Welcome to the second session of module 2, module 2 talks about specifically theory of demand. And in the previous class, we discussed about the nature and behavior of mainly two market forces like we introduced the concept of demand. And in today's class, we are going to take some of the behavior of the demand typically, how the law of demand works, how the law of demand, what is the law of demand, in which case it is applicable, and also what are the forces that influences this demand. So, if you look at, if you go quickly, whatever we have done in the last session, so a quick recap of that is that, we define the demand, how one of the important market forces is demand, and what is the role of demand in the market. Then we discussed the law of demand and different scenario, different situation, where the law of demand does not applicable, and there are and again we discussed the different factors that influence the demand. And market demand also always the summation of the individual demand, that is the last topic what we discussed in the last session. Today's class, we will see that, how there is a change in the demand. Till now, we have understood that demand is basically there is a inverse relationship between the price and quantity demanded, and it get influenced by few other factors like price of related goods income, the consumer, expected future price of the product, number of consumer in the market, and also the taste and preference by the consumer. Now, we will see why there will be change in the demand, whether this is due to change in the price associated with the product, or due to change in the other factors those influence the demand. So, change in the demand is because of two reason, one when there is a change in the quantity demanded, and it occurs when there is a change in the price, and this change is generally reflected through a movement along the demand curve. And second one when there is a change in the demand, it occurs when one of the other variables like determinants of demand, just now we are discussing the price of the related goods or the consumers income or expected future price of the product, or any other factor the non-price determinants, any other factor which is not price, if there is a change in those variables that leads to change in the demand. So, if you look at between the these two, the first one is change in the quantity demanded because this is due to change in the price, and second one is the change in the demand because of all other factors changing. So, the basic difference between these two if you look at one we can represent along the demand curve, and in the second case we cannot reflect the changes due to other factor along the demand curve, either the demand curve has to shift to the right or shift to the left. So, if the why there is a change in the demand curve, either there is a change in the price that leads to change in the quantity demanded, or there is change in the price of related goods, change in the consumer income, change in the taste and preference of the consumer expected future price of product is going to change, or there is a change in the number of buyers in the market. So, if you look at in case of change in the price, represent a movement along the demand curve. So, this is between from one point to another point, and in case of income, in case of price of related goods, in case of taste, in case of expectation, in case of number of buyers, generally the demand curve shift to the right, if it is a case of increase, and if it shift to the left, if it is a case of decrease. So, we will take a quick example like in the last class also if you look at we have drawn a demand curve considering p in the y axis and q in the x axis, q is quantity and p is price. So, if you take different point here, like suppose this you take p 1, this is p 2, this is p 3, this is p 4 and this is q 1, q 2, q 3 and q 4. So, you get different combination and that combination gives us the demand curve. So, if you take all this point then this is the demand curve. So, we get one combination p 1, q 1, we get second combination p 2, q 2, we get third combination p 3, q 3 and we get four combination p 4 and q 4. So, if it is a demand curve, now what happens if there is a change in the price, if the price moves from p 1 to p 2, if you look at there is a change in the quantity demanded from q 1 to q 2. So, movement from point a to b it is because of change in the price. So, in this case also there is a change in the quantity demanded, but the change in the quantity demanded is not moving or not shifting the demand curve, it basically just moving one point to the another point. Suppose there is a at the same price the consumer income is increasing, even if the price is p 1, still the consumer will demand more because the consumer has more purchasing power to buy the same product, same buy the more quantity at the same price. So, given p 1 fix at this moment may be the consumer will buy q 2 because there is a increase in the income of the consumer. So, when there is a change in the income and correspondingly if there is a change in the demand that means it is the change in the demand is not because of price, the change in the demand is because of any other factor. So, in this case we get a point this. So, the even if the price is p 1 the quantity demanded is q 2. Similarly, even if this price is p 2 the quantity demanded is q 3. So, in this case if you look at you get a new demand curve that is d 1 and the shift in the demand curve is because of change in the income. So, giving the same level of price if there is a change in the income and change in the income is increase in the income that leads to increase in the quantity demanded because income and quantity demanded they are positively related. The demand curve shift from d 2 to d 1 and in this case there is a shift in the demand there is no movement along in the demand curve. Similarly, if you look at for the other variables also whenever there is a change in the price of related goods or whenever there is a change in the taste and preference of the consumer or any other factor which is non-price the shift in the demand curve is goes to right if it is a case of increase in the quantity demanded and it comes to left if there is a decrease in the demand curve. So, if you will say generally if this is a demand curve here we take quantity here we take price if there is a increase in the quantity demanded the demand always shift to the right. If there is a decrease in the quantity demanded the demand always shift to the left. So, this is the case of increase demand curve shift to the right and this is the case of decrease when the demand curve shift to the left. So, now we will take a specific example that in which case there is a change in the demand or in which case there is a change due to change in price and in which case there is that change in the demand is because of non-price determinant. So, if you have seen the graph initially the demand curve is d 0 whenever there is a decrease in the demand it shift to the left and it is become d 2 the demand curve which d 2 and whenever there is a increase in the demand the demand curve shift to the right and that is d 1. So, in case of increase in the demand curve it shift to the right and in case of decrease in the demand curve it shift to the left. Now, suppose we take a case of specific case if there is a policy initiative how this change in the demand a policy to discourage smoking shift the demand curve to the left. So, this is the case of the product is cigarette here the price of cigarette pack is in the represented on the y axis and number of cigarette smoke per day is represented on the x axis. The demand curve is d 1 when the price is 2 the quantity demanded is 20. Now, if you remember there is a ban on the public smoking before one year the policy or the rule by the government is that there is a ban in the public smoking. There is no change in the price if the same price the quantity demanded has decreased from 20 to 10 now. Now, what is the reason here what the reason here is that there is a change in the demand not due to change in the price rather due to change in the non-price determinants. So, in this case because of government policy there is a ban on the public smoking which discourage the smoking and reduce the demand price even fixed at 2. Now, the quantity demanded moves from 20 units to 10 units and the demand curve shift to the left and the new demand curve is d 2. So, the price is fixed the change in the demand is because of non-price determinant the demand curve moves from d 1 to d 2. So, a policy to discourage smoking shift the demand curve to the left price remain fixed. Now, suppose we take a different case that there is a imposition of the tax by the government. Now, what is the tax the tax that raises the price of cigarettes resolved in a movement along the demand curve. Whenever there is a imposition of tax the producer try to shift that to the consumer and how they shift this to the consumer through the increase in the price. So, in this typical graph if you look at the price is again represented on the y axis and the quantity the number of cigarettes smoke per day that is represented on the x axis. The demand curve is d 1 when the price is 2 the quantity demanded is 20 corresponding to point a and when there is a tax imposition of tax that leads to increase in the price from 2 rupees to 4 rupees following the law of demand there is a decrease in the quantity demanded from 20 unit to 12 unit and in this case if you look at the change in the quantity demanded is solely due to change in the price because price increases from 2 to 4 that is the only reason that quantity demanded is shifting from 20 unit to 12 unit. So, in this case the change in the demand is represented through only in the movement and the demand curve from one point to another point basically representing two combination two price and quantity combination one combination when price is 2 rupees quantity demanded is 20 unit and in the second combination when price is 4 rupees the quantity demanded is 12 unit. So, 2 points to remember here point 1 when the change in the demand is due to change in the price the shift is between one point to another point in the demand curve. So, the change is represent through the movement along the demand curve from one point to another point and second point is when the change in the demand is due to change in the non-priced determinants of demand like any other factor a part of price the movement or the change in the demand is represented through the shift in the demand curve. If there is a increase in the demand curve that leads increase in the demand that leads to the shift in the demand curve to the right and if there is a decrease in the demand that shift to the demand curve to the left. Now, we will come to the second market force that is supply forces. So, if you remember in the beginning of the session that that market forces is always governed by the demand and supply forces and they generally set the rule for the market mechanism or the market mechanism works on the basis of supply and demand principle. We will discuss the second forces of market that is supply and to define supply we can say that this refers to various quantities of the good which the seller is willing and able to sell at different prices in a given market at a particular point of time. So, time being fixed prices are different and at different prices what is the exact quantity the the producer is willing and able to sell that is supply. So, if you look at again it goes to the basic principle of demand that it is not only the supply is dependent only also the producers willing to sell and able to sell. So, when it comes to willing to sell the whatever the price that is give some profit to the producer and when it comes ability to sell whether the producer has the ability to sell or ability to produce the product or not. If the producer has the ability to produce the product generally they sell it in the market if they are getting a good price that leads to the willingness to sell in the market. So, supply it refers to various quantity of goods and services which a seller is willing and able to sell at the different prices in different market or may be in a given market at a particular point of time. Now, what is law of supply? As you remember that price and quantity demanded is always inversely related other things remaining constant. So, following the Sattery Paribas principle Sattery Paribas means everything is everything every other things is equal the law of supply state that the quantity supply of a good increases when the price of good increases. So, in this case if you look at the economic law for supply relationship between the supply and price is there is a positive relationship between the price and the quantity supply. More is the price more is the quantity supply. But in case of demand if you remember there is a inverse relationship between the price and quantity demanded more is the price less is the quantity demanded and less is the price more is the quantity demanded. In case of supply, more is the price, more is the quantity supply, less is the price, less is the quantity supply. And the logic is also quite clear that if the price is more, the seller will sell more in the market because they will get more profit. If price is low, they will prefer to sell low because they are not getting more profit if price is low. So, if you take a typical example, when the price of good decreases from 25 rupees to 10 rupees, the quantity supply decreases from 31 rupees to 16 rupees. So, when price was 25, the quantity supply is 31 and when price is 10, the quantity supply is 16, which goes according to the basic principle of law of supply that when price is more, quantity supply