Switch to what exactly?

So essentially you’re saying that communication falls apart and you don’t have the correct tools for remote work.

The problem is that I don’t know of any tool or set of tools that fixes this. We have an extensive chat system that is open all the time with rooms for each group, we have zoom, we use all kinds of collaboration software. Everyone knows these are available, and uses them, but the hurdle inherent to it seems to be just enough to really put a damper on seeking help.

I think the best solution would be to have a zoom room where everyone is in it all the time. Which sounds even more miserable.

I know I’ll be downvoted, but I’ll answer your question.

“Need” is a strong word. Sure, it’s not needed. But that’s not what the business tends to care about. They care about productivity.

I work in software. In my previous job I was a one man show. For my day to day development, I didn’t need to interact with other people much. When I shifted to remote working it was a huge boost because I got protected time to work where I wasn’t distracted by other people in the office, either socially or incidentally. This case it worked very well.

After the pandemic I switched jobs into one with a hybrid schedule. Luckily for me my job is a 15 minute bike commute.

However, the suite of tools I’m now developing and working on require me to constantly interact with other people in the office. I also spend a lot of time mentoring jr devs.

This is, quite frankly, just better when we’re all in the office. The jr devs know, explicitly, that they can bother me whenever they need it. In the office this happens probably an average of 8 times a day. When either of us is remote, it’s probably once a day.

Now with the other senior devs, we hate meetings. However, all the time, spontaneously, we’ll end up chatting in our little section about the development of the system, someone will overhear (maybe even from an adjacent group) and chime in with useful knowledge. Next thing you know we have 4 or 5 devs whiteboarding and discussing things. Most of the fine tuning of our systems get hashed out in these impromptu meetings. This never happens when we’re remote.

Also the barrier to just turning around and asking someone something is so much lower. Often 30 seconds. Because at home I have to send them a message, maybe message back and forth a bit before determining that it would be easier on zoom, then we have to jump on zoom which takes a small amount of time. Now this is not some huge thing, but it is a barrier that makes it just hard enough that he happens way less frequently.

Working in the office is just better for productivity in this type of situation, which i imagine is true for most jobs that involve lots of collaboration. Almost all of my coworkers agree. We also all agree that remote is better because commuting sucks. It honestly even boggles my mind to hear other software devs argue that they are more productive at home. Believable if we are talking about my original situation, or if you’re just mindlessly closing tickets. But for collaborative development of large systems? No way.

Yeah but bringing people back is still more expensive because it means more maintenance, more cleaning, and in the case of Amazon paying more for the office perks.

I’m sure at some point, somewhere, someone forced people to rto because it was better for their real estate investment…but I just have not been able to make sense of the claims that this is driving factor.

You’re clearly arguing that tiktok is arguing in court that all Chinese apps steal your data.

This is patently false to anyone who has read the article. But, of course, it’s much easier to find something to be outraged over when you don’t really know what’s going on.

Simply reading the article would reveal how ludicrously incorrect your argument is.

Your position hinges on the survey not being anonymous. I clicked through and found nothing that claims it was not anonymous, and these things are normally done anonymously for exactly the reason you point out: less honesty.

Do you have anything to back this up or is it simply that holding this belief helps confirm what you already believe to be true?

That links says only a quarter did it because they wanted people to quit, so it suggests that chances are this is not the reason Amazon is doing it…and you’re posting while claiming it factually proves this is their motivation? Pretty deceiving.

Because the CEOs are all more concerned with the commercial real estate market than running their company efficiently.

It’s shocking how many people have honestly bought this. I mean, I’m sure there is some truth to it and maybe somewhere, someone forced people to come back because of some real estate interests… But the CEO of Amazon almost certainly gains to benefit much more from a rise in price of Amazon stock than any real estate they might own. And even if it was the case, I dont think the board would be very happy about it.

It might be the wrong move, and maybe it is being done to get people to quit, but it’s being done because they think it means more money from Amazon.

I love posters who announce they are blocking you. Such a good person that they’ve gotta get that last dig in. Lol

Im not one to say you can never speak ill of the dead, but man to bash someone right after they die among a group of people that likely includes his friends requires a special type of social cluelessness, or straight up being a bad person.

No one in the military

Okay, but is the person still an officer? I mean, it is in the name. The way I see it, as a layman, it is kind of hard to ding the author for getting this wrong when they are technically correct and a laymen would consider them an officer, and the only real complaint is that colloquially military members don’t refer to them as officers.

What am I missing or wrong about?

Their framing of how AI works is grossly inaccurate. I just corrected that.

I’m with you. I’m a Senior software engineer and copilot/chatgpt have all but completely replaced me googling stuff, and replaced 90% of the time I’ve spent writing the code for simple tasks I want to automate. I’m regularly shocked at how often copilot will accurately auto complete whole methods for me. I’ve even had it generate a whole child class near perfectly, although this is likely primarily due to being very consistent with my naming.

At the very least it’s an extremely valuable tool that every programmer should get comfortable with. And the tech is just in it’s baby form. I’m glad I’m learning how to use it now instead of pooh-poohing it.

I never said anything about leaving ai unregulated. I never said anything about being frustrated. And its likely you asking for laws to be changed, not me.

I’m not even sure you’re responding to my post.

Because what they are describing is just straight up theft, while what I describes is so much closer to how one trains and ai. I’m afraid that what comes out of this ai hysteria is that copyright gets more strict and humans copying style even becomes illegal.

I think AI training is very different from piracy. I’ve never downloaded a mega pack of songs and said to my friends “Listen to what I made!”

I’ve never done this. But I have taken lessons from people for instruments, listened to bands I like, and then created and played songs that certainly are influences by all of that. I’ve also taken a lot of art classes, and studied other people’s painting styles and then created things from what I’ve learned, and said “look at what I made!” Which is far more akin to what AI is doing that what you are implying here.

Check out their profile, it’s quite literally their only schtick.

The main goal of learning is learning how to learn, or learning how to figure new things out. If “a tool can do it better, so there is no point in not allowing it” was the metric, we would be doing a disservice because no one would understand why things work the way they do, and thus be less equipped to further our knowledge.

This is why I think common core, at least for math, is such a good thing because it teaches you methods that help you intuitively figure out how to get to the answer, rather than some mindless set of steps that gets you to the answer.

As another poster questioned, if it saved them tine then, yes, it is absolutely a win. But if they spent the same amount of time, I would agree with you that it’s not a win.