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Comment Re:Tokyo (Score 1) 95

Did he still do his work? Then whats the problem where he did it from?

Sounds like you're jealous he got to do his work while sitting on a beach, while you had to waste hours of your time trekking into a miserable office every day.

I agree, up to where the company runs into tax implications (because now you're employing someone working in another country, and they'd really like their share of payroll taxes and such.)

But within those boundaries? I don't see why I should fuss that my staffer got to house-sit for a couple weeks, so long as they're getting the work done and getting their hours in.

Comment Re:It depends (Score 1) 95

Otherwise, I prefer being at the work site

And that's 100% cool. I have staffers who go in a couple times a week just to get out of the house. Others come in because their spouse also is remote, and it's just easier to split up. Some just don't have the space at home for dedicated office areas. It's a personal choice.

My (again, personal) logic goes thusly - if I'm spending the hour on the commute, what am I and the company getting out of it? In my case, our team is spread out across the country - there's no-one else in my province. So all my meetings are going to be on screens anyway. If there was someone local I needed to meet, I'd happily arrange my day to go in to do that meeting in person. Guess what - most of *them* don't want to come in either! So, if I'm going to do exactly what I do at home, just in a less comfortable chair and on a smaller screen and fewer snacks on hand... what's the gain for anyone?

Even if my team was local - and they'd been hired non-remote and thus lived reasonably close to the office - having everyone in person for meetings sounds awesome. But the rest of the day we're all on our computers doing our work with our headphones on to concentrate, which loops back to - what's the advantage?

Comment Re:Work from home in bad weather (Score 1) 95

My work sent out an email on Friday saying anyone who physically reports to the office at several locations would not have to report on Monday or Tuesday due to incoming snowstorm. However, the email also stated that anyone who teleworked was required to work on Monday or Tuesday or use leave to take those days off.

Guess who is upset they have to work on Monday and Tuesday.

Wait - so the company said "if you work out of the office you get to take the day off", not "you can remote in"? The former is just good practice. The latter is playing favorites.

Comment Re:Stallman has always been a nut (Score 2) 204

The fact he always tries to coin juvenile little catch phrases doesn't help his case any: "internet of stings", "forbidden sharing", etc.

It's an attempt at framing. "Piracy" was coined intentionally, because it frames as evil theft, not copying. "Forbidden sharing" brings to mind those years where kids weren't allowed to trade lunches at school because a principal decided it was an allergy risk.

Could just be Stallman has less luck than Doctorow - "enshittification" seems to have caught on rather nicely.

Comment Re:College education is still worth it (Score 1) 145

Hell, back in the mid-90s software companies were poaching first-year students ("to get them before education ruins them"). And the O&G companies had to be bullied to stop taking kids at 16 who figured "hey, why finish high school when I can go straight to a six-figure oil rig job!" What they didn't tell the kids was "yeah, in a few years we'll punt you for the new up-and-comers, so hope you like being 25 with no education!"

Comment Re:They want people that cannot leave (Score 1) 224

I think 100k+ in student loans does that well enough already. It's literal indentured servitude, saddling people with tremendous amounts of unerasable debt before they have any income to even justify it, and then launching them into a workforce where the practice is to require degrees as a sloppy way to set a lower bar for access to employment.

It's a garbage system that deserves some competition.

Difference is a college kid has a degree - they owe a bunch of money, but they have paper that will be recognized at other businesses.

A Palantir Pal will get used like a rented car for a few years until they get worn out (or decide they'd like more than entry-level wage), get punted to the curb, and will now be 22 with a high-school diploma and "experience" no-one else cares about.

Comment Re:Teacher's Union (Score 1) 136

Programmers, in my experience, believe themselves to be like snowflakes, each one unique and different, each one possessing a unique skill set that makes them worth just a bit more than the programmer next to them - a programmer's union would likely struggle to accommodate that belief.

I would hope that the last two decades of cyclical hiring + layoffs has disabused programmers of any seniority of the notion that their employers consider them anything other than a fungible product. "We hire rockstar dev" is just company code for "we shall blow smoke up your ass, force you to give us unpaid overtime until either the project is done or you burn out, and then fire you to save costs and get our management bonuses. Sure you're jaded now, but that's OK - there's a whole new graduating class of suckers we can hire instead."

Comment Re:Why is Visual Basic still on the list? (Score 1) 86

I'm still a daily-driver VBA programmer. Ain't saying I'm fond of it, but Excel as a stealth UI can't be beat. People who will flail and gnash because they can't understand a Salesforce or web form will happily fill out cells that are quietly uploading values to server, because they didn't have to "learn" anything. It's just Excel.

Comment Re:WTF (Score 1) 924

In my view it was actually quite strange of UNIX that it by default let arbitrary user code stay around unrestricted after logout.

Hell, I'm no guru but I know the answer for this - it's so you can run long tasks without having to tie up a limited terminal in the lab. Log in, start your task, log out and go for beer while someone else gets use.

Now, in this world of "everyone has their own computer and terminal", it's not as necessary a feature as it used to be. But that hardly seems a reason to arbitrarily flip the default.

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