is more and when the price is less, quantity supply is less. That gives us in term of the number also, price is 25, quantity supply is 31, price is 10 and quantity supply is 16. Now, we will discuss what are the factor that influence the supply. The first factor which influence the quantity supply is price of the goods and services. So, just in the previous slide, we are talking about that how the price and quantity supply they are related to each other. If price is more, quantity supply is more, price is less, quantity supply is less. So, they are positively related, price and quantity murdered, they are positively related. So, the first factor influence the supply is price because the seller or the producer they always look for profit when they are producing in the market and selling in the market. So, if price is more, they are going to sell more. So, the first factor which influence the price, influence the quantity supply is the price of goods and services. The second factor which influence the supply is input prices. Like how input prices is influencing the supply, input price is 1, this is the input for the output. So, whether the input is land, whether the input is labor, whether the input is capital, whether the input is technology, whether the input is entrepreneurship, the more is the price of those inputs, it is more costly for the producer to produce. And if price remain fixed, input price is more, the difference between the cost of production and market price comes down and that leads to less profit to the producer. So, in this context if the input price is increasing, the supply is less because if you are keeping all other thing constant in the producer is not able to increase the price, with the increase in the input prices, they will prefer to supply less because they are not getting a good amount of profit. If input price is on a higher side and the market price is remain constant. So, input price is increasing, generally the quantity supply decreases and if input prices is decreasing, the quantity supply is more because the gap between the input price and the market price is more and they get more profit. So, input price and quantity supply, they are inversely related. Then the third factor is price of goods related in the production. Now, what is the price of goods that is substitute and the complementary good? If substitute good is supplied more, then this typical good has to supply less. So, there is inverse relationship between the substitute good and this good, price of substitute good and this and there is a positive relationship between the price of complementary goods and the price of between the quantity supply of this typical good. Similarly, technological advances, if the good technological advances, if technology is good, there is a progress that leads to more supply in the market. Expected future price of the product, it works if there is a increase in the expected future price of the product is going to increase, the supply less and if the expected future price is going to decrease, the supply more. So, again the relationship between the quantity supply and the expected future price of the product is inverse and number of firms producing the product, more the number of producer in the market, more the number of seller in the market, the quantity supply is more. Then we will come to a supply function and supply function at this point, if you are keeping all other variables which influence the quantity supply remain fixed, only if it is a relationship between the price and quantity supply, which comes directly between the law of supply, all other things remaining constant, law of supply says that there is a positive relationship between the price and quantity supply. Following that, if you formulate a supply function which shows a relationship between the price and quantity supply, quantity supply is a function of P. So, if you are taking a supply function where Q s is equal to 10 P x, if value of P x takes 2, then Q s is 20, if the value of P x is equal to 5, Q s take 50. So, if you look at in the supply function also the price, quantity supply is dependent on the price and it is positive, because there is a positive sign, there is no negative sign over here. So, they are positively related and Q s is equal to 10 P x means, always whatever the price of quantity supply is multiplied by that number. Now, if you consider the generalized supply function, which includes all the variables which influence the supply. So, what are the variable that influence the supply? The first one is price of the product that is represented through K p, h is the value of intercept, p is the price of product, p i is the input price, p r is the price of related goods in the production, whether it is a substitute good or whether the complementary goods, t is the technological advances, p i is the expected future price of the product and f is the number of producer in the market. So, there is one variable attached with each variable in terms of parameter.  So, all these variables like K, l, m, n, r and s, they are the slope parameters and what is the role of slope parameters in case of a generalized supply function? It measures the effect on quantity supply of changing one of the variable while holding the other constant. So, suppose what is the role of K or how K is being used? K will measure the effect of quantity supply of changing when there is a change in the price. Similarly, what is the role of l? l will measure the effect on quantity supply when there is a change in the input price, m will measure the effect on quantity supply when there is a change in the price of related goods. Similarly, n will measure the change in the quantity supply when there is a change in the technological advances, r will measure the effect on quantity supply when there is a change in the expected future price of the product and s will measure the effect on quantity supply when there is a change in the number of producers in the market. And how we represent the sign up parameters? The sign up parameter shows how variable is related to quantity supply. Positive sign indicates there is a direct relationship between that variable and quantity supply and negative sign indicates there is an inverse relationship between that typical variable and the quantity supply. Now, we see that how both the variables, all the variables, all the factors, those influence the supply, how they are related with supply. The first variable is P, price of the product directly related to quantity supply and the value of the slope parameter del q s by del p is positive. Input price is inverse related with the quantity supply. The value of slope parameter is del q s by del p is negative because there is an inverse relationship between the input price and the quantity supply. The related price of the goods, other goods in the market, the relationship is inverse for the substitute and direct for the compliment. How this is inverse for the substitutes? So, this is substitute goods. So, when the price of related goods increases that leads to quantity of the related goods to decrease because they are inverse related, price and quantity supply, sorry the price and quantity demanded they are inverse related. But how they are related with the quantity supply? Quantity supply is positive. So, whenever the price of related goods increases, quantity demanded decreases, but quantity supply increases as price and quantity they are positively related. Now, how this will affect this quantity supply of this typical goods? Since the substitute good is supplying more, in this case price there is no increase in the price, there is only increase in the price of related goods, the quantity supply of this will decrease. And how this works for complementary goods? What is the nature of complementary goods? Complimentary goods is one good, if two goods are complementary, one good cannot be consumed with other goods. So, in this case if the price of a related good increases that leads to quantity demanded of quantity supply of the related good increases and that also leads to increase in the quantity supply because if there is a demand for this, there is a supply of this, again there is a supply for this quantity supply. So, again it is the same logic for the quantity demanded also that complementary goods, it cannot be consumed individually, if one cannot be consumed without another. So, in case of relationship between the quantity supply and the price of substitute good and the price of complementary goods, it always inverse for the substitute, the price of related good and the relationship to the quantity supply. And if it is a case of complement, it is always direct because more is the quantity supply of the complementary good, more is also quantity supply for this typical good for what we are discussing the factors. In the first case, this is negative, the slope parameter is negative, in the second case the slope parameter is positive. Now, technological advances, the relationship is direct to the quantity supply, more is technological advances, more is the quantity supply, expected future price of the product. If the expected future price of the product is going to increase, quantity supply will decrease now because the producer or the seller they will feel more, they will get more profit if they are going to postpone their sale in the market and if it is going to decrease, they will prepone all their sale and they will sell more now. So, the relationship between the quantity supply and the expected future price of the product is inverse and the slope parameter r that is del Q s by del P that is negative. Coming to the last factor that influence the supply function that is the number of producer or the number of sellers in the market and how they are related to the quantity supply, they are directly related to the quantity supply because if there are more producer, more seller, generally the market supply is more and also the individual firm as a summation of the individual firm, the market supply is more and they are directly related to the quantity supply. Here the slope parameter s that is del Q s by del f is positive. So, this is how all the factors they are related to quantity supply, some of them are directly related and some of them are inversely related with the quantity supply. Now, we will see what is a supply schedule. Supply schedule is a table that shows the relationship between the price of the goods and the quantity supply. So, this is nothing but when you take the exact quantity, exact number of a price and quantity supply in different time period or if it is a trend, if you are giving a trend that how the price and quantity supply they are related that shows through a supply schedule. So, if you take this specific example of the supply schedule, when the price is 0, this is the case of the product is ice cream cone over here. So, the price of ice cream cone is the represented in the first column and the quantity of cone supplied is represented in the second column. If you look at when the price is 0, the quantity of cone supplied is 0. The simple logic over here is that if there is no price for the product, producer is not going to produce the product and they are not going to supply also. When the price is 0.50, still the quantity supply is 0, maybe we can explain this in this way that if this is 0.50, the producer is not getting there share a profit or it is not profitable for them to supply in the market and that is the reason they are not supplying it. So, one is 0, another is 0.5. So, one understanding from here is that when they are not getting profit by supplying in the market, they will not supply in the market. In the third case, when the price of ice cream cone is 1 rupees, the quantity supply is 1 unit and similarly when the price goes on increases from 1 0.5, 1.5 to 2, 2 to 2.5, 2.5 to 3 and look at the second column, the quantity of cone supply units generally goes on increasing that is 1 to 2, 2 to 3, 3 to 4 unit and 4 to 5 unit. Now, looking at the basis as the law of supply that the price and quantity supply is positively related, in this case also you can get an evidence of that. If there is a increase in the price that leads to increase in the quantity supply in the market and that is become evident when we are discussing about the supply schedule. So, this is the case of the individual supplier schedule. Now, if you say how you find the market supply schedule when the number of firms are more in the market. Suppose, there are two producers, they are producing the ice cream cone and they are supplying it in the market, assuming that producer and seller they are the same entity. So, in the first column there is a price, in the second column the supply quantity supplied by seller A, third column quantity supply by seller B and if you are assuming that in a market there are only two supplier, summation of the quantity supply of both the supplier A and B that will give us the total market supply. So, if you look at when the price is 0 or price or 0.5 the market supply or the total market supply is 0, because none of the supplier is supplying the ice cream cone when the price is 0. Similarly, when the price increases from 0 to 0.5 to 1 to 3, if you look at both the cases supplier A and B there is an increase in the quantity supply and if you take a summation of supplier A and supplier B, assuming there are only two supplier in the market, the market supply is represented in the last column and that is the total market supply of ice cream cone at different price level in a given period. So, given period can be a month, given period can be a week, given period can be a year. So, generally market supply is the total quantity supplied by different seller in the market at different prices in a given period represented through the market supply.


