Cookingboy

> and particularly skilled developers.

skilled developers are much more common than people think. We get the impression of rarity precisely because we limit the search pool to local areas where very often many top companies are competing for the same talent pool.

But at the end of the day there are a ton of super smart developers in EU, China, India, Japan, South America or even lower to mid COL areas in the U.S. who are more than happy to take 50% of Silicon Valley pay and just do as well of a job.

At the very end of the day vast majority of software engineering is far from rocket science, and you don't need someone who can re-invent MapReduce out of thin air just to refactor that clusterfuck of Redux code.

As preferable as WFH is for many and as productive as many people can be while working remote, at the end of the day, you can't change human nature.

There is a reason why companies like Google are doubling down in Silicon Valley real estate. They believe that the best, most innovative type of work are the results of organic discussions and unscheduled, unplanned, casual human interactions. So many cool ideas and new projects were the results of a casual lunch discussion even just random hallway chats. You can't duplicate that with Slack messages or scheduled Zoom meetings. The reason for that isn't because of process or infrastructure deficiency with remote working, it has to do with simple human nature.

Even as recently as this summer I've personally seen entire teams get sidelined for important projects because their engineering leadership didn't bother to physically attend an optionally in-person offsite. Guess what, all the most important conversations took place after the Zoom camera was shut off. An entire major initiative came into idea during a casual walk to grab coffee.

As long as companies are run by human there will be politics, off the record discussions, darkroom decisions, favoritism, subjective impressions, subconscious biases, and "out of sight, out of mind" selective memories.

Again, that's just human nature. A C suite executive at a top tier tech company is driven by the same human nature as a caveman. You can't engineer human nature away with process and you sure as hell can't undo them with technology.

Obviously you don't have to care about any of that and there is nothing wrong to focus on other things in life other than work (and many people should), but the inevitable end result will be there will be two categories of workers, even within the same company, if they allow optional remote work.

All the best, shiniest projects will be local right under exec’s noses. The "A-team" will be kept close, or just as likely, the ones who stay close/in office will be recognized as the "A-team". I believe there will be a lot of jobs that will be fully remote at first, then companies will lower comp for those jobs and start giving them less sexy/boring/keep the lights on type of work, and then eventually they will be outsourced out or automated away, yes, even for highly paid FAANG software engineers.

Edit: Some people have brought up the unique benefits of Slack messages like them being async, and by definition clearer and with better record keeping, etc. By people going back to the office 1 or 2 days a week we aren't going to be dumping Slack or Zoom. They will still serve as nice complements.

Edit: Haha I really ruffed some feathers here. I get it, many on HN believe anyone who derive value from in-person interaction are sub-par employees who aren't actually productive. I also do believe that you can have life-long relationships with people without ever hearing their voices or seeing their faces. But I'd just like to remind people that HN is a relative unique group of individuals (even among engineers) that probably prefers dealing with code than dealing with fellow human beings. But the very fact that all of our communication based technology has been progressing to mimic in-person meetings as much as possible (text -> voice -> video -> telepresence -> VR?) says a lot on this subject.

So this may be very unpopular and controversial. I think as great as paid paternity/maternity leaves are for parents, it's a somewhat an indirect penalty against people who don't have children during their tenure. Those people are literally expected to work more hours and days for the same level of pay and responsibility, and if someone has multiple kids during their career it can really add up vs. someone who choose to not have kids.

I don't have an answer for it because I think giving time off to new parents are super important, but in the name of fairness, maybe X months per Y years "paid leave time" should be universally granted to all employees?

This is really neat, how are you getting those data from RH?

Because at the end of the day "equal skills" doesn't exist. You can't just measure a developer's overall skill with a single power level number like in some anime. Different people are good/bad at different things and two engineers at the same level/experience can contribute to the team in completely different ways.

That's why compensation exists in bands, which is aimed to reflect that skill levels exist in bands (not all L4s are equal, etc).

Anecdotal data is still data, just not conclusive data. But there is a Chinese saying "无风不起浪", which roughly translates to “If there are waves on the water, there must be wind somewhere".

We are hearing a ton of these anecdotal stories very recently about Californians moving to other states, especially wealthy, higher income individuals. My gut feeling is that there is some material shift behind it and our systematically measured data could simply just be lagging at the moment, or they are measuring the wrong things.

Can $5-10 a day get you food with this kind of quality and variety?

https://www.businessinsider.com/photos-free-food-google-cafe...

Funny, I actually saw lots of people bring their family to work for dinner when I was at Google, it's pretty common actually.

You will be shocked that we even bring friends and family there occasionally! That's how good the food is :)

I remember the Japanese cafe at Google was very good at one point. This article has some pictures to give you an idea:

https://www.businessinsider.com/photos-free-food-google-cafe...

Why wouldn't you eat something free that's prepared by highly skilled experts with top quality fresh ingredients and a healthy recipe?

And those two people likely don't eat remotely as well as Facebook or Google employees.

Even if you value your labor/time to cook to be worth of zero dollars, when I was at Google my cafe had fresh seafood (a rotation of different types of fish, scallops, shrimps, mussel, crab, etc) and good quality regular meat dish (I particularly liked the skirt steak with guacamole), great vegan/vegetarian options, in-house made desserts including fresh made chocolate truffles every day prepared by the chef.

And that's just lunch, at one cafe, not including breakfast and dinner and options at the other 3 dozens cafes on campus.

