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HamsterHookah

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Posts posted by HamsterHookah

  1. 9 hours ago, TKthunder2 said:

    Hiring ahead of your attrition rate was a big deal over the last decade in tech. While cutting certain departments down to the most efficient head count (fewest) they could manage to get the job done, it quickly became apparent that you couldn’t stay on top of your work as soon as you had attrition. And while cutting cost is good for the stock holders on the surface, not getting development, support or implemented on schedule is bad for retaining clients and revenue. As a result workforce management runs numbers to anticipate hiring needs relative to workload and attrition rates so that they can keep running lean without falling too far behind in their business needs.

    If it take 3 months to get someone fully trained up then you’re typically 3 months behind (not to mention the front-loaded lag time from recruiting, HR, new hire orientation, etc). When you hear slowing down hiring, it typically means they are adjust those numbers due to lower than expected attrition. If I hired two new devs in Q3 in anticipation that 2 would leave between Q4/Q1 and none have left, then slowing down hiring is completely normal and almost a nonevent as the team is now sitting heavy in headcount (which also makes it ripe for layoffs, either cutting underperformers or high cost employees that no longer justify the salary).

    This is only noteworthy because it’s happening at scale across the industry and now the talent market (which has been bereft of talent recently) is now flooded with a few hundred thousand new applicants.

    I’d only get concerned if we see another round of layoffs later this year at this same scale. The market correction is good for the business and recent events have given just about every company a free pass to recalibrate their talent. I feel for anyone that was affect by this but on the bright side if tech keeps growing most of these people will find new jobs within a few months.

    Great post and I'll just add two things to the discussion:

    1) to the bold, as mentioned Apple will announce it's first negative growth period in a while, Microsoft today reported it's weakest growth in 6 years (2% YoY), Salesforce, Google, everyone is citing a slowing economy and growth for tech. I think it's too soon to know and this summer will tell the tale, but for now I don't think you can assume hypergrowth in tech.

    2) there is an interesting, if a bit out there, theory that tech is just playing a game of mimicking each other and enjoying the 5% stock bump (short term). The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson doesn’t rule it out, writing that one explanation for the layoffs could be tech CEOs mimicking each other to get a brief high from the market. https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2023/01/what-the-tech-and-media-layoffs-are-really-telling-us-about-the-economy/672791/

  2. It feels like a failure when the cornerstone of our entire economic and social strategy is dependent on population growth and scaling human beings.

    It would be like if a business never actually had a plan to be profitable and responsible but instead just projected out unlimited user-growth to sustain their spend and investments and market share.

    It's not sustainable, in both the general and ESG use of the term.

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  3. Getting back on track, I actually think a lay-out change could improve the site and here is what I'm thinking:

    • 6th Street and Daily Texan feel redundant to me. I think if we had one "Business & Markets" thread, that would be better for the focus and engagement. I find even the best of the posters on those pages sometimes don't know on which to post and there doesn't seem to be consistency. I think that would help some of the quasi-CR stuff that get posted on DT to also naturally be funneled to CR as DT becomes more codified as a business and finance and corporate markets and general business channel.
    • The Hobbies / Sub-Channels (Books, Video Games, Nerdz) design is suboptimal. I think there would be a lot more engagement if these were dedicated channels that were easier to navigate and be engaged with. I think some threads that by design should go to these subchannels are sometimes posted elsewhere because of the lack of visibility. Even just collapsing all those (Books, Video Games, Nerdz, Philosophy like the old Quackenbush) into "Hobbies" would probably not hurt, instead of adding additional click throughs, because I can't imagine the volume is too high as is. I just think about the aforementioned Quackenbush and Philosophical threads that the old site had and that engagement and it's missing here. Those safe spaces to have divergent conversations about philosophy and beliefs and worldviews that were interesting and educational, those same attempts at discussions and conversations for a lack of a better option have been shoe-horned into some of the CR threads which are inherently intolerant in their politicism (on both sides), especially since you have some of the more limited and less capable thinkers on this site who count the CR as a regular watering hole, who have an outsized influence and shaping of the culture and tone.

    Just some feedback, I don't know how big a lift any of these suggestions would be.

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  4. 15 hours ago, Patricio Swayze said:


    I’m talking about crispy and his latest (I think 4th handle) as hamsterhookah. Usual MO. Trying to play it cool and rational now, but like the previous 3-4 times, I am sure he will start being his usual self and warrant another banning. I was more curious as to why if someone has been banned multiple times, why are they allowed back. I get having a disagreement and losing your shit once and getting banned then coming back and being cool, but this dude has a history of being a shit heel.

    Montreal seems cold this time of year.

