Adobe does two of these every year, one in winter around the holidays and one in July. From my perspective as an individual contributor, there are a few advantages:
- With no feature/project work that week, there is zero pressure to check email or slack.
- Teams are forced to build systems that are automated, resilient and documented enough that most of the staff won't need to be contacted during the shutdown week.
- The business has to prove it can run with just the necessary amount of staff for operations and customer support. (These staff generally work with their managers to take an equal amount of time off.)
Personally I use that week in summer to disconnect from work and do something theraputic for myself- go for a 7+ day motorcycle ride, preferably through places where internet connections are poor.
Does it draw your vacation time? Mandatory vacations (especially around Christmas) were started in the early 2000s among Bay Area tech companies in order to reduce collective accrued PTO, reducing liability on the balance sheet—had nothing to do with worker health. Although that regime is certainly preferable to so-called "unlimited" PTO.
Unlimited PTO is a money-saving tactic for businesses. Traditional unused PTO is paid out upon resignation, but flex unlimited PTO has no such requirement.
If unlimited PTO wasn't just an accounting (and psychological) trick to screw workers out of accumulated vacation time, this might concern me. If they want limited PTO, that's fine. It should just be spelled out.
Like I said earlier in the thread, Adobe. Currently we're fully remote, with a plan to go 50/50 hybrid when offices reopen. There is a process to apply for fully remote but you need to live within a reasonable distance of an office and "digital nomad" lifesytles won't be available. I have do a few coworkers who were fully remote pre-pandemic but that was generally the exception.
I think it would be but I also would like forced time off as well. As well as forced socializing with team mates. And a sabbatical every 5 years or so.
But if I can find a job with full health benefits that lets me work three days a week, I'm going for it. Heck, that is the best argument in favor of universal healthcare. It would help unemployment, because way more people would be working part time.
I can tolerate the occasional "mandatory fun" corporate event, but only within reason (e.g. I have kids, so don't give me grief for leaving early).
And I think the entire "work hard play hard" office culture, where you're expected to do happy hour everyday and build your social life around co-workers in order to prove you're a teammate, is ageist and absolutely toxic.
To be blunt, if you have to FORCE people to socialize with you, then maybe you need some self-reflection on why that's necessary.
I was thinking along the lines of a fun day during working hours, where everyone who lives near by should come in. Holiday party, Icecream Social, Even just a day of meetings with breakfast and lunch included. Basically give people a few work days a year where they are expected to be there, but not really get anything done.
Bloomberg let you do philanthropy work during working hours, and they assign you some amount of money depending on the hours you do that you can donate to charity.
I met a few people during such events, which is more or less what you say: you are with people from the company (not necessarily teammates, we did it as a team only once) and you might be helping public parks clean, or take trash from canal on a canoe, or sort food in a food shelter.
It's a nice way to take a break, meet people from other areas, feel good about something you do, and managers have been very supportive of that, and they do it too.
I think that is a good balance of what you are talking about
You are part of a very small, very skilled minority that voluntariliy wants to work part time and lack of health care is all that's stopping you. In Canada where we have universal health care, the vast majority of people working part time are in low skill jobs because that's all they can schedule with another primary focus, or that's all they can get but really want FT.
I'd be curious how much different it would be if you got the same 1 week off twice a year but it was for a company trip, as in the company would pay for everything to take all employees (and a +1) skiing or some other activity. This would be independent of personal time off and these 2 weeks off would still be paid.
I've never been on such a thing but I wonder if it ends up being a real vacation or if everyone is still mainly talking about work except not in front of a computer.
Does anyone want to share a few stories on how their company trips went?
By definition I go on vacation to get a break from my coworkers and spend time with friends and family.
I also generally get to decide the activities on vacation. Many things the company might fund that are fun for some people, like skiing, aren't activities that I'm interested in but would be obligated to participate in.
What you described is a work retreat, not a vacation. I have been on such a trip. It was good for work relationships. It definitely wasn't a vacation.
> What you described is a work retreat, not a vacation. I have been on such a trip. It was good for work relationships. It definitely wasn't a vacation.
Would you mind sharing the details of what you did during the trip?
Some people do. My team within Adobe discourages it.
There are some really great hobby slack channels that I personally check on vacation. Can be hard to ignore the random work questions while doing that.
Once another team investigating an outage tried to contact me on vacation... I sent them a photo of my bike in an empty field in the mountains of Oregon and said "Sorry, bad internet out here!"
I would love to know how they are measuring the success of this measure -- and I'm not being cynical. How would one even begin to weigh the tradeoffs of closing business for everyone for an entire week against the increased productivity upon return and something woolly like "improved morale." What if giving everyone a week of twice a year was actually beneficial to the company? Or even quarterly? Many companies already have an unspoken/informal week off between Christmas and New Year's.
Also, this is incredible Marketing for Bumble, as many people are going to share this in Slack channels in an effort to get their companies to do the same.
Some things can't really be measured numerically, I think this is one.
I think you do things like talking to people afterwards and see if they think it was a good idea, looking at attrition rates and try and guess if it moved them, looking at whatever productivity metrics you have, and at the end you probably have a gut feeling on whether or not it was a good idea... That's probably the best that you get.
I think the argument would be that this actually could be measured short term (probably all the staff will say they feel better in two weeks) but if in Q3 the CEO realizes they need to roll out some features before a Q4 quarterly call then what could have been a 12 week project will turn into a cramped 10 week project.
Yea, this is what always gets me about taking personal vacation time. You take a week off, but that week isn't yours for free. Your expected work keeps accumulating during that week. You're just taking a week of time-debt which you will need to pay off in the form of much higher workload over the following few weeks. I wouldn't be surprised if these employees all get back to work and find their workload doubles for a time just to catch back up!
I think good management can turn it into a real vacation. Our teams works in scrum and we just commit to fewer or smaller tasks, accounting for the missing person-days.
And one major distinction is that it didn't seem like they got to pick the time?
Maybe I really like working during the summer but have lots of family stuff in the fall. Seems a bit inefficient for this to be so long but I'm all for experimentation.
Just to note, you can regularly ask your employees how they feel, and with enough employees get a significant measurement. So maybe they can measure the “woolly” morale impact of this. Tools like Lattice make it easy to do a “pulse” survey for this purpose.
Also the great thing about doing this twice a year is you get two experiments so you can start to be confident it’s not just “Christmas makes employees 10% happier” if you also measured a similar bump in the summer break. (Obviously numbers made up for the sake of example.)
It's a good question, which has been extensively studied over the last few decades in the medical context. The industry phrase would be "Patient Reported Outcomes" if you'd like to explore further.
After many papers and lots of clinical trials, it's widely accepted in the scientific community that the answers to both of your questions are "yes". E.g. see this FDA paper[1].
Of course, it's possible to design your questionnaire badly and there's an art to this, so it's right to be skeptical/cautious about putting this into practice. But you seem to be getting at a more fundamental epistemic question about whether the approach is possible even in principle, which has been thoroughly investigated.
Psychological science uses this technique a lot. It's not perfect, of course there's lots of noise because of both of the issues you raise (in addition to other issues like how to develop questions to measure nebulous things like "self-esteem" or "extraversion").
But as long as the results aren't pure noise, i.e., there's some signal there, then with an adequate sample size you can do something with it. Lots of fields deal with noisy, imprecise data. It's just conditional on it not being only noise.
Nothing is perfect, this is better than nothing though. [1]
The way my company does this is they ask a lot of questions and then mostly look at aggregates. E.g. they might ask 6 questions about "how do you feel about the size of your workload", "do you feel you have time to do the important things in your life", "are you satisfied with the amount of vacation you take", "do you feel stressed", ... and then roll those into a single "work life balance" metric (questions and specific metric entirely made up).
