733 karma · joined May 8, 2012
If it is trained on private information, then I would have issue with it.
If they wouldn't have had the eye of regulators on them they could have financially buried a bunch of startups. But that didn't make them turn their products into garbage. There were many issues.
Microsoft changed. And for the better. The death was short lived, but in many ways, especially in the cultural zeitgeist of software engineers and tech folk, Microsoft did die there for a bit. Satya did a great job of resurrecting it. He has been masterful in his role (I worked at a company that was acquired by Microsoft).
Companies who were once the 900 pound gorilla can die, despite making a lot of money. Oracle still prints money, but how many people under 50 use Oracle on a day to day basis when they are building a company? I would venture to say approaching zero. Google is still printing money, but in many ways it is dead (or dying).
I will also say, through lots of communication our sex is light years better now at 20 years of marriage than when we were first married. Our emotional connection is incredibly strong, and we have 20 years of communication to make the physical sex better as well. I am much happier sexually in my 40s with my committed spouse than I was as a teenager having sex (before I was religious) with different partners (the "variety" that the article mentions). Don't lose hope people. You can make a great life after marriage that is deep and rewarding sexually. Marriage can be wonderful if you value the right things in a partner and find that partner.
I hope to see more bargaining and unionizing by workers. We need a shift in the power dynamics in the United States.
You'll notice they often have much more generous terms of the severance when their employees live in countries that have actually worked hard to provide better terms for employees. In the United States we give companies incredible latitude in how they treat their employees (it's legal to treat them terribly) and many companies choose to do just that.
We need to stop relying on corporations to be kind and create a social safety net that helps employees in this situation. Most people in the United States live paycheck to paycheck (including many in tech). Our lack of a social safety net costs us too much collectively and individually.
Except they didn't. I brought it back to Apple after lots of phone calls and troubleshooting and Apple has now told me that something must have gotten messed up with the software. I am able to buy a new pair of AirPods if I would like to, or I can spend $250 for them to diagnose the issue (the price of a new set of AirPods).
I can't imagine having a problem like this that seems so obvious to be a software bug and passing that cost down to the consumer instead of making it right. I left the Apple Store in a worse situation than when I arrived. I had a working case and one working AirPod. I left with having spent $90 on my replacement AirPod, with none of them working.
I worked at Apple years ago in Apple Retail. I am shocked the people there thought this was the right approach to take. I love Apple products, but this is making me rethink the Apple ecosystem. I am certainly not buying another pair of AirPods. The environmental impacts of this also irk me. Instead of trying to solve the problem they want me to just throw away my AirPods and buy new ones.
If a company has a software issue and pushes the cost of that bug onto the consumer the company is incredibly unlikely to ever solve it. Apple pushed the pain point of their software issue onto the consumer. That's a painful experience as a customer.
But the average company has no potential tax breaks, has the potential to save money by getting rid of their office space, and doesn't care about the financial outcomes of large real estate investors or lenders.
I think they believe returning to the office is good. I would agree with them that some things are hard to replicate in a remote environment. It's hard to brainstorm a new project in a Zoom call.
But I think many prefer an in person work setup because they are bad managers. Bad managers are not good at setting a vision for a company or building in organic, helpful checkpoints for progress and accountability. They don't actually state what anyone at the company should be doing. Expectations are often unclear. These bad managers have very little way of knowing if their employees are working.
So they go the lazy route and use presence and the appearance of busyness, in the office, as a poor stand in for good management. There are benefits of being in-person. But whenever I see a decree for in person work, I think it's usually just poor leadership.
I would say the best dynamic for most, not all, companies is a remote work environment where people can get together as needed. Well before the pandemic I worked at GitHub. At GitHub we worked remotely but we got together often to have a hack house where we worked together solving a problem that needed brainstorming or deep thinking. I saw my fellow employees often. It was the best of both worlds. A remote first company with opportunities to get together as needed is the gold standard. A fully in person is too extreme. A fully remote company without the chance to get together is also a poor experience and is very isolating. Both too far on either side of the spectrum.
