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If you're remote, ramble

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Re: If you're remote, ramble

#221

Post by [deleted] »

echelon wrote: post #200
ronbenton wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“I see you’ve only had 15 rambles this week” “Isn’t 15 the minimum?” “Well, yeah, if you just want to do the bare minimum. But look at Todd over there - he has 37 rambles” “Well if you wanted people to have 37 rambles why wouldn’t you make that the minimum”

Yeah, but Obsidian is a startup. A remote startup. If you're in a startup of I can see how this feels dystopian in a giant corporation, but that's because everyone is there for the paycheck. In a startup, people are making sacrifices to make the thing work. They could get a higher paying, less stressful job. Picking a startup and not being engaged is disruptive.

[deleted]

Re: If you're remote, ramble

#222

Post by tranceylc »

MichaelRo wrote: post #205
tetromino_ wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But come on, having "a cold" twice a month... IT IS suspicious Suspicious in that it's only twice a month? When my kid first started preschool, we got exposed to all sorts of wonderful novel viruses, and I had respiratory infections of various sorts for probably 50% of the days for the entire autumn and winter. Most of them not rising to the level of high fever and not being able to work, but definitely noticeably…

Suspicious that it's probably a massive hangover rather than "a cold". And I assume it's during the week, otherwise noone but your liver cares what you do on a Friday or Saturday evening. "A cold" doesn't usually totally incapacitate someone working from the comfort of their home, down a paracetamol, drink hot liquids, take a nap, don't need to be 110% productive but still can manage to get some job done. But "a mass…

Are you sure you aren’t projecting your substance abuse issues onto others? Assuming someone has a hangover in the middle of the week is odd behaviour

Re: If you're remote, ramble

#223

Post by SoftTalker »

dclowd9901 wrote: post #214
kmarc wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To defend @bagacrap, they said they tend to be a bit suspicious. And I am, too, when I hear this weekly from the same person (and when I ask back next day, if she recovered, she asks me "from what"?) I'm all in for more times off for parents, more PTOs, sabbaticala, etc. But come on, having "a cold" twice a month... IT IS suspicious.

Do they perform adequately at their job in general? If so, who cares?

Typically if such a thing catches your eye it’s because in fact they aren’t performing adequately.

Re: If you're remote, ramble

#224

Post by rkomorn »

bee_rider wrote: post #210
rkomorn wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm okay with parents getting more perks and time to deal with their kids. I have zero desire to be a parent but I think people having kids is a pretty important part of keeping humanity/society going, so I'm happy to accommodate (or even reward) it.

IMO it would be better to subsidize this at the government level than the employer level. We definitely don’t want to create a situation where parents are less desirable to employ, right? And, most people have kids (even in places countries with highly developed economies and lower fertility rates). So, we shouldn’t think of this as an extra perk (some special case benefit). The treatment of folks who have had kids i…

Sure, it's better for governments to provide the incentives.

Regarding your second point, I guess you're right. :) I'm just looking at it from my "you couldn't even pay me to have a child" perspective.

Your question about making it a negative case is an interesting can of worms I'll elect not to open.

Re: If you're remote, ramble

#225

Post by kaashif »

closewith wrote: post #174
kaashif wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone was ill, then they're back, asking them if they're feeling better is totally normal conversation. The suspicion etc may not be, but the question is obviously fine.

Given you're suspicious about these people and the way you talk about them, they are most likely well aware that you're on a fishing trip feigning interest. People like you are always more transparent than you realise.

Apologies if it wasn't clear, I am a different person to the one you replied to, and am not suspicious - I was commenting on the other person's suspicion and indeed said that it wasn't normal.

Re: If you're remote, ramble

#226

Post by RedNifre »

We did something like that on a private Minecraft server 15 years ago, where everybody was required to have an identi.ca account for this server (status.net, like mastodon today). All messages appeared posted to the walls of a large library building in the middle of the world and people could post to their accounts from the ingame chat.

It worked really well for about half the people, the other half ignored it completely.

