281–290 of 448 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nope, just that when people who are not poor live in small houses they live quite well, hardly shocking.
I really dont understand how in America, tiny houses doesn't get translated as slums.
There is no downtime anymore. You can never truly get away from work in an age of 4g connectivity everywhere. I'm doing a bit of consulting with a startup at the moment, and one of our team members recently disappeared off on vacation. Good for him, I thought. Two days later, he popped back up on the company slack, working away from his tropical beach. To be clear, this is not a case of digital nomadding. This is 10…
You can. Get rid of your phone. Most of us don't have a job that actually requires a phone, and it's really as matter of your work willing to take advantage of the fact that most of you won't push back when pressed. You can take advantage of the fact that they won't pay for you to carry a phone.
I finally got rid of my phone about a month ago. Started off deleting all the apps, stopped carrying it. Finally, took a roofing hammer and smashed it to bits. I may purchase a pay-as-you-go "brick" and leave it in the trunk of my car for emergencies, but otherwise I will never have an internet connected device that I carry on me at all times. It's needless for most of us.
You can talk about how convenient it is to have things like Maps at all times, and to be sure that is convenient. Just requires a little forethought and planning. Don't give into the FOMO, smash your phone.
There is no downtime anymore. You can never truly get away from work in an age of 4g connectivity everywhere. I'm doing a bit of consulting with a startup at the moment, and one of our team members recently disappeared off on vacation. Good for him, I thought. Two days later, he popped back up on the company slack, working away from his tropical beach. To be clear, this is not a case of digital nomadding. This is 10…
From what I've seen, in a sample size of three commercial workplaces with software projects, I think it varies from person to person and company to company.
At my current enterprisey gig, my perception is that some of my colleagues are very poor at setting boundaries with work, especially in terms of signing out of the team's slack after hours. This isn't forced by the environment, it's people choosing to remain plugged in. Some of my other colleagues are much better at setting boundaries. I managed to last about 1.5 years in my role before checking my work email or work slack outside of business hours.
In previous gigs at a small company I've seen far worse culture in terms of crunch time to hit project milestones or close deals, but also fairly positive leadership at times from the CEO telling people to go home.
You want to work for a company where people signing in to company slack/Skype when they are meant to be on leave are kindly but firmly hounded by colleagues and management to disconnect and go actually have their holiday.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I find this idea bizarre. It's like humans enjoyed their time for millennia and only now we have to work. For all human history, the conditions of people were dire. Today people might be stuck in an office in their "best year", but people in the past had to toil all day to barely scrape by and didn't even have that many years to live. It's only now that we live these comfortable lives with houses, heating, electricit…
Yes, that's a very good point. Work has always been part of the human condition, and middle class people in the first world are enjoying much, much more comfortable working conditions than their ancestors did. I think we should all be very grateful for that. But it's also a very modern thing for people to suffer from alienating, despair-inducing work. I think this alienation, which Marx speaks of in much detail, is t…
If you hear someone sing in an office it's because they're either crazy or have been fired.
But there is also something to be said in favor of repetitive, low-qualification work. It frees the mind while you're doing it: you can think about something else, or even, yes, sing -- and most importantly, it doesn't follow you home.
Modern mid-level office jobs where you're constantly tethered to the company, at all hours and even during "holidays" (if you can get any) are the worst of the worst.
There is no downtime anymore. You can never truly get away from work in an age of 4g connectivity everywhere. I'm doing a bit of consulting with a startup at the moment, and one of our team members recently disappeared off on vacation. Good for him, I thought. Two days later, he popped back up on the company slack, working away from his tropical beach. To be clear, this is not a case of digital nomadding. This is 10…
I was amazed that I wasn't bothered once. The no release thing leading up to the vacation was a huge saver I think. Thats not to say I haven't been fucked by this company. I worked all day December 30th (Saturday I think) and a half day on NYE this year. But in general things I've put in like only doing releases on Tuesday to keep them far away from the weekend and only doing system patches once per month outside of super critical things (Meltdown and Spectre) have saved me. Again though I still get fucked on occasion.
