The Slackification of the American Home • Hacker News Board

Re: The Slackification of the American Home

#101

Post by Balgair » Thu, Jul 25, 2019, 6:08 PM UTC

quickthrower2 wrote: post #26

awadheshv wrote: post #21

>Julie Berkun Fajgenbaum, a mom of three children ages 8 to 12, uses Google Calendar to manage her children’s time and Jira to keep track of home projects. oh god..

Why oh god? Sounds reasonable. Firstly a calendar can be very useful for knowing which activities kids are doing, what playdates etc. Schools sometimes throw one off things into the mix. Most parents would use a regular calendar anyway. For JIRA - well that seems a bit heavy handed when trello would do but really it's a good idea. It's a todo list... so is the default todo app on your phone bad? Pen & paper bad? It's…

Like, for a lot of people, if you need to use these tools for your family at all, it's a big sign that you need to do less things. If tracking your family and it's velocity is something that you feel that you need to do, then you need to re-evaluate what it is that you are doing with your family as such activity is glaringly unhealthy. Not saying that I am part of this (tools are ethics-neutral to me, use whatever works, kids are stressful enough), but to a lot of people, family is not something to 'get done' or 'crush it'.

Re: The Slackification of the American Home

#102

Post by jwhitlark » Thu, Jul 25, 2019, 6:19 PM UTC

basch wrote: post #99

kibibyte wrote: post #7

This reminded me Atlassian's 2013 April Fools joke, JIRA Jr. ( https://www.atlassian.com/jirajr ). Funny how life imitates art.

Although that joke is funny, and this article is a little odd, personally I think everyone is taking away the wrong message. Personal life absolutely could benefit from management and intelligence layers. For banking, instead of logging into each bank, I can use mint/personal capital. But when it comes to so much of the rest of life nothing plays nicely. It would be awesome to have a shopping, construction, restauran…

Check out google data studio. Feels a better fit to me that tableau.

Re: The Slackification of the American Home

#103

Post by whenchamenia » Thu, Jul 25, 2019, 6:36 PM UTC

paxys wrote: post #25

Every family in the world uses IM, and Slack isn't very different from any of the hundred other options out there for group messaging. So not too surprising that families are using it. Similarly all the other software mentioned can be used for simple calendaring, TODO lists, reminders etc., all of which most people here undoubtedly use in some form to manage their life. It's just the association of these brands with…

Very few families use IM. Are you in california by chance? I doubt its even a majority with affluent families there.

Re: The Slackification of the American Home

#104

Post by paxys » Thu, Jul 25, 2019, 7:33 PM UTC

whenchamenia wrote: post #103

paxys wrote: post #25

Every family in the world uses IM, and Slack isn't very different from any of the hundred other options out there for group messaging. So not too surprising that families are using it. Similarly all the other software mentioned can be used for simple calendaring, TODO lists, reminders etc., all of which most people here undoubtedly use in some form to manage their life. It's just the association of these brands with…

Very few families use IM. Are you in california by chance? I doubt its even a majority with affluent families there.

Do you use SMS? iMessage? WhatsApp? These are all forms of IM. I'm from India BTW, and about half the country is active on WhatsApp.

Re: The Slackification of the American Home

#105

Post by pureliquidhw » Thu, Jul 25, 2019, 9:00 PM UTC

megabl8 wrote: post #48

djaychela wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My kids' school has just been taken over (in the UK) by an academy group whose other local schools were telling 8 and 9 year old that they needed to know what career they were going to have so they could study the right subjects... I'm 47 and I still don't really know what I want to do with my life. How the hell does an 8 year old?

Is it a bad thing to get kids thinking about this? I mean, this is what they have to do when they select what subjects they want to do. This has happened all over the world for at least 30 years.

There are too many invisible jobs in the world for even a high schooler to accurately decide. I was way to far into software when I discovered I would have rather have become a food packaging science. I didn't take anymore than the bare minimum chemistry and biology courses in high school instead opting for programming self study. The only people I know ended up going to a few select programs they discovered via proximity to the schools that had them.

That is only one job in one niche industry. I'm trying to figure out how to expose my children to a volume of careers that extend beyond programmer, fireman, astronaut, etc.

Re: The Slackification of the American Home

#106

Post by quickthrower2 » Thu, Jul 25, 2019, 9:59 PM UTC

Balgair wrote: post #101

quickthrower2 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why oh god? Sounds reasonable. Firstly a calendar can be very useful for knowing which activities kids are doing, what playdates etc. Schools sometimes throw one off things into the mix. Most parents would use a regular calendar anyway. For JIRA - well that seems a bit heavy handed when trello would do but really it's a good idea. It's a todo list... so is the default todo app on your phone bad? Pen & paper bad? It's…

Like, for a lot of people, if you need to use these tools for your family at all, it's a big sign that you need to do less things. If tracking your family and it's velocity is something that you feel that you need to do, then you need to re-evaluate what it is that you are doing with your family as such activity is glaringly unhealthy. Not saying that I am part of this (tools are ethics-neutral to me, use whatever wo…

Yes I agree, I was thinking more in line with people like me, who can’t hold everything in their head, so these tools are sophisticated todo lists.

But if I find my self asking my kid “so... what went well?” or “I’m not sure that’s a 5 pointer” before they are working age I’ll book an appointment with a professional pronto!

Re: The Slackification of the American Home

#107

Post by around_here » Fri, Jul 26, 2019, 4:31 AM UTC

btown wrote: post #22

awadheshv wrote: post #21

>Julie Berkun Fajgenbaum, a mom of three children ages 8 to 12, uses Google Calendar to manage her children’s time and Jira to keep track of home projects. oh god..

Gives velocity and burndown a whole new meaning...

Sorry, can't afford the scope creep on having Timmy over for dinner tomorrow night. Don't want to damage the metrics.

Re: The Slackification of the American Home

#108

Post by kibibyte » Fri, Jul 26, 2019, 5:09 AM UTC

basch wrote: post #99

kibibyte wrote: post #7

This reminded me Atlassian's 2013 April Fools joke, JIRA Jr. ( https://www.atlassian.com/jirajr ). Funny how life imitates art.

Although that joke is funny, and this article is a little odd, personally I think everyone is taking away the wrong message. Personal life absolutely could benefit from management and intelligence layers. For banking, instead of logging into each bank, I can use mint/personal capital. But when it comes to so much of the rest of life nothing plays nicely. It would be awesome to have a shopping, construction, restauran…

You know, when you put it that way, that does raise a lot of good points. There are legitimate non-obvious problems in this area ("family resource management" might be a catchy name here) and not a lot of solutions. And the solutions that exist are so heavyweight and industry-tailored that when you hear about parents using JIRA, it just sounds absurd (and rightly so).

Probably the reason there aren't many such solutions is that it's not a sexy or obviously lucrative field, and that it's probably pretty hard to come up with a well-designed product that handles all the complexity of a family. I mean, come to think of it, most software startup founders are young and have few commitments (e.g. children); I can't imagine them being able to empathize well enough until they're at a later stage of their lives. But, perhaps someone's working on this as a very extensive side project.