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25-Dec. Shout-out to everyone else at work
I made a similar post last year at this time and, again, I am in my office on Christmas morning.
There are a few days every year that really show which jobs are vital and which can be left aside for a day. I started my car this morning (-32, -40 with wind chill). On my way to work I drove past a hospital and a care home, both were manned. The dairy farm had its lights on. A cop with his flashers drove past me on the way to some emergency. The macdonalds drive-through was open too. I had to be at work by 0600, but I was relieving someone who had been sitting in another office since 1800. On my computer were the same dozen emails I get every morning, each from someone else who drew the short straw.
There aren't many of us on HN that work weekends let alone Christmas morning, but If you too are sitting in a dark office remember that all across the world are millions of other people working the truly important jobs.
- kleiba 5y agoI lost my job at the end of November. I wouldn't mind the opportunity to work today.
- pksebben 5y agoMe too! Right in the middle of the buy-shit month. This year was a lean one.
- trentnix 5y agoI worked at a convenience store when I was in high school and worked several Christmas Day shifts. Although I haven’t done it since, it gave me an immense respect for those who do show up and keep the gears on this machine going. Tip of the hat to all of you, and Merry Christmas!
- CyberRabbi 5y agoMany of my HFT friends are busy working today preparing for the markets to open on Monday. Lots of people from a diversity of circumstances are working today, I appreciate all their work!
- luckman212 5y agoHFT is to work as NFT is to art.
- midasuni 5y agoThus proving the hypothesis that “all jobs that need to work at Christmas are truly important” to be rubbish.
- dougmwne 5y agoThank you for keeping the lights on for the rest of us. Wishing you a well deserved holiday soon!
- torstenvl 5y agoI volunteered to stand Command Duty so I'm spending Christmas morning in uniform with my sidearm sitting at a very, very quiet desk. Merry Christmas! Hodie Christus Natus Est!
- sandworm101 5y agoLol. I don't get to carry a gun, but I had a serious debate with myself re whether to put on my uniform. Then I thought: If the worst case scenario does happen, I might have to turn on the webcam in the special room, the one with no windows. I don't want to be the one guy in jeans during that meeting.
- toomuchtodo 5y ago“In event conflict declared, break glass for comfy apparel.”
- meepmorp 5y agocry havoc and let slip the sweatpants of war
- sshine 5y agoI'm sure having to wear a uniform gets tiresome. But always dressing comfy means you never get to express that side. Having only used the office once a week in the last many months, I would consistently overdress when making an appearance. There is something nice about making an effort at dressing that correlates with wanting to make a bigger effort in general.
- sandworm101 5y agoThat is a very common misconception about the military. The uniform makes life easier. I never have to worry about fashion. I never have to figure out what is or is not appropriate attire for a specific meeting. It is very liberating. >> about making an effort at dressing that correlates with wanting to make a bigger effort in general. If you want to make the effort, military uniforms allow that too. The military is full of people who put that extra effort into their uniforms every day. They have the mirror-polished boots, the perfectly-fitted shirts. Their patches and ribbons are always perfect. Their beret is moulded into that perfect shape. The average civi cannot spot it but everyone on a base can see who wears the uniform best. Every drill sergeant is a diva. Every fighter pilot a slob who hasn't polished a boot since basic.
- tomrod 5y agoThank you sandworm101!
- isoprophlex 5y agoThanks for keeping it real so the rest of us can get drunk and fatter. Hope you can get some time to relax your mind later on!
- barrenko 5y agoAll the best to you OP and everyone else.
- megamix 5y agoI think you just explained the cause of inflation :)
- zw123456 5y agoThanks to everyone who has to work on Christmas to keep essential things running for us !
- rootbear 5y agoQuite a few of my NASA colleagues worked today to launch the James Webb Space Telescope, and I'm sure most of them didn't mind working on Christmas. And I certainly appreciate all of those who work on the holidays to keep us safe.
- ivve 5y agoI was wondering this today: why did they launch on Christmas? Were there conditions which made it unavoidable?
- dev_tty01 5y agoDelays got us to this month. Other delays got us to this week. Weather issues delayed it from earlier this week to Christmas. Once you are spooled up for launch, unwinding all of that just to avoid a holiday is not worth it.
