I feel like one of the under-appreciated problems with modern society (1) is the sheer quantity of lies we are surrounded with. RTO is just the current most blatant example (2) in the American economy of people saying lies knowing that they will never be held to account for those lies. All of these lies together are corrupting and destroying civil society, destroying the sense of trust necessary for people to work together, to respect and trust institutions, and to build a better world.
As the excellent series Chernobyl put it (in the words crafted by a writer, not an actual scientist) "Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth" and at some point someone is going to have to pay all of those debts.
1: Here I'm focusing on Anglosphere/largely US and UK societies, as a monolingual American that's all I can effectively comment on.
2: 'this will make you more productive/more efficient/more creative' whatever
You hear a lot about how toxic the hierarchical Japanese workplace is, but the fact that people are willing to openly admit things like "product B is better than product A, but we're going with product A because our CEO is friends with their CEO" ends up being surprisingly refreshing.
I find this difficult to navigate sometimes because I find myself looking around the room and wondering "we don't really believe this, right?" but I can never quite be sure
It is a complete lie unless of course it is backed by firing people who aren’t good enough. But 99% of the execs who force RTO are really just trying to get people to quit - unfortunately this gets good people to quit and crappy people stay
The other day I came to the office to join a Google Meet meeting. Another person near me was also in it, with their laptop speaker on. I'm hearing my headphones and their speaker, plus also them acoustically when it's their turn to speak. So I picked up my laptop and buggered off to a small meeting room where I closed the door and sat alone.
My favorite part about working hybrid is that no matter what, nobody meets in person, except the managers once a week, everything else is a Teams meeting at your desk.
it's called collaboration, and thanks to those sets of complementary off brand noise canceling headphones that welcomed you back to a desk, it's clearly increasing!
I find it such a darn waste. I spend anywhere from one to two hours commuting on what some consider one of the deadliest highways here, not sure how I-4 fares against the rest of the country though. Accidents every single day it feels like.
I know a place doing RTO where most teams are at least 50% contractors from Central and South America. You can imagine how productive the office might be for those people, given that everyone is on zoom all day, and there's a whole 4 meeting rooms in a floor with 50 people.
I’ve not ever had to experience that particular management style, but I think it’s the one where they don’t give a rat’s ass about their employees or unique thought.
I’d also hoped that some major semiconductor company would NOT embrace AI, just so they could differentiate themselves: “Our shit may be too slow for the Terminator to use, but it was designed by and for humans to use as air-gapped spreadsheet running machines with USB-key sneakernet email.”
Given that there is a growing backlash towards LLMs by the general public (not just one writers’ guild), that might sell some stock.
Creatively? Yes, definitely, at least for Amazon. IMHO, for that company there is an internal battle what they want to be: a webshop filled with garbage or a cloud hyperscaler? The way the web shop is degrading, I strongly assume that Amazon will attempt to exit that business sooner or later.
As for Apple, I do love their hardware, but the software side has seen better days.
See my other reply in this subthread - the money and the moat they have prevents a financial collapse for many years to come, even if they do not improve. So, I doubt RTO is a good indicator for (financial) collapse.
> the money and the moat they have prevents a financial collapse for many years to come, even if they do not improve.
Unfortunately, you do have a point there. We let companies grow way, way too large - not only does any potential competition just about zero chance to rise against effectively infinite cash coffers, but it also removes any incentive to improve when the moat is so large that one doesn't have to care about anything...
I was being hyerbolic. I should have made that clearer. That said, there is a nugget of literal truth to my statement.
Market reactions are typically neutral to RTO announcements, which confounds some analysts who imagine that RTO adds some kind of value. However, studies have repeatedly shown that while the short-term impact of RTO is neutral these companies typically fair worse than peer companies over longer timeframes. To make it worse for the analysts, similar studies have also shown that companies which do embrace remote first work have outsized returns. Some estimates show that fully WFH organizations bring in about 7.5% higher annual returns on average than peer organizations that RTO.
Leaders continue to ignore the ever growing piles of evidence in favor of those analysts "common sense", and forget that "common sense" is just a laymans term for what scientists refer to as "making shit up."
Those same executives are most tempted to fall into this trap during times of duress, because being perceived as "doing something" is more important than long term impact on share price.
I can mostly agree with that, with an exception for giant corporations like the mentioned Apple and Amazon. Their runway for making wrong decisions (like RTO) is exceedingly long, due to their money and their moat.
You have a solid point. I also ignore the fact that RTO actually does improve the bottom line in some narrow scenarios, such as when it's used as a backdoor layoff in companies that don't mind losing the best and brightest.
Some companies don't see an appreciable difference in performance between those that can easily find work elsewhere and those who are otherwise unemployable. For those companies RTO is a great, though immoral, way to lower headcount without triggering the WARN act.
My impression having done Django for over 15 years is that FastHTML allows for separation of concerns, albeit not within templates. Rather, most of the "presentation layer" is executed during the return statement. A common pattern in people building non-tiny FastHTML projects is to break out presentation into a components layer and business logic into a business layer.
