I don't recall when I first met Bob; I've known him for over 14 years. I've known him first virtually on IRC and then in person at around 2010. We share so many common friends, it's pretty crazy. I guess that's the open source world of nerds for you.
One thing I loved about Bob, is regardless of what he built, who he knew or worked with, you would never see him lean on that to express who he was..
Bob was just a real person with a passion for programming and helping people.
Looking back on my time knowing Bob, I do regret not taking him up on his offer to work with him. I could only imagine how I would have grown as a person by working closely with him.
I do want to say, Bob clearly had a consistency in his style of clothing. It didn't changed over the years.. lol
To void burn out, I did a few things which I feel are extremely helpful.
1. Have a room that is a dedicated office. When I leave this room, I leave the "office".
2. Establish communication throughout the day. This means having slack conversations (typed and video) that are casual. It's okay to vent on these calls.
3. Have a defined schedule - Awake at 6am, washed/dressed by 6:30am, Red Bull (or if you like food) and at my desk by 7am. I do work long hours, but I enjoy it because I'm accomplishing something.
4. Work on something that excites you or find joy in your work somehow.
5. Lastly, realize most of the mental stress can be managed with a little mindfulness, learning to accept that you still can grow and find joy even when at home and cut back on social media; or if you're like me, I cut out 99% of social media.
I hope everyone remains positive. Do something today, that makes you better tomorrow.
Sorry for the unqualified snark here, just couldn‘t resist. The realities couldn‘t be more different for different people at this time.
Someone recently asked me whether I enjoyed my Corona free time as well.
I didn’t know what to answer as could not even comprehend the concept.
I‘m missing everything. Time for myself. Silence. Holidays. Physical movement. Sanity.
Work and Noise, non-stop, around the clock. Still falling behind on all projects with limited understanding of single colleagues with more time to kill than Netflix has content.
I love those rascals, but I‘m crashing on the couch every night and barely make it out of bed the next day. Just functioning and surviving.
I had a "Covid fling" with someone who I would have never dated otherwise. Obviously, that made things a lot more fun than they otherwise would have been.
I am a childless couple, and although I love my partner and there have been no major fights or anything during this whole pandemic, we are living in a small 1 1/2 room flat and sometimes it's just stressful to go from working from home to constantly sitting on top of each other. There is no retreat, either you go to the bedroom/office and the other person stays in the living room or you are stuck on top of each other.
All in all I'm very grateful for our privileged situation, but I would not say I enjoy lockdowns or the pandemic.
this. same situation as you. Do you have any tips? Mine is having a predefined schedule throughout the day (semi formal schedule will work) works great. Also, are both of you working? how do you work? 6 hrs each?
Your comment resonated with me. 3 kids, (6,4,1) so my days start around 5am with the baby and basically alternating between working and helping with kids alternating every 30 minutes until 8. Every day.
I totally feel you. It's certainly been really hard for us. 4 year old going crazy, me at my desk all day most days. We try to cover for the other one while they get personal time, but it's me with the full time job.
This past few weeks I've started work at 6am (it's 6:07 right now) so that I can create some more space during the day and give her time.
I give my son some focused attention / special time in the middle of the day and in the evening. It's important that he gets a good intense dose of me and I'm not distracted when with him. Without that he's feeling unwanted (why does papa work all the time?) and he acts out. He refuses to join us for dinner: "I'm working" he says.
I disagree. I've got more kids than you do (edit: I misread your post, I'm not clear how many children you have. My apology for the mistake), all at difficult ages including a 1 year old. They are one of the few things making COVID seclusion tolerable for me.
The near constant interaction can be exhausting, but it has also been very rewarding. I know my kids better than ever and have gotten to participate in a lot of moments I would've missed.
I find that the narrative I give myself around things like this is very important. If I told myself I was barely surviving my kids I would probably feel that way. Instead I focus on how lucky I am to be surrounded by my family, and that it's a wonderful thing to have unprecedented amounts of time with them. I've perhaps never been happier with my family than I have been during the pandemic.
