The Candy House - Jennifer Egan

I recently read this book as part of a reading challenge. The author wrote this book in a peculiar format. A side character from one chapter becomes the narrator in the next chapter and so on. By doing this, the author is able to use different narration techniques in the same book. It also helps us understand a situation from different points of view. She is a real wordsmith. She writes one chapter as a field guide to a spy and another through messages between the characters. 

Bix, the founder of a successful social media company, is looking for new ideas to expand his company. As part of this, he attends a meeting at a college by a professor, Miranda Cline. Bix has used Miranda's original ideas about trust to build his social media company. In this meeting, he learns of a technology to transfer the consciousness of animals to the cloud. Bix takes this idea and creates a new product call Own your Consciousness. With this product you can transfer all your memories to the cloud. You can also change some recent traumatic memories and re-implant them back to your brain. Uploading your memories to the collective, gets you proportional access to others memories. 

This is very enticing and most of the world starts uploading their memories. Most people use this for personal and societal needs - to catch who was the kid that beat me up? What happened to that guy I shared a beer with at the Cafe? Who killed my friend etc. Chris remarks that the problem is that it is so attractive that people will give it everything. And the collective is omniscient. It is a Candy House - giving away your memories has benefits, but it can lead to unintended consequences. In fairy tale Hansel & Gretel, the witch uses the Candy House to lure them into the house. She feeds Hansel in the hopes of eating them. This reminded me of the aphorism in silicon valley, if you are not paying for the product, you are the product. 

Egan doesn't explore all the pros and cons of Own Your Unconscious. She tells us how the lives of different characters and how they live in the world with this tech. Charlene uses it to see her dad smoking pot at a commune when she was waiting for him to come home. Another daughter Roxy tries to relive a London trip with her father. Only it is leaves her with hurt. Later she uploads her memories and dies, finally feeling the connection with her dad. Alfred's character mocks the overperformance in social media. He hates it and takes to screaming in public to get an authentic response from people. 

Not everyone is enthusiasitc about sharing all the memories with the collective. Chris leads the resistance to this collective by building an app called Mondrain. He helps people elude from the collective by using proxies. They use fiction writers work to mimic them using their memories from the collective. 

Lincoln is a counter who helps identify the proxies and cut them. Lulu is a citizen spy with electronics called weevils embedded in her. Even after stint as a spy has ended, she faces trauma. She worries that the government is spying on her husband using the weevil implanted in her. There is Ames Hollander who runs an off the books store to remove weevils from former citizen spies. This helps them relax and not worry anymore about govt. spying. 

Bix's youngest son, Gregory doesn't share his father's interest about Own your unconscious. His father has shown his uploaded memories to the family many times. Those memories start with a blank space where his dad doesn't have any ideas. That interests Gregory. 

Later when he grows up, he comes to know that his father willed a lot of money to the Chris's resistance non-profit. He feels that he didn't know his Dad enough. One snowy day, he realizes that the blank vision his father started with was not blank. It was the human collective with each person doing different things. So it needed him to write his book to makes sense of all that. 

This novel is a huge panomara with lots of characters. There is no overarching narrative to the novel, except exploration of the lives of people around this technology. That is how Egan makes her point - stressing the importance of fiction in making sense of the human stories. 

“Only Gregory Bouton’s machine—this one, fiction—lets us roam with absolute freedom through the human collective. But knowing everything is too much like knowing nothing; without a story, it’s all just information. ” 

And that's why you need a narrator to connect the information into a narrative. 

These are the stories I liked the most - 

• Lincoln's story where he uses maths to understand the elusive thing that can make M fall in love with him. It is a clever expression of a math obsessed kid who loves M but can't express it to her in a way she understands.
• The story of Lulu, Molly, Chris and Colin when they share a close moment together on a pier. The teenage friendship, love and awakening moments was touching. 
• The story of Miles Hollanders' fall and redemption. Miles predicted that no one likes being right the first time. He then goes on to follow the script by falling from grace and then rising to be a state senator. 
• The story written in messages about Lulu's interview plan with Jazz Attenborough. It was clever and shows projects take shape.  

River of Smoke

In the second book in the Ibis series, Amitav Ghosh writes about the situation in China before the start of the opium war. Through the various characters, he writes about the English, American and Indian traders in Canton. He continues exploring the lives of the various people who cames from Ibis to China, Mauritius and other islands nearby.

This made me think about the opium war and the lessons we can learn from it.

Britian had trade deficits with China. To reduce the deficits, they started pushing opium. Chinese get addicted to opium and they lose valuable bullion.

