A dark day for the future of books - <AUTHOR> http://edition.cnn.com/2012/04/15/opinion/coker-book-publishing/index.html <comment><USER2> I will never buy an eBook when I can get an actual used copy of the same book in mid to great condition for a tenth or a twentieth of the price of the eBook, both from Amazon. eReaders may have gained acceptance (I have a Kindle and a Sony eReader) but they're not "better" than real books, at least, certainly not better enough to justify paying fixed prices w/ no opportunity for second hand sale (esp. for non-reference materials).

With almost any popular, still-under-copyright book, this is what the pricing looks like on Amazon:

[http://www.amazon.com/Harry-Potter-Sorcerers-Stone- Book/dp/0...](http://www.amazon.com/Harry-Potter-Sorcerers-Stone- Book/dp/059035342X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1334507344&sr=8-1)

Paperback: 8.79 dollars. Kindle: 7.99 dollars. Used: 1 cent. Used via Amazon Prime: 3.98

To save NINETY CENTS you get an arguably inferior copy that you cannot resell, pass on, share, touch, or truly experience. No, thank you. And don't forget that your Kindle cost a hundred dollars - you'll need to buy a hundred and eleven such books before you're actually "saving" money.

<comment><USER3> To each their own I guess. Personally I love how awesome it is that I can have one book in many places. I can read from my laptop at work, on my phone on the go, and from my tablet at home. Each automatically syncs to the last read page and my notes/highlights move between them. Mind you I don't actually ever USE notes or highlights, but it's pretty cool that that option is there. Sure I like to hold a book in my hands, but the convenience of an ebook is really hard to beat.

Plus if I have a moment to read and I want a new book, I don't need to wait 3-5 days for shipping, I can download it instantly. If I'm ever out of the country (as I am now for half a year) I can still get any book delivered to me instantly. For me that's just a convenience, however it's critical for areas that normally have to wait 15-20 days for shipping from a place like Amazon.

EDIT: As a quick note to your edit, you're really ignoring some of the best parts of ebooks while pointing out their worst. I don't own a Kindle however read ebooks through Amazon on three different devices.

<comment><USER2> Like I mentioned, I have a Kindle, and I've loaded it with tons of classics and DRM-free materials. It's nice and convenient, and I really like it.

But buying something is different - buying is, by nature, a matter of value. The fact of the matter is, buying a second hand book gives you more value/dollar than buying an ebook at 3 times the cost. An ebook you read once but cannot resell is eight dollars literally lost overnight. You no longer have the eight dollars _and_ you don't have anything worth eight dollars. When you buy the book second hand, you get the same (or better) value of reading the book, but you also retain a residue value that lives forever.

<comment><USER3> I contend that I get eight dollars of value out of the conveniences the ebook provides. Like I said, to each their own I guess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I essentially find his argument incoherent. What's he complaining about, that publishers don't have the right to illegally fix prices? They can set prices to whatever they want but can do so on their own marketplaces. Amazon has the right to impose whatever it wants on their marketplace. You don't have to sell there. Now we can once again make this argument that Amazon dominates the marketplace and you HAVE to sell there to sell any books, but that argument is ridiculous. Plenty of small publishers are selling books solely by themselves or with limited agreements with independent marketplaces.

This seems like sour grapes from more middlemen who are unneeded. This is why the music industry is so bitter--because the Internet makes them irrelevant. There will be a need for promotion, yes, but I'd rather pay a smart literary agent 15% or even 20% to handle that rather than some publisher where I'm basically getting dimes on the backend. I'm not aware of any promotion that Smashwords ever executed that reached me, so clearly they are not even doing a great job.

It's a dark day for industry middlemen and that's it.

BY THE WAY, I will pay a premium well over $20 if you distribute your ebooks in multiple DRM free formats. I just paid $40 for the InDesign CS5 Classroom in a Book yesterday which came with a PDF and an EPUB. If publishers are too lazy to do that, we have no use for them anyway.

</comment><comment><USER5> _...the responsibility for pricing decisions should rest with authors and publishers. If they price fairly and competitively, customers will reward them. If they price too high, customers will migrate to lower-cost books._

I agree authors and publishers should set prices, but not in collusion. As for the argument consumers will migrate to lower-cost books, that may hold for some genres, but books are not really fungible. The books I am interested in are each unique works.

<comment><USER6> If I understand his argument correctly, @markcoker is suggesting that if Lord of the Rings is too expensive people will buy Eragon instead?

Okay, could understand the lack of knowledge of basic economics, but I'd have hoped that someone who has started their own business would at least have read a couple of wikipedia pages on the subject.

<comment><USER7> Are you suggesting that people will buy LoTR no matter how high the price? Or are you suggesting that if LoTR is priced too high for someone who wants to read it, they will give up on reading rather than entertain themselves with some other book?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There are two major flaws with this article. The first is the author's reliance on the reader's understanding of the phrase "agency pricing model." A hyperlink to yet another article that presumably contains an explanation of the term somewhere within it is not the same as a simple one-sentence explanation.

The second is his assumption that "customers will migrate to lower-cost books." Books are not fungible objects. If I want to read the latest Eric Flint novel, I'm not going to pick up a Danielle Steele book instead because it's cheaper.

<comment><USER9> I read a _lot_ and I don't really notice or care who wrote most of them.

Sure, I would be willing to pay 50$ to read the next _Jim Butcher_ novel right now, but I also get a fair amount of free novels on my Kindle. If it's good I am more than happy to buy something by the author, but there is a lot of free stuff out there and I don't feel the need to spend money just because someone was published.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> > _By assuming responsibility for the roles once played by publishers, authors > are earning up to 70% of the list price as their e-book royalty versus the > 17.5% paid by traditional publishers._

I'm trying to figure out why this is a dark day for the future of books. It sounds to me like authors just got a sizable raise.

<comment><USER11> Assume for a moment that all authors in a given genre are interchangeable. In other words, they're unskilled labor, and it's really the publishers who bring all the value to the table.

Come to think of it, I am sure a lot of very successful people in the publishing industry view it this way.

<comment><USER8> Since the author of this article is an "e-book publisher" (ugh), I think your assessment of his viewpoint is spot-on.

He's a middleman who delivers a vanishingly small amount of value, and is worried about being made redundant.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I have an amicable solution. Don't let big publishing be a cartel setting prices willy-nilly, and if it bothers him that Amazon or whomever wants to have a sale on a book, they can negotiate a "bulk buy" of the paper or ebook with the author or publisher and then discount it however they choose.

But, he's insane if he thinks collusion is the answer.

</comment><comment><USER13> The publishing industry has a chance to actually make the transition into the electronic commerce world a success. What has worked in the past isn't going to make the transition.

One of the larger problems is the lack of a second sale. Many people, especially in non-fiction, looks to second sales as a way to add to their knowledge base. Without second sale there has to be a more effective method of engaging these people and it is price.

Collusion among the publishers ensures that the logical price dropping for ebooks wouldn't happen as it should normally.

Smashwords has done a ton to ensure ebooks have entered the market by mitigating the normal distributorship model. I can see where they are coming from in terms of author royalties, but other publishers will look to protect the old business models.

</comment><comment><USER14> One thing I've been noticing with arguments against this lawsuit is that people are saying "If prices are too high, just buy from another publisher." The thing is that it just doesn't work that way with books. If I want to read Moby Dick but I think the price is too high, I'm boned. That publisher owns that specific book, and I can't just get a knockoff book. There's only one Moby Dick. They are the gatekeepers to that intellectual property.

</comment><comment><USER15> Typical strawman. Authors and publishers are not a single group. Publishers are just gatekeepers.

</comment><comment><USER16> The author argues for a centralized command economy of e-book sales, in which large bureaucratic institutions set prices based on the consumption patterns of their executives.</comment>


Overview of Redis in 15 mins - <AUTHOR> http://www.scribd.com/doc/33531219/Redis-Presentation

<comment><USER2> Nice overview, but I wonder if it is current: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1459787></comment>


World's first 'printed' aircraft - <AUTHOR> http://www.soton.ac.uk/mediacentre/news/2011/jul/11_75.shtml

<comment><USER2> How long until 3D printer appear in each house and we stop buying most of the furniture/ appliances that we have in our homes?

How long until we print our homes?

It seems that we will only trade energy and raw materials.

</comment><comment><USER3> Fuckin' cool! 3D print will change the world!!!</comment>


A Story of a Heisenbug Hunt (2011) - <AUTHOR> http://jeetworks.org/node/105

<comment><USER2> The author still doesn't understand how "fprintf(stderr, "\n");" could have changed the behavior, so I doubt he understands the real cause of the bug. A test for floating point equality may not give you the result you expect, but it is most certainly deterministic: if you compare the same two floating point numbers (i.e., the same sequences of bits that represent two floating point numbers), the hardware will give you exactly the same result each time. So there was something in the program that caused a _different_ floating point result to be computed under some circumstances.</comment>


Declarative class-based reducers for redux and NGRX - <AUTHOR> https://itnext.io/reducer-organization-taking-a-step-further-4aba7af755d6 <comment><USER2> I'll quote the comment I made when this was posted over in /r/javascript a month ago [0]:

So, as a Redux maintainer...

I completely do _not_ see the point of trying to write reducers as classes.

A reducer is a pure function. There shouldn't be any use of `this` inside. Therefore, it doesn't need to be defined as a class instance method. Some kind of a factory function, as recommended in the docs? Sure.

Let me specifically address the points of concern about the `createReducer`-type approach:

>\- In case of complex reducers we have to leave lots of comments describing what this reducer does and why.

