After fighting for years to work from home full time (and loving it now). I see one big problem I have no fix for, training new grad / junior engineers.
Feel free to correct me if you have tools to do it, but I found training someone new like that over Video calls way too hard. It slows them down it slows me down, and their time to become productive goes up 4x. While I don't want to return to commuting I'm willing to compromise 1-3 days a week (at my discretion) to make training possible.
Honestly I think it works better, in some ways. I can share my screen and demo what I am doing, and they can follow along on their machine or vice versa. You can also take control of their machine. Rather than huddled together staring at the same screen. If something doesn't work on their machine, I can try it locally on my machine without having to walk back to my office to try whatever commands they were trying. Don't get me wrong, in person training is valuable, but even if we are in the office, sometimes we still setup a video call for some tasks.
We park in an open team chat for hours at a time. And by open I mean its unscheduled, open for any dev and people just pop in and out as they desire. Someone is always screen sharing and we work on problems together, a new person can absorb or drive things, get realtime feedback. You can popout and just focus as needed, its casual.
Sort of like discord but its code instead of games.
Screenshare with audio only. Video occupies too much mental bandwidth (human brains prioritize face recognition to the detriment of all other processes)
What exactly are you missing? With screen sharing its the same thing if not easier than looking back and forth at two laptop screens parked next to eachother. If its about those serendipitous questions, you could sit on a zoom call with your team all hard at work for the entire day and just don't say anything until someone has a question about something. It would function exactly the same as just sitting around some office, only better because zoom breakout rooms for more specific discussions with a few people are orders of magnitude easier than finding a free conference room for a impromptu work meeting in my experience.
Why are you making them use video calls. How much business was conducted over audio phone calls before the pandemic? Most of it, I'd bet. Just call them and chat as if they were in a satellite office.
There's also the same price but more complex issue.
Hybrid engines and washing machines are far more efficient but significantly more complex. Prices are roughly the same +inflation but the added complexity reduces lifetime and repairability.
I think this is similar to sitting in a coffee shop doing work with a coworker. The game is the work you're primarily focused on. Your coworker is there but only occasionally engaging between thoughts. The Video is the background activity of the coffee shop, it's there but you're not that focused on it unless something unusual occurs.
I don't think it's that they "prefer their current provider" it's that they prefer not to think about it or go through the hassle of changing. Like if someone got an oil change and it works for them every time and you sent them a flyer telling them there's a better place with better oil that's slightly cheaper. The product they buy serves their need and they don't want the work of having to try a new place out.
I'm not really surprised by this. In my old building, out of 6 units I was the only to get fiber and after a few years someone new moved in they were up to two people. I know for a fact 2 other units were work from home business sales folk who did regular video calls (even before covid) and they continued with comcast despite slower up/down at a higher price. In my new building again the same thing. This time 10 units, only myself and one other with fiber despite the same issues. Even with multiple household having a very compelling reason to switch (work from home and home schooling).
I asked an older neighbor in my old building why they hadn't switched and their response was that comcast was good enough for them, I explained it was also cheaper, they said they'd "look into it" and 3 years later still on comcast.
I wish they'd just pushed for TSMC to open a fab in Europe, with incentives and protections.
Micron has one in Italy that is basically shut down. I was once told that to avoid payouts, required by Italian Law, for letting employees go the factory had been put on a sort of "pause" everyone sent home but not let go. If things like this still go on I see no hope for a European electronics/Semi manufacturing industry to ever take hold.
I've been doing the no car thing for 4 years now after my last car was totaled in the middle of the night while parked. The thing that worked for me was to compute out the total cost I was spending per month on the car and set that as the cap on my car rentals and zipcar. I never even come close to that limit, and knowing that limit lets me feel free to spend.
When I did the math the insurance was close to 50% of my cost. Rest was depreciation, then gas, and maintenance.
Similar observation, on my tiny stretch of street I've seen 7 moving trucks since SIP started, far more than I've ever seen. I get it, If you just moved or been here 1-2yr I'd leave too, the costs would make no sense.
I'm right on the fence. I've been at my current place ~6 years, prices have just started to get to about what I'm paying (rent controlled). I'm hoping it drops some more so I can negotiate a reduction.
...with permanent WFH I too want to leave, head to Europe (I'm a citizen). With travel restrictions in place, and my employer saying they'd adjust my pay to reflect local cost of living I'm not sure what would be best.
> and my employer saying they'd adjust my pay to reflect local cost of living I'm not sure what would be best.
This "local cost of living" and "regional market" argument is a farce. Remote workers are competing in a global market by definition. They might as well be honest and say, "we think we can get away with paying you less."
Yeah I get that, the further east you go the worse it is, and my experience working with Indian coworkers sounds like a nightmare for them.
I'm from Portugal so I was thinking of being there, 8am here is 4pm there, and 5pm here is 1am there. I kind of like the idea of having my morning to myself, and working in the evening. With lock down that's been my work schedule now. I do exercise, chores, and cooking in the morning, and actual work in the evening (the occasional meeting tends to occurs as I bake/boil/chop something).
Look at past 1yr then 5yr. get average per year. Then look at forward growth potential, maybe read the last two quarter prospectus... and kind of guess/ballpark. You could be wrong so come up with a lowest case scenario even if it's negative and a top and middle, based on best judgment.
...this all goes out the door if they are so new as to not have 5yr of stock performance or if their revenue is negative. In this case, if it was me, I wouldn't even count stock in the compensation unless I plan to sell right at each vesting.
Yes, I manage a set of tools and libraries written in perl that are pretty large and service the whole company. That said we're re-writing them all to Python so more people can contribute... Saddens me a little I like Perl, but I'll get over it.
One big one is farming, think harvesting machinery. There's a number of startups trying to get that going. I think most are not at the scale to be successful the way the market themselves, but their collective learning will eventually lead to some consolidation.
Why AI for that, it's vision AI to know when fruit is ripe or vegetables are ready for harvest. Then hand eye coordination to not bruise the fruit/vegetables and adjust force/sensitivity as the equipment wears down.
Scaling that will put likely many workers out and transform the business of harvesting. What I think is most plausible is one large manufacturer will consolidate designs and rent the equipment to do the harvesting much like the contract labor used now, but at much lower prices than humans could do.
Depending on the crop you’re talking about, we are still very very far away from this.
People have been trying to design machines to pick fruit, even in toy scenarios, for decades, and we have little to show for it. I don’t think that image processing is the bottleneck here, it’s literally the mechanism as far as I understand.
I’m skeptical that any mechanical equipment will ever be able to do these tasks as cheaply, quickly, and efficiently as a human in our lifetimes.
> What I think is most plausible is one large manufacturer will consolidate designs and rent the equipment to do the harvesting
No way. Everybody wants the machines at the same time. You're going to incur the capital cost of buying/manufacturing the machines, the cost to store and maintain them for 50 weeks out of the year, and then rent them out at a profit for 2 weeks? No, the farmers will just keep hiring human labor.
If you can solve this problem, you can sell a lot of machines for a lot of money for a short few years. After that, they'll be a commodity and be dominated by all the other capital-intensive manufacturers that can run a factory better than you can.
Feel free to correct me if you have tools to do it, but I found training someone new like that over Video calls way too hard. It slows them down it slows me down, and their time to become productive goes up 4x. While I don't want to return to commuting I'm willing to compromise 1-3 days a week (at my discretion) to make training possible.