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

cnn.com

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

#361

Post by _heimdall »

rurp wrote: post #333
_heimdall wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately war does tend to have a way of rallying both sides together. Tribalism tends to just need an "other" group to demonize. A 9/11 scale attack would make it pretty easy for supporters of both parties to turn their sights on whoever they think attacked us.

That's certainly true in general but I can't think of an attack that was preceded by such a visible effort to make the country more vulnerable. There would be some rallying effect, but it might be smaller and shorter lived than usual especially if the response is bungled. Then again, things might have become so cultish that reality completely stops mattering and trump skates by once again without any responsibility.

Reality isn't simple enough to peg responsibility on any one person.

Unless you go with the "shit rolls down hill" approach and ultimate land blame for everything on the person in charge, it'd be extremely hard to find a clear line between 6 weeks of Trump's presidency and an attack on the scale of 9/11.

Maybe you could tie it back to connections with his first term, but any attack on that scale takes years to plan, not weeks, and has plenty of facets to consider when it comes to what motivated the attackers to actually do it.

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

#362

Post by consteval »

mirekrusin wrote: post #249
abeppu wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it's a valuable lesson that, though it may become a nazi cesspit and vastly more annoying to interact with, an organization can survive for a surprisingly long time as a shambolic remnant of its former self, doing less and less well for fewer people. As I understand it: - twitter became less appealing to advertisers so revenue dropped - you can't really firmly track the valuation over time after it was delisted…

It still works last time I checked – with fraction of headcount and with people working from the office. Twitter had few months runway until it'd run out of money and go bankrupt. Bloomberg analysis says (despite advertisers and communities leave etc) platform earnings seem to be staying at $1.2 billion a year. Reports from Feb 2025 say that X doubled its adjusted EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation…

It works in the sense that if you open the website it will open... probably.

Based off of what I've seen on Twitter, I'm not convinced it's very popular. I regularly see the stupidest people who walk this Earth making obvious rage bait. You know, Nazi stuff, women shouldn't vote, that type of thing.

The naive thing to say is that these people are morons because they're Musk supporters and surely that's the only thing left for Twitter. But I don't think so. They're bots. Millions and millions of them. Bots talking to bots talking to other bots.

The reason this bubble hasn't popped is because nobody has told advertisers. They're essentially burning their money but shhh it's a secret teehee!

In Twitter's defense, they're not the only ones doing it. Facebook deleted what, 1.5 billion bots a year ago? But if you log on, you'll see AI Jesus made out of cornflakes with 200,000 thousands comments that all say "God Bless". Hmmm...

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

#363

Post by nokun7 »

pseudalopex wrote: post #225
nokun7 wrote: post #80

[flagged]

> those little shops, daycares, and coffee spots need people around to stay afloat This is a strange inversion of priorities. Day cares and coffee spots exist to serve their customers. And you have lost sight of many important things if you think parents should be prevented from caring for their own children to support day care businesses.

Didn't parents care for their children before?

So then why do you think California - arguably the most liberal state - is also implementing a return to work mandate?

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

#364

Post by rsynnott »

mystifyingpoi wrote: post #133

> (...) returned to ethernet cords in piles around the floor, random wires sticking out of walls, and motion-sensor lights that weren’t working correctly I don't understand that part, maybe I'm missing something - what happened there? Why would the abandoned workplace not look exactly the same as they left it? Where did the ethernet cords appear from? Someone stole TVs from the walls?

It's been a few years. In that time, leases will have ended, and not been renewed. Refurbs and buildouts of new space will have been abandoned. Outdated and surplus equipment will have been decommissioned and scrapped or sold off or sent to other sites where it was required. I'm sure there are some offices that are just like how they were, but also some offices which _no longer exist_, and it's unlikely their replacements will have been fitted out if it wasn't expected that they would be imminently used.