I don't see how this changes no matter where or how you define the reducer.

> \- Huge reducer maps are hard to read.

If this is truly a concern, then try defining the functions outside the lookup table.

> \- Each reducer has only one corresponding action type. What if I want to > run the same reducer for several actions?

Then define the functions outside the lookup table, and associate them with multiple keys.

Going a step further beyond this, our new Redux Starter Kit package [1] has a `createSlice` function [2] that will auto-generate action types and action creators for reducer functions that are passed in, and _also_ allows you to pass in reducers to handle action types that were defined elsewhere. Example:

        const counter = createSlice({
          slice: 'counter', // slice is optional, and could be blank ''
          initialState: 0,
          reducers: {
            increment: state => state + 1,
            decrement: state => state - 1,
            multiply: (state, action) => state * action.payload
          }
        })

        const user = createSlice({
          slice: 'user',
          initialState: { name: '', age: 20 },
          reducers: {
            setUserName: (state, action) => {
              state.name = action.payload // "mutate" the state all you want with immer
            }
          },
          extraReducers: {
            [counter.actions.increment]: (state, action) => {
              state.age += 1
            }
          }
        })

I'd encourage folks to try out Redux Starter Kit and see how much it can help simplify your Redux apps.

[0] [https://www.reddit.com/r/javascript/comments/awk2be/reducer_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/javascript/comments/awk2be/reducer_organization_taking_a_step_further/)

[1] [https://redux-starter-kit.js.org/](https://redux-starter-kit.js.org/)

[2] [https://redux-starter-kit.js.org/api/createSlice](https://redux-starter- kit.js.org/api/createSlice)

<comment><USER3> How does `this` prevent any function from being a pure function? Classes could be just a different way to organize your code. Anyway, lots of good arguments were made for and against in that reddit discussion. [https://www.reddit.com/r/javascript/comments/awk2be/reducer_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/javascript/comments/awk2be/reducer_organization_taking_a_step_further/)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why does the TSA still exist? - <AUTHOR> I'm taking my first flight in over a decade. The thought of going through airport security makes me angry. The TSA is almost universally despised and ineffective, but continues to exist. Why? <comment><USER2> _The TSA is almost universally despised_

Sadly this is not true: [http://news.gallup.com/poll/156491/americans-views- tsa-posit...](http://news.gallup.com/poll/156491/americans-views-tsa-positive- negative.aspx)

I generally agree with you, but any politician who advocates saner policies would be walking directly into demagoguery like "you're willing to risk terrorists killing our children so that rich businessmen can save a few minutes".

</comment><comment><USER3> because we love bringing guns on planes. [https://www.tsa.gov/blog/2018/01/29/tsa-year-review- record-a...](https://www.tsa.gov/blog/2018/01/29/tsa-year-review-record- amount-firearms-discovered-2017)

<comment><USER4> Wow, this is eye-opening. The amount of guns and other weapons found by TSA is insane. If this post wasn't on tsa.gov I would've thought it's a joke post. How do this many people think they can get past TSA with all this?

<comment><USER5> Ironically the TSA regularly fail scheduled-tests. Where "actors" intentionally try to sneak guns & knives through security..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The TSA is flawed, not unimportant.

It should be improved, not dismantled.

</comment><comment><USER7> Because nearly 3,000 Americans died on September 11th, 2001.

I'm sorry to say this, and maybe you have unique and specific grievances I'm not aware of, but your _anger_ seems like a gross entitlement of the kind Silicon Valley has become used too.

<comment><USER8> I think your premise, that the TSA effectively prevents terrorist attacks, is not a universal one[1][2][3].

Also, _lacking_ anger at the TSA may also be a sign of entitlement. For people who look like Muslims, the TSA may be a source of fear and shame. Racial profiling used to be more prevalent than people perhaps realize.

There are, of course, many other reasons to be angry, including sexual assault, stolen items, and other TSA abuses. That's not even counting the intrusive body scanners and other officially sanctioned activities.

1\. [http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-aclu- tsa-20170207-stor...](http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-aclu- tsa-20170207-story.html)

2\. [https://www.vox.com/2016/5/17/11687014/tsa-against- airport-s...](https://www.vox.com/2016/5/17/11687014/tsa-against-airport- security)

3\. [https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/06/the- tsa...](https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/06/the-tsa-doesnt- work-and-maybe-it-doesnt-matter/394673/)</comment></comment>


Run chrome in linux with root login - <AUTHOR>

One reason for still sticking with firefox has been that chrome does not run when you are logged in as root. I know the implications of running as root, so I had to find some way of still using chrome.
Here is a neat trick.. pretty simple actually.
just ssh into localhost with the user id with X enabled.
ssh email@example.com -X Chrome runs just as you would expect it to. Before running chrome you will need to change permission of /tmp folder with the command "chmod 1777 /tmp".. run this command before ssh'ing into user login..
cheers <comment><USER2> Why would you want to run a browser as root?

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, I wont login into root specially to run a browser.. if you happen to login as root for some reasons, and you need to run chrome then a clean way is what I have put in the post.. u dont need to log out from X and re login again with your user..</comment></comment>


Nate Silver: What I need from statisticians - <AUTHOR> http://www.statisticsviews.com/details/feature/5133141/Nate-Silver-Wha%20t-I-need-from-statisticians.html <comment><USER2> To respond to a bunch of other posters here:

There's a fundamental difference between data scientist and statistician, I think. I see statistics as an academic discipline and data science as an applied discipline.

More concretely, the statistics approach is: formulate question --> formulate hypothesis --> collect data in a controlled environment under a specific set of assumptions (i.e., perform an experiment) --> determine probability of the data given the hypothesis (and assumptions).

While the data science approach is: hey look, we already have all this data --> generate predictions --> collect more data --> refine predictions.

Of course, that's an over-generalization. But I think the different emphasis on hypothesis testing vs. machine learning/data mining is fundamental.

</comment><comment><USER3> > "I think data scientist is a sexed-up term for a statistician."

As a statistician-and-engineer who is currently on the job market (my graduate program finishes this spring), I feel this pain.

I've been referred to as a "data scientist" multiple times (that's even been my official title at work before), though I do still cringe sometimes when I hear the word, for this exact reason.

That said, I don't usually present myself as a statistician, even though my degree is a statistics degree. Most people who hold statistics degrees are fairly lousy engineers[0], and I don't know of any other term that (concisely) expresses that I'm equally competent as a statistician and a (backend) engineer[1].

Of course, this is because many of these programs haven't yet caught up to the fact that computers exist and are still teaching statistics as if we're in a pre-computation era. The perfect solution is to fix this, and thereby fix the connotation of the word "statistician".

It's the same reason I dislike the term "growth hacker" \- really, that's just the way marketing _should_ be done (ie, based on numbers and verifiable statistics). In a perfect world, all (competent) marketers would be "growth hackers". But many marketers aren't, and so we have to make up another cringe- worthy term for it.

Unfortunately, that's a problem that's beyond my means to solve. So I bite my tongue and add the word "data scientist" to my resume anyway.

[0] Usually self-proclaimed, too [1] ie, "I could work as a backend engineer if I wanted to/needed to, but I'm looking for work involving both skillsets"

<comment><USER4> I've actually seen "data scientist" used to indicate "probably not that proficient as an actual engineer, but knows what he or she is talking about in terms of theory and can usually get a working model done in R, Matlab, or Python". There seems to be an additional jump in knowledge of systems, data structures, and algorithms in building up performant machine learning stacks (something which can add in practical knowledge and praxis, but steals a little from raw-ideas work).

Citation: working in data science and machine learning engineer roles for nearly three years straight out of grad school in math.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> "I think data scientist is a sexed-up term for a statistician."

This statement, given by Silver to the annual meeting of the Joint Statistics Meetings (the main cross-organization stats conference), was guaranteed to be a crowd-pleaser for that audience.

Unfortunately for them, it's not really true.

The problem is that much of conventional academic statistics consists of proving theorems about model classes. This requires a lot of sophisticated analysis, but has turned rather vacuous. And much conventional applied statistics consists of computing diagnostics based on dubious modeling assumptions. Under pressure in the last 20 or so years from computer science, machine learning, computer vision, Moore's law, and the data avalanche, the discipline has changed, but not fast enough.

As a result, a lot of what _should_ be taught and researched in statistics departments has been co-opted by these other disciplines. And many people with a real problem would rather work with a "machine learning" person than a "statistics" person.

The best summary of this state of affairs is Leo Breiman's essay ([http://projecteuclid.org/DPubS/Repository/1.0/Disseminate?ha...](http://projecteuclid.org/DPubS/Repository/1.0/Disseminate?handle=euclid.ss/1009213726&view=body&content- type=pdf_1)). The abstract of this essay is brutal:

"There are two cultures in the use of statistical modeling to reach conclusions from data. One assumes that the data are generated by a given stochastic data model. The other uses algorithmic models and treats the data mechanism as unknown. The statistical community has been committed to the almost exclusive use of data models. This commitment has led to irrelevant theory, questionable conclusions, and has kept statisticians from working on a large range of interesting current problems. Algorithmic modeling, both in theory and practice, has developed rapidly in fields outside statistics. It can be used both on large, complex data sets and as a more accurate and informative alternative to data modeling on smaller data sets. If our goal as a field is to use data to solve problems, then we need to move away from exclusive dependence on data models and adopt a more diverse set of tools."

Breiman was mathematically sophisticated, so it's not that he wasn't able to follow the theory he critiques, it's that he wasn't snowed by detail and could see its lack of relevance to real problems.

