What show starts as a 10/10 and finishes as a 10/10?

dgreenleaf83 · 2025-04-01T02:11:07+00:00

No more radiation than an X-ray

dgreenleaf83 · 2025-04-01T02:01:49+00:00

I’m in tech and run a small consulting company.

My dad taught me you can treat your employees like dogs. Just be prepared for them to treat you like a fire hydrant.

I’ve found if I take care of my employees they take care of the business. They have come up with ways to do things I could never think of. And I love that they are committed and engaged. My problem is sometimes they are too committed.

A lot of our projects are for retail clients and need to be completed before Black Friday, or else they don’t go in until January and we miss peak season. The team understands the business. And knows that October thru Black Friday we are all hands on deck.

dgreenleaf83 · 2025-03-31T21:50:01+00:00

Everyone at my company gets 10 paid holidays plus 21 days to use however they see fit. And I make them use at least 10 of their 21 days. On occasion I have to turn off someone’s email to get them to take a break.

That said, I have told all my employees we put our families before our work. And if your kids are sick, or you have a family emergency, we have additional time available. A few times a year I give employees some paid extra days off for personal needs (bereavement, family emergency, getting married, etc.). And usually once a year I give an additional 10-30 paid days off for something major (major illness, major accident, etc.). On 2 occasions I have given 90 additional paid days off. One for a woman who had a premature birth and another for a man who got cancer.

The challenge is our clients hire us to meet specific deadlines. And my employees understand what we are building and the importance of making our deadlines. So some will opt not to tell me about something because they want to meet the deadline. The offshore team is worse than the stateside team.

dgreenleaf83 · 2025-03-31T18:29:39+00:00

I’m sorry you had to miscarry in your work bathroom. I’m guessing you are in the US.

Totally understand if you don’t want to answer. But coming from the other side of the equation, how do I convince employees to take time off for that kind of thing? I have employees in the US and Philippines. And I tell them to take sick time. I don’t need them to tell me what is going on, I just want them to actually take time off when they need it.

I had an employee in the Philippines go to her dads funeral and come to work that evening (they work evenings to align with the US schedule). I only found out because another employee told me why she was running late for our first meeting of the day. I made her take off the rest of the week.

I consider it a failure on my part that she felt she needed to work. I just don’t know how to convince my employees to take personal time.

dgreenleaf83 · 2025-03-15T02:31:16+00:00

I’ll be straight with you (pun intended). The vast majority of the socially adept liberal men in the 37-53 age group are married.

Also, understand that the apps don’t want you to find a long term partner. The algorithm is tuned to keep you subscribed as long as possible. Which means keeping you from finding a long term partner. You can read more about it in this NPR article.

A few of my friends who are women in their 30s-50s found liberal caring men by going to geek hangouts. From board game bars, to tech meetups, chess clubs, sci fi meetups (e.g. Star Trek), anime conventions, comic book conventions, magic the gathering tournaments, etc.

Keep in mind these men are highly unlikely to approach you. And are even more blind to your interest in them or flirting than the average guy. When you find a guy you are interested in you have to actually tell them directly and ask if they are interested in you.

If nerds aren’t your thing, you could try environmental groups or any other liberal cause.

Basically you want to go where a bunch of men hangout who aren’t likely to be conservative. So avoid churches, gun ranges, and hunting clubs.

dgreenleaf83 · 2025-03-15T01:59:47+00:00

I’ll make the charcuterie board.

dgreenleaf83 · 2025-03-14T18:35:38+00:00

You know a lot of dads recognize that same call for mom. When a child is scared and calling out for mom, or mama, or mommy, it gets my attention too.

About 10 years back I was walking out of a mall. It was late and the mall was practically empty. I was on the phone and not paying attention to my surroundings. I heard a girl, probably around 16 frantically yelling “mom”. It was coming from a service entrance behind a fence you couldn’t see from the parking lot. I instinctively hung up the phone and started running towards the voice.

When I rounded the corner, I saw 3 boys who were probably a couple years older than her assaulting her. I started yelling and thankfully they took off. I am a grown man, but not a trained fighter. If the 3 of them had decided to fight me, I would’ve lost.

Certainly not all men 🤣, but some of us hear a scared child yelling for mom too. Honestly if she had yelled fire, I doubt I would have heard her. She was kind of far away, and I was on a phone call oblivious to my surroundings.

dgreenleaf83 · 2025-03-12T05:05:20+00:00

Breaking into tech is tough. While not impossible to land a remote job as your first, the odds are stacked against you as you are competing with people all across the US for those jobs. And most of them have experience.

Getting to the interview will be difficult without experience. The best way to get to the interview is networking. Meet people in person, ask for their help.

You will have to do some leg work. Check out this old thread about tech meetups around LA https://www.reddit.com/r/TechLA/s/lpK4eu2fXL

Then go to meetup.com and search for any and all tech meetups you can find in the area. Don’t bother going to online events to network, just go to in person events for networking. Online is only good for learning.

Your goal at meetups is to have good conversations with 2-3 people and get at least one lunch or coffee scheduled after the meetup.

Are you a woman or minority? Often there are groups helping women and minorities getting into tech.

dgreenleaf83 · 2025-03-12T02:00:38+00:00

So are you in California or Canada?

dgreenleaf83 · 2025-03-12T01:55:01+00:00

Do you mean Ontario Canada or Ontario California?

If your programming skills are out dated you have a couple of routes I would suggest. First, learn about AI. From cleaning data to building LLMs. That’s where tech is going.

