In brief: The early part of this week will see some storm chances, especially Tuesday. After that we’ll be mostly sunny and increasingly hot through the weekend. Some slightly lower humidity is also in the cards, a real blessing in June. Finally, we’re following the possibility of heavy rain next week as a tropical disturbance develops in the Gulf.
Houston will see fairly normal weather this week for June, which is to say plenty of heat and some humidity, and scattered shower and thunderstorm chances. While that is far from pleasant, I consider this type of weather a win. Why? Because the summer months bring the biggest threats along the upper Texas coast. At this time of year, Houston could be facing significant flooding or a debilitating drought. Temperatures could be in the upper 90s or even triple digits. A hurricane could be forming in the Gulf of Mexico.
In short, boring and not blazing hot during the months of June, July, and August are just fine with me in H-town. However, if this is all too boring for you, be sure and check the outlook for next week at the end of this morning’s update.
Monday
We’ll start the week off with the potential for a few storms. I don’t expect anything crazy, but with fairly high levels of atmospheric moisture and a series of disturbances moving through we’ll see some rain chances through Wednesday. For today that means the development of some showers and thunderstorms during the afternoon and evening hours. I think these will be fairly scattered, so some areas may pick up a half an inch of rain, whereas much of Houston probably won’t see any meaningful accumulations. Skies will be partly to mostly sunny today, with high temperatures in the low 90s. Winds will be light, from the northeast at 5 mph. Rain chances slacken tonight as lows drop into the upper 70s.
Severe weather outlook for Tuesday and Tuesday night. (NOAA)
Tuesday
This day probably has the best storm potential of the week. It appears as though a complex of storms will develop in central Texas on Tuesday, and push toward Houston during the afternoon and evening hours. It’s not clear how well this line of storms will hold up as it approaches our area, but there’s a decent chance of some storms on Tuesday afternoon and evening for the western half of Houston, and lesser so for the eastern side. Otherwise, expect partly to mostly sunny skies on Tuesday with highs again in the lower 90s for most locations.
Wednesday
Another day with a slight chance of storms, but otherwise mostly sunny skies and highs in the low-90s. With a continued northwesterly flow we should see the influx of some moderately drier air during the second half of the week, which will push dewpoints down into the 60s. This is not dry air by any means, but the days should feel a little less humid than Houston typically feels during the summer. Mornings and evenings will be a bit nicer as well. This slightly drier pattern should hold through about Friday, or so.
Thursday and Friday
Storm chances should go away for the second half of the work week as high pressure builds over the southern United States. Both Thursday and Friday should see sunny skies with highs in the low- to mid-90s and some of that slightly drier air. Overnight lows will drop into the low- to mid-70s. So again, not at all bad for June.
We’ll see some slightly cooler days in the middle of this week before heat builds back over the region. (Weather Bell)
Saturday and Sunday
The first half of the weekend looks sunny and hot, with high temperatures generally in the mid-90s although a few locations may reach the upper 90s. Sunday looks sunny and hot as well, although there’s the potential for some showers as moisture moves in from the Gulf of Mexico.
Next week
At some point later this week or over the weekend we are likely to see a tropical disturbance develop in the southern Gulf of Mexico. At this time I don’t think there’s much risk for a hurricane to form or anything menacing like that. However, this tropical system could be a heavy rainfall threat for the Texas coast beginning late this weekend and next week as it conveys moisture from the Gulf inland.
We are still at the point in the forecast where there is a ton of uncertainty. For our region, whether we see a little rain next week, or potentially a lot (i.e. 5 or more inches), will depend on the strength of high pressure over the southeastern United States. This will moderate how far north any tropical disturbance can move in the Gulf. (Further north and closer to Houston would increase the potential for heavy rain here). In any case, this is something we’ll be watching over the coming days.
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Gaming is going strong. This beautiful hobby is growing constantly and new games are being released all the time. Technology is also advancing, making games more demanding while also offering more integrated and connected experiences. This in turn creates a social space were people can collaborate, compete and relax. And best of all, Fedora Linux will empower you to do so. Keep reading to find out how you can play the latest video games on Fedora Linux, in 2024.
Previously on…
Before we kick off, you should check out our previous article from 2021. This article contains many useful tips, and most of its information is still relevant today. That said, three years in the Linux community is a long time, and many things have changed.
