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Working remotely, 4 years in

jvns.ca

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Re: Working remotely, 4 years in

#91

Post by ganzolo »

sotojuan wrote: post #87
ganzolo wrote: post #78

I had a totally different experience from the author of this article. Maybe, this was due to the fact that I was working remotely for 4 years with different startups maniacs. Biggest issues were : - Nobody sees how much you are invested into your day to day work. They just see bunch of commits / builds and the little gray or green presence indicator on your messenger app. But if you are struggling for 3 days x 10 hou…

> Being in the same place where you live and work makes it very challenging to not think of job in your private time or vice-versa. Can you expand on this? I do not work remotely right now but as programmers, we're problem solvers. Often times I leave the office after 8 hours but the problem I was solving is still in my head through the night. However, I do not open work stuff over the weekend or in the evening unles…

I have a work computer that I, on purpose, never bring home. It also happen to me now, to think about job problems from home but it's very rare.

While I was working from home, just seeing this desk / chair make me think of job. The temptation to look on mails / slack outside of your working hour is also much higher.

Re: Working remotely, 4 years in

#92

Post by anoncoward111 »

sdoering wrote: post #28
ubernostrum wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He mentions being lonely during the 3rd and 8th months and provides links I believe. The author's name is in large type at the top of the page.

I am with you. It is. And assuming a male gender isn't really helpful - but we all fall for this trap sometimes. I try to stay with the gender neutral "they". Especially if it just isn't of any relevance for the topic/discussion at hand.

additionally "the author writes," is a perfectly neutral and grammatically correct way of expressing oneself

Re: Working remotely, 4 years in

#93

Post by ubernostrum »

randomdata wrote: post #89
ubernostrum wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And definitions can change. As, in fact, they have. "They" was the gender-neutral singular pronoun in English for a long, long time. The idea of "he" as the "neutral" pronoun was forced onto the language only within the last couple of centuries. And now "they" can be, and is being, forced back.

> And definitions can change. Exactly. English is fluid and you can correctly use any word you want , as long as the message is accurately conveyed. And in this case it provably was, as the person I replied to specifically recognized that the original commenter was referring to Julia Evans when using he. So what is the issue here?

The issue is the original commenter did not use "he" in the sense of "a person of indeterminate or unknown gender". The original commenter very clearly used "he" in the sense of "I assume all authors of programming-related articles on HN are male".

Attempting to retrofit a "well it's OK to use it gender-neutral" explanation onto that doesn't work. And trying to enforce a gender-neutral "he" is hopefully going to stop working in the near future.

Re: Working remotely, 4 years in

#94

Post by ganzolo »

fao_ wrote: post #90
ganzolo wrote: post #78

I had a totally different experience from the author of this article. Maybe, this was due to the fact that I was working remotely for 4 years with different startups maniacs. Biggest issues were : - Nobody sees how much you are invested into your day to day work. They just see bunch of commits / builds and the little gray or green presence indicator on your messenger app. But if you are struggling for 3 days x 10 hou…

> Right now in my new office job, I am spending around 1h30 everyday to get ready and to travel back and forward to the office. At first I started to see that at pure waste. But actually this is not that bad. The days weather is good, I am biking to work and also doing sport, days weather is bad, I drive listening to music and relaxing. That's all very well when you own your mode of transportation. When I was working…

Yes, if you can't live close enough to your work this can be an issue. By close enough I mean around 10kms, this make it easy to go by bike or public transportation.

Re: Working remotely, 4 years in

#95

Post by jvns »

ganzolo wrote: post #78

I had a totally different experience from the author of this article. Maybe, this was due to the fact that I was working remotely for 4 years with different startups maniacs. Biggest issues were : - Nobody sees how much you are invested into your day to day work. They just see bunch of commits / builds and the little gray or green presence indicator on your messenger app. But if you are struggling for 3 days x 10 hou…

> In regular companies, you usually have direct manager, human resources, office manager, cleaning personnel, legal department, IT support, etc...

It's interesting to me that you didn't have those! Is that because you were working for small startups? I work for a pretty large company, so I have a manager, HR, a legal team, and IT support. I can't go see the IT folks in person obviously, but they have occasionally mailed me things I need. I talk to my direct manager 1:1 once a week, and he also works remotely. I definitely feel like I'm part of a larger team / company of people who can help me and not like I'm just off working on my own without any support.

I edited the post to add a section about "But if you are struggling for 3 days x 10 hours per day to fix a bug, chances are high that nobody will realize this." (that hasn't been my experience so I wanted to talk about how I approach spending a long time stuck on something)

Re: Working remotely, 4 years in

#96

Post by microcolonel »

bkovacev wrote: post #88
microcolonel wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These last couple weeks, and my first two years of work, I think I've hit my best groove by waking up at 06:00, optionally going for ~20-30 minutes in the gym, and jumping straight into work. When I delay eating until at least noon (so fasting for at least the eight hours I spend in bed, plus six or more waking hours in the morning), I tend to maintain a healthy body weight and feel little or no gnawing hunger. I'm c…

Fasting is actually something I have been doing as well lately that helped me maintain (and lose a bit) my weight properly and that one meal less a day meant a lot. Do you not feel the urge to always be online when you're working from home? Once I clock out I can't keep myself from checking emails/slack etc.

