How do you survive?
What does a regular day look like to you?
What are your hopes for the future?
2,584 karma · joined June 2, 2012
What does a regular day look like to you?
What are your hopes for the future?
And then there is just range anxiety which is always gonna be there. I've driven from Scotland to East Anglia and it took long enough with the awful traffic, put a slow charge into that mix and it would have been a multi-day trip.
I just don't get why people are so ready to blinker themselves to some of this stuff. EVs are still in early adopter stage, IMO, but we are fast tracking whole nations into forcing them to be the only option. And they are just not fit for some people's usecases.
Case in point, you struggle with WFH, others thrive. I just don't see any problems with employees not enjoying WFH as being significantly more complex than, say, an issue with someone struggling to get into the office on time. Or being stressed out by a stupidly long commute, or having no time with their children. And so on. There are pros and cons abundant that pretty much level it all out.
They refused to even talk about it, even as I protested they'd wasted so much of my time and I was about to sign. I walked away and found a much better paying job elsewhere.
"You may not struggle with office work and may do fine interacting in person, but that’s not true for a lot of people."
I have people who do far better at home than in the office, and some on the other end of the spectrum. People come in all sorts of shapes and sizes and finding the right people is the same challenge regardless.
What is hard is tooling and setting up processes that work for remote people. The world is at the start of figuring that out at scale and there is lots to learn. But hiring is always going to be the same game, finding the right people for the role and its requirements.
If I were hiring for an oil rigger it would not be more complex than hiring for a great developer. It will definitely be different, but all recruitment is different and sees different challenges. But it's always going to be about knowing what to ask, knowing your industry, and doing your very best to find a process that selects fairly and efficiently. Remote work hiring is just a different challenge that we are all just getting used to. People are hard problems to solve.
--- "Sun produces never seen before polar vortex"
And when I ask ChatGPT to write a matter of fact headline for the article it comes up with this:
--- "Sun's North Pole Experiences Unusual Phenomenon as Part of Surface Breaks Off and Forms a Giant Polar Vortex"
When I ask it to make it more sensational we get closer to what we are used to from click hungry media these days
--- "Mystery Unfolds as Sun's North Pole Forms a Giant Polar Vortex, Scientists Baffled by Unprecedented Event"
The 50s sold us on industrialized farming as making food cheaper, we'd work less, and have more free time. This sort of worked for the middle class suburbanites (single income earner, two cars, and leisure time), but over the next two decades all that went away.
Today you can't hope to make it through a middle class family life without both parents working, and prices of food, housing, energy all represent that. Meanwhile energy, pharma, commerce, tech are all making billions in surplus profit. Two incomes have replaced one, double the workforce but economically rewarded with half the mobility. Wages have not had to go up because we just added another earner to the picture.
Our media is compromised. The recent Pfizer scandal has been buried, NYT went to great lengths to dismiss it. The article was laughable.
The phrase "conspiracy theory" is slapped on any descent. We have lost our way while we sleep through social media. We follow the script or face social isolation.
10 years ago our current society would look like China, now the general pop is adopting that as a good thing.
We are fucked and it's going to take violence and death to claw back any sense of moral decency. No one wants that, and when all our wealth has been extracted we won't be able to compete with the robots that will keep us compliant.
I know this sounds crazy, but the writing is on the wall. I can see no reason it won't happen. Crazy shit becomes reality time after time and it's accelerating.
[1] https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/3472878-joe-bidens-m...
The UK has had 4 unelected PMs since 1990, and dozens before that.
And as pointed out before, the UK is ahead of the EU in terms of surveillance. You even have to opt in with your ISP to watch porn.
The UK has hundreds of thousands of government CCTV cameras and they can comprehensively track your movements through the entire country.
The Brexit rhetoric was more about nationalism than anything else, it was marketed as "we don't want the EU telling us what to do", but that just played heavily into nationalism.
