[HN Gopher] Mourning loss as a remote team
___________________________________________________________________
Mourning loss as a remote team
Author : asyncscrum
Score : 909 points
Date : 2022-03-26 12:13 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.sofuckingagile.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.sofuckingagile.com)
| jll29 wrote:
| We once hired a new colleague, and a week later I had a WebEx
| call to say 'hi' and we chatted about graph algorithms. It was a
| good-vibes call, and we closed saying we both looked forward to
| collaborating on research topics of mutual interests.
|
| The next day the news came that he had died from a hard attack.
| It was very sad, and also strange to have someone pass so soon
| after joining, and even more strange to know that, perhaps apart
| from his wife, I was the last person he may have talked to. Like
| in the poster's case there was a time zone difference, and we
| never met in real life.
|
| I was sorry for the family. I also reflected on the situation: I
| had (virtually) crossed roads with yet another nice person, he
| conveyed his passion for knowledge in one of the last acts in his
| life, then passed in his sleep; the premature time of death
| aside, that is actually a positive ending in a way. Recalling
| that memory from years ago, I do not remember his name, but I
| clearly envisage the shared excitement about the beauty of
| graphs; that is the impression that stayed with me until today.
| May he R.I.P.
|
| As a suggestion, I propose to those teams affected to hold a
| remembrance event for a lost colleague, where stories and images
| can be shared, ideally in person and in commection with a meal,
| but if not possible at least as a virtual shared meal.
| BubbleRings wrote:
| Managers, one solution here is pretty easy. For instance, if your
| team has a daily status meeting, just tell them "every other
| Friday, cameras are encouraged". That's it. Don't make it
| mandatory, don't make jokes about "Joe never turns his camera on,
| what does his place look like?" In a world that is getting more
| and more lonely for a lot of people, this can be a life saver.
|
| And to HR, I have a similar message. Do your job. Just because
| someone is a contractor, doesn't mean you can't put in a little
| effort when bad things happen. One of my co-workers died of covid
| early in the pandemic. The place I was contracting at basically
| disappeared him, it was disgusting. Part of the reason I was laid
| off may have been because I started contacting managers up the
| chain saying basically "do _something_ to acknowledge that a
| member of the team has died for Pete's sake!"
| brassattax wrote:
| The moment you realize HR is there to serve the company's
| interests, not the employee's, your expectation of them
| changes.
| misslibby wrote:
| Taking good care of employees and contractors can be in the
| company's interest, though. It's costly to lose them and
| having to hire new ones, and ex employees talking badly about
| a company also is not good.
|
| (I'd think, I don't work in HR, so no idea what actual
| directives they have).
| Beldin wrote:
| You'd be amazed at how often those coincide if there's not a
| culture of omerta.
|
| It's almost as if happy employees are in a company's
| interest. Not paramount, but not neglected either.
| alexashka wrote:
| Culture of omerta - I had to look it up.
|
| There'll _always_ be culture of omerta when you don 't give
| someone a piece of the company.
|
| If I'm an hourly employee, our interests are not aligned.
| You don't value me enough to share the wins but I know I'll
| be sharing in the losses by getting fired.
|
| To everyone pretending otherwise - wake the fuck up.
| devmunchies wrote:
| Are there any orgs that don't serve the company?
| tonyarkles wrote:
| I say this both being a non-unionized often-contractor, but
| in some other industries that would be the union. Ignoring
| all the politics sounds that, growing up I certainly got to
| witness my dad's coworkers and union come together to help
| out their members _personally_ when tragedy struck, as well
| as planning social events and fundraisers. Some parts of
| union can be really bad, but they're not exclusively bad.
| KuhlMensch wrote:
| In a HR org that is damaging to the company, they always
| side with the company; What is unique to HR, is that can
| often turn them AGAINST an individual worker.
| owl57 wrote:
| I could see the difference with "commodity" employees, and
| that sucks, but what's the big difference if we are talking
| about programmers? The company is obviously very interested
| to make us not want to leave, and also probably interested
| that we feel like caring about the product.
| brassattax wrote:
| Possibly true when the programmers are building the
| company's product. I happen to work for a company where all
| of IT is a cost center.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| I think if that was true then large raises would be the
| norm as they know programmers often leave every couple
| years for a 20+ % raise.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| Such mandatory face-time--and mandatory social interaction in
| general--can make things better or worse. It can make things
| better because someone might need more social interaction. On
| the other hand it can make things worse because some people are
| more lonely in a crowd rather than when they are by themselves.
| jddil wrote:
| Had 2 panic attacks from a well being manager forcing social
| interaction to keep up team moral. So yeah there is no easy
| solution, we're all different.
| civilized wrote:
| I would like to gently caution and remind everyone that seeing
| coworker faces once a week may not have been the make-or-break
| in why Pete took his own life. And for all we know it may have
| made him feel worse.
|
| A relatively solitary and cognitively intense discipline like
| software engineering could be _one_ place in society (one!)
| where genuine introverts are understood and appreciated.
|
| (I certainly agree that we should acknowledge when a team
| member dies and give people space to be sad!)
| wombat-man wrote:
| I wouldn't expect HR to do anything, nor would I expect them to
| send out a mail if someone quit or were fired.
|
| I do think the right thing is for the manager to acknowledge
| the situation and maybe hold some kind of gathering in
| remembrance. Possibly even pull together something to send to
| the family of the deceased. But I don't think this means
| anything coming from HR, it's gotta come from people who knew
| the person.
| Graffur wrote:
| What is your easy solution for exactly? A manager suggesting a
| team to turn on their cameras means "turn on your camera.". It
| will cause stress.
|
| It sounds like they developed a good working relationship and
| that camera/no camera didn't make a difference at all.
| BubbleRings wrote:
| I was thinking mostly about my experience working fully
| remotely for the last two years at more than one contracting
| job. And saying that if I was a manager, I would definitely
| tell people on Fridays or every other Friday "we turn on
| cameras if you are comfortable with it."
| jddil wrote:
| HR has 1 job. Protect the company, they aren't your friends at
| all. If announcing a teammates passing helps the company they
| would do it, if they don't think it would they wouldn't.
|
| No emotions come into this.
|
| (this is not to say you can't have friends at work, but the
| company is not your family and will drop you the day you aren't
| productive any longer)
| georgebarnett wrote:
| I see this often and it is a ridiculous over simplification.
|
| This entire thread has stories of broken corporate culture
| causing people to leave the company and somehow you're
| translating that as win for HR?
|
| In most cases, HR aren't the ones "dropping" you (it's your
| manager). They're the ones ensuring it gets done in a way
| that least disruptive to the rest of the org.
| Angostura wrote:
| > HR has 1 job. Protect the company
|
| I see this from time to time and it irritates me. I'm not in
| HR. I know some people who are and people who go into that
| line of work often _do_ care about making people 's lives
| better.
|
| Certainly if that _conflicts_ somehow with a a requirement to
| protect the company, they may have to prioritise the latter.
| But that doesn 't mean that they have 'one job'.
| jddil wrote:
| I think it does. At the end of the day they will (and
| should) choose to protect the company above all else.
| That's their only job.
|
| They can also want to help people, have a ton of empathy
| and be literal saints. But that's their personal motivation
| and not what the job actually is.
| Angostura wrote:
| I'd be interested to see the logic applied to other jobs.
| What's your job using this kind of reductionist logic?
| Are there _any_ jobs that aren 't "protect the company"
| in some way?
| jddil wrote:
| If you're working for a for-profit company .... uhh no?
|
| And I'm a software engineer, I solve business problems
| with code. If I decide to to write some code that doesn't
| help the company I would probably be fired or at least
| put on a PIP
| styren wrote:
| If there's one thing I've learned from mgmt it's that
| happy teams make for performant teams. The employees
| trust that I'll support them in creating a fulfilling
| work environment and look out for them. If I'd take all
| decisions with the companies profits in mind I'd break
| that trust which wouldn't lead anywhere good. When an
| issue arises I'll sometimes be on the side with sr mgmt,
| sometimes with the team, sometimes it will be more
| complex than choosing sides. Not all decisions can (or
| should) be boiled down to dollars and cents.
|
| Perhaps you should ask someone in your HR department to
| tell you more about their mission as I doubt they'd share
| these views.
| gh0std3v wrote:
| > Pay attention to your team. Build closeness. Get to know about
| everyone's family and private life. Take mental health seriously
| and talk openly about it. It may seem like prying, but you might
| catch a wobbler with a team member that you can address early.
|
| While I think it's important for workplaces to take care of their
| employees, I feel like Pete's issue was that he was _too_ close
| to work. And on top of that, he wasn 't even an employee, just a
| contractor with no benefits, PTO, etc.
|
| The real problem here is that Pete was not integrated as an
| employee. If he were, he could have taken PTO, accessed health
| benefits, and gotten help. I don't know the complete story, so I
| won't extrapolate further, but I feel sad thinking that this team
| almost feels "responsible" for his suicide. It wasn't the remote
| team's fault for not catching on, it was the company's fault for
| not acknowledging the health and security of their contractors
| (who, I reiterate, should have been employees).
|
| Don't mean to offend anyone, I just felt the way contractors are
| treated is sometimes unjust.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > I feel like Pete's issue was that he was too close to work
|
| The article is about a _coworker_. This isn't about the
| company, it's about the people you work with.
|
| Building relationships with your peers is a healthy activity.
| Mourning the loss of a coworker is normal and expected.
|
| If anything, going out of your way to avoid building
| relationships with peers would be a toxic behavior. Working at
| such a place where everyone avoided caring about each other
| beyond the minimum necessary transactions to get their job done
| would be miserable.
| dhosek wrote:
| It's somewhat surprising to think that in the course of 30+ years
| of work life, I've only had two co-workers die. I wasn't
| especially close with either of them, but the contrast is
| noteworthy.
|
| The first, was a suicide of a teammate who was in his 20s. The
| company's reaction was kind of shitty. They didn't point the
| other team members to things like the EAP. They didn't offer
| bereavement time to the team members. They even docked time from
| PTO allotments for those who missed a half-day of work to attend
| the funeral.
|
| The second, was a teammate in his 30s who died from cancer. I've
| been remote with the team since the beginning and never met
| anyone in person. He'd been struggling with health issues for the
| few months he was with us (he'd come back from a 6-month medical
| leave of absence before joining our team). The level of empathy
| and support from management at all levels was superlative. They
| made sure that we were aware of all the support that was
| available, let us know we were able to take off time if we needed
| it to process his death (including a member of the team who's a
| contractor), etc. Suffice it to say that I'm very happy with my
| current employer and know that they have my back if I need
| support.
| nkrisc wrote:
| I had a coworker who passed from cancer some years ago. He never
| acknowledged it but he knew it was coming. When his time finally
| came his wife talked to the team leadership and invited all of us
| to the wake. I thought it was incredibly thoughtful of her to do
| so. We were all given a paid day off work and went to the wake
| and met people from his family and personal life. It seemed a
| little strange that even though many of us weren't really part of
| his personal life, we were still part of at least some small part
| of his life nonetheless. I thought it was a really nice way of
| dealing with it.
| edmcnulty101 wrote:
| Why isn't there a video required policy?
| joshuahutt wrote:
| We lost a coworker to COVID-19, early on during the pandemic. It
| was surreal to go from seeing his smiling face in the hall to
| reading the company-wide email about his passing. We had a
| virtual memorial service, and his friends, parents, and
| colleagues were all invited to share their stories about him. It
| was an emotional experience. For all the things I could complain
| about at that company, how they handled this situation was
| probably the most comforting and humane thing they could have
| been done.
|
| It still makes me tear up to think about. He was so young and so
| cheerful. So full of life. Having faced loss like the article
| describes, I can't say that the nature of the loss makes much of
| a difference. Death affects everyone close to it, pretty
| universally. Questions about whether it was preventable or not,
| fair or unfair, etc., only serve to color our painful rumination.
|
| Every so often, I'll remember him, and I'll repeat one of his
| catch-phrases to a friend who was on his team. Inconsequential as
| this might be, I like to keep the good memories of him alive.
| thenerdhead wrote:
| One thing I cannot understand in the traditional workplace is why
| certain leaves & sudden departures are never disclosed to a close
| team whether by the person or their manager. I've had many
| teammates come and go in the blink of an eye and I'm curious to
| this day of "what happened to X?". Were they PIPed? Are they
| fighting something? Did they win the lottery and decide to
| retire?
|
| It's as if the relationships between the team are much different
| than with direct management and the disclosure happens privately
| between middle management and by the time they're gone, the team
| is left clueless.
|
| I think we need to bring more empathy into the workplace.
| Especially the remote workplace. I operate on the premise that
| everyone is battling problems that you don't know about, but even
| knowing a generalized detail can help in the long term. It takes
| courage to be vulnerable which not many are willing to do in the
| workplace, but helps teams become closer and more caring in the
| long run. It's hard to give bad news, but it's even harder on
| everyone to say nothing at all.
| throwmeariver1 wrote:
| Sometimes there is just nothing to say not everything is
| nefarious it could also mean that even if you think you had a
| close relationship to your colleague it really wasn't so close
| at all because otherwise they would give you a heads-up
| afterwards.
| thenerdhead wrote:
| Is it reasonable to say "X is no longer with us, we'll figure
| out their responsibilities with hiring a replacement,
| dividing areas of ownership, etc" shortly after they depart
| (for any reason)? Or should the team have to put two and two
| together after realizing they aren't coming back? I feel like
| the latter is too common.
| wombat-man wrote:
| When I left my last job I pinged everyone I was friendly with.
| Then I sent out an email to everyone I knew just so people knew
| I was leaving and how they could contact me. Not everyone feels
| a connection to their coworkers and if they want to just leave
| the job without fanfare that's fine with me.
|
| I do think that due to legal reasons, companies will say as
| little as possible to employees. We had an exec suddenly leave
| and we had a large meeting about it where the VP told us, but
| you could tell that there were a few talking points he had to
| stick to. Basically that the director was no longer with the
| company and that there wouldn't be a discussion as to why.
| Nearly two years later I learned it was because he said some
| rude shit on social media and got canned.
|
| If someone is leaving voluntarily and on good terms, I'd expect
| an email or announcement. Maybe even a farewell party. But if
| you hear nothing, I'd assume it's because they declined to have
| one or they did not leave voluntarily. Either way, best to
| leave sleeping dogs lie, unless you really felt a connection to
| that person.
