Final Fantasy 7 Remake: A less stereotyped change for Barret?

At E3 this year the long awaited high-definition remake for Final Fantasy 7 was announced.

I didn't think much about it, until I saw an article from Kotaku (here) that the game wouldn't be just an HD remake and it would have some changes.  Then another article (here) touching on how some scenes and components may be hard to pull off in HD without the "cartoony" look of the original.  The cross-dressing scene and slap-fight scene are two that come to mind that may be hard to do in HD.

It then occurred to me there was one component of the game that might get changed a lot.

Final Fantasy 7's Barret has been charged by some as racist (see wikipedia & article from kotaku).  It's been at least 15 years since I played the game, so I cannot remember everything about it.  I do recall Barret as the only character that cursed.  I also remember at times he used broken English/street slang while the other characters didn't.  Why?  I guess that's why they're called stereotypes.

Obviously, the game is now almost 20 years old and the world has changed a lot, and that includes in Final Fantasy games.  Final Fantasy XII's Fran (if she counts as Black, she is technically part of a half-rabbit race of people in the game) and Final Fantasy XIII's Sazh were quite normal.

So I'm wondering if a less "Mr. T" like character will be portrayed in the game.  We'll see.

Employee Retention: The N = large vs N = 1 Problem

During a recent conversation a great analogy popped into my head on employee retention at companies that I thought I'd share.  It of course relates to my love of baseball. 

The Baseball N = Large Problem

The N = Large problem is quite basic.  Take data from a very large sample and use that data to determine some type of result (such as success/failure) with a new case not from the sample.  For those familiar with machine learning, this should sound very familiar.

The N = Large problem is widely used in professional sports.  In baseball, it is commonly used with the drafting/signing of amateur talent.  After analyzing the height, weight, speed, velocity of fastball, accuracy of throws, speed of swing, walk rate, strikeout rate, etc. of a player, teams can determine lots of things:

• the probability of a player making it in the major leagues
• the probability they will injure their arm throwing
• the probability their performance will justify a $5 million dollar signing bonus
• ... a $2 million dollar signing bonus
• ... a $1 million dollar signing bonus

Teams are able to do this based on the large amount of historical data on players that have played in the league before and all the players that have played in the minor leagues and college.

The Baseball N = 1 Problem

In professional sports, especially baseball, each individual player's ability to succeed in the sport is never 100%.  The vast majority simply cannot jump from being an amateur to pro [1].  While the historical data can give you good guidance for the probability a player can succeed, individual coaching, mental training, physical training, and mentoring ultimately decide the level of success a player has.  Even for the most talented individuals, this can be the difference between a player making it to the big leagues or not.  This training is unique to each specific player.  Perhaps a player's swing is bad, or they need to get stronger to hit for more power, or their footwork needs to be better, or they need to learn how to throw a changeup, etc. 

As an example, in an article from ESPN they highlight minor league player Alex Yarbrough.  He is a reasonably talented player coming out of college.  However his throwing mechanics are so bad, he will never make it to the major leagues as a second basemen.  So the Angels must work on those mechanics to turn him into a major league capable second basemen.

This is the N = 1 problem.  Almost every amateur player has weaknesses that prevent them from playing at the major league level.  Each player's weaknesses are unique to them.  The work needed to fix them is unique to each player.  It requires special attention from coaches and trainers to deal with these weaknesses and help each player improve.

Employee Retention: The N = large vs N = 1 problem

In my opinion, there are two employee retention problems.  However, only one is often discussed.

The first retention problem is the N = large problem, retention programs to help all employees.  This is the most common type of employee retention issue that is discussed and the one most companies try to improve on.  It's easier to do and effects the most employees.  You can gather data about employees, conduct surveys, and determine best solutions for the employee population.  In all honesty, they are probably also the best bang for the buck retention ideas.  What are N = large retention solutions?

• Lets give the employees a recreation room
• Lets make ice cream parties for the employees
• Lets add additional educational opportunities
• Lets do an employee hackathon
• Lets try to ...

etc.

However, there is an additional N = 1 problem to retention.  What is it?  It's concentrating on the needs that each individual employee has.  Every employee's pay, career goals, personal value in the work their doing, personal frustrations, etc. are all different.  And that must be managed employee by employee.  It's unlikely the efforts to solve retention in the N = large problem will apply here.

IMO, this is the retention problem that is typically not discussed or discussed very little.  After all, it's hard.  It requires managers and mentors (i.e. coaches) to look at each employee individually and determine what would be best to do for them.  That's really hard.  However, it may be the problem that needs to be discussed far more often.



[1] - According to Wikipedia, the last three players to do this were Mike Leake in 2010, Xavier Nady in 2000, and Jim Abott in 1989.  It's very rare.  Only 3 players in the last 26 years out of about 1000 players drafted a year.

The Best Interview Answer I Ever Heard

There's been much written online about the best way to interview, the best candidates to look for, the qualities of top engineering talent, etc.

There is one singular quality I look for in any candidate, regardless if they are a system administrator, software engineer, or any technical position.  It's the ability to research and learn.

I was interviewing a system administration candidate for another group and the classic question I ask is, "When moving from administrating a few machines to 1000s of machines, what difficulties do you imagine you'll come upon?"

This particular candidate had actually setup and administered a small 16ish node cluster before and said something along the following:

When I setup this cluster, I realized FOO was running really slow.  I went online to see how other people solved the problem.  I found someone else who used pdsh to make FOO run better.  So I downloaded pdsh, set it up and FOO was working better.

I can't even remember what FOO was, but it was really irrelevant.  The candidate:

A) Realized something was running poorly or sub-optimal

B) Researched online a mechanism that would be better

C) Set it up/implemented the solution

D) The solution was deemed much better than the prior situation

Because my group had developed pdsh that was sort of bonus points for the candidate, but I absolutely loved this candidate's answer.  It was so simple and basic, yet illustrates exactly the quality that you want in an engineer.  Going online to research, learn, figure new things out, and find better solutions.  It's actually a quality that is often difficult to find in many candidates.