Work hard, drink hard

Ryan Burgess
Welcome to a brand new episode of Front End happy hour. This is episode 42. And we'll be talking about work life balance. We are joined by one of our favorite guests who is now joining us for the fourth episode Sara Showers. Sara, can you give us a brief introduction of who you are what you do and what your favorite Happy Hour beverages? And has it changed in the fourth episode?

Sarah Showers
I don't remember what it was before. This will be the true test. So I am Sarah showers. I am a software engineer hyphen UI at LinkedIn. Favorite Happy Hour beverage right now. Probably a penicillin.

Ryan Burgess
What is a penicillin?

Sarah Showers
It is a whiskey based cocktail is a blended Scotch with a honey simple syrup, lemon juice and a lip freak floats.

Ryan Burgess
Sounds

Brian Holt
awesome. Yeah, I drink that.

Ryan Burgess
I don't know if I've ever had one I have, but I think I was really drunk. So you might need to try it again. Yeah. All right. Let's also go around the table and give a brief introduction. today's panelists. Derek, you want to start off?

Derrick Showers
Yep. Darren shower Senior Software Engineer at LinkedIn.

Augustus Yuan
I guess this year in front end engineer at Evernote.

Brian Holt
I'm Brian hole, and I only go on podcasts where I work at the company that the majority of those people are. The only way I'll do it.

Augustus Yuan
There's only one Netflix

Ryan Burgess
today. Yep. And I'm Ryan Burgess. I'm a software engineering manager at Netflix. In each episode of the front end, Happy Hour podcast,

Brian Holt
we

Ryan Burgess
like to choose a keyword that if it's mentioned at all, we will all take a drink. What did we decide Today's episode is stress, stress stress. So at any point in this episode, if we say the word stress, we will all take a drink. Alright, let's get started. What does work life balance mean to each of you?

Sarah Showers
I think for me, I've finally gotten to the point where I'm finding my feats as a newer software engineer. So three years since I started my engineering boot camp, two and a half years actually doing this professionally. Work life balance was kind of like I was working evenings and weekends a lot, a lot a lot just, I felt like to get by. Now I'm finally at that place where I like I have nights to myself to work on, like, things that I care about and things that I have fun about. So while I'm still writing code, it's not necessarily for work. It's more for like my own personal gain. And I really appreciate that I have that time now that I didn't have earlier on when I was getting started

Ryan Burgess
to do you find when you were starting, you're actually working on work work like even on the weekends? Definitely. Yeah. Yeah, it's nice when you can actually code for what you want to do and get a break from the work for sure.

Augustus Yuan
Yeah, at least for me, like a company that values like, work life balance. To me, it's like, that company values me as like a person, an individual and not just like, some machine that just writes code for that. Like, actually, when I started, like at Evernote, like, I was like, so excited to code so like even weekends I would code but now that I feel like I'm more of an adult. Now, I guess I'm gonna commit adult. Like, I definitely like value having work life balance, because I don't have enough time to just always be coding like I have like other responsibilities in my life. So

Ryan Burgess
and didn't your manager at the time encourage you not to work on?

Augustus Yuan
It's so true. Yeah, you did. You did. So. But yeah,

Brian Holt
I don't know that that kind of sounds like a dick.

Ryan Burgess
For me, too. It's it's really just yeah, not working all hours of the day and actually taking a break. And even I mean, I love to code in my free time as well. But I think sometimes it is taking a break from that as well is like doing something outside of it. Like even Augustus, you said you you have things other things that are going on, you can't just always be coding and I think yeah, Sarah, it is a good thing to code on the weekends for something you want to do. But I think sometimes it's just getting away from that altogether.

Brian Holt
Yeah, definitely. For me, like I've had jobs where like, I worked stupid amount of hours and emphasis on the stupid. And then I had I've had jobs where I had really, really good work life balance, you know, working, you know, up to 40 hours a week rather than more than 40 hours a week. And you know, 40 hours a week is not necessarily magic number. It's not the number where you feel like you have work life balance. Like sometimes when you have like lots of shit going on your life or you're working on stressful projects. We're working on projects like you don't know how to do because a lot of stress juice cheers Yeah, like that that number can fluctuate up and down how much like how much capacity you have to give. And I think it's just kind of on you to learn enough about yourself to figure out, like your well, right, like how much you have to give, because something my dad always used to say is you can't draw from an empty well, right. So if you're just totally exhausted, and you keep trying to pull from yourself, you're just, you're digging yourself deeper, and you're, you know, on the fast path to burnout. So, yeah, it's a, it's a ever moving balance.

Derrick Showers
One thing that, that I like to think about is, when I go on vacation, I like to make sure that I'm turning everything off. So I'll make sure that, you know, Slack is at least notifications are turned off. So I can, I guess, so that I can check it, but I never end up doing that. But I know a lot of people you know, that feel like they have to check in every day or you know, a few even a few times a week. But I think like, it's really important that if you go on vacation, you just need to take the time away. And I mean, I guess to just to own and if you if that doesn't, if that doesn't stress you out, then I mean, I guess that's fine. But I don't know, I just feel like a sense of renewed energy when I get back to work if I don't work versus if I go on vacation. I'm constantly checking email or, or, or, you know, checking in on things. And I've never really

Ryan Burgess
got no, I think that's a really good way to maintain like a good healthy work life balance is like you need those breaks. And that's what vacations are for. And I mean, I'm guilty, sometimes I will jump on my email, because I'll be less stressed. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. When I

Sarah Showers
come back to work. Yeah, I was about to make that point. I'm actually the opposite of Derek, when we're on vacation, I like to periodically check in. So when I get back to work for the first day, I don't have you know, 10 days worth of emails to catch up.

Derrick Showers
This is why I bring this up. Because you know, because it bothers you. Does it stress? Does it stress you Oh, this is actually a problem between Sara and I.

