The transforming 2014

Without any planning or intention, 2014 was surprisingly big to me. It is not 2008 (when I graduated from high school), it is not 2012 (when the world supposed to end), 2014 is the biggest transition in my life, when many doors were closed, and other turned open. No photo or video could have captured my experience over the last year, but lucky enough, I have words. My wish when writing down these lines is that a few years from now, I can look back and say, "oh boy, there was a time like that".

1. Look. 

I went from this

to this

Oh its just the hair style, no biggie? I had had that hair side parting with me for as long as I can possibly remember. For 24 years, that had been how my hair looked. The idea of changing the hairstyle never came to me, even during those rebellious high school years when I got to know that weed wasn't grass. When I was a kid, a cousin told me that my head was not round and looked kinda ugly. I wasn't too fond of the idea of showing that weird-looking head to everyone.

But as some point, life was so depressing, and I got tired of that same look  in the mirror every day. And it was just the hair, I had my head shaved once when I was 10 (that was how my cousin commented on my head shape), "how worse can this be?", I told myself. Fuck that.

Though I still miss the thick layer of hair covering my neck and ears during winter, I also enjoy rubbing my head really hard, all the breezes running through it every night I ride bicycle home, and the fact that I wouldn't ever need a comb again. More importantly, I learned that restricting myself from something someone said randomly in the past is really stupid.

2. I left the company I founded.

Okay, strictly speaking, I did not found the company. I was employee number zero in Vietnam, and I was fortunate enough to get a bunch of friends, who are all smarter than me, to believe in "building a fun place to work", and together we tried. I spent 3 years at the company. The first 6 months I lived in a tiny little apartment office in Taipei, Taiwan which was right opposite of the National University of Taiwan and had a spectacular view over Taipei 101, the city's most prominent landmark. The next one year I continued to live from another apartment which was 5 minutes away from RMIT where I frequently passed by to give customized pitches to people I would love to work with.

During this period of time, the press painted a rosy picture about my career. But just among us colleagues, we all knew the reality was far less compelling. Why it happened the way it did has been a repeating topic among us, both current and ex-colleagues. But we could all agree that I was a horrible person. As a manager, I horrified my subordinates with my temper. As a colleague, I was far from a source of inspiration, I was the source of depression. And as a friend, I was an asshole. Lets not get into that.

At some point, people had it enough, and they made clear that the picture of "a fun place to work" couldn't be painted with me in it. It has been more than a year since, and I still haven't figured out how did I stray off my path so far, and so wrong. I was blindfolded and didn't know what to do, and yet was given too much authority. I am grateful that my colleagues showed me a way out. But I also came to learn that friendship isn't something you can screw and expect it to heal, at the cost of an arm and a leg.

3. I learned to cook.

My mom is over 50 now. She doesn't know the difference between Skype and Facebook. Actually she doesn't know how to shut down a computer other than pressing the power button for a really long time. And she thinks most of the things I do are stupid. And like all moms on earth, she is a great mom. My father is a man of work. As a professor, he seems to be very good at doing research and guiding his students on their thesis. But you leave him alone in the house, he would be starving. Mom has been looking over him and then our brothers ever since their marriage, and I can see she would continue to do so for many more years. I grew up to be a clone of my father, utterly useless at house chords.

But soon after I gave up hoping there would be another woman cooking for me, I'd better come up with a plan to survive the rest of my life. I had denied that I did not suck at house chords, just that I was so busy. Well, being unemployed, time was one of a very few assets I then had abundantly. Being a bookworm, I got started in this kitchen business in the most reasonable way I could possibly imagine: bought a book and read the shit out of it!

Now three books, a few cuts in fingers and many months later, I have to say that I am a terrific cook with excellent outcome 80% of the time. The other 20% conveniently "coincidently" all happened during the time mom came to visit me, with the peak being the kimchi soup that too sour for human to taste. She has been teasing me endlessly for being useless and inferior to her. But that was one more topics for family dinner, I really don't mind.

My signature disk, tía má con mực, though I love adding some beans and call it đậu má con mực

4. I got back to bicycle.

One day, I came into the Martin shop on Võ Thị Sáu street and proudly requested the shopkeeper "Can I have your cheapest bicycle please?" And that how I got my super average jade bicycle. She isn't a trendy fixie, nor is she the kind of bicycle you can travel along the country with confidence. But she is the one you can see every morning going to school with kids, or going to daily market with housewives. And that was 3 years ago.

Back when I first got her, turned out riding bicycle right after a big meal was not a very good idea. But once I learned how to cook, and honestly, was unemployed, I had certain control over my daily routine and riding bicycle just made sense again. And hey, it is environmental friendly, you dinosaur-fossil-burners! 

"Are you doing this for exercise?" was the most common reaction I got when people knew I was using a bicycle for 90% of my travel in this mega city . Well actually it was not. I simply felt good, really good, whenever I rode a bicycle. It somehow inarticulately reminded me the time I was in high school. High school time was carefree, no stress, no KPI. And for a while, I used to ride my high school sweetheart home every day on a borrowed bike. Pedalling around the city must have awaken the pavloved animal in me.

I also enjoyed the slow pace a mediocre bike had to offer. Ever since after high school, thing had moved too fast for me. RMIT. Assignments. Exams. MultiNC. MultiUni. ITClub. Internship. Cogini. I realized I didn't really have time to look back and retrospect what had happened and how I had responded. Every day the trip coming back home was the new precious break I needed to get back to the balance I had long lost.

