ser0

Having worked in ecommerce on both merchant and SaaS side I can explain why they may have and as a customer you will basically never see it applied.

From an engineering point of view, yes you can save so much packaging for the company and optimise for a delivery to be in fewer boxes, which is a fun problem to solve.

From a retail operations point of view the cost of packaging and shipping is negligible and why it’s so often discounted. The real costs though are labour.

Your pick and packing staff are basically all judged on throughput so if someone spends 5 minutes to pack an order in 1 well fitting box they will be fired if everyone else can pack 5 orders in the same 5 minutes.

Generally speaking your packer station is set up so they either have a terminal showing their packing list, a tub of goods to pack for one or more orders, and stacks of different sized boxes.

The stations usually get messy quickly with papers etc all over the place. It’s not a place for precise work and speed is valued above all. In describing the work station I didn’t even mention scanning, taping and labelling of the package that has to happen in the same space too.

Some may argue it’s possible to be both fast and precise, but I would argue it’s not sustainable over an 8 hour shift.

Finally, similar to why potato crisps/chips have so much volume is that inefficient, or spacious, packing is generally better for transport as you are less likely to have goods damage each other from being too tightly packed together.

That’s why IMO generally things are packed sub-optimally from a space use perspective but actually optimally from a convenience and speed perspective.

Pop is a very similar product.

Part of the problem is discoverability. As the library gets larger, without adequate time invested into docs or standardised naming to enable faster code-based search, people can end up writing their own functions when one already exist. Often these are not discovered unless PRs are reviewed by someone that either wrote or has experience with a reusable function.

I think the topic of having/not-having children should be treated like politics and religion in polite conversation, to be avoided.

Unfortunately there is quite the philosophical, ideological, and even dogmatic schism between the two sides.

Like another post I read, if you do have to enter a debate about it, it's probably a more useful exercise to ask each other what it would take for their stance to change.

I'm glad it's posted and thanks for being quite generous with the sample content of downloads and links that did not require an email to access.

I have bought a copy.

Since the description is pretty light. It seems Canon Rumors is a site dedicated to Canon related news in the same vein as MacRumors.

I think the idea is that it makes for more compliant, or less empowered, workers that will put up with more abuse.

I have similarly varied background and I have not had candidate employers put it through that lens.

If anything I find people tend to look upon varied experience as proof that you can add value on multiple fronts and across functions within the organisation, which should make you a slightly less common cog in the machine.

Agreed. A company that would enable a work environment that fosters a mass exodus would be unlikely to feel accountable to any remaining employees.

Effectively, yes, this.

Just as businesses are expected to monitor and react to competitors that are after their customers. They should also have processes in place to react to competitors for their staff.

For me The Silver Searcher (Ag) has replaced trying to memorise various grep flags. Its defaults produce largely what I'm looking for without needing any flags.

On occasions where I do need more advanced features such as excluding file patterns or directories, I find the man page to be pretty easy to understand.

I have to disagree with this.

Working for a flexible work arrangement employer has made me appreciate the following alternatives to what I used to consider pros of working in the office.

- Hall way chats are now Slack chats. These are more likely to be in the open and allow more participants. When gathering feedback or ideas this allows interested parties to participate asynchronously, which they may not have been able to do in person.

- Quick tap on the shoulder assistance or conversations. These were always a little disruptive. With Slack statuses and huddles, I'm finding we can have explicit do-not-disturb signals and when everyone is ready, a quick low-friction way of having a discussion.

- Group meetings. There was always a limit to the effectiveness of this depending on the make up of the group and the size of the group. Being forced online means it's even more obvious when people are not comfortable participating. The solution being more async collaborative RFC-style processes before meeting in Zoom to discuss only the points of difference.

- Recordings. Often we would need to take notes, etc. Now everything can be recorded. Minutes are still good, but no longer need to be taken all the time. If the meeting was a bust and nothing of value was gained, you don't need to type it up. If something important was discussed, you don't have to rely on memory and can transcribe off the recording.

All of the above I consider to be a benefit to both the employer and employee as it allows for greater flexibility in how and when we interact and automated digitisation means a much easier process of persisting and communicating institutional knowledge that is being created among a group.