Wait, I Pay How Much for Digital Services?

$366.83. Per month. Really? I added up the cost of every digital service my household subscribes to, and that’s the monthly total. It seems like a lot!

Why put my digital finances under the microscope? I wanted to gauge my digital spending to determine if I was comfortable with spending more. Recently I've felt motivated to pay for higher-quality news. The growing trend of media becoming smaller, bite-sized, and "snackable" is producing content of questionable quality. Reading a bunch of click-bait news is both easy and tempting, like eating junk food, while slogging through a full book is more like eating your vegetables. At least that's how I've heard it described.

Despite my enthusiasm for books, I don't always have time for focused reading. Sometimes I only have five or ten minutes, and I'd like using that time to keep up with what's happening in my industry, and the world at large. So I started paying for news from a few sources I trust to deliver insightful and interesting analysis. These purchases felt difficult to justify. I've been reading free news on the internet for two decades. Why start paying now?

Another trend affecting my spending is companies like Netflix and Spotify offering streaming services with monthly contracts attached. Individually these products seem cheap. I wondered, though, how much was I spending when I added them all up? How much more news, music, and streaming shows can I afford?

As a disclaimer, I want to acknowledge that I am very privileged to be able to afford these non-essential services. At best they're educational, but are often they're just frivolous entertainment. When I was in my twenties and on a shoestring budget, I remember agonizing over the decision to sign up for a $40-a-month cell phone contract. That represented a significant chunk of my monthly discretionary spending. These days a $4 coffee or $10 news subscription doesn't seem like a lot on its own, but they add up.

So, here's how my $366.83 breaks down, in pie chart form:

What’s included? Let’s go through what’s in each category, starting with the biggest slice of the pie.

Digital Access - $236.68 (64%)

Without internet connectivity, I can’t access any of these services, so I’m including them. Interestingly, these access charges dwarf all other costs, and add up to almost $3000 a year!

Verizon ($196.68) - I know, right? This cost may not be “fair”, as it’s a family plan covering voice and internet for three smartphones (myself, wife, and mother-in-law). That’s $65.56 per iPhone. Given how much time I spend using the internet on my iPhone, it’s arguably the most important.

Home Internet ($40) - I use Fibersphere, the internet service provider came with our apartment. They only offered me one speed option: 100 Mbps. Seems like a great deal for only $40!

Infotainment: News - $39.98 (11%)

I didn’t expect this to be the biggest “content” category. Apparently, I like news.

New York Times - Digital Subscription ($15) - The New York Times is my trusted source for global news. I appreciate their investigative journalism. Their basic digital plan gives me and my wife access to NYTimes.com and their apps.

Stratechery ($10) -  This is the first digital newsletter I’ve paid for. I discovered Ben Thompson’s work through his Exponent podcast, where he discusses strategy in the tech sector with co-host James Allworth. He previously worked for Apple and Microsoft, and delivers insightful analysis about the business models driving the industry. After I became hooked on his podcast and blog Stratechery, I wanted more, so I subscribed to his 4-times-a-week newsletter. It’s now one of my favorite news sources.

Nuzzel ($9.99) - Nuzzel is my favorite app, hands down. It helps me sift through all the noise on Twitter by surfacing the links that are “most shared” each day by people I follow. It’s a simple feature, one that Twitter should implement, and it’s incredibly useful. Their app is free, but I pay for “Nuzzel Pro”, which offers the ability to filter out news (e.g. “Trump”). The filter isn’t worth $10. I just want to give them money so they stay in business.  

Medium ($4.99) - I love reading and writing on Medium. It’s a beautiful product that enables anyone to publish news. This is another news source that is free, but I pay for membership anyway. I don’t find their member-only content worth $5, but I don’t want Medium to go out of business, because their free content is definitely worth more than $5.

