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25-Dec. Shout-out to everyone else at work
872 points by sandworm101 on Dec 25, 2021 | hide | past | favorite | 202 comments
I made a similar post last year at this time and, again, I am in my office on Christmas morning.

There are a few days every year that really show which jobs are vital and which can be left aside for a day. I started my car this morning (-32, -40 with wind chill). On my way to work I drove past a hospital and a care home, both were manned. The dairy farm had its lights on. A cop with his flashers drove past me on the way to some emergency. The macdonalds drive-through was open too. I had to be at work by 0600, but I was relieving someone who had been sitting in another office since 1800. On my computer were the same dozen emails I get every morning, each from someone else who drew the short straw.

There aren't many of us on HN that work weekends let alone Christmas morning, but If you too are sitting in a dark office remember that all across the world are millions of other people working the truly important jobs.




Quite a few of my NASA colleagues worked today to launch the James Webb Space Telescope, and I'm sure most of them didn't mind working on Christmas.

And I certainly appreciate all of those who work on the holidays to keep us safe.


There's a Christmas every year. A major telescope launch is apparently once a generation.


>> apparently once a generation

I hope not. This one is only going to last 10 years. Kepler also only lasted 10 years. Given the time it took to build it, I hope the JWST's replacement is already well into development. The reality is that space telescopes are launched every couple years without much fanfare. This just happens to be a very big and expensive one.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_space_telescopes


Hopefully this restraint will become less significant for future missions. Starship should mean larger payload volume (less folding/structure required), far more payload capacity, far lower costs, and more frequent flights.

Refueling and refurbishment costs should become much more acceptable as viable approaches emerge due to dropping ticket cost to space.


only reason for 10 years is fuel, I think they are working on a robot to refuel it to increase the lifetime.


What's a generation? Longer than 10 years certainly, but many people have kids by their early 20s if not before.


I think typically a generation is around 30 years, but this changes over time. Currently it's higher in the western world, but it was shorter 100 years ago.


So why couldn’t they delay the lunch by a week so everyone could spend Christmas with their families and then launch it?


There very specific times you can launch to establish desired orbits. Typically these windows only come once every month or two.


Is that the case for an orbit around the earth-sun Lagrange point? It seems like anytime should be GTG


True. I don't think this is an orbital launch window thing. Rather, the date seemed to be driven by operational necessities (range safety, weather, the practicalities of getting the rocket ready etc).


I believe the launch windows are fairly constrained due to the precise positioning requirements as well as the requirement to avoid eclipses throughout the lifetime of the telescope. This study [1] was for a planned 2018 launch, but I'm sure there were similar constraints in this time period too.

In addition, the fuel required to position the spacecraft varies a lot depending on the day - and any fuel saved can be used to prolong the operational lifetime of the telescope.

[1] https://issfd.org/ISSFD_2014/ISSFD24_Paper_S2-6_Yu.pdf


The launching of this telescope is FAR more important and beneficial to humanity than an arbitrary holiday that celebrates the winter solstice.


Christmas doesn't celebrate the winter solstice, it happens to be a few days after the winter solstice. In some places, the solstice is far more important holiday than Christmas, like for Buddhists in HK where I live, who celebrate the solstice with family


What's stopping anyone from staying with their family one or two weeks after Christmas?

What's up with this fixation people have with arbitrary dates for celebration?


Because those "arbitrary" dates are agreed on by many. So everyone can leave their works on the same day and gather together.


that may be, but I'm totally on board with staggered, a la carte breaks. Esp. considering how many work in places that are mission-critical (or service industry) and don't take the same time off.

Moreover, I find (for myself) very little celebratable about a time of year that :

- it's more expensive to fly during

- revolves around buying, just, stuff.

Viva la holiday revolucion. Let's all pick times that work for us and our loved ones and get off the monoculture train.


My employer has a pretty good policy for that: you can bank any holiday, work on it and take the date later as you wish. It's great for other religions, non-religious people, etc., you can choose to re-use any holiday as you wish.

Would that be a part of your holiday revolución? :P


Hells yeah it would! That's really great - it adds flexibility while not clobbering what other people value. What an elegant solution.


Kids have time off school on Christmas and not two weeks later. And all their friends share a particular experience for the holidays and they will be the only ones not to have that. If you’re not a parent it may not be as big a deal to not be there on major holidays.


It's a Schelling point.


Yeah. I commented to my family that this telescope took multiple countries years to build. I'm not sure if it's just that difficult, or if budgets are too small.


The JWST has a number of trailblazing technologies. Real Engineering did a great video on it:

https://youtu.be/aICaAEXDJQQ


Let's hope Starship lift capacity will make Webb obsolete in a decade!


Doubtful considering how long it took to put JWST together. What, 30 years almost?

Granted a lot of that was scope creep but nonetheless, I'm betting it's not launch capacity that's the bottleneck.