Disclaimer
This guide will help you play the latest video games. But a notice is in order. Most commercial games are proprietary and they often require commercial online services. While using any of these services and games, you can be subjected to all kinds of bad software practices: You may be subject to aggressive monetization, privacy-disrespecting anti-tamper tools, and user analytics. This guide will focus on the prerequisites of non‑FLOSS gaming using Fedora Linux. The choice is yours.
Launchers
To start, it would be worth emphasizing that there are more community tools that allow you to game on Linux. While we previously focused on Steam, let’s talk about a few other applications.
Minigalaxy
GOG.com has been a staple in Linux gaming. They provide native Linux packages for a large series of games since 2014. They’ve also focused on selling games without DRM. Sadly, while they have made steps in supporting Fedora Linux and other distributions, their official desktop application is not available on Linux.
Minigalaxy is the answer. This community made tool allows you to download games from GOG.com, update them automatically, and more. Minigalaxy is available as a traditional package or as a Flatpak.
Perhaps you’re old enough to own certain games on physical media. You could buy them again on Steam or GOG, but that would be a wasteful. Lutris might support a disk-installation, but you’ll not always be that lucky. If all previous options fail, you’ll have to get your hands dirty with Wine.
Luckily, there is Bottles. This modern application allows you to configure Wine or Proton without too much hassle. You can create a ‘bottle’ per application, tweaking the configuration depending on what you need. While it’s the most involved of all possible scenarios, it does give you another option in case you really want to run a specific piece of old software.
Finally, Bottles also has build-in scripts to install Battle.net, Epic Game Store and others. It even supports Steam, if you want your computer to mimic a matryoshka doll. Either way, Bottles is the best way of managing Wine nowadays. The recommended way of installing Bottles is with Flatpak, although a traditional package is also available.
$ flatpak install flathub com.usebottles.bottles
$ sudo dnf install bottles
Tweaking
Besides all the possible launchers, there are also some major changes in the software that we mentioned three years ago. Discord and Open Broadcast Software (OBS) now officially support Flathub! This is a major achievement for Flathub and it makes it the recommended way to use these applications.
Proton versions
Proton, as a tool, has also come a long way. Valve bundles official versions of Proton with Steam, but you can also download custom versions of Proton. The most popular community maintained version of Proton is Proton Glorious Eggroll, or Proton GE for short. This version contains more bleeding edge patches and additions that Valve can’t offer on the Steam Deck.
For easy management of Proton versions, ProtonUp-Qt is recommended. This simple UI application allows you to easily download the latest version of Proton GE, as well as other versions that various volunteers provide online.
$ flatpak install flathub net.davidotek.pupgui2
Gamescope
Another tool that can really help you out is Gamescope. This tool was also developed by Valve and it allows you to upscale games in a variety of different ways. It also integrates well with Wayland, addressing some ‘auto-scaling’ problems that you can experience when migrating away from the X-window manager.
In combination with Steam, you can render a game at 1080p and output it at 1440p. This could help you if your hardware would otherwise not be able to run a certain title.
$ gamescope -f -h 1080 -H 1440 -- %command%
You can also use Gamescope with older titles, rendering at 320p and outputting the game at 1440p, with advanced up-scaling.
Gamescope can fill a niche for those who sometimes have trouble running older titles, or it can give you more legroom on less powerful hardware. Either way, it’s a powerful tool when gaming on Fedora Linux. Note that you can install the Flathub and traditional package side-by-side.
Not everything is perfect though, and while gaming on Fedora Linux is great, you should remain realistic.
Drivers
Driver support for gaming hardware is mostly the same from a consumer’s point of view. Technically, Nvidia has made a big step in open-sourcing their proprietary drivers. But sadly, this is a large project and consumers will not see any benefits from it for some time. As such, Nvidia users should still follow the setup guide from the original article. Other hardware, like those from AMD and Intel work almost perfectly.
Anti-cheat
In a twisted sense of irony, what the Linux community might gain in the future with Nvidia’s support we might lose in terms of game support. Many developers use anti-tamper and anti-cheat tools that run afoul with Linux. While some developers do invest some effort in supporting Linux, this is still a drawback. Volunteers maintain a list online, Are We Anti-Cheat Yet?, listing all incompatible games. You should check this website before you spend money on a game or its content.
A breakdown of all anti-cheat equipped games, and their support for Linux in general.
But, the challenge does not stop there. A new wave of anti-cheat technology focuses on kernel-level access. This is the story of Nvidia’s closed source drivers all over again, but worse. Even when we ignore the ethical discussion about closed source drivers for a moment, it’s unlikely that these game developers and their publishers will ever release the tools to make a custom proprietary anti-cheat driver possible.
