Olympic medal-winning cyclist Rebecca Twigg is homeless in Seattle
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Re: Olympic medal-winning cyclist Rebecca Twigg is homeless in Seattle
#2Great read.
I have a "free spirit" in my family, a really gifted man who just couldn't settle. He's now in his 60s and does mosaics for people all around the UK.
He doesn't own a house and is constantly staying with friends and family. He tried working in construction jobs and other things, settling with a family and buying a house.
However after his divorce and other things he is most happy with his campervan conversion and parking it on offroads from motorways.
I asked him once, "Uncle, why can't you stay in once place". To which he replied, "Why do you have to stay in one place with brick walls?".
Another famous Olympian, Eddie the Eagle spent a few years homeless traveling for winter qualifiers for the Olympics.
Re: Olympic medal-winning cyclist Rebecca Twigg is homeless in Seattle
#3I'm feeling for her. Finding the right work is never easy but it seems reconversion after pro-sport can be really tricky, especially for these sports where it's hard to earn enough to make a living. From all the examples I read through the years I got the impression that the least disrupting kind of reconversion in these cases is have the luck to find a way to somehow stay in your sport, trainer, or work in the federation or something like that, but of course easier said than done, you're certainly not alone with this simple idea, and of course I think it's even more difficult when you're a woman.
Re: Olympic medal-winning cyclist Rebecca Twigg is homeless in Seattle
#4>It was a far cry from winning medals for Twigg, and beyond that, she said the solitary nature of programming troubled her.
I would like to know what HN thinks about the 'solitary' nature of programming? Isn't programming more or less a group endeavor now?
Re: Olympic medal-winning cyclist Rebecca Twigg is homeless in Seattle
#5She sounds like a great person and I hope things work out for her. It's hard to find the right context for her without painting her in a bad light. Some people are eager to call her (or people like her) lazy, conveniently ignoring the fact that nobody really wants to live this way. Society as it is designed now doesn't know what to do with people like her, so they're either ignored or just given shelters and... That's it? Seems like a societal failing on some level.
Re: Olympic medal-winning cyclist Rebecca Twigg is homeless in Seattle
#6>It was a far cry from winning medals for Twigg, and beyond that, she said the solitary nature of programming troubled her. I would like to know what HN thinks about the 'solitary' nature of programming? Isn't programming more or less a group endeavor now?
> Isn't programming more or less a group endeavor now?
It is still more solitary than many other jobs.
On the other hand, I hate that it becomes more and more a group endeavor - I would love if it stayed much more solitary as in former days.
Re: Olympic medal-winning cyclist Rebecca Twigg is homeless in Seattle
#7>It was a far cry from winning medals for Twigg, and beyond that, she said the solitary nature of programming troubled her. I would like to know what HN thinks about the 'solitary' nature of programming? Isn't programming more or less a group endeavor now?
It is and it isn't.
I am a developer now, was a PM, and was a developer before that. Even with actively reaching out to people to talk to, my day to day always felt objectively solitary, and certainly solitary compared to what I experienced as a PM. That was what originally drove me away from engineering, and when I went back I got reminded of that fact.
Re: Olympic medal-winning cyclist Rebecca Twigg is homeless in Seattle
#8>It was a far cry from winning medals for Twigg, and beyond that, she said the solitary nature of programming troubled her. I would like to know what HN thinks about the 'solitary' nature of programming? Isn't programming more or less a group endeavor now?
While programming is to a degree a collaborative effort, the act of sitting down is generally a solitary one (unless you happen to be in the 1% of companies that does pair programming extensively). I feel that she could have a place in programming, but there's the problem of finding the right company culture where collaboration is explicitly a bigger focus that would maybe allow somebody like her to thrive. (That's before even considering issues like a spotty resume and age-ism).
Even so, there's a significant difference between programming or a job in sales or PR or management or etc., anything where your core job is dealing with people.
Re: Olympic medal-winning cyclist Rebecca Twigg is homeless in Seattle
#9>It was a far cry from winning medals for Twigg, and beyond that, she said the solitary nature of programming troubled her. I would like to know what HN thinks about the 'solitary' nature of programming? Isn't programming more or less a group endeavor now?
> Isn't programming more or less a group endeavor now? It is still more solitary than many other jobs. On the other hand, I hate that it becomes more and more a group endeavor - I would love if it stayed much more solitary as in former days.
Agreed, Pair Programming is over-hyped as well as this new "mobbing" concept.
It affects productivity and makes people who prefer to work by themselves unhappy.
Re: Olympic medal-winning cyclist Rebecca Twigg is homeless in Seattle
#10>It was a far cry from winning medals for Twigg, and beyond that, she said the solitary nature of programming troubled her. I would like to know what HN thinks about the 'solitary' nature of programming? Isn't programming more or less a group endeavor now?
In-between coding there is more human interaction and the craft of coding itself became more social on an abstract level (code should be more communicative and all).
But I would still say it is far from really social jobs - after school, I worked at a home for elderly people, and everyday left me exhausted. After work as a programmer, my social batteries feel much more charged.
One could make programming an extremely social endeavour though, i.e. by constant pair programming (two of Googles best Software Engineers are doing this).