Photo by Andrea Piacquadio
Introduction
We meet Yasmin.
Bob and Alice play a guessing game.
We introduce the WYSIATI anti-design pattern.
Mountainview
There are two people in the reception area. Yael walks over to the broad-shouldered man, with a brightly-colored shirt. “Allan ? I’m Yael from People Operations, I’ll take you over to Mark for your interview.”
Mark speaks little and speaks politely. This frightens people so much that they never question him.
Mark asks Allan - “Tell me about yourself.” Allan is overweight, fidgety, sweaty-palmed and nervous.
“I graduated from Stanford in June and I want to find a job as a software developer. I have a number of projects I worked on. Let me show you examples of my work.”.
Mark says “Show me one.” Allan pulls out his tablet and demos an application for peer-to-peer communications app. It looks like Figma. Mark is thinking WTF. Mark says “What protocol did you use?” Allan says: “TCP”.
Mark says: “Unfortunately, we are doing work in UDP. We will be in touch”.
Yael escorts Allan back to the reception area and tells him: “We’ll be in touch”. Allan knows that the official reason might be one reason or another, but he knows he failed his interview with Mark. He’s still shaking. Mark was one scary dude, he thought.
The second person was tall, slim and very beautiful.
“Yasmin ? I’m Yael from People Operations. I’ll take you over to Mark for your interview.”
Mark speaks little and speaks politely. This frightens people so much that they never question him.
Yasmin sits down in front of Mark’s desk.
Mark asks Allan - “Tell me about yourself.”
“I’m Yasmin, I’ve been working the past 3 years at Tail Scale on the central management and tools for network administrators.”.
“Explain WireGuard to me”.
Yasmin, “Tail Scale uses WireGuard for VPN. WireGuard uses UDP to create secure P2P tunnels. It's simpler and faster than IPSec and OpenVPN.
“Do you think Wireguard is more secure than IPSec?”
Yasmin, “I don’t know what the marketing people say. I can think of 2 reasons why Wireguard is more secure. First of all, WireGuard is simpler: You can do the work with less code.”
“Why is less code good?”
“Less code makes a smaller attack surface with less vulnerabilities”.
“What else?”
“Wireguard doesn't store connection state information on the server. This means that attackers cannot exploit the protocol from the server side.
They talked for a few more minutes. Mark paged Yael.
Yael came in and told Yasmin - “I’ll take you over to your next interview with Bob. Bob is the infrastructure group manager.”
Bob, Yael and Yasmin
Yael brought Yasmin into Bob’s office. The 3 of them sat around a small round table.
Bob introduced himself. He was looking at Yasmin - seeing a slim, tall, very beautiful woman. Wearing a white designer t-shirt, expensive-looking slacks, and Mizuno women’s running shoes. Moving like a professional athlete.
Long purple nails. Not the stereotype of a kernel driver software developer.
Bob asked: “Lena speaks very highly of you. How do the 2 of you know each other?”
Yasmin: “We were classmates at San Jose State in the computer science department. We became close friends. At the beginning I helped her with English, and she helped me with the computer science courses. I found some of them challenging. I was on the womens’ track team and we trained a lot. I didn’t always have enough time or energy to hack the homework problems myself. Lena was a big help.
My twin brother, Amir went to Stanford. He is the smart and really successful one. After graduation, he co-founded a startup with a classmate. They sold the company after 2 years. He’s a venture partner at Mayfield and working with a dozen different cybersecurity startups in the Mayfield portfolio. He has this easy charm and ability to succeed. I have to work hard. I’m not successful like Amir”.
“Why do you want to leave Tail Scale and come to work for Google? You know that the founders worked at Google. I’m friendly with Brad Fitzpatrick. He’s a genius”.
Yasmin: “I’ve been there since the beginning and I need a change. The company is doing very well. Brad is a very special guy and I learned a lot from him. Now is a good time for me to move on”.
Bob said - “Yasmin, we will be in touch in the next few days. Yael will escort you out”.
Yael comes back to Bobs’ office.
“What do you think?” Bob asks.
“About what?” “About that story about her brother? I don’t get it”.
Yael is doing her PhD at Stanford in psychology. She’s working on AI in education with Noah Goodman.
“Bob - it’s common for a twin like Yasmin to feel overshadowed by her sibling. Amir’s achievements are impressive. She grew up in an Iranian family with parents who are very competitive. It’s not surprising that she talks more about Amir than about herself. Now listen to this: I did a little background research on Yasmin. She ran a sub 4’ 40s mile at San Jose in her sophomore year. She would have made the womens’ Olympic team if she had not gotten an achilles tendon injury in her junior year. I had a conversation with her after the phone screen. She’s still an active runner and she’s super competitive”.
Bob, “So how do you assess her? Is she an IC (Individual contributor) or EM (Engineering manager)”?
Yael, “It’s hard to say, but I’m willing to bet that 15 years from now, she’ll be VP Engineering at a major tech company. She has the technical chops, people skills and competitiveness”.
