Scanning, dumping, and diffing of active directory also helps seeing when people got promoted. ("Software Engineer" -> "Software Engineer II" -> "Senior Software Engineer" etc). Useful for figuring out stats on "promotion velocity" in one org vs other.
Wouldn't work at "a certain company" if such company now made all their levels secret by default of course.
> In-person is much better if you don't know what you need to build, are trying to "figure it out as you go along", and are relying on the implicit fast feedback loop of standing next to each other.
true.
> For large companies like FAANG, I actually think they mostly fall in bucket 2
Also true most fall in the "figure it out" bucket... But here's where it gets funny: just meet in-person you say?
No, this is FAANG. You're in MTV, but the people you need to collaborate are in NYC, LAX, SEA, AUS, SFO...
So your in-person experience is you booking a room just for yourself so you can video conference all those people who also booked a room for themselves.
Because every other team is in same situation, finding a meeting room is a challenge in itself.
Take the call from your desk then?
No, this is FAANG, every building is open office layout, it'd be rude & disrespectful to your colleagues around who are busy coding.
A lot of companies want the benefits of distributed teams, but also want to force everyone to come to offices and do conference calls in meeting rooms instead of work remote.
It's mind boggling to me. All I can think is that there is a lot of ego tied up in offices for some reason.
This was the first thing I noticed when I started working about a decade ago. Endless conference calls while people extolled the benefits of in-person interaction which wasn't even happening. As a result, I now have a healthy amount of cynicism about advocacy of office work. I take ICs who favor it at face value when they say it works better for them, but clearly, many of the most vocal advocates in management don't even care if any of the supposed benefits are realized.
Not just wall street. All of the governments, and thus their budgets, where this real estate resides are completely dependent on property taxes and the overall commerce in the area which will collapse if people (and then secondary small businesses) just simply aren't there anymore.
Budget collapses would be karmic, given how many local governments court commercial real estate while neglecting residential real estate by not encouraging (or actively fighting) the development of new homes. Too many city halls decided that housing people who work in their city is someone else's problem, and would be quite happy with 0 new residents within city limits if it meant all new developments are commercial.
Working for a FAANG right now and since RTO was mandated, I noticed that our team have been spending ~5 mins before the beginning of the meetings finding a room and setting up the audio/visual system for conference calls with other teammates across the country. This is for a company that has a lot of office space in its birth town and has HQs in a few other cities. A couple of teammates (out of 8 total) privately told me that they hate the RTO.
I personally prefer fully remote because I hate the distraction in the open office plan and associated pains like having to find meeting rooms, having to share restrooms with others (I admit this is just my personal pet peeve), and not being able to avoid distraction when I am in the zone for working. Most of all, I don't like the commute (I have to commute 1 hour each way, so everyday, I am spending 2 hours; when I worked from home, I started early and end up working an extra hour or two because I don't have to commute; these days, I try to arrive at 8-9am and leave by 5-6pm to beat the traffic and once I get home, I don't do any work). I consider quitting someday soon and am waiting for my wife to complete her training. Once she has done that, we will move to a place where she can find work, and I will quit my FAANG job for a fully-remote one (sure, my income will take a small hit, but quality of work life is more important for me).
If I went into "my" office I probably wouldn't recognize a single person at this point and I'm not sure there's anyone who I regularly work with who is assigned to that office, much less goes in.
>No, this is FAANG, every building is open office layout, it'd be rude & disrespectful to your colleagues around who are busy coding.
Individual offices have not been the norm for everyone at large companies maybe ever? Cubicles are "better" but not that much better. (Source: I had one for years--both full-height and then shorter.) And the fact is that lots used to spend a lot more time on the phone than they generally need to today given other communication channels. When I've been in an office I absolutely make calls from my desk and everyone else does too.
Sure this happens but it’s not like it’s everyone. For example right now 80% of the people I collaborate with are in the same office as me. So it’s still noticeably better to come in the office.
The downside is it’s hard to get actual coding down because of all the “collaboration”. So my ideal would be 1-2 days in office to meet and then 3-4 days to code ins peace at home.
I can be just as busy at a watercooler away from my screen. That’s not the point. I think that all of the arguments in this conversation, whether they are valid or not, are not at all relevant to the purpose of the conversation.
I have this wild guess that if a significant number of companies cut their leases on all those monstrous office spaces that are kept being built all the time, it could hurt some people with important companies a fucking lot, and the ripple effect could prove to be immense and disastrous.
Spice must flow, and the fact that there are parties interested in those office spaces running and bringing money in has diddly to do with whether there are any actual productivity advantages of bringing the office workers back to the office or not.
For enough dough you can buy enough experts and pundits and other talking heads that will overflow the information space with thinkpieces and analyses that go either way.
Meanwhile, the only actual productivity boost is when you have a private office with a closable door within walking distance from your living place. But it’s not like anybody would give you _that,_ plebeian.
> No, this is FAANG. You're in MTV, but the people you need to collaborate are in NYC, LAX, SEA, AUS, SFO...
I don't think this is really that common. I spent a decade in MTV on a wide variety of teams. I had VCs with people in different locations a handful of times and I never had one by myself. And getting deep focus with those people was so valuable that it was easier to just go to NYC, MUC, or SYD once a quarter than it was to jump on a call.
Even FAANGs do not apply perfect hashing to distribute teams across their office locations (well, for all I know, Google does, but the one I work at doesn‘t). And often it already helps if some of the team is co-located.
"Exempts manufacturers or distributors of certain medical devices, motor vehicles, any power generation or storage equipment, or equipment for fueling or charging motor vehicles."
Wondering what type of farmer equipment count as "motor vehicles" here, and if tractors are counted or not.