| thenerdhead wrote:
| Why is it so taboo to talk about people leaving, quitting, or
| even dealing with their own battles? Shouldn't we keep people
| in the loop with common sense disclosures? You don't have to
| say much and it makes people understand the situation and
| take on the responsibilities.
|
| So while it's hearing nothing, an irish exit, or even greener
| pastures, I do believe it's up to someone to communicate it
| in a common sense way so people aren't surprised months down
| the line.
| wombat-man wrote:
| Yeah I agree, otherwise people can imagine all kinds of
| things. I just think it's up to the person leaving or
| someone they report to. HR is focused on completely
| different tasks.
| atribecalledqst wrote:
| Sorry to hear for their loss. It's tough losing coworkers. Feels
| like we've lost more than our fair share over the past several
| years.
|
| My old boss died suddenly in an accident a number of years ago.
| Well-liked guy, been there for years, most everybody in
| engineering knew him. For some reason our leadership decided that
| they needed to have an all-hands -- the entire company -- where
| they announced that (these exact words) he "had been found
| deceased". Completely blindsided.
|
| Sudden all-hands meetings still make me nervous years later.
|
| In the context of this thread, I suppose what I'm trying to say
| is -- fully remote can create too much distance and that's not
| good. But at the same, you need to let people handle mourning in
| their own way. And maybe break the news gently.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| > I honestly don't know if HR does help in these situations, but
| I like to think they could schedule grief counseling
|
| This sounds cheesy, but EAP (employee assistance programs) are
| one benefit. Me and my partner recently did hospice care for my
| mother-in-law.
|
| Hospice care is physiologically and emotionally draining. After
| she passed I was in a bad mental health state (I have bipolar
| that's well-managed, but long-term, high-stress situations can
| still trigger problems).
|
| I wound up phoning the EAP hotline and trauma dumping on a random
| therapist for an hour. Sometimes just having someone to talk to
| is the difference between spiraling out of control and being able
| to take care of a mental health situation.
| hogrider wrote:
| It's funny in a sad way how bow he wishes he could have turned
| him into an employee. You are abusing contractors and you know
| it, tech industry.
| dcatx wrote:
| Thank you for sharing this piece. Navigating a loss like this in
| a purely remote environment must have been incredibly challenging
| -- grieving feels like an exercise that we do best together in
| the same physical space. Sometimes you just need someone to give
| you a hug.
|
| The hardest thing I have ever done as a manager was gather my
| team into a room and let them know that one of our team members,
| a young woman just beginning her career, died in a car accident.
| The accident happened the night before my wedding. I came back to
| work 36 hours after my wedding, and a few days before leaving for
| my honeymoon. The first email in my inbox was from a friend of
| hers telling me what had happened. I walked into work to an
| office full of people wanting to hear about my wedding and
| instead I had to tell them that someone they knew and cared about
| was gone.
|
| She sent me an email sharing her joy about my wedding that I
| didn't read until after I had already learned of her death.
|
| Six years later and the memories are still painful.
| asyncscrum wrote:
| Breaking the news is so hard. Sorry about your colleague. This
| sounds pretty rough.
| lostlogin wrote:
| > He was a contractor remember, so more hours means more money,
| and I could reconcile this without thinking twice.
|
| In a very depressing topic, this caught my eye. It's a shame that
| it's normalised for so many that extra work doesn't mean extra
| pay. Salaried work seems a bit evil like.
| noirbot wrote:
| See, I feel like it's almost the opposite - I like salaried
| because I work my 40 and then feel no guilt for slacking off
| after that unless it's an incident/emergency. If I had a
| contract that paid me for overtime/hourly, I'd have days where
| I didn't have anything going on in the evening and it would be
| harder to not just put in an extra couple hours of work for
| some extra money.
|
| It feels like a similar debate to the "unlimited vacation"
| discussions. It really depends on what your natural
| proclivities are to determine which option of the options is "a
| bit evil" and which is "natural"
| ryanmarsh wrote:
| In my 40's now and watching my father (boomer gen) go to funerals
| of people he worked with for years (in some cases decades). It
| makes me wonder who from work would bother going to mine, not out
| of guilt or obligation. The previous generation, for all their
| faults, seems to have a closer connection with their colleagues.
| Granted we connect differently these days, the bonds seem so
| temporary, fleeting even. They're often anonymous.
|
| Sad really.
| flybrand wrote:
| We lost a valued team member in late '19 and two others through
| the past two years. I choked up talking about him on several
| calls.
|
| Your note is very thoughtful. All we can do is our best. Grieving
| is very personal - from a colleague / employer standpoint we just
| support each other as best we can, if we can.
| asyncscrum wrote:
| Thanks for this. Sorry to hear about your losses. HN has been
| very kind today and it's been cathartic to read all of these
| stories.
| dschulz wrote:
| Back in 2020 I could very well have been the Pete in this story.
| I was struggling so bad with mental health issues, financial
| issues. On top of that, my father was giving the figh to
| prostatic cancer. I was just starting working remotely for the
| first time for a Canadian company. My employers were the nicest
| guys I have ever meet online and I was thrilled to have been
| asked to work for them as a software developer. At first I felt
| relieved because I finally landed in a job to do things I like
| using the tools I like with great people. Even though I
| desperately needed money, I was willing to work on a dime just to
| prove myself that I was sufficiently skilled to be "one of them".
|
| But as exciting as it felt, there was an impedance that made
| things so difficult for me and my brain. It rapidly started to
| erode my self-confidence, I began pushing so hard trying to solve
| every task and every little detail in the most perfect way
| possible and felt like I was failing at everything. I certainly
| was failing at one thing and it was communication. The language
| was a barrier (English is not my native language), and I think
| there might have been some kind of <<cultural mismatch>> at play
| too. In hindsight, I think my employers were also failing to read
| what I was writing on the wall. I let them know I was struggling
| with mental health issues and I think I made sufficiently clear
| what my struggles were. They tried to help me the best they could
| but kept insisting on things that were irrelevant to me.
| Apparently they thought maybe I was doing "just a theatre"
| because I was afraid of asking to renegotiate my compensation (I
| wasn't). That was particularly frustrating to me.
|
| At some point, feeling like a lightning rod in the middle of a
| thunderstorm, I was on the brink of doing what can't be undone. I
| had it all planned.
|
| Lucky me, my wife was wakeful enough to notice what was going on
| and helped me get out of the pit.
| Reggie_Walls wrote:
| We had an outside facilitator oversee and guide a remote memorial
| service for a fellow engineer lost to COVID. I would suggest this
| approach. Their job seemed very difficult, but it was very
| important and useful to recognize the person lost and share our
| experiences.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| > It's easy to think that we could have prevented Pete's death
|
| This sounds like guilt, one of the stages of grieving. I hope you
| get counseling.
| vertis wrote:
| Second this.
|
| This is the second time I've written this in the course of a
| week, over two different items. Seems it the time for it.
|
| Getting therapy is not a weakness. They're professionals there
| to help you get the best outcome.
| gkop wrote:
| How do you find a good therapist? It seems like a market for
| lemons.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| In my experience, you definitely have to shop. You have to
| find someone who is a fit for you personally. Don't settle
| until you find someone who truly helps you; someone you
| anticipate seeing each week. It takes time and is an
| investment in yourself. Have patience and expect to spend a
| lot.
|
| A therapist will never say to you, "You know what? I don't
| think we're a good fit" or "I don't think I can help you as
| effectively as someone else." It's up to you to figure that
| out, unfortunately. Personally, I have found that the more
| decades a therapist has in the field, the more helpful they
| are to me.
|
| A lot of the best therapists do not take insurance and are
| not part of a group practice. Why? Because they do not want
| the enormous paperwork hassle. And if they are good, they
| get enough referrals to fill their schedule with people who
| can afford to pay out of pocket.
|
| Also: this is one of those fields where credentials aren't
| as important as raw experience. Masters-level social
| workers can sometimes be more helpful than PhD- or PsyD-
| level clinicians.
| gkop wrote:
| Thanks. I could benefit from therapy to address trauma I
| experienced with a previous (awful) therapist. And I get
| a sinking feeling considering the shopping I would need
| to do.
|
| > A therapist will never say to you, "You know what? I
| don't think we're a good fit" or "I don't think I can
| help you as effectively as someone else."
|
| Would you say more about this? If I were a self-
| respecting therapist and I read this I would feel
| defensive on behalf of my field. The therapist is the
| professional in this situation- it's _obvious_ they have
| an ethical responsibility to catch bad therapist /client
| fits. I honestly have so many questions here!
|
| - Why should we _not_ expect the therapist to catch
| scenarios of bad fit?
|
| - Do therapist professional associations make any attempt
| to set an expectation in this regard?
|
| - Tactically, could therapists be required to set an auto
| survey to go out, say every three months asking "Is our
| work helpful?", to make it easy for the patient to speak
| up, and once the patient has spoken up, the therapist has
| some limited timeframe to remediate the relationship or
| it's terminated by default?
|
| - Is the reason that I perceive a market for lemons
| simply that therapists' profit motive is a moral hazard?
| IE the worse the therapist, the less likely they will
| catch (admit to?) a bad fit, so due to probability, over
| time, we patients will converge on the bad therapists?
| How could we systematically mitigate this "externality"?
|
| - If therapists could collectively improve the therapist
| shopping experience, could they grow the market for
| therapy? IE how many people like me are out there, that
| need therapy but don't seek it, because of distrust for
| the the industry. Is anybody working on this?
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| > Would you say more about this? If I were a self-
| respecting therapist and I read this I would feel
| defensive
|
| My background: for 8 years, I was married to a doctoral-
| level clinical psychologist with an active practice. I
| learned a lot about the industry from her. I've also seen
| many different therapists over my lifetime. Finally, I've
| the great fortune to have discovered a wonderful
| therapist almost a year ago. This was not my first
| wonderful therapist. But I've also had a number of poor
| matches over the years.
|
| > it's obvious they have an ethical responsibility to
| catch bad therapist/client fits
|
| I can't really answer why they never come out and say, "I
| don't think I can help you as effectively as someone
| else." I don't really know. They just don't. I'm sure if
| you ask enough therapists, you'll get the odd exception
| here and there, like a therapist not comfortable with a
| client's erotic transference who then lets the client go.
| I don't know.
|
| > Why should we not expect the therapist to catch
| scenarios of bad fit?
|
| Perhaps they don't have the perspective. Perhaps they are
| trained to think they can help everyone, to some degree
| or another, and perhaps that's generally true. I don't
| know. But like finding a teacher who resonates with you,
| you won't learn the material as well or progress as fast
| unless the two of your resonate.
|
| > Is the reason that I perceive a market for lemons
| simply that therapists' profit motive is a moral hazard?
|
| I don't think the majority of therapists go into their
| field for the money. I think there are lemons because of
| lack of experience and the highly-personalized
| experience; one person's lemon is another person's
| diamond.
|
| I can't answer your other questions. I just want to
| emphasize that you need to advocate for yourself. If you
| don't feel like the therapist is helping you after 3
| sessions, move on. Yes, you should have some progress
| after 3 sessions in my opinion. Doesn't have to be earth-
| shattering but should be something.
|
| Re-read my above comment because I edited it several
| times after your post, adding more info (e.g. info about
| insurance)
|
| Try not to Zoom your appointments. Go in-person!
| gkop wrote:
| Thanks, and thanks for the practical tips in this and
| above comment.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| You're welcome. Good luck. Don't give up. Keep trying.
| golemotron wrote:
| The article has a lot of reflection about how impersonal their
| workplace is but it stops short of discussing the impersonal
| nature of working with people you don't even see or share the
| same physical space with. The neglected mental health aspects of
| that sort of environment are obvious for anyone who cares to
| look.
| patientplatypus wrote:
| hahaitsfunny wrote:
| Another shining example of the ills of neo-liberalism,
| capitalism, and wage labor as well as how we adapt our humanity
| to the system rather than building up one around it.
| draw_down wrote:
| sergiomattei wrote:
| Wow. What an incredible read.
| trentnix wrote:
| Thank you for sharing such an honest piece. Suicide is a tragedy
| without peer, the result of pain, illness, and some part
| selfishness. I feel compassion for Pete and his fight with mental
| illness, sadness for the friends and coworkers left behind, and
| anger on behalf of his wife and children who will now carry an
| incredible burden.
|
| Suicide is infectious (as strange as that sounds) and I've found
| it tough to reconcile that showing compassion for the suicidal
| can actually encourage more suicide. It's an act I'm not able to
| comprehend and that paralyzes my response.
|
| I was dismayed to read the section _Did We Ignore the Signs?_ ,
| but I understand. Similarly, I feel a sense of personal
| responsibility for the well-being of those I've hired. It's
| common for those left behind due to suicide to carry guilt, but
| it's neither healthy nor constructive to think that way. Please
| take the opportunity to be responsible for your own mental
| health, and that requires you not to feel responsible for the
| mental health of those around you.
|
| May Pete rest in peace and sincere condolences to the friends and
| family left behind.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| > Suicide is a tragedy without peer, the result of pain,
| illness, and some part selfishness.
|
| Well at least they won't have to deal with your judging looks.
| [deleted]
| starkd wrote:
| Sadly, it is infectious. That may be why traditions have tended
| to marginalize it when it happens. The evolutionary
| psychologist Steven Pinker discussed it in one of his books by
| noting that when a prominent suicide happens and is televised,
| there is a corresponding slight uptick of accidents in the
| area. He suggests that merely the suggestion of suicide can tip
| the balance in favor of reactionary recklessness for a tiny
| percentage in response to a bad event.
|
| It's important to have empathy for all those left behind, and
| it is sad for those who take their own life, but there is a
| danger in elevating their actions to being virtuous or somehow
| noble. The consequences are indeed quite selfish for all those
| left behind.
| ralmidani wrote:
| I interviewed with my current company (where we work mostly-
| remote) last year. One of my interviewers was a very sharp,
| experienced, and nice developer. After I learned they were going
| to make me an offer, I emailed my interviewers, and this
| developer emailed me back saying he was looking forward to
| working together.
|
| The week before I started, he passed away in a car accident. I
| was really looking forward to working with him, but I never got
| the opportunity.
|
| As soon as I found out, I again emailed everyone I knew at the
| company to express my condolences.
|
| When on-boarding I said "I know I'm joining at a rough time for
| the team". It turned out it was the day after his funeral (which
| I found out my manager and at least some devs attended). They
| didn't seem to be expecting empathy from a brand new hire, but
| some folks were obviously still mourning. I'm glad I acknowledged
| their loss. We didn't dwell on it, but it might have been really
| awkward if I had just charged like a bull into a China shop
| saying "I'm so psyched to be joining your team!!!" as if nothing
| had happened.