Often we see "components.py" for presentation and "content|logic|models.py" broken out for business logic. You can see this pattern done in my as-yet-DNS-switched blog here: https://github.com/pydanny/daniel-blog-fasthtml
Of course, it's still early in the project, it's going to be interesting to see what patterns emerge over time. :-)
We had a similar thing with a malignant AirBnB host next to our living place. Plus issues with water leaks on their side. The host company and AirBnB made it clear their business was rentals, not taking care of the property or community on which they profit.
I used to be happy with AirBnB as an option when I travel, now it is my last resort if I can't find a hotel room.
I don't understand why either you or the parent comment had to deal with AirBnB in any way to begin with.
Shouldn't your talk be with the owner of the property ? or more likely the shared building property manager (syndic is the word I'm looking for an english equivalent for, I don't know if this is the right one here, maybe HOA is the right one ?) + a complaint the local authority if need be ?
I'm not from the US but surely it's not that different around the world ?
I'm in London and would have loved to be able to talk directly to the owner of the property. I tried to do that, I really did. So would the building manager.
I only found out the place was being used as an AirBnB when I knocked on the door to tell them their flat was leaking water into the main corridor and a guest answered. The host (which claims to be a management company) does its best to dodge any kind of communications. Their rentals are mismanaged illegal stays in central London, which AirBnB doesn't seem to care about addressing.
My understanding is that our building has a number of AirBnB rentals. Since it's hard to get them out, building management doesn't worry about it unless it becomes a maintenance or noise problem. In this case, my "neighbour" is such a problem, so the pattern is to call in the authorities until something happens.
When I asked the building manager about contacting AirBnB, they laughed out loud.
I don't know if this is the case here but it can be difficult to track down property owners through loop holes in the US. You can use different things like ownership trusts to obscure.
Yeah but that's not going to be a normal first step for people, its also not straight forward either
Whom Do You Sue?
You may not realize it, but suing the right person is very important and not as easy as you think. Before you sue, you must determine the nature of the entity you are filing your claim against. Basically, there are three ways a person may do business. First, as a sole proprietor, second, as a partnership, third as a corporation.
To sue a sole proprietor, you file against the person running the business, no matter what name he or she is using. Suppose that Sara Smith opens a dress shop called "The Dress Shop." Who do you sue? The answer is Sara. To find out who "The Dress Shop" really is, check with the "assumed name" department in the county clerks office.
To sue a partnership you should get the names of the partners. Under the law, each of the partners is responsible for the obligations of the partnership.
To sue a corporation, on the other hand, you file against the corporation. A corporation is a separate legal entity. To properly sue a corporation you should first contact the secretary of state and find out who the "agent for service" is so that you know who to serve with the papers. Visit, http://www.sos.state.tx.us/, andf look at the "Business Filings" section to see if the business is listed. If it is, get the proper name of the business and the name of the registered agent. This is the person you will serve with your legal papers.
Once you have determined the proper legal entity to sue, make sure to get the full name and address. A small error in spelling or an incorrect address could cost you months when your papers cannot be served.
In London properties are often owned by offshore companies who are in turn owned by other offshore companies whose only reason to exist is to hide the beneficial owner. Puncturing those structures is only possible if you are a determined hacker, journalist, or secret service.
Because AirBnB has a process supposedly designed to handle such situations. Also because I was dealing with a nuisance neighbour (loud drug-fuelled parties till 2:00-3:00am on workdays, all day and night on weekends) for four years and the London Met police refused to deal with my complaint unless my life was threatened. The local council had "noise patrols" conveniently scheduled at times when there was not much noise and proposed they install noise measurement devices in my flat to collect evidence as opposed to sending a policeman round to warn the neighbour. His fun stopped when his mates got busted for drugs. He mellowed down all of a sudden.
At 40 I had a stalled career and an unfortunate marriage where we truly disliked reach other; I was extremely unhappy and bitter. I felt that I was stuck and wondered if this was my lot in life.
I stepped clear. I got divorced. I started over. The coding skills I had I re-applied to things I wanted to do. My ex moved on and found someone good for her.
In the years that followed I found the love of my life and had a beautiful daughter. Restarting was a great move for me.
But a lot of the bitterness and anger remained. I've been a total jerk at times. It took a long time to get over the frustrations caused by staying in my old place for so long. I found therapy and constructive outlets for myself, got over many of the dark feelings, and I believe I've become a better person for it.
My story is my own, not yours. However, what I can say is get yourself to a therapist. If you can change your life now, why not try to do so?
Octopus Energy is a double unicorn hiring for many different roles on four continents. Our mission is selling renewable energy and other planet healing causes.
I am saying it is technologically possible. In the US, I simply do not watch sports as it all requires buying a subscription to an archaic and obviated cable/satellite TV service.
Once I can go to the sports league’s website and and pay directly for what I want to watch, I will start watching.