Live from Boston, Massachusetts, it's theCUBE at the HP Vertica Big Data Conference 2014. Brought to you by HP. With your hosts, John Furrier and Dave Vellante. Okay, welcome back and when we hear live in Boston, Massachusetts for Silicon Angles, theCUBE, our flagship program, we go out to the events and extract a signal from the noise. I'm John Furrier, the co-founder of Silicon Angle. And I'm here with two distinguished engineers from Zynga, Yoko Yamazaki, general manager of analytics, head of analysts at Zynga, and Joanne Ho, engineering manager at Zynga. Welcome to theCUBE. Thank you. Thanks for stopping by. We do go out to the events. We get to live action. It's like a ESPN of tech, some say, but we go out and talk to all the tech athletes. And we love gaming because gaming is real time, loyal audience, and if something's wrong, you didn't know about it because you either get angry, flamed mail, or you'll lose customers, right? So data is critical. So I got to ask the first question as head of analytics, what's your world like? What goes on? What's the strategy? Collect everything? Give us a quick overview of how you guys approach the data given the gaming market. You know, so our team, our next team has been here for five years now. It's actually not as challenging as it sounds like. We've got the schema, we've got the database, we've got end-to-end service, you know, visualization, experiment, just like everything is already set up that we, and in the way that we set it up, we can actually launch as many games as the company wants, and we don't have to change anything. So it's actually not that like crazy difficult. So horizontally scalable, but you can repurpose for new games, is that what you're saying? And scale's been no problem at all? No problem at all, and there's no additional table schemas technology that we have to build for a new game. That's fantastic. So okay, so we'll just get this on the record. It's an easy job, and everything's working great, it's scaling beautifully. What are you doing on your free time, sailing in the bay? What's going on? What's going on? You're in the trenches. What's the day-to-day like for you? Well, I managed the Vertica database in Zynga, and also in charge of the ETL process. So we do have a lot of data, day-in, day-out. One thing that I want to echo about from Yuko comment earlier is that we actually standardize our taxonomy for all games, across games. So for critical data, we have a standardized taxonomy, and then as a first tier. And then we also let game to lock their own game-specific tracking into our Vertica database. So we load all the game activities, user activities into our Vertica database, and we can do analyzations at a later time. So standardization seems to be a big theme these days. So first question. What kind of data can you share, data volumes with us, and it sounds like, I mean, kind of imagine it must be massive. What's kind of some of the numbers? In average, we load about 50 billion records per day. Yeah. B, billion. Billion. Okay, billion. That's a lot. Okay, so we got a lot of records. Petabytes, any kind of petabyte numbers? Is it not a big data? Is it a little data, or is it just transactional? It's more, it's more like a transactional data. Yeah. The entire database is about 500 terabytes compressed with about eight to nine. Okay, so it's not hugely like, you know, big volume, but a lot of activity. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, so I think the one of the biggest success stories for us is we are allowing them to, we have PMs, product managers, and engineers to decide what they want to analyze first. So that really creates the data culture, and they start thinking about what is it that we need to log for us to be able to analyze and move the business value. So we don't just capture everything that happens, and then decide, we let them decide first, and then click to what makes sense. So they're like the data wranglers. They set the agenda for the data strategies, because they're thinking about the product in mind, user experience, feedback, interaction, all the above, so they kind of look at the data from that perspective. Yeah. So the same design, they're starting to think about like what is it that we need to collect the data, what is it that we need to analyze and so forth. So the taxonomy sounds like a big innovation. When did that come about? So how did that happen? Just you saying, hey, we're pulling our hair out, we're hacking our way to success, we have to do something. Was it a redesign? Was it more thinking about the future? How did we get to the standard taxonomy? Give some color, some detail around that whole decision. So the base of like we call tier one standardization of taxonomies, that's been developed long time ago, and the data has been collected from every single game for those data. But as we notice any success with a particular metric that a product team has logged, that makes sense to standardize, we continue to improve that. What's the biggest challenge looking back now? You're smiling, you're feeling good, you're happy, because not a lot of people have standards that taxonomy, you guys are really ahead of the curve. What was the biggest challenge you found getting here? Because there's a lot of pressure, the games are significant, there's a lot of things going on, user accounts and whatnot, and you want to stay successful, so what was the biggest challenge? Thanks to me, I think, so as I mentioned about we allow anyone to see the data, we allow anyone to do anything with the data that does create sometimes a challenge of not experiment, not being set up correctly, or a particular PM saying this is what's been done from this experiment versus that actually wasn't the right way, for example. So it does create a little bit of not being perfect in terms of the data that's been measured, for example. What's the philosophy on the data? Because I asked the VP of Engineering at Vertica, what should we think about first, the data or the database? The old days when we were doing database work, it was got to get the database, once we decide the database, then we can move to the next step. Now it's a different issue, unstructured data is a big part of it, schemas are great to have that in place, but you got to deal with the structured and unstructured data, how do you guys deal with that? So I think first we need to look at our use cases, understanding the business requirement first, and then we will design the data that we want to track, and then we can decide on the taxonomy, like the schema later on. But for most of the Zynga data that we love, we are pretty in a structure format. So talk about the team, how big is the team? Where you guys locate? San Francisco, obviously the headquarters is in SF. Anywhere else, other places, do you guys have your core team there? How big is it? Can you share? Yeah, I think most of the employees are in headquarters. In San Francisco. What's the culture like? Are they data nerds? Are they geeks? Are they getting in the data?  What's the culture like?  So what's it like there? Definitely very, very data driven culture. So even product managers are very technical, they understand data, they understand how to set up experiments, how to make personalized game using data. So yeah, it's definitely a data geek. So I have to ask you ladies something, because this has really kind of been something we talked about yesterday is growth hacking. Well, we talked about the product CEO kind of role, the role of product manager, really important. Growth hacking has become a big part of social, online stuff. Data plays a big role in growth hacking. To do it right, growth hacking is a dangerous game, because if you growth hack and you make users angry, you actually get backfire. So there's been a lot of companies that have done it wrong and right. Some have done it really extremely well, elegantly. Some have failed. AB testing seems to be weird. So how do you look at the data aspect to do growth hacking, right? Meaning growth hacking to get more users in a way that's elegant and relevant. What's your take on that as analytics? You guys have a formula? Do you have an opinion on this? No? So something that we developed in the past is some personization model to enhance user experience. One of the really good model that we have developed is how to install, how to increase the install of new games. So we look at the current user's playing pattern, where you look at like 10 metrics of the current user, for example, user's engagement or the payment pattern. So you can see the fatigue pattern. You can see users that are on the brink of maybe kind of bored, maybe an incentive. We also look at your friend's playing pattern, so that we can predict how likely you will be installed that game, so that we will introduce a game that you will be interested in. Yeah, so social graph stuff around the games and overlays on the affinity data between certain features too as well? Yeah. So we're very focused on user satisfaction and how to enhance your experience while playing our games. Well I think you guys are awesome. Thanks for coming on the queue. I want to ask you one last question. But Zynga is a great company, we've been following the success, the rise I was there when Mark Pincus was, this is Nome Dex, it's like 2000 and something, he was just started doing the Texas Hold'em and then I heard him talking about it, it was like riffing on and then it became a huge success. Congratulations. But you had a lot of chances to do some things from a clean sheet of paper. So I want to ask you a final question, each of you to share something that we don't know about Zynga that surprised you with the data, something that's happened with the game that was data driven that was an aha, something that surprised you that was positive that was really an aha moment for you guys, share an experience that you had. Yeah so we've launched a lot of games in the last five years and we definitely have noticed using the data that people, there is a pattern from one game to another. It's not like this only happens in this particular game and there are a lot of things that we can repeat as a success. So our central analytics has been a success with that. I think there is a lot of learnings that you can get from one to another that we continue to improve. Joanne, anything that surprised you that you didn't expect to come out of the data with around the games? Well I think one thing that I'm very proud of for my company is that we standardizing how to lock our data into one centralized place which is very easy to manage and also we can increase adoptions across the company which is a really good thing. And also position yourself for deploying new games without rebuilding, tooling up. Because we have a centralized place of storing the data and then user can access the same data, they can even look at other games data to cross train each other or even new game they can just learn from existing successful games also. You guys are awesome. We can come on theCUBE anytime. We have our Palo Alto office. We have CUBE conversations anytime you guys want to explore more. Love to drill down. Joanne, thank you very much for coming on theCUBE. This is theCUBE. We're talking about analytics from the leaders at Zynga who have created a great model. Standardized taxonomy, rebuilding capabilities with new games and awesome analytics. Thanks for joining us. This is theCUBE. We'll be right back live in Boston after the short break.


