Why Are The Biggest Tech Companies So Dominant? | Alex Kantrowitz | Modern Wisdom Podcast 174

1. 0:00 – 0:22

   Intro

   1. AKAlex Kantrowitz0:00

      So, Jeff Bezos goes in front of this, uh, audience, and there's probably more than 10,000 people in the stadium, and you go, "What does day two look like?" And he says something like, "Day two is stasis followed by irrelevance, followed by slow, painful decline, followed by death."

   2. NANarrator0:14

      (laughs)

   3. AKAlex Kantrowitz0:14

      In front of the whole company. And he looks out and he goes, "And that's why it's always day one."

2. 0:22 – 2:19

   Elon’s market-moving tweets & why unpredictability is part of tech

   1. CWChris Williamson0:22

      (wind blowing) Alex Kantrowitz in the building. How are you doing, man?

   2. AKAlex Kantrowitz0:27

      I'm doing great. Really glad to be on with you, Chris. Thanks for having me today.

   3. CWChris Williamson0:31

      It's timely for me to have someone that reports on tech, given that an hour ago from when we're recording this, Elon Musk just tweeted, "Tesla stock price is too high IMO," and they're now down 11%.

   4. AKAlex Kantrowitz0:46

      That's right, Chris. But to be honest, anytime you, we'd, uh, have, uh, recorded this podcast, whether it was today, a couple weeks ago, or a few weeks from now, Elon would definitely tweet something absolutely ridiculous that would send his company in some sort of tailspin, so-

   5. CWChris Williamson0:59

      (laughs) So-

   6. AKAlex Kantrowitz1:00

      ... uh, it's not very surprising that he tried to tank his stock about five minutes before we hopped on here. So, um, Elon's just gonna keep being Elon. That's just how he does things.

   7. CWChris Williamson1:09

      E- Elon did an Elon, didn't he? He definitely-

   8. AKAlex Kantrowitz1:11

      Yes, he did. Yes, he did.

   9. CWChris Williamson1:12

      He went in- went and did an Elon.

   10. AKAlex Kantrowitz1:13

       I mean, he's... His Twitter is definitely fun to follow. I mean, you just... Just mostly because of the unpredictability about it. Like, he's got this valuable thing in Tesla, and (laughs) he keeps playing with its future every time he hits that tweet button. Like, for him especially, maybe he should just, you know, have someone where he has to read the tweets aloud, and then they type it into the box, and then they send it, and that might prevent some of this stuff from happening. But it doesn't seem like he's really interested in that, so...

   11. CWChris Williamson1:39

       No, yeah, I think a guardian of his Twitter, you know, like you get when you've got your kids-

   12. AKAlex Kantrowitz1:43

       Oh, yeah.

   13. CWChris Williamson1:43

       ... and your kids aren't allowed to use the iPad for more than an hour a day or whatever. You're like, "Look, Elon."

   14. AKAlex Kantrowitz1:47

       That's right.

   15. CWChris Williamson1:48

       "This, this, this tweet's got the word 'stock price' in it. This means that it needs to go through" (laughs) "five layers of security first."

   16. AKAlex Kantrowitz1:55

       Right. Maybe you don't want to send that. But, um, until, until he does, uh, his Twitter account's gonna be a lot of fun to watch, so-

   17. CWChris Williamson2:01

       And you're right, you're right as well, despite the fact he's done that today, whenever this gets published, whenever this episode goes live-

   18. AKAlex Kantrowitz2:08

       Yeah.

   19. CWChris Williamson2:08

       ... he'll probably done something that day too. So just go and have a look at E- E- Elon Musk's Twitter right now and see what he's done. I'd love to find out.

   20. AKAlex Kantrowitz2:13

       Yeah, you'd have the same reaction.

   21. CWChris Williamson2:15

       Yeah.

   22. AKAlex Kantrowitz2:15

       Yeah, it would be like, "Oh, that's ridiculous."

   23. CWChris Williamson2:17

       "I can't believe he's tweeted that." Yeah, exactly.

   24. AKAlex Kantrowitz2:18

       (laughs)

   25. CWChris Williamson2:18

       Um, anyway, we're not talking-

   26. AKAlex Kantrowitz2:19

       Yeah.

3. 2:19 – 5:05

   “Always Day One”: Bezos’ warning about Day Two and organizational death

   1. CWChris Williamson2:19

      ... about Elon Musk today. We're talking about your new book, Always Day One. Why is it called Always Day One?

   2. AKAlex Kantrowitz2:27

      Yeah, it's a great question. So, uh, at... So Jeff Bezos gets in front of Amazon's, uh, employees a couple years ago, and he's got this note card with him. And it's at the end of this all-hands meeting, and it's a, it's a question submitted from one of his employees. And it says, "What does day two look like?" (laughs) This is sort of not the thing that you want to ask Jeff Bezos, because he's been preaching this always day one mentality inside Amazon. And I always thought that always day one just sort of meant you gotta wanna work as hard as you possibly can. You work nights, you work weekends, you work holidays. And if you take your foot off the gas pedal, you're done. And so Jeff Bezos goes in front of this, uh, audience, and there's ten... I mean, yeah, probably more than 10,000 people in the stadium in Seattle. And you go, "What does day two look like?" And he says something like, "Day two is stasis, followed by irrelevance, followed by slow, painful decline, followed by death."

   3. NANarrator3:19

      (laughs)

   4. AKAlex Kantrowitz3:20

      In front of the whole company. And he looks out and he goes, "And that's why it's always day one." And, you know, I saw this clip when I was getting deep into my reporting on Amazon. And my first view of it was, oh, he is doing this hustle porn thing, work so hard, you know, work 80, 90 hours. Otherwise, you're out of Amazon. And if that was the case, I definitely wouldn't have had it... would not have had it as the title of the book, because, uh, you know, I do think that it's important to work hard, but I'm kind of skeptical of these people that say you need to work 100 hours a week or you're not going to make it. I think it's possible to have a healthy work-life balance and still do okay. What I found out that always day one means inside Amazon is that they're always inventing the next business line without any regard for what ha- what they have today and what they had in the past. So for them, it's about reinvention. It's about, let's keep building new products. We won't sit on our flagship products and wait for them to take us, um, you know, all the way, because, um, you know, right now, it's just impossible to do that. In the 1920s, the average, uh, company would sit on the Fortune, uh, Fortune 500 for 67 years. Today, it's 15 years. So that's why Amazon and ma- and the rest of the tech giants live in this always day one mentality. They're constantly reinventing because they know if they get too precious about the present and the past, they're going to miss the future. So there's this, this mentality that they have to continually be inventing themselves into the future or else they're done. And there's a culture that underpins it. It's not enough to have this mentality and say, "We want to live in day one," and just go about your business as a traditional company. What they've done, the real ingenuity inside these companies is building the culture, technology, and process that's allowed them to keep reinventing, um, and that's helped them stay on top.

4. 5:05 – 7:03

   How Alex got access: reporting, incentives, and studying how work actually works

   1. CWChris Williamson5:05

      How did you get such access to all of these companies? Like, who are you? Why, why should you be the person that's able to peer into the most exciting, biggest, most innovative companies on the planet?

   2. AKAlex Kantrowitz5:17

      You know, that is a great question, and sometimes I've been a bit surprised. But I will say that I'm a tech reporter here in Silicon Valley. Live in San Francisco, so I've spent last five years here, and I was reporting on tech in New York before that. And so I have spent a lot of time meeting with these companies in Silicon Valley, um, and my reporting has, um, has been out there. People, people recognize it. So, um, I think there might have been a sense that this book was going to have an impact. And then one thing that, um, I have that most tech reporters don't is a background in industrial and labor relations, meaning that I've studied the nature of work and organizational behavior, human resources, how companies are run, how people are motivated.... and I've brought that with me here. So by ha- having that background, and then looking at the tech companies and saying, "I want to write a book about how they, how they work and what it means for the future of the way that we work and the way we lead companies," to me, that must have resonated.

