A couple of years ago I was walking around downtown SF, and I noticed someone had drawn a chalk outline on the sidewalk and labeled it "techie fuck". I had a good chuckle. We are not loved there.
The bubble goes both directions. I've been working in tech from Colorado for a decade, and only started getting involved in SF this year; the culture shock is surreal (not least because it's normal to those on the other side), and the street-level economic disparities are beyond Dickensian.
And yet it still grates on my ears every time someone uses it in the singular. But the same things happens when someone ends a sentence with a preposition or splits an infinitive, and neither are those consider grammatical faux pas anymore.
That is true, but ending sentences with prepositions still makes you sound like you don't know how to English. "Where are you at?" Just no. Why add the extra word that doesn't clarify anything? "Where are you going to?" Even writing it makes me cringe. Granted, if doing otherwise would make the sentence sound awkward, go for it. e.g. "Ending sentences with prepositions? That is something up with which I will not put!" I am such a pedantic nerd that I still write that way and try to find a way to make it sound less awkward.
Every time? If a person never used it I think he or she might sound stilted, since he or she would need to alter his or her speech in order to avoid the pronoun he or she wanted to avoid.
When I was in academia, it was considered acceptable for one to alternate between his and her when the gender of the subject is unknown. Using his or her every time does sound stilted, but proper grammar often sounds "weird". My highschool English teacher's favorite phrase was "things that 'sound right' are often wrong". That's the beauty of this fucked up language. I refuse to believe that masculine pronouns being the default gender neutral is some conspiracy by the patriarchy, but that's just me.
I would never go back to commuting to the same place every day. It's cool that he does the coworking thing, but I've been working remotely for 6+ years fulltime (and I have other periods of 2-3 years at a time working remotely interspersed through my 20+ year career in software), and I would not give it up for anything less than a C-level role at this point. Most of the benefit to me is the lack of routine. Routine stifles my creativity. I don't want to go to the same place or do the same thing every day.
>Most of the benefit to me is the lack of routine.
Wow, this is literally the exact reason I loathe remote working! I've been working remotely for almost 5 years now and I'm about to jump ship at my current job specifically so I can find a job that has a physical office to go to. I find that the lack of a routine causes a significant increase in stress in my life. It's an actual dream of mine to go back to a 'normal' job where I go into an office and sit at a normal desk with a normal work schedule, and then can just go home or to the gym at 6pm and enjoy my non-work life.
Personally, I find having a space dedicated to work helps tremendously with this. When I am in my "office" at home, I am working. When I leave the office, I am not working.
Having that separation helps me "leave work" when it is technically at the same location. It does also require a good bit of discipline because it is easy to slip back into work at any point in the day.
Many argue that you should "work when you feel like it" but I personally find that leads to burn out. If I can keep a regiment that I don't deviate much/at all from, I am mentally healthier.
yes because most of us don't know how to turn that off!
Mental health must become a priority when working remote. Separation is a key way to stay ahead of the degradation. Even if you're not a person who tends to go outside, you HAVE TO when you work remote. Lack of face to face interaction will eat you very slowly over the years.
It can't just be with your usual people either. You need to have a level of unexpected interactions with other humans to stay a happy person. I'm not a psychologist, but I've had this happen to me and any other colleague I know who worked remote. It's a very real thing – respect it.
All the work code, emails, tickets etc. are on it and once it's closed for the day I it needs to fired up again to do any additional work, which surprisingly serves enough as a barrier.
I have a third option, work time. I have specific, inviolable times when I get on and off work. Past 8, I am off work and all work-related notifications shut off automatically. I've found this helps perfectly isolate work from life.
Working whenever you feel like it is hell, I agree.
> Wow, this is literally the exact reason I loathe remote working!
I've been remote working for years and I now find that my most productive times are "in-the-zone bursts" of work. What used to take a whole day I can now get done in a couple of hours.
So, now I find less of an imperative to keep a structure. My new rule is to just be very vigilant about when my brain wants to do the work... and when I get the feeling jump right in.
I have been working remotely for the past 4 years and every day has been routine. Walk into my my home office at 8, work until 12, take an hour lunch and work until 5. For the first couple of years I had issues with overworking myself not being sure of my productivity, but after setting hard limits to never stay in my office after 5 and to stop worrying about my productivity my stress levels normalized and nobody reported negatively on my productivity. It was all in my head.
My experience working remotely is almost the same as working in an office. My only added benefits are a lack of commute and job opportunities that aren't available to me in the small remote town I'm in. If it wasn't for remote work I wouldn't even be a software developer. This allows me to be a software developer and raise my kids in the same town as their grandparents. In fact living in the same town I was raised in may aid in the social isolation a lot of people feel. I could see working remotely in a town you have no/small amount of friends being very isolating.
I’m the exact opposite. My general perspective on life is to be able to do what I want, when I want to do it and remote work with a flexible schedule enables me to do that. I absolutely hate being told I have to sit at a desk and be somewhere between some prespecified hours.
I work remotely and have a very consistent schedule / routine. I have a family so that helps in terms of company in the house reminding me to leave the office.