Good afternoon. In case you are new, I'm Dr. Theron Sherman, and in today's briefing, we will be studying SCP-6572. There isn't any objectionable material in this document, so let's begin. Item number SCP-6572, classification level 2, containment class neutralized, special containment procedures. The current location of SCP-6572 is unknown, therefore containment efforts are to be directed towards falsifying reported cause of death for any of SCP-6572's victims, as well as explaining damaged infrastructure. Footnote As of September 12, 2017, these containment procedures are no longer applicable. Description SCP-6572 is a sword advertised as being able to cut through anything. It is not affected by friction. SCP-6572 also appears to be resistant to high temperatures and pressures. SCP-6572 was one of several otherwise unnoteworthy anomalous items seized in a raid on a Marshall Carter and Dark warehouse. During transit, the electromagnetic suspension unit housing SCP-6572 failed. SCP-6572 pierced its storage unit and proceeded to fall into the ground. SCP-6572 was initially presumed neutralized. On December 1, 2002, witnesses in Perth, Australia reported that a man, quote, exploded into viscera. High-speed camera footage indicated that the cause was SCP-6572. SCP-6572 traveled in a parabolic arc, re-entering the earth approximately 30 meters away. It is presumed that SCP-6572 will re-emerge in Bermuda, the point on earth that is directly opposite of Perth. SCP-6572 has been classified as Euclid. Update April 30, 2003 On April 10, 2003, witnesses reported that Donald Duck at Disneyland had been scattered across the park. Surveillance footage indicated that the cause of death was SCP-6572. It was determined that while SCP-6572 does not appear to be affected by friction, it is affected by lateral forces from convective currents present within the Earth's mantle. As such, without a comprehensive model of the Earth's mantle, it is impossible to accurately predict the trajectory of SCP-6572. As such, SCP-6572 has been upgraded to Ketter. A full list of SCP-6572 emergence events is available upon request. Over 50 emergence events have been directly observed. Update June 30, 2010 SCP-6572 appears to be accelerating. At every emergence event, SCP-6572 travels further before re-entering the ground. It is estimated that SCP-6572 will escape from Earth's gravity by 2020. Update September 30, 2017 SCP-6572 left Earth's gravity well on September 12, 2017 Containment efforts are no longer necessary. SCP-6572 reclassified to neutralized. No more dangerous than other space junk now. Thank you for listening.  Please become a patron or visit our merch store at the link in our bio to support our work. Secure. Contain. Protect.


Welcome. My name is Mark Lovelace. I am a security researcher at GitLab. I'm very pleased to be presenting here at Adversary Village as a part of the overall DEF CON experience here in 2021. Today the topic is advanced persistent threat, otherwise known as APT. I know a few of you out there are probably hoping to learn a few things that you can use for red teaming and penetration testing. So I'll point out some important differences between those and APT, but I know a lot of you are just interested in the topic. I'll discuss how one goes about tracking APT actors over time. I'll cover some elements of attribution, although as you will see in this presentation that's not necessarily as important to, at least so frontline defenders. I'm going to cover some technical details from an actual attack that I dealt with against my home systems from a very well-known APT group and I'm hoping that all of this information will kind of bring the entire subject into focus. It should be noted that some of the data associated with IP address assignments and domains discussed later in this presentation are no longer current. Also, all specific data I am discussing has been referenced in public by other parties or came directly off of my home systems, so I'm not revealing any state secrets.  A couple of decades ago I formed a hacking group known as NMRC. We did the usual goofy hacker things, but we did have a serious side when occasionally help out to a group that needed some technical support. Now we were doing this for free. Most of these organizations we'd help were involved with human rights. Some were activists who were working against a repressive government and other like-minded activities. We didn't make a lot of this work public for obvious reasons. We didn't want to tip the hands of these governments, nor did we want them to know who we were doing this work for. Alright, let me give you a quick example of something that we did that probably got us on the radar. I was working at BindView, which is later acquired by Symantec. We were developing a web scanner that would look for known security flaws, things like bad CGI scripts and whatnot. We needed to stress test it, so we decided we would try to scan a whole bunch of websites at the same time, and since China had a fairly poor reputation when it came to human rights, we aimed this thing at the entirety of China's allocated IP address space. Now, technically it was only looking for the existence of a file on a website and not code execution. We thought no harm, no foul. But when we did scan certain websites, it would occasionally elicit an interesting response, usually in the form of a DDOS attack. I mean, we weren't trying to really hide where we were scanning from. I was doing this from my house. After we collected scan results, a couple of us had copies of all this data, and we provided it to those that we knew were fighting the good fight, so to speak. Mainly repressed Chinese nationals who were angry at their government. Now, in retrospect, this was pretty poor off-sec on my part. I had static IP addresses. It wouldn't be too hard to figure out that this scan led to this type of an attack, et cetera, et cetera. In particular, when I started doing things like talking in public about how I didn't like what the Chinese government was doing as far as human rights goes. So it wasn't too hard to be able to track me down and get my feelings on the subject. Now, another area that probably impacted this just as greatly was my employer. I used to work at MITRE Corporation, which is basically a U.S. government think tank, where despite my hacker background, I somehow managed to get a security clearance, which has now expired. While I was at MITRE, I worked on a number of projects, including frontline battling of APT attackers against that organization. Now, because of these hacker activities, my employers, a few other issues and scenarios I won't belabor the point with, I was on the radar. I've apparently been added to a list of assets that some of these APT groups might want to compromise. I might have access to something interesting as far as they're concerned, where I may be in contact with someone that they're trying to target. Between direct contact from friends that work in government agencies and a rather interesting exit debriefing when I left MITRE, I realized that while it's not life-threatening, I was on a list of potential targets. I'm not saying I'm a special snowflake by any means. I'm just saying that there are a number of us that have worked in this arena before, and all of a sudden, we've become kind of a target, so to speak. So, in general, my perspective in this is a little more than simple curiosity about the subject. So, APT, let's talk about the history of the actual term itself, APT. In the 90s, the U.S. military used the term Advanced Persistent Threat, or APT for short, to refer to small self-autonomous enemy commando units. In 2006, the term was applied to cyber-based groups where it stuck, probably because of the similar independent nature of these groups. Instead of the usual distract, disrupt, delay mandate of the commando units, the cyber-based units were all about information acquisition. At the time, these cyber-based groups' main goal was intellectual property for competitive or military advantage. Often targeted were things like defense plans, including details of various weapons, troop operations, what projects are being funded, certainly any other form of intelligence. Additionally, things like network diagrams, software inventory information, email addresses of personnel to further existing and future cyber-based operations were sought. Basically, they would try to gather information that revealed military or economic weakness, or gave them a military or economic advantage, and gave them a way back into the place that they were trying to get into. So the ATP battle plan was roughly as follows. There would be a fairly detailed reconnaissance of a target that would include not just what type of systems the target might have, but also identify some of the people and what their jobs were to help with things like spearfishing. They'd develop an infrastructure for an attack, such as email accounts to send phishing emails from or register domains and set up websites or compromise existing ones, code up and get ready to deploy command and control systems, and so on. Based upon the reconnaissance attack at that point, using a method that should work on the target, once compromised, attempt to move laterally to as many systems as possible, backdoor as much as possible to allow for remote command and control, as well as potential future entry points in case of discovery, and being kicked out, they could get back in. And if this was a return visit to a site, perhaps they might be going after specific assets fairly quickly once they get in there. They would then perform the main objective, which it could be to exfiltrate data or something else, such as maybe backdouring source code, etc. And then of course, they're constantly adjusting things over that entire time as needed to maintain that all important foothold. Okay, for some reason, attribution has been a hot topic, particularly in the past when this entire APT thing began to be known in public circles. The main argument, the main arguments I should say, I heard were the following. First, an attacker is an attacker who cares who it is, just keep them out, right? Well, that's true. We should be doing that in any case, but that's not the entire point, and we'll get to that here in a little bit. Number two, consulting companies were using the term APT and they're marketing to sell goods and services, and so a lot of people just deemed this to be overblown marketing, just some type of weird marketing ploy. True, that was happening, but no, that really wasn't necessarily the problem. The third argument was that the term APT, Advanced Persistent Threat, advanced being the keyword here, was rather offensive to a number of people. The main argument was that someone read a report from, let's say, FireEye and see that an attack group had used a year-old bug to gain access to a target, and some people would say things like, oh, that's not advanced. If it were me, I'd be using zero-day, not some lame six-month-old bug.  