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

Mourning loss as a remote team

sofuckingagile.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 408 posts

Re: Mourning loss as a remote team

#91

Post by JCharante »

supertofu wrote: post #2

This was heartbreaking to read. What disturbs me most is the lack of any face-to-face time for this distributed team. I understand that not everyone likes to use a webcam, but to have gone 7 years without ever seeing your colleague's face seems, in my opinion, a symptom of a big managerial problem. Software engineers are usually humans, and teams composed of humans should make some effort to interact in a human way -…

Maybe it's different, but I've known people for a decade without ever seeing their face. Just communicating through text, text to speech software, or through VOIP while playing games. You can build deep connections and know their voices very well to hear when things are off.

Of course at work I've seen people's faces but as someone who grew up online, only voice comms seems normal too.

Re: Mourning loss as a remote team

#92

Post by devmunchies »

brassattax wrote: post #65
BubbleRings wrote: post #44

Managers, one solution here is pretty easy. For instance, if your team has a daily status meeting, just tell them "every other Friday, cameras are encouraged". That's it. Don't make it mandatory, don't make jokes about "Joe never turns his camera on, what does his place look like?" In a world that is getting more and more lonely for a lot of people, this can be a life saver. And to HR, I have a similar message. Do yo…

The moment you realize HR is there to serve the company's interests, not the employee's, your expectation of them changes.

Are there any orgs that don’t serve the company?

Re: Mourning loss as a remote team

#93

Post by evancoop »

dougmwne wrote: post #13

My partner sat in the same cube pod as someone who took their life. One day they were just gone and a crying family member came by to take away a box of things. There was no official acknowledgement of what happened, no service or memorializing, only hushed whispers. It was terrible. Thank you for your humane response to Pete's death, for creating room for the team to grieve and official acknowledgement that it was n…

During my doctoral years, two students in my department took their own lives (separate events, to be clear). The events themselves were horribly tragic, but the lack of even a clear acknowledgement of the causes of death left a surreal sense of denial.

Mental health is an enormously under-discussed issue in an increasingly digital society that hides suffering in so many of us.

Work becomes an increasingly integral element of our connection to others while certain employment becomes increasingly transactional.

We all can do better. So sorry to read about another human being lost too soon.

Re: Mourning loss as a remote team

#94

Post by starkd »

trentnix wrote: post #28

Thank you for sharing such an honest piece. Suicide is a tragedy without peer, the result of pain, illness, and some part selfishness. I feel compassion for Pete and his fight with mental illness, sadness for the friends and coworkers left behind, and anger on behalf of his wife and children who will now carry an incredible burden. Suicide is infectious (as strange as that sounds) and I've found it tough to reconcile…

Sadly, it is infectious. That may be why traditions have tended to marginalize it when it happens. The evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker discussed it in one of his books by noting that when a prominent suicide happens and is televised, there is a corresponding slight uptick of accidents in the area. He suggests that merely the suggestion of suicide can tip the balance in favor of reactionary recklessness for a tiny percentage in response to a bad event.

It's important to have empathy for all those left behind, and it is sad for those who take their own life, but there is a danger in elevating their actions to being virtuous or somehow noble. The consequences are indeed quite selfish for all those left behind.

Re: Mourning loss as a remote team

#95

Post by jddil »

Angostura wrote: post #86
jddil wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HR has 1 job. Protect the company, they aren't your friends at all. If announcing a teammates passing helps the company they would do it, if they don't think it would they wouldn't. No emotions come into this. (this is not to say you can't have friends at work, but the company is not your family and will drop you the day you aren't productive any longer)

> HR has 1 job. Protect the company I see this from time to time and it irritates me. I'm not in HR. I know some people who are and people who go into that line of work often do care about making people's lives better. Certainly if that conflicts somehow with a a requirement to protect the company, they may have to prioritise the latter. But that doesn't mean that they have 'one job'.

I think it does. At the end of the day they will (and should) choose to protect the company above all else. That's their only job.

They can also want to help people, have a ton of empathy and be literal saints. But that's their personal motivation and not what the job actually is.

Re: Mourning loss as a remote team

#96

Post by tonyarkles »

cookiecaper wrote: post #76
avgcorrection wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's more to being a leader than shipping a volume of features, you are also an important figure in the lives of your team and they need you in a time of crisis. deleted

It sounds distasteful only because the vast majority of bosses out there aren't worthy of the mantle. An individual's relationship with their immediate boss is one of those intimate things in life and it deserves sanctity. Help your people and don't be a dick and you'll be amazed at the bounty of unearned gratitude that comes back around -- and often not just once, but continuing for years. Being a good boss is "the…

I’m not saying this as any kind of brag. To be honest, I ended up as a manager by accident and when the team grew too much I found someone else to do it. I still work at the company and come by to help the team out once in a while. That shift happened about 6 months ago.

