Elon Musk is a nice chap

[james_s]

This would seem to imply that those on the right of politics have no interest in education. Imagine that...

That isn't true. What is actually the case is that it reached a critical mass where anyone leaning to the right of Stalin gets labeled as far right wing and bullied out. There have been many cases where teachers and university professors have been forced to resign for saying something that goes against the far left narrative.

[coppice]

This would seem to imply that those on the right of politics have no interest in education. Imagine that...

You have to be SERIOUSLY uninformed to think that way.

Education in the UK used to be controlled by the right of centre. When I left school in the UK in 1973, at the age of 18, I had been educated to a standard similar to a bachelor degree in the US. 3 years later I left university with a bachelor degree, having studied the material in a US master's degree. This was all paid for by the government. Then the left took control. Now kids leave school at 18, having studied only a fraction of what I learned at school. Bachelor degrees have been watered down to the point of worthlessness. For this, kids gets heavily into debt.

[RJSV]

james_s you cannot stop the ignorant slander slingers:
(At least not quickly).
   I got on a critical track (go figure), and some others nearby immediately took my comments / questions as;

   'HANNITY / FOX NEWS'
   'HANNITY / FOX NEWS'
   'HANNITY / FOX NEWS'

   I was amazed, to be smeared so quickly, almost longing for the days when personal attacks had some coherence...rather than repeating Tom Hartman Tom Hartman...who seems rather bent on a new
RACE WAR.  With the near constant references to lynchings (1888), and MORE lynchings (1907), and...
   Nope sorry, no HANNITY and sometimes other news media...I'm Green Party, Bernie Sanders, if any snide remarks or smearing is felt necessary.
   Sore Winners ! Youare

[Zero999]

The word woke has been used by both sides: left and right. It was originally meant to be awake to racial and social injustice. Many left wingers are proud to be woke. Those who are more centrist, . now see being woke as hypersensitivity to the point of seeing social injustice when there isn't any, which is why it's often used in the pejorative.

Both the Republican and Democratic parties have engaged in a fair amount of racism, as well as social justice in the past.

[CatalinaWOW]

The word woke has been used by both sides: left and right. It was originally meant to be awake to racial and social injustice. Many left wingers are proud to be woke. Those who are more centrist, . now see being woke as hypersensitivity to the point of seeing social injustice when there isn't any, which is why it's often used in the pejorative.

Both the Republican and Democratic parties have engaged in a fair amount of racism, as well as social justice in the past.

I am sure it must have happened somewhere, but I have never seen woke used except as a weapon.  A laudatory term describing how much better some individual or group is than some other less enlightened group.  Or a pejorative, as you describe.

I also have trouble describing the situation where woke is a working functioning word outside of some us vs them game.  Perhaps when describing someplace where persons of a rejected minority will received less obvious mistreatment, but even there the overtones of us vs them seem pretty strong.

[SiliconWizard]

teachers being civil service workers, will always lean left

Really? If you teach you're left leaning?

That's also saying the the binmen are left leaning, since they are civil service workers. I am pretty sure some of the lot that empty our bins are raving righters.

Whatever their reasons for being left wing, many studies of teachers at all levels, from kindergarten to university, in many countries show pretty much the same thing. In the 1960s the majority of teachers were left leaning, and now that pattern has become extreme. It varies by discipline. Hard science people tend to be the least left leaning, but even there there is a left leaning bias. In some disciplines there is barely a conservative left. One thing which has changed enormously in my lifetime is that at school in the 1960s I had little idea of the political leanings of my teachers. Now they can be really overt.

This would seem to imply that those on the right of politics have no interest in education. Imagine that...

This is a bit of flawed logic you're exhibiting here.

First, the left-inclined seem to be much more prevalent in public services in general, not just education. So teachers in public education are more likely to be left-leaning, not necessarily teachers in general as a profession. IME, teachers in private schools seem to be more diverse in terms of politics.

Secondly, people may have interest in education while having little interest in teaching. I'm sure that's for instance the case for a lot of us on this forum.

Thirdly, while I don't know how education systems are in details in all countries, in many of them, educational programs are defined by governments, and in at least the past 10-15 years, those programs themselves tend to be leaning towards left, so for people not being left-leaning, teaching can be a painful experience. That itself would partly explain why there are fewer right-leaning teacher, at least up to some level of education. Why are those programs left-leaning exactly, I have some ideas but no definite clue. Even the USA, which for a long time was almost the enemy of the left in general, is becoming largely left-leaning in its public institutions. Why that is so, not my area to analyze this.

