Just Pinging You For a Quick Tag-up To Circle Back
Review of a few action items we had to put a pin in to tackle offline
No sooner do I publish an essay about the sheer idiocy of resisting remote work, then it hits home (so to speak) and I’m asked to make the drive in an additional day per week. When my peers asked for a rationale of the unpopular decision, we received the following reply from management:
“It’s mission-critical to stay incentivized. Our business plan will foster flexible solutions for our customer base; if you can’t think outside the box, you’ll be downsized. It’s a paradigm shift. Hey, hey! Lookout!”
That’s a word-for-word quote of Weird Al Yankovic (Mission Statement), but it’s every bit as meaningful and coherent as the jargon of an answer we’ve received. The “water-cooler” talk that ensued among my peers (virtually-cooled virtual-water; real talk) made me want to write a follow-up to my remote work article.
Mainly, I wanted to add one additional consideration about what WFH reductions can signal.
Last year, the job market was hot. Companies were desperate to hire. For example, in February 2022, I got cold-called by an HR rep from Amazon, and invited to attend a recruiting event at Stone Brewery. They gave me, and hundreds of other financial professionals a very tasty dinner, and an unlimited, open, Stone Brewing bar. Free beer! In exchange, we were subjected to 90 minutes of listening to a traveling team of middle-management blowhards give their department pitches.
Not the worst deal! I also got a nice tote bag and a thermos. They were doing this event all across the country - it was a road show. That had to be costly. Fast forward to 2023, and that same Amazon is laying off thousands and thousands of employees. No longer traveling the nation, pleading with prospects to apply at Amazon - now they can’t unload people fast enough. Times have changed.
Aside from wining-and-dining hundreds of long-shot prospects, another recruiting tactic from back in the gold-rush year of 2022 was for companies to tout remote and hybrid work. By pulling the WFH lever at a company, staffing numbers went up! Now, in 2023, times are tough. Companies may want to avoid the ugly optics (and expensive severance packages) of layoffs. If the people in management are tricksy Hobbitses, maybe they’ll look at that WFH lever, and pull it back the other direction. Maybe that will make staffing levels go down, with no layoffs, and no severance packages. Magic! Just a whole lot of grumbling from people like me, caught in the middle.
And so, if your company is scaling back remote work opportunities, that’s double jeopardy. It not only means that your company is pushing away top talent, but they are also eyeing layoffs on the horizon.
As long as I’m already in follow-up mode, and seeing that we are now at the one quarter mark of 2023, this seems like an appropriate time to write follow-ups to some of the other blog entries I’ve made in the six months (six months!) I’ve now faithfully been writing. And so, in chronological order:
The Good News About Chromebooks (Five Part Series)
I stand by every word of my Chromebook manifesto; but I’ve also taken no criticism for it, and thus, standing by the article is quite a passive activity. It’s a different story for the recurring character of this blog, that is Chrome Unboxed. Last week, our old friend Robby Payne dropped some similarly saucy words about Chrome OS:
The tweet and the article are full of annoyed commenter feedback. The article seemed to trigger Linux users, more than anyone else. When I think of Linux users, I picture Professor Frink (did you know his full name is “Professor John I. Q. Nerdelbaum Frink Jr.”?), and yes, that is exactly the type of edge-case super user, who definitely should not get a Chromebook. I couldn’t follow the counter-arguments from the Linux trolls. It’s like they even think their thoughts in programming code.
And thus, the uproar in the comments (for merely suggesting that it is perhaps ok for a $999 Chromebook to exist) only proved my point further: if you’re not sure what to buy, buy a Chromebook. If a Chromebook won’t work for you, then you are already quite well aware of that.
Judging by the pronounced spike in engagement with Chrome Unboxed’s Twitter post, I think it was a great driver of traffic for them. I wish it worked out the same when Cool Story, George posted an article like that, but on the other hand, it would be tedious work trying to translate Cobalt to English and respond to such nerdery in the comments.
What Is a Substack?
In my “What Is a Substack” article, I wrote, “The actual main thing I like about Substack is that it’s growing and new and it seems like whoever is running it is really trying to make a cool and innovative platform.”
I’m slightly worried about the “growing” part. Last week, Substack sent me this:
That’s an invitation for me to be on an exclusive list of people with the opportunity to give Substack $100. Yes, the blog platform I’m writing on just basically emailed me and asked for money. I’m no expert on investment fundraising, but this does not project, to me, a message that all is financially well at Substack HQ.
What else is new in 2023? Everybody’s a little short on cash. I commented on their article that I too am offering an exciting opportunity for the community to send me $100. I received no funding but the comment got a lot of likes.
Top 3 Tech Things I’ve Given Up For Lent
Just a quick update on this one. We’re past Palm Sunday and into Holy Week, and I’ve yet to touch Crash of Cars. I remained true to my fast. No withdrawal symptoms. I was right all along - I’m not an addict, I can quit anytime!
Also, I won the family March Madness bracket this year, with the age-old, tried and true method of asking one’s wife to help make the picks (worked out nicely that her alma mater is SDSU).
HP Dragonfly Chromebook Review
Lastly, I’ve got an update to the ongoing saga of the $999 Chromebook. HP’s Dragonfly Pro Chromebook has had several rounds of restocks now. It keeps selling out, and when it does show up for sale, they say you won’t receive your order for six weeks.
As I publish this, there is 1 HP Dragonfly Chromebook remaining in inventory. It remains unclear to me if demand is truly that high, if HP is metering production on purpose due to the Chromebook being sold at a loss, or if there is some supply chain issue - maybe on sourcing that ridiculous 1,200 nit screen.
I think in this situation, we turn to Occam’s Razor, which states that the simplest explanation is the most likely. In that case, what’s happening is that my blog has succeeded in changing the public perception of Chromebooks. Demand is higher than HP ever could have anticipated, which is why they can’t build these things fast enough.
I’m not done being an unpaid promoter for Google yet! Here’s to 2023 Q2!