And in a city like Saigon, everything happened on the streets. A random foreigner lost her bike ticket and had trouble explaining it with body language. An auntie fell off her bike due to a street accident. A high school girl in her áo dài almost busted to tear when the chain of her bicycle misaligned with the gear. Riding a bicycle meant I always travelled at the speed I could comfortably stop to help these people and had no worries leaving my dear bike on the side of a street. It might add a couple of minutes to my schedule, but made somebody's day, such a bargain.

5. I learned to love Dalat again.

When I was 18 and left home for college, I had this weird feeling that the place I had spent my entire life would all of sudden become a place I would stop by a couple of weeks every year. That empty feeling gradually turned into the reluctance of going back home, because what was the point if I soon would have to say goodbye again?

By the time I graduated, my whole family got into a hideous fight over the only piece of land my grandparents owned, the piece of land I spent my childhood wondering around, with a running nose. I hated seeing people who were so close to me turning against each other. I hated how lonely it was every Tet ever since then. And I hated Dalat for reminding me of all the good memory. And that was back to 2011 and I thought to myself, getting back to Dalat once a year was more than enough.

But as time gone by, and I had to travel more often for work, I spent more time, usually on bus or airplane, thinking about home, as a real physical place, instead of that definition of home vs house I learned in high school. If there is a place I have to spend the rest of my life living there, it aint gonna be Taipei, Condao, or Hoian. It gotta be the place where every breath is full of cold air filling my lungs, where sunlight is scorching and shade is freezing, where morning dew cracks my lips like a dry field. As long as I can still enjoy those, there is one and only home for me. And it is really ridiculous to hate your only home.

And then there were guys like this https://www.facebook.com/dalattraveler and this https://www.facebook.com/hunter.dl.1 who took fucking mesmerzing photos about Dalat and by doing so, remind me every day how beautiful she is. They gave me the motivation to explore a new Dalat that I have never seen before. And like that, I am in love with her again.

6. I standed up where I fell.

I believe it must be a struck of luck that got me the current job. When I left the company I founded, I went through six months of unemployment. The time was precious to me. I got time to think about what I really wanted to do in my life, what I was better than others, and how my skills aligned with my goals. During this period, the internal healing process took place. I came to understand there are many other important things in life other than work. I realized that the easiest way to be hated is to try doing things that I am bad at. And then that I was burden-free, I could focus on learning rather than earning again.

But on the other hand, I also felt that the life without a schedule, a team, and a goal was rotting my mind and body. At the end of six months, I started to find a job. I understood that even though the healing was happening, something was wrong with me fundamentally. I wanted to find an entry level work that I could spend less time worrying about the daily work and had more time to observe a team dynamic and learn leadership from the ground up. To my surprise, I went on a whole month without getting a single interview. I was freak out, I thought that what had been wrong with me, was then obvious to others in the industry and no one would want me again. Out of depression that my professional value was below zero, I applied for management level vacancies. Within a week, I got 4 offers. I picked a Singaporean company that wanted to build its development team in Vietnam for 03 reasons. (1) The company was the one that hustled the most to get me. (2) I got to do my own product for the first time. and (3) building a sustainable team was where I fell and I wanted to stand up from that.

I proceeded to build a team, with the constant fear that I would fuck everything up again. I ran the team with XP, believing that a good team is a self-organizing team, and my job was nothing but to empower them. The team got its first milestone, rebuild the system from scratch in 6 weeks. During that period, we also managed to send our designer, Minh, to Singapore for a conference without slowing down. We ran our first Product Design Sprint, under the lead of Minh, and got tons of good ideas what we wanted to do with our product. We received investment, moved to a new office and continued working our asses off to meet the expectations from investors.

People still come and go. Once in a while I still got reject from a applicant because what I did (and didn't do) in the last job. But the most important achievement I got from this is that, once again, I can make new friends, like, really close friends. It means tremendously to me when the guys asked me out for lunch/dinner, let me know troubles they had in their lives, and even sought for advices from me. I am glad that I wasn't as broken as I thought. Or I was actually broken, but time and friendship fixed me.

People seem to love what I have been doing. I was asked to mentor a team to run Scrum. I was also asked to build an even bigger and more demanding team in Singapore, which has been giving me butterflies in my stomach recently. And we are planning to bring the team members to the next level, sticking to the one and only promise I made when they chose to believe in me: giving them the platform and support they need to  "punch above their weight class". As a former office dictator, I couldn't ask for more. Thank you, guys!

7. I led the organization of Barcamp Saigon for the first time.

Organizing Barcamp Saigon 2014 was probably the most stressful experience I have had since 2012. Coordinating different parties for a 1000-participant event was an incredible amount of work, especially when I could only spend a few hours a week on it. A month before the event day, my full-time job became part-time and Barcamp became my full-time obsession. I really appreciated the support I received from my company and colleagues. Without them, I wouldn't have been able to devote my time to Barcamp as much as I did.

There were multiple times when things were FUBAR (oh man I love this acronym) and for more than one time we talked about an exit hoping that it would save us from all the miseries. But this brutal experience also taught me the importance of not losing hope even in the darkest hours. And the rest is history now :)

Volunteer work like Barcamp also made me rethink a belief I had built up since college. Remember that in every group assignment there would be a free loader and you, trying to get a good grade, had to cover his ass and called him assholes multiple times a day? I thought that once I graduate and work with serious people it would be better. But guess what, it is just wrong. Actually most of the time there is no such person as a free loader. Just that everyone has a different set of goals and values in life, and at the end of the day, commitment is more of a moral question than a radical one. I learned that I am responsible to fulfill my expectation and the good news is that as long as I do a good work on my own, respect other people and let them feel confident in what they choose to do, the team will jell and miracle happens

.It is also another personal achievement that despite all the stress, I didn't get nuts and lose any friends, which would have been very likely to happen if it has been a year ago, with my notorious temper. I pat myself on the back for that.