[tom66]

Elon has told all Twitter staff to return to the office for 40 hours a week minimum; the work from home policy is ended effective immediately.

I can see this going down like a lead balloon in a time when almost everyone in technology has transitioned to at the very least a hybrid model (typically 3 days a week at home and 2 at the office kind of thing) and many are fully remote.  FAANG is divided on this; Apple wanted employees to come back for the full week, but in the end went down to a hybrid 3 day model.  But then again it's a pretty good way to get rid of staff by sacking them for misconduct or getting them to quit, rather than going for redundancy which in most countries/states implies additional payments to the employee.

Still, presumably losing thousands of talented engineers at Twitter will make it ever harder to implement all those new features ol' Musky wants.

[Bud]

What exactly they are "engineering" at Twitter?   New versions of the Blue Canary icon?   
When I visited IBM a few years back they had one "customer experience engineer". And Twitter has how many,  3700 of them?

[Black Phoenix]

Apple wanted employees to come back for the full week, but in the end went down to a hybrid 3 day model.

Apple finished before the pandemic (or during) a gigantic campus. They spent a ton of money on that for then not to be used?

Not only is that the reasons why most tradicional companies are against WFH, they have tons of assets on buildings that are paying rent and/or maintenance fees but also the over controlling managers who can't manage if they are not with their head always above the shoulder of their subordinates and need to have a way to show their internal desire of control.

It doesn't matter if the workers are happier, are healthier, have extra money and are productive as always. It matters that the management is not in full control of the "cattle" and that pisses then off.

[james_s]

Elon has told all Twitter staff to return to the office for 40 hours a week minimum; the work from home policy is ended effective immediately.

That right there is probably going to turn out to be an incredibly expensive mistake, and for what gain? My current employer has been hybrid since long before the pandemic and I have several friends that have been working fully remote for more than a decade. Once you've had a taste of that it's really hard to go back, and what exactly is the draw to work at Twitter? Tesla is making groundbreaking technological progress developing completely new vehicles. SpaceX is revolutionizing space travel. Twitter is... developing web based software, like a zillion other tech companies. People will put up with all kinds of shit and working for an intense workaholic when they are doing something really cool or when there is an opportunity for a huge payoff when a startup makes it big. But Twitter? I would bet money that 80% of the remaining staff has gone into full on job search mode. A lot of them might stick around while the economy is in the tank but when things pick up again they will be gone. Musk should be asking himself what does Twitter have to offer that will make prospective employees choose to work for him over all the other tech companies.

I almost wonder if he's actually trying to destroy Twitter as a service to humanity.

[SiliconWizard]

Uh yeah. I have very mixed feelings about this whole work at home thing. Sure there are good sides to it, but a lot of bad ones too.
While this is clearly bringing a bit more comfort to workers and cutting costs, this is also not empowering them in the least. From what I've seen and what we can expect in the future, it's the opposite. It  becomes extremely difficult for most people to make a clear distinction between work and private life, and it tends to contribute to destroying privacy, something that is already ongoing through other means. Your work is literally "invading" your home.

I am all for empowering people, but this is not it IMHO. It would require a complete change in the way we work, and *where* we do so is only a minor point in that equation. It doesn't matter, and only has the potential of making things worse.

As to Elon Musk, nobody knows what he is doing exactly. Just like nobody knows what all the other billionaires throwing huge amounts of cash here and there are doing exactly either. I (as well as some others) have been momentarily "happy"/laughing seeing all the woketards going bonkers over Musk buying Twitter. As if their lives depended on it. But it's only temporary and I have no illusion. Musk has mentioned turning twitter into something that would be close to what WeChat is in China, some sort of platform where "you do it all". I like the free speech idea, but I don't like the latter idea of concentrating too many services onto a single platform, potentally making it a gigantic surveillance system, and getting inspiration from totalitarian regimes.

So, we'll see. But what I'm almost pretty sure of is that it won't be anything we expected, be it the good for those thinking it'll be this great defense of freedom, or the bad for those thinking that it's way too dangerous to let people speak up, or whining about Twitter employees allegedly being bullied. All that is just the tip of the iceberg.