A lot of complexity of JWST is driven by the very restrictive mass and size limits. If you get a wider rocket and a 50% larger mass budget, then you can skip a lot of the complex unfolding and you can probably make a comparable diameter space telescope for literally 10 times less effort, cost and time.


The available launch vehicles probably demanded a certain amount of ambition in the plans. You can't launch small experimental telescopes with a short planned operation on the shuttle. It's too expensive just to show up with anything less than Hubble's successor. Now the new space race is aiming at making access to space cheap and common.

Whatever follows probably won't be a big telescope. It'll be all the little experiments that couldn't find funding over those 30 years because there was nothing to launch them without breaking the budget. There's a lot of progress deferred because every launch had to be big.


>> probably won't be a big telescope.

It will be another infrared telescope. Hubble's capabilities have been all but surpassed by ground-based optics. Some of the new giant telescopes already being built will easily surpass Hubble (100+foot mirrors etc). What JWST does is see in infrared, something that ground-based telescopes can never do as IR is absorbed by atmosphere. So whatever replaces JWST will likely be another, bigger, IR telescope.

https://www.tmt.org/page/about

>>With its 30m diameter prime-mirror, TMT will be three times as wide, with nine times more area, than the largest currently existing visible-light telescope in the world. This will provide an unparalleled resolution, with TMT images more than 12 times sharper than those from the Hubble Space Telescope.


Fast, cheap and out of control!


If any of them are reading this comment section, thank you NASA engineers for launching such an awesome Christmas present. I'm looking very forward to seeing the photos of the successor to the Hubble. Hubble had already given us such historical photos, and now we'll have an even better picture. Truly a landmark in history if all goes well.


Cheers to this! A fantastic day when decades of humanity’s scientific dreams are successfully launched, to fuel the next generation of discovery.


I'd be stoked to launch a space telescope as a christmas present! Congrats to them!


Thank you and your NASA colleagues for me please. The launch was beautiful.


A friend of mine is in Kourou, I think she would've preferred to launch a few days ago so she'd be able to spend Christmas and New Year's with loved ones


I was wondering this today: why did they launch on Christmas? Were there conditions which made it unavoidable?


Delays got us to this month. Other delays got us to this week. Weather issues delayed it from earlier this week to Christmas. Once you are spooled up for launch, unwinding all of that just to avoid a holiday is not worth it.


Amazing and terrible! Thanks for the clear answer.

Sounds like you were on the team: If so, thanks for your contribution!


Thanks for all you and your team's efforts to advance human knowledge!


Thank you, and your team, for your amazing work.


There are lots of people for who Xmas isn’t a thing — different background etc.

I always thought it would make sense to let us handle Xmas duty so others — people for whom it really, really matters - can do their Xmas stuff.

I used to try to volunteer for this when it was relevant (really, it’s not a thing for me), but I rarely saw a systematic opportunity to do so.

I think it gets harder as time goes because the replacement day (say a random day in Jun) isn’t as quiet because the rest of the economy is not turned off.


When I worked in Amazon retail many of the India and China immigrants happily and proactively traded Christmas and New Years oncall for black Friday/Cyber Monday. Or many other holidays. Heck the kids who were spending their first holidays away from home did it to have something to do.

Pre pandemic there was always a cool feel of working a chill holiday day with just a few others, compared to the insanity of those massive scale days. You also got to work on whatever you wanted as managers didn't plan anything.


> “the India and China immigrants”

While factually correct, a more elegant wording to express this would be “colleagues from India and China”.


Thanks, I didn't know how to phrase it, too late to go back now tho :(


No problem; I think my own comment could be better by being more appreciative of the interesting info you shared, before focusing on the area of improvement straightaway. Thanks!


I prefer the direct and succinct feedback than a shit sandwich, or in this case a shit flatbread. Thanks again. Happy holidays to you!


Happy holidays!


That seems like an ok sentiment when it’s opt-in. At a former place of work, I would be assigned all holidays and hours people didn’t want to work because “I’m a single guy with no kids/fiancé”. I’d almost exclusively work those shifts alone, too. It was absolutely based on who stroked who’s ego the most. This was for little more than minimum wage in a tech department and no such thing as differentials.

Glad that’s over.


There is a difference between assuming single people don’t care about holidays and realizing that not everyone celebrates the same holidays.


It works a bit like this in Swiss hospitals. Or at least used to. Might have gotten LEANed away.

I have fond memories of christmas dinner as a child/teenager, not because of any religious affiliation but because it was one of the few times a year the family of six, three of which work in hospitals, spent a day or so together. There were few overlaps of free time otherwise.

I don't remember the exact mechanics how it worked, but I think work schedules get set about 6 months in advance with some employee input about their preferences, and employees can to a degree swap shifts with each other. So e.g. it was quite common for people with kids to take christmas off, whereas young singles or from different backgrounds took new years or any other day.