I also got a chance to go to Barcamp Danang and was blown away by what these people at their 19, 20 have done. Freedom of speech might be still limited in Vietnam, but Barcamp is definitely going strong.

8. I came to accept my life would never be back to what it used to be again.

Few years ago, I met a woman who changed my life. The story, among many others of my life, didn't have a happy ending.

When I was a kid, a friend told me that to love someone is like to save a file to a hard drive, you can't really delete it until you save a new one on top of it. But the last two years taught me that true love sticks with you, changes you and continues to change you as the years go by.

I still remember the overwhelming emotions when I saw her, the incredible excitement when I wandered downtown with her, and the moment my heart stopped when we kissed. I continue to revisit all those memories from time to time... But what I remember the most is the empty, helpless, and unbearable feeling the day she gone.

The pain wasn't all at once. It took time to form, to grow, and to, in turn, alter my life. In contrast to my belief that as time gone by, I would forget her and get back to the old me, I'm awed to realize that the life I am living today has had her embedded in its framework. I came to accept that history will stay, and I'd better cope with that.

The new life shows me that I need to work on and improve on before I'm ready to be a part of a loving and committed relationship. And hence all the points above.

Although it has been taking a really long time now, I hope to once again find love and that pain will hopefully turn into fond memories I can revisit with a smile and sense of nostalgia.

So....

Having all these said, by no means I am a completely different, flawless, prince charming now. I am still skinny as heck and my effort to put on some weight hasn't got any return yet. There are many broken relationships since the old time that I don't know how to fix. I still have a long way to go with anger management. There are a whole lot of technologies/practices I would love to bring to my team. And to do that, I need to be better at time management and delegation. I am still struggling to write 01 blog post a month, and I have been telling myself that I need to spend more time to read and meditating and less time on social network, but the fact that I am writing this note on Facebook is pretty much self-describing :)

So, in all possible ways, I am still trying very hard everyday to be an okay person.

I don't have the habit of making new year resolution, nor do I plan to have one this year. 2014 was a surprising turn of event, and I am looking at 2015 with the same eagerness!

Happy New Year!

The mesmerizing Barcamp Danang 2015

Last weekend I had a chance to join Barcamp Danang 2015. On the days before the event, a couple of incidents happened, including a major server crash and a winter cold, that made me think really hard on whether I should travel half the country or not. I am glad I made it, because Barcamp Danang was absolutely fucking mesmerizing.

That was the first Barcamp ever for Danang, and it was held by a team of organizers and volunteers whose average age was 20 and never experienced a Barcamp first-hand before. I had been enjoying being the youngest person in the room for quite a while, then all of sudden, I was older than everyone. And that awed me. When I was 20, I was probably sitting in some random corner playing game and these guys had already organized the first, and therefore biggest (can't beat that), Barcamp in Central Vietnam.

Barcamp Danang was organized at Duy Tan University, which I found some similarities with Hoa Sen University where Barcamp Saigon was held last December. Both are private universities with urban campus and a paranoid of freedom of speech.

The event started at 8AM with the opening session. I was invited to be the MC of the session, like, of all the people on earth, me - an introvert that has a tiny panic whenever talking to a stranger? Unlike the opening of Barcamp Saigon, which was simply a recap of what Barcamp is and what to expect on the event day, the one in Danang had three small speeches from distinguished guests, so pretty much like a standard conference. The speeches left little time to convey the Barcamp spirit. I find that a pity. Minh Do, organized Barcamp Saigon for 5 years, once told me that the most important thing about opening session is not the information, people will always ask questions about the thing covered in opening session, it is the spirit. So ideally the opening is the time for ice breaker and audience participation so that they are set into the right mood for moving around, meeting new people and exchanging ideas. I made a mental note to myself that the meaning of opening session should be better communicated next time.

The first Barcamp in Danang attracted 32 speakers, covering 4 main topics: technology, entrepreneurship, education and volunteering. Around 10% of the speakers were foreigners, and aside from Vi Nguyen from Funkoi, I don't think there was another local using English in their presentation. The organizers was worried there wouldn't be enough speakers as the format of Barcamp was new there, so of these 32, some submitted topics to Barcamp, and some were invited. No matter what, I think they did a pretty good job at bringing diversity to Barcamp topics. I ran into all sort of speakers, from motivational speaker who had the room repeat "I believe in my own success" to students holding a fireside chat about their volunteer project. For people who experienced Barcamp the first time, I have to say they (the speakers) were really creative on methods of delivering their content.

Most of participants were students. General speaking, students are great, they are young, energized and willing to learn. But in an event whose focus is the interaction between participants like Barcamp, an average student is lack of the depth of thought and experience to really engage in a presentation or conversation.

At lunch break, Tam, an organizer, managed to invite an indie band known as Du Ca Danang to come. The band absolutely blew my mind with their talent. The little music show was first held at the lobby, but soon attracted way too many people that we had to move them to the school yard cum parking lot where they played even more passionately and the crowd went crazy. I talked to myself "Damn it, I love this! Barcamp Saigon really should have this!".