Entertainment: Shows and Movies - $35.97 (10%)

Binge watching shows during rainy Portland winters is a therapeutic stress relief activity. It’s also a guilty pleasure preventing me from reading and writing more. Importantly, it’s cheap.

HBO Now ($14.99) - I typically sign up for certain shows like Westworld or Game of Thrones. That reminds me, GoT season 7 is over. I need to cancel this subscription!

Amazon Prime ($10.99) - Prime includes free 2-day shipping from Amazon bundled with a movie and show selection where I occasionally find something good to watch. Unusual combo, but I like it. Thanks, Bezos.

Netflix ($9.99) - Their content selection is pretty slim, but a few times a year they’ll have a binge-worthy show like Stranger Things or House of Cards. Also, nature documentaries. My cat enjoys those as much as we do.

I didn’t include movie rentals in this category. We typically rent one a week from Amazon for about $5, depending on how busy our weekend is.

"Productivity Services” - $24.22 (7%)

This category is a catch-all for a few cloud-based services I use.

Dropbox ($8.25) - I use Dropbox for our family’s laptop backup strategy. It keeps our files sync-ed and accessible via our laptops and their mobile app. It’s only $99 a year for 1TB of storage, which seems like a great deal. If our laptops are stolen or destroyed, our files are safe up in the cloud.

iCloud ($1.98) - My wife and I both have the $0.99 monthly iCloud plans, which buys us 50GB of storage each. That’s enough to store cloud backups for our phones, which is the reason we pay for it. This is also a great deal for the piece of mind knowing that I could drop my phone in a lake and my photos would be safe.

Squarespace ($10) - For professional purposes, I feel obligated to have a personal blog. I only write one or two posts per year, so I’m not sure it’s a great deal at this price. Squarespace is a great product, though. It’s very easy to use, and their WYSIWYG editor makes it super simple to customize my blog’s appearance.

Evernote ($3.99) - I use Evernote all day long at work to take notes. I like how it’s organized, and that it’s available on all my devices. This is another product I technically don’t need to pay for, but I do anyway out of appreciation. Their “Plus” plan does allow me to sync across all my devices (laptop, iPhone, iPad), while their free version only lets you sync two.

Infotainment: Books - $14.99 (4%)

Audible ($14.99) - I love listening to audiobooks during my commute, which is where I do most of my “reading”. Audible lets you download one new book a month. I typically listen to 10-12 per year, so this plan works out great. Their iPhone app is excellent and overall I’m very pleased. The value I receive from listening to books from anywhere is much greater than the $15 cost.

Entertainment: Music - $14.99 (4%)

Apple Music ($14.99) - Apple got me hooked with their 3-month free trial. I started discovering new music again after many years of listening to the same old songs. We have the family plan, so we can both listen to music in the car, gym, or on the bus anytime we want. I found interesting music for the gym on Apple’s curated workout playlists. Spotify’s service cost the same amount and I think they have better social sharing features, but I’m too lazy try it, as I’d need to re-create my playlists.

Final Thoughts

The biggest shocker after running the numbers was the price of mobile. I’m not mad, though. Smartphones are incredibly useful! I also realized that I’m paying $34 for services that I don’t need (HBO after watching GoT) or that don’t require payment to use (Evernote, Medium, Nuzzel). The final surprise for me was that, after access costs, I spend more on “News” than any other category. I would have guessed it’d be “TV and Movies”. Maybe that’s just my dated expectations, as I remember cable bills costing between $100 to $200, back before people cut the cord.

I’m glad I took the time to do this analysis. This list will help me determine where I can cut to save some money.

What do you think? Am I grossly overpaying for digital services? Are there any “must have” services you use that aren’t on my list? I’d love to hear about it! Feel free to criticize me or offer advice in the comments below.

Mega Book Report (Part 2)

Last week in Part 1 of this Mega Book Report I wrote brief reviews for books I found helpful in my career in software team management. I don’t always read work-related books, though. After mentally challenging books, I take a break and indulge in some “leisure reading”. For me that’s usually a history book with an occasional sci-fi and literary classic thrown in the mix. Here are my favorites that I read and enjoyed over the last two years.

