6 ms·

I've generally considered out-of-hours checks to emanate from employees. There will always be employees who want to do a bit of extra, stay a bit longer, answer

by yason 10y ago

I've generally considered out-of-hours checks to emanate from employees. There will always be employees who want to do a bit of extra, stay a bit longer, answer emails at 10pm, to help make progress in their career and get promotions. Now, you obviously can't prevent these people from doing that without disabling corporate accounts and door access between 5pm-9am. So there will be people doing that, to appear in better light than others. The practice just spreads to less ambitious employees as well, and then to less motivated ones. While I support that you should be able to cut off work after the day is done and switch to your free time I don't see how you could regulate something like that. To even try you would have to ban giving promotions to people who work some extra for their employer (remove the incentive to do extra) or give some sort of employment protection to people who do disconnect (pretty much like you can't fire an employee who's pregnant or on parental leave because such is collectively agreed to be worth some serious shitstorm). In the end, the only enforcement I can think of is that each person needs to make that decision themselves. If they value their free time and life outside work then they must equally deprioritise work in their life, to the extent where they might be fired because they will disconnect from work outside of the hours agreed, and then find an employer who shares the same values. If good employees do that, employers will have to realise that in order to retain or get good employees they must give in and let the employees enjoy their free time in peace. Now, the only problem is that there is always someone more hungry for money than you, willing to sacrifice more than you. The remaining question is that which people are the majority.

