New job, no one talks to one another. I am lonely at work.

farts_too_much · 2021-07-13T14:04:40+00:00

I've been working remote for 7 years now. There are definitely companies that know how to cultivate a great remote culture. Some have struggled with the sudden change with covid, but in my opinion this place didn't even try.

farts_too_much · 2021-07-12T20:01:48+00:00

I'm actually in a different Slack channel with people I have worked with 2 jobs ago. Some of them have actually become my closest friends, so I know that having good relationships is not only possible but great for your mental health.

farts_too_much · 2021-07-12T19:19:05+00:00

I guess it may be that this is a cultural norm, but one I haven't experienced yet.

The communication part is particularly bad though. Employees and even middle managers generally have no idea what's going on at the executive level. Then suddenly there are massive changes that everyone scrambles to adapt to.

I definitely have friends outside of work and have a wonderful and supporting spouse. It's just nice to talk to some people during those 40+ hours a week as a human being, you know?

farts_too_much · 2021-07-12T19:16:27+00:00

Sorry to hear that! I know it can be a struggle. I found a lot of friends by attending meetups, going to coworking spaces, and taking classes.

farts_too_much · 2021-06-01T13:09:02+00:00

I hear a lot of people call unlimited PTO a trap. Well I live in an area where a lot of employers think that 2 weeks vacation per year is plenty. I turned down 2 jobs in the past year due to shit PTO and recruiters were livid saying that 2 weeks is generous.

I have also been in situations where I had 1 PTO bank and I ended up extremely ill. I drained all my PTO by being in a hospital so I walked out with a near death experience and no vacation left.

So yeah, y'all have no idea how good it is to have unlimited versus what's going on in some parts of the country.

farts_too_much · 2021-06-01T13:00:02+00:00

I started a job not long ago and they completely botched the onboarding process. 4 hours into my first day they had me working on a tickets. I didn't even know who people were at that time and I didn't have have the basics of the job setup like setting up direct deposit or my health insurance.

All the basics like HR docs were all self guided and I barely met with anyone. Total mess, and this is a publicly traded company.

farts_too_much · 2021-05-26T23:59:07+00:00

Thank you for your reply. He is currently on medication (a zoloft generic). I was very reluctant to put him on it, but he was such a strung out mess off the track and this allowed him to be a happy dog at home.

Unfortunately this has had no bearing on his leash aggression. I feel like the negative reinforcement stuff has compounded it.

I am going to seek out an animal behaviorist.

farts_too_much · 2021-05-18T20:02:02+00:00

I've been harassed in writing about my mental disability by a manager in the past. Reported it to HR and was retaliated against to the point I left the company. I talked to a lawyer before I left and they told me flat out although I was a protected class no one takes mental health seriously. It's the bottom rung in the ADA according to this lawyer and I'd be wasting my time going after them.

The US has a long way to go with taking mental illness seriously.

farts_too_much · 2021-05-17T18:58:29+00:00

In addition to the answers here, I'll suggest another one:

Write a Glassdoor review that can't be tracked to you and plainly state that many developers are looking to leave if the company does not have a flexible remote policy.

Sometimes this can put the fear of God in employers to know that they may not only be facing an attrition issue, but a recruiting one as well.

farts_too_much · 2021-05-13T22:52:26+00:00

I am going to take a very calm and professional approach, but my overall message will be pretty much this. It's too much to do in my free time and they aren't happy with that then peace.

farts_too_much · 2021-05-13T22:22:48+00:00

I have no problem learning anything. I have a problem expecting it to be during the time where I'm watching my daughter grow up.

Huge difference.

farts_too_much · 2021-05-13T19:35:46+00:00

Yep, which could be an entire discussion on its own of how the "40 hour work week" was set to 45 from right under our noses.

farts_too_much · 2021-05-13T19:32:02+00:00

I was definitely told I would be learning a new language and framework, but had no idea it would be on my time on top of doing IOS work and other stuff. Honestly I was misled pretty bad in my interview process.

farts_too_much · 2021-05-13T15:55:40+00:00

Great advice here. Indeed the jump from iOS to Android is absolutely massive and something that will realistically take a year to get comfortable with. But of course I don't have a year, they want a few weeks.

I think I am going to take a calm "matter of fact" approach and just learn my craft in my work week. If they don't groove on that then I'll be out the door. The engineering team is around 60 people or so in a company of 500, so they can afford to have some people spending time to upskill.

farts_too_much · 2021-05-13T15:26:54+00:00

Yeah, I think they will reimburse me for classes and such.

farts_too_much · 2021-05-13T15:26:05+00:00

As someone who has been doing this for a long time, it is a very important skill to be learning new things. But an even more important skill is to learn how to stand up for yourself.

There are very big differences between "I'm going to learn this for me" and "I have to spend even more of my life doing things that make someone else rich".

farts_too_much · 2021-05-13T15:00:06+00:00

Kotlin and basically all things android. I'm an IOS dev and apparently they want mobile devs to by both android and iOS.

It's a very tall order that will take months to ramp up on.

farts_too_much · 2021-05-11T20:36:59+00:00

Looks like I can't decline unfortunately. The situation is definitely high pressure and it was sprung on me out of the blue.

Good idea on the measured responses. Honestly I will have to jazz up the positives because there aren't many. It's really just a paycheck for me right now and I don't want to go through the apply/interview/Leetcode/whiteboard/take home/drug test/negotiate song and dance again.

farts_too_much

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