    Here is why your crying is funny to me:

    My username syntax [animal + tobacco product] is reiterated on purpose. It's a very simple and easy identifier and it's obvious I'm not trying to hide myself, right? This is because the only reason I've been banned with other names is because there are the same 4 or 5 posters who have gotten and remained so supremely butthurt about a calm, cool and collected expression of differences of opinions, that their only mental health recourse is to go on a neg spam spree to try and make me cease to exist, instead of just ignoring. It's literally the .01% of posters on this site banning me and then turning around with a "well, c'mon mods-- the entire community banned this guy! we've spoken!".

    This illegitimate gaming of the communal moderation is why I not only keep a very easily identifying handle to mark my reincarnation, but also take my next form based on a crowdsourced suggestion. Do you have a new name suggestion you'd like me to go ahead and register now ahead of what I assume will be your spastic response(s) to this post? I'll go ahead and park it, if so.

    The best part, however, is I have an active handle that has thousands of green rep points and you yourself have pos rep me many times, solely because the content and not your emotional liabilities that make it hard for you to exist on a platform where you know I am here. 

    But to your point, I've learned to just not share opinions or point of views or even really wade into any political discussions because no matter who above board, there are tiny people like you who can't seem to coexist with a difference in mindsets, and have focused most of my value to the community in Daily Texan business threads and Hobbies threads with a smattering of Movies & TV. If you stay out of Cloak Room, you generally stay away from people with mental health issues (on both sides).

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  5. 5 minutes ago, Pato del Muerto said:

    I also like being able to drive to the landscaping place and have them drop 3 buckets of mulch/dirt from the front end loader into my truck bed, and off I go. 

    Did this with a sod last spring, just had the forklift put it in the bed and off you go.

  6. 3 hours ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

    I've read some decent analysis or ideas about what Google (and others) are doing. Perhaps they're semi-following a Twitter model of dropping expensive employees but will retain the same revenue. Obviously Elon and Twitter only did the first half of that.

    Another interesting take is that Google is now far from being an innovative, ultra-high growth company. For many of their service lines, they're a mature company that only needs to maintain what they've got. Why pay the median (median not average) employee $300K per year.

    Even after these cuts, their headcount is still larger than it was a year ago. They and other tech giants just hired too many expensive employees in recent years. I applaud anyone that earns a high salary and has a cush job but you can't expect that forever. Not to mention the few that are simultaneously and secretively working multiple jobs. The music stops eventually.

    From WSJ:

    Quote

    From its fiscal year-end in September 2019 to September 2022, Apple’s workforce grew by about 20% to approximately 164,000 full-time employees.

    Meanwhile, over roughly the same period, the employee count at Amazon doubled, Microsoft’s rose 53%, Google parent Alphabet Inc.’s increased 57% and Facebook owner Meta’s ballooned 94%…On Friday, Alphabet became the latest tech company to announce widespread layoffs, with a plan to eliminate roughly 12,000 jobs, the company’s largest-ever round of job cuts. Alphabet’s cut follows a wave of large layoffs at Amazon, Microsoft and Meta. The tech industry has seen more than 200,000 layoffs since the start of 2022, according to Layoffs.fyi, a website that tracks cuts in the sector as they surface in media reports and company releases.

    And then this is a further interesting read which is grounded in Apple to date NOT having layoffs (though Apple is widely "expected to next month to report its first quarterly sales decline in more than three years." -WSJ) and I've highlighted the pertinent Google piece.

    "The popular narrative right now about these layoffs is that tech companies dramatically over-hired during the pandemic, but while that seems to have happened with Amazon — and for arguably very good reasons given the way that e-commerce shot up during lockdowns in particular — the reality is that the rest of the tech companies largely increased at the same rate they always had. Sure, the number of employees they added was large, but that was a function of keeping the same hiring rate off of an ever increasing base.

    The one exception is 2022, but I think I already put my finger on the reason for that increase while talking about Google’s Q3 2022 earnings:

    That leaves headcount growth: despite the fact that Google promised a slowdown in hiring, the company still managed to add 10,165 new employees last quarter (excluding the Mandiant acquisition). That’s actually an acceleration from Q2’s 10,108 new employees. Indeed, one wonders if Google overestimated how many employees would leave during the quarter: at this point Google would certainly seem to be a safe harbor, at least until/unless the company starts active layoffs. I don’t think it’s necessary — the business is doing better than these results suggest at first glance — but one wonders if management may see an opportunity to trim when few will blame them for it.

    In short, no one was giving up a job at one of the big five tech companies this year as fear spread about a broad-based slowdown in hiring; I have certainly heard this anecdotally. These companies, though, adjusted more slowly to the slower rate of attrition, which means they accidentally increased their headcount — that’s the theory anyways. And, to the extent that theory is right, the relatively limited size of the layoffs to date actually reflects that: these companies are not returning to their pre-pandemic levels of employees, but rather to where they would be had they kept up roughly the same rates of hiring this year that they have over the last ten.

