Irreverent unfiltered thoughts

Saltier takes for my insider friends.

Pay for Play

I saw a young woman on Linked In discussing how to lead in AI without having technical skills. She is a classically attractive young woman, intelligent, knowledgeable, and a master communicator. (If someone figures out who it is, I'm not picking on her. She's great. It made me think. Making people think is a great outcome.) Now, mind you, this idea that people should lead technical innovation without having some technical knowledge and experience is highly problematic today.

Look at the planes falling out of the sky, rockets blowing up over homes, and bridges collapsing; we might not be helping that by glorifying a lack of technical skill and placing higher-qualified people under the dictatorial rule of lower-qualified people who have social media rizz and really great hair. If you can lead, it can be wonderful, and you don't need technical skills to lead other knowledge workers. But you need empathy, sympathy, and the cognitive capacity to understand their work. You need the confidence to pick the best and then take their advice. An expert who can't collaborate is no better in this case. It's about leadership skills and transcendent leadership, which may be rarer than hard technical skills.

I've worked alongside a design leader of a Fortune 10 company whose prior experience in design was a home greeting card business where she hand-designed cards for a small circle of friends. I'm not denigrating this—I love that. However, it did not translate into much understanding of the industrial designers she managed, consequently driving natural talent out in droves. This is aided and abetted by Business Journalism, which isn't business journalism but bought advertising. Now, people can cut an image of authority without actively cultivating it. Wealth networks that don't want folks looking under the hood too much benefit from this a lot. It is better to put a 28-year-old woman with strong social and verbal skills and a ring light on than someone who might talk about model autophagy, instability, and the limits of neural nets, particularly if you want to drive traffic to a new AI platform that is the old AI platform dressed up to be a new one. (We have some brilliant 20-somethings here at Singular XQ who look good with ring lights and DO have technical skills and knowledge, by the way. This is neither ageist nor sexist. It might be intelligence-ist.)

Gentle Readers, I am here to testify to you, exclusively, that being "Best Place to Work for Innovators," even in the most significant, most respected name-brand publications, costs precisely $995.

They've done their research, and apparently, employee experience is directly correlated with the willingness and ability of the employer to pay for play. Well-respected brands have twice nominated Singular XQ, with its volunteer staff and one part-time employee, as the best place to work for innovators. I have also been nominated as one of the Top 50 Woman Innovators, one of the Top 10 Female Voices in AI, and my favorite:

"Top Up and Comer."

I have no problem telling you. I am 50 and have been working in software development since 1996. I'm not an up-and-comer, nor is the skin on my neck nor any other body parts unless we are talking about future joint replacements. Most of it is trending downwards like I think growth stocks will very soon. But I will tell you what I am.

I'm almost all out of estrogen and entirely out of f**ks to give.

I don't have spare revenue for that kind of thing, nor do I have a spare set of alternative situational ethics that allow me to do this simply because we work for a good cause, and you have to fight fire to fire. So, I am relying on readers like you and a social whisper campaign to tell us who we are.

We are a relatively decent community of smart folks who like to innovate and help humans instead of bottom lines. We also have the crazy idea that working this way does help the bottom line sustainably and steadily over time. This is an excellent strategy for corporate brands that want longevity and positive social impact, like Bob's Red Mill, and who want to build legacies of truly innovative thinking, like Boeing once did, but not for people who like to play in growth stocks and selling illusions.

I have a proposal for the big business media outlets. What do you think their response will be? Let me know. I'm here for your thoughts.

Dear Fortune 500 Magazines Logos that Make People Look Like High Price Tag Leaders:

We like to work with high-IQ folks who have experienced other barriers to employment. If you'd like to PAY US $995 instead, my Patreon is in my profile under Visit My Store. Speaking of being almost all out of estrogen, I have found a new biological piece of information about the hormonal changes of perimenopause. Are you ready? This is breaking medical science:

The hormone fluctuations of perimenopause change the body's capacity to regulate fluids. It causes fluid to back up behind the eyes and places pressure on the optic nerve, enabling me to see you clearly as precisely the fraudulent, lying snake-oil salesman you are.

I am happy to teach you how to use journalistic research, rubrics, and metrics to determine who should receive recognition.

Hire real female journalists to investigate the companies and people you laud and use your brains to determine who deserves to be celebrated, male, female, nonbinary, and other. Maybe use, I don't know, a rubric? And include a dimension or two about social conscience and integrity. If you don't know what a rubric is or how to add dimensions to them. Call me, maybe? I can tutor you.

All for the low price of $995.