His story will inspire you.

“Google search went down for a few hours in 2002; Jeff Dean handled all the queries by hand and checked quality doubled.”- Jeff Dean Facts.

One of many Jeff Dean jokes, but you get the idea.

Google's top six engineers met in a war room in mid-2000. Google's crawling system, which indexed the Web, stopped working. Users could still enter queries, but results were five months old.

Google just signed a deal with Yahoo to power a ten-times-larger search engine. Tension rose. It was crucial. If they failed, the Yahoo agreement would likely fall through, risking bankruptcy for the firm. Their efforts could be lost.

A rangy, tall, energetic thirty-one-year-old man named Jeff dean was among those six brilliant engineers in the makeshift room. He had just left D. E. C. a couple of months ago and started his career in a relatively new firm Google, which was about to change the world. He rolled his chair over his colleague Sanjay and sat right next to him, cajoling his code like a movie director. The history started from there.

When you think of people who shaped the World Wide Web, you probably picture founders and CEOs like Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Marc Andreesen, Tim Berners-Lee, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg. They’re undoubtedly the brightest people on earth.

Under these giants, legions of anonymous coders work at keyboards to create the systems and products we use. These computer workers are irreplaceable.

Let's get to know him better.

It's possible you've never heard of Jeff Dean. He's American. Dean created many behind-the-scenes Google products. Jeff, co-founder and head of Google's deep learning research engineering team, is a popular technology, innovation, and AI keynote speaker.

While earning an MS and Ph.D. in computer science at the University of Washington, he was a teaching assistant, instructor, and research assistant. Dean joined the Compaq Computer Corporation Western Research Laboratory research team after graduating.

Jeff co-created ProfileMe and the Continuous Profiling Infrastructure for Digital at Compaq. He co-designed and implemented Swift, one of the fastest Java implementations. He was a senior technical staff member at mySimon Inc., retrieving and caching electronic commerce content.

Dean, a top young computer scientist, joined Google in mid-1999. He was always trying to maximize a computer's potential as a child.

An expert

His high school program for processing massive epidemiological data was 26 times faster than professionals'. Epi Info, in 13 languages, is used by the CDC. He worked on compilers as a computer science Ph.D. These apps make source code computer-readable.

Dean never wanted to work on compilers forever. He left Academia for Google, which had less than 20 employees. Dean helped found Google News and AdSense, which transformed the internet economy. He then addressed Google's biggest issue, scaling.

Growing Google faced a huge computing challenge. They developed PageRank in the late 1990s to return the most relevant search results. Google's popularity slowed machine deployment.

Dean solved problems, his specialty. He and fellow great programmer Sanjay Ghemawat created the Google File System, which distributed large data over thousands of cheap machines.

These two also created MapReduce, which let programmers handle massive data quantities on parallel machines. They could also add calculations to the search algorithm. A 2004 research article explained MapReduce, which became an industry sensation.

Several revolutionary inventions

Dean's other initiatives were also game-changers. BigTable, a petabyte-capable distributed data storage system, was based on Google File. The first global database, Spanner, stores data on millions of servers in dozens of data centers worldwide.

It underpins Gmail and AdWords. Google Translate co-founder Jeff Dean is surprising. He contributes heavily to Google News. Dean is Senior Fellow of Google Research and Health and leads Google AI.

Recognitions

The National Academy of Engineering elected Dean in 2009. He received the 2009 Association for Computing Machinery fellowship and the 2016 American Academy of Arts and Science fellowship. He received the 2007 ACM-SIGOPS Mark Weiser Award and the 2012 ACM-Infosys Foundation Award. Lists could continue.

A sneaky question may arrive in your mind: How much does this big brain earn? Well, most believe he is one of the highest-paid employees at Google. According to a survey, he is paid $3 million a year.

He makes espresso and chats with a small group of Googlers most mornings. Dean steams milk, another grinds, and another brews espresso. They discuss families and technology while making coffee. He thinks this little collaboration and idea-sharing keeps Google going.

