Category: General Bitching

Employee Forum

An “Employee Forum” was created recently. Each month, a group of representatives from different departments talk about suggestions and complaints – to try and improve life at work. These are then proposed to Senior Management or Human Resources to hopefully implement.

Personally, I can’t imagine this lasting because many suggestions are illogical or have just descended into madness – and there’s only been two meetings over the 2 months.

I think no matter how good things are, people will always suggest more time off, higher pay, or both. Many of these suggestions do involve more time off, and it seems we have tried every angle already.

Some of these suggestions have company responses already.

Offices are not being used. Are managers encouraging the use of them?

Response: Will re-communicate about the offices to encourage colleagues to use them.

My take: Since we now are all home-working, the office is barely used. It’s optional for people to work so some people work there permanently if their home isn’t suitable, or they come in when their team does. Now it ain’t an “office”; it is a “collaboration hub”. I think it’s important to include this one in the blog to set the scene. The office improvement suggestions are funnier given that the office is under-utilised; it’s like they want more perks than we had before when the office was 100% full capacity – which doesn’t make financial sense.

What is the official business position on dogs in the office?

Response: Dogs are not permitted in the office. Multiple reasons are behind this, such as colleagues with allergies, or aversion to dogs. A dedicated area for dogs within each office is also not permitted.

My take: Did people ever want dogs in the office before? This isn’t the strangest suggestion, but this is what I mean by descending into madness. How was this one of the first suggestions? Surely we should prioritise bigger issues.

Would we consider offering everyone an extra day holiday for life events?

Notes: Representatives discussed and came to the conclusion it’s fairest for it to be a birthday specific holiday because other life events, such as wedding day, may not apply to all. Will take this to HR.

My take: I like how the representatives consider a wedding day might not apply to all, but later they soon forget this and start demanding more maternity leave/pay; even though that is for child-bearing women specifically. You can never really be consistently inclusive anyway.

The general sentiment of a birthday holiday is nice, but then there will be people that will say they are too busy at work to take it off, so then will want the day off later. May as well just increase everyone’s holiday allowance by 1 rather than dictating a specific day.

Could we move to a 4-day working week approach that other businesses are adopting?

Notes: This means working 4 days of standard hours with the same 5 day salary.
Representatives discussed how this would work in supporting our main customers who operate 24/7. Will take this to HR.

My take: Imagine the conversation that person has with HR:
Representative: “what do you think of an extra day holiday?”
HR: “Rejected. Not gonna happen”
Representative: “Ok, next question, how about we only work 4 days?”
HR: “what? no!”
Representative (as we will see later): “How about loads more holiday?”
HR: “get out of here!”

I have heard some claims that working 4 days is more effective. I can actually see it both ways. When it is Friday, people often take longer breaks or work slower because “it’s Friday”/”it’s nearly the weekend”. If you remove the Friday, some people may work faster to get the same amount of work done, or they could just adapt the “it’s Friday” thought to “it’s Thursday”.

The Return to Work Program needs to be rethought.

Notes: An example of this is an employee who came back to work in December from maternity leave and was told from HR that the ‘Return to Work’ program starts in April (apparently runs every quarter) so she would have to wait a good 3 months to get the return to work support.

Response: We need to address this.

My take: Well, this just sounds like a dumb thing we do. How has the return to work program failed that much? What does this Return To Work program even involve? Are people introduced to any new employees and told about new/changed processes? Surely you would be aware after 3 months back at work anyway.

Offices used to have refreshment options available on site: vending machines, fresh fruit, and hot drinks machines, and a canteen serving hot food. The only facilities now are tea/coffee.

My take: What do you expect here? We had a canteen, fruit, and vending machines because the office was full. It currently operates on less than 10% capacity. It doesn’t seem feasible to supply fresh fruit. Vending machines are a possibility since the products will have a longer shelf life (but I bet those are pricey to rent anyway). Canteen was nearly shut down on a few occasions because it wasn’t profitable enough. A different office also requested they want a Canteen and even suggested people would pay a monthly fee to run it. It used to cost £3.75 per hot meal and I used it most days so I was spending ~£75 a month if there’s 20 work days. The fee would be significantly higher than this to make that profitable with fewer numbers of staff using it. No way are they going to pay that. Can’t people just buy some food on the way to the office? I think we still have microwaves if you want to warm food up. If not, ask for the microwaves back!

The UK Parental Leave policy is not very competitive

My take: Not sure how we compare to other companies but I’ve found that women can take something like 9 months maternity, get 1 month full pay, then can take 2 months unpaid leave, then return to work on reduced hours. What more do they want? Maybe it’s controversial and a minority view, but I don’t think people need to be encouraged to start families or be paid at their employers expense. We are paid to work, not chill out, but you wouldn’t think it with the requests for more holiday, reduced working hours, more social events etc.

Compared to many other companies, our Maternity policy and pay is very basic. This could be a deterrent to people wanting to start families. The return bonus is a good feature, however doesn’t assist with the cost of living whilst on Maternity leave.