<comment><USER6> The two cultures argument is strong, but so is David Hand's "Illusion of Progress" paper [1] which fits into the debate by highlighting that classifier technologies often touted by machine learning aficionados does not scale to better performance when analyzed carefully.

In my experience, improvements in performance tend to come from improvements in domain knowledge. This usually plays out in feature selection, but may involve radical changes in the classifier/model design. The secondary ones are more fun and can more easily be the basis of a PhD. The initial ones are usually swept under the rug when they're brutal and boring, though fundamental changes also form great PhDs.

I think it's fairly clear that the success of NLP almost entirely came down to a feature engineering change.

I don't know what the ideal Data Scientist/Statistician position is. I think it varies based on many of the implicit needs that only statistics savvy businesses can pick between clearly. The role may require strong programming skills, the ability to build and iterate massive multilevel models of social data, a familiarity on-line classifiers, the ability to graph things nicely in R and D3, the ability to from scratch write a non-linear optimizer over a completely novel space, a familiarity with NLTK, or, finally and perhaps most commonly, the ability to pander bullshit about the benefits of machine learning.

I love the field and that's why I tend to side with the statisticians who want to really figure out what's needed to do an objectively good job drawing inference from data. Many in the new generation of statisticians are quite successfully crossing the cultural divide. A smaller cohort are brushing up at least their R coding skills to a suitable degree. Some already have an outside competency in programming. I'd like these people to eventually form the core of what real "data science" is.

[1] [http://arxiv.org/pdf/math/0606441.pdf](http://arxiv.org/pdf/math/0606441.pdf)

<comment><USER5> That paper by David Hand is good, I had forgotten it. (Even though I presented it to a reading group at my work...).

He points out a lot of ways the standard "supervised learning, iid feature vectors, moderate dimensionality, moderate n" problem setting is a theoretical construct that does not encompass enough of the real-world problem setting. And he highlights the fact that an epsilon improvement in error rate is not that remarkable.

So, I agree that his paper was smart as a critique of a certain culture within ML practice (and publications) of totally eliminating all problem context, and just saying "Give me a bag of labeled feature vectors -- I will build a classifier with an error rate better than your classifier, and publish the result."

But that is largely a straw man -- critiquing ML hackery is worthwhile and salutary, but it's going after small game. The random forest, support vector machine, and deep learning approaches should have been developed in Statistics. Why weren't they?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you're a trained scientist, 'Data Science' sounds distinctly odd. What other kind of science is there? A friend likened it to going to a restaurant to do some 'Food Eating'.

<comment><USER8> In general, if the subject includes "science" in the name, it probably isn't actually science. Political, data, social, etc. No chemist needs to say they study "chemical science."

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Data-scientist is a sexed-up term for statistician without any expectation of mathematical expertise.

<comment><USER10> What would be a preferable term, data engineer? I don't have a background in statistics, and I do a lot of things that would make PhD level statisticians unhappy... but the things I do are sufficient for my own purposes.

Sometimes I don't need a mathematically proven process. I often find a use for something like a Monte Carlo simulation, without rigorous methodology, because it works for me, and for what I'm doing.

By analogy, not every website needs a multiple tier, doubly redundant architecture. Sometimes a "dumb" setup with a single webserver and database on a single server gets the job done.

In fact, when I worry less about scientific validity and focus more on what is necessary to get the job done... I make a lot more progress.

It feels a lot like scientific elitism to me.

<comment><USER2> Sounds like you agree with nfoz... you don't always need mathematical expertise ('scientific validity') to play with data, but when you do, you need a statistician.

Really, it comes down whether you need to confirm your assumptions and quantify your uncertainty, etc. Often, in applied situations, you don't. In science, you do.

<comment><USER10> Yup. I don't plan on publishing anything I do in a peer reviewed journal. If I did, I would have to be way more cautious with a lot of my assumptions.

By freeing myself of that level of effort, I can test a lot more stuff and build things a lot faster. In what I do, that's more important than having something be "scientifically accurate".

Similarly, when I am coding a prototype, I don't do unit tests. Don't need them, and it takes me longer to develop.

<comment><USER11> Pardon me if I come off as rude, but you've made a couple of statements that strike me as rather silly. Maybe I've misunderstood you.

The function of a peer reviewed publication is to formalize and verify that some result is correct, reproducible, and relevant (and to advance tenure). One would hope that whether you publish or not is mostly orthogonal to _how_ you conduct your work. If you're doing data analysis in any professional capacity, you should be using mathematically sound techniques, _and you should understand those techniques_. There's no other way about it. I'm not sure what your line of work is, but I can't think of any technical field where one's analysis techniques being "scientifically sound" is anything but paramount. Why else would the work have any value? Perhaps it helps to think about publishing your work to be more like deploying your code, rather than testing it.

That isn't to say that every step of the way you have to conduct yourself with the utmost rigor. It doesn't mean that you must prove every theorem each time you use it, nor that you have to be laying out strict tests and hypotheses every time you load a data set. But to do data analysis in a scientifically sound manner _does_ mean that you have to understand the background of the techniques you're using, and how they apply to your data. It _does_ mean that you have to periodically bring your analysis back to basics and make sure your ducks are still in a row; that you haven't fallen off the assumption wagon somewhere along the line. It _does_ mean that you should know why something is working, or why something is broken, not just that it is.

"Statisticians" don't sit around all day laying out hypothesis tests in latex. They do the same thing you do; they fire up R, load the data and start playing with it. It's all about the context you have in your brain when you are playing with it. This, I think, is where the formal training becomes quite important. Because as with most things, it's the _unknown_ unknowns that will destroy you, and having the broad formal foundation gives you the tools to protect yourself from walking into a minefield problems you didn't even know existed yet.

<comment><USER10> I guess I just see the level of "scientific soundness" as a spectrum. For some work (peer reviewed journals, work you hope other people to be able to reproduce, etc.) you need a higher standard.

I find that higher standard requires a significant amount more time, effort, and ultimately prevents me from accomplishing what I need to.

It depends on the application and how you're using the result. Most of the time, for me, it just doesn't matter.

It may be worth noting that much of what i'm talking about is for personal understanding (e.g., baseball statistics) or is not mission critical and will never see the light of day.

Sometimes good enough is just that.

I do appreciate the thoughtful response you wrote. But often my decision is this: do I spend 2 weeks trying to understand a technique, or do I spend 1 day using it, understanding that my analysis has limitations. When you only have 1 day, my choice becomes "do what seems like it will work" or "do nothing." I agree that more complex techniques (neural nets, etc.) may need more understanding. But because they do, they are also inaccessible to me.

Maybe I can sum it up like this: it's not always necessary to do an analyses in a completely scientifically sound manner, if I can answer the questions to my satisfaction. Especially relevant when the other option is to not get anything done, and get stuck in a textbook trying to understand complex theory.

It's bit me once in a while, but that doesn't matter in what I'm doing. (And its usually pretty easy to recover from.)

Also worth a mention that I would not call myself a data scientist, nor do I operate in that role.

It's all tradeoffs, all the way down. I just happen to choose mine differently than someone who might call themselves a data scientist or statistician.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The way I have made personal peace with this is that I consider myself a better programmer than the median statistician and better in statistics and machine learning than a median programmer. Whether this is a useful spot to be in I have to find out. I can see that depending on the times this can either be an asset or a liability.

</comment><comment><USER13> We need a new term for statistician and data scientist is as good as any. For many years, the terms "statistics" and "statistician" have had negative undertones within the general public and renaming is a great way to overcome that.

<comment><USER9> huh? what are these "negative undertones"?

<comment><USER14> Probably the widely-help belief that anybody can come up with statistics for anything.

<comment><USER9> Well, that statement is true. You hire a statistician if you want statistics that are correct. Maybe people undervalue the latter...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It could be argued that we shouldn't abandon the term "statistics." Data science is to statistics what mathematics is to physics, but we don't (nor do physicists) call it "number science."

</comment><comment><USER16>
      I think data scientist is a sexed up term for a statistician.

fuck-yeah</comment>


A groundbreaking new series about apps and their creators - <AUTHOR> https://www.planetoftheapps.com <comment><USER2> It appears to be Apple-only?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, because it's also co-produced by Apple.</comment></comment>


Has Google.com hosted malware? - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=google.com&hl=en

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, this site has hosted malicious software over the past 90 days. It infected 3 domain(s), including cyber7in.com/, youtube.com/, stirringtroubleinternationally.blogspot.com/.

Part of this site was listed for suspicious activity 41 time(s) over the past 90 days.

Malicious software includes 449 trojan(s), 357 exploit(s), 64 virus. Successful infection resulted in an average of 3 new process(es) on the target machine.

Over the past 90 days, google.com appeared to function as an intermediary for the infection of 75 site(s) including bit.ly/, alfonsoquiros.com/, picamula.com.br/.</comment>


ChumpDump - Twitter friend management game (iphone) - <AUTHOR> http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/chumpdump/id373053965?mt=8

<comment><AUTHOR> This concept came out of StartupWeekend Columbus 2010. The core idea is that we're all following way too many people, and that odds are we have serious chumps lurking in our friends list. Everyday you play lottery on your friends, the game randomly picks a winner from your friend list- tells you a bit about them (# of replies, DM's, klout score etc) and then you decide, save or dump them. Players can override the lottery and dump on demand if they play more.</comment>


What If Google's Social Layer Is Chrome? What If Facebook Builds A Browser? - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/19/facebook-browser-chrome-social/

<comment><USER2> What if Techcrunch makes a tablet?</comment>


Wave to be acquired by H&R Block for $537M - <AUTHOR> https://blog.waveapps.com/wave-to-be-acquired-by-hr-block-for-537-million/ <comment><USER2> If wave could pipeline directly to H&R block for automated tax filings it could be a really nice experience. Can't expect too much though, I just hope they don't kill it.

