Tales from the jar side: My book finally appears, Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma, and The Rutles
I have always thought, in the back of my mind, cheese and onions. Do I have to spell it out? C-H-E-E-S-E-A-N-D-O-N-I-O-N-S, oh no.
Welcome, jarheads, to Tales from the jar side, the Kousen IT newsletter, for the week of July 18 - 25, 2010. This week I taught the online Introduction to the Gradle Build Tool course for Gradle, Inc, and hey, guess what? HELP YOUR BOSS HELP YOU is a real thing now.
It’s Alive, It’s Alive, It’s Alive!
Or, if you prefer Gene Wilder:
Either way, here’s the tweet announcing Help Your Boss Help You:
(Note the even better than normal coupon code.)
Of course, when I quote-tweeted it, I managed to introduce a typo:
I’m not sure what managing your manger would involve, but I promise you that no sheep were harmed in the writing of this book.
The Atlanta Java Users Group (AJUG) retweeted me, typo and all, while announcing my first appearance at a live, in-person meeting since the start of the pandemic:
I made sure to register myself, because I’m pretty sure I’m going to be there and I want some pizza too. This meeting is going to serve as part presentation and part book release party. My friend Pratik Patel runs AJUG along with Vincent Mayers (who came up with the name Tales from the jar side, but that’s another story) and they’re planning to order a couple boxes of books to raffle off at the meeting. So if you’re in the area, please drop by. As the tweet says, there will be pizza. 🍕
Interestingly enough, Amazon still lists my book as available only in paperback, when I know a Kindle version was prepared. From what I understand, it takes about an extra week for that to update, which is consistent with the fact that Amazon lists the book release date as July 27. Hopefully that will all take care of itself.
When I visited the site, I found that Amazon puts in the following “best seller” lists:
I hope that being in the top 3 million books is good for a book that hasn’t been released yet. I guess I get the Business Communication category, but I’m not sure how it wound up #920 in Business Ethics. Again, I’ll see how all that changes once the book formally appears on Amazon.
FYI, I’m still working on the audiobook recordings. I’m up through six chapters now (out of 10), so there’s still some ways to go.
The Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma and You
My latest Medium post in the Pragmatic Programmers publication is called Pushing Back: Lessons from the Prisoner’s Dilemma. Normally I’d just refer you to that article for the details, but this time I’ll try to summarize the major points here, which of course are covered more thoroughly in the book.
The Prisoner’s Dilemma is the most famous problem from the mathematical theory of games, and it has applications in field ranging from economics to environmental studies to international relations. I’ve never seen anyone apply it to the employee/manager relationship, however, so either I’ve got an original contribution (yay!) or I’m wrong somehow (boo!). I think I’m okay, but feel free to decide for yourself.
The basic Prisoner’s Dilemma problem is very simple. Two criminals are accused of the same crime. They’re interrogated separately and can’t talk to each other. Each has a choice of whether to cooperate with the other and say nothing, or defect by turning in their accomplice. The penalties are as listed in this table:
If they only play the game once, the winning strategy is each. Say you are prisoner A. Then you look at the options for B:
If B cooperates, you’re better off defecting, because you’ll go free.
If B defects, you’re also better off defecting, because you’ll only serve 2 years instead of 3.
So you defect. Unfortunately, B makes the same calculation, and the math results in both sides defecting. That’s sad, but it shows how two rational players wind up not cooperating, even though it is in their best interest to do so.
(This, btw, is what they call a Nash equilibrium, in case you enjoyed the movie A Beautiful Mind.)
Everything is different, however, if you play the game over and over an unknown number of times. The Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma (IPD) problem changes things, because what you do in each round will be remembered by the other side and may affect what they do next time. An extremely effective strategy for the IPD problem is called Tit for Tat (TFT), which can be expressed very simply:
Cooperate on the first move.
Each round after that, echo what the opponent did last time.
As discussed extensively in the book The Evolution of Cooperation by Robert Axelrod, this strategy won multiple IPD tournaments, and to this day is viewed as a top candidate.
If you want to try playing the game with different strategies, my favorite online simulator is here. That site also discusses the evolutionary IPD problem, where a population of strategies changes after each tournament by reproducing the successful ones and deleting the ones at the bottom. In that simulator, TFT is known as CopyCat, but it works the same way.
Applying TFT to your Manager
The beauty of TFT is that it’s easy for the other player to diagnose. That helps train them to expect your reactions. I apply this to the employee/manager relationship this way:
Cooperate with your boss from the start.
When they do something you don’t like, push back, but in a way that does not threaten the loyalty relationship. For example, go into their office and shut the door. Then tell them you’re not happy and why. But do it privately, because you don’t want this to be a public confrontation.
Negotiate, which may or may not get you anything, but at least gives the manager a chance to compensate you.
