Work Life Balance - HTTP203

Key Takeaways

Well, I went on vacation. Oh, well done. to like, you know, do the whole work-life balance thing. Okay. And just like, you know, I put my So, I took my iPad with me and my work phone. And only my That's a good start to work-life balance. I went on holiday with my work phone. have one phone. And that's my work phone. Okay. But, so to enforce the work-life balance thing, the phone lived in the safe. In the safe? And that's of course a Faraday cage. No, but it keeps you out. put it in the microwave, mate. It keeps me out. That's the point. I could have put it in the fridge, maybe. I feel I've not been very good at the work-life balance in my past vacations. It's I had my phone. It has all my private account and also my work accounts on it. So, work chat is on there. Um work email is on there as well. And so, you have this whole you're browsing things, might as well check into work email, and then you read something, you you think, "Oh, I should react." Even though you're on vacation. And just It keeps you engaged in a way that it really shouldn't. I find that even if I'm you know, not deliberately going to my phone to check work stuff, I up doing it. Well, I'll be out and about, and I'll go, "Oh, I don't know how to get to a place." So, I'll use, you know, maps. And so, I pull out my phone, and while I'm there, I see uh tweets, and I see the start of it like saying, you know, "This article is stupid, and" and I'm like Must respond. Yes, cuz if I don't respond, then then in my mind, it's just going to be like, "Well, what are they talking about? What have I got wrong? Is it genuinely wrong, or are they wrong?" And you know, that whole XKCD, "Someone is wrong on the internet, and it might be me, it might be them, but we I need to find out who." wrong on the internet. Yeah. I think I feel like for some reason, you feel you have this obligation to respond to people quickly. Yeah. If it's a person you don't know on Twitter, and they're like, you know, insulting you for the stupid article you wrote, there is no obligation for you to respond within 10 minutes of him authoring that tweet. Yes. You can do it two or three days later. I feel I think this topic is just interesting because every now and then I see tweets about people who like having the time to work on software, web development, whatever in your spare time is a massive privilege. And then I see other people tweeting, "Oh, it's the weekend. What should I do? Vote on this Twitter poll if I should learn React or if I should learn" I'm like, this is probably not healthy. I know for myself that sometimes well, that I have the massive privilege that my hobby is also my job or has become my job. Right. So, if you do your hobby at a weekend, you are doing your job. In a way, yes. But also the other way around, if I'm working, I'm kind of doing my hobby. And I feel that this absolutely should not be an expectation for anyone. No. No. And I don't think it is, but it's become culturally normal within the industry. scene, I feel like you're expected to have or some companies look at your GitHub profile and if you have not a consistently green contribution bar, meaning you have con- committed something on every day of the week, Mhm. you will have less chance of being hired than somebody who does do that. Whenever I interview somewhere, which has been a while, but I you know that bit where they say, "Do you have any questions for me?" Is you know, every interview someone asks that. The question I ask them is um you know, your employees, your uh your developers, they're working late or weekend cuz of a deadline. Yeah. Uh do you see that as just something that happens Mhm. or is it a failure in planning? Okay. Cuz it has to really be one of those two things. Yeah. The answer I'm not looking for is it's just it's just what we do. Yeah, that shouldn't be the answer. I think I think it can be that's something that happens because it is incredibly hard to do planning, but then there must be the second thing that says, "You will get that time back." Right. Okay, that's that's fair. If yeah, saying it just happens and it's expected to deal with it, that's that's the wrong answer. The correct answer is yeah, you know, it was a failure in the planning, but it couldn't have been predicted, but here's how we deal with it. As you say, you get the time back is is really the ideal answer. The other wrong answer, or probably the worst answer, is that doesn't happen because that means that manager is unaware of it happening. Or lying. And both are not good qualities in a manager. Exactly. Exactly. So, so yeah, and I felt like um the the somewhat ironic because I was on vacation with you know, browsing Twitter, and I saw these tweets, it's the weekend, what should I do? And I was like, then my first reaction was, oh, I'm just playing literally stupid games on my iPad. Maybe I should be working on a side project, use the time to expand my horizon. Right. And I had to convince myself that it is okay to what might be perceived as wasting time. But I have noticed