Nobody directly involved ever mentioned the idea and we didn't change jurisdictions. We had the right to reject a magistrate simply because they were a magistrate judge and not simply a judge. Nobody discouraged it or even tried to fight it. If law was so logical and like code, this move would not cause an instant 180 in the case.
I won through a little bit of advice suggested by a layperson. I simply got the case moved to another room. The old judge hated us and the new judge loved us. All we had to do was decline magistrate jurisdiction. My lawyer was really reluctant for reasons I believe had to do with his standing with the court and not my case. And to think that layperson could be jailed for suggesting it.
I was pulled into a tough legal case and my lawyer explained that engineers have the hardest time working with law because they expect things to be logical. It's really a squishy mess full of ambiguities that are resolved with sophistry and head games.
And then the retention department pretends to cancel, as they want to be on target for their monthly bonus. Now you can print a copy of your phone call as evidence when you get billed again (oops, you can't). So now you get to deal with the vendor and the credit card company. Very smart time savings!
Do you even realize you can send mail from your mailbox?
I can walk to my mailbox and put the little metal flag up in a couple minutes. I can't be put on hold or have the conversation drag on for 40+ minutes, as some in the complaint stated. No need to make this hard.
I joined a startup whose mission statement was to "do something with XML." We grabbed an embedded board, connected it to a printer port and enabled legacy systems to "print" to an XML service. It sold for lots of money and was never really integrated into anything.
When experts do chime in, they're blasted as shills. Have fun finding someone who is truly an expert yet has no connection to the industry that uses the technology.
The "user as the product" model works well for the user for a while, when business is booming. I now pay Microsoft for email simply because they have someone answering the phone over there, competent or not. I get Office as part of the deal.
I've been doing this for more than 25 years and the income gains for being productive are miniscule. Strategizing your job hops carefully is what gets you the 1/2 million.
I've seen other examples where thinking outside the C++ box is taboo. There was a talk at one of the conferences where the speaker was obviously referring to some of the enhancements introduced by Qt while taking care to never actually mention it by name.
Besides the licensing issues, I found it bloated and flaky. For me, the friendly GUI just added pain. I use docker in Hyper-V as my home media server instead. WSL2 also works.