As a fellow Beehaw local, ditto. Would definitely be a shame, even if I can appreciate why it’s being considered.

I do think the potential federation to build a unified alternative to centralised megacorps with freedom of movement for users is well worth the cost, and Beehaw leaving the party erodes that, but ultimately what will hit me on a day to day will be the loss of the usage pattern described above.

Where do we stand on hoarding code to protect against outsourcing? I have a friend who is encouraging his team to do everything he can to hoard and make it impossible for recently onboarded individuals in a “cheaper cost center” to mess with it.

I think it’s the right call, for both the team and the company. The team wants to keep their job, and to keep building the thing they worked so hard on. But I think it’s also best for the company. Management can’t control themselves when they see that they can get literally 10 engineers for the price of 1 local engineer. They know that each of the 10 is going to be less good than than a local engineer, but they always fall for “but still, they’re not that much worse and for that price how can I lose!”. Of course, the damage of 10s of mediocre-bad engineers is far more costly, especially when outsourcing an existing project. So I’d say it’s the right thing for everyone for the team to protect their code ownership anyway they can.

Not to feed into the bosses’ paranoia, but I’d say WFH 5-days (on paper) and bunk off, which is a lot easier to do WFH anyway.

I don’t actually think the employer misses out here, even if most companies already take far more than they’re owed from their employees to begin with.

The reality for a lot of jobs, especially those that require deep work, creativity etc, is that watching how long people are sat at their desks is not a good way to improve results anyway. Better a motivated happy workforce, and managers that are thinking in terms of how well a team is delivering useful things for the org rather than obsessing about timesheets.

If the company is happy to pay me X salary for the results I provide them, everybody wins. It’s foolish for organisations to think that getting people to work longer hours, whether it’s forcing people to work 4, 5, or 6 days, is going to get them more bang for buck.

As for remote working, I’ve worked exclusively from home for over a decade in fully remote teams. Everyone wins with WFH. There can be problems to mitigate and there’s always some subjective preference to consider, but on the whole the average employee and employer wins big from the arrangement.

All the pushback I’ve seen on WFH since the pandemic seems in large part management using it as an excuse for their own incompetence.

“How can I tell my employees are working if I can’t see them at their desks?” If you cant tell if they’re working now, then you didn’t know they were working before either!

On-boarding new people, building up young people, is just different from before. Make sure they have decent equilment for video and normalise teams sitting in video rooms when the work. Encourage buddy working at all levels. Recognise and respect the upfront cost of training. Encourage and fund opportunities for socialising both remotely and in person.

Managers don’t know what’s happening without the “water cooler effect”. They’re used to be able to shout at teams across an office, or easedrop. Again, this demonstrates a weakness in their ability to communicate and interact with the people they claim to “lead”. Good managers will be in the same video rooms and chatting shit with the people they lead while they work as a united teams. Shitty managers will sit on their hands while not even noticing their team does everything they can to avoid a unhelpful or unsupportive “leader”.

The worse one is productivity. I have no doubt things are going worse for corpos since the pandemic. This likely correlates with increase WFH. The ideas that this is proof that WFH is outrageously. During the pandemic we had teams working 17 hour days. Corpos took the opportunity to cut every corner and show contempt to the workforces, and they didn’t fix things when the COVID numbers went down. The big shots made some truly terrible strategic calls. All these things and more are seeming to lead to a kind of mass enshittification across a ton of organisations. But bosses don’t want to own their mistakes, let alone fix them , so WFH ends up the scapegoat.

(Sorry! This thread seems to have brought out the rant in me!)

I just did. I’m lucky that I can afford it. Although, because of tax, it affects my take home way less than 20%.

It’s wild really. I’m lucky, and most of my career I’ve been in the maximum tax bracket in my country. Also cause I’m lucky, I kept getting raises and bonuses, because I work damn hard and I’m pretty good at what I do.

The thing is though, I’m no better off in terms of my life quality for all that money. I live in a small semi-detached in a nowhere town. I’m incredibly grateful to have been able to buy rather than rent, but I’d still like to strive for a little more space, a little more privacy or a little more excitement. But the way property is, even though I’m earning well, it seems impossible. I’ve tried unsuccessfully 3 times in the last 5 years to move , and come to the conclusion without earning a considerable amount more than I am it’s impossible.

My basic needs were met long ago. I find ways to waste money here and there, but nothing to really work towards. I guess I could have kids, but this place is too small for a dog, let alone a couple of sprogs, and I wouldn’t wish this world on another generation. The only good reason to be earning more for me is to maybe protect the quality of life I have should I lose my job or the situation gets worse in general (inflation, climate change etc), and again it doesn’t seem like it’s much protection. I believe in the important of tax, I’d pay even more if I thought it’d be used for good, but with this circus in charge, it’d hard to imagine much of my considerable tax bill going to help people rather than ending up in the pocket of some corpo with a government contract.

Add to that, jobs seem to get worse and worse. I swear everyone I know, across multiple sectors, is burning out. Corpos and governments alike are treating people like garbage, working them to death then discarding them as reward. Profits go up. Nothing of value gets made. Everyone but the bosses gets fucked.

As for my job, I worked hard and gave it a lot. I’ve seen the company mistreat and discarded good people for years, while outsourcing to halfwits and grifters (and I can’t even be that angry at the grifters given what they’re paid regionally). It’s impossible to make a positive change, although I still try. But I hate it. The job grinds me down and takes everything.

I plan to work as little as possible, even if it means cutting back. I live in hope that it’ll mean I recover a little, maybe find some joy again. Not much hope, but worth 20%.

(Sorry for that becoming antiwork tirade. It’s been a shitty few years.)

Thanks for clarifying!

I was enjoying plexamp but had no idea of the restrictions. My missus probably hadn’t bothered to try it yet so we hadn’t noticed.

Such a shame because plexamp seems to me superior to the experience from all other streaming apps, apart from my less than perfect music collection!

Will have to give this Symfonium a look!