<comment><USER3> We already have automated tax filings in the US, the IRS does them first and those are what they use to check what you file to them. H&R Block et all lobbies to force the US tax payers to not have automatic filing.

<comment><USER2> Wave is for small businesses or consultants. The government doesn't know about most of the things that happen at low levels until the business reports it. End of the year bookkeeping can be a nightmare.</comment></comment></comment>


Steve Yegge on Scalable Programming Language Analysis (Video) - <AUTHOR> http://vimeo.com/16069687 <comment><USER2> That's awesome -- I want access to that tool.

<comment><USER3> Indeed, I'm glad I didn't miss that video, it almost got lost on HN.

<comment><USER4> Me too, I found the link in reddit.

The talk is great.</comment></comment></comment>


Git Is an Onion - <AUTHOR> https://iq.opengenus.org/git-is-an-onion/ <comment><USER2> Nice, but shorter than I would have liked. I did not see the true beauty of Git until I delved into how it creates objects in the underlying hierarchical persistent map in a file-store. I'd recommend this article series to start getting an understanding of that file-store.

[https://www.daolf.com/posts/git-series- part-1/](https://www.daolf.com/posts/git-series-part-1/)</comment>


Demystifying Bodhi Meditation - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@richardeng/demystifying-bodhi-meditation-f1b31318b29b <comment><USER2> Shouldn't the last bulleted item start with _" Visualization"_ instead of "Meditation"?

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually, it doesn't matter. Visualization is hard work. Meditation is hard work. It's all the same.</comment></comment>


Would you trust a software developer in shorts? - <AUTHOR>

Our company's new policy allows us to come to work in shorts and t-shirt. Whats your opinion on dress code for the IT professionals? <comment><USER2> If the developer will never be customer-facing, who cares? But if there will be customer interaction, the important question is "Will our customers trust a software developer in shorts?".

</comment><comment><USER3> If the company is on the downward spiral or is not a tech company, then I think everyone expects control tactics such as dress code to be attempted to drive out the techies. If the company is a new up and coming tech company on the upward climb to greatness then who cares what employees wear. On the technical side, success occurs usually in spite of people that care about dress code, so taking time and expense to impress people is the opposite of what should be done.

</comment><comment><USER4> I wore flip-flops and skate gear in my role in IT for many years. Some of the most brilliant developers I know wore pajamas (because they slept over at work many nights) and Batman t-shirts with cargo shorts to meetings. I fully support creative minds having the freedom to be comfortable. My own company changed their policy a while back and we went from jeans and Linux Ts to Dockers and ties. It shouldn't matter, but I know my creativity dropped after that :)

</comment><comment><USER5> Not sure how Sutherland Global Services' Activision Department, the original one in Rochester Tech Park- not Canada, is doing- but around AT&T and other customer service providers we were the only ones who were able to wear anything. It ran as a startup when it first launched. It made us look less professional and things were more informal, but people were themselves and got the job done. Not sure if this relates but you get the idea.

</comment><comment><USER6> Dress code for non customer-facing employees should be relaxed. I seldom need to be on site at a client's office, but when I am, I dress just as their employees do - anything from a suit to business casual. Otherwise, I wear shorts and flip flops in the office, as do most of my coworkers.

</comment><comment><USER7> Cal Henderson, the guy who made Flickr, doesn't seem to own a pair of long pants. Also when I met Paul Graham, he was in shorts. So, yeah, I'd trust a software developer in shorts.

</comment><comment><USER8> Depends on the company. Where I work you'd stick out like a sore thumb if you came in wearing anything but t-shirts and jeans (or shorts).</comment>


Oakland's Pothole Vigilantes address gaping problem, one road crater at a time - <AUTHOR> https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Oakland-s-Pothole-Vigilantes-address-gaping-13899311.php <comment><USER2> Also see Britain's vigilante pothole superhero, "Wanksy": [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/the-filter/11570595/Meet- the...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/the-filter/11570595/Meet-the-man- using-penises-to-fill-potholes.html)

<comment><USER3> That city council sure hates it when someone makes them look stupid. I like how that guy claims that children will be dramatized by crude drawings of a penis. Does he know that half of those children have a real one and aren't traumatized?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The math here says more about America's road addiction than anything else. Oakland has an unusually large mileage of roads which are unusually broad. Additionally many of these roads are on unstable hillsides. The reality is that even if Oakland were hugely wealthy and efficient with its resources then there would still be a problem. Treating road repair like some kind of moral issue clouds the real costs.

<comment><USER5> I don't know which roads the vigilantes are focusing on. But my guess is they aren't concerned with the less frequently used roads on the hillsides. They're probably more concerned with the ones that should be obvious to city officials to fix sooner rather than later. The ones that impact people significantly near the higher concentrations of homes and places of business.

The road conditions in Oakland have been this way for decades. And whenever you talk about a problem like this in Oakland, it calls forth the general condition of Oakland, which very much is a moral problem (both due to the alleged corruption that keeps it from changing as well as the fact that you can barely enter the city without being confronted by extreme poverty and people with severe mental health problems who are just left behind). The holes in the road have at least one thing in common with the overall state of the city: neglect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> . "If someone gets hurt on the repair you made, you're opening yourself to liability."

What if someone gets in a car wreck because of a pothole? Is the city liable?

<comment><USER3> The arguments against them were absurd. Essentially: (1) Don't help people if there's a chance the broken justice system hangs you for it. (2) Don't help people unless you can help everyone. (3) Don't help because thinking about how the government is failing at one of its primary jobs makes us feel bad and makes the government look like it's failing at one of its primary jobs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> In Chicago they just fill the potholes with pickled peppers and onions.

No, really: [https://chicago.suntimes.com/2019/4/29/18621740/this-wgn- anc...](https://chicago.suntimes.com/2019/4/29/18621740/this-wgn-anchor- filling-a-pothole-with-giardiniera-is-the-most-chicago-thing-ever)

</comment><comment><USER8> The vigilantes should sue Oakland for expenses at the end of the year, would make for a hell of a case, particularly if they can demonstrate safety and quality at lower cost than govt would have spent.

<comment><USER9> That's absurd. They are not owed anything. The city has no contact with them.

What they ought to do is pay a bounty per job, and bond the "vigilantes" against injury/damage.

<comment><USER10> Your first paragraph would make sense if they were not required to pay city taxes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> When Elon Musk got the boring company going, I couldn't help wondering why there weren't entreprenuers in paving.

Why don't we have giant computer-controlled machines that go down roads, suck them in and grind them up and spit out new roads behind themselves -- as the defacto paving scenario?

I know they do this sometimes. But why not all the time? Instead of pothole fixing, just fix the entire road. Cheap road machines, drive the price down. And put down lane markings and reflectors as part of the process. And do every thing only at night.

<comment><USER7> Because nobody wants to be the mayor who replaced 500 high-paying union jobs with five machines.

<comment><USER12> How about the mayor who fixed the terrible roads?

<comment><USER13> Voters don't remember which maintenance task was performed last month, but union types don't forget who acted against their interests.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> [https://web.archive.org/web/20190629020151/https://www.sfchr...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190629020151/https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Oakland- s-Pothole-Vigilantes-address-gaping-13899311.php)

</comment><comment><USER15> We need one of these for each borough of the Washington DC area.

<comment><USER16> The city council needs to be replaced with people who aren't quite as crooked. Fortunately, the FBI is actively working on this problem. One down, seven to go.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm sure other vigilantes have been doing this for longer, but this seems like one of the major initial instigators of the movement: [https://www.citylab.com/equity/2017/03/portland- anarchists-w...](https://www.citylab.com/equity/2017/03/portland-anarchists- want-to-fix-your-streets-potholes/519588/)

</comment><comment><USER18> none of the local politicians in this article express any embarrassment or shame over their city's failure to maintain the streets in good working order

<comment><USER19> The current crop of local politicians are not to blame - it's squarely the fault of generations of politicians and voters who severely overbuilt road systems without a plan to fund maintenance.

We should tear out 50% of our asphalt and replace it with dense housing - there's a shocking number of giant, underutilized roads that are large enough to accommodate entire buildings. That's how you increase density and actually fund your infrastructure.

<comment><USER20> Are you talking about oakland specifically or American cities generally? I don't really think this applies to oakland, which was built out 50-100 years ago and has almost no new roads in the last several decades.

Maintenance was deferred here for way too long, and now it's going to take a long time and a lot of money to get caught up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Harry Tuttle is busy.

<comment><USER22> Here's your receipt, and my receipt for your receipt.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> why blame individual residents for the government's disfunction?

</comment><comment><USER24> Git 'er done!

</comment><comment><USER5> Oakland is a disaster. If I recall correctly, someone from the U.N. went to Oakland a year or two ago and declared a humanitarian crisis or something to that effect. I remember the wording was quite strong, saying that it matched conditions in third world countries they've been to which are in crisis. How people can just step right past so many homeless people and so much obvious city disrepair and human brokenness for years on end is beyond me. Yet Oakland and nearby Berkeley are home to a lot of people who are considered "progressive" and "caring" and who supposedly want a better world. If you can't achieve positive results for the people in your immediate vicinity (which the people of Oakland and Berkeley very much have the power to do, especially with things as simple as potholes), then do you get to count yourself as a person who can say they are working towards a better world? Thumbs up for these so-called vigilantes. They talk less and act more. I just hope they don't let the mayor co-opt their efforts by letting her go around saying she's all about it.

