|
OneMoreTime posted:If you are meaning more recently post-Neumann, I have no idea. If you mean when he was in charge... That's pretty much the definition of a Ponzi scheme isn't it?
|
#
?
Sep 21, 2022 04:32
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 7, 2024 23:48 |
|
|
Capt.Whorebags posted:That's pretty much the definition of a Ponzi scheme isn't it? I don't think there's any fraud allegations on their investment side. All of their nominally-financially-sophisticated private investors had access to the financials saying that the company was losing money hand over fist while paying Neumann an enormous salary, they just decided to be idiots and buy a share of the company anyway.
|
|
#
?
Sep 21, 2022 05:05
|
|
|
Foxfire_ posted:No. A Ponzi pays old investors with money from new investors. WeWork never paid any investors, it's just an ordinary unprofitable business. There's also nothing really novel or techy about it, "buy or lease a building, then rent it out in smaller pieces" is just a normal office space landlord. What's baffling to me is that there's no added value to having this be a big national company other than VCs subsidizing it. Coworking spaces, either singular or as local chains, are a dime a dozen.
|
|
#
?
Sep 21, 2022 05:08
|
|
|
Absurd Alhazred posted:What's baffling to me is that there's no added value to having this be a big national company other than VCs subsidizing it. Coworking spaces, either singular or as local chains, are a dime a dozen. But have you considered Disruption? And I assume WeWork had an app.
|
|
#
?
Sep 21, 2022 05:13
|
|
|
You have to keep in mind that there is still a significant amount of people with money to throw around who think computers are literally magic.
|
|
#
?
Sep 21, 2022 06:03
|
|
|
WeWork hjad chocolate fountains and a DJ. do normal office space rental companies pay for that?
|
|
#
?
Sep 21, 2022 06:41
|
|
|
My only exposure to WeWork was that their Sydney office had free beer on tap and you could get to the break room from the street without being challenged or requiring credentials. So thankyou WeWork investors for providing free beer when stuck in Sydney.
|
|
#
?
Sep 21, 2022 09:07
|
|
|
At least it went to a good cause.
|
|
#
?
Sep 21, 2022 12:49
|
|
|
Kwyndig posted:Huh, I thought WeWork crashed and burned once the pricing on office space restabilized with everybody being forced back to work in the office again. They're bleeding money at a pretty hefty rate, but they've got enough banked that they can afford to circle the drain for a couple more years before their coffers finally run dry.
|
|
#
?
Sep 21, 2022 13:10
|
|
|
Ghost Leviathan posted:You have to keep in mind that there is still a significant amount of people with money to throw around who think computers are literally magic. That's what's kinda funny. WeWork somehow got lumped in with "Tech" but there's not really any innovation. It's somewhat similar to the food box companies like Blue Apron and scooter rental companies. It may or may not be a viable business but there's not really anything new,, innovative or disruptive about it.
|
|
#
?
Sep 21, 2022 13:27
|
|
|
Capt.Whorebags posted:My only exposure to WeWork was that their Sydney office had free beer on tap and you could get to the break room from the street without being challenged or requiring credentials. So thankyou WeWork investors for providing free beer when stuck in Sydney. I rented a WeWork space once on a trip to LA, and at around 2pm people started showing up and drinking, by like 4 it was a massive party. I realized the manager (guy in his early 20s) had invited a few dozen friends to come drink the free WeWork beer. Kinda hard to get work done in the middle of a frat party, so I left.
|
|
#
?
Sep 21, 2022 13:29
|
|
|
OneMoreTime posted:This caused pretty much all VC funding to dry up until WeWork got rid of Neumann, but not before paying him a ridiculous amount of money to just leave.
|
|
#
?
Sep 21, 2022 15:54
|
|
|
already owned properties that he rented to himself? why do i get the feeling this is just another kid that hustled and gradded college debt free all by his ssj john galt self. (oh and has parents that gifted millions of dollars of NYC properties, paid for college, a nice off campus apartment, etc)
|
|
#
?
