denverkarma

The details I’ve commented on are the ones present in the authors writing. Atlassian is not perfect, but the story as told is far from complete. But beyond that, I don’t have anything to gain from elaborating, and the author is already angry and going through a lot, so why pile on?

I agree with you about how it looks reading only this persons story. However, my experience with Atlassian was that taking PTO is no problem, and normally a request like this would not have met pushback. From what I know of the situation, there was a lot more to it than this.

The promo process there is a mess for sure. They were trying to fix the issue of having different offices all around the world, and that people's standards in different markets were - well - different. But the effort to create globally a standardized promotion process meant it became very hard to get promoted, and as a manager it sucked when you had people on your team who absolutely deserved it but got stuck in the process and had to wait 1-2 years more than they should have, or leave in order to get a vertical move.

Believe what you want. I no longer work at Atlassian, and I had my own frustrations with the company. There are definitely some internal struggles, and specific teams under a lot of pressure, and if you get caught in one of those situations it sucks. The specific team this person was on is under a lot of pressure, and this person is not the only person who quit over it.

But the person who wrote this article did not give an accurate portrayal of the entire situation.

My experience was that Atlassian was very generous with PTO, but it's true there was no accrual. I was encouraged to take 20-30 days off per year, and I did, and I never got pushback. My experience was that nearly everyone took 4-5 weeks off per year, and those that did not were often encouraged to take more PTO.

There was an entitlement for 6 weeks paternity leave and 6 months maternity leave, which is very good for the US.

But there is no accrual. I know that some people there had a really hard time with the idea of "unlimited" and felt that they could't use their time off if they didn't know how much they "really" had. The truth was you really had as much as your manager said, but this sucked for managers because occasionally someone would abuse it and try to just work 3 days a week, so they tried to give guidance. The standard guidance was "we want you to take at least 20 days off, and you should be fine up to 30, if it's more than that we might start saying no."

The person who wrote this post did not, and still does not, understand that this guidance is not the same as accrued vacation.

You're correct about unlimited PTO, it's absolutely a mixed bag.

I worked at Atlassian, and my experience was that people were actively encouraged to take between 20-30 days off per year, and that getting vacation was usually a mere formality - telling your manager "hey I'm planning to take the week of so and so off, any issue with that?" I never had vacation or sick time checked, never had any denied, and I very much took advantage of the benefit.

Still, the manager does have to approve it, so I have heard stories about teams that are understaffed declining vacation when they don't have enough people to be on call etc. I don't know how that would work out differently if you did have accrual vacation though... somebody does have to be on-call. It's tough.

The person took paid medical leave, and when that ended, was offered unpaid leave. They didn't want to use unpaid leave, they wanted to "use their earned vacation." But the person did not understand - apparently still does not understand - that there is no accrued vacation.

I'm sorry I can't speak to details as this is all very personal for the folks involved, but I know all the people involved in this story and can tell you this is not a very fair account of what happened. It was a long-running and very difficult situation for everyone involved.

The fact that they are more than capable of innovation and shrewd business is the entire reason that casually stealing whatever they want on top of things is problematic.

So when is the western world going to wake up and realize that China is a cutthroat competitor that does not respect western law or traditions, cannot be trusted, and intends to dominate the world? This seems especially troubling for the tech world as IP is easily copied and the only thing that really protects it is the legal system, which China has shown over and over they don't care about.

To be honest I’m not so bothered by the idea that depression could be extrinsic, or at least partially extrinsic.

What I find “crudely reductionist,” in the article is the very idea of “capitalist realism,” and the idea that some notion called “capitalism,” can be the cause of all depression.

Are we to think that depression did not exist in the Soviet Union? Or perhaps in the mercantilist kingdoms of the colonial era? Or perhaps not in the Roman Empire? Or what about ancient China or India?

There’s some irony in saying “capitalist realism tries to fool us that this is all there could ever be,” when the article itself is declaring that capitalism (or any -ism) can only be some kind of evil force which naturally causes depression.

It doesn’t read to me like a thoughtful scientific article, but like a religious text decrying another religion.

I find the real world is not nearly so black and white. Certainly the “capitalism” as practiced in the United States is far different than that practiced in Norway, as well as the statist system in practice in Cuba and currently falling apart in Venezuela.

It’s hard for me to see this author as doing anything other than taking a victim mentality and trying to prescribe it for everyone else, laying Universal blanket blame on the authors preferred heresy.

Yes, I saw that after another commenter pointed me toward the guidelines. I would delete the parent comment, but then I wouldn’t get to offer an apology. Thanks for flagging this to me.

@mattrp, looks like we’re at the max thread depth. Thanks for your comment.

I certainly don’t mean to say people should shed their ideas, or that we should be starlings that flock together.

But I do think it’s important to see humanity as one species, one people, who have most things in common and thrive by working together constructively.

That’s why I feel it’s important to seek to understand the people who see the world differently than you, rather than just exist in blind opposition to them.