Summary
Just like last time, this is a lot to take in. There are still more tools and applications that couldn’t be featured. Emulation is a topic for another day, and streaming services like GeForce NOW are also making gaming easier on Fedora Linux.
It’s impressive what three years can do in terms of gaming on Fedora Linux. Proton has matured and with the corporate backing of Valve, many things have improved throughout the entire gaming ecosystem. The Steam Deck is also not to be underestimated. It makes gaming on Linux frictionless and most of its innovations end up in Fedora Linux and other distributions.
Should you switch to Fedora Linux for your gaming needs? Just like last time, it depends. Anti-cheat for competitive games is becoming a bigger problem and there will always be companies that consider the market-share of Linux too small, to warrant serious attention. Your expectations and/or willingness to compromise remain the determining factor. That said, existing Fedora Linux users will have plenty of games to play.
Author’s comment. In the past three years, I’ve never been bored playing video games on Fedora Linux. I already own more games then I have free time. Also, there is the Steam Deck. While it is in no way affiliated with Fedora Linux or its partners… it’s certainly the device I use most for gaming nowadays. With that device in hand, I have good confidence in the future of gaming on Linux.
Got any video game recommendations? Feel free to place them in the comments below.
This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.
It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…
1. We have to cook food to feed our very well-paid managers
I work for a branch of government. The leadership team of another branch is having a meeting with the leadership team of our branch. The STAFF has been asked by our independently wealthy leadership team to sign up for a potluck to feed the visiting independently wealthy leadership team. Some of the staff bring home approximately a fifth — if that — of what our leadership team makes. Any one of our leadership team could whip out a credit card and feed the visitors without thinking about it; they all had highly lucrative careers before joining the government. Staff have not been invited to partake and mingle with the visitors. Apparently, we’re supposed to supply the food and disappear. Also, the meal starts at a time that most of us are not even at work! The signup sheet is out in the open, so anyone can see who is signing up and who isn’t. For those who aren’t signing up, I have to wonder how this will affect the funding of our departments. This is just wrong isn’t it?
Yes, this is ridiculous, and frankly pretty gross. Can you speak up as a group and say your budgets are tight, many of you can’t comfortably afford the request, and so it’s not something the group can do and you’re letting them know now so they can make other arrangements?
Alternately, you could just all not sign up; it’s unlikely that not bringing food to a potluck will affect a government department’s funding.
2. My employee sends stream-of-consciousness Slack messages to me during meetings
My job uses Slack to informally communicate and message one another throughout the day. An employee I manage has a habit of spamming my Slack channel during meetings with stream of consciousness type thoughts, reactions, and emojis, like “haha” or “yesssssssssss” or laughing emojis or “ditto.” Sometimes she asks questions, too. These meetings are taking place virtually, and we are both on camera, and I cannot both be attentive to her messages and focus on the meeting. Because Slack notifications pop up on my screen when I receive them, I find these messages very distracting. So far, when she starts to do this I usually just close Slack so I don’t see her messages, and I ignore them until the meeting is over. Afterwards, to address any questions she had about the call, we meet and discuss. I should also note that before we used Slack a lot, she would do the same thing but would text me instead, and I ignored those too until the meeting was over.
I am not sure how to handle this. I was hoping she would get the message when I consistently ignored her until the meeting was over, but that doesn’t seem to work. She is also extremely sensitive, and part of me feels like she benefits in some way from having an outlet for these stream of consciousness type thoughts during the meetings, and she doesn’t expect me to respond to them and has never seemed offended when I ignore her. So that brings me to you, should I say something or just keep ignoring? Other than this, she is a good employee and I’m not concerned about her performance.
How bothered are you? If you’re fine with just closing Slack during meetings and ignoring the messages until afterwards, it’s fine to keep doing that. You don’t need to tell her it’s annoying if you have a solution that works with minimal drama. But it’s also perfectly okay to say, “Would you mind not sending Slack messages while we’re in meetings unless it’s something I absolutely need to see? Otherwise it’s tough to focus during the call.” Even if she benefits from having an outlet for her stream of consciousness, that doesn’t mean her outlet should be her manager (or anyone who’s annoyed or distracted by it).
It sounds like she’s been doing this for a while, so she probably assumes it’s fine with you. It’s okay to let her know it’s distracting you.
