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whateverman23

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You can't fully remove the "gag-worthy" label unless they use the word "layoff". Calling it "rightsizing" or "headcount reduction" is gag-worthy.

A great gag-worthy line: "Please know we are focused on treating our impacted colleagues with the respect and compassion they deserve".

Also, if the note doesn't include the CEO stepping down (even with a transition period would be fine), then it's not a good layoff note.

in order to get the discussion centered more on the idea itself and competing views on the extent to which folk's have found some usecase or success with it?

So you only want "competing" views if they line up with your views?

The study was about driving, something many/most of us do on a regular basis. It shows that:

1. Sleep deprivation while driving is comparable to being intoxicated while driving.

2. Those who are sleep deprived are not reliably able to recognize their impairment.

If you think it's "obtuse" to bring this up, then I don't know what you're trying to do here. Those are extremely important pieces of information to bring up.

there's really nothing all that malevolent or irresponsible about the suggestion

You are underestimating the impact of sleep deprivation, and the ability for a person to recognize the impacts while sleep deprived.

https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s...

"It was concluded that sleep deprivation has a greater impact on driving performance than a BrAC of 22 μg/100mls of breath, as measured by driving simulation. Coffee is not an effective countermeasure for sleep deprived driving and drivers’ ability to judge this impairment is suggested to be limited."

But who bears the cost of this betterment?

We all do, of course.

I certainly don't want to be responsible for paying a cost for someone else's bad choice

Then, in some cases, you'd prefer them dead/permanently disabled/permanently in pain/etc. Which, I guess is a position to have, but not one I'd like to take. It sounds like I'm exaggerating here but I'm not.

Remember, the theory in the posts above is that technology makes people more likely to take more risky behaviors. And I'm arguing that there will always be a significant percentage of the population that engages in risky behaviors (for whatever your definition of risky is), and we should have technology to help.

esp. if the bad choice gave them an advantage or "profit".

Not everything is black and white. We are allowed to pick and choose here and limit this from happening. Most examples we've been talking about involve an individual having to use some communal system, like a healthcare system. That isn't an "advantage" or "profit" that the individual is abusing.

People often confuse society as a whole with individual choices.

An individual can independently choose to brush, floss, engage in less risky behaviors, have a good diet, maintain a health weight, etc. It's not hard.

But when talking about society as a whole, that breaks down. Society is going to have a percentage of people who don't brush and floss. Who aren't managing their diet and weight. Who are taking risks beyond what you find acceptable.

When talking about society as a whole, it's a dead end to just say, "well people should just be better". It doesn't work that way, and it certainly doesn't fix anything. Society will always have people who have a lot of sex. Making it safer is better. Society will always have people who have teeth issues. Not having them die or be in massive pain is better. Society will always have people who can't maintain a healthy weight. Making it easier is better.

Why should an ISP know more about a child’s Internet activity than the parents?

They shouldn't. Fight the ISPs.

For what it’s worth my personal philosophy would be trust, but verify. That necessarily entails some way to verify.

Again, trust what? Do all roads lead to porn?

Furthermore, in many jurisdictions parents are civilly or even potentially criminally liable for their childrens’ activities. If you’re in one of those jurisdictions you have a duty to prevent your child from breaking the relevant laws or other rules.

Really grasping at straws here. What laws are you worried your child will break that would reasonably reach the level you're worried about?

See my other comment below for a more detailed answer but: no, my claim is not that I needed porn to become the engineer I am today. But the level of restrictions proposed by the top level comment in this thread would have, and it seems blocking porn is a driving factor in those decisions.

Social media addiction, etc. can be helped by restricting time without restricting access.

I'm a millennial, for context.

So much to unpack here.

These restrictions just don't make sense to me. I was a pretty reserved child, so I can't imagine getting over all the hurdles needed to grow as a person and foster my love for programming/tech:

- Asking for permission to read all the random Perl forums or IRC chats I stumbled upon just wouldn't be a thing I would have done.

