andallthat @ andallthat @lemmy.world

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2 yr. ago

What's a "book"? Wouldn't want any of that witchcraft near our kids!

Why go and confuse people? The world is a simple place. There's only one gender and that's Man. There's Man and then there's Weaker Man with Boobs. There's only one colour and that's White, which also comes in darker shades. See how that resolves all conflict? We're all white men!

Thanks for posting this, I've learned things about cold reading and the Forer effect that, regardless.of whether they can be applied to LLMs, are fascinating information on our own minds.

I will try experimenting some more with ChatGPT and Bard and see if I can spot these effect the author deacribes

Well yes, I do feel we might have collectively given more thought to this here than my company has...

It's just that I work in one of those places where a trivial change that our users are asking for requires a business case and endless discussion, so it's weird to think that a big, life-changing decision like this would just be taken without a particularly strong motivation.

But maybe I'm just starting from the wrong premise here. The purpose of the business case is for us little guys to obtain buy-in from the top management, but if a decision comes directly from the top management they don't need much more than their own gut feelings?

Maybe especially so if they have to make a decision based on an unprecedented situation with no data and no guidance from what other companies have done before.I can see how the least risky bet would seem returning to the previous, proven situation where most people were working in the office.

One of the ways big, established companies look at change is this: "will this change make it easier or harder for new competitors to enter our market and take some of our business?". Depending on the answer, big players will ask for that change or will oppose it (and try to maintain the "status quo", I.e. things the way they already are).

In other words, what is called the "barrier to entry" for new competitors must be as high as possible.

For instance, when OpenAI's CEO started giving interviews on how dangerous AI like their own ChatGPT is and calling for more regulations, they are probably doing it to make it more difficult for new AI companies to enter the market and close the gap with them.

So, with that in mind, how would a big company view WFH? if a company already owns an office that they can't easily take off of their balance sheets and remote working can now be an effective, cheaper alternative, then a new competitor could enter the market and do what your company does at a cheaper cost (not having the office cost). WFH is a chamge that lowers the barrier to entry, so big companies will tend to oppose it (or at least delay it)

That could be a consideration, yes. Funny enough, our whole Legal team has been consistently the one with the LEAST attendance in person in the office.... Overall it seems like forcing your call center employees in office because you're afraid they'll leak strategic company secrets is a bit of an over-reaction. I doubt that the most high-level, secret discussions on mergers and acquisitions or mass layoffs have ever happened in our office to begin with.

That could be a driver, yes. The problem is that the first people to go are usually the ones companies want to keep, either because they are star performers or because the job market requires their specific skills more (so they find something else easily and their roles are also harder to fill again).

But yes, I can see how a company might be more or less lenient applying their return to office policies, so that attrition is concentrated more in some teams. And firing people does have side-effects too on PR and morale of the remaining employees.

I do generally see more people leaving my company than new hires, though, so you might be on to something with the attrition rates...

Also for me there is value in occasionally seeing people in person. The exact ratio will depend on the job, but for me it would be about 2-3 days per month in the office. We see each other, talk about how things are going, blockers, stuff we need to change, a little office gossip and then off we go again.

In that sense, a lax hybrid schedule works best for me personally. However, for it to work, everyone should agree to be in the office in the same days. Coming to an empty office and doing the same zoom calls you could have done from home is less than useful.

And since, again, the ratio of individual work Vs collaborative work varies by person and team, we'd need to find an average that sort of works for everyone and agree on a common schedule That is where I think the idea of hybrid comes in: 2 or 3 days per week in the office for everyone. My company is trying this and asking (but for now not forcing) people to concentrate attendance in the days in the middle of the week.

This clearly works better for some and worse for others.

I heard from a colleague that some companies are trying a different model. They shut down the offices and used part of the savings as budget for managers to create more frequent team events, so teams can e.g. meet in person at a restaurant a couple of times per month. I have no idea who these companies are and how this approach is going.

This is true. I just had trouble picturing the CEO of a big company going "I'll force everyone back to the office! WFH is sooo convenient but I can't do this to Mr Joe's hamburger joint around the corner".

However as someone else pointed out, if WFH becomes the norm, a lot of business might be impacted and fail, generating turbulence in the economy. This I can picture getting a CEO's attention

Thanks I agree. Pre COVID, my company closed some very small offices to only keep a few HQs and a handful of people were offered fully remote contracts. They were generally very unhappy, being basically cut off from training, career growth, most of the context around work discussions, company events...

WFH is great when working from home is the norm for everyone. The office ALSO works only when most colleagues are in the office (otherwise you just add commute time to the same zoom call you could have from home).

I saw someone else pointing out in the thread that fully remote companies would, in time, probably adjust their salaries too. (EDIT: ah, oops... it wasn't someone else, it was always you!! Sorry!)

As an employee, in the short term, I like to e.g. keep a London salary and save on housing and commute by moving to Manchester. But in a fully remote company there would be no "London" salary or London office at all, so salaries would be likely reflecting a blended national job market.

The transition is certainly awkward for existing companies, though, as nobody wants a salary cut (which by itself could be a good explaination for them wanting to maintain the previous in-office status quo).

Thanks for the article, it's an interesting one and it's one of the few I've seen that describes actual research on WFH productivity

Thanks, that's a very good point! A physical office is a great bargaining chip for a large company. I remember a few years back when several cities and states engaged ina kind of auction to host the next Amazon HQ. It probably also works at the international level, where I imagine it will be easier to enter a market (from the perspective of local laws and permits) and sell your product there if you also open an office and create thousands of new jobs there.

