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Having gotten experience with WFH, I learned I go completely stir crazy if I work from home every day. It has its advantages but I also really really miss the spontaneous brainstorms we'd get at the coffee machine. My work is doing a thing where you can come into the office occasionally after getting permission from your manager, to make sure there aren't too many people at once. So currently I go to the office like one day every couple weeks. It should open up more once the vaccinations get going. What'll probably end up happening is that everyone just gets a free choice - work from home 100% of the time, part of the time, or spend all working hours in the office. And it looks like most people are a fan of a combination of some office days and some home days each week. And that sort of freedom to choose seems like the best solution to me. I would certainly leave any company that forces me to WFH 100% of the time after the pandemic is under control.
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Apr 30, 2021 21:59
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Carbon dioxide posted:Having gotten experience with WFH, I learned I go completely stir crazy if I work from home every day. It has its advantages but I also really really miss the spontaneous brainstorms we'd get at the coffee machine. A big part of it is company/team culture when it comes to WFH communication. I still have spontaneous brainstorms with my colleagues despite us living thousands of miles away from each other. It just starts with an IM that says "this poo poo sucks" and leads to a video call instead of bumping into them in the break room.
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Apr 30, 2021 22:10
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New Yorp New Yorp posted:It just starts with an IM that says "this poo poo sucks" and Usually I get stuck on this stage 
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Apr 30, 2021 22:15
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Don't itemize, because everything sucks.
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Apr 30, 2021 23:23
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Programmers are suffering from a much higher burnout rate working from home, from what I understand. Many people take the commute as a transitional period for your brain to ramp down—coupled with working longer hours because management takes advantage of the lack of commute. Most people’s willingness to try and please their managers/fear of losing their job equates to a big chance to burn out hard. What I am saying is: be careful when working from home. Seriously, burnout sucks. If you push yourself too hard you could end up like this guy: https://twitter.com/TinkerSec/status/1388107620574171140
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Apr 30, 2021 23:37
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I’m burned out from working too little. Did okay when the pandemic started but have found myself less and less able to focus to the point where I’m only getting like 4 hours of work done a week. But I spend the other 36 hours medium-grade anxious about falling behind and being outed as a giant slacker so I’m not actually able to use it to get anything done in my home life either, just doom scroll and lie in bed.
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Apr 30, 2021 23:46
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New Yorp New Yorp posted:A big part of it is company/team culture when it comes to WFH communication. I still have spontaneous brainstorms with my colleagues despite us living thousands of miles away from each other. It just starts with an IM that says "this poo poo sucks" and leads to a video call instead of bumping into them in the break room. i literally just message someone saying "hi are you free? kinda stuck on something" and it works really well
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Apr 30, 2021 23:53
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my coworkers probably hate me for doing it but theyve never said anything idk
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Apr 30, 2021 23:53
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DoomTrainPhD posted:Programmers are suffering from a much higher burnout rate working from home, from what I understand. Many people take the commute as a transitional period for your brain to ramp down—coupled with working longer hours because management takes advantage of the lack of commute. Most people’s willingness to try and please their managers/fear of losing their job equates to a big chance to burn out hard.  I've been on leave for a month, and will be for a month still. It's not the same as this guy, my brain did not "pop" from overwork, it's mainly depression and anxiety. The end result was similar though; not only was I having trouble getting out of bed and getting started, but when I actually sat down to do work, I just couldn't. I couldn't get myself to do anything beyond light email or work chat, even though I had an exciting opportunity coming up. I got approved for short term disability with the help of my psychiatrist, fortunately, though I'd just take the time effectively unpaid if that was declined. I've found myself effectively disinterested in doing anything coding related, or even particularly puzzle related, which I'm putting down to "burnout," even though when I've felt burnt out before I would get the urge to start developing something after a week or two. It sounds dumb and entitled, but I basically cannot do anything more mentally exciting than loving around at home, playing video games, and sometimes visit people right now. And it's a problem, because I WANT to do interesting things but I'm finding it EXTREMELY hard to start anything, and I'm concerned about whether I'll be able to really get back into a work mindset. Even playing video games in no longer interested in doing any of the calculation and spreadsheet games things I used to.
