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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 5th, 2023

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  • The only way I get the equipment or maintenence time that I need to do my job efficiently is if I make my immediate superiors strategically miserable on occasion. If I did what the article insists is the ideal, I’d be doomed to silently perform the same temporary, time-wasting fixes every week forever.

    You can’t count on your work to ‘speak for itself’ if the company isn’t specifically examining your contributions in the first place. They will happily presume that your work is exactly interchangeable with everyone else’s because most middle managers aren’t experts at data collection and analysis and don’t spend 8 hours a day seeing what floor workers do.

    It’s even worse if they’re an outside hire, with potentially no relevant experience to compare it to. I swear companies do this on purpose to avoid elevating people with institutional knowledge and any sense of ownership in their area of expertise: they might end up accidentally paying someone what they’re worth.












  • Wanted to clarify that, while colors and spacing are customizable, I didn’t create or extensively modify the launcher apps, only the layout. It’s not rainmeter levels of remixing or anything. In particular, I don’t have as much control of the widgets as I’d like, and would probably tone down the calendar or picture gallery if I could.

    Though its not to diminish your read of it, I’m happy to explain my particular choices! You’re right that this layout is not visitor-friendly, but like you said, it’s a phone. Not really for sharing. That said, there IS a hierarchy of sorts, just not an obvious one - I’m left-handed, so anything I use with quick, one-handed input is in an arc from the bottom left (calculator, macronutrient tracker, checkbook). From there, apps in frequent or varied use, or with inline notifications, are larger. This way I can read a summary of a message or alert without opening the app or Notification Shade. From there, web browsing and social media is at the bottom for lots of thumb typing, while the morning routine (news, weather, traffic) is at the top for use on a desk.

    With a UI for general use, having to explain in such detail would be a sign of failure - I would indeed settle on a simpler rubric if it was a company tablet. But I love the little eccentric choices I can make with this launcher to make it just for me. Hope that proves interesting!


  • If it helps, I’m left-handed, so it’s grouped in a sort of arc from the bottom left corner - apps for quick one-handed use are inside the arc, and the rest is either informational or the start point for a more involved activity like web browsing. It looks ‘cluttered’ because I didn’t really lay it out as a generic or intuitive interface, but specifically to match my needs and habits. I think a home screen should be utilitarian - ‘pretty’ is for lock screens. Hope I didn’t send you down too deep a rabbit hole - Although sometimes that can be fun, so good luck!