None of that is a criticism of people who are struggling. Just looking to offer another point of view.
You're saying that lockdown added value to your life with kids. That's not an argument that having kids is easier than not having kids.
Life is complex. A change can be beneficial in some ways and harmful to others. And you have many children and keeps wanting more, you are probably an extravert not an introvert.
They never said how many kids they had, which makes it hard to take your comment seriously.
You don't know what their kids are like, how much spousal support they have, the floorplan or acoustics of their home, how hard their work is, or what their threshold for noise is.
> None of that is a criticism of people who are struggling. Just looking to offer another point of view.
No. It's easy to convince yourself that that sort of thing is helpful, but all you're really saying is that you can't understand because your particular circumstances are better.
Same boat here. 2 kids - 2.5 years and 2 months. All day just cycling between work and kids every 30-40 mins. Exhausted and falling behind projects at the same time with limited understanding from superiors and colleagues who either are single or can afford child care.
I've really enjoyed the extra time with my six-year-old daughter rather than sending her off to school. Having her around the house and able to come into my office for random cuddles during the working day is a joy.
I'm not dismissing the challenges you're facing but single no child people are suffering too, just very different challenges. I've spent almost a year alone in a flat with no separate working space and unable to do any of my usual hobbies and social activities. The challenges are very different but both groups have challenges.
I personally don't have children and I didn't _really_ understand how difficult it is to have kids at home while working. When I moved back East, I did spend 3 days at my brothers.
He has two adorable little girls; 1.5 years old and 2 months.
His kids are pretty calm, by most standards.. but you can't let the older one out of sight for a few seconds.
I certainly feel your pain even though I don't have kids.
Question: Tell me how much you love going to the bathroom or getting washed now. It's the only time you have to yourself lol
At the beginning of this, our day care closed down for a couple of months and it was tough (thankfully grandma got stuck with us at the time). Things got much better when daycare reopened, though we had to switch due to moving and had a misfire with a daycare that was too big and too restrictive for our tastes (we found one that could be less restrictive because they had fewer kids).
My daughters daycare told us point blank no staff wear masks unless answering the door and they “don’t want to close for a virus” (you can read between the lines). One of the teachers also shops for instacart half days. No thank you.
Staff in our state (WA) are required to wear masks. Kids under 5 aren’t required to wear masks. They take precautions, but at least we are allowed to escort our kid to class and talk to the teacher everyday.
Hey, I know it’s hard to think otherwise right now, but there are many great reasons to live and you being alive and in hopefully good health is a great gift. There are many people that are in bad situations and one way to not be lonely is to try and connect with others you might be able to help just by being there.
This is going to be over soon, so look forward to it and start getting ready (eat, exercise, and relearn grooming/dressing you forgot during lockdown).
More so than before covid, other people are going to want to meet you.
>Have a room that is a dedicated office. When I leave this room, I leave the "office".
If this is important (and I agree it is) then we're setting up the vast majority of people for burnout. Most people don't have the luxury of a room they can convert into an office.
> Most people don't have the luxury of a room they can convert into an office.
For those who don't understand, here's my annecdote:
After the divorce the only thing I could afford in my son's school district is a 2 bedroom^ apartment. I have to pack up "my office" just to serve dinner. We now have lunch from the couch. I'm not complaining, but the idea of a dedicated room is up there with personal island for me.
^ the master is his to give him playspace lacking a playroom
I understand too having been divorced and had to downsize to be close to my son for shared custody. What helped is doing away with a bed and opting for a Japanese futon setup where I fold up my bed and have loads more space to work.
A workspace can be temporal not geographic. Use your "non-commute time" to change over the curtains/linens/folding-furniture (and clothes!) to change the context from home to work.
Like Mr Rogers changing his shoes and sweater.
