Monthly Archives: May, 2022

Just the job

A recent spam email in my inbox says:

I can set up a 15 minutes intro call with our Head of Customer Success if this email interests you.

Do people really have job titles as idiotic as “Head of Customer Success”? How would you live with yourself? Wouldn’t you cringe when anybody asked you your role? And what are you head of? A team of other little Customer Success people all the way down to Customer Success Trainees, perhaps? Would you hang your head in shame if one of your customers didn’t succeed at something?

Perhaps you could get away with never mentioning it, now that people don’t hand out business cards any more… until your company insisted on email signatures. Anyway, if you have that job title, I pity you… unless you asked for it.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I rather like fun job titles. I remember a friend who had ‘Software Artisan’ on his business card, for example, and it raised a smile, while still actually saying something. The problem with the one in my email was the nagging worry that they were actually serious about it.

At one of my previous startups, I described myself as the CIO – the Chief Interim Officer. I wrote the software until I hired somebody better; did a bit of hardware until we got a proper hardware guy, sold things until we hired a sales team, and ran the company until I found a better CEO… at which point I’d hired myself out of a job and it was time to go and start a new company. That’s the peril, or joy, of being a jack-of-all-trades and master of none.

And I remember long discussions at one lab over whether we should be described as ‘Research Scientists’ or ‘Research Engineers’. Those of us working mostly with the U.S. tended to prefer the former, because the ‘Research Scientist’ term was well-used there, and an engineer was the guy who came and fixed your washing machine. Those working more with other parts of Europe, where the term Engineer is often given the respect it deserves, preferred the latter, which was arguably a better description of what we actually did.

Have you ever had any really good, bad, controversial, or cringeworthy job titles? Let us know in the comments!

Our eventual solution at the lab, by the way, was simply to leave the job titles off our business cards completely, and let others work it out for themselves. Perhaps, if they made a good job of it, we could have applied for a transfer to the Customer Success department.

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It’s high time the government did something about this…

My friend Jon Crowcroft pointed out that a UK government website says their watchdog is going to take a closer look at algorithms, how websites and apps use them, and how they impact daily life.

The underlying motivation is no doubt a fine one, but it’s unfortunate reporting: the investigation of ‘algorithms’ reminds me a bit of those people who are suspicious of ‘chemicals’.

‘Algorithm’, my OED tells me, comes from the Middle English ‘algorism’, which in turn is named after the 8th/9th-century Arabic mathematician Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi — what a cool name! — who, amongst other achievements, invented algebra.

So it’s high time the government got around to investigating these algorithm things.

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Friends don’t let their friends use TikTok

There are many reasons I’m glad we decided not to have kids. One is that I don’t have to worry about the amount of time they’re spending on TikTok.

Thanks to John & Pete Naughton for the link to Scott Galloway’s excellent article on the subject, which is well-worth reading. If you still have the attention span of anything more than a flea, that is.

Here’s a question. As people’s attention span has moved from books, to TV, to Netflix, to YouTube, to TikTok… are there any benefits? (Except to marketing organisations.) This is a serious question: I wonder if people are able to context-switch more quickly, for example, which might have the occasional advantage.

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Charging sideways: Towing Electric part II

I wrote a couple of months ago about my early experiences of towing with an electric car. A couple of quick updates, now that I’ve done a bit more towing of my little boat…

  • The general towing experience is excellent. The power and smooth acceleration, combined with a fairly heavy towing vehicle, make for a good ride.

  • Even the car’s reversing camera, which I had assumed would prove useless, turns out to be very handy with a small boat: you can check for any wildly flapping straps, reverse with more confidence, make sure you’ve left enough room going around a corner, and the towing ball itself is visible when trying to position yourself close to the trailer.

  • Since purchasing a good cover, and once I remembered that in the UK you’re not allowed to tow above 60mph, the aerodynamics aren’t too bad and I’ve been very pleasantly surprised by the efficiency. I tend to average about 320 Wh/mile while towing, which translates to just over 3.1 miles/kWh, or to put it another way, my Tesla Model 3 LR gets a range of over 230 miles. (Since this is at least 4 hours of driving, and more than 3 times the distance my first EV would go when not towing, I’m very happy!)