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Apr 30, 2021 23:59
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DoomTrainPhD posted:Programmers are suffering from a much higher burnout rate working from home, from what I understand. Many people take the commute as a transitional period for your brain to ramp down—coupled with working longer hours because management takes advantage of the lack of commute. Most people’s willingness to try and please their managers/fear of losing their job equates to a big chance to burn out hard. Are they sure this guy didn't have a stroke? https://twitter.com/TinkerSec/status/1388110097864347653 https://twitter.com/TinkerSec/status/1388115202328170496
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May 1, 2021 02:17
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brand engager posted:Are they sure this guy didn't have a stroke? If you keep reading he went in for a cat and mri and they both showed no signs of a stroke.
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May 1, 2021 02:54
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Volmarias posted:Ok but I probably am being too hard on myself, and I do script things that I use as tools for testing, which I guess counts? Also yes, I learnt to harness my innate chaos to write replicable bugs. Though I still get a problem where developers look at my bug and go "Step one, two, skip a few... It works fine on my machine *tags as unable to reproduce*". Lately I've been making excel macros and Postman collections to help me generate test scenarios in our system. Nobody taught me JavaScript or VBA, I've just learnt off some Udemy courses and judicious use of Google, so my code possibly counts as outsider art, but hey, it works... Though I kinda dread the day I have to hand it over to someone who actually knows what they're doing. Volmarias posted:
Oof, that sounds tough. Dev and dev-adjacent people developing mental health issues is more common than you'd think. It's not dumb and entitled, it's good that you're getting help! My mental health story: After the Christmas break, I tried to go to work and just... Couldn't. I just had this overwhelming feeling of dread, depression and anxiety. I had this overwhelming feeling that something was horribly wrong with me, that I was a fraud, and any day now, my work would find out and get rid of me. What made it worse was it seemed to be for no apparent reason. My boss seemed pretty happy with my work, my colleagues are decent, for the most part I quite like the work I do, but I couldn't bring myself to get my bike out of the garage and ride to work lest today be the day I got discovered. I went to see a nurse practitioner and explained the whole situation and she ended up giving me a quiz to fill in then ended up saying she reckoned I had ADHD. My reaction: Wait, what?! She explained while she was sure I was as anxious and depressed as I described, I hadn't stopped moving since I arrived, and "usually when I see depressed people, they're a bit more... Flat". She was right (drat that lady is good), and medication has been a revelation. I found out after that in women, ADHD often turns into anxiety and depression coz of societal pressures/expectations making us develop coping systems, and because we usually don't have the stereotypical variety, we don't get spotted. Which is likely why I barely graduated highschool and university, bounced through many, many jobs, and I'm only finding out about this now at the age of 30. I also get the impression a higher than average number of neurodiverse people land up working in IT and technology. So yeah. Don't feel alone, and don't physically sicken yourself for a job. You're a person who has an innate worth and value entirely separate of your capacity to produce/generate value/etc. Look after yourself!
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May 1, 2021 03:19
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DoomTrainPhD posted:Programmers are suffering from a much higher burnout rate working from home, from what I understand. Work 8 hours a day. Period. Of course you need to build discipline around it, it's something new. My first months as full remote had me working 9-10 hours, because it was "easy" and "fun". But I "strangely" also ended up going to bed at 9 and waking up at 8:30 for some reason. Took me a while to connect the dots.
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May 1, 2021 04:16
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I know I joke about being a slacker in here a lot but seriously, stop working so hard/so much. Work a few hours in the morning and a few hours in the afternoon and make them count. I use a pomodoro timer and do 25 minute pomos. If I'm focused on something I might chain two together without a break. My goal is to hit 10 pomodoros every day, which is basically five hours of work. Occasionally I'll hit 12-14 if I'm working on something interesting or pressing but most of the time it's 10. Nobody has ever accused me of slacking or not getting enough done. Slow and steady wins the race.
