Too Good

 A former colleague who is looking for a new job shared his recent interview experience. After a positive interview, L was rejected for a job because the company felt his resume was "too tailored" to the position. He expressed frustration that, unlike many applicants who use AI tools to generate customized resumes, his resume was genuinely written by him and accurately reflected his real skills and accomplishments. He believes that hiring managers are now struggling to distinguish authentic applications from AI-generated ones, resulting in flawed IT hiring practices. He also criticized the interview process for being ambiguous and often led by interviewers who seem unqualified to assess candidates properly, something I have heard from a lot of other folks too. 

That last part about unqualified interviewers struck a chord with me. When people luck into roles that do not deserve and lack the skills to perform, they create a terrific drag force for the company. They will do their best to keep out anyone (like L) who has demonstrable ability to perform (and therefore outshine them handily). They will also block hiring of managers who will easily identify that they are unfit for the role and not performing at the job. That kind of hire would jeopardize their own jobs. The force of resistance to qualified hires will rise in exponential proportion to the salaries of these folks. So we have a situation like L is running into. His qualifications seem too extraordinary to be be true when viewed by peers and managers less competent than him. They immediately conclude this could not be real and AI made up the resume for L. That can now be a great excuse to reject him. I do believe things will change.

Seeking Rare

An UX designer I worked with a long time ago, recently shared a long rant about the AI generated design. In D's opinion , generative AI tools, including new ones like those in Figma, can be useful, but they don’t replace the need to understand the design process. True design begins with a clear goal and involves thoughtful exploration and refinement, which AI often skips by jumping straight to a finished result. This shortcut can undermine creativity and the critical thinking that shapes strong design outcomes. Ultimately, while AI can assist, it’s the designer’s own understanding and intent—the “why” behind every decision—that drives meaningful results. The tool is just a tool; real intelligence comes from the designer.

I have some sympathy for his cause but not a whole lot. The "real intelligence" that D speaks of is not abundantly available in the UX community. A lot of folks I have worked with over the years follow the design process like it was a guarantee of outcome. As long as the full battery of artifacts are deployed, we will arrive at the right answer seems to be the thinking which is extraordinarily flawed. I have had designers go through days and weeks of such sessions and not produced deliverables that are in no way better than what AI can produce these days. 

There are those that do bring something special to the table and I have had the privilege of working with them as well. These folks are able to simplify and distill very complex ideas into something elegant, intuitive and simple and they can do this just listening to users closely, asking them thoughtful questions along the way, no frills, no involving works-shops. The first version of their concept can even be pen and paper. But they get it right. AI can take those rough notes and expert direction to execute, save them the mundane work. D may not like to hear this said about his beloved design community but the truth is real talent that cannot be replaced by AI is rare and that caliber of talent will not get displaced. 

Being Adult

Any parent who has experienced their child attaining adulthood has wondered at what age that becomes real adulthood and not conceptual. 

..everybody is unique, there’s no standard timeline for growing up. Some people learn how to control their emotions, develop the judgment to make good decisions and manage to earn enough to support themselves by the age of 18.

There are so many facets to a person that it would be hard to declare someone an all around adult because they are demonstrably mature in some areas. They could be woefully behind on the others. 

Growing up is about gaining experiences, making mistakes and learning from them, while also taking responsibility for your own actions. As there’s no single definition of adulthood, everyone has to decide for themselves whether or not they’ve turned into a grown-up yet.

As a parent, you want to see your "adult" child demonstrate the ability to function that meets or exceeds yours at their age. This is assuming you felt that you were a well-functioning adult at that reference age. If the child exceeds you in some areas that is cause for celebration but we are not able to accept nearly as well that they lag us in others, and as such we are reluctant to declare them as fully adult.

Good Direction

Like many I have many reasons not to like Google but allowing users to download and run a variety of open-source AI models directly on their smartphones, without needing an internet connection is great news. The app, currently available for Android (with iOS coming soon), lets users access models from platforms like Hugging Face to perform tasks such as image generation, question answering, and code writing, all processed locally on the device’s hardware. I only hope there's no catch. If this is even somewhat workable, it would represent a shift toward making AI more accessible, private, and customizable by empowering users to run advanced models locally, rather than relying on cloud-based services. 

While that is generally good for users, they have to take on more risk. If they run sensitive or private data through these models, and if their device is not secure, that could present it's own kind of problems. A fully air-gapped device could help. There is also the bad actor problem (though they have plenty of options already). Running AI models locally makes it easier to bypass safety controls and use AI for generating harmful content, coding malicious software, spreading misinformation, or enabling scams and illegal activity. The lack of centralized moderation and the potential for model jailbreaking and adversarial attacks significantly expand the risk surface for misuse. In this instance all of that could happen from a phone which is convenient. 

