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Ask HN: How are you holding up?

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251–260 of 398 posts

Re: Ask HN: How are you holding up?

#251

Started a new software engineering job just before stay-at-home orders. Joined the team in March. Nobody is training me. My teammates don’t like meetings so I never see them in video calls. I haven’t been getting any work done. Manager is asking me why I haven’t been getting any work done. I don’t even know where to begin. The documentation is garbage but that’s not so unusual. What’s unusual is that I have to ask qu…

If docs don’t exist for one reason or another, what are a few ways team members could assist you in better understanding the code base?

Re: Ask HN: How are you holding up?

#252
post #233
post #51

I feel a touch of shame considering the tenor of this thread, but amazing. I just said to my wife I don’t want to go back. And I have a pretty spacious private office. We had our first child on Halloween and we both had only returned to work for a month before being forced to wfh. We both still are. It’s great watching my son every day grow. My wife’s job leaves her twiddling her thumbs a lot so she gets to spend a l…

> We had our first child on Halloween As someone who also has a birthday on Halloween, let me share something that I learned in childhood: Don't give your kid candy for birthday presents. They'll start hating it past age 10. Trust me. Best of luck to you and your family.

They'll start hating getting candy as a gift, or hating candy? If it's the latter, then maybe that is the right gift to give!

Re: Ask HN: How are you holding up?

#253
Great. Frankly this has been one of the high points of my life. No commuting has been great. I get to spend a ton more time with my wife and kids. Before the pandemic I rarely went out to eat and rarely went to stores, so really little of my life has changed. I've been spending a lot more time on projects around the house. Before the pandemic I had started working on redoing the three bathrooms in my house. I thought it would take a long time, but I'm getting it done much faster than expected. The pandemic came at an ideal time for me. My work is such that I can do it from home no problem. I'm not sure when or if I'll ever move back to working on campus. I've even received a 15% raise during the pandemic. I don't personally know anyone that has been sick, much less died. Our governor shut things down very quickly so we have had very very few cases in our state. All in all this has been a wonderful experience.

Re: Ask HN: How are you holding up?

#254
We live in a dark time. Before I had a family I was on track for FIRE so I could exit society and live in peace. But now that I have kids I'm drawn back in and its heartbreaking to see how much worse it is now than when I first decided to opt out.

I don't know how I'm going to guide my children through this new dark age.

Re: Ask HN: How are you holding up?

#255

Started a new software engineering job just before stay-at-home orders. Joined the team in March. Nobody is training me. My teammates don’t like meetings so I never see them in video calls. I haven’t been getting any work done. Manager is asking me why I haven’t been getting any work done. I don’t even know where to begin. The documentation is garbage but that’s not so unusual. What’s unusual is that I have to ask qu…

Hey, it's me a couple months ago! With a side dose of "we may or may not fire you, we dunno yet" for several weeks (they did, abruptly, the day after once again saying they maybe wouldn't, and I guess I'll never know exactly why). Confusing as hell and unlike anything I'd experienced in my not-short career. I guess some managers/teams are straight-up incompetent at onboarding and blind to how hostile-to-new-hires their codebase(s) and docs are. Oh and useless, god-awful justify-your-existence-to-your-manager (then tune out because nothing anyone else says matters) standups every day adding to the stress. And no planning process to speak of. It's the second time in my life I've felt actually-mentally-ill and the other involved a sick newborn, so. That's impressive for them to have achieved, I guess.

Save money if you can and look for cheap/free credit lines, is my advice. If you can get a few months' worth of bills in the bank or available on super-cheap credit then the worst-case (shit, best-case, for me—I felt so much better after) scenario won't really be that bad. Hit up your network if you can and see if anyone needs some contract work, if things don't work out. It's pretty easy to scare up a few hours here and there, maybe enough to at least cover bills.

Re: Ask HN: How are you holding up?

#256
Having the time of my life. Yeah, there's a lot of stuff going on (BLM, The Last of Us 2 being DOGSHIT, sensationalist news, etc.) but I've decided to avoid that stuff cause "why would I do that my brain" (Bill Burr)?

I just spend my days coding, reading, and playing muh games. Gotta admit, I'm loving 2020.

Re: Ask HN: How are you holding up?

#258
post #76
post #16

Really badly, but could be worse. I am entirely sure that I have moderate-serious depression since the lock down started. I rely entirely on external structure and physical separation of spaces to keep myself sane. So WFH has been disastrous for me. I have been eating worse, not working out, stopped pursuing hobbies/side projects and have been incredibly unproductive at work. Thankfully, a year of good results prior…

Consider the alternative: Social/political climates and the "cancel culture" always has something to target. If you look, at any given time, this is something that has been going on since we could communicate in a public sphere. There has always been and always will be a tension in the public conversation. I wouldn't say "cusp of actual war" though. There are many people however who are hoping and actively counting o…

I would love to agree with you, except the present situation has been the one "media event" of my lifetime where having early warning through social media was materially useful: I stockpiled food before the two weeks or so of supply disruption and empty shelves at the start of the crisis.

I've found twitter to be both an extremely valuable lockdown coping mechanism with friends and replacement events, and an anxiety amplifier.

Materially I'm fine. I'm still getting paid and spending very little. All my travel plans for the year are cancelled and in unknown limbo and I don't know when I can dare to make plans again.

Re: Ask HN: How are you holding up?

#259
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to take too dark a turn here, but human zoos were not uncommon at the turn of the century. The Bronx Zoo had people, in cages, on display in 1906. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_zoo

Ohh dear..that page is really shocking. What a sorry, shameful history.

When I see things like this I always wonder if any of my ancestors were involved. Did any of my ancestors go to see these zoos? What would they think of me if they knew of my disapproval? Would they think there is something wrong with me?

Re: Ask HN: How are you holding up?

#260

Pretty terrible. I have no prospects, my startups all failed, I've lost most of my money (lost about $2m that I saved over 10 years and earned from previous startups which I managed to cash out). I tried to go the VC route, but no investors wanted to talk to me, so I spent my own money instead and now I'm broke. I need to find a job, but because I'm highly experienced and older (35 y/o), most companies see me as expe…

I feel this, I'm facing homelessness and have no prospects, just high intelligence and aptitude and good leadership skills. I don't really want to kill myself that much but it might be nice to stick it to the sort of people who post about suicide hotlines whenever you're open about it.
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