    In short, I don’t see any real indication that this spat of layoffs, at least amongst the big five, is anything other than an opportunistic cull of headcount that (1) gives investors what they want while (2) keeping the exact same sort of strategic priorities and planned employee count the exact same it was a year ago. That may be imprudent: Meta in particular should have probably cut more given the impact on their business of ATT in particular, but for now there simply isn’t much evidence that these companies over-hired or that they are truly changing anything about their employee strategy.

    That noted, Apple does deserve credit for whatever combination of discipline and employee retention that led them to avoid the 2022 employee glut that affected their competitors. Indeed, what makes the company’s China dependency so maddening is how phenomenally well-managed every other aspect of their operation is."

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  7. 1 hour ago, Js1 said:

    Seems like something both GOP and Dems could behind and pass some legislation this term on the custodial process of classified material/how and what something is classified/removal of classified documents.  But it won't happen

    The only thing that is truly bipartisan these days is LiveNation/Ticketmaster sucks and let's burn them them to the ground (I think the congressional hearing with them is today) because both sides are Swifties.

  8. 2 hours ago, The Original Greaser Bob said:

    Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis.  Been trying to get around to this for about 40 years. I actually thought it was pretty good.  I thought it terrible on why God exists and there was some pretty dated nonsense, but I thought he did a good job on Christian discipline - faking it until you make it, what "it" is, understanding that you may waiting in the hall and not already admitted, and I liked his explanation as to why Christians are likely to be assholes.

     

     

    I need to re-read this, thanks for sharing.

  9. 1 hour ago, TexPx said:


    Kandinsky is a favorite of mine. Went to The Guggenheim for their 50th anniversary. They were showing the first full-scale retrospective of his career in the United States since 1985. It was awesome.

    Guggenheim loves Kandinsky for some reason. I had a family friend who went for the 50th as well and bought a bunch of prints.

    • Like 1
  10. 8 minutes ago, Captainant said:

    It also means the right with its predilection for authoritarianism will always self-sort their way out of critical thinking children. They'll repress the hell out of their children's creativity and curiosity because that's how the hierarchical power structure works - "because I SAID so!"

    It takes a society and social structure that places a premium on critical thinking. And as we've seen from YOUR republican party, they are specifically and explicitly against critical thinking. 

    the big lebowski dude GIF

    As someone who is/has raised children in the hierarchical power structure, I think you can be and raise kids to be creative and curious and keep a beginner's mindset within the framework of an inviolable set of ethical principles (whatever those principles mean to you, as we have the freedom to define our belief systems and worldviews which is awesome).

    That's the beauty of the freedom of your family being your own and being free to not out-source your children's development to the government program that everyone seems to agree is broken and inadequate: public education.

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  11. 12 hours ago, Storm the Field said:

    FWIW, my wife went through something fairly similar not too long ago. 15 years post college and had never spent a day unemployed in her adult life. Company she'd been with for over a decade sold all off their assets and closed up shop in late 2020. We figured she'd be able to enjoy ~6 months of free time (got a healthy severance) and then find a job nearly instantaneously with her resume. Took over 6 months after she started in earnest to finally land something. Made it to a 3rd or 4th round at least half a dozen times. A handful of companies just straight up ghosted her deep into the interview process. Overqualified/too expensive/unlikely to stay for long is the best we could figure. Funny enough, I think tomorrow will be her 1-year anniversary in her new role. 

    It sucks, and each successive rejection seems to compound on the ones that came before, but you seem to have your head in the right place. Good luck man. 

    I wonder how much of that was getting into the rhythm of interviewing and selling herself again, considering she'd been way out of practice. In my experience it takes a few interviews to get back into a groove and the first few are really choppy. But once you have your talk track down and your assets codified and you can speak to this, that and the other in a confident way because you've done it a half dozen times, you naturally come off as competent and valuable. I've actually heard of folks taking a job interview cycle they don't particularly want when they first start looking, just to knock the rust off for the next job that you do really want.

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  12. 3 minutes ago, Captainant said:

    You are presenting a false dichotomy. You can practice the humanities without committing wholely to them as a career path. Granted, that also requires society to not place a premium on extracting every moment of productive time from individuals so they have the energy and will left to express themselves. 

    I think most of what's killing the arts is a braindead and uncritical MBA-like approach to EVERYTHING in this country. It's all just metrics and measurements as the goals, rather that advancing an outcome. This is especially evident in our public education system of no child left behind where standardized testing reigns supreme and stifles other, more creative and critical thinking curriculum out of the classroom. 

