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Why Aren't People Going to Local and Regional In-Person Events Anymore?

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Re: Why Aren't People Going to Local and Regional In-Person Events Anymore?

#81

Post by ProllyInfamous »

cjbgkagh wrote: post #77
ProllyInfamous wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was just going to write: >>"because everybody is BROKE?!?!" ...but I didn't want to offend anybody with `whining` [I'm an average net-worth, for my age, US blue collar worker]. ---- Here are my whines of thought: I think the thing many of my brothers (three multi-millionaires, I am not) fail to see at the moment is that the "bottom majority" is having an increasingly "really bad time" existance. Myself, I have zero…

As inequality grows, regardless of the mechanism, the proportion who benefit will decrease. The top 10% that benefited from the initial increase will find themselves on the wrong side of it as the process continues. I supply a low cost alternative software option so cost pressures on customers tends to improve sales so that helps a bit with recession resistance up to a point. Though more customers are choosing to do…

>more customers are choosing to do without any alternative which means it must be really rough out there

Absolutely. Outside of software, here is my simple dietary POV:

Last year, I gave up beef (chicken is less expensive).

Last spring, I planted my first garden (cucumbers, squash, peppers, strawberries).

Last week, I gave up chocolate (no alternative, so far).

I am a fat native blue-collar Texan, so this is ultimately a good dietary change — but terrifying for a consumer-based economy / society.

Re: Why Aren't People Going to Local and Regional In-Person Events Anymore?

#82

Post by ghaff »

bonoboTP wrote: post #53
dangus wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with all this is that you’ve only shown that socializing is fun, not that the amount of ROI you or the company is getting from events is positive. I’d rather have fun and socialize in ways that have nothing to do with work, and I think younger generations feel even more strongly about that. The way I see it is that corporate cultures have completely given up on investment in employees. No more tuition rei…

I think it's a broader social problem. People also socialize less in private as well. Atomization, mobile entertainment etc. > The way I see it is that corporate cultures have completely given up on investment in employees. No more tuition reimbursement, no more certification reimbursement, you’re a hired mercenary. They are telling employees straight to their face that they are replaceable temp workers who had bette…

I suspect that outside of executive ranks and probably some other exceptions, staying with the same company mostly didn't result in huge year-to-year raise. BUT jumping companies mostly didn't either. The tech job hop for 2x the money after a couple years is a relatively recent phenomenon for the most part.

Re: Why Aren't People Going to Local and Regional In-Person Events Anymore?

#84

Post by BobaFloutist »

dangus wrote: post #36
tasa999nine9 wrote: post #9

> I think the biggest value, and the reason I personally get really excited to attend local and regional events, is the ability to have casual, non-rushed discussions outside of the session rooms. As someone who's been to many meetups and conferences but who's generally unable to partake in "the hallway track" because of a potent cocktail of social anxiety, impostor syndrome and whatever else is going on inside my he…

I don’t think you’ve missed anything. I think these in-person events are declining because they aren’t as valuable as they purport to be, just like the the way in-office facade was destroyed during Covid. Why is learning stuff in a dingy hotel conference center better than an online community? Face to face time? But tools like Discord can replace that and they cost a whole lot less than plane tickets and hotel rooms.

I can't imagine how you can consider Discord to eliminate the differences between face-to-face time and purely online interactions unless you think the selling point of face-to-face time is literally the faces.

Re: Why Aren't People Going to Local and Regional In-Person Events Anymore?

#86

Post by dangus »

dheera wrote: post #49
dangus wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems like BS gatekeeper logic. You think that nobody “just learned to code” in the conferences of old? How do you expect people to get better at their craft if you want to lock them out of the conversation?

> How do you expect people to get better at their craft Reality check: I don't. Educating the masses for free is not my duty and I don't have space and time for that. If I host a tech-related event it's for a group of people I care about, including myself, to mutually benefit from each other.

In this case you’re just talking about a completely unrelated and irrelevant subject. This article and discussion isn’t about private gatherings hosted by you.