One can hope Google had some altruistic intentions here beyond trying to apply breaks on the cloud based contenders who are getting ready to eat its ads and search lunches.

Last Train

I met a couple of women recently at a friend's birthday party. One was in her mid 60s, S and the other in her mid 50s, P. They are both single and from the way they described it bounce between enjoying the freedom of being single and feeling like the last train to find a companion for life is leaving the station any minute. 

The bouncing back and forth can feel tiresome. They've had different cosmetic surgeries over the years and chatted freely about more things they'd like to do in the future. S said jokingly that the self-improvement never stops. Watching Things you can tell just by looking at her, reminded me of the couple of hours I spent chatting with these two women. In the movie, there are no magical endings for anyone - the women return to where they were when we first saw them. 

It also brought to mind some women I know that have been married for many decades and still find themselves lost in the mid-life. They see who they are with and can't find any reason for it other than habit. They too have a decision to make - continue with old habits or break them to take a chance on the world before that last train leaves. M told me once that she just misses having a man in her life she could have a real conversation with while having a nice meal together. 

Sounds like the most basic thing a person could ask for but she can't have that with her husband of going on thirty years. D wants to hold forth but is not really into conversation and he is an extremely picky eater - an overwhelming majority of things that M likes, D does not. So they have standardized their meals to point of infinite simplicity leading to as much boredom for M. This is how D evolved into from whomever he was when they met in high-school and fell head over heels in love. 

Finding Link

Joined an Eurovision watch-party by random chance and found myself rooting for singers I had never heard of until that day. The song that I loved won but I didn't think it would because it sounded too operatic maybe uncomfortably high-pitched in some passages. Yet there was something unique about the song that made it stand out. One of the woman that the event asked if if I could tell any of the songs apart because they sounded so formulaic. She was right I think and we agreed this was one of the ones that did stand apart. 

There other ones I enjoyed came in close to the top but the winner (as far this group was concerned) was the most pleasant surprise. In that group of strangers, there was a song that was the crowd's favorite to win and also mine. That created a bonding moment among people most of whom had never met each other before. The experience took me way back in time to my highs-school days of watching the Grammy Awards. 

Being able to predict who would win was as fun then as it is now. If you and a bunch of others (friends and strangers) picked the same song, that felt particularly good. It was like connecting to something beautiful and yet obscure that allowed us all to experience music in the same way, have a common language in the tune and lyrics of that song even if we had nothing else in common. It made sense that humans around the world could love a song with the same degree of passion, that a band from any country could become a global sensation. It was a cause for hope - of being more like each other than not. It was wonderful to experience that again so many years later, even if only for a couple of hours. 

Watching Strife

My friend S mentioned a few days ago that spending time with her parents is like watching a tragi-comedy unfold. She is at their home trying resolve some serious and long-neglected health conditions that have rendered her father almost immobile. She experienced some guilt over her reaction to their way of communicating with each other. The parents have been in a love-less marriage for as long as S remembers. They are deeply incompatible but managed to raise a couple of kids and build a family together - each contributing equally. When they were younger, S recalls loud arguments, her mother crying because she felt completely unheard and misunderstood. 

Her father would rage and sulk by turn for similar reasons. Nothing ever changed for the better. The two kids learned to isolate themselves from the chaos and take care of each other while their parents returned to whatever normalcy was attainable in this family. As time passed, both the frequency and intensity of these events reduced. It seems they lost both the hope that things could change along with the energy to fight for it. Yet they had no intention of parting ways. It was tossed around as a threat during the most vicious arguments but even the kids knew it was not to be taken seriously - just a way for the parents to imagine a different life that would never be.

S says, it made her and her brother wonder if the would be fundamentally flawed as humans because they were the products of such strifeful union. S was married very briefly and seemed to have exited at the first hint of trouble, anticipating a turn for the worse, ending up like her parents. Her brother is in his late 40s and single. She has not had occasion to see her parents' interact daily for decades until recently. 

She likens it to two equally skilled fencers jousting. It starts strong and at some point devolves into chaos - the verbal jabs turn more caustic and condescending but they are not protracted. Then they shift gears to more teasing and bantering which suddenly changes to mean-spirited jokes about each other. Then all at once there is silence. Typically her mother leaves the scene to go to the kitchen. When she reemerges from there after a long while it is as if none of earlier events had transpired. They may sit together in the living room and watch their favorite soap opera in silence.

If S is there, she might join them for a bit and try to spark some conversation but it does not work always but there are days when it does - there is an hour of perfect normalcy in the home. I believe this is how her parents cope with the dysfunction of their marriage of close to sixty years now. Outsiders like S may see the absurdity of it and find it tragic-comic like she does but it is what it takes to live.