I realize you’re asking which of these options you should pick but, truly, either is reasonable; it just depends on how much you care. (Although it’s also potentially useful to her to have you point it out so she doesn’t do it to someone who will be less patient in the future. Plus, if you were doing something that was irritating your boss, you’d probably rather be told so you didn’t keep doing it!)
3. How do we balance flexibility with making sure the work is getting done?
I work at a university where undergraduates do big capstone projects in their final year. Each faculty member supervises 12-14 student projects every year. Faculty are allocated a certain number of work hours per student to do this in the course of an academic year – for meeting the student, reading their proposal, checking their materials, etc. Every project is unique; some students need more of their supervisor’s time and others are more independent.
Some faculty are known shirkers who spend as little time as possible with their supervised students. They might respond to emails only after a long delay or give too little or perfunctory feedback on project design. Most supervisors are much more involved.
The department is looking at our procedures around the project. Some colleagues want to implement a new set of minimum standards about how supervisors have to interact with students (e.g., offering a one-to-one meeting every X weeks). To those of us who are diligent and put in the time to help our students succeed, it seems misguided that we’d create a straitjacket of rules to address misbehavior from ~5% of faculty. Bad supervisors will just engage in malicious compliance with any new guidelines (though perhaps this is better than the minimal engagement they currently do?). And the rest of us would feel obligated to tick all the boxes while our souls slowly withered. This might not result in a better experience for students, since good supervisors are already meeting their needs anyway.
Is there a way to balance the need to give faculty appropriate flexibility with the need to ensure students get a fair supervision experience? Ideally we would recognize that students are unique and have different needs, allow good supervisors the flexibility to do what we do best, and help managers identify shirkers. (Shirking could then theoretically be dealt with by line managers.) There are already minimum guidelines around the project: that students receive X amount of one-to-one time with their supervisors per semester and that student emails are responded to within X days. But these don’t add up to equal supervisory experiences for students. Do we need additional guidelines?
I should add that measuring supervisor performance by student outcomes (grades) wouldn’t be a viable option because there is variability in supervisor assignment, natural variation from year to year, etc.
Whether or not this is feasible in an academic environment is its own question, but speaking from a non-academic perspective: ideally you’d solve this with more attentive management. Managers should be paying enough attention to know who the shirkers are so they can then address it with them forthrightly.
In a non-academic environment, I’d say that the fact that that’s not happening indicates there’s a management problem, and that your managers need to be more actively engaged. With faculty members, the model is different — but since you’re referencing line managers who theoretically could identify and address the shirkers, I’m going to assume that an option here too. If it is, take it — that’s a better solution than saddling everyone with rules that don’t actually serve most people well. And to facilitate that, you could consider a system for getting feedback from students mid-year about whether they’re getting what they need from their project supervisors or not, so there would be time for managers to intervene if needed.
4. Hiring manager wants to cut out the recruiter
I have been looking for a new challenge for a while and a week ago found out about a role through a recruiter. It sounded like a good fit so I decided to apply. While speaking with the recruiter, it emerged that the role is with the company that acquired my previous employer, and the hiring manager is my old boss, who is hiring his replacement. I left that job several years ago on very good terms and it’s not clear why he didn’t reach out to me about this role before engaging the recruiting firm.
After our discussion, the recruiter sent my resume to HR. My old boss then messaged me to suggest a catch-up. During the conversation, he made it clear that they want to move forward but are looking to cut out the recruiter and say we were already in ongoing discussions.That is obviously untrue. The recruiter is now asking if they have contacted me directly as she has not heard back. How do you suggest I handle this? Is there a standard practice for this kind of situation? I don’t want to jeopardize my relationship with either party.
This is weird, because typically recruiters’ contacts with employers specify that recruiters don’t “own” the candidacies of people who are already in the employer’s own pool of contacts — and while there’s often a time limit on that (like people who applied the company on their own in the last six months), I’d expect “this person used to work directly for me” to qualify.
In any case, I’d say this to your former boss: “I’m happy to talk directly with you from this point forward and I agree it makes sense since we already know each other, but I don’t want to misrepresent anything to the recruiter. Could you talk to them and work out how to handle it?” Hold firm on that; you shouldn’t lie to the recruiter and it’s crappy if your old boss is asking you to.
