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FAQ on Leaving Google

(social.clawhammer.net)
462 points mrled | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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danparsonson ◴[] No.39034789[source]
> Context: When I was laid off from Google, I knew I'd be deluged with questions. I wrote this FAQ to share with friends and family, to prevent repeated explanation.

This is quite sweet in its stereotypical techie approach to life - your friends and family are asking questions about your situation because they care about and want to bond with you, not because they particularly care about the actual information you're conveying :-)

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tysam_and ◴[] No.39035174[source]
Well they can find alternative methods then that are less frazzling, there are fewer things worse than not feeling seen due to only answering questions!

I know it can be good, but sometimes the questions can legitimately get in the way of connection and spending quality time, and not everyone wants to have the hard conversation while being in the hotseat (especially not over, and over, and over again. I am transgender, for example, and while having 1 mildly hostile family member would be a somewhat-problem, most of my extended family only wants to talk about that thing, and that one thing, with me, to the point where it effectively creates a wall. That at least is my experience of the issue, it's not quite the same, but I've definitely experienced the "questions dynamic" within other, much-more-mild scenarios, and generally, IMPE, I really dislike it unless I'm actively getting something interesting out of it, which I'm oftentimes not! It can be very much isolating, as far as my personal experience goes.)

So, not really a terrible solution, I think! <3 :'))))

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dylan604 ◴[] No.39035692[source]
Then learn how to respond to questions that are being asked out of politeness and bonding vs some fellow techie that actually is interested in gobbledygook detailed answers. You can talk about work and why it was cool/fun/horrible/frustrating to non-techies and still bond with them in your commiseration of being laid off.
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tysam_and ◴[] No.39036169[source]
I mean, again, that's not really the point that I was making. I'm talking about the foundational emotional need of connection, not everyone connects well in that manner, the quality of the response to the question doesn't always have a huge bearing on that.

Like, sure, sometimes it is good bonding, and sometimes it's not, it's very much context dependent.

If having the emotional security of not being in the hotseat answering questions from family members is necessary for an amount of emotional security on the OP's part, then I would consider that to be a good strategy. It might not be what you would do in that scenario, which is okay, as you and OP are different and might have different methods of addressing and meeting your respective emotional needs.

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1. logicprog ◴[] No.39037106[source]
Yeah not having to be in the hot seat is crucial. Stuff like FAQs for personal things are helpful not just because they deduplicate effort, so people can just read it and grok your deal and then bond with you without excruciating rote ramp up, but also because it's emotionally exhausting to have to go through explanations about personal things, especially often, whereas pointing people to an FAQ alleviates that and actually makes further bonding possible bc you won't be harried and tired.