My Core Values

May 5, 2022

"I say unto you: one must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star."

Nietzsche in Thus Spoke Zarathustra

I have three values for work, informed by my past experiences, that I found applicable to my life more broadly.

We Need A Diverse Group of People To Get Quality Outcomes

Each one of us holds identities around different dimensions of our lives (e.x. race, culture, gender, nationality). When we have a group of people holding combinations of such identites working on the same mission in a respectful environment, we tend to find ways of reaching our end goal to be superior to groups holding a single combination of such identities. I believe the former group works better because they have more knowledge relevant to the problem at hand compared to the latter group. Diverse groups lead to diverse and beneficial ideas.

There are two ways diversity leads to better products. The first is that diversity helps in identifying potential applications. A problem linked to your unique identity may not be as obvious to other people. But this knowledge allows you to raise this problem to your organization and poentially be an opportunity to be solved. The second is that diversity helps in identifying potential problems of current approaches. If someone is familiar with the situation on which a product will be applied, bonus points if they will be directly impacted by it, then they can identify pitfalls to be avoided and issues the product will face.

Technical Solutions Are Necessary But Insufficient

Technology transforms the economic, social, and cultural way of life for many people. For any project I do, I believe I am, and can only be, one part of the solution. I need to cooperate with people from different backgrounds and expertise. Therefore, since I develop technology, my work is inherently interdisciplinary (requiring different fields to work with each other) and transdisciplinary (affecting different fields and beyond what is originally intended).

From pitching ideas, developing products, and communicating ideas to different audiences, I had, and will have, to take many different roles and wear many different hats. I am, and need to remain, skilled in my technical domain while being curious and knowledgeable about non-technical domains in order to know what and how my contribution fits to a bigger process.

There Is Usually An Alternative Way Possible

Every solution has its cons. Applying technology in the real world is not objective and straightforward as solving a formalized mathematical problem. We need to continually reevaluate our efforts if they are actually reaching our goals. On the other hand, solutions are invented with particular goals in mind, and these goals can become obsolete, even problematic. For example, making a model copy your company’s hiring patterns seems to be a neutral goal until you discover that it is biased against women, like Amazon’s recruiment tool. Both solutions and goals can be changed, and one needs to think critically to know when it must be done.

Contact Me

If you believe we can benefit from an opportunity given these values, please reach out to me at [first_name]@aya.yale.edu