And actually we outsource to a survey company that does that for us, which apart from outsourcing the non-core competency, means that there is a reasonably neutral party deciding how to aggregate things (I think, I'm not involved in the survey design).
You're getting it backwards. What if you go to work 7 days a week, and the numbers are still going down? Bumble is taking a week off because they're doing poorly. I have no opinions on whether the factors are in their control or not.
At a (perhaps generous) average of $120K per employee, a week off would cost $1.5MM - given how broadly this will get picked up and circulated in the media, it'll get more eyeballs than 1.5MM spent on mobile or search ads most likely.
> Also, this is incredible Marketing for Bumble, as many people are going to share this in Slack channels in an effort to get their companies to do the same.
Agreed and ppl sharing stuff of slack channels are their target customers too.
If the effects are minor I think it will be difficult to measure the impact on any one company given the number of confounding variables. In that case the only way to determine the correlation between these kinds of things and business success might be to gather enough statistical evidence across industries.
Good. We're taking all of July off at my company. Why? Because covid was an incredibly hard period for all of us and we as humans need a break. Somehow we all just seem to expect things to keep going like nothing changed. We all just seem to be expected to gloss over the pains of isolation, potential death and stress of work and life with no separation or boundaries. We made a conscious decision at my place of work to actually acknowledge the difficulties we've all been through and we're just going to take July off, because what else are we going to do? Ignore it? No. We won't do that.
I'd advise everyone to try take as much time off as possible this year. If it's available to you, take an extended break. The mental, physical and psychological damage of covid is something we really can't ignore.
This is a very subjective statement. The pandemic has been bar none the best period of my life. Increased physical and social distance from other people, no need to emote in public thanks to masks, no need to commute, greater accommodation for non-social options like self-checkouts. My physical and mental health have skyrocketed, and as a result I feel like I've been on vacation for a year and half, despite only taking about 3 days of vacation the entire time and starting a new and more intense job.
Those of you who have found the slightly over a year duration of the pandemic difficult have gotten a sample of how miserable pre-pandemic life was for those of us who are more introverted or misanthropic.
I've never been so envious of happily married people in my life. Being single throughout this ordeal has broken me mentally, particularly at an age (31) where I'm staring down the last couple years of being able to meet someone my age. And the prospects coming out of it are grim. For people with a happy home life, this may have been a good time. But for the isolated, work from home, single people with no long term social circle outside of work, it has been an utter nightmare.
I'm a little older but not by a lot, and was in a similar situation where I was in my early 30s where I felt my window for getting things done in life was closing and I didn't have a relationship and felt socially isolated in general (for different reasons since it wasn't covid 19 at the time, but still). Things were looking incredibly bleak for me.
But things can change awfully fast even if it seems hopeless, don't give up. The potentially partners you'll meet at this age tend to be more mature on average (generalizing of course!), and I think have a much more healthy perspective on life than the people I often met dating in my 20s. Keep in mind that dating is a numbers game, and like any numbers game, you increase your chances of success the more you play. You need to meet as many people as possible and have fewer expectations--the worse that happens is it doesn't work out and you move on. The hardest part is getting over the fear of rejection, but it can be done, even for the shy.
If it's more the isolation in general that's getting to you rather than no partner, I think if you look around you'll find clubs or groups you can hang around potentially--again you need to get yourself out of your comfort zone and just go join those things. If you're into gaming, feel free to message me (or chat about IT stuff or whatnot--Moonshine#3246 is my Discord).
Covid has been really hard on a lot of people for various reasons, but you're definitely not alone and I'm sure there are plenty of people also looking for more social interaction right now. Just need to find 'em.
I'm about to turn 32 and I'm a bit confused about the whole "last couple of years of being able to meet someone".
I know people who met and got married in their 40s...
Edit: go easy on yourself pal. We've all got enough to deal with in the world without beating ourselves up over imaginary deadlines.
Edit2: also, a lot of marriages are not happy. Imagine having to live in one of them during a pandemic. Usually made me feel better about being single!
I only know through friends, but dating in your 30s seems like an absolute nightmare - they all hate it and find it completely joyless and deeply cynical. Trying to fit someone new into an already fully-formed life at that point seems very hard.
Also 35 is the point where medicine considers a pregnancy to be 'geriatric'. And some people are going through menopause by 40! You don't have an infinite amount of time in life no matter how positive your outlook!
Well, a different perspective (as someone who was unwillingly tossed back into the dating pool at age 38).
While online dating was indeed a bit of a nightmare, dating older women in general was a net positive for me.
I liked people who have lived life a bit, made mistakes, hopefully learned from them, are past the point of obsession about body type, and are more focused on character and how to treat/be treated properly.
People do learn and grow as they age, and most of us become better people.
> Also 35 is the point where medicine considers a pregnancy to be 'geriatric'.
Which is a dated term that isn't used frequently. Yes the risks for certain things increase after 35 but pregnancy after 35 or 40+ is healthy and common.
> some people are going through menopause by 40!
The average age of Menopause is 51, before 40 is considered "premature menopause".
>I know people who met and got married in their 40s...
It all depends on what you're looking for I guess. Certainly you can get married in your 40s. But at that point having a single child, let alone a few, becomes a monumental task. It's not an imaginary deadline. Fertility falls off a cliff at 35 [0].
Even ignoring the fact that fertility treatments exist...
1 in 4 healthy women in their 20s and 30s will get pregnant in any single menstrual cycle. (The American College of Obstetrics and Gynecologists, 2018)
1 in 10 healthy women in their 40s will get pregnant in any single menstrual cycle. (The American College of Obstetrics and Gynecologists, 2018)
Nobody is saying it's impossible, on average - but people aren't aggregate statistics. Some women are already going to be unable to get pregnant by 35, more by forty. Many more will struggle, but might be able to get pregnant. I believe the study you cited is biased by excluding some of these as 'unhealthy' - essentially it is limiting the population to just women who still can get pregnant at these ages.
Once more, the number of chromosomal abnormalities skyrockets after 30 and by 40 around three quarters of eggs (or more, for an individual) will have serious abnormalities.
Even if only a small fraction of women would struggle at 35, but could have gotten pregnant at 25 - for her it's a tragedy. And she is not helped by these messages that 'no worries it's easy to get pregnant at 40'
Well that is a much softer point than the one I was responding to which called the age related fertility decline “monumental” in support of the implied conclusion that it is somehow imperative for otherwise healthy women to have children by their 30s.
Regarding your anecdote I do not see its relevance to a discussion of population statistics. People can be infertile because they were paralyzed in a car accident but that doesn’t mean the original claim wasn’t overstated and now walked back.
Regardless, I think narrowing in this specifically on reproductive biology of women in the context of who you date and how you think about relationships is a recipe for failure. Not only does it have somewhat creepy bio-essentialist connotations, but socioeconomic factors and healthcare access also have huge impacts on the health and success of any given pregnancy and childhood/life.
In short, "I have to date right now because I'm 30 and my hypothetical childbearing vessels are becoming less optimal" is an unhealthy and probably incorrect attitude.
I'd agree that it's a poor sole reason to date, but its definitely something to think about if you really want children. Two of my girlfriends in their mid 30s are 'technically' able to get pregnant but functifinally unable due to PCOS - its biologically possible for them to get pregnant (handful of viable eggs left, occasional good cycles). Not a lot of women get advice as teens like 'you have PCOS, you're going to really struggle to have children and its only going to get worse if you wait'.
1) Fertility treatments are expensive and don't work for everyone
2) "1 in 10 healthy women in their 40s will get pregnant in any single menstrual cycle". I.e. there is a 90% chance that a woman over 40 will have at least some difficulty getting pregnant. Likely more than that if their partner is similar in age because male fertility declines with age as well.
