If you aren't growing and building, then obviously you don't need the same amount of people only to maintain what you have. It doesn't take that many people to fix bugs, renew SSL certificates and plug security holes.

Game studios knew this since forever. Once you finish building, if you aren't building something new, then you're laying off. It's not a new thing Twitter/Musk has just discovered. Odd that whenever this is discussed, it's framed as if Twitter-then is the same thing as Twitter-now, minus most of its employees and doing just fine.

Here if anyone is interested: https://pantel.is/projects/ai-gaming-companion/

What I disagree with is "it's not a labor problem, it's a compensation problem" framing.

I think it IS a labor problem, and also a compensation problem. Compensation itself only solves for the local maxima.

This is said all the time, and don't get me wrong, I like "compensation" as much as the other guy, but to me this just sounds like a race to the bottom (or sky) for companies.

It's great for those compensated for sure. But what happens once the companies with deepest pockets, FAANG and such, pay the most and drain the job market, what happens to all the other companies then? It raises the bar significantly for any new startup, makes it ever more impossible for any boring, middle-of-the-road company to find anyone remotely capable. Ultimately growth of the tech sector is limited by the number of people you have available, regardless of how much you pay for them. If anything, another country with more potential talent could even surpass the one playing alone in its own sandbox.

I'm not saying this is necessarily a bad thing, and maybe in an economic downturn it's even a good thing, I'm just saying that it doesn't come with no tradeoffs.

Not that any other country does much better in this regard. Still it sounds a little wild to me that you can get this information without even needing to hit a shady forum and download some csv. Maybe lowers the bar too much.

I don't remember the last time someone dropped me the first link out of a Google search, telling me they haven't read themselves and have no idea about its contents. Yet I see it happen in various 1-1 and public settings with Claude all the time.

In those discussions people often don't use this as a "Here let me Claude it for you" kind of protest, but genuinely they mean "I copy pasted this topic to Claude, and Claude said this. I'm meat-proxying to you, and absolutely haven't invested a single microsecond of my time on it". Obviously the expectation is you'd invest the effort they haven't.

My strategy and hope, is to give it a decade. It will probably get better.

Hopefully it's not so bad.

Oh BTW they showed a new Beat Saber game, and among the logos I've seen Ace Attorney VR among a few others. Let's see if those come for Quest 3 and maybe even PCVR.

So yeah, be careful of the play area. :)

Obligatory subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/VRtoER/

It will probably never stop asking.

I think it’s fair to assume that for most companies, cost is essentially zero on the company’s side.

One would hope maybe boring things like healthcare, better living conditions, better functioning societies, and so on.

Not as exciting as flying cars and thinking machines for sure.

I think different people benefit from it differently. Most people regardless of remote or in-office, put on their headphones and barely talk to anyone else all day, and being in the office has zero if not negative networking benefit for them.

Then there are a few "social butterflies" who know everyone in every department, and they benefit in various ways internally and externally. Internally maybe they can move a difficult cross-department project because they have friends there, which then comes back as praise and rewards. Externally maybe one of their friends get a better position somewhere else and poach them, etc. etc.

OTOH we know tablets, smartphones and cars can operate in an open manner, and their users benefit from this. Apple choosing not to make such tablets and phones is similar to cars that could operate on any road and fed any brand oil, but Apple choosing not to for their own benefit.

Maybe not in this day and age of LLMs.

That heavily depends on the city and country. I don't know where OP is, but for example in Berlin it's kinda rare to meet people not speaking any English, basically mostly old people/retirees don't.

There are gyms where people speak English, cinemas with English subtitles, all kinds of doctors speak English, even a lot of bureaucracy like driving exams etc. can be taken in English. Speak to a random person in English, odds are very high they respond back in English.

I'm not saying this to mean it's 100% easy of course. Default language is ofc German, and not knowing it locks you out sometimes. Just saying that it's possible to live in a city like Berlin and not speak the language, and most days you barely think about it. I'd say it's an obstacle once-twice a month rather than daily.