Sep 21, 2022 19:46
|
|
|
I also thought I remembered reading something about how WeWork technically rented a lot of their space from him, was basically a way to redirect VC funding into personal income.
|
|
#
?
Sep 21, 2022 20:38
|
|
|
He did, he actually bought a ton of properties that weeork then rented. The biggest is he personally trademarked WE and they had to pay him to use the trade mark. Dude was massively grifting the company and it's one reason he got ousted because as more came out he became a figurehead of how bad alot of silicon unicorns were.
|
|
#
?
Sep 22, 2022 13:35
|
|
|
my current tech nightmare is twitter links not embedding, what's up with that?
|
|
#
?
Sep 23, 2022 00:33
|
|
|
Lack of twitter is a tech blessing
|
|
#
?
Sep 23, 2022 00:58
|
|
|
starkebn posted:my current tech nightmare is twitter links not embedding, what's up with that? Read this thread's title and you shall be enlightened.
|
|
#
?
Sep 23, 2022 00:59
|
|
|
I figured as much, but people just keep on postin 'em
|
|
#
?
Sep 23, 2022 01:12
|
|
|
https://www.vice.com/en/article/xgyvb7/tesla-recalls-over-1-million-cars-because-windows-could-injure-drivers Tesla Recalls Over 1 Million Cars Because Windows Could Injure Drivers The potentially painful problem will be fixed by a software update, and the company plans to notify owners in November. Electric car maker Tesla is recalling nearly 1.1 million cars in the U.S. because the automatic windows may not detect a person's fingers when going up, Reuters reported on Thursday. The recall affects nearly all Tesla models manufactured since 2017, according to recall documents posted by federal regulators. Tesla says it first noticed the issue during testing in late August of this year, when technicians found the "window automatic reversal system performance that had greater than expected variations in response to pinch detection." The testing continued nearly into mid-September when Tesla decided to do a voluntary recall.
|
|
#
?
Sep 23, 2022 11:59
|
|
|
How do you gently caress up something that basic?
|
|
#
?
Sep 23, 2022 15:22
|
|
|
Blue Footed Booby posted:How do you gently caress up something that basic? By hiring people who have never done the job before but are Very Smart (software) Engineers who have to constantly reinvent the wheel (due to lack of experience of the subject matter at hand) and don't know enough about the physical side of wear, tolerances, etc to properly test.
|
|
#
?
Sep 23, 2022 15:33
|
|
|
software engineer switches to car manufacturing, still struggles with windows
|
|
#
?
Sep 23, 2022 17:14
|
|
|
^^^ -  Reinventing sixty years of wheels
|
|
#
?
Sep 23, 2022 17:14
|
|
|
Stexils posted:software engineer switches to car manufacturing, still struggles with windows 
|
|
#
?
Sep 23, 2022 17:15
|
|
|
Stexils posted:software engineer switches to car manufacturing, still struggles with windows 
|
|
#
?
Sep 23, 2022 17:22
|
|
|
I choose to not blame the workers and instead blame the people running the place. There's probably some poor engineer that sent emails warning them that removing the sensor that detects fingers would lead to this, but they wanted to save the $0.50 or whatever. Tesla has a corporate culture of referring to the pre-existing auto manufacturers as 'legacy' (their customers picked up on this) and studiously avoiding all the accumulated knowledge. That kind of poo poo starts at the top. Or sure, yeah, blame the rank and file for being dumb, that certainly lets management off the hook.
|
|
#
?
Sep 23, 2022 17:49
|
|
|
Family Values posted:I choose to not blame the workers and instead blame the people running the place. There's probably some poor engineer that sent emails warning them that removing the sensor that detects fingers would lead to this, but they wanted to save the $0.50 or whatever. Tesla has a corporate culture of referring to the pre-existing auto manufacturers as 'legacy' (their customers picked up on this) and studiously avoiding all the accumulated knowledge. That kind of poo poo starts at the top. It's probably a software issue. But anything like this is inherently a management problem. A non-clownshoes company would have someone who knows the regulatory requirements and is tasked with making sure that everything meets those requirements.
|
|
#
?