To me, as a hacker who used to actually break into systems in my youth, I fully understood why you would not want to waste or essentially burn a zero-day on a target unless you really, really wanted into that target. A number of people saying it wasn't advanced, they did red teaming or pen testing as a part of their job, and they had a different perspective, completely different perspective. True attacking, truly committing felonies involves cheating, for lack of a better term. When you're pen testing, you're usually looking for multiple ways in and documenting all of them, and there are some assets that might be off limits or out of scope, and some techniques might be completely off the table, such as denial of service. Red teaming often involves testing subsections of the infrastructure. It might start with the idea that, assuming we got root on XYZ or some other scenario, just trying to test detection systems themselves, lots of different things that go into it. In other words, there are limitations that are imposed on those groups. Now, with APT, there are no limits. You can launch a DDOS attack against one part of the infrastructure or unleash a piece of nasty malware, just something to keep the admins busy, and then use your crafted attack to slip by defenses. Nothing is out of scope. Nothing is off limits. I'm giving you an example of this. I was aware of a very large software company where dozens of ISPs in the area of its headquarters were targeted, and the attackers were all looking for VPN connections from home systems and this large software company headquarters. Those home systems were targeted, and all of these VPNs for this particular organization allowed for split tunneling, which in turn allowed for the attackers to gain a foothold in this large software company. Now, APT attackers are in general better at this kind of thing than usual run-of-the-mill attackers. I mean, this is their full-time job. They're good at it, and so this gives you kind of a rough idea of what I'm talking about. Attribution. Attribution is uniquely identifying a particular APT group. In classified or political circles, knowing that nation-state behind the attack is important, otherwise that part actually doesn't really matter. TTPs, the tactics, techniques, and procedures help with this identification process. Now, by gathering TTPs and other indicators, patterns will begin to emerge. The more you gather, the more defined the patterns are. A set of these highly defined and related patterns is called a campaign, and a campaign is basically an APT group. Now, after gathering data from dozens of attacks, extremely refined patterns emerge, and one can ask if certain patterns are similar over time, which could mean a repeat attacker, and this is the true reason you do attribution. Based upon the historical data, what is their next move? If, for example, a particular group attacks on Tuesdays every four to six weeks with a phishing email from a yahoo.com address, you can attisapate that kind of attack and even stop it. Data from launching that executable from the last attack on your honey net tells you how they move and exploit access. So if they do get in, you know their next move. That's a big, big part of this. Will they crazy Ivan? If you haven't seen the movie, The Hunt for Red October, I highly recommend it. Now, in this film, the enemy Soviet submarine would sometimes stop and turn to look for someone tailing them. Typically, they'd be looking for the Americans, and this was referred to as crazy Ivan by these Americans chasing these people in their submarines. So some APT groups did something fairly similar where they'd swap out backdoors every week or so. Some even left a few of the old backdoors on a couple of computers so that if that particular backdoor was discovered and then all of those machines were wiped, the victim would think they'd cleaned up the attack and were okay, whereas the APT act was actually still in there because they were using multiple backdoors. Now, tools used to collect this data can include honey pots, honey nets, even honey clients. It also can include data from when you're going through and looking at the remnants of a successful attack on their part. This data gathered is stored at MITRE. It was done using a software package called CRITS, which is now an open source project. This started at MITRE who was dealing with this APT data collection and is still out there and you can still download it and use it. Data sharing, if you wanted to be able to share data with others, this can actually help with others in your industry, for example. It can be crucial, particularly if your buddy down the street gets attacked on Thursday by one particular APT group, then you're going to get it on the following Monday. You hear from them that it's Thursday and they got attacked, Monday you know what to expect. So that becomes important. So that kind of gives you a little bit of an idea about attribution. Let's talk about an actual campaign. This attack was from a group known as APT-18 or Dynamite Panda. I knew them by the name WEKB. WEKB is still active to this day. This particular attack took place a few years ago. I don't know if you remember the company hacking team and the breach they suffered in 2015. As a part of that breach, they had an Adobe Flash Zero Day, which was leaked. So it was going to be patched fairly quick. Now when WEKB saw this breach, within days, they had launched a campaign with a fully weaponized evil flash file. While it is possible that they managed to get the evil file working flawlessly without causing a crash and deploying the payload and all this accurately, it is more likely they already had this particular Flash Zero Day and decided now is the time to use it because all of a sudden it had a limited shelf life. They quickly developed a spearfish and I personally received this fish as did other select individuals and various organizations. Here are the raw headers of the phishing email I received. Okay, so the TTPs are in blue and the important data associated with that is in red. This shows just some of the dozens, if not hundreds of things that are collected when doing data gathering. Now here is the body of the email. There are obvious mistakes in the email, probably because WEKB was in a hurry to get this out the door. But the IP address of <IP_ADDRESS> really caught my eye. I recognized it, immediately thought of WEKB. I did go and look at the page that it was pointing to and downloaded the movie.swf file. The page and the swf were there for maybe three or four days, maybe less. I don't know who took them down, probably WEKB. Movie.swf had a payload that simply downloaded and installed a remote access trojan, also known as a rat. So I manually downloaded it and took a look at it. The rat was known as ghost and there are ghost variants. These were often used by WEKB to use a ghost variant. A bit of analysis on the IP address revealed more information that I remembered as WEKB as did the rat, including the command and control IP address. Now ghost is an HTTP browser style rat in that it does periodic queries and it looks for new responses which helps direct the next command that ghost will run on the target. In this particular case, it's using DNS text records for command and control. So ghost traffic looked like DNS queries and for a typical victim location, this type of traffic would not be blocked and would very easily make it outbound. As you can see, there is the potential for dozens and dozens of different attributes one can use to track individual attack groups. Depending upon the campaign, I have seen TTPs in the hundreds for a single campaign. When you compare these for looking for patterns and let's say that you get 80% that are common between a newly documented attack and one that's happened previously, you can almost be certain it was the same attacker. Especially when you consider that maybe the second place contender for common TTPs might only have say 10%. Anyway, enough about our attack attempt. Now let's talk about some fun facts about APT in general. Alright, some of our fun facts. The initial intrusion is going to be the easiest way in for the attacker. If sending in an email asking the person to run an attachment called backdoor.exe does the job, they'll do that. More sophisticated targets might require some more advanced techniques up to and including zero day. Credentials, tokens, keys of all kinds are going to be harvested. End user devices, servers, containers are all infiltrated and the more sophisticated attackers will rotate their backdoors. These are the APT basics that seem to happen at every intrusion. The main objectives still happen but the basics they do seem to be fairly consistent. Advanced attackers will compromise a target software and their services for downstream attacks. The 2001 attack on RSA, attributed to Wekby by the way, was an early version of this. SolarWinds is probably a good example of a more recent one of a kind of a downstream style attack. Now these supply chain attacks might be cheaper for the attacker as there is a lot more bang for the buck so to speak. Although the risk of detection is higher, the larger the spread of the attack, the more potential services that are touched. This could result in a breach being detected and that was the case for example with SolarWinds. Now as far as the nation state themselves, there are a few big players in this that includes China, Russia, Israel, France and the USA. There is also kind of a next tier group that includes countries like India, Pakistan, Iran and North Korea. Now as far as who is best of the best, that would definitely be, I would put that is USA, Russia and Israel, hands down. They're going to be the top ones. Security people do need to understand these types of threats. They're not common but they exemplify the sharpest attacker that you will ever face. If you sell goods or services to customers that are the type of victims that APT actors are going to go after, you should consider yourself a target. The RSA attack in 2011 is probably the best example I can think of of this. Not all of your customers would potentially face an APT threat but some might so just keep that concept in mind. At the same time, the tracking of TTPs tends to show general adaptiveness. So, secure your barriers, go up in one place, attackers will try others. Give me a quick example of this. Spear fishing worked a lot for APT attackers and then at some point it wasn't working quite as much so they would try to become friends with these people on, say, LinkedIn. Pretty much like, hey, you're my friend. Can you check out my resume and tell me what I need to do? I got a job interview coming up. Tell me what looks good. Sure, let me take a look at your resume. Okay, here you go, victim. Here's a nice zero day in a PDF file that has now owned your system and your organization. So that's like an example of how they might adapt to and take on other attack