throwaway803453

* Everyone seems to increasingly be in it for themselves

I was fortunate to have had a career with mild autonomy to help other team members even if it was slightly out of my job description. But this only happens in a shared office environment where you can see when someone is falling behind or overhear a problem. That physical presence also creates a bond with co-workers that's often more powerful than the corporate mission.

But working from home for the past years I feel like I mercenary working among mercenaries. Working with people that have never met and will never meet and for whom work isn't about the mission or the customer. If I get work done early, I now just call it a day. Why bother with ad-hoc testing, documentation, checking in on that new hire, proposing a conference paper, investigating technical debt, etc. It's liberating but it's also depressing.

Simply adding a delay to ensure the sentence doesn't appear after it is spoken would fix this. It's something that unavoidably happens with Saturday Night Live's transcript, for example, and I prefer it for comedy.

This is why I choose to be a contractor and an engineer. If I work, I bill. I never understood how anyone in good conscience can work 15hrs while the others at the company work 40hrs and still collect full-time benefits. As an engineer I have never had that luxury though, somehow we are always busy and I have to make an effort to reduce my billable hours without needing to pad them. I am probably also culturally biased from working class roots that overpraises hours worked and that mindset is admittedly self-defeating.

Preparing/eating a meal during a meeting is admittedly perk but it doesn't affect my focus or participation.

Here's what my invoice looks like for today

0.5hr chats, code reviews, time-audit

1.25hr Bug#12345

...

So I have captured the ~15 minutes I spent itemizing/cleaning up my invoice for the past day or two in a "time-audit"/misc line item.

"very thorough with my itemization" implying you'll just over bill your customer because they have the nerve to have you professionally account for your time ?

"tipped the balance of power from the money men to the workers"

Right so if they weren't operating with integrity that doesn't mean the worker shouldn't either. Tit-fot-tat might be an optimal game theory but better to optimize for a clear conscience.

Note, I realize I am being unfair to your comment. When my customer first asked me to itemize my invoice it was an annoyance, but now I am efficient at it and see it as win-win. I just keep adding to it in real time as I work through out the day and then do a periodic clean up and aggregation.

FWH has exposed how many white-collar jobs were only full-time in the ass-in-seat sense and how many employees should have Professional Meeting Attender as their job title.

I used to be the guy who would champion efficient meeting practices. Now it's the last thing I want given that I can now work-out, make breakfast, do manual labor, etc., while listening to meeting.

4 day work week in grasp you ask ? For many I'd be surprised if they actually did 15hrs of work a week. I'd never hire a full time employee who can work remotely. I'd employ a contractor who has to itemize their invoice.

One of the properties I own is in Reno which is a 4hr drive from SF. It's a 2br 1ba condo which Zillow estimates $207k. It's nice, fully remodeled. That would be $900 mortgage + $180 hoa + $50 taxes (?) = ~$1200/mo ?

Make $20/hour like most folks in this working class neighborhood do and you are all set. Get a roommate or a spouse that works part time if you can't earn $20/hr.

Correction "100 row style pull-ups" my chest is nearly parallel with the ceiling.

Thanks in advance for the advice. Please share a link when you can.

No, probably more dumb in the "man-up" sense: running immediately after waking in below freezing weather while it's still dark out without warming up or wearing warm clothes. I felt superhuman and that feeling is addictive.

Perhaps that is why running injuries are so common ? You can't keep pushing yourself to deadlift more, for example, without it being painfully obvious your form is not right. And you just know that the person looking back in the mirror should not deadlift 315 lbs. But with running there is no obvious indication and the environmental factors keep changing. Then you're spending months stiff and in pain. You feel 20 years old one week and 90 years old the next.

David Goggins is that you ? I have been exercising my entire life and running is the only activity that routinely gives me injuries that last for nearly a year. Most of us probably don't have the best form but watching Goggins get his knees drained last year made me question if humans were meant to run regularly past a certain distance and past a certain age.

"I want to minimize the amount of time I have spend doing it."

Just to quickly share what worked for me since many of us don't have room for a row machine: a pull-up bar and a 30lb kettle bell. Every 4hrs between 9AM and 9PM my Alexa reminds me to work out. I then do 3 out of 4 of the following: a set of push-ups, 100 crunches, 25-pullup (or 100 row style push ups with my feet on a tall bar stool), and/or 100 kettle bell swings. The routine is usually over in 7 minutes if I stay focused. It's short enough where I don't sweat so no need to change clothes and shower.

To be clear when the workout reminder chimes, sometimes I don't want to do any of it. But then I remind myself "you can do something" and I at least do the push-ups and pull-ups. I couldn't be more pleased with the results especially given how little effort is required.

Personally I have gone ever further and started treating "I, you, my, your" as mild swear words especially around people who are insecure or who may unfairly think you are authoritarian.

"one could argue", "it's possible", etc. may be better alternatives for "I think".

"Because who will put up with you if you don't even think you're worthy of love."

The answer is people who don't know the real you. Would anyone love you if they saw a clip show of all the lies, betrayal, hypocrisy, times you yelled at your family, embarrassing fails, wasted potential, etc. But for many of us that clip show plays daily in our heads as a reminder to stop being so shitty and it comes at the price of our self-esteem.

Exactly. The working poor want good health insurance, affordable college, paid time off, a pension/retirement, home equity, a safe neighborhood, passive income, a few yearly vacations, etc. Basically what me and all my friends and family have.

But whenever the income divide comes up in personal discussion otherwise smart people imply the working poor wants the private island, rockets, lambos, and yachts of billionaires and that could destabilize society.