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May 1, 2021 05:29
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I am getting close to burning out. I have been working from home for over a year now, and since I am pretty bad at self discipline, require being social to avoid depression and am entirely motivated by receiving in person praise or showing off to someone it really doesn't work for me. My productivity is down to at most a third of what it was, and I have been compensating by basically working from when I get up to when I go to sleep, with my "breaks" being mostly the distractions of working from home that are keeping me from being more productive. I have found that my most productive period starts when I should be going to bed, as avoiding the next day is sort of motivating, but I have stand-ups and stuff in the morning so this has mostly resulted in me getting very little sleep during the work week. I take naps and sleep a lot in the weekend to compensate. Clearly this is not sustainable or healthy, and I am trying to make changes, but I have a hard time seeing a proper resolution to this as long as working from home is mandatory.
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May 1, 2021 12:22
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froglet posted:I probably am being too hard on myself, and I do script things that I use as tools for testing, which I guess counts? Also yes, I learnt to harness my innate chaos to write replicable bugs. Though I still get a problem where developers look at my bug and go "Step one, two, skip a few... It works fine on my machine *tags as unable to reproduce*". It kind of sounds like you know pretty well what you're doing. I'm not perfectly clear on your responsibilities, but there is a large space in development and dev-adjacent areas for people who might not be full on programmers, but are fairly tech competent and can learn and resolve various tech issues. In fact, I think those people are very valuable and important towards an efficient team. Because there are many problems and work that require just the knowledge-set you have. You aren't far off from how most developers started. And it sounds like you've broken enough production systems to count 
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May 1, 2021 13:47
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thotsky posted:I am getting close to burning out. I have been working from home for over a year now, and since I am pretty bad at self discipline, require being social to avoid depression and am entirely motivated by receiving in person praise or showing off to someone it really doesn't work for me. My productivity is down to at most a third of what it was, and I have been compensating by basically working from when I get up to when I go to sleep, with my "breaks" being mostly the distractions of working from home that are keeping me from being more productive. I have found that my most productive period starts when I should be going to bed, as avoiding the next day is sort of motivating, but I have stand-ups and stuff in the morning so this has mostly resulted in me getting very little sleep during the work week. I take naps and sleep a lot in the weekend to compensate. It definitely sounds like you need to take a hiatus. A lot of what you're describing I would find concerning if experiencing myself. Semi-related, I've really tried to come to peace that my productivity is more than sufficient on even my worst days. A lot of this has come from me realizing that often I get more done in two hours when I'm ready/in the right mindset than flailing pointlessly for six or eight. Towards that, I've been trying to better embrace just being aware of what times I'm prepared and what gets me in the right mindset. In this sense, WFH has been great because in the office when my work is completed I feel an obligation to continue working on tasks outside of my job responsibilities. Which looks great to everyone else but has generally lead to burnout or just getting too much on my plate. And honestly, none of these employers are paying me enough for my 100%, so WFH has been great for me to learn to calibrate better.
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May 1, 2021 14:01
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I'm glad that all three of us in our stand-ups have said, "Ugh, I feel like I got nothing done yesterday." and the other two of us didn't pass judgment. Feels healthy.