   3. CWChris Williamson6:11

      Yeah. I think so. As opposed to, I imagine, some tech reporters must armchair philosophize about how the world might be, as opposed to, perhaps, someone like yourself who's got more real world experience of what actually happens within these companies, what a culture like this means to the people who live it and breathe it and work it.

   4. AKAlex Kantrowitz6:30

      That's right, yeah. And I also worked in sales and marketing for three years before becoming a reporter, so I have an idea of how, like, companies that sell products work. Um, so there's potentially that, you know, that, that background helps. But, yeah, my main philosophy as a reporter is, don't get lost in narratives. You know, don't try to make someone look good or try to make someone look bad. Just tell the truth. And, you know, I think that, um, I think that's, that's helped me out in my career, for sure.

   5. CWChris Williamson6:56

      That's awesome. So high level, what's, what's the book? You're covering different companies and looking at different, uh, cultures within them?

5. 7:03 – 10:05

   The core framework: execution work vs idea work (and why most firms get stuck)

   1. AKAlex Kantrowitz7:03

      Yeah. So it's all about how they put this Always Day One mentality into action inside their companies. And so they've done this in two, in well, actually, really three ways. One is have The Mentality, right? If you have the mentality that you're going to try to milk your asset, your flagship business, and not worry about building another business, you're gonna be, you're gonna be screwed. So they have The Mentality. The second thing is they do, they do is they view work differently than most of us do, right? So I think that we need to separate work, the work we do into two buckets. One is idea work. That's anything that's involved in coming up with new ideas and bringing it to life. And the other is execution work, you know, and that's anything that's involved in supporting the existing products that you have. So we've gone through three major transforma- or two major transformations, but three eras, uh, in our work life since the factory era. You know, people forget the factory was only 100 years ago. That was dominating-

   2. CWChris Williamson7:54

      (laughs) .

   3. AKAlex Kantrowitz7:54

      ... our economy 100 years ago. Uh, human existence is much longer than 100 years, so we've had radical transformations in the way that we work, uh, in just a century. And our systems, like, our cultural systems, our leadership systems are always a little bit slow to catch up, and they certainly have in this point. So let's start with the factory. In the industrial era, almost all the work that we did was execution work. There would be, like, one little bit of idea work which came from, like, the owner of the factory, right, who said, "Let's make widgets." And what did they hire employees to do? All execution work. Just being in the factory, making widgets. Okay, then in the middle of the 1900s, we transitioned to what's called the knowledge economy, which all of a sudden employee ideas actually mattered. Um, but because we were so process heavy, we would have a teeny tiny bit of our time, and this is what exists in most companies now, a teeny tiny bit of our time on idea work, and still most of it was on execution work. Now, we weren't pushing buttons and hitting levers like we were in the factory, but we were doing similar, um, work that, that, um, wasn't really involved in creating anything new. So that could be anything from moving numbers from one spreadsheet to another, or putting the same invoice in to, to buy the same product at the same amount every week, or writing the same letters to the same people every week. I mean, anyone who's been in a job knows this, right? And because there's been, there was so much execution work in the knowledge economy, our ideas really haven't been taken into consideration by management. So, you know, I think that, uh, um, anyone who's... You know, people come into companies, they're creative, and they're filled with energy, and they want to change the way the company works, and they see all this opportunity because all this opportunity is there. Uh, and they know, "We can do this and launch this product line, and we can change this process." And, "Hey, well, have you thought about connecting these two groups?" And that energy usually lasts for the first six months or so until they're told, "Actually, you know, we don't really, you're not really here for your ideas. You're here just to, like, do this one little task, and doesn't matter how much you can contribute to making this company better. We're not actually really concerned with it." That's the message that gets sent, because anyone who's brought these ideas inside the company knows generally people say, "Oh," you know, "Not really time for that," or, "You know, you were hired to do this, why are you saying that?"

   4. CWChris Williamson10:04

      (laughs) .

6. 10:05 – 13:01

   Why Big Tech keeps winning: automation creates space for invention (culture first)

   1. AKAlex Kantrowitz10:05

      Um, and that's a factor of the fact that we're living in this execution work economy. Because even in the knowledge economy, most companies don't have the capability to take those employee ideas and turn them into, into life, because they are spending all of their time supporting their existing products. Okay, so this brings me into what the tech giants do. What they've done is use technology, process automation, um, and process optimization to take the amount of execution work they have in their companies down and then make room for idea work. And then once they have their employees, you know, thinking of new ideas and having permission to actually come up with ideas, 'cause that's a big part of it, they build system to take those ideas to decision makers and bring them to reality. And everyone's saying, "Why are Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft so strong?" You know, "What are they doing that's illegal?" And they definitely have some nefarious behavior, but to me the most important thing is culture. It starts with culture. It begins with taking down execution work, making room for idea work, building the systems to turn those ideas into life. And that's why they're lapping the economy more than anything. It's just not something anyone talks about. And I think if the rest of us start paying attention to these systems, we have a much better chance of competing in their world, competing with them, carving our own, carving out our own niches to be able to make this happen today. And, uh, and that's sort of, that's the point of the book is that I said, "Enough of this," right? I'm-

   2. CWChris Williamson11:25

      I want to know the secret sauce.

   3. AKAlex Kantrowitz11:27

      ... sitting here in Silicon Valley.

   4. CWChris Williamson11:27

      Yeah. Teach me the secret sauce.

   5. AKAlex Kantrowitz11:29

      Yeah. That's right. So I was just like, "Yeah, enough of this. I'm in Silicon Valley. Might as well let people, uh, know what's going on so the rest of us can start to come and, and, you know, act the way they do in our own companies and, you know, start to make some progress in evening this economy out."

   6. CWChris Williamson11:44

      Yeah. It's fascinating that the...... the friction of taking idea from in someone's head to the market is one of the major barriers that people need to get over. So you've got to have the capacity within the company, um, operationally, uh, innovatively, in, in order to be able to deliver that, right? But then you also need to give, have the talent and the time for that talent to come up with the right amount of ideas, and then probably iterate on them and get rid of the bad ones, and get rid of the bad ones, and get rid of the bad ones. And then finally, you come up with this super left-field thing. And that's how you end up with companies, you know, going through the book, it's mad, all of the different stuff, specifically Amazon, but all of the companies have their fingers in li- little different pies. Like, a- and you think, "Well, why, why are they..." it doesn't really seem to make so much sense. It's not part of their core business. But then you actually realize-

   7. AKAlex Kantrowitz12:37

      Mm-hmm.

   8. CWChris Williamson12:37

      ... when you're constantly innovating and iterating on these different things, you, these ideas are gonna come to the forefront, and you're the person that's able to bring it to the market, is, um, it's mad.

   9. AKAlex Kantrowitz12:48

      That's right. And it sounds so simple, right? Give people more time for ideas and bring them to life. It's actually fairly complex, um, and that's what these companies do, uh, so well. And I can give you an example if you're interested.

   10. CWChris Williamson13:00

       Hit us.