|
| In my inbox, I also found an email from our CEO to the whole
| company (about 100 employees) from the week of his passing.
|
| There is also an archived Slack channel to memorialize him where
| different folks who knew him shared their fond memories. The
| company established an annual teamwork award in his name. And a
| lot of folks contributed to a GoFundMe for his son's education.
|
| All of these things are strong indicators that I'm at an awesome
| company. We don't say we're "a family" (don't believe it if your
| company or prospective company claims that - often it's an
| outright lie and otherwise it's code for a toxic culture with no
| boundaries), but we do care about each other.
|
| No matter your position, if empathy doesn't come naturally, learn
| it. It will serve you in so many situations in life.
| bckr wrote:
| > We don't say we're "a family"
|
| My favorite way of framing this discussion is use the term
| "village".
|
| A village is a close-knit group of people with aligned
| interests (economic and otherwise), activities, rituals,
| beliefs, and ties of friendship.
| GGfpc wrote:
| if I hear the expression "it takes a village" on more fucking
| time I will quit my job and become a baker
| bckr wrote:
| Well, I didn't say "it takes a village". I merely used the
| word "village".
| no_butterscotch wrote:
| Yea but I agree with the sentiment of the commenter
| you're replying to.
|
| It's unfortunately a loaded word now.
| hoten wrote:
| It takes a village to support a successful bakery.
| bicx wrote:
| It takes a village to bake a cake! Farmers gotta harvest
| the wheat, millers grind it to flower, Aunt Mae's chickens
| gotta provide the eggs, etc....
| dougmwne wrote:
| My partner sat in the same cube pod as someone who took their
| life. One day they were just gone and a crying family member came
| by to take away a box of things. There was no official
| acknowledgement of what happened, no service or memorializing,
| only hushed whispers. It was terrible.
|
| Thank you for your humane response to Pete's death, for creating
| room for the team to grieve and official acknowledgement that it
| was no longer business as usual. This is one of those moments
| that leadership really matters. There's more to being a leader
| than shipping a volume of features, you are also an important
| figure in the lives of your team and they need you in a time of
| crisis.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| That is the worst! I remember when a long-time team member died
| unexpectedly one weekend. We all learned about it at the Monday
| standup meeting and we luckily had the common sense to cancel
| the standup because no one wanted to talk.
|
| A number of us went to the funeral and his wife told me (I had
| met her once before) that she was _so_ happy that his co-
| workers came to pay their respects. It made her feel that he
| had a larger impact than she knew of and it was comforting to
| her.
|
| I hate, hate, hate the way corps try to brush away any
| unpleasantness like ignoring it means it didn't happen!
| synergy20 wrote:
| Job places are never your family, it's just a place to make
| money to keep life going, my take is, don't expect too much
| from the company you are working at other than paychecks.
|
| instead, building friendship outside of work(if you have
| friends at work, that's good too), and spending more time
| with your family,etc. I think this is also called work-life
| balance.
|
| This does not work for people that needs extra help though,
| e.g. those who experiences mental illness, depression, down-
| cycles in life etc. HR and benefit package should have a
| humane way to do it better, at least, providing free hotline
| as a medical insurance add-on for all employees.
|
| A good manager should stay aware of personal concerns
| cautiously in the team other than just checking their agile
| sprint schedule, it's part of your work. For years that a
| direct manager never met a key team member, never video chat
| with him/her, still keeping him as a contractor after 7
| years, sorry, I put quite some blame on the manager.
|
| A good manager takes great care of his team, which in the
| end, will benefit his own boss/company too. Blaming the
| corporate for your team members' lack of benefit is barking
| the wrong tree, it's you who did not fight hard enough for
| your key team members, you're the one should be blamed.
| anonporridge wrote:
| > I hate, hate, hate the way corps try to brush away any
| unpleasantness like ignoring it means it didn't happen!
|
| I personally don't mind it. It's a good reminder that we as
| individuals are just replaceable cogs in the machine, that
| all of us are only as valuable as the productivity we can
| contribute in the future, and that our sense of loyalty to it
| should be adjusted accordingly.
|
| Don't ever expect a corporation of any kind to act like a
| human or a family, because it's not, even if they try to put
| on a humanoid face.
|
| Having said that, I expect more corporations will start
| trying to act more humanely in the face of this kind of
| trauma, precisely because those that don't will engender a
| sense of deep distrust and disloyalty from their employees,
| which will make them weaker in the long run. The more
| generations of people go through the machine and see how it
| really works, and teach their children the truth, the less
| they'll be able to take advantage of naivety. This also tends
| to be a reason that the powers that be want tighter control
| on social media, so people can't as easily share widely the
| truth of their lived experience that will preemptively poison
| the trust of others towards machines designed to use and
| discard people.
| pizza wrote:
| Once heard this in response to a discussion of an org's
| virtue signalling. What do you make of it, in this context?
|
| _A man had been injured on a journey and was lying on the
| road, wounded. A good Samaritan saw him and helped him get
| up. Onlookers then retorted, "Well, the good Samaritan only
| helped him get up to signal their virtue!"_
| quantified wrote:
| 'Tis more blessed to give than to receive.
|
| Means you're preventing someone from obtaining a blessing
| if you don't take their gift. And by definition, it's
| less blessed to receive than to give. But if everyone
| only gives, no one receives, grinds to a halt.
|
| Metrics on virtue make things so difficult.
| bsder wrote:
| To the person injured, the reason for being helped is
| less important than the fact that he was _HELPED_.
|
| Too many people will ignore things like this. Too many
| people will stand around helplessly--if nothing else, at
| least call 911. The number of times I have been the first
| person to _actually call 911_ at an accident is
| embarassingly high--I have only ever been the first
| person on site once. The rest of the time a crowd was
| gathering but nobody bothered to call 911.
|
| Personally, I'll take help even if they're doing it
| selfishly. And I'll thank you just the same.
| anonporridge wrote:
| An evolutionary psychologist might argue something like
| that.
|
| Another way to put it, is that while the individual might
| act selflessly with pure and honest empathy, with no
| conscious expectation of something in return, this kind
| of behavior wouldn't have survived in our gene pool if
| there wasn't _some_ evolutionary advantage to behaving
| that way.
|
| So, the onlookers would really have to specify whether
| they're talking about the conscious being who is the good
| Samaritan or if they're talking about the unconscious
| entity that is the generic big brained ape that has
| deeply embedded survival and reproductive instincts that
| drive their conscious behaviors and desires outside of
| their control.
|
| I can simultaneously say that the person was honestly
| just being good while acknowledging that the biological
| entity may have achieved some kind of advantage by
| signalling their virtue. Alternatively, I could also say
| that the good Samaritan is actually acting in a way that
| is a detriment to his survival, and only happens because
| of a bug in his generic and psychological programming or
| an old beneficial feature that is no longer good for a
| new environment and will eventually be removed via
| natural selection.
| telesilla wrote:
| People forget: in this story, the Samaritans were enemies
| and known to be hostile. So how is it virtue signaling,
| to another group of people to whom you don't want to
| belong? In this story it was an act of altruism.
| nindalf wrote:
| The Samaritan knew this was his opportunity to be
| immortalised in a religious text so he pretended to be
| extra good. And he nearly got away with it for 2400
| years, until all of us in this thread figured it out.
| svachalek wrote:
| In an ideal world, the onlookers are secretly good souls,
| working acts of kindness and charity away from the public
| eye. In practice, they typically have no virtue to
| signal, and their comments are merely a variation of
| "sour grapes".
| jazzdev wrote:
| I don't think of it as virtue signal as much as it is
| community building, which certainly has a reproductive
| advantage if the community is stronger because of it.
| ajkjk wrote:
| The corporation may not be kind as an entity, but it would
| be nice if the individual people are.
| trinsic2 wrote:
| That's the rub, at least for me. The poster above you is
| right, corporations are just corporations. If you look up
| the etymology of the word it comes from latin: corpus
| (genitive corporis) "body, dead body, animal body.
|
| This is why I think that, more and more, people who have
| a heart, are moving away from big entities like this. I
| expect in a couple of generations corporations will be a
| thing of the past, or something so far removed from
| society, that it will no longer exist as a social norm.
|
| The biggest problem is not the people, its the amount of
| people that organize together to make something happen.
| When you live and work in a sea of people vying for
| attention, to be seen and heard, there is no possibility
| of humanity. Its the size that makes or breaks the
| organization, not the people in it. It breaks
| accountability and it breaks social connections.
|
| I see smaller organizations all the time that act
| responsibility. These organizations usually consist of
| smaller teams. This is the future, a new way of living,
| small decentralized organizations providing the world
| with what it needs in a human way.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > If you look up the etymology of the word it comes from
| latin: corpus (genitive corporis) "body, dead body,
| animal body.
|
| You could just shorten this to "body", which has the same
| range of meanings. If you want to say "corpse" in English
| or Latin, you can use a more explicit word, but you don't
| have to.
|
| The idea of "incorporation" is that something comes into
| existence - that it becomes "corporeal", not "soulless".
| anonporridge wrote:
| > I expect in a couple of generations corporations will
| be a thing of the past, or something so far removed from
| society, that it will no longer exist as a social norm.
|
| Alternatively, in a couple of generations, people who
| have too much heart/soul and can't stomach being part of
| a corporate machine will be bred out of the gene pool
| and/or thrust into the powerless underclass, while the
| psychopaths that have no problem with them will acquire
| the most resources and reproduce the most, passing on
| their genes and their way of thinking to their children.
|
| Some might argue this already happened generations ago.
| halfdan wrote:
| That's not how reproduction works though. The
| unprivileged often have more kids and people on the
| corporate bandwagon tend to have fewer.
| anonporridge wrote:
| They're also the first in line to die via disease,
| famine, and war.
| gunapologist99 wrote:
| Corporations are like a computer program. Sometimes they
| act a bit sentient, but mostly they just do what they're
| told.
|
| The only people who are people are people.
| samstave wrote:
| I had a colleague die in his cubical at Lockheed...
|
| I was IT director and I had to do a post mortem (no pun
| intended) about his activities in the facility by checking
| his badge-ing in and out of various doors to determine the
| time of death... that was super fn weird.
|
| We were able to determine he went to the break room at ~1am
| or something, made himself a cup of tea, went back to his
| cube and died before he even drank his tea.
| rhizome wrote:
| > _I hate, hate, hate the way corps try to brush away any
| unpleasantness like ignoring it means it didn 't happen!_
|
| Remember that study that found psychopathic traits in upper
| management?
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackmccullough/2019/12/09/the-p.
| ..
| zdragnar wrote:
| Everyone is a bit of a psychopath.
|
| https://youtu.be/xYemnKEKx0c
| [deleted]
| evancoop wrote:
| During my doctoral years, two students in my department took
| their own lives (separate events, to be clear). The events
| themselves were horribly tragic, but the lack of even a clear
| acknowledgement of the causes of death left a surreal sense of
| denial.
|
| Mental health is an enormously under-discussed issue in an
| increasingly digital society that hides suffering in so many of
| us.
|
| Work becomes an increasingly integral element of our connection
| to others while certain employment becomes increasingly
| transactional.
|
| We all can do better. So sorry to read about another human
| being lost too soon.
| maleldil wrote:
| Do you think it wasn't acknowledged specifically because it
| was suicide, or was it an overall culture of not addressing
| the cause of death in general? Because the second one sounds
| fine to me.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| How is it fine?
|
| Causes of death are not fungible, dying in a freak accident
| and dying from suicide in a high pressure setting should
| not be treated the same.
|
| Especially since we know that suicide can act like a
| contagion:
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK207262/#_sec_0078_
| and the demands of the program they were in were almost
| certainly a factor
| maleldil wrote:
| If it's specifically with suicide, then the company has a
| stigma with mental health, which is not okay. However, if
| it's always "teammate died" with no extra information, I
| can respect it.
|
| Your teammates are not entitled to know your cause of
| death. That's a personal thing, but you aren't there any
| more to choose if it's okay to share.
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| Mental health isn't underdiscussed, it's just not discussed
| seriously enough.
| haswell wrote:
| I would argue that it's both.
|
| It's not seriously discussed because it's under-discussed.
|
| I think most people understand the seriousness of cancer,
| or a heart attack, or other life threatening ailments. They
| accept that those things are often outside of one's
| control, and so there is never any hesitation to take it
| seriously. When someone in a work setting is diagnosed with
| something serious, everyone pays attention.
|
| Mental health issues are hard for some people to understand
| if they haven't experienced their own challenges. And
| because it's not discussed frequently/seriously enough,
| it's easy to downplay it or believe that the person
| struggling can change just by thinking hard enough.
|
| And the people suffering from it don't feel the same
| freedom to share those struggles because they've also been
| conditioned by the same collective mindset about mental
| health and worry what opening up about it will mean for
| them.
|
| Someone with severe depression who struggles with suicidal
| ideation has to wonder if people will think less of them,
| or if they'll be understand at all. Even though awareness
| has grown, those old stigmas and default behaviors remain
| just under the surface.
|
| Someone with a terminal illness will receive an outpouring
| of support and encouragement.
|
| I'm happy that awareness continues to grow, but there's a
| long way to go.
| bckr wrote:
| > Even though awareness has grown, those old stigmas and
| default behaviors remain just under the surface.
|
| This is exactly right. Even in the last few years I feel
| more understanding about mental health struggles, and I
| strive to be supportive as well, but even I judge people
| who take time off for mental health reasons, and I
| hesitate to tell people about my own struggles.
| quantified wrote:
| Taboo/misunderstanding/hangups beget that hesitation,
| round it goes, sadly.
| sacrosancty wrote:
| Depression and suicidal thoughts have a lot of public
| awareness and sympathy, at least in my country which has
| had public health campaigns about it. There are still
| many mental health problems that are stigmatized because
| they come with behaviors and feelings that are rightly
| stigamitized in normal people who have the power to not
| do them. Things like anxiety, anger, violence,
| inappropriate sexual feelings, and self-pity.
| freedomben wrote:
| > _Mental health issues are hard for some people to
| understand if they haven't experienced their own
| challenges._
|
| Bingo. This is the root of the problem IMHO. We're really
| good at recognizing and empathizing with a gaping
| physical wound, but if we can't see it/touch it/feel
| it/etc it's hard to grok.
| hashhar wrote:
| Reminds me of this other comment I made on an old thread
| discussing this point in a way which hopefully others can
| relate to at-least a bit.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27909275
| darkwater wrote:
| I think the biggest issue comes from thinking that since
| it's in the mind and not in the body, you can just cure
| it by yourself: be happy, not depressed! Which is
| obviously wrong and comes from ignorance.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| As someone who has experienced a lot depression myself
| and with family, I think the chemical/body mechanism is
| grossly overstated.
|
| It is a mind problem, but that makes it harder, not
| easier to address. The only real solution IS "happy, not
| depressed", but it is terribly difficult to do if you
| have poor tools and learned patterns.
|
| Medicine can help break up patterns.
| vlunkr wrote:
| Is this the norm? I don't see why they wouldn't at least
| announce it an email. It's a bit of a weird topic for a work
| email, but it's certainly better than doing absolutely nothing.
| kn0where wrote:
| Yeah, I've worked at a couple places where someone died, and
| it was definitely acknowledged by management and I feel like
| it would be incredibly weird not to.
|
| At one place, a guy who had left the company a few months
| prior died in a car crash. The guy had a wife and newborn
| baby. The CEO shared the news and the company made a
| contribution to a GoFundMe for the wife and baby. I think the
| company offered grief counseling.
|
| At another, larger company, someone died shortly after I
| joined, so I never knew them. We were all notified, once
| again I think a grief counselor came, and the guy's desk was
| left as a memorial until we moved offices a few months later.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| Reactions from management and everyone else is typically
| different for suicides than for car crashes and other
| causes. In my experience, suicides are hushed and not
| discussed while car crashes and heart attacks are. It's a
| terrible double-standard.
| jouleshey wrote:
| It may be because there is evidence that discussing
| suicide increases the likelihood of more suicides. I'm
| sure there's more nuance that could be done in theory / I
| would assume there exists some "right" way to discuss it
| that may actually be healthier, but it's easier to just
| look at studies and say best to just avoid it altogether.
