do so because of the color of someone’s skin or the shape of their genitals. I have seen people with the best of intentions look the other way at some terrible work because they wanted to make their diversity numbers.

We have a high washout rate in this business for a reason. If you prevent people in selective groups from doing so, you stack the deck against people in that same group. You know what would be worse than having few women in the industry? Having lots of women in the industry who are almost universally terrible. How much harder would it be for the women who got into this for the right reasons?

I think it’s cliched bullshit that society pushes women away from engineering with the mentality that “math is hard.” Math is hard. Coding is hard. Engineering is hard. That’s why we get paid so well—because the vast majority of people can’t do what we do.

Yes, there was a time when little girls were supposed to play with dolls and wear dresses, but among the families of the modern engineer, that time is long past. Every parent I know wants their kids to grow up to be great scientists and engineers.

The balance is shifting, and will continue to shift. We will nurture that shift by thinking not in terms of race, gender, or demographics, but by moving to universalist thought, as we have with our product designs. What will not help, indeed what will hurt, is driving a wedge of faux offense for your own aggrandizement.

The Hooker

Mon, 2 May 2011 16:30:35 +0200

While working on the ramp at Alaska Airlines might have been my deadliest job, it wasn’t my bloodiest. That dubious honor goes to the volunteer stint I served on the graveyard shift at Straub Hospital in downtown Honolulu. This was the ER closest to the main police station, so needless to say, shit went down.

One night a hooker came in fresh from a fight with another girl who had gone all Mike Tyson and bitten off a large chunk of her ear. The girl was scantily clad and beautiful, but covered in blood and in shock. The staff viewed her with the kind of black humor an ER staff has, and no small amount of contempt. “Double bag this one, boys” the head nurse said, donning a second set of gloves.

Given the delicate nature of reattaching an ear, the shift doctor pulled stitches duty. My job was to hold her head steady, but—and the doctor was very clear on this—I was not to hold her head down. “She can either hold her goddamned head still or she can live the rest of her life with one ear,” he growled after her failure to soldier up had led to several botched attempts.

I was no more a fan of prostitutes than anyone else. I grew up in Honolulu, where the tourist trade and local misery both supported large colonies of illegal sex workers—the high class hookers trolling the streets of Waikiki for businessmen with money to spend, and the low-rent drug whores servicing the whacked-out Johns of Hotel street, where there are no hotels to speak of.

My view of prostitution was typically American, firmly nestled between morality and paternalism. A prostitute was either someone of ill repute whose wiles endangered society, or a victim forced down a life-ending path by some criminal syndicate. Either way, prostitution was a scourge, the lowest rung of society, lower than even a beggar, who might lack pride, but still had honor.

But standing there in my scrubs, arms resting on the face of this poor girl facing permanent disfigurement, I suddenly felt my prejudices challenged. This person was not worthy of our fear, nor did she need our protection. What she needed was a little human kindness, a bit of common decency.

When the doctor began to sew, I held her head down despite his orders. I felt her wince and struggle beneath my meaty forearms, but I pressed them ever harder against her face, holding her head perfectly still. With my hand, I covered her eyes, feeling the steady stream of hot tears dripping onto my fingertips while the doctor sewed and snipped, pushing the needle into her ear, pulling the thread through, and tying it off.

When the doctor was done, the nurses cleaned and dressed the wound, processed her paperwork, and released her. I never saw her again, never heard word of her, and have no idea what happened to her. What I do know is that she has an ear because of me, maybe even a chance at a normal life.

I will never forget what I did for the girl in the ER that night. Not just because I am proud of it, but because of the lesson it taught me. It is the lesson of the good Samaritan: the challenge in life is not to provide help to someone you love, but to someone you were taught to hate.