There was also an application that took a screenshot of your current desktop and then gave you a bunch of weapons - bats, guns, bombs - and allowed you to smash it to pieces.
Compare with "Prosecco" recently starting an advertising campaign on the London Underground[0] telling people to stop calling whatever generic, non-region protected sparkling wine they're drinking "Prosecco" because Prosecco is DOC protected.
Seems to me (despite the almost certainly valid legal points in the comments here) that the Velcro one is a bit tongue-in-cheek whereas I was slightly taken aback at how direct and earnest the Prosecco one seemed.
I think the two videos from Velcro really hit the right spot between fun and educational.
I started watching the first video with a large amount of skepticism (soulless company paying millions to create viral video about something I couldn't care less about), but I really couldn't help but like both the videos and the company itself more now. Well done, I guess.
On the plus side, if I book out the family holidays and school holidays and and some time at Christmas and a few days for gigs or whatever, then as soon as something unexpected comes up I need to start horse-trading my days off to "balance" if I have a hard limit. With unlimited, I can just take the time for the unexpected thing without worrying about really accounting for it.
On the down side, it's clearly not _umlimited_. Managers talk about it in an unwritten "code" of what's reasonable. 35 days max, basically. Most roles in my industry in the UK will give you about 28 by default. So on that basis it's an extra week off.
This is my first year with it. I expect I'll be somewhere between 35 and 40 days by the end of the holiday year. I'm interested to hear what comes back as a result of that.
Never had any problems with either - I have both selected in case one has issues so that I don't need to immediately deal with "Daaaad the internet's not working!"
This is crushingly pertinent for my career at the moment. I've come from an organisation that I might describe as "architecture-led" into an organisation that is perhaps more "engineering-led". I prefer to plan and solve problems before they become crises. I don't know whether my boss like reacting to crises or we're just working through a really tough 12 months but we seem to _always_ be in a crisis. Problems are almost always solved in the "simplest" way - which makes a lot of sense from an engineering point of view - why do more than you need to? - but this often, and openly, means not actually solving the problem and just solving enough of it to shave off the spiky bits that are causing the "crisis".
There's very much a firefighting culture. That is, after all, how people earn medals. And whilst I've heard the adage that rewarding firefighting results in arsonists, I don't think it's quite that.
It's more than rewarding firefighting results in people who spot small fires but tolerate them to the point that other people notice - and then they don their helmet and rush in to fix it.
No one is maliciously lighting things on fire - but they won't put out the fires they find unless someone is watching.
I'm happily married, children, dog, several distinct groups of friends, great job at a great company, lovely house in a nice village, etc, etc, etc.
I worked from home for about 4 years as a freelancer and found it incredibly isolating (but lucrative, so endured it) but finally had enough and get a permanent job back in an office. This was 5 weeks before what would be the first of several COVID lockdowns and roughly 3 years later there's still no realistic "office culture" where I work.
Last year was incredibly tough for me. Incredibly dark. Despite everything that I ostensibly had going for me I was suddenly crushingly lonely, anxious, probably depressed. 8-10 hours per day of constantly interacting on Zoom calls doesn't just cut it. It's not the same.
I don't think the answer is to necessarily "return to the office" as a 100% arrangement. I don't think that's possible in reality. But something has to change; undeniable dilemma.
I started a new job during the pandemic (well, 2...). What sucks for me is that my boss has been like "Yeah, you can go back to the office." But both him and my direct coworker have said that they will never go back to the office. Pretty sure I will never physically meet them before I inevitably try to find some other job.
And what is more isolating than being home alone? Well, working completely alone in an office building meant to hold like 300 employees that was last updated in the 80s.
My basic idea about all of this is to restructure where people work. Take all the employees that want to come into the office on a regular basis and put them in the same building on the same floor.
You could … ask your boss for an in person 1:1. I did. My boss lives halfway across the country. We made it work. I am a long time remote worker (12+ years)
We have weekly group meetings and no one ever really has anything to say, and I've tried steering the conversation to anything interesting or getting to know them and it goes nowhere. The boss is the first one to bail once hes bored of the conversation. There are bi-weekly group meetings with the director where its a forced conversation that he doesn't actually know how to lead ("alright everyone, find something to talk about").
Like, my whole issue could be entirely down to the job. I'm getting weird vibes from this place and these people (yelling in meetings about various things that aren't important at all).