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK207262
| veb wrote:
| This is why it's illegal to report deaths as suicides in
| New Zealand media as well.
|
| https://mentalhealth.org.nz/media/reporting-and-
| portrayal-of...
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| That link says something different: "a description of the
| death as a suicide before the coroner has released their
| findings and stated the death was a suicide"
| freedomben wrote:
| Same. I don't think it's with mal intent, I think it's
| the result of a (misguided) attempt to give the passed
| privacy or spare them the
| embarrassment/humiliation/stigma that some people (mainly
| those who have never struggled with depression/suicide)
| think is attached to it. A good friend of mine committed
| suicide several years ago, and it was like pulling teeth
| trying to get somebody to just tell me WTF was going on.
| The most I could get was "Douglas passed away." Nobody
| even wanted to say it was a suicide!
|
| We really need to start talking more openly about these
| things. If your coworker dies in a car crash nobody feels
| like they can't talk about the car crash or even
| acknowledge the cause of death. Yet with suicide, nobody
| wants to say it. The result is even more pain mixed with
| frustration.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| I've had the same experience - when someone passed, no
| one would tell me the cause of death. I surmised the
| cause because of that, but never got external
| confirmation. It was just so ... strange.
| NAHWheatCracker wrote:
| Not acknowledging a death is wild, but a lot of organizations
| normalize only discussing positive project-related
| accomplishments.
|
| When the day-to-day doesn't address the simple human aspects
| of work, it becomes even harder to address the difficult
| aspects.
| catlifeonmars wrote:
| This is an interesting take. I strongly suspect you're
| right about this, but would like to find more data to
| support it.
| bqmjjx0kac wrote:
| Apathy is the path of least resistance.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| Maybe if you are apathetic by nature?
| 9530jh9054ven wrote:
| Depends on the company. I know for a fact that if I died
| tomorrow, only two people would actually notice at all and
| neither of them are coworkers.
|
| It doesn't seem particularly helpful to send out a
| notifications to people other then those that would be
| affected by having to take on my workload. And what good
| would come from them being told I was dead vs just left?
| rvp-x wrote:
| Not noticing doesn't mean the world doesn't care. There are
| a lot of reasons people vanish and it's harder to notice
| the absence of something than its existence, and people
| usually vanish for positive reasons, so I think nothing of
| it. I cried after discovering some people I hadn't known
| personally but were adjacent to me have died. I didn't
| notice their absence but I can empathize with the suffering
| they felt before their death, or the feelings of their
| family coming to grip with their absence.
|
| While I have a strong emotional reaction to it, I don't
| think it's a bad thing, it is a part of life and a reminder
| for me to savor life.
| VariableStar wrote:
| I do not know if it is the norm but I have also worked at an
| organization where one employee committed suicide. Leadership
| said nothing and everything was toned down. Some people spoke
| up and complained though. My interpretation is that the
| response was a combination of culture (although suicide is
| not "taboo" here it is not a preferred topic) and not wanting
| to bring undue attention to the organization.
| refurb wrote:
| What do you mean "said nothing" as in they stopped showing
| up and management pretended nothing happened?
|
| Or the person died and they didn't say it was a suicide.
|
| Because if it's the 2nd, that seems pretty normal. My right
| to know doesnt trump the family's right to privacy.
| pc86 wrote:
| Framing discussions around cause of death as privacy is a
| double standard. If you say someone died in a car crash,
| nobody gasps and tells you to respect the deceased's or
| their family's privacy. It's so extreme that is anyone
| even brings up privacy with regard to a death or cause of
| death everyone assumes they committed suicide, or did
| something criminal that ended in their death, or
| something else negative. Cause of death is posted in the
| newspapers and otherwise discussed in public all the
| time, there is no right to privacy around that piece of
| information.
| newaccount74 wrote:
| I'd like to think that if you spend 8 hours a day with
| someone everyday, and suddenly they are gone, it would be
| a decent thing to tell you what happened to them.
| VariableStar wrote:
| Colleagues knew it was suicide and wanted to talk about
| it. Leadership did not want to discuss the issue. Normal,
| as you write.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| > There's more to being a leader than shipping a volume of
| features, you are also an important figure in the lives of your
| team and they need you in a time of crisis.
|
| _deleted_
| idontknowifican wrote:
| this isn't work related, this is human meeds and suffering. i
| understand management is ass, don't become an ass yourself
| avgcorrection wrote:
| > this isn't work related,
|
| So give them time off to grieve.
|
| Once you say that "they need you [the manager] in a time of
| crisis" you are putting the tragedy in a work-related
| context. The crux of the issue is the tragedy that
| happened. Not how the supposed leader responds to it.
|
| The worker bees can get space to grieve alone or among
| their peers.
| pbourke wrote:
| > Once you say that "they need you [the manager] in a
| time of crisis" you are putting the tragedy in a work-
| related context.
|
| Sometimes all that's needed is for the manager to not be
| a giant fucking dick.
|
| My aunt passed away a few years ago, and I took a few
| days off work to go to her funeral (a few hundred miles
| away).
|
| When I mentioned that I was going to take a few days
| bereavement leave, my manager at the time responded by
| rules lawyering whether the death of an aunt qualified
| under the company's bereavement policy (it did). He
| otherwise said all the right things, but that's what I
| remember nearly 10 years later.
| eyelidlessness wrote:
| Several years ago, I lost a friend to cancer. He had
| previously worked on my team, and was well liked there.
| My boss at the time, who I adored and still do, hadn't
| known him as well but understood that his death
| devastated to me.
|
| I came in on a _Saturday_ to let the team know of his
| passing, and to work. We had scheduled a weekend
| hackathon--if I recall, this had been my idea originally.
|
| My boss, very sincerely concerned, asked me, "why are you
| here? You can go home." I told him there's no where else
| I'd rather be. That wasn't only because he was such a
| great boss, but that was a large contributing factor. He
| kindly, gently said he understood and that I should stay
| and contribute whatever felt comfortable and leave
| whenever that felt like what I needed. That didn't make
| mourning feel any less difficult, but it made me feel
| like I was right that work was where I needed to be that
| day.
|
| My point is not that this is the form all leadership
| should take. It's true that giving people time off to
| mourn is almost definitely the best default. But there is
| a compassionate kind of leadership that can be this
| welcoming and compassionate comforting.
| wccrawford wrote:
| My limited experiences of grief has shown that I react
| largely the same way at first, and then later probably
| need that time off. So I'd rather come in and get some
| work done until things really hit home, and then take
| that time. Others clearly need the time right away
| instead.
|
| I think a lot of people still don't realize that everyone
| deals with emotions differently, even though they've been
| told that a lot in the last few decades, and perhaps a
| lot longer.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| That was the right move by them. But I can't say that it
| takes much compassion to in order to allow/remind an
| employee that they don't have to work on a Saturday
| (hackaton).
| cookiecaper wrote:
| It sounds distasteful only because the vast majority of
| bosses out there aren't worthy of the mantle. An individual's
| relationship with their immediate boss is one of those
| intimate things in life and it deserves sanctity.
|
| Help your people and don't be a dick and you'll be amazed at
| the bounty of unearned gratitude that comes back around --
| and often not just once, but continuing for years. Being a
| good boss is "the gift that keeps giving" to good bosses
| everywhere.
| [deleted]
| tonyarkles wrote:
| I'm not saying this as any kind of brag. To be honest, I
| ended up as a manager by accident and when the team grew
| too much I found someone else to do it. I still work at the
| company and come by to help the team out once in a while.
| That shift happened about 6 months ago.
|
| My wife caught COVID last month while I was out of town.
| Since I continued testing negative, we decided that I would
| stay at the farm until either I tested positive or she
| tested negative. I posted a message on Slack explaining
| where I was and why, just as a "why is Tony joining all
| meetings remote this week" kind of update.
|
| Immediately, three of my previous reports reached out
| directly to let me know that they were more than happy to
| drop off anything she might need: groceries, medication,
| Dairy Queen, anything. _That_ is the kind of relationship a
| manager /leader and their reports can have. We've never
| really done much outside of work socially. We do the odd
| team dinner to mark special occasions. Two of them have had
| car trouble and are handy but didn't have the tools they
| needed; I had the tools (tubing bender for a brake line,
| electric impact for getting a stuck bolt out) and dropped
| those off on the weekend.
|
| The big dance I have always tried to do is make us into a
| team that always has each other's back. I've made it clear
| that sometimes The Business wants us to do weird things
| that don't always make sense and we've gotta just do it,
| but in general I'm doing my best to shield them from
| nonsense and help make sure we've got an environment where
| everyone can do their best work.
|
| I dunno, it was all an experiment and it seems to have
| worked out.
| gotbeans wrote:
| I might be off here, but I have only been able to feel
| this sports-like team behaviour in actual sports teams
| when no money is involved; where everybody tries to be
| the best and at the same time help their peers to be
| their best, for no actual personal gain or interest.
|
| On the professional world, where money and titles are put
| on the head of people, things hardly ever go that way, I
| believe for many reasons but mainly due to competitivity.
|
| Regardless, really happy to hear your experience and
| story. I'd love to be at an actual team as you put it.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| Of course this looks like the fruits of your leadership
| ("not to brag") from your perspective. On the other hand
| it can look different from the other side when you see
| your peers jump at the opportunity to please the boss.
|
| As long as one is the person with the authority in a
| relationship one cannot really know which option it is.
| absurddoctor wrote:
| There might be merit to this in general. But in this
| specific case the person is no longer in authority so it
| doesn't seem to apply.
| maleldil wrote:
| I think some of that is a lot harder to when remotely,
| though. You can't do team dinners, and the alternatives
| feel forced to me. It's also a lot harder to socialise
| with people that you only interact with a few times a day
| (if you're asynchronous) because they don't feel like a
| part of your life like in-personal colleagues would. So
| it ends up being a very I'm impersonal relationship.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| I agree but have found turning on the camera and keeping
| it on for most meeting does help.
| mrtranscendence wrote:
| During the time of COVID I've had two jobs, one where the
| culture is (usually) to keep the cameras on at all times,
| and one where the culture was to keep the cameras off
| even when speaking.
|
| There are benefits to the latter approach ... I could
| futz around on my phone in particularly boring or useless
| meetings. But keeping the cameras on does make
| connections feel more personal and overall I prefer it,
| particularly for small meetings.
|
| Plus, everyone gets to see my dogs roughhousing in the
| background.
| lostcolony wrote:
| >> I could futz around on my phone in particularly boring
| or useless meetings.
|
| The fact those meetings are occurring is a failure of the
| culture, and especially the move to WFH. It's been the
| key differentiator for me post-COVID; companies that are
| begrudgingly remote try to keep the office norms in
| place, just now remote, vs the companies embracing remote
| finding new workflows, which means leaning on async
| communication, collaborative documents, etc, instead of
| meetings, and synchronous meetings only when absolutely
| necessary.
|
| And it's been eye opening; in those former cases, no one
| wanted "social" Zoom meetings, myself included. But in
| those latter, people asked about it, championed it
| happening, etc.
|
| People only have so much time they want to be in meetings
| online, and making sure it's used to build team bonds,
| instead of squandered on business problems that could be
| solved other ways, seems like a huge part of making
| remote be successful.
| treis wrote:
| >An individual's relationship with their immediate boss is
| one of those intimate things in life and it deserves
| sanctity.
|
| I think there's a fundamental divide between people. Some
| see the workplace and the people in it as an integral part
| of their life. Others see it as a place they spend 40 hours
| a week that enables them to live their actual life. Neither
| are wrong and I think a lot depends on the type of company
| you work for. For me personally there's nothing intimate or
| sanctified about my relationship with my boss.
|
| But I do agree with your general point. Being someone's
| boss can have a large impact on their life. I'd reach for
| terms like responsible, ethical, or kind.
| sinsterizme wrote:
| I'm of the former opinion and it boggles the mind a bit
| thinking that some people view the place they spend the
| majority of their waking hours as ancillary to their
| "real life." Maybe my real life is just boring though :p
| emerged wrote:
| I felt it was part of my real life. But after leaving the
| first company (then each subsequent company) I almost
| never saw any of them again.
|
| People put on a polite friendly face at work, but that
| doesn't mean they're your intimate friends. Sometimes,
| but I think it's not so common as you're implying.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| Of course it is part of my real life. Doesn't mean that I
| necessarily like it, though. And I would be doing
| something else if I could. (Don't tell my boss^W^W my
| noble leader though.)
| avgcorrection wrote:
| The first option is a subjective view that some people
| might have. The second option is a bare fact for most
| people.
| treis wrote:
| "live their actual life" is a subjective view. For lots
| of people what they do at work is part of their core
| identity and an integral part of their "actual life".
