heisnotanalien

Programming is NOT meditative even the old way. Yes you can get into a flow state but that's not really meditation. In fact you're really just disassociating in a way and is easy to end stuck in your head too much. In fact, without balance, long periods of coding can leave some people feeling mentally over-identified with abstract thinking and less connected to their body or immediate experience.

It is also worth saying that you don't need to sit still to meditate. You can do yoga or go for a walk. Walking meditation is very underrated IMHO.

Yesss. I will never buy anything Meta so happy to see this.

I'm sorry but I just find this slightly ridiculous. Create a 'frictionless' environment as much as you want but it is never going to make you write. If you want to write then just write and overcome the internal resistance. It's NOT a tools problem.

This is how LiveJournal was back in the day. I have some really fond memories of people just honestly writing about their life. It seemed more pure and less performative. Then of course the whole Six Apart thing happened but I know many Russians for whom LJ still serves the same purpose.

No. A properly trained therapist essentially holds space so you can find yourself. That's not something you want to burden a friend with. It's a common misconception that it is just about 'talking'. Good therapy is more about feeling.

You don't go to a therapist to learn cognitive knowledge. You go to heal your way of relating with others. It's not easy and can only be done in the messy complicated emotional world of relationship with another human being. You need to feel their eyes on you. You need to feel vulnerable and on the point. You need to be guided to feel into your body.

Struggling to reconcile this is cool with what about the insane energy/water costs. Are we supposed to stick our heads in the sand? Hope it will magically go away?

I've experienced this and I think it's due to skills matrix bingo. You're a junior engineer and to become a senior engineer all you need to do is make a line in the skills matrix. Write a test! Be nice to someone in a code review! Boom! BINGO! Senior engineer.

Of course it's good to know what you need to do to become a Senior. It used to be more wooly but at the same time even the best thought-out skills matrices don't capture what a Senior engineer really is.

We need more third spaces beyond the gym or things based around alcohol. I like the idea of members clubs where people have similar values/interests and you can go there and chat to people. Laptops/phones banned.

Makes sense. Thanks for sharing your setup. Sounds great.

You work for Canonical but use NixOS? Isn't that er a bit weird?

I don't know much about the project but as an outsider it all just seems totally insane! People writing letters with screenshots of actions really? Liking a post becomes the equivalent to going on a political march or something? I can't help wonder if a lot of these problems would be avoided by more collaborative in person/talking and frankly more emotional awareness. It's all cognitive left-brain stuff - where is the emotional centre?

Very interesting.

What's the advantage of this? Can't you use a modern paint program? What am I missing? Is it just coolness factor?

A lot of it simply comes down to management being butt hurt because they signed up for a 20 year lease on office space in Expensive City.

That said, I think more focus should be on making remote nicer and productive as possible rather than fighting it. More actually listening to employees and making it work. Making having get togethers in person every so often.

Then the PM comes and asks you to change the wood used on the back of the chest of drawers because they have some brain fart.

I would suggest all this stuff will arise organically if you just hire the right people and give them some good principles of what good looks like. Like actually train people in leadership and other skills instead of just having a 'process'? I mean it when I say see what happens if you actually trust people and give them some freedom.

Fuck Scrum. How many devs are saying this privately how much they hate scrum but have a work persona where they have to love it? It's so fucking toxic. It's just focus on doing a good job and get back to basics. Hire the right people, give them a lot of trust, some incentives to do a good job, and see what happens. Stop making out a methodology out of a freaking todo list.

It's not so much time, it's more cognitive load. In scrum teams, it feels like you're always talking about the future. I think it just builds on the anxiety many people have frankly. It's just another attempt to unrealistically control the future.

Of course it's in SF cos the people there don't spend enough time on computers already.

Great post. Us engineer types I would say are generally too conscious. That is we prioritise the cognitive left-brain side waaaaayy too much.

Me me me. Other people exist apart from you!

I love working from home as much as everyone else here (seemingly) but I don't think people are fully appreciating how damaging not talking to people in meat space is likely to be long-term. We are embodied/energetic creatures and that energy is not exchanging the same way online (sorry if that sounds woo but it's true!). More so for the younger people, let's not forgot some of whom have never worked with people much in person.

You might find changing your external circumstances doesn't change very much. You might finding the frustration is still there. It could even by the source of frustration is somewhat outside of your conscious awareness. I would suggest therapy just to talk about it more and go inside. I think MORE people should be doing this generally.

I mean have you considered you don't get to be Bruce Lee without being a bit er crazy?

Pray tell, who is your perfect human being role model? Seems to me you have unrealistic standards.

I'm going to have a Coke Zero.

You can't be 'friends' with someone you have power over. It's that simple. You can be on friendly terms with someone but actual friends? Come on. You're not going to be completely vulnerable or honest with someone in that situation. It's not true friendship. It seems to be a lot of people might struggle to make friends outside of the workplace. IF that's the case, then just be honest about it.

I basically use i3 as a very minimal window manager. I just run all my programs full-screen on a workspace each e.g. one for chrome, one for visual studio code, one for slack, one for discord etc. I only ever use the tiling to bring up a quick terminal wherever I am or maybe to view a browser occasionally. You can def go down the rabbit hole with optimising but you don't need to. You probably rarely need to really see verything as once after all - hardly good for productivity IMHO. Otherwise I like how there are no window decorations using screen real estate or menus I never use etc

The best thing is about travelling with a second-hand cheap Thinkpad is no one wants to steal them. Also it's a nice fuck you to consumerism IMHO.