Then there is the opposite extravagoolish exhibited by tiny orgs you have never heard of going all in on superbowl ads.
Don't Be Frupid
41–50 of 134 posts
Re: Don't Be Frupid
#42[deleted]
Re: Don't Be Frupid
#43> Conference Austerity > Conferences get nuked because someone upstairs sees them as a “nice to have.” The irony? That conference could’ve been where your engineers learned about a new technique that would’ve saved you a million bucks in infrastructure costs. Instead, they’re stuck reinventing the wheel – badly. I agree with the thesis in general but this point is not resonating strongly with me. Conferences are expe…
I have to agree. And I’m all for “give everything to the engineers”, but I cannot rationally justify tech conferences. The only thing is that it creates cohesion among your team (if all of them go together to the same conference), but one could just as well organise a meet-up in the main office for a couple of days.
Re: Don't Be Frupid
#44People tend to forget that even in smaller companies 15 usd / month isn't that simple.
You need to approve the vendor, check if there no minimum amount of seats, then figure out that even for a simple sso they have a different plan which is 50 usd / month
And with laptops, I get the point to some extent, nobody says buy an engineer a 2 core 8gb ram machine, but try speccing up a Mac and see how deep the apple tax is on ram and storage, especially if you're non US.
I would propose, as always, things are about context and compromises.
Re: Don't Be Frupid
#45Don’t bother reading the article, it’s obviously LLM generated slop. ctrl-f: chatgpt, ai
Maybe I’m just crotchety but something about blogging your AI crud to the world really pisses me off. Feels… disrespectful, almost?
Re: Don't Be Frupid
#46> Conference Austerity > Conferences get nuked because someone upstairs sees them as a “nice to have.” The irony? That conference could’ve been where your engineers learned about a new technique that would’ve saved you a million bucks in infrastructure costs. Instead, they’re stuck reinventing the wheel – badly. I agree with the thesis in general but this point is not resonating strongly with me. Conferences are expe…
I would say it depends on the content of the conference.
I'm a EE but work on process controls systems.
If it's a specialized industry specific users group where people in the same type of role swap operating experience, that's worth it. I.e. a heavily regulated industry where the safety of the public is involved like nuclear power, air planes, oil, etc.
The other type of conference is if your plant is specifically on a certain vendor for your core process. So automation firms for industrial controls conferences fit this bill If you're a Honeywell shop, go-to Honeywell users group, Allen Bradley go to process solutions users group, or anything with aveva going to aveva world.
If the production of your plant is dependent on the lifecycle of a vendor for parts, support and licenses, this type of conference is a must.
For both of these types there is a smart option to save a ton, volunteer to present. Most of the time if you present something worthwhile at a conference they waive the fee.
Re: Don't Be Frupid
#47Don’t bother reading the article, it’s obviously LLM generated slop. ctrl-f: chatgpt, ai Maybe I’m just crotchety but something about blogging your AI crud to the world really pisses me off. Feels… disrespectful, almost?
I think you're being a bit paranoid...
I hate slop as much as the next person, but I guarantee that this is just me.
Re: Don't Be Frupid
#48Fairly sure this term originated at Amazon.
That's what I remember too. I heard this term at Google from someone who used to work for Amazon. Also a random article about it:
https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-employees-use-frupidi...
Re: Don't Be Frupid
#49> Conference Austerity > Conferences get nuked because someone upstairs sees them as a “nice to have.” The irony? That conference could’ve been where your engineers learned about a new technique that would’ve saved you a million bucks in infrastructure costs. Instead, they’re stuck reinventing the wheel – badly. I agree with the thesis in general but this point is not resonating strongly with me. Conferences are expe…
I agree that conferences like re:Invent are a waste of time and money on the HN crowd, who are anyway self-motivated continuous learner types.
But the vast majority of large company payrolls are stacked with 9-5 types who clock in, clock out, go home to spend time on anything not related to their job. These types don't read HN, don't watch engineering YouTube, don't read r/programming, don't read Slashdot, etc. If a company wants these people to skill-up, they need to do it on company time, and they need to bring someone from the outside to bring in outside knowledge.
Conferences are basically just an easy way for companies to outsource this, and companies will prefer to pay for conferences like re:Invent which will showcase vendors who got stuff like SOC2 to ensure they will pass Compliance, Legal, and Procurement, and not for conferences like FOSDEM which will help people build stuff that Only One Person Understands And Therefore We Can't Maintain It.
Re: Don't Be Frupid
#50> Conference Austerity > Conferences get nuked because someone upstairs sees them as a “nice to have.” The irony? That conference could’ve been where your engineers learned about a new technique that would’ve saved you a million bucks in infrastructure costs. Instead, they’re stuck reinventing the wheel – badly. I agree with the thesis in general but this point is not resonating strongly with me. Conferences are expe…
I agree that conferences like re:Invent are a waste of time and money on the HN crowd, who are anyway self-motivated continuous learner types. But the vast majority of large company payrolls are stacked with 9-5 types who clock in, clock out, go home to spend time on anything not related to their job. These types don't read HN, don't watch engineering YouTube, don't read r/programming, don't read Slashdot, etc. If a…
> These types don't read HN, don't watch engineering YouTube, don't read r/programming, don't read Slashdot, etc.
on the other hand, some read to distraction...