Brian Holt
So I have a solution for that. Just when you get back declared email bankruptcy like I do every day. Just like ignore them all. Delete, archive everything. Yeah, I

Sarah Showers
mean, figure if after 10 days, I'm gonna get that urgent that require or someone reaching out to me, it's probably not going to be that important. I need to check in on it. When I'm not in the office. I don't even take my work computer with me. So it's not like I could do

Ryan Burgess
anything. I'm sorry. But none of us are that important, too. You should be able to go away and everything should function without you. You're not that important. You

Brian Holt
said should a lot in that sentence. That's yeah. That's a good keyword. Yeah. So like, I have a problem with vacations that like I love to I love to travel internationally, I love to see the the world and for me, like I'll go into these, like these crazy vacations, I'll like see all of Italy in like 10 days. And I get back and I'm actually a little bit more stressed than when I left. Like I kind of see here. Yeah. This is a good one. So like, I think you need both kinds of vacations, right? Like you need to like spend a week in the Dominican Republic and just like chill out at like an all inclusive resort. And then that there is space for something like seeing a foreign country and doing all sorts of really cool stuff as well. But you know, kind of stressing yourself out a little bit more in the process. You need some downtime after the vacation. Yeah, definitely. So like for me, I've learned that I need to come back on like Saturday morning, Friday night, so that I have the weekend to recuperate, and then get ready to go back to work. So if I come back Sunday night and immediately go to work,

Ryan Burgess
especially with the time change, and you're going on an international trip and coming Yeah, that's it's not fun. Yeah, it's it sucks. Yeah. So I guess we kind of touched on it a little bit. But how are each of you at maintaining a good work life balance? Do you feel like you do a good job of it? I for one do not so like, I feel like I could do a lot better. There's times when I do a decent job of it. But then there's times where I just feel like I get sucked in and work is always on my mind. So

Sarah Showers
ask you a personal question. Yeah, how's that changed since the baby it's

Ryan Burgess
been a forcing factor, he's more important than anything at that point. So if he's hungry, or you know, need something that's trumps everything, so it's forced me to be a little better at it.

Derrick Showers
I think my problem is that like if I if I see an email come through or a message come through, it takes me I have a really hard time ignoring it and thinking about something else, especially if it's something that annoys me or you know, I don't know it's just like so even you know, I'll be like, in the middle of dinner or like in the middle of a conversation with somebody and I'll see this email and I'm like, Okay, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna think about it I'll respond tomorrow or later tonight, but then like, that's all I can like concentrate on so I think like there's ways around that this is something that I try to do is put my phone on Do Not Disturb mode. Like even do that during work hours. Like you know I get myself blocks of time to like an hour and a half to write code I turn everything on Do Not Disturb because the type I think it's just I don't think all people are like this but the type of person I am I think there are others like this that like you see something you just feel like you have to respond to it.

Ryan Burgess
I get it. Over the notification numbers, so I've started to turn off a bunch of my notifications. So I don't even get them suffocation badges on my phone? Oh, it drives me nuts. And actually, I'm a little upset. Android eight now has them. They've added the minute, the beauty of using an Android phone was you didn't have notification numbers. So it was perfect or the badging, and now they've added it. So that kind of sucks. I mean,

Augustus Yuan
I, I think, well, as we talked about, I used to be terrible, but I think I've gotten a lot better at it. But it's still like really daunting to like, maybe see a notification, I feel like, everything's just so wired together that like, it's really easy to like, message someone about something. And I'll like, take a look. And if it's something that I feel like it's blocking that person, then I'll try to I'll try to respond. But granted, I don't think the obligation is that I need to respond.

Ryan Burgess
Now I think that's probably part of it, too, is sometimes I'll even I'm guilty for it was all email someone not expecting them to respond. But it was like I was thinking of it. And so I can get it off my plate by sending it to them. I don't expect a response. But sometimes I'll get the response. I'm like, wait, I'm sorry for bugging you on your weekend. That's not what I was looking for. And so I think that's kind of bad, too, is you're feeding into that by trying to get someone else to respond.

Brian Holt
Yeah, I'm super good at ignoring that stuff. Really good. Well, first of all, my email box has really filtered like so it's you have to use really needs to be like a personal email you send directly to me to make it into my like focused part of my email box. Fuck, you

Derrick Showers
got that to work. I have tried so hard to get things out of my days of my life. I've moved every single thing. So Outlook is so what we're talking about Alec has focused in other similar how Gmail has primary and yeah, there guy. But Gmail works a lot better,

Brian Holt
a million times better. Don't fire us Microsoft,

Ryan Burgess
MVP, they're dogfooding their product. That's a good idea. So

Derrick Showers
what I'm saying is we have a lot of opportunities here.

Brian Holt
Anything automated whatsoever. If I see it in my inbox, the first thing I do is make a filter for put into a folder and then never look at the folder. And then just aggressively marking everything as unimportant. That's not important. And that ignoring it forever. And then like on the weekends and time off. And like if I'm doing something important, then like I just don't look at my phone. The first thing that was like really like a revelation in my work life balance was turning off, like the ringer on any notification. That's email. Right? So no email should be enough. Important enough for me to look at it immediately. It should never interrupt what I'm doing, whether that's personal or at work, I should not immediately have to look at email. If you need to immediately get a hold of me, come find me send me a Slack message. You know, paper airplane, something like not email, I would agree.

Ryan Burgess
So you're saying like you've turned it off. So you don't get any notification any vibrate anything at all? It doesn't. They're not on your notification screen on the phone. And

Brian Holt
email is like long response. If you send me an email, you're expecting a long response cycle. This is not print enough, right now, to immediately bring it to mind.

Ryan Burgess
I always used to have notifications where the email would go to the screen. It didn't make a sound or vibration or anything. But I recently turned that off altogether. And that is also removed the badging on iOS for Gmail. And I'm in love with that because like I check my email enough times throughout the day that I don't need the notifications. Yeah, trigger like, twice a day. And like that's that's it. And I

Derrick Showers
think if you if you do respond right away, you're you're helping the problem, or you're hurting the problem. I guess. You're feeding it. You're reinforcing it there. Yeah,

Brian Holt
you suck. That's the seesaw. Yeah, I

Derrick Showers
mean, I think, you know, if you reply to something right away, people are gonna start to see that and then expect that from you. So

Augustus Yuan
yeah, I mean, I feel like there should be like this general assumption that like two to three business days or something.

Brian Holt
Not immediately as what I say and if it's, and I might miss it, because like I just emails not the best way to get ahold me. I figured, like, if you really need it, you'll you'll find another way to contact me.