3) Getting pregnant is only the first step. Miscarriage rates also increase with age.
> 2) "1 in 10 healthy women in their 40s will get pregnant in any single menstrual cycle". I.e. there is a 90% chance that a woman over 40 will have at least some difficulty getting pregnant.
That is not what it means. It is unlikely at any age to get pregnant in one menstrual cycle.
"Each month, the average 30-year-old woman has about a 20% chance of getting pregnant. A 40-year-old only has a 5% chance of getting pregnant each month."
Not just conceiving; _having_ a baby becomes much harder as you age. Birthing is a pretty physically stressful process for lots of women, and the following few years is a lot of very hard work. The most demanding of your life, probably.
Edit: Wanted to add, though, that _dating_ in your 30s and 40s just gets better and better. Don't worry about that. Maturity is a bonus, not a drawback.
It really sucks for people like you at the moment, and I really feel for you. Saying that, being happily married but with two small kids (both under 2, for most of lockdown) was no joke either.
Hey man, if you ever need someone to shoot the shit with or whatever, shoot me a DM via keybase (https://keybase.io/ojensen) or any of the networks linked there. I'm also pretty okay at several online multiplayer games if that kind of thing floats your boat.
Being alone sucks and an internet friend won't fix that, but maybe it can help :)
> particularly at an age (31) where I'm staring down the last couple years of being able to meet someone
You still have plenty of time - even to meet someone and have kids. Just focus on getting yourself into a good state - gym, hygiene, activities/hobbies where you can meet people. The rest will come.
I was feeling pretty awful by the time April came around, being in the same position as you. But I took advantage of the fact that I work remote now and moved to a very large and densely populated city you've heard of. Meeting people and socializing regularly has completely changed my point of view. Obviously, not everyone can do this, but perhaps the moral is that a change of perspective would be beneficial and some sort of life change could catalyze that. A huge advantage of being single is that you have a lot more freedom to just up and go where you like.
>I'm 33, only a few months into my current relationship, and I have to say that dating is so much better at this age than it ever was.
You can get lucky. There are certainly unicorns out there. Or you can date younger, if you're ok with that. But by and large, women and men work on different timelines. And you don't realize this as a man until it hits. The vast majority of women are out of the dating pool by 30. And by this age, you've both ossified into separate individuals with rigid expectations and assumptions about life, which makes the flexibility needed to build a real lasting connection infinitely harder.
I’m afraid that’s quite a bit of self referential bias. So let me raise your hopes with some of mine: I met my wife when she was 30 and already had 2 kids. We’ve been together for 16 years now, got 2 daughters (so 4 children in total), and are nothing like the individuals we were 16 years ago. We’ve grown together, we’ve grown separately - we’ve changed yearly. Since you’re aware of it now: don’t become an individual with rigid expectations and assumptions. Life is constantly evolving.
Aim to hit 80 and still shake your head at the person you were when you was 70 ;-)
Here’s one of my favorite quotes that feels relevant:
“We thought of life by analogy with a journey, a pilgrimage, which had a serious purpose at the end, and the thing was to get to that end, success or whatever it is, maybe heaven after you’re dead. But we missed the point the whole way along. It was a musical thing and you were supposed to sing or to dance while the music was being played”
Thanks for sharing this lovely anecdote, and for the positive sentiment. Unfortunately I do agree with the person you're replying to - these days, it is vanishingly unlikely to find a partner past your early 30s.
Only a tiny proportion of the adult population in most western countries is single, and asymmetries in the dating pool induced by modern modes of meeting people (ie: apps) have radically upended traditional ideals about coupling and compatibility. Respectfully, if you met your partner 16 years ago (congrats by the way!), that might as well be a completely different world than the one we live in now. I sympathise with the GP's expression of urgency.
I am really really challenging your sentiment - we live in a time where more and more people than ever stay single even in their early 30s. Especially the gender balance there has changed immensly. What evidence do you have to the contrary?
Why wouldn't you date someone younger? At 31 assuming you have your life reasonably together and aren't living in some rural area (or san francisco lol) you can definitely meet attractive and interesting women 25+ that would be interested in settling down on your timeframe. Dating is all about self fulfilling prophecies so if you're telling yourself there are no women available that's what you're going to manifest.
>"Why is that? What's wrong with SF for dating? (just curious)"
Where to begin?
The tech industry is massively skewed towards male, so right off the bat your odds of meeting someone in your work life is near nil. Then, with the complete lack of affordable housing, there's no such thing as just being a single 20-something living independently and supporting yourself on a non-tech salary. Bare minimum subsistence income is about $80k. So that filters out the vast majority of women who are in non-tech careers and simply cannot afford to move there.
At that point you're basically left with the lucky few locals who have parents that bought houses in the 80s/90s and live with them rent free, or the unicorn types who make enough to live in SF independently.
From that vanishingly small pool of women, you're now competing with the guys who made startup money or have the $300k+ FAANG gigs and can afford luxury vacations, nice condos, BMWs, etc.
Don’t feel too bad about the highly paid tech dudes. Tech dudes don’t stand a chance either because women don’t want to date another tech dude.
I’m turning 31 in a couple months and am coming out of a 5 year relationship. It’s looking grim AF. My only real hope is that I get back with my ex eventually.
I did the fancy vacations. I have the high income (~400k). I have a reasonably high net worth for my age (~2M). Even have the BMW! Didn’t stop her from walking away because she didn’t wanna date just a miserable workaholic techie anymore!!
Honestly, the best candidates that I think many women are aiming for aren’t the tech guys. It’s the guys with rich families. They’re the ones I see not really having any issues because they don’t really need to have any kind of shit job. They got parental money after all.
> It’s looking grim AF.
> I have the high income (~400k).
> high net worth for my age (~2M)
SF is like another planet. Unless you're exceptionally ugly or have an incredibly bad personality, you wouldn't have problem dating anywhere else on entire Earth.
I'm 33, living in Eastern Europe, and have nothing special in terms of looks (probably solid 6, but you can just google my username) or money (certainly nothing even close to SF tech salaries). And yet, when I re-activate my profile on Tinder, I get first 100 likes in a first day or two.
Ah, yes, because that's clearly what I want to do. Who really earns 2M by this age and goes, "Yeah, I wanna hire cheap immigrant laborers and live on a farm in BFE." Nearly no one.
Would you say that the gender ratio also counts against you as a factor? Do you think you would be probably better off dating transnationally or internationally? Oh, and what kind of Bimmer?
135is convertible. Sporty, outrageously loud, and full of fun. I’d get a 1M but no drop top kills it for me. Also, I don’t have to feel as bad for driving it because a 1M is a collectible now.
Gender ratio is definitely horrible. Likely the worst factor against straight men. It’s obvious everywhere. Dating in other cities is likely a lot better (especially not on the west coast AFAICT). It’s no surprise that most long term couples I’ve met in SF have met outside the Bay Area.
I’ve heard access to the best dating in SF is by getting a cab down to SFO and flying anywhere else.
Is dating really that bad across the entire west coast? Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles, and San Diego included? As far as your own dating life is concerned, what do you intend to do for yourself given how bad the circumstances are for you?
I hear LA and SD are better. But otherwise, pretty bad compared to east coast. Gender balance is just not there because of so many tech jobs.
I have nothing I can do. I’ll see if I can meet someone else in another city when I get back to traveling. That’s about my only hope. I have in person activities I do but I don’t think post-pandemic will bring enough new blood to make up for the bad odds. (Even the activity I do which is normally known for being woman heavy is more heavily male here than anywhere else I’ve seen in the world)
What activity would that be? Also, any lessons learned with regard to your ex that you'd like to impart just so the rest of us don't fall through the same cracks you did?