It seems like if there was a competitive advantage to be found in another VCS it would be a large opportunity for a competitor to support and promote that alternative. Git certainly has many downsides but I am not sure a different system is an overall better proposition than git at this point. If it was, I would think we would see more investment there.
https://devonzuegel.com/post/agglomeration-effects-might-cha...
But I got a job as a Ruby developer from resourcefulness and eagerness. It was a great company. It was clear, however, that I wasn’t pulling my weight when the intern was technically running circles around me. They do the only right thing. They made some “bare minimum” requirements in the form of an evaluation and gave me three weeks to complete it. I couldn’t do it. I was getting much better by the end of the three weeks thanks to a coworker who decided to mentor me, but it was past my ability level. When this was clear and they were firing me I said to the CTO “you can fire me, but I am getting good at learning, so I am going to just study really hard and reapply in 3 months and you’ll have to give me another chance!” I said this in a motivated way, not an insane person way. He decided he would find another spot to put me in the company.
He ended up putting me on the technical integrations team. The other person on that team was an incredibly kind human who loved teaching people. It was perfect for me. I ended up performing super well in that role and became very good at it. It was a win/win for the organization.
I will tell you one thing, however. The weeks before they gave me that evaluation were the most stressful weeks of my life. I was waking up in the middle of the night immediately stressed. It feels terrible to be bad at your job. It felt so freeing to be given the evaluation. Because it was cut and dry. I could do it or I couldn’t, but at least there would be finality. It is kind to not let someone flounder in a role that is past their abilities. I am grateful he found another spot for me to fit at the company. That CTO has passed now at a young age, but I owe my career to him recognizing my passion and finding another spot for me. Thanks Brandon Dewitt!
But I can't take humans serious as this stage where 40,000 of us are dying each year and so little is done to prevent it despite it being something we can dramatically improve. But people shake their fist at a scooter laying on it's side on the sidewalk while 7 Eleven says a car drives into one of their stores (through the building) on average once a day.
"My mother was a great delegator. Each Saturday morning as my brothers and sisters and I were growing up, we received housecleaning assignments from her. Her instructions to us had been learned from her mother: “Be certain you clean thoroughly in the corners and along the mopboards. If you are going to miss anything, let it be in the center of the room.”
She knew very well if we cleaned the corners, she would never have a problem with what was left in the center of the room. That which is visible to the eye would never be left unclean.
Over the years, my mother’s counsel has had enormous application to me in many different ways. It is especially applicable to the task of spiritual housecleaning. The aspects of our lives that are on public display usually take care of themselves because we want to leave the best impression possible. But it is in the hidden corners of our lives where there are things that only we know about that we must be particularly thorough to ensure that we are clean."
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It seems like they took the exact opposite approach. Secret, backroom dealing to hide how much money the faith had to avoid scrutiny over what they are doing with this money. It is to avoid accountability to their own members and the world at large. And it's not surprising that they do this, when they demonstrate almost no accountability to their members when it comes to transparency because members have been lulled into a "god is at the helm, don't worry about it" mentality.
The tax exempt status of religious organizations is an enormous investment that the United States created. I could see at some point that being a worthwhile investment. There are many organizations that do a lot of good. But is that the current dynamic? Is that investment of the USA getting a good return if you consider how many religious organizations hoard the wealth they accumulate, enrich their leaders, and the community they operate in gets very little in return. I helped a member of the LDS faith with some bills last year. These people have paid 10% of their income to their faith for years. I asked them why they asked me for help and not their faith. They said their local leader said they were unwilling to help them with certain bills.
So society is subsidizing the LDS faith with tax benefits in the hope that they do tremendous good, but instead we get hidden finances to avoid scrutiny, and members (not always, but often) not being able to rely on them as a safety net in tough times. There are, of course, times they can rely on them. But overall, does the tax exempt status of religions make sense? Are we getting the return on investment that we hope from this decision to not tax them?
I do not believe we are.