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Mourning loss as a remote team

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Re: Mourning loss as a remote team

#151

Post by TedDoesntTalk »

maleldil wrote: post #115
tonyarkles wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think some of that is a lot harder to when remotely, though. You can't do team dinners, and the alternatives feel forced to me. It's also a lot harder to socialise with people that you only interact with a few times a day (if you're asynchronous) because they don't feel like a part of your life like in-personal colleagues would. So it ends up being a very I'm impersonal relationship.

I agree but have found turning on the camera and keeping it on for most meeting does help.

Re: Mourning loss as a remote team

#152

Post by gcheong »

simsla wrote: post #143
gcheong wrote: post #126

I don’t know if Pete was working from Scotland in which case he would have had access to NHS, but if not, then I’m all the more convinced that we need such a system in the US so nobody need depend on their company status to have access to what should be basic healthcare.

Unfortunately, NHS waiting times for mental health are abysmally long.

I don’t know what is meant by abysmally long but it seems they are trying to rectify some of the shortcomings. It’s certainly better than nothing at all and I would hope if you’re imminently suicidal that that would put you in the urgent category though: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/nhs-people-patients-mi...

Re: Mourning loss as a remote team

#153

Post by Macha »

kayodelycaon wrote: post #52
knorker wrote: post #19

How people can feel connected as a team without even video I'll never understand. It's hard enough to get a social "fix' over video. Audio only? No way. And I say this as an introvert who just knows that sometimes I have to take my "social medicine", because it's good for me. Maybe you feel connected with only audio. I can pretty much guarantee there's someone on your team for whom you're just some voice with a label…

I’ve had online relationships that are just as close and just as real as the people I know in person. Deaths of people whose faces I’ve never seen and voices I’ve never heard hit just as hard as any other. I’ve attended an online funeral with only text for interaction from a hotel room a thousand miles from home. It was just as real as ones in person.

Many of my longest friends are from online relationships, be it people I met online or from people I met in person but where circumstanes have left irl meetups very infrequent (e.g. moved countries).

Compare that to my IRL social circle which has turned over a few times as my college friends and I scattered around the country post-graduation, or as I've moved around since then.

Re: Mourning loss as a remote team

#154

Post by pbourke »

avgcorrection wrote: post #71
idontknowifican wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this isn’t work related, this is human meeds and suffering. i understand management is ass, don’t become an ass yourself

> this isn’t work related, So give them time off to grieve. Once you say that “they need you [the manager] in a time of crisis” you are putting the tragedy in a work-related context. The crux of the issue is the tragedy that happened. Not how the supposed leader responds to it. The worker bees can get space to grieve alone or among their peers.

> Once you say that “they need you [the manager] in a time of crisis” you are putting the tragedy in a work-related context.

Sometimes all that’s needed is for the manager to not be a giant fucking dick.

My aunt passed away a few years ago, and I took a few days off work to go to her funeral (a few hundred miles away).

When I mentioned that I was going to take a few days bereavement leave, my manager at the time responded by rules lawyering whether the death of an aunt qualified under the company’s bereavement policy (it did). He otherwise said all the right things, but that’s what I remember nearly 10 years later.

Re: Mourning loss as a remote team

#155

Post by bckr »

haswell wrote: post #138
DiggyJohnson wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mental health isn’t underdiscussed, it’s just not discussed seriously enough.

I would argue that it’s both. It’s not seriously discussed because it’s under-discussed. I think most people understand the seriousness of cancer, or a heart attack, or other life threatening ailments. They accept that those things are often outside of one’s control, and so there is never any hesitation to take it seriously. When someone in a work setting is diagnosed with something serious, everyone pays attention.…

> Even though awareness has grown, those old stigmas and default behaviors remain just under the surface.

This is exactly right. Even in the last few years I feel more understanding about mental health struggles, and I strive to be supportive as well, but even I judge people who take time off for mental health reasons, and I hesitate to tell people about my own struggles.

Re: Mourning loss as a remote team

#157

Post by geraldwhen »

olvy0 wrote: post #141
dvtrn wrote: post #88

Pete would ask to work more hours. He claimed he could use the money. He was a contractor remember Amidst the loss here, this line stood out to me and brings to mind all the terrible ways contractors are taken advantage of, or at least, treated and compensated vastly different than their "staff"/"full-time" peers who are often doing the exact same work . For fun, google the phrase "permatemp". E.g. I had a past job a…

That's awful. I was a contractor myself, and I still work with contractors every day. I wasn't treated as badly as that, but I was not too happy with how I was treated either. I and my team lead try to go out of our ways to acknowledge and include all workers, without regard to their actual employers, in all the team's meetings and interactions, and acknowledging their contributions. It's still not enough. Just last…

Tell them to leave and be happy for them. You cannot fix a broken organization.

Re: Mourning loss as a remote team

#158

Post by bckr »

ralmidani wrote: post #73

I interviewed with my current company (where we work mostly-remote) last year. One of my interviewers was a very sharp, experienced, and nice developer. After I learned they were going to make me an offer, I emailed my interviewers, and this developer emailed me back saying he was looking forward to working together. The week before I started, he passed away in a car accident. I was really looking forward to working…

> We don’t say we’re “a family”

My favorite way of framing this discussion is use the term "village".

A village is a close-knit group of people with aligned interests (economic and otherwise), activities, rituals, beliefs, and ties of friendship.

Re: Mourning loss as a remote team

#160

Post by [deleted] »

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…

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