> you've both ossified into separate individuals with rigid expectations and assumptions about life
This is the real issue, not the dating pool.
The obvious evidence against the dating pool is that a fairly large number of divorced people I know getting into serious relationships and married again fairly quickly regardless of their age when the divorce happens.
All of the unhappy single people I know (and there are some happy ones that don't mind) share the same paradoxical thinking: I'm unhappy with how my life is, and I want to be in a close relationship with someone, but am absolutely unwilling to change anything major (sometimes even minor) about who I am, what I believe or how I live.
It seems obvious, but if you are unwilling to change anything about your life, then the only changes you experience are going to be those that are thrust upon you, such as the pandemic.
I’m married to someone about my age, but I don’t see many downsides to dating younger once you’re in your 30s. Mid-20s is old enough for most women to be out of the immature phase of their life, and you’ll have a wife that’s going to look younger longer and be more fertile.
There was no way to type that out without sounding gross.
The proposition for women in their 30s is worse, even if it is easier to find a date. That biological clock is ticking and most men don’t want to date someone older than them.
There are 0 unicorns and 3.9 billion women out there. Many of those are dateable. I can see why somebody would think like you if they've been single for a long time, but my experience has been that arranging dates in my mid-late twenties and early thirties is easier than ever.
I could probably best describe it as non-malicious unintentional callous disregard, coupled with a belief that I'd mostly figured everything out - and a deep-seated need to always be "right" and "win".
I had not yet learned that at the point where there is an argument, both people have already lost.
>>I could probably best describe it as non-malicious unintentional callous disregard, coupled with a belief that I'd mostly figured everything out - and a deep-seated need to always be "right" and "win".
Sounds like well-earned confidence with a bit self-possessiveness . But on the whole that's not unusual or something that should be frowned upon.
>>I had not yet learned that at the point where there is an argument, both people have already lost.
I used to think like that and all that resulted was having my concerns paid lip service to if not outright dismissed, being blamed when something didn't go someone's way despite not being given clear instruction, being guilted into keeping the peace at the expense of my sense of self, etc. Being useful meant becoming easy to take for granted. Anything less was regarded as "not doing my best", "defiance", "rebellion", and "causing trouble".
Polite logical debate and asking the hard questions (when I eventually got to that stage) were met with evasion and scorn in addition to rampant hypocrisy and double standards. At the end of it all, arguing was the only way to truly know where I stand in the world and on what terms or, at the very least, led me to learn how to salvage myself and cut my losses (too late in my opinion, but better late than never). If I had been more willing to be upfront with my disregard for certain ideas, more willing to leverage "No" or "I don't care" without fear of reprisal (real or perceived), then I probably would have been in a better position to know in advance which arguments are worth it and which ones would be pointless time wasters. But I know first-hand that if you don't make yourself or your desired way of life a priority to be defended by whatever means you can muster, no one will. And you will suffer for it.
Being an introvert does NOT mean having unreadable or negative "resting face" expressions, nor does it mean dreading routine interaction with other humans, and it ESPECIALLY is not anything like "misanthropic".
What some of you people are describing sound more like autism or some kinds of personality disorders. That's very different from introversion--- which roughly half of the population could be categorized as.
How do you define misanthropy? A quick google search says the following: "Misanthropy is the general hatred, dislike, distrust or contempt of the human species, human behavior or human nature." That applies to me, which is why I dislike being around people that aren't loved ones, and why I've enjoyed the lockdown world where extra systems have emerged to keep people away from me. People with autism may or may not feel similarly, I can't say. I don't have problems socializing, I just dislike people.
I'm an extreme introvert as well, my wife is all the social interaction I require, and I'm a giant homebody, but I'm still super tired. Work wise I've been under pressure for a fair bit this year and there were no experiences to balance it out with. I miss a lot of small indulgences - quiet brunches on a Wednesday morning or going to get coffee. I may even miss the movie theater occasionally.
I certainly don't miss working from the office, but I miss the variety of downtime. A camel doesn't often need water, but they still need it.
This is basically how I feel. I'm an introvert and I'm exhausted and need a break. Being an introvert does not necessarily mean I like sitting in my small apartment all day with a roommate for months on end.
Perhaps you're not as extreme as you think, or perhaps I'm more extreme than most. I didn't miss movie theaters, eating out, driving, museums, malls, nothing. I have been able to stay in great shape with weights at home and biking, get more than enough socialization with my partner, and have plenty of hobbies that don't require interaction with or proximity to other people. There's a reason that my life goal is to escape into hermitude: I have zero interest in being around or seeing other humans unless they're loved ones.
Yeah, I don't care to see the people, my wife is enough for me, but I want a change and new experiences. Not even to travel, but to take some time and recover. Eat some food I don't usually eat, experience some things I haven't felt good about for the last year and a bit.
> Increased physical and social distance from other people
I believe for many people, this is more because "everyone else does it" and the general "miserable office atmosphere" in our industry. I'm not accusing the OP of anything by the way.
I would have said that I was in the group of "you've said hello, that's enough social contact for one day", yet after 15 months, at least according to friends and family, I'm more friendly, more sociable, and more outgoing.
I think really for a lot of people that are enjoying WFH for the last 15 months, what they're really enjoying, myself included is not sitting 2 feet from someone who is not family, that talks, fidgets, coughs, sniffs, slurps, and eats food at their desk 3 times a day, and being in an open plan office with 10-100 other people.
As a (currently, sort of) introvert, I agree with both you and the parent. I also had a great time during the pandemic. But I was behaving exactly as I was before, when I was depressed. The difference is that now everyone else – even celebrities and Instagram party girls – were suddenly living my lifestyle, and that gave me a sense of comfort. It meant that I no longer felt like I was letting the world pass me by, because the world stopped.
But now it’s back on again, frankly, that feeling is coming back. It was nice while it lasted, but that’s clearly not sustainable for anyone.
I'm "old" by the standards on here, in fact retirement isn't too far away if I want it, and I'm genuinely intrigued by how my personality is going to change once I'm no longer working. I see the last 15 months or so as a trial run, and it's been great.
I'm dreading going to back to the office if I'm honest.
I've been WFH for 4 years now and thoroughly enjoy it.
I enjoy isolation, I love the intensity of coding that I can get done. I'm generally more introverted.
That doesn't make the pandemic fun and rainbows. It's still been psychologically the most difficult time for me because I live in NYC. Walking the dog twice a day on ghost streets empty of any pedestrians, devoid of the hum of traffic and hearing nothing but the wails of every ambulance in the area for the better part of a month was deeply disturbing in a way I still haven't come to terms with.
Rubbing down the door knob with bleach. Double masking and surgical gloving when going to the bodega on the block for fruit. A real and valid fear of death and maiming for multiple months isn't something you just bounce back from.
So yes: It's a subjective statement. However it's not like just being an introvert made the pandemic a walk in the park. Don't mistake your experience as speaking for all introverts.
This article [1] implies the chance of catching COVID-19 from contact surfaces is 1 in 10,000 *at best* under lab conditions, and negligible at best. You're more likely to be struck by lightning or hit by a car.
The funny thing is bleach is what you need to stop noro and rota viruses, and those are actually very transmissible via surfaces, yet the protocol at my kids’ daycare (national chain) does not involve bleaching door knobs on the regular.
The same daycare that 2 weeks ago had an outbreak of noro or rotavirus which caused entire classes of toddlers to be infected and go home and vomit for a day and was spread to siblings and parents at home.
But they are still sanitizing pens. People’s risk profiles are crazy, and there is an insane amount of cover your ass for PR purposes.
Right, but NYC was hit hard relatively early on, and at the time there was a great deal of fear and uncertainty, especially because of the perception that the administration at the time had indicated it’s general hostility toward people in “blue” cities. People didn’t have the time or perhaps the perspective to step back and read whatever pre prints may have been available.
