• @jabathekek@sopuli.xyz
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    1893 months ago

    “this is a company for grown ups.”

    That’s too bad. I was thinking of getting their phone when I needed a new one, I guess I’ll just add them to my mental list of companies to avoid.

      • @Telorand@reddthat.com
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        443 months ago

        Right? Imagine thinking that working in a cubicle is something to aspire to as a “grown up.” Fuck that. I’ll continue working from home, like an adult, thanks.

    • @Sidyctism2@discuss.tchncs.de
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      473 months ago

      goddamn i read parts of the article trying to figure out which company… Im not a marketing guy, but nobody can tell me that “nothing” is marketable brand.

      • @Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world
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        223 months ago

        Allow me to introduce you to their main competitor, elon musk.

        Oh, I don’t mean competitor in the business market. I mean their main competitor for worlds least marketable brand identity.

        He took twitter, which had it’s own global brand awareness, and blundered it so bad that every media company refers to it as “X (formerly twitter)” because they know that if they had just put X, nobody would know what the hell they were talking about.

        And his other company is literally named “The Boring Company”. Where I assume they make disease, and murderous robots that are somehow racist.

        • @curry@programming.dev
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          83 months ago

          It’s still unbelievable considering Twitter had made its way into other languages’ lexicon other than English. In Spanish, for example, the word “tuit” had been added officially in the dictionary. It had no competitors in brand awareness and all it took was a manchild with money to burn to take it all down.

    • @BrianTheeBiscuiteer@lemmy.world
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      383 months ago

      Clearly it’s not a company for grown ups because you think they’re all children that won’t play together unless you cram them into a classroom and tell them, “Make nice.”

      • @candybrie@lemmy.world
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        63 months ago

        Right? Grown ups can be trusted to get their work done without someone watching them all the time. It’s small children who need constant supervision.

    • @scarabic@lemmy.world
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      53 months ago

      It baffles me because in many of the quotes they are clearly trying to be understanding and respectful toward those who disagree with this, but then they come out and call them children

      Ironically, that’s a really childish thing to do.

    • Boxscape
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      43 months ago

      “this is a company for grown ups.”

      When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up. – C.S. Lewis

    • @Teknikal@eviltoast.org
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      23 months ago

      Don’t I have one and it’s the only Android device I’ve owned that crashes and reboots almost daily. I can’t recall any other device ever doing it actually.

      This company’s all about the next gimmick and couldn’t care less about actually making decent phones.

      • @Arthur@literature.cafe
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        163 months ago

        Teenage Engineering is a hardware design firm that Nothing contracts with for hardware design. They aren’t a division of Nothing and they don’t work on just earbuds.

  • @floofloof@lemmy.ca
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    3 months ago

    "Remote work is not compatible with a high ambition level plus high speed,” Pei said in the email, telling employees who are worried about flexibility that “this is a company for grown ups.”

    Sounds like he actually means it’s a company for exploitable young people and socopathic assholes. Grown-ups have other responsibilities and don’t want work to commandeer their whole lives.

    • @TheReturnOfPEB@reddthat.com
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      613 months ago

      “This company is for grown ups. Now sit over there where I can check on you constantly and do what I tell you like a child that can’t be trusted alone.”

      • @zondo@lemmy.world
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        93 months ago

        The actual sentence, according to a Verge website comment, was: “This is a company for grown ups, so if you need to be out of office to deal with some issues, we trust you to make the right decision.” If true, this doesn’t reflect well on Verge journalism.

    • @niemcycle@lemmy.world
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      163 months ago

      Guarantee this is a ploy to chase off the ‘less committed’ employees (read: less desperate), while not having to announce mass layoffs.

    • @jj4211@lemmy.world
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      83 months ago

      The real problem is that Nothing brings… nothing to the table. Oh look, another startup making another Android phone in a sea of companies making Android phones, with yet another skin.

  • @eee@lemm.ee
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    1153 months ago

    This just means they’re a struggling company who needs to cut headcount and want to do it without paying severance

    • @Saledovil@sh.itjust.works
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      633 months ago

      In addition, this tactic will result in the best employees leaving first, because they’ll get employed somewhere else.

      • ℍ𝕂-𝟞𝟝
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        203 months ago

        Cue the pivot to some ridiculous buzz tech like AI in the near future, then being acquired and promptly abandoned by some big corp.