7. 13:01 – 16:28

   Amazon’s internal automation: “Hands Off the Wheel” and machine-learning retail ops

   1. AKAlex Kantrowitz13:01

      So y- you mentioned Amazon. Amazon, to me, does this in the, in the most wild way that I had no idea about and actually hasn't really been reported about, uh, too much. Uh, and I got to see it firsthand when I was out in Seattle, spent a good chunk of two summers in Seattle hanging out, um, reporting on Amazon and cat-sitting, uh, my friend's mother cat, Lady the cat, who was, uh-

   2. CWChris Williamson13:22

      (laughs)

   3. AKAlex Kantrowitz13:22

      ... was a good friend of the process.

   4. CWChris Williamson13:24

      Cool.

   5. AKAlex Kantrowitz13:24

      And, you know, really, yeah, it was fun. Lady really kept me, uh, kept me going in, you know, those days. I didn't know many people in Seattle, so it was nice to have that cat friend in that time. Um, but (laughs) I will say that, okay, so Amazon. So one of the things I really wanted to know is how does Amazon use automation not just in the factories and the w-, sorry, the warehouses, but in their headquarters as well? Because I heard some rumblings that, like, "Hey, people are getting their jobs automated in, in, in Amazon's headquarters." And you don't hear that too often. So what I found out is that they have a program called Hands Off the Wheel. And Hands Off the Wheel automates a lot of the traditional retail tasks for employees in Amazon's retail division. So I'll explain. So typically, when you, uh, you're a company like Amazon, you have these people called vendor managers. And vendor managers are on the phone all day with, with suppliers saying, "We need this many units and this, these many, uh, fulfillment centers at this time, at this price." So you got a vendor manager, they're on the phone with Procter & Gamble, and they say, "We want detergent, give us, like, X number of units of detergent, you know, in these locations. Uh, we want it at, like, 6.50 a unit, and we want it there, you know, in installments of every other week," or something like that. And Amazon built an army of people who were working with vendor ma- w- working with vendors to stock their fulfillment centers. And, um, all of a sudden, in the, in the mid-2010s, Amazon's like, "Wait a second. We have all this data that shows us what people want. Actually, our data probably knows better than the vendor managers what they want because it's precise. And, um, what if we decide that we could have our machine learning team work on this?" And they figure out how to use computers to do all this stuff instead of people. And that's what they did. They started a project that was called Project Yoda, um, which is instead of the vendor managers doing this, they would use the Force, and the Force being machine learning.

   6. CWChris Williamson15:09

      (laughs)

   7. AKAlex Kantrowitz15:10

      Right?

   8. CWChris Williamson15:10

      That's so good. (laughs)

   9. AKAlex Kantrowitz15:11

      And, yeah, it's, it's a funny name. And, uh, you know, it's obviously, like, when you got nerds running the company, you're gonna get good jokes like that.

   10. CWChris Williamson15:18

       Lots of Star Wars references, yeah.

   11. AKAlex Kantrowitz15:20

       That's right, yeah. Um, and then they, they moved, so they, they worked on this a bit. They wor-, they, they moved, uh, moved it further. The program changed from Project Yoda to Hands Off the Wheel, essentially taking, telling their vendor managers, "You've been driving the car. Now, we're gonna let the machine learning do it on its own." And a good portion of tasks inside Amazon right now are all being handled by machine learning. So, things like ordering, inventory management. Even when a vendor wants to negotiate with Amazon, they, instead of picking up the phone now, start to, like, suggest prices in a computer portal. And Amazon says, "Yeah, okay, cool," or "No." That's all being done by machine learning today.

   12. CWChris Williamson15:58

       Wow.

   13. AKAlex Kantrowitz15:58

       I mean, in some c- in some cases, there's human intervention, but very little. And actually, um, just citing, like, a figure to talk about the magnitude, one of Amazon's machine learning, uh, head said that vendor managers used to go, uh, used to be able to handle 1,000 products, products. Now, they can handle somewhere around 100,000. And later clarified saying it was just ballparking, it's not really, but come on. Like, that's, that must be the, um, you know, in the range of the type of mag- orders of magnitude more they're able to handle. Okay, so what happens now when all

8. 16:28 – 18:00

   Amazon’s idea pipeline: the six-pager and turning ex-operators into inventors

   1. AKAlex Kantrowitz16:28

      these tasks are being taken over by, uh, machine learning? A dumb company would say, "Great, let's fire the vendor managers," right? But that's not what happens inside Amazon. So these vendor managers are now all on product and program manager jobs, where they're basically professional inventors inside the company, working to shepherd new ideas along. Um, and they have a, a process inside Amazon called the six-pager, where instead of starting projects, uh, with a PowerPoint, they start it where you write everything down in six pages, single-spaced, 11-point font, no pictures. And it's supposed to be like, okay, you're gonna write the entire way that the project's gonna look like. And we can get that to a decision-maker pretty quickly. And it doesn't matter which level you're in, right? Just a couple of forwards can get that thing to Bezos or his top lieutenants. So that's the system to get ideas to decision-makers. Okay, I'll just finish with a example to bring this all to life. Uh, there's a guy named Dilip Kumar in Apple, in, in Amazon's pricing and promotions division. And, um, Kumar spends a couple of years under Bezos as his technical advisor, uh, meaning that he's shadowing Bezos, uh, all of Bezos' meetings and learning how to do the Amazon, uh, culture pretty well, uh, and, and sort of how Am- how does Amazon work inside? What is, what businesses does it excel at?... typically w- after someone finishes that, so he moves from pricing promotions to the technical advi- advisor job. Typically, when someone finishes that, they can take a big swing. Um, and when he finishes with Bezos as this technical advisor, pricing and promotions is almost all automated.

   2. CWChris Williamson18:00

      (laughs)

9. 18:00 – 21:00

   Amazon Go as a “Day One” output: eliminating checkout and expanding into everything

   1. AKAlex Kantrowitz18:00

      So he's not going to go back and do that. So he gets together with a bunch of people from the retail division and says, "We need to, uh, figure out a way to solve the most annoying part of shopping in real life with technology." And they decide the most annoying part of shopping in real life is checkout. People don't like waiting on lines and, you know, scanning and all that stuff, um, takes a lot of time. They'd just rather pick their items and get the hell out. So they started thinking, "Okay, maybe we're going to do a big vending machine." But they're like, "Okay, that kind of kicks the can down the curb." So they say instead, um, "What if we use computer vision and sensors and created a store where people could just scan in with a QR code, take whatever they want off the shelves, and then leave?" And that is what became Amazon's Go store, which exists now in a bunch of cities. It's still kind of experimental, but I've used it in San Francisco and Seattle. And-

   2. CWChris Williamson18:48

      What's it like?

   3. AKAlex Kantrowitz18:49

      ... uh, I've tried it. Oh, it feels like you're shoplifting. It's unbelievable.

   4. CWChris Williamson18:52

      (laughs)

   5. AKAlex Kantrowitz18:53

      You go in, you take the stuff, and you're like, "I'm out. I'm free. I just got, like, nine Clif Bars on the house, thanks, Bezos." And then two minutes later, they're like, "Nine Clif Bars. Here, here's your receipt."

   6. CWChris Williamson19:02

      Damn it, Jeff.

   7. AKAlex Kantrowitz19:02

      And you're like, "Dang it, Amazon."

   8. CWChris Williamson19:04

      Yeah, yeah.

   9. AKAlex Kantrowitz19:04

      You know, it's really this wild, just wild experience. And, uh, Amazon, if you read the, between the lines of Jeff Bezos' annual shareholder letters, like, they're going to make this a more prominent part of their retail operation. Um, and so because... So, it's just all the parts coming together, right? It's like you, they've taken the technology, minimized execution work, made room for idea work, built a system to get ideas from people to decision-makers. And when that system works as well as it does, you get another new invention from Amazon, which is Go. And this is sort of how they've been able to do so many different things, from, like, a first-party marketplace, to a third-party marketplace, to a logistics and fulfillment center, uh, uh, l- sorry, logistics and fulfillment operation, to a cloud services division, to a voice computing platform, and a hardware manufacturer that does things like the Kindle and all of their speakers, and then not to mention an Academy Award win- winning movie studio and a grocer.