I have to admit that I had a little worry that people wouldn't come back after lunch break. But it turned out to be ok. 70-80% of the participants came back and the presentation rooms were still crowded. And there is this thing that I have observed in many Barcamp, people usually find the afternoon session more enjoyable. The event was less crowded, and those who stayed were more serious about Barcamp, which translated into more focus and interaction.

To end the day, Alex Cuva helped me running his signature Open Space to give everyone a refresh after a long day. The final activity was feedback from participants. Barcamp organizers always love feedback, it lets us know what we did good, and what we didn't. Feedback time is always a very touching time. From the heartfelt sharing of everyone, I felt like Barcamp Danang scratched the right itch of the local community. There were people who wanted to be exposed to new schools of thought and there were people want to share their ideas and experience so that the rest can stand on the shoulders of giants, and Barcamp Danang, though strictly not 100% a Barcamp, brought all these people together.

I believe Barcamp Danang was a success, everyone seemed to learn so much from the event, be it organizer, volunteer, speaker or participant. The organizer team is planning to have another, bigger, better Barcamp in August 2015. It is hard to know if the event can happen as planned because a Barcamp is the joint effort between many parties and leaps of faith are always needed. But I know for sure that Barcamp Danang will have a special space in my mind for a long long time (in fact, I am still getting Facebook notifications about the event everyday).

Wish the young organizer team of Barcamp Danang best of luck and success on their journey.

PS Of course every Barcamp needs to end with a decent Beercamp. I made sure it happened. What happened in the Beercamp, is another story ;)

Barcamp Saigon video clips

Bacon Over Eggs (part 2)

By far, whomever I told the fable of chicken and pig managed to see themselves as pigs and agreed that eliminating the decision making power from chickens would brighten their work life.

And that is the tricky part of the fable. Most people think they are pigs. While Pareto principle (80/20 principle) implies that most are chickens.

If you want to know within your team, who are pigs and chickens, but can't afford spending 3 months turning your organization up side down, comparing your respectable colleagues to farm animals, then check out this story, told by legend Ken Schwaber, known as Squirrel Burgers.

Once upon a time, Ken worked at Fat Burger. One night he was given the task of closing up alone. About 15 minutes before closing time, a customer came to the window with $1.20 in his pocket and said he wanted a Double Fat Burger ($2.50), Large Fries ($1.25), and a large drink ($1.25).

Ken was the only one there. And he probably didn't have the best day in this life. He noticed a dead squirrel in the parking lot when he came into work. He scraped it up, cooked it, put it on a partially eaten bun from the garbage (inventory control said he couldn't use a fresh one), and gave it to the customer for $1.20.

The customer ended up going into a coma. And the company was sued for millions of dollars.

src: ibtimes.co.uk

In this F&B disaster, who were pigs, who were chickens?

• The customer was a pig because he bet with his own heath. That was a deep commitment.
• Ken was a pig, he was fired from his job
• Fat Burger was also a pig. It lost its business and faced a PR crisis.

And in every organization, the squirrel burger story is a norm. There is always a department affected by a decision made by some other random department. If everyone is committed to their work with their own career and welfare, should not everyone have the right to make decision? And then, with universal suffrage (or worse, bosses are more "equal" because bosses), there gone all the benefits of Chicken-Pig distinction.

But I know, and I believe you know, that not everyone is pig. Ken could always find another job, in fact he went on with software development and became a legend :). Fat Burger could always start its franchise elsewhere, Vietnam for example. Only the customer was The Pig, it was his own life on the line.

The story of squirrel burger points out that everyone tends to think she is a pig and that our mind plays with us, no matter what we do or don't do, we will always wholeheartedly believe we are pathetic pigs and all the chickens are making her life miserable.

That is, the chicken-and-pig question is in fact a moral question. At first sight, you are a pig. On the second thought, are you really?

====================

Trước giờ, mọi người khi nghe câu chuyện gà và heo luôn nhận ra mình quả thật là một con heo, và lấy đi quyền quyết định từ những con gà rách việc là một ý tưởng thiên tài.

Cái khó của tư tưởng Gà-Heo chính là ở chỗ mọi người đều nghĩ mình là Heo, trong khi qui tắc Pareto (qui tắc 80/20) cho rằng, trong mọi tổ chức, Gà luôn chiếm đa số.

Để hiểu được lý do phân biệt Gà-Heo sao phức tạp vậy mà không cần bỏ ra 3 tháng bới tung công việc của bạn, so sánh đồng nghiệp khả kính với đám gia súc nông trại, hãy nghĩ tới Tèo, phụ bếp của Mập Donalds ngay chợ Bến Thành (chuyện phỏng theo Squirrel Burgers của Ken Schwaber thần thánh)

Tối một ngày tháng 5, một đứa bé cầm 10 ngàn bước vào và hỏi mua một phần Big Mac, khoai lớn nước lớn. Tèo khá cao hứng tối đó và nó muốn làm thằng bé vui. Vì bánh và thịt bị quản lý bằng hệ thống kho, Tèo không tự ý thó một tẹo ở đây, ở kia mà không ai biết được. Nó bèn lấy phần bánh khô cứng của ngày hôm trước, rảy thêm chút nước cho mềm, và chiên một miếng thịt cũng của ngày hôm qua nốt.

Ý tưởng của Tèo thật sự vô cùng rất là khủng khiếp. Thằng bé đau bụng nghỉ học luôn ba ngày, ba mẹ nó thuê luật sự kiện đủ đường, Mập Donalds bị phạt cả triệu đô, Vài tuần sau người ta thấy một cửa hàng Trùm Burger hiện ra ngay chỗ trước đây của Mập.