| avgcorrection wrote:
| Sure. I was of course referring to the fact that they
| have to work in order to survive.
|
| And once you have to do that it might be prudent to let
| it become a part of your identity. It is after all
| something that you have to do for half of your waking
| time outside of weekends and vacations.
| NotAWorkNick wrote:
| Disclaimer: I'm about to disclose some personal information so
| will probably burn this nick shortly.
|
| I am slowly going blind (long, boring story; only relevance to
| the topic is during a discussion with the eye-guy consultant he
| mentioned that he had had a close personal friend of his kill
| himself the day after a night out and that he (the consultant)
| wished that he had been able to somehow sense that his friend was
| so close to the edge....
|
| I looked at him softly and with compassion and said to him that
| there was no way in hell that he would have ever known or be able
| to sense something like that because the serious ones don't
| broadcast their intentions (simply because they don't want to be
| stopped from doing it).
|
| My heart bled reading this article but having grown up in a life
| of violence (early start in Africa, a bit of a chequered past led
| me in to the world of I.T. (machines are better than humans...
| they can tell you why they are sick, what part(s) are broken and
| then either report a (1) Fixed or a (2) Not Fixed... any how,
| that's how I wandered into IT field mixed in with some ex
| military stuff including a lay-over in Dubai that lasted for two-
| weeks... the bloke at Heathrow customs glanced at my transit
| stamps and asked me where the fuck I had been for two weeks (10
| day gap in departure from place {x} to arrival at LHR ....
|
| I looked him in the eye and said simply ..... 'Good god, my arms
| are tired from all that flapping and those head-winds were a
| bitch!'
|
| He muttered something along the lines of "f*ing smart-arses",
| stamped my passport and waved me through.
|
| Whole point of the above? I dunno but nick & karma points burnt
| telling it.
|
| If you take nothing else away from this - Please know that you
| likely would have had no way of knowing so please don't feel
| guilt.... They made a decision and it was one that you (the loved
| one grieving) would have been unlikely to have changed even if
| you had have known. At best, you would be likely to have simply
| delayed it for a while.
|
| YMMV
| idontknowifican wrote:
| )))
| pbourke wrote:
| Tell me you're a lisp programmer without telling me you're a
| lisp programmer
| NotAWorkNick wrote:
| You are correct @idontknow.... I did omit some ellipses; My
| Bad.
|
| Thank you for pointing it out (Unfortunately the edit window
| has closed otherwise I would add them :) )
| mettamage wrote:
| IMO no need to burn this nick. Check my comment history,
| I'm still going strong ;-)
| NotAWorkNick wrote:
| I meant more in terms of leaking PII ;)
|
| Thanks for caring though, and hang in there :)
| Twirrim wrote:
| I had someone I knew from two consecutive jobs commit suicide.
| We'd routinely cross paths through meetings, water cooler chats
| etc. Nice guy, smart engineer. Capable of handling stressful
| incidents without batting an eyelid and spotting the shorted
| path to the best resolution. The kind of engineer you'd be
| lucky to have on your service team.
|
| He grabbed me for a lunch time meal about a week before he
| committed suicide, wanted to chat about my faith. These
| conversations happen from time to time, especially working in
| tech which seems to bias towards atheism, so I didn't think
| anything of it. It was a type of conversation I've had dozens
| of times over.
|
| In hindsight, of course, it was obvious he was looking for
| help. I can rationally tell myself over and over again that
| there was no possible way I could have known, but I highly
| doubt I'll ever convince myself of it.
| peaknarcissism wrote:
| gordaco wrote:
| > the serious ones don't broadcast their intentions (simply
| because they don't want to be stopped from doing it).
|
| While this might be generally true (and it's especially true in
| the sense you wrote the message, i.e., there's a good chance
| that no one could see it coming), I would add something. It's,
| as I said, mostly true, but far from being the case 100% of the
| time. Ok, that was probably obvious, but the thing is:
| sometimes we interpret it as the contraposition (which is,
| after all, equivalent to the original statement): _the ones who
| broadcast their intentions are not serious about it_. And that
| 's a huge mistake to make, when it happens to not be true.
| Someone who broadcasts that kind of intentions _might_ be
| overdoing that kind of millenial "everything sucks" gallows
| humor you see a lot in Twitter... or they _might_ be serious.
|
| So, pay attention to people talking about that suicidal
| ideation. Many times, it's more than a joke.
|
| BTW I also agree that in many cases an intervention can only
| delay the decision but not prevent it completely. I know it can
| be a hard pill to swallow for many people (and for good
| reason), but I strongly believe this to be true.
| tgtweak wrote:
| This is a larger issue. And it's not just limited to remote
| contractors. Even in the cushiest of office jobs with full
| benefits, seasoned HR and regular check-ins these personal issues
| can and do impact employees - often times not resulting in death
| but universally in personal suffering.
|
| It's easy and convenient to keep the workplace professional and
| file those concerns away as "not your business", but they're
| important.
|
| A good friend of mine (after years of being a good colleague) had
| immigrated from Ukraine to Canada a year ago and was weeks away
| from his family joining him when the unfortunate recent events
| unfolded. His wife and newborn child forced to drive a car from
| Kharkiv to Poland for a full week before they were even remotely
| "in the clear". He offered to continue working during this time
| when told to take time off fully paid, and said it kept his mind
| off of the things he couldn't control and that he was eternally
| grateful that he had this job in the first place and that his
| family's relocation was already prepared, saving him weeks of
| striding through refugee paperwork.
|
| The lesson was clear - had he been an affordable contractor there
| we left in Ukraine vs a valued team member who we cared about on
| a personal level it would have been a dire situation for his
| family and our company.
|
| Take the time to genuinely ask your people how things are inside
| and outside of work.
| fsckboy wrote:
| I really liked that his wife figured out how to submit a support
| ticket to send the death notice to his company, seems fitting in
| the age of remote work and in no way diminishing. As a tech geek,
| the tools of the trade are as comfortable as a favorite sweater,
| there's nothing wrong with a support ticket.
|
| Reminds me of something slightly humorous I encountered back in
| the 90's, based on my particular career path. I had used unix
| extensively in the time before tilde meant "login/home
| directory". Then I moved to windows and was doing C++ dev, where
| tilde means destructor. Reading Slashdot one day, there was an
| announcement that somebody had died, with a link to page about
| him, and it used an URL with a tilde and his name for his
| homepage, they way universities often did. Not knowing the
| convention, I thought "oh cool, somebody set up a memorial page
| and they used the destructor syntax in tribute!"
| trinsic2 wrote:
| Thanks for posting this and thank you to the organization for
| being honest and upfront about where your team was at with remote
| workers and the lack of communication with family. On the one
| hand, I really think remote work is great for many people who
| cant get into the office and I am glad its becoming more of a
| thing. On the other hand, I can see for myself, that remote work
| might put a strain on a person who doesn't go out much, or has
| mental health issues and that there can be a disconnection from
| others by relying to much on remote interactions. I learned a lot
| from this post and I will remember to reach out more and inquire
| about people I work with remotely, with care obviously.
| [deleted]
| ronzensci wrote:
| Having lost a loved one recently, I can say that never ever
| underestimate the effect of sharing grief with the family in-
| person. Just drop into Pete's home in Scotland and spend an
| evening with his family & loved ones. They must all be deeply in
| grief and your physical presence to talk to them about Pete would
| mean the world to them.
| RONROC wrote:
| Even though I had subpar due diligence that resulted in a almost-
| decade-long-contractor's wife not having any official channel to
| contact her husbands employer, this made me feel really bad.
|
| This is so fucking embarrassing and full of shit.
|
| Rest In Peace to Pete, and fuck the author of this post.
| xwowsersx wrote:
| Where is the /pete page? Anyone have a link? I don't know what
| company this is...
| [deleted]
| cebert wrote:
| Sometimes I am amazed employers aren't a little more sympathetic
| of personal situations as doing so can result in greater
| productivity (if that's all firms care about). My dad was in the
| hospital this past September-November with complications from
| pancreatic cancer and passed away late November. My spouse's
| father died from complications of multiple-myeloma the November
| before that. Needless to say this was a lot to process, and I
| really could have used a week or two off following my father's
| death. In December, things start to slow down anyway but I didn't
| have the vacation time left to take a break. Instead, I continued
| working but had a hard time focusing and dealing with the past
| two years. I'm finally starting to feel myself again in March and
| am becoming more productive. If I could have had a week or two
| off, I think I would have been in a much better mental state and
| it would have been better for me and my employer in the long run.
|
| I recently had an ok performance review a few weeks ago, but it
| was difficult for me to hear some of the negative feedback
| considering the past year I've been dealing with my dad's
| situation. That's not to say the feedback wasn't all fair, but it
| wasn't the best timing when I was trying to get back to normal.
| My goal was really just to survive last year, not necessarily
| advance in my career or get a raise.
| cweill wrote:
| I've been working a Full Time Employee in the industry for over 8
| years at multiple companies. Never once has HR done anything
| remotely useful to help me when there were family problems or
| tragedy, except maybe a couple weeks of paid leave.
|
| But I would like to hear the take from a founder who built an HR
| team to know if maybe I am missing something.
|
| I'm really curious if it's really different being an employee vs
| a contractor in that respect.
| basisword wrote:
| >> I've been working a Full Time Employee in the industry for
| over 8 years at multiple companies. Never once has HR done
| anything remotely useful to help me when there were family
| problems or tragedy, except maybe a couple weeks of paid leave.
|
| I'm curious (genuinely) what the company could have done
| different for you in these cases? Personally I wouldn't expect
| anything from the company other than paid leave/general empathy
| from managers with amount of leave varying depending on the
| loss (e.g. loss of a partner requiring more time than loss of a
| grandparent). I'm not sure what else I would want from my
| company or what they could offer.
| heffer wrote:
| Our company offers its US employees access to a service
| called Wellthy. It is good to know that when you are dealing
| with issues in your personal life you can reach out to a
| dedicated, named individual that has expertise in the area
| you are struggling and that is there to help you navigate and
| organize. Even if it's just for the feeling that you are not
| alone.
|
| Similar programs are available to employees in other
| countries.
| InCityDreams wrote:
| ...and for the non-US?
| mgkimsal wrote:
| I thought the same thing. The only thing I'd want from an
| employer would be time away and space to deal with things on
| my own or with family/friends. No texts, calls, emails about
| anything work related. If you have social connections at
| work, some show of support from colleagues (cards, flowers,
| calls, donations, etc) may be appropriate, but I would not
| expect that. Struggling to think of anything else most
| employers should be expected to do.
| Markoff wrote:
| I don't know what operation they are running, but I work 100%
| from home for years as contractor under same conditions as him
| (heck even my name is Peter), was never hired for this position
| in person, I don't think I even did any interview or video chat,
| just passed the test (though I work on stuff position in person
| many years ago, since then there are no people who met me in
| person working there), but when I communicate with different PMs
| they have all their Chinese work landline numbers in signature
| and they have clearly my number in system, since occasionally
| (maybe 5 times a year?) when I don't respond quick enough to
| their emails someone dares to call me from Chinese number in
| broken English.
|
| So even if I had locked computer/phone (which I don't have) and
| wife couldn't just reply any email (several dozens per day) or
| see phone number in email I can only imagine it would take them
| only few hours to realize I'm not answering and my phone would
| start ringing like crazy.
|
| Btw we never talk personal life, they can only learn about it, if
| I explain why I won't be available in certain hours because I'm
| going to hospital or we just politely wish each other nice
| holidays, all emails are strictly work, we don't even chat and
| during occasional video training I never switch on my camera.
|
| So considering all of this what kind of company is this they
| don't have his phone number to call? And how can they not notice
| he is not answering his emails and not just call to check on him?
| Unless he is not that important part of team they won't notice he
| is missing until his wife let them know.
| broth wrote:
| I have been working fully remote for over two years now. I
| certainly feel quite disconnected from my team now. I remember
| the days of commuting, water cooler talk, and just being around
| people.
|
| I've been with my employer for a long time now and have
| experienced a lot of coworkers passing away. Cancer, heart
| attacks, suicide, and undisclosed. The whole spectrum. Some of
| these coworkers I worked close with while others not so much.
| Either way it affects you and really puts things into perspective
| with how fleeting our lives are. Thinking about this gives me a
| lump in my throat.
| rmk wrote:
| I think human connection and doing things as a community has
| fallen by the wayside in the modern world. It will be
| particularly bad with fully remote work: most people do better
| cognitively and emotionally when they have contact with a variety
| of people and have the changes of scene that are part of a normal
| day.
|
| It's also sad to see the complete disconnect at the workplace,
| where people are no longer building relationships thanks to
| remote work. I do not know about others, but I am loath to
| discuss personal life on slack or on zoom. I am much more likely
| to do it at lunch, in person, with colleagues, or in hallway
| conversations. Nothing at remote work in the past two years has
| replaced that.
| brianwawok wrote:
| Right. But the discussions about a benefit of in person work is
| that hanging out with coworkers end up as "I already have
| friends, I don't need work fake friends".
|
| I just don't think the end state is a cohesive company doing
| their best work. Just a bunch of individuals doing their micro
| task.
| geraldwhen wrote:
| I will not be able to make friends at BigCo. My coworkers are
| all in wildly different stages of life than me, or don't
| speak fluent English, and making any comment outside of a
| thin politically acceptable line could threaten my family's
| livelihood.
|
| On the other hand, saying nothing is safe. And if I do have
| the opportunity to pick between two equal candidates, and one
| is like me and has shared interests and one is not, I'm
| supposed to choose the latter to encourage diverse team
| building.
|
| A job is not a place for friends. Not in corporate America
| anyway.
| rmk wrote:
| I agree that a job is not a place for making friends. But
| collegiality and good relationships with colleagues is
| still better than a complete disconnect from them. After
| all, a huge percentage of waking hours are spent at work.
| tomdell wrote:
| This hasn't been my experience at all. Plenty of social
| connection and discussion of personal lives in my team
| meetings, just less with coworkers who aren't on the same team.
| I'm doing better cognitively and emotionally working from home
| - I can take breaks more freely and use them more fully, going
| on walks around my neighborhood instead of a dull corporate
| park, interacting with my fiance instead of coworkers, napping
| on my lunch break. I have more energy, time and money to
| socialize with friends outside of work and pursue fulfilling
| personal projects thanks to not commuting. I'm more productive
| at work because I'm less distracted by office gossip and
| unproductive coworkers and because I'm happier.
| [deleted]
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| RIP Pete
|
| I didn't know you, but you were a person and it's sad you're not
| among us anymore.