kuschku 10y ago
Considering you have to pay people usually 1.5x or 2x their normal wage out of normal work hours in most of Europe, most employers just literally do that – and shove their employees out the door.
- chimeracoder 10y ago
  > Considering you have to pay people usually 1.5x or 2x their normal wage out of normal work hours in most of Europe The same is true in the US. The only difference is that California considers tech workers to be exempt. But other industries and in other states, this still applies.
  - greglindahl 10y ago
    Overtime policy is part of federal law. Many industries abuse it, e.g. fast food "management trainees" work huge hours and get paid a low salary. That's why Obama attempted to raise the minimum salary for being considered exempt.
    - greglindahl 10y ago
      And for those who are wondering what I meant, this AP article covers both the history of "management trainees" being exempt from overtime and Obama's action, which is currently stopped by a court: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/4aacfcafa43a42539d0e56e44ce9390a/overtime-pay-may-become-reality-more-us-workers http://bigstory.ap.org/article/4aacfcafa43a42539d0e56e44ce93...
chank 10y ago
e.g. you're a workaholic and have nothing better to do. I'm guilty of sometimes answering emails outside of hours, but it's more related to the desire to get stuff done rather than how it will impact my career.
- jghn 10y ago
  I do it all the time but I neither do it to appear better nor do I care if others don't do it. If I find myself sitting there with nothing better to do and an email I can answer pops up I'll just answer it as, well, I have nothing better to do at that moment. It's the same thing with doing work after hours. If it's something I find interesting and I've got nothing else going on I'll gladly take a peek.
- paulddraper 10y ago
  Getting stuff done is how you impact your career.
  - drdeadringer 10y ago
    This is true regardless of being a workaholic.
jknz 10y ago
A sane and simple solution seems to be that any email sent after 8pm is delayed by the company smtp server, and will actually be sent at 6am. You can still check your emails and get stuff done. But stuff will not accumulate after 8pm, you will not be bothered by other employees working at night, until early morning. This configuration of the smtp server can be billed $5/employee/month which is a bargain to make sure your employees (1) have a sane life after 8pm and (2) can still get stuff done if they want to!
- tubs 10y ago
  8pm in which time zone?
  - paulryanrogers 10y ago
    Recepient's zone I imagine.
    - twic 10y ago
      I think it has to be the sender's time zone, to disincentivise working late. Also, a mail can have multiple recipients, each in a different timezone, but only one sender.
- fooker 10y ago
  Have you considered differing time zones?
  - csdreamer7 10y ago
    Most offices are not remote and most businesses operate in one time zone.
    - cardiffspaceman 10y ago
      My experience provides a few counter examples, and I think in the world of making little items out of an SOC and some code, my examples are highly representative, so I wonder if you have a good source to back your supposition. I had a project at one large company, where a daily conference call was scheduled at 8AM Pacific Time, my local zone, so that the guy in France could attend at a reasonable hour. There were attendees in various other "Western" locations. The time zones ranged from -8 to +1. Nowadays I see this happening with virtual companies, who rent offices all over the place and barely own anything. When I have dealt with such, no one has been expected to be operating more than 8-10 hours at a time. Expectations of email response are patiently kept in accord with the time zones of the recipients.
ghostDancer 10y ago
This is so that the employer do not "politely suggest" that you should check your email just in case, or that if you don't comply they will take measures. You know it's not mandatory to check your email but if you don't do it you will be fired for another spurious reason.
tzs 10y ago
> I've generally considered out-of-hours checks to emanate from employees. There will always be employees who want to do a bit of extra, stay a bit longer, answer emails at 10pm, to help make progress in their career and get promotions. Another reason one might want to check email outside of work is to make work easier the next day. If something starts to go wrong at 9 PM, and I see an email alert from a monitoring system, I might be able to ssh in and fix the problem in a few minutes. If I wait until the next morning, the failure could be affecting other systems and I might be facing a whole day of annoying and tedious tracing the results throughout the system and fixing bad database items. Yuck. I'd much rather hit "pause" on the cable box, or step to a reasonably safe spot and cast invisibility on myself in EverQuest, or stick a bookmark at my place in what I'm reading, at 9 PM and take care of it and then get back to my TV show/game/book and then have a nice day at work the next day where I can work on coding new things, than give myself a really crappy work day in order to save a few minutes of slight inconvenience at home.
- 8fGTBjZxBcHq 10y ago
  And I wouldn't. I'd rather work hard at work, when I expect to be working, than at some other time when I don't. Personal time where I can be interrupted by an emergency isn't personal time to me.
ArkyBeagle 10y ago
This is all fine so long as you don't penalize people for getting things done quickly. Does it ever bother you that some people just show up to be seen?
Kankuro 10y ago
> There will always be employees who want to do a bit of extra, stay a bit longer, answer emails at 10pm, to help make progress in their career and get promotions. Additional work should not help getting promotions/a raise, but only a one-time bonus (proportional to the overtime/achievement): - if the person stops overtime after that, (s)he will continue to enjoy the rise forever. - working more does not help by itself to go to the next level (being more productive, getting new skills allowing to transition to another role) - (it's even more toxic when stacked ranking is put it place: those who work "normal" hours will almost never get a raise/promotion).

by yason 10y ago

kuschku 10y ago

Considering you have to pay people usually 1.5x or 2x their normal wage out of normal work hours in most of Europe, most employers just literally do that – and shove their employees out the door.

chimeracoder 10y ago
> Considering you have to pay people usually 1.5x or 2x their normal wage out of normal work hours in most of Europe The same is true in the US. The only difference is that California considers tech workers to be exempt. But other industries and in other states, this still applies.
- greglindahl 10y ago
  Overtime policy is part of federal law. Many industries abuse it, e.g. fast food "management trainees" work huge hours and get paid a low salary. That's why Obama attempted to raise the minimum salary for being considered exempt.
  - greglindahl 10y ago
    And for those who are wondering what I meant, this AP article covers both the history of "management trainees" being exempt from overtime and Obama's action, which is currently stopped by a court: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/4aacfcafa43a42539d0e56e44ce9390a/overtime-pay-may-become-reality-more-us-workers http://bigstory.ap.org/article/4aacfcafa43a42539d0e56e44ce93...

chank 10y ago

e.g. you're a workaholic and have nothing better to do. I'm guilty of sometimes answering emails outside of hours, but it's more related to the desire to get stuff done rather than how it will impact my career.

