Microsoft looking to buy Discord

You really come fiery with the (wrong) hot takes.

MSN.com is seen all over homes and offices as it was the defacto standard hompage in Internet Explorer, which most businesses and homes were using. It’s still all over the place in people’s browsers and it’s not people in their 80s now that were and are its only users.

You live in a future fantasy world of your own creation that no one else does.

It’s inertia from 20 years ago. Those people are dead inside, even if their corpses continue to animate.

It’s also the real world. People don’t live progressive lives typically. I think if you want to keep making proclamations on tech and be taken seriously, you might want to take that into account.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-24/microsoft-ceo-hunts-anew-for-creator-hub-in-discord-after-tiktok-bid-fails

For Nadella, the next decade of growth in cloud computing and internet use will be defined not by people watching and buying, but by those who are generating and exchanging their own content in different, thriving groups. Though he wasn’t referring specifically to acquisition strategy, his past purchases and current wish list illustrate that Nadella is eager to control some of the means of production.

I don’t see it. When the pandemic ends, a whole hell of a lot of people who are “creators” right now are going to be outside and out on the town “creating” memories that don’t have to do with sitting in front of a computer. Sure, they’ll use computers for some of that, but I think we’re definitely heading for a lull next year after the boon that the past year and so far this year has been.

Yeah, getting a little off topic, but video chat/conferencing has historically kind of come in cycles, it’s the cool thing there’s buzz around it and then it kind of fades away before the entire thing spins up again, I remember our old Picturetel setup at work and one of my college roommates ended up working there. The pandemic really gave it a good kickstart but while I think it might stick around a bit more maybe in business there’s going to be a big drop off as people are sick of being on Zoom etc.

Yup. While I sure as hell wouldn’t mind working from home for the rest of my working life, I am sure that is destined to end.

I think WFH is here to stay for some jobs, though for the proles it will be even more hellish service jobs, if those don’t get automated.

This pandemic really made me realize even more how different my life is now than what it was pre-military.

My company, which has done spectacularly well during the pandemic, was quite excited to welcome everyone back to the office today.

Not that I went in, of course. Fuck that noise, plus, my kid will be out of school for the rest of the school year. Watching him requires both parents as there are times during the day where we individually cannot even while WFH.

Maybe not full time, but it seems a lot of companies have decided to become more flexible. There will be a lot more working from home going forward for ourselves and for other companies in my circles. And the beefed up remote meeting infrastructure they have put in place last year will remain in use.

Nationwide just announced all its office workers would be allowed to work from home permanently

It’s far too soon to tell if WFH will be more widespread long term or not. While companies are allowing it we don’t know what perception and social pressure will be like after some start to return to the office. And there’s people out there that can’t wait to and hate working at home, I am definitely not one of those but I know a few.

Yeah, my company recently announced it will move to a situation where we will have more employees than desks, so they won’t expect everyone to attend the office five days a week and will be pretty flexible on top of that.

Suits me just fine, I bloody love working from home. I see no reason to travel to an office on public transport when I can do everything just as well in my own house.

I didn’t mean offices would go away completely, but I suspect for jobs that aren’t service (unfortunately most jobs will be service), WFH will become the main mode of work, at least past entry level.

I do think this is going to have some large societal impacts- most of which I think might end up being good.

My work actually sold the building I was in and I am now permanently WFH, along with the rest of IT. They did retain a small hoteling space, but it can only serve a fraction of our staff, so scheduling will likely be vicious

My workplace used to be about 95% in the office, with just a few field sales guys. Our leadership was notoriously anti-WFH. Last year we flipped that number and it seems we’re staying that way. It turns out that the cost savings on facility management is too good to pass up.

Seeing similar here - my employer was just dipping its toes into allowing limited WFH but over the past year has decided to lease out a large chunk of our owned building space. Even with the massive RIF last fall I don’t see us having room to return everyone to full-time working in the office.

Pretty much all my co-workers are now hybrid, as in WFH unless needed in office (those of us who were not actually hired remote that is). They literally don’t lease the floors anymore. There is no insta going back.

I’ve been WFH for many years and I have mostly enjoyed it so far (I DO miss face to face interactions with coworkers, and collaboration of complex work via video chat is not as effective).

That being said, I made sure to look for a house that had the room for an office and gaming room setup for me to quietly work from. Even then now that we just had our kid I’m wondering how long I’ll be able to keep it for that purpose (I guess we don’t have much of a choice though since I do need a place to work).

A lot of people have not bought houses with the intention of a home office setup, and now that Covid has caused sky rocketing housing prices it’s going to be hard for a lot of people to find a way to adjust. Then add in kids (who may not be school age yet) and there’s a lot of legitimate concern about permanent WFH.

There seem to be 2 concerning states of minds for a lot of companies. No WFH option at all for no good reason, or all WFH because it saves them real estate costs (and pushes those costs to the employees without compensation).

My employer had us overstuffed into our building, with too few conference rooms, and did nothing to fix it during COVID, so almost none of us want to go back. Will be interesting to see the degree of open revolt once office presence is required again.