   10. CWChris Williamson20:00

       (laughs)

   11. AKAlex Kantrowitz20:00

       All of this is a-

   12. CWChris Williamson20:01

       (laughs)

   13. AKAlex Kantrowitz20:02

       ... i- it's, yeah, this is a product of culture. And that's people think, you know, there's this b- when you don't see inside, there's this vision, "Oh, Bezos is the guy doing this. He presses a button and that's how it happens."

   14. CWChris Williamson20:11

       Yeah.

   15. AKAlex Kantrowitz20:12

       Actually what he's done is built a culture to harness other people's ingenuity and bring it to decision-makers. And that's how Amazon's been able to be so inventive.

   16. CWChris Williamson20:20

       It's no surprise that they're so dominant, man. Like, absolutely (laughs) . How can you, how are you supposed to compete with that? It's a company who has the most innovation, the most resources to bring that innovation to market. So even if you have the idea, they can probably execute the same idea as you've had, but quicker and better, and deploy it more through a, a wider geographic range and all the rest of it. Um, you mentioned about, uh, Jeff Bezos and PowerPoint. He banned PowerPoint by sending-

   17. AKAlex Kantrowitz20:50

       Mm-hmm.

   18. CWChris Williamson20:51

       ... an email with just a subject line, and it just said-

   19. AKAlex Kantrowitz20:54

       Mm-hmm.

   20. CWChris Williamson20:54

       ... uh, like, "No more PowerPoint presentations allowed in meetings," or something.

   21. AKAlex Kantrowitz21:00

       Yeah.

10. 21:00 – 24:21

    Automation for everyone: UiPath, RPA, and the missing “why” behind automating

    1. CWChris Williamson21:00

       I'd never heard of UiPath before. Can you tell us what U- UiPath is, please?

    2. AKAlex Kantrowitz21:07

       Yeah, it's an automation company. So a lot of times people say, "Well, the tech giants are doing this, so I could never do it." But it's really not the case. And we talk about minimizing execution work, making room for idea work. There are off-the-shelf solutions that any company can use. So in the introduction of the book, I talk about this company called UiPath. And what UiPath does, its software will watch your screen as you work. So you sort of open up a session, and let's say you're, like, filling out a form. Uh, it can watch your screen as you work, and each button you click and each t- you know, keystroke you make, you just label it to the, um, to the machine learning system, and it will remember how to do it on its own. Uh, and so it can do... It can fill out forms, it can send letters, it can move data from one spreadsheet to another. It can take over all this execution work that we do all day long and, you know, take it over via automation. So, um, I went to this conference in Miami, and it was crazy. And CeeLo Green was the opening singer, which was hilarious. He's going into the audience, "All right, if you've got someone you need to say fuck you to, now is the time."

    3. CWChris Williamson22:08

       (laughs)

    4. AKAlex Kantrowitz22:08

       And they're all like, "Fuck you." And I'm like, "You guys are, like, automating people's jobs." Like is that... It's kind of weird.

    5. CWChris Williamson22:14

       Yeah.

    6. AKAlex Kantrowitz22:15

       Um, but, but, and it was amazing to see how many people, how many different industries were represented at this conference, let alone the stuff that it can do. But it was like, you saw automotive, you saw insurance, you saw health, uh, you saw technology companies there, you saw banks. And, you know, one of the things that, uh, was striking to me was that this technology is available to people. Clearly, there's interest, uh, inside companies to, to put it into place. But it's almost as if they're, like, driving blind. They're like, "Yeah, we want to automate."

    7. CWChris Williamson22:45

       Mm-hmm.

    8. AKAlex Kantrowitz22:45

       But I, I heard very little about the broader strategy of why to automate. So I do think that, like, if they're able to do this and put some of the lessons from the tech giants, uh, in place, then they'll be in much better shape.

    9. CWChris Williamson22:56

       Didn't you say that it's able to do hiring, it can sort hiring people, and then when it comes time to get rid of them as well, that this UiPath thing can send them their, their letter? That's (laughs) so badass.

    10. AKAlex Kantrowitz23:06

        Yeah, so it's able, it's able... I know, it's wild. But it's able to write letters. So if you... You know, new hire letters are pretty formulaic. So when you have a new hire letter, Ui- UiPath can handle that. And so, of course, you can have a termination letter that it can do as well.

    11. CWChris Williamson23:20

        (laughs) There's just something about it. Oh man. And so upon kind of seeing this big overview, obviously we've touched on Amazon, but there's Google-

    12. AKAlex Kantrowitz23:29

        Mm-hmm.

    13. CWChris Williamson23:29

        ... and Microsoft and Apple and stuff as well. And it sounds dumb, but I, I kind of presumed that these big companies just operate the same way. You know, like when you get to the sort of size of these companies, you'll have optimized everything, and the size of the operation will have whittled away any ability to actually enact real change, cultural or operational. And you just kind of... They were all, they were all going to be super homogenous, but-... again, upon reading and having a look at the different ways that companies are deploying. Now, the end result's still the same, which is we need to be able to innovate quickly. We need to have li- a, a lack of friction, uh, from idea to deployment, um, and we need to keep resources and blah, blah, blah, and look cool, uh, and wear hoodies.

    14. AKAlex Kantrowitz24:12

        Mm-hmm.

    15. CWChris Williamson24:12

        But, um, like other than that-

    16. AKAlex Kantrowitz24:14

        Hoodies are important.

    17. CWChris Williamson24:15

        Hoodies are very, very important.

    18. AKAlex Kantrowitz24:16

        Yeah.

    19. CWChris Williamson24:16

        Um, you know what I mean, like, it, I was surprised. I would've thought it would've been much more homogenous.

11. 24:21 – 29:30

    Different company “moves”: Facebook’s feedback culture and ideas flowing upward

    1. AKAlex Kantrowitz24:21

       That's right, yeah. So I would say, in Always Day One, I talk about how each one of these companies has, uh, has, uh, d- their own flavor to build putting these systems into place. So we talk about Amazon, it's the six-pager, it's the use of machine learning. Uh, inside Facebook, it's a feedback culture, which is something that a lot of people might be surprised by. You know, Facebook isn't exactly the company that you think, uh, is one that takes feedback very well, given that people from the outside have protested almost every product decision-

    2. CWChris Williamson24:47

       (laughs)

    3. AKAlex Kantrowitz24:47

       ... uh, that they've made, and they've said basically, uh, like, "F off. Like, I'm gonna do this on our own." Yes, exactly. Um, but inside the company, there is this feedback culture, and in the book, I actually sit in on a daylong feedback training where people inside Facebook are taught to give and receive feedback. Uh, major meetings end with requests for it. There are posters around Facebook's, uh, Menlo Park offices that say, "Feedback is a gift." And actually, the first time I met Zuckerberg, um, I was surprised because typically, your, um, your typical CEO briefing is the CEO will tell you, "Okay, sit down. Here's 25 minutes of me selling our new product." Then the PR person will sort of watch your facial expressions, maybe allow you to ask one question. Oftentimes, just say, "Okay," and that's it. Have a good day. (laughs)

    4. CWChris Williamson25:28

       Shit. Is that what it, is that what it's like being a tech reporter with the big dogs?

    5. AKAlex Kantrowitz25:30

       That's right. Yeah, yeah-

    6. CWChris Williamson25:31

       Fuck.