My take: It is such an outrage; it’s on here twice! Seems the current policy is a “deterrent”, so I was wrong and people need to be encouraged to start families, then receive a “Return to work” bonus to get them back in. Insane. Also, what do they mean with “cost of living”? We mostly work at home now, so the costs of chilling at home shouldn’t increase.

Can we build a few bug hotels and bird tables in the gardens?

My take: “What? We can’t bring dogs in? What about bugs?” WTF. I hadn’t even heard of a “bug hotel” until now. Who is suggesting this nonsense? It’s making me angry reading this. Might make some sense if the offices were full, but they aren’t.

People who currently have an entitlement of 28 days annual leave should still be allowed to purchase 5 days, otherwise it is a scheme that doesn’t apply to many (it’s really 2 days purchase available).

My take: I think new employees have 25 days plus the usual bank holidays, then over years of service, it can go up to 28. But then you can purchase days up to 30. So the ask is that we should be able to buy 5 regardless of current allowance.

Recently, I was saying to some of my colleagues that 28 days is a fantastic annual leave and those in the USA barely get any leave at all which surely would make them go insane. But look at us chillers, we want more than 28 days!

Can we review holiday entitlement for length of service and/or senior roles? After 14 years, I have 28 days per year, whereas rival companies are on 35 to 38.

My take: They wanted to buy 5 days on top of 28 for a total of 33. Now they have increased their demands. “Can’t we just have 38 instead?” What’s the next demand? “Buy 5 days on top of 38”?
Do we still want our birthday off as well? These demands are just escalating.

Can we get a fleet of ‘Boris’ bikes to allow people to get off-site and obtain lunches from local businesses without the need to get in their cars or walk across muddy fields?

My take: Boris bikes refers to what they have in London where you can rent bikes to cycle around London. Here is a bonus fact: even though Boris Johnson was the London Major when the bikes were introduced, it was actually the former mayor Ken Livingstone that started working on the plan.

So we want to hire bikes to cycle to get food. The nearest supermarket is literally 10 minutes if you walk slowly and there’s only fields if you leap over the wall onto private land, so no idea where that false claim has come from. If you walk the other direction, there’s a few shops where you can buy food within 5 minutes walk (and can take a scenic detour through a park; no muddy fields this direction either), and a few pubs that serve lunch also within a 10 minute walk.

They want bikes because they are too lazy to walk, but would they cycle? isn’t that more effort? Locking/unlocking the bike at your start and end destination. Probably have to put a helmet on for health and safety. The extra hassle if the bike gets stolen… ain’t nobody got time for that.

Subsidised Pet Insurance – Wellness Allowance, £360 per annum to cover anything health related, Gym, massages peloton etc

My take: why not just ask for an extra £500 wage increase?

Anyway, I’ve got tired of critiquing these demands. I vote to stop the Employee Forum. It has clearly got out of hand already, and there is no way the majority of these are even going to be considered. I think all that will happen is that we will be encouraged to use the current offices more (and they may reinstate a vending machine if we do), and I could see maternity benefits being increased slightly. Everything else will be laughed at.

Wokeness at work

March 8th was International Women’s Day and so people at work made a few posts about it. One person made a post about “Gender bias“:

“Gender bias comes in many different forms including stereotypes, assumptions and discrimination. It can be both deliberate and unconscious, malicious and unintended – but above all, it is a common barrier to equality – both for women and those who identify as women.

Today is a perfect opportunity to reflect on the role of gender bias in the workplace and in society as a whole and how we can all become allies and support our female colleagues, friends and family members. The best place to start is with our own learning.”

Person 1

I find today’s “woke” culture quite interesting because it’s actually quite difficult to say the right thing and it’s very easy to be hypocritical. She says “both for women and those who identify as women.” which implies they aren’t equal – this is basically a microaggression. The correct thing to do is not actually point it out, and just use the term “women”. However, she then goes on to use the term “female” instead of women in the following sentence. Ironically she did call out it can be “unintended” discrimination, and the “best place to start is with our own learning.”

Another person recommended these “unconscious bias” tests https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html 

“I tried the gender and race tools and it helped highlight to me where I have to think and work on my ‘implicit associations’. These associations should not be judged by anyone other than myself (they are after all how my brain has become wired over 50+ years) – but will help me understand, moderate and change my interactions and thought process when looking at a whole number of things.”

Person 2

I gave a few of them a go. The ones I tried had the same style. The test is that there’s a group of words associated with 4 categories. You are given a pair of categories, one on the left, one on the right. You are shown one word at a time, and have to press “I” and “E” on the keyboard to assign it to the correct category.

For example: “Gender – Career. This IAT often reveals a relative link between family and females and between career and males.”

I think the idea is that when Career and Males are paired together on one side, and “Family and Female” on the other, then you will match the words faster because of the strong association that these words are related.

As the Result screen states:

The order in which you take the test can influence your results, but the effect is small. We minimise this effect by giving practice trials after the categories switch sides. We also randomly assign the order of the IAT so that some people get one order and other people get the reverse order.

Harvard

I do think this will have a bigger impact than they claim, although maybe it depends on the individual. When I got to the end, sometimes I thought I was submitting the answers faster because I was used to the way the test worked, but then sometimes I ‘d get the wrong answer and think it was down to the fact that I recall pressing “E” when I saw “Salary”, but then in this round, I should be pressing “I”.