When we let our ideology define who we are it becomes a religion, and world history has plenty of examples of people taking religious ideology as a reason to blindly oppose and eventually wage literal war on “the other.”

Meanwhile, healthy mutual tolerance comes from seeking to understand and then arranging life in such a way that each person can have their own ideas and worldview without needing to quash the others.

To me that feels like just a description of liberal philosophy, so it’s surprising I most often have this conversation with friends leaning far left who are so angry they are thinking more in terms of how to wage a war than how to find a workable mutual tolerance.

Well, I re-read the guidelines, and I have to admit they do say to reply but don’t specifically say not to downvote. Not sure where I got the idea that was one of the rules.

I see it also says don’t comment on votes, which I hadn’t noticed before. I would go back and delete that comment but then your reply would make no sense, so oh well.

Thank you for posting your explanation and helping set me straight on HN etiquette, I appreciate it!

I think actually, knowing your perception of the world is not correct is the really hard part, because then you can’t just go through your day comfortably, you have a constant mental struggle against a faulty autopilot.

Imagine driving a car with misaligned steering that pulls sharply to one side. You could do it, but it would get tiring, and it would feel dangerous to go on a long road trip because if you lost focus for a minute you could crash.

My own experience with mental health issues is that it feels about like that.

Hah! This got downvoted in the first second after posting, which to me says the down-voter couldn’t have read past the first sentence. Come on now, HN downvotes are for unconstructive or inappropriate comments. If you disagree you’re not supposed to downvote, you’re supposed to reply :)

This article is very “inside baseball” for the far left. As far as I could understand, the article basically says: depression is caused by the world being terrible, and the world is terrible entirely because of capitalism, so depression is mostly capitalism’s fault. Therefore, we on the left (the article is explicit that it is only for “we on the left”), must learn that therapy is a kind of important political collective act to help us recover from our depression so we can fight capitalism, and not be fooled into thinking it’s something that our depression is something we have individual agency over.

I guess.

I don’t have a deep understanding of depression, except that it is a very real and difficult thing that many people struggle with. So let me caveat that first.

But I have to say, my gut reaction is that it’s rather sad to take a worldview that makes things so dire as to say one’s own depression and the apparent increase in depression around the world is entirely due to the politics you oppose.

To me this reads as the tragic consequences of ever escalating polarization. Instead of seeing the politics around you as merely diverse ideas held by your friends and neighbors, you see it as something more like a species differentiator - and “they” are in control. Well, yes, that would be dire.

But out in the real world it turns out the vast majority of people on the right and the left are not so far out to the wings of their ideology, and that if they sat down over a nice meal they could have a great conversation and really enjoy each other’s company, perhaps even learn from each other and positively influence each other.

The political world around us is indeed depressing, but I would argue we shouldn’t wish that we could get out of bed so we can “throw a brick through a window,” but perhaps instead so we can work toward understanding and reconciling with our neighbors instead.

Buried in the middle of the story:

Still, recent textbooks have come a long way from what was published in past decades. Both Texas and California volumes deal more bluntly with the cruelty of the slave trade, eschewing several myths that were common in textbooks for generations: that some slave owners treated enslaved people kindly and that African-Americans were better off enslaved than free. The books also devote more space to the women’s movement and balance the narrative of European immigration with stories of Latino and Asian immigrants.

“American history is not anymore the story of great white men,” said Albert S. Broussard, a history professor at Texas A&M University and an author of both the Texas and California editions of McGraw-Hill’s textbooks.

So, in short, all the textbooks are moving toward a more multicultural worldview and ideas traditionally associated with "the left," but California is moving that direction faster than Texas.

Honest question, are men allowed? I assume so because I didn’t see anywhere that they aren’t, but I didn’t see a single male in the marketing images, and it has a feminine-looking brand, so now I’m slightly unsure.

I’m assuming it’s just their target demographic is young single (white?) professional women, but the homogeneity of the marketing images honestly tripped me up a bit.

Edit: on further examination I do see an image with a guy in a red track suit outside of one of their busses, I missed that the first time.

Still, to be honest I think I’d be intimidated to book a trip and be the only male on the bus. Role reversal, I guess :/

It’s really hard for me not to be skeptical of a study that starts with the premise of measuring everyone else against “the most privileged group,” aka. white men, and then calling their metric “health justice.”

I don’t know the stats off the top of my head but I’ve heard many times that men’s health issues are under-studies relative to women’s — ie breast cancer versus prostate cancer. I’ve also seen that mental health problems affect men more than women, as well as behavioral problems with youth, and yet there’s no outcry for “health justice” for all the men with mental issues or men vastly overrepresented in the prison population.

The study claims that health correlates most strongly with income, and that the gap between black and white has narrowed - and yet the study author claims there’s a “stunning lack of progress.”

Most of America’s problems correlate most strongly with income and more weakly with race and gender, which isn’t surprising when income itself is uneven between race and gender demographics.

