6 ms·

This is certainly a very good reason to not put your work account on your personal phone, but my primary reason not to is that it's my device and I pay for the

by kpwags 7y ago

This is certainly a very good reason to not put your work account on your personal phone, but my primary reason not to is that it's my device and I pay for the service. If my company needs me to be available beyond my 9-5 workday, they can pay for it. If there's an emergency, they can always call, but I don't like being "always on".

stilley2 7y ago
I recently got a new job where the email is completely locked down (only accessible on a networked computer or via the awful outlook web interface). It's been awesome not getting work emails on my phone.
- allthecybers 7y ago
  Same here. If I have to VPN in I’m less inclined to look at email outside of work.
  - treve 7y ago
    I'm trying to see the drawback, but failing.
- mooreds 7y ago
  I used to have work email and slack on my phone. While it made some things easier (heading out in the work day and not blocking people who might need my input, for example), it also made me feel tethered. Slack in particular was very addictive to me (to be fair, not just work slack, but other slacks which I was on). When I got a new phone, I simply didn't install the email or slack clients. It's led to occasional text messages, when I really needed to communicate with a team member, but all in all has been a fantastic experience. Highly recommended.
- the_watcher 7y ago
  One of the things I miss most about my previous BigCo job was only being able access work tools via my work phone. I could go on vacation and tell my team that I wasn't taking my work phone or computer (I needed a corporate VPN installed on my work computer to access anything internal) and everyone knew I was completely unreachable.
- chipperyman573 7y ago
  Why can you only access from a networked computer or OWA? Is the desktop outlook client more privileged than OWA? (I've never used either extensively)
  - cbhl 7y ago
    Presumably the IMAP or Exchange server is only exposed to the LAN. (It's non-trivial to configure these properly to be exposed to the internet...)
derefr 7y ago
> If there's an emergency, they can always call, but I don't like being "always on". Personally, I choose the opposite: you need to email me to tell me you want to call me (so that I’ll turn on my softphone app), otherwise you’ll just automatically go to voicemail (which will also go to my email.) I notice that with Gmail’s inbox categories, you only get push-notified when something lands in Primary or Updates; so as long as you’ve trained the system to push the irrelevant/lifecycle stuff into the other categories, your phone won’t ding all that often. (Mine doesn’t, and I get a good amount of raw email.)
- ceph_ 7y ago
  I can't believe anyone can handle having push notifications on email. I only read my email when I go to check it. For both work and personal. I have hundreds of rules for email filtering. With most mailing lists never hitting my inbox. But it's still way too much for individual email push notifications.
  - derefr 7y ago
    The other thing I do is to separate my personal and work email accounts. I’m signed into both on my phone, but I only get push-notified about personal mail. I want to know if a family member is in trouble; servers burning down can wait until tomorrow.
VBprogrammer 7y ago
I learned that lesson after losing too many days off to some emergency or other that I spotted on my emails. Personally I need to be able to put everything to the side when I'm out of office.
- ohithereyou 7y ago
  >losing too many days off to some emergency How do you even lose days off to some work emergency? If I was scheduled to be on vacation but I have to come in for some emergency, I don't lose those days, and you shouldn't either, since you never actually took those days off.
  - VBprogrammer 7y ago
    I meant that less literally. While I might still be technically out of the office, if I'm spending time worrying about an on-going problem it's not nearly as restful as if I'm blissfully ignorant.
mti27 7y ago
Exactly- if work doesn't pay, they don't get to play on my phone. I'd be willing to check work email sporadically, and it's unfortunate that doing so in any capacity means allowing an unknown admin "wipe my phone" privileges. Companies don't handle that stuff with any sort of finesse and mistakes happen. Ultimately email on a phone may be a moot point for software developers: We use more independent chat apps like Slack, no one worries about texting you, and it's hard to do anything really more involved than messaging without opening your laptop (which probably is provided by work).
- lugg 7y ago
  Slack, on my phone? Are you nuts? If you want me after hours you call. Thats the only option you have.
  - toomuchtodo 7y ago
    Exactly. Your employer is not going to enforce boundaries to ensure healthy work/life balance for you, you must do it yourself (until labor regulations catch up; see France [1] and NYC [2] labor law regarding checking email outside of work hours for examples). [1] https://newatlas.com/right-to-disconnect-after-hours-work-emails/55879/ https://newatlas.com/right-to-disconnect-after-hours-work-em... [2] https://legistar.council.nyc.gov/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=3458217&GUID=8930D471-5788-4AF4-B960-54620B2535F7&Options=ID%7CText%7C&Search=disconnect https://legistar.council.nyc.gov/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=3...
  - scarejunba 7y ago
    Slack has work hours. After that nothing notifies me. FWIW I use Slack to keep in touch with other groups of people too. It’s actually quite good.
  - zippergz 7y ago
    Are you, with a straight face, saying that you'd rather receive a PHONE CALL than a notification from an app that you can set time-sensitive notification methods for (i.e. DND overnight, etc.)? I'm not fan of getting any kind of work message outside of working hours, but I'd FAR rather let my co-workers send me a slack message that I can ignore and/or deal with when I feel like it than call me on the phone. No one at my office except my direct manager and HR has my phone number (and in the 5+ years I've worked here), no one has called me on it.
supergeek133 7y ago
No joke, we recently went to a BYOD model with no "assistance". I'm expected to be available 24/7 in most cases. So I'm refusing to be available until I get some compensation.
