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Mourning loss as a remote team

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Re: Mourning loss as a remote team

#381

Post by Graffur »

knorker wrote: post #368
Graffur wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if you ring your parents you don't feel connected with them? You don't feel connected with your friends playing online games? Video doesn't provide any additional connection to me. I find I just look at myself more because you can't hide your own video in MS Teams. And then when someone shares their screen and includes a video of yourself, you see yourself mirrored which is definitely a distraction. Video calls ar…

I video call my parents. I'm not convinced by "natural, therefore better". The "can see everyone" is the one thing that's better with video than in person. But yes in person as a whole is better.

Imagine a scenario where you just audio called your parents then..

Re: Mourning loss as a remote team

#382

Post by oportunityastro »

sgt wrote: post #367
oportunityastro wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but it is prohibitively expensive for most people (ironically because the market is quite small...everyone tries to go through the NHS). The level of underfunding is, however, such that mental health providers are a huge part of the private health sector: Priory Group is a very big one. Another factor is that a lot of training for psychologists is paid by the NHS, and funding for training has been going down eve…

If the NHS can't keep up, the private sector needs to be partially subsidized, in my opinion.

That is already happening. The NHS is paying the private sector to perform operations due to long wait times (it will take half a decade for the waiting list to go down)...but these are usually the same NHS doctors, working in the same hospitals...they are just being paid 3x the price, it is the worst of all worlds (doctors are an extremely powerful lobbying group in the UK, they have tightly controlled entry to the industry so you have doctors making base £150-200k part-time on the NHS, then topping up with another £200-300k with private sector work...it is chaos).

I understand no-one in the US wants to hear it...the UK system doesn't work (fully public health doesn't work, almost no countries in Europe with good healthcare have it, Australia is very similar to the UK, introduced private healthcare...their results are miles, miles, miles ahead).

Re: Mourning loss as a remote team

#383

Post by haswell »

tomp wrote: post #335
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.…

> it’s easy to downplay it or believe that the person struggling can change just by thinking hard enough. The reason some of us downplay mental health issues is because we hear stats like "97% kids are ADHD" or "74% of university students are on Ritalin" or "108% of Americans are on anti-depressants and visiting psychiatrists" "Mental health" (without further qualifications) is closer to herpes than to cancer.

> The reason some of us downplay mental health issues is because we hear stats like "97% kids are ADHD"

Quite frankly, this is a poor excuse. I don't draw sweeping conclusions about "physical health" issues because of cherry picked stats about extremely prevalent physical health issues.

"73% of adult Americans are overweight" doesn't make me downplay physical health across an entire spectrum of issues.

Another conclusion one might draw is "holy shit, this is a crisis!". And there is growing evidence to support this. Humans haven't evolved to deal with the realities of the current century. We're only just starting to understand the impact of modern technology and many other developments of the last decade.

If someone sees a crisis and concludes that this must be something to dismiss, that says more about that person than it does about the crisis.

> "Mental health" (without further qualifications) is closer to herpes than to cancer.

And yet, people still take herpes seriously. People don't just dismiss ailments that aren't cancer.

But there's a more fundamental issue with the entire line of thinking raised by this comment. A key point that many people miss is that mental health and physical health aren’t really two distinct categories at all. The two are deeply intertwined, and usually inseparable.

Who you go to see, or what actions you take when you start to have issues will change, but you also see a dermatologist for skin problems, a cardiologist for heart problems, etc.

Re: Mourning loss as a remote team

#384

Post by tomp »

haswell wrote: post #383
tomp wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it’s easy to downplay it or believe that the person struggling can change just by thinking hard enough. The reason some of us downplay mental health issues is because we hear stats like "97% kids are ADHD" or "74% of university students are on Ritalin" or "108% of Americans are on anti-depressants and visiting psychiatrists" "Mental health" (without further qualifications) is closer to herpes than to cancer.

> The reason some of us downplay mental health issues is because we hear stats like "97% kids are ADHD" Quite frankly, this is a poor excuse. I don't draw sweeping conclusions about "physical health" issues because of cherry picked stats about extremely prevalent physical health issues. "73% of adult Americans are overweight" doesn't make me downplay physical health across an entire spectrum of issues. Another conclu…

I agree, “mental health issues” are much more similar to obesity than to cancer.

Societal reactions reflect that, both dismissive (“just exercise more”, “don’t be lazy”) and constructive (“we should find the cause - is it endocrine disruptors / social media?”)

Re: Mourning loss as a remote team

#385

Post by maleldil »

lostcolony wrote: post #205
mrtranscendence wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

During the time of COVID I've had two jobs, one where the culture is (usually) to keep the cameras on at all times, and one where the culture was to keep the cameras off even when speaking. There are benefits to the latter approach ... I could futz around on my phone in particularly boring or useless meetings. But keeping the cameras on does make connections feel more personal and overall I prefer it, particularly fo…

>> I could futz around on my phone in particularly boring or useless meetings. The fact those meetings are occurring is a failure of the culture, and especially the move to WFH. It's been the key differentiator for me post-COVID; companies that are begrudgingly remote try to keep the office norms in place, just now remote, vs the companies embracing remote finding new workflows, which means leaning on async communica…

I mostly agree, but I have some resistance to those "social" meetings. I'd rather spend that time working, and I'd never take a social call like that outside of work hours, like I see it happen in other companies.

