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When Work Didn’t Follow You Home

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Re: When Work Didn’t Follow You Home

#91

Post by ghaff »

commandlinefan wrote: post #85
ghaff wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a flip side to that though. It also meant that, when I was "in the office," I pretty much needed to be IN THE OFFICE. I couldn't really disappear during the workday on a regular workday by going for a walk or being available at home for this that or the other thing without making specific arrangements. I had the flexibility to do that from time to time but it wasn't a casual I'll be in my home office while th…

> when I was "in the office," I pretty much needed to be IN THE OFFICE Well, we're getting back to that anyway... they're pretty much demanding that we all drive 45 minutes to sit at a hoteling spot that we reserved ahead of time in a noisy open office so that we can get on zoom calls with our remote coworkers all day (and be asked to "please mute because your background noise is very distracting") - and then drive h…

Well, some people are. I've just gone into the office when it made sense for a couple decades now. It does make sense to go in most days for people doing certain types of work, e.g. when they need access to equipment, but one of the (few) positive outcomes to the pandemic that I see is that a lot of routine meetings now default to virtual at least in my circles.

Re: When Work Didn’t Follow You Home

#92

Post by swader999 »

tra3 wrote: post #27
jader201 wrote: post #6

I’ve been working from home 100% for going on 10 years. I’ve had a mix of experiences re: disconnecting from work, and three things that I believe are key: 1. Work out of a separate office, ideally with a door. Don’t go in that room except when you’re working. If you work from a laptop, (mostly) never take it out of that room. Obviously some don’t have this luxury, but if you do and you’re not doing this, I highly su…

How do you disconnect and shutdown the problem solving part of your brain? I’ve found that writing a log or a daily summary, a core dump, if you will, helps me disengage. But not always.

You need to do this even if you don't subscribe to the idea of work life separation. You'll find better solutions to complex problems if you can rest, exercise, pursue a hobby or other distraction for part of each day. The subconscious needs recruitment for anything non trivial. Log it and state the problem that isn't yet solved explicitly in writing. Then affirm to yourself that you will come back with a solution.

Re: When Work Didn’t Follow You Home

#93

Post by nobsthrow »

distcs wrote: post #86
nobsthrow wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are a 2nd-year CS student.* You have never worked as an engineer. You do not understand what the real world is like. Please stop waxing about shit you don't know a la /r/cscareerquestions. * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36344172

They may be 2nd year CS student but the world they experience is not any less real than ours who have been in the industry for 10-20 years. You may disagree with them and that's fine. There is a sort of generation gap obviously and our opinions would differ from theirs. That's fine too. But what is really unacceptable to me is how you dismiss their viewpoint because they are a 2nd-year CS student! What if they were n…

I think the internet would be a much better experience if every person online had generic details about themselves attached to their handle; e.g. age, ethnicity and nationality, parents' net worth and income, employment history or lack thereof, etc. So just like in real life, I could easily dismiss the strong opinions of others who do not have the experience necessary to form any educated opinions on which they speak.

Yes, there is no truth, and no one's reality is less "real" than others -- but children are known to talk confidently (dare I say arrogantly) about things which they know not, when they think there are no consequences. Therefore, I would like to be able to easily filter out their opinions, so as to improve my reading experience, and that of others.

If they were not a 2nd-year CS student, they would either be: very early into their career and lucky, willfully naive or privileged, or simply a malicious and adversarial person. Atleast a child can be taught to act properly.

Re: When Work Didn’t Follow You Home

#94

Post by Roark66 »

jader201 wrote: post #6

I’ve been working from home 100% for going on 10 years. I’ve had a mix of experiences re: disconnecting from work, and three things that I believe are key: 1. Work out of a separate office, ideally with a door. Don’t go in that room except when you’re working. If you work from a laptop, (mostly) never take it out of that room. Obviously some don’t have this luxury, but if you do and you’re not doing this, I highly su…

My recommendation (working 100% remote since 2018).

2b - have a separate work phone If people choose to send emails outside business hours it's their choice, but you don't have to answer. If you do, as part of your contract... Well, you saw the contract before you agreed right?

2c - Set clear boundaries between when you're off work, off, but on call and at work. How? Personally I don't mind being "on call" for <25% of a time, but I absolutely positively have to have extra money every single hour I'm on call(lets say 10~20% of normal hourly rate), and 150~200% rate for incident response time. That's the only way I can do it. But what if your employer pays you double the hourly rate all the time and "implies" it's a 24/7 on call commitment? Isn't that even better financially? Well, yes, but it's definitely not better for my peace of mind. Somehow I don't mind being on call when I see a tally for it at the end of each month, if it "just happens" (and frequently) I quickly start hating it.

Re: When Work Didn’t Follow You Home

#95

Post by makeitdouble »

> When work was done at work, and there was no chance of continuing your labors at home, your job didn’t seem nearly as all-consuming or onerous .

Working as a software engineer in the early 00s, when you had no chance of continuing labor at home, you'd stay at the office way later and potentially miss the last train home.

I'm sure there were better and less demanding companies, but the picture depicted in the article is IMO way too rosy. In several companies I've had months where my extra hours' pay litteraly doubled my base salary as we stuck in the office to meet crazy tight deadlines.