|
| Our line of business is seriously f*ked up if we don't take care
| of people like you.
|
| Thanks for sharing this story, it's important that we all
| remember that connecting with people is so much more than having
| a video chat to talk about features, deadlines and whatnot.
|
| At the cost of being rethoric I wish we've all learned to be
| better, let's put people over deliverables again.
|
| It won't cost us a dime, it will repay us with a lifetime of
| stories to tell and memories to share.
| grae_QED wrote:
| Not to diminish the seriousness of this post but I'm a little
| curious why this site is named 'so fucking agile'. If it's just
| for shits and gigs then it would have been great if they called
| it 'sofa king agile'.
| dvtrn wrote:
| _Pete would ask to work more hours. He claimed he could use the
| money. He was a contractor remember_
|
| Amidst the loss here, this line stood out to me and brings to
| mind all the terrible ways contractors are taken advantage of, or
| at least, treated and compensated vastly different than their
| "staff"/"full-time" peers who are often doing _the exact same
| work_. For fun, google the phrase "permatemp".
|
| E.g. I had a past job as a middle manager where my team
| interfaced heavily with a group of contractor developers
| overseas. When the time came to demo new features and place
| superlatives upon the various teams, I noticed my leadership
| cadre said nothing about the contractors and did not acknowledge
| any of the work they had done.
|
| I spoke up about it when the floor was given for anyone else to
| give kudos where they desired, and mentioned the overseas team
| and thanked their team lead for working with me on delivering. He
| spoke up and expressed his gratitude in kind.
|
| Apparently, this got my CTO into "trouble" with "legal" because I
| guess merely acknowledging contractors was some kind of a
| "problem". As a result, my boss got in trouble. As a result, I
| got written up. I was out of that company within six months after
| relationship with my boss and CTO deteriorated immediately after
| I opened my darn mouth.
|
| For expressing gratitude.
|
| To contractors.
| fiznool wrote:
| This is probably an unpopular opinion but as a contractor, I'm
| not expecting to be fully integrated into a company, nor lauded
| for my efforts. As a contractor, I understand that I am
| plugging a gap at short notice, on a temporary basis. I
| anticipate coming in, being useful and getting paid well to do
| so. I then expect to leave and find something else. The
| flexibility, autonomy and well-remunerated nature of
| contracting is what appeals to me - integrating with co-workers
| and compliments on my work are a distant second.
|
| As an aside, if you are being compensated less than permanent
| employees as a contractor, then your rate is not high enough.
| The 'fully loaded' cost of a permanent employee is higher than
| their stated salary, due to tax, insurance, pension
| contributions etc - all of these need to be deducted from the
| contractor's billable rate to provide an accurate comparison
| between the two.
| kortilla wrote:
| >> Pete would ask to work more hours. He claimed he could use
| the money. He was a contractor remember
|
| >Amidst the loss here, this line stood out to me and brings to
| mind all the terrible ways contractors are taken advantage of
|
| This is like the one scenario where being a contractor is
| better than being salaried. Asking for more hours and getting
| paid for them is absolutely not being "taken advantage of".
| Corrado wrote:
| I was a contractor in corporate America for a while and
| experienced the same thing. The way it was explained to me was
| that you cannot give contractors the same "benefits" is a
| regular employee. If you do, then you have to treat them as
| employees, which means you have to offer the same healthcare,
| PTO structure, etc.
|
| I don't think the rules around the "benefits" were especially
| clear from a legal standpoint. Therefor the company would
| always err on the side of caution. If some auditor somewhere
| could perceive an action or event as employee specific and a
| contractor took part then the company could be penalized for
| it. In my case, it was pretty standard things like in-office
| birthday parties and monthly staff meetings.
|
| It's not right, but I can understand why it happens. The legal
| team in a big corporation is extremely risk averse.
| civilized wrote:
| This seems inconsistent with what little I know of employment
| law, or at least the spirit of the law. The difference
| between an employee and a contractor is mostly about the
| degree of control the employer exerts. Employees are more
| heavily controlled and therefore get more protections and
| benefits.
|
| In a sane world, common practices like forbidding a
| "contractor" from working with any other company would be
| more legally risky than letting a contractor participate in
| an in-office party.
| eric-hu wrote:
| I was a long term, full time contractor from about 2015
| until 2019. It worked out better for me since I was working
| as a nomad abroad. Around 2019, my client wanted me on as
| an employee. I never found out the precise motivations, but
| I suspect it had to do with the contractor laws getting
| tightened down for rideshare drivers. I suspect that I
| could have remained a contractor by the letter of the law,
| but that still might have skirted into territory the legal
| team was not comfortable with. This seems like the most
| reasonable read of the situation to me, but it's still only
| my speculation.
| civilized wrote:
| For all we know, some attorney general was ginning up to
| collectively punish businesses that use contractors
| because recent press had made such businesses politically
| attractive targets. And your client was just trying to
| stay out of the crosshairs.
|
| You can be compliant with the spirit of the law and still
| be targeted by some ideologue using the law as a cudgel.
| eric-hu wrote:
| Yes that's exactly the way I'd characterize the public
| sentiment towards "businesses with many contractors" at
| that time.
| me_me_mu_mu wrote:
| That's dumb. I work with contractors who I consider not only my
| team mates (we work on the same shit) but also my friends. We
| play games together after work sometimes and chat once in a
| while on zoom.
|
| They give demos, leadership gives them kudos, and they feel
| part of the team.
|
| Contractors are team mates with a different employment
| structure but if we're in the trenches together that
| distinction gets thrown out.
| olvy0 wrote:
| That's awful.
|
| I was a contractor myself, and I still work with contractors
| every day. I wasn't treated as badly as that, but I was not too
| happy with how I was treated either. I and my team lead try to
| go out of our ways to acknowledge and include all workers,
| without regard to their actual employers, in all the team's
| meetings and interactions, and acknowledging their
| contributions.
|
| It's still not enough. Just last week, I found out that a team
| member is now considering to leave, and one of their reasons is
| being treated as "less worthy" by the higher-ups in my company.
| There was some internal confusion where they forgot to assign
| them an office, and since they're a contractor, HR ended up
| putting them in a somewhat remote office, away from the team,
| completely ignoring our protests.
|
| The thing is, we (my team lead and I) don't know what to tell
| them, how can we convince them to stay after this. We're at a
| loss.
| geraldwhen wrote:
| Tell them to leave and be happy for them. You cannot fix a
| broken organization.
| Spoom wrote:
| The argument is that it's a legal risk. Look up the Microsoft
| co-employment lawsuit for the kinds of things they're scared
| of. As parent accurately describes, the contractors are doing
| the same kinds of work as full time folks... So to avoid the
| appearance of them being the same (and possibly suing for
| benefits), basically they get treated as second class citizens.
|
| I know of companies where referring to vendors by _name_ is
| frowned upon.
| rvba wrote:
| MBA way of doing business.
|
| On a sidr note: at least they were paid for overtime.
| lostcolony wrote:
| As an hourly employee they legally have to be. If the company
| doesn't, they're in for a world of hurt if the employee
| decides to contact a lawyer. That assumes a level of
| privilege (knowing your rights, having enough money to pay
| for a lawyer's initial time, etc), but that level of
| privilege is common in software, so much so that no company
| with a legal department is going to let it fly to try and
| treat an hourly employee like a salaried one; there's just
| too much risk.
| puritanicdev wrote:
| It was the same in the last two (American) companies I was
| working for. In both companies, my team and I have done some
| majestic work. Still, at the end when C-level people and
| managers were giving aknowledgements and thanks, my team was
| either not mentioned at all, or we've received some vague
| aknowledgements for our work...
|
| We still got paid handsomely, but It sucks to be left out from
| the end credits.
| icecap12 wrote:
| Your comment REALLY resonates with me. When I was fresh out of
| school, I joined an enterprise software team as a junior
| engineer. The team was mostly FTEs, but there were 2 or 3
| contractors as well - one of whom was extremely talented. It
| was the talented one that everybody ganged up on. He was
| ridiculed (it was supposed to be in good fun but I think it
| went too far), and he was abused and given all the hard
| problems to solve. Here's the thing - this guy made up for all
| the rest of those shitty FTEs. He fixed all their problems, he
| did all the real work, developed the best features, and fixed
| all the hard bugs. The lead engineer was an absolute joke (I
| once caught him making changes to a live production database).
| The roles were all reversed.
|
| Well, it didn't sit well with me then, and I became friends
| with that guy and the other contractors. We're still friends to
| this day. I'd say he got the last laugh because he started his
| own company and is doing well. But I promised myself that I
| would never treat any contractor like that ever. I'm a Director
| now, with a team of my own. Similarly, it has a few
| contractors, and every single one of those guys is treated like
| an FTE, with regular 1x1s, objectives, and personal
| development. As a leader, I invest the time in them like
| they're my own, because they are people too - regardless of the
| SSO number or the ".consultant" in their email address.
| paledot wrote:
| This reads like a LinkedIn parable. I hope you're also
| providing them with avenues to become full-time contributors
| if they want to, and ensuring they're fairly compensated and
| have access to the resources as discussed in this thread.
| detcader wrote:
| In some time the future generations will come to consider this
| contractor/employee dichotomy with the same disgust we have for
| child labor. Same with surrogacy and many other things.
| dvtrn wrote:
| Funny you say that, the entire reason I even opened my mouth
| was because I used to be on those contractor teams early in
| my career. Experienced it first hand. It sucked. I knew how
| much it sucked. I promised to be a better leader than the
| ones I had and saw.
| civilized wrote:
| It's a glaringly obvious caste system. I hardly see the
| difference between being punished for praising a contractor
| and being shunned for associating with an "untouchable".
| misslibby wrote:
| Why is a contractor asking for more hours an example of them
| being taken advantage of?
| kradeelav wrote:
| Some people can make it work, but imo it's an orange flag for
| a path to burn-out, especially if it's an excessive number of
| hours and not a standard 9-5 (with all the rest of their
| clients put together). A lot of times contractors work for
| multiple clients at one time, so it's easy to forget "your
| hours" are not their only ones.
| seb1204 wrote:
| From the text I would assume Pete was working full time for
| this company. This is also not unusual for my company.
|
| In Germany there are laws against this type of
| 'contracting' as you seem/are fully depending on one
| client.
| gcheong wrote:
| I don't know if Pete was working from Scotland in which case he
| would have had access to NHS, but if not, then I'm all the more
| convinced that we need such a system in the US so nobody need
| depend on their company status to have access to what should be
| basic healthcare.
| simsla wrote:
| Unfortunately, NHS waiting times for mental health are
| abysmally long.
| sgt wrote:
| Surely there is a private health sector as well?
| oportunityastro wrote:
| Yes, but it is prohibitively expensive for most people
| (ironically because the market is quite small...everyone
| tries to go through the NHS).
|
| The level of underfunding is, however, such that mental
| health providers are a huge part of the private health
| sector: Priory Group is a very big one.
|
| Another factor is that a lot of training for psychologists
| is paid by the NHS, and funding for training has been going
| down everywhere (even in Scotland, which has a left-wing
| govt running the NHS).
|
| It is just a resources problem. Even in the private sector,
| there isn't a supply response to higher prices. Ironically,
| the UK has lots of people who do undergrad Psychology, just
| none of them actually go on to practice because entry is so
| tightly controlled (for some reason, the NHS in Scotland is
| attempting to train nurses to do psychology with a couple
| of days training...that is going as well as you can
| imagine).
| gcheong wrote:
| I don't know what is meant by abysmally long but it seems
| they are trying to rectify some of the shortcomings. It's
| certainly better than nothing at all and I would hope if
| you're imminently suicidal that that would put you in the
| urgent category though:
| https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/nhs-people-patients-
| mi...
| oportunityastro wrote:
| Abysmally long means 1 year plus to get an appointment. And
| you are usually only eligible for a limited course of
| treatment...if you are fortunate enough to get treatment,
| most people don't get treatment at all because there aren't
| the resources (you will get referred to a nurse within your
| GP, who will have done a few days training on basic
| advice). If you have anxiety or even something like autism,
| it can be impossible to get a diagnosis (and btw, this
| isn't just mental health...I have a physical illness, I
| have been waiting roughly two years for treatment and I
| expect I will be waiting at least another year or
| two...this is something that impacts my quality of life
| daily, not fatal but annoying enough).
|
| If you are imminently suicidal, you can be hospitalised but
| there is little to no support outside of that. Bluntly,
| there are a lot imminently suicidal people and limited
| resources. If you attempt to commit suicide and are
| unsuccessful, that wouldn't speed up the process.
|
| Also, it is worth saying the rate of suicide in Scotland is
| very high. I live in a small place in Scotland with
| essentially no poverty, and there are still 10 or so
| suicides every year. I know someone who works as a
| psychologist within the NHS in Dundee (probably one of the
| worst cities globally for suicide/deaths of despair), and
| it is totally out of control. There isn't sufficient
| funding, and there is no way to acquire sufficient
| funding...it isn't possible (and btw, it isn't just
| suicide...heavy drug use in Scotland has been an issue for
| many decades).
| cphoover wrote:
| While I do not always put my camera on... (sometimes I like
| wearing a raggedy old t shirt and taking a call from my sofa
| chair) I think this shows one major advantage to face to face
| communication which is human connection.
| gkop wrote:
| Would you spell out please why you don't put the camera on when
| joining from your sofa chair?
|
| I feel self-conscious joining from my couch occasionally, but
| am pushing through it, there's no reason why we can't normalize
| harmless alternatives to desk locations. So just want to check
| that I'm not missing some material consequence of this
| behavior.
| knorker wrote:
| How people can feel connected as a team without even video I'll
| never understand.
|
| It's hard enough to get a social "fix' over video. Audio only? No
| way. And I say this as an introvert who just knows that sometimes
| I have to take my "social medicine", because it's good for me.
|
| Maybe you feel connected with only audio. I can pretty much
| guarantee there's someone on your team for whom you're just some
| voice with a label (name).