        • @Saledovil@sh.itjust.works
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          63 months ago

          The thing with AI is, what the term today refers to most often is neural networks, which are really advanced statistics. And the thing is, to get more precise statistics, you need exponentially more data. And of course the marginal utility decays exponentially. So exponentially increasing marginal expenses meet exponentially decaying marginal utility.

          • ℍ𝕂-𝟞𝟝
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            123 months ago

            Just to be clear, I am in love with statistics and especially generative algos, and have written papers on it before ChatGPT was a thing.

            I just hate that one company made a chatbot with it and now the whole world is cargo culting around it.

          • @model_tar_gz@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            AI is a very broad term that also includes expert systems (such as Computational Fluid Dynamics, Finite Element Analysis, etc approaches.). Traditional machine learning approaches (like support vector machines, etc.) too. But yes, I agree—most commonly associated with deep learning/neural network approaches.

            That said, it’s misleading and inaccurate to state that neural networks are just statistics. In fact they are substantially more than just advanced statistics. Certainly statistics is a component—but so too is probability, calculus, network/graph theory, linear algebra, not to mention computer science to program, tune, and train and infer them. Information theory (hello, entropy) plays a part sometimes.

            The amount of mathematical background it takes to really understand and practice the theory of both a forward pass and backpropagation is an entire undergraduate STEM curriculum’s worth. I usually advocate for new engineers in my org to learn it top down (by doing) and pull the theory as needed, but that’s not how I did it and I regularly see gaps in their decisions because of it.

            And to get actually good at it? One does not simply become a AI systems engineer/technologist. It’s years of tinkering with computers and operating systems, sourcing/scraping/querying/curating data, building data pipelines, cleaning data, engineering types of modeling approaches for various data types and desired outcomes against constraints (data, compute, economic, social/political), implementing POCs, finetuning models, mastering accelerated computing (aka GPUs, TPUs), distributed computation—and many others I’m sure I’m forgetting some here. The number of adjacent fields I’ve had to deeply scratch on to make any of this happen is stressful just thinking about it.

            They’re fascinating machines, and they’ve been democratized/abstracted to an extent where it’s now as simple as import torch, torch.fit, model.predict. But to be dismissive of the amazing mathematics and engineering under the hood to make them actually usable is disingenuous.

            I admit I have a bias here—I’ve spent the majority of my career building and deploying NN models.

            • @Saledovil@sh.itjust.works
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              3 months ago

              That said, it’s misleading and inaccurate to state that neural networks are just statistics. In fact they are substantially more than just advanced statistics. Certainly statistics is a component—but so too is probability, calculus, network/graph theory, linear algebra, not to mention computer science to program, tune, and train and infer them. Information theory (hello, entropy) plays a part sometimes.

              What I meant when I said that they are advanced statistics is that that is what they do. I know that a lot of disciplines play a part in creating them. I know it’s incredible complicated, it took me quite a while to wrap my head around what the back-propagation algorithm.

              I also know that neural networks can do some really cool stuff. Recognizing tumors, for example. But it’s equally dangerous to overestimate them, so we have to be aware of their limitations.

              Edit: All that being said, I do recognize that you have spent much more time learning about and working with neural networks than I have.

              • @model_tar_gz@lemmy.world
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                3 months ago

                Cool cool, we’re cool. I get a little triggered when I hear people say that NN/DL models are “fancy statistics”—it’s not the first time.

                In what seems like another lifetime ago, my first engineering job was as a process engineer for an refinery-scale continuous chromatography unit in hydrocarbon refining. Fuck that industry, but there’s some really cool tech there nevertheless. Anyway when I was first learning the process, the technician I was learning from called it a series of “fancy filters” and that triggered me too—adsorption is a really fascinating chemical process that uses a lot of math and physics to finely-tune for desired purity, flowrate, etc. and to diminish it as “fancy filtration”!!!

                He wasn’t wrong, you’re not either; but it’s definitely more nuanced than that. :)

                Engineers are gonna nerd out about stuff. It’s a natural law, I think.

          • Richard
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            -43 months ago

            Friend, your brain is also just a neural network. “Advanced statistics” are happening in your head every second. There is nothing exceptional about humans, save for the immense complexity of our neural network.

