Archives for May 2016

Absolutely.

The more you create, the more time you are spending doing it. That’s practice. That’s valuable.

Even if every idea you come up with is terrible, you’re getting better at the process overall. each incremental step forward is making you better at your craft.

Originally Posted: https://www.quora.com/For-creative-people-is-quantity-the-path-to-quality

Originally Posted On: 2016-04-02

When I was at Evernote, we were approached by Elephant charities often, as you can imagine. However, our official charities at the time were actually centered around *memory loss.*

Individual employees are of course welcome to support any causes they wish, but the company brand message has always been aligned toward memory, and not physical elephants.

Originally Posted: https://www.quora.com/Would-Evernote-like-to-protect-elephants-from-extinction-with-Chengeta-Wildlife

Originally Posted On: 2016-06-09

There isn’t just one path to this, but I’m happy to share mine.

I remember thinking when I was younger, like you are right now, what is my endgame. (I’ve actually done this a few times, but this was a specific “I’m in the workforce now” course correction.)

I really thought hard about it.

I figured out exactly what I wanted, and what I would need to *sustain* it once I already had it, the. I started thinking about what I needed to have gotten it in the first place –

And I worked backwards.

Along the backwards trip I saw that there were skills I needed that I didn’t currently have, people I didn’t currently know, and organizations I wasn’t associated with.

So I quit my job and found a new one very quickly that would give me some of those skills I identified as lacking. And that quickly led to aanother that led to more skills, and some of the people I didn’t know. And so on ….

For the last 10 years …

From Engineer, to Coordinator, to Manager, to SR. manager, to Director, to CTO…

And I’m not done yet!

Does that help?

Originally Posted: https://www.quora.com/How-do-you-grow-and-get-to-take-on-roles-with-a-lot-of-responsibility

Originally Posted On: 2015-10-02

When do you know if it is time to give up on your startup?

Originally Posted: https://www.quora.com/How-do-you-know-when-to-give-up-on-a-startup-idea

Originally Posted On: 2015-02-09

When I was a Flight Attendant (and for years after, as both a pilot’s wife and an Airport contractor myself), I received discounts to the airport shops & restaurants with my airline id/airport badge.

Additionally, airline employees receive discounted travel benefits with hotels, rental cars, city tours and cruises.

Some airlines also offer memberships to the similar types of “employee perks” programs that are available to large companies to offer additional discounts to shows, amusement parks, etc.

This is on top of the “free” standby or ID90 (10% of the ticket price) ticket benefits available.

Originally Posted: https://www.quora.com/Do-flight-attendants-get-discount-programs-and-offers

Originally Posted On: 2015-11-12

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Originally Posted: https://www.quora.com/As-a-cabin-crew-member-what-are-your-funniest-experiences-with-first-time-travelers

Originally Posted On: 2016-02-04

As a born and bred New Yorker, whose brother has a very nice restaurant in Manhattan, and who works with multiple businesses as well as two startup accelerators located downtown –

I honestly have to say that there are no more “a holes” in Manhattan (man or woman) than I “ve encountered in any other major metropolitan city.

Granted, my frame of reference is entirely from a business perspective, and not from a dating one.

Originally Posted: https://www.quora.com/Why-are-men-in-Manhattan-such-a-holes-to-women-dont-respond-to-texts-etc-Seems-like-all-they-want-is-hook-ups-and-thats-it-What-gives

Originally Posted On: 2016-08-07

I presume the perks of “dating” me are pretty much the same as the perks of being married to me, so lets see:

According to my husband:

I am an awesome cook (but terrible – really top marks in the awful department – at cleaning.)

I have a nice body (but I’m really bad at showing it off.)

I can fix pretty much anything (but I’m horrendous at prioritizing, so that broken thing will capture my attention instead of you until its fixed.)

I love animals (but can’t take care of them worth a damn. In fact, I think I left my dog outside AGAIN.)

Honestly, I have no idea why anyone would want to be with me at all. I’m amazed he’s stayed married to me so long!

Originally Posted: https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-perks-of-dating-you

Originally Posted On: 2016-01-12

I am constantly fascinated by how much people are interested in Flight Attendant anecdotes (mine and others)

I suspect it has to do with a combination of factors:

Service

As it is a customer-centric position, Flight Attendants are the representatives of their respective airlines. They’re noticeable in their crisp, matching uniforms walking together through an airport, and then up and down an aisle.

Dependability

Flight crew is hidden from the cockpit, and gate/ticket agents you only interact with for a few minutes, but Flight Attendants are there entirely for you, from the start to the end of your trip.