Vậy trong đại hoạ của Tèo, ai là Heo, ai là Gà?

• Đứa bé rõ là Heo rồi, vì nó lăn lộn qua lại báo hại ba mẹ nó hết mấy ngày, lại còn nghỉ học bị ghi sổ đầu bài.
• Tèo, cũng là Heo. Bằng chứng là nó bị đuổi.
• Mập Donalds cũng là Heo nốt. vì mất tong miếng bánh An Nam thòm thèm suốt từ thời mở cửa.

Và trong các công ty, câu chuyện như của Tèo diễn ra khá thường xuyên. Luôn có một phòng ban nào đấy bị vạ lây bởi một quyết định ất ơ ở một ban phòng khác. Nếu mọi người đều cam kết vào công việc bằng chính quyền lợi thiết thân của mình, mọi người nên có quyền quyết định, đúng không? Và khi đó, phổ thông đầu phiếu (hay tệ hơn, phiếu của sếp thì quan trọng hơn vì đó là sếp) xoá sạch mọi lợi ích của chế độ Gà Heo.

Nhưng tôi biết, và tôi tin bạn cũng biết, không phải ai cũng là Heo. Tèo luôn có thể tìm một công việc mới (nó được nhận vào Trùm Burger, đứng ngay chỗ trước đây nó đứng và người ta còn cho nó huy chương gì đấy). Miếng bánh An Nam chỉ là một mẩu trong chiếc bánh Đông Nam Á của Mập. Nhưng thằng bé thì khác, nó có thể đã đi hầu cụ kị nhà nó.

Câu chuyện bán burger của Tèo chỉ ra, rằng nếu bạn hỏi một người bất kỳ, nhiều khả năng bạn ấy (cũng) sẽ cảm thấy mình giống Heo hơn, rằng cái tôi của chúng ta thường quá lớn để chấp nhận sự hiện diện của mình nhiều khi chỉ để trang trí.

Vậy nên, câu hỏi Gà-Heo là một câu hỏi luân lý. Thoạt đầu, bạn là Heo đó. Nhưng nghĩ lại một lần nữa, có thật vậy không?

Bacon Over Eggs (part 1)

Whenever I have a chance to meet up with my friends, a conversation on bullshit decisions and unreasonable bosses always finds its way to pop up. Usually these two factors are directly proportional. No boss who manages to make decisions with clarity is marked unreasonable. Everytime the conversation develops in this direction, despite acknowledging even bosses (or rather, especially bosses) are learning in their leading role, I can't help but mumble to myself "you should kill all those chickens".

Chicken who?

The fable of the chicken and the pig is classical among people of software industry.

A Pig and a Chicken are walking down the road.
The Chicken says: "Hey Pig, I was thinking we should open a restaurant!"
Pig replies: "Hm, maybe, what would we call it?"
The Chicken responds: "How about 'ham-n-eggs'?"
The Pig thinks for a moment and says: "No thanks. I'd be committed, but you'd only be involved!"

src: www.implementingscrum.com

The moral of the story is that people who are committed should be given the right to make decisions on their fate (including the ultimate right to quit). Even though the fable to a software developer is just as popular as an Aesop one to a 3-year-old, few people outside of the circle know about it. I personally believe that in this wild and colorful world, every career and industry would benefit from adapting the mindset.

Though I know that everything that exists has a cause, I can only see the traditional power hierarchy is socially unfair and a waste of talent.

Bosses have to suffer from shareholders' pressure, make detailed planning for their subordinates to execute, and are still victimized with endless critics. That is unfair. Employees who are talented, spent four years of their lives in the most prestigious schools and ready to be all in for the job are treated as a dispensible piece on the chess board, expected to be executing instructions like a machine. That isn't fair either.

Why is it every time I ask for a pair of hands, they come with a brain attached? 

- Henry Ford

This is no French revolution but I truly believe that giving the decision making power to people who are committed is the first and most essential step of building a healthy self-governing organization.

Next post will be on why figuring out pigs and chickens is more challenging than what it seems to be

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Bạn bè lâu ngày gặp nhau,nói chuyện một hồi thế nào cũng đến lúc bán than những quyết định quái gở và những ông sếp hắc ám. Thường thì hai đại lượng này tỉ lệ thuận với nhau. Không ông sếp nào có khả năng đưa ra những quyết định sáng suốt mà bị coi là hắc ám cả (lưu ý sáng suốt khác trong sáng). Những lúc này, tuy biết rằng chính các sếp cũng đang trưởng thành dần trong vị trí lãnh đạo, tôi vẫn thường lầm bầm "nên giết sạch mấy con gà đó đi"

Con gà nào?

Câu chuyện con gà và con heo là một câu chuyện ngụ ngôn kinh điển của các bạn làm phần mềm. Truyện rằng: một ngày đẹp trời, Gà gặp Heo bàn chuyện làm giàu bằng vốn tự có. Gà muốn mở nhà hàng bán trứng và thịt ba chỉ chiên. Dù Gà liên hồi về việc bán hàng đếm tiền, conversion rate và viễn cảnh nhượng quyền, Heo thấy run. Mở nhà hàng với Gà là đóng góp vài quả trứng, với Heo là tính mạng của nó. Trong trò chơi đồ hàng này, Gà là người liên quan, nhưng Heo mới là người cam kết. Vì vậy, mặc cho những giấc mơ đẹp đẽ của Gà, Heo mới là người có quyền quyết định theo đuổi dự án hay không.

src: http://blog.smartbear.com

Bài học của câu chuyện là rằng, những người bị ràng buộc với kết quả cuối cùng nên được trao quyền quyết định số phận của họ (bao gồm quyền cao nhất là từ bỏ). Câu chuyện này phổ biến trong ngành như một dạng truyện ngụ ngôn Aesop, nhưng tuyệt nhiên vô hình bên ngoài vòng tròn những người viết code. Nhưng trong thế giới đầy màu sắc, có lẽ mọi ngành nghề khác đều có thể học hỏi từ tinh thần này.

