The health care toll today’s work culture exacts on employees • Hacker News Board

Re: The health care toll today’s work culture exacts on employees

#341

Post by girvo » Fri, Mar 23, 2018, 12:42 PM UTC

nathan_f77 wrote: post #316

mathgladiator wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You captured a core reason that I picked up wood working: projects finish. An annoying aspect of software is that it takes a life of its own. It is never done, but there are feature requests, bugs, and updates. You make a table, and that is it. It's done. Sure, you have to clean it, but mostly it will last a while until it breaks down.

I think many software projects should be called “done”, but startups hire lots of people and add tons of new features in the name of growth. I’m working on a SaaS service that does one thing really well, and I think it’s pretty close to being done. The code is very solid, and I rarely see any bugs or error reports (thanks to React, Immutable.js, and Flow.) The infrastructure is autoscaling and requires very little ma…

Flow is fantastic. But nowadays I eschew Immutable for flow-static-land Lenses, with the amazing “decoders” library for handling JSON. That lets me use standard raw objects in a type-safe way with real runtime validation, and with cleaner types than you get with Immutable and Flow!

Re: The health care toll today’s work culture exacts on employees

#342

Post by retube » Fri, Mar 23, 2018, 12:44 PM UTC

JDiculous wrote: post #227

DeusExMachina wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find this idea bizarre. It's like humans enjoyed their time for millennia and only now we have to work. For all human history, the conditions of people were dire. Today people might be stuck in an office in their "best year", but people in the past had to toil all day to barely scrape by and didn't even have that many years to live. It's only now that we live these comfortable lives with houses, heating, electricit…

This is actually false. The average American worker today works more hours per year than a 14th century peasant ( http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2013/08/29/why-a-medie... ). Hunter-gatherers only worked 2-3 hours per day. Despite technology allowing us to work less, we work more. Yes we should be grateful of technological advancement, but too many people are unnecessarily depressed and suicidal, and it doesn't…

> Hunter-gatherers only worked 2-3 hours per day.

They were also dead by 35.

Re: The health care toll today’s work culture exacts on employees

#343

Post by retube » Fri, Mar 23, 2018, 12:46 PM UTC

grecy wrote: post #268

osrec wrote: post #24

Work has become a strange thing. I see people foregoing their best years stuck in an office, in the hope they can enjoy their later years. What utter nonsense. I'm not sure what the right answer is, but society has got something very wrong, as our work culture seems to surgically remove the wonder and enjoyment from our days. Hardly surprising that it drives people to ill health. Glad I broke out of that cycle a long…

I agree wholeheartedly, and just so you know, once you get out of North America (the USA especially), it's often not like this. There are millions and millions of people out there in their 20s and 30s who work part time and do whatever they want with the other time, because that provides "enough" money for the life they want to live. I personally work roughly 50% time. I work a few years, then a quit and do whatever…

> They don't have a lot of money, but they have "enough" for the life they want and they spend a lot of time surfing

Right. and what happens when they get old? how will they ever be able to retire?

Re: The health care toll today’s work culture exacts on employees

#344

Post by gerbilly » Fri, Mar 23, 2018, 12:47 PM UTC

slimshady94 wrote: post #270

rland wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is something I have given a lot of thought to. I saw footage of a gazelle being hunted by a cheetah. My reflexive thought is -- how unimaginably horrible. Here is an animal which is evolved specifically to hunt you down and kill you. And every moment you spend trying to live is a moment lived in fear of this awful creature. What a life! My horror does not even compare to the horror of this life. But, watching th…

The gazelle is not self-conscious about it's life, and whether it's muscles are beautiful or not. It will never sense the beauty of what you're describing - from it's point of view, it will just feel fear, pain, then die. Perhaps a higher-dimensional being would also see some beauty in our life that we cannot comprehend currently - like the gazelle can't comprehend it's Olympic flow, a human can't comprehend the long…

> The gazelle is not self-conscious about it's life

This is a popular assertion about animals, but I've yet to see someone prove it.

Also we shouldn't overestimate how self aware the average human is.

Much of our lives are lived in a disconnected fog, disconnected from our bodies, our feelings and our minds.

Re: The health care toll today’s work culture exacts on employees

#345

Post by lostcolony » Fri, Mar 23, 2018, 12:51 PM UTC

mieseratte wrote: post #282

jasonkester wrote: post #278

There is no downtime anymore. You can never truly get away from work in an age of 4g connectivity everywhere. I'm doing a bit of consulting with a startup at the moment, and one of our team members recently disappeared off on vacation. Good for him, I thought. Two days later, he popped back up on the company slack, working away from his tropical beach. To be clear, this is not a case of digital nomadding. This is 10…

> There is no downtime anymore. You can never truly get away from work in an age of 4g connectivity everywhere. You can. Get rid of your phone. Most of us don't have a job that actually requires a phone, and it's really as matter of your work willing to take advantage of the fact that most of you won't push back when pressed. You can take advantage of the fact that they won't pay for you to carry a phone. I finally g…

I've never configured Outlook on my phone. If they absolutely -have- to reach me, they can text or call me.

The beautiful thing about that is it makes it difficult, but not impossible, to reach me. No one on my project has my number. They know who does. That person knows to respect my time. They also know I don't always pick up.

So there's multiple levels of filtering that means that if it arrives, it arrives as a voicemail, and is something so important it requires attention ASAP, -and- is something that can't be addressed by someone else (since if it is, it'll be faster to find someone who can figure it out than to reach me). So it's a very small class of problems that actually get through, and they're usually the ones I -do- care about.