I did the Sexuality (‘Gay – Straight’ IAT) test first, and I was conscious of how it was expecting me to be biased, so I focussed more and was more determined to score higher. In the end it suggested I had a fairly strong preference for Straight. I would have liked to have seen the timings because I was convinced I had scored consistently in the later rounds, or even better because I was aware of how it was trying to trip me up. I think I messed up more in the early rounds because I was getting used to the test.

Personally, I wouldn’t read too much into the results anyway.

Salary: Cost of living increase

In the last few years, my employer hasn’t bothered matching inflation. When challenged, the HR Director has said they traditionally don’t do this and are not obligated to do so.

It’s basically a wage-cut if they don’t though, and each of these years they seem to be posting record profits. Always seems really sketchy when you get told there’s no budget but they seem to forget they are a Public Limited Company and need to announce their finances, including director’s bonuses and all that.

This time they acknowledged that inflation is very high this year, and are hyping up how caring they are because they are actually giving an increase… although in most cases it still is going to be under inflation. It was pretty predictable that it was going to rise further than the 5% they were benchmarking against. The current figure published by the ONS was 6.2%.

They claim to be giving “an excess of 7% rise“. Everyone is getting a 2% rise, with a further 3% at the discretion of line managers but they can’t give it if your salary has changed in the last 6 months. Last year, when they finally acknowledged I was underpaid, they staggered the increase in 2 instalments so I only got my full rise in January so that means I don’t qualify for this 3%. They are also giving 2% profit share which is a one-off payment and not a salary increase at all. Pension will increase by 0.5%.

So according to their maths, 2 + 3 + 2 + 0.5 is 7.5%. But 2 of that is the one-off payment so at most you can get 5.5%, but 0.5% is your pension, which is nice, but it doesn’t end up in your bank; so we only get 5% direct in our bank.

Personally, I just get the 2% plus 0.5% pension. That is supposed to cover the 6.25% inflation, and is it even going to stay that way? Could rise further.

I love that in the FAQ they provided with the announcement, they went with:

Will I receive a salary increase if I leave? 

Surely no one would even think that. How can you get a salary increase from a company you are no longer employed by.

:upside_down_face:

Ukraine Cyber Attacks

Our security expert in the IT department made a security announcement last week:

“Due to the growing tensions in Ukraine, it is not surprising that the UK may be subjected to increased cyber-attacks”

Security Expert

When I started reading this, I’m thinking “why is it not surprising that we would have increased cyber-attacks?“; it is written like it is stating the obvious, but why are we under threat? My immediate thought is that Russians aren’t able to tell the difference between the UK and Ukraine. I mean, they do sound kinda similar.😁

So I read on, and I was a bit confused when the following paragraph goes on to say “whilst there is no specific current threat to UK organisations…“. I guess the keyword is “specific“, because much later in the post, he finally clarifies what he means. He was referring to the usual phishing attacks and donation scams. For example: emails asking for donations to help Ukraine, and you could be likely to click links and hand over cash for a worthy cause; but you will be handing  money to criminals.

So it will be true that there’s more “cyber-attacks” across the world, so no idea why he mentioned the UK then had to clarify that it wasn’t specifically the UK in the very next paragraph.

He also wrote

“instructions have been issued to all areas of the business to bolster their cyber security measures”.

Security Expert

I find this a bit of a nonsense statement really; shouldn’t we already have max security? After all, just like he also states: “We take data security very seriously and it requires all of us to play our part.“

So are we at our most secure or not? It makes me think that we aren’t. Anyway, after instructing everyone to be suspicious of clicking links, he then provides some links for us to click to find out more.

Global Employee of the Year

Colin was instrumental

Director

Colin was a developer I originally wrote loads of stories about after he got unfairly promoted to Senior Developer. There was more injustice a few years later, when he found himself promoted to Principal Developer. Weirdly, his work best-friend always got promoted at the same time, or close to it, so he eventually found himself as a Technical Architect even though he is the shyest person that I know at work, and he has low productivity.

I’m not sure if Colin has some dirt on the Development Managers or the Directors but he seems to have so much influence now. My close colleagues also think it is farcical but laugh it off when I say he must have some dirt on the senior management. But how else can you explain these nonsensical decisions?

Colin had recently proactively tried to address issues that occur for users, and the CTO was impressed with him so gave him an interview at the monthly update presentation. Recently, he changed role from Principal Developer to Technical Manager, which I think is more a sideways move than a promotion but it’s interesting how he seems to get what he wants.

Near the end of last year, the Directors announced they would be hosting an Employee Awards event to celebrate people, or team’s achievements.

I’ve never been happy with these in the past because awards usually go to people whose managers are enthusiastic about such awards, or are charismatic enough to persuade the awards panel that their line-report/team deserves something. Or, it goes to a team that was assigned a project that was worth loads of money, regardless if it was actually a great success.

Anyway, our team (well, really it is a group of teams) got one of the awards even though I don’t think we have done anything particularly great, and many of the items Colin has been involved in have led to a few Major Incidents.