<comment><USER11> I remember reading a story by a motorcyclist who had ridden around the world. He had ridden through the most inhospitable places - some because of nature, some because of warfare.

I believe he was going through a US city and slept under a tree with his bike parked nearby, and he was woken and told it was too dangerous to do that. I thought it was Oakland, (but I might have misremembered and it was some other dangerous urban area).

<comment><USER25> I've spent many months cycling and walking throughout the US, mainly in the 2000s; it was striking to me to learn how scared some people are of the world around them.

I could imagine your story playing out anywhere - someone saying "it's too dangerous to do that here", doesn't actually mean much about the actual danger.</comment></comment></comment>


Arg.js – Lightweight URL argument and parameter parser - <AUTHOR> http://github.com/stretchr/arg.js Everything that existed for this was bloated or weird.  Arg.js is our attempt at keeping it simple and solving the problem in an elegant way. <comment><USER2> ugh. I know that popular convention is pulling so, so hard in this direction. But, am I the only one around here who thinks that mashing query strings and document fragments into the same namespace is a Bad Idea?

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree actually - I prefer to keep them separate, which is why we included the hash() and query() methods too. I'd say pick one and stick with it. Arg.js has to care about both, because people use both.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The library looks very nicely done, however, personally I think it is better to avoid such query string parameter formats completely. So to use an example from the Github page:

         http://www.stretchr.com/?name=Mat&company=Stretchr#?comment=123

should become

         http://www.stretchr.com/companies/Stretchr/users/Mat/comments/123

The URL now looks much nicer and more readable, and it also leads to organized hierarchy because of predictable URL patterns. So maybe the user wants to see the list of all users in the Stretchr company. So just from the URL they can determine that a good way to do that is probably by removing the end of the URL so that it is:

         http://www.stretchr.com/companies/Stretchr/users

Anyway, that's just my personal preference, but I think that query string style URL's should be avoided unless absolutely necessary and nicer REST style URL's should be used instead.

If you have a one page app you can route all requests on the domain to one page, and then use Backbone logic to look at the REST style URL and show the correct view based on the URL.

<comment><USER4> I agree if everything in your app follows a perfectly restful pattern, but what about if you want to capture application state that does not belong in a database. For example, what if you have an online store that has many different filters to narrow down selections. And you want to share this url with someone.

How would this be done using a RESTful url path? You have to use url params. If so, this seems to be a nice solution if your using a lot of params.

<comment><USER3> Here is how I would do it:

Assuming you were searching for computers with the following filters:

        Manufacturer: Apple
        Type: Laptop

You could represent that as:

         http://mystore.com/electronics/computers/manufacturer/apple/type/laptop

If you make your routing code (on either the frontend or the backend) robust enough then you will be able to support any number of filters in any order.

<comment><AUTHOR> for nested data - I 100% agree. I'd do that and use params for things like ordering or filtering on other fields:

        http://mystore.com/electronics/computers/manufacturer/apple/type/laptop#?order=-price&size=medium

Also - the `#` is nice for when you don't want to reload the page.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I would suggest adding a bower and composer package file, it's so nice to pull in a library like and just start using it without the additional tooling.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ohh that sounds good... I've never done it before - fancy giving me a pull request? :)

<comment><USER5> I can for composer in a few hours

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> been using this for a few days now. Simple to use and solves a common frustration, I've added it to my standard base app install.

Edit: base, not bass...silly me.

<comment><USER7> Any idea of how this compares to purl.js ? [https://github.com/allmarkedup/purl](https://github.com/allmarkedup/purl)

<comment><AUTHOR> We just thought it did too much for what we needed. It's a great library, and if I were parsing URLs in my apps I'd use it. But we just wanted a single get() interface and support for complex objects in the URL.

Arg.js turns an object like this:

        {
          tags: ["one", "two", "three"],
          deep: {
            nested: {
              objects: true
            }
          }
        }

into this:

        #?tags[0]=one&tags[1]=two&tags[2]=three&deep.nested.objects=true

<comment><AUTHOR> ... and vice-versa</comment></comment></comment></comment>


At JPMorgan, productivity falls for younger employees at home - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-14/at-jpmorgan-productivity-falls-for-younger-employees-at-home <comment><USER2> Never believe stories like this, measuring productivity is an impossible problem. Microsoft spend something in excess of 3 billion dollars trying to quantify productivity in the 90s and they couldn't do it. One of my college professors worked on this exact problem for the Army in the 80s, they created a formal domain specific language for quantifying employee productivity it took them 20 years and several hundred million dollars before they finally realized it wasn't generalizable. They had to scrap the entire project.

It isnt possible to measure employee productivity because its impossible to properly quantify the relative importance of a task. Properly scoping problems is a massive task and finally its impossible to adjust for employees gaming the system, collusion or simply malicious behavior.

Employees always figure out how to abuse productivity metrics.

<comment><USER3> > Never believe stories like this, measuring productivity is an impossible > problem

I want to start off by saying that I don't completely disagree with you, but all of us should take a step back and realize how an absurd of a position this is for us to be in a society.

This immeasurability is inversely proportional to the tangible, real value created. You can, for example, absolutely measure to the dollar the productivity of a plumber and you can easily compare two different plumbers, and see if environmental factors improve or decrease their productivity.

If you own a factory making screws you can unquestionably measure the valued added and therefor productivity of each and every employee. If you have a farm and you hire seasonal laborers to help you harvest, again you can easily measure the exact productivity of each worker, determine if a hot day makes them less productive etc.

Software engineers are a step removed from this in part because the things we make are of questionable value (especially in the extremes). Front-end contract engineers certainly seem to have measurable productivity. If someone can build you a working store front in 40 hours, you can compare this to another one how can do a worse job in 100 hours at the same rate.

But as software products grow more complex and the actual value more vague, then software engineer productivity likewise gets harder and harder to measure. And I think a real question every engineer who has worked at a large company has asked, even if they work their asses off, is "do I really create any value?"

Software engineers, again, are still closer to the side that you can measure real productivity because in at least most cases software itself is important. When you move on to other "office workers", those who are really struggling now, that value again is very hard to measure and therefore so is productivity.

The question that we need to ask more often is, if productivity is so hard to measure, maybe it is possibly because we might not be creating as much value as we have largely tricked ourselves into believing we have.

<comment><USER4> > You can, for example, absolutely measure to the dollar the productivity of a > plumber and you can easily compare two different plumbers

I'm curious about this idea.

What if plumber A shows up, quickly fixes something using existing, on-site materials, and ends up charging much less (no parts + 'quick' labor), and then the plumbing breaks again in X months.

What if plumber B shows up, takes more time and replaces a part of the plumbing, and ends up charging more (part(s) + more labor) but then the plumbing lasts for Y months, where Y >> X?

Which plumber is more productive? How does one convert the productivity to dollars?

<comment><USER5> Doesn't happen to the same degree as in software. With plumbing or painting, yes there are good jobs and bad jobs, but if the water gets to where it's going and there's no moisture, you're pretty much done. If the paint is on the wall and not on the ceiling or the trim, and you can't see roller marks, it's a good job. With software, there seem to be endless layers of nuance between good or bad, finished or unfinished.

Also, it should take X hours to paint a room of Y size with this many windows or doors. There are clearly established timelines for a job and any big deviation from that will get you fired (or not hired again by the same builder). There's no "due to this manager's lack of experience with agile, a project that should have taken 2 weeks took 4 and a half months, and the test coverage is poor".

<comment><USER6> Doesn't happen to the same degree as in plumbing. With front end or back end, yes there are good jobs and bad jobs, but if the data gets to where it's going and there's no bit rot, you're pretty much done. If the data is in the db and not on the paper forms, and you can't see it decrypted at rest, it's a good job. With plumbing, there seem to be endless layers of nuance between good or bad, finished or unfinished.

Also, it should take X hours to code a feature of Y size with this many fields or inputs. There are unclearly established timelines for a job and any big deviation from that will get you fired (or not hired again by the same builder). There's no "due to this plumber's lack of sobriety with the world, a project that should have taken 2 weeks took 4 and a half months, and the connections on the joints are poor".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> First off, let me say that I have happily WFH for a few years now. I'm not opposed to it. It works for some people.

However, this is likely a problem that will get worse, not better, over time. The early WFH experience was able to cruise on the office connections, cross- training, personal knowledge, team-building, etc. that had happened previously. The longer people are away from the office, the more that hard-to- quantify stuff will decay. Plus, onboarding a new college grad has got to be challenging when there's not a group of experienced team members around them to be able to see when they're struggling or headed off the wrong path without realizing it.

All of these problems can be mitigated, but they won't be eliminated. There will always be some positions and employees where WFH makes sense; as I said, it has often worked for me. But the idea that half or even a quarter of employees would become permanently WFH, is fantasy. It's kind of like having a long-distance relationship. You can do it for a while, but the penalty mounts over time in ways that are hard to quantify, but real nonetheless.

<comment><USER8> > _onboarding a new college grad has got to be challenging when there 's not a > group of experienced team members around them to be able to see when they're > struggling or headed off the wrong path without realizing it_

Has anyone figured this one out? It's inhibiting hiring quite significantly at our firm. I can't imagine we're the only ones.

