Wait, so you have an employee that can get all their work done using 20% of their working hours and then spend the rest of their day ensuring they don't burn out and you want to become adversarial to that employee?
Because clearly they are getting stuff done if they can post that video and not get fired. Otherwise, you have a low performer slacking off which is its own, completely separate issue from the video itself.
It's like that quote from The Office where Michael says Jim is a lazy worker because it takes Jim 20 minutes to complete a project that would take Michael hours to complete. Seems like you're saying you want your least efficient employees and can't be bothered to understand the working habits of your most efficient employees.
Or maybe, just maybe, using time as a sole metric isn't the best way to evaluate employee effectiveness or efficiency.
B) no one is paying that close attention to their performance in the first place or the metrics for performance themselves are setup in such a way that can be gamified and are therefore meaningless.
C) there really isn't enough work to justify a FTE for it.
My hunch is that its a combination of these two.
I've worked long enough to know that the mean time for work completion (assuming C is not the predominant factor) is more than 20% of your work week.
I am not missing those options at all. It's just that the video is not the issue nor the way time can be spent at the company. If your metrics for evaluating performance is wrong that should be addressed before becoming adversarial to your employees based on a flawed perception.
And if there isn't enough work to justify a FTE, then again your metrics are bad. The forecast was not accurate enough. And the only way to know if that's true or not is to fix the formula, do the math again, and figure out the truth.
In both scenarios the employee isn't necessarily the problem, or even a problem at all.
And if we take a step back and evaluate the source material, it's a TikTok video. It's meant to be content. Do we even know if the employee is really only working 20% of the time? We aren't getting a 16 hour live stream here, it's short form content. The truth of the matter is heavily obscured.
It just seems like a bad idea to me to base you're business decisions around a TikTok video, especially when it's one that is adversarial to your employees. Instead, spend the time to understand the reality. Like we might find that the employee is actually working 90% of their workday. And then suddenly you're making decisions that never need to be made in the first place.
> I've worked long enough to know that the mean time for work completion (assuming C is not the predominant factor) is more than 20% of your work week.
Depends heavily on function. Plenty of roles are somewhat peaks and valleys of backlogged work. There might be times where some employees really can get their work done using 20% of their day, but then at a different stage they would need to use way more than 20%.
Yeah, I’m not a twitter exec but presumably would be making decisions off of more than just a TikTok video. I don’t think any of your argument is counter to mine.
It doesn’t take a genius to observe that there may be some fat to cut.
I mean I agree, there is probably fat to cut. But the premise was that if you were an exec and saw that video you'd then consider tightening up the amenities. And if you're basing that decision on a TikTok video that seems a bit short sighted to me.
If you're tightening up the available amenities that should be based on totally different data that has nothing to do with a social media post.
This is just more straw-manning. The video either leaves an impression on you or it doesn't. It's really not possible to have a meaningful argument about the actions inferred from an ambiguous statement like "I might be considering tightening things up".
The video struck me as particularly brash given the current economic climate.
What are you using arrive at this opinion? What creativity existed in a measurable way before 2020 and what does that metric look like now? Who is less creative in this environment and in what ways are they less creative? What amount of creativity is necessary for a business to operate successfully or solve meaningful problems?
Not all problems require new or genuinely creative solutions either. And it seems really difficult to try and measure the creative output by individual contributors at any given company. You have no way of gleaning the micro decisions or solutions that people come up with for their internal issues. So this doesn't seem like one could "easily argue" this point at all, in fact it seems quite difficult.
Are you suggesting that product offerings are less creative as a whole? And if so, again what metric are you using to arrive at this conclusion? And are there really no trends of this same metric before 2020?
This is insane. We don't live in a meritocracy. The idea that someone only gets to that level of wealth and business ownership because they make good decisions or understand the laws or requirements isn't something you can demonstrate with any consistency. Deciding to simply trust that he is correct because of his status is a dangerous game to play.
I think they have a few larger issues than contracts they are working to overcome. Pretty sure they are mostly concerned with getting their employees out safely. Further, those contract disputes are going to come mostly from Russia, and with the current state of Russia's isolation, I am curious if there is even a channel for an impacted Russian customer to raise a grievance. How would Namecheap even pay them out for damages?