5. I used the wrong company’s name in my cover letter
I recently submitted two different job applications to two different companies. After submitting, I was editing the cover letter I submitted to suit a third, separate job, and realized a mistake — I accidentally left the name of an earlier company I applied for in one of my sentences (second paragraph). There are no options to withdraw my application. What do I do now? Am I screwed?
Obvious moral of the story is proofread three times over, but hoping for advice on damage control.
Well … some people will consider it a deal-breaker, others will consider it a strike against you but not a fatal one if you’re otherwise strong, some people won’t care much at all, and some people don’t pay much attention to cover letters and thus won’t even notice it. There’s not really anything you can do about it now, though; you’ve just got to let it play out. (I don’t recommend contacting them to correct the error; that’ll just call more attention to it and make it a bigger deal than it should be.)
The true reason there are so many random loose items all over the Somniel floor is because Emblem Marth got bored and started knocking things out of people's hands for fun.
Mayor Jyoti Gondek apologized to Calgary residents Sunday morning, calling the city’s efforts to communicate information about the ongoing feeder water main break “slow to come,” and “confusing at times.”
Someone recently asked an interesting question: Why do Microsoft C and compatible DOS compilers have no truncate() and/or ftruncate() library functions? And how does one resize files on DOS?
OK, that’s actually two questions. The first one is easy enough to answer: Because XENIX had no truncate() or ftruncate() either. Instead, XENIX had a chsize() function which, sure enough, can be found in the Microsoft C libraries at least as far back as MS C 3.0 (early 1985).
The second question is rather more interesting. The way files are resized on DOS is moving the file pointer to the desired size by calling the LSEEK function (INT 21h/42h), and then calling the WRITE function (INT 21h/40h) with zero length (CX=0).
Now, this mechanism is rather curious, because the handle-based file API in DOS 2.0 was modeled on XENIX, yet on UNIX systems, the write() function asked to transfer zero bytes simply does nothing. If the mechanism didn’t come from XENIX, where did it come from?
I thought I’d check the DOS 2.x source code. But the $Write function in XENIX2.ASM has absolutely no special handling of zero-size writes. It just performs common setup code and hands off the real work to $FCB_RANDOM_WRITE_BLOCK.
Was this behavior some kind of oversight? No, certainly not. The MS-DOS 2.0 Programmer’s Reference Manual is quite clear that writing zero bytes either truncates or extends a file.
But the source code points in the right direction. $FCB_RANDOM_WRITE_BLOCK is in fact INT 21h/28h. And that function is documented to change the file size when called with CX=0.
Is this some kind of CP/M heritage? No, it’s not. CP/M 2.2 had no mechanism for resizing files, and CP/M 3 had a separate BDOS function to change file size, nothing like the DOS mechanism.
In fact this method of resizing files is unambiguously documented in the 86-DOS 0.3 Programmer’s Manual, published in 1980. It is also documented in the preliminary 86-DOS manual of unclear vintage; in that version, the functionality is only document to truncate files, not extend them. In the 86-DOS 0.3 manual, the documentation clearly states that both truncating and extending files can be achieved using this method.
It is thus clear that the DOS method of resizing files through zero-length writes originated in 86-DOS in 1980, and it is more or less guaranteed to be Tim Paterson’s invention. The 86-DOS method was adopted for handle-based I/O in DOS 2.0 by default, because the handle-based I/O was layered on top of FCB I/O.
Now let’s briefly loop back to chsize(). Implementing a XENIX compatible chsize() function on DOS is not entirely straightforward. For one thing, chsize() is not expected to move the file pointer, which means the current position needs to be saved and restored. Another problem is that when DOS extends a file size, it just allocates whatever clusters happen to be available. But on XENIX, chsize() fills files with zeros when extending; therefore the DOS run-time library implementation must explicitly write the requisite number of zero bytes when extending files. When extending files, chsize() implicitly changes the file size by writing to it rather than explicitly asking DOS to increase the file size.
The Romance Writers of America has filed for bankruptcy, saying it can't pay for conference spaces it booked up ahead of Covid and before several years of infighting and allegations of racism. What does this mean for romance writers and the growing fans of the genre?
