Tag: work
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Why I Am So Tired
After dusting off and modernising a joke I first read in a chain email from 1996, I can tell you conclusively that the reason that I'm tired is because I'm overworked.
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Attempt #2 to get to Belfast starts... at 3:30am in a Premier Inn in Gatwick. 🥱 Today, perhaps, I'll catch a plane! 🤞
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A car park at night.
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Two Days Offline
This week we lost Internet access for two whole days, and it was pretty disruptive and annoying!
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In my first few weeks at my new employer, my code contributions have added 218 lines of code, deleted 2,663. Only one of my PRs has resulted in a net increase in the size of their codebases (by two lines).
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GitHub change summary showing +218 lines added, -2,663 lines removed.
I need to pick up the pace if I'm going to reach the ultimate goal of deleting ALL of the code within my lifetime. (That's the ultimate aim, right?)
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Dan Has Too Many Monitors
My new employer sent me a laptop and a monitor, which I immediately added to my already pretty-heavily-loaded desk. Wanna see?
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Off to my first day at Firstup. Gotta have an induction: get my ID badge, learn where the toilets are, how to refill the coffee machine, and all that jazz.
Except, of course, none of those steps will be part of my induction. Because, yet again, I've taken a remote-first position. I'm 100% sold that, for me, remote/distributed work helps me bring my most-productive self. It might not be for everybody, but it's great for me.
And now: I'm going to find out where the water cooler is. No, wait... some other thing!
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Firstup Recruitment
I'll soon by starting in my new role at Firstup, after a rollercoaster of a recruitment process that rocketed through all the usual tech job steps... but in barely over a week. What a rush!
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If this man isn't hired immediately, it's a huge loss
Shortly after I found myself redundant, the other month, my former colleague Kyle wrote some inspiring words on LinkedIn that I've re-read about once a week ever since then. So now I'm going to keep a copy here for posterity.
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I'm applying for a few roles that might be the next step in my career. And to my surprise, updating my CV and tweaking my portfolio is doing a world of good for my feelings of self-worth!
Seriously: looking back over the last ~25 years of my career and enumerating the highlights is giving me a better "big picture" view of everything I've achieved than I ever got from the near-focus of daily work. I should do this more often!
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Breakups vs Layoffs
I've had a few breakups, but I've only been made redundant once. There's a surprising overlap between the two! Here, let's put a Venn-Euler diagram together...
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LayoffBot - eliminating the human in human resources
In a perfect example of gallows humour, a friend shared with me a satirical (I hope?) website about an AI service for performing bulk redundancies. Alarmingly, compared to my recent experience, it doesn't sound completely bad...
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"I know that losing your job was hard," my 8-year-old said to me this evening, "So you can borrow this." He handed me his newest soft toy.
"It'll help you feel better when you're sad. Keep him for the week."
😭
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'Squishmallow' soft toy in the shape of a fat snake with a starry belly, sitting on a grey pillow.
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I'm in an extremely rural area and I needed a phone call with my lawyer about my recent redundancy. Phone signal was very bad, so I resolved to climb a nearby hill and call him back.
"I'm at a crossroads," I said, when I finally found enough bars to have a conversation with him.
"In your life?" he asked.
"I guess," I replied, "But also, y'know, literally."
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Pre-Worboys Committee British junction signpost in black and white, photographed against a bright blue sky. The signs point to Rosgill in one direction, Shap and Kendal in a second, and Bampton and Haweswater in a third.
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The phone signal is so shit at this year's 3Camp venue that I've had to climb a hill to take a call from a lawyer (whom I'm speaking to about my recent redundancy). Nice to be outdoors, though!
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Dan, with a laptop, sitting alongside a rural Lake District lane in bright sunshine.
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I'm off for a week of full-time volunteering with Three Rings at 3Camp, our annual volunteer hack week: bringing together our distributed team for some intensive in-person time, working to make life better for charities around the world.
And if there's one good thing to come out of me being suddenly and unexpectedly laid-off two days ago, it's that I've got a shiny new laptop to do my voluntary work on (Automattic have said that I can keep it).
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Black Macbook Pro whose screen shows a locally-hosted copy of the Three Rings web application, overlaid with a terminal running lazygit.