Fire Drill, Bishopsgate

Every day one or other of the office blocks in the City tips its occupants onto the streets. Companies with trading floors leave a couple of traders inside unless they know it's real fire and not a drill or some over-sensitive alarm. Then it takes about twenty minutes or so to get everyone back in and up to their floors.

(I know: I cheated the dates. The last weekend was weird and this week more so, involving cough and fever.)

Ten Dumb... err Clever Programmer Interview Questions

Over at The Simple Programmer (I think), they posted a bunch of questions that recruiters ask programmers and analysts. Here are my answers.

1. "What would you do if you were the one survivor in a plane crash?" (Airbnb Trust and Safety Investigator job candidate). More Airbnb interview questions. ME: where did it crash? What that tells you: Like everyone with a tonne of experience, I know context is all.

2. "What's your favorite 90s jam?” (Squarespace Customer Care job candidate) ME: Jam as in music or jam as in basketball or jam as in jelly? What this tells you: You come at me with ambiguities, and I’m going to help you clarify them.

3. "If you woke up and had 2,000 unread emails and could only answer 300 of them, how would you choose which ones to answer?" (Dropbox Rotation Program job candidate.) ME: In descending order of the ability of a non-response to get me fired. What this tells you: I’m political

4. "How many people flew out of Chicago last year?" - (Redbox Software Engineer II job candidate ). ME: This is one of those Fermi estimation questions isn’t it? Actually, I’d probably look up the answer on Wikipedia. What this tells you: I know where to look up information.

5. "How much do you charge to wash every window in Seattle?" (Facebook Online Sales Operations job candidate). ME: Well, what you want me to do is a Fermi estimation. Or are you looking to see how much I really want as a salary? What this tells you: I think you’re playing games.

6. "Given 25 swimmers and a pool with five lanes, what is the minimum number of heats needed to determine the three fastest swimmers in the group?" (CKM Advisors Data Scientist job candidate.) ME: Oh heck. You didn’t say this was a combinatorics job. Not my strength. Nice meeting you. What this tells you: I’m not your guy.

7. "If you were a Muppet, which would you be?" (TicketNetwork Executive Support job candidate.) ME: Mal Reynolds in Firefly. What this tells you: I understand what you’re getting at with this question, so here’s an answer I can live with.

8. "How many gas stations are there in America?" (Zappos Family Senior Financial Analyst job candidate.) ME: What is it with Fermi estimation questions? Call Exxon. Ask them.

9. "You have a 1 mile long x 1 mile wide private island that you wish to turn into a resort. A plane requires a 2-mile long runway to take off. What do you do?" (Riot Games QA Analyst job candidate) ME: You want me to build a circular runway, don’t you? it would be just over 3 miles long. It wouldn’t work though because the airplane tyres and undercarriage wouldn’t take the centrifugal force at anything near take-off speed, not to mention the awful airflow wouldn’t generate enough lift.

10. "Why is the earth round?" (Twitter Software Engineer job candidate) ME: it isn’t. It’s oblate. And it’s oblate because gravity, centrifugal force and liquid core. Or something. What this tells you: I don’t do groupthink assumptions.

I know. I’m not going to get the job. But then, if they’re asking these questions, I don’t want it.

Objects, and Emotions, That Fell Between the Rafters

Every now and then, I think I want a good wallow in self-pity. No friends around me, no girlfriend, no sex, don’t even want to go on a vacation… the list is endless. Who doesn’t deserve a little self-pity on all that? A few old Carol King songs, too much chocolate and some memories of when I thought I had a life.


Except I just can’t be seem to sustain the mood. Not being able to drink makes it more difficult - alcohol is a reliable depressant. Also I have a job to do, or a session in the gym, or cooking, or sleep, or whatever else - I think it's called 'Life'. That, of course, is just avoidance. Because I must really be unhaaaaapy. I'm supposed to be lonely and blue. My health is supposed to be poor, my skin wrinkling and my mind going. Because I don't have... someone.

Hey guess what Oprah? (All therapists and pop psychology pundits are hereby named 'Oprah'.) I'm doing just fine. It helps I grew up around recorded music and books rather than people and sports. That makes it easier to live a life of sober solitude. But that's not a reason, it's a resource I can draw on. The reason is, well, you decide.

