Sam's posterous

My 2012 Resolution

DISCLAIMER: I work for Square. This post does not necessarily reflect the opinions of Square, Inc, the CEO or any of the people there. These opinions are strictly my own. Learn more about Square here.

One of the topics that I've been most passionate about this year is the direction of technology here in the bay area. I think we've lost our way.

The valley has always been good at throwing out convention, and forcing us all to think about solving old problems in new ways. This is apparent not just in the product offerings and the business models, but even to benefits packages and office designs are affected by this way of life (SHAMELESS PLUG: check out Square's Latest Office). This mindset is by far one of the best parts of being here, and I hope it never changes.

My beef is with the types of stuff we are doing. There was a time when personal computers came out of the valley. Transistors and then microprocessors were developed here. These technologies transformed the world in every way imaginable. Genetics, energy, meteorology, medicine, business, social-networking, carpentry - just try to name an industry unaffected by computing. Maybe it's too early to tell, but very many of the hottest companies coming out of the valley as of late will not have this sort of impact. In fact, most don't even aspire to. Some of them might even be cleverly disguised Ponzi schemes.

It's not that the companies today are not changing the world. It's that they just don't have the vision, will, or social responsibility to improve it. It's getting harder to turn our eyes away from the balance sheet, and instead turn them to a world in need.

So, this year, I resolve to spend more time improving the world, however I can (and less of this nonsense). One of the best things about technology and science is that you don't have to just sit around and talk about helping the world - you can actually do it.

This is actually one of the things I love about Square. We grew out of a need for self-betterment. I hope we never forget that our job isn't SEO optimizing businesses, or building location-aware loyalty programs, or disrupting industries, or any other valley buzz-word laden non-sense that you hear from the press. Our job is to simply improve lives through our product.

I wanted to close with the video that inspired this post. It's a TED talk by Justin Hall-Tipping, and it really spoke to the humanness of technology. Please enjoy, and please, never forget the big picture.

People are Not Resources

Hey people who refer to other people as "resources", the next time you catch yourself doing this, I want you to stop and remember these words.

When you transform a "person" into a "resource", or a "person" into an "engineer", you are giving yourself free reign to do things to something that you would never do to a person. This is true of changing what you call any living thing into something else. When we abstract a person into something else, we are unconsciously giving ourselves free reign to do things to that abstract object that we would never do to a person. 

When next you notice that you are about to indirectly refer to a person, just slow down; relax; breath. Take the time to say their name, or acknowledge them for a human being. By humanizing our approach to working with each other, we'll have a much better shot of building the next great thing.

Being Humble Is Not So Terrible

Since coming to silicon valley two years ago, I've noticed an alarming number of rather public and well respected figures in the tech industry make sweeping generalizations about other people. This disturbs me and fascinates me. Two things to note here:

1. A lot of geeks that I know of have a chip on their shoulder from being oppressed, belittled, and generally made fun of when they were younger. These geeks come to SV, realize that they are treated like royalty hear, and vengefully react to anyone who may be underneath them. It's very much a situation of the bullied becoming the bullies; it's disturbing and fascinating that some of the smartest people in the world don't realize what they sound like.

2. Those of us who work in technical fields are always quick to say that people who are cruel or mean are just stupid. This ties back to point 1; we are quick to point out that bullies are just stupid or something of that nature. In retrospect, perhaps they aren't stupid. Perhaps they are allowing that side of themselves to play itself out while they are still young. Sure beats being one of those thugs as an adult.

A striking example: I think we can agree that the average intelligence of someone who reads the 37signals blog would be higher than the general population's average intelligence. Yet, you couldn't tell from reading the comments of this blog post (aside from the slightly fancier words). Though this is bigotry in a small way, I've often seen and heard discrimination in other, more troubling ways.

Rumors of a "Google Brigade" or companies that would not hire candidates because they enjoyed Sports, played sports, or had certain tastes in music are both things that I've heard of people experiencing. This is bullshit and amounts to the same sort of bullying as geeks may have experienced earlier in their lives. I don't lose sleep at night criticizing people that behave this way. They are entitled to saying whatever they like. All I'm trying to say is that this late-working, basketball playing, hardware engineer and software engineer will take your ass to school if you try that shit here.

There's No Such Thing as Over-qualified

Guy Kawasaki points out in an excellent blog post that A players hire A players, and that B players hire C players. A players are great at what they do, and have the confidence in their own abilities that they can acknowledge greatness in others. B players may be nearly as good as A players, but don't have the confidence in themselves to hire other great people.

