@enderland I usually have about 20 SE chatrooms open (I just open all my favourites at once) but make a point of only properly participating in my pre-work, lunch and post-work windows. The rest of the time I dip in and out as work permits, based on notifications
@RoryAlsop I'm an employee and even I don't have 20 chat rooms open. My 'standard' window of chat is 3 internal, 2 Japanese, and TL. Then popping here and there as needed. I can't even fathom having 20 open, I have enough trouble with 6.
There are so many things I want to do, but a limited amount of bandwidth in which to do it. Unfortunately.
SOjp already has almost 4,000 questions and is still growing, and meta is out of control busy as of late (and I'm the only one in the company who can read it).
@JaneS When you work remotely like stack exchange believes in, work tends to expand to fill the time you are within ping distance of your computer or mobile device.
@enderland Clearly you don't. We work on developing the tools to allow the communities to delete all the things. Because clicking buttons is hard work, and there's beer to be drank.
It's a great company, and I've never worked anywhere I've been happier. And the work is fun, so I don't mind the fact that I tend to overdo it (just look at pings in the TL, I think I have eclipsed Jon Ericson and Tim Post to rise to the second most popular CM to ping after Shog!).
@enderland It depends on the person. People who work in one of our offices tend to work 9-5 or 10-6. Those of us who are remote in a weird place (like Japan) have to overlap so I, for instance, did 9-4 + 9-11 yesterday so I could participate in a call.
Generally speaking, we are encouraged not to work more than 50 hours a week (unless we want to).
@JaneS good luck in the election -- glad to have you as part of the community! And @enderland keep fighting the good fight and all that. You have to fill my shoes, that was part of the social contract, remember?
Yeah, part of it is that morning is usually my flow time since starting work
So I can get 5 hours of Serious Business™ handled, but then everyone is asleep.
My brain just shuts off in the afternoon -- my best days are when I don't have a call the night before, I wake up at 8, have a nice breakfast, and then dig into SQL/data analysis/meta/whatever.
(I was elected as a mod to TWP in Spring 2014 -- barely. Got hired to Stack Exchange in July, and enderland was the runner up in the election -- so he gets to handle my shoes/modly duties)
Ah, I remember now. Jim was the runner up in the election, but he didn't want to be a mod, so we had a new election.
@enderland Try 6-8 months maybe. With our new graduation criteria I could probably graduate them now, but the privilege levels are lacking since people are very reluctant to vote for some reason.
@jmac It seems to work quite well - when working in my home office, SE is on one screen, and I use two others for the day job. At work I only have two screens, so I just bring my SE window up as needed. The mobile app is my least favourite way to work, as it is very difficult to see everything at a glance (ie you can't) so I have to cycle through them all
We had a quick straw poll around Sec.SE, and I tended to have the lowest number of tabs open. A lot of those guys have >60 or 100. I don't think my brain could sort those effectively
@RoryAlsop I frequently run out and have problems, though I suspect it might be because of my page file settings from before, I changed those recently so who knows...
I have that type of personality where I can dig into something extremely nitpicky or abstract and find challenges to keep myself occupied. When I was younger, I temped for a while, and I found data entry not so bad - it can be kind of zen, and there are all sorts of little puzzles to solve about how to optimize the work as well as your own comfort, how to do QC, how to improve the DE procedure
Of course, it's much more rewarding to make actual money and be able to get up from your desk and not worry about RSI
Inventory of air pollution is loads more complex and interesting than inventory of a warehouse.
Why hire consultants instead of FTEs?
What are the pro's of hiring consultants, and when do you need one?
Keep in mind that there will be a multitude of employment laws/regulations/etc that vary based on country and region (or even government). These can make hiring an FTE vs consultant a v...
@enderland That's really helpful - I have always taken a sort of ballpark figure when doing the justifications to take on contractors vs permies, but this explains a lot
that was incredible. by the way, I've always wondered - what is a 401k? I've assumed it might be something to do with tax or retirement or healthcare in the US, but never really been sure.
@RoryAlsop there's likely more misc costs that you can't really predict, technology costs (does your company pay for all that?), building costs, etc, but yeah that is at least a pretty good start to the "think about this" thing
@enderland I was typing up an answer to that when yours appeared, and I realized we just had overlapping lists of bullet points, the permutations of which for such a broad topic were endless...
The only thing I'm not sure is in your expanded answer (skimmed it, looks good) is the simple fact that sometimes it's not the company making this decision, it's just that there are a lot of tedious obstacles in the way of a supervisor getting funding and approval for a new hire
Even supervisors have "real work" to get done, after all
Why hire consultants instead of FTEs?
What are the pro's of hiring consultants, and when do you need one?
Keep in mind that there will be a multitude of employment laws/regulations/etc that vary based on country and region (or even government). These can make hiring an FTE vs consultant a v...
The Water Cooler
The Water Cooler