Furthermore, Colin got Global Employee of the Year.

Employee of the year!

Global!

HUGE impact on our customers through his amazing work following the issues we had earlier in the year, Colin was instrumental in most of the changes that have since been applied, and made such a difference. He led the team to ensure that everyone was able to contribute and fully felt supported and Colin’s high standards in “collaboration” demonstrate the best in our corporate values.

Director

So in multiple offices in the UK, India, and all those smaller companies we seem to buy out and then we don’t hear much from them – Colin is deemed to have contributed the best work last year. So he gets a promotion, a team award, and the highest-rated individual award.

Absolutely ridiculous. I think I have written this many times in the blog, but if I was someone reading it, and was familiar with previous blog entries about Colin – I certainly would not believe this was a real thing that happened.

I had a call with Colin and he said he has been really stressed this week. There were 3 Major Incidents, 4 people across the teams he is managing have resigned, and he has had to sack his work best-friend Technical Architect (no idea why this happened – it is rare that we sack people but it will be a blog entry if I find out).

You would think morale would be high if a team (or group of teams) were performing well enough to win an award. Yet we are 5 people down across these teams, another is on long-term illness, and I don’t think we were producing much when we were fully staffed. Colin sure has a job to do here.

Positive Discrimination

A few years ago, an “Employee Forum” was created to discuss Women’s issues at work. If there are issues like wage inequality, then I’m all for it, but I just didn’t understand why we formed this. I hadn’t heard any complaints, but I suppose they aren’t gonna complain to me. If anything, I think women are treated better at work.

I was thinking about this scenario recently which I’ve known to happen several times now. A woman is about to have a child, so they manage to take a full year off. 9 months for the actual maternity leave as a starting point. Apparently those 9 months accrue holiday allowance as if you were actually working, and any bank holidays during this time are also added to your holiday allowance too. So it ends up accumulating to around 4 weeks annual leave. Then they ask for 2 months unpaid leave and get it. May as well round it up to the nearest year, right?

Instead of worrying about returning to work and people being promoted ahead of them, they somehow manage to also pre-arrange a promotion, so they actually jump ahead of their team. They have 1 year less experience than their team, aren’t aware of things that happened at work in that year, yet get promoted ahead of them. Sometimes even going part-time too.

I’m not just saying this is unfair to men. There’s sometimes loads of women in their team, and yet they just have to work that year as normal, and might actually be denied a promotion because of this person that will return in the promoted role. It’s like we overcompensate because we don’t want to be accused of discrimination.

Now men cannot get pregnant, but what happens if they want a year off? One man wanted to see his family that lives in Australia, but he decided it would be nice to live with them for a year. He asks for a “Sabbatical” but gets denied. He is told that there will be positions available in his role in a year’s time, so he can just re-apply for his job. So as planned, he quits and goes to Australia. After a year, he returns to England, he comes in for the interview and gets rejected!

I don’t see how that is fair. He wanted 100% unpaid leave for a year, then to come back to his standard job. Yet, women get various pay for their time away: some full pay, half pay, and often a promotion with some scope for working less hours. Then they are taking time out of work to discuss “issues” in this Employee Forum.

I think both these reasons are fundamentally the same reason – you want time away for “family” and it’s much better for your mental health not to have to think about work. I’m not sure if it is the right thing to randomly decide these things, or seemingly decide based on gender.

Guess The Employee

Last year, we hired someone as a Communications and Engagement Coordinator and she came up with a “Guess The Employee” game. You are given a few clues, and if you guess who it is, you can win a £25 Amazon voucher. The thing is, we are quite a big company, and I only know people in Development, Support, and maybe know a few names of Directors.

I don’t even think I know most people well enough to know facts about their personal life either. For a few of my closest work friends I would – but then I don’t imagine they would be selected as a candidate. So even if there’s some really easy clues, how am I meant to know Becky from Marketing, or Mark from Finance? 

I imagine they only choose senior managers from each department as possible answers, since theoretically they would be more well-known. However, the people that know them the best will be their managers – so you are then awarding high-ranking managers and directors.

Recently we had this clue:

I display good performance for our customers, but I have been known for handing out red cards for other’s poor performance.

Obviously it is the “Customer Support Director”! He was a qualified Football Association referee, assigned to the North West Counties league.

£25 was awarded to a Director for knowing this.

Surely the Employee Engagement officer should come up with ideas that can engage lower-ranking staff rather than games that Directors can play.

The Matrix Resurrections

Since The Matrix series is related to hacking, I feel that a movie review is suitable for my blog. This is full of spoilers as I discuss the film’s plot; or lack of it!

In December, I watched the Matrix Trilogy again in anticipation for the new film; “Resurrections”. I believe I saw the original film when it was released on DVD, and the other two in the cinema. I tend to forget films very quickly so I only remembered I loved the first one, thought the second was quite good and disliked the third. I think this time, I did enjoy the original trilogy a bit more than I remembered, but I did get the feeling that by the third film, they didn’t really know how to end it – and it just felt a bit half-assed.

