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The health care toll today’s work culture exacts on employees

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Re: The health care toll today’s work culture exacts on employees

#101

Post by morgtheborg »

chaseha wrote: post #5

Dealing w/ RSI has been an eye opener for me. What makes it worse: working on a laptop, working on the plane, having to do long hours in poor ergonomic conditions. What do I have to do to be good at my job? Basically, that. What happens if it gets worse and I can no longer use a computer for at least eight hours a day? That is my livelihood

I had RSI, chronic ankle pain after an injury, and back pain. I bought all sorts of ergonomic solutions. Some helped, but none completely. I was getting desperate since, as mentioned, typing is how I pay the bills. I can't just STOP.

I was scouring the net and ran across a developer who swore that The Mindbody Prescription: Healing the Body, Healing the Pain by Sarno fixed his issues. I looked him up, proved to myself he was a dev and then basically said, fuck it, let's try it despite it seeming woo-woo to the extreme.

Little to no pain to this day. This was after MONTHS of PT and ergonomic changes that didn't solve the problem.

Anyway. Just my two cents.

*EDIT - one of these was the article (perhaps both), https://blog.evanweaver.com/2012/09/05/a-programmers-guide-t... and http://aaroniba.net/how-i-cured-my-rsi-pain

Re: The health care toll today’s work culture exacts on employees

#102

Post by bob_theslob646 »

btilly wrote: post #74
bob_theslob646 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mean liability as in liability for discriminatory hiring practices by providing feedback?

No. Liability as in the more that you have said, the more likely it is that a lawsuit will be filed based on a misunderstanding of what you did say. It doesn't matter how unlikely the lawsuit is to win on the merits. Fighting in court and discovery both bring costs and distractions that institutions would prefer to avoid.

Makes sense.

I did not know this existed.

Thanks, learn something new everyday.

Bafflingly to think about...

(https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/lawsuits-based-the-h...)

Re: The health care toll today’s work culture exacts on employees

#103

Post by Thriptic »

rconti wrote: post #89
retrac98 wrote: post #27

I’ve always found it very effective to use a “just say no” policy to out of hours work or more work than I can handle comfortably. People stop taking advantage when you stop letting them. More than you might expect actually respect it. I don’t think this way of working has hurt my career progression, and it’s certainly done wonders for my mental health.

Agreed. I've found the more you stand up for yourself, the more your boundaries are respected. That said, I'm sure it doesn't work in all situations, or with all bosses, so I'm hesitant to blame the victim -- I've been lucky to have very good bosses in my career.

I've found that assembling highly in demand skills helps a lot with this. For awhile I was by far and away the best developer in my org (which is not to say that I'm a good developer, just that our org had 0 formal software engineering xp). This gave me very broad power to say no to projects or put in place prerequisites which had to be met before I would take on a project. It definitely pissed people off, but I was adding enough value to be able to take the stance "hey if you don't like it fire me".

Re: The health care toll today’s work culture exacts on employees

#104

Post by thowawayburnout »

pascalxus wrote: post #88
remar wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure you're aware of this, but a lot of people just don't have the financial freedom to even begin thinking about a decision like this, or it ends up requiring a lot of energy to make that plan viable. And as you've probably experienced, energy is not exactly abundant after a day/week/month/etc in an environment like that...

With the right financial planning, it can be done. But, if you've already taken on 20K in student loans and 5 year cell phone contract, it's gonna be much much harder. That's why we need to start teach financial education really early: like K-12. Food and water can be quite cheap: the grocery stores are filled with healthy foods you can get for less than 1$ per lb in most of the US: corn, whole wheat flour, bananas,…

People have been living trailer parks, with trailers worth far less then 20k for many years. The tiny housing movement did not show us much.

Re: The health care toll today’s work culture exacts on employees

#105

Post by pcarolan »

onezerozeroone wrote: post #71
someone7x wrote: post #19

> I see a workplace that has become shockingly inhumane. A thousand times this. Very few of the lessons my parents taught me apply in the corporate world. Be honest and straight with people, assume good intent, take responsibility, etc. All that behavior will do is paint you as naive. Sure there's room for honesty and responsibility, but only when used appropriately (strategically). Strikes me as acutely inhumane eve…

Not really the company's fault here. Policies like this exist because candidates have and will sue the shit out of you for any flimsy accusation of discrimination they can cobble together. Companies didn't create these policies arbitrarily and unprovoked. They became necessary because of some people who took advantage of the legal system to get settlements. It's in the company's best interest to protect itself from f…

It would be valuable if a 3rd party solved the problem of feedback minus the liability. Could be a business there. No idea what that would look like though.