They have a pretty clear carveout in their TOS where they get to decide a breach of Acceptable Use, and one of the AUP that says "Engages in or instigates actions that cause harm to Namecheap or other customers." which one could make an argument that providing means to an invading military force as an action that harms Namecheap. So please show something material that outlines they cannot discontinue service without massive legal implications. Not to say that TOS' are indisputable in court, but it's hard to imagine that a court in the West would consider this a material breach considering the situation. This seems much more like a concern troll than a legitimate issue.
And to frame it as virtue signaling after outlining when they are impacted directly seems really odd. Normally people are compelled to do something, even something dumb, when they face a large crisis. I don't think we usually consider that virtue signaling, and it seems like an unnecessary thing to bring into the conversation.
California is one of, if not the largest EV market in the US right now. Consumers by and large don't care where a company has their HQ, but they will be upset if they don't have access to features. And this impacts people that aren't in CA that have FSD but road trip to/through CA. I can't imagine this is an ideal situation for Tesla to be in, and they'd prefer to avoid this as much as possible. There isn't a really good solution here for them.
I don't see how they can jurisdiction shop in any similar way to a credit card company in this instance, these are markedly different scenarios and services provided.
Not only that, but California EV transferable credits are a major part of Tesla's income stream. IIRC, if Tesla stops selling in California, their profits go down by more than 50% (assuming that the other states can absorb the extra Teslas, which at this point is a reasonable assumption.)
They’ll still sell FSD, they just won’t offer the beta functionality in (or if you traverse) California due to “regulatory constraints.” They’ll continue to run FSD beta testing in 49 other states.
In similar fashion, Autopilot has tighter operational constraints in parts of Europe versus the US.
Yeah, they will still sell it but it wont sell to people living in CA which is one of the larger US markets. that's a non-trivial market to close your doors to for something like FSD. The margins on FSD have to be some of the best on the whole car.
The EU regulations and standards are likely just as annoying for them, but they don't sell the same volume across the EU yet, and the regulations are a bit more consistent across the whole region. So getting a Tesla in one EU country will work the same in another. Which is just easier for a consumer.
I am not saying this would end Tesla, but I can't imagine a world where they want it to come to that. I think they would look at either properly complying or some other workaround before just drawing a fence around FSD in CA.
I think you're a bit confused about what's going on. Autopilot, FSD and FSD Beta are all different things.
Autopilot is advanced cruise control, built-in and sold everywhere with each car.
FSD is a software package you can add. It can do a few things, change lanes on highways, chime when the green light comes on and you haven't moved for a few seconds, etc. You can buy FSD anywhere, but not all the features are available everywhere. Overall, it doesn't do much right now. FSD Beta is a testing program you apply to and can join if you have a good driving record and are selected. Only in the US. There's at most low-digit thousands of people who have access to this, fewer that actually use it.
Article is about the last bit only. Not being able to test FSD in California only is probably a pain, but won't impact much. Allowing people to test the beta only started a few months ago.
Tesla never enabled FSD in Europe. Currently it's only enabled in US.
FSD couldn't possibly have been shut down if it was never enabled there.
As far as Autopilot goes, EU limits how much software can steer the car that makes some of the Autopilot functionality not possible (e.g. to take a sharp turn you have, you know, turn the wheels).
For that reason some Autopilot functionality is limited in EU.
This is not anti-Tesla rule but one that affects every car maker and they are in the process of changing that rule.
To be honest, I'd happily let my car mess up the flow of traffic trying to block the box. The only reason this exists is because everyone decides to enter the box to make the light.
When working in SF without self driving I would regularly not let myself block the box and I'd miss multiple lights. Police need to actually ticket people that do this. I've seen cops sitting at the intersection waiting to ticket people for bypassing traffic by using the carpool freeway entrance while doing fuckall about the blocked intersection causing people to want to choose the HOV option.
I understand that it's a part of driving that a self driving car would need to know how to navigate. But we really should just fix this problem through proper traffic enforcement instead of trying to make self driving cars participate in this completely shitty and unnecessary practice.
