Clodfobble wrote:

...preferably not made of leather...

Please turn in your Texan card on your way out.
 

Ha!!  I was going to suggest putting a pimp throne on a furniture dolly earlier today.

Flint wrote:

My primary computer is a Dell laptop that runs everything (power/displays/peripherals) through a single USB-C cable to a docking station with two HDMI outputs. And I use wireless network, I can pick it up and go mobile by unplugging one cable. Although I did prefer the old physical ka-CHUNK docking stations.
 

Have I ranted recently about how much i HATE what the "docking station" has become?

My single USB-C connected laptop has taken to going "doo doo DEE" and "DEE doo doo" frequently throughout the day, indicating something (?) is disconnecting and reconnecting. Also, there's a continuous 'USB device not recognized' message in my system tray. Nothing but mouse, keyboard and monitors connected.

The single connection itself is loose and flimsy. If I bump my computer wrong it can disconnect, but THIS doesn't produce the symptoms described above.
 

better than zombies, I guess. unless it's zombies on ATVs

Pete's hoping to minimize office time, but three separate coworkers approached her about being lonely working from home. It's great for us married folk but some singles can't bear it.

griff wrote:

Pete's hoping to minimize office time, but three separate coworkers approached her about being lonely working from home. It's great for us married folk but some singles can't bear it.

I don't know it it's as simple as just being single.  I'm single and live alone and I like it much more than I thought I would.  I have lots of room, though, and I've become more of a hermit in the past few years.  I don't need to see people to talk to them.  I don't need to use the office environment to fill a social life hole.

Everybody has their own level of comfort. Pete is fine with zoom meetings etc... but my work with shorties is not effectively done remotely and honestly I hate being on screen it gives me the creeps.


Getting out of the country before the end of democracy would seem attractive unless you look at the growth of right wing populism throughout the West. We need to hold the line here.
 

griff wrote:

Everybody has their own level of comfort. Pete is fine with zoom meetings etc... but my work with shorties is not effectively done remotely and honestly I hate being on screen it gives me the creeps.


Getting out of the country before the end of democracy would seem attractive unless you look at the growth of right wing populism throughout the West. We need to hold the line here.
 

 I think this is something that a lot of companies are missing the point of.  A lot of people in my profession prefer working from remotely because we're basically just working on our own anyways.  I still would send a message to people instead of talking to them.  It was a culture thing - if it wasn't something urgent, sending a message would let the person know you needed an answer, but they could do it on their time.

There was also a group of people who had to be isolated in the office because of the confidentiality of the work they did.  They were basically coming to work to sit in a fishbowl that no one else could enter.  It was dumb to force them back into the office.

But I also recognize that there are people who prefer working around people. 

I think the company I work for has a nice balance.  It's basically a work anywhere policy.  There's people who never goo into the office because they are truly remote.  There are others that go into the office when they feel like it, not because it's company mandated.  It caters to both all 3 types of workers: 100% remote, hybrid, and 100% office.

Agreed with glatt-- no chance for new people to "integrate" unless done in person. Maybe this is not true for everybody, but I was once hired in a "batch" of remote analysts. We went on site ONCE for the general onboarding, got our laptops and went back home to jump in feet first. None of us really understood the job, which was mainly, as it turns out, networking and making side-deals. Because Sales sold something to the customer that wasn't exactly what they needed, we as the "interface analysts" were in the position to rig something together out of whatever work we could convince an engineer to do (and haggle for hours with our PM so the engineer would have hours on their timesheet to justify doing the work). We were supposed to fly back out to "shadow" some of the veteran people in our position, but this never happened. All of us struggled, and eventually we were all let go (also due to there not being as much work in the pipeline as they expected). In my experience, it was such a "people" job that expecting to be able to do without ever meeting any of the people in person was just too much to expect.

What is not seen does not exist.  No innovation?  It was not necessary.  Not heard of others problems?  No problem.  I am working just fine.  It's their problem that they have no contacts, learn nothing from peers, and cannot contribute to the only thing that makes profits ten years from now: innovation.

Rubbing elbows (especially with the new blood) is essential for innovation.

Since I am not wasting time advising other, learning of new problem, and discovering better ways of doing things, then I am being more productive.  None of that wasteful stuff is impeding today's output.
 

lol

A paper by Fort, Keller,Schott, et al examines innovation.  Companies that locate manufacturing near their R&D centers produce more patents and citations.  A less geographic distance between manufacturing and innovation people means more innovation happens.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Kota and Mahoney (2019) assert that “once manufacturing departs from a country’s shores, engineering and production know-how leave as well, and innovation ultimately follows. It’s become increasingly clear that ‘manufacture there’ now also means ‘innovate there’.”

That (not speculation from a spread sheet) defines profits many years later.

Why did HP want large hallways?  Major source of HP's innovations happened there - before business school graduates such as Fiorina and Young started using cost controls to increase quarterly and annual profits.

If face-to-face interactions between production and innovation workers affect innovators’ output, then the geographic colocation of these activities may be critical, regardless of the firm boundary

When elbows are not being rubbed, then the real source of profits does not exist four and ten years later.

 

Last edited by tw (11/06/2022 5:06 pm)