Writing this weeknote started out as a kind of training wheels for getting back into blogging. Having not written regularly for years I needed some kind of structure to hang my writing on, and having a regular appointment which summed up what I had been doing and reading each week seemed like a good idea.
Of course, this my weeknote and not anyone else's and because such a lot of what I do at work falls into the category of "business confidential" that precludes me talking much about it. I spend a lot of my time managing people, and intrinsically that's not something that I can often write about publicly.
This week though, I've had the pleasure of interviewing a bunch of young people who have applied to work on some paid internships we're running, and it's been incredibly rewarding. It's part of the government's Kickstarter programme, which is designed to help employed people to get work experience and training to give them a foot in the door towards a permanent job.
Doing ten interviews in two days is always hard work, but what's been brilliant is just how fantastic and smart and engaged the people have been. None of them have been over 21, some have been graduates and some not, but all of them have been great. What's also heartening -- and I think important -- is that all of them have honed in on the fact that we do a lot of campaigning and support for mental health in the workplace, and that diversity is an enormous and important issue for us.
I think companies need to think about this: these are issues that are important to young people in particular when choosing an employer, and if you're not focused on them, you could lose out on talent. There's a demographic time bomb coming down the line, as the lower rates of birth impact on the number of young people entering the workforce (exacerbated by Brexit), which means that companies will need to compete for new employees in a way they haven't had to do since the era of full employment in the 1960s.
But most important of all: the kids are alright.
Meanwhile, of course my new M1-powered Mac mini arrived. I've written about why I got it a bit, and I'm not going to do anything like benchmarking (the world does not need another M1 benchmark) but I'll write more about my experience this week. So far... well, it's a Mac. It is incredibly snappy, and with one exception, every Intel-code app I've run has worked well. In fact, what code the app is running is basically invisible to you: after the first time you run Rosetta, when it asks you if you want to install it, it's hard to even se what kind of code you're running (you have to go and look in the Info for each app, checking if it says "Universal" or not).
The exception, sadly, is Elder Scrolls Online, which has been my favourite MMORPG since I stopped regularly playing World of Warcraft a few years ago. ESO is great if you love a huge, sprawling world with enough story to keep you interested for years, a lot of variety in play styles (any character class can fill any role) and a really nicely developed world.
Unfortunately, its developers have also said they have no plans to support the M1 Macs, which basically means that over the long term they are throwing in the towel on Mac development -- in two years, all Macs will be M1. Not only that, they won't support it running under emulation, which is a shame as other games which run under emulation seem to run, and run well.
I guess they won't be the only ones: some developers, particularly in AAA games, could use this as a chance to stop supporting the Mac. And that would be a shame because ultimately, I don't have much doubt that the graphical and game play capabilities of this new generation of Mac will be exceptional.
So... I think it might be time to go back to WoW. Anyone got a friendly guild?