- ivve 5y agoAmazing and terrible! Thanks for the clear answer. Sounds like you were on the team: If so, thanks for your contribution!
- Simon_O_Rourke 5y agoThanks for all you and your team's efforts to advance human knowledge!
- legel 5y agoCheers to this! A fantastic day when decades of humanity’s scientific dreams are successfully launched, to fuel the next generation of discovery.
- jtchang 5y agoI'd be stoked to launch a space telescope as a christmas present! Congrats to them!
- amildie 5y ago
- scrapcode 5y agoI am lucky enough to be home with my small immediate family this morning. I spent most prior to this in basic training, deployed on a military mission, working in federal prisons, or some other seemingly less-than-desirable place. I grew to enjoy some of those days. There was a type of camaraderie amongst the folks that drew that short straw- and it was widely accepted that we were just there 'to put out fires.' Often times we would get a short visit from 'higher ups' and get that few seconds to connect on a more personal level. It drew out a bit of a different side from the 'extra alpha' types of some of these places that I used to work. Not that any of that is better than being with family- just an added perspective. Happy holidays!
- stochastician 5y agoThis is an incredible post, and thank you for the mission critical work that you do. I'm always curious what other people's work lives are like -- can you talk a little bit about your job, the tasks you're working on today, and how the people you interact with on a day like today (customers, clients, coworkers) could make today a little easier / more fun?
- sandworm101 5y agoMilitary. Empty building. Sitting at a desk looking at computer screens. No cellphones allowed. I cannot leave my office because I might not hear my phone ring. Work involves talking to other people in basically the same situation at other bases. Not much real work going on. This is what we call "minimum manning". Everyone retains full capacity to act at any moment but don't actually do anything unless necessary.
- eslav 5y agoThank you for doing what needs to be done. Are you allowed to stream video or audio?
- sandworm101 5y agoAllowed is a loaded word. I am accessing HN through an unsecured network. We aren't "allowed" to stream because it can quickly overwhelm shared bandwidth but I do have that ability.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- nlh 5y agoThanks for doing what you do! (What is it that you do?)
- oumua_don17 5y agoCant thank enough folks like sandworm101 who keep the society running giving the rest of us the flexibility to spend time with our loved ones. Deep gratitude
- duxup 5y agoI used to work Christmas pretty often. One job, PC support could be brutally busy. The other, tech support for some high end networking equipment was very quiet. I loved working holidays there. Mostly just played video games. Always strange how the jobs that pay less often are more work / tiresome.
- sandworm101 5y agoMuch of that depends on corporate culture. Often it is the lower-paid and more junior people who get the bad shifts. But in my organization (military) it is normal for the more senior people to work those shifts. Responsibility for mission-critical tasks falls upwards. If you are only going to have one person on shift, then that person cannot be a trainee. So all the people I interacted with this morning were relatively senior within their team.
- CharleFKane 5y ago“ But in my organization (military) it is normal for the more senior people to work those shifts.” I remember reading a story about Jim Mattis (back before he was famous). A fellow general showed up, found Gen. Mattis was the duty officer on Christmas Day, and asked him how he got stuck with that. Gen. Mattis told him, “Well, the young man who was scheduled for duty today has a family, and I decided it was more important for him to spend the time with them. So I took his place.”
- sillyinseattle 5y agoDropped off my wife at work around 7. She's on call at the hospital. Fortunately, it is not -40 here ;-) Happy holidays all!
- ozfive 5y agoMany thanks to your wife for carrying on caring for the sick and dying. Especially in times like these. There are many people that actively think about healthcare workers and the unrelenting work that it entails.
- sillyinseattle 5y agoThankfully, things are not too crazy at the children's hospital at present. Of course, the kids still there are the ones too sick to be sent home :( . But the staff bring them gifts and there's a holiday meal for everyone: patients, their families and staff :)
- ozfive 5y agoCommunity building is always the best way to get through crisis. Also thanks goes out to you for running support. I read today that we've lost 20% of the health care workforce since the pandemic started. Tell your wife to hang in there. There are people in this country that are rooting for her and genuinely thankful for what she does!