I tend to like watching review videos to get an idea of what other people think, and I did see a suggestion that The Matrix was supposed to be just a standalone film but the massive success forced it to become a trilogy to cash in on the popularity. This sounds plausible because it’s what happens to everything really, and these days you get unnecessary sequels and reboots. I thought Resurrections sounds like it fits that category… and it is.

They really are milking the franchise if this really is the 3rd sequel to a film that was never intended to have one. The time between the films is so large that the actors are quite old now and I think this does negatively impact the film. They got Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Ann Moss to reprise their roles as Thomas/Neo and Tiff/Trinity, but Morpheus has been replaced.

The film begins by introducing you to the new characters (led by Bugs) but they are rewatching the opening from the original film where the agents have tracked Trinity down. It’s described as a “modal” – some kind of “sandbox” simulation, but things aren’t exact – and it turns out it’s an ambush; cue some cool action scenes in typical Matrix style. Morpheus is an Agent for some reason, but soon turns (for some reason) and is determined to find Neo to bring him back to the real world.

Thomas Anderson (Neo) is a famous game designer by the success of his The Matrix trilogy of games. He is now making a new franchise but is told by his boss that Warner Bros are wanting to cash in on a fourth Matrix instalment whether he likes it or not. This sounds like that Lana Wachowski has somehow been forced to make this film and is spending the first 30 mins or so just having a dig at the people that are paying her. Warner Bros seem fine with it. They probably just want a film to get money.

Thomas seems depressed and delusional, so goes to therapy. Part of him suspects that the idea of the Matrix is actually real, and when he meets Morpheus – a character he thinks he created – he thinks he really is crazy. One of the new characters, Bugs, convinces Thomas to follow her and now we get loads of sequences that mirror the first film. Instead of fans picking up on the references, it is specifically pointed out to you by using actual footage from the original film. Look here is Morpheus (shows clip), here is a cat (shows clip). 

Also, instead of using landline phones to travel out of the Matrix (who uses landlines now?), they use mirrors. Why? Mirrors don’t have the internet, they could have just used any smart device. I’ve seen explanations that mobile phone screens are called “black mirrors” when powered off so it’s a reference to that – but that seems tenuous. I was confused near the end when they don’t use a Mirror and just get disconnected by being unplugged. I thought that caused death in the original trilogy?

So once you go through the story beats of the original film: Neo wakes up again in his pod, released by robot, meets the new crew, trains in a fighting program, travels to Zion – the actual film can happen. There’s still no real plot or end goal though. We have Neo back in the real world but what is really at stake? He now wants to rescue Trinity who is still in her pod. Does she want to come back though? Probably if she is convinced that she is living in a simulation, but she should think Neo is a nutcase.

Why are Neo and Trinity even alive? Didn’t they die at the end of the original trilogy? Well they did, but they were resurrected because the love they had can generate extra power or some nonsense. So the new “Architect” did exactly that. Then the more he torments Neo, the more power he can generate, so the Architect also happens to be Neo’s therapist to keep convincing him that the idea of the Matrix was just a game idea in Neo’s mind and it isn’t real. Wasn’t Neo blinded too? Well, these super resurrecting bots can repair eyes as well. 

When Neo reaches Zion, he is told that 60 years have passed. Neo and Trinity haven’t really aged that much but everyone else has; so Niobe, still played by Jada Pinkett-Smith, is an old woman. She thinks Neo is bad news, so locks him in a room with a balcony. So when Neo looks out to enjoy the view, a ship swoops in to free him. Wasn’t a well-thought out plan by Niobe. 

I previously mentioned that the age of the characters is a problem. Instead of all the fancy kung-fu, Neo just blocks bullets and uses a force-push move. Trinity doesn’t have much to do until the final scenes; and I was surprised at the number of scenes she was in. I suppose most of the film was trying to make you remember what happened in the original film and showing you what the characters had been up to – that they ran out of time for the film to actually happen; despite it being 2 hours 30 mins. After the initial set-up, Morpheus only appears sporadically, and Bugs barely features.

Tiffany should need strongly convincing to leave the simulation, but Neo barely even tries, so Tiffany walks away. Somehow, Tiffany suddenly decides she prefers to be called Trinity so ditches her husband and kids, and suddenly becomes proficient in combat again. Then, when it is needed, she decides she is somehow “The One” so can fly now, saving the day, before going to meet the Architect to show who is boss now.

I think the original Matrix captivated audiences with cutting edge effects, and impressive martial arts. There’s far less action in this film and it pales in comparison aside from the opening scene. Visually, it is nice, but it’s just like any modern film.

It was probably hard to come up with a story without feeling like it was a cash in. I think Lana probably didn’t want to make this film, and I don’t really understand why the likes of Keanu and Carrie agreed to do it. Did they read the script and think this had a good story to tell? Or do they just like money?

Some people thought Revolutions tarnished The Matrix’s legacy, but now this film comes along to deal the finishing blow. Unless they turn this into a new trilogy of course.

I think the Pitch Meeting for this film sums it up perfectly.

