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Mourning loss as a remote team

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Re: Mourning loss as a remote team

#81

Post by jddil »

BubbleRings wrote: post #44

Managers, one solution here is pretty easy. For instance, if your team has a daily status meeting, just tell them "every other Friday, cameras are encouraged". That's it. Don't make it mandatory, don't make jokes about "Joe never turns his camera on, what does his place look like?" In a world that is getting more and more lonely for a lot of people, this can be a life saver. And to HR, I have a similar message. Do yo…

HR has 1 job. Protect the company, they aren't your friends at all. If announcing a teammates passing helps the company they would do it, if they don't think it would they wouldn't.

No emotions come into this.

(this is not to say you can't have friends at work, but the company is not your family and will drop you the day you aren't productive any longer)

Re: Mourning loss as a remote team

#82

Post by thenerdhead »

One thing I cannot understand in the traditional workplace is why certain leaves & sudden departures are never disclosed to a close team whether by the person or their manager. I've had many teammates come and go in the blink of an eye and I'm curious to this day of "what happened to X?". Were they PIPed? Are they fighting something? Did they win the lottery and decide to retire?

It's as if the relationships between the team are much different than with direct management and the disclosure happens privately between middle management and by the time they're gone, the team is left clueless.

I think we need to bring more empathy into the workplace. Especially the remote workplace. I operate on the premise that everyone is battling problems that you don't know about, but even knowing a generalized detail can help in the long term. It takes courage to be vulnerable which not many are willing to do in the workplace, but helps teams become closer and more caring in the long run. It's hard to give bad news, but it's even harder on everyone to say nothing at all.

Re: Mourning loss as a remote team

#83

Post by throwmeariver1 »

thenerdhead wrote: post #82

One thing I cannot understand in the traditional workplace is why certain leaves & sudden departures are never disclosed to a close team whether by the person or their manager. I've had many teammates come and go in the blink of an eye and I'm curious to this day of "what happened to X?". Were they PIPed? Are they fighting something? Did they win the lottery and decide to retire? It's as if the relationships between…

Sometimes there is just nothing to say not everything is nefarious it could also mean that even if you think you had a close relationship to your colleague it really wasn't so close at all because otherwise they would give you a heads-up afterwards.

Re: Mourning loss as a remote team

#85

Post by supernovae »

supertofu wrote: post #2

This was heartbreaking to read. What disturbs me most is the lack of any face-to-face time for this distributed team. I understand that not everyone likes to use a webcam, but to have gone 7 years without ever seeing your colleague's face seems, in my opinion, a symptom of a big managerial problem. Software engineers are usually humans, and teams composed of humans should make some effort to interact in a human way -…

Depression is something we never talk about and don’t treat as a health concern. My daughter attempted suicide and it wasn’t for any reasons I could relate to. That was a hard lesson for me.

What i did learn is that depression is taboo, therapy isn’t talked about openly, insurance doesn’t cover therapy well and there aren’t enough therapists in existence that the burden of depression seems to heavy. It’s not because we didn’t turn on cameras but because of systemic failures in our culture and a fascination with puritanical beliefs at all costs. Come to work depressed, come to work sick, work all day long, have no life, have no vacation, never mind the cost of living surpasses your ability to afford to live and now just living seems like the worst option.. replace work with school…

not a single person here seems to be talking about how we’ve normalized suffering and as long as it’s always someone else, it’s their loneliness it’s their depression it’s their problem. we celebrate the people who would be psychopaths if we knew better.. it’s odd

we have a society in place that doesn’t afford opportunity for all and not only doesn’t afford it, but is politically motivated to make sure people suffer for wanting to live it how they wished they could.

the puritanical fetish at all cost - mostly because they suffered through it and so should you…