I try to do this as well, and in exchange they usually are good about me taking my holidays off(in my case Eid). To me it's just another Saturday, so why not-- I see how much it means to people who celebrate it. Getting time and a half is nice too


I wish we could do this for most holidays. There’s a lot of US holidays I really don’t care about (like thanks giving). Just give me PTO instead! My first manager allowed me to do that, I thought that was really cool.


Exactly. I volunteered (along with 2 others) yesterday to relieve & go home 4 hours early (paid). I would get those 4 hours anytime next month.


I'm not working today but what this brings to mind is a recently hired coworker who apparently is.

My small team has had a nice culture of keeping our work chat mostly confined to our normal working hours, except when some issue comes up that needs attention. This new coworker has lately been shattering that. This person not only posts in the evenings, weekends, and sometimes into the graveyard shift, but does so in a cloying, overeager, performative kind of way.

"while that job was running I took the opportunity to go learn this new skill!"

"I finished this step of the process. Now I'm gonna go do the next one!"

...and updates on what they're doing and their reachability, at all hours.

"I'm going to have dinner because I haven't eaten anything today, but I will have my work computer and work phone with me so feel free to ping me".

Even today, on Christmas morning, there was more from this person in slack, posted after midnight on Christmas Eve.

I do my best to push it out of my mind, but I can't deny this adds a layer of stress for me. I don't want work conversations to stretch into nonworking hours. I don't want this to become part of the culture in my team or company. I don't want to see this kind of behavior become the expectation. I hope nobody ever asks anyone else to be more like this.


What is stopping you from having a level headed, heart to heart conversation with your new colleague about your growing concern? Part of any job is to pass on the culture to new comers. I'm sure they'll understand.


> I'm sure they'll understand.

Frankly, I'm not.

I think this conversation is actually the responsibility of the GP's boss, not the GP. If the GP is really confident in the existing culture, then in my opinion they should approach their boss with their concerns.


No. It’s a recent hire with a small different mindset. It’s a simple problem, with a simple solution. I wouldn’t even call it a problem or a conflict, just difference in expectation

Be an adult and just talk to people. Explain why his behavior disrupts a nice culture you had and why this causes stress to you. If there is risk of heat and you are new to giving such feedback, the standard template is something like “I’ve noticed that you ..., which causes ... to me. Because …. Would you mind … instead.” Be sure to emphasis on your own feelings of the situation, don’t make it hostile or negative in any way.

This guy probably just comes from other team culture where people turn off notifications off hours.

Don’t bring your boss into this unless the pattern repeats. The message will be lost in translation and you will come of as a whiny wimp, both to your boss and your colleges.


My experience is that these type of people are basically incorrigible. If/when colleagues hint as such, it results in response to the tune of "I am ambitious and want to demonstrate my work; if you don't, feel free to manage your time the way you like" (it may be packaged in softer wrapping but the point is still the same). Unfortunately that is a shitty but hard to combat argument without increasing acrimony.

Management usually doesn't want to discourage such behaviour because it fits perfectly into their all-too-common willingness to exploit such tendencies by throwing morsels of acknowledgement/praise to extract more work by feeding this hunger for visibility. It is rare that the work-life balance culture is widely consistent and respected by everyone including management and even if that were the case, any advise from management to tone it down generally results in such people sulking and continuing with their behaviour in more covert ways that gives rise to underhanded politics. All this is amplified if this kind of person doesn't want to leave - basically a fish polluting a pond personified.


Some us _like_ working. If mu team doesn’t want to check-in thats fine but I dont mind getting shit done at 4am or on weekends. Heck I am on a three week vacation right now and I have been working on a prototype I plan to show off when I get back in the New Year.

My team is under no obligation to keep up with me, but Im not going to lower my performance for them.


My guess is that @grappler is more bothered by the performative visibility than that the new guy works as much as he does. It's a clear move toward politicking and away from real productivity.


exactly


> My team is under no obligation to keep up with me

I'm not going to pass judgement here, as it's a complicated issue and I have zero context, but I hope you understand why this is not an entirely truthful thing to say.

Working over your vacation sets a tone whether or not you intend it to.


Being fairly new to software as a job and not a hobby, I don't have a ton of experience when it comes to office politics. Does it necessarily follow that because employee A is busting ass, expectations get raised for employee B? Is the set standard really that fragile?

I'm asking because I tend to dive into work headfirst. I love doing this stuff and I can't believe I'm getting paid for it; but if this is a thing perhaps I should be a little quiet about that - I'm not interested in making enemies of people by being 'too peppy'.


>>Does it necessarily follow that because employee A is busting ass, expectations get raised for employee B? Is the set standard really that fragile?

Yeah sure - most metrics in software do not work as expected, so the only thing that we are left is perceived performance. And perceived performance is created only by comparison - You always subconsciously look for the baseline observing people in Your team, so if one ot them is concentrated only on work and is at least a little bit competent while doing it, it makes others look worse in comparison.


I like working too! I do work related things on evenings and weekends more often than not. But that time is precious to me as focus time, free of checking in, free of needing to post updates. It's time for reading something long and technical, learning new stuff, or working on code. I'd much rather do that stuff on my own and then have things to share during the next workday.