    7. AKAlex Kantrowitz25:31

       ... that's usually what it's like. But with Zuckerberg, it was totally different because we walked in there, and he's like, "I want your feedback on this." It's like, "Okay." And-

    8. CWChris Williamson25:39

       He cares. He cares what you think.

    9. AKAlex Kantrowitz25:40

       ... he seemed more interested. Yeah, he seemed more interested in listening to what was going on than selling. And that's when I started asking people in Facebook's orbit, "What's going on?" And that's how I learned that there's this feedback culture inside Facebook, where people are encouraged to bring ideas, not only to their boss, but to their skip-level manager, and all the way up to Zuckerberg himself. And so feedback, a lot of peoples, people say feedback is about putting people in their place, letting them know what's going to happen before the review, right? So they're not surprised when they sit in there and you get, like, a, "Meet sir," you know, "You, you're not meeting your expectations. Okay, you should know." I think that's totally wrong way to look at feedback. I mean, it's good to not have your people surprised, but what feedback functions for inside Facebook is that it makes sure that people feel comfortable sharing ideas with anybody inside the company, and then people inside the company feel comfortable receiving other ideas. And when Facebook has been told, "Hey," from people inside, "Actually, we're not approaching this right," it has shown a, an ability to change and shift direction. And that's why it's gone from an online directory to a broadcast platform that operates largely on desktop to a mobile app that's still in, doing this sort of broadcast to all your friends. And now it's changing again, moving to more intimate networks, like groups and messaging. So this is all because of feedback. These aren't Zuckerberg's brilliant ideas on his own.

    10. CWChris Williamson26:57

        (laughs)

    11. AKAlex Kantrowitz26:57

        It's, and, and people, when they read the book, they'll see it's other people inside the organization pulling him aside and being like, "Hey Mark, we're missing this important thing. We gotta make a change."

    12. CWChris Williamson27:06

        Yeah.

    13. AKAlex Kantrowitz27:06

        And when he's listened, it's actually worked out pretty well for them.

    14. CWChris Williamson27:09

        The CEOs are made to look like just these bottomless pits of innovation, aren't they? But it's actually the, it's the coalition of everything that's happened below that. So before we get on a couple (laughs) of the other companies, I wanna see if you can-

    15. AKAlex Kantrowitz27:24

        Yeah.

    16. CWChris Williamson27:24

        ... if you can do this. I wanna see if you can try and personify each of the companies that you looked at into a character.

    17. AKAlex Kantrowitz27:31

        (laughs)

    18. CWChris Williamson27:31

        So for instance, I think Amazon would be, uh, kind of the jock in school, super clean-cut, dates the prom queen. Apple might be, like, the arty philosophy student who all the girls fancy, but he keeps himself to himself and spends his-

    19. AKAlex Kantrowitz27:45

        Mm-hmm.

    20. CWChris Williamson27:45

        ... lunchtime sketching trees. How would you sort of personify some of the companies that you looked at?

    21. AKAlex Kantrowitz27:50

        Yeah. Uh, Amazon would be the MBA that's brilliant, uh, but doesn't have very much empathy for other people.

    22. CWChris Williamson27:57

        (laughs) Okay, yeah. On the spectrum somewhere.

    23. AKAlex Kantrowitz28:00

        Yeah, let's put them there.

    24. CWChris Williamson28:01

        Yeah. Go on.

    25. AKAlex Kantrowitz28:02

        Uh, so Facebook, hoo, Facebook is, um, is almost like the, the, the kid in high school that, um, everyone thought was perfect, you know, that was good at sports and good at talking to people and, you know, was attractive, uh, but also sort of missed part of what living is all about because everything was so easy for them.

    26. CWChris Williamson28:28

        Ah, yeah, yeah. No challenge.

    27. AKAlex Kantrowitz28:29

        Yeah. No challenge, yeah. So that's kind of what I think. Google might be, um, Google's just your classic nerd-

    28. CWChris Williamson28:37

        (laughs)

    29. AKAlex Kantrowitz28:37

        ... nerd with attitude.

    30. CWChris Williamson28:38

        Yeah. (laughs)
12. 29:30 – 35:18

    Microsoft’s comeback: Nadella’s cloud pivot and a full cultural reset

    1. AKAlex Kantrowitz29:30

       Well, Microsoft is this amazing case study because they were in this day two mentality under Steve Ballmer, their former CEO. And back in the day, all they cared about was Windows, their desktop operating system. And in the age where we were not doing any computing on the browser and using desktop computers instead of mobile phones, they were the king, right? And they knew it, and Congress knew it, and they ended up, you know, bringing antitrust action against them.... uh, and then everything shifted. And this is sort of why time is generally more potent than, um, government regulation, or, um, you know, your competitors, because, uh, Microsoft could sit on this, um, on this Da- Desktop operating system for as long as it wanted, but the world changed, and we started doing computing on the browser, and we started using our phones, uh, instead of our desktops. And then what use is Windows? It's much more ... I mean, it is exactly how Bezos described that day one, day two mentality, right? Stasis, yes. Irrelevance, uh-huh. You know, slow, painful decline, check.

    2. CWChris Williamson30:29

       (laughs)

    3. AKAlex Kantrowitz30:30

       Okay, death? It was heading that way-

    4. CWChris Williamson30:32

       (laughs)

    5. AKAlex Kantrowitz30:32

       ... until they had to change their, their course. Um, and so after Ballmer, a guy named Satya Nadella came in and took over and became the CEO. And Satya had been a 20-year veteran of Microsoft, and worked on, uh, Bing, which is kind of funny. Everyone makes fun of Bing. Like, "Oh, that's just the shitty search engine."

    6. CWChris Williamson30:50

       It's the special needs version of Google, isn't it? Yeah.

    7. AKAlex Kantrowitz30:52

       That's right. (laughs) I wouldn't go that far, but yeah-

    8. CWChris Williamson30:54

       (laughs)

    9. AKAlex Kantrowitz30:54

       ... it's, it's somewhere in that range. Um, and so, uh, the, th- so the thing with, with Bing is that, um, it's a cloud computing system. And, uh, because it works on ... It's a powerful program that works on the internet that has to make sense of all of these different, uh, links coming in and, and spit something out to people that work. So because Satya had worked on that, uh, he had been able to, um, uh, see where the future of computing was going, basically saying, "We're not going to work on programs that we install, like come in the mail and we install on our computers anymore. You know, put it on Windows. We're going to be working on a browser, and that's cloud computing, and there's gonna need to be an infrastructure that's going to support cloud computing." And the funny thing about that is, um, when you enable cloud computing, you actually hasten Windows' decline, because if you can access a program on the browser, you can use it on a Windows machine or an Apple machine or a Chromebook, and you don't really need Microsoft anymore, or at least in the Windows component. So it was actually a pretty gutsy move to say, "We're going to go support cloud first." And the other thing he says is, "We're going to make sure that our services are available everywhere." So Microsoft Office, you know, you used to only really be able to get on a Windows machine. You couldn't really get it on the internet. And that ended, and they made an app for the iPhone, which is sort of unbelievable given Microsoft's history. You know, back in the Ballmer days, you weren't even allowed to, or yeah, you were basically not allowed to have an iPhone or an Apple product inside-

    10. CWChris Williamson32:18

        (laughs)

    11. AKAlex Kantrowitz32:18

        ... the company.

    12. CWChris Williamson32:18

        Is that true?

    13. AKAlex Kantrowitz32:19

        And ... Oh, yeah, totally. People were like ... Would get scorned, and Ballmer even pretended to smash an iPhone when he saw it in a meeting.

    14. CWChris Williamson32:25

        No way.