The fourth bullet point is also a non-starter. I'm sorry, but it's not, nor was it ever, good advice for programmers to write code both at work and at home. We don't expect this of other careers, we shouldn't expect it of developers, either.
Feel free to write code after work if you like, but to consider it anywhere close to a requirement, even to just help with burnout, is perpetuating a rather toxic view of this particular industry's workers.
A lot of us get into programming because we enjoy it, but the realities of work often mean doing boring repetitive tasks. OP isn't suggesting that it's mandatory, just a way to keep from feeling burnt out, and I agree.
Additionally, if you're smart that time can wind up being compensated later. I wrote JavaScript on my own for 3.5 years before I started doing it professionally, and while I didn't get paid, it allowed me to eventually double my income, so I consider it a great investment.
> We don't expect this of other careers,
Sure we do. Doctors may be expected to read medical journals or keep up on the latest research, for example.
> Additionally, if you're smart that time can wind up being compensated later. I wrote JavaScript on my own for 3.5 years before I started doing it professionally, and while I didn't get paid, it allowed me to eventually double my income, so I consider it a great investment.
Great if you are young and have no commitments. Not so great if you are old and have many commitments.
Or are we expecting programmers to program after work even during their later years?
> Or are we expecting programmers to program after work even during their later years?
Look, OP suggested a strategy for not getting burnt out that works for them, and I'm just saying what works for me. You are the one who is turning this into some sort of "expectation".
If you don't want to code outside of work, and don't see value in it, don't do it. Nobody gives a rats ass.
Indeed doctors do, at least in the US although I don’t know how it works internationally. They’re called CMEs (continuing medical education) and they need to earn a certain number of hours per year
Who said it had to be writing code? If finding joy in work is unrealistic, then take up a musical instrument, build a model railroad, write short stories, or something totally unrelated. (I've been a full-time code monkey by day and musician by night for going on six years, and I'm still finding other hobbies to dabble in.)
Two counter points. First, it depends on the personality. If you don't find programming on its own gratifying and enjoyable, there's no need to force it on the side. But second, if you do enjoy programming, are burnt out, and have never tried a side project, give it an honest shot. It is so utterly counter-intuitive that programming on the side can cure your burn out from programming as a job, but time and again that has been my experience. I don't quite understand how it has this effect on me (and others), but it does. A few hours or a weekend of coding on a side project, and I come back to work like I've just been on vacation, sometimes even struggling to remember just what it was that was bothering me so much last week.
I took item 4 to mean "at work" -- find something enjoyable to work on at work / while actually working... Which definitely isn't always an option depending on your job.
I agree to what you're saying, but the 4th bullet should not mean this. Find joy in what you're doing is independent advice. I would add to this that outside of work, you should also look for something that gives you joy. Something that is not coding would be preferred.
That one seems like pretty common advice even for non-software fields. The work you love doesn't have to be software, too, but you should be working on something you enjoy (or if you get fulfillment from your job, that's just a bonus!)
Programing at work and programing as a hobby are very different activities.
One should never consider it a requirement, but it's not a recipe for certain burn-out either. (But yeah, if you are doing it because it's a requirement, then it's work and it will lead to burn-out.)
That is so not true. When are doctors supposed to perform research or their required continuing education? When seeing clients? No. It’s on their own time.
Continual Medical Education (CMEs) are definitely during normal work days. They're also often at fancy destinations with hotels and mai tais. My father and other family have done them for years. They never had to take vacation days.
Just want to chime in and say your dedicated space doesn’t need to be a room!
I’ve gone the entire pandemic in a 450sq ft studio with my wife and our pets. My trick was to put my desk between a window and a wall and get an $80 room divider. Anytime the room divider was closed it meant one of two things: “Please don’t distract me, I’m busy”. Or “I’m not sitting back at my desk to work until tomorrow”
I love working — prior to my wife moving in, all I wanted to do was code and tinker with different ideas. But I know that isn’t sustainable for many reasons. Having a blocked off space, as tiny as it may be, to “get in the zone” or literally separate me from work has worked wonders for my mental health during the pandemic.