If you can recreate all of that for two people with a $60/week budget, then kudos to you. I know I can't.

Next time you should ask them "do you think the all victims of those crimes deserved their fate as well?"

You are right it is a possibility, I actually think "incarceration rate" may actually be this alternative benchmark you suggested.

Now the question is do voters realize that benchmark can be artificially lowered by terrible policies that don't help anyone other than make some people "feel good"? We can literally make all crimes legal and we'd end up with an incarceration rate and prison population of zero.

I consider myself liberal, but I agree with you, the California/SF branch of progressivism are extremely toxic.

Much of the platform is based on feelings and ideology instead of facts and problem solving, but it manages to even be worse than the right wing counterpart somehow because it comes served with a side dish of "holier and smarter than thou!"

>What makes you think you have any say in the situation?

He doesn't have a say, but that doesn't mean he can't have valid opinions as an outsider with a more unbiased perspective.

To be clear I've lived in SF Bay Area for 10+ years and I've also traveled extensively/lived in other world class cities.

SF really is a more expensive shithole. It doesn't mean there aren't any charms but anyone who doesn't acknowledge SF's shortfalls vs. other top cities is in complete denial.

Oh he absolutely knows it's bad policy, however he also knows it wins votes from people in San Francisco.

The problem is a large numbers of voters in SF don't realize it's bad policy, and maybe a bigger problem would be why are district attorneys elected positions in the first place?

It's simply some kind of easing function, and if the universe does have a designer, it's obvious to see that said designer prefers smooth transition and curves for most macroscopic phenomenon.

Also by defining the inverse square law you can maintain a cohesive interaction model between different objects and regions. Their sphere of influence (which can be described by gravity waves) will now just be superimposed on top of each other without extra work.

Or even crazier, maybe it's a combination of both, maybe there is a hard cutoff after all once you pass the event horizon.

On one hand I see where you are coming from, but on the other hand I really, really want to witness First Contact and the subsequent reaction from the world.

It will be the single most monumental moment in human history.

Yeah I'm honestly not too sure here either, the more I think the more I believe simulation + hidden variables may be the true explanation behind our reality.

>How physical space emerges from configuration space is a deep mystery.

Exactly, how quantum collapse happens, or what quantum collapse even is, is one of the biggest mysteries of physics.

And I'll argue that as long as we don't have an explanation for that bridge between the "configuration space" and the "physical space" like you call them, the former may as well be magic.

Yes it would make learning and explaining the rules of magic a bit easier if you get into that mindset, but it still doesn't make it intuitive, but just easier to accept.

If anything, it does feel we could very well be living in a simulation governed by arbitrarily defined rules that exist on a different plane than other physical laws. Hmmm maybe we should give non-local hidden variable theories another look...

>Google leadership doesn't believe that

What do you mean. Obviously they believe the $1B in cost saving. But what they do also believe is that the value generated by people being in the office will exceed the obvious short term costs.

I can assure you all these "assurances" are just based off personal preferences and anecdotal stories.

There are pros and cons with office work and WFH, and some people prefer one over the other. A full remote arrangement isn't for everyone, despite how the overwhelming number of introverts on HackerNews paint it as the objectively the best way going forward for all companies.

>Your kids all else equal will be outsprinted by kids who live in more competitive cities

But it won't "all else equal", there are so many variables at play here that it's meaningless to talk about a hypothetical "all else equal" scenario. Also there have been so many successful people who were born and raised in what you'd call "less competitive" areas.

>The irony is that most educated people living in small towns want to get out, and a generation or two after they do they want to go back.

What's ironic about people going to places chasing things they desire? Big cities and small towns offer different things, and those things value differently to different people. The people who are leaving small towns chasing after opportunities and the people who want to move back to small towns from big cities are obviously at different stages in their lives and value different things.

>Will the cycle repeat itself?

Probably? But why is that an issue?

Huh, so they recently raised $850M just before end of February, at $74B valuation. Anyone have an educated guess on why they raised more so soon after that? Maybe some investors threw money at them at a much higher valuation?

Because Wall Street realizes even consumers don't care about consumer privacy.

If Ashley Madison and Equifax walked away with barely a scratch from their catastrophic breaches, then this is almost nothing in comparison.

I absolutely agree. It's just your typical pseudo-intellectualism rant here. It starts with a provocative declaration and then backed up with some explanation that is technically true, but doesn't offer any actual insights or value.

>What is "greed" versus motivation for innovation?

I don't have exact data, but my gut feeling tells me that 99.99% of the people buying cryptocurrencies today are driven by greed instead of innovation.

> and you drew the line at BTC?

Not really, if you look at the perspective that we already have enough instruments for financial manipulation and greed, why introduce another one that consumes so much energy?

>Fitting for a city known today for its vast outdoor tent cities of homelessness.

I mean...you know that's a completely man-made problem right?

Just because something else is bad already doesn't mean you should introduce more of the same.

Also Bill Gate's opinion is based on Bitcoin offering almost no utilitarian value but consumes a ton of energy, nothing to do with monetary policies.

>So, this is 'be found guilty and be forced to go back to your junkies and give them their next hit of crack for free.'

It's worse, like you said, the in-game currency isn't even real, unlike a hit the dealer has to hand out for free...

That’s just them dropping the ball when people needed it to work.

But their predatory behavior have long existed before this GME debacle. Which other “investment apps for adults” show confetti animation after a trade? Or actively have UI that go “wanna make more money? Try trade on margin!”?