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When Work Didn’t Follow You Home

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Re: When Work Didn’t Follow You Home

#131

Post by doublerabbit »

westernpopular wrote: post #114
doublerabbit wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its not always that easy. Enterprise just doesn't work that way. Where multiple timezones come in to play you need to be around. If I need email comms for an important document regarding to something super tight. I can't just wait till tomorrow. Information can be crucial at times and emails can cause break down in communications. Spreadsheets need to be spread and PowerPoints need to be pointed. Work yes, you can st…

Counterpoint, I work in an international company where teams in Europe often need to liaise with teams in the US. The policy is: if it needs to wait, it waits. If it can't wait, you need to reorganize your teams' responsibilities so that those who are reliant on each other are timezone-aligned.

> If it can't wait, you need to reorganize your teams' responsibilities so that those who are reliant on each other are timezone-aligned.

I'm not a developer nor a manager. The team responsibilities; we are one of the most efficient. Our teams cross over the globe: Hong Kong, China, Japan, America's,

My manager is spot on. The team are fine, it's just the nature of work.

Re: When Work Didn’t Follow You Home

#132

Post by lumost »

Aurornis wrote: post #96
lumost wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm honestly surprised that more companies haven't invested in broader vacation policies. My experience has been that the constant "on" state wears you down. The only way to get to "off" is to be OOTO officially for a week+. Add in parental responsibilities and you really don't have any headspace for yourself. Would love to have 5-8 weeks per year, that would let me take at least 1 week's worth of time per quarter to…

> Would love to have 5-8 weeks per year, that would let me take at least 1 week's worth of time per quarter to recharge from the constant 24/7 rush. At least 1 week of vacation per quarter (in addition to normal holiday time) has been fairly standard for every senior-level tech job I’ve had in a long time. I had one job with a generous vacation policy that resulted in some people taking 8-10 weeks of vacation or more…

I saw HubSpot (a former employer) started turning short weeks into a "week of rest". Seemed like a great idea, just synchronize everyone's vacations so that no one plans work for that week.

Re: When Work Didn’t Follow You Home

#133

Post by 8n4vidtmkvmk »

wpietri wrote: post #56
freedomben wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not OP but many years of working from home. The best thing I've found is Logseq. Any other note taking app would probably do, but the important thing is that it's a "daily journal" style where I brain dump relevant things into bullet points. This has come in really handy for many other reasons as well.

I've been using Logseq for the last few months and it's wildly better for me than using things like Evernote for this. I used to be big on having a lot of structure in terms of notebooks and notes, a lot of which contained project journals of one sort or another. But the way Logseq makes journaling a primary interface makes things much easier. I tag some things I want to be able to find later, or link them to pages.…

I use paper. Sometimes I refer back to the last few pages but rarely go back further than that. 99% things... Seem like really good ideas but if they don't stick then they probably don't need a dedicated home. And if they do stick.. well, I'll have to flip a few pages and copy them into my personal wiki or something so they can have a longer life.

Re: When Work Didn’t Follow You Home

#134

Post by lumost »

ye-olde-sysrq wrote: post #48
lumost wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm honestly surprised that more companies haven't invested in broader vacation policies. My experience has been that the constant "on" state wears you down. The only way to get to "off" is to be OOTO officially for a week+. Add in parental responsibilities and you really don't have any headspace for yourself. Would love to have 5-8 weeks per year, that would let me take at least 1 week's worth of time per quarter to…

>Add in parental responsibilities Out of curiosity, how many of your coworkers have kids? I have 3, and I've always found it a bit ominous that even when I'm on large teams (8+) I'm typically still the only person with kids. So far: 1. job 1, team of 8, only 1 other IC had kids 2. job 2, team of 10, nobody else had kids 3. current job, team of 8, nobody else has kids. If you expand it to the suborganization we're in,…

I did find that it's important to work on teams where folks have kids. If you're politely vocal about the time blocks... it helps. But honestly I've had to use the 8PM-11PM slots for work with folks on the west coast. I treat is as a red flag if the management/other senior engineers don't have kids.

