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Comment by nerdjon | Hacker News Reader

As mentioned in the article, I think the single biggest reason was that Covid largely showed us that it is not strictly necessary to physically be together for everything.

Conferences, announcements, etc all happened virtually and things were largely fine. Sure things like networking were lost (and the associated drinking), and while that was valuable was not necessarily the marketed reason for the events.

We see the same thing outside of the professional space. Video Game conventions for example never really bounced back because the larger companies found out they can do things on their own terms virtually. Those conventions are still happening but they are not the same.

I do sometimes miss the free traveling but I also find it far more convenient (and less of an impact on my life outside of work) to do these things virtually.

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> Conferences, announcements, etc all happened virtually and things were largely fine. Sure things like networking were lost (and the associated drinking), and while that was valuable was not necessarily the marketed reason for the events.

I haven't heard anyone say that things were fine. I and colleagues have participated virtually in ML conferences during covid and people almost unanimously said it was mostly useless. You can't compare zoom rooms to poster sessions, real social events with GatherTown etc. For papers you can just follow arXiv and configure alerts or browse the conference website. The networking and shared fun is core. People make friends/acquaintances, have discussions about how it is to live in another country, their job, their takes on events, gossip, and just general human exchange over beers etc. I know many of us here are introverts, but I'm still seeing it like this. It can be a bonding experience with colleagues to go to the same conference for a week, multiple times a year, you can become friends that will last long. Or it can be hell if you hate them. Two sides to the coin, I admit.

There are many things that can't be said fully openly, e.g. that the main purpose of such conferences is social. Because fun can't be reimbursed, the cog in the machine must be productive and efficient and serious. Except if it's structured like daycare activities mediated by a primary school teacher, i.e. "team-building workshops", whose concept already makes my stomach turn. People can socialize much better if it's not some structured forced activity but happens naturally alongside some other (non-made-up) activity, such as going to a conference and listening to talks etc.

Another thing is that you change your location and life a bit for a week (or a few days), shift your working style. If you stay in the same home or the same office and tune in virtually, most people just going to be multi-tasking. That's already the case for many meetings. People turn off their cameras, their mics, eventually even attendance dwindles. Then if you propose in-person events again, people are disinterested because they associate it with that low-engagement boring stuff, except they now also have to travel to it etc.

In my experience, the in-person networking is absolutely the point. If you're a junior researcher, it's really valuable when your more senior collaborator introduces you to new people. Then that snowballs into more contacts. That can really only happen in a relaxed setting like the hallway or during lunch or over after-session drinks. If you try to do this virtually, you're just a random entity on a screen, not a real person. It's not about the exchange of words, but the reality of being around others that enables that kind of professional connection.

The problem with all this is that you’ve only shown that socializing is fun, not that the amount of ROI you or the company is getting from events is positive.

I’d rather have fun and socialize in ways that have nothing to do with work, and I think younger generations feel even more strongly about that.

The way I see it is that corporate cultures have completely given up on investment in employees. No more tuition reimbursement, no more certification reimbursement, you’re a hired mercenary. They are telling employees straight to their face that they are replaceable temp workers who had better start using AI as much as possible or else they’ll get fired and be replaced with AI anyway.

Why would I want to spend my time going to an industry conference when the industry treats me like shit?

And on this note, how many companies are actually investing in sending employees to conferences? My company even gave up on any sort of team building budget to have my team meet in person, they’re not even willing to pay to have us meet in person once a year. Never mind paying for conference fees and sponsorships.

Conferences that aren’t sales tools have no value to the modern corporation.

From the article:

> I’ve actually talked to folks who decided, “I’ve only got a few years left – I’ll just keep doing what I’m doing, the same way, at the same company, until they let me go or until I decide to quit.” LLMs like ChatGPT made it easier to get by without actually knowing what you’re doing – at least in the short term – and that’s all these kinds of people care about.

This is what has been incentivized by companies. Again, they have told us to our face that we are throwaway employees who are not worth investment. We should just use AI and work faster, please.