“Some of us have been working together for more than 15 years,” Dean said. “We estimate that we’ve collectively made more than 20,000 cappuccinos together.”

We all know great developers and software engineers. It may inspire many.

ZERO GRACE/ZERO MALICE

Amazon's purchase of One Medical could speed up American healthcare

The U.S. healthcare industry is a 7-ton seal bleeding at sea. Predators are circling. Unearned margin: price increases relative to inflation without quality improvements. Amazon is the 11-foot megalodon with 7-inch teeth. Amazon is no longer circling... but attacking.

In 2020 dollars, per capita U.S. healthcare spending increased from $2,968 in 1980 to $12,531. The result is a massive industry with 13% of the nation's workers and a fifth of GDP.

Doctor No

In 40 years, healthcare has made progress. From 73.7 in 1980 to 78.8 in 2019, life expectancy rose (before Covid knocked it back down a bit). Pharmacological therapies have revolutionized, and genetic research is paying off. The financial return, improvement split by cost increases, is terrible. No country has expense rises like the U.S., and no one spends as much per capita as we do. Developed countries have longer life expectancies, healthier populations, and less economic hardship.

Two-thirds of U.S. personal bankruptcies are due to medical expenses and/or missed work. Mom or Dad getting cancer could bankrupt many middle-class American families. 40% of American adults delayed or skipped needed care due to cost. Every healthcare improvement seems to have a downside. Same pharmacological revolution that helped millions caused opioid epidemic. Our results are poor in many areas: The U.S. has a high infant mortality rate.

Healthcare is the second-worst retail industry in the country. Gas stations are #1. Imagine walking into a Best Buy to buy a TV and a Blue Shirt associate requests you fill out the same 14 pages of paperwork you filled out yesterday. Then you wait in a crowded room until they call you, 20 minutes after the scheduled appointment you were asked to arrive early for, to see the one person in the store who can talk to you about TVs, who has 10 minutes for you. The average emergency room wait time in New York is 6 hours and 10 minutes.

If it's bad for the customer, it's worse for the business. Physicians spend 27% of their time helping patients; 49% on EHRs. Documentation, order entry, billing, and inbox management. Spend a decade getting an M.D., then become a bureaucrat.

No industry better illustrates scale diseconomies. If we got the same return on healthcare spending as other countries, we'd all live to 100. We could spend less, live longer and healthier, and pay off the national debt in 15 years. U.S. healthcare is the worst ever.

What now? Competition is at the heart of capitalism, the worst system of its kind.

Priority Time

Amazon is buying One Medical for $3.9 billion. I think this deal will liberate society. Two years in, I think One Medical is great. When I got Covid, I pressed the One Medical symbol on my phone; a nurse practitioner prescribed Paxlovid and told me which pharmacies had it in stock.

Amazon enables the company's vision. One Medical's stock is down to $10 from $40 at the start of 2021. Last year, it lost $250 million and needs cash (Amazon has $60 billion). ONEM must grow. The service has 736,000 members. Half of U.S. households have Amazon Prime. Finally, delivery. One Medical is a digital health/physical office hybrid, but you must pick up medication at the pharmacy. Upgrade your Paxlovid delivery time after a remote consultation. Amazon's core competency means it'll happen. Healthcare speed and convenience will feel alien.

It's been a long, winding road to disruption. Amazon, JPMorgan, and Berkshire Hathaway formed Haven four years ago to provide better healthcare for their 1.5 million employees. It rocked healthcare stocks the morning of the press release, but folded in 2021.

Amazon Care is an employee-focused service. Home-delivered virtual health services and nurses. It's doing well, expanding nationwide, and providing healthcare for other companies. Hilton is Amazon Care's biggest customer. The acquisition of One Medical will bring 66 million Prime households capital, domain expertise, and billing infrastructure. Imagine:

"Alexa, I'm hot and my back hurts."

"Connecting you to a Prime doctor now."