Ryan Burgess
I wish I had a bot to just respond to all my emails. That'd be perfect. I don't know if there's a smarter enough one yet.

Brian Holt
I don't know the Gmail ones pretty good.

Ryan Burgess
It is pretty good. It starts to suggest responses. Yep. I was like shit, that sounds like me. The one day I almost wrote exactly what it said. That's creepy. But yes, it's getting smart.

Derrick Showers
I want to see what Brian's responses

Ryan Burgess
what does your companies do to help foster good work life balance?

Brian Holt
I like LinkedIn in days those are kind of fun. What's an indie it's once a month it's they have various themes like they have like Culture Day where you come in, they do various activities and that kind of help you get into the culture or wellness like to help you be like more healthy. And then if you just need a day to take off no one's really upset if you just go home. But the one thing is that's consistent across the board. You cannot work.

Ryan Burgess
Oh like you legitimate art. doing magic work? Yeah,

Brian Holt
no meetings. It's also our Hack Day Night. Just

Sarah Showers
like when we do our sprint planning we take. So this I'm in a nine day sprint, sprint, because we have an index Friday. And our manager supports that are pm sports that to give him yeah, in days are sponsored by an executive. So when one theme is owned by some, you know, upper level executive. So yeah, it's all the way from the top that this is like a part of the culture that they're really trying to promote.

Ryan Burgess
That's awesome. Yeah, cuz if not everyone followed it, then it actually causes probably more problems. Because if like, your team was doing it, and my team wasn't doing it, then we're trying to interact and it's like, oh, well, they're on their end day and our team isn't respecting that. Like that would be difficult. Like I know, I've seen the I don't know if you guys have ever seen an IT companies where they have the no meeting days. Ours is a joke. I've seen some people at Netflix that have it. And some teams only respect it on their team level or even org level. But then, if no one else follows it, then it's a little wonky. Because you go to schedule a meeting with them. They're like, No, it's no work. You know, no meeting Wednesday, and like, oh, but we're all meeting and you're the only one that's not it's weird. Airbnb has

Derrick Showers
company wide no

Ryan Burgess
meeting Wednesday. See? And that's awesome.

Brian Holt
Yeah, cool. We have no meeting Wednesdays and most of my meetings are on Wednesdays,

Derrick Showers
seeing that doesn't make sense. Or the other problem is that your Thursdays are the worst.

Augustus Yuan
Forever. No, like, we have work from home Wednesdays and then we naturally don't put any meetings on that day. But I guess it's like for us, it's just like you dial in if there's like a meeting. But the nice thing is when you're working from home, people are less inclined to like put a meeting for you. Because they want to

Ryan Burgess
say want you in person or they're not coming up to your desk and bugging you in the middle of while you're coding. Yeah,

Augustus Yuan
exactly.

Ryan Burgess
So does the whole company do that?

Augustus Yuan
So yeah, actually good question. I actually just my team, I think some other teams who want to do it, but it's like on a team by team basis. So

Ryan Burgess
one thing I like about Netflix is weird for me in some ways, because and Brian, you've dealt with this, too, is that we had like a commute, like we both lived in San Francisco, and going on our to Los Gatos. In some ways, I actually like it in the fact that it's a forcing factor. When I worked at Evernote, I didn't have a forcing factor, because I had a really short commute, I had like a five minute walk from the building. And that was great and all that I didn't have to commute. But it made me stay there so much later, because I was like I don't have to commute home with the shuttles. It kind of forces me to do that. And I also like that there's early shuttles, not like you're waiting till like six or seven at night, I leave at 430, which is awesome. And just being able to leave at that time. It forces me to actually say no, gotta go and like, on my calendar that block it off so that people aren't scheduling meetings at that time, which is nice.

Derrick Showers
I think though, so I've also committed long distance, I think the flip side of that is, at least when I did it is i i hate ending the day rushed in like, feel like I didn't finish whatever I was working on. So often what I'll do with that is then when I get home, I'll you know I want to finish like what I was working on, and I'm working longer than I should at home. So I guess my point is, I think there's ways to be disciplined about I do agree with what you're Yeah, at its core. But I think you can also do that we have a short commute. Sure. And then you have a you have a lot of time. So like like if you can find a way maybe to break up your day. So like something that I've tried to do is go to the gym. Like I do it in the mornings, just because I like the mornings, but the afternoon is actually kind of nice, too. Because then you're like, you go to the gym for enough time to like maybe forget about what you've like been but I guess just let's say some sort of barrier. Yeah, I guess to I guess it works to your points you like the barriers the community in totally one for

Ryan Burgess
me. It's like I'm in meetings all day long. But that's pretty much my day. And so it's a forcing factor for me to leave. And I actually find in that hour. When I'm on the shuttle, I get a ton of work done so that when I get home, I don't have any work to deal with or anything. So there's times when I drove to work and then so I'm driving and you can't work while you're driving. And then that actually impacts my evening because I will feel like I have almost an hour to make up because there was a couple things I wanted to

Derrick Showers
destroy. I when I commuted I commute via Caltrain and and that's tough.

Ryan Burgess
Yeah, you don't have the Wi Fi.

Brian Holt
Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, made a huge difference that there was like Wi Fi and a shuttle and stuff like that. Yeah, it was a big thing. What I liked about Netflix in particular regards to that is like 430 was around the when the first shuttle was taking off. So after 430 There was zero meetings planned because you could not guarantee that anyone was gonna show point. Yeah. Whereas like LinkedIn, I give meetings like at 530 Sometimes Yeah. And like sometimes I was planning to leave a five I was like, Well, I gotta stick a stick around for my meeting. So I did appreciate that.

Ryan Burgess
Yeah, did the rest of the team that's not committee and you look around and they're pretty much all gone too, which is really nice. Like there's not many people staying there like really late. I've

Derrick Showers
noticed and I don't know this is to the reason that you just explained maybe it is and I really thought about before is when I worked in, in the like South Bay which is near where now. flexes. And I guess more people are commuting. And I do feel like people left earlier. Yeah, yeah, where's in the city. I mean, everyone lives within walking or a quick bus ride and or bike ride. And I do feel that people stay later.