Do you shift your work hours, or do you just do overtime? Are you compensated for it? I just feel usual shifts are already long enough for someone to give away their free time on top of it into the same thing.


Im salaried, I dont think in terms of hours. I think in terms of goals and progress.


I don't think I'm in a position to. I'm not management, and I'm not one of the rock star engineers. Those are the people who would have the sway to either encourage or discourage this sort of thing.


I'd bring it up with your boss, but don't push the issue. Management sets culture. If your boss takes no action, that's that; maybe brush up your resume.


Because that's the job of management.


In my experience usually the people who do that are loners. They crave the interaction and use work related channels ro do that, with the plus of getting positive feedback from being a hard worker. Hard thing to defuse.


I would suggest simply letting them know that you appreciate their effort but it's not necessary during non-work hours or non-emergency periods. Even the most gung-ho socially awkward person should be able to get it.


I think the first step is to stop checking Slack when you’re out of hours!


My grandmother is hospitalized at home after a huge stroke.

Her nurse just left our house for the second time of this Christmas Day for taking care of her while we were in family.

Thanks to his work, I was able to spend Christmas with my family, including my grandmother.

That’s some badass important job.


Side note:

I don't know how many people on HN are nurses/doctors, but thank you all for everything over the past couple years, especially now.

We as a society have failed you guys, I just wish we could all do better.

Edit: Just realized this could read as me criticizing GP, this is not what I intended, this comment just made me realize this sentiment more fully.


From an ER doc working in remote Alaska today, thank you. These have been trying years for all of us and while no one I know in the field expects to hear "thank you" for doing our jobs it certainly feels good.


> remember that all across the world are millions of other people working the truly important jobs

Im going to assume this wasn't intenional but it came off as a little negative given the rest of the positivity in this sweet message.

It just got me thinking about underpaid educators and childcare workers who for the most part are off today. Really everyone, we're all in this together right? Keeping this whole crazy machine running for each other.

Regardless this was a nice thing to see bubble up today, merry christmas HN!


Yeah I agree. This reads to me more as one of those folks who is always trying to one up. Oh, you're tired? Well I got less sleep than that!

Shout out to everyone who decided not to work today because of work life balance. You're the real mvp, in my opinion. We are humans, not machines.


> Im going to assume this wasn't intenional but it came off as a little negative given the rest of the positivity in this sweet message.

I’m not following your logic here. How is this a negative thing? OP is literally praising people for their dedication with good faith intentions.


Because it could be interpreted to imply that "even if your job isn't important, lots of us have jobs that are." I think it's the "truly" that makes it just slightly ambiguous. Maybe if they had said "also working" to make it sound like the audience was included in the statement, idk.

I don't think it was negative, but I can definitely see how someone could take it that way. I saw a glimmer of it.


I had the same thinking as you after reading the first part about it sounding negative. I didn't read it like that at all.

The last part makes it clear though. Child education is a truly important job.

I think emphasis also changes this subtly. I.e. did you read it in a neutral "truly important jobs" way or for example with emphasis only truly. "_truly_ important jobs_". Like "yeah yeah educator is important but not really. Only these other jobs are the really important ones, like burger flipper at McD". Well to be honest that does read quite negative to me!


It's so subtle, I am willing to give OP the benefit of the doubt. This level of pedantry in a rather innoucious post is kind of worrying though. Sorry to bring this up at all, since I was confused.

Happy holidays!


I think the key word that makes it perhaps slightly negative is "the". Take that out and it's totally fine. The "the" specifies it and implies the jobs that take Christmas off aren't as important.


just because OP stated jobs on Christmas are the truly important ones doesn't imply that other jobs that don't work Christmas aren't important. Your logic is the same logic as people getting offended by "Black lives matter" and them saying "all lives matter".


I volunteered to stand Command Duty so I'm spending Christmas morning in uniform with my sidearm sitting at a very, very quiet desk. Merry Christmas! Hodie Christus Natus Est!


Lol. I don't get to carry a gun, but I had a serious debate with myself re whether to put on my uniform. Then I thought: If the worst case scenario does happen, I might have to turn on the webcam in the special room, the one with no windows. I don't want to be the one guy in jeans during that meeting.


I'm sure having to wear a uniform gets tiresome.

But always dressing comfy means you never get to express that side. Having only used the office once a week in the last many months, I would consistently overdress when making an appearance. There is something nice about making an effort at dressing that correlates with wanting to make a bigger effort in general.


That is a very common misconception about the military. The uniform makes life easier. I never have to worry about fashion. I never have to figure out what is or is not appropriate attire for a specific meeting. It is very liberating.

>> about making an effort at dressing that correlates with wanting to make a bigger effort in general.

If you want to make the effort, military uniforms allow that too. The military is full of people who put that extra effort into their uniforms every day. They have the mirror-polished boots, the perfectly-fitted shirts. Their patches and ribbons are always perfect. Their beret is moulded into that perfect shape. The average civi cannot spot it but everyone on a base can see who wears the uniform best.