5 years later
Venice
Bob, Lena and Iris are at the studio apartment facing the beach, working on the next release of the software for gig workers hour reporting. Barry is at a sales meeting in Marina Del Rey.
Bob is sitting across a desk from Iris, looking at Iris bent over a stack of papers.
Iris is wearing a sleeveless blouse, designer-ripped jeans and stillettos. Reading glasses perched on her nose.
Power look, Bob is thinking, but not saying.
Bob, “We need a kernel driver programmer to support integrating phones and watches”.
Iris, “How long would it take? We’re about to sign a contract with that feature. Barry is meeting with them right now.”.
Bob, “I estimate 3 months of work for someone who knows what they’re doing. There’s a lot of talent out there right now with all tech layoffs, but it will take time to find someone we can trust. I don’t want to go to Upwork. I want someone local, I can trust”.
Lena is listening to the conversation. “Call Yasmin. She’s back in LA. You know, she was laid off from Google. We talk all the time”.
Bob - “I didn’t know that. I lost touch with all the excitement. Let’s call her up now”.
“Hi Yasmin - it’s Bob. How are you? I hear you’re back in LA. Do you have time for a coffee with me? - I might have something interesting for you if you’re available”.
Yasmin - “Hi Bob, I’m great. There is life after Google. Where do you want to meet? I can meet tomorrow morning”.
Bob, “How about Intelligentsia off Venice beach, tomorrow at 10:00?”
“Done. See you”.
Intelligentsia Cafe. Bob is looking at Yasmin. Still tall and very beautiful.
Looks a bit more athletic or maybe it's his imagination.
Bob, “What brings you to LA?”.
Yasmin, “After I was fired from Google, my parents started pressuring me to come back to LA and find a husband. I had just broken up with my boyfriend in Palo Alto. I don’t mind. The Koreans on Pico do a fine job on nail manicures. I signed up for a Persian dating website. Makes my mom happy. It's fun meeting rich Persian dudes. They spend money on me. I’m lifting weights, and running a lot, now that I don’t have a day job. What’s up? Lena says you’re working together on a startup out of a studio in Venice”.
Bob, “Yep. I’ll get to the point. We’re developing and selling a cloud service that enables gig workers to report hours using their watch or phone. We need to integrate data flows and develop a management layer. Right up your alley”.
Yasmin, “I can do that. Sounds like fun. What are you paying?”. Bob names a number.
Yasmin, “OK, I can start today. Do you have a contract?”.
Bob, “Just so happens, I do. In my backpack. You wanna sign now?”
Tuesdays with Alice
Bob is back in the Venice gym doing circuit training.
It’s Tuesdays with Alice.
Alice is working on a treadmill when he comes in and parks his bike by the ping pong table.
He finishes the circuit and they take a water break.
Alice is leaning against a pillar in the gym. The old USC sweatshirt and tennis shoes are her trademark. Drinking from a generic water bottle.
Bob smiles and says, “So Alice, what do you do for a living?”.
She smiles back. “Why don’t you guess”.
He takes a stab. “You’re an investment manager at Merrill Lynch”.
“Are you kidding me? Do I look like a baby-raper? Try again”.
“You’re a professor of economics at USC?”
She smiles back. “Keep on guessing. Not even warm, listen, I’m jumping into a shower, I have a meeting downtown. You can walk me to my car”.
After the shower, she comes out - wearing a black pants suit, white shirt, flats.
Alice, “You want another guess?”
Bob, walking her to her car - “Special CIA agent?”
“Not even close. Ciao Bob, I have to roll.”
They both smile at each other, as she gets into her car.
WYSIATI - the anti-design pattern
A design pattern is a template for creating solutions in different situations.
For example, an IKEA cabinet with its little tools and instructions for assembling the table is a design pattern.
An anti-design-pattern is a pattern that guarantees failure in different situations.
For example, not reading the IKEA papers and losing the little tools.
Anti-design pattern WYSATI - What You See Is All There Is
We tend to judge people by their appearances.
In the context of software development, WYSIATI can be jumping to a conclusion regarding the root cause of a bug. After the bug resurfaces 5 months later, you lost context and have to start from scratch.
What does it look like?
You meet a person.
You see a slim, tall, very beautiful woman.
You see that she’s wearing a white designer t-shirt, straight-leg jeans outfit from L’Agence on Rodeo Drive.
It does not occur to you that this person is a talented software engineer who develops kernel drivers with a sense of fashion.
Solving “WYSIATI”
Be curious: Be curious without being creepy. Ask what they do for a living.
Wipe your disk: Put your first assumption aside and consider other alternatives.
Debrief users: Ask your users what they think about the source of the bug. You will be surprised - users are surprisingly intuitive about these things.
Take ownership: If an engineer gets stuck in WYSIATI, it’s the leaders fault and leader’s responsibility to fix. This means - it’s the team leader’s responsibility to train the engineers and make sure they have all the tools they need including the capacity to step back and wipe their disk.
“WYISATI" can be challenging, but with extreme ownership and an open mind - you can achieve outstanding results.