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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 30th, 2023

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  • So we’ve been down that road. There are company computers available for that purpose, and training has been provided. It’s a joke we tell each other around here that the only training we get is on the app.

    For the handful of folks who are legally prohibited from having a smart phone, the state has requirements in place that they be notified of any schedule changes in advance, they’re often the first to know.

    The CEO frequently holds little meetings and fields questions, that’s the next route.

    I don’t know what they were sold or why they’re so insistent that we download the app, but their feverish insistence that we download it sure makes me suspicious.




  • I did mention that when I connected to it via a VPN I could see my outgoing traffic spike suspiciously, that particular member of HR is no longer with the company and few of those remaining have the technical background to understand why I find that problematic.

    Sadly around here, you’re either on board with the direction the ship is sailing, or you’re not on board. Those is us in bargained positions have been fine, and voice our frustrations freely. But management does not have the same freedom to do so.





  • I work in a manufacturing environment. A few years ago they decided they needed a company social media app. They hired, or more likely were sold the idea by Salesforce and built this stupid ass website, then went on a fucking War campaign to get people to install the app on their phone.

    They demanded. They begged. They removed functions of HR to the app exclusively. When we protested they simply said no, no room to negotiate, no give. You will use the app or you will not have access to certain information required to do your job. When they closed the plant one day and posted it on the app, they threatened to write up an entire shift that showed up to work anyway without knowing any better.

    Because apparently, when you get up at 4 am the first thing you’re supposed to do every day is check an app on your phone to see if you have work that day.

    They used to just push out a robo call.

    When we have committee meetings with HR they go something like this.

    HR: how can we get you guys on the app Committee: how can we retrieve these functions from the app HR: you can’t Committee: that’s your answer.

    There have been at least 6 versions of this meeting that I have been a part of.

    Most of my coworkers are older than me. Few of them have fancy phones, generally the most basic phone you can get. A number of my coworkers are on parole or work release and have limited access to smart phones for one reason or another and literally have no access to the app.

    I was chatting with one of the IT gals recently and apparently resistance to the app is pretty widespread. When I said “venture capital IT firm” she gave me a high five.

    They want everyone using this thing and maybe 15% of the company has it. Then they switched to Workday.

    It hasn’t gone well.


  • I have an app for my sprinkler system and it’s a fucking nightmare. Not only is it basically just a web API, it’s so transparently just a glorified browser with access to exactly one site that frequently my phone thinks that app will work for whatever else I’m trying to open.

    Document? Sprinkler app. Web Page? Sprinkler app. Installing from a source other than Google? Oh you better believe the sprinkler app can do that.

    Doing anything takes longer to load than it would take me to walk from anywhere on my property to the fucking box and hit whatever button I need to hit.

    It frequently forgets what I entered for preferences. I can tell it a week ahead what days I want it to skip but if I do that more than 24 hours on advance I might as well not have done it at all.

    Oh you want to make a payment online? Let your sprinklers do that for you. YouTube video? Sprinkler app. YouTube video about fixing your fucking sprinkler system? Sprinkler app.

    Apparently the one thing it can’t do is effectively manage my water usage. It’s ONE job








  • Many years ago my grandfather was involved in an air force test of aerial defense platforms that used balloons.

    The idea was you could station these things all around the country and at the first sign of an attack you could have missiles launched from 10k feet to anywhere from anywhere.

    The test encountered two problems that caused them to abandon the idea.

    These balloons were incredibly easy to shoot down. Which would, presumably, rain volatile rocket fuel and munitions down on whatever was beneath them.

    And if a missile launched, but failed to separate completely from it’s housing, it would carry that balloon on a wild, unpredictable trajectory, until it collided with something or it decided it had reached it’s detonation time.