Reader question:

Please explain this sentence, with “all in” in particular: We are all in on remote work.

My comments:

Remote work refers to work at home, away from the office.

They (We) all support the idea of remote work (considering, for example, the coronavirus isn’t going away).

That’s what all in means.

All in?

Originally, “all in” refers to putting ALL of your chips IN when you play a gambling game.

In gambling, one decides whether they stake a chip (a coin-like piece represent an amount of money) by calculating the odds, or the chances of winning.

In a game of poker, for example, a player decides whether they want to gamble on their money by analyzing how good a hand (of cards) they have. If they have a great hand, they may stake more chips in the hope of winning more.

However, if they feel they have a bad hand, they may choose to chip in less up in order to minimize potential loss.

Once in awhile, a player is so confident in his or her hand that they may decide to go “all in”, that is, putting all their chips in.

If they win, they win big. On the other hand, if they lose, they lose all.

Obviously, going “all in” (or all-in) requires a lot of confidence as well as daring and determination.

Hence, metaphorically speaking, “all in” means you are fully committed to something, willing to risk everything you’ve got.

In our example, “we”, as employees, are all supportive of the idea of remote work.

Like, totally – come hell or high water.

All right. And here are media examples of people who are all in – on this idea or that:

1. Microsoft has acquired the software development platform GitHub for $7.5bn in stock, it was announced today. The deal is due to be completed by the end of the year.

GitHub hosts over 85 million code archives (called ‘repositories’) from more than 28 million users. Coders are able to collaborate with each other on their work and many projects on the site are ‘open source’, meaning they are publicly accessible, and therefore anyone can inspect, modify and share them.

The platform was founded in 2008 and last valued at $1.9bn. It is used by developers in more than 1.5 million organizations including PayPal, Airbnb and Spotify. Microsoft itself is the most active organization on GitHub, with more than two million updates made to projects.

Announcing the acquisition, Microsoft promised that GitHub would continue to run independently and would remain an open platform with a “developer-first ethos”.

Microsoft also said it was “all-in on open source”. This is a serious shift from a previous position when it was opposed to what it saw as a threat to its intellectual property, with former Microsoft chief Steve Ballmer once calling the open source operating system Linux a “cancer”. However, Microsoft has come around to the idea of open source in recent years (and even joined the Linux Foundation in 2016).

- “We’re all in on open source”: Microsoft buys GitHub, Verdict.co.uk, June 4, 2018.

2. Things are starting to move and groove ahead of the 2022 NFL draft.

According to Tony Pauline of the Pro Football Network, New York Jets general manager, Joe Douglas is “all in” on using the No. 10 overall pick to acquire San Francisco 49ers wide receiver Deebo Samuel.

This is a significant step to potentially making this dream trade a reality.

On the Friday episode of Get Up, ESPN NFL Insider Jeremy Fowler said if the Jets were willing to give up the No. 10 overall pick in the first round, “that could be enough to get something done” with the 49ers.

Now that it seems like the Jets are willing to give up that level of compensation, this deal could come together very quickly.

We have two of the three things necessary for a trade.

Samuel wants out and does not want to play another snap for San Francisco. The Jets, according to Pauline, are willing to give up a premium asset that no other team in the NFL can compete with.

The last missing of the puzzle is the 49ers coming to the realization that this is a lost cause. From all indications, they’re trying to do everything in their power to fix whatever is wrong with their relationship with Samuel, but if they come to terms with the fact that isn’t possible, that is when a deal could come to fruition.

- Jets Are ‘All in’ on Trading for Pro Bowl WR in Blockbuster Deal: Report, Heavy.com, April 23, 2022.

3. Rep. Eric Swalwell said that Democrats didn’t know the degree to which House Republicans were all in on the 1/6 attack.

Swalwell was asked by MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace if Democrats knew that these House Republicans were in on the plot.

Rep. Swalwell answered:

“No. They were all in on it, Nicole, and it clearly went beyond their own expectations, because at the end of that day, we were all running for our lives together, and I actually was so foolish to believe that once we were put in the evacuation room, that we would come out of it united, and that would be our antidote to make sure a day like that would never happen again. And they were as terrified as I was.

“Inside that room. But what did they do? They came out of that room, we didn’t have unity. Instead, they tried to blame it on Antifa and then they went right back to saying that the election was stolen, creating the same exact ingredients for another combustible event in our country, and so it is really maddening to see how much criming they were doing ahead of time, and you just hope that there’s going to be some accountability, a reckoning of sorts for their roles.”

Swalwell also said that Kevin McCarthy and Marjorie Taylor Greene believe in violence over voting.

- Eric Swalwell Says House Republicans Were All In On 1/6 Attack, PoliticusUSA.com, April 27, 2022.

本文僅代表作者本人觀點，與本網立場無關。歡迎大家討論學術問題，尊重他人，禁止人身攻擊和發布一切違反國家現行法律法規的內容。

About the author:

Zhang Xin is Trainer at chinadaily.com.cn. He has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for potential use in a future column.

（作者：張欣  編輯：丹妮）