  • In addition to my load being fairly light and streamlined, I’m guessing that I benefit significantly from the fact that this is an unbraked trailer. In the UK, any load that weighs more than 750kg is required to have its own brakes: as you slow down and the trailer compresses a spring on the towing hitch, these brakes are applied. If, however, you can get away without needing this on an EV, then the momentum of the trailer is converted back into battery charge by the regenerative braking system of the car as you slow down, rather than being lost as heat. My first experiences of towing with an EV involved a significantly heavier, more ancient, less streamlined and generally much clunkier braked trailer, and the effects on my range were much more dramatic. Your mileage, as the saying goes may vary!

  • In the future, I imagine, heavier trailers will come with dynamos/motors attached to the wheels, so they can do their own regenerative braking. These might be more basic than would be needed to provide significant motive power while driving at speed, but they could perhaps double up as the remote-controlled motor-movers employed on caravans to allow easy final positioning at your destination once you’ve disconnected from your car. I sense a real future business opportunity here, by the way. Anyone fancy collaborating on a start-up?

More about charging

Since, given the right charger, my car (and many other modern ones) can charge really very fast, the fact that I have to stop every three or four hours to do so is hardly a major concern!

However, as I’ve pointed out in the past, the design of most charging stations in the UK is hardly optimised for those who are towing!

The Gridserve Electric Forecourt at Braintree is one pleasing exception, but in general, EV owners will often need to unhitch their load before charging. This is not a problem for a light trailer like mine with a jockey wheel, but it’s another reason those motor-movers might come in handy!

So far, I’ve only needed to charge away from home three times while towing, and on two of those occasions, I’ve managed to get away without unhitching, either by visiting remote superchargers at off-peak periods…

… or by blatantly abusing the facilities when there aren’t any other people needing to get to them, as I did on Friday!

That arrow on the road does indicate how you’re meant to park, doesn’t it?

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If you need a cheery start to your Monday morning…

… then here’s a little Vivaldi for you.

Thanks to John for the link.

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The Recycler’s Confession

While we’re on the subject of prayer — not, I admit, a regular topic in this blog — there’s another traditional one that often comes to mind. This time, it’s when I’m putting things in the recycling bin. I’m sure you must have had a similar experience.

Anybody old who, like me, grew up in the Anglican Church, will remember this oft-repeated phrase from the Book of Common Prayer:

We have offended against thy holy laws.
We have left undone those things
which we ought to have done;
and we have done those things
which we ought not to have done;
and there is no health in us.

As I carefully separate the rubbish into the blue ‘recycling’ bin and the black ‘non-recyclable’ bin, there are always some items about which I am unsure, and I mumble to myself:

We have left unrecycled those things
which we ought to have recycled;
and we have recycled those things
which we ought not to have recycled.

Does anyone know, as a general rule, which is the greater sin? Or are there too many variables involved to generalise?

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The IT Consultant’s Prayer

Anybody getting involved in any organisation’s pre-existing IT infrastructure could probably benefit from pausing, reflecting, and sending a prayer heavenward. I recommend this well-known one, written nearly a century ago by Reinhold Niebuhr. It is usually called the ‘Serenity Prayer’, but I’d be willing to bet he really had IT consultants in mind at the time.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.

Actually, that’s probably the key to any successful consultancy business…

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Forecourt futures?

If only they all looked like this…

A few years ago, I was involved in a big brainstorming session with some senior staff from BP. We had gathered, from both sides of the Atlantic, to consider some of the implications of technology changes on their business, and one of the topics discussed was the future of the retail forecourt: the petrol station, as most of us know it today. There was one thing we were all pretty much agreed on about its future: that it hadn’t got one.

The problem is that electric cars give you a very different refuelling experience from cars burning dinosaur juice. The bad news is that it takes longer, as we all know. Even when I’m charging my Tesla at speeds that would have astonished me when I first started driving EVs, I’m still generally there for 20-30 minutes, rather than the five minutes I would have spent filling up with petrol.

