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Federal workers ordered to return to offices without desks, Wi-Fi and lights

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311–320 of 380 posts

Re: Federal workers ordered to return to offices without desks, Wi-Fi and lights

#311
post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your argument seems to be entirely financial rather than what twitter _does_. My understanding is their MAUs and DAUs have fallen. Fewer people are looking at it or posting on it, less often. https://soax.com/research/twitter-active-users https://mashable.com/article/twitter-x-daily-active-users-dr... I think it's interesting that you mention bloomberg as saying that things are going ok. My recent read was that they…

My argument is around cutting workforce and requirement to be present in the office in context of efficency in general. Sentiment of people predicting total failure back then feels like flashback now.

I saw few predictions of rapid collapse. Many predictions of slow or delayed reductions in revenue, active users, content quality, service quality, and ability to deliver new features.

abeppu's argument was efficiency and health are not the same.

Re: Federal workers ordered to return to offices without desks, Wi-Fi and lights

#312
post #10

The disruption is (part of) the point. Degrading the ability of government employees to do their jobs leads to greater inefficiency and more failure, which can then be pointed at to validate assertions that government isn't efficient and produces bad outcomes.

Absolutely insane that this is what we've come to. It is mind blowing to me that this is what people want. We are regressing this country so rapidly that we are likely to become one of those shithole countries the president so loudly proclaimed Haiti, El Salvador and others were.

Why? Current action is no different than when Private Equity buys a company. The American public asked for the government to be ran like a business, and sadly, this is how big money men in the USA run businesses. Take control, fire everyone, leverage everything to their gain, bankrupt, then walk away.

This IS what people voted for. American business practices applied to the government.

Re: Federal workers ordered to return to offices without desks, Wi-Fi and lights

#313
post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[citation needed]

For what it's worth, while I don't agree with the moron bit of what OP said, I have felt like I have seen HN leaning more pro-Trump. And it does also feel like saying anything critical of him can be heavily downvoted. There really does appear to be a large contingent of pro-Trump people on here, at least in my experience. I don't have citations, just my own experience, so, obviously take it for what it is.

Capital is inherently conservative and this is a website focused around venture capitalism. It makes sense that more than average this website's users/staff would lean towards more conservative politics than a random sample of Internet users. This should be even more clear when you read pg's essays. Of course this has an effect on the moderation, including voting/flagging.

Re: Federal workers ordered to return to offices without desks, Wi-Fi and lights

#314
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may not be what people want now, but it is what people voted for. People voted for tariff and massive day 1 changes and federal cuts. People wanted a loud strong man president who makes deals. These actions ARE what people (who voted) wanted… people just didn’t think about the outcome

The isn't meant as any kind of defense regarding Trump or his supporters, but it seems under-discussed to me: The Democrats offered a really bad alternative (Biden) for most of the campaign season. Even if you liked his politics, there was (IMHO) legitimate reason to question his mental competence. My guess is that Trump would have lost if the Democrats had fielded a less-bad alternative.

Both times trump won, this was true. The DNC is just allergic to putting forward candidates that people want to vote for.

Kamala really ran a campaign like someone trying to lose.

Re: Federal workers ordered to return to offices without desks, Wi-Fi and lights

#316
post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> An organization allegedly about reducing waste is creating it instead The point you missed in the parent comment was that this is temporary . I don't have a strong opinion on the matter, but if the way we discover that government offices were sitting vacant for years (i.e. big waste) is by having people return to them and be unproductive for a few days (i.e. small waste), then the trade will be worth it. I doubt an…

I didn't miss the point. This waste could have been avoided, is the thing, and anyone who cared about running and knew how to run an organization well, might have. Such a person might even have guessed there were excellent reasons that the executive has not, previously, been run by one single person issuing surprising and very specific decrees that reach down to the lowest-level workers, across large swaths of it at…

> This waste could have been avoided, is the thing, and anyone who cared about running and knew how to run an organization well, might have.

Sure, by not having the vacant offices in the first place. Different ways to achieve that goal include: not allowing huge numbers of employees to stop coming into the office; or if you do allow that, by then competently following up on the implied reduction in office usage.

