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We ALL need to be against 24/7/365 “on call”. I did it for 10 years. It not only sucks, but I’m confident hurt my overall productivity. If it’s not important en
by frankwiles 8y ago
We ALL need to be against 24/7/365 “on call”. I did it for 10 years. It not only sucks, but I’m confident hurt my overall productivity. If it’s not important enough to hire a backup or two, it’s simply not important.
- ams6110 8y agoOne of the advantages of getting older is that you develop some perspective on crap like this. I never check work email at night or on weekends anymore. And I just tell people "no" when they ask me to do work stuff on a weekend. The world continues to turn.
- randycupertino 8y agoI think this is why companies often have a bias towards hiring naive younger workers- they're more likely to be cool with being exploited and haven't established any healthy work/life boundaries yet. I worked somewhere that "specialized" in hiring younger newish grads from the midwest. They'd bring them out to the Bay Area, pay them way under market. The people would put in a year to two years at $75k working 70 hour weeks before they realized it was an intolerable and nonsustainable situation. The younger people were more excited over the free lunch and pingpong tables to care about comp, let alone making rent.
- falcor84 8y ago> The people would put in a year to two years at $75k working 70 hour weeks before they realized it was an intolerable and nonsustainable situation. Indeed unsustainable, but getting that experience and Bay Area connections might quite likely be a rational career choice for these grads
- gnu8 8y agoNegative, those things are external to any employment position and not something an employer is entitled to discount salary against.
- duado 8y agoEmployers can do whatever they want if the employees are OK with it. When I was 22 I signed up for a job that kept me in hotels 250 nights a year. I loved it but now with kids would obviously tell any such job to go fuck itself.
- jacobreg 8y agoSure, but companies have a heck of a lot more bargaining power than individuals. I don't think "this didn't cause large numbers of employees to quit" means that this was okay.
- Bekwnn 8y agoDo you think it's better than spending that same time socializing with coworkers outside of work? Because it isn't.
- krageon 8y agoThis is a variant of "do it for the exposure", which is deeply disrespectful to anyone's time and dignity. Regardless of whether or not you are right in terms of money made, society as a whole would benefit if we stopped playing that particular rigged game.
- jtd514 8y agosounds like the game industry
- malloreon 8y agothis sounds like Palantir to me
- kokokokoko 8y agoNot only that, but those hours put your hourly rate around $20. Which is about what you would make as an assistant manager at a retail store in the Bay Area.
- president 8y agoAs a result, you're probably the first to go in a layoff scenario. Maybe it's not a problem for you but for many, it is tough to regain footing after getting axed.
- sjg007 8y agoAh yes.. Logan’s run logic.
- ryanmcbride 8y agoAny company that lays me off for having boundaries is a company I don't want to work for. Work-life balance is pretty much the _only_ think I optimize for when looking for jobs now. I'm fine being flexible once in a while but if the default assumption is that I will be available on slack every night, I'm not gonna stay there.
- president 8y agoAgree completely but the amount of decent companies with work-life balance is rare in the Bay Area. If they exist, they won't for long.
- ryanmcbride 8y agoStartups I agree, but working for a more mature company makes it much easier to find this balance. Also, unlimited remote means that I don't _have_ to find a job in the Bay Area. The tradeoff there though is that Non-Bay companies offer much less compensation.
- dasil003 8y agoDepends entirely on management priorities. I make sure to never take a job that judges me on butt-in-seat or mean-time-to-email-response. That way I can build skills that actually matter and take that to my next role whether it be at my own startup, in mgmt at bigco, or as a consultant.
- arvinsim 8y ago
- godelski 8y agoI'm not old, but I tell people that I don't check work emails when I go home. But I give the offer that they can call me. Usually this leads to almost never being contacted on the weekend or after hours, and only really when there is a dire need. People seem to be more hesitant to call or text than send an email, and so this method works. But that's part of the implied condition. I think it is fair to call someone after hours for emergency type stuff, but not typical work stuff. Doing this has facilitated a healthy work life balance and I believe leads to better productivity.
- tfigment 8y agoI basically do the same. We are critical development/operational support so I have to have on-call support and do so 1 week at a time with primary and backup (I'm implied 2nd backup if not higher in chain). But my google voice number is only listed on the official schedule website and not in the company contact database so only those that need to know know. The best thing that ever happened to me was company implementing a lockdown policy so that email/chat/... are only allowed from company assets so I am totally cutoff from work via my phone except through that list and the best part is it by the companies own policy. I only get true emergency calls now.
- godelski 8y agoSounds like a good pitch for recruiting!
- innagadadavida 8y agoIt is more tricky when some of this will show up on your perf review and the bonus/RSU grants reflect it. I’ve seen some people circumvent all this by taking sick days liberally and just tow the company line. Any other advice to handle thes situations nicely balancing work/life/$$$ ?
