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Things I Didn't Learn in 2020
- daniellarusso 6y agoI have no issue speaking up when other people’s children are being disruptive during a Zoom meeting. If they can walk, they can learn social protocol.
- salex89 6y agoWhile I don't necessarily disagree, I just don't know any child "developed" enough to comprehend what you are talking about. That's usually between 11-13 months. Try explaining the notion of "working from home" and "zoom conference" and daddy talking to a man in the box to a one year old.
- obesacantavit 6y agoLOL. The man in the box is so strange when you think about it that way.
- daniellarusso 6y agoIt is as simple as making a stern face versus smiling and waiving (which I believe encourages the behavior).
- powersnail 6y agoAnecdotally, I disagree. I have never seen any parent successfully stop a 1-year-old child from doing something by any kind of face. Not to mention if it's from a face on the computer screen. Instead, just tell the parent to put the child in a different room.
- redisman 6y agoEven that is usually not an option. You can’t put a 1-2 year old in a room by themselves for a meeting
- zaat 6y agoLet me guess, you have no children of your own, right?
- cm2012 6y agoStern face is going to make them burst into tears. Great strategy during a business call.
- redisman 6y agoThis has got the be one of the most delusional things I’ve read here
- GuB-42 6y agoSide question? Do you actually use the camera when doing a Zoom (or other) meeting? Most of us don't where I work. Not only we don't necessarily look our best, and neither do our rooms, but most of the times the screen is used for other purposes. Usually screen sharing, a powerpoint persentation, or some work document.
- bort-simpson 6y agoAt my work we always have the camera on unless it’s a large meeting (30+).
- uncledave 6y agoIndeed. I don’t even own a camera. People don’t need to see me to work with me.
- flukus 6y agoI was the same working remotely for 6 months pre covid, seeing faces just isn't that important. Had to get one for job interviews though.
- war1025 6y agoMy boss tried to mandate cameras during video calls. I really don't want to look at my coworkers. I turned my camera on once and it looked like garbage and that was enough for me. I always just pin whatever screen is being shared to be full screen so I don't have to look at anyone.
- ryanianian 6y agoYes. While zoom sucks for conveying body-language, being able to see someone’s unhappy, confused, or confidently-agreeing face makes certain kinds of meetings much easier.
- aprdm 6y agoYes we all turn our cameras on in meetings, I believe body language is important. Can’t imagine working in an office without seeing the people you work with in some cadence
- stolenmerch 6y agoThe delicious irony here is that social protocol asks adults in a mandatory remote meeting to not scold other people's children during an already trying moment.
- daniellarusso 6y agoI did not say scold. Also, this is prior to COVID.
- phonebucket 6y ago> If they can walk, they can learn social protocol. Kids can generally walk aged one. I think that’s too young to learn social protocol.
- TeMPOraL 6y agoAs a parent of a walking 18mo, a) it depends, sometimes it takes closer to age two, and b) they're absolutely too young to learn any social protocol at this age.
- pvorb 6y agoMy 23mo has learned social protocol to get what he wants and when to violate it to get it even more quickly when I have no other options than to comply. But I'm not sure that any given Zoom meeting is important enough to mess up my son's breeding.
- TeMPOraL 6y agoI also start to see a similar pattern in mine. At this point, she's figuring out barter. She'll approach me with some thing that belongs to me (or occasionally with something entirely random) that she picked up somewhere when I wasn't looking, expecting that I'll give her something she wants in return (especially things we don't let her play with, like a smartphone). She doesn't understand the concept of relative value yet, as evidenced by trying to exchange a scrap of paper for my glasses today. > But I'm not sure that any given Zoom meeting is important enough to mess up my son's breeding. Agreed. I'm lucky to be working in a place where my superiors all have kids, so this is implicitly understood.
- schwartzworld 6y agoHonestly it took our 4 year old months to accept that a closed office door meant she wasn't allowed in. What does OP expect parents to do when their kid needs them? Beat them? Lock the door and ignore the crying? Jeez.
- sanderjd 6y ago
- 908B64B197 6y agoAm-I the only person that thinks kids derailing a meeting is funny?
