Gotta Work For a Living

[Tez]

@crawfish PHARAOH AND CLEOPATRA? I’m in.

[Testament]

@Solstice said in Gotta Work For a Living:

@Testament said in Gotta Work For a Living:

So there’s often a ‘slightly blind leading the fully blind’ feeling going on.

Indeed. Ask me anything about VOIP Phone Systems! I’ll definitely know what I’m talking about. T-the entire time.

The only benefit is that in my position, I’m able to say “Let me think about it.” and no one questions it. Meanwhile, I’m going to go have a headache because I’m cursing my life choices.

[Jennkryst]

I am on the edge of either doing some unethical shit to get rid of some of my asshole co-workers (I have tried the ethical methods, no success), or like… taking out a loan and getting a commercial pilot license (this IS an incredibly weird choice, yes, but it is what the Facebook and YouTube algorithms have decided; for some reason, 90% of the ads I’ve seen have been for flight and/or ground school).

Plz explain why my goblin brain is like this?

[shit-piss-love]

@Jennkryst said in Gotta Work For a Living:

I am on the edge of either doing some unethical shit to get rid of some of my asshole co-workers (I have tried the ethical methods, no success), or like… taking out a loan and getting a commercial pilot license (this IS an incredibly weird choice, yes, but it is what the Facebook and YouTube algorithms have decided; for some reason, 90% of the ads I’ve seen have been for flight and/or ground school).

Plz explain why my goblin brain is like this?

Literal fight or flight.

[Testament]

@Jennkryst

[Jennkryst]

@shit-piss-love said in Gotta Work For a Living:

@Jennkryst said in Gotta Work For a Living:

I am on the edge of either doing some unethical shit to get rid of some of my asshole co-workers (I have tried the ethical methods, no success), or like… taking out a loan and getting a commercial pilot license (this IS an incredibly weird choice, yes, but it is what the Facebook and YouTube algorithms have decided; for some reason, 90% of the ads I’ve seen have been for flight and/or ground school).

Plz explain why my goblin brain is like this?

Literal fight or flight.

Honestly I might just choose both. At some point I will probably vent about all the bullshit, but I’m going to wait until I figure out how to incorporate the other two Fs (Feeding and Fucking) to my options.

[Arkandel]

The company I work for went pretty much full remote back at the beginning of the pandemic. Now and then when the situation allows/demands it some teams return to the office for a day or two, and on such occasions we all see each other. In some cases it has been years we haven’t seen each other in real life, but only worked together over Zoom meetings and Jira tickets.

I must say this. People look better these days. They look healthier; some lost weight, others got more time for themselves, or to spend with their families. They all had stories of gardening, renovating their homes (to some that meant ‘new decks’ and others ‘I learned how to make shelves and built them for my living room’), or hiking trails walking their dogs - and of new dogs they got to actually hang out with during that time.

All of this because they no longer had to spend two hours every day commuting back and forth. Because for lunch they got to sit on their couch and eat home-made food instead of grabbing a candy bar from the work fridge or going for a Big Mac across the street simply because they had no time for anything else. And because if they had ten minutes to kill between meetings they could spend them with people they love rather than work-friends who wanted to talk about their projects anyway.

Working from home isn’t always great but it’s so much better than the alternative.

Of course YMMV.

[shit-piss-love]

@Arkandel said in Gotta Work For a Living:

The company I work for went pretty much full remote back at the beginning of the pandemic. Now and then when the situation allows/demands it some teams return to the office for a day or two, and on such occasions we all see each other after. In some cases it has been years we haven’t seen each other in real life, but only worked together over Zoom meetings and Jira tickets.

I must say this. People look better these days. They look healthier; some lost weight, others got more time for themselves, or to spend with their families. They all had stories of gardening, renovating their homes (to some that meant ‘new decks’ and others ‘I learned how to make shelves and built them for my living room’), or hiking trails walking their dogs - and of new dogs they got to actually hang out with during that time.

All of this because they no longer had to spend two hours every day commuting back and forth. Because for lunch they got to sit on their couch and eat home-made food instead of grabbing a candy bar from the work fridge or going for a Big Mac across the street simply because they had no time for anything else. And because if they had ten minutes to kill between meetings they could spend them with people they love rather than work-friends who wanted to talk about their projects anyway.

Working from home isn’t always great but it’s so much better than the alternative.

Of course YMMV.

Amazon and Meta both reached out to me in the past month. I told them to hit me up when they have committed to permanent remote work policies.

[SpaceKhomeini]

This is a general bump of solidarity to everyone else who works in the education sector (on the technical side of things, but guess who kept the lights on for the last couple of years).

I started writing a lengthy rant on how everything sucks right now and I’ve been doing 50+ hour weeks due to cascading mismanagement and the screaming entitlement of a few people who should just take a nice walk outside and how management just scheduled a HUGE project over the top of a vacation I had reserved months prior in advance (plus they’re a little restricted on vacations).

But I lost this post. Whoops.