But the good news is that you don’t have to stand there while it’s happening, shivering, breathing in those lovely fumes, and wondering if your shoes will reek of diesel for the rest of the day. Instead, you can be inside the car watching the latest episode of your favourite show, or having a drink at the nearby cafe, or taking the dog for a walk. One of our favourite superchargers is in a multi-storey car park near Bristol, where you can just plug in and stroll over to John Lewis to purchase pillowcases, or whatever takes your fancy.

(As an aside, I think this is very healthy: on long drives, it’s important to take a proper break every so often, not just for your own wellbeing, but for the safety of those you may be approaching at speed later in the journey. EVs almost enforce that.)

Now, you could beef up the shopping/dining experience at some petrol stations, but it’s not really enough. The problem for those who have invested large amounts in forecourt real estate is that these stations are generally the wrong size for charging points — you need bigger parking areas and bigger retail areas — and many of them are not where you’d actually want to spend much time: on noisy town-centre roundabouts or on the edge of a busy bypass. Add to that the fact that they aren’t necessarily in good locations for a high-power connection to the electricity grid, and you’d think it probably makes sense to start selling them off. Oh, except you’ve spent a few decades storing and spilling toxic liquids there, so that’s a bit tricky too.

After the gas has gone…

We discussed other possible uses for the sites, which, despite some problems, do have the merit of being close to good road links, and often close to towns.

One idea was that they might become last-hop delivery hubs. Instead of fuel tankers rolling in during the night to top up the tanks, it would be big Amazon trucks coming to offload their parcels. Then a fleet of smaller electric vans would zip out from there during the day, doing the deliveries.

Someone else pointed out that there’s another service to which people often need quick and easy access while travelling: the loo! Yes, petrol stations are ideally placed for public conveniences, but up to now, that part of any visit has not always been very inspiring! Apparently one gas station chain in the States made their toilets a feature, advertising that they had the nicest bathrooms in the business! I thought this was very smart: there’s not much else to distinguish one station from another, so this was a cunning way to make your visit one of choice (as well as necessity!) Could you, we wondered, actually dispense with the petrol station, and instead draw people to your roadside retail experience through the quality and cleanliness of the adjacent WC? I like that idea, though it might require some clever marketing!

I suggested that they might want to develop a brand and business that wasn’t tied to particular premises in the same way. In the past, petrol stations were expensive and difficult to install, and they added retail experiences onto them to try to increase the profitability of each visit. But in the future, what people would want was not a Costa Coffee shop next to their refuelling point, but a refuelling stop next to their Costa Coffee. And that was much more viable than it ever had been in the past. Who was going to make it really easy for a supermarket, restaurant, shopping mall or pub to turn their existing car park into a charging centre? This, I thought, was an opportunity.

(Interestingly, almost on that exact day, it also became public that BP were buying the Polar/Chargemaster charging network, which was a smart way to get a good foothold in the charging world in the UK.)

Happy memories

Anyway, just to finish this on a personal note, and to show they’re not all bad, I do have a favourite petrol station, of all the ones I’ve visited in my life.

It stood right on the side of a Norwegian fjord, not far from a cottage where I stayed with my parents and grandparents on holiday sometime in the mid-1980s. You filled up your tank in a gentle sea breeze, surrounded by some of the most stunning scenery I’ve ever seen, and then strolled into the shop to pay. This was also the local grocery shop for that side of the fjord. (For the post office, bank, and the other shop, we would just go into to the cottage’s boathouse, get into the dinghy and chug across to the other side of the water.) Anyway, I remember that the two or three fuel pumps had unusually long hoses, because they were also sometimes used to fill up the boats which could pull in just as easily as cars.

And in the spaces between the pumps? Flower boxes.

Yes, that was a really lovely spot to fill up, and it would also make an amazing charging station. Perhaps, knowing Norway, I’ll be able to go back someday in my current car and fill up again…

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