Every drill sergeant is a diva. Every fighter pilot a slob who hasn't polished a boot since basic.


Dont the fighter pilots try to sound cool on the radio though? Like pracficing speaking with a certain accent. At least that's what was said in that SR71 story.


They certainly try their best to look cool. All of the pilots I've worked with wore a flight suit every chance they got. They probably mow their lawns in Nomex and aviators.


Don’t you have several dress uniforms for different occasions? Like three different ones? Combat, normal, and formal?


Yup, but the rules are very clear as to when you wear each. 95% of the time I wear the combat camo stuff, which is great because you don't need to even iron it. Since covid has stopped most gathering/parades I haven't put on the more formal uniform in over a year.


Are the boots back to being polishable? My stint was during the dusty oakleys era.


“In event conflict declared, break glass for comfy apparel.”


cry havoc and let slip the sweatpants of war


Branch? Are you statesides or overseas?


I hopped on the bus this morning to work and it was empty except for one person, who I see every morning as we share the same bus schedule but we’ve never interacted before. This morning we smiled at each other and the empty bus, and almost laughed, like oh you too huh? Then we carried on as usual. It was nice!


I really don't see how a job you're being forced to do at inconvenient times has to be more important than a job that doesn't.

I have a friend that worked in a insulation manufacturing company, the oven would never be shut-off because of the time it takes to start it up again, it's cheaper to let people run it 24/7.

Just because something is time critical doesn't mean it's important.

This post feels like a real feel-good self-motivator post to keep you from jumping ship.


I used to work Christmas pretty often.

One job, PC support could be brutally busy.

The other, tech support for some high end networking equipment was very quiet. I loved working holidays there. Mostly just played video games.

Always strange how the jobs that pay less often are more work / tiresome.


Much of that depends on corporate culture. Often it is the lower-paid and more junior people who get the bad shifts. But in my organization (military) it is normal for the more senior people to work those shifts. Responsibility for mission-critical tasks falls upwards. If you are only going to have one person on shift, then that person cannot be a trainee. So all the people I interacted with this morning were relatively senior within their team.


“ But in my organization (military) it is normal for the more senior people to work those shifts.”

I remember reading a story about Jim Mattis (back before he was famous). A fellow general showed up, found Gen. Mattis was the duty officer on Christmas Day, and asked him how he got stuck with that.

Gen. Mattis told him, “Well, the young man who was scheduled for duty today has a family, and I decided it was more important for him to spend the time with them. So I took his place.”


Just getting to bed after an overnight in the ER and subsequent Christmas with the wife and kids. Thanks for the shout-out, and likewise for all the other cogs in the wheel.

Discovered today that the hospital IT has decided to disable rebooting our computers through the usual Windows 10 menu, which I usually do at the beginning of each shift to optimize the chances of a smooth-running EHR. Power button still initiates a controlled shutdown. Unclear what they accomplished here.


I can't believe how bad the EHRs in ER settings seem to be. I run a small (but complete) EHR that never has these problems, but we don't have the right sales people I guess to get into these settings.


The OP has made some telling observations about all those working 25th December.

Living in India, I had worked in the US healthcare industry for over 15 years. I had to work every Indian holiday. Just imagine the list of festivals/holidays India has; they are perpetual, to say the least. I didn't have to work US holidays, during which I would be home while the rest of my family went about their business, as usual. I would say that it got to the point where I was estranged from my parents and other folks. Now, whenever I think about the sorry state of affairs which I felt had been thrust upon me, I'm filled with remorse for not visiting my parents more often. Every aspect of life has its pros and cons. I see a pattern.

Season's Greetings to all HNers!


I worked at a convenience store when I was in high school and worked several Christmas Day shifts. Although I haven’t done it since, it gave me an immense respect for those who do show up and keep the gears on this machine going. Tip of the hat to all of you, and Merry Christmas!


I think that the last time I worked on Christmas I was a busboy, likely at a Holiday Inn. That really doesn't compare with work in health care or public safety, but I'm sure that the customers--some of them probably employed in critical work--were grateful for clean tables and coffee refills.


I am lucky enough to be home with my small immediate family this morning. I spent most prior to this in basic training, deployed on a military mission, working in federal prisons, or some other seemingly less-than-desirable place. I grew to enjoy some of those days. There was a type of camaraderie amongst the folks that drew that short straw- and it was widely accepted that we were just there 'to put out fires.' Often times we would get a short visit from 'higher ups' and get that few seconds to connect on a more personal level. It drew out a bit of a different side from the 'extra alpha' types of some of these places that I used to work.

Not that any of that is better than being with family- just an added perspective. Happy holidays!


I lost my job at the end of November. I wouldn't mind the opportunity to work today.


Me too! Right in the middle of the buy-shit month.

This year was a lean one.