[james_s]

Uh yeah. I have very mixed feelings about this whole work at home thing. Sure there are good sides to it, but a lot of bad ones too.
While this is clearly bringing a bit more comfort to workers and cutting costs, this is also not empowering them in the least. From what I've seen and what we can expect in the future, it's the opposite. It  becomes extremely difficult for most people to make a clear distinction between work and private life, and it tends to contribute to destroying privacy, something that is already ongoing through other means. Your work is literally "invading" your home.

It's not for everybody but it works for me. I hate commuting, it's at least 2 hours out of my day to commute to and from downtown, that's 2 hours I can be doing something else. By working from home I spend more time working and I get more time to myself too. Most modern offices have embraced the open layout where you get no privacy and there are constant distractions, at home I have none of that.

[AVGresponding]

teachers being civil service workers, will always lean left

Really? If you teach you're left leaning?

That's also saying the the binmen are left leaning, since they are civil service workers. I am pretty sure some of the lot that empty our bins are raving righters.

Whatever their reasons for being left wing, many studies of teachers at all levels, from kindergarten to university, in many countries show pretty much the same thing. In the 1960s the majority of teachers were left leaning, and now that pattern has become extreme. It varies by discipline. Hard science people tend to be the least left leaning, but even there there is a left leaning bias. In some disciplines there is barely a conservative left. One thing which has changed enormously in my lifetime is that at school in the 1960s I had little idea of the political leanings of my teachers. Now they can be really overt.

This would seem to imply that those on the right of politics have no interest in education. Imagine that...

This is a bit of flawed logic you're exhibiting here.

First, the left-inclined seem to be much more prevalent in public services in general, not just education. So teachers in public education are more likely to be left-leaning, not necessarily teachers in general as a profession. IME, teachers in private schools seem to be more diverse in terms of politics.

Secondly, people may have interest in education while having little interest in teaching. I'm sure that's for instance the case for a lot of us on this forum.

Thirdly, while I don't know how education systems are in details in all countries, in many of them, educational programs are defined by governments, and in at least the past 10-15 years, those programs themselves tend to be leaning towards left, so for people not being left-leaning, teaching can be a painful experience. That itself would partly explain why there are fewer right-leaning teacher, at least up to some level of education. Why are those programs left-leaning exactly, I have some ideas but no definite clue. Even the USA, which for a long time was almost the enemy of the left in general, is becoming largely left-leaning in its public institutions. Why that is so, not my area to analyze this.

So, what you are saying is, left leaning people are more likely to do public service type jobs, whereas right leaning people are more likely to go for jobs that pay them more.

[DavidAlfa]

They take jobs that pay them more: politicians, lawyers, directives, companies controlling first need products or health care... with all that money coming from lower-class people aka "left leaners".

We're still in medieval era, with modern lords and farmers.

While normal people take jobs and get paid what these consider enough.
"The company is going bankrupt, we can't pay you $100 more", talking from one of his 5 homes or a $100K car.
It's great if you gain millions, just make a 5% less and provide a better life to your employees.

[tom66]

Apple finished before the pandemic (or during) a gigantic campus. They spent a ton of money on that for then not to be used?

Not only is that the reasons why most tradicional companies are against WFH, they have tons of assets on buildings that are paying rent and/or maintenance fees but also the over controlling managers who can't manage if they are not with their head always above the shoulder of their subordinates and need to have a way to show their internal desire of control.

It doesn't matter if the workers are happier, are healthier, have extra money and are productive as always. It matters that the management is not in full control of the "cattle" and that pisses then off.

Yeah, but this is sunk cost fallacy.  Before the pandemic, no one really knew how companies would work remotely en-masse.  Then everyone was forced to make it work, and it turned out, it wasn't so bad.  In fact, so many positives came from it. 

Sometimes big societal changes happen in completely unexpected ways.  Whilst it's of course not comparable on a moral/social level, I'm thinking of WWII being the reason many more women entered the workforce, because the men were off shooting the nazis.  No-one could have really predicted that before it happened, but once it did it became obvious why it was good to have a broader workforce.

Companies that don't embrace the new way of working will die out, just like people that believed women shouldn't be able to do the same jobs men can became irrelevant quickly enough.

[Zero999]

So, what you are saying is, left leaning people are more likely to do public service type jobs, whereas right leaning people are more likely to go for jobs that pay them more.

It's probably because left leaning political parties want to invest more in the public sector.

