Category: Uncategorized

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N26

N26 recently launched “Spaces”. It is some sort of sub-accounts in your account that you can create and configure to save money in.

While n26 is a leap forward to the German market, for me it is quite disappointing compared to the bank I used in the Netherlands.

Yesterday I realized I can’t edit/delete a scheduled transfer once it is scheduled (unless it is a recurring one). This is scary.

This spaces product is half baked. I can’t automate transfers between spaces making it almost useless and hard to build savings habits.

And the most scary for me was when a friend’s card got hacked, someone withdrew money from India on a Sunday evening, we called the number on the back of the card and guess what? They are off on Sunday. And here is what they say on their support page

Freak out and destroy your card

Overall my experience with n26 so far is that they invest in those useless user interface changes (spaces, dark themes…etc) without improving the core experience of their banking services. I hope it gets better because right now it is far from my expectations.

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Grit Score

Forgive me father for I have clicked on a Harvard Business Review article. And it was about “Organizational Grit“. It is by the author of the book “Grit”, in which the author argues that grit (passion + perseverance) is the key to success in life.

I tried reading the book and got bored. It has the same template of such books where you start with a strong argument and keep repeating it to fill 200+ pages with studies that support it.

In the article there is a link to the “Grit Score Test”, which is a 10 questions survey that measure your level of grit to predict your success potential. I scored at the lower end of “American adults in a recent study”.

This whole grit thing have multiple problems. It almost completely ignores the circumstances, which are mostly out of one’s control. It is mostly measured in retrospect, you won’t find someone who had high grit score and failed but you can always say that anyone succeeded had grit.

It is like everything in life: it depends.

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The maturity log

I deleted all the posts on my medium account. I did this because I stopped cross publishing my blog content on it. It is outdated and feels abandoned.

I saw titles of my old posts from months and maybe years ago. As embarrassing as it is, it feels good seeing how much one matures over time.

Blogging frequently acts like this log you can look at and see a snapshot of yourself in the past. And it is public, allowing everyone to see the same snapshot, and see how you changed over time. It is a maturity log.

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Google Flights

I was never a fan of Google flights. Yesterday a friend told me to give it another shot. I went there and I got hooked.

The new experience is much faster and more dynamic. The work done on the front end is great.

The most impressive for me is how fast the results load if you change something in the search. For example when you add another passenger, Google can’t just multiply the price * 2 as they have to ensure the flight still has a seat for the passenger you just added. This requires a new API request to the providers asking them for the new search results, which is typically slow. Same applies to any other change like dates or airports.

It seems this speed is driven by caching results on their end, however cache is not reliable as it may happen that the trip is no longer there, or the price went up by the time users click on the flight to book it. I don’t know what else they are doing to make it this fast while staying reliable.

Another reason for this speed is caused by only searching the airlines themselves and not other 3rd party websites. SkyScanner always gets stuck trying to retrieve the data from that one slow provider. This also reduces complexity on the front end as Google doesn’t have to show the same flight multiple times by multiple providers.

Overall it seems that you can provide a superior experience by building insanely faster horses, even if you don’t have the all the options, nor the most accurate prices.

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Twitter, Facebook, and asymmetry

Asymmetry of connections is a better representation of human relationships than symmetry. We are not as interested in everyone who is interested in us.

Twitter does this best by making the connection on the network unidirectional. I can follow someone without them having to follow me. If I am interested in you it doesn’t mean you are interested in me.

Facebook realized this and solved it by introducing the news feed algorithm. They later added the ability to follow someone without having to friend them. This was Facebook way of admitting asymmetry of relationships and trying to reflect that on the product.

Not all asymmetry is represented equally. Twitter uses a discrete binary model of representing asymmetry. I am either following you, you follow me, we both follow each other, or none of us follow the other.

Facebook’s representation is continuous, and it keeps oscillating between both ends of the spectrum. The algorithm keeps calculating how much I am interested in you and how much you are interested in me. Those separate scores determine how much the algorithm shows me from what you do and how much you see from me.