<comment><USER9> For fresh grads: x2 Manager checkins daily for first 2 months

For the 2-5 yr expirence: x1 checkin daily for the first month

For the 5+ yr experience engineer: x1 checkin daily first week.

For all: reduce checkins as appropriate for each, case-by-case.

<comment><USER10> 2x Daily Checkin's for 2 months.... sounds like a recipe for micro management.

Also given most managers schedules are packed, I'm not sure how feasible this advice is. Especially if they onboard 2 or 3 new hires.

<comment><USER9> This is fresh college grads, and it's literally a "you have things to do? Are you stuck at all?" The checkins reduce in proportion to the positive check on things.

People don't understand the massive amount of time new hires can spend stuck (be it HR, software license issues, unfamiliarity with the process, etc).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This may be an unpopular opinion, but I honestly can't wait to get back to the office (or any other workspace that isn't my home). I really hate working at home. I don't have enough space or privacy, it becomes far more difficult to partition work and play when they occur in the same spaces / I find myself distracted more easily, and there is no one to socialize with when I'm sitting by myself every day.

Could I remedy all of these problems with extra effort? Sure, but it's far easier for me to simply go to the office.

<comment><USER12> I've officially reached zero productivity today.

I'm sick of being stuck in my tiny condo with the noise from neighbors and zero work/life balance. The constant streams of asks on Slack that wake me up in the morning and keep me up at night.

I'm making more in the stock market than my job.

<comment><USER13> Might seem a little off topic, but you are well positioned to read "Deep Work" by Cal Newport. It's been discussed on HN many times, and when I recently read it, it felt like someone finally "got it". Like "yes, this is what I've believed, but now someone else is saying it!".

Back on topic - I've been on both sides of this. I started working from home ~7 years ago when I took a job on the west coast, but opted to stay in Chicago.

Prior to this role, I had worked almost exclusively IN the office for ~10 years, with the very occasional WFH day (literally about 1-2 days/year, usually during the holidays, so definitely not a habitual thing).

When I started WFH, I _loved_ it...for about 3 months. I relished the lack of commute. I enjoyed the additional focus / reduced distractions. But then I started to feel the downsides. The lack of connection with people, the higher effort required to collaborate on some kinds of things, etc.

Over the years though, I found a balance. I found new outlets. New habits. And about ~25% travel helped break things up a bit.

And then COVID hit.

And now I'm back to fully hating WFH. My new habits, outlets, and most importantly the work travel, were no longer viable.

On top of that, while _I_ may have been comfortable with WFH by the time this all started, most of the people with work _with_ were not. So they're going through the learning curve, and I'm empathizing every step of the way. Which is in turn reminding me about the things I dislike.

Anyway, this is a super long winded comment that I'll bring to a close by saying: WFH is not a cure-all. It's not a solution to every problem. Like everything in life, it needs to be applied prudently, and a balance must be found.

My advice to you and people struggling with similar challenges is this: __quickly learn to set boundaries __.

\- Set "Do not Disturb" windows on all work apps/notifications.

\- Set clear expectations with your management about when you'll start/stop your day

\- Don't succumb to the temptation to just keep working...working...working at the end of the day

\- If possible (this is hard or impossible for some), set up a dedicated work space

\- Only check Slack once/hour if you can. Encourage your team to do the same.

\- Invest in good noise cancelling headphones

\- Oh, and read Deep Work :)

<comment><USER14> > \- If possible (this is hard or impossible for some), set up a dedicated > work space

This is the real killer IMO. It's impossible to focus in a studio apartment. It's where I cook, eat, drink, sleep, Netflix, and now work.

<comment><USER15> Try to micro partition your space.

Have a desk to work and a table to have food, possibly facing different walls.

Sit on a couch to play videogames and on a (office) chair to work.

Don't play games or watch Netflix on the computer you use to work. Uninstall them.

<comment><USER14> Yeah, counterintuitively buying a TV helped. It's better for my sanity than going full cold turkey on Netflix.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'll venture a good chunk of that is due to an out-of-sync-with-reality issue.

I think we'd all feel more productive and motivated working from home if the world wasn't collapsing all around us. Working on some new feature shaving a few milliseconds off an API call for investment bankers seems a bit out of touch, whether at home or in the office.

Blaming loss of productivity solely on working from home may be the wrong conclusion.

<comment><USER17> This has been a massive issue for me. I've had the same problem off-and-on over the past few years, whether in offices or at home. The work I do feels rather pointless in a world collapsing around me with no short or long term future. I at least sometimes get pulled back into feeling good about what I work on because it's a consumer app that does have a large userbase that depends on it for their happiness, and I do feel good about contributing to that, but if I was working in _finance?_ No way.

Anyone who has been able to stay productive, let alone get _more_ productive, in this reality is either in denial or far more optimistic than I'll ever be.

<comment><USER18> > in a world collapsing around me with no short or long term future.

This is just your world-view being shaped by your "news" sources. Maybe get off of social media for a while or only follow people who do not talk about politics/current events.

> but if I was working in finance? No way.

People who say this tend to underestimate the importance of finance. For example, enabling easy mobile banking for tech illiterate people is going to have a much larger impact on society than 99% of the apps already out there. Another: imagine if you can fix budgeting for the 90% of people who don't bother.

Don't shit on fields you don't understand. It makes you look ignorant and blocks you from even realizing the opportunities in the world.

<comment><USER19> > This is just your world-view being shaped by your "news" sources. Maybe get > off of social media for a while or only follow people who do not talk about > politics/current events.

This is a good way to escape reality, but not much more. I've done this plenty of times, but the world doesn't stop moving because you're ignoring what's going on. You become ignorant, and that is far worse.

> Don't shit on fields you don't understand. It makes you look ignorant and > blocks you from even realizing the opportunities in the world.

I took the comment as they are not interested in finance. Maybe they've worked in the field in the past and don't like it. They didn't "shit on" anything.

<comment><USER20> > This is a good way to escape reality, but not much more. I've done this > plenty of times, but the world doesn't stop moving because you're ignoring > what's going on.

Unless you're in a position to actually create change, I don't see how following every single update to an unfolding news story helps you. I am not talking about being completely ignorant. There is a saying, important news will always find you.

You could try avoiding news, and letting the news find you. Just following that simple methodology will greatly change the perspective you have on the world, and your short term life.

<comment><USER21> Avoiding the news is a good recipe for becoming ignorant, and only knowing the propaganda. In a world of public relations experts, the only way to avoid this is to look for original sources that you can trust (e.g. by interacting with people who were part of the event), and/or listen to as many different news sources as you can find. You should usually avoid the bigger ones, especially the ones intended for mass consumption.

If you just find out about the world from what the NYT or Fox or WSJ write about, you only know propaganda.

<comment><USER18> Following the news is a good way to drink a bunch of propaganda and think you're not ignorant when you still are. See Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia effect

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Younger employees probably have less space. Apartment/house shares, etc.

I've known some who are working on their bed. This isn't healthy nor is it likely to be conducive to productivity.

<comment><USER14> Not to minimize the struggles of suburban parents, but I do feel they might be divorced from what single urban life is like right now.

As a "younger" (30 year old) tech employee, in addition to living in a cramped space with 3 roommates in SF with no privacy, I have to work in a dining room because my bedroom has very thin walls. I also have to do cook and clean way more often, when I previously used to get 3 meals a day at work. I also have to haul groceries a couple times a week, which is super painful without a car, and then I have to compete for very limited fridge space.

I also haven't met friends and family in over 6 months, and my dating life's been obliterated. It's been mentally taxing in a way that living with your loved ones in a McMansion isn't. I can't even handle Zoom calls with friends anymore. It's the last thing I want to do after the 3 hours of back to back Zoom meetings I get roped into because I'm "senior".

Again, I don't mean to minimize the struggles of parents, college kids, the many people unemployed, our essential workers keeping things running, or our elderly who are at risk of dying. I'm in a very privileged position. But it's clear that all the lifestyle changes I've been forced to make have been a huge drain on my productivity.

<comment><USER23> How about moving back home? Your parents will be happy to have you around, cooking will be fun again, they are your best friends. And since there are only 7 zipcodes in the whole US where single men outnumber single women ages 20-40, your dating life may surprisingly improve too!

Listen this is a healthy perspective. Having such clarity about how shitty things are without the perks. Most people sit around years ruminating how crappy all this stuff is and you figured it out pretty quickly.

<comment><USER14> Thanks, that's actually great advice. I can't move back home - my parents aren't in the US and with border closures and tax implications I don't want to risk international travel now.

I don't have any visa issues thankfully, so I can pretty much relocate to anywhere in the country. I'm thinking of an AirBnb in a nice seaside town.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I think it's unfortunate that people are taking statistics (or anecdotes) from this period to support or not support WFH. At this point in time, it would be rather audacious for anyone to claim that productivity is more tied to the location of your desk than to the fact that people are working through the apocalypse, and some people are working through more than one "once in a lifetime" disaster. If productivity is down, maybe it's because we expect people to keep adding to billionaire bottom lines when their entire lives are falling apart, in many cases irreparably??

<comment> oh-4-fucks-sake Chiming in here. I moved across the country to SoCal and returned to the company I left, (re)-starting in Sept. 2019 as full-time WFH. I worked 4-5 days in the office before the move.

I'm a good control here because I've worked for the same company:

1\. In the office

2\. WFH pre-Covid

3\. WFH during-Covid

What's more, all of my favorite activities: golf, hiking, cooking--are largely unaffected by the pandemic. My income's been the same and the work activities have been roughly similar.