     

    What you are framing it as has only the logical outcome of "we should cut the arts because they're unprofitable", where we should be focusing less singularly on profit and productivity so that we aren't boxed into a corner of needing to specialize in order to have the space to think critically and be creative 

    I think the bolded is the crux of the issue: yes you theoretically can. I can theoretically do a lot of things I don't do now, but I only have so many hours in the day unless I re-prioritize. The reality is that we live in a world and society of intense scarcity and we have to be judicious in what we undertake (spend our limited time and budget and attention and energy on) because most of our resources are extremely limited (yes, even you surly 1%ers). In my opinion, at least.

    And I agree with you about public education being a sub-optimal institution for our youth, which I guess then gets to the real answer for how to fight misinformation and teach critical thinking-- it starts and stops at home as a family. Which means that the underprivileged will continue to suffer-- those with broken homes and/or parents without the time due to the urgency of paying bills and surviving or just ignorant to these skills themselves.

  13. 10 hours ago, Mole said:

    Your post is almost Gatto-like: faculty.bard.edu/hhaggard/teaching/sci127Sp20/notes/GattoSevenLessonSchoolteacher.pdf
     

    The first chapter/essay/screed lays it out pretty clearly, the seven things schools teach:

    1. Confusion

    2. Class position/hierarchy 

    3. Indifference 

    4. Emotional dependency 

    5. Intellectual dependency

    6. Provisional self-esteem

    7. Constant surveillance 

    Gatto isn’t always 100% right, but he’s usually not wrong and points out some big picture, systemic things that are broken in education. Even the way we think and discuss education is wrapped up in this broken system. Schools may be filled with wonderful teachers, but the system is filling kids’ heads with a bizarre view of what an education should be. It’s a bizarre view that we were all taught, so we don’t even see how preposterous it is.

    Regarding public schools teaching media literacy and critical thinking, you can rant and rave on how it should be, but anything that can be politicized will be, so make alternative plans just in case.

    Great post, and last page my posting of the "This is Water" Kenyon College commencement speech was not just to make fun of neon moon for being a dead-eyed, cow-like human with no independent and critical thinking ability (though some of it was that), but it was more to highlight the conversation around how do you teach "how to think".

    The commencement makes the argument that a liberal arts education, as the cliché goes, teaches you how to think so that when you enter the real world you are equipped to deal with it. It being, misinformation, other people, etc.

    So then you have this tension between what is higher education then?

    Is it a liberal arts education teaching you how to think while you explore the higher order crafts that make us creative and intelligent human beings (i.e. the humanities), which costs a ton of money (therefore skewed towards the privileged class) and has no direct application to getting a job with a great value and ROI post-college?

    or

    Is it a place to learn a discipline, to learn the technical how-to's and rote mechanization of a rules-based job (accounting, computer science, engineering, etc.) that is in demand and valuable in society that you can theoretically build a life upon?

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  14. 40 minutes ago, Sbbruin said:

    Well I guess a little update may be in order.  Got my feeding tube out last week (zero tubes in me, down from 6 originally) so I’m on only oral foods, which has been a real hit or miss.  Been on some solid foods for a few weeks, but i really struggle with nausea and (sorry) quite a bit of puking.  Just get food caught in what’s left of my esophagus.  Frustrating.  I’ve lost about 20 lbs so I guess there’s an Upside But I’ve been able to make it into work for a couple half days.  Working from home the other days.  Just can’t put as much into work as I probably need to, but pushing things forward as best I can.  Physical strength is pathetic.  A walk around the block feels like running a marathon.  Hopefully can turn that around soon.

    God bless man. Keep fighting, one day at a time.

    • Like 1
  15. On 6/1/2022 at 12:42 AM, shadow_operative said:

    so, it appears that i've never shared this, and with that being case, it seems like it would be a waste to not share it now. 

    when this was filmed, it was meant to be the first in a long series of youtube videos which featured a variety of content ranging from interviews with guests tj sports highlights reels. long story short, my mental and physical health issues have taken precedence since this filming, and the youtube channel still has yet to get off and running. i was reminded of this video when talking with a friend recently, and i figured i may as well share it at this point, for anyone who's interested in watching. 

    I went and listened to Liberation and it's just not me for, I guess, but I can't see how this a top 1000 song much less top 1. That is why art is art, I guess.

  16. I agree with everyone; Dak sucks.

    Okay.

    But why are we so convinced the story is over? Can't people get better? Can't Dak put in more work to study the offense and the reads and defenses? Can't he work out and get in better shape for his athleticism? Can't he do drills and work tirelessly on his accuracy? 

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