Black BMW and a heart blacker than his car
Self Care
Photo by Richard T
Introduction
We meet a new anti-design pattern: Self Care.
Alice makes a frightening discovery about her ex.
Giganet has a SaaS application for collecting work hours from gig workers using watches. Their big win with LA County is headed to crash on the rocks after they discover a privacy issue. Iris is not sleeping.
He has a black BMW, but his heart is even blacker
Once upon a time, Jerzy Stein was married.
20 years ago, his wife had a daughter and died in childbirth.
The girl was named Alice.
Her grandmother on her mother’s side, lived in Mendocino and grew cannabis.
The old woman didn’t like her son-in-law.
She said, “Jerzy is a trader, he has a black BMW and big house, but his heart is even blacker than his car”.
The old woman took Alice to Mendocino. She lived 20 years with the girl and died.
Then Alice came back to her father.
On a cool Wednesday in December, there was a knock on the door.
Jerzy opened the door and saw a short California blonde, wearing a long yellow dress, Doc Martens and a huge backpack.
“I’m Alice”.
Jerzy said, “Come in, it seems we have a lot of catching up. What happened to your grandmother?”
Alice, “She died. I came here. I don’t have a home anymore, but at least I have a house. I’d like to stay with you until I figure things out”.
Jerzy, “You are home. I’ll set you up and we’ll talk”.
Alice grew up on a surfboard on Big River Beach off Mendocino Village. She was a good student, Her grandmother pushed her to work hard at school. Alice was a straight-A student and helped out on the cannabis farm in the afternoons. After high school, she worked on her surfing in the mornings and spent the rest of the day cultivating cannabis.
20 years passed, her grandmother died and Alice went back to a person she heard of but never met. Her father, the trader with a house in Bel-Air.
Jerzy, “What are your plans?”
Alice, “I want to study law at USC. The plan is for me to live here and for you to pay for my tuition”.
Jerzy, “You know that you need a BA and a high score on the LSAT”.
Alice, “I can handle that”.
The next day they drove over to USC and visited admissions. Jerzy knew a guy who knew a guy and he didn’t have to wait like a migrant farm worker in a state office to get an interview for Alice.
Alice aced the interview. 2 years later, she got her BA in philosophy and economics with a 4.0 GPA and a 177 on her LSAT. 3 years later she graduated summa cum laude from the USC Gould School of Law.
She met Dave at USC. Dave was tall, easygoing and majored in finance. They got married after graduation and by the time she finished her LL.M in international law, they had 3 children.
Dave became a derivatives trader and they bought a nice house in Santa Monica. They were on the fast track to successful careers and family, except for one thing.
Money corrupts.
Dave had a rich client. He hit on her and didn’t stop there. 6 months later, Alice divorced him, took the house and a settlement.
At age 35, Alice found herself with a nice house in Santa Monica, 3 small children, a nanny and 80 billable hours/week at Werkman, Jackson and Quinn.
Far from Big River Beach and surfing every morning.
Surrounded by farmland and protected by her old babushka.
After a year of nanny, kids and billable hours, Alice asked Jerzy what to do. She was at breaking point.
Jerzy said, “I know a guy who knows a guy in the FBI anti-money-laundering operation in LA. It’s a government job. It should be interesting for you with normal office hours. Tell Mark Werksman that you’re quitting. I know that lawyers on the hamster wheel of billable hours is an amusing sight for Mark but you have to take care of yourself and the kids”.
“God knows your grandmother hated me, but you’re all I have left of your mother now and I don’t want you to make the same mistakes I made”.
And so it was. Normal office hours and flex time to work from home and be with her children.
Thursday morning, Alice was outside the Federal Courthouse.
Alice’s right hand held a heavy briefcase with the paperwork for the case. There were 3 FBI agents with her. Inside, 2 Colombian nationals would soon be charged with money-laundering. After they were picked up by LAPD for possession of cocaine, LAPD queried NCIC and the names of the 2 Colombians popped up.
Sam, one of the FBI agents, said, “Lemme take that briefcase. We have another 20-30 minutes before we’re up to bat. Do you know Agent Timothy Kelley? “ Timothy not Tim. Alice wonders if he has a reason for being formal.
He nodded towards a tall, heavyset Irishman. “Kelley wants a minute of your time”.
Alice, “I know Kelley, he’s got a reputation as a ladies man”.
Sam, “You can handle him”.
Alice gives Sam the briefcase and walks over to Kelley. “Tim - how can I help you?”
Tim smiled and said, “I can think of 2 ways I can help you”.
Alice flashes him a smile back, “Keep on trying, I’m out of your league little man”.
Tim shows her a picture of a tall, sandy-haired man. “Do you know this man”?
It’s blurred, but Alice recognizes her ex. She said to Kelley, “You have him under surveillance?”
“Since last Tuesday”.