Leisure Reading

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Harari

As a fan of history, this book blew my mind. It was definitely my favorite book of 2016. I judge the quality of a book by how annoyed my friends are when I keep recounting stories from the book. I kept talking to people about this one. There was an epic battle between Neanderthals and Sapiens 70,000 years ago? And we lost? Whoa. The author’s ambitious scope covers thousands of years, as he draws some challenging conclusions while reflecting on our past. I re-read the epilogue several times, wondering about the promise and horrors that await our species in coming decades. If you enjoy history books, read this one.

Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson's Lost Pacific Empire by Peter Stark

Described as "a story of wealth, ambition, and survival", this book is action packed. Entrepreneur and German immigrant John Jacob Astor sought to extend his global fur trading empire by establishing a trading base in the newly charted regions of the Pacific Northwest. Two parties were sent, one over-land party comprised of French Canadian canoeing experts, and the other across the oceans via ship. The men leading the two groups used contrasting leadership styles, one being a strict authoritarian and the other favoring democratic agreement. Both groups tragically suffered major casualties. Fighting through doubt, starvation, insurrection, and attack, the founders of Astoria had a tough job. The book was adapted into a two-part play at Portland Center Stage scheduled to conclude this winter. Read it now before seeing it live!

Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford

Weatherford, a professor of anthropology at Minnesota's Macalester College, argues that while Genghis Khan has been depicted by western historians as one of civilization's greatest villains, his empire’s policies had many positive social effects. I went into this book knowing hardly anything about Mongolian history, and was fascinated by the story of Khan’s conquest of neighboring Chinese, Middle Eastern, and European kingdoms. Especially interesting was the economic progress made when Mongolian rulers fostered trade between nations across the world, and the isolationism and stagnation that occurred when Khan’s empire collapsed.

The Foundation Series by Isaac Asimov

Considered a classic of science fiction and one of Asimov’s best works, this trilogy explores the collapse of a great galactic civilization. Scientist and “psychohistorian” Hari Seldon predicts society’s downfall using advanced math, and creates a group charged with protecting human knowledge. It’s a fun thought experiment about dealing with the apocalypse, and reasoning about free will when our actions are accurately predicted by simulations.

The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene

This book describes stories of ethically questionable techniques some humans use to gain build power, with stories from history as examples. If you’re shocked by the behavior of  characters in “Game of Thrones” or “House of Cards”, this book might lead you to believe their Machiavellian plots are typical human behavior. Reading this book and listening to The History of Rome podcast, I was surprised to learn how far people will go in the pursuit or protection of power. Here’s a summary of the 48 laws. It can be fun to identify the “law” used when corporate or political power struggles become public. I’d encourage some lighter reading after this book, to guard against cynicism.

The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli

After reading the “The 48 Laws of Power”, this infamous book of political advice by Machiavelli seemed fairly tame in comparison. I went in expecting to read amoral advice, but ended up finding it filled with the history of turbulent times in post-Roman Italy, and some practical recommendations for new rulers. Ascending to power can be dangerous, and it does seem sensible to consider one’s reputation and public perception during the transition. The introduction in my copy included a letter Niccolo sent his friend while he was writing “The Prince”, and this except stuck with me:

“When evening comes, I return home and enter my study; on the threshold I take off my workday clothes, covered with mud and dirt, and put on the robes of court and palace. Fitted out appropriately, I enter the courts of the ancients and am welcomed by them, and there I taste the food that alone is mine, and for which I was born. I am unashamed to converse with them and to question them about the motives for their actions, and they, out of their human kindness, answer me. And for the space of four hours I forget the world, remember no vexation, fear poverty no more, tremble no more at death: I pass indeed into their world.”