Re: The health care toll today’s work culture exacts on employees

#106

Post by osrec »

remar wrote: post #41
osrec wrote: post #24

Work has become a strange thing. I see people foregoing their best years stuck in an office, in the hope they can enjoy their later years. What utter nonsense. I'm not sure what the right answer is, but society has got something very wrong, as our work culture seems to surgically remove the wonder and enjoyment from our days. Hardly surprising that it drives people to ill health. Glad I broke out of that cycle a long…

I'm sure you're aware of this, but a lot of people just don't have the financial freedom to even begin thinking about a decision like this, or it ends up requiring a lot of energy to make that plan viable. And as you've probably experienced, energy is not exactly abundant after a day/week/month/etc in an environment like that...

Oh I'm very aware of it. I tried once before to quit my job and go it alone, at the ripe old age of 22! I failed spectacularly. Reason - I only had 7k GBP in my bank. That simply wasn't enough money for me to live on and pay my mortgage till I found clients. I then put aside 10x times that amount, and things started to fall into place. Exactly the same skills, idea and enthusiasm as before, just a bigger cushion that meant money was not at the forefront of my mind driving crazy waves of anxiety.

Re: The health care toll today’s work culture exacts on employees

#107

Post by kartan »

onezerozeroone wrote: post #71
someone7x wrote: post #19

> I see a workplace that has become shockingly inhumane. A thousand times this. Very few of the lessons my parents taught me apply in the corporate world. Be honest and straight with people, assume good intent, take responsibility, etc. All that behavior will do is paint you as naive. Sure there's room for honesty and responsibility, but only when used appropriately (strategically). Strikes me as acutely inhumane eve…

Not really the company's fault here. Policies like this exist because candidates have and will sue the shit out of you for any flimsy accusation of discrimination they can cobble together. Companies didn't create these policies arbitrarily and unprovoked. They became necessary because of some people who took advantage of the legal system to get settlements. It's in the company's best interest to protect itself from f…

>> I am not even allowed to tell a candidate (another human being that probably NEEDS a paycheck) why I didn't hire them and what they can do to improve their viability. > Policies like this exist because candidates have and will sue the shit out of you for any flimsy accusation of discrimination they can cobble together.

I thought that it was the other way around. You need to have always ready the reasons why a candidate has been rejected and give them on request. Otherwise, they can sue you as your reasons are not clean and transparent.

But, I guess that this depends on the country's laws.

Re: The health care toll today’s work culture exacts on employees

#108

Post by ag_camel »

enraged_camel wrote: post #92
jriot wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree this is a US problem and I don't understand why. It doesn't hurt me why you didn't select me. You didn't think I would fit in culturally. Ok, no worries. You didn't think I knew enough of what you wanted to know. Ok, no worries. You didn't like the way I was dressed. Ok, no worries. You weren't really hiring but were just testing the waters. Ok, probably won't apply again but no worries.

>>Agree this is a US problem and I don't understand why. Because the US has very severe issues related to racism, sexism, ageism and many other types of discrimination. So the laws are much tighter, which results in extreme caution and risk aversion on the part of employers.

And other paces dont? Almost every country has severe issues related to all the above. In the US, we have litigation everywhere, you fall and slip in a supermarket? Lawsuit! You tripped over a pothole? Lawsuit! Heck, lawyers advertise to do this...

Re: The health care toll today’s work culture exacts on employees

#109

Post by thehnguy »

remar wrote: post #65
tboyd47 wrote: post #31

Honest question. How much of this is cultural or psychological? Can people be trained not to take so much shit from bosses or automatically make the company's problems their problems? I ask because at my current job, a lot of work is explicitly motivated by the threat of getting yelled at or publicly shamed in some way. I often wonder if these stressful interactions could just be handled politely but in a way that do…

I can't speak for whether or not this behavior can be trained "out" but I can share what I have noticed and my own personal experiences. On the part of people being trained, as I mentioned in another comment, I've seemed to notice that a lot of my Indian and Chinese coworkers, for probably cultural reasons, seem to have this sort of "respect the decisions of 'elders'" mentality and see it as extremely confrontational…

Your last point is spot on. Lots of successful people are simply good at faking it and not getting called out. This is good and bad. Good if you know how to play the system. Bad because it means our system is run by a lot of people who don’t know what they’re doing.

Re: The health care toll today’s work culture exacts on employees

#110

Post by ghettoimp »

retrac98 wrote: post #27

I’ve always found it very effective to use a “just say no” policy to out of hours work or more work than I can handle comfortably. People stop taking advantage when you stop letting them. More than you might expect actually respect it. I don’t think this way of working has hurt my career progression, and it’s certainly done wonders for my mental health.

Yep yep yep.

I've had to fight numerous battles with my boss, along the lines of, "I don't care who scheduled the meeting, I already have plans tonight, and it's not reasonable to make me change them with no notice."

This mentality has turned out to be (a) well worth it for my marriage, and (b) not actually a big deal in the scheme of things.

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