Want to vs. Have to

I predicted Amazon entering healthcare years ago. Why? For the same reason Apple is getting into auto. Amazon's P/E is 56, double Walmart's. The corporation must add $250 billion in revenue over the next five years to retain its share price. White-label clothes or smart home products won't generate as much revenue. It must enter a huge market without scale, operational competence, and data skills.

Current Situation

Healthcare reform benefits both consumers and investors. In 2015, healthcare services had S&P 500-average multiples. The market is losing faith in public healthcare businesses' growth. Healthcare services have lower EV/EBITDA multiples than the S&P 500.

Amazon isn't the only prey-hunter. Walmart and Alibaba are starting pharmacies. Uber is developing medical transportation. Private markets invested $29 billion in telehealth last year, up 95% from 2020.

The pandemic accelerated telehealth, the immediate unlock. After the first positive Covid case in the U.S., services that had to be delivered in person shifted to Zoom... We lived. We grew. Video house calls continued after in-person visits were allowed. McKinsey estimates telehealth visits are 38 times pre-pandemic levels. Doctors adopted the technology, regulators loosened restrictions, and patients saved time. We're far from remote surgery, but many patient visits are unnecessary. A study of 40 million patients during lockdown found that for chronic disease patients, online visits didn't affect outcomes. This method of care will only improve.

Amazon's disruption will be significant and will inspire a flood of capital, startups, and consumer brands. Mark Cuban launched a pharmacy that eliminates middlemen in January. Outcome? A 90-day supply of acid-reflux medication costs $17. Medicare could have saved $3.6 billion by buying generic drugs from Cuban's pharmacy. Other apex predators will look at different limbs of the carcass for food. Nike could enter healthcare via orthopedics, acupuncture, and chiropractic. LVMH, L'Oréal, and Estée Lauder may launch global plastic surgery brands. Hilton and Four Seasons may open hospitals. Lennar and Pulte could build "Active Living" communities that Nana would leave feet first, avoiding the expense and tragedy of dying among strangers.

Risks

Privacy matters: HIV status is different from credit card and billing address. Most customers (60%) feel fine sharing personal health data via virtual technologies, though. Unavoidable. 85% of doctors believe data-sharing and interoperability will become the norm. Amazon is the most trusted tech company for handling personal data. Not Meta: Amazon.

What about antitrust, then?

Amazon should be required to spin off AWS and/or Amazon Fulfillment and banned from promoting its own products. It should be allowed to acquire hospitals. One Medical's $3.9 billion acquisition is a drop in the bucket compared to UnitedHealth's $498 billion market valuation.

Antitrust enforcement shouldn't assume some people/firms are good/bad. It should recognize that competition is good and focus on making markets more competitive in each deal. The FTC should force asset divestitures in e-commerce, digital marketing, and social media. These companies can also promote competition in a social ill.

U.S. healthcare makes us fat, depressed, and broke. Competition has produced massive value and prosperity across most of our economy.

Dear Amazon … bring it.

I apologize if this sounds basic, but throughout my career, I've always been clear that a company's activities are shaped by its founder(s)' morality.

I consider Palantir, owned by PayPal founder Peter Thiel, evil. He got $5 billion tax-free by hacking a statute to help middle-class savings. That may appear clever, but I think it demonstrates a shocking lack of solidarity with society. As a result of this and other things he has said and done, I early on dismissed Peter Thiel as someone who could contribute anything positive to society, and events soon proved me right: we are talking about someone who clearly considers himself above everyone else and who does not hesitate to set up a company, Palantir, to exploit the data of the little people and sell it to the highest bidder, whoever that is and whatever the consequences.

The German courts have confirmed my warnings concerning Palantir. The problem is that politicians love its surveillance tools because they think knowing more about their constituents gives them power. These are ideal for dictatorships who want to snoop on their populace. Hence, Silicon Valley's triumphalist dialectic has seduced many governments at many levels and collected massive volumes of data to hold forever.

