The Water Cooler

7:28 AM

good morning

it is a fine day to clean the CV queue!

7:46 AM

might need a moderator intervention on a comment war with Kilisi :|

if you mean what I think you mean, I'd hardly class that as a comment war

well you probably saw a lot worse ^^

When in doubt, you've made your opinion known, it's best to disengage and not insist on having the last word

Hm yea. Well I think this is kind of interesting. People tell me "no that wasn't rude IMHO" and the author himself just like admit he meant that.

It's just more subtly rude than the usual thing

there's where opinion comes in again. In your opinion subtly rude

in other people's opinion (perhaps unnecessarily) brusque

7:56 AM

I have a clear cut definition for that. Personal judgement is rude, period

It might be just "my" definition but I'm applying that quite rationally and without emotion involved

if we start allowing each other to call names I really don't know where we would be heading

So personally if we go in this area I flag

right, flagging it is your prerogative

just ... when you've done so, leave it for the mods or other members to react

Do I have any other choice, anyway ?

not really

you can of course leave comments and try to convince someone their answer is rude, which is unlikely to be helpful and just leads to wasted energy. More constructively, you could suggest a good edit like Mister Positive has done yesterday

Well, given what happened Kilisi would probably not accept I edit out rudeness

it would require considerable changes to the answer also

since proposed solution is part of what's rude

so for that particular one, not much I'd do

I keep the advice for future ones maybe

well, in general you can
- flag for mod
- ask about it on meta
- vote
- edit

seems like you exhausted the options there

8:09 AM

yea. Well that's fairly ok

I think this was a good opportunity for me to raise points and understand better how I'm supposed to interact with that

8:44 AM

@Magisch how you define R/A other than "i know it when i see it" kind of thing ?

I'm asking that because it can be fairly difficult to determine by just feelings. If you are not on the situation that's hard to relate and that's hard to determine that it's just "harsh" or if it's really bad.

It's a "you know when you see it" kinda thing for me

everyone has a line. When enough people's line is crossed, something gets r/a deleted

10:15 AM

@Arthur you say you're not involving emotion, but you admitted yesterday to that answer hitting a nerve because you'd been through similar stuff as the OP

Also Morning all XD

10:26 AM

Mornin' Bee!

morn

How is everyone this beautiful morning?

slightly tired

@Magisch I'll second that, can't seem to quite shake this cold/flu bug

same

I'm still intermittently coughing and have a few flu like symptoms even though the main bronchitis I had last week is gone

unusual

10:36 AM

Not been to any Corvid-19 infected areas have you?

@Magisch sounds like you're on the mend (albeit slowly)

@Bee nope - and I've been (for want of a better word) snotty which isn't a symptom of that anyway :D

Glad to hear it!

If you get what I mean :P

@Bee not to my knowledge

gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/…

I'm obsessed

@Bee <shrug /> other than taking some basic common-sense precautions there isn't much you can do so why worry about it?

10:43 AM

I'm not worried, just fascinated

I reckon it'll end up like another seasonal variant of the flu

I'd love to see more mathematical research about the spread of diseases like this in the modern day

even though my dad has been pressuring me to prepare for worse

@Bee that I can understand - we've never really had the capability to readily view something like this playing out in near-realtime

Apparently it took over 100 days for the flu pandemic ~10 years ago to spread like this did in 25 days

@moto exactly!

Did you hear - about a month ago - sales of the game Plague inc rocketed and the company had to release a statement saying that it was not designed to model a real life virus?

10:48 AM

@Bee lol.. why am I not surpised

People 'ey?

@Bee I mean, it's not an accurate model, but it's a rough approximation

I read somewhere that the number of cases in china is underreported by factor 19 due to mild cases in healthy adults

Yeah I've heard that to - not sure how much I believe it though

I think they mostly screwed up their credibility by changing how they reported cases twice in the same week....

But I still don't think that they are "lying" to the media

to be fair, this disease is pretty hard to quantify and contain. It has a wide range of symtoms from none/mild cold to full blown dual pneumonia and a long incubation time with peak viral loads up to 48h before symptoms start, ready respiratory transmission and surface contamination and tests are scarce and expensive

so this disease is a perfect storm for a modern pandemic

I love the way they are trying to claim it's not a pandemic though

I get why - because that will cause panic

10:56 AM

cause the word instills panic and fear

and in a situation like this the panic response may well be orders of magnitude worse then the actual effect

Thing is, the mortality rate (now that it's been identified and people are on high alert) is pretty low

especially when you factor in underreporting due to the super mild symptoms in some people

Absolutely

My lovely receptionist saved me some free breakfast biscuits this morning - I'm not nice to people because it pays (obviously) but if anyone every needed another reason

12:52 PM

@Bee I can feel bad about something I also find rationally bad. I don't think that's mutually exclusive

I'm not saying you can't @Arthur I was just pointing out that it may have an unintended bias

*cause you to have

@Bee I don't think pointing out potential bias on people is neither difficult or helpful.

It wasn't meant to be an attack, just an observation

you see that's fairly hard to distinguish at times, which is why I believe there is a need for rationalizing what happens.

How do you mean?

12:59 PM

By just analyzing phrasing and context and trying to determine if someone is making a personal judgement.

In what context?

What are you trying to get at here?

I just feel like responding to you idk I am not trying to get anywhere especially, do you ?

Maybe you think you can't be rational about rudeness ? It's something that's arguable

I'm not trying to argue

I was only responding to your complaints really, I wondered if you have an end goal or any ideas for how the issue you are seeing can be resolved

What complaints ?