Sep 23, 2022 18:01
|
|
|
Family Values posted:I choose to not blame the workers and instead blame the people running the place. There's probably some poor engineer that sent emails warning them that removing the sensor that detects fingers would lead to this, but they wanted to save the $0.50 or whatever. Tesla has a corporate culture of referring to the pre-existing auto manufacturers as 'legacy' (their customers picked up on this) and studiously avoiding all the accumulated knowledge. That kind of poo poo starts at the top. That's a nice story, but not how this works. It's much simpler: the body module (computer) that controls the window regulator (the motor and assembly that moves it up and down) can sense how much current is being used. When the current goes up you know there is more resistance to movement. The software in the body computer is written to detect events like this and act accordingly. This has been a solved problem for decades with every other auto manufacturer. This is a software problem.
|
|
#
?
Sep 23, 2022 18:05
|
|
|
Motronic posted:That's a nice story, but not how this works. It's much simpler: the body module (computer) that controls the window regulator (the motor and assembly that moves it up and down) can sense how much current is being used. When the current goes up you know there is more resistance to movement. The software in the body computer is written to detect events like this and act accordingly. This has been a solved problem for decades with every other auto manufacturer. and that software wouldn't be broken if the management wasn't lovely and actually treated their workers well instead of forcing them to do poo poo like commute in person to their remote job after their whiny CEO got upset on twitter about remote work existing all problems are management problems
|
|
#
?
Sep 23, 2022 19:26
|
|
|
Iamgoofball posted:and that software wouldn't be broken if the management wasn't lovely and actually treated their workers well instead of forcing them to do poo poo like commute in person to their remote job after their whiny CEO got upset on twitter about remote work existing While all problems are management problems, making people come into the office/whatever you're saying here is not the root cause of things like this. It's a culture of hubris and terminal software engineer brain poisoning from the very top that thinks they know better than people and companies who have been designing and building cars for decades and that there is nothing to learn from them or the past. It's telling and believing a story that "software is better" (as if there is no software in GMs, Fords, VWs, etc) and that if the other companies just knew how to write good software everything would be better and self driving cars are easy to make. These cars are physical manifestations of what goes on inside of the bay area reality distortion field.
|
|
#
?
Sep 23, 2022 19:38
|
|
|
Stexils posted:software engineer switches to car manufacturing, still struggles with windows New Thread Title plz
|
|
#
?
Sep 23, 2022 19:47
|
|
|
Motronic posted:While all problems are management problems, making people come into the office/whatever you're saying here is not the root cause of things like this. It's a culture of hubris and terminal software engineer brain poisoning from the very top that thinks they know better than people and companies who have been designing and building cars for decades and that there is nothing to learn from them or the past. It's telling and believing a story that "software is better" (as if there is no software in GMs, Fords, VWs, etc) and that if the other companies just knew how to write good software everything would be better and self driving cars are easy to make. It's not even that. It's the fact that there is an actual list of federal regulations saying things like "the window needs to do X under Y conditions". At real companies in highly-regulated industries, there is often someone whose entire job is to make sure that everything complies with regulations. There should be someone in charge of checking that all these basic documented requirements are met, and that's not happening. I wouldn't be surprised if Tesla's software teams have been overly influenced by "move fast, break things" methodologies, leading to failures to thoroughly test things before deploying fixes. And the inconsistent hardware of Tesla vehicles no doubt makes it rather difficult to keep the codebase stable. And of course, it doesn't help that Tesla promoted their last director compliance to Head of Legal, putting him in charge of all Tesla's lawsuits. That left the compliance job open until this summer, when a new director of compliance was hired, and a month or so before the aforementioned Head of Legal quit the company. I doubt it's a coincidence that the window problem was discovered around that same time.
|
|
#
?