> Do you not feel the urge to always be online when you're working from home? Once I clock out I can't keep myself from checking emails/slack etc.

It can get to be a serious problem, but my solution is to just close the stuff while I'm working, and set time aside to check it when I get up to refill my beverage and relieve myself. If somebody really needs to reach me, then they can call my phone.

Update: In addition to that, for the moment I have the luxury of doing exactly what I want, and selecting who will employ me for it, so that could be affecting this considerably. I think the holy grail would be learning to convince myself to enjoy my work even if some day it's untangling some ridiculous JSP cobweb instead of porting compilers.

Re: Working remotely, 4 years in

#97

Post by randomdata »

ubernostrum wrote: post #93
randomdata wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And definitions can change. Exactly. English is fluid and you can correctly use any word you want , as long as the message is accurately conveyed. And in this case it provably was, as the person I replied to specifically recognized that the original commenter was referring to Julia Evans when using he. So what is the issue here?

The issue is the original commenter did not use "he" in the sense of "a person of indeterminate or unknown gender". The original commenter very clearly used "he" in the sense of "I assume all authors of programming-related articles on HN are male". Attempting to retrofit a "well it's OK to use it gender-neutral" explanation onto that doesn't work. And trying to enforce a gender-neutral "he" is hopefully going to stop…

That seems like a pretty big leap. The original commenter left one short sentence. There is not enough information to conclude anything about intent. The context of the comment does not rely on gender at all. In fact, I see nothing in the article to suggest the person's gender in the first place. The only hint I can find on the whole page of the person's gender is the name "Julia" in the header, which, not personally knowing this person, could just as easily be a man's name as a woman's. It is reasonable to stick to generally accepted gender neutral terms, like "he" or "they", here.

Although, for what it is worth, even if this person is a man, I see no harm in using "she" as well. It's just plain not pertinent information to get the proper gender here. The message that it is referring to the original author would still be conveyed, and that is the only thing that really matters. English really doesn't care about anything else.

Re: Working remotely, 4 years in

#98

Post by ubernostrum »

randomdata wrote: post #97
ubernostrum wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is the original commenter did not use "he" in the sense of "a person of indeterminate or unknown gender". The original commenter very clearly used "he" in the sense of "I assume all authors of programming-related articles on HN are male". Attempting to retrofit a "well it's OK to use it gender-neutral" explanation onto that doesn't work. And trying to enforce a gender-neutral "he" is hopefully going to stop…

That seems like a pretty big leap. The original commenter left one short sentence. There is not enough information to conclude anything about intent. The context of the comment does not rely on gender at all. In fact, I see nothing in the article to suggest the person's gender in the first place. The only hint I can find on the whole page of the person's gender is the name "Julia" in the header, which, not personally…

It's not a big leap, and no amount of faux-innocent obtuseness will make it be one.

Also I am unaware of any culture in which "Julia" is in common usage as a masculine personal name. Being a modern Romance-language version of a Latin-derived name, the "a" ending gives it away quite plainly ("Julio" would be the masculine, or "Julius" in the original).

Re: Working remotely, 4 years in

#99

Post by jvns »

ubernostrum wrote: post #18
ratsimihah wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He mentions being lonely during the 3rd and 8th months and provides links I believe.

He mentions being lonely during the 3rd and 8th months and provides links I believe. The author's name is in large type at the top of the page.

I think on about 30% of my blog posts that end up on the hacker news front page:

* someone refers to me as "he"

* someone else corrects them to "she"

* an extended argument ensues about whether "he" is a gender neutral pronoun, whether "they" is a gender neutral pronoun, whether it matters if you refer to a woman as "he" or not, whether the original author cares whether they're referred to as "he" or "she", and on and on and on :)

From my perspective (since I've seen this argument so many times) this argument is very repetitive and doesn't add a lot of value to the HN comments -- I think it would be much better if people just accepted being corrected with "it's she" and then go back to discussing the actual contents of the article in an interesting way (in this case, a lot of people are sharing their experiences with working remotely and it's been really interesting to see what everyone's different experiences are!)

so if you care about this topic I would humbly suggest that you don't comment further about pronouns and instead maybe share your experiences with working remotely! =)

Re: Working remotely, 4 years in

#100

Post by randomdata »

ubernostrum wrote: post #98
randomdata wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems like a pretty big leap. The original commenter left one short sentence. There is not enough information to conclude anything about intent. The context of the comment does not rely on gender at all. In fact, I see nothing in the article to suggest the person's gender in the first place. The only hint I can find on the whole page of the person's gender is the name "Julia" in the header, which, not personally…

It's not a big leap, and no amount of faux-innocent obtuseness will make it be one. Also I am unaware of any culture in which "Julia" is in common usage as a masculine personal name. Being a modern Romance-language version of a Latin-derived name, the "a" ending gives it away quite plainly ("Julio" would be the masculine, or "Julius" in the original).

> Also I am unaware of any culture in which "Julia" is in common usage as a masculine personal name.

However, it is very common to use "he" in a gender neutral way. So common, in fact, that the modern dictionary includes gender neutral definitions for the word. If we cannot make assumptions about the usage of common words defined by the dictionary, how can we begin to do the same for names of people? Julia, even if always assigned to females, may simply be a name given at birth that does not represent this person's current gender.

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