What I don’t like about working at a remote job

What I don’t like about working at a remote job
priconceptions.com

Instead in both programming jobs Ive had post pandemic, it is all remote. I've met my workmates in person perhaps thrice despite working at the company for a year. It is surreal.

> it feels like I’m living in Groundhog Day everyday. Every single day looks exactly the same

This in particular, and it is even worse if you live alone.

I've been working on distributed teams since around 2011, though I have been contracting from home for five years before that. In the very first distributed team I joined, the eng director made it a point to:

  - Have everyone gather in-person periodically by flying everyone to HQ
  - Making coworking spaces available
  - Traveling to the different cities to meet with the team
  - Setting "core hours", a subset of the regular business hours of the US timezones 

I found that the daily standup was an important synchronization point for remote-first and distributed teams.

This is the key, I think. Even in a general sense, very few of the problems we face in day-to-day life are unsolvable. But having the discipline and strength to actually implement those solutions -- especially when they require sustained effort -- can be really hard.

I've been running into this too lately, now that I have more time on my hands. I've picked most of the low-hanging fruit from my personal project list, and it's hard to find the motivation to keep going. Lately I've been spending a lot of time watching TV shows and movies, reading books, and reading random things on the internet (like HN). These aren't pointless activities, but I'd like to be spending more of my time on activities that I personally find more valuable.

Just do stuff. Don't look for meaning in things. It's a glaring red flag that he finds the idea of working 15 hour surgical shifts appealing and wants someone else to tell him what to do and give his life structure. That isn't meaning. That's just outsourcing your decision-making. You're going to die, sooner than you'd like, and everyone who ever gave a shit you once existed will die as well. I spend so much of my time wiping down surfaces, lifting weights, sweeping and vacuuming floors, for what? I know damn well it will all go to shit and rot into dust within days, if not hours, of my death. To paraphrase Beric Dondarrion, entropy is the enemy, and the enemy always wins. But still we fight, because what the fuck else are we supposed to do? You either kill yourself, you fill your time with something, anything, or you sit around writing think pieces about how much you despair over not knowing what to do with your time.

A good place to start is don't hijack the right click action on your blog.

I probably sound like an asshole, but I do empathize. I've felt this way a lot. Then I get over it and get back to work. Then I despair again. Then I get over it and get back to work. Hopefully this guy at least goes through similar cycles and doesn't just spend his entire life directionless and depressed. It's okay to slow down and realize how pointless this all is every now and again. Just don't let it consume you, and eventually get over it and get back to work. Not your job, but your life. Live it, no matter how stupid and pointless it is.