In Defence of Brad Traversy

When I have written a few blogs on “Social Justice Warriors” in the Tech industry, I’ve chosen not to call specific people out in order to avoid backlash, but this situation has really riled me. I’ve only watched a few videos from Brad Traversy so I have no reason to defend him, but those attacking him seem very misguided. This is how I see things:

So back in June, Anastasia Marchenkova posted this:

So Hays is a guy in the tech community sending hate to a woman in the tech community. It’s unknown what triggered this, but it doesn’t matter – the abuse is out of order. Anastasia is suggesting that he was positively interacting with her by retweeting her content. If you view the full tweet, you see that her initial response to the abuse is this

“Hey Hays! This seems like a weird message from you- you’ve seemed to like my links to resources – have you been hacked”

Anastasia’s initial reaction

Remember this response. It’s key to understanding the misguided reactions.

Just like that quote, she also elaborates in the follow-up tweet

“I asked if he was hacked because we always had a good dialogue”

Anastasia

So it seems not only has Hays retweeted her content, it very much sounds like they have shared messages before too.

It’s worth noting that: if someone has been hacked and the hacker is sending abusive messages, asking if they have been hacked isn’t actually going to get a valid answer. Probably will just get more abuse back.

Brad Traversy then shows support for Anastasia with this tweet

“Such weird and incoherent messages, I would have sworn he was hacked by some low IQ incel that hates women. He has always seemed pretty chill in any interaction I’ve had with him. Maybe some kind of mental break. Unfollowing for now though. That shit is unacceptable”

Brad Traversy

So what did Brad say here that wasn’t echoing Anastasia’s thoughts? He agrees with her initial reaction of questioning the possibility of being hacked. He then mentions he has never witnessed this behaviour in previous interactions. Although he wants to give Hays the benefit of the doubt, he has unfollowed him.

But here comes the Social Justice Warriors that presumably, haven’t actually read the entire thread.

If Anastasia hadn’t made these comments herself, and Brad was the one to initially suggest them, then maybe Ali has a point that he is “minimizing” this experience. That’s not what has happened though, and Brad is being supportive.

So Brad obviously reacts to it and points out that this Social Justice Warrior and virtue signalling behaviour has to stop, because it is just toxic.

People really didn’t like Brad using the phrase “you people”, presumably because they thought he was attacking women. He wasn’t. He was attacking Social Justice Warriors, overreacting to anything. He wanted to show support for women in tech, and he has been lambasted by the people he was defending.

I thought this guy’s response was funny.

Brad responds to him with “There is a group of them that do it”. This is referring to some of her friends that gang up together, pooling their followers to collectively abuse, and even cancel someone completely. It had happened before when someone posted a joke; a tech pun based on current events. They requested all their followers unfollow this person, then contacted the CEO’s of several companies that the guy made money on, and demanded they delete his account. I could understand if he had done something really bad like committed a murder, but tweeting a joke isn’t enough to lose several sources of income. The guy could have lost his house or something.

I have even seen them respond to people that tweet “here are my personal favourite software developers” with something like “this isn’t representative of the industry because there’s no women”. If the person says “it is my list, with opinions from my experience, then they get accused of being a “tech bro”. If they back down and agree to add a woman, then they then say “what about women of colour”? Where do we stop? Do we need to list a developer from every country in the world? It was their personal tweet, you don’t have to comment on it.

Anastasia’s thread was supposed to be about Anastasia’s abuse, but Ali has then made it about Brad. Ironically, she then attacks Brad for making it about him.

The tweets have since been deleted, so I may be making this bit up, but I think Brad tweeted something on his own page along the lines of “if you are gonna cancel someone, then make sure it is justified”. He didn’t call Ali out specifically, but then she replied to it, so people then knew he was attacking her. She claimed that Brad was out of order because she would never publicly call him out. Well, apart from all these tweets I’ve linked to, which triggered Brad to make his tweet.

This stuff happened in June, but for some reason it has been brought up again as if it was some major turning point in the industry. They are acting like it is Armistice Day or something.

The intention is fine. Abusing someone is bad. Defending someone who abuses someone is bad. However, if you are gonna call someone out on it, it needs to actually be legit. They are attacking Brad when he didn’t do anything wrong.

Why is this being brought up again? It was 5 months ago. Sure, if it was a huge deal and actually accurate, it would be fine to bring it up. Brad wasn’t the huge deal, it was Hays. Surely something has triggered myraccoonhands into discussing this, so why not tweet about whatever the new situation is?

What riles me is that it’s a screenshot where you can’t see Anastasia’s original post. So now when people see this, it really does look like Brad is minimising women’s experience of abuse. Since people don’t research things, you then get responses attacking Brad.

This shows that Ali did have some success in cancelling Brad:

Check out this vitriolic tweet. When I initially saw it, I thought he meant Brad deleted his responses to Ali which is why myraccoonhands used a screenshot. But no, they used a screenshot to be deceptive. Not sure what sweetestshuga is on about with the apology. I don’t recall Brad apologising but he had nothing to apologise for.

Conclusion

I’ve personally never witnessed any hate in the workplace towards women, but I have no doubt that women do get patronised in the workplace and get abuse online. It’s out of order, but you need to tackle the problem effectively.

I think the problem with “Social Justice Warriors” is that they come across as extremists and don’t go after the actual problems. It just creates more divide.

