Banter RDT CXCII - TDDS

[Mr Q]

I work in the public service and in the year or two before Covid I put in a request to WFH once per week. It got pushed back almost instantly. 'Nah, we can't do that, it sets a preecedent and it will take us ages to set you up, blah blah blah.' Covid hits and literally overnight they set up wfh arrangements for thousands of staff, no dramas at all.

I'd actually arranged WFH two days a week from the start of 2019, so I was already fully set up for WFH already. When I was told by my manager that I was in the first tranche of people being told not to come into the office due to Covid, I was fine (I was first because I had kids under two - everyone else ended up being told WFH the next week). Just didn't get on the bus the next morning.

The interesting thing was all the rigmarole that I had to go through to make WFH possible back then (down to showing pictures of my proposed work space to HR for approval), that all just evaporated.

I now work 7/10 a fortnight at home (and 9/10 in school holidays)

The technological solutions that allowed WFH to suddenly take over for office workers wouldn't have worked even as little as five years earlier. It would have been an absolute nightmare. Ten years before that utterly impossible I think.

 

[Dazzler9]

A 3 and 2 arrangement for me, but might change to 2/3 or 5/5 over a fortnight. I definitely do value time in the office, despite hating the commute and, well, generally hating the office. But face to face discussions can be invaluable.

 

[txbyhull]

Really trying to figure out if I want to pursue a career with WFH potential. Second year teaching student. Combined with the fact I hate kids under 14. Have placements prepared at high schools in my home town (be nice to spend time with my parents), but I feel like I’ll only end up going to a year 11-12 college at this rate.

 

[Bender_]

A 3 and 2 arrangement for me, but might change to 2/3 or 5/5 over a fortnight. I definitely do value time in the office, despite hating the commute and, well, generally hating the office. But face to face discussions can be invaluable.

We didn't have to come in at all for a period. And then one of our team that is an infamous misanthrope started getting even more isolated and weird and the bosses started getting worried about him, so now I have to do the fortnightly check-in to make sure I'm not writing any sort of manifestos.

 

[Bender_]

Really trying to figure out if I want to pursue a career with WFH potential. Second year teaching student. Combined with the fact I hate kids under 14. Have placements prepared at high schools in my home town (be nice to spend time with my parents), but I feel like I’ll only end up going to a year 11-12 college at this rate.

At least as a high school teacher you'll be able to walk into almost any school you want at some point. What subject/s are you focusing on?

 

[kane249]

The technological solutions that allowed WFH to suddenly take over for office workers wouldn't have worked even as little as five years earlier. It would have been an absolute nightmare. Ten years before that utterly impossible I tthink

As someone who works in IT, it was a nightmare. We have to rework our entire companies VPN solution to allow that many people to work from home in a few short weeks. Before that it was assumed ar most you would have a spattering of people doing it, you then had to scale a solution that would allow everyone to do it and in a small time frame as we didn't know when lockdowns would go into effect.

Add to that the user side of it as well.

"Hey I've got two screens, a docking station, headset, keyboard and mouse in the office yeah? OK now I want you to duplicate that exact same setup at home for me. I dont want to carry my stuff back and forth"

Nevermind the company only paid for the office equipment, expectation was to just pull the exact same stuff out of thin air for them to use at home. Luckily HR stepped in to set rules around that. People were not happy when they were told they would have to either take their stuff home from the office, or buy stuff out of their own pocket if they wanted a home office setup.

The other kicker that came with it was the semi conductor shortage. Factories got shut down during that period, so it caused a global shortage on semi-conductor chips. What would take a week or 2 to get in, was now taking months to a year to get in.

Was one of the most challenging periods to get through.

 

[Bender_]

As someone who works in IT, it was a nightmare. We have to rework our entire companies VPN solution to allow that many people to work from home in a few short weeks. Before that it was assumed ar most you would have a spattering of people doing it, you then had to scale a solution that would allow everyone to do it and in a small time frame as we didn't know when lockdowns would go into effect.

Add to that the user side of it as well.

"Hey I've got two screens, a docking station, headset, keyboard and mouse in the office yeah? OK now I want you to duplucate that exact same setup at home for me. I dont want to carry my stuff back and forth"

Nevermind the company only paid for the office equipment, expectation was to just pull the exact same stuff out of thin air for them to use at home. Luckily HR stepped in to set rules around that. People were not happy when they were told they would have to either take their stuff home from the office, or buy stuff out of their own pocket if they wanted a home office setup.

The other kicker that came with it was the semi conductor shortage. Factories got shut down during that period, so it caused a global shortage on semi-conductor chips. What would take a week or 2 to get in, was now taking months to a year to get in.

Was one of the most challenging periods to get through.

Must've been rough for you to have to expand your trouble shooting vocabulary beyond "have you tried turning it on and off again?".

 

[RookiePick]

Luckily for Txby, they have already made a cool instructional video on teaching older cohort.

 

[txbyhull]

At least as a high school teacher you'll be able to walk into almost any school you want at some point. What subject/s are you focusing on?

Maths major, Science minor geared towards PE Studies / Human Bio. Don’t plan on teaching much science though.