Re: Mourning loss as a remote team

#86

Post by Angostura »

jddil wrote: post #81
BubbleRings wrote: post #44

Managers, one solution here is pretty easy. For instance, if your team has a daily status meeting, just tell them "every other Friday, cameras are encouraged". That's it. Don't make it mandatory, don't make jokes about "Joe never turns his camera on, what does his place look like?" In a world that is getting more and more lonely for a lot of people, this can be a life saver. And to HR, I have a similar message. Do yo…

HR has 1 job. Protect the company, they aren't your friends at all. If announcing a teammates passing helps the company they would do it, if they don't think it would they wouldn't. No emotions come into this. (this is not to say you can't have friends at work, but the company is not your family and will drop you the day you aren't productive any longer)

> HR has 1 job. Protect the company

I see this from time to time and it irritates me. I'm not in HR. I know some people who are and people who go into that line of work often do care about making people's lives better.

Certainly if that conflicts somehow with a a requirement to protect the company, they may have to prioritise the latter. But that doesn't mean that they have 'one job'.

Re: Mourning loss as a remote team

#87

Post by wombat-man »

BubbleRings wrote: post #44

Managers, one solution here is pretty easy. For instance, if your team has a daily status meeting, just tell them "every other Friday, cameras are encouraged". That's it. Don't make it mandatory, don't make jokes about "Joe never turns his camera on, what does his place look like?" In a world that is getting more and more lonely for a lot of people, this can be a life saver. And to HR, I have a similar message. Do yo…

I wouldn't expect HR to do anything, nor would I expect them to send out a mail if someone quit or were fired.

I do think the right thing is for the manager to acknowledge the situation and maybe hold some kind of gathering in remembrance. Possibly even pull together something to send to the family of the deceased. But I don't think this means anything coming from HR, it's gotta come from people who knew the person.

Re: Mourning loss as a remote team

#88

Post by dvtrn »

Pete would ask to work more hours. He claimed he could use the money. He was a contractor remember

Amidst the loss here, this line stood out to me and brings to mind all the terrible ways contractors are taken advantage of, or at least, treated and compensated vastly different than their "staff"/"full-time" peers who are often doing the exact same work. For fun, google the phrase "permatemp".

E.g. I had a past job as a middle manager where my team interfaced heavily with a group of contractor developers overseas. When the time came to demo new features and place superlatives upon the various teams, I noticed my leadership cadre said nothing about the contractors and did not acknowledge any of the work they had done.

I spoke up about it when the floor was given for anyone else to give kudos where they desired, and mentioned the overseas team and thanked their team lead for working with me on delivering. He spoke up and expressed his gratitude in kind.

Apparently, this got my CTO into "trouble" with "legal" because I guess merely acknowledging contractors was some kind of a "problem". As a result, my boss got in trouble. As a result, I got written up. I was out of that company within six months after relationship with my boss and CTO deteriorated immediately after I opened my darn mouth.

For expressing gratitude.

To contractors.

Re: Mourning loss as a remote team

#89

Post by Angostura »

willcipriano wrote: post #27
jeandejean wrote: post #22

That's the very reason why I don't want full remote as a norm. I want to see my people and meet colleagues, for a good laugh or whatever but for human interactions that I value a lot. Very sad story here, twice as sad with that profound lack of human interaction...

For me, "my people" are at home. The transactional work relationships do nothing for me on a human or social level. It's like when a pretty waitress is nice to you, it means little since she is paid to be nice.

whereas I generally like people. You say: "The transactional work relationships do nothing for me on a human or social level" perhaps the mistake you are making is seeing any interaction with the people at work as purely transactional - or being absolutely determined to keep it that way.

I have a family and kids and friends. But I absolutely have friends who I have made at work as well. I quite regularly go out for a beer with people I worked with in the 1990s.

Re: Mourning loss as a remote team

#90

Post by mettamage »

NotAWorkNick wrote: post #80
idontknowifican wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

)))

You are correct @idontknow.... I did omit some ellipses; My Bad. Thank you for pointing it out (Unfortunately the edit window has closed otherwise I would add them :) )

IMO no need to burn this nick. Check my comment history, I'm still going strong ;-)
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