I'm an addict. I want my high. Since I can't get it from booze or drugs, then I'll get it from... chocolate, food, sunshine, music, fiction, non-fiction, solving problems at work, a dozen other things. I'm still not sure if sex ever gave me a high. Maybe one-night stands did sometimes. People don't provide those highs. People provide lows, anxiety, upset. People made me redundant, didn't hire me, re-organised me. People cancel trains and leave other people to die in hospital corridors. A very small number of people give Good Hug. Some of them recognise from the last time I came into their cafe, and I'm always slightly suprised when they do. People expect me to be this-and-that before they even know my name. Apparantly I have obligations towards people, but they have none towards me. People are not, nor should they be, a source of highs. Mostly people are a source of work and obligation, and a few are good company and provide some last lingering sense of connection with a world that fades a little more everyday, and that used to be so vivid.

That vivid sense I had of the world was as the possibility of belonging, rest, relaxation, safety, comfort. Somewhere. Comfort is an armchair. Safety is not jumping in front of traffic. Rest is what I do Saturday, when I leave the world to itself. Relaxation isn't what we ACoA's really do. Belonging? We don't do that either. So the world is fading because it's just a bunch of streets and houses and cows standing in fields. It's fading for me to what it's always been for you.

I'm an addict, and if I can't get my highs, I'd rather be asleep with my eyes open watching a box set. If I want drama, I'll add some weight to the bar. And if I can't have Rebekah Underhill...

(5' 11' Size 0 in a dress)

I'll happily do without anyone. It's an advantage of being grey-haired.

That urge to have a wallow in self-pity is partly an old weakened habit, a last remains of how I used to feel. And it's also caused by the now fading delusion that there is an otherwise that my life could be. That snake-oil sold by therapists and mind-body-spirit authors to disconnected, unsatisfied people everywhere. That somewhere there is a room full of people, and I walk into that room, and I relax, and feel uplifted at the same time. These are my brothers and sisters, my muckers, my team, my boys and girls. That was when we were eight, in junior school. In adult life, there's no such number, no such phone.

This doesn’t mean I am thoughtfully rejecting the self-pity, nor does it mean I don’t want to feel it from time to time. It certainly doesn’t mean I do some hokey gratitude list that convinces me that my life is really much better than I allow. It means the past self-pity was a fake: an artefact of booze, cigarettes, insufficient exercise, and a shit-ton of neuroses and dysfunctional thoughts. All of which have been cleared out, like clearing out the loft. All gone, except an old teddy-bear, the coal-tender from an OO-gauge model train, a school-exercise book and a photograph of the cottage we had a family summer holiday when I was eight. Objects, and emotions, that fell between the rafters.

Hypergamy Isn’t Quite What The Fable Says It Is

Hypergamy. Alpha Fucks and Beta Bucks. It’s a core idea of the Sphere. Women pursue a bi-polar sexual strategy: they want a reliable, low-maintenance, provider to pay the bills, take care of the kids and haul the heavy freight (Beta Bucks), and they want excitement, tingles and random emotions with some sex thrown in (Alpha Fucks). The usual theory, taken straight from the pornographic tendency of echo-psycho, is that women are attracted to men with Good Genes, dominant Alpha male, hunter-fighter-winner types who will breed strong sons and beautiful daughters from them. So they get pregnant by the Alpha and fool the Beta into raising the children.

This fable causes large-scale reality-field distortions in nearly everyone who comes near it.

Because the truth is that most women who fool around, don’t fool around with evo-psycho approved Alpha Males. They fool around with douchebags, losers, low-income musicians and artists, drug addicts and drunks, the local Lotharios of the holiday town, with other married men, and with men who don’t stay for breakfast and even the occasional PUA. Women have sex for two hundred and thirty seven different reasons, many of which barely made sense to them at the time.

They choose losers and abusers for two reasons: first, they can’t hack the competition for the small number of over-subscribed Alphas; second, they don’t want to threaten the relationship that exists in their heads with their Beta Provider, so they don’t have flings with men who are viable partners. They choose losers and douchebags because they don’t want to feel that could be doing better than their Beta, as that would then cause them to regard him with contempt for not being as good as the next guy, and then to regard themselves with contempt for staying with him when they could do better. That then re-doubles back on the Beta Hubby, because it’s his fault she feels self-contempt. Not hers for tasting the forbidden fruit and being an ingrate.