I think what I'm finding out is that having great coworkers in my previous in person jobs either hid or overrode my new found hatred of system administration. If I liked what I did then maybe all of my comments would be different here.
I guess after 8 years of being a DBA/SysAdmin have taught me to stop applying for these jobs.
Edit: Like, I'm married. I have friends far away I see monthly and game with weekly. I'm not dying here. I just want the 8 hours of work to not be as lonely. My jobs won't get my best performance this way because I'm mentally so disconnected from what I'm doing since I'll never meet who I'm doing it for.
You have to go back to the office. All my friends and coworkers who have tried it haven’t gone back to remote work. People weren’t meant to sit alone all day.
So how does the office solve that exactly? I worked in an office in the before times. It was me sitting alone all day. Sure I was surrounded by other people technically but I was working on my own stuff and didn't interact. There was more annoyance than anything: constant chatter, super bright fluorescent overhead lighting, sickness spreading, etc
I am very happy not going back to the office. Perhaps I'm a sociopath, I don't know, but I would rather retire than return, and my boss is well aware. My company is on "mandatory" 2-days-a-week in the office, but I haven't been asked to return, and still sit in my shed. Which is awesome.
I don’t know where you live, but have you considered finding a “third place” to work from or frequent at lunch or after work?
I’ve found that working from a local cafe, in my little suburban “village” centre has been really fantastic for this. I work, I bump into people I know, I meet new people and get to know my neighbours. It’s great.
Given their ubiquity, local libraries might be good to advertise meeting facilities for remote workers during the day. Before anyone complains about the noise and distractions from other workers - it's probably better than an open office layout.
Was listening to radio the other day. Was some writer that used to sit at her local café to work but during covid she stopped because it got too crowded and now she can't go back again.
I've worked from home for more than 10 years and after covid I signed up for a co-working space to go a couple of days a week, work and hang out. Since everyone is doing different things than what I do, I love it. Designers, sales, photographers, lawyer and other IT peeps.
Always someone to chat with when taking a break and getting a coffee.
We have devolved responsibility for secure code to the product owners.
Ultimately, meeting their compliance objectives and addressing the threats is their business.
We (infosec) can, and will help, but the outcome is their responsibility. We provide threat models, guidelines, patterns, and consultancy to the tribes if they need it (as well as SecOps, etc).
Ensuring the incentive model makes security part of the problem they need to solve we manage to avoid the constant fights - infosec is a "pull" service at the design stage rather than an endless, fruitless "push".
I used to do a lot of work in VB6 back in the day (I'm no longer coding/developing) but it was nice to read about the "joy and excitement" of VB6. That really resonated with me.
Closest I've been since is the simplicity of python, but I always felt it was missing a RAD form maker with good usability considerations.
I think the new owner has certainly been the spark here but there are real benefits to moving too that people are starting to notice. Replies here already cover a bunch of them but I’d like to echo the “algorithm” point too: so far my experience has been substantially less toxic and I put that in large part down to not being fire-hosed with content designed to enrage me every time I log in.
So far my experience is reminding me of 1990’s style connecting and chatting with interesting random people from around the world who are friendly and quirky, and I find being there a “nice” experience.
That's not too far from a reductio ad absurdum though really.
> life is too short to waste it working with people who don't like to inject heroin into their eyeballs whilst riding dolphins bred in captivity around Seaworld. Just find a different company that will be less miserable.
I like a drink occasionally with friends after work. Some choose not to come. Some drink soft drinks. Some stay out until I can see the regret on their faces the next day. Everyone makes their own version of "fun".
What gets my back up most in a work environment is mandatory fun. Someone has designed an activity, a workshop, a day that is all about having FUN!!!!1! Except its their version of fun and we all have to play along or else you're the problem.
That's what bothers me.
It's not about life being short or people being "fun" or not. It's about my interpretation of what it means for me, and everyone else's interpretation of what it means for them.
I think the "unpopular opinion" you are responding to is making the argument that if you don't want to engage in "mandatory fun", just quit and get a new job.
I don't necessarily 100% agree with that opinion (I'm glad there is recourse against sexual harassment in the workplace), and I have a ton of sympathy for employees in more coercive job environments where there are few jobs and it's difficult to just quit and get another one. In this case, though, I highly doubt "Cubik Partners" is the pinnacle of consulting in Paris. If it were me, I would have said "fuck these guys" and peaced out.
That was nice sometimes.