I don't think this is how most introverts have felt. Introversion doesn't mean you dislike interaction with other people. Like others mentioned, what you're describing doesn't sound like just being introverted, it sounds like ASD or some other personality disorder.
Definitely subjective though. I'd say I'm an introvert, and I've made it through ok, but it still very much feels like I lost a year of my life. It's really not been too different from being in prison in the country where I live.
That's quite callous towards people with autism. Many people with autism very much want to socialize and integrate into society, but have difficulties doing so. I don't have difficulties socializing, I just don't like people (misanthropy) and get drained by socialization (introversion), which is why the pandemic has been a great time for me. Of course by that I mean the circumstances as they have impacted my life, not the health status of people.
I’m curious, are you female? I don’t think I’ve ever been asked that unless I was unbelievably angry. Like maybe once or twice in my entire adult life.
I get asked quite often if I'm angry, grumpy, down, "what's wrong?" even when I'm absolutely fine and none of those things.
I was even stopped by a random stranger in a supermarket once and they asked if I was OK... I said I was fine, and then she asked if it had been a long day... erm. Guess it's just my face.
I remember in the supermarket I was actually just thinking about if a man could beat a giraffe in a fight.
With technological help like guns, obviously the man wins. Without technology but with enough preparation, humans probably still win because they could rig up traps and whatnot. Straight up the giraffe would wreck a humans because they can kick really hard with their long legs.
Terrain probably matters a lot here. On flat ground the giraffe kicks the shit out of humans. On uneven terrain with nooks and crannies to hide in and trip up the long legged thing, and rocks to throw at it to keep it mad, I think a human would have a good chance (not a giraffe fighting expert).
Humans probably have more stamina, if you can drag out the fight.
Speaking from personal experience, this happens to male humans as well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resting_bitch_face: "Using a type of facial recognition system, they found that the phenomenon is real and the condition is as common in males as in females, despite the gendered word bitch that is used to name the concept."
As a male, it's happened to me quite often, since my age was in single-digits. I just have a naturally serious expression, I guess. It also applies to people from other cultures like eastern Europe, where it's not the default to go around smiling and laughing in public or making small talk to strangers. Default expressions vary quite a bit and maybe yours is just more cheery or neutral.
Yea, I kind of cringe when I read the all-hands e-mails from my company that say things like "We know this has been incredibly difficult for all of you..." and "Everyone wants to get back into the office..." Wow, speak for yourself--it's been the best year of my life, and no, I'd rather just stay remote permanently, thankyouverymuch!
On the other hand, it gives me a chance to step back and develop some real empathy for everyone else. I recognize that I am blessed, and most people aren't wired like me, and the isolation has been really tough for them. When I interact with people over videoconference, I have to remind myself that this person might very well be suffering to the point of a mental breakdown from all this, and I need to communicate with care and thoughtfulness.
> On the other hand, it gives me a chance to step back and develop some real empathy for everyone else. I recognize that I am blessed, and most people aren't wired like me, and the isolation has been really tough for them. When I interact with people over videoconference, I have to remind myself that this person might very well be suffering to the point of a mental breakdown from all this, and I need to communicate with care and thoughtfulness.
This is what I hope everybody else can come out of the pandemic with: empathy, particularly for people like you and me who have thrived during the pandemic. Unfortunately, I fear you are an exception and people will push to make things just how they were before, as evinced by your email. On the bright side, I think it will at least get a little easier to find remote jobs, etc moving forward.
Agree. I’ve suffered levels of abuse far too many times simply because someone misread my facial expressions professionally/personally. My school bullies would examine my expressions intimately and the “lessons” they instilled on me through my basic desire to not give them something to read stand to this day. Having a simple block over my face has been downright comforting. And frankly I’m not missing the everyday exposures to allergens nor anything else in the air.
I keep hearing this over and over. I get it, some people are fairly introverted, some really enjoy WFH.
But what stopped you from distancing from people and using self-checkouts before the pandemic? If you hate people, fine, just go home straight after work, you aren't obligated to hang out with anyone. It is not like the government would fine you for coming home before 11pm, right?
> But what stopped you from distancing from people and using self-checkouts before the pandemic?
This was not uniformly accepted behaviour. Yes, some people could find roles and a situation where this was possible before, but most couldn't. Stores didn't really optimize for a self-check out experience.
The social pressure in many organizations and communities to conform was high and there was no escape. If you you wanted to work at a tech company or startup you would have to accept open offices, happy hours, and other social requires to a great extent. It was not acceptable to skip many events and you had no option to switch your working environment in the office because the only option was open space.
The pandemic has forced a change, most importantly, in a relatively uniform manner. I'm not making the argument that we should all accept this other extreme. Just as we return to normality we should consider the experiences of others, and try to make some reasonable adaptations.
Not speaking to the other points, but I did notice many stores completely reconfigured the checkouts in my area; before the pandemic there were few very tiny self checkout stalls, and there was always a long line of people with just a few items.
Now almost all the aisles are self-checkout and are friendlier to larger cart-fulls like I buy (having a few kids means there's no such thing as a quick trip with a hand basket anymore...).
It's a third of my life, half of my waking hours, that I'm forced to be in a box, dealing with people I wouldn't choose to breath the same air as, pretending to be interested in their small-talk.
If you're working this job and you started it in the office, you actually chose to breathe the same air as the coworkers you seem to so dislike. Saying otherwise is deceiving yourself.
No one is forcing you to pretend interest in small talk. If you're not interested in it, say so instead of pretending.
Are you afraid you'll lose your job over being antisocial or rude if you don't pretend to get along with your coworkers?
You might be happier if you look for a job you don't hate.
(Also if you stop seeing other people as beneath you, but that's a taller order)
By your argument, many people also voluntarily chose to stay home. Plenty of people continued flying, going on spring break, going to clubs, etc throughout the pandemic if there were no legal lockdowns.
If you're a normal person who understands consequences and social interactions, you also understand that not playing social games comes at a cost. As you said yourself:
> just go home straight after work
In your own hypothetical example, I'm still required to be in an office or else be jobless. Finding remote jobs isn't trivial.
Yep, As my company slowly starts going back to the office, I decided to move to a remote/rural area because I wasn't willing to go back into an office everyday. I expected to have to find a new job, but my current employer offered to let me continue remotely, so I suppose it has worked out.
I am jelaous. My company has a stated goal of going back to its old ways. I requested basically hybrid mode ( one day in office a week ) to show I am a team player, but it is clear remote is reserved for favorites..
I think it's very fair and valid for you to feel however you want with regards to shelter-in-place/wfh/lockdown, but to me it seems somewhat unconscionable to be smug like enjoying your time alone is a huge win against extroverts.
I feel like it's a pretty ridiculous over-statement to say that introverts feel like they're in a pandemic normally. I'm an introvert and don't feel like that. I suspect the only people who could reasonably feel like that are people with anxiety disorders or phobias.
I don't know, I'm not saying you can't express your opinion or feel how you feel. But I want to express I'm a bit grossed out reading your post, as you seem just a bit too gleeful and smug at this whole situation.
Please tell me where I expressed any glee at other people's misfortunes. What I said was the following which is a statement, not an expression of emotion:
> Those of you who have found the slightly over a year duration of the pandemic difficult have gotten a sample of how miserable pre-pandemic life was for those of us who are more introverted or misanthropic.
It doesn't impact me what other people feel, but I do hope that people who have not enjoyed lockdown can gain some empathy for the people who have enjoyed lockdown. It seems more like you're defensive at somebody having different preferences than you, which is just how life works.