I wouldn't mind if today's office chats like Teams or Slack added a microblogging feature where you could subscribe to interesting colleagues.

Re: If you're remote, ramble

#227

Post by kqr »

tetromino_ wrote: post #175
kmarc wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To defend @bagacrap, they said they tend to be a bit suspicious. And I am, too, when I hear this weekly from the same person (and when I ask back next day, if she recovered, she asks me "from what"?) I'm all in for more times off for parents, more PTOs, sabbaticala, etc. But come on, having "a cold" twice a month... IT IS suspicious.

> But come on, having "a cold" twice a month... IT IS suspicious Suspicious in that it's only twice a month? When my kid first started preschool, we got exposed to all sorts of wonderful novel viruses, and I had respiratory infections of various sorts for probably 50% of the days for the entire autumn and winter. Most of them not rising to the level of high fever and not being able to work, but definitely noticeably…

For anyone curious: an average of 1.2 instances per month the first year and a half. During the worst season, it can be twice in a month, sure. https://entropicthoughts.com/how-often-does-a-child-get-sick

(Child spent 16 % of the year sick. Across two parents, that is nearly a month of absence in a year.)

Re: If you're remote, ramble

#228

Post by bee_rider »

rkomorn wrote: post #224
bee_rider wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO it would be better to subsidize this at the government level than the employer level. We definitely don’t want to create a situation where parents are less desirable to employ, right? And, most people have kids (even in places countries with highly developed economies and lower fertility rates). So, we shouldn’t think of this as an extra perk (some special case benefit). The treatment of folks who have had kids i…

Sure, it's better for governments to provide the incentives. Regarding your second point, I guess you're right. :) I'm just looking at it from my "you couldn't even pay me to have a child" perspective. Your question about making it a negative case is an interesting can of worms I'll elect not to open.

I don’t think it is a can of worms really; making special negative cases for subsets of the population is a can of poop! There’s nothing so complicated as a worm in there.

Re: If you're remote, ramble

#229

Post by TimTheTinker »

Aurornis wrote: post #158
majke wrote: post #132

Let me share a personal story. Back in 2014 when I was working at Cloudflare on DDoS mitigation I collaborated a lot with a collage - James (Jog). I asked him loads of questions, from "how to login to a server", via "what is anycast" to "tell me how you mitigated this one, give me precise instructions you've run". I quickly realised that these conversations had value outside the two of us - pretty much everyone else…

I understand the point you were making, but from a manager’s perspective this format is something we’ve tried to avoid. Having a place to have people ask questions is great and encouraged, but doing anything that starts gravitating the knowledge toward a person instead of a topic creates problems for discoverability, searchability, and risks creating the impression (for new employees) that certain specific people are…

That's the remote equivalent of banning informal conversations in the hall and saying "save it for the daily team meeting".

It feels good as a manager to formalize things, but the best collaboration and ideas happen organically at less formal times and places - and those times are worth at least as much, if not more to the company than anything formal.

You might as well say "no thinking about work in the shower."

Re: If you're remote, ramble

#230

Post by oefrha »

serf wrote: post #213
ZeroCool2u wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have an organic channel like this that's just called "Study Hall". People constantly ask technical questions and they know it's a judgement free zone. Probably one of the most productive chat channels in our org.

>and they know it's a judgement free zone. that's the thing that's so inorganic about this whole thing : it's not a judgement free zone, it's a zone that tricks people into presuming that. If some underling somewhere says something that exposes their ignorance or naivety to either a policy problem or a technical problem you'd better realize that it's going to trigger a 'review mechanism' somewhere down the road withi…

Yeah, maybe I’m small-minded, but if someone I’m not familiar with, say a new hire asks a question way beneath their presumed experience level I’m absolutely gonna judge, judgement free be damned; and if they’re my report I’m gonna question the hiring (in my mind). There’s no shortage of imposters in the industry, most of them who’re capable of landing jobs above them are probably also smart enough to scoff at pure fantasy like “judgement free zone”.
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