I agree with you in principle about not blocking the box. But in practice it's not always like that. Sometimes the actual light timing needs to change. Sometimes the roads need to just be different than they are to prevent bottlenecks, which is a pretty expensive fix
Sometimes you roll up to an intersection, and every time the light turns green, the direction you're trying to go already has all lanes filled by another approaching direction. Every time.
Really, Manhattan is just a terrible place to drive. A horribly congested island with limited ways in and out, that is also sometimes the lowest-cost way to get between the mainland and geographic Long Island. The same goes for the rest of NYC to a lesser extent; shoutouts to Elmhurst and Flushing for being particularly terrible places to drive.
Not a morning goes by without a report of "45 minutes/1 hour to the Holland Tunnel." There isn't really a scalable fix for the solution that involves road capacity.
> Really, Manhattan is just a terrible place to drive. A horribly congested island with limited ways in and out ...
Manhattan is a wonderful place to drive, my favorite place to drive by far; it's how I instinctively drive but can't everywhere else. It's the most sophisticated driving, not the lowest common denominator; people have to focus on what they are doing - don't start texting. Like the rest of the island - more people is more life, more energy. That's why people have loved NYC for centuries. (Sorry to get corny, but there are plenty of songs about it.)
> Not a morning goes by without a report of "45 minutes/1 hour to the Holland Tunnel."
If you stop thinking about NYC driving distances as physical, but in terms of time, that's just how 'long' the Holland Tunnel is.
My experience... the lanes are usually blocked because some other lane, coming some other direction, has much better access to those lanes because of how the signal timing works at the intersection.
A common scenario is: you're heading east, want to head north. When space opens up heading north, northbound traffic has a green light and fills it up. When you have a green light, there is no space.
I could imagine that left turns like you mentioned would be systematically disadvantaged, but doesn't that just mean you should circle around so that you are going north? If instead you were going west and competing against northbound traffic I find it hard to believe you would be systematically disadvantaged; a space is equally likely a priori to clear out when you have a green as when they have a green, no?
Space clears out when traffic upstream starts to move. If the next traffic light upstream is synced to the current one, then space will consistently open up at the same point in the cycle, favoring whichever direction has the green at that point. If the lights are almost but not quite synced, then the "favored direction" will gradually cycle around the intersection over time.
> circle around
This is generally not possible, especially for the kind of intersections that have this problem. There generally is not a short path that would allow you to circle around, and even if there is, it's guaranteed to be completely congested by everyone else trying the same trick.
>Sometimes you roll up to an intersection, and every time the light turns green, the direction you're trying to go already has all lanes filled by another approaching direction. Every time.
The only time I can imagine this happening is when trying to turn left, at which point the solution is to go past the turn, double back, and approach the intersection so you can make the turn from the right.
Imagine you want to go straight, but there is an overwhelming quantity of traffic that is turning right. And the lights are badly timed, so the traffic on the other side of the intersection does not make any progress during your green light.
Why would other investors buy an overpriced home? They are also looking for the deals that Zillow is hoping to find. Owners wanting to live in a home are the ones willing to buy a turnkey home above asking.
I mean, I guess it's just a matter of perspective. If you think having an entrenched class system is good, then I guess nothing is "wrong" with it.
Sure, early on in the system it's possible for it to be fairly competitive. You have a mix of responsible and irresponsible families passing down wealth, and the ones that do it best will retain their wealth the longest. But over time it becomes a very different game. Take a look through history; the stories it tells don't look good for the bulk of the working class.
It's one thing to be able to leave your wealth to your children, it's another thing to have a completely protected trust that is exempt taxes. The longer this runs, the less money forced back into the economy and through compounding interest it becomes impossible for a new set of "nobility" to reasonable ever achieve the same status.
It is a zero sum game, as there is effectively a limited amount of wealth. And the more it becomes centralized around a noble class the less everyone else has.
You can leave money to your children today, it's not like that's not possible. So I am not sure what you're on about. The loophole being discussed here is doing it free from taxes. Like Elon Musk won't need to shelter his kids kids kids from taxes on his billions. If you make enough money that can be true for you too. But yeah, you might need to teach your kids proper financial skills so that they don't blow through what you leave them so it reaches your grandchildren.
You can already setup a trust today for your kids. You can leave your kids shares in a brokerage account and that has some pretty solid tax advantages. There are a ton of ways to leave behind your wealth that doesn't require completely untaxed assets.