Additionally, I don't have anxiety. Not before nor during the pandemic. So my point was not anxiety, my point was that the same way life during the pandemic has caused many people inconvenience and frustration, pre-pandemic life is inconvenient and frustrating to me because of the obligation to play social games and always be around people. It's quite tiresome and irritating.
> I'm an introvert and don't feel like that.
I also didn't say all introverts feel like I do, I said pre-pandemic life is miserable for those of us who are _more_ introverted or misanthropic.
I think you’re being overly reactive to the OP. Glee would be a lot more blatant and celebratory of the misfortune of others. I don’t think that’s their point. Not mine anyway.
I’m pushing back on the sentiment you pose because it’s far too often used and oppressively effective.
It seems OP is quite gratified at the rest of us having gotten "... a sample of how miserable pre-pandemic life was for those of us who are more introverted or misanthropic." when even as mostly an introvert this pandemic has been more than the typical anxiety of having to interact with others when I didn't want to.
Please tell me where I expressed any glee at other people's misfortunes. What I said was the following which is a statement, not an expression of emotion:
> Those of you who have found the slightly over a year duration of the pandemic difficult have gotten a sample of how miserable pre-pandemic life was for those of us who are more introverted or misanthropic.
How other people feel doesn't impact me, but I do hope that people who have not enjoyed lockdown can gain some empathy for the people who have enjoyed lockdown. Pre-pandemic life was as uncaring and dismissive of people who thrive during the pandemic as pandemic life is towards people who thrived before the pandemic.
“While most of the early studies were on children residing in orphanages that were deficient in almost every dimension, even children who are reared in relatively good orphanages but who are subject to social and emotional neglect display many of these characteristics while living in the institution”
The effects of early social-emotional and relationship experience on the development of young orphanage children :: Atypical Behaviors
I'm strictly talking about the day to day circumstances of distancing, masks, etc, not illness or death of loved ones as that's obviously an unpleasant thing at any time.
> Because covid was an incredibly hard period for all of us and we as humans need a break.
While true and a good thing, i cannot simply take a step back, look at the whole picture and feel this feels a bit awakward. The op (guessing) is perhaps a lucky few that got to keep their jobs through the pandemic, spend more time with family and were baking breads and indulging in gardening etc. This while millions lost their jobs and health insurance, relied on govt assistance or pick a job like a cashier where you constantly met people during a pandemic, while day cares and achools were closed. And feels like we expect the rest of the world to move on like nothing else happened while feel like I need a month's break.
Company-wide month off sounds amazing. Would you be willing to name it (would be great PR for them). If not, would you give a sense of geography, industry and size?
God I wished I worked there. Even without Covid this past year would have been tremendously hard on me. When I've talked to my manager about what I've been going through and explaining how it's impacted my performance I get the "Yea it's been a rough year for everyone" bit.
Finally we reach a point where both the pandemic and everything else has settled down and I'm too burnt out and depressed to enjoy it.
My company has been springkling extra days off throughout the year ("day for me") and its been great.
As someone with a family, we've been mostly doing ok through the pandemic. The biggest stresser for us is the lack of babysitting / kid swaps for being able to get project or personal time in (e.g. my half bath remodel has sat untouched for 6 months now).
> Because covid was an incredibly hard period for all of us
Not really. Most of my family and friends did fine. Whole bunch of them changed to better jobs due to tech job boom, worked from home, started gardening projects, learnt tennis ect. It was more than awesome for whole bunch of ppl.
Yeah I wish more companies would give an extra week of pto this year. Like I didn't leave my house for a year and a half and worked pretty much that whole time without a break while the world felt like it was falling apart.
> Because covid was an incredibly hard period for all of us and we as humans need a break.
Ok. Then let's give one to the essential workers who didn't get a break and had to risk their health going in to work every day, delivering food to the WFH crowd, dealing with anti-maskers, delivering packages to the WFH crowd, etc.
Maybe it's because I already got a lot of PTO (7 weeks a years, which is standard on this side of the Atlantic), but mandating time off for all the company seems a bit much over letting employee choose when they want to take some PTO
For me, the best part of Christmas & new year holidays was the entire company (HQed in west) shuts down. Without exception almost every single office across the world shuts down. It means absolute radio silence, no emails, no slack messages, no nothing. I realised the usefulness of it only when I recently experienced it first hand.
Unlike me taking two week personal leave, there's no anxiety of missing out on important decision, nothing to catch up on when I return. When everyone's back from Christmas holidays it's like the whole company wakes up from two weeks of hibernation. I found the break very refreshing. I wish we would do it more often, say twice a year or maybe even four times a year but one week each, one per quarter.
I've been working remotely for about five years, now, and I love it. I've always been curious about working at Twitter and Google, and I was vaguely hoping that they'd start looking at full-time remote hires across their engineering orgs. I value remote work more than I do the possibility of working at Twitter or Google, so it is a little wistfully that I realize I might never follow up on that curiosity.
I was trying to make sense of these lines from the article.
I probably misunderstood.
> Twitter has said that it expects a majority of its staff to spend some time working remotely and some time in the office. That's despite its boss Jack Dorsey initially saying that employees could work from home "forever".
> And Google rejigged its timetable for bringing people back to the workplace. As of 1 September, employees wishing to work from home for more than 14 days a year would have to apply to do so.
Gotcha, yeah I know for sure twitter is allowing 100% remote. People will have the option to go to an office if they want at Twitter but there's no requirement or need to apply like what you're saying google is doing.
Though, google has way more employees than twitter I believe (5,000+ vs 130,000+)
I think you're right, but I don't think this organizational discomfort with remote work will be true of the next batch of hip companies to work at. So you may yet get your chance. :)
My workplace (Moz) has been giving us the third Friday of every month off since April of 2020 due to COVID. The CEO called them "Breather Days" - a day to catch our breath, catch up on chores or home life, help get our kids school straightened out, etc. More importantly than simply getting the days off, the empathy that it demonstrated reassured everyone that we would find the work/life balance we needed even in extraordinary times.
Ours did the same thing, although we generally vote on which friday it will be for the upcoming month - people often choose to line it up with another stat holiday to make 4 day weekends. I agree that the empathy part of this really means a lot to people.
I'm really curious how long we'll keep that in place, especially after re-opening the physical offices.
That was announced a few months ago along with the opening up of most US States and the soon-to-be-widely-available vaccines.
I can't speak for everyone where I work, but this felt like an appropriate time to shift back to normalcy in that regard. In any case, we have a very generous PTO policy that should make it easy for anyone to continue to transition through the rest of the year as they see fit.
I’m at the start of an extended break for now. 3 weeks in and I’m not sure how long it’ll be but I have enough saved up to take 2-3 years off. How’d you spend your time off? And what brought you back?
I tried to self-fund a startup that crash and burned.
I'll never do that again. What an expensive lesson to learn.
I traveled the world. I went to all seven continents and fucked off big time. I partied when I wanted to. I went where I wanted to go. I was a bit hedonistic at times.
No regrets.
Eventually, I ran out of money, so I'm back again. I honestly didn't want to come back to tech, but that big paycheck, and I'm good at it.
I feel this, but for me that means I haven't gotten fully into vacation mode. The goal is to not think about work at all, and don't do any. Once that feeling goes away, you're on vacation. It takes me ~2 eventful fun days. I can tell I've gotten into vacation flow when I go back to work and the first 2 days back are just as difficult.
I read similar stories from early retirees. After some time they get bored and return to work.
I honestly don't get it. I have never experienced that feeling. I'm now on my second year of working significantly less, and you'd have to drag me back kicking and screaming.
Are they taking the app down? Because no matter what people think even that "serverless", "cloud", "automated", "containers", "super-redundant" thing does not run without engineering and ops.
1 point by rektide 32 minutes ago | parent | edit | delete [–] | on: Bumble closes to give 'burnt-out' staff a week's b...
