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Mourning loss as a remote team

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Re: Mourning loss as a remote team

#321

Post by Matumio »

anonporridge wrote: post #260
pizza wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once heard this in response to a discussion of an org's virtue signalling. What do you make of it, in this context? A man had been injured on a journey and was lying on the road, wounded. A good Samaritan saw him and helped him get up. Onlookers then retorted, "Well, the good Samaritan only helped him get up to signal their virtue!"

An evolutionary psychologist might argue something like that. Another way to put it, is that while the individual might act selflessly with pure and honest empathy, with no conscious expectation of something in return, this kind of behavior wouldn't have survived in our gene pool if there wasn't some evolutionary advantage to behaving that way. So, the onlookers would really have to specify whether they're talking ab…

But this is humans we are taking about. Humans have evolved genetically to be maximally flexible in behaviour. Our psychology is learned from role models and repurposed by our cultural institutions[1]. So here we are, discussing a story passed down over generations, to guide our moral values. This is culture, not biology.

This particular story teaches us that we should judge people by their individual intentions. Western cultures tend to judge that way[1]. Most other human cultures will ignore intentions and judge by outcome. They will also punish a whole family or clan, not an individual (except within their own clan or family).

So, according to our culture, we should judge people by their intentions. What about companies? Given that a company has many legal rights of a person, maybe we should judge it like a person - by the goodness of its intentions? Or maybe we can only judge individuals. But then why do so many individuals justify what they do with the needs of a company? Even questions about death, it seems.

[1] See Henrich's books: "The Secret of Our Success" and "The WEIRDest People"

Re: Mourning loss as a remote team

#322

Post by AussieWog93 »

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.…

I would argue it's understood poorly and discussed in an unhelpful way.

My own struggles have taught me that at least in some cases it seems to be more like a "mental obesity" than a "mental disease". It's not necessarily that there's something wrong with the person's brain, but that their depression/anxiety is a perfectly normal reaction to a lifestyle that's toxic.

If you never take the time to do the activities you really, truly enjoy (by this I mean the type of thing where afterwards you feel better and think to yourself "that was great; I'm so glad I took the time out of my day to do that" - not necessarily things that are hyper-engaging), don't eat vegetables and fruit every day, sleep poorly, live alone, don't make the time to socialise with others and are constantly surrounded by a hostile environment (cluttered, tripping over things, disgustingly/unpleasantly unclean sights and smells), then the depression is just a "healthy" response.

Re: Mourning loss as a remote team

#323

Post by sailfast »

pizza wrote: post #254
anonporridge wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I hate, hate, hate the way corps try to brush away any unpleasantness like ignoring it means it didn't happen! I personally don't mind it. It's a good reminder that we as individuals are just replaceable cogs in the machine, that all of us are only as valuable as the productivity we can contribute in the future, and that our sense of loyalty to it should be adjusted accordingly. Don't ever expect a corporation of a…

Once heard this in response to a discussion of an org's virtue signalling. What do you make of it, in this context? A man had been injured on a journey and was lying on the road, wounded. A good Samaritan saw him and helped him get up. Onlookers then retorted, "Well, the good Samaritan only helped him get up to signal their virtue!"

If the Samaritan had tweeted about how he felt the person really was deserving of help, he would have been signaling. Maybe they scheduled a seminar for their company on how best to help people after having walked by?

But the Samaritan acted. Helped someone. Did a thing.

Action is not signaling. Action is action.

Maybe it helps one’s reputation doing it for the Gram, but you are actually helping another person and that is something.

In this case it was at the cost of their own reputation given how Samaritans were viewed at the time.

The Bible might say that if you are doing it only because of how you feel or what it means reputationally it is not the same as doing it out of compassion alone, but it’s still doing something and different than signaling.

Re: Mourning loss as a remote team

#324

Post by misslibby »

kradeelav wrote: post #186
misslibby wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is a contractor asking for more hours an example of them being taken advantage of?

Some people can make it work, but imo it's an orange flag for a path to burn-out, especially if it's an excessive number of hours and not a standard 9-5 (with all the rest of their clients put together). A lot of times contractors work for multiple clients at one time, so it's easy to forget "your hours" are not their only ones.

But it was not the company asking for more hours from the contractor, but the other way round. If they need to work more because they need the money, maybe it would be better to let them?