Conscentious Chinese mandarins appeal to both the British merchants and the Queen. Their appeal is logical since British ban it in their country. So how can their morals justify selling it in China?

They also ban bringing opium to China. Then the traders started smuggling opium by selling it from the outer islands. These smugglers then bring it to China in fast crab boats. They bribed the local officials and still continued the business. A new official comes and threatens the chinese traders. They burn these fast crab boats and stop any opium from the outer islands. They quarantine all the foreign traders in Guangzhou till they turn in all their opium.

They don't harm any merchants but destroy the opium. This angers the companies who have lost their profits from the opium trade.

They force the British government to act and go to war against China.

Due to the powerful ships and military equipment, British win. They extract unequal treaties from China and addict the Chinese even further. All this so they can earn money without any regard to the damage done by Opium.

The lesson here is that if you're not powerful, people will walk over you. Even if countries talk a big game about values and morals, you cant trust them. They will not hesitate to use their power in an unfair situation.

This causes an arms race as each country wants to be in a more powerful position than the other.

It also tells about how Indian traders from Bombay also took part in the opium trade.

Before the opium war, Canton (present day Guangzhou) was the only port open for foreign trade.

The arguments from the British side for the war are also interesting. They argued that China was not allowing free trade. It is stopping their people from getting the things they wanted. The book also provides an interesting counter for that. It argued that the British used the free trade argument when it suited them but not always. As an example, the British set the rules for procurement of ships in a way that only British firms can meet. This caused Indian shipbuilders to lose their business.

PM traps to avoid - 2

 I have worked as a product manager for the past three years. If you've read books about product management but have never worked as a PM, you have a rosy picture of what a PM does. 

So I wanted to share a few traps that await you when you become a PM and how you can avoid them. 

You can read the first one - Don't be a warm body.  This post is about the second one. 

2. Don't buy into the hype machine

Your exec team have an idea. It fits with the strengths of the company. If this idea is successful, then your company will be wildly successful. They start selling this idea even before vetting it. They make plans about it. They talk about it in the all hands meeting. They bring you in as the PM for the product. 

You buy in to the idea and focus on building the product and getting it out to the market as soon as possible. 

You speak to your engineering team and they tell you it will take a long time to build. Given the hype inside the company, you don't find it difficult to get resources for the build. 

You speak to prospective customers and who appear super excited. If you ask for concrete committments everyone asks you to get back once the product is ready. After a long build time the product is now ready. You go back to the prospective customers who have expressed interest before. Now they are a little bit cool. They say the idea is good but it is lower in their list of priorities. One customer who helped you spec out the product says that the way you've built it is incompatiable. They ask for many changes to the product before they can integrate it. Now you realize that none of the prospecitve customers want to use the product. 

You wonder how can a product which is the future of a company fail so bad? 

Here what happened is that you've failed to test if the idea you have is solving a real problem? 

You allowed a costly build to happen without knowing if the product is useful. 

Understand that it is the PMs job to cut the hype and identify the hits from the duds. 

How to avoid this trap? 

• It is the job of the exec team and sales team to be rosy about prospects of the products and product ideas. 
• You as the PM should test the ideas as cheaply as possible to make a product usable, feasible and viable. 
• When faced with such a situation, you should speak with your customers. Use the Mom Test to understand if the problem you are solving is real
• Get concrete committments from interesting customers to understand the viability of the product. 
• If you are not able to get committments, it could be because of two reasons. First reason being it is not a real problem. Second reason they need to see the product to see the value. 
• If it is the first then  communicate it and help the company pivot to some other product. 
• If it is the second then use the testing strategies like mockups, static demos etc to test it out further. 
• Try a Debate meeting - Kim Scott in her Radical Candor book talks about Big Debate meetings. You can schedule one big debate meeting to discuss your concerns about what are the different ways in which it can fail and why it is not a great idea. That way you can easily persuade others that it is not an idea that is meant to be persued. 

Understand that it is the PMs job to cut the hype and identify the hits from the duds. 

PM Traps to Avoid - 1

I have worked as a product manager for the past three years. If you've read books about product management but have never worked as a PM, you have a rosy picture of what a PM does. 

So I wanted to share a few traps that await you when you become a PM and how you can avoid them. 

1. Don't be a warm body 

When you join a team as a PM, especially in the initial stages, you can't choose your product. Your seniors assigns a product for you. Once you come upto speed, you notice that the prodcut doesn't make sense. Or atleast it is not the best use of your time and company resources. 