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May 1, 2021 15:17
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WFH has worked out decently well for me by being just as much of a slacker as I always am, and gently caress you if you don’t like it. My working hours are 9-5. I don’t touch my work laptop outside of those hours unless something is broken. I don’t work all of those 9-5. I probably only put in ~5 hours of work a day. The first 30-45 minutes of the day are spent having my coffee and catching up on what happened overnight then saying hi to coworkers. I take an hour lunch break, because I cook almost all my meals. (I’m down 45 pounds since January 2020, thanks deadly pandemic!) 430-5 I’m usually winding down and either reviewing where I am on the career ladder or making sure my to-do list is done for the day, then I let the engineers on the other side of the planet know where I left off. I also give them poo poo (in a joking manner!) if they’re still awake for some bizarre reason. I break up my workload by switching to other activities like my Japanese vocabulary lessons, paying bills, scheduling medicine deliveries, or playing with my cat. My body does this naturally because of my ADHD, even though I’m medicated every work day. It’s just what works best for me. This helps keep me from burning out, but getting fatigued over time is inevitable. I make sure to take days off every once in a while, even though we aren’t exactly going anywhere these days. Getting time to recharge is crucial and I resent not getting that time. If something doesn’t get done in a sprint, sorry - it just didn’t happen. If this means I’m a bad worker or a parasite to the company, well, the reviews and positive feedback and company wide email shoutouts and completed projects say otherwise. (Of course, this assumes they’re telling the truth...and no one ever lies, right?) I’m not a neuroscientist, so I have no idea if this works for everyone or if normal humans even work this way, but I can tell you this: I’ve been just as productive during enforced WFH as I was during enforced in-office, and my biggest career achievements have been during this past year when we’ve all been stuck inside with cabin fever. WFH works for some people just as if not better than an open plan office where no one shuts the gently caress up and you either have to idle in your car munching on Dunkin or get packed like a sardine into a metal crate for 45m~1h twice a day. Burnout is real and has a physiological basis. Not everything works for everybody. If someone gets mad at you for “being a slacker” when you’re genuinely trying your best and have to deal with anxiety and depression all day, that’s selfish, anti-worker, money-worshipping, capitalist bullshit. Pollyanna fucked around with this message at 15:36 on May 1, 2021 |
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May 1, 2021 15:34
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Pollyanna posted:WFH has worked out decently well for me by being just as much of a slacker as I always am, and gently caress you if you don’t like it. Literally everything you just said. (down to the masochistic Japanese lessons. is picking up Japanese common among programmers or something lol) It had a big learning curve for me, but I ended up reaching the same conclusions and habits. I've never, ever had anyone complain that I "don't work enough" or don't produce results. Though sadly recently we had a company-wide email saying that we should only count hours worked if they were used doing actual work, whatever that means. If they install a screen recorder and only count hours worked as hours tapping on my keyboard, I'll just leave.
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May 1, 2021 16:34
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marumaru posted:(down to the masochistic Japanese lessons. is picking up Japanese common among programmers or something lol) Yeah it is. I know a few of those too. Something about a racist society with a hosed up attitude towards women is really appealing to software engineers.
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May 1, 2021 17:14
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Pollyanna posted:WFH has worked out decently well for me by being just as much of a slacker as I always am, and gently caress you if you don’t like it. Same on all counts. Except we were recently forced back into an office 2 months ago. It was a 3hr daily commute for me and had ground me down to such an extent I was physically and mentally feeling like poo poo. Finally had a covid case in this new shared office space and had a single week of WFH. Felt the difference immediately in my own attitude and energy levels. However, the new tech lead we hired at the start of the year had wanted us all back in office ASAP. I pushed back on this in the latest retro and a flood of red flags came pouring out. Team needs to be more hungry. (work longer hours)  Turns out he thought we weren't productive enough to WFH yet.(haven't been working enough hours) Always wanted to watch us in the office to make sure we were on task. (doesn't trust us) Says we're like family. (wants to exploit our emotions for more work) Proper planning and design for tasks and features to develop is only possible in an ideal world. (can't take an extra day to discuss and organize tasks, thats time that could be working) Overtime is just a fact of being a startup. He is glad to work 12hr days and weekends if it helps the company. (and he has been) I had seen a couple of red flags before this pop up here and there, but this is irreconcilable differences at this point. The first few were: Starting 1 week sprints with point estimations and burn down charts. Wanting to get the cheapest food option for our now 1 paid lunch a week.  Suggesting we do a hackathon after hours. And a little cherry on top, Really loving what Elon Musk is doing and all the problems he is solving, really great guy. I absolutely regret green lighting this guy, but if it wasn't him it would have been someone else because our CEO is a ghoul. I was this close to forging a super awesome dev team but the CEO didn't like that I did not make our new junior hire REPORT TO THE OFFICE EVERYDAY despite the fact that we were all forced into WFH due to out of control virus spread during that time. He seriously wanted him to commute on public transport everyday to an empty office simply because he was junior, as if anyone would be there to watch him. It is extra funny that he forced us into this office location too, because he chose the furthest location, probably on purpose to piss me off. Signed a yearlong contract for it. Mandated everyone go into the office. 2 weeks later gets offered free workspace at a much better location but now has this contract early cancellation fee of like $10k. So yeah, I basically wont be going back into the office until I hand in my work machine one way or another.