Alice, “Then you know it’s my ex - so what’s this do-I-know-him shit?”
“What I mean to ask, what do you know?”
“He picked up my kids last Friday. They spent Friday, Saturday, Sunday with him and brought them back to my place Sunday afternoon”.
“What’s he think about you being with the FBI?”
“Look”, Alice said, “Why don’t you stop dicking around and tell me what’s going on?”
“See Alice, the situation is so sensitive”, Kelley said with a blank expression. “A derivatives trader is a suspect for wire fraud and money laundering. Married to an FBI lawyer”.
Beverly Hills, CA
Iris is not sleeping well after Pesya, their security hacker, found major security vulnerabilities in the Giganet contracts module.
Pesya, the jolly hacker matriarch, slightly overweight, always laughing,still thinking about going to the gym, but more interested in discovering exploits in the Giganet system with $25M in exposure to fines for CCPA privacy violations.
She thinks back to their conversation last week:
Pesya, “Iris, You cannot release the system like this.
In addition to the DDOS vulnerabilities, there are XSS vulnerabilities. Attackers may be able to extract contract information about the gig workers and conduct a side-channel attack to identify people. You will be in violation of CCPA.
CCPA penalties have an upper cap of $7,500 per intentional violation or $2,500 per non-intentional violation. It may seem like a small penalty, but it can eventually grow massive. The penalties can quickly add up because one consumer equals one violation.
Pesya, “How many users do you have now?” Iris replies, “About 10,000 users”.
Pesya, “You have $25M in exposure”. She deliberately uses the word exposure with Iris so that Iris will understand financial impact.
“We’ll need another 4 weeks for security testing and validation after Lena and Justin finish. Yasmin’s back end module is not affected and the rest of the front-end is fine. You need to allow 12-13 weeks to fix this problem”.
Iris feels like she wants to throw up.
Iris’s husband, Eric is a former Navy Seal, doing security consulting for Hollywood celebrities. Eric had been in Mosul with his team and came back to tell the story.
Eric, “Iris, you’re not sleeping. What’s going on?”
Iris tells him the tale of the security vulnerabilities and the financial exposure and how they could lose the contract and the company.
Eric said, “I get it. What I don’t get is why Barry and Bob didn’t take care of you. OK, you designed the contracts module yourself, and you hired this low-cost contractor yourself, you got yourself into this mess, and you own it, but Barry and Bob need to look after you.
In the teams, every operator checks the pouches of his teammate before going out. Izzie and I checked each other's pouches for 5 years.”
Izzie is Eric’s partner in the security business. After 5 years in SEAL teams, they are closer than brothers.
“Barry and Bob need to look after you”. Go back and talk to them.
The Self Care Anti-Design Pattern
Problem
You take care of others and expect others to take care of you.
Solution
Take care of yourself, your family, your team.
This is like flying with children. When there is a sudden loss of cabin pressure, parents put on their oxygen masks before their children.
You need to take care of your personal mental and physical well-being first.When you are mentally and physically strong, you can take good care of your family.When you and your family are strong, you can take care of your team.
Lead your team to take care of themselves and each other.
Check each other's pouches before going out to combat.
Always picking up other people’s shit
The next day, Bob is back in the Venice gym doing circuit training.
It’s Tuesdays with Alice.
What Alice did, she walked into the gym, put her bag into a locker and started on the treadmill.
Bob walked over to join her after parking his bike by the ping-pong table.
They chat as Alice treads.
Bob smiled, “Come va Alice?”
Alice is not smiling, “I’m always picking up other people's shit. With my ex, with my kids. I’m always driving them around and taking care of them. Doctor, school, soccer, music lessons. Now I have a mouse problem in my house that I have to take care of”.
Bob, “Let me help you with your mouse problem at least”.
Alice, “No, I'll handle it. I insist; it's not a big deal. You know I grew up on a farm”.
On a park bench in Venice CA
Mark was the one who began.
Mark, “Bob, tell me what’s happening at Giganet, and what’s new with Alice?”.
Mark remained silent as they sat on the park bench.
In front of them there was the green calm of the park.
A man hungry for an answer, must stock up on patience.
A man in possession of analytical skills needs to listen.
That is why Mark remained silent.
Mark listened carefully to Bob's story for about 15 minutes.
Mark, “Are you going to help Alice with her mouse problem?” Bob, “No. She specifically said no. Like how she grew up on a farm and she knows all about how to handle this kind of stuff”.
Mark, “Bob, You were not listening. She specifically asked you to take care of it.
This is the Self-Care Anti-Pattern.
Buy a box of that sticky paper with the peanut butter and put it in your backpack. Next Tuesday, help her with the mouse problem. Leave her ex out of it, just do what you can to lighten her load.
And at Giganet - you, Barry and Pesya need to take care of Iris”.