Where does socializing fit into that world view? Hell, employees who socialize do pesky things like unionize.

I think it's a broader social problem. People also socialize less in private as well. Atomization, mobile entertainment etc.

> The way I see it is that corporate cultures have completely given up on investment in employees. No more tuition reimbursement, no more certification reimbursement, you’re a hired mercenary. They are telling employees straight to their face that they are replaceable temp workers who had better start using AI as much as possible or else they’ll get fired and be replaced with AI anyway.

Chicken-or-egg of course, but employees also tend to job hop much more than before (again, understandable if they can't get a raise otherwise), making investment less rational for companies. It's a self-feeding cycle. People used to work for multiple decades in the same place before that. But probably some MBA books derived that this is bad, because they become too crucial and too unique, bus factor things, you need more fungible cogs than that.

Even in friend groups people are flakier, romantic relationships are treated as more disposable etc. Of course all these have a flipside, they didn't happen without reason. A general shift away from a "high-trust society" model.

I suspect that outside of executive ranks and probably some other exceptions, staying with the same company mostly didn't result in huge year-to-year raise. BUT jumping companies mostly didn't either. The tech job hop for 2x the money after a couple years is a relatively recent phenomenon for the most part.

It was also never a move that did anything beyond early career even back in the “good old days.”

The whole benefit is that you could convince your next employer that you had senior level experience after spending a short few years as a practitioner.

Almost no one in my field goes to conferences to "learn" anything. Panels don't say anything controversial it's all a giant marketing presentation. Two or three years in you hear the same shit again and again and zone out.

What people do go to conferences for is networking and meeting people. It's often the only time some folks are in the same spot for a face to face dialog. That is 100% not replicable online.

Panels are (mostly) useless unless you have a good moderator and panelists a little controversial. Crowded breakout rooms (or keynotes with 10,000 of your closest friends), I'd mostly rather watch the video or a good stream--though I may not take the time. As mentioned somewhere upthread, conferences can also have value in somewhat focusing your attention for a few days.

Opinions are split on this take because people attend conferences for different reasons.

The group who attend conferences to view the talks and absorb material can mostly accomplish the same thing remotely without dealing with travel, hotels, and being away from family. Remote conferences are great for them.

Another group doesn't really care about the content all that much. They went to conferences to walk around, see things, bump into people, go to parties, and have an excuse to travel. This group feels a big loss because the parts they enjoyed the most have been taken away.

> (and the associated drinking)

I expect this, or lackthereof, is actually the biggest single reason. Which is to say that people aren't wanting to drink much anymore, so by extension they aren't going out to drink. Alcohol is known as the "social lubricant" for good reason. Despite a rise in use during the early stages of COVID lockdowns/restrictions, consumption of alcohol has dropped precipitously since — now at the lowest rate on record.

On the contrary it actually showed me the value of person.

It did for me too, I still travel to some things.

But it did show me that a lot of things were unnecessary to travel too and were just fine virtually.

It isnt go back to how it was before or all virtual, there is a middle ground of traveling and in person when it is actually valuable instead of just being yet another conference.

I still go to some events; I'm in a part-time role these days on my own as well. But I'm much more selective than 10 years or so when I was constantly putting out speaking proposals and shooting off to conferences pretty casually.

For better or worse, it’s kind of the double-edged sword of ICs insisting that WFH is fine and they don’t need to see other people in the office. Once you’ve made that argument, it’s hard to find a principled objection when management says “OK, no more conferences on our dime then.”

I can't imagine wanting to go to even a local conference unless it's a paid alternative to doing real work in a shitty office. Like sure, it's better than that. But certainly not wanting to travel for it. Like if it's just "getting me out of" WFH, lol, no, I'll pass.

I like social events well enough, but Christ, I'd rather go to some other profession's conference than a tech conference. If I started showing up at them it'd be a sign of distress, that I was desperate for a job and my existing network had failed me.

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