09 Dec 2024 #miscScorpion's team. Via: themoviedb.org
Imagine The Big Bang Theory marrying MacGyver. That’s Scorpion.
Scorpion, aired between 2014 and 2018, follows a team of four geniuses (and two or more “normal” people depending on the episode) solving impossible cases for the Department of Homeland Security. Walter O’Brien, the guy with one of the highest IQ in history, 197, leads the team—allegedly, based on a real character.
In every episode, they solve all sorts of crazy and impossible cases to save the day, the U.S., or the world:
Saving a small county in the middle of nowhere from a fire approaching a nuclear waste facility.
Dismantling an old nuclear warhead in a secret military base.
Saving a kid trapped in a cave from drowning by raising tides.
And those are only the cases I remember off the top of my head.
After binge-watching all four seasons of Scorpion, these are 8 lessons I learned:
1. Soft skills take you further
A team of four geniuses can get around any situation. But the team is in trouble when Paige isn’t around.
Interestingly, Paige isn’t a genius by conventional standards. She isn’t a mathematician or mechanic. She has excellent social skills and is brilliantly at connecting with people.
In one episode, while Paige wasn’t around, Toby, the doctor, and Happy, the mechanic, made things worse.
They needed to collaborate with the local police to save Walter but their poor social skills and egos got them arrested. They ended up insulting the police chief instead of coordinating efforts. They had to call Paige to fix the misunderstanding.
Hard skills open doors, but soft skills take you further.
2. Find something that gives you meaning
Before joining the team, everyone was a mess:
Toby, the doctor, was a gambling addict.
Paige was an underpaid waitress with no purpose.
Paige’s son, Ralph, was misunderstood as a weirdo. He was another genius, living in his own world.
Happy, the mechanic, had no friends or family.
Sylvester, the Math genius, was bullied or something. I don’t remember exactly.
Walter, the leader, had 0 social skills.
Agent Gallo, the government handler, was a widower and workaholic.
Solving those near-impossible cases gave them meaning. Being part of something and working together was what they needed to bring meaning to their lives.
3. A simple framework tells many stories
Almost all Scorpion episodes are the same.
The team is hanging out in the garage. Then, Agent Gallo or an external client comes with a case. They quickly come up with a plan. But, mid-case something unexpected happens that complicates the case. They have no clue how to solve it, but a non-genius (Paige, Gallo, or somebody else) says something unrelated. An “aha” moment leads to a new solution. And, finally, they’re back at the garage to end the episode.
A simple storytelling framework gets you hooked on every episode from start to end.
4. Find who’s best at every job
No matter who is leading a case, the team shines when everyone is working on what they’re good at:
Sylvester, mental math.
Toby, medicine and psychiatry.
Happy, mechanics.
Paige, connecting with people.
Walter, leading and connecting the dots.
Gallo, speaking the government lingo.
As a leader, your job is to find out who’s best at each task, split the goal into smaller tasks, and assign each task to the right person.
5. But, be willing to take the back seat
From time to time, someone has to stay at the garage and oversee the entire case: monitoring and reporting, passing context, and coordinating efforts with local authorities.
As a leader, you’re not there to shine, but to make others shine and get the work done.
6. Be ready to have uncomfortable situations
As the series progresses, the team has to face their own challenges.
Gallo has childhood trauma. Walter has unresolved issues with his father. Happy can’t express her feelings. Sylvester is afraid of pretty much everything.
They all overcame their issues when they opened up and talked to someone they trust.
7. Learn to let go of what you can’t control
Spoiler alert…
Happy and Toby missed their wedding ceremony while solving a case. They lost the flight back home because the case took longer. They couldn’t control that and couldn’t do anything about it.
But they controlled what they did after that. Again, Paige saved the day by improvising a wedding ceremony for them. She’s the real genius in the team.
Life keeps changing its rules. You can’t control it. Learn to adapt to the new rules and keep playing.
8. Your favorite show could end anytime
The show was canceled and the last episode ended with a cliffhanger. Damn! Where’s season 5? Arrggg!
I guess the lesson here is to always end our stories or writings with a cliffhanger.
I didn’t believe a TV show could teach that much about leadership, storytelling, and psychology…Well, I don’t feel that guilty about watching four seasons with 93 episodes. At least, I took some lessons away and wrote about it.
