Only because he's white. If he was black, I would have said stereotypical black. I wasn't addressing this at you. I'll edit to say stereotypical ~~douche bag~~ ~~frat boy turd~~ thing.

This is why giving importance to "not the focus" of the message gets in the way. Now we aren't talking about -insert meme here- anymore. We are talking about someone's personal issue with how I phrased something. Honestly, just proves the point of getting distracted by irrelevant things.

Why would anyone care who the stereotypical white dude is? That is giving importance/energy to the wrong thing. I didn't even really notice nor care who he was (and still don't). That said, I don't generate memes with him in it so I guess I'm doing my part. 🤷🏻‍♂️

I see your TLD is ".de" so maybe there it works, not in America. Home of the "free".

Changing the setting in Teams and Outlook to Default Browser resulted in links that did not work at all. Removed Teams add-on was the only solution.

Meanwhile, if you use Microsoft Teams & Outlook with the Teams add-on installed ... and you are wondering why your email links are suddenly opening in Edge instead of your default browser, disable the Teams add-on in Outlook and rage for a moment at the stupidity.

Teams is forcing Edge browser to open links in new Teams and by extension, in Outlook. Setting the default browser to open links within Outlook settings just leads to un-clickable links. The only way to fix it is to disable the Teams Outlook add-on.

Yes, same old Microsoft. Anyone who thinks they have changed in any way since the days of forcing Internet Explorer as the default are sadly and woefully mistaken.

As an extra FU, if you want to opt out of data sharing with partner advertising on the Magenta Marketing Platform you have to know your Android or IOS advertising ID number or you have to install an app ... which most likely profiles you and sells your data to yet another 1000 partners.

Yeah, what I wouldn't give to have each person responsible for this madness sent to Dante's Inferno worst ring of hell.

Most everyone has been to this point some time in their life. The question is how you handle the answer.

The world is cruel and doesn't care. That's why YOU must care for yourself, not kill yourself.

My suggestion for you is to take stock of all that you have to offer and then list what you like. Interests, hobbies, skills, knowledge (like can you do your own taxes or expert at filling out student loan forms, you can do construction or plumbing, etc.). Anything goes.

Now see what lines up from column A and column B and write down a list of jobs that needs/uses those things. Now you know what kind of work you can do and won't hate.

Next list what you like and dislike about your personality. Then, do the same for everyone else. You should see a pattern (i.e. I like intelligent conversations/ I dislike loud people) of things that go hand in hand. Like the loudest person in a room is usually the dumbest too.

Anyway, once you know all these things, you should be able to tell if a job is for you and if the people you'll be working with are a match.

The key is to like what you do and the people you do it with. The money will eventually come if you don't hate going to work or the people you work with. At the very least, your life won't suck. Also, never stop looking for a better job or opportunity.

A perfect job doesn't exist (unless you are your own boss) and the good ones don't always stay that way. Adjust to that reality and always be looking ahead. That is how you navigate/work the system. I am a sore loser and never back down so letting the system win is not an option. It shouldn't be for you either.

Oh please don't misunderstand my post. I'm in total agreement that this bullshit can't go unchallenged and that posting about it is necessary and good. It's just that, like public comment town halls, all the complaining in the world does not affect change.

Instead, I meant to imply that more needs to be done and in a way that people who have already paid can use to fight against them.

Like encouraging all Roku TV owners (and eventually all Smart TV owners) to contact their local, state and federal representatives to demand they enact consumer protection laws against post purchase forced software changes to functionality of the product (aside from security patches) or forced acceptance of 'terms of service' that essentially take away your right to your preferred method of recourse.

I mean, the idea that we buy something for the features and capabilities it gives us just to have it changed at the whim of a corporate moneymaking scheme is insane. Even moreso when policy changes mean you accept something you don't want to or lose what you paid for (i.e. Roku's forced arbitration acceptance that would otherwise brick the TV).

It's fine to vent frustrations but in the long run, jailbreaking and looking to buy something different doesn't resolve the root problem. Greed overcoming consumer protection in the name of shareholder interest (most of which are corporate C level douches).

Sorry if I wasn't clear with my opinion but my posts usually are already too long before they even start. lol

You know what people tend to forget?

Shareholders = Consumers of the product too

Marketing departments that come up with these assinine ideas are staffed with consumers of the product too.

As long as enough people are making bank from this stupidity, it will not stop.

The only right answer is not to give them your money. Hard to do that when they all do it and after purchase protests are kind of pointless since they already got paid. So, how to actually impact their bottom line? That's the only language they listen to.

WFH and successful collaboration are not mutually exclusive. Quality of life and commuter culture are (unless you define yourself by your job ... which is sad).

Studies are just statistics hidden behind words and statistics can be twisted to support any theory. Also, the main study being touted in this thread as verifiable facts is absurdly manipulated and miniscule.

The "researchers" of that study have constantly been changing the dataset used to calculate their numbers and then doing fuzzy math to "re-weight" the results. Removing and excluding participants based on salary or the year of salary that it uses to generate statistics from. Oh and the participant count is 200k since May 2020. Meanwhile, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics National Current Employment Statistics show about 135 MILLION non-farm private sector workers in the US.