Dù biết rằng cái gì tồn tại thì cái đó có lý, tôi vẫn nghĩ mô hình phân quyền truyền thống là một bất công xã hội.

Sếp phải chịu nhiều áp lực, lên kế hoạch cho cả team, và còn hứng hết chê trách từ những người ôm hận trong lòng. Đó là bất công tập 1. Nhân viên tài năng, dành bốn năm học hành chăm chỉ, nguyện hiến xác cho công việc nhưng bị xem là một con cờ trên bàn cờ, phải "ngoan" và làm việc như một cái máy. Đó là bất công tập 2.

Đây không phải là cách mạng Pháp, nhưng tôi nghĩ trao quyền tự quyết vào những người cam kết vào công việc của mình là bước đi quan trọng để tạo dựng một tổ chức tự vận hành.

Bài tiếp theo là bàn về việc tìm ra đâu là heo, đâu là gà thực sự khó hơn lý thuyết rất nhiều.

When everything is fucked up beyond all recognition

Right after Barcamp Saigon 2014, I shared this status on Facebook. Though it wasn't long, it was pretty much what had been on my mind the whole event day. I was truly grateful that Barcamp Saigon 2014 wasn't a Failcamp topic the year after. The (relatively) successful execution of the event was a huge relief on my heart and by relief, I mean the feeling of being released from all responsibility in life and once again, become a child.

Over the 2 months duration preparing Barcamp Saigon 2014 with the organizing team, the experience had been stressful, brutal, and depressing to me. It reminded me of all the tough times I had been through in the past, like when my whole fish tank died after a night, or when I almost got a retention due to academy performance; the times that I genuinely told myself everything must be just a dream and I should wake up like right there before thing got worse.

At some point, my work on Barcamp was pushed forward not by the belief of Barcamp on the local community, but by the fear of fucking everything up. The shift in mentality was the same as a good student going from getting an A+ to praying "oh God, please let me pass this".

So what actually happened?

A month and a half before the event, some time in the first week of November, I met my sponsor lead. She was worried that we got only one sponsor and hadn't succeeded in getting any new sponsors for a few weeks. She suggested downgrading Barcamp Saigon so that it fitted the budget we had got. I was pretty sure that would be a huge disappointment to Barcamp enthusiasts in the city. After all those years, we had spoiled the Barcamp crowd with lots of  freebies. But I wasn't at Saigon, where all our potential sponsors were. I was stuck at Hanoi for 10 days.

A month before the event, I had a major meeting with Barcamp Saigon venue sponsor. Gathered in the meeting room on floor 9 of a downtown campus were faculty members, and various staff of the university. More or less everyone in the school whose function involved in promoting and managing Barcamp Saigon was in that room, where we finalized a few last issues mostly regarding the event flow and the university's concerns about Barcamp's openness. After the meeting, I had a tour around the campus when I got to pick the floors, halls, and rooms that would be used before and on the event day. Everything seemed so certain. All what left to be done was to update the agreement with the new room numbers and we were good to go.

Fourteen days. A major sponsor sent us a formal email demanding that the company's logo must appear on the T-shirt design and threatened to withdraw the sponsorship agreement if the demand wasn't satisfied. Though the withdrawal would mean a significant portion of Barcamp budget might be gone, appearance on T-shirt was not by any mean stated in the sponsorship proposal and contract, the demand wasn't something we could agree. Until thing was sorted out, the incident delayed the commence of T-shirt manufacturing for a few days. We were making 700+ T-shirts, so any delay on the schedule was a nuisance. However, what was going to happen the very next day made this incident in our favor.

Thirteen days before the event, I headed to the campus one more time, believing that I would have the agreement signed. After all, the event was coming close and we satisfied all the requirements from the university. To my surprise, the half-an-hour appointment extended itself into a meeting over lunch, where I was bombarded with questions from a staff I had never met in any previous meeting. He was the most paranoid person about risks associated with the open nature of Barcamp. Though I do agree that there are lot of bad things that can happen in an unconference like Barcamp, I also believe the benefits of Barcamps to its local community outweigh all the risks. In the same way, despite of its risks, the Internet prevails and continues to transform our life every day. That staff seemed to be one who would have blocked the Internet. Also in that meeting, I learned that the people I had spoken to did not have any actual decision making power. Which is fine, because I knew no university vice president would spend his time meeting me once every couple of weeks. I just did not expect that to happen 13 bloody days before the event. The meeting ended and I knew that none of the prior preparation mattered. I had to start from scratch. Everything needed to be postponed till this was solved.

Ten days before the event, I was told that there would be a way to hold Barcamp: contacting a dean at the university, who would then foster Barcamp as an activity of his faculty. I rushed to the campus to meet the dean I was introduced to. He seemed so nice, and supportive, and, above all, so affirmative about the possibility of organizing Barcamp even there was only roughly a week left. I was not as certain.