There are clearly lots of ways to avoid this kind of waste, but all of them go back for years, and were not done. So here we are. And instead of being critical of that, you're choosing to fixate on the most recent events, where someone is actually discovering and fixing the underlying problem.

Re: Federal workers ordered to return to offices without desks, Wi-Fi and lights

#317
post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't miss the point. This waste could have been avoided, is the thing, and anyone who cared about running and knew how to run an organization well, might have. Such a person might even have guessed there were excellent reasons that the executive has not, previously, been run by one single person issuing surprising and very specific decrees that reach down to the lowest-level workers, across large swaths of it at…

> This waste could have been avoided, is the thing, and anyone who cared about running and knew how to run an organization well, might have. Sure, by not having the vacant offices in the first place. Different ways to achieve that goal include: not allowing huge numbers of employees to stop coming into the office; or if you do allow that, by then competently following up on the implied reduction in office usage. Ther…

> There are clearly lots of ways to avoid this kind of waste, but all of them go back for years, and were not done.

What waste? The offices? Filling them doesn't reduce the waste.

No, the waste is lost hours of productivity, and chaos making these offices less efficient. You solve that by rolling this out very differently. The waste I'm talking about is entirely avoidable and 100% DOGE's fault.

[EDIT]

> where someone is actually discovering and fixing the underlying problem.

What underlying problem? This 1) didn't need to be done, and even if that weren't true, 2) was done in a hamfisted way that wasted money.

Re: Federal workers ordered to return to offices without desks, Wi-Fi and lights

#318
post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This waste could have been avoided, is the thing, and anyone who cared about running and knew how to run an organization well, might have. Sure, by not having the vacant offices in the first place. Different ways to achieve that goal include: not allowing huge numbers of employees to stop coming into the office; or if you do allow that, by then competently following up on the implied reduction in office usage. Ther…

> There are clearly lots of ways to avoid this kind of waste, but all of them go back for years, and were not done. What waste? The offices? Filling them doesn't reduce the waste. No, the waste is lost hours of productivity, and chaos making these offices less efficient. You solve that by rolling this out very differently. The waste I'm talking about is entirely avoidable and 100% DOGE's fault. [EDIT] > where someone…

You're focusing on the trees and missing the forest. Please go back and re-read my original comment.

Small waste: the few hours/days of lost productivity while offices are re-opened.

Big waste: the empty offices that were sitting there while nobody was using them, for years.

Maybe they could have avoided the small waste by being more careful and methodical, or maybe that would have taken 10x longer. I don't know, and it's not worth arguing about.

Re: Federal workers ordered to return to offices without desks, Wi-Fi and lights

#319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US has perhaps the most battle hardened military in the history of the world. It’s had real combat deployments continually for going on 25 years. At best you can suggest it would be too allocated to counter insurgency but combined arms battles is the heart of American doctrine and its shown its value in Ukraine not its weakness. I think there are real questions about US military composition, particularly its navy…

The US military might be battle-hardened and ready for war, but the US public is not. The public is soft and fragile and totally unready for the sacrifices and losses that come from a serious war where we're not an overwhelming force against a tiny Middle Eastern country. The public will not work together collectively to get through a war. We're not going to put up with rationing programs, collecting scrap metal, Vic…

There is no military in the world without nuclear weapons that can put enough of a fight to require the US public to collect scrap metal. If the US goes to war with a nation with nuclear weapons, what's left of the whole planet's gonna be collecting scrap metal for the next 200 years.

Re: Federal workers ordered to return to offices without desks, Wi-Fi and lights

#320
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point, anyone remaining at Xitter has to be aware that they are working for a neo-Nazi. And anyone using Xitter in a country that has a history of fighting Nazi's in WWII has to be aware of who they're supporting. It's maddening how many people just don't seem to give a shit.

Many of them are trapped by work visas.

It's not just Xitter - it's Tesla, Starlink, Neuralink and BoringCo. among others. They can't all be trapped by work visas.

While I have some sympathy for them, it diminishes every time their boss opens his mouth.

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