- ianai 7y ago
  Expect to be fired. That’s, unfortunately, the labor market reality.
  - asark 7y ago
    Labor market reality's also that everyone's falling over themselves to hire developers. Won't last, but that's what's up right now.
  - nathan_long 7y ago
    Depends highly on the employee's value to the company. Also, if the employee has very marketable skills, they may be happy to leave a job whose hourly rate has suddenly dropped.
  - joe5150 7y ago
    we're pretty close to full employment. lots of industries are job-seekers' markets right now. which doesn't mean that management recognizes this and wouldn't do something stupid like fire a good worker, but that doesn't have a lot to do with the labor market.
  - elbrian 7y ago
    I'm still waiting, 5+ years later...
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- wikibob 7y ago
  It's a very competitive labor market. For employers. If you are highly skilled, you are highly in demand. Therefore, demand good treatment. Tech industry compensation has never been higher: http://levels.fyi/comp.html http://levels.fyi/comp.html Google pays for on-call hours. You are credited with 33.3% time for each hour on call if you have a 30 minute response requirement, and 66.6% time for each hour on call if you have a 5 minute response requirement. These can be taken as extra holiday, or cashed out. [0] [0] Among other public sources: https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/41v0ol/i_might_reject_an_unattractive_google_sreswe/cz5gky0/ https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/41v0ol/i...
crazygringo 7y ago
> If my company needs me to be available beyond my 9-5 workday, they can pay for it. If you're salaried then they are paying you for it based on the job requirements, it's part of the job and one of the things that separates hourly employees from salaried ones. Unless you're talking about the cost of your cell plan or device? But even then, a lot of companies will pay for your plan and subsidize part/all of your device if they have a legitimate work reason to need to contact you and expect a fairly quick response outside the office. EDIT: To be clear I'm referring to US law/practices. The entire point of salaried as opposed to hourly work is that it is based on performance rather than hours, and it's up to you and your employer to come to agreement on what performance means. At some companies salary might be for 40 hours, at others it's for 60 or 80 regularly. It's your own responsibility to find out before taking the job, and decide for yourself what you're willing to provide or not.
- djsumdog 7y ago
  I worked for a University that paid cell phone plan steepens back in 2012. In Illinois, it now required by law for employers to pay cell expensive if they're required for work.
- tharax 7y ago
  No they are _not_. Salary is for 40 hours a week, +/- 5 hours depending on temporary circumstances. Salary is not 40 hours working + 128 hours on call per week.
  - michaelmior 7y ago
    This of course depends on your particular employment contract. In some cases, someone may agree to be on call whenever they're not working and AFAIK (IANAL) such contracts are legal in some circumstances.
  - kube-system 7y ago
    That depends on whether or not the employee is FLSA exempt or non-exempt.
- dancek 7y ago
pwthornton 7y ago
My company pays for my service but not my phone, so I'm in a gray area here.
- vecplane 7y ago
  Heads up, if your company is paying for your service, they can see who you're calling and texting. I'm not saying that's unreasonable, but I've heard of employees getting caught leaking by communicating through cell plans paid for by the employer.
  - Nowyouknow 7y ago
    What if you're being reimbursed for your phone? I assume they can only see activity on my logged in GSuite account. Can't imagine that they have access to anything beyond that.
    - PeterStuer 7y ago
      If they are the ones paying for your phone's subscription, they get a very detailed report on all the calls/texts/data access requests done.
  - pwthornton 7y ago
    All they do is hand me a certain amount of money every month. The plan is my own, and they didn't install any software on my phone. All I do is run Gmail through the built-in mail and calendar apps on my iPhone. I also have Slack on my iPhone.
- TimTheTinker 7y ago
  My company pays a $75/month BYOD stipend. It's more than enough to cover the phone bill.
kinkrtyavimoodh 7y ago
So it would be ok if your employer paid 60 bucks a month to foot your phone bill? Be careful what you wish for.
- ohithereyou 7y ago
  This is precisely why I make it clear that I do not want a work phone. My mobile number is published in the global address book for emergencies, but otherwise if I'm not at work then I'm not working, and I do my best to not think about work when I'm not working. Having a block of metal and plastic specifically to intrude into my free time for the benefit of my employer is not something that I am interested in.
conradfr 7y ago
Basically I have my Gmail work account on my phone but I'm syncing it manually, only when I want/need to consult it.
- stunt 7y ago
  Yes, I do the same for the same reason. Fetch Manually instead of default Push or Fetch.
- anotherevan 7y ago
  Mine syncs automatically, but there is no notification sound, only the visual indicator in the status bar. That works for me.
glvn 7y ago
The counter to this is that oftentimes I'm at work and not at my computer so I need access to my email/calendar on a mobile device. This doesn't happen often enough for me to warrant a work phone but happens often enought to where it would be a pain to always go back to my computer to pull that up. My solution so far has been to just use the outlook web app. Sure it's not as nice as the app but it lets me get to the info I need while also preventing me from having to install any sort of profiles on my device, as an added bonus I do not allow the site to send me notifications so I do not have to worry about being bothered off-hours.
kstrauser 7y ago
Yeah, my last job wanted me to install their rootkit/spyware on my personal phone for the privilege of being able to check my work email at night. I resolved this by letting my manager know how to contact me after hours in the event of an absolute emergency, and that otherwise I'll check my messages at the office when I get in to work.