Really important to me to be teaching people that want to be there, which greatly reduces the number of schools I can pick in the south west. Only reason I’d remain in Perth is to teach at really high-end institutions

 

[txbyhull]

Luckily for Txby, they have already made a cool instructional video on teaching older cohort.

View attachment 2462009

I’ve actually seen this one guys! Shocking, I know

 

[Bender_]

Maths major, Science minor geared towards PE Studies / Human Bio. Don’t plan on teaching much science though.

Really important to me to be teaching people that want to be there, which greatly reduces the number of schools I can pick in the south west. Only reason I’d remain in Perth is to teach at really high-end institutions

My wife is a qualified highschool maths teacher, she taught at a couple of schools for 8 years or so before joining the examination side of stuff for Dept of Ed. Don't think you'll have much trouble choosing your work place with those qualifications.

 

[Mr Q]

As someone who works in IT, it was a nightmare. We have to rework our entire companies VPN solution to allow that many people to work from home in a few short weeks. Before that it was assumed ar most you would have a spattering of people doing it, you then had to scale a solution that would allow everyone to do it and in a small time frame as we didn't know when lockdowns would go into effect.

I'm an IT worker (though not much in the user space these days).

The scaling up of remote access solutions was incredible - but at least possible. I think the challenges would have been a magnitude harder in 2015 - and before 2010 I really don't think many organisations would have been able to do it at all.

One thing I think we sort of learned from it all though is the critical importance of the whole retail home Internet infrastructure. It needs to be stable, it needs to be reliable, it needs to perform. I think that the rollout of full fibre is a good result that may not have happened prior to this.

 

[Mr Q]

Maths major, Science minor geared towards PE Studies / Human Bio. Don’t plan on teaching much science though.

Really important to me to be teaching people that want to be there, which greatly reduces the number of schools I can pick in the south west. Only reason I’d remain in Perth is to teach at really high-end institutions

My brother was a PE teacher back when he started out, and one of the realities his cohort all discovered as they got older was that teaching PE just got harder and harder as they got older.

That background in science will be a saviour down the track when you just can't physically keep up with the kids any longer.

 

[Dazzler9]

My brother was a PE teacher back when he started out, and one of the realities his cohort all discovered as they got older was that teaching PE just got harder and harder as they got older.

That background in science will be a saviour down the track when you just can't physically keep up with the kids any longer.

My daughter's primary school PE teacher takes them out onto the oval, sits down, and starts up the beep test. Nice work if you can get it.

 

[Barrybran]

Really important to me to be teaching people that want to be there

Might have to lower your expectations...

 

[txbyhull]

Might have to lower your expectations...

Definitely true for the majority. I’d like to be teaching ATAR preferably, easier due to the lack of qualified maths teachers. But I know I’ll have to start with the younger high schoolers, so I’d love to at least get a few that want to learn.

 

[RookiePick]

Definitely true for the majority. I’d like to be teaching ATAR preferably, easier due to the lack of qualified maths teachers. But I know I’ll have to start with the younger high schoolers, so I’d love to at least get a few that want to learn.

My kids are all early-middle highschool. Their teacher's attitude to teaching makes a massive difference in how enthused they are about the class. A much bigger difference than what the subject matter is.

My boy killed it in maths in y7 and loved it. y8 and a different teacher, still performing very well but incessantly complains about maths.

 

[WCErevival]

I always find school teaching a strange thing to get into as a first career. Spend your youth at school to learn everything and then go straight into teaching young people what you learnt. Kind of like uni people that never work outside of uni. Each to there own though.

 

[txbyhull]

I always find school teaching a strange thing to get into as a first career. Spend your youth at school to learn everything and then go straight into teaching young people what you learnt. Kind of like uni people that never work outside of uni. Each to there own though.

Me personally, I’ve just found that it fits a lot of what I want from life and utilises talents (I’d like to think) I have. We’ll see though haha

 

[RookiePick]

I always find school teaching a strange thing to get into as a first career. Spend your youth at school to learn everything and then go straight into teaching young people what you learnt. Kind of like uni people that never work outside of uni. Each to there own though.

That's why the shop teachers were always interesting. Brought a lot of, often times colourful, life experience to the role.

Unfortunately for me they showed the safety video day 1 of year 8 and watching Timmy the surfer's long hair pull him into the lathe pretty much ended any interest in woodwork or metalwork class once I got a choice of electives.

 

[DorothyG]

One positive that came out of COVID has to be this:




What a bunch of ****wits

 

[TY24]

is Breaking Bad as good as everyone says it is? Like generationally good?

Here's the IMDB ratings for every episode.

Only one episode in the entire series drops below 8 (and anyone who's seen it will know exactly which episode it was too)

 

[Bender_]

View attachment 2462064

Here's the IMDB ratings for every episode.

Only one episode in the entire series drops below 8 (and anyone who's seen it will know exactly which episode it was too)

The Fly?

 

[TY24]

The Fly?

Spoiler

 

[Ochre]

The Fly was a great episode.

Also it's as good as everyone's saying, but it's also slow at times, so don't go in expecting your dick to be blown off every five minutes.