2,330 karma · joined March 10, 2009
CLAP: I'm using the JUCE framework for plugin integrations, which doesn't currently support CLAP. But their roadmap says that the next major version will support CLAP, and I will definitely implement that in Anukari. Not sure when JUCE 9 comes out though, it could be a while.
It runs on the GPU and it took a lot of tricks to make that work reliably. The biggest difficulty has to do with the fact that the model is user-editable in real time, so all the GUI stuff has to be synchronized to the audio rendering thread, and due to the latency constraints that has to be done without locks, allocation, etc.
Hopefully sometime in the near future I'll have time to write up a detailed explanation of the design!
[1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3wdj7/inside-the-discord-wh...
I still get to manage my reports remotely. :P
Now, I like to view myself as helping them succeed, rather than browbeating them into submission to enact my will. But even if I was this caricature of a manager that you posit, why would it be better for me in person?
If anything, my "big shot" factor is higher remotely than it is in person. Physically, I'm just a normal person, made of meat and vulnerable like anyone else. If I am speaking to a large audience, they can actually participate. An audience member might throw out a little joke here and there, a bit of heckling, etc. I can't stop it! (Not that I'd want to, personally.)
But over video? Well, first, I can make it a live stream. Boom, I am in power, no heckling possible. But even if it's technically a two-way call, once you have a few dozen people, there's no audience banter. I control the conversation, completely. Heck, I'm the only one with my camera on. I'm the center of attention. I have the power to mute people. I'm a God!
> If everyone is doing their work just fine without all that close supervision
That's a pretty good description of my team. And you're right: like anyone else, I enjoy feeling appreciated. But bossing people around in person is not a way to obtain appreciation! Providing useful feedback, helping people ensure they're are working on meaningful projects, helping resolve weird interpersonal situations -- in other words, being a good manager -- is what results in real appreciation.
And all that stuff can be done remotely. But again, it sure is less fun, at least for me. Having a difficult performance conversation with someone over video sucks, for the same reason that it sucks to break up with someone via text message.
> So I wouldn't push them to go back into the office; remote work is the right thing for the team overall.
By the way, I definitely don't have an MBA. I've written around a million lines of C++ over my career. So I understand what it's like to work as an IC. Have you managed?
Your theory seems to rely on a rather uncharitable set of assumptions.
I wonder if an alternate explanation could be that the manager job role tends to involve a lot of talking to other people, and that there's something advantageous, or at least more fun, about doing that in person?
Or perhaps the type of people that become managers tend to lean more toward extroversion, and thus on average managers enjoy in-person social interaction more?
I often meet and talk with people for 6 hours in a day. Have you ever talked on video calls for 6 hours in a day? Every person has a slightly different quality of microphone setup, you can't make eye contact, it's harder to read social cues, you can't get fresh air by doing a walking 1:1, etc. It kind of sucks, like, a lot. Especially for people, like myself, who ended up managing because they simply enjoy being around other people. It's just not that fun to talk to a plastic rectangle all day.
Now, I do still sneak in some IC work from time to time, and it's obviously great to do that remotely. And I understand that most of my reports spend most of their time doing that kind of work. So I wouldn't push them to go back into the office; remote work is the right thing for the team overall.
But if you surveyed me, asking whether I'd like to return to the office? Fuck yeah, I'd like to. But my motivation has nothing to do with your ungracious views on managers needing to feel like bigshots. I'm sorry that you've evidently worked with poor management to the extent that this is your worldview.
As an example, we can look at the Netflix Prize [1], which was only $1M. But that $1M bought them way, way more than $1M worth of work: "over 20,000 teams had registered for the competition from over 150 countries. 2,000 teams had submitted over 13,000 prediction sets." It's hard to guess the value of having 20,000 teams working on the Netflix problem, but $1M invested directly by Netflix would probably only pay for 3-4 engineers for 1 year, so it seems like they got a lot of leverage out of that $1M.
And yeah the sonic possibilities are endless. On a physical pedalboard, it's pretty involved to rewire everything to change the routing, or add/remove pedals, etc. With the digital modeling ones, this all becomes trivial and you can try all kinds of different setups much more quickly, save them and go back later, share them with friends, etc.
All that said, it's kind of like asking an acoustic guitarist in the 1950s why they would use an electric guitar. Electric guitars obviously have lots of advantages, but it's not like people stopped playing acoustic guitars. I still think real analog pedals are cool, they're fun to collect, in some cases they sound better, etc. And sometimes you don't need the mega-flexibility -- if you have a 4-pedal setup that does "your tone" maybe that's all you ever need.
I don't have perfect pitch, but as a guitarist I often tune my 3rd string to be a little bit flat (relative to equal temperament), because many chords I play have their major 3rd on that string and it sounds better to have it closer to just temperament.
Regarding singing, one of the reasons that Barbershop music has such a beautiful/smooth sound is because the vocalists sing the intervals of chords in just temperament, despite the fact that the bass note moves around in equal temperament. This is covered well by the Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbershop_music.
This is another reason for the vesting payouts for employees. If there wasn't some reward, and you had to do a full interview, why not just interview somewhere else?
Regarding your last question, it is true that a cabal of disgruntled employees could cause problems for an acquihire. I have seen cases where the acquisition was contingent on a certain number of engineers passing the interviews. Another good reason for a big financial incentive.
I don't think that would lead to better terms in a new deal. The next buyer is likely to learn that the company's employees boned the interviews, which is going to look bad.
You're right that often people do have to interview to remain employed (and thus to receive these benefits).
https://www.consumerreports.org/online-shopping/why-do-i-hav...
(Plus, this is Hacker News, where discourse is intended to be civil rather than deliberately inflammatory.)
What an appalling sentiment.
:(