by kpwags 7y ago

stilley2 7y ago

I recently got a new job where the email is completely locked down (only accessible on a networked computer or via the awful outlook web interface). It's been awesome not getting work emails on my phone.

allthecybers 7y ago
Same here. If I have to VPN in I’m less inclined to look at email outside of work.
- treve 7y ago
  I'm trying to see the drawback, but failing.
mooreds 7y ago
I used to have work email and slack on my phone. While it made some things easier (heading out in the work day and not blocking people who might need my input, for example), it also made me feel tethered. Slack in particular was very addictive to me (to be fair, not just work slack, but other slacks which I was on). When I got a new phone, I simply didn't install the email or slack clients. It's led to occasional text messages, when I really needed to communicate with a team member, but all in all has been a fantastic experience. Highly recommended.
the_watcher 7y ago
One of the things I miss most about my previous BigCo job was only being able access work tools via my work phone. I could go on vacation and tell my team that I wasn't taking my work phone or computer (I needed a corporate VPN installed on my work computer to access anything internal) and everyone knew I was completely unreachable.
chipperyman573 7y ago
Why can you only access from a networked computer or OWA? Is the desktop outlook client more privileged than OWA? (I've never used either extensively)
- cbhl 7y ago
  Presumably the IMAP or Exchange server is only exposed to the LAN. (It's non-trivial to configure these properly to be exposed to the internet...)

derefr 7y ago

> If there's an emergency, they can always call, but I don't like being "always on". Personally, I choose the opposite: you need to email me to tell me you want to call me (so that I’ll turn on my softphone app), otherwise you’ll just automatically go to voicemail (which will also go to my email.) I notice that with Gmail’s inbox categories, you only get push-notified when something lands in Primary or Updates; so as long as you’ve trained the system to push the irrelevant/lifecycle stuff into the other categories, your phone won’t ding all that often. (Mine doesn’t, and I get a good amount of raw email.)

ceph_ 7y ago
I can't believe anyone can handle having push notifications on email. I only read my email when I go to check it. For both work and personal. I have hundreds of rules for email filtering. With most mailing lists never hitting my inbox. But it's still way too much for individual email push notifications.
- derefr 7y ago
  The other thing I do is to separate my personal and work email accounts. I’m signed into both on my phone, but I only get push-notified about personal mail. I want to know if a family member is in trouble; servers burning down can wait until tomorrow.