scenarios. So just remember that the whole information acquisition mandate and all of the associated tactics that are used by APT actors are being adopted by non APT attackers as well. These non APT attackers say such as ransomware attackers, they see what's working and they they'll go ahead and try to use it. So defending against a potential direct APT attack does have some advantages. All right, let's talk about some mitigations. The basic security tech we have such as using two factor authentication, automating our patching on endpoint systems immediately, all that helps. If I were to go further in general terms, I'd say not using Windows and being an all remote cloud based company also helps because that's not as common. And it creates a much harder target than what the APT actors are going to be used to. Using things like Google's GCP, Amazon's AWS, this helps because they've been hit themselves pretty hard in the past and they do a lot of stuff that happens behind the scenes to help secure things. So moving to that cloud environment if you haven't already is definitely a big help just for that alone. Get aggressive. Use your red team and employ outside pentest firms and with extremely broad mandates. Remember, APT attackers cheat and ask these people to cheat on your systems if they're going to give them a fair shake. Dicks everything they find. Don't just check off the box of we did the annual test and then wait until next year and do it again. Test frequently with phishing campaigns. I think this is still the number one way that APT actors manage to gain a foothold is through stealing of credentials in some form or fashion. So make sure that you do phishing campaigns. Finally, do not punish users when you get breached. Reward them when they report things even if it's a false positive. They are not the security experts. We are. So help them want to help you and that will obviously help in so many different ways. Okay, that's the end of the presentation at this point. I want to thank you very much for your attention. There is contact information where you can reach me and just reach out to me if you have any questions and I'll answer them as best I can and thank you very much.


In this episode of the Engineering Career Coach podcast, Tony Munson, author of People Skills for Engineers, is going to tell us how we can make a great first impression, how we can impress our manager, and how we can deal with difficult people as engineers. And in our Take Action Today segment at the end, he's going to talk about the difference between giving criticism and correcting others. You're going to love this episode. Let's do it. And now I'm excited to welcome our guest onto the Engineering Career Coach podcast today, Tony Munson. Tony is the author of People Skills for Engineers. Tony, welcome to the podcast. Hey, great to be here. So, Tony, before we dive in and talk about People Skills for Engineers, which you and I both know is critically important for the success of engineers and technical professionals, tell our listeners and viewers a little bit about your career. OK, yeah, this is great. Before I went to the Washington State University, I graduated with a BS in computer science. I spent four years in the Army, which is an interesting environment to be in, almost absent of People Skills, which is kind of funny how I ended up kind of being where I'm at now. But I graduated in 2002 after I did an internship at Agilent Technologies. That was in Fort Collins, Colorado, great place, by the way. Then I took a job at Hewlett Packard here in Boise, Idaho, working as kind of a performance engineer. And then I just gradually over the next 18 years, I worked in developing custom ASICs with firmware engineers, high level, front end development. I worked at Hewlett Packard for 13 years. Now I'm working at, as you can see, I've got some company swag going here. I'm working for Cradle Point now here in Boise, Idaho. And I'm doing a lot of same stuff. They're a SaaS organization, so that's software as a service. We have management software that lives up in the cloud. But I don't want to say I've done it all because there's so much. But I've spent my entire career in a cube working with technical people, mechanical engineers, electrical engineers, computer engineers, computer science. And so I'm keenly aware of the difficulties of working with technical individuals. And that's what kind of drove me to where I'm at now. I guess that's what drove you to write the book, People's Skills for Engineers. Yeah, about seven or eight years ago, I became almost obsessively interested in how humans behave and specifically how we behave to each other. And as I was learning more, I would go to work and I'd be in meetings with other developers, engineers, with management. And think to myself, wow, we could have just sidestepped all of those problems, tore down some of the sandbags, people have drawn battle lines. People just adhered to what I would classify as just common best practices. The problem is is in our field, nobody's getting it. It just doesn't drop out of the sky on us. So we have to go seek it out. And if we don't, we end up just bogged down and a lot of relational, collateral damage that we cause for ourselves. And I looked at it and said, you know what, I think I can help. That's what kind of led me into writing the book. That's great. And what I love about your story is that you are, as you mentioned earlier, you and I were talking offline, you're still in the trenches, you're working as a technical individual, professional with other engineers, technical, professional software developers, whatever the case may be. And you're seeing these problems that arise from the lack of people skills.  If we just would have done something different, something would have changed.  This is how technical people are. We don't have the training, you know, we have to deal with these situations and it is what it is, but you didn't. So to that point, we're going to go through like some of the different themes that you talk about in the book. And one situation that I thought was pretty interesting from the book is you talk about joining an existing engineering team. You know, it is a situation that a lot of people deal with, whether they are hired onto a new company or they're in a large engineering firm or company and they get moved to a different team or organization. Maybe you could talk about how somebody can approach that situation. Sure. Yeah. Great. I would love to. To me, the way I look at joining an existing team is this is one of those rare opportunities you get in your life to completely reboot your career. You get to dictate how people perceive you. It's kind of like when you graduate high school or graduate college, while you're there, you built up this way that people view you. And then when it's over, you get to start fresh again and say, hey, you know what? What didn't work last time? What did work? I'm going to use what did work, the things that didn't work. I'm going to try to make better. And so one of the very first things, and this may seem obvious to some, is be keenly aware of first impressions. As technical people, we can get super lazy in our social interactions. And I think it's because we've bought into this whole, oh, well, I'm a technical person. So the only thing that really matters is my technical ability. All, you know, wear my, my Torah shorts and Star Wars shirts with, I don't have anything wrong with that spine. But when we're trying, when we're trying to make first impressions, this is the opportunity to recalibrate the next three, four, five years. And so I go through the book. I'm like, you know, typically when you join a team, especially if you join a new company for the first week or two, you're meeting with a bunch of new people. These could be directors. These could be vice presidents. And you're not going to have a whole lot of interaction with these individuals after this first round. So you need to make sure that you look the part. You talk the part. You present yourself in a professional manner.  One time somebody told me this and it stuck with me is that people will take what they do know about you and map it out to other areas of your life. This is why it's so important to pay attention to how you speak, how you dress, you know, what you say when you don't think people are listening is because people will take that small slice of your life, what they, what they do know and go, oh, well, they must be this way in other areas. So, you know, I'm a father. I have a 13 to 16 year old. That's why I tell them you really need to pay attention to what you say because people will judge other areas of you. And it's that way joining a new team. The very first thing they see about you is your first batch of work is sloppy, not well thought out. You're just trying to go fast to impress people.  So obviously first and foremost is first impressions. And then quickly have a couple of other things. You know, be in listen mode. I know as technical people, we like to come in even if we we know, you know, how to do things. We need to think about the team that we're coming in there, right? So you have a maybe existing team of six people. There's this new guy and this new guy's coming in or gal and saying, oh, OK, this is how we should do it. It's like, well, who are you? I don't know you. And yes, it's it's we want to come in and quickly establish ourselves. But there are dynamics and teams that you would be wise to observe.  And it means a lot to them. And you have someone coming in challenging that. I think in my book, I use an analogy of a chicken getting stomped out in the corner of a pen because there's a there's a hierarchy, apparently, in chicken world. And so just being aware of that laying back, surveying the landscape, and especially if you've been brought in as a technical lead, first and foremost, is connect with your people, get to know them before you try to lead them, because you will save yourself much anguish and much grief. Been there, done that, learn from my mistakes, avoid the minefield. Just don't do it. Yeah, that's that's great stuff. And and and I get what you're saying.   