- arendtio 6y agoDepends on the importance of the meeting and the status of the person who is responsible. If you live in a corporate environment where status matters, your kids should better not detail a meeting where you are the person with a low status compared to the other participants. If status doesn't matter in your corporate culture you just have to be aware of the importance of the meeting. If you company is fighting for survival it is probably not funny to derail the discussion. However, there are many unimportant meetings with people with the same status and I agree that if it doesn't become a pattern it can be a sweet/nice/funny distraction ;-)
- mikkelewis 6y agoimo the folks involved in a company fighting for survival during a pandemic are the exact crowd that need some sweet and funny distractions here and there.
- bee_rider 6y agoI can definitely see how it would be annoying in the moment, but if your company is in a fight for survival and a kid wasting 15 of your minutes is an actual risk to that fight, there are probably deeper viability questions.
- disown 6y agoKids derailing people's meetings are funny as long as you aren't party to it. Just like people getting splashed by a passing car on a rainy day is funny, as long as you aren't party to it.
- sanderjd 6y agoEvery once in awhile, sure, no biggie, definitely funny. But it's also already hard to keep meetings on topic and an efficient use of everyone's time. Anything that makes that harder is not ideal.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Maha-pudma 6y agoI'd have no issue telling you to mind your own if you tried telling me how to manage my kids.
- njharman 6y agoWhy are people so up their own ass about receiving advice and aide with their kids? Do you get hostile and reject people helping you with flat tire, when you're lost, chasing down you escaped dog? Do you jump to the conclusion that the offer is indictment of you're parenting?
- umvi 6y agoWould you like it if I saw some code you were writing over your shoulder and I started correcting you and giving you advice on how you should be coding it differently? Maybe, but more likely you would feel defensive depending on my tone and/or how you interpreted my tone.
- ggurface123 6y agoThere's a whole paradigm that centers around exactly this. It is called pair programming. It is quite popular.
- umvi 6y agoIndeed, and believe it or not, it is quite popular for 2 people to co-operatively raise kids as well. It's called "parenting". Sarcasm aside, I think the main difference between pair programming and OP's scenario is that usually it's unsolicited advice that is unwelcome. Pair programming is usually consensual.
- jacobolus 6y agoIf you were at a gas station washing your car windows, you'd probably be annoyed if some guy drove up and started giving unsolicited judgmental advice about your tires. If you were at the park playing fetch with your dog, you'd probably be annoyed if someone started giving you unsolicited judgmental advice about dog grooming.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- jacobolus 6y ago> If they can walk, they can learn social protocol. At the beginning of a conference talk a couple years ago, my 2.5-year-old demonstrated his ability to "learn social protocol". 2 minutes into the talk, he shouted "Don't talk in the lecture!" (and was promptly removed by one parent to the hallway).
- reactor 6y agoDid it ever occur to you that we are evading their (kids) space when working from home, not the other way around? It's that you have to learn the protocol, not them.
- salex89 6y agoThis is exactly my thoughts. I'm still without children, and over the years I made my own little "cave" from where I can work, although my flat isn't exactly huge. Some colleagues are not so lucky. Multiple young children, small flats, day-to-day logistics complications, significant others that are essential workers (as my wife, who is working extra shifts since this pandemonium started, and I don't have an idea what would I do if we had a child) or could not work from home... And same goes for business partners or clients. I don't even dare scrutinize them about what they are going through these days. Some of their loved ones may be impacted, or they are having a hard time by themselves, the least they need is me judging them because they have a needy kid. I remember a couple of years ago I had an interview with a job candidate, online because some other circumstances (FYI he was hired and is a great chap). He was pretty anxious, I can hear and see that, and in the middle of the interview his six-month baby started crying. We could hear the wife trying to calm the baby down and seen him sweating peas. My senior colleague did the best thing at that moment, basically aborting the interview discussion altogether and started talking about children and parenting and so on. We offered the guy to take a break, but the baby calmed down soon enough, so we continued. I remember the relief I've seen when he realized we understand him and that we're on the same page. He became much more relaxed in the rest of the interview.
- edoceo 6y agoI think you mean "invading"¿
- reactor 6y agoOh yes, sorry for that.
