Web Worker Daily

Holiday season is just around the corner. Some of us will stay home, some will go away. Some will work every day that’s not a public holiday, or on which our presence is not required elsewhere by friends and family. Others will take days, if not weeks, of time out from work. Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve all read the news stories that identify social implications of a world increasingly conducted electronically, rather than in person. It seems that in an environment where individuals and organizations can manufacture themselves new personas, and nothing’s real until we broadcast it across a network of contacts, many web workers are feeling increasingly isolated. Read the rest of this entry »

If you read Aliza’s post outlining the five best web working lessons she’s learned so far, you might have noticed a trend: all of those lessons were focused on control.

For the web worker who works remotely, relies on someone else’s technology, and/or needs to coordinate disparate, diverse inputs to some kind of timeframe and standard of quality, control is always going to be an issue. Read the rest of this entry »

A friend of mine who’s worked in a slew of web jobs that have sorely disappointed him has finally found a role he thinks will be fun, challenging and rewarding.

He knew of the company, met multiple times with different team members, had been taken on a tour of the office space, and was happy with the offer they’d negotiated. It all looked good. But before he jumped in and signed up, he made one final check that all web workers should undertake.

He called a friend of his who used to work for the company to get the inside story on what it’s like there. Read the rest of this entry »

Recently, I changed my home office setup, and found myself with pretty severe neck pain as a result. I switched to a chair that provided better back support and raised my laptop, adding an external mouse and keyboard to try to alleviate the problem. It did, but not as much as I’d have liked. Now I’m trying regular breaks and exercises to see if that makes a difference.

Interestingly, I never had these problems when I worked in an onsite office: I always managed to adjust my chair to suit my needs, and have my monitor at the right level. Since I spend a lot of time out of my home office anyway, my office setup only has an impact on the sedentary part of my work week; the rest is, as they say, in the lap of the gods. Read the rest of this entry »

In the age of continuous connectivity, many a web worker may feel a sense of wry irony in the fact that often, when we need answers on something, the person we need those answers from is uncontactable.

We all diligently plan ahead, so we allow plenty of time for our colleague to pull together the necessary input to our project. We go out of our way to establish some kind of understanding and rapport. We explain the timeframes and constraints of the project so they know where we’re coming from. And we try to make our follow-up requests as polite and professional as possible.

To no avail, sadly. Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve talked a lot on WWD recently about the tech-savvy of our clients, our site’s users, the public, and, well, everyone … except ourselves!

We might like to think we know it all, and many of us spend innumerable hours reading, researching and learning so that we do actually know a heck of a lot. But for all of us, there are times when things get hairy — times when we wrestle with technology and struggle to get even the (apparently) simplest things done. Although web workers may not like to admit it, we too experience technical challenges from time to time.

When I think about the people I know who aren’t tech-savvy, their responses to tech problems seem to encompass these options:

1. Employ strong language in questioning the piece of technology’s intentions.
2. Strike the device in use, or one of its peripherals.
3. Ask “what kind of idiot designed this thing.”
4. Call offspring or partners for advice.
5. Complain to friends.
6. Hack an improbable and unproductive workaround at best; give up at worst. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, I met a new client who accepts that she needs to use the web much more effectively than she does now. Over the coming months, she’s planning to build her personal brand online, with the help of various promotions experts. Right now? “I just don’t have time for it,” she says. And when we discussed our next meeting, her suggested venue was her house — which is at least two hours’ travel time from mine. Read the rest of this entry »