In hindsight this is what makes Facebook more successful, it is having this more accurate representation of asymmetry of relationships reflected in their product.

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Dortmund

This weekend I am meeting a friend who is living in the Netherlands. We decided to meet somewhere in the middle and hence it was Dortmund.

It is similar to every other German city I have been to on a weekend. Boring.

Sitting there on a quite Sunday with the sound of churches penetrating the silence feels like the right conditions to conspire and turn the world upside down without anyone noticing. Sadly we weren’t prepared so the world stays safe.

In terms of wheelchair accessibility it is not flat like Berlin. We didn’t use any public transit so I don’t know how good it is.

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Open Salaries Reflections

One question I got in response to yesterday’s open salaries post was:

And what is your reflections after going through this initiative. How accurate is the data and what observations on the team synergy since then.

My reflections are actually not much. I just took a quick look with more focus on people in the product management job family. In general there were some minor surprises, but nothing major. It turned to be not as scary as it looks (or maybe it is for others, I don’t know).

As for data accuracy, well, it is based on trust. You can’t verify its accuracy unless the manager is also on the list and verifies the numbers of their directs (Managers can’t join the list unless they also share their salaries).

I feel it is accurate to big extent because of the game theoretical element involved if you lie and get caught. I think of it as a variant of prisoner’s dilemma. However I don’t certainly know what makes sense from a game theoretical perspective, assuming one wants to look good while getting access to everyone’s info. Is lying better? And if you lie, should you lie by posting a higher salary? or a lower one? I definitely don’t encourage anyone to lie for the obvious ethical reasons, I am merely interested in the game theoretical analysis of the situation.

On the synergy point, I can’t see any team synergy effects because it is voluntary and the company is big. I think you would only notice this if a big % of a specific team members are on the list and can see the differences in their salaries. And it will make matters worse if those differences are big between people who assume they have the same skills/contribution as their peers.

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Open Salaries

I joined Zalando open salary initiative. You submit your salary information to a form, once you do this you get access to all the other submissions of the form.

It took me a long time to wrap my head around the idea. It is scary having your salary exposed to your colleagues.

It can lead to resentment if you discover you are under paid, or fear of envy/hate if you discover you are paid much higher than your colleagues.

After a lot of thinking and discussions with the founder of the initiative inside the company, I decided to join. I already knew where I am in comparison to my salary band before joining. However I had a few reasons to join.

1) Gathering the courage to do this. I like to push my limits and the fact I was fearing the consequences that may arise from this – including my own insecurities – made me more determined to do it.

2) Understanding the market. I hope one day to start a company and this was free data to understand how much it costs per engineer/product manager/data scientist…etc.

3) I don’t fit the typical stereotype of a wheelchair user who is also a social justice warrior, however I thought I might help someone by exposing this info. You never know.

At the end, I believe money doesn’t define one’s worth. What matters is the value you create in the universe and how you treat others around you. That being said, I believe money defines your level of freedom, which I am a big believer in, and that’s why I believe in money.

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Being an Owl

Yesterday I sent the following email to some of my coworkers

I have a weird request, but can we make this meeting some other time that’s not 9:30? I am genetically a night owl and I hate 9:30 meetings. You can find more info on night owls below. Source: Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams

And then I attached the following two screenshots

And I want to add this screenshot to this blog post

I don’t know if what I did was good or stupid, but I really hate 9:30 meetings. I am an owl, and I should be accommodated for.

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Zapier

Yesterday I wrote about wanting a replacement to ifttt, some people on twitter told me to try Zapier. I tried it and it is exactly what I need.

It is basically an internet chewing gum, you use it to stick two things together which is what I did, making it automatically publish my newest blog posts to twitter and LinkedIn.

It checks every 5 minutes for new posts, much better than ifttt, which changed from every 20 minutes to every few hours which isn’t good. Thank you internet.