- yreg 5y agoA job being done during holidays is not necessarily vital or truly important. Working at the hospital is a vital job, keeping an important server running is a vital job and driving a mass transit bus is a vital job as well. On the other hand keeping McDonald's open is not vital, it is just economically sensible.
- dlivingston 5y agoTraveling families and busy 'essential workers' need food, gas, and basic necessities. Access to quick food (McDonalds in this case), gas stations, and convenience stores are just as vital as anything!
- yreg 5y ago>Convenience stores are as vital as anything! How come it is illegal to keep them open during public holidays in much of Europe then? I find hospitals a tad more important.
- NoSorryCannot 5y ago_Just_ as vital? If you had to choose between closing a hospital or a McDonald's, you would choose at random? I hear what you are saying. Gas stations are vital transitively from the vital jobs that require gas, such as ambulance services. But I could still rank them as less vital than the services themselves, enabling me to at least close some gas stations. Fast food would be far down the list because it is predictable and trivial to plan around.
- shusaku 5y agoHere in Japan, people I’ve talked to will say that decades ago around New Years, everything was closed for days. No super markets. No restaurants. Not even ATMs. The downside is it requires a lot of prep work pre-holiday (i.e. packing sandwiches instead of fast food). I think we can do without a lot more than what we think, but the burden is shifted to the consumer instead of the worker, so without a strong culture of shared holidays you’ll see more and more people at work.
- sandmank 5y agoi guess i'm technically working but i'm just shooting video and playing with guns so it's more like recreation
- sandermvanvliet 5y agoI’ve had plenty of on-call shifts at Christmas and New Year’s Eve and it’s always a special time somehow. High five to all of you at work today!
- krallja 5y agoI love taking on-call over the holidays, because with nobody deploying anything, there’s a much lower risk of being paged!
- ncpa-cpl 5y agoI am on call today too. Fortunately not much has happened today. Last two years it was very different though, with day long conference calls for issues.
- sandermvanvliet 5y agoTake care, hope the quiet holds!
- sandermvanvliet 5y agoI did get a number of pages during those times. This was in port of rotterdam which is basically always busy, little bit less on holidays but still. There is that sort of special vibe with the other people working though. Same as an overnight deployment when everyone else is asleep
- omarhaneef 5y agoThere are lots of people for who Xmas isn’t a thing — different background etc. I always thought it would make sense to let us handle Xmas duty so others — people for whom it really, really matters - can do their Xmas stuff. I used to try to volunteer for this when it was relevant (really, it’s not a thing for me), but I rarely saw a systematic opportunity to do so. I think it gets harder as time goes because the replacement day (say a random day in Jun) isn’t as quiet because the rest of the economy is not turned off.
- davchana 5y agoExactly. I volunteered (along with 2 others) yesterday to relieve & go home 4 hours early (paid). I would get those 4 hours anytime next month.
- hellbannedguy 5y ago
- smoe 5y agoIt works a bit like this in Swiss hospitals. Or at least used to. Might have gotten LEANed away. I have fond memories of christmas dinner as a child/teenager, not because of any religious affiliation but because it was one of the few times a year the family of six, three of which work in hospitals, spent a day or so together. There were few overlaps of free time otherwise. I don't remember the exact mechanics how it worked, but I think work schedules get set about 6 months in advance with some employee input about their preferences, and employees can to a degree swap shifts with each other. So e.g. it was quite common for people with kids to take christmas off, whereas young singles or from different backgrounds took new years or any other day.
- ianai 5y agoThat seems like an ok sentiment when it’s opt-in. At a former place of work, I would be assigned all holidays and hours people didn’t want to work because “I’m a single guy with no kids/fiancé”. I’d almost exclusively work those shifts alone, too. It was absolutely based on who stroked who’s ego the most. This was for little more than minimum wage in a tech department and no such thing as differentials. Glad that’s over.
- hashimotonomora 5y agoThank you for being grateful. Please also note that Christmas is not a thing for a lot of people. Jews, Chinese, Muslims.