Machiavelli felt reading history was like a two-way discussion with the ancients. I’m fascinated by current events happening today, but love the fact that books let us listen in on conversations that go back several millennia. Which book will you open next, my friend? What questions will you ask?

Epilogue

I’m always on the lookout for my next favorite book. If you have any recommendations, I’d love to hear them! Bonus points for books in my favorite categories: management/leadership, business stories, history, sci-fi, general non-fiction.

Mega Book Report (Part 1)

I love books, but am not a particularly fast reader. Because of my slow pace, I’m picky about which books I read, relying on advice from peers, Goodreads ratings, and annual “best book” lists. Earlier this year I saw Jeff Marten’s post “My 2016 year in books”, and ended up reading Shoe Dog based on his recommendation. It was so good! To pay it forward, I compiled this list of books I read and enjoyed over the last two years.

Career Path Books

I found these book helpful in my role as a software development team leader. We read the first three in New Relic's management book club.

High Output Management by Andy Grove

This was on my “to read” list for a while. It’s widely considered a seminal work in the category tech management literature, and for good reason. Grove's writing is very persuasive. Written in the 80’s, some of the examples are a bit dated ("email will be huge!”), but I found the historical context interesting. Human nature is surprisingly consistent through the decades, despite the endless waves of tech innovation. Grove’s advice on tracking team indicator metrics and conducting performance reviews were two tips I immediately put into practice. This question from the book resonated with me: “Are you trying new ideas, new techniques, and new technologies, and I mean personally trying them, not just reading about them?"

Good Strategy Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt

I discovered that I was fascinated by business strategy while reading this book. It explains ways to critique your company’s annual strategy, if you’re lucky enough to have one. Rumelt teaches strategy at UCLA’s school of management, but also has decades of experience consulting in the private sector. The case studies in the book are great business history. They illustrate how difficult it is to understand your competitive landscape in the moment (everything is clearer in hindsight) and design a focused, effective strategy. I found it both entertaining and educational to read about companies whose strategies achieved “success" (e.g. Starbucks, NVidia, IKEA, Cisco) as well those that didn’t pan out (WorldCom, Enron, GM). It’s a solid intro to strategy, providing a vocabulary for discussing the subject. Spoiler: good strategy includes a diagnosis, guiding policies, and a set of coherent actions to carry out.

Managing Humans by Michael Lopp

Michael Lopp made a name for himself by blogging about engineering management under the pseudonym "Rands”. The book is more of a packaging of his best blog posts than a cohesive narrative. In our management book club, some people disagreed with Lopp’s opinions and conclusions, but we appreciated his efforts to answer “What does a software engineering manager do? What should they do?” Despite my initial objection, I found some of his descriptions of diametrically-opposed engineering personality archetypes (e.g. Completionists vs. Incrementalists, Mechanics vs. Organics, Old Guard vs. New Guard) to be helpful in understanding the behaviors and motives of my co-workers. This book is recommended reading, especially for new managers living through start-up drama.

Work Rules! by Laszlo Bock

Google built a reputation for being a great place to work, and that is no accident. Laszlo Bock, who led Google’s PeopleOps team for 10 years, describes their journey of innovation in this space and the rationale behind their approach. After becoming a big company, Google hired data scientists to run experiments testing the effectiveness of their employee perks and management approaches. They open sourced their findings on re:Work, a site describing best practices for managers. Bock makes a good case for a career path in PeopleOps, and the benefits of caring about your workforce.

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini

This book details six techniques used by sales folks, or “compliance professionals” as Cialdini calls them. These tactics leverage, or you could say exploit, universal principles of human psychology such as seeking approval from an authority, and the desire to be consistent with our past statements. The book opens a window into the black magic of marketing, and why certain ads are effective. I’m now better at identifying tactics salespeople use on me. I notice the theory of reciprocity used frequently, which is when you give people something (often of small value), then ask for something in return (often of large value). These approaches can be used for evil, or just to boost your persuasive communication at work.

