181–190 of 243 posts
Early on (during Covid) I made the decision that remote work was not for our company (SAAS for financial services) and two years in have zero regrets about it. We are clear about our expectations so there are no surprises to employees and new hires (or we filter out people that want it). Most of our clients in financial services have reached the same conclusion. One of my clients at a large bulge bracket said “if the…
At the beginning of the pandemic, the CEO of our company was very adamant about working from home being a temporary situation, with all of the usual explanations. Although I still have to go into the office occasionally to things that can't be done remotely, midway through the pandemic I had decided that I am going to work from home as much as I like from now on. And if this company doesn't let me, I'll switch jobs.…
I don't know if this answers your question, but my employer (engineering firm) just announced last Friday that starting July 5th being in the office Tue-Thu is mandatory. Then Sept 5th Mon-Fri is mandatory. Pre-covid there were very very few remote positions at my employer, we are going back to that I guess. I've been going in Mon-Fri anyways, so it doesn't really effect me.
My employer just announced last Friday that starting July 5th being in the office Tue-Thu is mandatory. Then you need to remind your employer that your presence on the team is not "mandatory", but rather optional. In the form of the 2-week notice you give once you have found a much better job that also respects your health and sanity.
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I'm happy for you! Out of curiosity, did your current housing situation provide the space for a comfortable and productive home office, or is this unexpected development putting pressure on your housing situation? (If you're part of a trend, that has implications for preferred housing layout and square footage. And, of course people in different housing situations should be expected to respond differently to fully-re…
I live in a 48sqm apartment and never even thought about this. I work usually either from my little desk and kneeling chair in my bedroom or my couch. My remote coworkers at different levels have all kinds of stuff in their backgrounds - pets, kids, books, walls, posters, clutter, paintings, and thinking back I have not once found myself judging them negatively _or_ positively for it. A candidate judging your house i…
It is super awkward to imply your interviewer should have a wealthier zoom background, but its by far not the worst thing I've heard blurted out in an interview. Interviews are stressful, and people in this industry (myself included) are pretty awkward.
Only those truly needed on-site (or want to be) are there currently. Remote is alive and well but you can smell it's trending back towards the option rather than the default.
Talk has started about returning to the office for a portion of the week. It's not being enforced yet but it seems to be trending that way.
I'm a little frustrated by it. Our handling isn't a return to normal, it's an overshoot.
I've been remote for years before the pandemic - it was known, my whole team is in another state.
But, now that the pandemic is over, anyone not > 50 miles away from the office has been encouraged to get an exception. The implication being, you will return eventually
Prior to the WFH spree I never needed this, but now I do - apparently. It could be good record keeping, it could be pressure to get rid of the non-believers.
I was looking for new work this year and found a company which hired me for +40% salary increase and remote/timezone free. Personally I have young kids and therefore prefer flexible times, fully remote etc. Being in Europe, I think fully remote is getting embraced. It‘s the third company where I get US level salary plus all the benefits (30 days vacation, unlimited sick leave etc). I see a strong trend from young fam…
Email is in profile :)
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You are (mostly) wrong. The definitions of long Covid are indeed a bit inconsistent for now, but there’s evidence that both repeated infections do tend to be worse with the omicron variants (possibly due to t-cell exhaustion but I’m not sure if that’s the only factor), and that repeat exposures are at least not protective against long Covid (this isn’t settled science yet, and there are a lot of confounding variables…
You lost me at "T-Cell exhaustion". If that were a thing, repeated boosters wouldn't really make sense, now would it?
Immune escape is the process where viruses basically evolve to either evade antibodies that your body has created, or do things to prevent your body from creating effective antibodies in the first place. This is a really common thing with a lot of viruses, including some other coronaviruses. We were pretty lucky that, until omicron, Covid didn’t have the greatest immune escape- but now it does. For whatever reason, omicron infection alone doesn’t give you great immunity against omicron variants or other variants. Having been vaccinated before your first omicron infection helps some, but not as much as it did with earlier variants.
Now, the thing about the immune system is that even when it can’t completely stop a virus, it can often help make it more mild over time. Unfortunately, for Covid, and especially for omicron, the opposite seems to be true. On average, reinfections are worse than earlier infections. Again, the vaccine seems to make this a little better, but not a lot.
The fact that reinfections are worse isn’t unknown in other diseases either. Antibody dependent enhancement is a known thing, and we know a lot of the effects of Covid seem to come from the immune system- so maybe ADE is the cause? It seems like that’s unlikely because the vaccine worked so well- but also, it seems like there are a bunch of other diseases that get worse for someone after they’ve had Covid. That would make it seem like whatever is happening to the immune system after an infection might be bigger than just Covid itself.
There are a bunch of ideas about why this might be- including reservoirs of virus lingering in the body, damage from Covid making it harder to fight off other infections, and the lockdown just generally making our immune systems a bit less effective for lack of use. One of the ideas for why this might be happening is this idea of “t-cell exhaustion” which, as I understand it, is basically just a kind of broad term for “t cells don’t seem to be working like they should and we don’t know why” with a few specific hypotheses about the possible mechanisms. I don’t think this is something that’s like, broadly accepted and well understood yet so much as it is a plausible non-specific idea for one way to explain some observed data.
At any rate, whatever is happening seems to be related to a natural Covid infection and either the spike protein encoded by the current vaccines isn’t enough to cause the immune system problems, or vaccination doesn’t produce enough of them over a long enough period of time to cause the problem.
I know that “ the data is weird” isn’t a very satisfying answer but it seems to be where we’re at.
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Buy a smart bulb for your WFH desk. Pick a color (example: bright white) that you only use when you are working. you might not notice anything at first, but after a while it really helps with shifting your mentality into or out of work mode very quickly. Very helpful at the start of a busy day, or the end of a rough day. Source: I did WFH for about 2 years before the pandemic in a 1 bedroom apartment that I shared wi…
Great idea. I double up my office space for work and for personal projects / hobbies outside of work (same desk and chair, different computers), but didn't consider having a dedicated colored light for it. I think I'll leave normal lighting for work, but then do a more playful color for hobbies, like purple or blue or red or something. I already have the light even, I just haven't been using it.
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> I also don't really believe people claiming they are losing productivity in WFH, its most likely that they were never productive to begin with and its becoming magnified. Often such comments frame their productivity in terms of impromptu discussions, or over-staffed meetings. I suspect they're the sort of people who feel jointly productive so long as they're engaged with the productive people during the process. Y'…
… or the sort of people with young kids.
I'll take their company over that of an office any time. At least my kids respect me enough not to interrupt be when I've got headphones on and am working; something I can't say for any office I've ever worked in.
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Also, most video chat apps have filters where you can make your background look like a couple of different options. A standard, clean, organized home office being one.
Although filters have gotten better (more precise, faster responding to movement), I still don't like them for cutting off hands or things I hold up for the camera to see. So, I hang a curtain behind me, since I don't have a wall.