Machines have a lot higher initial one off costs.
The repair costs of some robots might make them more expensive per hour.
Humans are tried and tested, they don't break-down and stop your production line.
When designing the production lines they must weigh up the cost of a machine at each stage (initial cost, elec, repairs) vs workers and decide a time-frame they want to project and compare the costs over (because of their higher initial cost the longer period you do your projection over the more likely a robot will ever be cheaper).
I might be wrong, UK law is different than the rest of the EU (you can opt out of the working time directive here).
That said, isn't it a 40 hour max on contracted hours? Otherwise it is completely un-policeable. The idea is that you can't lose your job for refusing to work past 40 hours (i.e. refusing to take overtime). But you are allowed to work the overtime if you so please.
40 hours/week is maximum your contract in the UK can oblige you to work. Having said that, when I got my job in the games industry I had to sign a statement stating that I voluntarily decide to work over that limit(but I am not required to). And no, overtime is not paid.
Ok 48 hours. And yes, I was told I don't have to sign it, but it's one of these situations when not signing it is ill advised. And in the games industry if I was working more than 48 hours per week it would be because I want to,not because I have to.
Don't offices and residential buildings have different building regulations, not to mention licenses. I don't know much on the subject but it would't surprise me if this was either illegal or only legal in a small set of cases where the buildings are up to standard.
Recently former BT employee here. The primary affects of stack ranking at BT is on bonus and raises. If you receive a sufficient number of sub-standard rankings then you would go through the usual UK process of being given warnings which tally up and could eventually lead to dismissal. It definitely is not the case that they fire the bottom x%.
I know for fact BT do not do this however it is my understanding that Amazon (and possibly other big US tech companies operating in the UK) employ their UK workers as contractors to the US subsidiaries to avoid employment law.
As some-one living in a flat, if there was somewhere with a quality piano I would happily pay gym prices to go play it. Although much like a gym, if I couldn't get at the piano I would soon stop paying.
I live nowhere that would have this unfortunately (140k pop town)
I live in Helena, MT (let's say 60k pop). I met a local piano tuner a few months back who had started a program where he would place unwanted pianos in local businesses and maintain them for free. He said the local market just isn't buying pianos anymore and he has a couple dozen sitting in storage. Rather than throw them out, which he is a real, tragic possibility, he gives them away.
I just opened a coworking space in town (grand opening was Friday!) and I'm going to try and get one of these pianos in there.
Was coming into this expecting an interesting piece about the distribution of prime numbers. Either a new approach to predicting them or a proof of why they're unpredictable. But no it's a visualisation of their distribution. Interesting but entirely not what was expected.
No, but I am saying that switching between them is not as easy as grabbing a different tool. The easiest place to switch languages is between abstraction layers or between functional components/processes. These language separations do not often coincide with the types of code that benefit from either OO style structure vs functional data processing.
Machines have a lot higher initial one off costs. The repair costs of some robots might make them more expensive per hour. Humans are tried and tested, they don't break-down and stop your production line.
When designing the production lines they must weigh up the cost of a machine at each stage (initial cost, elec, repairs) vs workers and decide a time-frame they want to project and compare the costs over (because of their higher initial cost the longer period you do your projection over the more likely a robot will ever be cheaper).