* I used some past tense here because we finally just upgraded to a 1 bedroom after 2 years :)
Can confirm. I live in a 450 square foot studio apartment and I work from home every day. I would love a separate room to just be my "office," but my only room is already my kitchen, bedroom and living room too...
I don't have a feeling for how big that is, but I work from home in a small flat. I have found that I can get this separation from only using my desk for work. I don't sit in my office chair or at my desk in my own time, if I'm writing code in my free time I do it on my sofa or at my coffee table.
Alternatives I've heard from others are things like dressing up for work. I had a colleague that wore a suit to work every day (at a tech startup) so that when he got home he could change into something else. That helped him define a boundary.
Find what works for you, it doesn't have to be physical space.
That's actually a great point - the days that I put on a button-up and nice jeans as if I was going into an office are days that I'm way more productive, as opposed to wearing pajamas all day.
Well my dress up is limited to putting on a different t-shirt. (What's further down is irrelevant for zoom meetings) But it does help. I have a set of slightly more respectable work t-shirts and a very different set of home shirts. And it does change my mind set. And it is very nice to take it off at the end of the day.
Also my kids whom are stuck at home at the moment recognise the difference and "somewhat" tries to disturb me less if I got a work shirt on.
I find that going for a walk before / after work is helpful to get in the right mindset. Hopefully that's an option available to you.
Make sure you've got everything ready to go when you 'arrive'. Don't do chores during the day -- but if you have a partner, discuss your reasoning for this with them beforehand.
I 100% agree. I moved from Mountain View CA to Jersey City, NJ. When I moved, I intentionally made sure I found a place with an extra bedroom. That being said, trust me, I know not everyone can afford it.
I grew up sleeping on the floor for 15 years because I couldn't afford a bed. I get it.
If you are in a studio it’s going to be harder, but if you literally have a room, there are ways to make it work - I’ve been working literally inches from my bed by putting a standing desk converter on a low 3-drawer dresser. The key is that when I’m working - the standing desk and chair are there and the bed is made/not used. When it’s time to stop work, I fold everything away so it’s not in the way, move the chair out and spend some time outside of that room. I return there when it’s time to sleep and don’t touch any work related items. It’s an odd mental switch, but been working well for me. The context of the room is reset. Having grown up in small Soviet-era apartments helps I guess.
I think, especially in context of burnout, is the mental switch. If necessary, cleanup your whole equipment and shove it below the bed or to the pots. Do some sports in between and do not code for fun but watch some Netflix. On a TV and not your VSCode plugin :)
In lieu of a separate actual space, a separate conceptual space can help too. Recently I started making an active effort to shut work down. Write down closing thoughts for the day, close all tabs and open processes, shut it all down. Block off time in my calendar, and even if I have to stay online for something important, I still go through the "shtudown" routine with everything that isn't the urgent situation. That whay when the urgency resolves, I am ready to just drop it and walk away. Its not since I approached this more mindfully that I realized just how much I was letting it weigh on me.
On Windows 10 you can have separate virtual desktops. You can use win+tab to add and switch to one and then bring all of your work windows over to it. I used to use that when I began WFH but got out of the practice. You can switch between them by doing ctrl+win+left arrow or ctrl+win+right but be careful because some graphics drivers use ctrl+alt+left/right/up/down to rotate the screen and I've messed up my multi-desktop setup more than once by mistaking the key combo.
It's not as good as having a separate system for office work but you can conceptually separate what you are doing at least.
I have a separate work laptop from my employer, but if I didn't, I would just create another user account on my computer.
I try to keep work/personal data completely separated. No logging in to private email from work account, no hobby code and work code accessible for same user account. No Hacker News or other unrelated sites on work browser. Private matters during work hours done on my private phone.
I find this good for work/free time separation, and helps a lot with concentration too.