Shout out to Laura Hogan's late-April "We Need To Talk About Your Q3 Roadmap"[1], which talks about taking care of workers just starting to make it out of a crazy pandemic year.
The real story here is that this is news. It's common for most European businesses for 2 weeks every year in the summer. It's a non-optional, lights out, GTFO shutdown.
Can you give some examples? I live in Europe and have never experienced that in my country suddenly everything stops for 2 weeks in the middle of the summer.
Citation needed. Germans do not quit working for 2 weeks in the summer. Where did you get that from? What German companies shut down for 2 weeks in the summer of 2019?
There's even a word for it. Google Betriebsurlaub.
I get that from working with and for German, Austrian and Dutch companies in Germany, Austria and the Netherlands. It's nigh on impossible to get anything done in August around here.
This doesn't apply to things like resorts and restaurants, for obvious reasons, though if that's what you're thinking of.
Yeah, your first comment made it sound to me like the country shuts down (grocery stores, home improvement stores, furnite stores, banks, offices, government agencies, taxis, ...) ;-)
My small-ish SaaS company in the US gave us all a European Christmas, Dec 24-Jan 2 totally off last year, short of on-call for P0 events. It Really made a difference. It was sub 100 headcount, but the SaaS supported a few major chains.
The upside is hard to measure which might be a blocker for larger, metrics-driven HR teams. However I feel like we all, as humans, know that policies like that make a difference.
It does until you mix that with all the employee perks and see that it could very well be strategic.
From the article:
> It also boasts a "Mommy Bar" - described as a "private lactation space" by Ms Wolfe Herd - as well as fortnightly manicures, hair trims and "blowouts" which the founder said showed "appreciation for our busy bees".
It seems like an appealing target for private equity or managers installed by a pension fund. Not sure what their ARPU and ARR look like, but when you have a company with solid revenue, perks like this are a huge signal for a bunch of "opportunities for efficiencies," I would wonder how long all that perceived value would be left on the table. It's not just a Bumble thing, I also think story-worthy perks are mostly a cheap way to attract new staff into the pipeline, and get attention from acquirers. Less than $5k in beanbag chairs used to have a 10x ($50k+) return in organic press, recruitment pipeline, and marketing buzz. Culture spend like that can have non-linear returns. That "Mommy Bar," alone probably has a 30x return on what they spent on it.
I'd absolutely close an office for two weeks in August if I ran a company that could afford to, or split it across teams. There's the question of whether you need an office you can afford to close, but from a capital management perspective, if one knew how to make a company appear both attractive yet helpless when it came to optimizing it, to attract someone who liked to solve problems who would intervene and buy in to "fix" this obvious inefficiency for you, well, that would be about par for the course wouldn't it.
I know this is a little weird, but everyone I know in downtown Austin (where bumble has their offices) had a marked increase in despair/depressive symptoms with the summer jump in heat.
In my experience that's been true every year (and I normally try to leave the city for August) but especially this summer post pandemic, post icepocalypse.
I've been burnt out bad before and a week isn't enough.
IMHO, with burnout, a week off feels like taking just one breath. What a week does though is let the workers reconsider their situation. Is the burnout worth it? Companies ultimately don't care if you die tomorrow. We are all replaceable to them in the end.
> fortnightly manicures, hair trims and "blowouts" which the founder said showed "appreciation for our busy bees"
> Working hours? Not nine to five apparently. Employees can choose the hours they want, just as long as the work gets done
It's all just a bunch of BS. Give your employees reasonable time off policies and encourage them to actually take time off instead of letting them get burned out and then closing the office for a week.
Yeah, my personal experience over the past 18 months has led to some changes in how I view the structure of work.
I don’t get burned out from working too much; I get burned out from having to make constant decisions about what I’m going to work on and how I’m going to do it. For me lack of structure is the primary source of burnout, not workload. The flexibility of working from home is nice, but not enough to make up for the increased stress of having to manage the environment all on my own.
Obviously not everyone is like me, but I think it’s common enough that we should be questioning the wisdom of the work-from-home free-for-all.
I wouldn't say I like boundaries; it's just that without them my mental health suffers greatly. And I'm terrible at constructing and enforcing those boundaries on my own.
Judging by their recruitment page, they have a large office in London.
I don't know about Bumble, but some of my friends in the UK have found the past year very tough. The UK has had strict restrictions on socialising, travel away from home, even being outdoors.
For months at a time, my siblings have been unable to visit my parents!
I can see the benefit of a company saying "let's all take this week off". It allows holidays of people in the same team to clash, when that might normally not be allowed.
(It's not been great in Denmark either, especially the dark winter with most social life closed. But we were still able to see friends and family and stay in holiday cottages, and no-one was shouted at by police for taking a walk too far from home.)
My takeaway from this, in addition to it being awesome, is that this likely means that many others are feeling what you are feeling as well, if you are in fact feeling burnt-out too.
Does one week really resolve it or does it just restart with added pressure? Feels like they might need to pull 2 - 3 weeks to really take pressure off.
Maybe I am too naive but what the heck are they overworking on? It's an app with some basic functionality. Is software dev in such a sad state that you can't deliver a self-standing product that doesn't require teams working overtime to keep it running? I doubt that all of their staff is doing DevOps or maintaining servers which are the only two things that jump to mind as being labor-intensive for a an app with millions of users
If you look at their job openings, they're looking for experience re-engineering monolithic codebases to microservices, and they mention PHP experience or willingness to learn PHP to read their legacy codebase as a plus, so it sounds like their back-end engineers have a lot on their plate. Add in two mobile apps, plus all the technical, legal, and business challenges of operating on lots of different countries, plus recommendation algorithms, abuse detection, tons of marketing stuff I'm sure, constant running to stay in place in a crowded market, hell, that's just what I can think off of the top of my head never having worked in that space.
> I doubt that all of their staff is doing DevOps or maintaining servers
Please don't assume this.
Just because you don't use the app and have no interest in the app or company does not mean you need to have a reductionist outlook on other people's work.
Bumble has a great and in depth engineering blog [0] here that doesn't make it 'an app with some basic functionality.'
> Just because you don't use the app and have no interest in the app or company does not mean you need to have a reductionist outlook on other people's work.
Why are you assuming genuineness when the parent mentioned this:
'an app with some basic functionality'
'I doubt that all of their staff is doing DevOps or maintaining servers'
'Is software dev in such a sad state that you can't deliver'
'what the heck are they overworking on?'
This is enough to know that the parent is dismissing the effort and work of others to the point that they are expressing a reductionist viewpoint of the entire app and company, which is not ok.
I’m just assuming the question was asked in good faith :) I’ve seen this topic discussed on HN about many companies and sometimes there are interesting and unexpected reasons for the high headcount.
A bit O/T, but a few things from that blog jumped out at me:
1. I clicked the we're hiring link. Most roles are in EU (particularly UK and Spain). Is that for cost reasons? I know hiring engineers is cheaper in those two locations in particular. Or is it for EU/Badoo reasons?
2. Despite frequently playing up its female-led workplace, all but one of the blog posts are authored by men (based on photos and names). Is this reflective of their staff? The Badoo staff? The pool of people who like to write blog posts?
UK is not a low-cost region for hiring. Employment taxes are high and the IT market in locations like London is very competitive. Rates are comparable to hiring in the US outside of outliers like Silicon Valley.
FTA: “Bumble has had a busier year than most firms, with a stock market debut, and rapid growth in user numbers.”
I don’t think they’re implying that everyone is working overtime. Scaling up to accommodate a lot of new users isn’t always simple, we all know this. And a looming IPO means the pressure to get that scaling right first time is high (and has plenty of non-tech requirements to stress out employees too)
A busy year like that combined with the effects of COVID means that a lot of people feel burnt out. A synchronised break also has benefits: with no-one working there’s much less chance you’ll be tempted to “just check emails quickly” and get sucked back in.
