Having worked in PowerApps the last year and integrating a rest API in Azure that then updates Dataverse, low code is just short for abstraction layers. As a developer, this irritates the hell out of me.
Sure, you can view your Dataverse database in SSMS, but it's read only and you get no autocomplete.
As someone who is of East Asian descent, and with a mid -8 diopter, I fall into this category. I am extremely grateful that I can still get 20/20 vision with corrective lenses, but I assume that at some point, that will no longer be the case.
No. What's currently popular is normalizing talking about mental health and wellbeing. Not everyone has the privilege to get a diagnosis, much less, get proper care or treatment. Talking about these issues on social media is an outlet for people to not feel so lonely or isolated.
The article quotes a few people. One of the quotes is, "The accounting team is not happy with me providing this time off, because it’s a liability for the company". Another quote is equating not taking sick days to having a "work ethic".
What does 'abusing' sick leave mean though? You mention going to the ballpark using a sick day. Going to the ballpark with your son, looks a lot like taking care of your mental well-being if you ask me.
Well, that's up the employer who will come up with that definition.
I just used it as an example because it was in the article. What did he tell his employer? My job requires one to state the illness, although I understand that's not common, so this may be irrelevant.
If the guy does it every few months, no harm, no foul.
If he's taking every other weekend off and posting pics on his facebook page with a big smile, then maybe his employer may not be so happy.
I think the takeaway would be don't give your employer proof that could be interpreted as you were not straightforward.
Having to tell your employer what your sickness is in order to get sick leave approved (or not) is ridiculous at the outset. This is the exact kind of thing people are lobbying against. My employer should not have that much reach into my work/life balance. You give me PTO with minor stipulations and leave it at that.
My desire to maliciously comply with your company's policy would have me stating things like, "I have this red, oozing puss on my ass cheeks and would like a day off," or, "My balls are really itchy and red and it's spread to my fingers."
There are states where paid sick leave is mandated, and the state law explicitly lets workers take sick leave for _ANY_ reason related to health.
Feeling too tired to work? Fine to take a day off.
Stressed out because you had to take your pet to the vet? Take a day off.
> My job requires one to state the illness
Aside from being a huge red flag, what's stopping you from just putting in "mental health" and not being very specific? Does anyone even care/check? Surely HR can't be that petty?
> Aside from being a huge red flag, what's stopping you from just putting in "mental health" and not being very specific? Does anyone even care/check? Surely HR can't be that petty?
There's still a stigma attached to mental health problems. Many, perhaps most, people can't seem to differentiate between "I'm feeling really depressed" and "I'm psychotic and want to kill a bunch of people". It's very sad that this is the case, but that's how it is.
1 in 6 Americans takes antidepressants, so chances are you know quite a few people who are taking them. However, I'll bet that the only people who've ever told you they're taking them are really close friends and family.
Why? Because this stigma exists.
(note that I'm not interested in debating whether antidepressants work, or whether taking them is a good idea... that's not the issue here)
> It's not up to the employer.
> There are states where paid sick leave is mandated, and the state law explicitly lets workers take sick leave for _ANY_ reason related to health.
My comment wasn't on defining what constitutes as "sick," but the parent asked what constitutes "abuse." As there is no law which defines it, yes, it unfortunately is the employer that will determine what "abuse" means.
> Aside from being a huge red flag, what's stopping you from just putting in "mental health" and not being very specific?
Requiring doctor's certification that one was ill in my (unionized) workplace. If they don't like the explanation, paid sick leave law or not, pay is refused. Challenged in court and upheld.
I refuse to think this is the only employer in the US that does it. Cases like these however have situations that lead to them. I surely don't think it's right, but do see where if someone's not showing up to work because he's "sick" and then posting photos of having a good time, and doing it often, it doesn't look good. In fact it's stuff like that which lead to such policies where I work.
A search got me this, so obviously it is done elsewhere:
What Covid showed my household, despite me working from home, was that ALL of us being isolated at home, meant no more sickness. No longer were my kids bringing home crud from school and making me sick for weeks at a time while we all passed it around until the crud got sick of us and moved on.
This is why it still boggles my mind that companies with antiquated RTO policies aren't embracing remote when they can. There are many days I'm not feeling great enough to get dressed up and drive a couple of hours into an office, but I can get up, put on my shorts and a t-shirt, and sit down in my home office and work.