All that aside, if you think any major political system in the west, or indeed globally is safe from lobbying and major corruption you are wrong. Corporate and industrial influence is rife throughout, IMO. When was the last time you saw any significant legislation come through to give working-middle class any kind of help or upward mobility?
I am wandering from your initial point, but I am angry and frustrated with our rapid decline. We trashed our economies over COVID and we're now splooging billions of dollars into an un-winnable proxy war which escalates monthly.
All of this shit is done in the same vein as this surveillance proposal "think of the children", I mean how could you not think of the children?? How could you not think of your neighbour? How could you not think of your fellow Europeans? It's all built to socially shame and coerce us into terrible policy that ultimately puts us in the hole unable to get out.
Anyways, yes I have an axe to grind and probably have some stuff wrong here, but I am frustrated with my economic decline. It feels like the middle class is constantly being drained for the benefit of oligarch, war mongering liars.
Apologies for a reactionary derail, it's cathartic at least. Please feel free to tell me how I am wrong, I genuinely want to be corrected because I feel depressed with my perspective.
Moving the heat around the house requires doors to be open and thoughtful placement of the head units which have fans in them to push the air around. It is certainly not ideal but we are comfortable.
And yeah, cooling is not a thing in the UK, my point is folks are definitely going to be looking toward that given the summers people have been having, increase heating costs will make mini splits a double win. No brainer to me and I bet mini splits will be in limited supply this summer in Europe.
Given the hot summers and energy costs in the UK I think many homes would find that investment a net gain.
> There's also the consideration of additional costs due to lower running temperature which often necessitate larger radiators.
I don't know what that means. There are no radiators for mini splits or air source heat pumps, maybe you are talking about ground source hot-water systems? They are still stupidly expensive, for good reason, huge install consideration.
Today's low upfront cost of mini split heat pumps makes for a highly favourable option for new builds, and indeed even the average home.
We installed three mini splits in total for a ~2k sq ft 1800s draughty home. Before we had them our central air gas furnace, which is ~20 years old, would burn through upwards of $600 a month of gas in winter. With heat pumps we pay $180 a month equalized and we run heat or cool all year except for maybe a month in spring and fall where it's perfect 22c outside.
Without this magical tech we'd be broke or cold in the winter and uncomfortable all summer.
This is a cynical view of 1:1 time. I've always felt like a 1:1 is a time to bond with my manager, and look out for my own needs so I can make the most of my career.
Today I am a manager and I can hand on heart say I am at the service of the people I support. I am not telling them how to spend their time, I am not trying to know everything they are doing, I am there to listen, assist, and fill in organizational gaps to keep things moving and keep ICs unblocked.
Engineers are smart people perfectly capable of outthinking me, they are relied on for keeping their own work on track but to ask for help (maybe in a 1:1!) when they need it.
My work is done when everyone is happy and productive, 1:1s help me do my job and my job is to provide support, advice, consultation, and communication between the business and my team. I don't know how I could possibly make sure everyone has what they need, is working toward goals they care about, feel valued and heard, without regular 1:1s. If I were an IC and my manager didn't check in with me regularly I would not feel like I was part of something, managers help glue teams together because no one else on the team is going to do that.
I know this is a glib take, and it's somewhat tongue in cheek but tech jobs in general are well paid enough to at least make a plan to retire in your 40s. I don't think you'll necessarily get there with a "chill" approach, you'll need to be ambitious and smart with investments to make the most of it.
Something else to think about; retiring in your 40s means you are not necessarily even half way through your life these days, so you'll need to work hard enough to pay for the second half of your life. That means you may never make big purchases beyond a home, may not have money for hobbies, or vacations. I mean, life is expensive for the average person, even if you are bringing in $200k+ right now. I feel like we may see early retirees from the 2020s looking for work again in 20 years time.
Investing well is critical, but also a gamble. I know people who have been saving their whole lives into a pension plan only to have it wiped out later in life.
Trade mag mentions it: https://www.waterworld.com/home/article/14071043/the-perfect...
This is more of a nostalgia or niche link list. It's not the same purpose as yahoo in the 90s.