101–110 of 133 posts
> One of Facebook’s internal slogans is something like “always do what’s best for Facebook”. Is that real? Like they really have this slogan that like comes straight out of a modern interpretation of Marx's theory of alienation shoved right into their employees faces? http://i.imgur.com/oVb4J0b.png
> 3-4 hour daily commute It saddens me that anyone thinks this is acceptable. I know some people don't mind it, but what a waste of your life to do this for any extended period of time.
My last CEO thought I was insane because I took a pay cut to swap a 90 minute each way commute for a 15 minute commute, but that's about 600 hours of extra time per year I get to spend with my wife and kids. 25 whole days.
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I am absolutely venting emotionally, I thought that much was clear. :) But I heard a variant of this in dozens or hundreds of meetings, generally when a project was getting shut down or canned or reorg'd, so it's not true to say that it's not true. It's not even a bad slogan. Company priorities should come before territorial interests. This is why it's important to work in a place that shares your values at a high le…
I think people are juxtaposing "what's good for Facebook" not with "what's good for [territorial subunit]", but rather with "what's good for the lives of the people working at Facebook." A slogan like that is sensible in the first case and terrifying in the second case.
I may have a separate set of issues with Facebook People policies, but there are a ton of really passionate, amazing engineers working there who deeply believe in the mission (or at least their local specialty). I miss many of them very much and wish them all well.
> 3-4 hour daily commute It saddens me that anyone thinks this is acceptable. I know some people don't mind it, but what a waste of your life to do this for any extended period of time.
mathgeek, your sentiment is seconded. Seeing people saying, "It's me time." is a bit disconcerting. Respectfully as an opinion, spending between 2 and 4+ hours a day sitting on a bus/train is not "me time". Why do I think that? Because of what I suspect the answer to this question would be: If you had 2 free hours at home would you spend it doing the exact same task that you would do for 2 hours on a bus? I understan…
In comparison, when I take the train, I arrive at the station a leisurely 15 minutes early. And I sit in a gigantic chair (compared to the plane) for those six hours. And they have free coffee and wifi. And the desk at my chair is not a baby's highchair platform, but an actually usable work surface. So I work.
And while the food isn't high quality, it's better than anything I've ever had on an airplane. Burgers and pizza and beer. Or fresh salads and coldcut sandwiches. Candy, granola bars, teas, water. It's a small convenience store.
No, I don't spend my time commuting. I spend my client's time commuting. Working on the train is the closest thing to teleporting I think any of us will come to in our lifetime.
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mathgeek, your sentiment is seconded. Seeing people saying, "It's me time." is a bit disconcerting. Respectfully as an opinion, spending between 2 and 4+ hours a day sitting on a bus/train is not "me time". Why do I think that? Because of what I suspect the answer to this question would be: If you had 2 free hours at home would you spend it doing the exact same task that you would do for 2 hours on a bus? I understan…
I occasionally take the train to travel larger distances. Between a 2 hour flight and a 6 hour train ride, I will take the train. Because a 2 hour flight is not just a 2 hour flight. It's a 2 hour "dealing with getting to and through airports" plus a 2 hour flight, with the whole experience microchunked into a plethora of annoyances and issues that I will not have any chance to sit down on my computer and do anything…
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> When I see a founder sell his business, all I ever think is (as I'm sure most do), what a selfish asshole. You must be new here. Some useful info: http://ycombinator.com https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I've been here a long time, and I frequently think the same thing.
In 1996, Graham and Robert Morris founded Viaweb, the first application service provider (ASP). Viaweb's software, originally written mostly in Common Lisp, allowed users to make their own Internet stores. In the summer of 1998 Viaweb was sold to Yahoo! for 455,000 shares of Yahoo! stock, valued at $49.6 million.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Graham_%28computer_progra...
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Do they seriously expect you to work 8hrs with a commute like that?
Never met a company that gave any sort of shit about how long it took employees to get there. I even once worked at a place that moved and added an hour to everyone's commute.
https://books.google.com/books?id=_h4eF9H9UtQC&pg=PA93&dq=%2...
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I occasionally take the train to travel larger distances. Between a 2 hour flight and a 6 hour train ride, I will take the train. Because a 2 hour flight is not just a 2 hour flight. It's a 2 hour "dealing with getting to and through airports" plus a 2 hour flight, with the whole experience microchunked into a plethora of annoyances and issues that I will not have any chance to sit down on my computer and do anything…
How I wish the US had more trains!
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My last CEO thought I was insane because I took a pay cut to swap a 90 minute each way commute for a 15 minute commute, but that's about 600 hours of extra time per year I get to spend with my wife and kids. 25 whole days.
Life is so very short. What value can you put on 25 extra days with your kids in a year. They're only going to be home for ~20 years. That's ~500 more days you get to have with them. An extra year and a half. It's a no brainer. There is no way you could pay me to give up a year and a half of my family.
There is no way you could pay me to give up a year and a half of my family.
By agreeing to participate in the work process, most people these days "give up" not 25 days a year, but full 100. Of course, there is a price tag they put on that time -- the salary.
This single-minded "family time is infinitely more valuable than work time" sentiment doesn't seem to match people's actions in reality. It looks more like some new-age signalling process; a (recent?) social phenomenon.
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I commute 2 hours each way per day and you get used to it. It sucks but so do home prices in South Bay.
Do you subtract those hours from how much time you'd be in the office or do you spend 12 hours a day away from home every day? I do about 2 hours a day when I'm not biking, but because we have a strong remote-work culture, I find myself working from home more and more, and expect to be fully remote pretty soon.