I like the FP branch, but too bad it didn't lead deeper or at least spawn some Funny.

Mostly just sharing a couple of anecdotes, but having trouble deciding which side to focus on. I think I'll start with the provider side, since so much of my career involved providing support.

Funniest anecdote is probably from an Internet startup before the first bubble burst. They had some venture funding, but support wasn't in the business plan. I was actually hired for one role, but wound up doing most of that work on my own time in the evenings and early mornings (from home) and spent almost all of my time in the office doing customer support. But I always saw support in terms of making customers happy and finding new ways to make new customers happy, while the managers saw support as a cost to be minimized. Fortunately, since it wasn't in the business plan, they were glad to pretend it was an imaginary number. They knew how my time was being spent, but didn't actually care. In terms of office politics, I wound up mostly working for the manager who was bringing in most of the customers and generating most of the actual revenue. When she was fired I took that as the signal for me to pack up and leave and the company went down a while after that--even before the dotcom bubble burst.

On the recipient side, these days my "support" is mostly received from AIs, often in the form of remarkably useless AI chatbots. Geek that I am, I still think that might be a technical problem that can be solved. The key would be getting the chatbot to ask useful questions--but I'm remembering that was the hardest part of doing support. The typical customer didn't know what to look at, so the biggest trick was to get the customer to look at the right thing that would most quickly reduce the problem space. Once the problem was clear it usually made the best solution clear, too. So far I hain't seen a chatbot like that.

Mod parent Funny, though I cannot recall any humor from Redit. Pretty sure I tried to find something funny on several of my visits, but some years since I abandoned hope of finding anything useful there. Some sort of disclaimer needed, but I never detected anything useful on Redit, even though some useless search engine (AKA goog) kept sending me there.

I do have a theory of what went wrong. It's kind of a good idea and they were able to coast on that for a while before spinning out. But the reason Reddit spun out was that the world should not be reduced to one dimension. That's essentially what the up/down vote does, even though I'm sure different people have completely different interpretations of why they are clicking thusly. Slashdot is almost as bad, even though there are several dimensions... But I think that Slashdot's main problem is the lack of resources to fix anything. Reddit seems to have some substantial resources, but maybe someone can enlighten me about something that has been fixed over there? Preferably within the last ten years or so.

Observing that some people aren't responsible enough to work without someone breathing down their neck is a wildly different claim than saying the work itself couldn't be done remotely.

I don't think it's that simple. Sure, if you're talking about physical possibilities for single instances. But those aren't anything other than a bound because you have to have people to do the tasks. Once you've got low to mid skill people in a dull, dead end job, you have a problem. For certain kinds of job, I reckon it becomes more or less impossible to motivate the majority of people who will actually do the job.

At that point what does it matter if someone could in theory do it remotely?

My original statement, just a statement without anything incendiary in it, has ignited a firestorm of profanity, personal insults and general anger. Because people disagree with me, their rage is somehow appropriate.

I have encountered much the same. I think on a previous thread I stated that I tried WFH, hated it and even though I was a solo contractor, paid for a desk in a co-working office so I could be out of the house and have other people to talk to, and that actually proved incredibly and let to me doing a startup (didn't work out but that's another story).

Yo wouldn't believe (well hyperbole, obviously you would) the batshit insane things people here were saying to me, such as I'm a shit manager and a worthless employee who leans on other people's work and steals credit because what other possible reason could there be to be in work?

I am honestly not sure what part of "independent contractor in a co-working space" they didn't understand.

But it's this incredibly blinkered view that WFH is GOOD and RIGHT and anyone who has any alternative experience or opinion is (a) out to get them (b) stupid and (c) evil. All for the crime of being a human with only very mild introversion (I like and need socialising, but too much is draining and I need quiet focus time too).

But maybe it's this too:

Maybe it makes them feel better living in a world where competence is inversely proportional to ones place on the food chain.

but we now know virtually all white collar work can effectively be done remotely;

Do we know that? I sometimes have to interact with some particular people in a non IT white collar profession. They ain't good at replying to emails and so I phone them yet "lunch break" now seem to extend from about 11 to 3. Those fuckers need to be back in an office with someone actually watching over their shoulder so that they are actually at their desk and actually answer the phone if it rings. Oh and I only ever have to call because of paperwork that hasn't been done for too long.

I have a friend who's pet theory was HR's main goal was to tune compensation to keep the attrition level where the company wanted it.

Your friend's pet theory is predicated on HR being both really smart and working in complete lock step with management.

You'll argue "If I'm doing my job, I don't need managers." A good manager should be taking care of the sh*t you don't need or want to be doing. Either doing it themselves or seeing that someone else is taking care of it and not blocking you.

And also ensuring that what you're working on is the right thing to be working on. A good manager should have some idea of what direction product development is going in the short, medium and long term and what other teams and projects are doing that may effect the manager's team.

I'm going to victim blame. This is what happens when you blindly accept what a computer tells you. Based solely on this story, none of them did the least bit of research into what this trail entailed OTHER than what Google Maps said. Again, based solely on this story, none checked with any of the ranger stations or even the web site of the trail itself to see if it had any information on this trail.

If you've never hiked a trail, or even driven somewhere, in this day and age there is absolutely no excuse for not doing your research (the good kind, not the vaccination kind) prior to leaving. We literally have the information at our fingertips to find out what something is like prior to going there. How about we use it.

Well also that and that valuation i predicated on growth that' physically impossible.

AI companies have started talking about "GW" of installations which makes it simpler to analyze. The electricity capacity doesn't exist to meet the growth predictions. The manufacturing capacity doesn't exist to manufacture the generation capacity required to meet growth predictions. The capacity to build manufacturing facilities to match predictions doesn't exit.

The market has gone irrational because there's no way growth can match predictions. I ain't shorting though because Keynes isn't wrong.

I expect any other irrationality will also bite hard. Claude is pretty good, really. Not, like, perfect and AI will destroy the world and programmers, but the genie is out of the bottle here, something like it is here to stay. It's too useful. But let's say OpenAI stumble and suddenly their terrifying outgoings slightly tip over and they go very broke very fast, well, the market will panic and go omgomgomgomgAIisbadactually!!!111onelelevne and the entire thing, Anthropic included, will crash through the floor, even though people will, for example, still be spending a lot on Anthropic.

Where's the part of small government, freedom, free market, don't tread on me now?

Right there in power, it was all lies and a branding exercise. The right have never held to those beliefs, but it turns out that a lie repeated often enough becomes the truth for enough people that they can get into power.

But you know "both ides" so I voted for the worst. How come on one ever says "both sides" so I voted for Harris?

HP 4%, etc.

Well HP had the genius idea of putting a 8723409821E+27% markup on printer ink while selling the printers at a loss to bring in customers. Unfortunately they also forgot to not make their printers so shit that they self destruct before HP make enough back on the ludicrously overpriced ink.

It's like the shittines doubles for the customer, but somehow cancels out on HP's end.

Fuck HP. Also Apple, can't stand those fuckers (shame their CPU is so good), but also and especially and for ever fuck HP.

Either you posted AI slop or you've been reading so much that you've tarted to ape chat GPT's style.

Anyone who doesn't think it's impressive can go hand in their engineer card at the door.

This feels a bit like a distinction without a difference?

Development feeds into distribution however you do it, so, at some point you have to deal with that.

Besides, pypi is more of a package distribution system than a software development system.

Aren't these developers paid a good salary, generally better than a large percentage of the population? What did they do with all that money? Why would they need a "hardship" fund?

The simulation we're in gltiched and hasn't refreshed. Try again in a day or two and see how it looks.