One purpose is to enable you to concentrate on work, but I am don't think that's the biggest win. The core idea here is to use physical space mapped to mental space so you can move between activities easily. It can be a specific corner of a room too. Like - "when I sit here I'm ideating, when I go there I'm designing, when I sit at that desk I'm coding" sort of split. You don't need to be fine grained, but it is similar to "when I sit at the dining table, I eat". Quite possible to design this even in small spaces.
The goal is to have a physical mapping that allows context switching. A whole separate room is the obvious ideal, but as I don't have that either, I came up with something different that works well enough: I have two couches (sort of, two parts of an Ikea couch), so I rearranged them a bit and one of them is now strictly for work, the other for non-work.
Anything can help provide that same context switching to a lesser extent. Examples can be wearing your hair a certain way during working hours, or wearing one set of headphones for work and another for play, etc.
Buy a bootable external drive for your computer. Have all your "work" stuff on that drive. When you reach then end of your work day, shut down the computer, disconnect the external drive and store it in a closet until the start of your next work day.
When booted off the work drive, do not mount your internal drive.
1. Kicked out my roommate and made an office. Didn't help.
2. It's very hard to do casual check-in with another person.I feel like I'm bothering them too much. I can't get over it. Too stressful. Was way easier in person. Just feel the room and interrupt as needed.
3. I wake up early, take my pre-workout or red bull or 5h energy but just stare at the screen for 4 hours between 8 and noon and can't start.
4. I love the product but I can't start working wihtout others around me.
5. I hired multiple therapists. They put me on meds. I took medical leave. Nothing helped.
For me, work is for work and home is for home or for "work on autopilot"
Our company has a daily meeting for the team. On paper, it's to talk about what we did yesterday and what we're doing today. And we do that. But we're allowed to take as much time beyond that as we like to socialize. We talk about tv, movies, games, sports, whatever.
Without this, I think I would be a lot worse off in this crisis, and I'm a pretty extreme introvert.
If I was in your situation and had to actually bug people to talk to them... Ugh. No way.
Have you asked others if they want to be on an 8 hr/day video call with you? Perhaps there are others that would prefer that, or would do it to help you.
I personally would not enjoy that, but if someone on my team needed it... I'd at least try to deal with it.
Alternatively, maybe you can find a few of them to do it for 2 hrs/day and take the edge off.
Not sure what your budget situation is, but what if you got a new roommate and then rented another small apartment nearby to be your "office"? It wouldn't solve the people around part, but at least you'd have an office to go to.
Life choices always have an impact. I'm not judging you, because trust me, expensive areas like New York City (I love living there) are great, but blow during a pandemic since you're unable to enjoy what the actual city has to offer.
When I relocated back east, I made it a point to a) not live in the city since it'll be overpriced and I won't be able to enjoy the surrounding area and b) Price per square footage wouldn't make sense if I'm at home 24/7. So I went across the river and pay less for _a lot more_.
I know a lot of people are moving to Austin TX. They get a LOT more for their money. I was lucky to be on a month by month lease when the pandemic hit.
I've lived in Austin for just over 10 years and while there are major benefits over the coasts, the downside is the city is also importing the bad things.
Homelessness is off the charts with the street camping and violence that comes along with it. If you're familiar with SF, it's nothing like the Tenderloin but more like SOMA-lite.
In addition, shootings are way up. For context, there were 39 total in 2019. In the summer of 2020, we had 40 consecutive days of shootings. Further, the local DA has also adopted the mindset of not prosecuting "low level" crimes of any theft under $750.
Sacrificing what makes Austin compelling is not the way to go.
The city also has no even remotely sane urban planning, resulting in the worst sprawl I've seen anywhere in the USA in the last 10 years.
Austin isn't entirely alone with this: most of the sunbelt cities that are growing are doing so in the context of a complete lack of long term city planning. But Austin, IMO, is the worst right now. Even Phoenix, with an even more insane lack of water than Austin, has managed this side of things better.
