Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Are you ok?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 898 posts

Re: Ask HN: Are you ok?

#31

Post by gordon_freeman »

jLyrrad wrote: post #19
klenwell wrote: post #11

As a team lead, one question I always ask in my 1-on-1's: On a scale of 1-5 (low good, high bad), what's your stress level since we last met? If my teammate says 4 or 5, I ask what we can do to bring it down to a 3. We also address this as part of the simple assessment we do in each sprint retrospective. My company struggles to define meaningful KPIs and OKRs. This is the one that's most important to me.

Really wished my lead would ask this. I might suggest it!

Why don't you be proactive and suggest it anyway to your lead? I mean what's the downside!

Re: Ask HN: Are you ok?

#32

Post by bpchaps »

quantumwoke wrote: post #6
Porthos9K wrote: post #4

If I had ever been OK, I wouldn't have gotten into tech in the first place.

Why do you say that? I think there's a lot of things that are really great about tech industry and there's some things that aren't so great. What's been your experience?

This field fucking sucks.

I'm tired of being on call 24/7/365.

I'm tired of having to explain why plaintext passwords are bad.

I'm tired of being taken advantage of for being a generalist.

I'm tired of ex-google asshole bosses with massive egos.

I'm tired of carrying a laptop with me "just in case".

I'm tired of the constantly shifting "popular" technologies.

I'm tired of spending weekends indoors studying for work, instead of work giving time to learn.

I'm tired of pretending to find conferences on monitoring systems exciting.

I'm tired of my coworkers and bosses being high at work.

I'm tired of JIRA.

I'm tired of consultants telling us how we're using JIRA wrong.

I'm tired of the politics behind technical decisions.

I'm tired of having to learn another DSL.

It all feels unreal. Can't wait to get out of this field.

Re: Ask HN: Are you ok?

#35

Post by awinder »

algaeontoast wrote: post #7
cvaidya1986 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you try teaching at your local university meanwhile?

I have zero interest in teaching or entering academia. I can get interviews, just struggling to find a way that I can improve fast enough / perform at a necessary level to pass interviews it seems. Idk, maybe I’m just not trying hard enough.

I doubt you're not trying hard enough. Are you interviewing for large or small firms (or combination)?

> ghosted for the on-site after a pass

Not sure if I'm misreading, but are you saying interview was cut short / you had an interview lined up that just got pulled at the last minute? If that's the case -- don't worry about it. This is like organizational maturity level of 0, I had this happen exactly once in my early career and it screwed me up for a little bit. So if that's what happened and I didn't just misread -- don't spend any time taking it to heart.

Re: Ask HN: Are you ok?

#37

Post by cloudytoday »

I love this and have had other folks use this type of thing regularly in start off meetings. Nice way to pause a bit to check in with people. We used a scale of 1-10 and if you were lower than 7, you explained why... sometimes it was a work thing and sometimes a personal thing but it gave the group a chance to either help problem solve or offload work things to give our colleague extra space to deal with the things outside of work.

Re: Ask HN: Are you ok?

#38

Post by johnfactorial »

bpchaps wrote: post #32
quantumwoke wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you say that? I think there's a lot of things that are really great about tech industry and there's some things that aren't so great. What's been your experience?

This field fucking sucks. I'm tired of being on call 24/7/365. I'm tired of having to explain why plaintext passwords are bad. I'm tired of being taken advantage of for being a generalist. I'm tired of ex-google asshole bosses with massive egos. I'm tired of carrying a laptop with me "just in case". I'm tired of the constantly shifting "popular" technologies. I'm tired of spending weekends indoors studying for work,…

What will you do next? You can be rid of all these problems if you start raising chickens in the woods and selling eggs and poultry.

Re: Ask HN: Are you ok?

#39

Post by Insanity »

bpchaps wrote: post #32
quantumwoke wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you say that? I think there's a lot of things that are really great about tech industry and there's some things that aren't so great. What's been your experience?

This field fucking sucks. I'm tired of being on call 24/7/365. I'm tired of having to explain why plaintext passwords are bad. I'm tired of being taken advantage of for being a generalist. I'm tired of ex-google asshole bosses with massive egos. I'm tired of carrying a laptop with me "just in case". I'm tired of the constantly shifting "popular" technologies. I'm tired of spending weekends indoors studying for work,…

It might be your job. Almost none of it applies to places I have worked at.

Re: Ask HN: Are you ok?

#40

Post by JaumeGreen »

klenwell wrote: post #11

As a team lead, one question I always ask in my 1-on-1's: On a scale of 1-5 (low good, high bad), what's your stress level since we last met? If my teammate says 4 or 5, I ask what we can do to bring it down to a 3. We also address this as part of the simple assessment we do in each sprint retrospective. My company struggles to define meaningful KPIs and OKRs. This is the one that's most important to me.

What if the stress is mostly from outside the job?

Some of it could be "solvable" (better pay, better hours, ...), but some of it may not (family problems, health issues, ...).

Is it taken into account or addressed?

Post reply on HN