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May 1, 2021 17:15
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BabyFur Denny posted:Yeah it is. I know a few of those too. Something about a racist society with a hosed up attitude towards women is really appealing to software engineers. 
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May 1, 2021 17:22
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Gildiss posted:Same on all counts.
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May 1, 2021 17:31
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I was promoted to a managerial position and found myself having less control and less influence on the work to be done, found it harder and harder to defend corporate decision. I warned multiple time about obvious security issues that could have been prevented but instead ended causing a week-long downtime of our whole IT infrastructure. Felt powerless, found no support from my boss, got demoted back to my old job and started getting poo poo on by my boss for issues unrelated to my responsibilities. I started to put limits on overtime, availability outside of work hours and asked to be given expectation and clear definition of my role. That angered my boss even more. Last week I was put on leave by my doctor, I will consult with psychologist and try and rebuild my happiness. I'm not sure why I post this, maybe just to add to the others testimonies or maybe as a warning... I tried to climb the ranks in order to improve things for my team and our clients, was it too much to ask ? Maybe we computer touchers are too analytics and not enough narcissist to be in command ?
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May 1, 2021 18:34
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AskYourself posted:I'm not sure why I post this, maybe just to add to the others testimonies or maybe as a warning... I tried to climb the ranks in order to improve things for my team and our clients, was it too much to ask ? Maybe we computer touchers are too analytics and not enough narcissist to be in command ? For these people, yes. You work for assholes, and when assholes are in charge, they don’t appreciate people who are similarly sociopathic. You don’t want to associate with those kinds of people, and as far as I’m concerned, they’re a career dead-end. 
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May 1, 2021 20:00
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One thing I established that works well for keeping communication up as daily scheduled office hours for tech leads and principals. They just spend an hour on a standing teams call and if you have any questions or want to ask architecture things or even just see what’s going on in the team you can join it. And If not then it’s some time blocked on their calendar where they can do some non meeting work.
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May 1, 2021 20:09
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AskYourself posted:... I tried to climb the ranks in order to improve things for my team and our clients, was it too much to ask ? Maybe we computer touchers are too analytics and not enough narcissist to be in command ?
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May 1, 2021 21:50
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thotsky posted:I am getting close to burning out. I have been working from home for over a year now, and since I am pretty bad at self discipline, require being social to avoid depression and am entirely motivated by receiving in person praise or showing off to someone it really doesn't work for me. My productivity is down to at most a third of what it was, and I have been compensating by basically working from when I get up to when I go to sleep, with my "breaks" being mostly the distractions of working from home that are keeping me from being more productive. I have found that my most productive period starts when I should be going to bed, as avoiding the next day is sort of motivating, but I have stand-ups and stuff in the morning so this has mostly resulted in me getting very little sleep during the work week. I take naps and sleep a lot in the weekend to compensate. Decide on set times to work and then only work during those times. The cycle of falling behind and then working more to catch up is a trap and for most people will result in less productivity if it carries on for longer than a couple weeks. asur fucked around with this message at 23:12 on May 1, 2021 |
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May 1, 2021 23:05
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fourwood posted:Unfortunately it sounds like you work for some incredibly toxic people. I strongly encourage using your leave to start working on finding a new employer. Yup he is certainly toxic now, considering his personality I doubt he will ever see any wrongdoing in his past actions, not the introspection type... Honestly, finding new position when on a downer is not ideal... So for now I'm going to take care of myself and disconnect from work. I've been unrusting my techno skills by be completing some exercises on leetcode.com, I'm struggling because I haven't coded for over a year but I can feel the itch is still there.