That night, I met the rest of the organizing team to let them know about the situation. And we planned for all possible exits: changing location, delaying the event date, or dropping everything all together. We were 60% sure that we would not be able to have Barcamp on the designated date. And that was horrible. We had about 30 registered speakers, half a dozen of sponsors who had signed contracts and wired money to my bank account, and worst, hundreds of Barcamp enthusiasts who had purchased their tickets. We planned to have T-shirts, mugs and gym sacks as freebies for participants. All suppliers were calling, because that night was the deadline to kick off the work, or else they would not be able to deliver on time. That was especially true for T-shirts, 700+ T-shirts couldn't be possibly made in a few days. But having these items made also meant we had to spend the sponsored money, and once we had done that, there would be no way back. We had to postpone everything. I thought planning for my own death would have been easier.

Src: Toy Story 3 screenshot

Nine days to go. I booked my meeting at 10AM with the dean, but for some reason I could not call him and did not know where to find him. I did not meet him until over 11AM, at which point he was rushing to another meeting. So we decided to meet in the afternoon instead. He looked different from the man I met the day before though, with a twist of anxiety and uncertainty in the corners of his eyes,

In the afternoon, what I worried was right (I am usually proud of my prediction, this wasn't one). Between our meetings, the dean met the university vice president who, once again, expressed serious concerns that Barcamp's openness would bring sensitive topics to the university and ruin its reputation. The dean asked for some extra information and one more day so he could think everything through. The words T-shirt and deadline passed through my mind a few times. But fuck that, it would be pointless to have 700 T-shirts and no Barcamp. The dean was my last life vest.

Eight days. When I came to the campus at 10AM, the time we were supposed to meet and sign the bloody agreement, the only paper that could guarantee Barcamp Saigon 2014 was not going to be a flop, the dean was in another meeting (I genuinely think people here are meeting too much). I had to wait, and while I was waiting, all the exit plans we planned the other day played again and again in my head. I ended up waiting for an hour and a half, but it seemed to be much longer than that. At 11:30AM, I met the dean, after a short talk and even making some changes directly to the printed agreement by pen, we finally proceeded to sign the agreement. By fostering Barcamp, I knew that the dean, and everyone involved in this plan, took a huge leap of faith in us, the Barcamp organizing team, and put their career and reputation on the line. I could not have asked any one for a better commitment. But the process almost killed me.

We then rushed to contact all suppliers we could possibly thought of to get the freebies made. Due to time constraint, we had to compromise the original design that we made. But again, having a decent Barcamp on time was more important that having a perfect one late, so we bit the bullet and rolled on.

Four days to go. Yet another sponsor intimidated to withdraw the sponsorship because they believed some registered topics went against the company's benefit. As the organizers of Barcamp Saigon, we took the responsibility of providing benefits to all sponsors, because we would not be able to pull things together without their help. But there were lines we also needed to maintain to keep Barcamp what it is, an unconference. As a Barcamp, we were supposed to not be censors. Though I have to admit it is hard to rationalize with people taking thing personally.

Sixty hours left. I got a phone call from the university, saying that the titles in the agreement was not in the right format and we would have to redo it. Now please notice that Barcamp Saigon team was nothing but a group of locals and foreigners falling in love with Barcamp. We did not have a legal status. A local company was nice enough to trust us and help us sign all the paper as a legal entity. There was only one problem, the company was in the further corner of District 7, half a city from where I lived and another half the city to the university. I am typically most productive around afternoon, but that was one afternoon I spent riding around the city and would never get back.

Until then, when the format was right, memos were sent between departments to prepare for the event. There were around forty eight hours left. People from maintenance, security, IT and sanitation were up in arms, complaining that that was a ridiculously short notice, that how they were supposed to allocate people to work overtime on the event day, and many other things. All what I could do then was smiling like an idiot. I knew that I had done everything that I could and if I made half a university pissed for my little event, so be it.

This brutal experience taught me the importance of not losing hope even in the darkest hours.

Remind me of all the tough times I have been through. It is true that the experience was horrible and even haunting, and if given a chance, I would definitely choose not to go through the same thing. But no matter how bad the experience was, and how often it happened, the next thing I remember is that somehow I am still here, in one piece, looking for the next stupid thing to do. So I know that as long as I stay on my path, this too shall pass and become a story for my children.

And the light that led my way in darkness was my "why". Why did I volunteer to put myself into this situation? For at least half a dozen of times people asked me why I was putting myself through all those pointless things, and my answer was the same. In 2008, when I first heard of Barcamp, the inner voice in my head said that there was no way would this work. Why on earth some random people would want to share their knowledge and ideas to some other random people? But somehow, the community has always responded incredibly positive to Barcamp. Year after year, the number of participants increase. And people looking forward to the event as if it was some sort of annual festival. Every year my mind is blown by the power of a healthy community. And I want to carry on the spirit.

Let me know how crucial it is to be around supportive people. If you want to do something, and all the friends are telling you how stupid it is, better consider dropping the plan, or look for new friends.  During these hard times the temptation to just drop everything on its own is huge. The assumption that once I quit, all miseries will be gone is really seductive. I know that I am weak so I don't try to fight the devil alone. I stay with my team to get encouragement. and, when I can, to help inspire others. What I have learned from all the years fighting alone is that never wait until my inner self starts screaming for some human interaction, by then it will be too late already. Now I always try to have my shields up before difficult times strike.