I stated a few times I'm not asking anything more here

About Kilisi

Ok just seemed this morning you did was all

But if you're happy the way stuff is handled then it's all good :)

1:11 PM

Yea well. I just wish people thought more like me but I can't blame people for not to right ? :)

It warms my heart to think that we're at least 30 to find this answer terrible and that a few of them also commented that way. I don't think I need more support than that

Glad your satisfied! As we all said yesterday - the idea is that the community filters out stuff that shouldn't be there

2:49 PM

@ArthurHavlicek One of the beauties of Q&A is that different people can offer different points of view, and you are absolutely free to like, dislike, accept, follow or ignore any of the advice based on what you think is best for you, regardless of what anyone else in the community thinks of it.

My personal standard is civility. As long as the advice is clear, actionable, and not abusive, it should be up to the OP and any future readers to decide if they find it useful or not.

Q: Should we take into account the number of answers and up-votes for a question, when voting to close?

I think Arthur's issue was that he didn't think it was civil

Pointy Haired Boss

5:08 PM

0

Example question: Strange job interview -- What were they really looking for? In the example, the question is well voted for and has a good number of highly voted answers. However, I would tend to agree that it isn't suitable/should be closed - as it's effectively asking people to guess what so...

discussion

A: Tactics for rewarding employees - keep them motivated and eager for work - long term employee retention

5:19 PM

I may have gotten a little passionate about this one. But I really absolutely love my company, and I wish more companies could be like us:

0

Agency People are happy when they feel they have control over their environment, and absolutely miserable when they don't, regardless of how objectively good or bad the environment is. Take for example Chinese Water Torture. Having a drop of water fall on your forehead isn't painful, it's barel...

5:32 PM

It's a really good answer

@Bee Yeah. I don't think I could ever go work at a Mega Corp, the startup life has spoiled me.

dwizum

@Kaz that has been an interesting question for sure

if anything, it speaks to the variations in terms of what actually motivates people. I would mostly agree with your answer for myself, and I'm sure it's representative of people who do well in the environment you're describing

but I've been surprised from time to time when "agency" in the sense of "freedom" is seen as almost scary to some people, they literally just want to be told what to do and how to do it so they don't have to decide

@Kaz same here

No one likes to be micromanaged though, surely?

dwizum

that's the thing that's surprised me, some people seem to only be happy when they are "micromanaged"

Q: Tactics for rewarding employees - keep them motivated and eager for work - long term employee retention

@Bee You're in London right? Maybe you should come work at my company. I'm looking to hire a Data Analyst at the moment.

@Bee Depends on the person. I think it would be more accurate to say that different people want different levels of direction. Personally I love maximum freedom: Give me inputs, outputs and parameters and let me figure out everything in-between. Other people want a clear, known, unchanging process with objective performance criteria.

Also, anyone want to VTR?

4

What are some effective tactics used to keep employees motivated and enthusiastic for the company vision and to achieve long-term retention? (developers mainly) Or if you are an employee: what have employers done that has worked to keep yourself motivated and enthusiastic besides the obvious of ...

developer employees employee-engagement

I'll admit it's borderline, but I think it's probably concrete enough to be useful as a reference, which is ultimately what Q&A is about.

dwizum

5:54 PM

I voted to reopen

6:30 PM

me too

2 more

I like your answer kaz

one of the things that keeps me at my current job is that the managers know that they are not developers, and take our input and let us do our work

2

6:50 PM

@Magisch Even being a tiny startup, full of smart experienced people, it still took me the best part of 2 years to persuade them that an extra £100/year/person for much faster computers was a good investment.

Honestly, the moment I have budgetary authority the very first thing I'm going to do is give each employee authorisation to request stuff they want up to a discretionary budget of 1%-2% of their salary each year.

Computers, stationery, the kind of tea and coffee we stock in the kitchen, whatever. As long as I can glance at it in 10 seconds and "sure, go ahead" then they can have it.

@Kaz I appreciate the offer but I work for a fab company, I meant same here as in, I am also spoilt!

I mean, it also helped that we eventually went from barely breakeven to significantly profitable, but still.

And yeah I agree, I don't want maximum freedom. I do want some level of guidance, but more because I'm new to the field - I was always account management before

@Bee Fair enough. If your situation ever changes just let me know.

7:16 PM

Will do! Always good to know what's out there

@Kaz Determining abusive isn't clear. If I tell you quit your job depending context it can be legit advice or abusive. If I tell you "grow up" is that abusive ? In essence it's what I understood from Kilisi's answer and he doesn't hide from the fact this implied meaning is volontary.

I just dislike when answers take for granted they know better and even more so when it disregards OP. It's the same about the sexism part. If op says "i experience sexism" I see violence in denying that.

7:39 PM

When people answer me by saying "it's just harsh, not rude" I am questioning myself if they understand the meaning of rude. All I understand from it is that they belittle the harm done.

7:51 PM

@ArthurHavlicek I'd agree that it's harsh (and based on personal experience, probably not going to help in the OP's situation either). But nowhere near the standard of "This should not be uttered in a public discourse".

8:01 PM

I don't see The Workplace as a place of free speech and public discourse, but a place with a defined purpose that these kind of answer hinder achieving.

there are nothing I would forbid people to say in public. There are things I would forbid to stay here though.

@ArthurHavlicek Q&A is not just about the OP, but about every future reader who might find themselves in a similar position. As such, I think diversity of ideas and advice (and letting future readers and the OP decide which advice they find useful) should be of central importance.