Can you explain the lockdown rules and what area you're in? In the UK I'm now in the highest risk area and still allowed to walk and cycle from home and travel around my county by car. That could easily be a 20 mile walk or 50 mile bike ride from home if I had time on my hands. I could take a mask and buy takeaway food from a shop or cafe. Just trying to compare the rules in different areas.
Harshest lockdown in the UK was probably in Scotland where you were restricted to not be more than 5 miles home which could still easily allow a 10 mile walk.
I had a similar thing about a decade or so ago. Thought I might be able to wrangle a (part) remote gig with them. No dice.
There's no way I was going to commute to London every day. Nightmare. They kept coming back to me though.
In my case I think it was more likely a combination of poor process, and a clueless recruiter, rather than a deliberate retargeting of me that resulted in the ongoing calls/emails.
It's real deja vu looking at this thread. Many of the questions/comments here are exactly the same ones that came up in the early 1990s with Taos on CiX, and then later with Elate/intent. :)
Chris was far ahead of the curve - a heterogeneous, load-balancing, multi-processor, multi-tasking OS, with Object-Oriented Virtual Processor, byte code, load-time translation, support for multiple CPU types (including RISC/CISC/transputer and LE and BE), and tiny footprint message-passing kernel, when most people used MS-DOS 3.3 or DR-DOS 5.0, with Windows 95 still a gleam in Bill Gates's beady eye! Nearly 30 years on and he is still ahead of the curve!
p.s. no one has mentioned it yet - try a Google search for "edge tao spyfish". That was 1995!! Not released, but still very interesting reading material.
I have a friend that turns time allocated for other things into paid time. For example, she got certified as a Spin coach, so takes classes a couple of times a week and gets paid to work out. She also does yoga classes and gets paid for that too. Sure, you might not hit $2K/month but it'll get you part way there...
You can probably get about £200/day painting and decorating for people you know. If you're prepared to work weekends it'll get you nearly there after word gets around that you're trustworthy and polite...
Yeah most companies in Europe I would say. Even in a non-unlimited PTO company you'd get at least 25 days (paid) typically plus 8 paid public holidays in addition.
At some companies you can give up 'points' to get more paid time off. I think at Oracle UK I could get up to 46 paid days off by using up some perk points (actually not that many). Not sure if they still do that.
The legal minimum in UK is 28 days paid leave for full-time workers, but that includes 8 days paid for public holidays.
On your first point: In UK there is a minimum usage by law. For full-time workers that's 28 days paid leave and that includes typically 8 public holidays. Not sure if that applies in US though. I agree with you on the other two points.
I'm currently on DTO (Discretionary Time Off) and it works great. Last year I took 7 weeks paid. If I'd had a decent justification I could have taken more. Some colleagues took a lot more (like 3 months). This year I have a couple of long holidays planned so think I'll take around 10 weeks, possibly more. Only breaks longer than two weeks need to be approved by my manager.
To be legal you have to take the statutory minimum holiday or the company would be in trouble (at least in the UK), so they are quite stringent about you taking at least the statutory minimum (for full-time workers that's 28 days in UK and that includes Bank Holidays), so typically 20 days minimum excluding BHs.
The downside is if you leave the company you won't get holiday pay. For example, let's say I'm entitled to 24 days annual holiday at a non-DTO company, and then leave after 6 months, without taking holiday, I'd be entitled to 12 days pay (for my paid holiday entitlement). At a DTO company you get zilch as I understand it. I've not left yet but I think that's how it works. Something to check.
I personally think it's a great perk. Depends what your priorities are though and the above is a bit UK specific.
I have some recent experience of this where a friend switched into web dev from a totally unrelated (non-computer) field. Originally she was looking at Python/security as a path, but then changed to web dev as she was more interested in that. Did an free Google course online, learned JavaScript and (IIRC) a bit of React, and 9 months later was working in the industry. She did this in her spare time on top of her day job. She's been a year in the industry now and she has had a couple of promotions and is doing well (double her previous salary)...