Honorable Mention:  The First 90 Days by Michael Watkins (read this one prior to starting a new job)

Business Stories

I discovered this genre recently, and am now a devoted fan. These are often told chronologically like fictional stories, a great format for info-tainment.

The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution by Walter Isaacson

This book should be required reading for computer science and electrical engineering students. Weighing in at 560 pages, it covers a lot of territory, from Ada Lovelace's notes describing an analytical engine, to the traitorous eight forming Fairchild Semiconductor populating the Silicon Valley with their “Fairchildren” spin-off companies. As technologists, we stand on the shoulders of giants, and this book is the story of those giants. Isaacson has a gift for humanizing the legendary innovators by detailing their feelings of failure, struggle, and self-doubt. He also works to dispel the myth of the lone genius by describing innovators that found success by teaming up with collaborators with drastically different skills and personalities. I was surprised about how many of these stories I didn’t know, like the long and unlikely partnership between government and academia that created the internet, and the fierce competition among scientists to invent the transistor. Amazing, and inspiring.

Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike by Phil Knight

Being a native Oregonian, it was fun to read about Nike’s humble beginnings in Portland. Phil grew up in the Eastmoreland neighborhood, and Portland is the backdrop to many events in Nike’s history. Phil begged for loans at banks downtown and taught accounting classes at PSU. He is very humble, self-deprecating, and honest in his memoirs. I was impressed by his search for purpose as a young man as he traveled around the world learning about other cultures. It's inspiring to hear very “successful" people describe their feelings of intense uncertainty, doubt, and fear. Without knowing that, we might assume their path to success was easy.

The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon by Brad Stone

My personal and professional lives were increasingly impacted by Amazon’s services (Prime & AWS) this year, but I didn’t know much about the 23-year-old company. Author and former NY Times journalist, Brad Stone, covers Jeff Bezos’s background as a gifted youth raised by his Cuban immigrant stepfather and self-sufficient Texan grandparents. After reading about Amazon.com’s fast and furious startup days in the 90’s, I was exhausted. The book includes several great anecdotes, like employees so busy that they forgot where they’d parked their car days before, and Jeff’s biological father’s career as a traveling unicycling polo player. I’d recommend it for people trying to understand Jeff Bezos and Amazon’s history, motives, and ambitions.

The Upstarts: How Uber, Airbnb, and the Killer Companies of the New Silicon Valley Are Change the World by Brad Stone

After enjoying Brad Stone's journalistic style of narrative storytelling in “The Everything Store", I read his follow-up business book chronicling these “sharing economy” companies. Uber and Airbnb started eight years ago, while I was worrying about being laid-off during the great recession. Obviously, their story isn’t done yet, and they continue to create major controversies. Some of the most interesting topics to me were how they tackled rapid international growth, the history of Lyft, and the two CEO's (Travis Kalanick & Brian Chesky) frequent meetings to discuss strategies for disrupting their respective industries (hotels and taxis). In retrospect, Uber’s story is a cautionary tale about fostering an aggressive company culture for too long.

Honorable mention: The Phoenix Project by Gene Kim (fictional story, but it feels real) 

Next Time

Wow, that’s a lot of reviews. I’ll stop there and add my favorite “leisure reading” books from the last two years in a follow-up post. Do you have a favorite book you read recently? I’d love to hear about it!

PDX Tech Talks Monthly #7 - FutureTalks at New Relic

Dearest reader, I have neglected my duties to write about PDX Tech Talks for many months. Have I been attending tech talks? Yes. I’ve made it to a few of my favorites like PADNUG and AgilePDX, but didn't ever get around to posting the summaries. Why so busy? Well, in the fall I was heads-down hacking on an IoT side project. Since then I’ve been hard at work helping to build some teams at Surescripts. Now that we’ve filled most of our newly-built office space and assembled some great teams, I can get back to some leisurely blogging.