How can this happen?  - 

A company gets started with a single revenue generating product. They achieve product-market fit with that product. They start selling the product and hire hoping the good times continue. Then they do well and sature the market for that product. Now the company wants to build new products to keep growing and sustain their valuations. For that they do some brainstorming, listen to customers, think of the market to come up with new products. 

They confirm it with a few customers and they respond well. They get a product built and deliver to this customer. They are able to sell this product to a few customers but they can't grow it anymore. This gets assigned to a new PM, you. 

You realize this is not a good product or not a product that can grow. Here I'm not talking about product trying to solve a real problem but doesn't solve it completely. Here I'm talking about products you know there is no market. i.e. you are not solving anybody's problem. 

Ultimately, it is your job as the  PM of the product to own it. The sooner you can raise the alarm about this, the faster the company can pivot.

But the director has this product in his portfolio and he needs someone to continue building it. You speak to him and tell what you think. You suggest some new products to grow that business. Those are risky ideas but if they succeed there is a chance to grow the business. They need bigger budget. All valid reasons for why we cannot work on those new ideas. But since he has a budget to spend,   it compels you to work on ideas which you know don't amount to much. 

What can you do when you find yourself in this trap? 

• Once you realize this is a dead product, you owe it to speak the truth to power. 
• Create a deck or a document detailing your analysis and recommendations. 
• Tell them what outcomes you can expect if you continue in the same path. 
• Generate alternative ideas which you can persue/test out to meet the same objectives.
• Speak to other internal teams to get their reading of the situation. 
• Include bytes from customers and internal folks about the situation. 
• Use formal and informal forums to talk about what you found. 
• Your goal is to get everyone to acknowledge the situation. Then drive towards making a change to the next promising idea. 

Lots of times, everyone is busy to notice this. Ultimately, it is your job as the  PM of the product to own it. The sooner you can raise the alarm about this, the faster the company can pivot. 

Next, I will speak about how to the avoid the second trap - buying into the hype machine

Sea of Poppies Review - Amitav Ghosh

I recently read the book Sea of Poppies written by Amitav Ghosh. It is a fictional story written in the backdrop of the Opium wars with China in 1830s. 

This is the first book in the Ibis Trilogy. Ibis is an American ship used for slave trade. After American abolished African slave trade in 1808, a British trader buys the ship. He plans to use it to transport indentured labor to Mauritius. Mauritius' sugarcane cultivation was labor intensive. Abolition of slavery caused acute labor shortage. Hence the plantation owners decided to import labor from India. 

This journey on Ibis to Mauritius brings together a group of people each one showing a different side of British colonialism. 

There is a  mulatto American who is on the crew of Ibis as it sails from Baltimore to Calcutta to espace racism.  There are the lascars who help with bringing the Ibis to Calcutta and later to Mauritius.  There is a chaste king of Raskhali whom the British sentence for forgery and send to Mauritius. There is a high caste lady who married an opium addict and wants to die by Sati but a low caste man saves her.  She is on the run and gets into the ship for indentured labors. There is the daughter of French botanist whom a Muslim lady raises and is at home in Bengali customs. When her father dies, she gets into the ship to escape a marriage. These and many other characters all come together in Ibis on the trip to Mauritius. 

Through the stories of these people, Ghosh tells us about the opium trade with China. There was great demand for tea, porcelian and silks from China in Britain and Europe. But the British didn't have anything that China liked to trade with them. Because of this, the British had to pay in silver and gold for the trade. They started exporting opium to pay for these goods. The Emporer banned trade of opium as the opium was addicting the Chinese. Even after the ban, opium was being smuggled. To stop it, the chinese captured the ports and destoryed the opium. Opium was one of the biggest revenue generators for the empire. So Britian went to war with China to allow them to trade opium. The Chinese lost this war and in a later opium war had to give away HongKong for lease. 

To get all this opium to sell, the British leaned on Indian farmers. They compelled the farmers to cultivate opium by entering into unfair advance contracts. This devasted the farmers as the opium cultivation was uprofitable. The land was being diverted from food crops so they couldn't grow their food anymore. This caused lot of farmers and poor to migrate to Mauritius as slave labor. 

It illustrated a part of colonial history I was not familiar with and wanted me to read more. The consequences of all these events are still visible in the world. India is a biggest legal opium producer for pharmaceutical purposes. Mauritius still has a large Indian origin population. China still uses the opium war as insult to national pride. 

Ghosh using different languages and dialects was able to make the story real. The book was an easy read and I couldn't put it down. If you have any interest in colonial history, it is a great read.