Weekly Update: 02/19/2023

In software engineering, there is a term, “the hard fork”. As in the fork in the road.

Most of you have used Microsoft Word. Like pretty much every Microsoft product, when Word for Windows first came out in ¹1347 it was terrible. Their competitors ²laughed. But Microsoft is, if nothing else, relentless. They keep diligently upgrading products they really believe in. So, after about Version 3 Word became good, and then it became great, and then a Word document became what everyone used to write letters.

However, the version of Microsoft Word I use is still from 2003. Because at a certain point, they kept adding features (and charging upgrade fees) based on the desires of certain niche (but loud) customers. And most of those features were simply not useful for the majority of users. Fewer people upgraded. And cumulatively, all the features began to make the products harder. Harder to buy. Harder to install. Harder to use. Harder to maintain. Some individual features may have made sense for a small number of users, but overall, the product was getting worse.

There is a certain point in your life where you’re no longer cool. You go from rebel to wearing ‘Dad Jeans’. As a culture Microsoft had became so locked into “add features, charge for upgrades, rinse, repeat” that they refused to admit how out of touch they had become–including the fact that the world had moved to the Internet. You’d see some of their attempts to try to look ‘hip’ and you wouldn’t know whether they were kidding.

So, by a certain point their products were far past their prime, and they had all kinds of incentives to continue catering to an ever-shrinking audience, and not adapt.

The Hard Fork

Eventually, Microsoft did put out a version of Microsoft Office for ‘the cloud’. And just like Word V1… it absolutely suuuuuucked. Big time. Industry watchers assumed this was just one more of those old guy missteps.

But within Microsoft there was a war; not just among Dad Jeans leadership, but especially their best customers. In public, every stakeholder would agree: something must be done! And then do everything in private to keep slapping a new coat of paint on the same old stuff and call it Word V71!

Microsoft had met the enemy. But as I said, when Microsoft stops kidding around, they stop kidding around.

Des Moines Marina V51!

Here’s a piccie of the new lighthouse thingee at the north parking lot of the Marina. Me being me, I might argue that the ‘wind sock’ is pointing in the wrong direction 😀 . But… it’s consistent with the design theme of the pier. So, it’s fine. 🙂

As an individual snapshot, the new restroom also looks very nice. But, it’s $1.2 million, which is not fine. It has nothing to do with the other design elements, it’s arguably not in the best location, and in fact that location seems to be contra-indicated by at least one of the recent Skylab drawings.

Next time yer at the Marina,  watch how drivers use the north parking lot. There are often long stretches when nobody uses those arrows properly. It’s not just that the parking gates were never exactly 100%, it’s that the traffic flows are goofy. Everyone recognised these problems from the moment the system was installed. But (sorry condo people) residents were so energised to do something which made them feel safer, once they were in place, the Council simply lacked the courage to say, “this is an awful lot of money to spend on a system that isn’t working all that great.” So, we punted. We’ll just re-jigger it again in the next ‘plan’.

The Marina is our ³Word V51. Feature after feature after feature after feature. Some good, some meh, some poor. But, a very long time ago it stopped being anything resembling a plan that makes sense, either in terms of design, finances, functionality, or fiscal fairness to the entire city. Long ago, we learned that it’s simply easier to keep adding over-priced, under-researched features, one at a time. And once anything is installed? Good luck questioning any of it. Because everyone has their pet ‘thing’.

Even the recent ‘no hotel’ kerfuffle? Love the community engagement. Well done! However, the City spent a ton of money on a totally bogus RFQ and then working on a development agreement that was never gonna fly; not to mention all the energy residents put into fighting back on yet another goofy feature. It wasn’t just a failure to make forward progress, it was actually a step backwards. The time to protest was before the November, 18 2021 RFQ.

But… I can hear how ‘negative’ that may sound to some of you. Sorry, but if avoiding something as obviously wrong as that hotel is your dream of democracy in action? Dude, you need a bigger dream. 😀

There’s public and then there’s public…

As a public corporation, Microsoft is required to report on their place in the wider world. They must tell their shareholders how they are doing, both in comparison with themselves, but also relative to the Googles and the Oracles and the Amazons. It took me about five seconds to get an overview of Microsoft’s long term performance, both internally and externally.

The City of Des Moines is also a public corporation. But unlike Microsoft, a municipal corporation has absolutely no similar requirements for all you swell voters. So long as we balance the books according to State law, we can basically tell any story we want.