When I leave my office (a dedicated space), I'm done for the day, but that's also due to the culture at my workplace. It's possible to have both, is all I'm saying. Remote doesn't mean no routine.
Were you sociable before going remote? - My biggest issue when I have periods of work from home from my job is getting very lonely from not speaking to anyone in person all day. But I imagine if I was a fully remote worker I would make active changes in my life to see more people every day.
“But I imagine if I was a fully remote worker I would make active changes in my life to see more people every day.”
That’s one of the biggest improvements in quality of life when I work remotely. I find working in an office (especially open space or cubes) very exhausting due to noise and lack of privacy. So I come home at night totally exhausted and do nothing. When I work from home I naturally feel motivated to do something after work which I find very positive.
It will force you to find social outside of work, but that's a good thing to do in general. Once you start getting out the house at what is normally work hours you'll start to meet other people who work remote.
But, and this can be hard for people, you have to make an effort to be social. The default that someone works with you they will likely have to talk to you is no longer an option.
I am a very extroverted person and require social interaction to not become depressed. My job is a little different in that I'm customer-facing and have to travel to customer sites from time to time. I also have a family (wife and 2 young daughters), and I enjoy the opportunity to interact with them throughout the day. I have a separate area of the house that is mine, and they know not to disturb me while I'm working (which is often, but on my own schedule). To clarify: Wife is a SAHM. I also work for a Bay Area startup, which has perks in terms of flexible schedule and unlimited PTO.
That is the harshest adjustment. I had to make accommodations as my mood plummeted immediately. I work every morning at the coffee shop which gives me some social exposure and pseudo interaction. Merely being around others, and bright light, helps. I don't have to rely on meetups much anymore, but that's a very useful tool. I particularly enjoyed pick-up sports, non-fiction discussion, etc.
You have to integrate more socializing into your life or you will not make it in the long run. If a remote worker tells you this doesn't bother them... ask them how long they've been remote. If it's less than 5 years, it's slowly eating at them and they don't realize it yet. Even the most introverted homebodies need to do this for remote jobs IME.
+1 for this. Been remote ~5 years or so now and it's lonely. There are weeks where, outside of work calls, the only people I talk to are clerks at a checkout counter.
I've found that getting involved in some type of group activity is super helpful for that.
I'm into music, so I joined our local community choir. It's not necessarily the style of music I listen to on my own or like to play/perform (I'm more into guitar and folk music), but its a very social activity that gets me out of the house once a week, with people that I have some things in common. I've made some great friends and got to know a lot of people in my community that I would not have otherwise.
I really start to miss it when we're off-season (long summer break), because of that feeling you get when you haven't left the house for a week or so. :)
I would have periods of becoming unsociable if I was heads down all the time. Practice makes perfect, you know?
Becoming remote didn't change that. But traveling while being remote did. It's hard not to walk into great wall of socializing to balance out all the abstract work we do day today.
Personally, I kicked started it by putting all my stuff in storage. I also started slowly by traveling within the US and moving month to month. My boss does it cool, important to note that not all remote work environments will be okay with you traveling.
I've been working remotely the same amount of time. I used to work remote for a local Chicago company and there were plenty of opportunities for social interaction. Now I'm working remote for a Bay Area company and it's pretty isolating. My wife's Christmas party is a highlight of the year.
We chatted last week and I was sorry to hear you went with another contractor for frontend dev. The bait and switch wasn't my intention, UpWork doesn't really let you present yourself as a team. Best of luck.
That's not how option valuation works. They're worth the difference of their strike price to the price of the underlying intrinsically. So if his strike is $110 (which it's not for reasons others have pointed out - he was issued options on common stock), he gets the appreciation of the stock after IPO once he exercises. If the stock plummets after IPO, his options will expire worthless. Though they are probably LEAPs, and it's weird to denominate options per-share like that. Normally contracts are for 100 shares and it always confuses me the way companies award options.
So go work from a coffee shop or take a walk. I'm not sure if anyone has told you, but it's not been normal for humans to go to an office five days a week for 8 hours a day for most of human history.
If you were individual 1099, then no there is no advantage really. And you have to pay self-employment tax. If you were B2B 1099, there are ENORMOUS advantages. My average effective federal tax rate on ~$250k/yr is right around 1.8-2.2% because I'm 1099 B2B and have a great tax attorney and accountant. Obviously on paper I make like $30k a year or something stupid like that, I don't know. My attorney adjust things monthly or quarterly as necessary, starts new LLCs or whatever is required.
Yes, if he's married filing jointly the standard deduction is $24k. Meaning he pays zero taxes. If he's unmarried his standard deduction is still most of his salary (~$12k), and the remaining amount would fall into the 10% tax bracket. But he would qualify for tax credits with income that low. Also very likely social services and safety nets. His effective income tax rate should be negative.
Reading these comments, it's apparent most people have no idea how this shit works. I thought here of all places, I wouldn't see people falling into the "I don't understand how progressive tax brackets work" trap.
So you don't apply VAT to inelastic commodities. We have in fact figured this shit out. Austrian or Keynesian are not the only two choices available to us, despite what some would try to lead you to believe.
