You should not be afraid of a conflict

Thanks for reading! I'm writing about my remote work journey thanks to covid-19 forced me to😂 I'm. writing now almost a month now (Day 24 and 25)

Work-related

I'm definitely now into too many things:

• The big pull-request (check out posts from Day 18-21)
• Our App moving towards WebViews for now. Me supporting them
• Our own A/B-Test
• Feedback Cycle (6 open requests).

We will have some meetings over next week, to tackle open questions about this big feature packed pull-request.

Today I (re)learned (TIL)

How do you tackle conflicts?

Two years ago I got the feedback that I'm trying to not be in much conflicts professionally even when I should. It's not about being toxic but rather having constructive discussions and also when I believe in something communicating clearly Why I believe in my opinion and the advantages.

It could be a technical solution or non-technical. It could be giving feedback to a CTO. I should not be afraid, yet learn the tools.

This week I realized how I changed from "I don't want a conflict" to "How can I raise this properly, so my concerns are understood without blaming someone."

A person's success in life can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations he or she is willing to have. - Tim Ferris (4hour work week)

This quote keeps coming up again and again in my career, the more I learn and grow.

Technical Learning:

• Be careful when you want to do componentWillUnmount or using Hooks to have specific unmount routines.

I found an issue where the unmount event is not triggered because we do a URL change and the browser updates the URL.

This seems obvious yet I took me some time to understand why this is not happening 😂

Personal

Germany is relaxing the lockdown light 🎉
Yet I'm concerned as in Berlin many people act like nothing happened. No masks, no gloves, no social distancing. Berlin had always this shitty cultural attitude (trust me, I'm born here) and it looks like it never changed. I think because Berlin as a 3.5 million city got lucky with ~5K corona infections and 100+ deaths. The numbers look like seasonal flu, but I doubt if we would continue like we did before, a second hit would be worse.

Also I'm disappointed how politicians and many parts of the society don't care about kids. I have two small kids in the kindergarten and according to the news and decision makers, I need to keep them at home until August.

How the fu**** ? No playground, no social contact to family. How should this work out?

This shows me again, what I deeply experience and know from others:

Germanys is the one of the worst G20 states to raise kids.

It's not about education, yet existing systemic racial inequality, but hidden in the data.
It's not about the fact that germans are annoyed when a kid cries in the Bus, but are deeply caring about dogs when they are afraid of bus driving.
It's the overwhelming institutional "we don't care" attitude. There is no platform to educate kids online. 100.000+ kids across Germany are not getting education and most are not lucky to have parents trying to do home schooling somehow.

Especially in districts with high immigration rates, teachers don't care. Families often too. Even if, there is no easy way to reach out.

It's frustrating and annoying. One of the richest countries in this world, has NO digital education strategy, NO homeschooling plan, NO digitalization of any educational stuff.

Teachers got paid to do their work, but sending one email with some papers is not their job. It's their responsibility to come up with creative solutions.

Besides, we realized with this new decision, my wife and I can't keep up this high-intense, stressful plan. 6h + 8h of work and having two kids at home is impossible to manage. So my wife reduces her work time, takes some leaves. I'm not happy with this, yet it's a decision based on rational thoughts (me earning more, she having a not clear future career in the current role). Yet, I believe many families will do the same due to systemic gender pay gap. Covid-19 will remove many of these achievements. Let's see how this will work out in one year.

Take care!

Cheers,

Ferit