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| I've had online relationships that are just as close and just
| as real as the people I know in person.
|
| Deaths of people whose faces I've never seen and voices I've
| never heard hit just as hard as any other. I've attended an
| online funeral with only text for interaction from a hotel room
| a thousand miles from home. It was just as real as ones in
| person.
| Macha wrote:
| Many of my longest friends are from online relationships, be
| it people I met online or from people I met in person but
| where circumstanes have left irl meetups very infrequent
| (e.g. moved countries).
|
| Compare that to my IRL social circle which has turned over a
| few times as my college friends and I scattered around the
| country post-graduation, or as I've moved around since then.
| trentnix wrote:
| I can remember being on IRC in the mid-90s and hearing that a
| channel regular had passed away. I'd never met them, heard
| them, seen their picture, and never even talked to them
| privately. But somehow there was a real sense of loss and
| sadness, anyway.
| Graffur wrote:
| So if you ring your parents you don't feel connected with them?
| You don't feel connected with your friends playing online
| games?
|
| Video doesn't provide any additional connection to me. I find I
| just look at myself more because you can't hide your own video
| in MS Teams. And then when someone shares their screen and
| includes a video of yourself, you see yourself mirrored which
| is definitely a distraction.
|
| Video calls are unnatural anyway. In a meeting or social
| setting you generally don't sit facing everyone, face to face,
| watching all their movements.
| ianai wrote:
| The thing we can all do is be kind. I had a college dorm mate
| attempt to kill himself over a holiday. He didn't show any signs
| and frankly we his friends probably didn't have the maturity
| bandwidth to be the solution as we too were teens. I'd say being
| kind helps.
|
| This is related to why I abhor arrogance or any signs of holding
| oneself over others. It's fundamentally unkind. If you truly are
| the Wisdom In Flesh Come Down From Heaven then you're breaking
| your humble vow in any shows of arrogance. So be humble and show
| us all what you know. Let us learn from your actions and deeds.
| Don't tell us your greatness or demand your authority.
| faangiq wrote:
| Let's be real this has nothing to do with remote and everything
| to do with callous and corrupt corporate culture.
| asn0 wrote:
| One of the people I managed on a remote team suddenly died one
| night from an aortic aneurysm. He was in his early 40's, had his
| teen-aged daughter living with him (who fortunately was away
| visiting her mom). I'd talked to him only hours before. I'd only
| met him once in-person, just a few weeks before, when he and I
| and another person I managed had an informal "on-site". I'd
| learned recently the two of them had been really good friends for
| many years.
|
| The company had never had to handle something like this.
| Thankfully, HR and execs had the right priorities - concern for
| his family, respect for him and his family in how the news was
| shared with co-workers (especially with cause-of-death being
| unclear at first), concern for how it would affect close co-
| workers and others in the company, awareness that people would
| need to process and grieve in their own way.
|
| HR talked with the family and got their permission to make an
| announcement to co-workers, and some guidance on the wording. HR
| offered to send this, but I felt that would feel too impersonal.
| I wanted news like that to come across in the most personal way
| possible, from someone (like me) who knew and cared for him.
|
| The amazing response from the company was a big part of the
| healing. So many people wanted to do something. The family
| decided to have a private ceremony, and asked that instead of
| flowers, donations be made to an animal charity his daughter
| loved. People really felt for his daughter, and wanted to send
| cards and letters (which the family was happy to support). One of
| the teams (that hardly knew him) decided to have a commemoration
| during their weekly meeting.
|
| The hardest part of all of this was (a) when his daughter called
| me to arrange for return of his work equipment and (b) when a
| family member suggested that one way I could help would be to
| share some of my experiences with his daughter about working with
| her dad. I have girls of the same age, so pretty close to home.
| It was hard to write that letter (#b), but it was also healing
| for me to think about the many positive ways he'd affected me and
| our team.
|
| A few days later, it felt right to me to have some "closure". I
| sent a note to the company thanking everyone for the different
| ways they had respectfully honored our co-worker and supported
| his family. I also shared some of my memories working with him,
| and how much I missed his contagious happiness. As sad as it was
| that he wasn't with us anymore, I wanted to remember how much fun
| it was to work with him, and that's what I was going to focus on.
|
| I hope I won't have to go through that again any time soon, but
| when I do, I hope it goes this well.
| madrox wrote:
| I realize there are toxic side effects to "our team is like
| family," but it's been important to me to find ways to express
| any sentiment that recognizes the shared humanity of people
| coming together to work on common goals. I'm glad to hear the
| team was given space to grieve. It's not something that comes up
| in a typical management playbook.
|
| Take care of your team and your peers. You may not be family, but
| you're something else kinda like it.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| "Pete had no HR, no health benefits, and no employee record with
| alternate or emergency contacts."
|
| Welcome to tech dystopia, I guess.
| misslibby wrote:
| He was presumably making good money, so able to buy his own
| insurance? According to the article he was from Scottland, so
| presumably he would also have been eligible for care from the
| NHS, like every other UK citizen?
|
| Just because people organize their own things, it is not
| "dystopia". Some people don't need and/or don't want a nanny or
| a nanny state.
| charcircuit wrote:
| beaconstudios wrote:
| Dude, the guy /died/. We memorialise the people we care about
| when they pass away.
| kilburn wrote:
| I have conflicting feelings about this.
|
| I've witnessed a company name a hall after a guy who took his
| life. We all knew that the main reason he did it was because
| the company wouldn't secure his position. He was an expert on
| a very specialized field and losing his job meant he would
| have to move to a different country. It still feels
| hypocritical when I think about it.
|
| It is generally accepted that a company's mission is simply
| to make money for its shareholders. Management will fire
| good, well-performing, committed people without thinking
| twice about how it impacts their life. But then someone dies
| in a car accident or takes their life and ... it's memorial
| time? It feels off.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| I agree that companies should be less exploitative and
| generally evil, but that doesn't subtract from this
| particular case. I agree that it can be done cynically
| though, and that's messed up.
| pdpi wrote:
| What you're describing is a company naming a hall after an
| employee when that employee was just numbers on a
| spreadsheet to them. What this article is talking about is
| a specific team, who had a personal relationship with Pete,
| adding that memorial as part of their own coping process.
| The former is definitely cynical and offputting, while the
| latter is human and heartfelt.
| tartoran wrote:
| You're conflating company with the team and direct peers.
| You're right about the company mission but the workers are
| human and make connections with their peers.
| crankysiren wrote:
| is the tribute page sofuckingagile.com/Pete?
| asyncscrum wrote:
| It's inside a b2b enterprise app with ~50k mau. However that
| would have been a fitting blog path. But his name wasn't
| actually Pete
| desireco42 wrote:
| I lost a colleague year ago. Both him and me were at the similar
| level, we had really good professional relationship. He had
| family issues and while we talked, he never wanted to share too
| much (but I knew what is happening). We did know each other in
| person before we went remote because of pandemic.
|
| Now, he got laid off during one of the "smart realignments" our
| oversized corporation did. Didn't make sense at all but it
| happened. Me and another colleague (both immigrants) were the
| only one who reached out, I tasked my reports to write him
| testimonials on LinkedIn etc, my other friend connected him to
| where he eventually will find a job. He was a proud man, with
| personal issues, this was really too much.
|
| Two months later he took his life away.
|
| It was really hard to this day to think about this. I was always
| supportive of him so I don't have that kind of guilt, but I
| always think, what would happen if he was not laid off, if things
| were different.
|
| Anyhow, in a weird way, I understand this. We really need to show
| more support and understanding to each other way more, remote or
| in person.
|
| After that I was in charge of team and we had so much fun and
| care about each other, I got a message from a new guy who joined
| the team around I was leaving, just telling me how unique and
| good experience he had and how they are trying to preserve all
| the good things I instituted.
| rendall wrote:
| If you work remote, I encourage you to turn on your cameras, and
| encourage icebreakers and social chatting. Have face-to-face
| meetings if possible, but take time out to hang out with your
| remote colleagues. Do this daily. It is important for mental
| health, and will also help with team trust and productivity.
|
| My sincerest, heart-broken condolences to @sofuckingagile.
| chrisandchris wrote:
| What's the experience / statistics about that? I'm not always
| cam-on but most of the time I use the cam and I encourage
| others to use it.
|
| > [...] and even during the interview process we didn't use
| cameras.
|
| Yes, appereance does not matter (mostly) for your job
| performance, but seing a face just makes it more human.
| jeandejean wrote:
| That's the very reason why I don't want full remote as a norm. I
| want to see my people and meet colleagues, for a good laugh or
| whatever but for human interactions that I value a lot. Very sad
| story here, twice as sad with that profound lack of human
| interaction...
| willcipriano wrote:
| For me, "my people" are at home. The transactional work
| relationships do nothing for me on a human or social level.
| It's like when a pretty waitress is nice to you, it means
| little since she is paid to be nice.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Second this. Colleagues are just people I interact with to
| receive a wage. Friends and loved ones are elsewhere and at
| home.
| [deleted]
| Angostura wrote:
| whereas I generally like people. You say: "The transactional
| work relationships do nothing for me on a human or social
| level" perhaps the mistake you are making is seeing any
| interaction with the people at work as purely transactional -
| or being absolutely determined to keep it that way.
|
| I have a family and kids and friends. But I absolutely have
| friends who I have made at work as well. I quite regularly go
| out for a beer with people I worked with in the 1990s.
| willcipriano wrote:
| Here's the problem. If I talk with my friends and misspeak
| or say something I don't mean, worst case is I lose the
| friendship. At work I lose my livelyhood. That means I have
| to have a constant cognitive overhead at all times at work,
| I am unable to explore ideas that don't fit into that
| narrow box. If your life fits entirely into the confines of
| polite society maybe you don't have this worry, but I can't
| bring my full self into these situations and that makes it
| feel transactional to me.
|
| The narrow workplace acceptable box is full of activities
| and thoughts that I'm long bored of. That means workplace
| interactions will be boring by definition.
| Angostura wrote:
| I suspect that there are probably literally an infinity
| of thoughts and concepts that it is acceptable to talk
| about at work.
| willcipriano wrote:
| Everything except politics, religion, sexuality, drug
| use, firearms, philosophy and your ambitions in life
| (unless they are die working here).
|
| You also don't want to bring up things like playing video
| games too much, or going out for drinks too often, unless
| people get the wrong impression about you. Getting too
| personal about issues you are facing in life also can be
| career limiting.
| [deleted]
| supertofu wrote:
| This was heartbreaking to read. What disturbs me most is the lack
| of any face-to-face time for this distributed team. I understand
| that not everyone likes to use a webcam, but to have gone 7 years
| without ever seeing your colleague's face seems, in my opinion, a
| symptom of a big managerial problem. Software engineers are
| usually humans, and teams composed of humans should make some
| effort to interact in a human way -- face to face (even just once
| a year!)
|
| It's also easier to get measure on how people are doing
| emotionally when you see them in person semi-regularly. (Not
| always, of course, but when you get to know people in person and
| learn their body language, you get a sense of their emotional
| baseline, and it gets easier to notice when something is off. Of
| course, none of this matters when there is no HR support because
| an employee is "just a contractor")
| user_7832 wrote:
| I was also surprised by the complete absence of face to face
| interaction. It seems very odd; though I hope it is not
| something that the author ends up regretting as well. Mental
| health needs to be talked about much more and de-stigmatized.
| hohoemi8 wrote:
| I'm probably a minority but I don't care about my company or
| coworkers or building relationships. I'm just here to do a job
| to make money. As soon as I find a better offer I will happily
| quit. So being forced to use a camera to attend unnecessary
| meetings is just annoying to me.
| supertofu wrote:
| For a long time I was like this too -- until I arrived at my
| current job. My dev coworkers are good friends, and I care
| immensely about their well-being.
| scarface74 wrote:
| If a company cares about their employees getting to know each
| other - and they should - and they are distributed, they should
| budget for travel for them to meet in a central place - not
| withstanding a worldwide pandemic.
|
| No, cameras and "virtual happy hours" don't cut it. I was hired
| remotely 6/2020 and the rest of my division is remote. I didn't
| meet any of my coworkers until 9/2022. I didn't meet most of my
| teammates until even later (long story, there is distinction).
| But this was completely due to Covid not company culture.
|
| It's made a world of difference. My manager just said that if
| any of us feel that we need to get together for a few days, he
| has no problem with us meeting at any of the corporate offices
| around the US, just give him a heads up.
| [deleted]
| supertofu wrote:
| Absolutely. Remote companies need to invest in team get-
| togethers.
| ENGNR wrote:
| I don't know, would it be more awkward for management to force
| you to turn on your webcam? I think the lack of face to face
| and the free language of this post shows some empathy. Maybe
| they could/should have arranged an in person trip sooner than
| that or something
| teknopaul wrote:
| +1 I hate cameras, and pushing social media was a source of
| mental health issues for me. Lost a couple of colleagues
| recently, who I had never seen, I don't think cameras would
| have helped. Especially not when mourning loss. Face to face
| meetings are imperative, but not cameras. Plenty of people
| are camera shy but just fine over dinner or a swift pint.
|
| Can't understate the importance of breaking bread.
| gkop wrote:
| +1 to that would be awkward, and post shows some empathy
|
| A strong manager of course would not mandate micro behaviors
| like webcam use. A strong manager perhaps might 1) give space
| for the team to develop their own norms, 2) subtly nudge
| those norms with intention to test a hypothesis, gauge the
| result, and iterate and 3) once healthy norms have developed,
| take steps to formalize them (while taking care to maintain
| space for healthy dissent).
| asyncscrum wrote:
| Am OP, can speak to the lack of cameras. We actually crafted
| our process in the Microsoft Lync era. Video was brutal. Also
| because of the diverse accents (Vietnamese, Portuguese,
| Russian, Scottish) it was easier to 'listen' without
| distraction. Obviously if you were starting today, cameras
| would be on. As you pointed out, probably a mistake.
| Philip-J-Fry wrote:
| I feel like it's much easier to understand what someone is
| saying when you can see their face and mouth than if it's
| just audio.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| Same here. Seeing their lips move often provides just
| enough additional information for me to correctly guess
| their words.
| darkerside wrote:
| I can see this not being the case with international
| latency causing lag between audio and video
| cfcosta wrote:
| Nowadays, with high definition and close to no
| perceivable latency. Early video chat was so bad that
| having the video on was more distracting than helpful.
| supertofu wrote:
| I'm so very sorry for Pete's suffering and the loss to you
| and your team.
|
| I hope I didn't imply that "cameras are required for
| distributed teams!!" I don't agree with that and you're right
| that it's super impractical a lot of the time.
|
| I do hope to suggest that in-person team-building shouldn't
| be overlooked for the success and well-being of distributed
| teams.
| [deleted]
| lostlogin wrote:
| I've never used Lync, but Teams with poor internet
| connections is terrible, so I'm not sure everything has
| improved.
|
| I used to have a lot of Australian colleagues and their
| connections made calls with 5+ people just horrible.