I didn’t have a particularly intense workplace in the last year and I still feel pretty burnt out so I can sympathise.
I don't know about your organization, but at mine utilization jumped like crazy when we all started working from home. People threw themselves into their work and stopped taking vacations. Not a lot of people have taken time to breathe in the last year. Was that focus and effort required? Probably not, but with nothing else to do and in a time of such economic uncertainty people did what they needed to make themselves feel better. I understand why the company would be burnt out.
Plus, with nobody doing anything social or interacting with other humans, I've noticed far fewer people getting sick, or taking the occasional Friday off to get out of town at the last minute.
Yeah - I haven't been sick since this whole thing started. I was honestly hoping that my recent second Pfizer shot would make me feel ill enough that I could feel good about taking a day, but no luck.
There is this misconception that software development can be ultra lean and only really need a team of few handful of people if they're just sufficiently capable.
It's knowledge work that is almost always in the complex domain, and as such it's far from simple. In fact it's the domain of unknown unknowns. So to have a product with millions of users with an online attack vector, that takes security and uptime serious, you need the following lead roles as a minimum:
Security, Test, Agile, Operation, Owner are at the very least full time posistions in their own right for a single service, then you need to add developers. Add requirements for new documentation and maintenance of old. You probably need some support roles too.
An app with millions of users are likely to have multiple teams that have a subset of the full application. For every feature you want to develop or any significant refactorings, you need to involve at least architect, security, test and operations. My experience is that teams around 8-10 people can be really productive and run a service. If you really want to accelerate and be best in class you assign teams to specific parts of the service that makes sense. Could be signup, search, chat, ect.
Then you probably want teams for analytics, ads and marketing, legal and before you know it, you have 50+ people working directly on a "self-standing product".
All that said, if the code base is crap, and the organization of the employees are similar it's highly likely that alone is responsible for creating the additional workload compared to a better codebase and organizational structure.
For Agile role (assuming you mean a role like SCRUM master), it works way better if it's a productive team member (either developer, QA, doc writer...) that works part-time as the SCRUM master for the team, rather than a agile person who does only that, which usually feel disconnected from the actual concerns of the team.
I'm not sure I agree. Some of the best Scrum Masters I've worked with was not developers, but peoples person with great process optimization skills. Some of the worst I've worked with have been developers or product owners that failed to separate their roles.
They had an IPO and their user count spiked. The former requires a ton of work on the finance/management team (great writeup here on HN recently. The link evades me). The latter probably necessitated some rearchitecturing.
> I doubt that all of their staff is doing DevOps or maintaining servers
I should imagine there's a fair few customer support people along with at least a handful of content moderators - considerably more labour intensive than software dev/devops/sysadmin, I think.
Obviously there's also comms teams, marketing, HR, finance, etc. I'd say these are probably also more labour intensive than dev/devops/sysadmin because they tend to involve a lot more human contact, etc.
This comment feels like it shares a lot of the attitude found in the "I could build this in a weekend"-style comments. Even things that seem relatively simple become quite complicated when scaled out internationally to millions of users.
This reads like someone who has never worked on anything. Here's something I totally made up but have experienced half a dozen times and caused it the other half dozen:
Come in to an exciting new opportunity. The first week you recoil in horror the technical debt. It appears the previous maintainer/builder didn't know one or more of: basic system admin, testing, documentation, packages, coding design, database design, or security.
The incidents start. The code is so interdependent it's terrifying to make even a small change. Fixing a bug in their custom json generator breaks a service you don't know exists and takes out billing. Yes they wrote their own. You lose the confidence of the team already there. Now you are too afraid to make changes.
All you can do is toil or try to think about selling a rewrite. When one or both of those hit burn out you fire up LinkedIn and beg for mercy.
They had their IPO a few months ago and I imagine all of their staff, not just engineers, were under a lot of pressure. And no one said they were working overtime, just that they were burnt out. Plus, when your company is in the news and your user base grows 30% in a matter if months, that's the time to strike while the iron is hot, which no doubt required a lot of work from all teams.
Concur with someone else on the thread*. Bumble’s security team is largely overseas (UK). For a US based, culture-forward company, to me this probably implies a lot of offshoring of eng talent at some point, in order to grow. Which in turn probably means growing pains moving from contract devs to a real, in-house product<>eng program.
> A spokeswoman for Bumble said a few customer support staff will be working in case any of the app's users experience issues. These employees will then be given time off to make sure they take a whole week of leave.
It's called paid vacation in Europe and all citizens have the right to at least 4 weeks per year. I hope this boon arrives to the whole of USA one day, together with paternal holidays, free education and other modern achievements that are standard here. I don't mean to be inflammatory here, it really boggles my mind how a week off is even a thing we're discussing here.
This is different than paid vacation and has some pros and cons. Obviously it doesn't have the flexibility of 1 week you can use whenever you want. But closing the company for a week forces people to take the time off (some people just accumulate as much vacation as they can, either because they don't like taking it or because in some states you'll get cash for unused vacation). Making EVERYONE take the same week also helps avoid the existential dread of taking vacation because you feel burnt out, then coming back to a pile of 500 unread emails
Of course, but for all we know this extra week could be the only paid vacation they have since for some reason in the USA there is no concept of mandatory paid vacation.
If you had any idea on how US orgs work, you wouldn't say that. First, just because the government doesn't impose something, it doesn't mean companies can't do it. In fact, companies so much more for their employees than the government dictates. It's the same for minimum wage: the federal government might be stuck at 7.25, but in practice low pay jobs are more than that: Walmart was 11 last time I checked, Amazon 15 etc.
Most US tech workers have around 20 days of PTO. Paid medical leave is a bit trickier: some companies don't give it to you so it comes out of PTO. Some companies require a doctor's note. Some don't require anything. Some require a note after 10 days....it varies a lot. And this is where the US could step up a bit and acknowledge humans do get sick every now and then, and cover for that.
Do you have any source for that? My limited research[0] shows it's closer to 15 - and sometimes, as you say, this includes sick days. It can't be compared to Europe where you have 4 weeks, guaranteed, for any industry, plus sick days - and many cou. Fortunately WfH greatly reduced the strain reduced with working in the office (commuting, open spaces, not being able to use your time more efficiently), but for non-office workers the problem still remains: you spend your life working and you barely have time to even stop and think why you're doing all this. Family life suffers, Cat's Cradle and all. It's all really wrong.
The legal minimum is 20 days for the London office, 22 in Spain, at least that in Moscow. (This is in addition to public holidays.) Bumble probably offer a bit more.
In the UK and Spain, that's also the number you must use, I don't know about Russia. (In other words, if you've not used any days by December, you'll be taking all of December off. Or whenever your year wraps round.)
> You must take at least four weeks’ holiday a year, so only holiday on top of this can be carried over and then only if your employer gives you permission or if this is permitted by your contract of employment.
I once had a colleague who was given a letter along the lines of "you still haven't used enough holiday; unless you advise us of your preferred days, you will be on holiday from date X to Y".
And in addition to that, what is the company culture/attitude around using time off. Unlimited time off is great, in theory, unless you're made to feel like a monster for using any.
- With no feature/project work that week, there is zero pressure to check email or slack.
- Teams are forced to build systems that are automated, resilient and documented enough that most of the staff won't need to be contacted during the shutdown week.
- The business has to prove it can run with just the necessary amount of staff for operations and customer support. (These staff generally work with their managers to take an equal amount of time off.)
Personally I use that week in summer to disconnect from work and do something theraputic for myself- go for a 7+ day motorcycle ride, preferably through places where internet connections are poor.