Irreal

Managers and bean counters tell themselves all sorts of pretty lies to justify open office plans. It will increase collaboration, they say. Employees will know what the rest of the team is doing and be better able to solve problems, they think. Yet, somehow, despite all the putative benefits, these managers virtually never think it’s a good idea for them. That’s because deep down they know it’s really about being cheaper and they won’t have to endure it so why not?

Sadly, Apple has joined the list of companies that should know better but don’t. Their new headquarters is going to feature open office space for engineers, developers, and other employees. The employees aren’t happy. Some of those employees say they are planning to or considering leaving the company. It’s those engineers and developers that have made Apple the success it is. Inflicting the horror of an open office on them seems like an ungrateful—and ultimately self-destructive—thing to do.

Those of you who been following Irreal lately know of my fascination with the WeChat mobile app and its use in China where it serves as a wallet and messaging service. Chinese users pay for practically everything with it, use it to access government services, and for more mundane things like haling a cab or texting a friend.

I love this idea and wish we has something similar in the West. I don’t care so much about having every function in a single app but I would like to have something like Apple Pay that worked everywhere. If I have to use the Uber app to get a ride, that’s okay. The MIT Technology Review has an interesting article asking if WeChat can thrive in the U.S.

The answer so far is maybe not. Just as Western companies often have difficulty penetrating Chinese markets, Tencent, the maker of WeChat, has had limited success in penetrating markets outside of China and what success they have had is mostly with ethic Chinese traveling abroad. Part of that is that although I can download the WeChat app, I can’t link it to my bank account so I can’t use it to pay for things. On the other hand, there are already lots of successful social and messaging apps available so it doesn’t make a lot of sense to start using WeChat. That is, the network effects of the incumbent players inhibit Tencent from gaining traction in the West just as WeChat’s dominance in China would prevent, say, Facebook from succeeding in China were the Chinese government to cease blocking it.

If you’d like to learn a bit more about WeChat, take a look at my two previous posts about it. WeChat or something like it is in our future and it can’t come too soon for me.

Speaking of \(\LaTeX\) —as we were yesterday—Diomidis Spinellis, who’s the Editor and Chief and IEEE Software and who has written hundreds and papers and books in \(\LaTeX\) has a nice set of tips for writing LaTeX documents.

He has the usual advice about using the \(\LaTeX\) language but also mentions such things as source control, make files for building documents, style files, and recommended third-party packages. If you are writing with LaTeX, it is well worth your while to take a look at Spinellis’ advice. It’s relatively short and mentions all those little things that I, at least, always forget—do footnote indicators go before or after punctuation, for example.