VBprogrammer 7y ago

I learned that lesson after losing too many days off to some emergency or other that I spotted on my emails. Personally I need to be able to put everything to the side when I'm out of office.

ohithereyou 7y ago
>losing too many days off to some emergency How do you even lose days off to some work emergency? If I was scheduled to be on vacation but I have to come in for some emergency, I don't lose those days, and you shouldn't either, since you never actually took those days off.
- VBprogrammer 7y ago
  I meant that less literally. While I might still be technically out of the office, if I'm spending time worrying about an on-going problem it's not nearly as restful as if I'm blissfully ignorant.

mti27 7y ago

Exactly- if work doesn't pay, they don't get to play on my phone. I'd be willing to check work email sporadically, and it's unfortunate that doing so in any capacity means allowing an unknown admin "wipe my phone" privileges. Companies don't handle that stuff with any sort of finesse and mistakes happen. Ultimately email on a phone may be a moot point for software developers: We use more independent chat apps like Slack, no one worries about texting you, and it's hard to do anything really more involved than messaging without opening your laptop (which probably is provided by work).

lugg 7y ago
Slack, on my phone? Are you nuts? If you want me after hours you call. Thats the only option you have.
- toomuchtodo 7y ago
  Exactly. Your employer is not going to enforce boundaries to ensure healthy work/life balance for you, you must do it yourself (until labor regulations catch up; see France [1] and NYC [2] labor law regarding checking email outside of work hours for examples). [1] https://newatlas.com/right-to-disconnect-after-hours-work-emails/55879/ https://newatlas.com/right-to-disconnect-after-hours-work-em... [2] https://legistar.council.nyc.gov/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=3458217&GUID=8930D471-5788-4AF4-B960-54620B2535F7&Options=ID%7CText%7C&Search=disconnect https://legistar.council.nyc.gov/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=3...
- scarejunba 7y ago
  Slack has work hours. After that nothing notifies me. FWIW I use Slack to keep in touch with other groups of people too. It’s actually quite good.
- zippergz 7y ago
  Are you, with a straight face, saying that you'd rather receive a PHONE CALL than a notification from an app that you can set time-sensitive notification methods for (i.e. DND overnight, etc.)? I'm not fan of getting any kind of work message outside of working hours, but I'd FAR rather let my co-workers send me a slack message that I can ignore and/or deal with when I feel like it than call me on the phone. No one at my office except my direct manager and HR has my phone number (and in the 5+ years I've worked here), no one has called me on it.

supergeek133 7y ago

No joke, we recently went to a BYOD model with no "assistance". I'm expected to be available 24/7 in most cases. So I'm refusing to be available until I get some compensation.

ianai 7y ago
Expect to be fired. That’s, unfortunately, the labor market reality.
- asark 7y ago
  Labor market reality's also that everyone's falling over themselves to hire developers. Won't last, but that's what's up right now.
- nathan_long 7y ago
  Depends highly on the employee's value to the company. Also, if the employee has very marketable skills, they may be happy to leave a job whose hourly rate has suddenly dropped.
- joe5150 7y ago
  we're pretty close to full employment. lots of industries are job-seekers' markets right now. which doesn't mean that management recognizes this and wouldn't do something stupid like fire a good worker, but that doesn't have a lot to do with the labor market.
- elbrian 7y ago
  I'm still waiting, 5+ years later...
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
wikibob 7y ago
It's a very competitive labor market. For employers. If you are highly skilled, you are highly in demand. Therefore, demand good treatment. Tech industry compensation has never been higher: http://levels.fyi/comp.html http://levels.fyi/comp.html Google pays for on-call hours. You are credited with 33.3% time for each hour on call if you have a 30 minute response requirement, and 66.6% time for each hour on call if you have a 5 minute response requirement. These can be taken as extra holiday, or cashed out. [0] [0] Among other public sources: https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/41v0ol/i_might_reject_an_unattractive_google_sreswe/cz5gky0/ https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/41v0ol/i...