We can tell you all about our new Des Moines V74! (now with ten exciting new features.) Many are real and very nice and have my full support. Some are meh. Some are not great. Some are not even real. But regardless, we are under no obligation to tell you how our features compare to any of our peer cities, or even (objectively) how well we’re doing compared to ourselves ten years ago.

Practical example…

If the City of Des Moines functioned like a Microsoft, the board and CEO could tell start pre-selling a fantastic idea for a ferry in our own newsletter. But…

1. We would be required to put a disclaimer at the bottom telling potential investors that our newsletter is not independent analysis.
2. We would have to not only disclose our $35,000 private ferry study, but also explain why we felt that study was necessary after the multiple public studies, and why we should believe that private one over all the rest which are not supportive.
3. We would have to make it clear that our $5,000/month Ferry Consultant is also the publisher of that City Currents newsletter, and our representative on the community airport committee, and a representative of our Lodging Tax Advisory Committee, and has long standing ties with the Port of Seattle, and does not live in Des Moines.
4. We would have to provide some legitimate type of risk analysis and return on investment forecast–what our expected outlays would be and what we hoped to obtain in return over the course of 5-10 years. ie. a business plan.
5. And if, as happened at our last City Council Meeting, the subject of ongoing funding were raised, the CEO would not only have to disclose that the goal was “to get someone else to pay those costs”, he/she would also have to explain how that was going to happen–before any of the votes which have now added up to almost $1.6MM.

That’s the important part: even if the board of Microsoft was as gaga about ‘a ferry’ as our Council majority seems to be, the City would still be required to disclose all that stuff to the public; not just the information the CEO or board majority wanted to provide.

You just cuss and cuss and cuss…

Almost every meeting I have with residents includes profanity. From them. 😀 Within fifteen minutes or so, you will start cussing over some frustration with the City. Guess what? I’ve been attending City Council meetings for fifteen years, cuz. I get it. 🙂

But for some reason, since my (cough) ‘censure’, people don’t see the irony. 😀 Apparently some of you consider that unpleasantness to be either “politics” or me engaging in “self-pity.”

Or maybe I’m just not explaining it very well. Because my censure was exactly the same problem as the above.

In a properly functioning corporation, you simply cannot mistreat any board member, any more than you could make a ferry proposal without providing a business plan. You’d get sued. You’d get investigated. ⁴The whole point of having a strong, independent board is to provide oversight.

Long ago, the Federal government developed corporate systems of governance, including:

• Standards of financial disclosure.
• Board member independence.

The United States figured out a long time ago that those features are key to making companies good. Transparency is a main reason we became the financial center of the world. People may not always trust our politics, but they trust our markets. If the majority can screw with any board member, there can be no transparency.

But in our local government, there is no Securities Exchange Commission. Councilmembers only have the rights the majority says they do at any given time. There is no independent journalism. Or even a share price. There’s nothing that requires the City Council to have anything approaching the level of accountability of any for realz corporate board.

But there’s also nothing to prevent it. You just have to decide that both these things matter. They’re not a ‘feature’ and that is why they are so hard to get to–especially in a city like Des Moines where everyone is constantly focused on the crisis du jour.

The Results are in…

Did you bother to click on that link? Microsoft is absolutely crushing it—ten times more valuable than in 2012. One could say that it takes courage to pivot in a new direction when your market cap is already$250BB. Or that it takes even more courage to let go of the baggage to get there.

But ya know what? Even with all those rules about ‘transparency’ and all the experts on their board screaming for reform, still they almost ran out of time.

And by ‘ran out of time’ of course I don’t mean ‘go out of business’. Microsoft would have kept chugging along for a good while–in fact, that would have suited some of their oldest customers just fine.

But the millions of small investors (like moi) who trusted them to provide the best value for money would have had a very different reaction.

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¹It was more like 1995, IIRC.

²Note that none of them are in business anymore. 😀

³We were incorporated in 1959. See what I did there? It’s a disease.

⁴On more than one occasion our City Manager has done presentations, pointing out that the RCW describing the role of a Councilmember does not contain the word ‘oversight’. To which I reply, “Duuuuuuuuuh!” 😀 OK, that was not helpful. How’ this, instead, “…and neither does the United States Constitution contain the word ‘privacy’.” There are some functions of government that are just so basic, as to be axiomatic. The RCW says that the Council meets to review and approve things like budgets and ordinances. If that does not describe ‘oversight’, why bother showing up to vote?