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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.
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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,…
Change jobs; you are not a wage slave. I come to work at 8 AM and leave at 4 PM on the dot every day no matter the situation. I can care less about the company I work for because it isn't my prerogative to care, but instead, I am paid to build what they tell me to build, and we exchange my abilities for currency. In no way am I willing to give up my dignity or health in any way in exchange for currency.
Last year I lost my job and my marriage. I have since survived on occasional self-employment and burning my life savings; this month I lost the car, chances are I'll be broke by Christmas and will lose the house. My CV is atypical and hard to sell, too old for junior jobs and not good enough for senior ones, and I'm crap at selling and networking, but what else am I going to do?
I have not had a sexual relationship for several years now, to the point I'm considering paying for it. I probably have had a mild form of depression for a decade - since my kids were born, I can count the number of days I was happy on the fingers of one hand. One just keeps working and working because there are bills to pay, until he forgets what the point is. My friends and family are thousands of miles away. Some days I stare at the clock until it's time for bed. I love my kids but I hate how they literally diminished my life.
After downing the last bottle of wine, a few days ago, I decided I can't go on like this. I've booked a session with a therapist for tomorrow. I'll have to live on noodles to pay for it.
I wish there were a place where you could go when you feel like shit and everyone else is there for the same reason and you can talk it out and nobody judges you.
No - 2h one-way commute is slowly killing me and my recent Ask HN thread got 0 replies, so I am not sure what to do to change my commute. I live near my family in suburbia and don't want to move inside the city so am not sure what to do or how to feasibly get full remote employment as a deaf QA professional.
It sounds exhausting! If you want someone to chat with, let me know.
The whole experience has left me jaded on working with for-profit tech companies, and put me in a pretty rough mental state all around. I feel disgusted with myself when I consider working for another vc backed org, so now instead of making a healthy west coast engineer salary, I make minimum wage in a bar, and am teetering on the edge of homelessness.
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.
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Good point. One way I could try to pre empt this is to say: "nobody was ever fired for answering 4 or 5 to this question" But I'm not sure how effective that would be.
That question (and all variations of it) give me stress just thinking about answering lol. I immediately begin to micro-analyze what the likely outcome would be for each scenario. Does these get recorded, and reflected upon to judge my ability? Will it spread? What will the 1on1 manager think of me? If I answer 4-5 am I not capable? If I answer 1-2, are they going to think I'm more capable than I am, and overwork me?…
Right now no, the last couple weeks is where everything in my life is going down the shitter. I'm trying to just get on with it cuz my stoic nature just tells me I'll get through it eventually. I'm in substantial debt for me but at the rate in which I earn I can pull myself out of it within 6 months, but I've been working on launching new companies and it's been a struggle. My 2 cofounders are waiting for me to finis…
Dude, sounds like you're spreading yourself too thin. Trying to launch multiple (two?) companies at the same time, plus renovating, plus running a charity, plus working with clients... When do you sleep? My unsolicited advice is to say no more often - if an opportunity comes along but you're already overworked, you might need to pass on it.
Thanks for asking. Not really, and it's 100% work-related. I dread coming in to work and it's given me awful anxiety that's turned into occasional passive suicidal ideation. Once I leave work, I feel like a totally different person and all the symptoms disappear. My boss calls me stupid, incompetent, r*tarded, and "like you have part of your brain missing". He grills me on literally everything I do, like why I'm gett…
You are working in a TOXIC environment and obviously it's taking its toll. You have to get out, or at least transfer to another team. You wrote that you went to HR and they didn't help with your boss, but perhaps they CAN help moving you to another team. And you wrote that you're applying for other jobs - it can take time, just don't give up! > It's hard for me to believe that another job won't be the same thing It w…
Most people also are too lazy for this level of sadism. Even if your next boss is a bigger asshole (which sounds completely unbelievable), it'd be more profitable for them to let you work rather than waste all that energy abusing you.
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Start interviewing, I know that this is very often thrown around here and in other communities but absolutely NONE of this behaviour should be acceptable in any kind of professional environment. You know you are being severely underpaid (I'm assuming you are from the US even though I'm not) so finding a place paying the same or a little better just to get away from this fucking horrible situation is worth every singl…
Thanks. I have a final interview next week at a somewhat boring company, but the pay would be nearly double and I think I'd be much much healthier, so I'll take that if I can get it.
I hope you find a job that isn't the same thing, they really do exist! Most of all, I hope it works out for you. Best of luck!