Dangerous company. There are many more. My analysis of the moral principles that disclose company management changed my opinion of Facebook, now Meta, and anyone with a modicum of interest might deduce when that happened, a discovery that leaves you dumbfounded. TikTok was easy because its lack of morality was revealed early when I saw the videos it encouraged minors to post and the repercussions of sharing them through its content recommendation algorithm. When you see something like this, nothing can convince you that the firm can change its morals and become good. Nothing. You know the company is awful and will fail. Speak it, announce it, and change it. It's like a fingerprint—unchangeable.

Some of you who read me frequently make its Facebook today jokes when I write about these firms, and that's fine: they're my moral standards, those of an elderly professor with thirty-five years of experience studying corporations and discussing their cases in class, but you don't have to share them. Since I'm writing this and don't have to submit to any editorial review, that's what it is: when you continuously read a person, you have to assume that they have moral standards and that sometimes you'll agree with them and sometimes you won't. Morality accepts hierarchies, nuances, and even obsessions. I know not everyone shares my opinions, but at least I can voice them. One day, one of those firms may sue me (as record companies did some years ago).

Palantir is incredibly harmful. Limit its operations. Like Meta and TikTok, its business strategy is shaped by its founders' immorality. Such a procedure can never be beneficial.

It's cheaper, faster charging, longer lasting, safer, and better for the environment.

Batteries are the future. Next-gen and planet-saving technology, including solar power and EVs, require batteries. As these smart technologies become more popular, we find that our batteries can't keep up. Lithium-ion batteries are expensive, slow to charge, big, fast to decay, flammable, and not environmentally friendly. MIT just created a new battery that eliminates all of these problems.  So, is this the battery of the future? Or is there a catch?

When I say entirely new, I mean it. This battery employs no currently available materials. Its electrodes are constructed of aluminium and pure sulfur instead of lithium-complicated ion's metals and graphite. Its electrolyte is formed of molten chloro-aluminate salts, not an organic solution with lithium salts like lithium-ion batteries.

How does this change in materials help?

Aluminum, sulfur, and chloro-aluminate salts are abundant, easy to acquire, and cheap. This battery might be six times cheaper than a lithium-ion battery and use less hazardous mining. The world and our wallets will benefit.

But don’t go thinking this means it lacks performance.

This battery charged in under a minute in tests. At 25 degrees Celsius, the battery will charge 25 times slower than at 110 degrees Celsius. This is because the salt, which has a very low melting point, is in an ideal state at 110 degrees and can carry a charge incredibly quickly. Unlike lithium-ion, this battery self-heats when charging and discharging, therefore no external heating is needed.

Anyone who's seen a lithium-ion battery burst might be surprised. Unlike lithium-ion batteries, none of the components in this new battery can catch fire. Thus, high-temperature charging and discharging speeds pose no concern.

These batteries are long-lasting. Lithium-ion batteries don't last long, as any iPhone owner can attest. During charging, metal forms a dendrite on the electrode. This metal spike will keep growing until it reaches the other end of the battery, short-circuiting it. This is why phone batteries only last a few years and why electric car range decreases over time. This new battery's molten salt slows deposition, extending its life. This helps the environment and our wallets.

These batteries are also energy dense. Some lithium-ion batteries have 270 Wh/kg energy density (volume and mass). Aluminum-sulfur batteries could have 1392 Wh/kg, according to calculations. They'd be 5x more energy dense. Tesla's Model 3 battery would weigh 96 kg instead of 480 kg if this battery were used. This would improve the car's efficiency and handling.

These calculations were for batteries without molten salt electrolyte. Because they don't reflect the exact battery chemistry, they aren't a surefire prediction.

This battery seems great. It will take years, maybe decades, before it reaches the market and makes a difference. Right?

Nope. The project's scientists founded Avanti to develop and market this technology.

So we'll soon be driving cheap, durable, eco-friendly, lightweight, and ultra-safe EVs? Nope.