We're supposed to be doing hybrid, 50% in the office. I don't think we ever went over 30-35% of people in the office. My company tried the carrot, more than the stick to get employees back, like events. Everybody hated the almost-full office in those days. Most teams tried to have in-person team meetings, so there were no available meeting rooms and nobody is really used to the noise of an open-office plan full of people. There is clearly some push from above on our managers, because they try to sound happy but they mostly look as miserable as everyone else.

How was the return for you? Is the whole company back in the office or just you/your team?

That makes you more talented than Einstein, Newton and Leonardo da Vinci

This lead to lots of people investing in companies. As long as those companies paid out more money than those low interest rates, it was worthwhile. But at the same time, this meant companies didn’t have to be profitable, because they could pay out investors from money that other investors gave them???

I'm not an economist, but this is how I understand it works. If interest rates are low and your company can deliver 2% returns to investors, more people will invest in your company rather than leaving their money in the bank. Your company can ALSO borrow money from banks at near-0 interest and deliver a 2% return on that borrowed money (I'm probably over-simplifying, here, but I hope not by too much....). Basically, after building and selling more of your product thanks to the borrowed money, your company will have enough to return the money they borrowed from the bank and then some. If interest rates are 5%, your company now needs to be much more profitable for the whole thing to work.

This is why I understand most companies (even big and solid ones) have what is considered a "healthy" amount of debt. As long as your company can earn enough to repay that debt and keep something, not taking that debt is considered a lost opportunity.

If you're a start-up, though, you're almost by definition not profitable to begin with. You need money in exchange for a promise of big future profits. Access to that money becomes a lot more challenging with higher interest rates, so you might not be able to operate at a loss for long enough to turn profitable.

EDIT: as I see a lot of discussion on speculation, stock market and such. While these elements do exist and magnify the effects of the higher interest rates, I think the basic mechanism can also be explained without them. Low interest rates are a way of pumping "free" money into the economy, when you stop doing it, the economy goes to shit in various ways. For instance:

You have no job but own a car. You plan to drive to the countryside, buy $100 worth of potatoes and resell them in the city for $110. You estimate that gas will costs you $4. You have only one problem, you don't have $100. But hey, interest rates are super-low! You can borrow $100 from the bank and give them $101 back after selling your potatoes, so you're good to go! In the end, you're $5 richer, as you've spent $105 and earned $110.

WAY #1 things go to shit: if rates had been higher, you wouldn't have even be able to start your business (low interest rates attract more new businesses to the market)

Now say you want to do this again. Your net worth is no longer 0, you have $5! Can you buy $5 worth of potatoes and go on without borrowing any more? Not worth it, you would barely be able to cover your gas costs. So, even if your business is overall profitable, you still rely on borrowing. Given your earlier success, if anything you will probably want to try borrowing more and go for $200 worth of potatoes this time! Note that in this example you started with an owned car; if you'd had to buy one, it would take you years to repay the car and start actually turning a profit.

WAY #2 things go to shit if rates get higher now, you will have to shut down your business. You will still have earned some money, but you can't continue

Fast-forward a few years, your business is moving about $1M worth of potatoes You buy them for $1M and sell them for $1.05M, earning a cool $50K. From your years in the potato business, you have accumulated $200K in cash. Now, if you want to buy your $1M worth of potatoes, you still rely on the bank to lend you money. OR at this point, you could scale back your business and only use your cash reserves to buy potatoes. You would buy for $200K and make $10K every time. But rates are still so low and demand for potatoes is still very high, so why wouldn't you borrow and make a $50K profit instead? Or, by borrowing $2M maybe you could buy a field and start growing your own potatoes (since the farmer started raising his prices).

WAY #3 things go to shit if rates get higher now, you might still have a sustainable business, but you will need to scale it back and probably cut some costs. Maybe not too shitty for you, but probably not great news for the people you've hired to help you ("guys, due to difficult market conditions, our business has now 5 times less profit and we have to downsize")

And I haven't even touched on how an unexpected event, let's call it Schmovid, can leave you with $1M in potatoes that you've already paid but nobody can buy any longer. Your $200K savings have been wiped and now you're $800K in debt with the bank. You're starting to recover and.... NOW the borrowing rates get much higher.

we have windows 11 on our work machines. The OS and Office 365 apps are forcing more and more links to open in Edge instead of the default browser. Microsoft has been fined in the past over their push for Internet Explorer (at least in the EU), but what they are doing now has already become much worse.

Thanks to Elon I misread your comment for a bit

A couple more kids. Or a smaller house. Or my mother in law coming to live with us.

And if you were in one of those companies pushing hard to get people back in the office, what pay cut would you be willing to take to make your job fully remote? (I swear I'm not in HR! )

I like working from home and I would also find it pretty f-ing great to be able to access a pool of interesting jobs without having to move to San Francisco. However let's admit it, it's not only real estate that loses with WFH. A lot of businesses, bars, restaurant, transport and travel companies, nurseries, you name it... depend on people commuting every day, sipping overpriced lattes, dry-cleaning their suits and going for a quick pint at the pub with colleagues. All the money I'm saving by working from home is money that someone else's job currently depends on. And some of the money other people are saving is funding some jobs at the company where I work too. Maybe mine too?

The city I live in is one of those business cities with overpriced rents that would probably lose over 50% of its population almost overnight if WFH became the standard. Including probably me and my family. The mayor, unsurprisingly, has been one of the biggest fans of return to office.

And yes, I do think WFH is the path to a more sustainable and humane future. But arriving there so suddenly could be problematic for more than real estate moguls. I think there has been a cultural shift and we're hopefully going to get there, but saying "ok, the last one to leave Manhattan please turn off the lights", going back to our small towns and expecting all our current salaries to still exist is not realistic. Over time (and I don't think it's going to take generations, just maybe a decade or two) things will gradually adjust, people will start selling their houses in the city, new, smaller local businesses are going to emerge, the window cleaners at skyscrapers will have found a new job or retired.