    15. AKAlex Kantrowitz32:25

        So, and then Satya was like, "Okay, we got to move past this." So what he did was he reoriented this company, which was in a day two mentality, brought it to day one, and then once he figured out we're gonna ... The company was going to structure itself in a way that supports cloud, collaboration, the internet, um, then the tough job started, which was to change Microsoft's culture, which had been, you know, alpha male, lar- large, I mean, loudest person in the room, yell at each other, to a culture where they had to start using technology. And again, I'm going to sound like a broken record, but it's really what happened. Minimizing execution work, making room for idea work, channeling ideas to decision-makers. And that's how Microsoft turned it around, and it is now the most valuable tech company again-

    16. CWChris Williamson33:06

        So is-

    17. AKAlex Kantrowitz33:06

        ... which is unbelievable.

    18. CWChris Williamson33:07

        ... have, have they really turned it around? Because to me, as someone who doesn't really know, I'm not watching the s-

    19. AKAlex Kantrowitz33:11

        Yeah.

    20. CWChris Williamson33:12

        ... the share price. I don't know what's going on, who's got what amount of market and this, that, and the other. But to me, Microsoft, um, still, uh, now feels like just the granddad at the party type thing, this sort of older guy who used to kind of maybe have it, but now he's playing second string to these other companies. But it sounds like the work that the new CEO has done has actually given them a resurgence.

    21. AKAlex Kantrowitz33:36

        That's right, yeah. They're the most valuable of all the five big tech companies.

    22. CWChris Williamson33:40

        Why?

    23. AKAlex Kantrowitz33:40

        Which is, uh, because I do think that investors see the value in what they're doing, which is moving towards the future. So the products that they work on are not as sexy. Like, cloud computing backend is not as sexy as an iPhone. Uh, but it has, you know, a very bright future. And you look at it now, like we're all sitting at home right now, and Microsoft's collaboration, uh, technology with things like Teams, the usage is going through the roof. So they are really moving to where the enter, like where ... I mean, they're definitely B2B enterprise technology, but they're crushing it there, and there's a bright future for them.

    24. CWChris Williamson34:13

        I mean, businesses have far more money to spend than consumers do-

    25. AKAlex Kantrowitz34:18

        Mm-hmm.

    26. CWChris Williamson34:18

        ... on these sort of high, high-ticket, low-volume kind of, uh, apps and services, I suppose. But yeah, that's interested, that is interesting that, um, that one person, and obviously he'll have brought, this CEO will have brought a team with him, and other people-

    27. AKAlex Kantrowitz34:32

        Mm-hmm.

    28. CWChris Williamson34:32

        ... who have had to have got on board to deploy his ideas. But the, uh ... A business the size of Microsoft can be changed by the fundamental ideas and the vision of just some bloke. He's just some guy, you know?

    29. AKAlex Kantrowitz34:47

        Yeah.

    30. CWChris Williamson34:47

        I mean, he's a very capable guy, obviously, who understands what he's talking about, but he's just some fella that's gone-
13. 35:18 – 44:32

    Google’s “side-to-side” collaboration engine and the race for voice assistants

    1. CWChris Williamson35:18

       Yeah. Okay, Google. Let's ... Talk to us about Google. What was Google's signature special move?

    2. AKAlex Kantrowitz35:24

       Their, uh, their special move, like (laughs) I feel like this is like in Mortal Kombat-

    3. CWChris Williamson35:28

       Mortal Kombat. That's exactly-

    4. AKAlex Kantrowitz35:28

       ... versus their Fatality. (laughs)

    5. CWChris Williamson35:29

       ... what it is. Yeah, exactly. (laughs)

    6. AKAlex Kantrowitz35:31

       Um, they're like that, uh, Mortal Kombat character that can go across the screen, you know, shoot across the screen.

    7. CWChris Williamson35:37

       Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I know who you mean.

    8. AKAlex Kantrowitz35:39

       Um, because their ... You know, at Facebook if ideas go up and down from the bottom to Zuckerberg, uh, inside Google, ideas go side to side, you know, across divisions very well. And that's because Google's interconnected in the series of their own social networks. Um, they have email listservs that span the whole company. They have, uh, uh, their own meme board, like a, almost like a Reddit or an imgur, where people make memes about the company and vote them up and vote them down. They have Q&As where people can ask the leadership any questions they want, although that's been pared back a little bit. Um, and most importantly, they work in an open drive.... meaning they use G- Google Docs, Slides, and Sheets, and the sharing on almost all those docs is set to open. So anybody in the company can go look into anyone else's documents. And at first, you know, people say, "That's kind of weird." But what it does is it allows people to get caught up, uh, to speed on projects incredibly fast. And they can, you know, when you're in a Google Doc, you can also add your ideas and comments, and people do that, right? So just like the six-page got ideas to Bezos quickly and the feedback culture gets ideas to Zuckerberg quickly, ideas inside Google can move side to side incredibly fast. And the example to show how this has worked really well is the Google Assistant, right, which is their voice assistant. And the Google Assistant combines so many different products. It combines Search and Android and Mail and Calendar and Maps and YouTube. And in order to build an effective assistant, you need everybody working together. Otherwise, you know, it's going to be pretty dysfunctional and people won't use it, and people don't have a lot of patience for a voice assistant. Like, if you say, "Hey Google" enough and it doesn't respond-

    9. CWChris Williamson37:16

       (laughs)

    10. AKAlex Kantrowitz37:16

        ... you're not going to keep saying it. You're just gonna, "I'm gonna type this shit in."

    11. CWChris Williamson37:19

        (laughs)

    12. AKAlex Kantrowitz37:19

        So, you know, so because they were able to collaborate, they were able to build this pretty effective, uh, assistant. And, a- and the assistant, again, is this evolution of search. It's another reinvention, right? Because y- when you speak with a voice assistant and you say, "What's the weather gonna be?" Right? How would you find that otherwise? Type it into Search. If you say, "When's my package coming?" How would you find that out? Type it into Search or type it into Gmail. So if Amazon was able to get the lead because ... Got a muter. Because, uh, you know, Alexa started answering those questions instead of Google, Google's d- domination of Search was really, would really be, uh, uh, challenged. But because, uh, Google was able to reinvent this way through collaboration, now it has a real foothold in the voice assistant space and is able to hold its own in its most important product.

    13. CWChris Williamson38:05

        Is that going to be, is the voice assistant space going to be as big as some of my friends think it is? 'Cause I've got a couple of buddies who are addicted to Siri. Like, a- a- absolutely addict- they won't do anything. They refuse to touch their phones. Um, for me, (clears throat) other than controlling music and stuff when I'm listening to it, I tend to not use it that much. But moving forward, can you see voice assist, is it the next big thing, one of the next big things?

    14. AKAlex Kantrowitz38:29

        I think it very well could be. And the reason why I say that is because we're still at, like, the pretty early moments of artificial intelligence technology. And what we're doing by talking to these things is training them, and every conversation they have helps them get a little bit better. So, I think that, um, it's amazing there's already tens of millions of these things in people's homes. Um, and as that grows, they'll get better at figuring out what we want from them. They'll get better at talking back to us. Like, I even see that the Alexa starts to, um, get more conversational with time. Like, I say, "Set an alarm," and she goes, "All right, I'm setting your alarm for 8:00 AM tomorrow. You want me to set that for every day this week?" And I'm like, "How the hell did you know that," right?

