iMustProtest

I liked my jumbo iPhone for a while but it was too long to fit comfortably in my pocket. Making it foldable wouldn’t help though, because the main reason I got rid of it was I kept dropping it. Too big to use with one hand.

I could allow that some people would rather carry a thicker but shorter object in their pocket than a thinner one with larger surface area. But I can’t think of much more than that. It bugs me that all foldable now ALSO have a miniature screen on the outside. Like they immediately admit that their primary feature is a nonstarter and add bulk to the phone when bulk is a primary issue with foldables.

Uh yeah that definitely needed to be “spelled out” from your prior comment.

If the mars rovers can function on a fraction of a watt,

It doesn’t?

Perseverance’s power system works essentially like a nuclear battery. …The power system will reliably produce about 110 watts …The MMRTG also charges two lithium-ion batteries, … Perseverance’s power demand can reach 900 watts during science activities.

Source: NASA

Yes I did read your comment before :)

You’re saying that accepting his offer is not necessarily a statement of low confidence in their own business. I get you.

But we can’t separate the notion of it being a good price apart from its being a bad business. It was a great offer in part because the business was so poor. By all estimates he vastly overpaid.

So yes, it was a good price.

And yes, it was a bad business and yes they knew it. With no other offers on the table, they pulled out all the stops to ensure it went through. It was their and their shareholders only chance for a payday with the business as bleak as it was.

All of these things are true.

I don’t know who you’re talking to. I have no pity for the man and don’t relate to him. I don’t have to argue with you over whether Tesla and SpaceX have been successful businesses because those are objective facts. It’s also pretty idiotic to deny that years ago, he had a boy genius aura about him - investors still throw billions at that image. Sorry it makes you throw up, especially because you already appear to be absolutely choking on Elon hate. I despise the man but I’m not slobbering all over myself with jealous disdain as you sound to be.

I think you make a good point. But we don’t have to guess whether they thought Twitter was struggling. We know it was.

Twitter never managed to develop an online ad business that matched the scale of its influence in popular culture and society at large. Twitter has lost money in six of the eight years since its IPO.

Source: CNBC

They’re giving up control over exactly who leaves. When you do a layoff you can choose to cut your lowest performers or most overpaid employees or everyone in a small office which you can then close.

These hypothesized “soft layoffs” where they supposedly encourage people to leave give them no real control over how many people leave, which ones leave, etc. And it’s the top employees generally who have the best options elsewhere. So you’re really inviting a brain drain by putting broad pressure on everyone to quit.

It’s just not a smart move. I think we have a lot of armchair CEOs here who think a company would just suck up all these downside to save on a little severance and that doesn’t add up for me.

I mean the people at Twitter were very happy to sell it off. Remember how they actually sued to force him to go through with the deal and succeeded in stopping him from backing out?

Even if he’d managed it as well as the prior stewards, it was always a losing business.

I think it’s even pettier than that. He’s the loud guy on the forum who literally bought the site so he could be admin.

PayPal and Tesla and SpaceX been pretty big successes. But Twitter is a real fuckup for him. It shows that his judgment and temperament and perfect boy genius mystique have all jumped the shark in a big way.

It’s pretty hard to beat FAANG pay though. Probably there are other factors involved as well. Like maybe they can command 90% of the pay but have 2x better work-life balance or something. But people do stay at these companies for long periods. I’m sure some are there to stamp their passport but not all.

I find that unconvincing. That they will give up all control in order to save what is ultimately a small amount of money. Paying severance to cut people is already a way to save and reduce budgets. To say they will give up control and take real risks with who they lose just to avoid a piddling 2 months salary per head… it doesn’t add up.

Amazon tech workers are well paid. What I find is the real cost of in-office is the commute time. I’m almost an hour away door-to-door and while I always enjoy seeing people in person, and our office is quite nice, I just can’t convince myself that it’s worth two hours a day of wasted time, plus the costs. I pay $12 in train tickets any day I go in.

Here’s the problem though. When everybody is allowed to choose what they want, people who prefer remote get remote. And people who prefer the office get a ghost town. So by definition, personal choice precludes one group from having access to the thing they would choose.

People who want to work in the office want to work with other people. It’s not just about having a desk in a high rise. People learn from other people and are energized by being around them. There are efficiencies to being able to talk without zoom lag and all. Someone else characterized this as extroverted people and their annoying needs. But I think it’s more than that. Working with others in person certainly has real benefits.

Remote work means no one gets those, ever.

I’m a remote guy myself and hope never to go back. But I can see another side to it.

I don’t suggest Amazon cares about its employees - just the results they produce. But they need their best people in order to produce those results. Culling your staff randomly doesn’t make sense, and I don’t believe that Amazon are simply dumb.

I never understood why anyone works for them at all. And I’m not even talking about warehouse workers. I’m talking about the tech staff. Amazon is known as a cutthroat workplace that drives people like a hammer drives nails. I would never choose to go there.

Which is why everyone who thinks they’re clever to call this a “soft layoff” is not as clever as they think. Amazon isn’t shy about doing layoffs and dismissing low performers. An unpopular decision like this will frequently eject the most capable employees because they are the ones who can most easily find other work. Meanwhile the dead weight employees stick around because they know they can’t find other arrangements as good. It’s a dumb way to reduce staff, and Amazon aren’t dumb.

No, I think we take Amazon at their word on this one. They are not just fucking around to try to shake 20% of their workforce loose. They genuinely don’t want to do remote anymore.

Why do you think a company like them would do a soft layoff, instead of just picking the low performers they think they should lay off and just dismissing them? What do they gain by leaving it up to chance and the decisions of employees? It could be a lot more disruptive that way, with no control over who leaves or when. If you’re going to say it’s all to save a buck by not paying severance, I’m not convinced that the lack of control and having to deal with the random effects is remotely worth it.