It's not amazing. Technology has never been a prerequisite to business success and it certainly isn't one today. Does technical literacy help? Absolutely. But it's by no means necessary, and I'd say the majority of industries today don't require any of it. All you really need is an ability to build relationships and have something valuable to offer. If you've got those two down, you can very easily put yourself in a place where you can hire someone else to take care of the tech stuff.
I know doctors, real estate agents, lawyers, consultants, and a few successful CEOs who are very averse to using anything tech, and they're all raking it in just fine.
Apologies will go around, investors won't be held accountable, employees will be fired to feign action, company culture won't change, and they'll all end up rich(er), more influential, and praised by this very community at the end of it all. Such is life, sadly.
I've been a loyal Uber customer for some time, and have defended them in the past, but there's an undeniable pattern that's emerged indicating a company culture I'd rather not support any longer.
Bringing on a VC is such a huge commitment and with capital becoming easier and easier to come by, I'm often baffled by why there's currently no place online to openly talk about investors and others' experiences with them.
It seems terribly one-sided that investors demand company financials, founder profiles, go through the entire due diligence process, while the community is relatively hush-hush about openly discussing bad experiences and shitty investors.
This is a reality that most do not want to accept. Is it just? Probably not.
I've often viewed this as Thinkers vs. Workers. Society places a high value on Thinkers, those who make decisions, strategize, make connections, build relationships, etc. Those who fall in this camp are doctors, lawyers, consultants, CEOs, etc. The Workers -- programmers, engineers, designers -- are often fungible. They are in a competitive market of manual laborers that has driven down the price of labor to levels that, for many, increase the opportunity cost of learning the tech yourself. Over time, Thinkers accumulate social capital that can be leveraged to gain benefits, both related and unrelated to their profession -- e.g. a doctor being given preferential treatment by a restaurant host. Workers accumulate labor capital; they're more efficient at their work, can develop more creative solutions. But put a 50yr old coder up against a 50yr old lawyer/doctor/banker and the latter will be given more praise, more money, more influence 9 times out of 10.
Even Workers eventually outsource their labor once they're in a position to become a Thinker. Few successful startup CEOs and execs are actually coding themselves. Their roles shift to strategy, operations, so on and and so forth, for that's where they're valued and will be rewarded the most.
And getting a graduate degree is often the ticket to be considered a Thinker, whether MD, MBA, JD, PhD.
That's the game, whether you like it or not, and it certainly won't be changing anytime soon. If money is a priority, becoming a Thinker might be in your best interest.
Twitter is terrible for meaningful conversation and debate. And I say that as an avid user.
Networking, sharing links, tidbits of insight, short messages, and Q&As all work really well. I've learned quite a bit from the curated articles and reports tweeted by those I follow. And if you follow the right people and engage appropriately, Twitter can open up a lot of opportunities. But anything beyond that is a waste of time, and can border damaging.
In fact, for all the good Twitter has facilitated (protests, revolutions, etc), I think it's having some negative impact. It is by far the most popular platform where individuals of all backgrounds, beliefs, and opinions congregate and interact, but it's built in a way where it is absolutely not conducive to meaningful debate, and so when the huge opinionated masses clash, the bite-sized arguments volleyed by either side are taken without context and nuance, further igniting and polarizing people. I'm seeing this happen with issues like feminism and Islam, where someone will tweet a very distilled version of a larger and more thorough opinion, it will be taken at face-value, someone will retweet it with a snarky comment, it snowballs into a food fight with enraged people retweeting/replying, and the original tweeter trying to add context but not being able to keep up with the reactionary domino effect. And because Twitter has almost become the official sounding board for many people, their tweets and reactions to those tweets contribute to their public image, reputation, and online presence, all damaged by death threats, accusations of sexism, bigotry, racism, etc, often thrown around unwarranted by people taking things out of context and who feel antagonized or polarized because of the way Twitter is structured.
And that's why I avoid tweeting about religion, politics, and databases.
I would be hesitant to purchase another Fitbit device. As someone who was a hugely loyal fan of theirs, they've repeatedly dropped the ball.