CALGARY – In the wake of a catastrophic water main break that has led city officials to urge the public to limit water use, Calgarians have banded together to defy the request by constructing a city-spanning 24-hour water-consuming Slip ‘N Slide. “How dare anybody try to infringe on my freedoms!” shouted Jeff Stapletton, 45, as […]
CULVER CITY, CA — Producers of the popular game show Jeopardy! announced that this year they’ll air their inaugural “Tournament of Dolts.” “Our Tournament of Champions is always a ratings bonanza,” said producer Michael Davies. “After all, who doesn’t like to marvel at the best and brightest egging each other on to supreme feats of […]
Hovertext: I was in a train station a few years ago and all the women were dressed like it was the eighties. Went back to my farm and emerged a year later to see all the men had developed mustaches as a kind of reflexive mating response.
This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.
It’s four answers to four questions. Here we go…
1. My husband’s boss didn’t alert me when he had a medical episode
My husband works for a small, family-owned business. The owners of the business are three siblings. The oldest brother used to be in charge, but he retired a year or so ago. The next oldest sister, Tina, is now trying to run the show. Tina is a mess. She doesn’t even show up for work until around 4:30 pm when they close at 5:30 pm. She claims she is working at home, but with nothing to show for it. They are struggling financially, but that is not the real question here.
My husband has some serious health issues. It is under control and he seems high-functioning, but it’s still there and he is dealing with it. He recently has been having a bad run of luck with continuity of care and refilling needed medications. He will have “episodes” and need to sleep them off. One of his episodes hid a stroke, so they are nothing to laugh at. He hasn’t had one in a few years since he started on medication.
Today he was sent out to do a pick-up and delivery in the company’s poorly-maintained, aging semi-sized delivery truck, a round trip of around five hours. He had an episode while driving today, and he pulled over and slept for a few hours. When he woke up, he called me and told me what was going on and said he was going to call Tina and then sleep some more. I gave him an hour or so to feel better and was thinking that Tina would call and let me know what was going on and what the plan was should he need assistance. Nope! I finally called him and he was back on the road and feeling a little bit better. Tina finally called a few minutes later, but she only called because he wasn’t answering her calls, not to tell me there was an issue. Oh, and she wanted to ask him a work question.
I told her I was about to call her and tell her to send someone to go get him and take him for medical evaluation. She had the nerve to be defensive with me. She was more worried about her empty truck than whether or not my husband was having a medical emergency.
Am I overreacting? How should this have been handled? What is an employer’s responsibility when this happens? I would have left my job and driven two hours or further to try and find him. I am really just stunned at the lack of … anything. It’s not even his job to do the deliveries.
Without knowing what your husband told Tina, I don’t think this necessarily warrants outrage. Did she know he was potentially having a medical emergency and could be in need of help, or could she have had the impression it was something more minor that your husband had under control? If the latter, it makes sense that she didn’t call you.
I’m guessing you have a lot more background on your husband’s health situation than Tina does and so you’re able to see that the situation required XYZ, but an employer wouldn’t necessarily have the info to make that call themselves. Going forward, can your husband work out a more official plan for these episodes with his employer, including them calling you if that’s a step he wants them to take? Otherwise, if he hasn’t given them clear guidance on how it should be handled, and especially if he just said he needed to rest before continuing the drive, it’s understandable that they wouldn’t know to alert you.
2. When can I ask about morning start time in an interview process?
You’ve written a few times about when you can bring up salary during an interview process. But what about office hours?
It seems like a lot of places have moved to starting at 8am instead of 9am. That is a deal-breaker for me. An otherwise perfect job that requires me to get up an hour earlier is an automatic no, the same way an otherwise perfect job that’s a $20,000 pay cut would be an automatic no. So, it seems to me it should be discussed around the same time, very early on in the interview process.
However, there is a weird, persistent stigma around night owls being viewed as lazy, despite the fact that we’re doing the same amount of work as the early birds, just later in the day. And while there has been growing acceptance of discussing salary earlier on and including it in job postings, there doesn’t seem to be the same discussion about scheduling.
Yeah, it’s BS and I imagine at some point it will change, but it hasn’t changed yet. Asking to work a schedule of, say, 11am – 7pm often does trigger an “indolent layabout” bias that asking about working 7am – 3pm doesn’t. It’s irrational — it’s the same amount of work, and there’s nothing inherently more virtuous about early hours versus late hours, but that bias persists in our culture.
I do think you can ask about hours fairly early on — as in, “What hours do people generally work?” That’s not asking about starting time, but about hours overall. If you don’t get clear info on starting time, you can follow up with, “Do most people start at 9 or 8 or…?”
