Peter wrote up this interview back in August 2009, so I’m a little late to this party. There’s some really great quotes in this interview. Here’s a few of my fav quotes from Cross:

At Google, the research scientists prototype in python and R, and then port to C++ for the real scalable map reduce runs.

Building layer upon layer of abstraction is a big key…  The technical term for this is “wrap the crap.”

Here’s a problem I think anyone who works with data and models can relate to:

I made a lot of mistakes early in my career in building trading models where I let me theories get too far ahead of what I could really test in practice. That is not a good place to be. Unfortunately, this is an easy mistake to make.

So part of Ada Lovelace day is to blog about women in technology. I love technology. I love women. I have a daughter named Ada whom I love. So it seems like I am more qualified than most to blog about women in tech. I was going to blog about my wife who blogs not only on our family blog but also has a very successful law blog that garners over 5000 reads a week (not bad for a blog about how not to be a prick as a client). But given that I type this blog under a nom du clavier I can’t really talk about my wife(s). So, I have to dig a little deeper.

Mary Shaw

Given that only one woman has read posted a comment on my blog, I have to give a shout out to Mary Shaw. Ms. Shaw posed a comment to an earlier post of mine where I quoted her. It turns out that she has been active in technology for longer than I have been able to legally drink alcohol. Professor Shaw has an interest in the topic of Value Based Software Engineering which appeals to me as an economist. The general idea behind VBSE is that software engineers should have an objective function that incorporates cost concerns along with functionality and feature concerns. Yeah, I know, if you are an economist this seems like a no-brainer. But as someone who has led software development teams I can attest that this mindset is not typically taught to technical students. I had to teach my developers the meaning of the term “marginal” in the context of effort and costs. At first they thought I meant marginal, as is “of minimal value.” So Iam glad that folks like Prof. Shaw are helping the smart kids at Carnegie Mellon University to think a little like economists. Because I’ve spent a lot of my career learning to think a little like a software engineer.

Side note: When Mary Shaw posted the comment earlier on this blog I thought at first it was this Mary Shaw, the suffragette and woman’s libber, who had come back from the dead to haunt me for being a misogynist drunk. Scared me so much I almost dropped my beer.

And since I know Prof. Shaw has a very good Google vanity search in place let me be the first to say, Thanks for being a women in tech, Prof. Shaw. When my daughter is older I hope she has role models like you. Right now she’s 19 months and just learned how to take a CD out of the CD player and put a new one in. But she has a keyboard, mouse, and an old Blackberry that she loves to play with. One day she’s going to be a women in and of technology too.

I also can’t resist mentioning Kathy Sierra on Ada Lovelace Day. I can’t say anything about Kathy that has not already been said dozens of times by others. Plus my wife thinks I have a crush on Kathy so I gotta watch myself. One of the many things I dig about Kathy is that she gives a presentation titled “How to Kick Ass.” Exactly! Keep kicking ass Kathy. And keep on twittering… it allows me to e-stalk you without my wife getting jealous.

Hal Varian - Superstar

So one of the top jobs in the world has to be the friggin’ gig that Hal Varian has. He’s the chief economist at Google. He might as well have business cards that read “Hal Varian, Mother Friggin Rock Star.” Plus he did his BS at MIT and got his MA in math and his PhD in econ at Berkeley. According to Wikipedia (aka digitalgod) he finished his education at MIT in ‘69 and his PhD at Berkeley in ‘73. WTF? It was the early 70’s and he was in Berkeley! Some of his classmates are STILL there trying to figure out which end of the bong their dissertation is supposed to fall out of. So to get the masters, the doctorate, and smoke the chronic in 4 years is amazing. And it just contributes to his legend. Is it just me or does he look like a slightly more healthy Steve Jobs in that picture to the left?

You may not know that he wrote a textbook on Intermediate Microeconomics. It’s only $55 on eBay! Since the he wrote the book on microecon, not macro, I take back all that reefer smoking smack I was saying. Becasue it’s a well known fact among economists that only macroeconomists smoke pot. They also practice voodoo, but that’s fodder for another post.

That’s all well and good, but why am I writing this? Glad you ask. Let me just cut to the chase:

Hal Varian Thinks I Am Sexy!

Yep, he said so in an interview with McKinsey Quarterly Magazine. But don’t take it from me, read for yourself:

I keep saying the sexy job in the next ten years will be statisticians. People think I’m joking, but who would’ve guessed that computer engineers would’ve been the sexy job of the 1990s? The ability to take data—to be able to understand it, to process it, to extract value from it, to visualize it, to communicate it—that’s going to be a hugely important skill in the next decades, not only at the professional level but even at the educational level for elementary school kids, for high school kids, for college kids. Because now we really do have essentially free and ubiquitous data. So the complimentary scarce factor is the ability to understand that data and extract value from it.

I think statisticians are part of it, but it’s just a part. You also want to be able to visualize the data, communicate the data, and utilize it effectively. But I do think those skills—of being able to access, understand, and communicate the insights you get from data analysis—are going to be extremely important. Managers need to be able to access and understand the data themselves.

Yes, I know that I am an economist, not a statistician, but Hal’s trying to be discrete. It was just a little too obvious he was talking about me when he got to the part about “visualize the data, communicate the data, and utilize it effectively.” As much as I am flattered, I have to be perfectly clear here. I am happily married and wouldn’t give that up for the world. But if you ever want to have me over to the Googleplex for free lattes and sushi, Hal, you know my number.

-JD