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Co-working with friends over video in virtual gather.town office

guzey.com

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Re: Co-working with friends over video in virtual gather.town office

#41

Post by guzey »

chris_engel wrote: post #11

Working 10 to 12 hours straight with only one or two half an hour breaks is no goal one should thrive for. Neither working 80 hours a week. Heck, it would even be against the law in my country and it favors companies over people... We tried gather.town in my team (we develop web services for a big news site) and dropped it after a week or two. While some people seemed to like it, others disliked it very strongly. I p…

>Working 10 to 12 hours straight with only one or two half an hour breaks is no goal one should thrive for. Neither working 80 hours a week.

I work on the thing I love & care deeply about (newscience.org) and I'm most happy when I work 10, 12, 16 hours straight, 60, 80, 100 hours a week.

What wrong with that?

Re: Co-working with friends over video in virtual gather.town office

#42

Post by ctvo »

guzey wrote: post #41
chris_engel wrote: post #11

Working 10 to 12 hours straight with only one or two half an hour breaks is no goal one should thrive for. Neither working 80 hours a week. Heck, it would even be against the law in my country and it favors companies over people... We tried gather.town in my team (we develop web services for a big news site) and dropped it after a week or two. While some people seemed to like it, others disliked it very strongly. I p…

>Working 10 to 12 hours straight with only one or two half an hour breaks is no goal one should thrive for. Neither working 80 hours a week. I work on the thing I love & care deeply about (newscience.org) and I'm most happy when I work 10, 12, 16 hours straight, 60, 80, 100 hours a week. What wrong with that?

Nothing. And don’t let people who’ve never worked hard tell you their opinions on what it’s doing to you.

Re: Co-working with friends over video in virtual gather.town office

#43

Post by alfiedotwtf »

rhacker wrote: post #13

I am 42. I am still coping with a question I've had since I was young and was able to get my first office job. Why am I paid so much money to basically do data organization. I'm organizing data. There are other people that build houses, grow food, prepare food. Then there are others that are simply entertainers - but that does provide societal value. I mean I guess in order to have entertainment, we have to have this…

How do you calculate value, and even what is value, is a question that's been asked by philosophers, economists, and every day people for thousands of years but is still debated about.

... although one that stuck with me was "you're worth about how much it would be to replace you". And with that perspective you can see why you earn more than a subsistence farmer

Re: Co-working with friends over video in virtual gather.town office

#44

Post by ljm »

I'm honestly exhausted just reading the article. What I was taking away from it was micromanagement/excessive control.

12-16 hour sessions, obsession with productivity and not efficacy, camera always on, notifying whenever leaving for 5 minutes, only a couple of 30 minute breaks (which in some countries like the UK would actually be illegal), no personal email or social media, and a skeuomorph of walking up to someone's desk.

It doesn't matter what the rules are, just that there are many of them and that there is no flexibility. This and the 12+ hour shifts, under total observation, are major red flags.

I question how many people were genuine when they said they enjoyed this, or if they were afraid of being honest with the guy who has exerted an unreasonable level of control over two thirds of their day.

Re: Co-working with friends over video in virtual gather.town office

#45

Post by alfiedotwtf »

dmos62 wrote: post #16
rhacker wrote: post #13

I am 42. I am still coping with a question I've had since I was young and was able to get my first office job. Why am I paid so much money to basically do data organization. I'm organizing data. There are other people that build houses, grow food, prepare food. Then there are others that are simply entertainers - but that does provide societal value. I mean I guess in order to have entertainment, we have to have this…

I often wondered why doesn't everyone want to be a construction worker. We've all seen what they can do. Make huge structures appear out of thin air. Change the way space is. It's magic. And all the gadgets. Gigantic hydraulic arms, cranes, tractors of all sizes. Instead we're paid heaps for programming. Which kind of makes sense. In my mind, programming is about making sense of a mess. Untangling all the seemingly c…

"Software is eating then world "

Companies need software to make profits, and so, at least for the moment, need people who can do that software. That raises prices.

Re: Co-working with friends over video in virtual gather.town office

#46

Post by JohnWhigham »

dmos62 wrote: post #14
rhacker wrote: post #13

I am 42. I am still coping with a question I've had since I was young and was able to get my first office job. Why am I paid so much money to basically do data organization. I'm organizing data. There are other people that build houses, grow food, prepare food. Then there are others that are simply entertainers - but that does provide societal value. I mean I guess in order to have entertainment, we have to have this…

You make it sound like you work in a filing department and that you're being figurative at the same time.

The average web developer (i.e. most of this site's users) is exactly that though: an organizer of data. Glue some API code together to slurp data out of one system and make it normalized for your own system.

Re: Co-working with friends over video in virtual gather.town office

#47

Post by JohnWhigham »

guzey wrote: post #41
chris_engel wrote: post #11

Working 10 to 12 hours straight with only one or two half an hour breaks is no goal one should thrive for. Neither working 80 hours a week. Heck, it would even be against the law in my country and it favors companies over people... We tried gather.town in my team (we develop web services for a big news site) and dropped it after a week or two. While some people seemed to like it, others disliked it very strongly. I p…

>Working 10 to 12 hours straight with only one or two half an hour breaks is no goal one should thrive for. Neither working 80 hours a week. I work on the thing I love & care deeply about (newscience.org) and I'm most happy when I work 10, 12, 16 hours straight, 60, 80, 100 hours a week. What wrong with that?

There's a difference between willingly working 80 hours on your own creation vs. begrudgingly working 80 hours on someone else's creation.

Re: Co-working with friends over video in virtual gather.town office

#48

Post by zelphirkalt »

eyko wrote: post #31
rhacker wrote: post #13

I am 42. I am still coping with a question I've had since I was young and was able to get my first office job. Why am I paid so much money to basically do data organization. I'm organizing data. There are other people that build houses, grow food, prepare food. Then there are others that are simply entertainers - but that does provide societal value. I mean I guess in order to have entertainment, we have to have this…

Who pays for the interesting structures, ponds, waterfalls, and arenas? It ultimately always boils down to where does the money come from -- think of "data organising" as the circulatory system of an extremely complex, multi layered, and global economy. It's not the most efficient and a lot of people learn to live in the cracks getting paid for doing virtually nothing, but it's necessary if we want to continue to cre…

And even in protecting what nature already has, there is far less money to make, than in destroying it.

Re: Co-working with friends over video in virtual gather.town office

#49

Post by zelphirkalt »

kristiandupont wrote: post #15
rhacker wrote: post #13

I am 42. I am still coping with a question I've had since I was young and was able to get my first office job. Why am I paid so much money to basically do data organization. I'm organizing data. There are other people that build houses, grow food, prepare food. Then there are others that are simply entertainers - but that does provide societal value. I mean I guess in order to have entertainment, we have to have this…

I have similar thoughts. I basically make pixels change color all day long, and the effect of it is mostly that it changes the color of pixels on other peoples screens as well. Somehow that's valuable and while I understand why, it also seems deeply surreal at times.

Ultimately, you could abstract from any kind of computer work with such a general description. Another example: "Basically I am just pressing buttons all day and I am getting paid for it. shrugs"
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