I consider myself fairly liberal, but the current trend of progressive DAs failing to prosecute quality of life crimes (phrased as so-called "quality of life" in quotes) adds to my pessimism. It's happening in the cities with jobs and things to do, limiting the options if you don't subscribe to that social policy.
I was in Austin last year and was shocked by the homeless there. I spoke to a few people and they had informed me that some laws changed recently which allows them to live under bridges and the lots of churches etc.
I was taken back because I never thought Austin would have such a problem.
In my opinion crowded cities really suck, during pandemics. I love to huge city I'm living in. But during the last 9-10 months I only had all the downsides of city living and none of the upsides. If I were not that attached to the apartment I'm renting currently for how hard it is to find one with its characteristics for the price, I would have long ago terminated the contract and moved to the country side for the time being as a large part of my colleagues.
I was fortunate enough that my lease expired back in July so I looked for somewhere a bit further out of the city with more room. I pay a smidge more each month, but I probably at least doubled the size of my place and I have a dedicated office now
I've never been more relaxed too, here are some more pointers:
1. Realise you're lucky to be in this position to work from home, as opposed to medical staff and being depressed is a luxury.
2. You are not a code machine, amount of code written is not a good measure of how productive you are. Better think of how much you contributed overall or learnt something new that year.
3. Your work is not your life, so focus and even obsess over other things such as hobbies and spend more mental energy on that rather than worry about your job. Your job just pays the bills nothing more.
4. Find online ways to socialise such as playing online games. If you're introverted that should be enough to satisfy your social needs.
Yes, maybe this is just me, but every time I have an extended work from home period, depression follows after a few months.
I was working around this once by drinking red bull, which I found lifted my emotions temporarily, but after it wore off in 4 hours I crashed way harder into despair. This effect built up over time and fortunately I noticed it and stopped using it routinely.
YMMV - just a friendly warning of how it affected me.
If you generally use anything as a crutch it will start wearing off and you will build up a tolerance unless you start enjoying it for the sake of enjoying it and nothing more.
This can apply to pretty much any substance or routine. Right now for me it's video games :(
I would recommend dropping coffee for tea. Switch to tea... (sorry for mocking ;) ). Honestly, while real bean coffee includes caffeine, which energizes you for 30 minutes, it also includes theobromine, which would put you to sleep after 30 minutes; tea (black tea and earl gray) has caffeine only. Instant coffee with milk (like Nescafe decaf) is a good beverage to drink before the bed time, since it contains theobromine only
You might want to kill me after I say this, certainly people on HN want to kill me just for fun ;), but I also drink coffee. I only drink sugar free Red Bull. What's strange is I can stop for months without any withdraw from caffeine. I often go from drinking Red Bull + Coffee for a few months to just water for multiple months.
Once I finish this case, I think it's time to go back to water and coffee for 6 months. :)
Partly because we have "real coffee" here in Portugal (expresso, a cultural import from the Italians via the Cimbalino series of coffee shop hardware, IIRC), partly because a long mug is better suited to winter, and partly because I am back working 90% with British folk, to the extent where we can compare blends...
But, overall, it suits me better. Takes longer to drink, does not mess with my stomach in the mornings, and smells great.
(Mind you, we do not consider American-style coffee to be "coffee" in the strictest sense of the word, because it's too processed/diluted/mixed).
> (Mind you, we do not consider American-style coffee to be "coffee" in the strictest sense of the word, because it's too processed/diluted/mixed).
Out of curiosity, what exactly do you mean by "American-style coffee"? Are you referring to something you would get at Starbucks, or are you referring to the quality of the coffee beans used to make it?
American-style "coffee" is harshly roasted at high temperatures and then ground to a powder in a destructive processing machine. Finally, it is diluted with water and even mixed with sugar to make it more palatable.