Re: Mourning loss as a remote team

#325

Post by misslibby »

seb1204 wrote: post #289
kradeelav wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people can make it work, but imo it's an orange flag for a path to burn-out, especially if it's an excessive number of hours and not a standard 9-5 (with all the rest of their clients put together). A lot of times contractors work for multiple clients at one time, so it's easy to forget "your hours" are not their only ones.

From the text I would assume Pete was working full time for this company. This is also not unusual for my company. In Germany there are laws against this type of 'contracting' as you seem/are fully depending on one client.

This German law sucks, Germany simply doesn't like independent people. It is also not "contracting", but contracting.

Ultimately, once again, the government is telling me how I have to work or run my business. I didn't ask them to do that, and I don't want them to do that.

Re: Mourning loss as a remote team

#326

Post by sailfast »

samstave wrote: post #302
HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is the worst! I remember when a long-time team member died unexpectedly one weekend. We all learned about it at the Monday standup meeting and we luckily had the common sense to cancel the standup because no one wanted to talk. A number of us went to the funeral and his wife told me (I had met her once before) that she was so happy that his co-workers came to pay their respects. It made her feel that he had a la…

I had a colleague die in his cubical at Lockheed... I was IT director and I had to do a post mortem (no pun intended) about his activities in the facility by checking his badge-ing in and out of various doors to determine the time of death... that was super fn weird. We were able to determine he went to the break room at ~1am or something, made himself a cup of tea, went back to his cube and died before he even drank…

Whoa. This sounds really tough and I’m sorry you had to go through that.

Re: Mourning loss as a remote team

#327

Post by philwelch »

pizza wrote: post #254
anonporridge wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I hate, hate, hate the way corps try to brush away any unpleasantness like ignoring it means it didn't happen! I personally don't mind it. It's a good reminder that we as individuals are just replaceable cogs in the machine, that all of us are only as valuable as the productivity we can contribute in the future, and that our sense of loyalty to it should be adjusted accordingly. Don't ever expect a corporation of a…

Once heard this in response to a discussion of an org's virtue signalling. What do you make of it, in this context? A man had been injured on a journey and was lying on the road, wounded. A good Samaritan saw him and helped him get up. Onlookers then retorted, "Well, the good Samaritan only helped him get up to signal their virtue!"

Virtue signaling would be if you took a picture of the guy and posted it on social media complaining that such an outcome was possible in this world without doing anything that could actually help.

Re: Mourning loss as a remote team

#328

Post by SamBam »

sailfast wrote: post #323
pizza wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once heard this in response to a discussion of an org's virtue signalling. What do you make of it, in this context? A man had been injured on a journey and was lying on the road, wounded. A good Samaritan saw him and helped him get up. Onlookers then retorted, "Well, the good Samaritan only helped him get up to signal their virtue!"

If the Samaritan had tweeted about how he felt the person really was deserving of help, he would have been signaling. Maybe they scheduled a seminar for their company on how best to help people after having walked by? But the Samaritan acted. Helped someone. Did a thing. Action is not signaling. Action is action. Maybe it helps one’s reputation doing it for the Gram, but you are actually helping another person and th…

Giving employees time to grieve, cancelling meetings, making space where people can talk -- those are all actions, not a company virtue signaling.

Re: Mourning loss as a remote team

#329

Post by all_factz »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #322
haswell wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

I would argue it's understood poorly and discussed in an unhelpful way. My own struggles have taught me that at least in some cases it seems to be more like a "mental obesity" than a "mental disease". It's not necessarily that there's something wrong with the person's brain, but that their depression/anxiety is a perfectly normal reaction to a lifestyle that's toxic. If you never take the time to do the activities yo…

This is a bit of a chicken-or-egg problem. If you’re depressed, you don’t have the energy to do the beneficial things you’re recommending above. So I come back to the idea that you need to look inward, into the core causes of your depression, and make some sort of peace with them — freeing you to move forward. Therapy helps.

Re: Mourning loss as a remote team

#330

Post by philwelch »

BoorishBears wrote: post #170
maleldil wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think it wasn't acknowledged specifically because it was suicide, or was it an overall culture of not addressing the cause of death in general? Because the second one sounds fine to me.

How is it fine? Causes of death are not fungible, dying in a freak accident and dying from suicide in a high pressure setting should not be treated the same. Especially since we know that suicide can act like a contagion: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK207262/#_sec_0078_ and the demands of the program they were in were almost certainly a factor

It’s exactly because suicide is socially contagious that it makes sense to stigmatize it and not openly discuss it.
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