Non24Throw

So you’re saying that all companies should have everyone work from home from October to February.

That’s flu season. The flu is more transmissible, has a higher fatality rate than COVID-19, and is more dangerous for the same immunocompromised demographic (young, elderly, and those with preexisting conditions).

And you think I’m being irrational.

I have mild respiratory symptoms right now (mucus in nasal cavity, post-nasal drip, fever, aches, cough) in a region where coronavirus is prevalent. There’s a good chance that I have coronavirus right now. It’s not nearly bad enough to prevent me from working, which is often the case with coronavirus because the symptoms are usually mild.

Many people with coronavirus are completely asymptomatic, recover fully and don’t even realize they had it.

You are watching the news too much, and not being appropriately skeptical of it.

I guess he better lay down, drink plenty of fluids, and have some chicken noodle soup?

This whole story has become so over-the-top it’s almost comical.

Every tech company falling over themselves to see who can have the “stronger response”, because they don’t want to risk the brand damage that would come from media companies singling them out as the company that let one of their people get the sniffles...

This is such blatant sensationalist fear-mongering nonsense from the media companies. It’s unfortunate that we (apparently) still give them so much power.

It’s a pretty wild situation.

I’ve been given offers from Google, been rejected by random web shops, and everything in between, all within the same year.

The Dunning-Kruger effect is put on steroids during tech interviews.

There’s this pretense that the interviewer is smarter than the interviewee, and an expectation that the interviewee will abide by that pretense as a show of respect.

That pretense leads interviewers to being unnecessarily ambiguous, and especially leads them to asking overly complicated questions. If you’re an insecure engineer, this allows you to impress your coworkers in the meeting afterward with your complicated question. You can act as if it would have been easy for you, the other engineers in the room won’t disagree because they want people to think they’re smart too, and one thing will be made very clear to everyone: You are smarter than the candidate, and the company is very lucky to have you.

It also leads interviewees to fake equivocating and feigning ignorance, and is overall a strong recipe for unconscious or deliberate bias based on the personal and professional insecurities of both parties.

From the other side of the table, when you’re the one interviewing candidates, you spend an absolute minimum of 90% of your time screening and interviewing people who are so bad that it literally hurts on an emotional level to interact with them. You develop compassion fatigue, like a nurse in an ER, and it’s very easy to find yourself in a place where you assume the worst of every candidate and don’t even care anymore if they fail.

The results of these interviews are influenced far more heavily by the interviewers than by the person being interviewed, in my opinion. And most companies (nearly all in fact) have literally no mechanism by which they grade the quality or subjectivity of their interviewers.

I had a similar outlook, I thought I could only code productively during hours where other people weren’t working and I knew I wouldn’t be bothered.

But I started exercising during the pilgrim days, mornings, and the habit stuck but now I do evenings. I feel most productive now between 8am-noon, even with people around.

There was a job change too though, so can’t guarantee it was the exercise that changed things. Exercise was definitely a massive net benefit either way though.

I go really hard with kettlebells for about an hour/day. Very low-impact, no stress to the joints, loads usually not heavy enough to cause severe muscle failure. Cardiovascular/aerobic state is similar to running, climbing stairs, swimming, etc. The exercises are all compound, and there’s enough resistance to build a good amount of muscle too (kettlebells go up to 200lbs).

Flexibility too, most of the motions involve stretching from the hips in one way or another.

And all you need is a living room and a kettlebell.

I feel like I found the holy grail of exercising, so I take every opportunity to recommend it. Google Pavel’s Simple and Sinister routine if interested, or check out /r/kettlebell. I add overhead presses and standing rows, a lot of people add snatches and cleans. Always new things to try. It’s fun.

What you’re describing sounds similar to me years ago

Then one day I moved to a house that had no internet, and we would have to wait a month to have satellite put in, and we had no smartphones

After 20+ years of just thinking I had a sleeping disorder, losing internet access and living like a pilgrim caused my sleep schedule to naturally coincide with the setting and rising of the sun

Without any deliberate effort from myself whatsoever, I would get sleepy at like 9pm, and wake up around sunrise, wide-eyed and ready to start the day

I thought I had tried everything too, including screen limitations and so on. That probably didn’t work because just the awareness that I could go online if I wanted was enough to keep me awake, feeling like there was a party going on that I wasn’t there for. And of course I would cheat some days, and doing that even occasionally was enough to reset my progress to zero.

There’s probably some kind of “disconnection retreat” nearby you could try, where people get together in some remote place and stay off tech for 7+ days. Could be a fun way to see if this is the cause of your sleep issues.