Cant thank enough folks like sandworm101 who keep the society running giving the rest of us the flexibility to spend time with our loved ones. Deep gratitude


Back when I worked in fine dining, I worked every holiday because it was great money. It wasn't a really important job or anything, but still needed to get done. My dad worked in a factory, and also worked some part of every holiday. Even now, I volunteer for holiday coverage if needed.

The world doesn't stop because it's some made up day on the calendar. Thank you to all those who keep the world going.


I have a really hard time on my days off taking my mind off work. Shout out to everyone else who is accidentally getting distracted today by problem solving when they are trying their best to be present with their families


I used to be like this as well. Vacations of less than 5 days were meaningless because it took me that long to stop thinking about work!

But I managed to un-learn this habit. I work 9:30 to 5:30. I turn off my work brain outside of that. It's not easy, but it's worth practicing.


Thanks for the dairy farm wave! 3:30 start, stop at 9:30. Back again at 13:30 and finishing 17:30.

A long day, but it was satisfying.

Plus the animals don’t know it’s Christmas.


This is an incredible post, and thank you for the mission critical work that you do. I'm always curious what other people's work lives are like -- can you talk a little bit about your job, the tasks you're working on today, and how the people you interact with on a day like today (customers, clients, coworkers) could make today a little easier / more fun?


Military. Empty building. Sitting at a desk looking at computer screens. No cellphones allowed. I cannot leave my office because I might not hear my phone ring. Work involves talking to other people in basically the same situation at other bases. Not much real work going on. This is what we call "minimum manning". Everyone retains full capacity to act at any moment but don't actually do anything unless necessary.


Thank you for doing what needs to be done.

Are you allowed to stream video or audio?


Allowed is a loaded word. I am accessing HN through an unsecured network. We aren't "allowed" to stream because it can quickly overwhelm shared bandwidth but I do have that ability.


My wife had already delivered one baby by the time I had tea this morning, fewer than 2 hours into her 24-hour shift.

I miss her today and am also very proud of the work she does (Nurse Midwife).


If I were having a baby I’d hope the midwife wasn’t at the end of a 24 hour shift!


A job being done during holidays is not necessarily vital or truly important.

Working at the hospital is a vital job, keeping an important server running is a vital job and driving a mass transit bus is a vital job as well.

On the other hand keeping McDonald's open is not vital, it is just economically sensible.


Traveling families and busy 'essential workers' need food, gas, and basic necessities. Access to quick food (McDonalds in this case), gas stations, and convenience stores are just as vital as anything!


_Just_ as vital? If you had to choose between closing a hospital or a McDonald's, you would choose at random?

I hear what you are saying. Gas stations are vital transitively from the vital jobs that require gas, such as ambulance services. But I could still rank them as less vital than the services themselves, enabling me to at least close some gas stations. Fast food would be far down the list because it is predictable and trivial to plan around.


Here in Japan, people I’ve talked to will say that decades ago around New Years, everything was closed for days. No super markets. No restaurants. Not even ATMs. The downside is it requires a lot of prep work pre-holiday (i.e. packing sandwiches instead of fast food). I think we can do without a lot more than what we think, but the burden is shifted to the consumer instead of the worker, so without a strong culture of shared holidays you’ll see more and more people at work.


The same was/is true in China around Chinese New Years. It is still pretty bad, things might be shutdown completely for a couple of days and mostly for a week or even two.

It can take some real planning to figure out how to deal with that first week.


>Convenience stores are as vital as anything!

How come it is illegal to keep them open during public holidays in much of Europe then? I find hospitals a tad more important.


Thanks to everyone who has to work on Christmas to keep essential things running for us !


Thanks for keeping it real so the rest of us can get drunk and fatter. Hope you can get some time to relax your mind later on!


> if you too are sitting in a dark office remember that all across the world are millions of other people working the truly important jobs.

I totally get the sentiment, but please turn on some lights.


Yep. Still patching log4j.


I had to do a patch tuesday for 6 hours even though I had the whole week off. Ugh.`


My whole vacation got cancelled :(


That is pretty freaking miserable and would annoy me to no end. Are they going to let you take off your week at some point in the future?


I hope so. No official word yet but managers are "looking into it", it's a big company, end of the year, etc.

What makes it feel like crap is how it's way more difficult to patch than it should be because we're never given time to clean up tech debt and every team does things differently, so everything is a mess. I actually haven't taken time off all year and feel pretty burnt out. Maybe time to polish the resume.


Yeah, my company treats me very well so I was definitely willing to patch this thing during an unfortunate timing. If they were always treating me like shit, I polish up the resume too. You should do it.


I retired from an easy job (sold the business for a dollar) and I’m now building a new business from scratch. Heading into my seventh decade and working seven days a week for months now.

Mine is definitely not a truly important job. I have the same attitude as you and sometimes I’ll forget it’s a holiday and when I go out, say to the local McDonald’s, I’ll leave a huge tip and thank them for working.


You literally sold it for a dollar? Must be a interesting story behind this.


