Lol, that is pretty much one of my past employers. They set a daily stand up everyday at 9:30am, so flexible time means I can arrive anytime before that..
One day I missed a stand-up because my wife was pregnant at the time and I wanted see our first baby MRI. The CTO sent me a nasty slack message in the company phone (which they claimed as a benefit “we give you state of art iphones!!”)
Also, there was catered lunch, which I sort of dislike and went out for lunch by myself sometimes. It was also frown upon, they want me to be in the office for the working hours.
I didn’t last long. In my subsequent job I made sure to pick just for the flexible hours since compensation in Europe, well st least where I am, doesn’t vary enourmously across companies.
Yes, I have seen that in one of my past job. Most of the political attrition came from managers of other divisions that required face time and perception of dedication.
OTOH, I also worked for an investment bank and there it was made clear, in my first day, that different people work different schedules so don’t assume productivity is sitting in your chair 9-5. I think it all comes from communication and clear expectations.
The administrative state in the US isn’t as trusted, powerful or competent as in other developed countries. This is partly because of the structure of government in the US, all the checks and balances making getting anything done harder, the US tendency for regulation by judicial settlement instead of legislation and the much more democratic decision making process. There are far more political appointees in the US system, and elected posts, than in other developed countries. The civil service just isn’t as powerful. All of these are self reinforcing. The US is just very different from other places.
The ignorance of international best practices is just imperial disease, a special case of not invented here. I honestly struggle to think of a technology or industry the US has lost leadership in and then recovered but it’s not like Germany is doing well in electrical vehicles. Sometimes your time is past, like the US and semiconductors.
The political and administrative sclerosis is unlikely to get better fast without the kind of pressing need that results in a new constitutional settlement. It could get better slowly I suppose. The inward looking self regard will get better when the US sees itself as an excellent country rather than assuming they’re the best at everything.
the US tendency for regulation by judicial settlement instead of legislation and the much more democratic decision making process
I'd wager that the democratic decision process in Switzerland is far more stringent and the public is far more involved.
On every level, be it a local tram line, a canton wide, or intra-cantonal rail system, or projects of national importance and great expense, like [1], the public is virtually always consulted via referendum and has to green light the project.
This is also a huge strength of the system. Because once a project is approved, the funds are secured and politicians can't pull shenanigans to pull, or divert funding.
I'd wager that a high democratic involvment into major (and expensive) projects is rather an asset, than a liability.
We have the chance to participate in the US too, now to what extend it is effective, I don’t know.
For example, even in big cities like NYC, there are public meetings about the projects, etc. Yet, I still believe that past certain point, people just stop either caring or not having the energy to follow thru the whole process.
Just a side note, it might sound pedantic but after living in Scandinavia, one thing I noticed that the expectation of “participation” during the decision making is not same even here. I bring this up because somewhat it contributes for more or less polarization and inefficient processes, I’d say.
I think Switzerland with its long history of democratic participation has developed a pretty mature population that generally makes (relatively) informed decisions. If you introduced this in the US I bet people would vote for abolishing taxes while increasing government spending on their pet issues. It would probably take a while until people have learned that this doesn't work.
For the competency and powerful the public administration, I think part of that it is really hard to compete with the private sector in the US, unless for prestige or political capital.
As trust goes, I am not sure if it is any different than most of countries in Europe except maybe Scandinavia?
For international best practices, at least in my subsection within IT, the US is the main driver for it. Most of people I talk to in terms of regulation see the US as its own jurisdiction but it is not like things there don’t make sense from a regulatory stand point, but they are just different?
I think the answer is that we just have all sorts of different systems of governance, optimized for different things.
UK underground is ancient, it's part of the fabric of culture, the UK is the birthplace of real rail, maybe they just have a centralized org to pull that off. Maybe they have a historical entente with unions. Maybe for whatever reasons there's less graft. Maybe it's just not politicized. Maybe it's just a lot easier for 'right of way' - or there are ample underground facilities. Maybe they just make things smaller (ie stations) so it's easier.
I find these situations are very enlightening, because it doesn't boil down to a scrum vs. waterfall or static vs. reactive kind of thing ... it's just 'really complicated'.
It's also very frustrating obviously and makes one very cynical of all of the dopes in charge.
