Category: Adulting

On a normal Monday morning walk, half of these cars would be gone from driveways. Some others would already have the spattering of snow cleared off, preparing to leave. Instead, I saw only a handful of cars on my way to the park, rush hour diminished by the Stay At Home order that went into effect Saturday night. As I walked, I listened to the birds.

Snow notwithstanding, the robins have reemerged in northern Illinois for the spring. The couple inches of snow that landed on Sunday had, for the most part, melted itself off the streets and driveways by Monday morning, but remained on the lawns and trees, a fluffy white layer made more pleasant by not needing to shovel it.

The cardinals never left for the winter, but now they’re singing. There are a couple woodpeckers in the neighborhood; I never see them, just hear them as I’m walking. That’s an improvement over the one woodpecker at my old house that started pecking on the wall outside my home office. Occasionally, I hear an owl, and frequently the crows.

For now, I hear fewer cars. They’ll return, after this crisis fades, but for now, I’ll enjoy the birds’ sound effects.

On February 18th, Kickstarter became the first well known tech company to unionize (article here). As somebody whose professional career has always been in technology, I rejoiced, as I’m sure many others did.

I find it interesting that trigger that pushed Kickstarter’s employees to unionize was the decision to cancel a campaign, rather than working conditions.  Typically, trade unions engage in collective bargaining related to wages, benefits, and working conditions, rather than a management decision on satire.  And that’s where I would see a benefit to unions for tech employees. 

As a tech worker, with one exception, I have always been a salaried (or “exempt” – from overtime) worker.   While union workers in the private sector are typically paid more, that’s not what I would look for from a union – tech workers are typically well-paid.  But we are paid the same whether we work a 40-hour week, a 60-hour week, or an 80-hour week. 

What if you work a 30-hour week, you ask?  Well, in that case, you’re expected to use vacation time.  But those extra 20 or 40 hours a week… are effectively unpaid.  And they’re common… ask your friends in IT how many hours they work each week.  Pause while they check their phone for the latest work e-mail, because we are always connected now.  (But they’re not in the office, it doesn’t really count, right?) 

If you’re lucky, you might be given a “free” vacation day to make up for the overtime, like when I worked an entire weekend for a system launch and got… one day.  Or that 80-hour work week… no, wait, I received no days off or financial recompense for those extra 40 hours.  And that was the beginning of 18 consecutive days in the office during a “hell project.”

As a disclaimer, the company I work for now is awesome in allowing employees to balance work and life, so I’m definitely not complaining about my current position.  But management at many companies forgets that we are, in fact, employee humans, who need the time off, particularly in positions where we’re expected to be mentally engaged most of the time.  I can assure you, my programming wasn’t up to par by the time I hit my twelfth hour at work, and I usually spent some time the next morning reviewing my code wondering what in the world I had been thinking. 

I think Kickstarter unionizing is a good first step. Who’s next?

I had the opportunity recently to walk in two rather different environments. (Three if you count walking near home, but the amount of traffic is significantly lighter here.) I rarely drive in downtown Chicago; I prefer to take the train in, and if the weather is nice, walk to wherever I’m going.

If you’ve ever walked in downtown Chicago, you know there’s strength in unity… the larger the group of pedestrians is, the more likely that turning cars will have to wait, instead of them pushing through the intersection and making people on foot wait.  Yes, in theory, pedestrians have the right of way in a crosswalk.  It’s a lovely theory and doesn’t usually hold up to drivers’ impatience.

Imagine my surprise then, walking in Carlsbad, California and having drivers defer to me, a lone pedestrian in a crosswalk.  This happened multiple times, so I don’t think it was just a fluke.  The weirder part about it was that the turning cars stopped even if I wasn’t to their side of the crosswalk yet, waiting until I was clear before taking the turn.

I was, as ever, delighted not to get run over while out walking, and would love it if the drivers here picked up similar habits.  The ease of walking in Carlsbad certainly explains how I managed to walk 18 miles in my week there.  Of course, the warmer weather helped too.