The guy's story about never taking a sick day and falling asleep at his computer while on meds, only to eventually get fired, would be a huge wakeup call. It's just not worth it to give that much of yourself to a job.
Right? It's a _job_. We are all going to die someday way earlier than we would want and we're not going to wish we had dedicated more of our lives to our jobs at that moment.
And if you never take sick leave, like I did during my almost 30 year career, the toll it takes on your health is tremendous. My employers have never cared about my high blood pressure or that I'm pre-diabetic.
I assume the poster to whom you're responding just hasn't been in the industry long enough to understand that the entire point of gigantic platforms like Microsoft or AWS is specifically to create ecosystems of vendors that provide service around that platform.
You can tell by who is fighting the current. Some get paid in ideology, some in fiat. Which are they here for? That's the question. I'm just here to get paid, and enjoy working with others desiring the same outcome (strong opinions weakly held while bank acct goes brrr). We can chat war stories at the hotel bar with a comfortably large investment account from the work.
Unethical implementations are distinct from agnostic technology implementation choices. I don’t care about the underlying tech (Windows, Linux, Mainframe), but I’m certainly never working at Meta, for example. New FedNow instant payments runs on a mainframe. New hotness? No! Built to run for decades? Yes.
Meh. That whole issue is way overblown by the twitter researcher types trying to build buzz and make a name. It's a serious issue don't get me wrong but security incidents are a question of when not if and the dialog surrounding the issue doesn't come across as charitably capturing the scope and impact. Microsoft's response, which has been to handle the issue responsibly is far from the "radio silence coverup" and "the attackers are still in the network" and "you can't trust anything Microsoft signs anymore" reality you'd be inclined to believe if you only read the hype angle and believe the alarmist comments from other "any chance to bash on M$ is a heyday" types.
I hadn't seen the article you linked though and will say it seems to be in good taste.
>Every company and every vendor has strengths and weaknesses.
Yes, every company and every vendor does have strengths and weaknesses. That's why it's foolish to lock yourself in to only one vendor.
If you locked yourself in to AWS, for example, you'd benefit from some great AWS services, but be stuck using the awfulness that is Workmail/Workdocs. Or you could lock yourself into MS and get Outlook/Office, but then be stuck using subpar offerings like Azure Functions or be a victim to their lackadaisical attitude towards security. Why would you ever choose to do either of those? Instead, you can choose both Microsoft for Outlook/Office, and AWS for other offerings that they are stronger at. Now you benefit from the strengths of both, while avoiding their weaknesses.
If you _can't_ do that, there might be good reasons and that's fine. But to _intentionally_ not do that, and especially to _brag_ about not doing that is laughable, no "holier than thou" attitude required.
more power to you if you made a career on MS technologies, for a long time they were the big dog on the corporate world but to be fair there are better options there and actually bragging about vendor lock-in is ridiculous, if you're full in and it works for you good! But its not something to brag about, specially since MS refuses to fix their certificates after they got hacked by China
@danseop08 Stuck? What a weird and interesting thing to say since I deliberately chose and applied for jobs I was not only good at, but had the most experience in. And to then add in that I haven't seen anything other than Microsoft to boot?
Don't you think that over a 30 year tech career that I've touched and used many different products and technologies?
Very bad rebuttal. You effectively just demonstrated you got stuck with MS for 30 years. You have not seen any others other than MS. You likely downplay the bad and overtly having good image of MS. My experience with multiple cloud systems CANNOT conclude Azure in the top 5. At best maybe 6th with occasionally hitting 5th or 4th depending on some specific tech metrics.
Remote workers falling through the cracks is wholly on the company and not on the remote worker. It takes a very concerted effort on the companies part, to ensure that everything is remote first.
None of the other things you mention (bonding, siloes, etc.) happen because a worker is remote. They happen because companies treat remote workers the same as in office workers, without putting in any effort to become a remote first company.
Indeed, it is on the company. My point is that it is hard to do this well at a fully remote and async company. Especially when collaboration needs to be tight and delivery needs to be quick.
Naturally, when in person, you sit with your team and you have opportunities to have lunch with people and get to know who they are. These opportunities don't work as well at remote companies. Especially with different timezones involved.
Not saying it can't be done, but I haven't found a way that isn't extremely contrived.
Videoconferencing is fatiguing as hell and is not at all the same as gathering in-person.