that doing following your gut and just allowing you to be lazy if that's how you feel like, it is so refreshing, it is such an energy boost. Well, we are definitely saying this from a point of view of a company which does do it right. Yeah. Like a lot of people are working weekends because their job depends on it. I mean Yeah, absolutely. working longer hours is not does not scale. No. But that will bite you Yeah. if you do it for too long. So, what's your answer then, Selma? Like if someone's working That's a nice way of putting you on the spot. Are you saying oh, you've got they've got to change job, right? That's That's so I've seen this argument before and it makes me angry. Like people like, oh, if you have to work if you have to support IE11, I would switch jobs. And I was like, not everybody has to put up with change a job. Right, absolutely. Like I know that in our line of work specifically, web developers, there's a massive demand. So, you usually can say, I'm just going to leave company A and I'll be pretty confident to find another job somewhere else. Yeah. Usually in web development, that will work because the demand is so big. But if you are not necessarily in that spot, Yeah. AKA a lot harder, or if you don't have enough experience to get all these jobs going that one eight years of experience with React, even though it's only been out for five. Yeah, I know a lot of people doing sort of development work up north, uh, cuz that's where I'm from, the north of England. And yeah. Are you? I didn't know. Yeah, I got the accent still there, unfortunately. You know, there's not as many jobs as there are in London, so that sort of attitude of like, "Oh, you would just change a job if you don't like it." is yeah, it is comes across as incredibly privileged, snobby, and yeah. I think, as always, it requires a shift in in paradigms in the entire field of work. And that's not easy to do, but it's just something that you as a person should be aware of that what you're doing right now is not scalable, and that you need to take time for yourself if you have been working the last three weekends, or something, because, as you said, it doesn't scale. It will Well, eventually you hit 24 hours, and then you can't work a 25th hour. And at some point you die. What crunch? That went dark. And then the heat death of the universe. Well, it's not sustainable. Yeah. So, yeah. Just Is that your advice? Just work less? Just Yeah, just work less. No, I I think it's just like if you need to fight for your right to party. To not work if you're not on work hours. It's If If you leave the job, it must be okay. People who are working more sensible hours tend to get the same amount of work done. Yeah. I mean, it's that same problem. I I had it last week. I was working on a piece of code, and I was just hitting my head against it for like two hours, and I I did the thing where I just I eventually walked away, yeah, and just took half an hour to just I left the office, I just walked around the block a couple of times, I came back to my desk, and I solved it in five minutes. That's Ah, I love that. I love this I mean, I hate it because it's frustrating, but I've experienced so often where it's like, just take a break. Yeah. But But taking a break while there's a code problem there is near impossible. Like I I cuz You feel like you have the entire thing contract build up in your info, it will just vanish if you leave and you have to start over. But this is not what happens because the construct is usually what is wrong. Well, the problem I have, and I think I may have spoken about it on on the show. Can we call it a show? Let's call it a show. Uh spoke about it on the show before is that having uh if I leave a code problem and then sort of go into a social environment, Yeah. which could just be like, you know, having dinner with my partner or being out with friends. Yeah. There is still 80% of my brain trying to solve the problem, but now I don't even have a code editor. So, I'm hitting my head against the problem even worse than I was at my desk. So, the the break I took was just a you know, on my own. Didn't have to socialize. I was still sort of roughly thinking about the problem, but also listening to a podcast. Fresh oxygen and just, you know, getting distracted every now and then. I came back and went, "Oh, yeah. There's the order. Oh, it works." So, yes. It wasn't a semicolon. The Yes. So, yeah, non overwork people are bad coders, but I don't know the answer if if you're in a situation where you can't avoid it. No, I'm not saying I have the answer. It's just something I thought about on the vacation. I was like, I'm trying to get better with this because I have a job where I can, but it should it should be a high priority for more people. In the last episode, we we spoke a lot about like needing views and and stuff. And I think there was a subtext there that it was employee review time for us. Yeah. And it's done now. Yeah. I don't actually care. No. Just unsubscribe. Don't Yeah. We don't need you. Please stay. Yeah, please don't go. Please.