A significant component of that is that my only work experience is in a fully remote team of varying time zones. I imagine that changes the perspective of how these things should go compared to someone who's used to the social interactions of the office.

Re: Mourning loss as a remote team

#386

Post by haswell »

tomp wrote: post #384
haswell wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The reason some of us downplay mental health issues is because we hear stats like "97% kids are ADHD" Quite frankly, this is a poor excuse. I don't draw sweeping conclusions about "physical health" issues because of cherry picked stats about extremely prevalent physical health issues. "73% of adult Americans are overweight" doesn't make me downplay physical health across an entire spectrum of issues. Another conclu…

I agree, “mental health issues” are much more similar to obesity than to cancer. Societal reactions reflect that, both dismissive (“just exercise more”, “don’t be lazy”) and constructive (“we should find the cause - is it endocrine disruptors / social media?”)

> I agree, “mental health issues” are much more similar to obesity than to cancer.

Will you explain how/why you agree with that sentence?

To be clear, nothing in my comments concluded anything close to this. Your agreement is certainly not with me.

If I said “poverty is more similar to overspending than homelessness”, I’d expect someone to tell me this is a meaningless (and ridiculous) comparison, and rightly so.

Such conclusions are not useful, and don’t help anyone involved: not the person struggling, not the person trying to understand the struggle, not the people trying to fix it.

Will you help me understand the point you’re trying to make here? Because it’s unclear.

Re: Mourning loss as a remote team

#387

Post by cphoover »

cphoover wrote: post #365
gkop wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you spell out please why you don’t put the camera on when joining from your sofa chair? I feel self-conscious joining from my couch occasionally, but am pushing through it, there’s no reason why we can’t normalize harmless alternatives to desk locations. So just want to check that I’m not missing some material consequence of this behavior.

I don't know I work for an old-school very corporate-feeling company. I feel like I would be presenting as too casual. I work in finance and while we (software developers) don't have to wear suits or traditional business-ware like traders, fund managers or other associates, sitting in my sofa couch in a t-shirt just feels like it would come off ass to casual.

as too*

Re: Mourning loss as a remote team

#388

Post by lanstin »

Corrado wrote: post #212
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…

I was a contractor in corporate America for a while and experienced the same thing. The way it was explained to me was that you cannot give contractors the same "benefits" is a regular employee. If you do, then you have to treat them as employees, which means you have to offer the same healthcare, PTO structure, etc. I don't think the rules around the "benefits" were especially clear from a legal standpoint. Therefor…

To be honest I don’t think it is the cost of benefits but the ability to fire people quickly without having to find other work that is appealing to companies. If some big grand idea flops and it’s 200 contractors, just don’t renew the contract. If it’s a lot of employees you have to move them around or something. Also, often contractor money is a different pile of money than regular hires/payroll. So people looking to empire build can do it more easily with contractors. Companies looking for lower costs will hire lower on the skill ladder or choose different cheaper locales, or drive off with more experience and higher salaries.

Re: Mourning loss as a remote team

#389

Post by tonyarkles »

absurddoctor wrote: post #129
avgcorrection wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course this looks like the fruits of your leadership (“not to brag”) from your perspective. On the other hand it can look different from the other side when you see your peers jump at the opportunity to please the boss. As long as one is the person with the authority in a relationship one cannot really know which option it is.

There might be merit to this in general. But in this specific case the person is no longer in authority so it doesn’t seem to apply.

Yeah, that was the part that really gave me pause. While there was always a clear "I'm the guy that you have to listen to" relationship when I ran the team, there wasn't ever, from what I could tell at least, any real attempt by anyone to try to suck up or anything. And now, they've got their own manager to try to suck up to if they want to, but the new guy seems to have a similar style as me (he was the senior-most person on the team when I left).

The other piece is that this team has done this kind of stuff in the past for each other. As an example, one guy blew a timing belt on the highway about 150km out of the city (on Sunday night coming back to town for work Monday morning). Two of the other people on the team loaded up tools into their truck and drove out to meet him, try to see if they could fix the car on the side of the road, and when they realized they couldn't they towed it away from the road and gave him a ride back to town.

I mean, I could be misreading this, but it seems like I, without really knowing what I was doing, put together a really tightly gelled team that jumps at the opportunity to help each other out. And in the process, I guess I got to be a part of that even after I left.

Re: Mourning loss as a remote team

#390

Post by leaflets2 »

lossolo wrote: post #372
Scarblac wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily, no. Why would it?

Maybe because it's perceived as noble thing to do so people would signal that to others as benefit to themselves - to get higher status in a group.

Maybe depends on how dumb the others are -- the easier to fool, the more effective virtue signaling would be?

And, like @Scarblac wrote, sometimes it's a bad idea -- if the others see through it?

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