This battery must be kept hot to keep the salt molten; otherwise, it won't work and will expand and contract, causing damage. This issue could be solved by packs that can rapidly pre-heat, but that project is far off.

Rapid and constant charge-discharge cycles make these batteries ideal for solar farms, homes, and EV charging stations. The battery is constantly being charged or discharged, allowing it to self-heat and maintain an ideal temperature.

These batteries aren't as sexy as those making EVs faster, more efficient, and cheaper. Grid batteries are crucial to our net-zero transition because they allow us to use more low-carbon energy. As we move away from fossil fuels, we'll need millions of these batteries, so the fact that they're cheap, safe, long-lasting, and environmentally friendly will be huge. Who knows, maybe EVs will use this technology one day. MIT has created another world-changing technology.

The Traffic Light Approach to Reviewing Personal, Team and Project Development

What needs improvement? If you want to improve, you need to practice your sport, musical instrument, habit, or work project. You need to assess your progress.

Continuous improvement is the foundation of focused practice and a growth mentality. Not just individually. High-performing teams pursue improvement. Right? Why is it hard?

As a leadership coach, senior manager, and high-level athlete, I've found three key questions that may unlock high performance in individuals and teams.

Problems with Reviews

Reviewing and improving performance is crucial, however I hate seeing review sessions in my diary. I rarely respond to questionnaire pop-ups or emails. Why?

Time constrains. Requests to fill out questionnaires often state they will take 10–15 minutes, but I can think of a million other things to do with that time. Next, review overload. Businesses can easily request comments online. No matter what you buy, someone will ask for your opinion. This bombardment might make feedback seem bad, which is bad.

The problem is that we might feel that way about important things like personal growth and work performance. Managers and team leaders face a greater challenge.

When to Conduct a Review

We must be wise about reviewing things that matter to us. Timing and duration matter. Reviewing the experience as quickly as possible preserves information and sentiments. Time must be brief. The review's importance and size will determine its length. We might only take a few seconds to review our morning coffee, but we might require more time for that six-month work project.

These post-event reviews should be supplemented by periodic reflection. Journaling can help with daily reflections, but I also like to undertake personal reviews every six months on vacation or at a retreat.

As an employee or line manager, you don't want to wait a year for a performance assessment. Little and frequently is best, with a more formal and in-depth assessment (typically with a written report) in 6 and 12 months.

The Easiest Method to Conduct a Review Session

I follow Einstein's review process:

“Make things as simple as possible but no simpler.”

Thus, it should be brief but deliver the necessary feedback. Quality critique is hard to receive if the process is overly complicated or long.

I have led or participated in many review processes, from strategic overhauls of big organizations to personal goal coaching. Three key questions guide the process at either end:

• What ought to stop being done?

• What should we do going forward?

• What should we do first?

Following the Rule of 3, I compare it to traffic lights. Red, amber, and green lights:

• Red What ought should we stop?

• Amber What ought to we keep up?

• Green Where should we begin?

This approach is easy to understand and self-explanatory, however below are some examples under each area.

Red What ought should we stop?

As a team or individually, we must stop doing things to improve.

Sometimes they're bad. If we want to lose weight, we should avoid sweets. If a team culture is bad, we may need to stop unpleasant behavior like gossiping instead of having difficult conversations.

Not all things we should stop are wrong. Time matters. Since it is finite, we sometimes have to stop nice things to focus on the most important. Good to Great author Jim Collins famously said:

“Don’t let the good be the enemy of the great.”

Prioritizing requires this idea. Thus, decide what to stop to prioritize.

Amber What ought to we keep up?

Should we continue with the amber light? It helps us decide what to keep doing during review. Many items fall into this category, so focus on those that make the most progress.

Which activities have the most impact? Which behaviors create the best culture? Success-building habits?

Use these questions to find positive momentum. These are the fly-wheel motions, according to Jim Collins. The Compound Effect author Darren Hardy says:

“Consistency is the key to achieving and maintaining momentum.”