> Example: if there were 1000 spacefaring civilizations in the Milky Way, what are the odds that all 1000 of them (assuming they were within out light cone) would remain quiet or hidden? Couple that with mass and energy ultimately being limited then there is a strong incentive and advantage in becoming as large as possible. So even if 99% of civilizations remain quiet, the 1% will still make themselves visible.
I am not sold on this math necessarily. When you ask "what are the odds?" what is that based on? How do we derive these odds at all? We know nothing about how these civilizations would evolve or what their values would be. So how can we assume that out of 1000 that 1% would be visible based on the odds? This sort of assumes that the Drake Equation is accurate, when the last few parts of that equation are complete guesses.
> Additionally, on the notion of hidden civilizations in particular, it's essentially impossible to remain hidden to a K2 or K3 civilization so there's really no point.
And maybe this is the difference. Maybe all 1000 are visible to K2 or K3's because it doesn't matter. But equally all 1000 aren't visible to K1's. We are so far away from K2 that I see no reason to speculate on the likelihood of this since we have literally no basis for this other than some fun thought experiments. And all of this is based on how we view ourselves and apply those same traits to beings we have never met and possibly can't even imagine.
This is simply so far out of our grasp to intelligently speculate on, I tend to just avoid doing it.
As a result, the Drake equation can have any value from “billions and billions” to zero. An
expression that can mean anything means nothing. Speaking precisely, the Drake equation is
literally meaningless, and has nothing to do with science
But what part does Amazon have to play in radical change here? Is the radical change that Amazon should help push for free college federally? Like what specifically is the radical change being blocked by a private company paying for its employees college? We could sit here and create hypotheticals but unless there is something directly actionable, what more can we expect?
This might be a bandaid but this issue existed before Amazon, it's not created by Amazon. And many other companies have done this before Amazon. If the issue is the cost of education, there are so many factors causing that how can we expect a single private company to lead that change?
So what is the actual proposed solution that Amazon is making less viable through this change, and how could Amazon have enabled that radical change better? And once we derive what that action could have been, we have to evaluate the value it has to Amazon because at the end of the day they are operating a business not a social justice non-profit.
One would imagine that the richest man in the world, who rules the largest private employer in the nation, has some amount of power to influence others.
An obvious solution is to make secondary education free.
> And once we derive what that action could have been, we have to evaluate the value it has to Amazon because at the end of the day they are operating a business not a social justice non-profit.
This is a rather myopic view of society. If you believe that the status quo is unquestionable (that businesses should only prioritize their self-interest), then of course you can't believe in any radical change to it.
Bezos isn't Amazon. What he chooses to use his wealth on be called into question without conflating it with Amazon the company.
And yeah they are one of the largest employers in the world. You have yet to define what specific action Amazon should have taken to produce radical change. Maybe it would have just been a flat out increase in salaries, but with the lens of education, it seems like this is a positive move.
> This is a rather myopic view of society. If you believe that the status quo is unquestionable (that businesses should only prioritize their self-interest), then of course you can't believe in any radical change to it.
No, THIS is a myopic view of society. Entities are always going to work towards the social reward system established, and Amazon/Bezos are acting exactly as you'd expect for our reward system. If the issue is a broader society problem then by definition it cannot be exclusively Amazon/Bezos fault.
And this brings us back to what SHOULD they be doing in this scenario? I am not saying don't question the status quo. But how does questioning the status quo change anything about this scenario? We can question the status quo while also accepting that people live inside the status quo, and thats not inherently bad. I fail to see how it's inherently bad that Amazon is paying for employee education. What SPECIFICALLY does it block in terms of radical change? How do these two things become mutually exclusive in this scenario, not some hypothetical scenario?
Because clearly they are getting stuff done if they can post that video and not get fired. Otherwise, you have a low performer slacking off which is its own, completely separate issue from the video itself.
It's like that quote from The Office where Michael says Jim is a lazy worker because it takes Jim 20 minutes to complete a project that would take Michael hours to complete. Seems like you're saying you want your least efficient employees and can't be bothered to understand the working habits of your most efficient employees.
Or maybe, just maybe, using time as a sole metric isn't the best way to evaluate employee effectiveness or efficiency.