 

(Not the Alpha she’s fooling around with) 

For additional silliness, add the assumption that women are good judges of breeding stock. If this is so - and the really crude evo-psycho theories assume it - then apparently douchebags, unemployed artists, drug addicts and all sorts of other people whose phenotypical behaviour screams “unsuitable” in fact have excellent genotypes. Which they do, if “excellent genotype” means “breeds douchebags, heroin addicts, bi-polars and low impulse control”. Maybe losers, abusers, drunks and violent men are the true inheritors of the Earth, and this civilised society thing is a dreadful evolutionary mistake.

Or not.

Maybe many women are just dreadful at spotting a good partner - which explains why 30% of them get fed up with their choice within 10 years and divorce him. Maybe many women know a good deal when they see him putting food in the cupboard, petrol in the tank, clothes in the wardrobe and mowing the lawn, and are smart enough not to threaten that for the sake of some sex and cheap thrills, so they fool around with “the bad boys, the cool boys, the commitment-phobic boys, the crazy boys”, all the unsuitable boys. Maybe female choice is not what makes an Alpha male - after all, in nature for the animals that do the Alpha thing (which is not many of them), the females just stand around and wait for the males to decide who’s the Alpha.

Maybe many women are morally flawed, emotionally dysfunctional and, when you get past the glamours, have un-attractive personalities. Maybe there aren’t that many Good Women out there, not now, in the present exact conditions of really existing Capitalism. Maybe there never were, and they behaved themselves in public for fear of shame, inside their houses, they made the lives of their husband and children a sheer hell of indifference, contempt and sarcasm. Maybe it was always like it is now, except now, men don’t have to marry any of them.

(Renton. Mark Renton. Who she really fools around with) 

The practical problem for many men is that they don’t want to be jerks, freeloaders, clowns and drama-triggers, and they don’t want to be around women who choose that kind of second-rate phenotype. They would rather believe they were being rejected because they weren’t James Bond, than because they weren’t Mark Renton. They are being rejected for casual relationships because they are husband material and the girls don’t want husbands yet.

Hypergamy is rarely Alpha Fucks and Beta Bucks. Mostly, it’s Asshole Fucks and Beta Bucks. When put like that, it may be even more threatening. It’s one thing to get James Bond’s girl when he’s finished with her, but to get Mark Renton’s girl when he’s finished with her? Not so palatable. And that’s why evo-pyscho sells: it’s much easier on everyone’s ego.

Mandatory Training Questions and Answers

I can't resist this. Every month we have to do Mandatory Training. It doesn't actually train us to do anything, it's a box-ticking exercise so The Bank can say it makes us all aware that we shouldn't e.g. transfer money to anyone in Myanmar at all for any reason. So there's a Whistleblowing Line for when we catch our managers working scams (and in fairness, the scamming managers are always female, which I think is how Diversity should be). So this gives you a sense of what the test questions are like...


What happens to Jack now he’s called the Whistleblowing Line? Select THREE correct options 

1. He will never be able to get another job in the company 

2. His managers will give him unsatisfactory ratings until he leaves 

3. He will be treated as if nothing happened, as the Whistleblowing Line is strictly confidential 

4. He will be shunned by everyone around him

Except for where I'm being childishly sarcastic with the options. Should you choose 1,2 and 4, a pop-up will say something like

That's right! Jack has totally shafted himself by showing everyone in the company that he can't be trusted to keep a secret and let frauds and embezzlers get on with their scams in private. 

I forget what we have next month. Something about leaving wires to trail over the floor and not bothering to ask building services to use detergent to get the oil off the stairs.

Red Bus, Red Bus, Another Red Bus

Every morning I take a break from twiddling my thumbs while my queries run producing insightful analysis by going to Pret A Manger (I know, don't judge me) for a sandwich and a dash Americano. This gives me some fresh air, well okay, air that hasn't been round the aircon a dozen times, and a few minutes of time out. There's usually nothing much going on. Except for last Friday when I saw a line of buses that would have done Oxford Street proud. It went right on up past the overground railway bridge.

Frequent services are tremendous, but as soon as anything goes wrong on the road, this happens. It is the first time since I've been there that I've seen it. The Red Wall of Oxford Street happens every day.