More than 25% of new Google code is generated by AI.
That’s what Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, announced in the last earnings call—Q3 2024.
That’s scary. Not because AI is taking our jobs, but because they’re relying on who knows what kind of code. And if human-generated code has created all sorts of problems, what about the AI-generated code?
That announcement generated lots of discussions.
On Hacker News, a Google employee, probably behind a throwaway account, said that AI is autocompleting the lines he writes, but it doesn’t do any actual engineering or generate code from natural language. I was wrong about my initial thought.
On LinkedIn, there was a post dismantling that announcement and pointing to that Hacker News comment. Of course, someone didn’t believe what the Google employee wrote in that comment. “Would you trust a random employee?”
If you really want to know how a company is run, do you ask the CEO or someone with boots on the ground?
The best one to answer how a company runs is the receptionist, janitor, or an entry-level employee, not the CEO.
The CEO of a million-dollar company, to raise stock prices and invite investors to throw money at them, will say “AI,” “disruption,” “climate change,” “diversity,” or any trending SEO keyword.
I don’t believe what Google’s CEO said. I believe that random Hacker News comment.
Starting on November 1st, I began writing daily here on my blog. I chose to go with a good headline and one main idea. That’s good enough to mark the calendar and call it a day. No need for an introduction, 10 main points, and a conclusion.
I start my writing sessions after sitting in silence for 10 minutes with my eyes closed. Like magic, before finishing those 10 minutes, something comes to mind.
That was not the case today.
I looked at Hacker News, searching for something to react to but found nothing interesting. Reddit? Nothing. Old posts to expand on? Nothing. List of drafts? Extra nothing.
Until I had to step outside for a while.
There’s something magical and mysterious about taking a walk… Well, there’s nothing magical about that. More oxygen gets to the brain, and that activates certain brain regions.
On my way back home, I had something to write. I rushed to my laptop before I forgot it.
If you think you’re facing writer’s block, read something to prime your brain and step away from your computer for a walk. Before you get back, you’ll have something to write. It works every time.
That’s better than simply claiming on your CV that you did something.
Write about what you’re doing and what you’re learning at work. For example, write about:
Challenges you’re facing while solving a problem.
Lessons you’re learning from every project.
Checklist you use to review pull requests.
Most common code review comments you give.
Difficult situations you have overcome.
I wrote my first post to document an alternative for a coding task I had. For my 2022 Advent of Posts, I took a lot of inspiration from what I was doing at work at that time.
There are always alternatives to avoid disclosing real code. 99% of the time, we’re not doing top-secret rocket science. But companies don’t want the world to know how they’re doing CRUD applications.
You can share isolated coding blocks and use different business domains to represent examples and coding issues. Using movies, posts, and reservations is a good alternative.
Instead of saying “trust me, I know how to do that,” you could say “I’ve done it and here’s where I wrote about it.”
That was the last message you got from your boss’ boss.
Earlier that day, you logged in to work as usual. And you had a couple of “Are you still around?” messages. You knew it was happening. Again.
Then came a quick goodbye message from another colleague. He shared his email and contact details.
You went through the daily meeting knowing something was in the air. Some team members didn’t show up. Everybody pretended nothing was happening. But everyone knew it. It was the most awkward and useless daily meeting of all.
This “Do you have a minute?” conversation was different. You felt the disturbance in the Force right from the start. Your boss’ boss looked downwards, his voice is trembling. A small speech of how bad the economy was going. Your only thought was, “It’s my turn?”
Then the bomb: “We have to let you go this time.”
Definitely, it was your turn.
You left that last meeting relieved and worried at the same time. “What am I going to do now?”
And just like that, you got disconnected from the VPN and the company chat.
It was nice while it lasted.
That’s how being laid off feels. I know. I’ve been there. More than once.
Layoffs are always around the corner. High interest rates. A recession. AI…Today it’s a large U.S. company. Tomorrow who knows?
We’re better off rolling our own insurance policy:
Building a brand
Starting a side hustle
Creating an emergency fund
Growing a professional network
Having multiple sources of income
Learning different skills to monetize
Winter is always coming. Make yourself layoff-proof.