It worked alright for about 1.5 years, but ... I need to get more PTO to sustain this type of work load.

Re: When Work Didn’t Follow You Home

#136

Post by willcipriano »

doublerabbit wrote: post #130
willcipriano wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> regulators chasing us Unless I've got serious equity the regulators are chasing you, make it worth my while to solve your problem.

I can't go in to detail because NDA. Three letter agencies, something something war, trading, cyberattacks and more stuff.

Sounds like they are willing to pay a lot for my weekend.

Re: When Work Didn’t Follow You Home

#137

Post by doublerabbit »

DeltaCoast wrote: post #110
doublerabbit wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its not always that easy. Enterprise just doesn't work that way. Where multiple timezones come in to play you need to be around. If I need email comms for an important document regarding to something super tight. I can't just wait till tomorrow. Information can be crucial at times and emails can cause break down in communications. Spreadsheets need to be spread and PowerPoints need to be pointed. Work yes, you can st…

Is there anyone on your team that just isn't around? Keeps a strict schedule - I've found that even working across time zones with tight deadlines, some people just have a hard stop.

Its not the matter of my team.

Its more talking to the VPs of other department's.

Re: When Work Didn’t Follow You Home

#138

Post by robotburrito »

lopis wrote: post #14
NoahECampbell wrote: post #4

I mean this isn't actually a large problem, at least in programming where I am familiar with a lot of trends. It is very common for people to immediately sign off for the day the minute their work day/shift is over and not do anything else after. If people want to do that then sure they can, but they also trade off the ability to earn raises and promotions by doing the bare minimum. Getting a work-life balance is imp…

Please, enough with this mentality. You don't need to work overtime or sacrifice your work-life balance to grow and earn raises or bonuses. For anyone reading that is working in a company that works like this, just know that there's a better world out there. Your brain can't focus for 12 hours a day no matter how much you try to convince yourself, and the more you push it the worse. It's ok to be paid to be on-call,…

Not that I agree with this sentiment. But you do need to do these things if others are doing so. It’s like weight cutting in combat sports. It only takes one person who does it to force all others to as well.

Re: When Work Didn’t Follow You Home

#139

Post by nuancebydefault »

I started working as sw dev in 1998. I remember being quite exhausted after work. Had a dial up connection at home, mostly used for chatting and napster, but I also continued working after hours, either on pc or laptop. There were floppies and cdrw's, so it was certainly possible to take work home or homework to work.

Bottom line is that if you are very much invested in tech or work, it can be exhausting, even without any direct line to work.

I dreamt about being connected to the internet wirelessly and roaming. As soon as that came in our pocket, it became handy (you can look up anything at any time) but also addictive.

What i want to say... It's not the tech itself that supposedly made things worse, it is the habits that you make from them.

If you tell your boss that you will not respond after hours or won't work late hours, that would take courage but today that is still plausible.

Work/life balance should be a personally checked boundary, it takes practice and patience to get it right, no matter of whic era of tech.

Re: When Work Didn’t Follow You Home

#140

Post by athenot »

dotnwat wrote: post #72
athenot wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Point 1 is very important, I can confirm with also a decade of doing this. One note I'd like to add is pay attention to your lighting, have a special "work-mode" set of lights that you turn on when you work and then turn off when you are no longer working. I use the same work desk for non work stuff, but I turn off my "office lights" and it's a completely different vibe. Everyone's tastes will be different but as for…

Would be interested to know which lighting products you are specifically using. I've started dipping my toe into the pool of improved lighting, but the number of products out there is quite overwhelming.

10 years ago the specialty bulbs were all metal halide and CFLs but nowadays, they are LED and much better; some are even dimmable. Sites like 1000bulbs let you search by type, brightness (in lumens), color rendering index (CRI; over 90 is best), temperature (in K), angles (for spotlights).

Many people spend a small fortune on light fixtures and then use the cheapest bulbs in them. I prefer the opposite.

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