My wife caught COVID last month while I was out of town. Since I continued testing negative, we decided that I would stay at the farm until either I tested positive or she tested negative. I posted a message on Slack explaining where I was and why, just as a “why is Tony joining all meetings remote this week” kind of update.

Immediately, three of my previous reports reached out directly to let me know that they were more than happy to drop off anything she might need: groceries, medication, Dairy Queen, anything. That is the kind of relationship a manager/leader and their reports can have. We’ve never really done much outside of work socially. We do the odd team dinner to mark special occasions. Two of them have had car trouble and are handy but didn’t have the tools they needed; I had the tools (tubing bender for a brake line, electric impact for getting a stuck bolt out) and dropped those off on the weekend.

The big dance I have always tried to do is make us into a team that always has each other’s back. I’ve made it clear that sometimes The Business wants us to do weird things that don’t always make sense and we’ve gotta just do it, but in general I’m doing my best to shield them from nonsense and help make sure we’ve got an environment where everyone can do their best work.

I dunno, it was all an experiment and it seems to have worked out.

Re: Mourning loss as a remote team

#97

Post by wombat-man »

thenerdhead wrote: post #82

One thing I cannot understand in the traditional workplace is why certain leaves & sudden departures are never disclosed to a close team whether by the person or their manager. I've had many teammates come and go in the blink of an eye and I'm curious to this day of "what happened to X?". Were they PIPed? Are they fighting something? Did they win the lottery and decide to retire? It's as if the relationships between…

When I left my last job I pinged everyone I was friendly with. Then I sent out an email to everyone I knew just so people knew I was leaving and how they could contact me. Not everyone feels a connection to their coworkers and if they want to just leave the job without fanfare that's fine with me.

I do think that due to legal reasons, companies will say as little as possible to employees. We had an exec suddenly leave and we had a large meeting about it where the VP told us, but you could tell that there were a few talking points he had to stick to. Basically that the director was no longer with the company and that there wouldn't be a discussion as to why. Nearly two years later I learned it was because he said some rude shit on social media and got canned.

If someone is leaving voluntarily and on good terms, I'd expect an email or announcement. Maybe even a farewell party. But if you hear nothing, I'd assume it's because they declined to have one or they did not leave voluntarily. Either way, best to leave sleeping dogs lie, unless you really felt a connection to that person.

Re: Mourning loss as a remote team

#98

Post by owl57 »

brassattax wrote: post #65
BubbleRings wrote: post #44

Managers, one solution here is pretty easy. For instance, if your team has a daily status meeting, just tell them "every other Friday, cameras are encouraged". That's it. Don't make it mandatory, don't make jokes about "Joe never turns his camera on, what does his place look like?" In a world that is getting more and more lonely for a lot of people, this can be a life saver. And to HR, I have a similar message. Do yo…

The moment you realize HR is there to serve the company's interests, not the employee's, your expectation of them changes.

I could see the difference with "commodity" employees, and that sucks, but what's the big difference if we are talking about programmers? The company is obviously very interested to make us not want to leave, and also probably interested that we feel like caring about the product.

Re: Mourning loss as a remote team

#99

Post by InCityDreams »

heffer wrote: post #72
basisword wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> I've been working a Full Time Employee in the industry for over 8 years at multiple companies. Never once has HR done anything remotely useful to help me when there were family problems or tragedy, except maybe a couple weeks of paid leave. I’m curious (genuinely) what the company could have done different for you in these cases? Personally I wouldn’t expect anything from the company other than paid leave/general…

Our company offers its US employees access to a service called Wellthy. It is good to know that when you are dealing with issues in your personal life you can reach out to a dedicated, named individual that has expertise in the area you are struggling and that is there to help you navigate and organize. Even if it's just for the feeling that you are not alone. Similar programs are available to employees in other coun…

...and for the non-US?

Re: Mourning loss as a remote team

#100

Post by noirbot »

jnwatson wrote: post #41

7 years as a contractor is abuse. It is abuse of the crappy enforcement of labor laws and abuse of the contractor. That you can have an integrated member of the team clearly be a second-class citizen, that’s just hard to fathom.

It's interesting that you think that they're "clearly" "second-class". I've never had a feeling that the contractors on the teams I worked on were treated any differently. Obviously I didn't know their pay/benefits, but that's even true of folks in different offices/countries that are FTEs.

If anything our contractors seemed to have looser schedules and would often take planned extended vacations for a month or so since they didn't have any real limit on vacation time, just however long they didn't want to be working.

If anything, inside of Ops stuff, contractors are usually amazing to have around since they often have worked at a lot of different companies and have seen different patterns and practices in person to compare.

Post reply on HN