Re: When Work Didn’t Follow You Home

#96

Post by Aurornis »

lumost wrote: post #22
ttul wrote: post #7

In the 1990s, even as a software developer, I never answered emails after working hours. Why? Because we didn’t have access to the office mail server outside the office. It was physically impossible to work from home. Add to this the fact that I didn’t have a cell phone or a pager, so when I left the office, nobody could get in touch with me even if they wanted to. On reflection, the separation of home and work was s…

I'm honestly surprised that more companies haven't invested in broader vacation policies. My experience has been that the constant "on" state wears you down. The only way to get to "off" is to be OOTO officially for a week+. Add in parental responsibilities and you really don't have any headspace for yourself. Would love to have 5-8 weeks per year, that would let me take at least 1 week's worth of time per quarter to…

> Would love to have 5-8 weeks per year, that would let me take at least 1 week's worth of time per quarter to recharge from the constant 24/7 rush.

At least 1 week of vacation per quarter (in addition to normal holiday time) has been fairly standard for every senior-level tech job I’ve had in a long time.

I had one job with a generous vacation policy that resulted in some people taking 8-10 weeks of vacation or more per year, in addition to normal holidays. They had a great time, but honestly it started to become a burden for everyone else to work around them.

Toward the end it was getting bad enough that some projects were basically stalled because you could never get everyone on the project to be available at the same time. We’d push the project forward as much as we could, then wait a week for another round of people to come back to work, then push it forward as much as we could while working around the rest of the people on vacation this week, then repeat.

It would have been okay if it was a lifestyle business where delivering quickly didn’t really matter much, but it was a less established business where we were slowly running out money. They tried hiring more people but that only increased the burn rate.

The end game was that they clamped down hard on vacation time. A lot of the people who were only there for the lax vacation schedules left. Ironically, it was more relaxed to actually do work there after it became more predictable and you could depend on people actually being available to work.

There’s probably a good middle ground but it’s not as easy as just letting everyone take a lot of vacation all the time.

Re: When Work Didn’t Follow You Home

#97

Post by daok »

bombolo wrote: post #73
NoahECampbell wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean if you can't handle working when something breaks, you probably shouldn't be working there in the first place. Work is.....well work.

Being on call is scheduled and paid.

Many places is not. They hang the carrot of bonus, stocks and promotion...

Re: When Work Didn’t Follow You Home

#98

Post by [deleted] »

lopis wrote: post #54
NoahECampbell wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did say work-life balance is important, but also you are not being paid to sit at a desk for a few hours a day. If you work more then you should get paid more, I never said anything about working more for free, so please stick to what I was actually saying? Also try reading a book called Stolen Focus regarding the human brain's ability to focus, which is diminishing due to people actually not working on expanding t…

> If you work more then you should get paid more Yes but the habit of working overtime in companies often leads to others feeling like their are "just doing the bare minimum" as you say. Working 8 hours and being productive throughout the week is not the "bare minimum". Companies that encourage people to work overtime are usually toxic places to work on that see jobs as a privilege instead of a partnership. In my wor…

[deleted]

Re: When Work Didn’t Follow You Home

#99

Post by JohnFen »

nobsthrow wrote: post #93
distcs wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They may be 2nd year CS student but the world they experience is not any less real than ours who have been in the industry for 10-20 years. You may disagree with them and that's fine. There is a sort of generation gap obviously and our opinions would differ from theirs. That's fine too. But what is really unacceptable to me is how you dismiss their viewpoint because they are a 2nd-year CS student! What if they were n…

I think the internet would be a much better experience if every person online had generic details about themselves attached to their handle; e.g. age, ethnicity and nationality, parents' net worth and income, employment history or lack thereof, etc. So just like in real life, I could easily dismiss the strong opinions of others who do not have the experience necessary to form any educated opinions on which they speak…

> I think the internet would be a much better experience if every person online had generic details about themselves attached to their handle; e.g. age, ethnicity and nationality, parents' net worth and income, employment history or lack thereof, etc.

I strongly disagree.

> So just like in real life, I could easily dismiss the strong opinions of others who do not have the experience necessary to form any educated opinions on which they speak.

And this is why. In evaluating an opinion, it doesn't really matter what the person's background is. Experts can have wrong or crazy opinions and laypeople can have correct ones.

What matters is how solid their arguments for their positions are.

Re: When Work Didn’t Follow You Home

#100

Post by pierat »

tra3 wrote: post #27
jader201 wrote: post #6

I’ve been working from home 100% for going on 10 years. I’ve had a mix of experiences re: disconnecting from work, and three things that I believe are key: 1. Work out of a separate office, ideally with a door. Don’t go in that room except when you’re working. If you work from a laptop, (mostly) never take it out of that room. Obviously some don’t have this luxury, but if you do and you’re not doing this, I highly su…

How do you disconnect and shutdown the problem solving part of your brain? I’ve found that writing a log or a daily summary, a core dump, if you will, helps me disengage. But not always.

> How do you disconnect and shutdown the problem solving part of your brain?

I dont.

Instead, I substitute MY OWN projects and goals and things INSTEAD OF work's goals. So instead of killing my innate curiosity and problem solving, I change its focus to serve me.

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