The FutureTalk series, sponsored by New Relic, has been on my radar for a while. When I noticed this month’s talk was about Next Glass, a start-up that uses software and science to make great beer recommendations, I decided it was time to go check it out.

The FutureTalk crowd at New Relic

The Event – FutureTalks at New Relic, with Next Glass

New Relic, a Portland and San Francisco based start-up that makes software analytics products, hosts their FutureTalks series monthly in their downtown office. The talks are given by tech luminaries like Ward Cunningham, Amber Case, and DevOps guru Gene Kim. The presentations focus on “examining the code of tomorrow, celebrating and meeting the people who write it, and looking ahead to the future of modern software.” Their shiny new workspace is up on the 29th floor of the Big Pink building downtown, and features amazing 360-degree views of our fine city. I could see my neighborhood from up there! I wandered around a bit afterwards and discovered a very long table full of Legos to play with. Awesome :)

This month’s presenter was Trace Smith, the COO of Next Glass, who made the trip all the way from Wilmington, North Carolina where their start-up is headquartered. Trace recounted the founding story of their company, which strives to make wine and beer recommendations that are accurate and personalized. They do this by rigorously analyzing wines and beers (over 35,000 so far) then creating a “DNA profile” for each product.

Who I Met

It was a full house at New Relic, with plenty of folks to chat with. I met quite a few students and alumni from Epicodus, a 4-month program that teaches coding skills. One recent Epicodus graduate, Natalie Blackburn, mentioned that she really enjoyed the program and is now busy applying to entry-level dev positions. I also met Paul Burkett who had made the trip down from the ‘Couv, where he is CEO of the custom software shop AgileCore. Paul was full of interesting tech ideas, some involving Google Glass, and was excited about future entrepreneurial possibilities.

What I Learned

I’ve been reading a lot about the role of “data scientist,” a job title that scarcely existed three years ago. It’s gaining popularity as online retailers and service providers (e.g. Amazon, Netflix, Pandora) strive to make use of their hordes of data. They want to recommend a product, song or movie to you that you’re statistically likely to love.

Next Glass Chief Science Officer Connell Cunningham 

Next Glass is definitely riding this technological wave. They added a CSO (Chief Science Office) to their team in addition to the traditional CTO role. Like Pandora's Music Genome Project, the first thing Next Glass did was devise a way to create the “DNA profile” for beverages. Now, I’m no biologist, but it sounded like they used something called a mass spectrometer to analyze the wine. Apparently it uses Thermo Scientific Orbitrap technology and records 22,000 data points for each wine sample. Here’s the “for dummies” video about how it works. After building their “Genome Cellar” database, they started testing recommendation algorithms, comparing them with user taste tests. Users get to rate beverages on a four-star scale, and their preferences are thrown in the data analysis too. The end result: a wine suggestion that users agree with 86% of the time. Not too shabby!

The demo of Next Glasses app was very cool. Interestingly, they ended up using algorithms that work super-fast on a mobile device, despite being about 2% less accurate than the ideal but slower-running versions. Speed matters to mobile users. For me, the most impressive part was their augmented reality feature. While using their app, you could point at beer label with your phone’s camera, and their recommendation rating would hover over the image on the screen, allowing you to click and drill down to find more info. They showed their app scanning a restaurant wine list, then transforming it into a formatted page with hyper-links, high-lighting the wines and their recommendation rating. “Oooohhh,” I said. Very impressive indeed.

Wrap Up

I definitely recommend checking out the next FutureTalk at New Relic. By my estimate you are 87% likely to enjoy it, and I don’t even need big data analytics to back that up. You also might like the Next Glass app, which is scheduled to launch around October.

Next Month

Keeping on the big data topic, I’d like to check out the Portland Big Data User Group. I’m also interested in learning about Docker, and it looks like there’s a local meet-up for that too. Neither of those appear to have anything scheduled yet for September though. If you have any recommendations for next month, please let me know!