I would love to vote for a super competent non-populist city administrator who said 'these are the operational reforms I am going to make', i.e. a leader who's not actually a politician.
I sort of believe that past a certain scale, a leader will have to be political to both get things done and maintain decision power. Even, if everyone agrees in one goal, which is impossible, the execution is rarely an easy division of labour.
When I compare (software) projects amongst different locations I worked at, things vary so so much. Making those comparison somewhat misleading at best.
I don’t see how comparing the costs between systems that have so different requirements, labor markets, legacy infrastructure, regulamentation agencies, can help much but I am not an expert on this subject by far.
I’ve been in similar situation and it was really hard to be effective in product / high level planning meetings because it is easy to be blindsided. At the time, I was still an youn engineer in a big co, so I just thought it was my lack of technical experience, but in reality it was nothing technical to it but BS politics.
What boils down to is that people who have any extra data access privilege will have the lead.
Most of the insights will come from aggregate data, so I think companies could work around privacy concerns but I am no GDPR expert.
Back in my days in academia, there was a saying “if you have the trace, you have the paper”.
Or maybe he didn’t have to go thru daily stand-ups and have to say how many letters will be delivered today.
Just kidding, kudos for him and some people are indeed gifted to make friends and connections intuitively.
On the other hand, there are jobs that make connecting to other people harder if not impossible. I used to work for Microsoft during the poignant stack rank time and it was utterly hard to build trust with anyone. I never played that game but competition was part of the culture and it ruined genuine relationships at any level.
Absolutely. I am all for making the best of things, but the conditions have to support it as well. Today more and more things are temporary, from doctors and workplace to where you live. Of course it is hard to make those connections. Especially since it also gets even harder as less people have them. That is why it always annoyed me when people say things like "just move", "just quit" or "it isn't a right to ...".
One thing to consider when scaling down and up an exercise is to measure progress, kipping is not very precise and usually used to make one achieve arbitrary goals way off ones reach (eg massive ammounts of pull-ups in a short period of time, oh impossible even for elite athletes but with kipping we can get there).
Same goes with handstand push-up with against the wall and that kick up. That’s one of the hardest exercises in gymnastics from my experience, why do one want to do that in a HIIT is beyond me.
As for scaling, I never consider not compromising but actually reinforcing proper form even overthinking it, to prepare one for load and speed (when things tend to go awry). As tools and techniques to scale down, there are bands, eccentrics, Grease the groove, etc.
Ps: you seem to have been downvoted but your question seemed legit to me. I hear that a lot from gym mates
Being sensible is not having a WoD one size fits all. It oversimplifies too much IMO.
People, specially who are new, haven’t gotten serious injuries, or just don’t understand how exercise can get you high, tend to fall in the WoD trap from my observations.
There have been a great mindset change with CrossFit in terms of sharing good knowledge, welcoming new members no matter their level and mixing everyone together but still everyday seems to be race day in CrossFit.
I completely agree. Any Crossfit gym where the coach doesn't enthusiastically support scaling down from the "Rx" is one nobody should go to. As I've said elsewhere in this thread I don't do Crossfit (I'm lazy and I hate cardio so I powerlift), but I know many people that do and their coaches have been entirely supportive of proper scaling to ability, with an eye toward progression of course.
I am usually the one who scape lunches at work because I want quietness and a break from work. Also, it is typically the only time of the day I can day dream and wander around the city center, where I work.
I find that eating at work to be quite unhealthy too. I tend to eat for instant gratification because I am too wired up, since there is no change of environment and my cafeteria is quite loud, etc.
I would also skip free dinner in case I work late but I would welcome a cab or car service to ride me home.
However, I will just add one benefits that would make a difference for me: a quiet room with yoga mats, maybe a pull up bar and some weights for some stretching here and there.
One day I missed a stand-up because my wife was pregnant at the time and I wanted see our first baby MRI. The CTO sent me a nasty slack message in the company phone (which they claimed as a benefit “we give you state of art iphones!!”)
Also, there was catered lunch, which I sort of dislike and went out for lunch by myself sometimes. It was also frown upon, they want me to be in the office for the working hours.
I didn’t last long. In my subsequent job I made sure to pick just for the flexible hours since compensation in Europe, well st least where I am, doesn’t vary enourmously across companies.