Notes for January 19th 2024

Song of the week:

• I spent some time (just 3 nights) in NYC this week. This will likely be a recurring trip for me in 2024 given my manager and a lot of peers are there, or adjacent. It's a city I love being in, admire and think is infinitely curious. However, it's somewhere that I increasingly think would be awful to live in. I could spend significant time there, but only on the provision that it's temporary.
• Hearing about rounds of layoffs is reminiscent of the end of 2022, but coming into 2024 has had some unfortunate news for folks. In my mind, this is still linked to companies hiring poorly, competing with each other for talent they didn't need and general bloated organisations who believed the more people in the org, the better/more powerful it'd be. It's sort-of ironic seeing Google pave the way for these layoffs given they invented the OKR (objective, key-result) metrics-driven approach to measuring success. Somewhere, the ball got dropped.

• Being in a foreign place was a perfect opportunity for me to bring my new camera. My Fuji X-T5 was given a proper test. It passed with flying colours as something that's so easy to use, weather resilient and capable of being controlled while wearing gloves in -9 cold!
• Last week I noted that there was a lot of work-related activity around the BT Young Scientist competition, of which I am immensely humbled to have been part of, in a very small way. But Saturday was a real joy for me. I went with my 3 year old and he had an absolute blast. It's lovely to be able to spend quality time with him solo. And I look forward to doing the same with his young brother, once he passes the destruction mode evident in all 2 year old boys!
• I was reflecting on an interesting conversation I had recently about RTO ("return to office") plans. They seem mired in controversy because companies are using the stick of RTO without any carrot; and expecting absolute compliance, absolutely. It's a weak management tool to point to poor performance and link it to the physical location of an employee.
  • I say this as a huge fan of RTO. I ushered it in at $job's office this past year as a pilot phase before we rolled anything out to the wider business. Which we will now do in other locations. But we have a fair system of measurement (not time-based, no weirdo tracking and no dashboards for managers to perf manage through it directly/exclusively) and ask for around 10 days per month for you to show up and be part of your office; assuming you're not a remote contract (which you can be!). RTO helps people get more done, builds a culture and a collaborative environment. But it would never get you over the hump of being a bad boss.
• It's funny watching the Apple bro blogosphere lose it's mind over the Vision Pro release. The main gripe seems to be that this product has not lit the world on fire. And that there are no apps, from obvious players on there. Spotify, Netflix, etc. have no obligation to make software for anything, let alone niche products that feel a lot like large betas than actual final expected hardware. This is coming from the same blogosphere who are salivating at the idea that a judge would grant a multi-million amount of funds to Apple from EPIC over their middle-class white guy court case.