Ryan Burgess
Also, one of the things that I thought was good, which I think all of our companies have is unlimited vacation. That is amazing. I honestly hope that we all take advantage of it. Sometimes. I don't think we do as much as we could. But it is nice to have the unlimited vacation. So even if you need a day off to run errands, go to the doctor or something little like just dealing with something, it doesn't impact your actual vacation time. It's just you can go and you know, take a day go to go do something. And that's not really a big deal.

Derrick Showers
I think this is an interesting topic, though. I, I think this can go both ways like you can it's also so it's similar in a way to remote to working remotely, you have more freedom to take more vacation, or to maybe not work all day if you work remotely, but then again, I think that people don't tend to take as much vacation because they're so great that they're abusing the policy. So it's I guess it's all about being

Augustus Yuan
Yeah, yeah, it does sound like statistically, like people, like do take less vacation when they're given this unlimited PTO. So it's, I don't know, it's, I guess, like to me, I will. So my team is pretty chill about like PTO. So like if we need to take a day off thing. But then I guess there's also like this kind of glooming. Like, you don't want to take too much time off. Whereas like in a company where you accrue like vacation days, you can be like, Okay, these are the only three weeks I have. So I'm free. I'm just going to take a dedicated three week vacation. Well, and

Ryan Burgess
also, I think to that point, too, is if you don't take those three weeks vacation, you actually get paid out. The only thing was yes, that's agreement and PTO is it doesn't matter you if you don't use it, it's not like they're like, Hey, you didn't use any of your vacation time, here's three weeks vacation pay? No, no, that's not how it works.

Brian Holt
This is why in particular, I've decided at the end, like I don't actually like unlimited vacation policies that I prefer regular PTO is because if you don't take vacation time, which is fine, like some people can elect to make that decision, but you eventually get paid out for it whenever you leave, or at the end of the year or something like that. It's actually money that the company carries on their ledger and pays out to eventually as money that they owe you. So you you only you also get paid for the time that you should have been there. But then you get paid on top of that for the time. The PTO time, right. And so if you never take it, you get paid out for it. Whereas if your company has an unlimited policy, which most of the companies I've worked for, for the past 10 years have had unlimited policies. But my first company, when I left, I actually ended up getting paid out for a decent amount of PTO, which was really, really nice.

Ryan Burgess
Yeah, especially when you're switching to a new job, you're like, Oh, this is a nice, it's a

Brian Holt
nice little, you know, bonus on the way out of the company. And then just what everyone's been saying, I've noticed that myself in particular that I've ended up, at least at previous companies, probably previous to Netflix that took a decent vacation other Netflix, that took less vacation time. So I guess if your company has unlimited policy, and that's something that you're interested in implementing your company, just make sure that they're well defined boundaries like that, we expect you to take at least two if you're not taking two, you're in trouble. And if you're taking more than five, you're also in trouble. fall somewhere in the middle, it should be defined that people can feel good about taking time off. And then to what the showers were both talking about earlier, people that take unlimited time off feel like they're still working, right. Like there's just that mentality, where as opposed to like, when you're taking a vacation day that you accrued, if something that you earned, like when you take that vacation is of something that you're in, you turn off everything because like this is my shit right now. Right? Whereas with, you know, unlimited vacation off, you still can't be like, maybe I should have been in the office today. I'm gonna leave slack on the day.

Augustus Yuan
Yeah, it's like the psychological implications of having it's like so interesting. There should be a research paper on this, like, very real. I would totally read

Brian Holt
I think there is.

Ryan Burgess
Yeah, there probably. Yeah. But it would also be interesting to to see, is it a saver for money on the company, too, because they're not having to pay out vacation? And also there's not paperwork for vacation. Usually, that would have to go that far and everything like that. Well, that isn't I think it's less stress on you to file that. Just have you ever had a bad work life balance experience? It was like working with a company that or manager slash boss that you know, was not delightful to work for?

Augustus Yuan
God will let me tell I can

Brian Holt
tell you, one of my managers, hey, you're talking about our man. Please, no. So when I was working at Reddit, God bless Reddit. And it's actually not even necessarily a product of like, read its policies or anything like that, like Reddit, for the most part was a pretty good employer in regards to giving people the time off that they needed. But I used to work on a marketplace, right an e commerce website and so on. Round Black Friday, the Friday right after Thanksgiving here in the US. Everything's on sale and everything's also on fire. Yeah, and so I had to work crazy hours to make sure that we were ready for Black Friday because we made like, 60% of our income on one day, right? So we had these sales and all these features that had like, it's like, drop dead business day. It's like, if you don't make this time, it's not like there's another Black Friday. So really, from August, beginning of August to probably like mid December. So from you know, for about four months, I was kind of ramping from likes, you know, I'm gonna say like, 5060 hours a week until like, the hours before, like the Black Friday sales. I was, I was sleeping in the office most nights. And so unbelievable burnout, right? Like I was incredibly stressed. Not cheers to that. But it was it was the nature of the beast, I was employee number 29. Right, like the it had to get done. And if I didn't do it, it didn't get done.

Ryan Burgess
The funny thing is, though, and I get that social with the startup is like you can't even necessarily plan too far in advance. But you know, black Friday's coming,

Brian Holt
but everything was on fire all the time. Yeah, that's true.

Ryan Burgess
I think that is the nature of the beast.

Brian Holt
No, it sucks. It sucks. Yeah, but but it is its survival. Right? Like, if you're not fixing, like, when you're working on Reddit, like if you're not fixing the bugs that the users leave? Yeah. And then they go to

Ryan Burgess
something else. Yeah,

Derrick Showers
it's specifically I had a similar experience at an agency, the agency was all of our clients were ecommerce companies. So it's like the worst of all worlds. But it's like, you know, especially when you are able to grow dollar amounts at it, you know, you're like, at least for me, I was the you can make threats that like we're going to lose a, you know, million dollar contract client client, or, or this client has lost X number of million dollars. For, you know, we had an issue with one of our clients, we broke the nav, the week of a week. And, you know, they estimated it as it is affecting their business by multi millions of dollars, you know, so then it's really hard to not stress out about that kind of thing.