Uh yeah. I have very mixed feelings about this whole work at home thing. Sure there are good sides to it, but a lot of bad ones too.
While this is clearly bringing a bit more comfort to workers and cutting costs, this is also not empowering them in the least. From what I've seen and what we can expect in the future, it's the opposite. It  becomes extremely difficult for most people to make a clear distinction between work and private life, and it tends to contribute to destroying privacy, something that is already ongoing through other means. Your work is literally "invading" your home.

It's not for everybody but it works for me. I hate commuting, it's at least 2 hours out of my day to commute to and from downtown, that's 2 hours I can be doing something else. By working from home I spend more time working and I get more time to myself too. Most modern offices have embraced the open layout where you get no privacy and there are constant distractions, at home I have none of that.

I hate commuting, but also don't think I could work from home, so I found a job within around 4 miles from my house and cycle to work. The exercise keeps my stress levels down. It also helps there's a good cycle track, so I can avoid the main road. I could get a job which pays much more, but the extra money after tax, wouldn't cover the extra time and cost of the commute.

I think Elon is making a mistake forcing everyone back into the office. Every role should be considered individually, which will take time and some cost, but it would be worth it. I suppose he's not used to working in the IT sector.

Whilst it's of course not comparable on a moral/social level, I'm thinking of WWII being the reason many more women entered the workforce, because the men were off shooting the nazis.  No-one could have really predicted that before it happened, but once it did it became obvious why it was good to have a broader workforce.

It also had it's downside: lower wages. Back then a man's wage was enough for food and a roof over his family's head. Now both parents invariably have to work, creating a bit of a headache for childcare. I'm not saying this outweighs the benefits: more freedom to women, but that it's not perfect.

[Psi]

Uh yeah. I have very mixed feelings about this whole work at home thing. Sure there are good sides to it, but a lot of bad ones too.

I think it's very dependent on the worker in question.
For some people working from home is great and they're more productive than when at work. For others the temptation, distractions and less risk of being seen slacking off, results in less work getting done.

[Zero999]

Uh yeah. I have very mixed feelings about this whole work at home thing. Sure there are good sides to it, but a lot of bad ones too.

I think it's very dependent on the worker in question.
For some people working from home is great and they're more productive than when at work. For others the temptation, distractions and less risk of being seen slacking off, results in less work getting done.

I fall into the latter category. I also think it's good to keep my home life separate from work, from a psychological perspective. I think if I had to work from home, I would set aside a spare room to use as an office, or take a laptop to a public library and work there.

[boz]

Someone once asked me how many people worked at my last company, I said "about 50%" lets face it. we've all seen companies like this, and these internet companies especially have a lot of fat to trim after many plump years. If I'd tried to back out of a sale after seeing how sh** a product was and then got forced to buy it anyway, by a judge, I would do whatever it takes to try and re-coop my investment and at the end of the day twitter runs a web site and it doesn't take thousands of people to do that.

Musk is his own worst enemy, the media which laps up his every word is worse, the guy can be a douche and may act like a dick-head sometimes but overall I think his heart is in the right place and he's a genuine force of good for the world. I will take 100 Musks over any politician or media influencer.

[james_s]

I hate commuting, but also don't think I could work from home, so I found a job within around 4 miles from my house and cycle to work. The exercise keeps my stress levels down. It also helps there's a good cycle track, so I can avoid the main road. I could get a job which pays much more, but the extra money after tax, wouldn't cover the extra time and cost of the commute.

I think Elon is making a mistake forcing everyone back into the office. Every role should be considered individually, which will take time and some cost, but it would be worth it. I suppose he's not used to working in the IT sector.

The arrangement that has worked well for me is hybrid, go into the office 2-3 days a week and work from home the rest, it's what I was doing for a couple years prior to the pandemic.

I don't think requiring everyone to be in the office at least a day or two a week is unreasonable, but it's important to offer flexibility, find out what works for the individuals and give them the freedom to do it as long as they're getting their job done. Arbitrarily going from fully remote to coming to the office 40+ hours a week overnight is completely unreasonable and it makes it glaringly obvious that he has no idea how the tech industry works. All of the big software companies are offering flexible working now, except for Twitter. They aren't building cars, they don't need to be physically present, the work is all done sitting at a PC.

[james_s]

It also had it's downside: lower wages. Back then a man's wage was enough for food and a roof over his family's head. Now both parents invariably have to work, creating a bit of a headache for childcare. I'm not saying this outweighs the benefits: more freedom to women, but that it's not perfect.