- sebazzz 8y agoIt might be my bubble, but it is also a more of a team spirit thing. I live in a country with good laws regarding employment and my young coworkers in my team don't work outside office hours and don't read email. In other teams in the same business unit of the company it is a whole different story.
- mirceal 8y agoyeah. totally agree. i call bullshit on being available 24/7/365 when you're the only person doing the job. even if you ignore the implications this has on you, this is a terrible idea if only from the redundancy/keeping the lights on kind-of perspective where if you quit you're left with 0 people doing an "important" job.
- bigiain 8y agoI've told bosses in the past "Your payslip says you're paying me for 40 hrs a week, which was the agreement when you employed me. I think it's reasonable to ask for the next 20hrs at time and a half, and anything beyond that at double time. So if you want me on duty 24x7x365 - to start you'll need to pay me our current agreed 40hr amount, plus 20 hours at time and a half, and 108 hours at double time to cover a full 168 hour week. That's 7.15 times as much as the 40hr/week rate to get 24x7. To get "365", which means I'm also on duty during public holidays, sick days, and vacation days, that'll come out to 8.5 times the 40hr a week rate. Let me know when that rate starts applying to my paycheques, and I'll then stop turning my phone off whenever it suits me outside office hour." Interestingly, none of them have ever taken me up on that, but it's often lead into productive discussions about how you need at least five people to properly cover a 24x7x365 roster - and that the cost of that is quite reasonable - if you genuinely need 24x7x365 coverage.
- lotsofpulp 8y agoMy leisure time is worth far more than 1.5x or 2x, with each additional hour being exponentially worth more than the last. I would be giving up time with family, excercise (my health), and my other goals, so I don’t see how a simple 2x would even begin to cover the loss of those.
- bigiain 8y agoYeah - of course that's all true. My numbers are based around super-hard-to-argue-against standard employment law for other professions where I live. If you work as a waiter or a shop assistant that's the sort of overtime deal you get automatically. When you push that minimum legally required remuneration to its obvious extension if your boss is asking you to be on duty 24x7, it's difficult for them to argue a reasonable case _down_ from having to pay you 8 times as much money. The primary aim of that line of reasoning is to point out "if you need my job covered 24x7, employing and paying another four people with my skills to make sure it's covered for the 130 hours a week I'm not in the office is a more reasonable and less expensive way of doing it than trying to make it all my problem." Quite often, in my experience, it's because the boss suddenly has their first customer ever suddenly demanding it, and they've not done the maths already and been immediately able to tell the customer "Sure. That'll cost you about ten times as much as a weekday business hours only support. When would you like us to start billing that? I'll need that in writing, of course."
- commandlinefan 8y agoWhat I can't reconcile is the prevalence of this type of abuse (along with many other types of abuse) when we're supposedly hard to find, hard to replace and hard to retain. I don't expect the rock star treatment, but there are a lot of positions that are MUCH easier to find people to fill who are treated with a lot more respect or, failing that, at least not with utter contempt.
- WrtCdEvrydy 8y agoYou have to come to an understanding that the reason a place is shit is because of this. Revolving doors are actually worse than just a morale problem. Someone quitting isn't just leaving your company, they're taking everything they know about the systems at your company. My favorite move in tabletop strategy when doing disaster recovery is finding the most important person at the table and going 'Bang, you died driving to work, you can stay but you cannot help anyone'
- ohithereyou 8y ago>hard to find, hard to replace and hard to retain You only get this line if you're a US citizen as justification as to why H1B visa quotas need to be increased. If you're here on an H1B visa, you get reminded daily that your replacement is waiting back in your home country, you can be replaced with a single phone call, and you better have a plan to get all of your things and family back to your home country quickly when you get bounced.
- iceninenines 8y agoSounds like slavery.
- Frost1x 8y agoIndentured servitude with a new name basically. My friend works in the health industry and I can confirm this. The second he got his greencard, everything changed as far as employer abuse. Now it's just the typical abuses we all deal with.
- 8y ago
- president 8y agoNothing like having to break away from a dinner with your family and switch your brain into work mode. Honestly, the worst things about this industry is everything they do to ensure you have no personal life outside of work.
- vmware505 8y agoYou guys should come to New Zealand... working outside of your work hours is not cool here. More and more companies expect only 37 hours per week... a new trend is 4 days workweeks. Nobody checking their email or phone after work... Ridiculous.
- UnpossibleJim 8y agoUmmm, we want to but New Zealand ISN'T TAKING PEOPLE ANYMORE! I looked into it =( it super bummed me out. EDIT: I should say, from the U.S. anyway.
- nicoburns 8y agoSame in the UK mostly (although there is a bit of this culture in London). I remember my first job, it got to 5pm and my boss gently prompted me to go home. He was happy to let me stay if I wanted to on occasion to finisb something off, but made clear that it wasn't expectsd or the norm. It's something I've stuck to ever since.
- yeOldenWhiner 8y agoMaybe you just got 10 years older. And what did you get for it, now that your youth is gone?