I've had to replace multiple devices for loss of functionality, poor quality of the Flex band, and wrist rashes. To their credit, they've been more than responsive and replaced my products no questions asked, but it's all left me with a sour taste. Their simplistic app, confusing calorie tracking and refusal to integrate HealthKit doesn't help.
Fitbit was on top a few years back when the wearables game was still young, so a slip up here and there was acceptable, but now there are a ton of competitors with great products, so research your options.
And you're certainly not to blame for that. As an intern and second year, you're at the bottom of the food chain. You have to run this perverse gauntlet where you're burdened with most of the labor while attending physicians swoop in for a brief moment of lets-play-House, else you'll get on superiors' bad sides, you'll be seen as a weak link, co-interns will feel as if you're shoving your duties onto them, or at the very least, you'll be forced to sacrifice personal time for yourself and/or a partner. There's a ton of pressure, and the easiest fat to trim is time not spent getting a blood draw, calling the lab, or requesting a consult, even if chatting lightheartedly with a patient or taking the time to educate them on their condition could prove just as valuable a use of time.
To be frank, this is why I've decided to leave medicine proper altogether and to go down the startup route. Not only do I find startups more interesting, but I genuinely believe that a much bigger impact to patients' health could be achieved while maintaining my empathy, sanity, and life. I don't mean to denigrate you in anyway. If anything, you're far brave than I am.
The sad truth is that this is due to a variety of problems at a variety of levels. Of course, all that follows is highly dependent on the team, hospital, and location.
A the lowest-level, you have doctors who're just assholes. Unfortunately, they don't do a good job at filtering out abrasive personalities upon entry to medical school. In fact, I'd say in some ways they self-select for that type of person. I've worked with heads of departments at huge hospitals who've openly discussed their salaries with me in patient rooms or brushed off a patient's concerns in a condescendingly paternalistic manner only to laugh with colleagues about it the second they step out of the patient's room. I've argued many times with specialists running their own clinic about their exorbitant fees and clever ICD-coding skills -- that some brag about developing -- to squeeze every penny out of insurers, all justified by "we've got to make a living." Assholes in medicine run rampant.
Up one level and you have the sheer morbid nature of medicine that physicians deal with on a day-to-day basis. I've given chest compressions to trauma patients with self-inflicted gunshot wounds to the head, and cleaned maggots out of a patient's festering diabetic foot. To the outsider, it is all incredibly shocking and gruesome, but as a physician you grow callous to it. Unfortunately, many times that means growing callous to all emotions and stunting your ability to empathize. Mix that with a superiority complex and you get things like Hispanic Hysteria Syndrome.
Go up a level and you've got a huge logistical and resource problem. Hospital physicians, particularly residents at teaching hospitals, are often overloaded with responsibilities and patients. They often feel they cannot give every patient and every obligation full and thorough attention because they are being bombarded by pages for new admissions, calls from other staff, etc. I have seen residents breeze through a list of patients, only giving minimal attention to each, just to avoid being chastised by a superior for not fulfilling all responsibilities in the short time allotted. And when you are severely limited to the number of open beds you have, and you've got a crowded ED, it becomes a game of who can we push out the fastest without killing.
At a higher level, you have a hospital who needs to keep the lights on, needs to pay salaries, needs to maximize profits and yet treat patients as best as they can. Unfortunately, many hospitals are being swindled by suppliers who're working through group buying organizations [1], inflating costs and making it difficult for hospitals to hit their margins.
Yeah, agreed. It's both interesting and quite disturbing to think about.
I have a pretty cynical view on social media and its effects on society. I think Blythe, and many others, do this out of a hatred of themselves and their own lives -- a hatred amplified by social media. She admits to stealing her friend's FB picture to use as her own, and if you look at the accounts linked to here, the picture is of a pretty attractive women. I'm willing to bet Blythe sees herself as unattractive, is constantly bombarded by photos of her attractive friends and their escapades, feels comparatively bad about herself, and reacts by creating a persona of who she wants to be, which would explain the pictures of her nonexistent trip to Greece.
I'm not saying the internet, particularly social media, is the reason these people exist, but I can't help but feel that it has both worsened their pre-existing conditions and equipped them with a dangerous coping method. I know a few people whose depression is proportional to their FB use and who react by either isolating themselves or overcompensating by crafting a public shell of happiness and adventure.