Europeans prefer to chew on a few green coffee beans throughout the day as a long-lasting source of clean, non-jittery, all-natural energy.
The US coffee tradition is both not very strong and made without pressure (drip/filter.) Most places use espresso level pressure even on larger weaker coffees. The stovetop moka is still typical for occasional coffee drinkers and is lower pressure, but still made stronger than drip coffee.
If you add an equal quantity of hot water to an espresso that is the European cafe attempt at emulating an American coffee, but it still has different taste because of the pressure.
I don't think Europe is as obsessed with aribica beans, robusta is common and actually quite good. In drip coffee, arabica is really the only thing drinkable or the closest to drinkable depending on your perspective.
It's worth noting that "American" styles like v60 pour-overs, chemex, and cold brew iced coffee often have more caffeine per typical serving than traditional espresso drinks.
I recently got a coffee-grinder for Christmas so it’s my morning treat. Even though, I love the caffeine buzz, I try to drink only tea in the afternoon and I concur with the longer drinking being more enjoyable.
I’m currently experimenting with different blends of black tea and decreasing the amount of milk (as is tradition in Ireland) so that I can taste the tea better. I find that I can develop a taste for any decent tea leaf (or coffee bean).
My other half got me a De'Longhi Burr Coffee Grinder [1] as a Christmas gift (after I had been dropping not-so-subtle hints that I was thinking of buying a burr grinder [2] for coffee). Previously, I had used a blade grinder but the problem with those is that they do not "grind" the coffee evenly (produce a mixture of fine and coarse particles).
I can't compare the De'Longhi with any other burr grinder but the results are similar to those of the shop that I get my coffee from. Its one downside is that the minimum grind quantity is too much coffee for one person so I try to time it for when my wife will share the coffee with me. The whole point of grinding your own is that you can then brew the coffee at its freshest.
So far, I've been enjoying the results of having freshly ground coffee. Best of luck with your own grinding.
what do you mean by "american-style coffee"? as an american, coffee to me means drip coffee, which is more "diluted" i suppose but is certainly not more processed or "mixed" than espresso. most american coffee is not sweet starbucks drinks.
I use my PC for both work and PC gaming. I find I have to get up from my desk for at least 45-60 min and reset after my workday before I'm ready to sit back down and game.
Something that helps me is having 2 laptops (though I'd imagine it would work just as well with 2 accounts on the same computer). My work-provided laptop stays in my work area at all times, and I don't put anything work-related on my personal laptop. I also took at least an hour or two customizing each one (name, background, dock) so that it feels different than the other. That way when I hop off my work laptop at the end of the day, if I decide to pick up my personal laptop, it immediately feels like I'm doing something different.
Yup. I have a room I use as an ‘office’, with a PC I use for both gaming and work. I look forward to the evening where I take a step back from it, cook dinner, then come back for some games :)
One bad thing is I keep trying to use my Discord push-to-mute keybind in zoom and it never works :(
Not the same but if you have to use the same laptop you can create separate work and leisure user accounts.
When I'm working I use a dock/monitor/mechanical keyboard and sit in an office chair, but after work I switch to just the laptop and sit on the couch. Every little bit helps.
Good advice. Thank you. I'd also add some sort of exercise. It doesn't have to be intense, and sometimes it's not even about the physical benefits. Just the ritual and the focus on something other than work or current events and the various chemical things that happen with exercise might yield more mental benefits than physical. Getting outside makes it even better, if your circumstances allow that. It's like getting good sleep (another important thing BTW). The difference won't be immediate or dramatic, but over sufficient time you'll feel just a bit better.
I would second these guidelines as well to make wfh manageable.
I'll emphasize on 3. Manage your expectations with your direct reports. Let them know in order to stay sane you are going to have set schedule to manage stress while wfh. I do this with everyone I meet at work to set those expectations onset. It has helped tremendously.