Excitement

Flight Attendants get to go places that a lot of people only dream about (even if it is only to another state). They have passports. They have exotic uniforms. They look similar.

Scarcity

And lastly, for every 50 passengers on a plane, there needs to be 1 Flight Attendant, and they can only fly for 8 hours in a 24 hour period.

In any given 24 hour period, we know there are around 8 million passengers flying around the world. That’s three F/A shifts worth every day.

By my rough calculations, that’s 55,000 flight attendants on call globally at any given time of day.

Flight attendant schedules also are fairly repetitive. You only need around 2 weeks worth of FA’s to cover a year’s worth of flights. So, that’s:

55000 x 3 x 14 = 2,310,000

Covering 3 Billion travelers worldwide, globally.

That’s less than 1/10 of 1% of the overall travel population.

Its highly interesting.

Originally Posted: https://www.quora.com/It-appears-that-Quorans-are-obsessed-with-flight-attendants-Why-do-you-think-that-is

Originally Posted On: 2016-02-05

While the workforce requirements inSTEM have been increasing steadily (in some cases exponentially) every year, there is a consistent decrease overall in the number of women achieving degrees or certifications in STEM.

In fact, since a concerted effort has been made in the last 10 years to recruit more women, the drop has become more precipitous:

People might think this is counter-intuitive. Why, when we are actually focusing on the “problem”, would we not make any headway in graduating more women to fill these skilled careers?

There are a few reasons that I can see:

1. No one likes being singled out.

When I was a child, I was raised in the happy place in between the Women’s Liberation Movement of the 60’s and the Gender Discrimination wars of today. Perhaps it was a naive time, but we didn’t have toys “for girls” or “for boys.” If a girl wanted to play with toy cars, they didn’t have to buy a plastic pink version. If a boy wanted to play with dolls, he didn’t have to explain it away with “it’s an action figure” to everyone under the sun. No matter what your thing, provided you weren’t shy you could generally find kids to play with and support you (and make fun of you while supporting you.)

So when it came time to decide what you were interested in, be it sports, science, medicine, whatever – people just accepted it no matter what gender you were and moved on. People were willing to experiment, and while it wasn’t judgement free, it was character building.

I don’t see kids doing that today.

I see them being mean to each other when someone shows any interest in anything outside the accepted norms (whatever those are, because frankly no one ever told me). I visited a school recently where the science room had been trashed the night before “just because,” causing two girls to break down because a project they’d spent so much time on was gone in an instant. It was heart-wrenching.

2. There aren’t any STEM rock-star role models.

I knew I wanted to become an astronaut the day I saw the Challenger explosion. Of course, Christa McAuliffe was on that mission (First “Civilian” teacher in space), as was Judy Resnick (first person of Jewish ancestry in space, and second American female), but to my 8 year-old brain, the thought process was:

1. Astronauts go into space.
2. Space is cool.
3. Engineers screwed that launch up.
4. I will get myself to NASA and make personally sure they don’t screw it up again.

Gender didn’t play into it.

I remember when both Brooke Shields and Jodie Foster went to Ivy League schools, it was a huge deal to myself and my friends; not because we were super fans of either or anything (although the original Freaky Friday or Oh God! were almost always on in one of our houses) but because we KNEW that those girls both were epitomizing “you need to have something to fall back on” and if even THEY were concerned about their careers after already being famous, we better study our butts off.

Today, we have celebrities who say science is dumb and others who actually have Masters degrees or PhDs in STEM not giving very convincing counter arguments.

For example, this dude:

Ken Jeong is an actual medical doctor, famous for being a comedian (good for him!) who tells people all the time that being a doctor was way harder than what he does now where he makes so much more money.

Which brings me to point 3.

3. There is hardly any money in it, and where there is it takes a lot of effort to obtain.

For better or worse, our society has shifted to one of instant gratification and global transparency. Everything we do can be instantly streamed to everyone everywhere around the world in real time.

Many people don’t want to accept jobs that pay less than or equal to minimum wage (if they have any choice in the matter), and many STEM jobs are low paying yet require high amounts of education to fill. Others are higher paying but hazardous, another thing that knocks people out of taking them.

People don’t have the patience to sit and wait 24 months for test results – they want Maury Povich to tell them after the commercial break (which they can fast forward through.)

Until we can overcome all of this, I fear the downturn in overall STEM (not just women) recruiting will continue.

Originally Posted: https://www.quora.com/How-well-have-the-current-efforts-to-bring-females-into-STEM-worked-out

Originally Posted On: 2015-04-26