Funny how corporations react when they get caught at something, including Apple. It’s always explained as trying to do right by their customers. When my youngest son was working on his MBA at the Washington University Olin School of Business in St. Louis he told me about a class he was taking on just how to respond when you get caught with your pants down around your ankles. The professor set up various situations and asked the students to respond. My son said the majority of the class always seemed to prefer the cover-up route, obfuscation, and denial. Many of these students were already in positions of management at their respective companies. My son said the professor was aghast at some of the solutions. Honesty and straightforwardness was what he wanted to hear but didn’t.
I went for an interview once where I had to do one of those role-playing games. The scenario was that a project was running late, and we had to meet with the client and come up with the solution.
My idea was to come up with a precise and honest appraisal of where things went wrong, and what we were going to do to fix it. I also said that we also accept the penalty clause because it was in the agreement and we were clearly at fault. So I went out in round one.
The fella who won the exercise for his “out of the box” thinking said we should tell the client that the leader engineer had “contracted cancer or something”.
The next exercise involved telling a co-worker they had a personal hygiene problem. That one ended in a fight.
Can anyone explain to me how this previously utterly-unknown-to-me Zoom suddenly became the video conference product of choice before the current round of realizations about how shitty it is?
I've heard the 'ease of use' argument mostly, though I have little experience with it. A number of podcasters started using it to do their live multi-person recordings that they might then publish to YouTube as well.
That said, in my experience over many years (in a number of fields), popular software often doesn't mean it is good or the best. Sometimes, I suppose, it means a unique (necessary, at least thought to be) feature. That is usually how the decision is at least justified.
Rayz2016 said: My idea was to come up with a precise and honest appraisal of where things went wrong, and what we were going to do to fix it. I also said that we also accept the penalty clause because it was in the agreement and we were clearly at fault. So I went out in round one.
Yeah, and one has to be really careful, as sometimes companies will try to get you to do illegal things to resolve situations or make something happen, and then you're also often on the hook with the company on criminal charges.
My wife briefly worked at a company that was bought out by one of those 'buy it, gut it, turn it' type owner/CEOs, and he tried to get her to do illegal things. But, some of these people exist in an alternate reality. When she got into an argument with him over the situation and it being illegal, he actually stated something close to, 'I am the law here.' She ended up having to resign.
Can anyone explain to me how this previously utterly-unknown-to-me Zoom suddenly became the video conference product of choice before the current round of realizations about how shitty it is?
I'm glad you're saying what I'm thinking. I thought they came out of nowhere. All the blue check marks started suddenly loving this company and I never heard of them. Not that I'm up on all the social platforms, but just seemed really odd. I wonder how many people who use this service are on Office 365 and can be using Teams instead?
My company (which has us all on Office 365) is offering to turn on Teams for us on a case-by-case basis if we have customers who won't meet with us over Zoom. I have two thoughts on this...
Much of this is blown out of proportion. I'm not concerned with being Zoom-bombed, nor am I particularly concerned over my meetings being snooped on.
I met with a company two weeks ago who wanted us to use their Teams system over Zoom. I found it to be less responsive, more cumbersome to access and use, and its UI was far less intuitive. Basically the same issues I find with most Microsoft products. It also didn't appear to have similar functionality, but that could have been dependent on features the host had not enabled.
I wouldn't even be using Office if my company didn't offer it. While Excel is just fine for crunching numbers, Numbers produces far better-looking tables and charts, I rarely use Word (Pages beats it for almost everything), and never use PowerPoint (because if's a f'ing horrible piece of crap in comparison to Keynote). That leaves Outlook which I use by default, even though I could be using Postbox or Apple Mail and Fantastical.
We too are an Office 365 shop. Unfortunately we don't have much of an option in our mixed environment. As basic as they are, the "iWork suite" is still better than Office for most work documents.
razorpit said: We too are an Office 365 shop. Unfortunately we don't have much of an option in our mixed environment. As basic as they are, the "iWork suite" is still better than Office for most work documents.
I like Excel, but otherwise I agree. I HATE Word! Keynote is just way better than PP. It is certainly more of a case of use it because you have to, or for compatibility... *maybe* for some feature (automation via VB, etc.). But as word processors go, there are several better options.
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I went for an interview once where I had to do one of those role-playing games. The scenario was that a project was running late, and we had to meet with the client and come up with the solution.
That said, in my experience over many years (in a number of fields), popular software often doesn't mean it is good or the best. Sometimes, I suppose, it means a unique (necessary, at least thought to be) feature. That is usually how the decision is at least justified.
My wife briefly worked at a company that was bought out by one of those 'buy it, gut it, turn it' type owner/CEOs, and he tried to get her to do illegal things. But, some of these people exist in an alternate reality. When she got into an argument with him over the situation and it being illegal, he actually stated something close to, 'I am the law here.' She ended up having to resign.