Isolation, anxiety, and depression in the remote workplace • Hacker News Board

Re: Isolation, anxiety, and depression in the remote workplace

#171

Post by tasuki » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 10:21 AM UTC

lbschenkel wrote: post #164

marcoseliziario wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

30 days here in brazil per year. No theoretical limits on sick days as long as you're really sick, but after 15 days in the hospital, the government pays you instead of your company (at a progressively reduced scale, of course, if you make lots of money, it is just fair that the government should need to help you less than someone who makes minimum wages).

One thing which is important to clarify is that in Brazil, once you take your vacation, it gets "spent" during the whole period that you are off, including weekends and eventual holidays. In Europe (or at least a good part of it) vacation is "spent" only on workdays, not weekends or holidays (which is fairer, you wouldn't be working on these days). So in Sweden, where you get 25 days compared to Brazil's 30, you actu…

This is super strange. Does Brazil force people to take vacation contiguously? What prevents one from taking Monday-Friday off and then the next Monday-Friday off? What if you want to take Thursday and Friday off and then spend the weekend vacationing - how many vacation days does that take?

Re: Isolation, anxiety, and depression in the remote workplace

#172

Post by st1ck » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 4:27 PM UTC

EMM_386 wrote: post #13

I am a fully remote worker nowhere near my "office", which is simply where our company is technically HQd. I have never met my boss or any of my coworkers in person. I do highly technical work, on a team that only hires very senior developers who have prior remote work experience. And I can say, it is NOT for everyone. If you do not have a life out of work, if you live alone, if you do not have a good network of real…

Have you ever considered that if you move to some less developed parts of EU, while retaining your salary (and likely reducing taxes), you can basically retire in several years? This is something most people in the world would dream of.

Re: Isolation, anxiety, and depression in the remote workplace

#173

Post by lbschenkel » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 8:44 PM UTC

tasuki wrote: post #171

lbschenkel wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing which is important to clarify is that in Brazil, once you take your vacation, it gets "spent" during the whole period that you are off, including weekends and eventual holidays. In Europe (or at least a good part of it) vacation is "spent" only on workdays, not weekends or holidays (which is fairer, you wouldn't be working on these days). So in Sweden, where you get 25 days compared to Brazil's 30, you actu…

This is super strange. Does Brazil force people to take vacation contiguously? What prevents one from taking Monday-Friday off and then the next Monday-Friday off? What if you want to take Thursday and Friday off and then spend the weekend vacationing - how many vacation days does that take?

It "works" because, legally speaking, it's the employer who decides when you can take vacation. Apart from some edge cases, the employer has the option to give your full vacation in one go but it also has the option to give it to you in two different periods (at most). No period may be smaller than 10 days. They have to notify you of your vacation period at least 30 days in advance.

In practice it really depends where you work.

In some jobs you will have a lot of latitude, and the employer will let you freely choose and only veto it if it's really disruptive (like everybody else in the team leaving at the same time). This is what I had experienced, working in IT.

I suspect that in some lines of work, like the service industry, you might be totally out of luck and have zero choice on the matter.

Re: Isolation, anxiety, and depression in the remote workplace

#174

Post by tasuki » Fri, Nov 01, 2019, 6:50 AM UTC

lbschenkel wrote: post #173

tasuki wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is super strange. Does Brazil force people to take vacation contiguously? What prevents one from taking Monday-Friday off and then the next Monday-Friday off? What if you want to take Thursday and Friday off and then spend the weekend vacationing - how many vacation days does that take?

It "works" because, legally speaking, it's the employer who decides when you can take vacation. Apart from some edge cases, the employer has the option to give your full vacation in one go but it also has the option to give it to you in two different periods (at most). No period may be smaller than 10 days. They have to notify you of your vacation period at least 30 days in advance. In practice it really depends wher…

That makes a lot of sense - thanks for the explanation!

Re: Isolation, anxiety, and depression in the remote workplace

#175

Post by shrimpx » Sun, Nov 10, 2019, 8:01 PM UTC

viraptor wrote: post #168

shrimpx wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm referring to the situation at hand: going remote and finding oneself isolated and depressed. That is, one felt socialized enough in the office but now that they're remote they're isolated and finding the "being remote" as the cause. This clearly means that the core source of socialization (and therefore non-isolation) is that the social group was at the office. People who can develop relationships in a variety of…

I don't mean the issues part, but the "if you have drive and information you can fix social skills". If only it was that easy. Specifically, isolation and lack of motivation are also caused by depression. You're basically recommending "not having depression would really help for your depression".

I tried to avoid clinical depression... If we're talking clinical depression I want to exclude myself from this conversation because I'm not an expert.

I'm talking about social laziness. Few people have the guts to go introduce themselves to a stranger (in an appropriate context of course) and strike a conversation and try to make a friend. At the office this is "built in" and you get a level of socialization for free. So many people rely on these perks and leave it at that. Tons of firsthand observation here.