I agree, it's an interesting view. I found it quite positive about the culture in that part of Splunk. The writer parachuted in, threw their weight around, bruised a bunch of people, but lost out to another manager who openly acknowledged the contributions of their people.
The effect is really cool. I like the idea of visualizing data flowing through work systems like this. I think I'll go for 3D-printed or laser-cut panels instead though - would work out cheaper. Thanks :)
Ordering satellite imagery and counting cars is just a weekend project. The last time I looked at ordering imagery, the main obstacle was the minimum order size, so it'd actually scale better for monitoring every store car park than for looking at a single car park.
So if Macy's parking lots have 11% more cars than the same time last year, is that a buy or a sell? Are people actually buying more, or are they more cash strapped and spending more time looking for value?
How busy are the car parks by their dispatch center? are the cars staying longer because people are working overtime? how many UPS trucks are visiting?
you buy data flow data from ISPs at all tiers, so even though they're encrypted, knowing how much traffic is going to Macy's.com vs JCPenney.com gives you information you can act on.
We know this is being done, because of reports that say Netflix is X% of Internet traffic. The undredacted reports from those same data sources have much more detail. It's also why some apps that don't appear to have any business model are actually quite valuable.
I am a millennial with a few online friend groups and they're not really the same thing. For me those online relationships are loose and impermanent. People are continuously entering the group and continuously leaving never to be seen again. There's some level of trust and stability from meeting in-person that I can never seem to achieve online.
> For me those online relationships are loose and impermanent
I hate to break the news but most relationships simply are loose and impermanent, we just don't usually notice how brittle they actually are.
As for trust, is it really reasonable to trust someone more or less just because they've been in front of you vs not? And I mean that both ways: too trusting of people in front of us and not enough of people away.
> I hate to break the news but most relationships simply are loose and impermanent, we just don't usually notice how brittle they actually are.
Probably true at some level, but I'd wager that's much more common for Gen Z and younger millennials for a variety of reasons, as well as among people who just aren't really authentic, suburbanites, and people who just don't invest in friendship building.
However, that's a bit of a silly comparison, online relationships have some value, maybe a lot maybe a little, but they aren't an equal substitute for a friend in meatspace
I'm aware that most relationships aren't going to last forever, but the friends I have online are notably less cohesive than the friends I used to work with.
I make no claims to reasonableness. We are not creatures of pure reason and our friendships are never totally rational. All I claim is that there's something which ties offline friends to me and I to them, particularly if we've worked together, which is not present for any of my online friend groups.
You really don't need them to be in person. Have you scheduled any lunchtime catch-ups? Got any regular group calls around interests? Just random banter? My work group online is a better experience than I've ever had in the office. It may vary for other people and environments, but "something missing" is not a given just because of remote contact.
In the same way junk food is equivalent to a healthy meal (IMO). There is a reason some mental health issues have been skyrocketing, and this is a big part of it.
Not ‘online communities being the cause’, rather ‘lack of genuine in person community and physical connection’ being the cause.
Same as junk food isn’t necessarily the cause of health issues - rather lack of enough healthy, not processed to the tits food is the cause.
Replacing most/all food intake with junk food is going to be bad.
Doing it periodically with enough of the ‘real thing’ to compensate? No issues.
The issue is not enough of the real deal. Which is possible until something breaks because of the alternative, but not necessary.
If you put someone in a capsule in say Antarctica, and they only communicated with other people via video chat - would anyone be surprised if they went crazy?
Hell, I think we’d all be surprised if they didn’t.
The challenge right now is a lot of people (including many people here) are de facto in that pod in a way that they can’t see, because theoretically they could walk outside and have conversations, etc.
They just won’t actually do it, because there are less visible factors pushing them away - factors that in many cases they aren’t allowed to see or acknowledge.
> rather ‘lack of genuine in person community and physical connection’ being the cause
Yes, caused by toxic corporate culture and the modern American work week. There are no third spaces because everyone is busy working, and we all hate the people we work with.
When people say "community", your corporate hell-hole should be the absolute last thing to enter your mind. The fact it's what you turn to and long for really highlights the problem. We've destroyed communities and conned the average joe into thinking work life is their life. Their family. Now we take that away and they're nothing.
The problem isn't the taking away, the problem is getting to a point where the only thing standing between happiness and being a loser is asking how the weather is going by the water cooler.
There is a vast body of literature that shows that in person interactions is not just correlated with happiness, but an effective intervention for loneliness and depression.
In full disclosure, even setting aside the research, I have way too much anecdotal evidence from what I have seen and experienced to be convinced otherwise.
I havent read about workplace interactions as an intervention for loneliness and depression. It would be hard to run a RCT on that, so you would only be left with correlation.
I dont know why making it a more pleasant experience during work has anything to do with how much someone thinks about it outside of work.
I think the comparison would a workplace where people can take a break and chat with friends, vs one where they spend their breaks in isolation.
Alternatively, a workplace where a grocer talks with customer while filling an order vs one where they get a packing list from a machine and puts it in a pickup box.
Seems highly testable. You could if the climate catastrophy and affordability crisis cause the same amount of distress for people who spend lots of time with friends vs have no friends.
It shouldn't be shocking studies show loneliness and depression tracks well with how many close friends people have and how much time they spend with them.
I don’t see how yours are theories as they don’t seem to have any relation to the underlying anything, or have anything testable per-se. Frankly, I’m struggling to see how they’re even hypotheses?
I could see how adding a few sentences onto them could result in such things. Which is why I’m asking for you to elaborate.
After all Hurtful != lonely or depressed. Problems existing != lonely or depressed.
We’ve always had problems of some sort. I’m unaware of any time in history where someone didn’t have something nasty to say about anyone, or there wasn’t something bad potentially happening.
Lonely or depressed tends to happen when someone is isolated and/or feels like there is nothing they can or should do to resolve an existential issue.
Depression tends to be the ‘I should hide in a corner and pretend I don’t exist’ survival strategy.
Not necessarily because there is a problem in general.
But the issue is unlikely to just be ‘living at home with the parents’ still, since in Europe and Asia that is and has been a thing for a very long time, and we don’t see such an epidemic there eh? (Or do we?)
My personal theory is that the problem is less ‘the problems’ - rather that our increasingly sedentary/isolated lifestyle is leading to a downward spiral where we’d rather bitch about/ruminate on problems (and ramp up anxiety fear to try to get moving) than actually solve problems and move on, or even just accept problems and live.
It's primarily some mental blocker in the old that prevents them from connecting things online to their real-life counterparts. It's like being illiterate and insisting that no one else can read those strange symbols. I'll offer in advance that younger people need to learn to separate the two sometimes.
Or they (some at least) might have a better frame of reference and “the young” people simple don’t know and can’t comprehend what they are losing. My interpretation is on no way less generous than yours.
It's pretty normal for ordinary government workloads in the UK, or at least it was at GDS. Using niche suppliers who cater to government paranoia is expensive, and they're usually much less mature than hyperscaler platforms. It's also open for debate whether those niche, inflexible suppliers result in a genuinely more hardened target or not.