- Godel_unicode 5y ago"Chinese" is not a religion. There are quite a large number of ethnically Chinese people who celebrate Christmas as a holy day. There are many more for whom it is a holiday. And many more who don't celebrate at all. Demographics are complicated.
- bell-cot 5y agoTrue - but their cultures & religions having different special & sacred days does not much change the nature of "some people will have to work on those day". (Yes, when you've got enough diversity of cultures & religions, shifts can be swapped around so that nobody has to work... Nice, except that being one of those who work on those days is also something special.)
- dlivingston 5y agoYawn. Christmas is ostensibly a religious holiday, yet those from all faiths and cultures celebrate it. I am an atheist and it is my favorite holiday by far. I know Jews and Buddhists and Hindus who celebrate. It is a cultural holiday, not a religious holiday. This is a very important point.
- hashimotonomora 5y agoChristmas is literally Christ’s mass. If there’s a widespread religious celebration it’s that.
- bachmeier 5y agoMaybe a different way to state the point is that you need to distinguish between the relationship of Christmas to Christianity and the Christmas holiday (in the US). If you search on the history of Christmas, you'll find that until relatively recently (late 1800s) it wasn't even a holiday in the US. You will find that in some cases Christians passed laws punishing people for celebrating Christmas in the US. Easter was the dominant holiday in the very early church, with Christmas being relatively minor. We celebrate Christmas as we do in the US because it's an official holiday. This also says nothing of the Orthodox Christians that celebrate Christmas on a different day. The distinction is pretty clear for them - Dec 25 is purely a holiday, since that's not the day they celebrate the birth of Jesus.
- matwood 5y agoBack when I worked in fine dining, I worked every holiday because it was great money. It wasn't a really important job or anything, but still needed to get done. My dad worked in a factory, and also worked some part of every holiday. Even now, I volunteer for holiday coverage if needed. The world doesn't stop because it's some made up day on the calendar. Thank you to all those who keep the world going.
- throwawayfarmer 5y agoThanks for the dairy farm wave! 3:30 start, stop at 9:30. Back again at 13:30 and finishing 17:30. A long day, but it was satisfying. Plus the animals don’t know it’s Christmas.
- tyronehed 5y ago
- gootler 5y ago
- rasengan 5y agoI work every day - the world moves too fast. Regulations are the new moats, but holidays and weekends were the moats in the past -- 260 days in a year vs 365 - who will produce more?
- Gene_Parmesan 5y agoThere is more to life than how much one can produce, surely. You may be interested in a little piece of literature called A Christmas Carol - the core of the message is as accurate now as it was when it was written, if not more so, and I personally believe that core applies whether you celebrate Christmas or not. (I'm obviously being a little facetious as I assume most if not all of us are intimately familiar with the tale - I personally like the George C. Scott version!)
- throwaway984393 5y agoYep. Still patching log4j.
- xeromal 5y agoI had to do a patch tuesday for 6 hours even though I had the whole week off. Ugh.`
- throwaway984393 5y agoMy whole vacation got cancelled :(
- xeromal 5y agoThat is pretty freaking miserable and would annoy me to no end. Are they going to let you take off your week at some point in the future?
- throwaway984393 5y agoI hope so. No official word yet but managers are "looking into it", it's a big company, end of the year, etc. What makes it feel like crap is how it's way more difficult to patch than it should be because we're never given time to clean up tech debt and every team does things differently, so everything is a mess. I actually haven't taken time off all year and feel pretty burnt out. Maybe time to polish the resume.
- xeromal 5y agoYeah, my company treats me very well so I was definitely willing to patch this thing during an unfortunate timing. If they were always treating me like shit, I polish up the resume too. You should do it.
- jorgesborges 5y agoI hopped on the bus this morning to work and it was empty except for one person, who I see every morning as we share the same bus schedule but we’ve never interacted before. This morning we smiled at each other and the empty bus, and almost laughed, like oh you too huh? Then we carried on as usual. It was nice!
- gentleman11 5y agoI have a really hard time on my days off taking my mind off work. Shout out to everyone else who is accidentally getting distracted today by problem solving when they are trying their best to be present with their families
- mabbo 5y agoI used to be like this as well. Vacations of less than 5 days were meaningless because it took me that long to stop thinking about work! But I managed to un-learn this habit. I work 9:30 to 5:30. I turn off my work brain outside of that. It's not easy, but it's worth practicing.
