4 ms·

did your boss ever have to send you a memo demanding that you use a smartphone? Was there a performance review requiring you to use Slack? I see this is alrea

by andy99 1y ago

did your boss ever have to send you a memo demanding that you use a smartphone? Was there a performance review requiring you to use Slack? I see this is already a favorite quote amongst commentors. It's mine too: I had a job ~15 years ago where the company had introduced an internal social network, that was obviously trying to ride on the coattails of Facebook et al without understanding why people liked social networks. Nobody used it because it was useless, but management evidently was invested in it because your profile and use of that internal site did in fact factor in to performance reviews. This didn't last long, maybe only one review cycle before everyone realized it was irretrievably lost. The parallel with the article is very apt thought. The stick instead of the carrot is basically an indication that a dumb management idea is in its death throes.

ramesh31 1y ago
A social network never did a weeks worth of work for me in 10 minutes. Keep swinging that hammer, John Henry.
- skybrian 1y ago
  If it makes that much of a difference and quality is the same, nobody will care whether you used AI or not. It’s an implementation detail.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
- h2zizzle 1y ago
  John Henry won, he just died doing it. Another victim of racial healthcare disprities, probs. EDIT: Also, depends on your chronological window. Is, "Posting a video advertising your services that reaches 30,000 people," a week's worth phone-calling? Of mailing letters? Of knocking on doors? Productivity increases are incremental and built on a ton of up-front capex, but they're there all the same. AI-pushers, of all people, should understand and be ready to defend this fact.
nkrisc 1y ago
I would say we might have worked at the same company, but there were so many companies trying that at the time we may very well not have. Where I worked, it was an open secret that the CEO had an alter ego he used on the site. I have no idea if he knew that we all knew who that really was (I have to assume he did), but every played along. By the time I had worked there it had been around for a few years already and once a quarter the head of our group set time aside for everyone to "engage" with it for an hour so that no one would be dinged on their performance review.
alabastervlog 1y ago
That "Facebook for business" fad was so fucking stupid and managed to last what, about a decade? It's a great example of how executive group-think can drive whole multi-industry initiatives that are very-obviously, to anyone outside that bubble, pure waste.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- pimlottc 1y ago
  Nobody wants Facebook at work, what they want is a comprehensive org chart that's actually up-to-date.
- rsynnott 1y ago
  Longer; a lot of the metaverse hype was pretty much a reframing of it.
  - alabastervlog 1y ago
    I once worked at a company that'd acquired a virtual-office company. I wasn't around for the acquisition, but it really smelled like one rich person bailing out another's failed investment (or someone on the board had a bunch of money in the acquisition target, or something along those lines). To justify owning the useless damn thing, they insisted everyone use it, basically like Slack if it ate 3-4x the resources (really saying something, given Electron already eating 5-10x the resources it ought to need for any given task), monopolized a screen when in use, and added all the awkward elements of physical environments to virtual ones for no reason ("is it weird if 'I' 'sit' in this chair 'next to' this other 'person' when there are other chairs available in the room?", or "oh shit where's that meeting room 'physically' located, again? I think I'm lost...") while removing none of the awkwardness of virtual interactions. Truly, bizarrely pointless. It was like some shit out of the Silicon Valley TV show, so absurd it was hard to believe it was real. I swear to god, I'm not making this up, they even had in-world presentations, so you could add all the fun of having a bad angle on a screen or being too far away to comfortably read the text to the joy of a Zoom screen-share. Totally nuts. Luckily you could also maximize whatever was being presented, but... hooray, your best feature is that I can ignore all the things that make your dumb crap distinctive? What a win. This is what I think of every time I see anyone trying to promote Zuckerberg's weird, bad idea. I assure you, being in VR goggles would not have made the experience either more productive or more pleasant. Nobody who's ever tried to work like this even for one week could possibly think it's a good idea to invest in it.
romellem 1y ago
Oh wow, totally forgot about [Yammer][1]. What a waste of time. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viva_Engage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viva_Engage

by andy99 1y ago

ramesh31 1y ago

A social network never did a weeks worth of work for me in 10 minutes. Keep swinging that hammer, John Henry.

skybrian 1y ago
If it makes that much of a difference and quality is the same, nobody will care whether you used AI or not. It’s an implementation detail.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
h2zizzle 1y ago
John Henry won, he just died doing it. Another victim of racial healthcare disprities, probs. EDIT: Also, depends on your chronological window. Is, "Posting a video advertising your services that reaches 30,000 people," a week's worth phone-calling? Of mailing letters? Of knocking on doors? Productivity increases are incremental and built on a ton of up-front capex, but they're there all the same. AI-pushers, of all people, should understand and be ready to defend this fact.

nkrisc 1y ago

I would say we might have worked at the same company, but there were so many companies trying that at the time we may very well not have. Where I worked, it was an open secret that the CEO had an alter ego he used on the site. I have no idea if he knew that we all knew who that really was (I have to assume he did), but every played along. By the time I had worked there it had been around for a few years already and once a quarter the head of our group set time aside for everyone to "engage" with it for an hour so that no one would be dinged on their performance review.

alabastervlog 1y ago

That "Facebook for business" fad was so fucking stupid and managed to last what, about a decade? It's a great example of how executive group-think can drive whole multi-industry initiatives that are very-obviously, to anyone outside that bubble, pure waste.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
pimlottc 1y ago
Nobody wants Facebook at work, what they want is a comprehensive org chart that's actually up-to-date.
rsynnott 1y ago
Longer; a lot of the metaverse hype was pretty much a reframing of it.
- alabastervlog 1y ago
  I once worked at a company that'd acquired a virtual-office company. I wasn't around for the acquisition, but it really smelled like one rich person bailing out another's failed investment (or someone on the board had a bunch of money in the acquisition target, or something along those lines). To justify owning the useless damn thing, they insisted everyone use it, basically like Slack if it ate 3-4x the resources (really saying something, given Electron already eating 5-10x the resources it ought to need for any given task), monopolized a screen when in use, and added all the awkward elements of physical environments to virtual ones for no reason ("is it weird if 'I' 'sit' in this chair 'next to' this other 'person' when there are other chairs available in the room?", or "oh shit where's that meeting room 'physically' located, again? I think I'm lost...") while removing none of the awkwardness of virtual interactions. Truly, bizarrely pointless. It was like some shit out of the Silicon Valley TV show, so absurd it was hard to believe it was real. I swear to god, I'm not making this up, they even had in-world presentations, so you could add all the fun of having a bad angle on a screen or being too far away to comfortably read the text to the joy of a Zoom screen-share. Totally nuts. Luckily you could also maximize whatever was being presented, but... hooray, your best feature is that I can ignore all the things that make your dumb crap distinctive? What a win. This is what I think of every time I see anyone trying to promote Zuckerberg's weird, bad idea. I assure you, being in VR goggles would not have made the experience either more productive or more pleasant. Nobody who's ever tried to work like this even for one week could possibly think it's a good idea to invest in it.

romellem 1y ago

Oh wow, totally forgot about [Yammer][1]. What a waste of time. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viva_Engage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viva_Engage