> (Other) Motor vehicles are not the focus of the bill, but could be impacted by the bill, especially for things like touch screens in vehicles and electric vehicle chargers. The industry would appreciate an exemption to exclude motor vehicles and related devices from the scope of the bill
> (Other) There are concerns regarding the definition of digital electronic equipment. A clarifying amendment to exclude digital electronic equipment in vehicle charging stations would be appreciated. New York's right to repair law had similar language.
The list of entities testifying in the "(Other)" category (versus "(In support)") is thankfully visible in these docs you only need to Ctrl+F for "(Other)".
"We are worried this manufacturing bill might affect vehicle touch screen and electric charging technology. Lets exempt the entire auto industry, the single largest manufacturing sector in the country, that represents 3% of the US GDP."
Thankfully, most automakers do make diagnostic tools/parts/info available to everyone (due to Massachusetts' 2012 right to repair law). The automakers don't really mind because more users licensing that software is more revenue. If anyone cares in that industry, it's the dealers.
They're only required to do it in MA though. They do it everywhere because it's more revenue, so I think it's fair to say they don't mind. It's the dealers that mind.
And the contempt the politicians have for their voters who actually put it into law, which is more egregious imho. I don't necessarily blame an industry for trying to get things in bills that benefit their industry, but I do blame the politicians who actually make it a reality over the interests of their citizens and then a governor who signs it into law.
civics education, critical thinking, math, science, and humanities education all have an impact on how and if people understand and get involved in issues that affect the population and the world, politics, etc...
It's a lot easier to manipulate and misinformed people when the lack a basic education in these fields.
I wouldn't say the contempt for customers is conscious. It's more a single-minded focus on revenue maximization, leading to an obscene effort to defend against any percieved threats to that revenue maximization, that results in what looks like contempt... When you only care about one thing, nothing else matters.
> When you only care about one thing, nothing else matters.
Which counts as contempt in my book. Contempt means "The feeling or attitude of regarding someone or something as inferior, base, or worthless; scorn." Caring more about your revenue stream than your customers is regarding your customers as inferior to your revenue stream.
Totally, and in my experience it's above a certain level in the company, below that level the employees have pride and care about their customers because they are them and can relate to them, above a certain level they are not users of their own products, cant relate to regular people and then a different dynamic takes over.
This is potentially an advantage for the Colorado bill, which (I think?) specifically targets right-to-repair for farmers/farm equipment. When you only target one industry, that industry can't say "give us an exception, the bill will still be fine."
> Seems like Americans are left with the choice to either risk killing someone/themselves driving home or just not going out.
If only there was a service where you can pay money to be driven somewhere... I heard Americans invented these smartphones with apps, Maybe they can even invent an app-based version of that paid ride service!
Yes, you can see I costed out a non-car round trip at $5. In NYC on the MTA it would be $5.50; in DC, between $4 and $8.
One thing I do in DC is ride bikeshare to the bar (where the amortized cost of the ride, with my annual membership, is basically $0) and then take metro back ($2).
And of course this is all moot if you can just walk, since it is always free, which is one major benefit of denser mixed use walkable neighborhoods.
Taxis are incredibly cumbersome to hail, if not impossible, in less dense areas. Uber is also relatively new on the scene in the grand scheme of it. You didn't always have that option.
> Programs which have offered the homeless real homes, with privacy, the ability to safely store belongings and keep pets, and the ability to decorate, cook, and sleep in quiet, have not had any difficulty filling those homes, but these programs are few and far between (none exist in the US, that I know of).
That's exactly what needs to be built. The other thing that needs to be done is for cities to not tolerate homeless people living unsheltered in city streets or parks. Any homeless people that refuse to enter shelters in the city should be deported to these tiny home villages.
> They couldn't do a massive layoff in the past because it would get them bad rep
Forget about "bad rep", it was a bad economic decision: why let go a slight underperformer (a now-known 0.8x engineer) that you hired in 2015 at pay X, if in exchange you hire a "expected normal 1.0x engineer", but at a price of 1.8*X in 2021 due to crazy escalation of SWE salaries in that period.
(Assuming you have a perfected/more picky hiring process that knows the median hire will be a 1.0x engineer)
Now in 2023, the situation is different: you can hire a "expected normal 1.0x engineer" but at pay 0.8*X (adjusted for inflation - ratios all made up)
> At Flexport, 2023 is going to bring extraordinary velocity – we are in the process of doubling our software engineering talent and moving to single threaded business organizations to build world class products faster, and we will continue to invest in delivering best-in-class operational execution for our customers.
Looks like they are laying off non-tech workers who they have made (or will make) obsolete through automation
You don't layoff workers that you replace through automation. You simply don't renew their contract. It's much smoother and cheaper, and automation does not happen overnight anyways.
Dave clark brought this from Amazon. At Amazon they call it "STLs" or single threaded leadership. Basically you assign one director/vp/etc. to the business, and they are responsible for PnL/success.
It isn't that you do one thing at a time as an entire company, but your org is focused on one thing. For example, maybe there is a director who runs an org in charge of international freight forwarding.
I'm not really sure how things are organized at other large companies as Amazon was my only experience into mega corp work.
"A single-threaded leader is a leader who is 100% dedicated and accountable to a specific product, such as your mobile application, customer account, or the search capability in your e-commerce store. The single-threaded leader is responsible for turning strategy into real results, and they are empowered to do so."
This announcement will at least make it more fair going forward to teams that sticked to the rules and did report the days off. The teams that didn't report still get an advantage in a larger payout though.
At the end of the day, for a salaried employee, it's not a vacation day if you do any work -- and checking email IS work -- no matter how it's accounted for, most Microsoft FTEs never truly take a vacation day. So it's all just a matter of accounting anyway.
Wouldn't work at "a certain company" if such company now made all their levels secret by default of course.