I think it is kind of a “boy who cried wolf” scenario (probably will get in trouble for that, why can’t the girl cry wolf?), that if people falsely accuse people of being sexist; then when there is a case, it’s harder to believe them. Accusing people of being sexist for tweeting about their favourite developers (that just happen to be male), then accusing people of being sexist for agreeing with a woman’s accusations…surely the next accusation I’m going to dismiss. Then I’ll be called a misogynist and minimising the person’s experience, and it will seem like there is a case for it.

In future, Brad would be less inclined to speak up due to his experience; further perpetuating the “bro culture” that they aim to eradicate.

Anastasia described a problem with one guy who was abusive, but yet it quickly became about some other male who was an ally. Emily Kager, myraccoonhands , and Ali aren’t reminiscing about Hays awful posts to Anastasia, they are reflecting on how they attacked Brad, who was their ally.

People need to remember that if they attack people, then all their followers may join in on the attack, if they intended or not. The Youtuber The Quartering often discusses “controversial takes” and has been on both ends of that. If he is negative towards someone, he does tend to remind people not to be a lynch mob. We are merely discussing events that have happened. We are criticising the lynch mob behaviour and don’t want to create it. I only have 31 followers, but don’t go after anyone I’ve mentioned here.

Now I have written this blog:

  • myraccoonhands thinks I defend stalkers
  • wellis321 thinks I’m a prick who is not good for the industry.
  • Emily has now validated me as a misogynist
  • denvercoder will never promote my blog
  • Ali thinks I am minimising her experience

If this blog disappears, then I have been cancelled.

Office Tales

Introduction

Going to the office 5 days a week for my Software Engineering role was such a standard thing until the whole Coronavirus and lockdown became the new world. It’s crazy that my employer doesn’t have any interest in us returning to the office other than for optional collaboration. I mean, it does make sense, but it’s a complete u-turn on their previous ideals. We used to have a few offices nearby, but I think we only have 1 now. They redecorated the remaining office, cutting down the number of desks, and we are allowed to book time in the office if we wish, either individually or as an entire team. I have never been in though, and have only seen a handful of colleagues on a recent night out.

Things I miss about the Office

I think I miss the conversations you overhear from nearby desks, and communication is much more efficient when you can just walk over to someone’s desk. There will be people that you don’t need to interact with for your current work, but will acknowledge them as you walk about the office (often going/returning from lunch breaks). So it’s much more social when working in the office. I think there is a general awareness of what things are happening across the business, because you see people moving about and hear them talking about work. Now I only get that information if people post on communication software such as Slack/Yammer.

It seems I have quite a few draft blog posts that aren’t that exciting on their own, but I’ve put together a collection of ideas to reminisce about office life.

I’ve just discussed some things I miss about the office in this introduction, but the rest of the blog is basically “Things I don’t miss about the office” and “Other tales”.

Things I don’t miss about the office

Moving Desks

Every so often, managers decide to reassign loads of people between projects. Then, if the team sizes aren’t the same, they have no choice but to rearrange the desks, or simply relocate teams. This meant the entire department would move, even if the new desk is just 1 desk away. It was a major disruption and was basically a waste of half a day. People tended to unplug their PC a bit too early, but you did have your PC, 2 monitors, keyboard, mouse, drawer unit, then loads of cables and other items. It’s a big chain of moves though because you can only move if your new desk is free, but it is only free if the current person’s new desk is free and so on.

There was supposed to be a big move shortly before the lockdown happened. We were told that it was coming but then seemed to get delayed but no announcement (so no one knew what the holdup even was). 

I was told I was moving desks by my manager. An entire month went by with no update. I ask my manager what is going on. He says “I’ve been asking many times and I don’t get a concrete response. If you hear anything before I do, then tell me“.

A few days later, I heard another team talking about the new seating plan. I told my manager as requested.

He says he has the seating plan “but I need to spend some time to digest it“.

What are you on about? Just send it to me.

It’s a seating plan that has been released, and many developers were already reading it. Why is he making out it’s something he has to analyse then explain to me?

Anyway, the conclusion is that desk moves are very disruptive, managers find it a really hard task and they change their minds about it, then this makes it seem like a bigger event than it needs to be.

Sounds Of The Office

When I need to concentrate on programming, I often put my headphones in and listen to music. Drowning out all the random talking really helps you focus on your work. If people are talking, I’d often want to listen just in case it is something interesting and work-related, or maybe some funny casual chat that I want to hear.

Periodically, I’d take my headphones out, or maybe I would have to because I want to speak to someone or have a meeting.

Although the general sounds of the office were fine, there were some sounds that would do my head in.

Many people also used headphones to listen to their music, but there was one woman that often had her music on really loud. One time I looked over and saw that she had hair covering her ears, a beanie hat over that, then the headphones were placed over that. So the speakers have to go through a hat and her hair to reach her ears. No wonder she has it that loud. Also, I found it more distracting if I recognised the song. When Tool’s highly anticipated Fear Inoculum came out, she was listening to classic Tool every day and it went on for well over a month.