Sep 23, 2022 20:06
|
|
|
I think some people have unrealistic beliefs about how perfect car software is (including other manufacturers), and about how broken the Tesla window thing is. The Tesla problem is not "the auto-reverse on pinch doesn't function at all and nobody ever checked", it's "under some combination of circumstances, it is possible for it to not work as intended". In terms of how well the car industry does generally, most manufacturers have had recalls for similar kinds of failures of autoreverse functionality (i.e. Ford 16V617000 for a window or Kia 18V338000 for a power sliding door)
|
|
#
?
Sep 23, 2022 20:24
|
|
|
Yeah, it very much reeks of startup/entrepreneur brain where you assume that literally everyone else is just too stuck in their ways and afraid to innovate, only to run headfirst into hundreds of problems that literally everyone else has already encountered and solved before. It's doubly funny that it seems to happen in a software context. Basically the first thing I learned in practical development was: "No matter what you're trying to do, somebody else likely already tried it, and probably did it better than you would. Do your loving research and don't waste your time on solved problems".
|
|
#
?
Sep 23, 2022 20:28
|
|
|
Perestroika posted:Yeah, it very much reeks of startup/entrepreneur brain where you assume that literally everyone else is just too stuck in their ways and afraid to innovate, only to run headfirst into hundreds of problems that literally everyone else has already encountered and solved before. It's doubly funny that it seems to happen in a software context. Well said. This is part of the core point I'm trying to get across.
|
|
#
?
Sep 23, 2022 20:36
|
|
|
I think it's an interesting corollary to the desire for diversity in the workplace, and an example of why it's actually incredibly necessary and beneficial. If you have 100 people with the same educational background and same experience and same general worldview, you're going to run into problems that someone elsewhere has already solved and would tell you about, if only you'd ask, and none of those 100 people are going to be of any use. Age, gender, cultural background, previous work experience, field of education, etc... you need to have a good mix not for the sake of appearances, or because it's a good thing to support marginalized groups (though it is), but because you can spot problems and then solve them much, much more effectively.
|
|
#
?
Sep 23, 2022 20:41
|
|
|
I feel like maybe because I had an unusual trajectory with respect to software engineering, maybe I just don't think about things in the same way. But while I occasionally like reinventing the wheel for fun, my usual go-to is to find an existing solution, and only implement my own if it doesn't exist, or it exists but has a bad license/is too pricey, or if it exists but is different enough to warrant a more suitable reimplementation.
|
|
#
?
Sep 23, 2022 21:43
|
|
|
Blue Footed Booby posted:How do you gently caress up something that basic? A lot of it, to me at least, is just trying to come up with shiny new unneeded ways of doing poo poo that worked perfectly fine just the way it was and has for several decades. There's a lot of poo poo that's gotten broken on my cars that would ordinarily be really easy to fix except for some reason it has to be super high tech and "cool", for lack of a better term. Looking at you broken hatchback that I can't afford to fix. I don't even like digitial inputs on my radio since the god damned knob I used to turn was actually much faster. Not that I listen to the radio that much but still. Bascially, everything that Motronic said
|
|
#
?
Sep 24, 2022 00:22
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 7, 2024 23:48 |
|
|
Perestroika posted:Yeah, it very much reeks of startup/entrepreneur brain where you assume that literally everyone else is just too stuck in their ways and afraid to innovate, only to run headfirst into hundreds of problems that literally everyone else has already encountered and solved before. It's doubly funny that it seems to happen in a software context. Basically the first thing I learned in practical development was: "No matter what you're trying to do, somebody else likely already tried it, and probably did it better than you would. Do your loving research and don't waste your time on solved problems". move fast and break fingers
|
|
#
?
Sep 24, 2022 01:30
|
|