Many of the comments there are chastising Kathleen for how she responded, but I sympathize with her. As wonderful as the internet has proven to be with connectedness and giving the masses a voice, I struggle to accept that people like Blythe, who abuse their newfound reach, just happen to be the cost of an open online world, not having to bear any consequences for their actions.
The potential damage that one person can now cause online is real and substantial. All it takes is one malicious individual to rile up the online troops to doxx, smear, and ruin a person and their career. And there's almost no risk involved in participating in such an act -- you are anonymous and not held accountable for anything you do.
So while Kathleen's response might seem a bit excessive, I can certainly understand why she acted that way. She was being attacked by an individual who had all the voice and reach in the world, on a mission to destroy her literary work, using a platform that's frustratingly conducive to mob-creation but not debate. I might have done the same.
I don't know what the solution is, or even if one exists, but this is a real problem. We saw the other week how Twitter was used to volley targeted death threats, and how the individual on the receiving end felt genuinely unsafe for her life. And yet Twitter, Reddit, et al. are very blasé about the severity of it all. You wouldn't want to hurt your growth rate, I guess.
More people should understand that hospitals are messy. Really messy. From wiping vomit to feces to rolling over patients to changing chucks to wiping down monitor cables to handling bottles of saline that you may inadvertently leave out in the open for others to touch to not disposing spare gauze that may be contaminated to forgetting to wipe down your stethoscope to tearing your gown off as you rush to see another patient, etc etc etc. There are any number of people going in and out of a patient's room, performing a wide array of tasks, handling an even wider array of objects. Add to that the often hurried nature of hospitals and you get an environment prone to breaches of protocol.
I say this not to incite panic, but to provide insight that many might not have. It is more likely that during the thousands of interactions that this patient saw, the messiness led to a breach, instead of the virus infecting via a vector we've not yet realized.
I'll preface by saying that I'm usually a fan of what Ron has to say. I've seen him speak at several Startup Schools, but this chat kind of rubbed me the wrong way. He came off as a man who's finally settled into more extreme, absolutist, and comfortable views. Very binary platitudes that have no regard for context.
This idea that you're either born with it or not is an opinion of his with which I take particular issue. A lot of people have their growth spurts later in life. Many are born in environments that often stifle self-derived drive, flounder, and take off. To reduce it to two main camps of haves and have-nots is not a healthy attitude, and will lead to a lot of folks doubting themselves, or viewing others who're successful as those who were just born with it, as if people cannot change and qualities develop. In fact, Ron, during SS13, mentioned Ben Silbermann's (Pinterest founder) soft-spoken and unaggressive nature, and how Ron was trying to get him to speak up. Ben certainly doesn't seem to fit the image of the prototypical founder that Ron is painting.
And as to the "age bigot," I think that's fine if you're focused on social -- that demographic is by nature closer to the pulse of what's hot and trendy. But I think it is highly unlikely that a person in their 20s could have feasibly founded a SpaceX or Tesla, or really any seriously industry-toppling startup without having either the connections, the wealth, and/or the industry experience to pull it off.
I say all this as a 27yo who hopes to found his own startup in the near future.
This has never really been my impression of Internet of Things. The examples you've mentioned seem far too obvious and simplistic. To me, it's far more than scrambling to find the nth device to make smartphone-connected.
I've always looked at IoT as a mesh network of many specialized devices talking to each other to provide an overall context. For instance, speaking from my background: imagine a location sensor on a patient's wrist detecting an iBeacon in a particular ICU room indicating the patient has been upgraded, then triggering their vitals sensors to set to continuous monitoring, then upgrading the alert level for the patient's notifications in a physician's EMR, so on and so forth. In other words, these "Things" act more as specialized sensors, like our ears and eyes, that relay signals onto a digital thalamus/cerebrum where signals are integrated, a context is created, and actions are then taken.
I may be totally off-base here, and perhaps this isn't what Internet of Things is really about. But I hope it is.
I know doctors, real estate agents, lawyers, consultants, and a few successful CEOs who are very averse to using anything tech, and they're all raking it in just fine.