- mc32 5y agoWhen I was going to college and worked part time, I’d volunteer to work as many holidays as I could as it meant getting paid double time!!!
- ok_dad 5y agoThanks for keeping things in the world running everyone here. I’m at fine with my family but I appreciate your odd hours.
- n8henrie 5y agoJust getting to bed after an overnight in the ER and subsequent Christmas with the wife and kids. Thanks for the shout-out, and likewise for all the other cogs in the wheel. Discovered today that the hospital IT has decided to disable rebooting our computers through the usual Windows 10 menu, which I usually do at the beginning of each shift to optimize the chances of a smooth-running EHR. Power button still initiates a controlled shutdown. Unclear what they accomplished here.
- yobert 5y agoI can't believe how bad the EHRs in ER settings seem to be. I run a small (but complete) EHR that never has these problems, but we don't have the right sales people I guess to get into these settings.
- davemtl 5y agoI also drew the short straw for on-call this weekend. I've probably already clocked up 10hrs following a network failure at one of our datacenters. I'm not an essential worker, but I want to pass on my Christmas wishes to people who are; doctors, nurses, healthcare assistance, ambulance crews, fire crews, police and everyone else who keeps the world turning over the Christmas holiday. Thank you all for your hard work!
- titanomachy 5y agoIn my opinion “essential worker” is a very blurred line. People depend on technology and the internet. There are real consequences when things stop working.
- midasuni 5y agoIn the U.K. there was a lot of yabbering about “key workers” during lockdown. Nobody even mentioned the people working in power plants.
- pjerem 5y agoMy grandmother is hospitalized at home after a huge stroke. Her nurse just left our house for the second time of this Christmas Day for taking care of her while we were in family. Thanks to his work, I was able to spend Christmas with my family, including my grandmother. That’s some badass important job.
- Shared404 5y agoSide note: I don't know how many people on HN are nurses/doctors, but thank you all for everything over the past couple years, especially now. We as a society have failed you guys, I just wish we could all do better. Edit: Just realized this could read as me criticizing GP, this is not what I intended, this comment just made me realize this sentiment more fully.
- akmd 5y agoFrom an ER doc working in remote Alaska today, thank you. These have been trying years for all of us and while no one I know in the field expects to hear "thank you" for doing our jobs it certainly feels good.
- soheil 5y ago> if you too are sitting in a dark office remember that all across the world are millions of other people working the truly important jobs. I totally get the sentiment, but please turn on some lights.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 5y agoI applaud the sentiment to encourage and celebrate the people who have to work difficult times. Although I don't think it was necessary for you to denigrate other workers (by saying that their roles are not truly important) who aren't working today. You can be important and vital without other people being unimportant.
- maerF0x0 5y agoAnd to think there's a strange few who want to suggest that you important folks who work overtime, are on call 24/7 for dangerous high demand jobs should not earn more than those of us who don't? Well I hope you keep being compensated, and I hope you'll accept my thanks (I'm on HN as a time kill as I wait for my family to call me)
- erikpukinskis 5y agoWho said that?
- maerF0x0 5y agoThose who want same pay for same title and experience w/o variance in looking at very difficult to price details like overtime, contribution, and sacrificing family time for work etc.
- enduser 5y agoMy wife had already delivered one baby by the time I had tea this morning, fewer than 2 hours into her 24-hour shift. I miss her today and am also very proud of the work she does (Nurse Midwife).
- midasuni 5y agoIf I were having a baby I’d hope the midwife wasn’t at the end of a 24 hour shift!
- koksik202 5y agoI remember oncall during Christmas for cloud provider almost no pages all day, easy money
- ipaddr 5y agoWhy can't you do your job remotely?
- rootveg 5y agoThis year I had vacation for Christmas and New Years... but then I got covid on a plane to SF. I stayed 10 days in quarantine in a hotelroom (with only two days of mild symptoms). Today I finished quarantine and tomorrow ill be flying back to europe... thank you everyone who worked through Christmas and thank you for your service sandworm101
- Symbiote 5y agoHopefully you can claim back the vacation days. (I don't know if this is all of the EU/EEA/UK, or just some countries.)