I'm based on what I see because I know nothing else. Right. And so I can see how critically important that is. So one of the other things, Tony, that you talk about in your book, that I'm sure our listeners and viewers would love to hear about is impressing your manager, right? Everyone has managers and they're always, you know, interested in, of course, looking good in front of them and pressing them because it probably is tied to their development. Talk about impressing your manager a little bit. Yeah, there's a few things that come come to mind specifically when it comes to impressing your manager. I think first and foremost is to take personal responsibility for your failures. One thing I've noticed in my 18 years is managers don't expect perfection. They expect refinement and predictability. So, you know, if we mess up as as technical resources, as individual contributors, just own it, don't blame other people because that makes us look bad to blame, especially if we've missed it in some way. I've been in meetings where it almost turns into like a courtroom with people, you know, presenting their facts over here and presenting their facts over here of why it wasn't their fault. And in the end, man, it can be refreshing for someone to just stand up and be like, hey, you know what, I blew it. Like, I should have known better. I did it this way. It didn't work out. However, this is what I've learned and it will not happen again in the future. That is very impressive to management. Be honest and forthcoming with information. And what I mean by that is. Always keep your manager up to date, even if it kind of makes you look better, that you've dropped the ball somehow is that matter. I mean, as technical resources, we're kind of the eyes and the ears for the managers and if they don't know anything's wrong because we're not telling them, they won't know anything is wrong. And if we own the 11th hour, say, hey, we're not going to be able to deliver because of this, they will not be happy. A quote that one of my managers uses is the only thing worse than bad news is bad news late. So I always even even if it turns out of maybe crying wolf is keep my manager informed and say, hey, you know, I see some storm clouds rolling in on the horizon here, that gives them the ability to make a contingency plan and maybe get at the root of that problem. So I don't deliver late. They don't deliver late and they don't look bad. So thirdly here, I got a couple small things. We need to drive our own work. That's super impressive to managers. I think categorically, everyone says that they dislike to be micromanaged. But that means we need to drive our own work. We need to show that we don't need to be micromanaged. So I mean, scheduling all the necessary meetings, following up on the details, putting design documents together. If we have to, whatever your discipline is, but really saying, this is my deliverable, I own this. And if I need help, I'm going to bring in the necessary help, including management. So that's very impressive to managers. And then lastly, managers like to see it when you positively contribute to team morale. The morale of your team is super valuable. I've seen people leave companies because of problems with their team and problems with morale. And so it's impressive to management when you positively contribute to that. When they openly see you appreciate people or call out things that they've done well. That creates more of a cohesive, just even fun environment. Managers love that. That's like manager crack. So so remember, those are those are just a handful of things that you can do to impress your manager. That's great. And it's funny. Some of those points when listening to you, I feel like it's they can be in terms of impressing your manager. And also some of the conversations that I have with my young kids, which is, you know, if you do something wrong, it's not the end of the world unless I find out about it from somebody else. Right. It's the same idea. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, managers, their career is contingent on the performance of the people they manage. So when we're missing it, they miss it. And that makes everyone look bad. And you do not want to make your manager look bad. So I'd like to think that every manager is mature enough to handle situations in mature ways, but we're not. Yeah, no, it's it's I mean, everyone's human. And, you know, you have to deal with with things that come up and different people, which kind of leads right into the next question that I have for you, which is another topic that you touched on in your book, People, Skills for Engineers, which is everyone's different. And some people are more difficult to deal with than others, for sure. Right. There's no engineering equation for how to deal with people. So what advice can you share with if someone does have a difficult person on their team or that they have to deal with on a regular basis to help them to deal with that person or navigate that relationship? OK, yeah, that's a really good question. Now that I'm 43, as you probably can tell with the gray in my beard now. I've there's some things that I've experienced that allow me to just get a little perspective on dealing with others. Yes, there's a lot of sort of training and investigating I've done, but just practically walking it out in my life is learned first and foremost, dealing with difficult people is just learn to cut people slack. You know, give them some grace. A perfect example of this would would be, I think my son might have been in first grade and his teacher was just not a pleasant person to be around. And I would sit there and be like, how can how can she even be a teacher behaving like this? Well, it turns out her mom had terminal cancer and the stress of dealing that was just bleeding over into into her work environment, which the exact same thing can happen to us as technical people. And so I've learned, you know, I don't know what's going on behind the scenes. And while it's not necessarily my best or my responsibility to to dig out a scab and try to figure that out, but there's a lot that goes into what makes up a person. And so there's individuals dealing with some pretty hard stuff and we may be just dealing with the symptoms of it. So that's one of them. I just try to view it more of let me give a little more grace here. Second is just learn to forgive people. And that's not some newfangled religious or spiritual concept at all. What it does is allows us to keep from carrying baggage around every single interaction. You know, sometimes we just flat out will never even know why people behave the way they do. They could maybe they're out to get us. I don't know. But we always get a choice in how we respond to that. And so forgiveness is I kind of look at it like water off a duck's back. It's like, you know what? Who knows? Yeah, if I let it, that probably could be hurtful. But guess what? I forgive them. I'm moving on. I got other things. I'm not going to let this person rent space in my brain. We're done. Just that alone allows us to just carry less of a load. You know, analogy that's used is every time you don't forgive someone or take offense, it's like throwing a rock in your backpack. And so a few of those rocks is fine. But man, there's people I know currently in my life that are not only carrying a backpack full of rocks, they're pulling around a trailer with rocks in it as well. That just slows you down and that contributes to just frustration and anger and stress and sickness. It's just not worth it. So that's that's another key principle. I touched on a little, just refused to be offended. Just refused to let people get to you. Like some people are going to say offensive things. I'm just not going to receive it. I'm just moving on. I got bigger things I'm trying to do in my life than get bogged down in the mud. And lastly here, this is a good reminder for all of us is you do reap what you sow. Or sometimes you refer to as karma or what goes around comes around and make sure that you're not behaving in the exact same way you're accusing others of behaving. It's very easy to look at someone else and just go down the laundry list of deficiencies, not realizing like, oh, wait a second, I just described myself and I'm only getting returned to me what I'm putting out there. So those are a few things that can help us deal with difficult people. That's great. And really what I what I kind of hear from from all the answers to that question is it's a lot about, you know, your mindset and approach and response to these types of people, right? Because you get in a situation where you have I mean, you're always going to have to deal with difficult people. There's really no way around it. I mean, it's just part of it's kind of part of life, not just engineering. The way you respond to them is really critical. I remember like when I was going through coaching school, executive coaching school, one of the trainers told us when you think about these situations with difficult people or somebody who might be angry, it's kind of like your response to them is almost like a magnet, right? So like if you get back angry at them, then anger is coming back. If you try to take a different approach, like you said, and be a little forgiving, then, you know, they may be kind of a little bit more forgiving. And so it's almost like a mirror. And so that's I think a really important part of that dynamic because the kind of the instinctive response is let me go back at them, right? So we have to like hone that in a little bit. Well, let me just point out quickly on what you said to your audience members listening right now, you know, speaking directly to them.  And my question to you would be, you know, using the the sewing and reaping analogy, what seeds are you planting with them? Are you planting seeds that you would expect to get back what you want? Are we just stoking the flames and making it worse? It's just totally unrealistic to sew one particular type of seed. You're sewing in anger, gossip, criticism, frustration, like all this stuff into them. And just all of a sudden expect them to take the high road and go, you know what, I now see the error of my ways. I apologize. It's like, no, at some point, somebody in that relationship has to put on the big boy pants and be an adult. And the way I look at it is it may as well be me, it may as well be you to be the one that just is like extends the proverbial olive branch. So just remember that. Think what I'm not what I think I'm saying, but like, what am I actually saying and doing that would make this better? Because if we're not doing anything that would make it better, we shouldn't expect it to get better. Yeah, no, for sure. That's that's definitely solid advice. All right. So we covered some interesting points here from Tony's book, People, Skills for Engineers. We've talked about, you know, making first impressions when joining a new team, talked about some different things that you can do to impress your manager as an engineer, specifically, you know, giving them bad news, ASAP, as opposed to trying to avoid it and it can just get worse. And we also just talked about kind of dealing with difficult people and, you know, your response to them is a really important aspect of that. So what we're going to do now is we're going to come back in a minute and in our take action today segment, I'm going to ask Tony to help us think about ways that we can give constructive criticism or correct someone on an engineering project, which happens a lot and is not an easy thing to do. So we'll be right back with that. All right, we're back with Tony Munson, author of People, Skills for Engineers. So, Tony, we've been talking a lot about kind of interacting with people as an engineer or technical professional and one of the interactions that you'll have to have at some point in your career as an engineer, most likely as a manager, but maybe even just as a team member is, you know, providing constructive criticism when someone doesn't meet your expectations or correcting someone. And we know that some people don't take well to that. So what are some pieces of advice that you can share on kind of that tricky situation? OK, that's a great question. First, I like to delineate between criticism and correction. Criticism, its main objective is to just inflict pain and potentially to get someone to the line, which is way different than correction, which is to effectively is to help someone maybe see a way that they they could do something better and to kind of guide and mentor them. So my first question I like to ask myself when approaching someone when I think that I need to correct them is what's my end game here? What's my goal? Is is is my goal here to actually help? Because if so, that's the right motive. If my goal is to just point out deficiencies for the sake of making myself look better, making myself look better in a team environment. That is not the right way to do it.  