Re: The health care toll today’s work culture exacts on employees

#346

Post by lostcolony » Fri, Mar 23, 2018, 12:56 PM UTC

pi-squared wrote: post #297

jasonkester wrote: post #278

There is no downtime anymore. You can never truly get away from work in an age of 4g connectivity everywhere. I'm doing a bit of consulting with a startup at the moment, and one of our team members recently disappeared off on vacation. Good for him, I thought. Two days later, he popped back up on the company slack, working away from his tropical beach. To be clear, this is not a case of digital nomadding. This is 10…

> 20 years ago, there was an expectation that when you left the office, you were unreachable except in an emergency. Maybe I am sort of fresh in the workforce (3 yrs) but I just don't allow this - if I am not in the office I don't work. I don't have slack on my phone or whatever and I have strict boundaries working 9-5. Does it become worse when I have more exp?

No. A few companies may have toxic expectations from management (and some of the stories here do show people who work for such places); avoid them (quit if you mistakenly end up at one).

But most of this is self-inflicted via tacitly accepting and reinforcing cultural norms that don't actually need to be followed. I've yet to work at a place that attempted to abuse my boundaries once I made it clear I respected them. I.e., "Didn't you see that email I sent last night?" "I did when I got in today", they now know I don't check email after hours. No one wants to 'officially' say "You should have no work life balance; we expect you to be on call 24/7", so just making it clear that you won't voluntarily do it, and will presume that you are always truly off the clock when not at work, means they tacitly accept it.

Re: The health care toll today’s work culture exacts on employees

#347

Post by lostcolony » Fri, Mar 23, 2018, 1:01 PM UTC

FlyingSideKick wrote: post #96

How can workers change corporate culture from within to demand work-life balance? I asked an executive VP this at a one of the worlds largest company’s here in Seattle and she said “If the young talent we need coming out of school across the board demanded shorter days and more vacation we would have to comply. But they don’t instead they are awed by an extra $10k on a hiring bonus they might or might not get after t…

Inform. Even in such a culture, one person refusing to do it (not rudely, just passively; go home at the right time, not checking stuff) is enough to change things. We know from every bit of research that 60 hours is not more productive than 40 hours. The one person who refuses is going to shine. And their good habit, if they know to commit to it, and to socialize it, will help empower the others.

I know as a team lead I've tried to empower the people under me to manage their own time, and actively encouraged them to ignore workplace communication after hours

Re: The health care toll today’s work culture exacts on employees

#348

Post by andrepd » Fri, Mar 23, 2018, 1:06 PM UTC

DeusExMachina wrote: post #62

osrec wrote: post #24

Work has become a strange thing. I see people foregoing their best years stuck in an office, in the hope they can enjoy their later years. What utter nonsense. I'm not sure what the right answer is, but society has got something very wrong, as our work culture seems to surgically remove the wonder and enjoyment from our days. Hardly surprising that it drives people to ill health. Glad I broke out of that cycle a long…

I find this idea bizarre. It's like humans enjoyed their time for millennia and only now we have to work. For all human history, the conditions of people were dire. Today people might be stuck in an office in their "best year", but people in the past had to toil all day to barely scrape by and didn't even have that many years to live. It's only now that we live these comfortable lives with houses, heating, electricit…

And I find this sort of posts bizarre. The argument that "we are better of today than we were in prehistory or the middle ages, so quit your complaining". Yes, things are better, but no, that doesn't mean we should stop wanting to improve. We have accomplished a lot, but we have not reached the end-all stage of human development. Societies are better than they were 500 years ago, but they're still pretty damn flawed. We can do much, much better.

Re: The health care toll today’s work culture exacts on employees

#349

Post by andrepd » Fri, Mar 23, 2018, 1:07 PM UTC

terryf wrote: post #319

JDiculous wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is actually false. The average American worker today works more hours per year than a 14th century peasant ( http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2013/08/29/why-a-medie... ). Hunter-gatherers only worked 2-3 hours per day. Despite technology allowing us to work less, we work more. Yes we should be grateful of technological advancement, but too many people are unnecessarily depressed and suicidal, and it doesn't…

I work my ass off. Lot more hours than would be technically necessary. High tech as well. I've also gone hiking in the mountains in California. Been on the beach in Italy. Walked around in the center of Munich. As a 14th century peasant I probably never even knew those places existed. I can also get pain medication if I have a headache. I can go to a doctor to fix my broken bones if I happen to get one. Oh, and the l…

But that is a false dichotomy. Your working long hours in an office in no way helps or correlates with the ability of being able to travel, or to have headache medication.

Re: The health care toll today’s work culture exacts on employees

#350

Post by dancek » Fri, Mar 23, 2018, 1:07 PM UTC

mathgladiator wrote: post #194

ghettoimp wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Only” work 9 to 5? Don’t forget your commute. And you’ll still need your wife to get the kids to school and pick them up. Hope you earn enough for that and she’s happy st home. And you should help out with dinner and the lunches and homework. And when you get the kids to bed it’s 8 and you’re exhausted. Enjoy your weekend.

I chose not to have kids. Was a great call becauses kids are like 1,000,000 each (when you factor in investment returns).

This comment elegantly displays what's wrong with modern society.

Yes, kids require a lot of things that cost money and a lot of time from the parents. Yes, they make you significantly less productive at work when something is wrong. Yes, life is much easier without kids.

But having and raising children is literally one of the most natural things to want to do with your life. A culture that views children mostly as inconveniences is a sick culture.