jghn 10y ago
I do it all the time but I neither do it to appear better nor do I care if others don't do it. If I find myself sitting there with nothing better to do and an email I can answer pops up I'll just answer it as, well, I have nothing better to do at that moment. It's the same thing with doing work after hours. If it's something I find interesting and I've got nothing else going on I'll gladly take a peek.
paulddraper 10y ago
Getting stuff done is how you impact your career.
- drdeadringer 10y ago
  This is true regardless of being a workaholic.

jknz 10y ago

A sane and simple solution seems to be that any email sent after 8pm is delayed by the company smtp server, and will actually be sent at 6am. You can still check your emails and get stuff done. But stuff will not accumulate after 8pm, you will not be bothered by other employees working at night, until early morning. This configuration of the smtp server can be billed $5/employee/month which is a bargain to make sure your employees (1) have a sane life after 8pm and (2) can still get stuff done if they want to!

tubs 10y ago
8pm in which time zone?
- paulryanrogers 10y ago
  Recepient's zone I imagine.
  - twic 10y ago
    I think it has to be the sender's time zone, to disincentivise working late. Also, a mail can have multiple recipients, each in a different timezone, but only one sender.
fooker 10y ago
Have you considered differing time zones?
- csdreamer7 10y ago
  Most offices are not remote and most businesses operate in one time zone.
  - cardiffspaceman 10y ago
    My experience provides a few counter examples, and I think in the world of making little items out of an SOC and some code, my examples are highly representative, so I wonder if you have a good source to back your supposition. I had a project at one large company, where a daily conference call was scheduled at 8AM Pacific Time, my local zone, so that the guy in France could attend at a reasonable hour. There were attendees in various other "Western" locations. The time zones ranged from -8 to +1. Nowadays I see this happening with virtual companies, who rent offices all over the place and barely own anything. When I have dealt with such, no one has been expected to be operating more than 8-10 hours at a time. Expectations of email response are patiently kept in accord with the time zones of the recipients.

ghostDancer 10y ago

This is so that the employer do not "politely suggest" that you should check your email just in case, or that if you don't comply they will take measures. You know it's not mandatory to check your email but if you don't do it you will be fired for another spurious reason.

tzs 10y ago

> I've generally considered out-of-hours checks to emanate from employees. There will always be employees who want to do a bit of extra, stay a bit longer, answer emails at 10pm, to help make progress in their career and get promotions. Another reason one might want to check email outside of work is to make work easier the next day. If something starts to go wrong at 9 PM, and I see an email alert from a monitoring system, I might be able to ssh in and fix the problem in a few minutes. If I wait until the next morning, the failure could be affecting other systems and I might be facing a whole day of annoying and tedious tracing the results throughout the system and fixing bad database items. Yuck. I'd much rather hit "pause" on the cable box, or step to a reasonably safe spot and cast invisibility on myself in EverQuest, or stick a bookmark at my place in what I'm reading, at 9 PM and take care of it and then get back to my TV show/game/book and then have a nice day at work the next day where I can work on coding new things, than give myself a really crappy work day in order to save a few minutes of slight inconvenience at home.

8fGTBjZxBcHq 10y ago
And I wouldn't. I'd rather work hard at work, when I expect to be working, than at some other time when I don't. Personal time where I can be interrupted by an emergency isn't personal time to me.

ArkyBeagle 10y ago

This is all fine so long as you don't penalize people for getting things done quickly. Does it ever bother you that some people just show up to be seen?

Kankuro 10y ago

> There will always be employees who want to do a bit of extra, stay a bit longer, answer emails at 10pm, to help make progress in their career and get promotions. Additional work should not help getting promotions/a raise, but only a one-time bonus (proportional to the overtime/achievement): - if the person stops overtime after that, (s)he will continue to enjoy the rise forever. - working more does not help by itself to go to the next level (being more productive, getting new skills allowing to transition to another role) - (it's even more toxic when stacked ranking is put it place: those who work "normal" hours will almost never get a raise/promotion).