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| This is one of the best recruiting e-mails I've received:
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Sushi, I don't know what I like more : your name, where you went (are going to) College or your group photo on your website. If you ever drag yourself away from Palo Alto would you consider working in NYC? I deal with an amazing S/W firm/Hedge fund located in Soho NYC. they look for extremely bright, well educated people to train in High Frequency trading development. Maybe I can get your whole crew to come to NYC. Best work environment and pay structure I've ever seen. Please call and or email your resume and everyone in the picture too! Have a great day. Pass the Toro!
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I received this in my gmail account the other day from a recruiter at a technical recruiting company in New York City. I've received many recruiting e-mails in the past, mostly for entry level positions outlandishly embellished by generic superlatives. They were all generic, impersonal, and absolutely forgettable.
This one is different. It's short, personal, and memorable.
You can create a carefully crafted e-mail in several hours and send it out to thousand people, but that doesn't mean you should. In an age where communication is frictionless and people are bombarded with e-mails, a short and surprisingly personal e-mail can go a lot further than just another cold e-mail.
Of course, if every recruiter did this, people will quickly tune their cognitive filters and this would become ineffective. It's not easy trying to continually differentiate yourself. But for now, I think this recruiter has a competitive advantage going on that not many of us have caught onto.
(If this is the most innovative recruiting letter I've received, the weirdest definitely goes to the one I received through Skype)
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| Most of my friends in my age group have Facebook accounts, which is not surprising. However, those that don't are no longer apathetic. They are adamant about not having an account, citing reason such as privacy or aspirations to run for public office. People are no longer indifferent about Facebook. They either subscribe to it or protest against it. Everyone knows about it, everyone cares about it, everyone take sides on it. Have we seen this in the past?
Did you ever have the friend who refused to get a cellphone because of (insert some reason here)? How about a friend that doesn't own a television because X?
This is common any time there is a mass adoption of a new paradigm. Some people refused to use the internet or e-mail for some self justified reason before finally accepting it as an integral part of the modern lifestyle (or some still refuse it and get called Luddites). Some still refuse to buy any made in China products even though it's now mainstream. Even when phones lines were first being laid out, some people refused to install it in their homes because they didn't want to be disrupted in their homes (see first few minutes of "Goodfellas"). I'm sure automobiles faced similar resistance before becoming the dominant transportation paradigm.
So has Facebook joined the ranks of basic plumbing, running water, and electricity?
Probably not yet. After all, I am in the demographic that is most likely to use Facebook, and I'm sure there are plenty of people in the US or world who have never heard of Facebook. However, if the trend continues, Facebook very well may become the next basic necessity of life.
Just for comparison, number in the world:
Facebook accounts: >300,000
Cars: >600,000
Phone lines: 1,263,367,600
Televisions: 1,416,338,245
Internet users: 1,668,870,408
Mobile phones in use: 4,100,000
People with electricity: 4,100,00
(In trying to discover how many people in the world used Social Networking Service, I found out that QQ is most popular in the world, although almost entirely in China)
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| Think of some designers. Do you own any of their products?
Look at the things around you. Do you know who designed them?
We don't own the things created by designers we know, and don't know the designers who created the things we own.
There are exceptions. I know Philippe Starck designed my watch and Jonathan Ive was involved in the laptop which I'm using, but that's all I can come up with.
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| Because we send so many e-mails, we design and create software that is easier to sort, search, and digest e-mails. Because e-mails are becoming easier to process, we send more and more e-mails. Classic Catch-22.
So what can we do about it?
Is Google Wave a step towards fixing this or another technology that continues this path of over communication and information overload?
Maybe we should be looking for social fixes instead of technological solutions.
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| I can see how people would think Paris is beautiful. Cobble stone streets, Medieval architecture, historical relics, they are all there. Ask anyone what they think the most beautiful city in the world is and chances are you'll get Paris or some other European (or possibly Asian) city established centuries ago. It's unlikely that anyone would choose newer cities such as Los Angeles, Canberra, or Brasilia.
Have we become incapable of designing beautiful cities?
Or is it that we don't appreciate the designs of newer cities?
I believe that people appreciate most non-perishable products when they are very new and very old. The earlier lines up on show windows across shopping streets, and the latter appears in antique shows and auctions. All the stuff in between? We simply don't care. Cars are a great example. There are connoisseurs of classical cars (1900s-1940s) and vintage cars (1950s-1970s) but you'll be hard pressed to find people who appreciate vehicles from the 1980s and 1990s. The same applies to audio media. You're likely to find audiophiles who swear by LPs but cassette tape fanatics are much rarer. While the time constants are different from product group to product group (video games from the 1980s are now collectibles), the chart below captures my general theory.
I feel that cities are no different. We were once excited about Los Angeles, a vast expansive city that freed people from the crowded streets of the public-transit-dependent cities out east. I'm sure the designers of LA didn't intend the city to become a smog-ridden icon of automotive abyss. Brasilia was supposed to be an well-planned utopia but it now faces the same issues of crime and traffic jams as with many other Brazilian cities.
If you think we're done getting building or getting excited about new cities, think again. The central focus is no longer transportation but sustainability, but we're still designing with the values of today for tomorrow.
So when will we start to appreciate the cities stuck in the valley of the appreciation curve? Maybe the answer lies not in time but in paradigm shift. Once we get away from our current state of urbanity, we'll start to admire the automotive relics of the past.
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