I felt relatively productive WFH pre-Covid but something has changed that's affected my productivity/motivation--and I can't put my finger on it. I think it's the general, subconscious, back-of-my-mind feeling that things are profoundly going to shit that's dragging me down. It's been a struggle now when it's not been before.

This is all purely anecdotal, but I think I'm a good case-in-point example of your position: that WFH is a convenient strawman to hand-wave away the effects of people living in the final pages of a Vonnegut novel.

I love WFH; I want to be productive; but I don't think that shoe-horning people back into offices (wearing a mask all day, nonetheless) is going to magically turn everyone back into creative, chipper good-time-charlies.

<comment><USER25> if we're doing anecdotes, the apocalypse makes me more productive since good work allows me to hide from everything else in the world being terrible

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The younger employees clearly haven't mastered the art of the automated Monday morning 7:47am email or how to rewrite git commit history to edit the author time stamp.

</comment><comment><USER27> The old guys want us back in the office as well. The party is over. It's a shame. I am getting so much more done at home. I can't believe I have to go back to that hell hole. There's no way I can replicate my home office setup. I think I am going to glue my headphones to my head claim it as an ADA accommodation...

</comment><comment><USER28> I want to bring up another question: How much of the work was synchronous vs asynchronous?

A company that is deeply in bed with meetings and face-to-face cooperation will suffer in a remote-first environment. The article, as others have noted, talks a lot about feelings of the upper management rather than any hard data.

Reading a linked article further down [0] says that JPMC, and other banks, were ramping up the return to the office for months, and it's now when they are making it mandatory.

Also, several weeks ago large New York landlords [1] were urging Wall Street banks to bring their staff back into work. Might be a coincidence, but the timing certainly warrants a look.

[0]: [https://archive.is/qJYRo](https://archive.is/qJYRo)

[1]: [https://archive.is/LSp9t](https://archive.is/LSp9t)

</comment><comment><USER29> As a young guy who was a full time remote worker for about 6 months, and also very honest with myself: I was more distracted as a remote employee. I wasn't as focused as I needed to be and when I was on site working next to the guy I reported to I was much more productive.

<comment><USER30> That's true but you were fooling yourself. Wait until you get fired and then you'll realize it's about getting your work done and not where you are sitting. Discipline should come from within.

<comment><USER29> > That's true but you were fooling yourself.

When did I fool myself? What are you talking about?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> We took an entire society from in-person offices with norms structured around a clear delineation between home/work to full WFH basically overnight. There was little to no training, often limited or confused technology rollout, and no planned culture transition. On top of that, many people had their kids kept home as well and had other essential services disrupted.

The fact that it is difficult to measure whether or not WFH had an impact on productivity or not is a HUGE mark in its favor. This should have just fallen apart, no consultant or advisor would have every recommended trying a mass remote working initiative this way. Instead it seems to have mostly worked.

I say mostly, because now we are at the point where it takes concious thought to build processes and culture to sustain a remote work culture. Developing young talent is difficult regardless of the circumstances, but in the in person office we have well developed norms, culture, programs, and processes to support them. Have you and your organization spent significant time thinking adapting and developing those cultural factors? I'm a remote work advocate because I've seen it work not just for me but for those around me, including junior talent, but you have to think about it, experiment, and work at it.

Beyond the workplace, a lot of people have complained about the sudden transition to WFH do to them being not set up for it. I've heard this expressed as because they have limited space / lots of roommates or just being uncomfortable with the lack of home/work seperation. The root cause of these is (mostly) the unique circumstances of this experiment. If WFH was a strong social norm, people would have chosen different living accommodations and would have "seperate spaces" without needing a corporate office.

While not every job ultimately can or should become primarily remote/WFH, I think the benefits for most information workers and their companies will win out. But right now we are going to see the long and hard process of rebuilding culture and norms in a new work environment.

<comment><USER32> I don't know about you, but work/life delineation pre-Covid wasn't much better. The reason that employees are feeling it worse now is because even that pretense is gone, even if it barely existed before.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Dimon kind of throws them under the bus, doesn't he:

"Work output by younger employees was particularly affected on Mondays and Fridays, according to findings discussed by Chief Executive Office Jamie Dimon in a private meeting with Keefe, Bruyette & Woods analysts. That, along with worries that remote work is no substitute for organic interaction, are part of why the biggest U.S. bank is urging more workers to return to offices over the coming weeks."

Of course, if one were cynical, you might suspect he wanted return to office anyway and young workers are a convenient and safe group to blame.

<comment><USER34> Do you think he's just lying about it?

When I was a younger worker I certainly did slack off on Friday and Monday when I could get away with it.

I've worked in more than one office where people started drinking on Friday afternoon _in the office_ when the CEO was out of town.

<comment><USER35> You're right in that most office workers take Monday to get going and wind down on Friday, but Jamie Dimon is the guy that lied in Congressional testimony multiple times, so that's equally likely.

<comment><USER34> It's not equally likely unless you think 50% of statements Dimon makes are lies.

If you do think that, it would be an interesting and unusual claim worthy of analysis, but it's certainly not a reasonable assumption without such analysis.

<comment><USER35> I think he's not a dispassionate observer of WFH trends. Lies have an underlying motive, and he's shown before that he is willing to lie in high- stakes testimony to avoid a negative outcome. Dimon's WFH assertion was made to analysts, and in his role as a leader at JPMorgan, presumably for a positive motive (market sentiment, boost morale, ensure a return to normalcy). This wasn't an off-the-cuff observation. By equally likely I mean he was in a situation with a clear motivation so the likelihoods are between truth and falsehood. In that frame, 50% is generous.

Edit: the above does preclude the idea that "truth" can have a motive behind it as well, but I don't particularly think he deserves the benefit of the doubt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I used to enjoy short periods of remote work but I have hated WFH since it started during the Covid period.

\- I miss talking with colleagues on things related to tech, but not necessarily related to the current task.

\- Video meetings are exhausting to be a part of for resolving simple things. It was way faster to just talk in person.

\- Video meetings feel less collaborative in general for open ended discussions, I see far fewer participation from teammates if it is not their own task.

\- New employees who onboarded during Covid feel isolated as they didn't get to build personal rapport with others in the same or different teams.

\- Interaction with people from different teams has almost disappeared, not everytime you had a new idea, you were actively looking for it.

\- As much as I enjoy cooking, I hate that it feels like a chore at this point to do day in, day out.

\- I hate that personal time and work time boundaries have merged and it seems like I am working at all hours and relaxing at all hours at the same time.

</comment><comment><USER37> > The bank has noticed the productivity decline among "employees in general, > not just younger employees," JPMorgan spokesman Michael Fusco clarified in > an emailed statement, adding that younger workers "could be disadvantaged by > missed learning opportunities" by not being in offices.

From the article

</comment><comment><USER38> Something I've observed is middle management is doing more of the doing. That is to say, they are cutting out their (younger) subordinates. This is happening as they want to be in the best position to survive layoffs. I sadly have overseen the talent reviews aka lay-off rankings and I've heard from colleagues that this is happening at their companies too.

<comment><USER39> This.

Interns and new graduates are mostly dead weight right now. They're impossible to train and bring up to speed without being physically together.

Layoffs will come and younger employees will be the first to go.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> With a 1.5 year old daughter WFH is great. Sure, there's distractions — she wants to climb on my lap and bang the keyboard and play with the mouse. In the start I used to get upset about the interruption but now I take a 5-10 min break and play with her. It gives me purpose to why I'm behind the keyboard in the first place. If I were in an office I'd miss these moments, leaving the house before she wakes up and returning just before she goes to bed.

</comment><comment><USER41> I'm not nearly as productive in my 1 bedroom apartment as I am at the office.

I try to only go to my desk during work hours but it's where my dining area would be, so while cooking I like to browse the internet/watch Youtube on my ultrawide monitor. At the same time, it's a small apartment, so the dining area is part of my living room.

This means I'm in the same room for pretty much the entirety of the day. I try to avoid going into my bedroom outside of night time sleep hours so that I can at least keep that space as more of a nighttime only relaxing one.

I desperately need a completely separate space. I was already planning to move to a new, nicer apartment this year, and because of COVID WFH I'm considering getting a 2br and taking the hit on the additional cost just so that I can have an entirely separate office space.

But regardless, while I don't mind WFH once or twice a week, I really prefer a separate office a majority of the time. I need and value the separation.

<comment><USER42> It sounds a little silly, but a uniform can help. Pick some clothes that are work clothes, put them on when you "go to work" and then switch back out when you're done. Sort of like how changing into gym clothes helps (me anyway) motivate myself to go out and excercise.

<comment><USER43> It's a pretty powerful psychological motivator - if I change into my gym clothes there's no way I'm not working out - imagine going through the trouble to change into your gym clothes and then changing back out without doing anything. To me it's almost unimaginable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I despise working from home, and think my productivity has taken a massive hit as a result. Believe it or not I _like_ being able to switch between a work and home environment, and find it vastly improves my mood and productivity.

</comment><comment><USER45> I work from home and have done so for a couple of years. It all depends, like most stuff in life. It depends on the person working from home, their situation, what their job is etc.

It works great for me since I have a dedicated office at home which is larger than any office space I've had before. I can have this because I can live on the country side where housing is cheaper.

I can walk my dogs when I need to and I can focus a lot more here than I ever could in an open office. I have respect for people who claim they cannot and see no reason (except a pandemic) why people should always work from home. I can imagine why a 20-year old in his or her 20 square meter apartment isn't as productive as they would be at a big, bright office. For me, if I had to go to an office, I would have to leave my dogs in some dog care facility in the morning, stressing in my commute to work since I am forever a optimist when it comes to time. I wouldn't feel good, I would be tired and unable to focus. I have been there and done that. I know I am more productive at home.