    15. CWChris Williamson39:11

        (laughs)

    16. AKAlex Kantrowitz39:12

        So I do think, yeah, this is gonna be big. It will be big, and they'll also start plugging in with other people's, uh, products. And, you know, I- I can, I have an idea why your friends like Siri so much, right? Because we're, I mean, especially now, we're all on our screens, all, you know, all this time. Uh, we're tapping, we're looking, watching, and it's like, you know, if we can do any computing by not having to deal with a screen, um, some people love that. And I think especially as that gets better, um, you know, people will really embrace it. So-

    17. CWChris Williamson39:40

        It's-

    18. AKAlex Kantrowitz39:40

        ... I'm bullish on it.

    19. CWChris Williamson39:41

        Nice. Bullish, uh, with that said, Alex Kantrowitz, bullish on, on voice, uh, voice commands, I love it. Um, that's an interesting point about how, uh, voice control or other nonphysical, um, versions of input will affect our tech use, you know? Because if you can do a ton of the things on your phone, let's say it's 100 years further on and we're able to, we've got microchips that can, uh, detect and correct neurons that are firing in our brain and we can just control stuff with our brains or we've got some sort of wearable or whatever it is, the line between screen time and not screen time could either diverge or could completely come together, so that either there's ba- barely any screen time or that all time is screen time.

    20. AKAlex Kantrowitz40:26

        Mm-hmm.

    21. CWChris Williamson40:26

        You know what I mean?

    22. AKAlex Kantrowitz40:28

        Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I would bet that, uh, we're heading towards a world where almost all time is screen time. But the cool thing about voice is it enables screen time to not be screen time, right? Like, you can be plugged in, but it can be ambient, sort of in the background-

    23. CWChris Williamson40:42

        It's a great word to use.

    24. AKAlex Kantrowitz40:43

        ... versus something requiring your full attention.

    25. CWChris Williamson40:46

        That's a brilliant way to put it. I've never thought of it like that, but it is. It's part of the environment when you use, "Hey Siri," or, or, or, "Okay ... Hey Siri." Is it, "Hey Google?" "Okay Google"?

    26. AKAlex Kantrowitz40:56

        "Okay Google," "Hey Google," I think both work.

    27. CWChris Williamson40:58

        Got you. And then what's the Alexa one?

    28. AKAlex Kantrowitz40:59

        Yeah, Amazon is just Alexa.

    29. CWChris Williamson41:00

        What's the Alexa one? It's just Alexa?

    30. AKAlex Kantrowitz41:02

        Just Alexa. Yeah.
14. 44:32 – 52:45

    Apple’s culture of refinement: silos, secrecy, and why Siri (and the car) struggle

    1. AKAlex Kantrowitz44:32

       Well, I'm sorry to disappoint your listeners, but (laughs) it is-

    2. CWChris Williamson44:35

       Hit us.

    3. AKAlex Kantrowitz44:37

       ... uh, a company with a culture that needs a transformation.

    4. CWChris Williamson44:40

       Ooh. Why?

    5. AKAlex Kantrowitz44:40

       And I think that's because, um, inside Apple they've been very good, I, I call it a culture of refinement. They've been very good at, at refining the iPhone, which is their flagship product, right? And they do that by keeping people in silos and keeping everything secret. And what that does is it allows people to concentrate on their one task. So the people that make the battery life live longer, that's what they're focused on. The people that make the screen better, that's what they're focused on. The people that, uh, made the iPhone thinner, that's what they're focused on. The computing power, that's what they're focused on. And they don't spend a lot of time distracted speaking to other people. And that's helped make the iPhone the best phone on the market. I don't think there's any doubt about that. I have one. Um, but for Apple, it's made it difficult for the company to reinvent itself. And I think we can go back to the voice assistant, uh, example.

    6. CWChris Williamson45:28

       Mm-hmm.

    7. AKAlex Kantrowitz45:28

       And, and while your friends might be using Siri only, uh, be using Siri as the only way they use their phones, they're probably the only two people on the planet to do that, because, um, Siri is terrible. And the reason why Siri is terrible is because it was thought about as, not as a voice platform, but as a feature on the iPhone. So just sort of like this fun thing that, like a fun magical assistant you could talk to, not something that could connect you via your voice to the rest of the internet. And because of that, Apple said, "Okay, well, Siri folks, why don't you sit in your own room?" And that's not how it works. Like, we talked about the Google Assistant. Google needed, you know, people across Search and, and Android and YouTube and Maps and Calendar, um, all these different divisions, and, uh, yeah, and music, to be able to integrate with each other and be able to talk to each other to be able to build this thing, um, without any barriers at all. And inside Apple, these silos have prevented the assistant folks from actually getting out there, uh, in a way that would be meaningful and helping Siri, uh, you know, become something that can overtake the Google Assistant and the Echo. Um, and the one, the one, uh, example that I give is that, um, you know, the, the Google ... I mean, Apple gave Amazon a multiyear head start. It gave Google like a five-year head start on Google Assistant. Like, Siri came out in 2012. These other things came out in 2016, 2017, 2018. And then Apple said, "Okay, finally they're going to build a speaker to put Siri inside of." Great. So they built the HomePod. The HomePod is not selling at all.

    8. CWChris Williamson46:54

       It sucks-

    9. AKAlex Kantrowitz46:55

       It's a total embarrassment.

    10. CWChris Williamson46:57

        ... so bad.

    11. AKAlex Kantrowitz46:58

        And the Echo and, and Google Home are in, in tens of millions of homes. And it's, again, it's funny because like for Apple, Apple is so interested in design, right? So they think about the, um, they think about the sound of the speaker and the look of the speaker and the feel of the speaker, whereas the Echo is the ugliest appliance I have in my whole life. It's disgusting to look at. (laughs) I'm looking at it now and I want to throw it out the window. But it's not about the speaker, the way it looks, it's about the assistant inside. And so that's something that Apple is going to have to change, because it's not going to be a visual or physical design first. It's going to be a computer design, and that requires collaboration. And it's struck out on the HomePod. It's also struck out... I mean, yeah, I think it's fair to say it's really struggled to build its own car. It's trying to build a self-driving car.

    12. CWChris Williamson47:46

        Okay. I didn't-

    13. AKAlex Kantrowitz47:46

        And the way they think about this-

    14. CWChris Williamson47:48

        ... I didn't know that.

    15. AKAlex Kantrowitz47:48

        Yeah, yeah. The way they think about this is sort of like the iPhone, right? The iPhone had beautiful hardware, great software, put it together, best phone on the market. Car, self-driving car is similar, right? Beautiful hardware. The, um, the, the way that it looks, and then beau- and then, you know, functional software, which is the self-driving software. Bam, Apple should have the elite on the market there.

    16. CWChris Williamson48:08

        Mm-hmm.

    17. AKAlex Kantrowitz48:10

        But it's had, put this old iPhone style mentality into, into building this car.So they don't let the machine learning engineers talk to each other that are working on different projects. So you'd have people working on the car, people working on face ID. One of them is locating, like, lanes and markers and stuff like that. The other one is locating facial features. And it's been difficult for them to talk to each other, which means their technology develops slower. Then also there's been the influence of design, right? So design inside Apple is the, is the most important division. First, they figure out how it's going to look, then they figure out what's going on inside. So, the-

    18. CWChris Williamson48:45

        (laughs) We're speaking backwards engineering something's pretty.

    19. AKAlex Kantrowitz48:46

        Exactly. Yeah, yeah. Well, it's worked, it's worked very well for a lot of products, but for the car, it just hasn't worked well because, um, and I spoke with some people who had worked on this, the design team asked them to take the sensors that are out there to figure out what's going on on the road and embed them in the car. Because typically, with a self-driving car, it looks like this horrific, you know, rolling submarine, uh, with all these different, you know, knobs and, and laundromats-

    20. CWChris Williamson49:10

        Satellite dish that whirs round in a... Yeah, yeah, yeah.

