State of the Market

[SchumiStars]

https://m.slashdot.org/story/437491

https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&f=180&t=2102042&p=1

Apparently a lot of the Asian countries are back to working from the office.

Again, I'd love to be back at an office in London. Hopefully, it's moving that way.

[Snooky]

I'd love to be back at an office in London. Hopefully, it's moving that way.

Hopefully not, but you do you.

[SussexSeagull]

I do hope people who went to work for these companies factored in commuting costs with their salary demands. If not and it was sold to them as WFH or Hybrid then they have ever right to feel annoyed.

[SchumiStars]

I do hope people who went to work for these companies factored in commuting costs with their salary demands. If not and it was sold to them as WFH or Hybrid then they have ever right to feel annoyed.

That's a good point. Previously people would have their salaries which of course included their commuting costs.

WFH, means people spend less money travelling. The previous page showed up tfl being down, which would then also mean all the other train, bus companies down.

I was shopping for clothes yesterday and it occured to me that the last work shirt I bought was 5yrs ago. Which is still hanging with the tags on, never used it! lol.

WFH, regardless of what we, the employees want, is loosing GDP, whichever way you cut. Yes we can say we get more work done and we are more efficient but the overall cost is greater than just an employee vs the holding company.

For instance there is also the health cost, people not leaving homes, walking and getting mentally refreshed may or may not be rises in MH issues. Or what about the families which suffer DV.

Working from the office is good. Otherwise, there would be no need for rentable office spaces, bike lanes or brief cases

[hobnob]

You can use ChatGPT for this kind of thing yourself. Perhaps you are doing a DIY extension on your house and need to know about the building code? Just dump it in and ask questions about it - whats the max height of the extension allowed? What level of insulation must it have? and so on.

Here's a counter example from last year (Apr 2024):
https://bsky.app/profile/garius.bsky.../3kp5kjcwlo42b

Basically, people were asking ChatGPT to answer rules questions about various board games, and it kept getting the answers wrong.

Quote:
"I mention this because board games should be the LITERAL BEST CASE SCENARIO for showing the worth of AI as a Q&A tool. Board games have explicit, logical rules. Often published online. Every question is one about binary game logic. And yet AI still acts like Chad Who Scanned The Manual Briefly Once"

My advice: if you're doing a DIY extension, either read the regs yourself, or consult an architect who has already read them. Don't just plough ahead based on "what the chatbot told me to do".

[Fraidycat]

<mod snip>
nothing to do with the state of the contracting market
</ mod snip>

[dsc]

[..]
Working from the office is good. Otherwise, there would be no need for rentable office spaces, bike lanes or brief cases

tulip coffee, open spaces where you can't focus and long commute? nah thanks, I'll do the same from home and then spend the time I saved with my family.

WFH is as good or as bad as you paint it. It was the best thing ever in lockdown and now it's the worst thing ever.

[SussexSeagull]

tulip coffee, open spaces where you can't focus and long commute? nah thanks, I'll do the same from home and then spend the time I saved with my family.

WFH is as good or as bad as you paint it. It was the best thing ever in lockdown and now it's the worst thing ever.

To be rather boring it depends on the company, the role, the person and what you are working on at the time. With me it would have almost always have been useful to be around people more when I first started (although it was usually more the client not being in the office rather than me blocking it), before doing a lot of the actual work remotely.

I understand why permanent employees need to have agreements in place to come in x days a week to keep things consistent but if a client can't trust a contractor not to be the best judge of where they can best do work then they don't understand IR35 and need to be get in better contractors.

[willendure]

Here's a counter example from last year (Apr 2024):
https://bsky.app/profile/garius.bsky.../3kp5kjcwlo42b

Basically, people were asking ChatGPT to answer rules questions about various board games, and it kept getting the answers wrong.

Quote:
"I mention this because board games should be the LITERAL BEST CASE SCENARIO for showing the worth of AI as a Q&A tool. Board games have explicit, logical rules. Often published online. Every question is one about binary game logic. And yet AI still acts like Chad Who Scanned The Manual Briefly Once"

My advice: if you're doing a DIY extension, either read the regs yourself, or consult an architect who has already read them. Don't just plough ahead based on "what the chatbot told me to do".

I think their mistake is to evaluate ChatGPT on its ability to apply logic. Its not a logic engine, its a language engine. That is why its called a large _language_ model. Its good at language related things, like finding relevant text, rewriting some factual statements you give it into short document, and so on. The o1 reasoning engine however, is getting pretty good at logic too.

If you give it the data in the form of the building regs, it will do a very good job of helping you to quickly find the things you want to know. Without the data, it will just make up some BS. The important thing is to realise just as it is not a logic engine, it is also not a memory engine. Hence the popularity of RAG based systems.

If they had fed the actual rules into ChatGPT as say a "GPT" project, where you can upload supporting data, they would have gotten a much better result. Just as you or I cannot know the rules of a game we have never seen or played, neither can an LLM unless it happens to have seen it in its training data, and even then it does not explicitly remember all of its training data although there is some of it in there.

Of course you don't trust its output, just as with any new fangled and difficult to understand technology. If its important you double check. But it will still save you time by getting you to the right places to check faster.

Try this for an example of how ChatGPT is good with language. Ask it to write the opening paragraph of a speech on the topic of "What is good in life?", in the style of a trade union activist addressing the shop floor. Then in the style of an MP addressing parliament. Then in the style of the late Queen Elizabeth giving her christmas address to the nation. See how well it adapts its style of language to the different people and situations? Its a language expert, not a logic engine or a memory store.

[willendure]

To be rather boring it depends on the company, the role, the person and what you are working on at the time. With me it would have almost always have been useful to be around people more when I first started (although it was usually more the client not being in the office rather than me blocking it), before doing a lot of the actual work remotely.

I agree. WFH for the last 3 years, and only actually met my co-workers 3 times in all of that! By the end I was finding the whole experience quite isolating and tiresome. I think maybe 2 days a fortnight would be a good amount for me. I like both, and do like a good office environment. The bad office environments I have been in are almost entirely counter productive, and I have been in more bad ones that good.