Brian Holt
Like you're, I mean, cheers. You have to like, it's like, on one hand, I definitely want to encourage people to really look out for the work life balance. But on the other hand, this is a job, you're compensated, sometimes to stress about this. Cheers. Cheers. Like, it's not all ponies and unicorns all the time. And like that is an expectations that people set forth on Twitter, but like, it's a job, you have to do it like, and thank God like, it's not like we're not like firemen, right? Like, if it's a fireman has like 10 fires. And really, you got to put out all the fires, right? If all your servers are on fire, you have to put out all the fires, I guess

Ryan Burgess
it just it's a balance of for the company even to prioritize what is a fire and what's not, because I think when they're crying fire for something that's really not a fire totally, that that is really where it's a problem. And I know I've definitely run into that at a few places where it's like, panic to get something out the door when it's like really, that didn't have to be a crazy deadline. We could like shipping it a week later is really not the end of the world missing Black Friday, that is Black Friday. You can't tell everyone in the world guess what Black Friday is next Friday.

Brian Holt
I thought Netflix was super good about that. Like we missed a business deadline. Let's turn on business Ireland, but a non business deadline, right? Let's talk about why we missed it. But like let's, you know, push the date,

Ryan Burgess
we'll come up with like an aggressive deadline or to try and hold ourselves accountable. But if you're a week before that release, you're you're looking at it you're like, Yeah, we're not going to do it or we're not going to ship something that's really a great experience. How much time do we have we need an extra week? Well, let's just do that rather than everyone staying up all night and all hours to try and get it out the door? Because that sucks. Nobody's happy?

Brian Holt
Really?

Ryan Burgess
What did we lose if it got out a week later?

Brian Holt
And like sometimes like you you miss estimate the problem, right? Like sometimes it really is like a no fault problem. Like, we worked our asses off. We had unexpected speed bumps that we could not have foreseen. Like these are all okay, things to say of why we push today. Yeah,

Augustus Yuan
yeah. And they really like affects the quality of what you release to like, depending on what like are the obstacles that come out and you say, Hey, this is the hard deadline that we have to hit. Sometimes you have to like, sometimes, like people, like try to compensate for that. And inevitably, sometimes that's like not not what you want at all.

Ryan Burgess
When that's when people burn up to yes, they're working all hours at night just for something that if it's a legitimate fire, like your servers are on fire, yeah, that that's probably a good idea. Yeah.

Sarah Showers
Last quarter I was working on. On something that I had started from the ground up and it was kind of my first project that I owned at LinkedIn. And I felt a lot of pressure To meet this deadline, which I didn't realize at the time was like a totally arbitrary deadline. But the way it was being enforced, made me feel like it like this has to happen. And I was the only front end resource on it. And I felt like at the time, I had a heart stop on it. And like, what I didn't realize was like, I had the power to like, be like, you either need to change the scope of the project, you need to change the timeline, or you need to give me resources. But like, I was so stressed for like, weeks at a time, tears, weeks at a time trying to like, deliver this deadline. And like, it's now coming to the end of a whole other quarter later, and I'm still working on it. So like, like, the hindsight is like, I was never ever, ever going to make that deadline. But like, my status on my team at the time, like I just didn't know any better to be like, This is not good. But like, I'm going home, and I'm working at this at night. I'm going home, I'm working on this at the weekend, because you're trying to you're telling me I have this arbitrary deadline I have to hit and nobody, nobody told me any differently. And so, yeah, it you're gonna say it again, was stressful.

Augustus Yuan
Yes. Here's

Derrick Showers
one thing that I was told when I first started in this career, and I swapped from a different career. And it was very difficult. I was actually at the agency. And that was my first job. And so I remember asking my manager at the time, does this get any easier? Like, this is really stressful, and I go home at night, and I'm stressed, and I go on the weekends. And I'm stressed because I feel like I always have to work like three tears. Anyway, the advice he gave me was, I said, Does this get an easier? And he said, No, but you just, you'll just eventually care less. And like, I thought that was like one of the best advice that I've ever Yeah, if you think about it, and it's like, if you take it literally, then it's terrible. But if Yeah, if you think about like, the like, what that actually means, and I think it's like, and but I want to say before, it's kind of going back to what Brian was saying about the firemen is there are some jobs. And in fact, in the industry that I was in before, it was really hard to have work life balance, because as a fire man, if you if you're on call over, you know, a day off or whatever, you know, you have to work or like, in my previous job, I was a hotel manager, and no one had Saturday Sundays off. So it was like, everyone had different Saturday's off. Right. So everyone was working all the time. I think this seems to be true, probably if you're a nurse, or if you're, you know, all these businesses that are 24/7. And so it's really hard to have work life balance, because all these other people are working. And and and I think in our industry, there are there are advantages to having like everyone's on the same days, everyone goes for the holidays. And you know, usually there's code moratoriums put in place so people can enjoy this time off. But I think that to bring full circle, I think that sometimes we stress ourselves out by caring too much. And I'm not aligned. And I think that like we could do a better jobs. I know personally, I could do a better job, sometimes it's just letting it go.

Ryan Burgess
So I mean, to touch on the firefighters and the like nurses and everything like that, they have shifts on and off. Like they're, they don't get called in unless they are legitimately on call and they actually get paid to be on call. So and they're like safe.

Derrick Showers
So maybe I'll use the wrong example. But when I was a hotel manager, I was salaried. And so like, I would come back from my weekend, which was like a Monday, Tuesday, and I would have hundreds of emails because so much had happened like the I guess my point was the business you saw the business doesn't stop. So you have all this follow up like you don't have the ability and even though you weren't like something's

Ryan Burgess
happening where you expected to like,

Derrick Showers
I mean, it's, you know, it maybe there's I expectations is, is relative, but like you there's things going on that you have knowledge about that maybe other people don't, whereas when in our jobs like No, most people are having fun on the weekend, they're doing their own thing and they're not expecting.

Augustus Yuan
This actually brings up an interesting Do you guys have like an on call kind of thing set up at your workplaces? Because that's an interesting kind of tidbit of like work life balance where you might have to sacrifice some weekends, but then holistically like the whole team, maybe your product, right? So which is like awesome.