Item #4 - I fully disagree. Some choices are scary to actually make, but are healthy. For instance, my mom stayed with her abusive husband for many years because she had Stockholm syndrome. If you had asked her why didn't she leave during that time, she would say "I didn't have a choice". Ask her now, and she will tell you "Fear - fear of not knowing how things would work out."
Sometimes the hardest choices to make are the impossible choices.
> 2. Establish communication throughout the day. This means having slack conversations (typed and video) that are casual. It's okay to vent on these calls.
I'm not at all convinced. I was in peak physical condition while training for mountain races this year, and I still experienced the same stress and anxiety everyone else did.
I definitely notice a positive difference when I drink more water than coffee but the core problems causing burnout are still there and unresolved. It's a boost not a fix.
We're allowed, but the vast majority of the time I'm inside. A typical day for me, pre-covid, was coffee shops, bookstores, that sort of activity. Now those options are not available so I am inside most of the time.
Lucky me, growing up my mom didn't make more than $8k a year - this would have been impossible for me to do lol. It was also impossible for me to eat properly and have new cloths...
Sadly my eyes are too small to actually track the pupils. I remember when I got my ID, the lady taking the picture said "Sir, please open your eyes". I looked at her and asked "They are open... you don't see that?" She laughed and asked if I had been smoking. :/
I'm not at all opposed to companies like Google, Facebook, etc asking Algorithms, Data Structure and Big O related questions. Why? It's very applicable to problems at their scale. That being said, not all engineers there work on such problems.
If I'm asked to do a BFS/DFS, Tree traversal, etc for a small company.. I tend to share high level how I'll solve it then basically not actually code it up and say something like "This is pretty tricky...". Why? It's my way to exit the interview quickly because I question the ability of the company to hire talented engineers. Especially when I test your product out and see all sorts of inconsistencies.
Okay, so when do Data Structures matter to a company?
Are you building a product that needs to perform very efficiently at scale and the system is doing something outside the "norms" of what a data store can provide. Examples: Facebook's TAO system and their type ahead search.
Read the design paper for TAO and you'll see how they use very primitive data structured related to Graphs. Their typeahead system also makes use of some very basic data structures and some probabilistic data structures as well.
When do Algorithms matter to a company?
For most traditional companies, you're not going to do a BFS/DFS search, traverse a tree or a Dynamic Programming solution like Levenshtein distance. So unless these algorithms have a practical use case in your company, you're just creating a sort of monoculture.
Once again, Google and Facebook do apply these algorithms so I respect their interview process.
Big O has its place in such large companies. I think most people fail to understand the purpose of Big O; identify upfront if a solution will be sufficient from a time or space perspective as the data grows. Most people speak about Big O on interviews AFTER they code up the solution. You should do that before you code it up.
e.g, So the data for this problem is <100 items then this quadratic solution would work, but if we scale the data set up to say 10,000 items then it won't work. Then you can look at data structures or sorting algorithms for instance that'll help you get it down to say O(n) or O(n log n) etc
Look, I get the frustration a lot of people feel about this sort of interviewing process. I have a very non-traditional background and it could be very scary when you first start learning about this. My advice? Learn it for your own good. It'll make your a better programmer and it'll help you become more aware of so many things you weren't aware of before!
The moment when you realize why using an array for a Min Heap or why a Min Heap must be a complete tree... you'll step back and go "Now that's sexy!" Or when you realize even stupid stuff like "A balanced binary Tree has this weird reality that the leaf nodes account for 50% of all nodes in the tree" It's just fun if you see it in a positive way.
Let's call technical interviews that ask such questions when it doesn't represent the company "interviewer imposter syndrome". When a company tries to act and look like Google early on.. Google has a million+ candidates a year interviewing with them. They MUST allow good candidates slip through their process.
NYC itself is great. Parks are open and less crowded, subway is super clean, and some street parking space has been reclaimed for outdoor dining. Almost everyone is wearing a mask, and things are slowly opening up. It feels like the recovery will be slow, but the city will come out of it stronger.