I suspect a significant part of this is the fact that most people spend as much as they can afford on housing. When you have two incomes you can afford more so people spend more on housing and housing prices rise to meet what people are willing to spend.

Another factor is people today have far higher expectations. Houses (in the USA at least) are enormous compared to the post-WWII years, we have far more luxury items, TVs, entertainment systems, computers, tablets, phones, video games, all manner of other widgets that people either didn't have at all or had one of back in the era my parents grew up in. Even when I was a kid my grandparents were the only people I knew that had cable TV, now virtually everyone has some kind of pay TV.

[Zero999]

It also had it's downside: lower wages. Back then a man's wage was enough for food and a roof over his family's head. Now both parents invariably have to work, creating a bit of a headache for childcare. I'm not saying this outweighs the benefits: more freedom to women, but that it's not perfect.

I suspect a significant part of this is the fact that most people spend as much as they can afford on housing. When you have two incomes you can afford more so people spend more on housing and housing prices rise to meet what people are willing to spend.

I'm talking about in the UK, where there is a huge shortage of affordable housing. There are two reasons for this. Firstly the government sold the council houses off for cheap in the 1980s and 1990s and didn't build enough new ones. Secondly, from the late 90s onwards, the government has allowed mass immigration, which has increased the population, thus the demand for housing, pushing up prices even more. Of course if one points the latter out, they're labelled a racist or xenophobe.

Another factor is people today have far higher expectations. Houses (in the USA at least) are enormous compared to the post-WWII years, we have far more luxury items, TVs, entertainment systems, computers, tablets, phones, video games, all manner of other widgets that people either didn't have at all or had one of back in the era my parents grew up in. Even when I was a kid my grandparents were the only people I knew that had cable TV, now virtually everyone has some kind of pay TV.

Those luxury items have become much cheaper over the last 75 years, but some have become essential, such as a mobile phone and broadband and most people now need a car to drive to work, whilst back then most people worked nearer to where they lived. Another issue is the government shut down much of the railway network in the 1960s, making it even worse. Food is also more expensive, as many people have lost the ability to cook from scratch and now both adults in the household work, there's less time available for food preparation.

[AVGresponding]

I'm talking about in the UK, where there is a huge shortage of affordable housing. There are two reasons for this. Firstly the government sold the council houses off for cheap in the 1980s and 1990s and didn't build enough new ones.

In fact Milk Snatcher put in spending restrictions making it very difficult if not impossible for Councils to build fresh stock to replace what had been sold, which was something of a scam in itself to provide extra revenue for the government to provide more tax cuts, and thus stay in power longer on this basis.

https://fet.uwe.ac.uk/conweb/house_ages/council_housing/print.htm

[tom66]

You have to be SERIOUSLY uninformed to think that way.

Education in the UK used to be controlled by the right of centre. When I left school in the UK in 1973, at the age of 18, I had been educated to a standard similar to a bachelor degree in the US. 3 years later I left university with a bachelor degree, having studied the material in a US master's degree. This was all paid for by the government. Then the left took control. Now kids leave school at 18, having studied only a fraction of what I learned at school. Bachelor degrees have been watered down to the point of worthlessness. For this, kids gets heavily into debt.

No, if anything kids learn more these days. And educational attainment statistics show on average kids are getting smarter, by a few percent per year, if you go by general intelligence statistics.  This is not all due to school;  removing lead from petrol, overall nutrition and health improving and the country getting slowly richer all contribute too.

It is, true, though that kids are not necessarily learning the right things.  There's too much focus on prepping someone for university rather than a vocational field.  We can partially blame Blair for this, as he aimed for the ludicruous target of 50% of students going to university (which was indeed reached).  There isn't much point having a police officer with a degree in modern history or a plumber who knows more about the USSR than they do about welding copper pipes.

To call the education in this country anything close to left wing shows you've not been sufficiently exposed to it recently enough.  It really isn't left wing, unless you consider learning about other people and cultures to be a leftie thing.  In my recent experience, it is a very pro-capitalist, pro-state teaching system, teaching individual responsibility above collectivism. (And that's not necessarily a bad thing.  Personal responsibility is vital.)

[PlainName]

There isn't much point having a police officer with a degree in modern history

Why not? Isn't broadening the mind a worthy cause, or should people be deliberately dumbded down to they know their place?

And isn't the real benefit of university not so much knowing a ton about some specific subject but knowing how to learn about stuff? Anyone that got through would surely retain some benefit from that regardless of their eventual calling.