    • ✺roguetrick✺
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      203 months ago

      Considering this company was founded as a remote work company from the beginning, you’re absolutely right.

    • @CancerMancer@sh.itjust.works
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      73 months ago

      It’s such bullshit too because drastically changing someone’s working conditions is clearly a constructive dismissal and should lead to severance payments.

  • @mercano@lemmy.world
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    763 months ago

    The way this usually works out is you loose all the good employees and you’re left with the dregs who were unable to find another remote position in time.

  • @gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works
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    3 months ago

    And Nothing is going to fire you if you don’t find a creative way to meet their bullshit attendance metrics.

    I love being treated like a gradeschooler. Really boosts my morale, especially with nearly two fucking decades of experience and being on the wrong side of 35.

    Stop bothering me and let me do my fucking job, for christ’s sake.

    Edit: all that said, the company name does make for an amusing headline

    • @ByteJunk@lemmy.world
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      123 months ago

      This is an interesting approach from the CEO, in that it demonstrates why unions are mandatory.

    • @sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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      53 months ago

      I’d meet those rules out of spite, and do a really crappy job while there. They’d essentially be forced to fire me, and I’d consider suing for wrongful termination in not providing a suitable work environment for me to do my job (evidence is my productivity before and after being forced back to the office).

  • @mojofrododojo@lemmy.world
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    613 months ago

    uhhhh…

    anyone else totally misinterpret the lede to mean “there’s no reason to go to work at an office” lol?

  • Eager Eagle
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    3 months ago

    nice, yet another company to avoid as either employee or customer

    • cum
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      -193 months ago

      As a customer, why do you care if the employees are wfh or not lol

      • @Honytawk@lemmy.zip
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        83 months ago

        Because you vote with your money.

        As long as those businesses keep receiving money, they will continue these malpractices and damage the market.

  • kamen
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    563 months ago

    I wanna see them pay for office hours AND commute hours. In a big city you easily have 1+ hour a day irrevocably lost to commuting.

      • @Cryophilia@lemmy.world
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        83 months ago

        So glad I live in California. A faulty security gate once prevented me from leaving my job on time. Which pushed me past 12 hours on shift, which automatically meant I was earning twice my hourly wage while I waited. Plus it required a mandatory additional meal break, which I couldn’t take. Since I couldn’t take it, I was automatically given an additional full hour’s wage, as required by state law.

        • @sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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          33 months ago

          I’m glad I don’t work for a company that forces me to go through a security gate, and I’m glad we don’t track hours. I get paid salary, and I rarely work more than 8 hours in a given day, and my average hours worked per week is usually under 40.

          It’s nice you had some protections, but those protections really shouldn’t be necessary.

          • @EarthShipTechIntern@lemm.ee
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            43 months ago

            You’re lucky. Many people on salary end up working overtime with no pay increase.

            Once again, there are good managers & (far too frequently) bad (Elon loving cockwomble) managers

          • @Tja@programming.dev
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            23 months ago

            Being salaried doesn’t remove you from those protections, at least in Europe. You get overtime, which is either 1.5x pay or you accumulate PTO.

            • @Cryophilia@lemmy.world
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              23 months ago

              In the US most salaried positions are not eligible for overtime. Unfortunately, California has yet to close that loophole.

              The next job above me is salaried. If I were to get a promotion, I’d be making about 2/3 of my current income because I would lose all of the hourly protections I have. Despite a higher base pay.

      • kamen
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        73 months ago

        Wow. Now I don’t want to go to the US even harder than before.

      • @BradleyUffner@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        If I’m reading that right, the decision was reversed by the 9th circuit.

        The District Court originally dismissed the case, ruling that the security checks were made after the regular work shift and therefore not “an integral and indispensable part” of the job. The Ninth Circuit disagreed, ruling that the checks were necessary to the principal work of the job.[2][3]

        • @Teepo@sh.itjust.works
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          23 months ago

          The US Supreme Court then reversed the Ninth Circuit ruling. You’re quoting the background that gives context to the case in the lixned article.

  • @WhatYouNeed@lemmy.world
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    513 months ago

    Open plan offices fucken suck.

    Noise, constant distractions, and that one arsehole who never covers their mouth when they sneeze, sending a wave of infectious germs rolling out across the office floor.