- paulpauper 6y agoI have yet to use zoom . I hope it stays that way.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- rubicon33 6y ago> 6. Whether it’s OK to go to that thing or not This part really resonated. What a weird year it's been. Finding the right balance between having a social life and being safe + conscientious has proven to be exhausting and depressing. My wife and I have chosen to be super safe and turn down almost all social engagements, even ones with close family who promised to wear masks and social distance. If it wasn't a life or death thing, we felt the "right" thing to do was to host the even on Zoom, or not at all. That decision never came lightly though and missing events with friends and family always weighed on us heavily. We'd never know if we were doing the right thing or if we were being too cautious. Especially when, on Facebook or Instagram, we would see close friends without masks hanging out and partying, while we sequestered ourselves from the rest of the world. It's hard not to have emotions in a situation like that. At times I have felt frustrated, angry, tired, etc. Everyone has a different perspective on this whole thing, a different feeling of risk, and a difference decision about how to behave during it all. I long for the day when we can be human again without having to pass every social decision through some matrix of risk calculation.
- loganwedwards 6y agoThis has been my experience to the T. Hindsight may provide some reinforcement one way or another, but if we had to do this all over again, I likely would not change much about our quarantine behavior patterns. Our crew just does not want to be a statistic (even if our demographic is of lower risk). Hang in there!
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- sneak 6y ago> Especially when, on Facebook or Instagram, we would see close friends without masks hanging out and partying, while we sequestered ourselves from the rest of the world. People that recklessly and selfishly endanger themselves and others would not remain my close friends.
- ryandrake 6y ago
- ImaCake 6y agoI think it is totally reasonable to not be cool calm and collected during a pandemic. It was an incredibly stressfull experience which means it is excusable to be not collected anyway. I would argue that it is also okay to not be happy during the pandemic because your emotions are a useful barometer for the state of your world. If your world is dangerous, then it is reasonable to be stressed and under a higher alert status than normal. It seems unreasonable to maintain coolness and calm when the situation calls for further action.
- dcchuck 6y agoThank you for sharing. My guess for #8 - The dog wants you to put on your shoes and take him for a walk.
- savant_penguin 6y ago"Frequently changing advice from the same public health institutions (remember when the WHO advised against wearing masks?)" One thing that really caught my attention is how reddit went from 'if you wear masks you are overreacting and a bad person' to 'if you don't wear masks you are killing people and a bad person' in a heartbeat. I'm not advocating not wearing masks or anything, I was just surprised how the definition of what was the "obviously" right thing to do changed in a heartbeat without any concern on how diagonally opposite these two advices were. When such opposite advices are given by the same institution I think some skepticism is really useful. (Did they know the previous advice was wrong in which case they lied? Did they not know any better but gave advice anyway? What was the compelling evidence to change their minds?). Again, I think you should wear masks, but the total lack of questioning and the instantaneous change of opinion I saw online was really weird.
- ci5er 6y agoWhat's weird to me is how freaked out people are about this. I get that it is a higher risk than a lightening strike, but given that the absolute number of deaths in 2020 was lower than 2019 (even given that deaths of despair were up significantly), I'm thinking our society has turned into a bunch of nervous nellies. Or maybe city folk don't think they should ever get to die. In any case, the scared worried self-isolating comments I have read in this thread from "man-folk" make me think that when we got rid of TB and SPox and Polion - we probably got rid of Testosterone at the same time.
- tchalla 6y agoLet’s say we take it “some skepticism” is useful. The question is - how do you use this skepticism to enable quick decision making?
- RobertRoberts 6y agoMaybe quick decision making _is_ what being sceptical is for? Way too many times leaders and people wanted quick decisions in 2020 when what scepticism may help us do is slow us down to be more thoughtful, critical and careful.
- rbrbr 6y agoHe seemed to have removed the page. Here is the backup: https://web.archive.org/web/20210102002234/https://ex-apple-engineer.medium.com/my-experience-apple-5d8b6205cb56 https://web.archive.org/web/20210102002234/https://ex-apple-...
- ArcMex 6y agoPoint number 7 is one that I am still learning. I'm at my girlfriend's parent's for lunch and here I am, casually browsing HN with a termux session in the background.
- gedassan 6y agoJust logged in to say, the author of this article is dubious. I have spoken.