I think it is impossible to recreate the "small" bonding events that happen in-person, and I also think that many in-person events that are recreated virtually are (a) significantly less engaging and (b) easier to dip from.
That's me, though. Everyone is different. I also haven't experienced working at a 100% remote-first company, so I might not have experienced better alternatives yet.
I find in person meetings more fatiguing than zoom meetings.
In a zoom meeting, when the topic turns for my particular focus I can refocus myself either by getting up (wireless headphones) stretching, maybe nipping out on the porch and getting some fresh air or taking care of some other task on my computer without disrupting the meeting in any way.
In an in-person meeting, these things would be seen as rude and/or distracting.
This is less of a concern in both cases in 1:1 type meetings where the conversation is generally focused or it's easier to call a break.
WFH for the past couple of decades, gives me the choice to live where I want to live (internet dependent and time zone dependent of course). I can make a West Coast salary and live in the midwest if I so choose.
Having lived in PDX and commuting there, what would sometimes take me a 30 min drive early in the morning, would be a 2-3 hour drive coming home. Absolutely absurd and guess who it was costing? Certainly not my employer for sitting in traffic for 2-3.5 hours each day...
I cannot even begin to tell you how much my work/life balance has evened out since I stopped having to be in an office. Additionally, I get far more hours of singular concentration at home versus an office.
> I can make a West Coast salary and live in the midwest if I so choose.
For now, until the execs realize that they don't need to pay West Coast salaries, just whatever gets them the engineering output that they need. If the job can be done with Latin American and Canadian engineers for less, or even less if they are open to other timezones, then West Coast salaries for remote work will go away in many instances.
I'm definitely enjoying working remotely, but I doubt that the high salaries from the good times in the tech industry will be there forever for remote work.
I don’t think you realize how hard it is to find good engineers abroad. And if you do find them, they’re already likely employed at a good job and would want a significant pay bump to leave.
A "significant pay bump" could be an increase from the equivalent of $100k to $130k. Well below west-coast tech salaries.
Anecdotally, I had a total comp of (roughly) $400k as a senior engineer at Dropbox with a tier-1 salary (Seattle area). I asked about moving to the UK. The move would result in my base being cut from $220k to £120k, which, at the time I asked, was equivalent to about $140k. So, just over a 35% paycut. Now, because I already had RSU grants from the US, I'd continue to do better than that, and would have been making an extra $150k/yr in stock, roughly -- but a new-hire in the UK wouldn't have that advantage.
And Dropbox is one of the best-paying non-finance tech employers in the UK. Most tech employers in the UK are paying <$200k/yr total comp for senior engineers. Most tech employers in Europe are paying even less. And I'm talking about top-tier companies in terms of comp, here -- Facebook, Apple, Dropbox, etc.
So, yes, good engineers may already have a good job, but unless they're at quant hedge funds, US-based employers can probably offer 30-40% less than they'd offer to a west coast engineer, and it will still be a huge increase in comp.
Given how beneficial it is to employees and it's ubiquity, quality workers are reasonable to expect this flexibility when looking for their next company to join.
I thought WFH was great until the inevitable result of increased Slack messages and Zoom meetings. In fact, I think there were fewer hours wasted to context shifting and loss of concentration in the office. But it really depends on the company/team in the end.
Peer group as in friends? Or peer group as in coworkers?
I'm friendly with my coworkers, and some I may even call friends, but I certainly don't need my job to be able to make friends wherever I live. I can do that without the company stepping in to do the decision making for me. Companies all argue we should all be family, and my coworkers should de-facto be my friends, which is wrong to assume.
If you mean peers as in coworkers, well usually most people are just assigned to teams. So you meet people through that and eventually get to know them, remotely or in-person, doesn't really matter imo. I'm relatively close with plenty of my coworkers whom I've only met a couple times in person over the course of 2-3 years.
I have conversations all the time over Teams with any peers that I'm interested in having relationships with outside of work. This gives me the opportunity to be selective in doing that because I'm not interested in being friends/pals with everyone at work.
Also when we lived in the same city, we would meet in physical locations for a beer and a burger.
Now that I don't even live in the same state, we make plans to fly to each other's cities and get together. We'll also carry over convos to Slack or Telegram and phone calls.
Sure, you can view your Dataverse database in SSMS, but it's read only and you get no autocomplete.
And don't even get me started on XRM Toolbox.