    • @grrgyle@slrpnk.net
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      163 months ago

      God I remember how the flu used to just rip through the office come wintertime… Since switching to remote work, I think I’ve taken 1 sick day this year.

    • @BillMurray@lemmy.world
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      33 months ago

      I’m in an open floor plan with cubicles. There is one asshole who has an office, he insists on having loud conversations, with his door open, on mother fucking speakerphone through his tinny laptop speakers. I’ve resorted to a white noise playlist on Spotify. He’s a client, so not cool telling him to fuck off.

  • FergusonBishop
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    463 months ago

    “this is a company for adults” says the CEO of a company who slaps “Glyph” lights on knockoff iPhones and calls it innovative. I hate when I see Carl Pei’s smug face pop up every few months. Hey Carl - put a fucking charger in the box. OnePlus is thriving without you.

    • @Blackmist@feddit.uk
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      13 months ago

      I won’t buy anything that isn’t stock Android. Sick of never being able to find anything.

        • @Blackmist@feddit.uk
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          13 months ago

          Anything that isn’t a Pixel, pretty much. Every single manufacturer seems to think it’s their duty to replace all the settings screens with their own custom bullshit.

      • @dan@upvote.au
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        3 months ago

        No devices have “stock Android” though. Even the Pixel is a customized version of Android. Vanilla AOSP doesn’t even have a usable phone dialer included with it.

  • Uriel238 [all pronouns]
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    443 months ago

    I have a hypothesis that anyone who is required to be on site without having to do a hands-on thing (e.g. physical maintenance or repair) is actually a garden hermit, that is, hired to perform as an extra for the pleasure of viewing upper management.

    I also have a hypothesis that a lot of company budget and material goes towards handling and pacifying upper management (e.g. the way a binky pacifies an infant) since they are accustomed to being coddled and not accustomed to actually managing.

    To be fair, I’ve only been able to observe the relationships between clerical class and management class in a handful of companies, including a small one-store CD-Rom reseller and Bechtel Corporation circa 1990, but my observations have been consistent between them.

    • Semi-Hemi-Lemmygod
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      43 months ago

      I have a hypothesis that anyone who is required to be on site without having to do a hands-on thing (e.g. physical maintenance or repair) is actually a garden hermit, that is, hired to perform as an extra for the pleasure of viewing upper management.

      They’re Type 1 Bullshit Jobs, aka “Flunkies”

      Flunky jobs primarily exist to make someone else look or feel important. Throughout recorded history, rich and powerful people would surround themselves with servants, clients, sycophants, and minions of one sort or another.

  • circuitfarmer
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    443 months ago

    We had a tremendous office culture in the 1950s. Since then, we have had numerous – very numerous – improvements and innovations in the telecom space, in the office assistant space (think personal digital assistant, or rather all the ubiquitous tools that do what those used to do), and other general improvements which empower significantly enhanced productivity.

    To say people still need to be in the office is to say there have been no improvements. The fact is, we can be at home and be more productive than in an office. Anyone who tells you otherwise has ulterior motives.

    Company is too invested in real estate? Sounds like an issue that the C-suite caused and that they alone should fix. Middle management needs to feel useful? Maybe they should find a career that actually has a need for their micromanagement instead of forcing other people into an obsolete box to appear useful. Show me a company against remote work, and I’ll show you a company with outdated goals, more outdated methods, and leadership which should be replaced en masse with people from 2024.

    • @Agent641@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      WFH is not a new concept, nor restricted to office work. Priya Satia’s book Empire of Guns reports that 2/3rds of company-employed Birmingham blacksmiths in the 1700s worked from home, and were more productive for it.

      • circuitfarmer
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        73 months ago

        Nothing I said contradicts that. But it is the case that there are a wide variety of technologies which make WFH even easier than it may have been before.

        If people did it before, they should keep doing it. But now, even more people should be able to WFH.

    • @SupraMario@lemmy.world
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      143 months ago

      One person does what 10 people did in the 50s, these assholes just want control, and companies like this shit for brains, is going to have workers who don’t care and just want a paycheck. He’s not getting cream of the crop with his pouting childish screams. He’ll be irrelevant in a few years.

    • HelloThere
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      83 months ago

      We had a tremendous office culture in the 1950s.

      If you were a middle class white man, sure.