There were a few people with really exaggerated laughs. In previous blogs, I have mentioned one guy which I nicknamed Beavis for his style of laugh, but there were plenty of others that often did a fake laugh. One person sounded more like they were in pain rather than having a good time. It stressed me out.

There was one person that coughed a lot but it was more like a “ah mmm” like a stereotypical teacher would do to get a student’s attention. It wasn’t aggressive enough to actually clear her throat so it just seemed pointless to me, and extremely annoying.

Maybe the worst thing is this next subject, because I wouldn’t ever consider doing this whilst at work. I didn’t realise until I heard these sounds in the office, but I think it is a sound where it’s very satisfying to hear when it involves you, but hearing someone else do it; then it is vile. There were 2 managers sitting a couple of desks behind me, the woman was filing her nails and the scraping sound was very distracting. The worst thing that had me cringing though – the male was clipping his nails. Like I said, really satisfying if I am clipping my nails, but hearing that “click” sound on someone else’s; it had me cringing. I had to put my headphones on and crank up the volume, and try to not imagine those fingernails fly across his desk.

Kicked out of large meeting room

Meeting rooms were a really in-demand thing. Managers do love meetings, especially pointless ones. Then when you really do want a meeting, you just can’t get a room.

There were two meeting rooms next to each other, located near my desk.

  • Meeting Room A holds about 8 seated people, but you can get more people in if standing
  • Meeting Room B holds 3 people but you can get more people in if standing

I was called for an ad-hoc meeting with 3 other developers. Both rooms were free at the time. We take the larger room (Room A), since there’s 4 of us.

5 minutes in, someone knocks on the door

“Sorry, I have a one-to-one and have booked this room“

My fellow developers didn’t seem interested in arguing, so I followed suit and kept quiet. It’s a one-to-one so it’s a meeting for 2 people. Room B is perfect for them.

So after moving to Room B, we were trying to crowd around a laptop – crammed awkwardly in our seats. Meanwhile 2 people were sitting comfortably around a large desk in the opposite room. It looked ridiculous.

Office Tales

Empathy Lab

As I just explained, Meeting rooms were in high demand so we needed more of them. Of course, we like cutting down the number of meeting rooms for some cool initiative. One of them was the “Empathy Lab”.

“We were inspired in part by Facebook’s empathy lab which shows how people with impairments may interact with Facebook using assistive technology.

However, when building our accessibility empathy lab, it was important to us that it had a dual purpose: To raise awareness about accessibility, but also be an assistive technology testing space.”

I never saw it get used, but I did see many people get frustrated that they couldn’t find a meeting room.

The Recruitment Letter

Beavis gets a hand-written letter delivered to work written in a green pen. I don’t think I’ve seen anyone get anything delivered with their name on it that wasn’t a package, mainly from Amazon.

He opens this suspicious letter, and it is from a recruiter apparently from LinkedIn.

She explains that the unconventional approach to contacting him is due to the fact that his profile lacks detail and therefore that signals he doesn’t want to be contacted by recruiters.

<Sure, that makes sense.>

She likes the lack of detail in his profile though; it’s the kind of person she is looking for, so she wants to meet in person and talk at a Café.

I’ve never heard of this before? Is it a weird scam?

AWKS

Years ago, I wrote about how I was working in a team that was making the framework for a new application. One of our developers, Timothy, got moved to a team known as “Solutions Team” who were making a framework for the new application. I had asked him how his team differed to mine, surely we were doing exactly the same work? He said he was just doing what the managers told him.

A new developer, Nina joined the Solutions Team.

She comes over and asks Timothy to send her some documentation so she can understand what they have done over the last few months. (The correct answer is “nothing really, just messed about and partially duplicated another team’s work).

You could see the absolute terror in Timothy’ face. I think at that point, he was probably realising that I was right all along and their team was pointless.

Nina detects the panic and says in a concerned tone “are you okay?”

Timothy says “yeah” dejectedly, and then mumbles about “maybe he should update the documentation.”

Nina says she will come back later

It was the most awkward situation in a long time.

Just Paste It In

William has been working closely with a Junior developer. The Junior had a list of objects and needed a simple sort.

William is new to Javascript, but the syntax is exactly the same as C#. He looked at the method signature and didn’t understand it, so he told the Junior to google it.

The first solution they stumbled upon on Stack Overflow had an overly complex solution, but the original poster did request he required only one method that can handle sorting various items. Therefore it required an elaborate solution.

In the Junior’s case; he just wanted to simply sort a list; therefore this code wasn’t appropriate.

William told him to paste the complex method in and “it will work”. The Junior challenged him on it, asking if the algorithm sorted the items in ascending/descending order, and asking him to explain how the code worked.

William then just reads the name of the method and the parameters, trying to say some words in a confident way to blag that it was the correct thing to do: “It’s a dynamic sort, you just pass in the list, along with the name of the property you want to sort by“.

The Junior asks again if it sorts in ascending or descending order.

He then says “yeah you are right, this might not work“.

He had no idea what that code did, he was just hoping it worked – so was just confidently telling him it would work if he just pasted it in.

I ended up telling him how to do it. It’s a one line solution; not a 30 line method.