Building an English Speaking Culture - Up and Down

Source: http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1996-06-01/

Build an English speaking culture, because why not?

One of the most controversial decisions I made during the time I served as the head of Coder, Inc. was to use English in all forms of communication within the company. And it was so controversial that, until today, I keep questioning the correctness of the decision. Hiring people who are fluent in English and making them use it in their daily communication is unconventional, and in fact I believe that this idea rarely crosses the minds of the executives of companies in Vietnam. At the same time, I gained personally and professionally from the choice of language. Let me tell you my story.

When we first started Coder, Inc., we did not use English. After the first 2-3 months, there was a time that we were on a conference call with a client and we were all surprised by how rusty our English had become. Just like how people work out to keep themselves in shape, we started looking for a way to strengthen our communication skills. And as we were all RMIT alumni, the idea of speaking English all day long came naturally. We thought, "Hey this is cool, I don't think there is any other company doing this" and we decided to keep doing it as part of the tiny little organization we were building.

The pros

Because the decision was made at a very early stage, speaking English had extended itself into various aspects of the company, even before we'd fully realized it. The following points explain the impact of speaking English on our culture.

• One of the things we had been discussing was how working at Coder, Inc. helped an employee increase her personal and professional values. If fluent communication in English is not valuable, I don't know what is!
• Speaking English eight hours a day was not easy. Firstly, we all had these funny Vietnamese accents. Secondly, people hard learned a pretty academic version of English so they were not familiar with actual daily conversation (try describing how your favorite dish tastes -- I still have problems with that now), or slang (who knew what "klam" in klamr meant) or jokes (yo mama jokes, anyone?). This was a part of the learning process for everyone joining us, which, I believe, embraced the core value of the constant pursuit of growth and learning.
• Employing someone without sufficient English skills meant we needed a buffer layer between developers and clients. Those who spoke directly to client would have more insight about a project than those who didn't. This eventually would lead to hierarchy and compromise the flat organizational model we were applying. I was not a big fan of hierarchy as I saw it preventing people from operating at a higher level then where they currently were, which was yet another selling point of working at Coder, Inc..

Most importantly, it gave us a distinct brand. We were a small team of fresh graduates doing outsourcing in a country where the main revenue of software industry was, well, outsourcing. Building an English-speaking culture was an easy way to differentiate ourselves and give people something to talk about. With that under our belts, we managed to compete with companies that had been around for longer and had spent more money on recruiting. There was a semester at RMIT when out of 20 students we got 18 internship applications (we ended up picking 2).

The cons

You might be telling yourself that hiring only fluent English-speaking developers is nuts, these people aren't public speakers, they are programmers, their job is to code, not to communicate, and by doing so, I restricted myself to a smaller pool of talent. And that is true. But the small talent pool was not the problem for me. Coder, Inc. was not a gigantic multinational consulting firm, it was a twenty-something-developer outsourcing shop. The number of applications I received every month was between so many that screening and interviewing time alone ate up my entire day and too few that I had to desperately look for new sources of talent.

As it turned out, the blessing of working directly with clients was also a curse. Coder, Inc. clients were mostly entrepreneurs looking to get their ideas implemented at an affordable rate. Under the name of lean startup, fail fast - fail often, and responding to market trends, entrepreneurs had the tendency to conceptualize, change and twist the project vision in every possible way. While this energy was exactly what was great about entrepreneurship, it placed an incredible demand on software engineers, who were asked to write, test and re-write the code, all over the course of a few days.

Many engineers Coder, Inc. employed at that time were talented, energetic, and passionate. They engaged in discussions with clients with both curiosity and eagerness to build something great. But as time went by, unstable requirements, code reconstruction and midnight calls drained the energy out of these youngsters. They got burnt out. I personally at the peak of a high-demanding project, got to be very grumpy and thought about dropping everything more often that I would like to admit.

In this case, the thing we tried to remove was the very thing we needed: a buffer layer that shielded the developers from the clients' whim, allowing them to focus on their work and be productive.

The second problem with the English-speaking policy was rooted in my own voluntarism. It didn't occur to me that what worked well when we were a group of 5 wouldn't work when we scaled up to the size of twenty. And I thought what was good for me was good for my employees. An act that in retrospect was naive, conservative and stupid.

As we grew and sought diversity, we hired new people who still had great English abilities, but had little experience using it as a primary language. They would study English in a center two or three times a week, but had never spoken the language for an entire day. And it was hard. When confronted with such a challenge, it was natural to switch back to the language they had practiced for decades and knew inside out: Vietnamese. Rules are supposed to guide people to what they want, not prevent them. When that happens, rules will eventually be broken. Gradually, within the team, Vietnamese gossip groups formed and became the source of much unwanted office politics. So in an attempt to remove a formal hierarchy, with title, scope of responsibility, and everything corporate, we found ourselves in an informal and intangible hierarchy of politics where the flow of information was blocked, twisted or altered to serve personal interest. The rest is history.

Conclusion

Though it is painful for me to look into the past and see things that I had done wrong, it is extremely important to learn right from where I failed. In my opinion, Coder, Inc. would have been in a better state if either:

• A suitable process had been set up to manage projects and find balance between client's interest and engineer's sanity.
• The pace of recruitment had been slowed down to ensure one new hire had time to adapt to the new culture before hiring the next one.
• The English-speaking policy had been removed when the team decided to scale up.

What has been done cannot be undone. I learned that building an intensive English speaking company is hard, and requires the right people and the right process.

There's a different between knowing the path, and walking the path. - Morpheus