Yet it feels to me like we’re constantly crying out about race and gender discrimination while paying much less attention to wealth and income which seem to be the root issue.

Are there racists in the country? Do hate crimes happen? Yes, and we shouldn’t gloss over them.

But are the country’s problems driven mostly by racial hatred? I don’t think so. I think the problem is we have done a lot to pull the ladder up behind the upper-middle class, everyone in the lower income brackets is getting screwed, and that disproportionately affects minorities and historically disadvantaged groups. I think if we could get more serious about putting the ladder back and investing in upward mobility for all, we could make a lot more progress on all the rest of the issues that are affecting the country.

I think you meant “cohesion” not coercion.

But also, while “cultural Christianity,” the idea that everyone is a Christian and follows some pseudo-Christian values has mostly gone away, actual religion (of many varieties) is alive and well.

You can still move almost anywhere and find a Catholic Church that is pretty consistent around the world, and likewise many other denominations.

Speaking of my own experience in non-denominational Christian churches from here down:

The people in them would probably be a lot less like-minded than you would expect. The church (collectively, even if not every congregation) is wildly diverse, and is one of the few places you can still go and build relationships with people from all different income brackets, ethnicities, jobs, etc.

Lastly, you don’t need to believe in God (or Jesus) to attend and be welcomed in. Not everyone there does, and actually in most churches they’d be very interested to talk with you and hear why you’re there etc. Yes, they will teach you about their beliefs, but they’re quite simple, as summarized by Jesus himself in “the great commandment”: love God, and love your neighbor.

While all believers wrestle with what God is and what it would mean to love God, the focus is largely on the second commandment - love your neighbor as yourself. That, choosing a life where you genuinely try to support and take care of the people around you, is a pretty good way to live.

Now, I expect some HN hate for posting this. I don’t mean to claim that everyone who has ever called themselves a Christian lives as described above — I myself have been disgusted by the behavior of people who claimed Christian slogans or shove a few bible verses on poster boards and then twisted them for political purposes, completely failing to follow the actual teachings of Christianity in the process. Bad churches and misguided church-goers exist in every religion, unfortunately (Christ himself often called this out). You have to think critically, never follow anything blindly. And I think that “cultural religion,” where the mainstream state government adopts the trappings of a religion and then uses it as a cudgel to enforce their agenda has been quite harmful. My point in posting this is not to gloss over any of that.

Rather, my point is that spiritual life (of many different traditions) is still alive and well among thoughtful, caring, and intellectual people. If approached with an open mind you might be shocked at how pragmatic they are, and how open they are to deep skeptics who are more interested in how to have a meaningful life here on earth than whether or not anything beyond that exists. In fact, many of them fit that description themselves.

It was interesting to see the photos of the Union Jacks marching around. Anyone with first hand experience in Hong Kong, are there many people who wish for a return to the commonwealth, or is that a tiny minority?

As an outside observer it seems like China doesn’t care very much about upholding agreements. And why should they? It’s not like Britain or anyone else in the west is willing to start a war with China, no matter what they do.

This is the kind of stuff that makes me feel the trade conflict between the US and China is overdue. The world’s two biggest economies operating on such a different standards of IP was bound to lead to conflict eventually.

Do you have any recommendation for an at-home test? I've considered doing a lab study, but at-home sounds much better. I didn't realize that was an option.

How is it that React gets celebrated for “solving” problems that React created in the first place?

The entire paradigm of React keeps changing as each pervious iteration proves to be “messy” or “over complicated.” createClass? Nah that’s obsolete. Mixins and HOC - oh wait, bad idea, hooks to the rescue!

At what point do people start to call BS and say you shouldn’t build around a framework that needs to be reinvented every year or two?

Unfortunately it cuts both ways. I’ve been in hiring meetings where people from underrepresented backgrounds applied but really didn’t have the required skills, they got hired anyway because the company wanted to feel good about hiring diversity, and then the people really struggled down the line - in one case the person got fired, in another case quit.

I don’t know how we get there but we eventually need to just get over skin color. When we interact with other people we generally don’t even notice or think about what color eyes or what their nose shape is. We should be able to get to that point regarding all aspects of physical appearance.

Saying the other political party has “ideological resistance to helping each other,” is ridiculous. That kind of bigoted dismissive ignorance just fuels our bitter partisan gridlock and helps nothing.

Of course are fringe nutters in the world and unfortunately some of them even get elected, but the vast majority of Americans, Republicans and Democrats, are just ordinary people who care about their kids and their neighbors, want to see everyone prosper, and even agree about a lot more than they disagree about.

There’s a lot more of the bootstrap stuff on Indie Hackers. Sounds like you’d enjoy their podcast too. indiehackers.com

Side tangent, if you’re looking to share a draft book like this with a bunch of people, https://betabooks.co is a good option. Specifically designed to handle heavy load of readers and look great on mobile, etc.