What can you do consistently to reach your goal?

Green Where should we begin?

Finally, green lights indicate new beginnings. Red/amber difficulties may be involved. Stopping a red issue may give you more time to do something helpful (in the amber).

This green space inspires creativity. Kolbs learning cycle requires active exploration to progress. Thus, it's crucial to think of new approaches, try them out, and fail if required.

This notion underpins lean start-build, up's measure, learn approach and agile's trying, testing, and reviewing. Try new things until you find what works. Thomas Edison, the lighting legend, exclaimed:

“There is a way to do it better — find it!”

Failure is acceptable, but if you want to fail forward, look back on what you've done.

John Maxwell concurred with Edison:

“Fail early, fail often, but always fail forward”

A good review procedure lets us accomplish that. To avoid failure, we must act, experiment, and reflect.

Use the traffic light system to prioritize queries. Ask:

• Red What needs to stop?

• Amber What should continue to occur?

• Green What might be initiated?

Take a moment to reflect on your day. Check your priorities with these three questions. Even if merely to confirm your direction, it's a terrific exercise!

Startup entrepreneurs assume what risks when pitching?

Last week I signed four NDAs.

Four!

NDA stands for non-disclosure agreement. A legal document given to someone receiving confidential information. By signing, the person pledges not to share the information for a certain time. If they do, they may be in breach of contract and face legal action.

Companies use NDAs to protect trade secrets and confidential internal information from employees and contractors. Appropriate. If you manage a huge, successful firm, you don't want your employees selling their information to your competitors. To be true, business NDAs don't always prevent corporate espionage, but they usually make employees and contractors think twice before sharing.

I understand employee and contractor NDAs, but I wasn't asked to sign one. I counsel entrepreneurs, thus the NDAs I signed last week were from startups that wanted my feedback on their concepts.

I’m not a startup investor. I give startup guidance online. Despite that, four entrepreneurs thought their company ideas were so important they wanted me to sign a generically written legal form they probably acquired from a shady, spam-filled legal templates website before we could chat.

False. One company tried to get me to sign their NDA a few days after our conversation. I gently rejected, but their tenacity encouraged me. I considered sending retroactive NDAs to everyone I've ever talked to about one of my startups in case they establish a successful company based on something I said.

Two of the other three NDAs were from nearly identical companies. Good thing I didn't sign an NDA for the first one, else they may have sued me for talking to the second one as though I control the firms people pitch me.

I wasn't talking to the fourth NDA company. Instead, I received an unsolicited email from someone who wanted comments on their fundraising pitch deck but required me to sign an NDA before sending it.

That's right, before I could read a random Internet stranger's unsolicited pitch deck, I had to sign his NDA, potentially limiting my ability to discuss what was in it.

You should understand. Advisors, mentors, investors, etc. talk to hundreds of businesses each year. They cannot manage all the companies they deal with, thus they cannot risk legal trouble by talking to someone. Well, if I signed NDAs for all the startups I spoke with, half of the 300+ articles I've written on Medium over the past several years could get me sued into the next century because I've undoubtedly addressed topics in my articles that I discussed with them.

The four NDAs I received last week are part of a recent trend of entrepreneurs sending out NDAs before meetings, despite the practical and legal issues. They act like asking someone to sign away their right to talk about all they see and hear in a day is as straightforward as asking for a glass of water.

Given this inflow of NDAs, I wanted to briefly remind entrepreneurs reading this blog about the merits and cons of requesting investors (or others in the startup ecosystem) to sign your NDA.

Benefits of having investors sign your NDA include:

None. Zero. Nothing.

Disadvantages of requesting investor NDAs:

• You'll come off as an amateur who has no idea what it takes to launch a successful firm.

• Investors won't trust you with their money since you appear to be a complete amateur.

• Printing NDAs will be a waste of paper because no genuine entrepreneur will ever sign one.

I apologize for missing any cons. Please leave your remarks.