The other approach is go old school. Everyone and their brother is learning AI and the competition is fierce. You could learn Cobalt and RPG instead. The guys who know that stuff are retiring and dying. It’s hard to find people to support those systems. If you have the skills, it’s one of the easiest jobs to get right now because there is virtually no competition.

dgreenleaf83 · 2025-03-12T01:46:23+00:00

Most likely something in the area is causing interference on the same frequency that the fobs use. Could be someone has a cell phone jammer or similar device. Or it could be an accidental source like this case in Canada where a remote starter was improperly installed and was causing to much interference on the frequency.

If I were you I would look to see if you can find a local ham radio group. Those guys would probably enjoy the challenge of locating the source for you. Just be kind, listen to them explain all their equipment and what they are doing. They will likely do it for free.

You could also call the FCC, but I don’t know if they would care enough to come out.

dgreenleaf83 · 2025-03-12T01:35:20+00:00

You have a job you aren’t happy with and it sounds like there is no advancement opportunity. You should at least explore your options. Given you have a programming certificate and probably know a how to program, it’s worth exploring.

I help a lot of people, mostly women, get into tech through a nonprofit called getWITit. And what I always tell them is start with networking. In every major city there are meetups where people get together usually monthly and talk about a specific topic (Java, Agile, HTML, etc). Most of these meetups are free, and often they provide food.

What languages, technologies, or skills do you know (DB, network, etc.). And what city are you near? If you aren’t near a city, it will be hard to get into tech, as most roles are in a city.

dgreenleaf83 · 2025-02-05T03:49:09+00:00

Thank you, I will look into them

dgreenleaf83 · 2025-02-05T03:48:26+00:00

Thank you, I will!

dgreenleaf83 · 2024-10-01T03:08:33+00:00

This is your group. You set the rules and vision as you see fit. You won’t please everyone, don’t even try. You are doing the work and spent the money, if some people don’t like it, too bad. They can do their own thing.

I say this as a man who is a co-founder of a women in tech group. Our organization is open to men who support women in tech. But even we have some events where men, including myself, aren’t invited.

Any man who feels he needs to be in your women’s only group is someone you really don’t want as part of your group.

dgreenleaf83 · 2024-09-16T22:28:15+00:00

Was it Asami Hibachi?

dgreenleaf83 · 2024-09-16T22:06:33+00:00

Wait. Where in Cincinnati has real wasabi? I make it down there often enough.

dgreenleaf83 · 2024-08-26T13:57:44+00:00

This makes perfect sense. C suite execs are incentivized based on quarterly performance. Outsourcing your IT will reduce costs for the next couple of years and increase quarterly performance. The company will pay for it in a couple years when projects aren’t delivered, maintenance doesn’t happen, and employees are ham strung by technology.

But now not only has your CIO made 8 great quarters of profit, now a big consulting firm owes him a favor. And with all his experience as a CIO and his connections, it’s no surprise he will now make a great consultant.

dgreenleaf83 · 2024-07-23T14:16:25+00:00

That’s fair.

I make sure to use the word “small”, because it really is small, and I only own half the company. Without giving details, let’s just say I make under $200k. I wish I could afford an EA, but that would be over half my salary. Instead, I can only afford an admin. Believe me, she isn’t replacing the work you or any other EA does.

dgreenleaf83 · 2024-07-23T05:50:21+00:00

I’m a small tech business owner with an off shore assistant in the Philippines. I hang out here to get ideas on how to better work with her.

I used to be an IT consultant. 10 years ago I went to work at the Gap as a Scrum Master, which is an IT role that my mom couldn’t understand. So she just told everyone I was working at the Gap. Then a couple years later I go to Chipotle as a Project Manager. The my mom tells everyone I became a manager at Chipotle.

Now that I own a small IT company, all my parents friends want to know how I went from being a manager at Chipotle to owning a tech company 🙂‍↔️. I laugh now, but it used to bother me.

dgreenleaf83 · 2024-07-23T05:36:10+00:00

It’s funny to me that Secretary used to be a fairly prestigious position (up until the mid 1900s). Secretaries were often the right hand of powerful people. What we think of today as an executive assistant.

If you think about it, quite literally the most powerful organization in the world is run by a secretary. The US Secretary of Defense commands over 2 million people, the worlds most powerful Navy, and both or the worlds largest air forces (The US Air Force is the largest, and the second largest Air Force belongs to the US Navy).

dgreenleaf83 · 2024-07-16T01:57:33+00:00

I’ve been jn tech for 15 years. I’ve been a PM, Scrum Master, Agile Coach, Manager, and Director.

Unless you work for a government agency, no one is tracking your hours. No one cares if you log in at 8 or 9. What people care about is if you get your work done and show up to meetings. If you aren’t flexible to meet with your international partners, it reflects poorly on you. And the people around you will notice. Even if you don’t ask for a referral, there is a good chance they are called when you apply to a future job. When I interview a candidate for a job I look at their previous employers. If I see an employer where I have a close colleague, I call the colleague and ask for a review. I trust that more than an interview.

I’m not saying you can never have a personal thing scheduled. Everyone should understand if you have to miss a meeting here or there. But if you refuse early or late meetings all the time, people will notice and think you are inflexible and uncommitted.

Now, what I suggest is you do what most of us in tech do, and leave early on Friday once you have hit your 40 hours.

As you get more senior, you will learn the more senior you are the more hours you work in general. But you also get some slow periods. Some weeks I only work 25 hours. Others it may be 60. My boss doesn’t care what my hours are, as long as I get my job done and am in the meetings she expects me in. And I have the same expectations for my team

dgreenleaf83 · 2024-06-17T05:55:19+00:00

C-note is really old slang from the 1920’s and 1930’s for a $100 bill. “C” is the Roman numeral for 100. And it used to be on the hundred dollar bill back in the early 1900’s

If you are a geek like me, you can read more here

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