Dropped off my wife at work around 7. She's on call at the hospital. Fortunately, it is not -40 here ;-) Happy holidays all!


Many thanks to your wife for carrying on caring for the sick and dying. Especially in times like these. There are many people that actively think about healthcare workers and the unrelenting work that it entails.


Thankfully, things are not too crazy at the children's hospital at present. Of course, the kids still there are the ones too sick to be sent home :( . But the staff bring them gifts and there's a holiday meal for everyone: patients, their families and staff :)


Community building is always the best way to get through crisis. Also thanks goes out to you for running support. I read today that we've lost 20% of the health care workforce since the pandemic started. Tell your wife to hang in there. There are people in this country that are rooting for her and genuinely thankful for what she does!


Thank you for keeping the lights on for the rest of us. Wishing you a well deserved holiday soon!


I also drew the short straw for on-call this weekend. I've probably already clocked up 10hrs following a network failure at one of our datacenters.

I'm not an essential worker, but I want to pass on my Christmas wishes to people who are; doctors, nurses, healthcare assistance, ambulance crews, fire crews, police and everyone else who keeps the world turning over the Christmas holiday. Thank you all for your hard work!


In my opinion “essential worker” is a very blurred line. People depend on technology and the internet. There are real consequences when things stop working.


In the U.K. there was a lot of yabbering about “key workers” during lockdown. Nobody even mentioned the people working in power plants.


FWIW, the rest of the world where Christianity isn't a major religion, Christmas isn't special either. In Japan, people perceive this as a fancy Western festive event, just like Valentine's Day but there's no holiday. Our real seasonal holiday is a New Year Day and it's common that people work at late night in Christmas to prepare for it.


This year I had vacation for Christmas and New Years... but then I got covid on a plane to SF. I stayed 10 days in quarantine in a hotelroom (with only two days of mild symptoms). Today I finished quarantine and tomorrow ill be flying back to europe... thank you everyone who worked through Christmas and thank you for your service sandworm101


Hopefully you can claim back the vacation days.

(I don't know if this is all of the EU/EEA/UK, or just some countries.)


You're right I already did fill out a form and probably will get them back, maybe I try to get my birthday off now... Christmas would have been nice but when you read trough all these comments here I'm sill lucky anyway


I'm not Christian, so I normally volunteer the end of year shift. It seems to mean a lot to those who really celebrate it.

It's nice to live somewhere diverse, where anyone can take off for the holidays that matter to them. I had a colleague return to India for a month for Diwali. Eid and Chinese New Year are popular slow periods too.


Last year, we had to work from home and do other kind of work, it was sprung upon us we were working on Xmas — no room for negotiation.

Thankfully, this year, unlike last, I was able to visit my family not only for Thanksgiving, but also Xmas — I only have to work the 26th.

Happy Holidays, everyone!


Water distribution manager for a small municipal water district - sanitation never stops. I was happily only required to do about two hours onsite this morning, and have remote monitoring for the tanks and chlorine levels. Merry Christmas to those who celebrate!


I remember oncall during Christmas for cloud provider almost no pages all day, easy money


Cheers to those that are working. Not to say that jobs that don't work on x-mas aren't important of course. To those that aren't working but also have truly important jobs, catch you on the flipside in 2022!


Interesting that what you describe as special is what I consider normal working environment for myself: quiet, empty and just me humming along. And I don’t get that except on weekends and holidays.


Many of my HFT friends are busy working today preparing for the markets to open on Monday. Lots of people from a diversity of circumstances are working today, I appreciate all their work!


Thus proving the hypothesis that “all jobs that need to work at Christmas are truly important” to be rubbish.


HFT is to work as NFT is to art.


Thanks for doing what you do! (What is it that you do?)


When I was going to college and worked part time, I’d volunteer to work as many holidays as I could as it meant getting paid double time!!!


I’ve had plenty of on-call shifts at Christmas and New Year’s Eve and it’s always a special time somehow.

High five to all of you at work today!


I love taking on-call over the holidays, because with nobody deploying anything, there’s a much lower risk of being paged!


I did get a number of pages during those times. This was in port of rotterdam which is basically always busy, little bit less on holidays but still.

There is that sort of special vibe with the other people working though. Same as an overnight deployment when everyone else is asleep


I am on call today too. Fortunately not much has happened today. Last two years it was very different though, with day long conference calls for issues.


Take care, hope the quiet holds!


i guess i'm technically working but i'm just shooting video and playing with guns so it's more like recreation


Thanks for keeping things in the world running everyone here. I’m at fine with my family but I appreciate your odd hours.


All the best to you OP and everyone else.


I've been wondering if some devs are still feeling the pain of the log4J troubles during the break?


Thank you for being grateful.

Please also note that Christmas is not a thing for a lot of people. Jews, Chinese, Muslims.


"Chinese" is not a religion. There are quite a large number of ethnically Chinese people who celebrate Christmas as a holy day. There are many more for whom it is a holiday. And many more who don't celebrate at all. Demographics are complicated.