crazygringo 7y ago

> If my company needs me to be available beyond my 9-5 workday, they can pay for it. If you're salaried then they are paying you for it based on the job requirements, it's part of the job and one of the things that separates hourly employees from salaried ones. Unless you're talking about the cost of your cell plan or device? But even then, a lot of companies will pay for your plan and subsidize part/all of your device if they have a legitimate work reason to need to contact you and expect a fairly quick response outside the office. EDIT: To be clear I'm referring to US law/practices. The entire point of salaried as opposed to hourly work is that it is based on performance rather than hours, and it's up to you and your employer to come to agreement on what performance means. At some companies salary might be for 40 hours, at others it's for 60 or 80 regularly. It's your own responsibility to find out before taking the job, and decide for yourself what you're willing to provide or not.

djsumdog 7y ago
I worked for a University that paid cell phone plan steepens back in 2012. In Illinois, it now required by law for employers to pay cell expensive if they're required for work.
tharax 7y ago
No they are _not_. Salary is for 40 hours a week, +/- 5 hours depending on temporary circumstances. Salary is not 40 hours working + 128 hours on call per week.
- michaelmior 7y ago
  This of course depends on your particular employment contract. In some cases, someone may agree to be on call whenever they're not working and AFAIK (IANAL) such contracts are legal in some circumstances.
- kube-system 7y ago
  That depends on whether or not the employee is FLSA exempt or non-exempt.
dancek 7y ago

pwthornton 7y ago

My company pays for my service but not my phone, so I'm in a gray area here.

vecplane 7y ago
Heads up, if your company is paying for your service, they can see who you're calling and texting. I'm not saying that's unreasonable, but I've heard of employees getting caught leaking by communicating through cell plans paid for by the employer.
- Nowyouknow 7y ago
  What if you're being reimbursed for your phone? I assume they can only see activity on my logged in GSuite account. Can't imagine that they have access to anything beyond that.
  - PeterStuer 7y ago
    If they are the ones paying for your phone's subscription, they get a very detailed report on all the calls/texts/data access requests done.
- pwthornton 7y ago
  All they do is hand me a certain amount of money every month. The plan is my own, and they didn't install any software on my phone. All I do is run Gmail through the built-in mail and calendar apps on my iPhone. I also have Slack on my iPhone.
TimTheTinker 7y ago
My company pays a $75/month BYOD stipend. It's more than enough to cover the phone bill.

kinkrtyavimoodh 7y ago

So it would be ok if your employer paid 60 bucks a month to foot your phone bill? Be careful what you wish for.

ohithereyou 7y ago
This is precisely why I make it clear that I do not want a work phone. My mobile number is published in the global address book for emergencies, but otherwise if I'm not at work then I'm not working, and I do my best to not think about work when I'm not working. Having a block of metal and plastic specifically to intrude into my free time for the benefit of my employer is not something that I am interested in.

conradfr 7y ago

Basically I have my Gmail work account on my phone but I'm syncing it manually, only when I want/need to consult it.

stunt 7y ago
Yes, I do the same for the same reason. Fetch Manually instead of default Push or Fetch.
anotherevan 7y ago
Mine syncs automatically, but there is no notification sound, only the visual indicator in the status bar. That works for me.

glvn 7y ago

The counter to this is that oftentimes I'm at work and not at my computer so I need access to my email/calendar on a mobile device. This doesn't happen often enough for me to warrant a work phone but happens often enought to where it would be a pain to always go back to my computer to pull that up. My solution so far has been to just use the outlook web app. Sure it's not as nice as the app but it lets me get to the info I need while also preventing me from having to install any sort of profiles on my device, as an added bonus I do not allow the site to send me notifications so I do not have to worry about being bothered off-hours.

kstrauser 7y ago

Yeah, my last job wanted me to install their rootkit/spyware on my personal phone for the privilege of being able to check my work email at night. I resolved this by letting my manager know how to contact me after hours in the event of an absolute emergency, and that otherwise I'll check my messages at the office when I get in to work.