- rootveg 5y agoYou're right I already did fill out a form and probably will get them back, maybe I try to get my birthday off now... Christmas would have been nice but when you read trough all these comments here I'm sill lucky anyway
- pkdpic 5y ago> remember that all across the world are millions of other people working the truly important jobs Im going to assume this wasn't intenional but it came off as a little negative given the rest of the positivity in this sweet message. It just got me thinking about underpaid educators and childcare workers who for the most part are off today. Really everyone, we're all in this together right? Keeping this whole crazy machine running for each other. Regardless this was a nice thing to see bubble up today, merry christmas HN!
- systemvoltage 5y ago> Im going to assume this wasn't intenional but it came off as a little negative given the rest of the positivity in this sweet message. I’m not following your logic here. How is this a negative thing? OP is literally praising people for their dedication with good faith intentions.
- aerovistae 5y agoBecause it could be interpreted to imply that "even if your job isn't important, lots of us have jobs that are." I think it's the "truly" that makes it just slightly ambiguous. Maybe if they had said "also working" to make it sound like the audience was included in the statement, idk. I don't think it was negative, but I can definitely see how someone could take it that way. I saw a glimmer of it.
- tharkun__ 5y agoI had the same thinking as you after reading the first part about it sounding negative. I didn't read it like that at all. The last part makes it clear though. Child education is a truly important job. I think emphasis also changes this subtly. I.e. did you read it in a neutral "truly important jobs" way or for example with emphasis only truly. "_truly_ important jobs_". Like "yeah yeah educator is important but not really. Only these other jobs are the really important ones, like burger flipper at McD". Well to be honest that does read quite negative to me!
- systemvoltage 5y ago
- Avisite 5y ago
- rationalfaith 5y ago
- cafard 5y agoI think that the last time I worked on Christmas I was a busboy, likely at a Holiday Inn. That really doesn't compare with work in health care or public safety, but I'm sure that the customers--some of them probably employed in critical work--were grateful for clean tables and coffee refills.
- tomcam 5y agoI retired from an easy job (sold the business for a dollar) and I’m now building a new business from scratch. Heading into my seventh decade and working seven days a week for months now. Mine is definitely not a truly important job. I have the same attitude as you and sometimes I’ll forget it’s a holiday and when I go out, say to the local McDonald’s, I’ll leave a huge tip and thank them for working.
- theonething 5y agoYou literally sold it for a dollar? Must be a interesting story behind this.
- mproud 5y agoLast year, we had to work from home and do other kind of work, it was sprung upon us we were working on Xmas — no room for negotiation. Thankfully, this year, unlike last, I was able to visit my family not only for Thanksgiving, but also Xmas — I only have to work the 26th. Happy Holidays, everyone!
- bastijn 5y agoCheers to those that are working. Not to say that jobs that don't work on x-mas aren't important of course. To those that aren't working but also have truly important jobs, catch you on the flipside in 2022!
- oxplot 5y agoInteresting that what you describe as special is what I consider normal working environment for myself: quiet, empty and just me humming along. And I don’t get that except on weekends and holidays.
- techgnome 5y agoWater distribution manager for a small municipal water district - sanitation never stops. I was happily only required to do about two hours onsite this morning, and have remote monitoring for the tanks and chlorine levels. Merry Christmas to those who celebrate!
- dogmatism 5y agoAt the hospital today. Let me tell you, if you're in the hospital on Christmas, you've either got serious socio-economic problems, or are sick as shit. Most years, it's a little slower than usual, but not this year
- folkrav 5y agoSometimes just terrible timing. My son decided to climb on a chair and fall head first on a ceramic floor last year lol. Didn't expect to spend a handful of hours at the ER on Christmas night in the middle of a pandemic, but there I was.
