- I determined that I had two paths to choose from. The first was to treat my teams better, improve their output, and hope that over time others would follow my example. The second path was to find a way to influence how entire companies treat people. I chose the latter path because I believed it would give me the greatest chance of affecting the most people, and decided to find a job in human resources.
- Welch and Conaty had implemented a 20-70-10 performance ranking system, where GE employees were sorted into three groups: the top 20 percent, the middle 70 percent, and the bottom 10 percent. The top workers were lionized and rewarded with choice assignments, leadership training programs, and stock options. The bottom 10 percent were fired. Under Immelt, the forced distribution was softened and the crisp labels were replaced with euphemisms: "top talent," "highly valued," and "needs improvement."
- Google is the most sought-after place to workon the planet.
[Words & Phrases]
- amass: to gather or collect (something, such as a large amount of money) especially for yourself
I amassed a random walk resume that could best be described as a guidance counselor's nightmare.
- stumble into: to start doing something by chance, without having intended to do it
- muster = collect
muster enough courage
They pushed the car with all the strength they could muster.
- stagnant: not flowing, active, changing, progressive
- toil: to work very hard for a long time
- alongside: at the same time as, together with
- posh: very attractive, expensive, and popular
poshest university
They live in a posh neighborhood.
I stayed at a posh hotel.
- intriguing = extremely interesting, fascinating
found my background intriguing
- nuts = crazy
I was nuts.
She's going to drive me nuts [=make me crazy; make me go insane] with her jealousy.
- latitude: freedom to choose how to act or what to do
He gave me tremendous latitude to explore the company.
We weren't given much latitude in deciding how to do the job.
The judge has wide/considerable latitude to reject evidence for the trial.
- acclaimed: strongly praised
Her performance was acclaimed by the critics.
a highly/hugely/widely acclaimed play
the city's most acclaimed restaurants
- stringently = very strictly or severely
- lionize = to treat (someone) as a very important and famous person
- euphemism: an innocuous(=inoffensive, harmless) word or expression used in place of one that may be found offensive or suggest something unpleasant (완곡어법)
- vaunted = very good
The team's vaunted defense faltered in the second half of the game.
falter: to stop being strong or successful =to begin to fail or weaken
- permeate: to pass or spread through (something)
The water permeated the sand.
The smell of baking bread permeated the kitchen.
A feeling of anxiety permeated the office as we rushed to meet the deadline.
- secrecy: the act of keeping information secret
- disseminate: to cause (something, such as information) to go to many people
The Internet allows us to disseminate information/news/ideas faster.
The findings were widely disseminated.
- unprecedented: not done or experienced before
Fortune has named Google the "Best Company to Work For" an unprecedented five times in the United States.
[Engagement Points]
- dot-com boom: The dot-com bubble (also known as the dot-com boom,[1] the tech bubble,[2] and the Internet bubble) was a stock market bubble caused by excessive speculation of Internet-related companies in the late 1990s, a period of massive growth in the use and adoption of the Internet.
- arrows in a quiver
"You guys are all like arrows in a quiver. Every one of you is the same."
- Six Sigma: a set of tools to improve quality and efficiency.
- The Peter Principle, also known as The Peter principle of Incompetence, claims that people who do their job well are promoted to positions of greater responsibility, and so on, until they reach a position in which they are incompetent, so they remain stuck in that position.
- For example, a devoted mechanic who is promoted to the position of manager. From his new position, he gets in the way of the work of his subordinates; he is also unable to remain still and he is continually doing things that he is not meant to do, this way, he is not making it easier for these employees to work. In the end, neither he nor his employees can carry out their jobs so they end up totally frustrated.
- In order to reduce the effects of the Peter Principle, some companies opt for solutions such as getting managers back to their previous positions or rewarding the most productive workers with a pay rise rather than a promotion. Another option is to train these people in order for them to stop being incompetent in that new position; In order to achieve this, it is very important to be aware of one’s own inability to do that job.
- The Dilbert Principle is just a variation of the Peter Principle; and it emphasises that incompetent employees are intentionally promoted to prevent them from causing harm.
[Words & Phrases]
- comic strip: a sequence of drawings in boxes that tell an amusing story, typically printed in a newspaper or comic book
The Three-pass Approach for reading research papers
The first pass gives you a general idea about the paper. The second pass lets you grasp the paper’s content, but not its details. The third pass helps you understand the paper in depth.
The First Pass
1. Carefully read the title, abstract, and introduction
2. Read the section and sub-section headings, but ignore everything else
3. Glance at the mathematical content (if any) to determine the underlying theoretical foundations
4. Read the conclusions
5. Glance over the references, mentally ticking off the ones you’ve already read
Result: At the end of the first pass, you should be able to answer the five Cs: category, context, correctness, contributions, clarity
The second Pass (1 hour)
1. Look carefully at the figures, diagrams and other illustrations in the paper. Pay special attention to graphs. Are the axes properly labeled? Are results shown with error bars, so that conclusions are statistically significant? Common mistakes like these will separate rushed, shoddy work from the truly excellent.
2. Remember to mark relevant unread references for further reading (this is a good way to learn more about the background of the paper)
Result: After this pass, you should be able to grasp the content of the paper. You should be able to summarize the main thrust of the paper, with supporting evidence, to someone else.
The Third Pass (2+ hours)
1. The key to the third pass is to attempt to virtually re-implement the paper: that is, making the same assumptions as the authors, re-create the work.
Result: At the end of this pass, you should be able to reconstruct the entire structure of the paper from memory, as well as be able to identify its strong and weak points. In particular, you should be able to pinpoint implicit assumptions, missing citations to relevant work, and potential issues with experimental or analytical techniques.
Related Work
1. If you are reading a paper to do a review, you should also read Timothy Roscoe’s paper on “Writing reviews for systems conferences”.
2. If you’re planning to write a technical paper, you should refer both to Henning Schulzrinne’s comprehensive web site and George Whitesides’s excellent overview of the process.
3. Simon Peyton Jones has a website that covers the entire spectrum of research skills. Iain H. McLean of Psychology, Inc. has put together a downloadable ‘review matrix’ that simplifies paper reviewing using the three-pass approach for papers in experimental psychology, which can probably be used, with minor modifications, for papers in other areas.
[Words & Phrases]
- tick off: to mark something with a written tick = check (✓)
Tick the box next to your choice.
Tick off your choice below.
Glance over the references, mentally ticking off the ones you've already read.
- adequate: enough for some need or requirement (충분한)
- gist: the general or basic meaning of something said or written (요점)
- shoddy: poorly done or made
shoddy work/workmanship/furniture/goods
They gave a shoddy performance
- acronym: a word formed from the first letters of each one of the words in a phrase
- persevere: to continue doing something or trying to do something even though it is difficult (인내하다)
- iterate: to repeat a process, especially as part of a computer program
- perceptive: having or showing an ability to understand or notice something easily or quickly (통찰력있는)
a perceptive comment/analysis/observation
He is a very perceptive young man.
He is socially perceptive. (눈치 빠른)
- correspondent: someone who writes letters or e-mails to another person (보낸 사람)
recipient (받는 사람)
[Engagement Point]
- a bird's-eye-view (조감도)
- read the paper in
read in vs. read
- Paper reading skills are put to the test in doing a literature survey.
- Please take a moment to email me any comments or suggestions for improvement. Thanks to encouraging feedback from many correspondents over the years.