Where it gets trickier is that if you hear 8 am, you won’t necessarily know if you could negotiate a later start time at the end of the hiring process if they conclude you’re they one they want to hire. You could ask about it on the spot (“I’ll be up-front, starting earlier than 9 isn’t a good fit for me — are you open to later schedules or would that be a deal-breaker?”) but sometimes it’s easier to get agreement at the offer stage than while you’re early in the interview process. Still, though, if you’re going to bow out at that point anyway, you might as well give it a shot and see what happens.
3. Should I correct my boss about someone else’s pronouns?
I have an absolutely wonderful boss who is super compassionate, smart, takes care of her employees, and has a spine with the higher-ups. She’s been in this job for a few years) and we’re around the same age.
We’ve been working with someone in a related department, also our age and at about my level, who uses they/them pronouns but goes by a traditionally feminine name, let’s say “Emma.” Our company’s internal directory displays people’s preferred pronouns, but not everyone fills this section out, and not everyone knows to look. I’ve noticed my boss talking about Emma using she/her when we are discussing our common work. So far this hasn’t happened while we’ve been talking to Emma one-on-one, but I worry that my boss might inadvertently misgender Emma to their face without meaning to do so.
However, she’s still my boss, so I don’t want to issue a corrective if it’s not my place to do so. Should I say something to her? Should I enlist another colleague who is at her level to say something? Should I make it less about my boss and more about “hey, everyone should know about this pronouns thing in the directory?”
It’s reasonable to assume a decent person would appreciate a heads-up, and your boss sounds like a decent person. The next time she uses the wrong pronouns for Emma, just say matter-of-factly, “Emma uses they/them pronouns” and continue right along with the conversation. Ideally it shouldn’t be a big deal — you relay the needed info, your boss hears it, and you move on, just like if you were letting her know Emma’s title recently changed or that they have an unusual pronunciation to their name.
4. Should I try to grow in my current job or leave for more money and more PTO?
I’ve been in my position for nearly three years. After a particularly rough season, I decided I would not stick around for more than another year. I started working on my résumé and putting out feelers. I knew that one possible pivot would increase my pay and get me some benefits that would matter a ton to me right now, specifically increased PTO. But then things changed at work. There were some personnel changes, and I ended up in a role where I was needed and thriving. Things were so busy as well that I totally dropped my own career planning. I started to think as well that I perhaps wouldn’t need to move on, things could work here.
Recently things have started to feel the way they did during the very bad season, and I am full of regret that I am facing down another one here. When I felt like things had changed, I was glad to try to make it work. Now I fear I’ve trapped myself.
I believe that my rough season was caused by multiple factors. Some are on me. I should have demanded better training and guidance. I shouldn’t have been afraid to ask for what I needed. When the training was not adequate, I should have been open and forthright in order to get the training I needed to be the employee they needed.
I’m struggling with whether I’m jumping ship because I’m lacking confidence and afraid, or whether it is the right choice. The prospect of more money and better benefits sounds wonderful. I also think that this pivot will be a better fit for me. I fear I’ve never been a good fit for this position. I believe I could grow better at it, but I wonder if I’m capable of growing fast enough to make it a less difficult place to be. I worry that I’m letting my sensitive nature make me quit something that I could grow at. On the other hand, maybe my sensitive nature will help me get more money at another position where I am a more natural fit!
Do you think there’s a way to know clearly whether my motivations are adequate for leaving or whether I should stick it out and find a way to be strong enough to grow? It has been hard to grow in this position, because I just feel stupid. Things that come easily to other people do not come easily to me. I am learning and I am growing. But the fact that I’ve disappointed people has never been hidden from me.
I suppose my worry is that I only think the pivot would be a better fit for me, and that actually I’ll just be at least a bit of a disappointment everywhere I go. So I may as well try to make it work here.
Wanting more money and better benefits is enough! You don’t need to try to contort yourself into something that doesn’t feel comfortable for the sake of “toughing it out” or showing that you’re strong enough to do it. You’re not happy in your job, you see a path that would get you more money and better benefits … that’s enough. Maybe you could stick it out and grow in your current position. But there’s no special merit in doing that, and you’re not failing by choosing not to. You’re allowed to leave whenever you feel like leaving, and it sounds like you feel like leaving.
As for your worry that the next job won’t be a better fit … maybe it won’t be! There’s never any guarantee. But you’ve been at your current job for three years, and that’s a reasonable time to move on if you’re not satisfied. Try something new, do your due diligence before accepting it, and give yourself the gift of not feeling tethered to a place that you already regret not leaving earlier.
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