Windows 11 shows STEP thumbnails now.
68 karma · joined March 25, 2022
As long as oil and emissions is what runs our society what are individuals going to be able to do about it?
Nevermind that every job is different and the outcomes are measured very differently and sometimes "hustling" or "staying busy" is actually a substandard way of achieving most tasks consistently as the short term benefits of hustling give way to burnout.
Bad managers are asking employees to constantly sprint when business is a marathon. It's a weak form of leadership generally ascribed to the "professional" managers with (only) business school backgrounds who can't understand what their employees actually do nor understand the system of the company as a whole.
It's a classic short term quarterly profits mentality.
Employees have for centuries been doing this sort of thing. Looking busy by optimizing for busyness over actual productivity because they realize managers are only concerned with looking good and skating by, not the actual business outcomes.
Note for those starting a business: design your corporate structure so that middle managers incentives are visibly aligned with the actual success of the company and not with visible working culture. And then set the pace properly.
A motor cannot work at 100% duty cycle and maintain it's longest possible service life before being rebuilt.
"The future is here it's just not evenly distributed yet." -William Gibson
WFH will reduce middle management and "prestige" employees as more efficient workflows evolve from the old "filing cabinets and typewriters" methods that some companies are still using to this day.
Automation is coming, and it is definitely coming for the white collar workers who act as human CRUD apps.
The ability to collate, search, and analyze data used to require labor power, it does not anymore.
I watch my partner's experience in accounting and the difference are stark.
There are many many bs steps in accounting with paper that disappear when digital tools are used.
Having physical pieces of paper as a fungible business tool is still something used by a lot of firms but they are simply behind the times, there are relatively simple software solutions for most paperwork needs and this reduces labor power required.
"We've always done it this way" is an excuse for firms that will fall behind other digitally empowered firms.
What does this mean for investors? Don't invest in companies that insist on using filing cabinets.
But seriously folks, it's so obvious that the older generations are intimidated by technology and the changes it begets in new work culture. Us younger gens (I am a "Millennial" FWIW) KNOW that work done digitally is faster and more efficient. The backlash against remote work is a backlash against the digital revolution.
What's the saying, if a technology is created when you're young you can get a career in it, if it happens when you're old you lash out against it? Something like that.
The people who complain about remote work are telling on themselves, and they are admitting they don't want to adapt to the new realities.
Upskill in things you want to do but you don't do at work.
Create and add to your portfolio.
Submit CV and portfolio of projects that serve as proof points.
In FreeCAD, I see a product that is almost there, but suffers from a lack of creative leadership and business thought. Of course, it's being done by long suffering devs with little resources and time. But the truth is this could be a success on the level of Arduino or RPi if the right organizational structure was agreed upon and executed.
Devs need to be paid. Labors of love never turn out as well as well funded endeavors. There are many models to point to but the one I like is RedHat. RedHat serves corporate customers for money, and delivers free products to individuals. Open source software for free but with paid support and custom development. This is the way.
In my opinion this is the perfect model for a CAD system development organization. FreeCAD needs to be free for users to learn and modify. This is goes without saying and FreeCAD is popular with users IN SPITE of it's glaring flaws. If FreeCAD could be developed to a level that made it a viable choice for professionals like myself, a mechanical engineer, to trust enough to base a development toolchain on, then corporate money for enterprise level solutions would flow like water. The CAD market is ripe for disruption and a solid open source model could do that. SW costs ~$4000 plus ~$1000 per year in maintenance fees and let's be honest, it is broken but usable and has a network effect in play. But nothing they do is unique or even especially state of the art, it's stuck in the 80s.
How do we make this happen HN. I see a "FreeCAD is gr8" post like once every two months and looking at it we should be able to org our way to a better solution.
My DMs are open.