Yeah. An actual study of how WFH impacts companies and workers does not exist. Mostly because companies don't care to spend the money to find out and no one else has the money or access to truly determine the truth.

So, in the absence of an actual facts, let me randomly quote anecdotal statistics which is completely unscientific, 6 out of 10 people you ask prefer WFH or Hybrid (except if they are a people person and need personal interaction for their own happiness or their home life sucks). The 7th one out of 10 want full time back to office for whatever personal reasons they have. Usually related to in office romance or criminal activities. The 8th out of 10 wants no one to be able to WFH because their job can't be done remotely and are envious that they chose a career they don't like. The 9th and 10th out of 10 people are the ones who stand to benefit from people being tethered to a life of nothing but your job being the sole focus of everything you do. So, when it comes down to it, it feels like a toss up when you ask people but really, its just those with personal reasons or a vested interest in the rat race that want asses in seats. Governments, real estate property companies, business district establishments and ride share companies for example.

I personally would love for my job to be fully remote without any ridiculous salary adjustments based on where I live. The skills I need/have, the work required of me and the quality of work that I perform does not change because I moved to a LCOL area. The compensation I get for my work shouldn't either.

As a compromise or if I have other reasons for being willing to commute to an office for my type of work, I would prefer a 4 day work week with 2 days in office and 2 days remote. Also, no stupid rules about making the days non-consecutive or otherwise forcing artificial barriers to minimizing the impact to your personal life for office face time.

"MILDLY" infuriating? lol

The message was lost with the example chosen.

TL;DR - the world sucks for most people nowadays who want to buy a house.

The idea was that at one point in America, a single earner could afford to buy a home and upgrade the quality of their life if they:

• work hard
• had a decent job
• saved money
• did not procreate themselves into poverty

Now, even with two-earner families, it is not enough to afford even a basic starter home without being house poor and in debt for the entirety of your life without ever really "owning" anything (other than the payments). The reason for this change in home ownership experience is what is always hotly debated.

Those with general wealth or an entrepreneurial spirit will argue that it is still possible. The working class who just wants to do a job, earn a paycheck and leave work behind at the end of the day will disagree. The poor worry more about how to pay their bills at the end of the month and still feed themselves to worry about a house.

There are a lot of factors in my opinion on what has changed to make it so hard today but no reason greater to me than when a house became an investment instrument instead of a place to raise a family. Something left to your heirs to give them a leg up in their future and that was how upward mobility worked. However, now that a house is not just a home but an investment tool, more and more people are finding the "American dream" is no longer achievable.

How the value of a house was derived hasn't really changed all that much. What has changed is how much that value is. It used to be that a single earner making 100k a year in a big city could afford to buy a home and with more kids (aka tax breaks) could afford to upgrade homes from the starter home to one in the suburbs. Then came the two-earner households. People could afford more so the real estate industry started charging more for the same things and people paid it ... because they could. The single earner was left behind because two incomes will always be more than one.

Then came the real estate get rich craze. Those modern families with two working adults and positive cash flow just waiting to be ... (oh wait, that's the infomercial sales pitch). There was money to be made for little to no effort. Just buy a property, charge someone rent and make sure that your income was greater than your expenses. Boom! That's it. Sit at home watching TV while your bank account gets rich. The two-earner family was now getting squeezed out by competition from the small investor. This also drove up the price of homes because the investor was willing to spend more if they thought they could charge more for the rental. The two-earner families now had to shell out more to buy or stay a renter because they could no longer afford to buy. Pretty cool business model where you can create your own customer base.

As is typical, it wasn't long before real estate corporations started to muscle in on the business as there was money to be made; especially with the deep pockets of bankruptcy protected corporate entities that could speculate on property values going up without worrying about losses. They also started exercising local political and financial influence over zoning and construction laws to ensure opportunity and property values would go their way. The small investors started to get pushed to the side and all the while, home prices kept going up (and inventory going down). Since profits must always go up, these so called developers started to decrease the actual size of the living space to squeeze more profits from the same properties. The original shrinkflation. That's how you ended up with shoebox sized apartments in big cities.

Finally, we come to modern day times, where publicly traded companies like the Zillow and Redfins of the world buy up whole markets in an effort to control supply and pricing. Real estate is unaffordable to most and the rich buy properties with no intention of using it for living. Instead, they use them as tax shelters for their wealth (tax deductible real estate investment trusts (REITs), 1031 exchanges, depreciation, and mortgage interest payments). Corporate shareholder interests also demand that housing costs keep rising regardless of the impact. What impact is that you say?

People are forced to rent, delay starting a family and find other ways to make money besides working for a living. Some try to do it through investments in the stock market where there are always more individual investor losers than there are winners. The same place the Zillows and Redfins of the world go to get their money so they can afford to try and manipulate said markets you can no longer afford to buy in. If you ask me, this is capitalism at its finest so long as you are on the right side of the financial wall. If your main focus in life is not to make money, then you will be supporting someone who does make it their focus. Welcome to modern serfdom.

"Serfdom, condition in medieval Europe in which a tenant farmer was bound to a hereditary plot of land and to the will of his landlord." - Encyclopedia Brittanica

Fun! The user comments out of context are great too!