Sarah Showers
And when I was a contractor actually got paid double. So I cheered to be on call during a cold code moratorium over the holidays because I was in town and cool. Yeah, I also had to bank my vacation time when I was a contractor and so it just allowed me to get paid for an unpaid week of time.

Brian Holt
I'm in the example of the firefighter which I should probably like Like Derrick played off? Yeah, so fuck you too? Yeah, most of our jobs aren't life and death. So it's, for example, maybe the hotel manager is a sort of more apt example that,

Ryan Burgess
that there's like the business doesn't sleep necessarily what I guess what, um,

Brian Holt
what I worry about is I see some newer developers and even older developers come in and just like, like, I'm only working 35 hours a week. And if I don't have a my time, my desk, and a massage scheduled in my office, then I'm not working right. Like, work is hard sometimes, right? Like, I've really enjoyed my job. I've enjoyed all of my jobs, right? So we have a pretty sweet life, or at least I do, I have a pretty sweet life and like to complain about things, but for the most like, sometimes it is time to buckle down and work. Yeah, no, no, yeah. But then on

Sarah Showers
the flip side of that, the days that I do, go to the gym, in the middle of the afternoon, or whatever, and I'm forcing myself to take that time away, I think I am often way more productive. If I give myself that, even though it's just half an hour, to be away and come back mentally refreshed, because I'm not thinking about it. Like, I feel like, after I've given myself that time, I'm so much more productive. And I think that's why a lot of managers actually support people like, go be involved in activities, go to the gym, go do your mindfulness exercises, like whatever it is you need to do. I think it's a good thing that managers like support, people going and actually taking that time for themselves. A

Derrick Showers
lot of people say I don't have time for that. And I guess that's what I'm trying to get. That's what I'm trying to get is you can make time for it. But it's hard. It's not easy. It's like you always think that you're too busy to go to the gym, or you're too busy to go to to participate in de there's a lot of people I mean, I know they they claim no work. But there's, I have heard I've been in LinkedIn for three years. And I've heard countless times. I never have an NDA because I'm too busy. But I think you you you do that to yourself to an extent. Yeah, there's exceptions to that. But

Augustus Yuan
I 100% agree. Like, we also have like an Evernote hack week. And we're told not to work on anything. Like any actual project. Yeah, they're like, and everyone's like, pretty set on that. But sometimes we sneak

Derrick Showers
in, I do it. I'm like, you know, there's meetings I really want to go to or tech talks or that we have that too at LinkedIn. And like, I'm like, I want to go to this business. And I'm like, I can't do that. I'm too busy this week. But I'm really not. I mean, I am busy. But I'm really like I can make time for it. If

Brian Holt
I Yeah. Or on the flip side, you are always that busy? Yeah. Yeah.

Ryan Burgess
Is there anything that companies can do to help foster a better work life balance?

Brian Holt
So actually, this is something I was thinking about this week, at LinkedIn, like I walked into our little cafe that we have on our floor, like a like coffee break room, I guess is what it would, what it would be. And like, they have stuff to do pour over coffee in our That's badass, which is great, right? But I always like, Well, I was walking in there almost every day. And I was like, had the opportunity to either use the machine or do a pour over coffee. And it's like, I never have time to do a pour over coffee. And I was like, it was like, they wouldn't put this in here. If they didn't expect me to take 15 minutes occasionally to make myself pour over coffee. I was like, fuck it, I'm gonna make myself pour over coffee. And it was amazing. I loved it. And everyone should have pour over, I can do it.

Derrick Showers
I used to do it almost every day. And I thought the exact same thing. I was like, I don't have time for this. Like, I just want to push a button and get my coffee. But it's you

Ryan Burgess
just need to schedule the time you and Brian can have an invite together for over coffee things

Derrick Showers
there. So all right, there you go,

Brian Holt
like in olink arms and like pour it over each other and stare into each other eyes.

Sarah Showers
Just like bias setup for that little sofa area you guys have over by your desk. And you can walk over and you can have a bonding experience in the sofa area, make your coffee

Brian Holt
tell each other about our dreams. But we have this coffee break room. That's pretty fancy to do that. But like I think like for example, LinkedIn has a gym, right? And at sending a message to employees, like we expect you to take time out of your day to take care of yourself.

Derrick Showers
I've heard the flip side of this. I've heard people and I've actually had this arguing with people. And they're like, you know, down in Sunnyvale, they have basketball courts at LinkedIn. And people are like, oh, there's never anyone on there, like these tech companies provide, you know, not just like my LinkedIn, but they're talking about Google and like these companies provide all this stuff, and no one's ever using them. And that's like, the sign that they provided. And it's like an incentive to work there. But they're not actually they're not actually using it. But I think that goes back to the point I was making is I think you can I mean,

Ryan Burgess
you have to make time though. I think it's on Yeah, on you as the individual. Like they're not going to force you to go play basketball, right? It's like I see people at Netflix playing basketball often actually, but I've never played it.

Sarah Showers
One of my favorite things to do and it's a it's kind of like not widely known, but LinkedIn has multiple means Sit groups across their classes and they provide acoustic equipment, electrical equipment, they have silent play at room so everything is headphones, but they also have a fully like soundproof playout room. We have an acapella group. So like once a week I'm like gone for an hour and I rehearse with acapella group and like I don't know that I could ever go work at a company that didn't have that now it's my like, highlight of every single week.

Derrick Showers
Which they are started trying to start at Netflix.

Ryan Burgess
Are they actually getting on together? Isn't?

Sarah Showers
Yeah, you have to alum from from Intune What the What was the name they came up with?

Brian Holt
It's got to be some clever pun on the name it always is it Why is what is LinkedIn? Intune? It's,

Augustus Yuan
oh, yeah, it was so good. Airbnb beats. Oh, like actually ever know what to start with? And we were gonna call it Evernote. But oh, we didn't have enough people.

Sarah Showers
There is the songbirds from Twitter. There's pin tunes from Pinterest.

Brian Holt
Ooh, get a better name.

Sarah Showers
Where registers that's a smart.

Ryan Burgess
Good, actually. Yeah. Yeah.

Sarah Showers
Shameless plug tech Capella is usually at the beginning of December, and all of the acapella groups from these companies do a concert. And it's really cool. But yeah, the the music program, I think is one of my favorite things that LinkedIn offers. It's very unique to LinkedIn.