I’ll console myself with the fact that this city school district is nowhere near the higher-ed trash fire I was at previously.

[mietze]

I’m really enjoying the subbing gig. My calendar is almost fully booked for the next two months except for the couple of weeks I have blocked out for transporting kids back to college/hubby’s biz trip. I was going to immediately start looking for a part time district job (I’ll be taking the parapro assessment soon) but now I’m torn.

[SpaceKhomeini]

@shit-piss-love As unenthused as I am about the idea of ever going back to the private sector as it is, I got enough of a taste of Amazon culture from my former job where we imported one of their execs as a CEO.

Nothanks ever.

[shit-piss-love]

@SpaceKhomeini said in Gotta Work For a Living:

@shit-piss-love As unenthused as I am about the idea of ever going back to the private sector I got enough of a taste of Amazon culture from my former job where we imported one of their execs as a CEO.

Nothanks ever.

Oh yeah I would never work for Amazon or Meta. But I do want to contribute pressure to making permanent remote work the norm.

[SpaceKhomeini]

@shit-piss-love

Yeah as of this fall Tech Department is the last group that gets permanent WFH privs. But that may be revised next year. Hmmph. Enjoy your covid, fucknuts.

As it stands, the writing is already on the wall with a very cheery email from HR stating that it will now be “enforced policy” to have your camera on at all times during meetings.

As much as I hate this I want to say, this is going to hurt everyone else more than it hurts me.

[Arkandel]

@SpaceKhomeini We have a guideline by HR to be on camera during meetings.

It’s… very loosely upheld, at best. We do when it makes sense (i.e. during scrums, semi-social occasions, etc). If there’s actual work to be done my team is well aware they should leave it off and focus on the screenshares.

There is no point to enforcing cameras. It’s all based on old-school “are you doing your job” kind of micromanagement. If I have to rely on looking at people to see if they’re busy then what good are all the other KPIs we generate for?

In any job that can be done over Zoom, if you can’t tell whether your FTEs are producing work unless you have visual contact with them then you’re probably doing something wrong.

[SpaceKhomeini]

@Arkandel

Bingo. This is only for “WFH users.” The irony is, the way our office is set up, were I at my desk in my cube I wouldn’t be able to see anyone anyway. Plus I’d be dealing with massive meeting mic echo.

[junipersky]

I feel really awful missing the first day of school. But I’m also sitting and having to take a break after folding just one basket of laundry.

[Evilgrayson]

The only time my work insists we use cameras is when there’s someone with a disability who needs to be able to see what you’re saying. This has led to a culture in my team of cameras on for greetings and general natter, then cameras off unless you’re speaking (or have something you want to say) for the rest of the meeting.

It’s a good halfway house between the ones who have a need to not be on camera and the ones who have a need to see the people who’re talking, with the added bonus of not taking up as much bandwidth as fifteen cameras all on does, and a great side benefit of people being able to see that you want to specifically add something to the current topic.

[Pavel]

@Arkandel said in Gotta Work For a Living:

We have a guideline by HR to be on camera during meetings.

At university, we have a similar condition. During tutorial (actual teaching) classes, our cameras must be on, but not so during lectures.

The reason for this is an important one, even if it’s a little irritating. The university staff need to know we’ve actually attended, as that’s an essential part of our accreditation - no attendance, no certification, certification which is important for those who want to practice after our degrees.

[Arkandel]

@Pavel I don’t like mandates in general. They are inflexible. I can understand HR wanting to encourage culture-building (at least) by allowing coworkers to ‘see’ each other, take cues from facial expressions and all those everyday subtleties of human interaction. There’s absolutely a time and a place for it.

But for example I once had an accident that gave me a black eye for a week. I wouldn’t want that to be a focus of every call I got on. Other people might be dealing with… anything - a bad hair day, a headache forcing them to keep the light off, it might be hot and they want to be in a tank-top.

There’s no need to have one-size-fits-all policies unless that is actually the case. If it’s 100% needed, 100% of the time, have it. Else leave it as a general guideline and go from there - especially since if you effectively force people to ignore one of your mandates then they will find it easier to ignore other ones, too.

[Evilgrayson]

@Arkandel If they tried to mandate camera use at all times, I’d go for a Reasonable Adjustment to say ‘no’.

I can handle it when the deaf guy needs to be able to see me; that’s fine and fair enough. His need to see who’s talking absolutely outweighs my need to not be visible. I can handle it when I’m talking in general, because that’s what talking in a meeting means now, and that includes the ‘hi how are you’ pre-ambles. Teams will let me fake my background, and I got a nice photo that’s suitably work-themed a few months ago.

In general, though, I find being on camera exhausting, especially when it’s unnecessary. I’m not doing it for hours on end when I’m not the focus, and if you think I’m taking the minutes with a camera on me I have two words and the second one is ‘off’. I have a disability, and I have stated so to work. One of the recognised symptoms is being camera-shy. I will absolutely weaponise employment legislation if I have to.