Mutton Hash and Turnip Tops

For Rollo at The Rational Male, a man who isn’t his wife's Kind of Alpha is more or less condemned to a lifetime of sexual frustration and thick contempt under a thin layer of civility-in-public. Without Alpha a woman in a relationship is an uncontrollable shrew, who will jump into the arms of the first passing biker with enough of her favourite drug. OK. I’m exaggerating his views only slightly. It doesn’t have to be a biker.

So there’s something Rollo doesn’t understand, and it’s an oversight common to good-looking men. For the majority of the population, who are not physically attractive, sex is a hygiene factor and its mere provision is enough. They don’t need to eat steak and salmon, as Somerset Maugham noticed:

The keenest pleasure to which the body is susceptible is that of sexual congress. I have known men who gave up their whole lives to this; they are grown old now, but I have noticed, not without surprise, that they look upon them as well spent. It has been my misfortune that a native fastidiousness has prevented me from indulging as much in this particular delight as I might have. I have exercised moderation because I was hard to please. When from time to time I have seen the person with whom the great lovers satisfied their desires I have been more astonished by the robustness of their appetites than envious of their successes. It is obvious that you need not often go hungry if you are willing to dine off mutton hash and turnip tops.

A woman with an honest view of her status will settle for the provisioning of sex by an ordinary man. It’s a hygiene factor for both of them, and they are both better off with it. The majority of the human race lives like this.

The nonsense starts when women have delusions about their desirability, or profess self-serving rubbish to mask the fact that they have married a man they don’t find sexually attractive, but do find a useful payer of bills. Hypergamy says that all women have ideas above their station, which isn’t true. What is true is that, given the chance on a plate all women would have a night with their favourite male hottie. That’s not hypergamy, at least any more than my willingness to own a Ferrari given one for free plus lifetime insurance and maintenance is a sign of my consumerism. Consumerism is when I sacrifice the quality of my life to get the Ferrari: hypergamy is when she refuses men of her value in the vain hope of landing one way above her value.

So let’s deal with the Alpha thing. Both Rollo and Roissy define in it terms of women. For Rollo, Alpha is a relational concept: X is an Alpha male for Y at time T if there exists a female Y who wants to have unconditional sex with X at time T. So today Rollo can be Alpha for Alice, but not for Barbie, and tomorrow he doesn’t even make the cut for Alice. For Roissy, Alpha is measured by weighted notch count, where the weighting is the SMV of the woman. So Roissy can be Alpha even if Alice and Barbie don’t want to fuck him, because he’s got the notch count to prove it.

As defined by either of them, Alpha is completely independent of a man’s moral character, economic productivity, intellectual and cultural creativity, self-discipline, and even his preference for dressing from Jermyn Street. So if being a douchebag or a drug-dealer is what it takes to get with the 10’s, then maybe a decent man stays away from the 10’s. If some Four with delusions of Eight gives him the brush-off, maybe he should count himself lucky. Self-respect matters, or should matter, more than getting laid and having a woman around the place.

However, a guy gotta get laid now and again, and that’s why English men and women drink so much: so they can take the sharp edges off their judgement and give themselves the chance of some physical intimacy. Game can turn the whole thing into, well, a game, but only if he accepts that he’s not going to be meeting any potential long-term relationships that way, and he’s willing to accept that it does not say anything about a woman’s moral character that she will fall for Game, anymore than it says anything about a cat’s ability as a mouser that it goes crazy for catnip.

So is Alpha something a man should aim for, as he should aim for a 200lb bench-press and deadlift? No. A man lives his life for the approval of himself and his few peers, not for the opinions of women, employers and other people with a vested interest in exploiting him.

But he should bear in mind that women (who aren’t co-dependent or looking for weak men to bully) need attention, excitement, to see that he has a purpose, and that he has thought about what they are doing the next time they meet, and before or after they have sex. (This is the ‘Alpha’ of which I was speaking in a previous post.)

He should also shun White Knighting, Beta supplication and orbiting, thinking that his goal in life is to provide for a wife and children, and also avoid TV and computer games, the use of social media for anything except Game, and thinking that he’s some kind of sad sack if he doesn’t have a woman in his life. What makes a man is purpose, self-respect, independence and permenant self-development. All of us flinch along the way, and all of us compromise some of it from time to time. The point is not to abandon it away for anything: money, fame, power, or women.