Augustus Yuan
Yeah, I guess like forever? No, I think we still offer this but we might just give you like, $1,000 to like use, like, if you have to, like show that you're actually using it like a plane ticket or like, just like a bunch of receipts. But like, they're like, Hey, by the end of the year, because we had this problem with unlimited PTO, where people aren't taking it. So they're like, Okay, well, every year you get $1,000, to like to put towards your vacation put towards your vacation. So I think

Ryan Burgess
that is cool. Encourage you to actually take the time to go on a vacation. So that is like a flight or hotel. Exactly, yeah.

Augustus Yuan
But actually, like, I think a bigger thing that my team has kind of done to help with work life balance that I found is like when we move to Agile, and we've gotten way better at like, kind of costing committing to like certain work. I think like even from like a management perspective, like for my team, like when we moved to when we went to Agile when you'd like formerly had like sprint planning, like storytime and stuff like it like it feels like really comfortable to know that like, Okay, this is the amount of work we're bringing in and committing for these two weeks for sprint. And then like, no one's like that. We know we can get that work done. And it's like, we give us ourselves like some leg room. And there's like lots of like, points of communication like times like during stand up to like, bring up hey, we can make this deadline. I feel like just kind of doing those things like setting up. That kind of environment. Like really helps

Ryan Burgess
with work like like helping set like expectation Exactly. We're tising I think that's really important is just like we've mentioned it here is sometimes like not everything's on fire. So how do you prioritize the work? And I think that can really help everyone feel good about what they're delivering? Yeah, at the end of each episode, we like to share pics of things that we found interesting and like to share, let's go around the table and share pics of for today's episode, Brian, you want to start?

Brian Holt
Yep, I have two that actually do pertain to a work life balance. One of them is called the Focus app I may have picked up before but I'm gonna pick it again because it's applicable to me about it. I've never tried it though. Like, there's the Pomodoro thing, right? Like work 25 minutes, take a break for five minutes. And then you take like four in a row. And then even longer play. I have to I had to adjust it to me because I have I can stay focused pretty well for about 15 minutes and five zero that is 15 minutes. And then I need a 20 minute break. 15 minutes, and then I take an eight minute break. And I do three of those before take a 20 minute break. Do you still use it? Yeah, that's awesome. Is that on and off? Yeah, like so sometimes I find that like I'm like staying in the zone and doing really well. So I just don't use it. But other times I find that my like focus, like I'm living more burned out or I'm a little bit more getting back into the swing of things from like vacation or something like that and all that kind of get back onto it. So I really enjoy focus, there's a million Pomodoro type things out there. You're welcome to use whatever you want. I just like to focus because let me adjust the time periods because 25 minutes is not useful for me. I found myself doing to write in a row. So that's definitely one definitely check it out. I like it because for 15 minutes I know I like working like doing work applicable things and I know at the end of it I can check Twitter for eight minutes or I can hop on Reddit or something like that waste time for or get up and walk around or get a coffee or something like to

Derrick Showers
pour over coffee. Yep, exactly. As long as if it's an eight minutes you need to really

Brian Holt
yeah, don't give a shit have. So I mean, it's just like permission to get up and go do with thing, right? It's also nice because it's on iOS works on Apple Watch. That kind of thing. Actually, surprise second pick is to not have an Apple watch, and I'm looking at the showers right now.

Ryan Burgess
I'm wearing one as well and run

Brian Holt
to more to be more disconnected than connected that and that was important for me. I know other people handled a lot better than I did. But like getting notifications on my wrist was a huge problem for me, like I wear a Fitbit. But I turned all the notifications off. That was really important for me to just maintain work life balance, because I was getting notified all the time, I need to be less connected to the world not more connected. So my actual second pick, not the anti Apple Watch pick is the website to do list.com. It's exactly what it sounds like. It's a really fancy to do list. I'm pretty poorly organized sort of person I don't like doing I hate what I like to refer to as metalwork, which is why I don't like Jira, I don't like Trello. I don't like any of those things. I hate doing work about doing work. So anything that is like that is the worst.

Derrick Showers
He lost me I hate.

Brian Holt
The fact that I'm like, I'm committed to do work about work I'm about to do is just like melts my brain. But the reason why I can handle to do this is because I'm such a poorly organized person, I often forget to do like things that are actually important to me, like, you know, call the vet about my dog or mail these bills off, or things like that. And so what I really like about Todoist is I can throw things on there as like, This is shit that just has to get done. I'll make sure to check it a couple times a day. And then if I forget to do it, it reminds me in the morning is like, hey, here are things that you missed. Here's what we suggest how you reschedule them, right? Like you don't have much on next Tuesday, you might want to schedule these things for next Tuesday. And it just kind of like helps you figure out how to like slot things back into your day. So you don't have like a Monday where you have 15 tasks. So it works across their app, the and the web, and it's it's pretty great. So I would definitely suggest that.

Ryan Burgess
Awesome. Augustus Vidya.

Augustus Yuan
Sure, yeah, I actually have two picks. They're like from Google. One is called How to Fix a toilet calm. It's like this pretty. It's this article that started getting neat. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Do you know how

Brian Holt
to fix the toilet? My toilet is actually broken right now. Oh, really? So can fix it? Well, there we go. Yeah, actually, well,

Augustus Yuan
this is a great pic. I'll have to Google it. But yeah, it's basically it's like this. It's actually its own website. But it's just an article about all the things like kind of a data visualization. And like an article of all this, like, like, how many people have looked up how to do something in Google. And it's like, there's a lot of cool, like findings and metrics. And like they even like to like what do certain regions look up for how to it's like, pretty interesting. I thought it was a really well written article. And visualizations are super beautiful. So I think it's worth checking out. And then my other pick is, Google started releasing a bunch of projects. One of them was called sketch to AE, where you could take like, a sketch file, and then like, export it into After Effects. And I guess there's like this thing where like, the layers for in Sketch, like they don't translate super well. And so when you like try to when you rebuild something, and After Effects, you have to like do it all again. So they've kind of figured that out. And then I had this like crazy idea, because one of my old picks was ladi. From Airbnb, we can take after effects and turn them into React components. So you have like a system where you can take skin. Just kidding, but

Brian Holt
there is no there is there's reacts get

Derrick Showers
coaster After Effects.

