I have discovered and enjoyed so many books by reading the book jackets, which I would not have, if I only followed recommendations. I feel like doing this actually lets me make my own judgements about a book instead of restricting myself to lists or recommendations of "good" books.
If you are interested in teaching and are based in the US, the TEALs program by Microsoft Philanthropies (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/teals) is an option to consider. I volunteered with them for a few years teaching AP Computer Science and I enjoyed it.
It's definitely tough to juggle these roles. A few things that helped me and my partner -
* find local help for parents to do chores like groceries,meal prep, help with personal care if they need it, etc.
* make sure there's a way to pay their bills, manage their finances. You may have to do some of this for them by making sure they have access to their money, pay their bills, etc.
* if you are able to connect with their doctor, this would be great to keep a pulse on their medical needs. If you aren't able to drive them to doctor appointments, etc, funding help to do so would also be good.
* be prepared to drop everything and help them for emergencies. This meant letting managers know a bit about our situation.
If you have siblings, see if you can share responsibility for these things.
There is no single correct way to handle these situations so do what works for you and your family. Remember to take care of yourself and your family in the midst of this! Talk to a therapist if it helps.
I also suggest reading the book _Being Mortal_ by Atul Gawande that goes into some ageing related issues, which I found helpful.
I think one thing posts like this miss out is teams are made up of humans It may be a fun thought exercise to compare teams to parallel computing but one key thing is team members are not necessarily interchangeable or have the same expertise. They also don't produce at the same rate everyday. I would be very skeptical of applying these principles to teams in real life.
This, exactly. It takes a lot of hard work to raise children and have a good relationship with your partner. I consider taking vacations to lay on the beach with my partner or children a part of that hard work. The definitions in the essay seem a bit short-sighted to me.
I wasn't questioning the writing process - written design documents are very necessary. My experience with the Amazon-style design review meeting is that there wasn't sufficient time to read the document, process it and come to a decision. If you're reading the document ahead of time, then that isn't really following Amazon style :)
I am curious if Amazon follows this process for engineering design documents. I worked there a very long time ago and don't recall this. At another company I worked for, folks from Amazon introduced this for eng reviews. I found it very difficult to get or do a thorough review after reading a document for the first time at the meeting. Some things are nuanced and need time to process - I thought this style just didn't work for these cases.
If you have the financial means to do so, I highly recommend taking a gap year. It was a very rewarding time for me - just working on projects that interested me (tech and non-tech) and at my own pace, instead of racing towards arbitrary deadlines set by the employer. It was also the time where I could actually learn some new skills, which is quite difficult when you have a full time job. I cannot wait for the next time I can take a year off!
The fact that it's not a priority up the management chain is a red flag. Try speaking with the skip-level manager or higher to see if you get some attention. At the very least, I would ask for days off to compensate for a bad rotation.
Is fixing root cause prioritized? If you are just adding more alerts and not prioritizing fixing underlying issues, that's another red flag. Try to see if you and your team members can get your management to prioritize this. Having a group of people asking for this can be more effective than just one person.
If you have enough leverage, push back on new feature work until fixing oncall problems becomes a priority.
If all of this fails, leave - there are any number of places where oncall is not as much of a burden and/or you are compensated for your time.
Good luck!
Surely you're joking Mr. Feynman! I first read it as a college student and have read it many times since. Feynman was a fascinating character. Reading about him taught me to appreciate the value of curiosity.