You can hear the approach of a B player if you hear the following words out of their mouth: "They are overqualified for the position; therefore, we cannot hire them."

Let me assure you - there is no such thing as an overqualified person at an organization. The way you rate a person is on a continuum of not qualified to supremely qualified. That's it. There's nothing beyond this scale.

To put it another way, if an entrepreneurial, motivated, computer literate, educated, intelligent, meticulous person wants to work for McDonald's as a burger flipper, as McDonald's you should extend that offer. Period. The only reason you would refuse to hire someone because they have greater potential than the job you wish to fill is if you are scared that this person is smarter than you. And if you are making decisions like this, then your interests are not aligned with your company's, and people will find out. Do not allow this person to spark a Bozo Explosion.

Don't Be Religious

It's hard to have a discussion with a religious person about anything
outside of the topic of their chosen religion. One example is the
religion of Apple. Don't get me wrong, I like Apple products, but I
don't constantly think about Apple. For instance, when I talk about
the graphics of Rage for the iPhone, I'm speaking directly about the
graphics of iD Tech 5, and when I say you should see what it looks
like on a computer, I'm not saying that the iPhone sucks, I'm saying
you should see the total potential of this technology. In this
particular instance, let's face it, it's about the tech, not the
hardware. Thus, the amazingness of these graphics are a function of
the developer's abilities to overcome the limitations of the graphics
subsystem of the phone, and we should pay respect to John Carmack and
his team. Absolute religion like this obscures your ability to think
critically about unrelated problems, and makes you look like an
asshole because you are unable to give credit where it's due. We
should all remember that there is more to technology (and life) than
your chosen religion vs everything and everyone else.

Thinking About Startup Hours

You are the founder and owner of your organization, and you've grown
to ~20 people. It's a startup, so everyone understands that there are
long hours and hard work. Contrast this with the defense industry,
where people frequently do their 8 hours (and much of those 8 hours
are spent unproductively) and leave. When your team already feels this
responsibility to the company - i.e. feeling the need to accomplish
something every day, and staying as long as it takes to do just that -
DO NOT guilt trip them about hours. Likely, this is the group who has
equity, and know the stakes they work under. If they need some time to
rest, let them have it. Let's put it this way - take your equity,
divide it by the equity of the highest equity earner in your company.
Take this multiplier, multiply it to the hours this high equity earner
works, exceed this time. Now you've earned the privilege to ask more
hours from this highly dedicated core set of employees.

The Duality of Fanboys

Fanboys are great for your product. They are free evangelists, and if
you've built a good product, fanboys will follow. If you have them,
listen to these people closely, and keep them happy. Fanboys will
spread your good word. Contrast this to the fanboy who doesn't like
your product, and in fact likes a different product. These are people
who aren't worth listening to because they are unwilling to give you
innovative feedback in the space because they only know their single
way. It's a two-sided coin. Treat fanboys are evangelists, and not
real technical users with good technical feedback (no matter how
technical they may be), and you will be rewarded. Ultimately, to be a
successful entrepreneur, you have to be willing to take the risk to
fail.

Trust Who You Pay

Since starting Square, I've heard a lot of speculation about the
security of the device. As someone who's seen the regulatory measures
that we follow first hand, I can assure you that the security of a
payment network can't be pinned on the underlying PCI regulations that
Square, and many other payment processors, follow. Paying someone has
always been about trust, and with the advent of credit cards and debit
cards (devices that give you access to your full purchasing power),
the need becomes even more apparent.

Ultimately, it comes down to who do you trust? We trust waiters and
waitresses every day to take our credit cards to a back room to pay
for our meal (even though they literally take this device out of sight
to do their work). We trust ATM machines at corner stores to not skim
our credit cards. The real challenge is building something that helps
people inspire trust in each other, not just trust in Square.

Square follows the highest standards of security compliance, and we do
many other things above and beyond. The rest of the trust equation is
up to the merchant.

Stay Humble, but Not Too Humble

If you are humble, then you are open to new ideas, and new ways to
solve problems. Opinionated people are good, but the best leaders are
able to incorporate and listen to many ideas and come to an informed
decision. Being humble also allows you to be analytical from a neutral
standpoint, and allows you to integrate the best ideas of all your
options.

Inspire

An inspirational founder feels the pain of every part of the company.
If the service goes down, you feel the pain and jump in to try to help
where possible. If the client shipped with a bug, you feel the pain,
and try to connect you to Apple to push an expedited update. If
customers are unhappy, you are on the phones with customer support
listening and helping solve their problems.