- My parents probably wouldn't have understood what it all was and denied my request. Early on I probably wouldn't have even been able to explain why I needed that access.

- Remember installing linux for the first time? Sorry, not going to happen because the stalkerware doesn't work on linux.

- You want access to a website called "hacker news"?? No way! (HN wasn't really a thing I think back in my childhood but you get the idea).

-----

Second, I was a latchkey kid. Having two working parents is neglectful? What would have been the alternative?

And my point with the porn is that it's not worth locking everything down for fear that your child is going to see some boobs. It's not worth it, and it seems that it's the driving force or a lot of these restrictions.

Unless we're talking about very very young children, I have an extremely hard time with this. I had none of that as a child, and I assume neither did most adults here. Because I had none of that, I'm a software engineer making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. In no world would I be where I am today with those limitations.

- What am I going to do with my child's browsing history except snoop? Are we still worried about porn in 2023?

- What applications are they going to install that I'd want to override that couldn't be solved by not giving them a credit card number?

- What are they going to watch on Youtube that can't be solved by simply limiting device time?

- Shock sites? Surely every one of us experienced that at some point in our childhood, and I haven't thought about them in years. And are they even in vogue these days?

- Stories like strangers trying to meet up with children seem on par with poisoned halloween candy. It happens incredibly infrequently, often ends up being a known family member anyway, and people forever fear it as if it's actually something to fear in their daily lives.

I think communication, education, and limiting screen time at certain ages is the only healthy thing to do. Giving children (yes, even young children) some privacy is important. Your suggestions I believe fall into the "helicopter parent" territory.

There’s only no harm in more data if you handle false positives perfectly. Surely, this is never the case, so there’s always some harm in more data.

That's not the correct way to think about it. The correct way to think about it is whether or not there's more harm with more data than the status quo.

Most medical professionals seem to think there's more harm than the status quo, but that doesn't change the fact that you're thinking about it wrong.

The reason is pretty simple. As companies get larger, the culture dies.

Those who joined big-tech early-ish in their career likely see the state of the company at the time as way better than what they're used to. Then it gets worse.

It doesn't really matter where you enter in the history of the company, the culture is almost always going to be the best as you know it when you join and get worse over time. Very rarely does the opposite happen.

ctrl+f "ads"

ctrl+f "monetization"

ctrl+f "moderation"

ctrl+f "existing infrastructure"

ctrl+f "personalization"

etc etc

Yeah about what I expect from a "we rebuilt twitter for cheap" post. There's no point to the comparisons with the Twitter codebase size/cost. It completely distracts from what is probably a perfectly fine project.

"Private offices with doors that close were absolutely required and not open to negotiation."

Where does this come from? It's something that sounds right, but then I look back at my parent's office jobs and pop culture from 20+ years ago and it doesn't line up. Open office spaces have been extremely common for a very very long time, with private offices reserved for higher level people.

I'm almost certain c suite often work a lot more and have higher demands than junior employees.

Lmao. I'm no where near C-Suite but I've also never worked as hard as I did as an intern/junior engineer. Moving up often means working less hard.

I don't really see any other way around it apart from a dehumanizing process to treat everyone exactly the same regardless of capabilities

This post is about WFH, not treating everyone the same regardless of capabilities. Those are such different things that I'm convinced you must be arguing in bad faith.

Is this really a pharmaceutical issue or a societal structure and support issue.

Any if it is? We surely can't solve every, or even most societal issue that causes it.

You can continue to support improvements to the societal issues of the world while still supporting pharmaceutical interventions for those who need it right now.

Everything you can do remotely, you can do in person as well. I don't know why you think you can't screen share or send links and commands in a chat if you're in person.

So at minimum, in person would be the same. So I can't possibly see how in person could be worse.

Remote is better for collaboration and training.

Oh come on... I get arguing that there are ways to make remote training good enough. Maybe even similar. Maybe even a net-positive when you look at the entire picture (including the productivity and happiness of your senior staff). But saying remote is better for training specifically? No way. That makes no logical sense.