I think it's nice to offer people the ability so that for the people who thrives in it (like me) can have the ability to work from home.

It has been hard, because the WFH mentality is either all or nothing. Why can't people and companies simply be a bit more laid back and offer both? The world isn't black and white, just let people decide for themselves since we are all grown ups.

I expect companies not to treat me as a child and so should you.

</comment><comment><USER46> I prefer arrangements where I go in to work ~80% of the time. (e.g. ~1 day each week WFH of my own choosing, completely spontaneous day-of decision.)

That being said, I don't think my productivity has taken a hit during this long period of WFH. If anything, I think I'm being more productive. I do miss the social interaction, though. That's why I prefer the 80/20 arrangement.

</comment><comment><USER47> Without giving even the slightest idea on what productivity and how did they measure it I would say it is just plain propaganda from managers discovering that some of them (maybe a good lot) are becoming redundant.

As for learning things - there is insane amount of knowledge online and if one is unable to use it they have bigger problems than being/or not in the office.

</comment><comment><USER48> I've worked in two of these top investment banks and the amount of red tape that needs to be crossed is just breathtaking. Something as simple as provisioning a kafka topic? Go raise 2 requests, have it approved by these 4 people including your manager, then create multiple system accounts for each environment, each with its own approval steps. Agreed that these approvals and audit trails are necessary - but surely they can be simplified.

In office - you always knew someone who knew someone in that team. It was just a matter of picking up the phone, calling them and getting them to expedite your request. Now that everyone is WFH, you ping them on IM and wait for them to respond. With back-to-back zoom calls, it's honestly the last thing people want to do.

Couple that with the fact that there isn't a divide (like commute) between work and home anymore - so there's just more fatigue and higher levels of irritability.

</comment><comment><USER49> Apples to Oranges. This is not Work From Home. This is Work From Home during a Pandemic during Natural Disasters. WFHPND is a bit long for an acronym though.

Productivity may, actually, fall for younger employees at home, but data from this year is not valid for a calculation vs prior years.

</comment><comment><USER50> I've enjoyed working from home for the past four years but have serious reservations about how well it would have worked for me at the beginning of my career. Though I came into the labor market with a good degree from a good school, there was so much to learn and much of that happened informally and organically while in the physical presence of others with more experience. Perhaps the nature or structure of work will adapt in such a way that those early in their careers will not be hampered by being remote but in the meantime it does seem like there is going to be a need for extra patience in developing younger employees into higher levels of productivity.

</comment><comment><USER51> It's a good thing that in this natural experiment nothing else that might effect productivity changed between February and March except switching to work from home, right?

Since factors that might effect anxiety, physical and psychological health, priorities, demands on time and attention, and external factors effecting success stayed largely the same, but for switching from working in an office to working from home, so we know it was "the WFH lifestyle" (lifestyle?!?) that caused a 'hit' to 'overall productivity', so we can be confident that instructing employees to return to the office regardless of safety will restore this stolen productivity.

(not)

</comment><comment><USER52> Could they have chosen a more inane data point? These companies hire one person for the job of three people, underpays them for the number of years they squeeze from their stressed lives, then spits out the ones that can't handle the hazing.

</comment><comment><USER53> It's important to keep in mind we can't distinguish between work from home and having to work during a pandemic affecting everyone's daily routine and moral and keeping us from our normal activities.

</comment><comment><USER54> The fact that JP Morgan have managed to actually measure productivity for any complex role is frankly incredible. That alone will get them the (non-) Nobel prize in economics I imagine...

</comment><comment><USER55> Going way out on a limb here, maybe productivity has dropped due to the overall stress of the situation, and not being at home? It doesn't seem like it's ever going to be possible to separate the noise from the signal here - everyone's experiencing an unprecedented in their lifetime event causing an immeasurable amount of extra stressors...

</comment><comment><USER56> At this point I'm not sure I care whether I'm more productive at home or in the office. I'm simply not going to consider ever going into an office again unless someone wants to pay me at least double what I'd make working at home, and that's that.

FWIW my honest assessment is that I'm more productive at home on average, but with much higher variance.

</comment><comment><USER57> > extended remote work may not be all it's cracked up to be, at least for some > job functions. While pre-pandemic studies found remote workers were just as > efficient as those in offices, there were questions about how employees > would perform under compulsory lockdowns.

Or maybe ya know... A pandemic has its own negative effect on productivity.

</comment><comment><USER58> Not surprised in the least.

My hypothesis is that we _won 't_ see a massive shift towards WFH with the exception of a few big name tech companies. Most employers will require people to be in the office, at least a part of the week.

And even those companies who say "ok" to WFH, will start second guessing their decision within a couple years.

</comment><comment><USER59> Are bank employees that work on securities permitted to use common collaboration apps such as Slack? Or are they prevented from doing so to crack down on insider trading etc?

If they can't use common collaboration apps you in a remote setting you could see how this could impact their productivity.

<comment><USER60> You can chat to other people on internal IM apps or on Symphony/Bloomberg to external people. They're all monitored and recorded along with Zoom calls.

My drop in productivity as a trader was mostly due to the fact that despite we were raking in a lot of cash I could just see us barely getting paid at the end of the year so I just made sure our books weren't blowing up and spent most of my time finding a hedge fund job.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> [https://archive.is/JG7Sn](https://archive.is/JG7Sn)

</comment><comment><USER62> > Work output was particularly affected on Mondays and Fridays, according to > findings discussed by Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon in a private > meeting with Keefe, Bruyette & Woods analysts.

How would they measure that? It seems basically impossible, and the article has no details.

</comment><comment><USER63> Imagine for a second these comments but for an article praising productivity while working from home.

</comment><comment><USER64> Ramping employees new to the workforce is probably best done in person over the course of several months. There are so many things that someone new can spin their wheels on for hours that you can solve immediately.

Younger employees won't be getting the full support they need.

</comment><comment><USER65> Report: "WFH has made productivity go up."

HN: "Of course you're more productive. WFH is the best, I hope we never return to the office!"

Report: "WFH has made productivity go down."

HN: "Don't trust this. Productivity can't be measures."

</comment><comment><USER66> I don't get it. How does one even measure productivity and that too on a daily basis? How do they know that productivity fell on Mondays and fridays? Are they stalking their employees and tracking their every keystroke?

</comment><comment><USER67> For those who don't know, Bloomberg journalist have their bonus linked to their capacity to have their articles impacting th market. Bloomberg has developed a tool to monitor this.

</comment><comment><USER68> Don't young bank employees just sit around all day until their boss asks at 7pm for powerpoint they rush to research and make for the next 3 hours?

<comment><USER69> At least it would match the college experience of working those hours.

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> I see it as good news.

If employees can be fully productive while working from home, they can be equally productive while working from Mumbai.

I'd rather be in NYC office.

<comment><USER71> I somewhat disagree. For a lot of work you want workers to be in, or near the time zone of the majority of the workers. 10+ hours offset means no real-time communication and email chains take days instead of minutes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> Landlords in NYC will feel happy about this.

<comment><USER73> From their perspective, it would be rational to cut a deal with JPMC: they bring workforce back to offices, landlords get their money and give a % of that to a few execs at JPMC. And all the health related problems won't be a JPMC's problem. In some sense, JPMC's execs suggest to burn the workforce now, pocket the extra money, and depart to greener pastures (less contaminated with viruses) shortly before the fallout.

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> Sounds like propaganda to me. No word on how they have measured it.

</comment><comment><USER75> Maybe if they offered desk, stand+keyboard+mouse/desktop so people don't have to work from the "kitchen table" the results would be better?

</comment><comment><USER76> > At JPMorgan, productivity falls

How can it "fall" when JPMorgan doesn't actually _produce_ anything?

</comment><comment><USER77> There is a lot of certainty in the quotes this article shares given the complete lack of hard data.

> "The WFH lifestyle seems to have impacted younger employees, and overall > productivity and 'creative combustion' has taken a hit,"

What exactly is "creative combustion" and how can one measure it?

> "Overall, Jamie thinks a shift back to the office will be good for the young > employees and to foster creative ideas," Kleinhanzl wrote.

This is yet another remote work hit piece. There are not metrics presented, perhaps none collected, and the immeasurable "creativity" is used in place of facts.

For any of these claims to have credibility the following need to presented at minimum.

1\. What was measured.

2\. How it was measured.

3\. What the sample size was.

4\. How long it was measured.

5\. The delta in measurements alongside the raw data.

But I suspect Dimon and his cohort don't care about credibility. They just want to find a way to rationalize their decision.

<comment><USER78> Where's all of this for your side of the argument? Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> Am I supposed to feel bad for JPMC?

</comment><comment><USER80> I'm inclined to believe he's afraid of change and is abusing his power to push his feelings-based agenda.

To me, this goes one of two ways. One, he loses a huge swath of young workers that apply to different companies instead and his company folds. Two, he still loses a huge swath of young workers who don't apply but his feelings turn out to be true and the company comes out stronger. Either way, we won't know until many years down the line.

<comment><USER81> You seem to be operating under the assumption that all young employees want to work from home. I'm a young person who can't wait to go back to the office, and I know I'm not the only one. WFH is a much better setup for people who have two kids and a dog, not single people in small studio apartments.

<comment><USER82> What makes you think that WFH is better for people with kids and a dog?</comment></comment></comment>