- dogmatism 5y agoI speak in generalizations of course, and am referring to admitted medical patients, as that's my area we were already over-capacity from people who delayed/avoided primary care over the past two years, and then the lack of outpatient prevention has caught up, and now starting another covid wave Used to be New Year's was worse than Christmas, because people would try to struggle along at home through Christmas, then come in New Year's sicker than they would have been if they came in earlier, but now that's everyday and compounded by two years of avoided care
- grappler 5y agoI'm not working today but what this brings to mind is a recently hired coworker who apparently is. My small team has had a nice culture of keeping our work chat mostly confined to our normal working hours, except when some issue comes up that needs attention. This new coworker has lately been shattering that. This person not only posts in the evenings, weekends, and sometimes into the graveyard shift, but does so in a cloying, overeager, performative kind of way. "while that job was running I took the opportunity to go learn this new skill!" "I finished this step of the process. Now I'm gonna go do the next one!" ...and updates on what they're doing and their reachability, at all hours. "I'm going to have dinner because I haven't eaten anything today, but I will have my work computer and work phone with me so feel free to ping me". Even today, on Christmas morning, there was more from this person in slack, posted after midnight on Christmas Eve. I do my best to push it out of my mind, but I can't deny this adds a layer of stress for me. I don't want work conversations to stretch into nonworking hours. I don't want this to become part of the culture in my team or company. I don't want to see this kind of behavior become the expectation. I hope nobody ever asks anyone else to be more like this.
- mongrelion 5y agoWhat is stopping you from having a level headed, heart to heart conversation with your new colleague about your growing concern? Part of any job is to pass on the culture to new comers. I'm sure they'll understand.
- nwiswell 5y ago> I'm sure they'll understand. Frankly, I'm not. I think this conversation is actually the responsibility of the GP's boss, not the GP. If the GP is really confident in the existing culture, then in my opinion they should approach their boss with their concerns.
- Too 5y agoNo. It’s a recent hire with a small different mindset. It’s a simple problem, with a simple solution. I wouldn’t even call it a problem or a conflict, just difference in expectation Be an adult and just talk to people. Explain why his behavior disrupts a nice culture you had and why this causes stress to you. If there is risk of heat and you are new to giving such feedback, the standard template is something like “I’ve noticed that you ..., which causes ... to me. Because …. Would you mind … instead.” Be sure to emphasis on your own feelings of the situation, don’t make it hostile or negative in any way. This guy probably just comes from other team culture where people turn off notifications off hours. Don’t bring your boss into this unless the pattern repeats. The message will be lost in translation and you will come of as a whiny wimp, both to your boss and your colleges.
- lillecarl 5y agoI really don't see how a job you're being forced to do at inconvenient times has to be more important than a job that doesn't. I have a friend that worked in a insulation manufacturing company, the oven would never be shut-off because of the time it takes to start it up again, it's cheaper to let people run it 24/7. Just because something is time critical doesn't mean it's important. This post feels like a real feel-good self-motivator post to keep you from jumping ship.
- keyle 5y agoI've been wondering if some devs are still feeling the pain of the log4J troubles during the break?
- euske 5y agoFWIW, the rest of the world where Christianity isn't a major religion, Christmas isn't special either. In Japan, people perceive this as a fancy Western festive event, just like Valentine's Day but there's no holiday. Our real seasonal holiday is a New Year Day and it's common that people work at late night in Christmas to prepare for it.
- happy-go-lucky 5y agoThe OP has made some telling observations about all those working 25th December. Living in India, I had worked in the US healthcare industry for over 15 years. I had to work every Indian holiday. Just imagine the list of festivals/holidays India has; they are perpetual, to say the least. I didn't have to work US holidays, during which I would be home while the rest of my family went about their business, as usual. I would say that it got to the point where I was estranged from my parents and other folks. Now, whenever I think about the sorry state of affairs which I felt had been thrust upon me, I'm filled with remorse for not visiting my parents more often. Every aspect of life has its pros and cons. I see a pattern. Season's Greetings to all HNers!
- giantg2 5y agoDidn't work Christmas. I will be working some on 1/1 and 1/2 though.
- muzani 5y agoI'm not Christian, so I normally volunteer the end of year shift. It seems to mean a lot to those who really celebrate it. It's nice to live somewhere diverse, where anyone can take off for the holidays that matter to them. I had a colleague return to India for a month for Diwali. Eid and Chinese New Year are popular slow periods too.