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teraku

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Stronger By Science[0] recently did a longer piece on caffeine, trying to argue against it (from the perspective of lifters who actually enjoy caffeine as a performance enhancer). You know, scientifically trying to disprove your believes.

TL;DR: Probably mostly harmless in medium quantities, but no real proven long-term benefits. So if you enjoy coffee, just drink in moderation.

[0] https://www.strongerbyscience.com/pros-cons-caffeine/

I believe your overall statement is true, but that doesn't mean "People don't leave jobs; they leave managers." is wrong.

I have left jobs because I had a shit manager, but he was enabled by a shit company culture. My teams were mostly great, the tasks were okay. It might have been time to move on regardless, but the biggest reason was shitty managers and shitty company culture.

I think with WK getting to 1.5k - 2k is possible in 1-2 years if, as OP said, you invest a lot of time every day. I noticed that if I could keep my usual pace every day I would complete it in ~2years. But since I do take breaks, have better and worse days, I am at a 4-5 year pace. I am at level 32 and about 2.5 years in.

How normal am I? 4 years ago

It's skewed. I read the terms first, but then the website bugged so I had to reload. And then it said I haven't read the terms first. So....

I think it's just how the environment is set up. If the company sets you up for success in remote work, there might be some sub-optimal things, but it will work out. (Remember, not everything is perfect in the office as well).

If the company does not accommodate for this properly, then you will fail. Experience will help you compensate for some of these shortcomings, but that will also only go so far.

Thoughts on OKRs 4 years ago

It's like with most things in life.

If you want to become fitter, don't think "I want to lose 10kg of weight", think about finding a sport which you like and healthy food which you enjoy eating.

Your belly might not disappear 100%, but you will feel better, and you are in for the long run.

There is research on this, and basically people have gone from a model of concentric circles to a model of connected island.

What does this mean?

Back in the day, you explored the area around yourself by foot or bike. Your model of your surroundings grew in concentric circles, which included more and more places of interest. Your friend's house, school, the library, and so on.

Nowadays, you drive everywhere, by train or car, and it is like warping to that location. The way is just a wait, which you spend on your phone, or sometimes driving (but really (auto-)piloted by your navigation system).

Reminds me of the documentary of how the wah-wah pedal was invented. Apparently Warwick Electronics told one engineer to swap out an On/Off switch with a turn knob because these cost 0.25$ per piece instead of 1$. Which was huge savings in the 60s.

While experimenting, the engineer, who was also a guitarist, found that it sounds really cool to play while you turn the knob.

The director wanted to sell these knobs to jazz orchestras and big bands for the trumpeters, but the engineer was like "Hold on a second, I think we can put this in a pedal and make it a guitar thing".

If your employer chooses Rufbereitschaft as their on-call mode, then that means it all adds to your working time, and you can't exceed 10hours a day. Having a 2hour incident means no more overtime allowed. Additionally, they need to clock your work during each incident. Lastly, if you have an incident outside of working hours, you are not allowed to pick up work again for another 11 hours, unless it's another incident.

No, it does. Because whenever you have to be "ready" for work, it counts as work.

Bereitschaftsdienst Beschäftigte im Bereitschaftsdienst halten sich in der Regel im Unternehmen oder in unmittelbarer Nähe auf, damit sie die Arbeit bei Bedarf sofort bzw. zumindest zeitnah aufnehmen können. Ein typisches Beispiel sind Feuerwehrangestellte, die auf der Wache die Nacht verbringen, aber dort schlafen können. Bereitschaftsdienst gilt in vollem Umfang als Arbeitszeit und muss daher bei der täglichen und wöchentlichen Arbeitszeit voll berücksichtigt werden. Die Vergütung des Bereitschaftsdienstes richtet sich nach dem jeweiligen Arbeitsvertrag, beziehungsweise gültigem Tarifvertrag oder Betriebs/Dienstvereinbarung.