| busterarm wrote:
| You'd be surprised how normal this is, historically, among
| remote-first companies (pre-pandemic).
|
| A decade or so ago, I worked at a remote-only company with 1600
| employees and we never cammed up. We had a large number of
| employees with serious medical conditions or other personal
| issues that prevented them from holding down normal jobs and
| really appreciated not having to go on video.
| notamy wrote:
| > We had a large number of employees with serious medical
| conditions or other personal issues that prevented them from
| holding down normal jobs and really appreciated not having to
| go on video.
|
| This is the reason I treasure my current company. The work I
| do works around my disability perfectly, they don't demand I
| have video on, they're very understanding of my health
| issues, ... I got seriously lucky and hope I don't have to
| leave this position for a long time.
| mgkimsal wrote:
| I'm on a couple of remote teams, and set the expectation that
| I won't be 'camera on' all the time during meetings. My
| reasons are more practical than privacy oriented. I'm often
| pacing during meetings, and connected via phone and desktop.
| I can see and hear what's going on, and can talk back, but
| when my camera is 'on' it's just constant movement, which
| distracts folks.
|
| Every couple of weeks I'll start a meeting with camera on for
| a minute or so just to say 'hello' to some folks, let them
| see I'm still 'here' in some sense, then camera off
| (usually). It feels useful to have some initial face/camera
| time to get a sense of the other person, but again, it's not
| something I generally routinely will leave on.
|
| I had a period of a month or so last year where I moved to a
| Mac mini and... there's no camera. I didn't have a working
| webcam at all laying around, and it took me a month to bother
| to get a new one. No one missed anything of value by not
| seeing my face during that time. :)
|
| Over the last 5-6 years, it's only been a noted issue with a
| handful of folks, and never been a deal breaker. The
| compromise is 'on' now and then for the start of a meeting.
| There's a humanizing aspect which is easy to lose sight of,
| but in most meetings, it's typically not that useful anyway.
| When there's more than a handful of folks, not all camera
| boxes can be see (too small, too many), and if/when you're
| working with a smaller group, there's usually much more value
| in sharing a document/editor/whatever.
| paulcole wrote:
| > No one missed anything of value by not seeing my face
| during that time. :)
|
| How do you know this for a fact? You think sharing your
| face isn't valuable, why do you think this applies to
| everyone you work with, too?
| mgkimsal wrote:
| Speaking in absolutist terms, I can't know as 'fact',
| true. The output/quality/pace of the group was about as
| close as it could be during that period of no camera
| whatsoever. But the comparison is my normal MO which is
| camera on a few minutes per week. So the delta wasn't
| that different to begin with.
| gkop wrote:
| What efforts have you made to get candid feedback here
| though?
|
| > it's only been a noted issue with a handful of folks,
| and never been a deal breaker
|
| In my experience it's not realistic to expect people to
| proactively note constructive feedback on one's unhelpful
| behaviors. It takes creativity and effort to collect
| candid feedback.
|
| Do you work with anyone for whom the language spoken at
| work is not their first language? They might appreciate
| any advantage you could offer to make yourself easy to
| understand.
| mgkimsal wrote:
| No, everyone (bar one person) has the same native
| language. The person with non-native English does not
| care, and often has their camera off as well.
|
| The 'issue', such as it has ever been raised, was "why
| don't you have your camera on?", and in one case it was
| "I have no camera", and in another case it was "I'm
| walking around, you won't see me or you'll get dizzy
| trying to look at me".
|
| > It takes creativity and effort to collect candid
| feedback.
|
| I'm not sure how much I actually want to spend time
| 'collecting candid feedback' vs a) getting stuff done and
| b) supporting other people in getting their stuff done.
| Camera on/off has not been noted as enough of a hindrance
| (as in, any at all) by anyone as an impact on their
| ability to get stuff done. We also have phones and direct
| meetings where people can collaborate that way.
|
| Forcing "cameras on" is... the covid-era version of
| "butts in seats" it seems.
| waylandsmithers wrote:
| Not that long ago conference or regular phone calls with no
| video at all were the norm and we seemed to get along fine
| supernovae wrote:
| Depression is something we never talk about and don't treat as
| a health concern. My daughter attempted suicide and it wasn't
| for any reasons I could relate to. That was a hard lesson for
| me.
|
| What i did learn is that depression is taboo, therapy isn't
| talked about openly, insurance doesn't cover therapy well and
| there aren't enough therapists in existence that the burden of
| depression seems to heavy. It's not because we didn't turn on
| cameras but because of systemic failures in our culture and a
| fascination with puritanical beliefs at all costs. Come to work
| depressed, come to work sick, work all day long, have no life,
| have no vacation, never mind the cost of living surpasses your
| ability to afford to live and now just living seems like the
| worst option.. replace work with school...
|
| not a single person here seems to be talking about how we've
| normalized suffering and as long as it's always someone else,
| it's their loneliness it's their depression it's their problem.
| we celebrate the people who would be psychopaths if we knew
| better.. it's odd
|
| we have a society in place that doesn't afford opportunity for
| all and not only doesn't afford it, but is politically
| motivated to make sure people suffer for wanting to live it how
| they wished they could.
|
| the puritanical fetish at all cost - mostly because they
| suffered through it and so should you...
| bckr wrote:
| > That was a hard lesson for me
|
| Let me tell you: you are a good parent merely for having this
| attitude.
| [deleted]
| JCharante wrote:
| Maybe it's different, but I've known people for a decade
| without ever seeing their face. Just communicating through
| text, text to speech software, or through VOIP while playing
| games. You can build deep connections and know their voices
| very well to hear when things are off.
|
| Of course at work I've seen people's faces but as someone who
| grew up online, only voice comms seems normal too.
| [deleted]
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > but to have gone 7 years without ever seeing your colleague's
| face seems, in my opinion, a symptom of a big managerial
| problem.
|
| Video calling is still a relatively recent thing. It will
| become more unusual not to have video calls, but the past is
| less likely to have had it, not more.
| illender wrote:
| Ive been on fmla since first week of jan. i'm trading self harm
| for more time. the thoughts are killing me slowly until i lose
| the battle. i'm desperatly trying to bring myself to call EAP and
| get in a hospital but that scares me even more. I tried to resign
| my remote job and they refused to accept it and sent the cops. i
| don't know why i'm sharing this here. The entire company went on
| holiday and i volunteered for the week between xmas and new years
| to keep distracted.
| CrispinS wrote:
| I can relate, and I was in a similar situation not too long
| ago. I remember dreading weekends because there was nothing to
| stop me from curling up in a ball and crying the whole day.
|
| And honestly, if you've taken advantage of FMLA, you're
| actually doing better at taking steps to help yourself than I
| was!
|
| Medication really helped me. I've been on bupropion for about
| two years, and it's made for a drastic improvement. I'm
| actually able to see things for how they actually are, and not
| let every minor stumbling block or criticism make me think I'm
| a complete and utter failure.
|
| If recommend finding a mental health clinic nearby and
| scheduling an appointment to talk about depression. The
| appointment will probably take half an hour, and at the end the
| doctor will give you a prescription. This is _extremely_
| routine -- you 're not suffering from anything a million people
| haven't gone through already.
|
| If you're scared on being institutionalized or something,
| just... Selectively tell the truth. I mean, I can't say this is
| the best idea, but it's what I did when the psychiatrist asked
| me if I had suicidal thoughts.
|
| I think the most important thing to keep in mind is that your
| brain is just another body part. If your knee hurts, you go to
| a doctor and get it looked at. If your vision is blurry, you go
| to an optometrist and get glasses. If your brain is giving
| incorrect responses to stimuli, you go to a psychiatrist and
| get medication. It's fine and it's normal.
| geraldwhen wrote:
| Screw the job. Join a group fitness class, an amateur sport,
| something with other people that isn't a job. Leave mid day.
| Take a walk.
|
| What are they going to do, fire you? Who cares.
| 58x14 wrote:
| Hey, you matter.
|
| The world is pretty fucking broken and you have every reason to
| feel how you do. I don't have pithy advice, I'm just another
| guy on the internet.
|
| But things can change. I promise they can. I don't know how or
| when, but they can. And you're not alone. I promise there are
| so many people fighting the same battle.
|
| Don't give up.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| Many times you can't know it was going to happen.
|
| As some who is bipolar and struggled with suicidal thoughts most
| of my life, you wouldn't know. The thoughts had been so constant
| they became background noise I learned to ignore. By the time I
| was ten years old, I knew I had to hide anything that wasn't
| "normal".
|
| As far as never meeting the person you knew...
|
| I've lost a friend I only knew online this way. I never knew
| their face, their voice, or their real name, but we had been on
| the same mod team for two years. We found out because their SO
| posted some details on Twitter.
|
| A few people organized an online memorial service. I think we
| used Twitch for the audio for some readings and Discord for
| discussion.
|
| These things were no different from the friends I've known in
| person. Relationships are relationships.
| saos wrote:
| Very sad. I'm not sure if this is problem of remote working but
| more of a relationship / communication / poor company culture
| issue. But, it clearly does show remote work done wrong. The
| theme had been set from the interview...
|
| > I was the person who hired him and even during the interview
| process we didn't use cameras.
|
| anyways this is why I'm a big fan of hybrid working. We often
| think about ourselves in this moment but actually it's important
| for others who may actually need human interaction.
| UglyToad wrote:
| Not reading the article because I think I'll find it too
| upsetting but I think you're right that the issues described
| aren't necessarily remote based.
|
| A friend of mine died of suicide back in college and it wasn't
| clearly communicated, there wasn't any support offered, etc.
| And this was a group of people gathered in person almost daily.
| We found out the details from an online news site.
|
| Unfortunately suicide can kill people wherever, whenever.
| Problems handling it aren't solely the preserve of remote
| companies.
| saos wrote:
| I do feel like WFH does compound loneliness factor. Overall
| it's all about relationship with others. If we have that then
| we can all help each-other...
| NoblePublius wrote:
| "Full time contractor" is an oxymoron.
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| I...was not ready for this one...bit too close to home for me
| mateusfreira wrote:
| Thanks for sharing. We sometimes forget that we are fragile. This
| post needed to be read by all remote teams.
| rob74 wrote:
| Yeah, working remote has many advantages when looking at it
| "rationally", but humans (even software developers!) are social
| beings and a lot of that gets lost with remote work. I tend to
| also not turn the camera on more often than not, have to
| remember to change that...
| leeoniya wrote:
| > I was the person who hired him and even during the interview
| process we didn't use cameras
|
| this is so bizzare.
| beebeepka wrote:
| I treat camera requirements as red flags. Don't want to get
| judged for skipping shaving for a month
| jnwatson wrote:
| 7 years as a contractor is abuse. It is abuse of the crappy
| enforcement of labor laws and abuse of the contractor.
|
| That you can have an integrated member of the team clearly be a
| second-class citizen, that's just hard to fathom.
| [deleted]
| burntoutfire wrote:
| Depends on the particulars. In some countries in Europe,
| contractors pay much less taxes than FTEs. Hence, a lot of
| people prefer contracting. The additional benefit of being
| outside of grasp of HR and their processes (I'm mostly a
| contractor and never once in my life had to formaly define
| "yearly goals" or write up evaluation of my peers) is also nice
| for a lot of people.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| I don't know, I was offered W2 at my job and declined it. As a
| contractor I get to invest far more of my salary towards tax
| deductible retirement accounts and I get paid for OT. I don't
| get paid time off which is unfortunate. But I have had projects
| where I consistently worked 80 - 90 hour weeks. I am lucky
| enough to get my benefits via my wife's job though. I do agree
| with you though regarding someone that wants to come on board
| as a w2 employee, stringing them along for so long is pretty
| bad.
| exitb wrote:
| Isn't it difficult/impossible to employ a remote worker from a
| different country? I assume the company was American, while the
| contractor worked from Scotland.
| keskival wrote:
| You can use abundant Employer of Record (EOR) platforms to
| payroll people located in other countries.
| jlokier wrote:
| The company is free to treat contractors as well as an
| employee in many respects, if it chooses, even if pays them
| as a contractor internationally and has the legal constraints
| associated with that.
|
| Things like: Putting them on the same mailing list as regular
| employees, inviting them to the same company-wide meetings,
| including them in international company get-togethers and
| christmas parties, paid vacation time and sick leave, listing
| them in the company directory and org chart, paying a day
| rate so they aren't counting specific hours, a training
| allowance, giving them the same credit for work as employees,
| equity including vesting, any of the HR functions that were
| mentioned in this story (such as bereavement support), etc.
|
| The idea that a contractor can't have HR services or that
| nobody in the company knows about them just "because they are
| a contractor", or that they have to be paid by the hour with
| no paid time off, is really just down to company policy. Some
| companies have better policies.
| Macha wrote:
| Worked in the vicinity of a guy in one of our US offices who
| flip flopped between employee and contractor a few times on his
| own initiative. He eventually settled on a FTE role when he
| became a manager and to my understanding that was a company
| decision that no we can't have a contractor manager.
| jonp888 wrote:
| Some people choose to stay as contractors.
|
| My last team had one. Compared to the internal employees he
| earned more money, paid less tax, could work for multiple
| employers, could work from home 5 days a week instead of 1(pre-
| pandemic), and had more say over what projects he worked on. No
| way would he have agreed to join as an employee.
| 1270018080 wrote:
| In developed countries (so not the US) that have public
| healthcare, I've heard contracting roles are much more common,
| typically preferred by workers, and pay better.
| noirbot wrote:
| It's interesting that you think that they're "clearly" "second-
| class". I've never had a feeling that the contractors on the
| teams I worked on were treated any differently. Obviously I
| didn't know their pay/benefits, but that's even true of folks
| in different offices/countries that are FTEs.
|
| If anything our contractors seemed to have looser schedules and
| would often take planned extended vacations for a month or so
| since they didn't have any real limit on vacation time, just
| however long they didn't want to be working.
|
| If anything, inside of Ops stuff, contractors are usually
| amazing to have around since they often have worked at a lot of
| different companies and have seen different patterns and
| practices in person to compare.
| treis wrote:
| > Obviously I didn't know their pay/benefits, but that's even
| true of folks in different offices/countries that are FTEs.
|
| Usually contractors make more than FTEs for various reasons.
| It's only in the context of H1B body shops that contractors
| really get abused. Otherwise, the trade is higher pay for
| less stability.
| mparnisari wrote:
| "His wife had to create a support ticket". Jesus. I can't imagine
| my own family being able to even FIND how to create a ticket to
| alert my company.
|
| Thanks for sharing the story. RIP Pete.
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