True - but their cultures & religions having different special & sacred days does not much change the nature of "some people will have to work on those day".

(Yes, when you've got enough diversity of cultures & religions, shifts can be swapped around so that nobody has to work... Nice, except that being one of those who work on those days is also something special.)


Yawn. Christmas is ostensibly a religious holiday, yet those from all faiths and cultures celebrate it. I am an atheist and it is my favorite holiday by far. I know Jews and Buddhists and Hindus who celebrate.

It is a cultural holiday, not a religious holiday. This is a very important point.


What an insensitive take! It is a religious holiday. I don't celebrate it. It's fine if other people do.

Stop trying to shove it down everyone's throat.


I’m not trying to shove it down anyone’s throat; I’m just saying that culturally it has separated itself from religion almost completely and, because of that, is celebrated by people of all backgrounds and faiths.


I'm Jewish. None of the Jews I know celebrate Christmas, or any holiday of another faith.

I spent today (in London) at synagogue.


Very interesting. Is it safe to assume Orthodox?


Jews in general don’t celebrate Christmas, or any holiday of another faith.


Christmas is literally Christ’s mass. If there’s a widespread religious celebration it’s that.


Christmas is literally a festival in the middle of winter with Turkey and family and lights and trees and a jolly fat man and presents and cheesy music and films we’ve watched a dozen times, nothing to do with religion.

Your mileage may vary, and if it does involve religion good for you, but for millions it doesn’t, but it’s still the most wonderful time of the year.


Maybe a different way to state the point is that you need to distinguish between the relationship of Christmas to Christianity and the Christmas holiday (in the US). If you search on the history of Christmas, you'll find that until relatively recently (late 1800s) it wasn't even a holiday in the US. You will find that in some cases Christians passed laws punishing people for celebrating Christmas in the US. Easter was the dominant holiday in the very early church, with Christmas being relatively minor. We celebrate Christmas as we do in the US because it's an official holiday.

This also says nothing of the Orthodox Christians that celebrate Christmas on a different day. The distinction is pretty clear for them - Dec 25 is purely a holiday, since that's not the day they celebrate the birth of Jesus.


Just as Easter is a celebration of Ishtar, the Babylonian deity, and All Hallow’s Eve is a remembrance of departed saints.


While Ishtar can be considered an equivalent goddess, it is not quite accurate as the rite was most-likely originating from a Germanic/Slavic/Baltic entity, Eostre.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ēostre


Yes! Thank you.


Christmas is literally Christian hijacking of Saturnalia.


And to think there's a strange few who want to suggest that you important folks who work overtime, are on call 24/7 for dangerous high demand jobs should not earn more than those of us who don't? Well I hope you keep being compensated, and I hope you'll accept my thanks

(I'm on HN as a time kill as I wait for my family to call me)


Who said that?


Those who want same pay for same title and experience w/o variance in looking at very difficult to price details like overtime, contribution, and sacrificing family time for work etc.


I applaud the sentiment to encourage and celebrate the people who have to work difficult times. Although I don't think it was necessary for you to denigrate other workers (by saying that their roles are not truly important) who aren't working today. You can be important and vital without other people being unimportant.


Didn't work Christmas. I will be working some on 1/1 and 1/2 though.


At the hospital today. Let me tell you, if you're in the hospital on Christmas, you've either got serious socio-economic problems, or are sick as shit. Most years, it's a little slower than usual, but not this year


Sometimes just terrible timing. My son decided to climb on a chair and fall head first on a ceramic floor last year lol. Didn't expect to spend a handful of hours at the ER on Christmas night in the middle of a pandemic, but there I was.


I speak in generalizations of course, and am referring to admitted medical patients, as that's my area

we were already over-capacity from people who delayed/avoided primary care over the past two years, and then the lack of outpatient prevention has caught up, and now starting another covid wave

Used to be New Year's was worse than Christmas, because people would try to struggle along at home through Christmas, then come in New Year's sicker than they would have been if they came in earlier, but now that's everyday and compounded by two years of avoided care


Thank you sandworm101!


I work every day - the world moves too fast. Regulations are the new moats, but holidays and weekends were the moats in the past -- 260 days in a year vs 365 - who will produce more?


There is more to life than how much one can produce, surely. You may be interested in a little piece of literature called A Christmas Carol - the core of the message is as accurate now as it was when it was written, if not more so, and I personally believe that core applies whether you celebrate Christmas or not. (I'm obviously being a little facetious as I assume most if not all of us are intimately familiar with the tale - I personally like the George C. Scott version!)


+1 for the Patrick Stewart version


Patrick Stewart is great, but for me the definitive version is the one with Michael Caine


Isn't that the muppet version? That is a great one.


Why can't you do your job remotely?


They’re doing a military job that involves “rooms without windows” and potentially emergency situations.


Even seen the start of WarGames?


I think you just explained the cause of inflation :)




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