Augustus Yuan
Yeah, like, not, I'm totally kidding, but I thought it of itself was cool. So, Derek odf.

Derrick Showers
Alright, so I recently traveled to New York last week. And so my pics are all New York related and kind of work life balance, because they're not tech related at all. My first pick is the New Freedom Tower. There's an observation deck, which I didn't even know on 100 and third floor and it's actually really cool. It's very modern recording on September 11, so I thought it was a good picture because it's yeah, it's it shows how we can rebuild and it is like you're in the future. Like you you go up there and the host they show you this video and his whole screen like goes away and then shows you the view of New York City so and there's a bar on top so I

Brian Holt
liked that. That's the reason okay, I'm

Derrick Showers
Percy has no bar

Sarah Showers
telling me I saw I did not go on this trip with him. But when you're riding the elevator, you start and it starts at like what 1900 And as you go up, the year increases and the sky Oh,

Derrick Showers
Who? And they actually have the Twin Towers? Yeah. And they kind of disappear like in 2000. But it's just really well done. That's

Ryan Burgess
so cool.

Derrick Showers
Yeah, cool. My second pick is Shake Shack because I'd love Shake Shack. The burgers are amazing. We

Ryan Burgess
don't have it on the West Coast,

Derrick Showers
they are so much better than in and out. I don't care what anyone says. That's all I say. My third pick pick is actually I never thought I would pick something other than Southwest as far as airlines are concerned because I love southwest. I even own stock in Southwest and Shake Shack, but

Brian Holt
there's, there's a reason okay. But to cut through his bullshit to get to a

Derrick Showers
jet flew back from New York, and they were amazing. I've flown them before, and they were okay. But so I guess this isn't on all our flights, but they have free high speed internet that you can that they allow streaming so you can even stream any streaming service? What? Yes, yeah, that's awesome. They're partnered with Amazon Prime. So they're like their TVs have all Amazon Prime shot shows but making stream and it's like, it's like 1.5 to two megabits per second.

Brian Holt
So they're one of the first if I'm not mistaken, the one of the first providers to use satellite internet. So everyone else uses this like crazy stupid system. Gogo. Yeah. And it bounces it off the ground. Yeah, just anything over water looks terrible. Yeah, it doesn't work at

Derrick Showers
all. Yeah, it's amazing. And I mean, I don't mind paying a little bit for internet, but it's annoying when you have to pay for your phone. And then you have to pay for your laptop and it's free. You don't have to worry about any of that go goes just annoying. I think they have Dunkin Donuts, coffee. Oh, there's a reason?

Augustus Yuan
Do you have stock with Dunkin Donuts?

Sarah Showers
We're gonna go buy something.

Ryan Burgess
Sarah, what do you have for us?

Sarah Showers
So I found myself in the last six months, there was a shift in people on our team. I meant started mentoring a reach apprentice, which you should go to LinkedIn and read all about this amazing REACH program. But I essentially found myself with a lot of commitments and funding, I didn't have as much time at my desk to write code anymore. And so I like struggled for a bit trying to like figure out ways to like, get my productivity back up, back up. So Derek hates that I use pen and paper, but I love writing things down. I think it I find it very soothing. But it also helps me kind of like, plan my shit. And so I invested in this journal. And I know people use bullet journals and various other techniques, but I found this one called best self. And I just really liked that. It pre formats, a lot of things for you, which I didn't like the investment upfront that bullet journal would have required. So best self allows me to, I have like a month view, I have a week view, I have a debut. So I actually started time blocking 30 minutes at the beginning of my day to sit down and time blocked my entire day. And so you know, a lot of people have this inbox zero mentality that I like to have nothing in their inbox. I like to have this like Inbox Zero mentality in terms of like, all of my time is accounted for. So I know that like today, I can go to the gym, I realistically have like, an hour more than I could be away from my desk. But I also know that I have three hours to write code today. And so I know I can go to stand up and be like, Hey, I'm either going to deliver on this thing today or I'm not, because I kept finding that I was going to stand up and like, think I can do this thing. But realistically, I was going to stand up and not delivering and I just started to feel shitty, and it compounded on me. So it just, it's been a really useful tool for me to can't like manage my time and my productivity. And it's been a really good tool for me to manage my time and my productivity. And it also gives me 30 minutes at the start of my day to really set myself up well. And I'm really liking it. I'm not suggesting everybody go and spend you know, 30 some dollars on a journal but you know, there's methods some of you should I like this. I like it. I would recommend it. But I know it's not for

Derrick Showers
everyone, especially people like Brian who loves to spend as much time as possible pining a day. Yes. He loves meetings. You guys have like the exact opposite fix. Like flavor.

Brian Holt
I'm gonna go tell my wife about it because she's gonna fucking love it. Awesome. See?

Ryan Burgess
I have two picks. One is I guess you could say it's kind of work life balance because it's, well it's tech related but it's not coding related, which is the MOBO photo M tp 11 Which is actually a good for doing time lapses. We actually shot with it today while we were recording but it turns the cameras slowly on a counterclockwise or clockwise so that you can I actually have a little bit more interesting of a time lapse. So I've been playing with that a lot lately. It's kind of fun to play with. So just set it and forget it. So that's nice. And then my second pick is actually Sarah Dresner is SVG animation book. I bought it when it first came out and only kind of flipped through it a little bit, but I've actually started to look at a lot more and, man, it's got some pretty cool ideas for dealing with SVG. So I highly recommend checking that one out. Just want to say thank you to Sarah for joining us on yet another episode with being her fourth episode. Thank you for joining us. Always a pleasure to have you.

Brian Holt
She's the better showers.

Ryan Burgess
I don't disagree.

Derrick Showers
She takes better showers.

Ryan Burgess
Thank you all for listening. Today's episode. If you'd like to send us a message, we are always happy to hear from our listeners. You can tweet at us at @frontendhh or find us on Facebook. Any last words?

Brian Holt
Speaking of Inbox Zero, I would invite all of you to strive for inbox 10,000. Is that your goal? I'm already there.

Ryan Burgess
Nice.