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May 1, 2021 23:11
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froglet posted:I’m not a neuroscientist, so I have no idea if this works for everyone or if normal humans even work this way, but I can tell you this: I’ve been just as productive during enforced WFH as I was during enforced in-office, and my biggest career achievements have been during this past year when we’ve all been stuck inside with cabin fever. Enforced WFH has been nothing short of devastating to me, culminating in my above mentioned self-enforced shutdown. There are some people who do not, in fact, do well fully remote!
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May 2, 2021 04:20
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I didn't expect to take well to full-time remote work. I like working in an office and having incidental contact with people. I like having a geographic separation between work and home. Hell, I even like my co-workers. But after circumstances forced me to get some practice with it, I turned out to be good at working from home, so I'm not going back. Everyone in this drat industry works too long, even at just 40 hours. I'm lucky enough to be trusted with the discretion to say things like "If I work one more hour today, I'm going to have to spend an hour tomorrow undoing that work." I'd like to see a much shorter workweek normalized, but I don't know how to get there from here.
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May 2, 2021 09:10
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I like WFH a lot - or rather, I don't particularly like the office. We needed to work out some routines for taking care of kids and so on, but overall my department handled the transition pretty well. It was obvious that some people on the team missed the office a lot more than I did though. Now I'm starting in a new job tomorrow, and it seems like the first day will be a half or full day at the office, and then WFH for the foreseeable future. It feels weird that I have to get to know the rest of the team in this way.
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May 2, 2021 10:44
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I think the only way I would consider going back to an office is if I had my own office with a door and if it was less than 20 minutes away. And even then I'd still prefer not to. I like being able to take a 5 minute break and put on laundry or a 20 minute break to do some cardio rather than just using every break to wander to the office kitchen to eat the junk food the company provides.
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May 2, 2021 14:36
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See and my company doesn't even provide any junk food, so there's even less reason to go back!
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May 2, 2021 14:53
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I really struggled at first with WFH last year - just the switch from seeing coworkers every day to isolation really messed with me. Took me a bit to adjust but now I'm pretty happy with it. I expect we will go back to partial in-office at some point this year. Only thing I dread is the commute. 
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May 2, 2021 17:46
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BabyFur Denny posted:Something about a racist society with a hosed up attitude towards women is really appealing to software engineers. but enough about america  NFX posted:I like WFH a lot - or rather, I don't particularly like the office. WFH is great when your office uses one of those open layout nightmares where you spend most of your time overhearing irrelevant crap.
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May 2, 2021 18:28
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I was WFH for a year and got sick of it so I got a new job in an office. 7 months later it’s a pandemic and now I’m really sick of WFH again.  I will want a few days a week as an option but please, I need to get out of the house again.
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May 2, 2021 18:59
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I like WFH on days I absolutely need to concentrate on getting work done. I don’t mind coworkers coming up and shooting the poo poo with me either, but it does break concentration and takes me quite a while to get back in the zone when they do so.
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May 3, 2021 00:27
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DoomTrainPhD posted:I like WFH on days I absolutely need to concentrate on getting work done. I don’t mind coworkers coming up and shooting the poo poo with me either, but it does break concentration and takes me quite a while to get back in the zone when they do so. Once everyone is back to some office life then it’ll totally switch back for me and yeah, WFH will be the productive days.
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May 3, 2021 01:32
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