    21. AKAlex Kantrowitz49:12

        Oh. It looks almost as bad as the Echo. And, uh-

    22. CWChris Williamson49:15

        (laughs) Yeah.

    23. AKAlex Kantrowitz49:16

        ... so a- a... Of course Apple isn't going to be down with that. So they say, "Okay, take the sensors, put it in the car." So it looks much nicer. But for the machine learning engineers, it's much more difficult to figure out what they're trying to do because it's like putting blinders on your eyes, right? Now you can only see this, you know, th- this much and your peripheral vision is cut in a certain way. And then how do you make a, a machine learn how to do self-driving if it can't get the full range of vision? And so that's one of the reasons why the product has struggled.

    24. CWChris Williamson49:40

        Shit. I-

    25. AKAlex Kantrowitz49:41

        So, look... Yeah, sorry, sorry, go ahead.

    26. CWChris Williamson49:43

        I, I, I just think that my, uh, seduction into Apple is probably very common amongst, like, just normal consumers. You know, you think all of their products are super slick. I'm speaking to you on a MacBook Pro that I upgraded to even though I didn't need to just because the new one looked good. I got an iPhone, I've got AirPods. I bought my mom and dad AirPods for, like, last Christmas and the Christmas before and blah, blah. You know, like, but because the design is so seductive and, um, so visceral and so easy to see, right? You know, like Microsoft, perfect example. Like, I do not think sexy when I think Microsoft, but-

    27. AKAlex Kantrowitz50:25

        Yeah.

    28. CWChris Williamson50:26

        ... money talks, you know. The numbers don't lie. And they're the biggest, the biggest company of all the ones that we've spoken about and they're doing, like, some of the least sexy shit. But I guess it all depends on what the vision is. And the oth- the other thing as well, uh, that I've noticed when you're talking about Apple is, it seems like a very old style approach to, um, management and also careers within a company in that you've got specialization. You know, this is Henry Ford shit. You know, this is like 1910 shit.

    29. AKAlex Kantrowitz50:56

        Right.

    30. CWChris Williamson50:56

        The guy that, that turns the knob, he's the knob turner and the guy-
15. 52:45 – 57:07

    What’s next: tech transforming work, AI everywhere, and governments as execution machines

    1. CWChris Williamson52:45

       Yeah, I get it. Look, Alex, man, it's been really, really awesome. Finishing up, final question. What is your, uh, vision for tech or what are your predictions for the big things happening in tech over the next five to 10 years? What should we be on the lookout for?

    2. AKAlex Kantrowitz53:01

       I mean, I would say be on, be on the lookout... So right now we've had, like, tech change our consumer lives in a big way. Uh, meaning that, like, we are now... We use Netflix to watch TV, to watch yeah, TV and movies, um, and we all have phones and apps. Um, and it's really changed our experience living life outside of the office. And it's funny because in the office it feels like we're still living in the 1990s sometimes, um, given like the programs that we use. So I, I... My first big prediction is that we're going to start to see technology change our work lives in the same way that it changed our consumer lives. And I think work is always a little bit slower, uh, to adapt and I think that that's really, um, going to make a difference for the... in terms of the way that we work. So I would look out for that. I think AI is going to be way more advanced and change the way that we live, uh, in ways that I'm not even sure how to predict. Like, one thing I've thought about in terms of-

    3. CWChris Williamson53:52

       You're the guy, Alex. It has to be you. If it's not you, who's it going to be?

    4. AKAlex Kantrowitz53:56

       Yeah. Well, I gu- I guess like it sort of goes to the point of, of the book, right? There can't be just one person with the vision. It's everybody's ideas that come together that, that actually, you know, push forward the change. Um, but it's going to ha- happen in so many different industries. You know, my dad is a podiatrist and so... In, in the US, um, when, when you're a doctor, you spend, you know, some of your time working with patients and almost all of your time...... filling out charts. (laughs) And my dad, every time I come home, he's just filling out charts. I'm like, "Dad, do you do anything else but f- fill out charts?" He's like, "Nope." So, (laughs) I mean, it'll be amazing when we start to see this technology start to gain... You know, if the, if, if, uh, UiPath technology can write an HR letter, right? Why can't there be other technology that starts filling out the paperwork for doctors? I mean, of course you'd have to have it at a, um, pretty high, you know, specification, and have to, you know, understand privacy. But a lot of this stuff is, is just like, you know, write down and spit back. It's not so, so complex. It's just you have to key it into all these different systems. So there needs to be technology to be able to do that. That might change the medical field because instead of having doctors spend their time doing paperwork, you might actually have doctors spending their time taking care of patients. And wouldn't that be cool? So... And I think it'd change government as well. Like I expect us to see if we have the political will to see lean or more effective governments. You know, our governments are the ultimate, uh, uh-

    5. CWChris Williamson55:17

       Bloated creature.

    6. AKAlex Kantrowitz55:18

       ... groups, bloated groups. I mean, talk about execution work. All the government does is execution work.

    7. CWChris Williamson55:23

       (laughs)

    8. AKAlex Kantrowitz55:23

       Imagine those people had some time to come up with ideas to figure out problems like climate and poverty and health. That would be amazing. So I-

    9. CWChris Williamson55:30

       Well, the fact of the matter is within a government you have to use the word think tank, you know, in that-

    10. AKAlex Kantrowitz55:35

        That's right.

    11. CWChris Williamson55:35

        ... the, the think tank-

    12. AKAlex Kantrowitz55:37

        Yeah.

    13. CWChris Williamson55:37

        ... is the exception because everybody else-

    14. AKAlex Kantrowitz55:40

        That's exactly right.

    15. CWChris Williamson55:40

        ... is, is busy doing the ops.

    16. AKAlex Kantrowitz55:42

        That's exactly right, Chris. And that's a freaking big problem.

    17. CWChris Williamson55:45

        (laughs)

    18. AKAlex Kantrowitz55:45

        So we need to work to solve that.

    19. CWChris Williamson55:46

        Hey, it looks like-

    20. AKAlex Kantrowitz55:47

        Uh, so yeah.

    21. CWChris Williamson55:47

        ... it looks like you've got a good handle on the, on what we're talking about. Alex, your link, the link to your book will be in the show notes below. Always Day One, highly recommended. Where can people go to check out your stuff online?

    22. AKAlex Kantrowitz56:00

        Yeah, I appreciate it, Chris. So you can, um, yeah, they... Check the show notes for the book. Also, you can Google Always Day One and read some of the reviews. I think people have been happy with it so far. And then if you want to connect with me, uh, I'm a pretty online person. You could just type my last name into Twitter, K-A-N-T-R-O-W-I-T-Z. My DMs are open and I check my mentions, so I'd love to hear from you there.

    23. CWChris Williamson56:20

        Amazing. Everything that we've spoken about will be linked in the show notes below. You already know what to do. If you enjoyed the episode, go and give Alex a follow, let him know what you think. Dude, I, uh, I really enjoyed that. I'm loo- I'm looking forward to seeing what the next few years has got in store now. I'm excited.

    24. AKAlex Kantrowitz56:34

        Thank you. Yeah, me too. (laughs) It's gonna, it's gonna be a wild few years, that's for sure. I hope it becomes calmer and li- (laughs) less trapped in our houses than it is now.

    25. CWChris Williamson56:43

        (laughs) Ooh.

    26. AKAlex Kantrowitz56:44

        But yeah.

    27. CWChris Williamson56:45

        We'll see. We'll see. Dude, thank you so much for your time.

    28. AKAlex Kantrowitz56:48

        Thank you, Chris. This was really great.

    29. CWChris Williamson56:54

        Get moving, get moving.

Episode duration: 57:07