Whether you get anything or not, go back to work. That’s important, because it shows your manager that you can object without turning the situation into a crisis.
The benefits are that your boss will (hopefully) learn that whenever they make a decision that goes against you, they’re going to hear about it. They may do it anyway, and they may not even seem to care about your pushing back, especially because you’re going to go back to work anyway, but your actions accomplish a few goals. First, you’re standing up for yourself, which always feels better than not doing so. Second, you are establishing a pattern of non-hostile objections, and most people (even most managers) tend to avoid conflict if they can. Finally, if your manager refuses to learn, you’ve built up a series of objections that show you haven’t been happy for a while and tried to do something about it. As they say, you never want your announcement that you’re leaving to be a surprise to your manager, because that means you both missed any chance of fixing things. Also, when you have your exit interview at in human resources, the first thing they’re going to ask is whether your boss knew you were unhappy, and this way you can point to a series of cases where you made that clear.
This approach is hardly a perfect strategy. It won’t always work. But it’s playing the long game, and it will likely help you feel better about things along the way. Normally when people get into a conflict with their boss, they feel they only have two options: they can just go along, or they can leave. This strategy gives you an intermediate option to try.
And, believe it or not, some bosses do learn.
For more details, see the article, but for a much more thorough explanation, see the relevant chapter in my new book.
Gradle Goodness
This week I taught the Introduction to the Gradle Build Tool class that is offered by Gradle, Inc every couple of months. We had a large, active group this time.
Nothing special to report this time, but the class went well. I always do a demo with both Eclipse and IntelliJ IDEA, and both of those were well received. The only real problem is I still have too much to talk about in the hours available, but that’s hardly a new issue for me.
Meet the Rutles
And now for something completely different. I spend way too much time on YouTube videos, but this week I stumbled across the channel for Elliot Roberts. He made a video a couple months ago about the lost opportunities of the movie Yesterday, which was about a world where the Beatles never existed, but one musician becomes famous because he remembers their songs. Roberts liked and disliked all the same things about the movie that I did, so I followed up by watching his video called The best (and worst) Beatles tribute films
In the video, he talked about the travesty that was the Peter Frampton / Bee Gees movie based on Sgt. Peppers, which I’ll spare you the indignity of linking to here.
He also, however, reminded me of the fantastic Eric Idle / Neil Innes mockumentary, The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash. I’m pretty sure that link has the entire movie in it, though I rewatched it a different way. In case you’re not aware, The Rutles describes a Beatles-like band, following all the same historical events as the real band, but in parody form*. It features appearances by many of the early Saturday Night Live cast members (John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Gilda Radner, and Bill Murray), as well as guest appearances by Mick Jagger, Paul Simon, and even George Harrison (in disguise, sort of).
*I still can’t believe they got away with what they did to Yoko. :)
The parody songs are fantastic. For example, here is their fictional live appearance from the Ed Sullivan show, where they sang Hold My Hand:
The lyrics are just what you’d expect:
Please, please, hold my hand!
Hold my hand, yeah, yeah
Hold my hand, yeah, yeah
Hold my hand, and I’ll see you home!
If you enjoy that, check out Cheese and Onions, or Ouch!. I finally remembered that I subscribe to a music service now (sadly, it’s YouTube music, but so be it), which meant I was able to spend a very pleasant afternoon listening to the soundtrack album. I’d never heard Blue Suede Shubert before, or the George Harrison-inspired Nevertheless, so that was awesome.
I think of myself as a second-generation Beatles fan, meaning I was too young to remember seeing them while they were together, but instead became a huge fan in the decade after they broke up. The more you know about their history (and I know way too much), the more you’ll enjoy The Rutles. It’s such a labor of love, even though it’s a parody. I can’t believe it wasn’t a big hit when it was released back in 1979, but I guess you never know.
Amusing Tweets
To finish up this week, here are a few tweets I enjoyed, in no particular order.
Ooh, green.
Exactly. This +1000.
That would explain a lot.
Finally, this is a bit NSFW (language), but hilarious:
Enjoy. It’s a bit embarrassing how much the subtitles help, even though she’s probably speaking English.
As a reminder, you can see all my upcoming training courses on the O’Reilly Learning Platform here and all the upcoming NFJS Virtual Workshops here.
Last week:
Introduction to the Gradle Build Tool, the bi-monthly online course I teach for Gradle, Inc.
Recorded more chapters for the audiobook version of HYBHY. I’m up through chapter 6 out of 10 now, so making progress. :)
Try again to record a podcast for the GOTOpia Book Club.
This week:
Kotlin Fundamentals, on the O’Reilly Learning Platform
Java Upgrade, private class in Raleigh, NC. This is my first trip involving an actual flight since February of 2000. Wish me luck.