What are my motives? And more importantly, does does the person really need to be corrected? I work with technical people all day long and the amount of time we will spend talking about things that make no difference just because they need to be perfectly correct or they think they need to be perfectly correct. You know, it's like, oh, yeah, I went to this place and it was 110 miles away. Well, actually, it was 109.87. It's like, oh, my gosh, I mean, just so that that right there can set a lot of people free. Do I really need to correct someone? Is something at stake? And if so, what's my motive? Is it to help? And if it is to help, then there's different ways that you can do it. And those are pretty common as far as, you know, do it in private, correct? In private, you know, ask questions to lead people to the problem areas. You've heard, everyone's probably heard of the sandwich approach, you know, where you put, you know, you sandwich a correction in between kind of two positive things. I like my bread thick. So when someone's correcting me, I like thick Texas toast size bread on the side of mine. But yeah, a lot of times you don't even get in the details of the correction itself. It's more of just high level. What's my end game? And what do I want to be the result of this correction? Because you can correct someone and come out looking much stronger than you did going in. Sometimes we look at correction as a bad thing, but done correctly. Man, you can gain a lot of interpersonal capital with the people around you. That's great. And really what it sounds like a little bit based on your kind of your answer there is there may be situations where you have to decide between criticism and correcting, because I know that for managers that I've had as an engineer, they might look at a plan that I worked on and they very simply could have corrected me. But instead they, you know, criticized me and then eventually corrected me. So maybe it's like, you know, using those two actions in the right way, so to speak. Yeah, it's just it's to be aware that there's more than just this specific situation happening right now. There's this whole relational soup of you, that person, everyone on the team and to rise above that and to be able to look down on it and say, what course of action is going to set me up better next week, next month, next year? Yeah, you can get your super quick fix of putting someone in their place, which criticism will usually do that for you. But what does it look like tomorrow and next week? I mean, as we grow and mature as people, these are the types of questions we need to ask ourselves. Awesome. So once again, we're speaking with Tony Munson, author of People Skills for Engineers, and we went through quite a bit here in this episode with Tony, a lot of really good kind of actions that you can take, whether it's, you know, impressing your manager, making first impressions, dealing with difficult people. And now in the take action segment here, we talked about, you know, the difference between criticism and correction and, you know, just how to think ahead before you start to do these things and what the consequences of your actions may be. Tony, this has all been great information. We're so happy that you took some time to come on the podcast and, you know, just share this information with us. And you're I believe your book is available on Amazon. If people want to check it out, is that right? Yeah, absolutely. It I wrote it first and foremost for myself to remind myself, but I wrote it for the people closest to me that I work with. And I knew if it could help me and help them, it could help everyone else. And it's not specific to any type of engineering, discipline or technical discipline in there. There's lots in there for everyone. If you think it could help, pick it up. Awesome. Tony Monson, author of People's Skills for Engineers. Thank you for spending some time on the Engineering Career Coach podcast. Yes, sir. Happy to be here. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Please leave your comments and or questions in the comments section below this video. Also, if you'd like to view the full show notes for this episode, visit Engineering Management Institute dot org or see the link in the video description. There you will find the key points discussed in today's episode, as well as links to any of the resources, websites or books mentioned during the episode. Until next time, I wish you the best in all your engineering career endeavors.


In language learning, we need to know the elements, factors and components of language that what elements are making a language, how can we learn language by getting the knowledge of the components of language and components of language are very important because every language is comprised of some elements or some phases, some parts. So unless you understand these phases or components, you cannot get mastery over any language. So in these components, first of all, phoneme is a basic unit of phonology. Phonic, like the phonic word comes in front of our mind for an hour, which we call sound. You may get the idea of sound. So this means that when you learn a language, the second language, English, I know that we teach it with sound, with a word, with vowels, and with alphabets, how this alphabet is sounding that a, b, s, c, k, we are teaching it with sound. Phoneme means that this phonology is the component of the language and this sound, as you can see now, is our cultural signs and symbols or some sounds, through which we are communicating with someone else and when there is pain, it sounds different or when there is happiness, the people are, you know, smiling, laughing and they are producing different voices and in the same way, in the sadness, people are producing different voices. So alphabets, which are of any language, when we introduce the sound to the child, basically the first step is the introduction of how they get awareness from the sound. If you know the sound, then you will pronounce any word that is of any language because if you are not understanding, now look, it's like a ceiling fan, so the ceiling fan is with the sea or someone has pronounced it on the child, now he is reading the ceiling fan, the ceiling fan is also with the child, for example, there is a knot, now there is a knot or a night, so since the K is coming with it, it is not silent, it is called a night, so this means that the sound is very important, because of the sound, you know the word of any language very well and then you travel to its meaning, so this is actually giving the concept of sound in any language and phonemes match up to the sounds of the alphabets, although there is not always a one-to-one connection between a letter and a phoneme. Now, for example, there is a shape, there is a cat, there are three phonemes in it, cat, cat, cat, so three phonemes mean that this cat is made of three phonemes, three sounds are coming, cat, if we talk about shape with it, then there are three phonemes in shape, although there are five letters in it, but if we look at the shape here, then the sound is coming from the shape, it is coming from the shape, it is coming from the shape, you are stopping it at the end, so three phonemes are making it, although the letters are its five, so this means that it is not necessary that there will be five letters, so there will be five phonemes, the letter means that your letters can be more, but its sound, how it is working in phoneme, it is a different matter, that is the concept English language has around 45 different phonemes, so English language has 45 phonemes, which are used differently, i.e. according to words and according to its spelling and according to alphabets, so with these two examples, what I have explained is that phoneme and letters have a connection, but the exact amount of letters or the exact amount of phonemes is not essential. After that, phonology comes, phonology is a study of verbal communication, structure within the language is non-the phonology, how do you structure the word, make it, a dialogue that you prepare to say it, so this phonology gives all this information, the smallest unit of sound to form a little language is called the phoneme, phoneme is a part of the phonology, which we have discussed and we have seen that it is describing the use of a sound language, so it is the smallest unit of the phonology and for example cat, I have given you already the example, contains three phonemes, phonology describes the way sounds function within a language to encode the meaning, phonology is to expose the meaning of any word, the sound used, how to convey a meaning with a sound, this whole phenomenon is the name of a whole study and phoneme adds that sound. After this, phonetics belongs to descriptive linguistic and phonology belongs to theoretical linguistic. Phonetics is described and phonology is a theoretical part, what is theory to learn a language, behind learning a language, the main concept of language is to learn a language or an English language, so what should we do first, what is theory, should we learn grammar first or directly communicate, as Gora is saying, we do not understand the meaning of a lot of things, but we start communicating with it, so we also come to speak English, but when it comes to writing, we do not get grammar, so we cannot write, so that is why he is saying that the theoretical part deals with phenomenology and the descriptive part deals with phonetics, that is the difference between phonetics and phenomenology, so phonemes and phenomenology are very important component of the language and they basically discuss and they study the soundness or the structure to just make sound in order, words to make in order to produce sound, that is actually these two components are describing.