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

#365

Post by danaris »

consteval wrote: post #360
Ajedi32 wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> many of them genuinely have zero metric for gauging "how much is Aurornis working?" besides measuring the amount of time a butt is in a seat This is a legitimate problem though. Obviously making people do all their work from a centralized office location is a horribly inefficient solution, but it is a solution, and if there really is widespread slacking happening it might still be more efficient than doing nothing.

It's an unsolvable problem, because any sufficiently complex job will therefore be complex to measure. I mean, if you could measure it, then you could just do it, no? Why spend all this time measuring how good an engineer is? If you really want to know, you have to look at the code, sit in on the meetings, write the code and see the challenges with integrating with the existing system, submit a PR to see the pushback…

"Unsolvable" in the sense that there's no one magic algorithm you can use, sure.

But every job has some ways to determine if the person in it is actually, y'know, doing it. And off the top of my head (and it's early, so YMMV), I'd say that remote jobs tend to have more easily-auditable products than many in-person-only jobs (particularly the type where the main purpose is direct interaction with the public).

> If we hire two engineers to act as one then maybe, maybe, we could measure performance. At the cost of the largest inefficiency imaginable.

And why should "efficiency" be our most important criterion?

"Efficiency" is why we have lean staffing that forces the "bus factor"[0] of nearly every position to 1. "Efficiency" is why we have stretched, fragile supply chains that break down the moment any one supplier or middleman experiences a crisis.

Efficiency is the enemy of resilience. The only people it really helps are shareholders.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor

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

#367

Post by mirekrusin »

pseudalopex wrote: post #311
mirekrusin wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Predictions of rapid collapse were dominant on HN [0] at that time.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33463908

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

#368

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

piva00 wrote: post #266
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We know that Russia has run a very long, very extensive disinformation campaign against the west. It might be expected that that extends to HN. Not everything posted here is someone's actual opinion. Some of it is deliberate propaganda and attempts to manipulate. That's hard to accept, given what HN was once. The difference between ten years ago and last year was noticeable; the difference between last year and this…

I've become used to check those users comments and, unfortunately, a lot of them have been posting on HN for many years, even before Trump 1. It can be Russian disinfo but it's definitely not only that.

Yeah, it's kinda disheartening to be honest.

That being said, the writing was on the wall in 2016, the first time Trump ran, HN (and the anglosphere internet in general) took a sharp dive down in quality, and Covid made it all worse.

I just try to remember that the printing press caused a lot of wars, but over the longer term it lead to a better world.

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

#369

Post by consteval »

danaris wrote: post #365
consteval wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an unsolvable problem, because any sufficiently complex job will therefore be complex to measure. I mean, if you could measure it, then you could just do it, no? Why spend all this time measuring how good an engineer is? If you really want to know, you have to look at the code, sit in on the meetings, write the code and see the challenges with integrating with the existing system, submit a PR to see the pushback…

"Unsolvable" in the sense that there's no one magic algorithm you can use, sure. But every job has some ways to determine if the person in it is actually, y'know, doing it. And off the top of my head (and it's early, so YMMV), I'd say that remote jobs tend to have more easily-auditable products than many in-person-only jobs (particularly the type where the main purpose is direct interaction with the public). > If we…

Efficiency is perhaps not the right word, but I was under the impression that attempting to measure performance is a cost saving tactic. I think you lose the cost saving if you just double your engineers while keeping the same amount of work.

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

#370

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

consteval wrote: post #359
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's parroted by people who see the government as "inefficient" at generating profit, not as inefficient at providing a service. Why should plebs be entitled to clean water without an 80% margin?

Profit in it of itself is an inefficiency. It's a bandaid for the fundamental problems of the private sector. The fact the public sector isn't burdened by a requirement to make profit isn't a downside, it's a super power.

It's only a super power if you're buying those services instead of providing them for a profit (99.9%).

It's anathema if you're competing against someone who doesn't need to make a profit - when you're trying to make an 80% monopolistic margin (0.1%).

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