But I mostly fuck myself into working either because I feel pressured by the sheer weight of ever building tasks and bugs or because there is something fun I want to try in our application, generally performance optimizations make me happy and give me a sense of accomplishment. I can be found doing those some early Saturday mornings before getting on with my day.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> For all human history, the conditions of people were dire. No. There's been societies based on slavery or indentured servitude and industrial societies treating workers much like slaves and there's been also almost idyllic, often agrarian, societies far removed from war, exploitation and hunger. Furthermore, given the incredible amount of energy and natural resources that the average person in rich countries is con…
Citation needed. My understanding of primitive agrarian societies are that they have hard work, hard lives, poor diet, and a population that is generally at the edge of starvation. (In good times, population grows. In bad times...) You might want to read Guns, Germs and Steel as an example of a reference backing this view up. Or read through random snippets of history like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_o…
https://www.worldcat.org/title/farewell-to-alms-a-brief-econ...
https://press.princeton.edu/catalogs/series/title/the-prince...
Whilst preindustrial societies did see variable subsistence, the floor tended to be higher than today (Clark's introduction, available online, notes that the poorest people who've ever lived, live now, and in great numbers), and cycles tended to be long-term -- decades or centuries, not years. Whilst life expectancy at birth was low, from age of majority it was generally far less abbreviated. Disease was far more prevalent in cities (London was a net population sink well into the 19h century), and major instances of famine and plague something experienced perhaps only by occasional generations within an area, though wth mortality rates from 10-90% (far more typically in the 10-30% range).
You're familiar with Laurie Garrett's wwork on healthxare, and the fact that 85% of mortality decline since 1850 materially predates modern medical practice, including antibiotics, vaccines, and organ transsplants. The Conquest of Pestilence in New York City chart highlights this:
https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/wp-content/uplo...
There is no downtime anymore. You can never truly get away from work in an age of 4g connectivity everywhere. I'm doing a bit of consulting with a startup at the moment, and one of our team members recently disappeared off on vacation. Good for him, I thought. Two days later, he popped back up on the company slack, working away from his tropical beach. To be clear, this is not a case of digital nomadding. This is 10…
> There is no downtime anymore. You can never truly get away from work in an age of 4g connectivity everywhere. You can. Get rid of your phone. Most of us don't have a job that actually requires a phone, and it's really as matter of your work willing to take advantage of the fact that most of you won't push back when pressed. You can take advantage of the fact that they won't pay for you to carry a phone. I finally g…
Perhaps a middle ground is having a dedicated work phone, and then turning that off when you are not on the clock and not rostered to be on call.
It makes it sound as if work was more healthy in the past. Was it? When? I know hunter gatherer times were supposed to be paradise, but anything since then? Farming sounds rather arduous. Or what about mining, or working in factories where safety measures have not yet been invented?
The present population of workers the article is referring to with "work culture" are white collar workers. Comparing like to like, these wouldn't be people working in factories or mining. The equivalent jobs in previous eras would be those of priests, monks, and scribes; of surveyors, navigators, and architects; of military officers; and of nobles tinkering around in the sciences. Compare the working conditions of t…
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…
Can you share your story? How did you make it?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I find this idea bizarre. It's like humans enjoyed their time for millennia and only now we have to work. For all human history, the conditions of people were dire. Today people might be stuck in an office in their "best year", but people in the past had to toil all day to barely scrape by and didn't even have that many years to live. It's only now that we live these comfortable lives with houses, heating, electricit…
The article criticizes American work culture for very good reasons. Of course we should work and have jobs, but that doesn't mean work needs to be like it is in America. Do you guys in America even know how it is in Sweden for example? We don't have this competitive culture, and companies are trying hard to make their employees feel good at work. Nobody really works full 8 hours at big companies and nobody is stresse…
EDIT: To be more precise: typically ~20 days in the summer and additional ~5-15 days in the winter. Averages by country, Sweden 26 days: https://www.europeandataportal.eu/en/highlights/which-countr...
34 days (minimum?) when you include the 16 paid public holidays such as Christmas, New Year, Easter, Midsummer: https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/countries-with-the-most-...