Re: Why Aren't People Going to Local and Regional In-Person Events Anymore?

#87

Post by dangus »

ghaff wrote: post #82
bonoboTP wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's a broader social problem. People also socialize less in private as well. Atomization, mobile entertainment etc. > The way I see it is that corporate cultures have completely given up on investment in employees. No more tuition reimbursement, no more certification reimbursement, you’re a hired mercenary. They are telling employees straight to their face that they are replaceable temp workers who had bette…

I suspect that outside of executive ranks and probably some other exceptions, staying with the same company mostly didn't result in huge year-to-year raise. BUT jumping companies mostly didn't either. The tech job hop for 2x the money after a couple years is a relatively recent phenomenon for the most part.

It was also never a move that did anything beyond early career even back in the “good old days.”

The whole benefit is that you could convince your next employer that you had senior level experience after spending a short few years as a practitioner.

Re: Why Aren't People Going to Local and Regional In-Person Events Anymore?

#88

Post by dangus »

BobaFloutist wrote: post #84
dangus wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think you’ve missed anything. I think these in-person events are declining because they aren’t as valuable as they purport to be, just like the the way in-office facade was destroyed during Covid. Why is learning stuff in a dingy hotel conference center better than an online community? Face to face time? But tools like Discord can replace that and they cost a whole lot less than plane tickets and hotel rooms.

I can't imagine how you can consider Discord to eliminate the differences between face-to-face time and purely online interactions unless you think the selling point of face-to-face time is literally the faces.

Then what is the difference? Can we quantify it or is it just warm fuzzy feelings?

In a discord or other similar technology you can exchange text, video, audio, screen sharing, whiteboarding, collaborative editing, etc, in virtual environment with varying group sizes.

Is there something from a tangible and practical level that in person is getting you above and beyond that experience in terms of tangible skill or career growth?

I mean, here we are in a world where more newly married couples meet online than offline [1], 20 years after people started getting married on World of Warcraft and we're still acting like socialization online is impossible.

In terms of a learning environment, I can think of many reasons why an in-person conference is potentially less than ideal. Sitting jet-lagged in an uncomfortable conference center chairs juggling a laptop with its single 13" screen and dying battery connecting to janky public WiFi on your lap, sitting far away from a projector, with half of the interested people you're hoping to meet not able to attend at all because of cost or distance.

[1] https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1908630116

Re: Why Aren't People Going to Local and Regional In-Person Events Anymore?

#89

Post by nunez »

Because work from home has been normalized and it takes much more inertia to get people out of their homes to drive or take public transit to a work event than it did when they were held at some office nearby.

Because companies used to host event spaces for Meetups, and between them scaling this back (my opinion) and event space being expensive, it's harder for work-related Meetups to meet. (Non-work-related Meetups seem to be doing okay though!)

Because companies are also getting stingier about flying rank-and-file engineers out to events, even if it's part of their training budget.

Because --- and this might be a stretch --- free food and drinks was a major draw for these events, and people (especially the youngs) are drinking less.

Saying that COVID was simply "a factor" in causing this is a dramatic undersell. COVID was THE factor. It opened peoples' eyes to work from home. That changed literally everything.

As for me: these events were all about the drinks and late nights _after_ (and sometimes during) the event. I don't enjoy drinking late at night, I'm usually on a meal plan and prefer to stick to it, and I generally go to sleep earlier these days. All of these things have made tech events harder to enjoy. Also, everything's about AI now, which couldn't be more depressing IMO.

Re: Why Aren't People Going to Local and Regional In-Person Events Anymore?

#90

Post by Seattle3503 »

dangus wrote: post #86
dheera wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do you expect people to get better at their craft Reality check: I don't. Educating the masses for free is not my duty and I don't have space and time for that. If I host a tech-related event it's for a group of people I care about, including myself, to mutually benefit from each other.

In this case you’re just talking about a completely unrelated and irrelevant subject. This article and discussion isn’t about private gatherings hosted by you.

That's it, I'm removing you from my Thanksgiving guest list!
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