Earlier this year, I met some of the team behind the launch, and they love their job. They showed up with NASA pins for everyone, the geeked out over the launches, and just expressed a level of enthusiasm on bringing up this service that I rarely see elsewhere. If that team is reading this, I just want wish you good luck, you certainly pre-built a fan in me.
I could see how it might be used as a "memory" to some of these AI-generated workflows. As content is generated, having it stored, indexed, and easily discoverable would be important. If the users of these AI tools are individuals and small groups more than big corporations, there may be a market here for Dropbox to tune its product line towards.
I don't necessarily disagree with you, but coming in with the mindset is not always natural. We don't know where the poster grew up, their education, their background, etc. It's not the worst assumption to believe that a company is going to be invested in developing you because some will and do. Sadly, the poster was not part of one of those companies.
So instead of beating them down, we should point them to a better way of thinking in a more constructive manner.
It's an interesting point about motivation and work load. My experience with burnout occurred at a time where I was regularly doing 60 hours / week, and enjoying it! The motivation hit came when a new manager moved into the team, and he suddenly wanted to shift my role in a career direction I did not agree to. Prior to him joining, I felt my path was progressing in the direction I wanted, with the blessing of my previous management.
It's amazing how fast a single person can flip that motivation versus work load into the wrong direction.
Facebook is an ad company, and if that market is declining, those cuts may come from non-technical groups meant to serve those accounts and markets. There are likely other programs necessary with high marketing needs that I could imagine need culling and thus fewer people.
When I was in business school for my MBA, the human component was absolutely covered, and I suspect that is the case with many of them. Part of the problem may be though that there are subjects (finance, operations), where I can see the concept of a human resource becomes a bit abstract in order to focus on other concepts. In this regard, schools can certainly do better to connect the people element across disciplines.
For those with a complete disdain for "business types", I'd encourage you to read Peter Drucker. Some of his opinions may feel a bit outdated, but he speaks quite a bit to the knowledge worker and their needs.
I genuinely hate how MBA-speak has been adopted seemingly everywhere. I truly, truly hate it. I understand and appreciate that we need a concise set of terminology and jargon to have conversations about these things but these words seem specifically chosen to abstract away the human quality of the humans being discussed.
Fake-smart business language is a plague. "Per" (worse: "as per"), "utilize" where "use" is more correct. All sorts of absurd euphemisms for "chat" or "meeting" or "talk". It's gross.
Yeah, to be clear, I have no issue with it’s use in macro-Econ, my issue is a C-Suite calling their employees and their specialized knowledge human capital to their faces.
It's quite possible that my school wasn't that great. I am glad to hear examples highlighting these issues, but I walked out with a class of over a thousand that year and I don't think any of those folks got the perspective you speak of, and I think it's reasonable to assume lots of other folks around the world aren't getting that perspective either.
It could very well depend on the school, but also the students who enroll. Where I went (top-10, but not top-3), there was nothing in the curriculum about contempt for employees, and I don't think any previously well adjusted student came out of the program with such contempt. We did have our share of "elite" trust fund snobs and Jack Welch cosplayers, but they brought that into the class from somewhere else, probably their previous jobs at investment banks and consultancies.
I think if you go to a MBA to add financial modeling to your toolbox, that's what you'll get out of it. If you go to get your paper stamped so you can move on to banking Associate, that's what you'll get out of it. If you go thinking you're learning how to become Gordon Gecko, well you might get something out of it. Most of my classmates were actually ex-engineers with 5-10 years experience looking to escape from their "senior software engineer" career plateau.
The reason most young engineers think this way is 1) they think their work is self-evident and doesn't require demand creation, 2) their management does not engage with marketing and therefore can't convey the value down, and 3) confuses "growth hacking" and "advertising" with the broader work that marketing supports.
...and for the records, they're completely justified here. They have a lot on their plate as a new engineer and this is not an area that has immediate value to them.
I struggle with this as well. My team grew during COVID, and many of them are in different locations. In many ways, they haven't been able to gel as a team. There are other managers who had teams before COVID hit and their virtual hangouts just amplify the bond they had before.
People will complain about these events, but I just don't know any other way to help teams learn about each other.
>People will complain about these events, but I just don't know any other way to help teams learn about each other.
In gaming, there are entire genres which expect people to cooperate to get better results. Initially, they don't know anything about each other, but in functional groups there's at least a silent agreement to work together and not cause a fuss. Let's say in professional environments, it's fair to expect most employed people would do the same (ergo, the hiring process properly filtered the problem people out).
Eventually people end up working together on things more and more. From there, depending on their personalities, they will either learn more about each other, or come to an agreement they are only there to do the work. Both outcomes are fair, though individuals might feel left out when their expectations aren't met (team culture mismatch).
By introducing these events, it feels like managers are trying to fastforward a process which would happen naturally, through events which have little to do with the work at hand. If your projects need collaboration, surely these people will eventually communicate with one another and go through the flow illustrated above. I only expect managers to step in when there's a clear mismatch or sign of dysfunction within the team.
And honestly, I'm skeptical whether functional adults as a whole enjoy the attempts at fastforwarding the process. These events have a tendency to feel forced and infantilizing.
> And honestly, I'm skeptical whether functional adults as a whole enjoy the attempts at fastforwarding the process.
I certainly don't. I'm there to make money, not friends.
I've tried making friends at work before, and it was never worth it. They expect you to be there for them, they're never there for you, and once you've left the company you might as well have never existed to them.
Ironically the money part is a very good reason for people not to misbehave to begin with. If they don't misbehave, that alone should provide ample opportunity for the group to figure out if they want to just work or do more.
