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.

Any Kindle owner should go find out how easy it is to get library books on their Kindle. It’s totally the way to go. You don’t have to buy their shit and deal with their rules.

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.

Now this is a good point. During the time of remote work, everything became organized around it. In fact my employer just closed the local office I belong to, because everyone is remote and it just isn’t getting used. If they suddenly decided on RTO and asked me to work at an office 60 miles away that would not be a “return” nor practical in any way. I’m sure Amazon know this but are just saying “oh well,” because really they can’t do kick to solve it. It’s going to be a painful transition but I guess they’ve decided they are ready.

If Amazon don’t think that remote work is productive, then they don’t think they’re losing anything. I don’t even know how “stealth” this is at all. They must believe that those individuals could be productive, because they are trying to keep them working in office. I’m not sure why anyone thinks a company like Amazon would try to be “stealth” about a layoff anyway. They don’t need to.

I know some tech workers who really want to return to office full time along with everyone else. They miss the old way. It’s not everyone, and it’s definitely not me, but it’s a legitimate position. I guess now they know where they can go.

If it’s reductive to say they were all morons, it’s fabulist to say they could step into the modern era and be nerds.

I get your point that curious people had no other outlet then, and that the clergy was just where they went. But there is one problem with that: science did in fact develop as a discipline. We did crawl out of the dark ages. We did discover we are not the center of the universe. And mostly it wasn’t the clergy who did that. There are notable exceptions like Gregor Mendel and Pope Gregory 13. But not enough to characterize the whole institution by. And in fact that same institution was a force for anti-curiosity quite a bit, as when they imprisoned Galileo, which is hardly the only example of them quashing open questioning as heresy.

If perhaps we focused only on theologians who were not part of the clergy, that could turn up slightly differently. I don’t know enough there to guess.

Okay you haven’t been very explanatory about your statement that theologians were scientists. But it seems you are using the term extremely loosely to mean anyone who explores questions.

This is not my definition at all. Science is a method of exploring questions that involves hypotheses and tests and building principles from observed results. Theologians do none of that and never did. They made shit up. That is not science.

Never said otherwise. All I’m saying is that when I pay my $10 and visit the art museum, I profit.

I’m willing to bet that the huge majority of those here supporting these vandals have never been inside a museum.

Why do people only ever talk about the carbon footprint

To be fair that is not what occurred. The comment was significantly more rounded than that.

Microplastics are the big focus right now, so actually bringing up carbon footprint diversifies the discussion. You’re actually saying stop - don’t bring that up?

I’m old enough to remember when plastic bags were considered the friendly option because they cut down trees to make paper. Anytime people focus only on one aspect, we come to the wrong decision.

Disingenuous, useful idiot… any other terms you heard online and don’t understand how to use properly? Words have meanings. They are not mere talismans to wave at someone.