Arbeitsbereitschaft Bei der Arbeitsbereitschaft sind die betreffenden Beschäftigten im Zustand „wacher Achtsamkeit im Zustande der Entspannung“ am Arbeitsplatz anwesend. Sie sind jederzeit einsatzbereit. Ein Beispiel könnte eine Beschäftigte in einem Elektrizitätswerk sein, die beim Piepsen eines Überwachungsmonitors sofort aktiv werden muss, über längere Phasen aber keine Aufgaben zu erledigen hat. Arbeitsbereitschaft ist Arbeitszeit und muss im vollen Umfang auf die tägliche und wöchentliche Arbeitszeit angerechnet werden.

Die Vergütung richtet sich auch hier nach dem jeweiligen Arbeitsvertrag, beziehungsweise gültigem Tarifvertrag oder Betriebs/Dienstvereinbarung.

To add to this: If your boss calls you when you are on vacation, you get that full vacation day back. If your boss asks you to be ready in case he might call during your vacation, you also get those vacation days back.

Courts ruled that when you are on-call, they have to pay at least minimum wage for every hour you are on-call. Additionally, you get tax benefits for working night and Sunday, which your employer has to declare.

That's why you earn so much more during on-call in Germany

I agree with your observation but disagree with your conclusion.

I believe division of labor is paramount to avoid burn-out. Of course, we would want to have the freedom to split our work around our workday. But that usually means work never ends. And for cognitive workers (like IT), it's hard to just turn it 'off' at some point and think about something else. If something is bugging you, you keep thinking about it. Is that considered work (time)?

Also, while I do believe we do not need as many synchronous meetings as we have right now (even remotely), I think we do need some. But people *also* need to get better at asynchronous work.

I don't know how many colleagues I helped with 'git' just by telling them to read what 'git status' is actually telling them.

Some people's mind just goes blank when they see error and it prevents them from solving it themselves. Often times, they are so used to copy-paste and also not being empowered by management and colleagues for some of their approaches diminishes loads of their confidence.

Your cognitive workload is too high.

There are three forms of cognitive workload: Intrinsic, External and Germane.

Intrinsic is things you just *know*. How to write a class in java, how to write a query in SQL, ...

External is stuff you only need occasionally, and need to look up every time: How to deploy to X, how to set up CI/CD, ...

Germane is context knowledge. Usually referred to as business knowledge.

You want to keep external cognitive load a minimal as possible. You can really dig deployment and stuff, and then this becomes your intrinsic cognitive workload and coding becomes more or less external, but for somebody who just likes to code, it's best to once do a deep dive to deployment logics, write a scaffold and stick with an automated version forever.

Mars sucks 5 years ago

I think OP means, why can't we try to thrive and achieve Mars colony, eventually evolving into its own culture. It might take building a Dyson sphere and whatnot and thousands of years. But it might be worth trying. But Mars is not a Planet B, where we go once we destroyed earth.

I feel like there is a lot of mixture between being an outsider and alienated versus being lonely.

Being lonely has become such a huge factor in (especially young) people's lifes, because they need to hop cities for university and later jobs a few times before they start settling down, that a lot of the friends they make have moved away, or they themselves moved away from their friends and it's hard to find new friends. Sometimes your only new social interactions are at work, and in a country like Germany where work and private are strictly separated at first, this is a double whammy.

It also affects very old people, whose friends have died and whose children and their friends have moved away.

Solitude is endemic in the west.

Just Be Rich 5 years ago

But there is nothing about pricing in there.

I mean, I'll be honest and share that I didn't know the housing regulations are so f-ed up in the US, but they are pretty complicated everywhere.

What drives housing prices is a deflation of living goods coupled with an inflation of luxury goods which makes finding safe investments for large sums of money with relatively high yields hard to find. This is driven by an increasing inequality gap, which makes rich people desperately trying to find more things to invest their money into. And they have found housing in urban areas is the safest bet right now. So houses are bought and sold for the millions in hopes somebody else buys it for higher prices or the area justifies the rent.