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"Conducted by telecommunications company TollFreeForwarding.com, " an odd source, but OK. I work remote from a place outside the US. Last thanksgiving my boss

"Conducted by telecommunications company TollFreeForwarding.com, " an odd source, but OK. I work remote from a place outside the US. Last thanksgiving my boss (from the US) was on Slack. So were... all but one of my US colleagues. I see them writing at all hours of the night. On a work trip it was more or less assumed I'd work from 9 AM (8:30 ish really if you count coffee before) until 10 PM. I'm not on pagerduty anymore but my daughter still sings Frere Jacque as "Something's broken Something's broken It's your fault!, It's your fault!" I spent half my life on pagerduty (so over half my life - waking and asleep, working in some sort of fashion). It depends on the industry but there's too many people who are de facto actually at work every waking moment (and sleeping, if you count on-call). Combine this with the nagging suspicion that none of this actually matters (See "Bullshit Jobs" by David Graeber) and burnout, detachment, etc. shouldn't be a surprise.

thaumasiotes 7y ago
> It depends on the industry but there's too many people who are de facto actually at work every waking moment If "at work every waking moment" means "needs to be able to respond to emergencies", then this is actually the norm for everyone in the world until very recently. Anyone who doesn't have an employer is "at work every waking moment" by this definition. Peasants, housewives, aristocrats... Given the nearly 100% rate of this for all of history, it seems weird to argue that the current -- much lower -- rate is too high.
- yabadabadoes 7y ago
  Given that chauffeuring is driving and we were driving before Uber existed, it seems strange that people expect compensation when driving for Uber and count it as part of their labor time?
  - thaumasiotes 7y ago
    Try to make the correspondences in your supposed analogy explicit. I'll wait. My parent comment is not complaining about excessive labor time. He's complaining about being on call. Is it strange that people expect compensation for being on call? That depends on what you're willing to consider "compensation". No one is clocked in at an hourly rate while on call because the labor laws prohibit that, but that's an artifact. On-call positions are viewed as more undesirable than otherwise and pay compensation accordingly.
    - yabadabadoes 7y ago
      We all have personal lives where we do things employers would pay for. It doesn't follow from that that employers demanding constant availability is nothing new, we still have those personal lives, so this isn't a swap of fungible work. Even if it were, we aren't required to deal with professional bullshit in personal driving or family emergencies.
- rixrax 7y ago
  You mean emergencies such as your hot shot boss calling you 2am because he wants to discuss some bullshit idea he just had? I’ve worked in a couple of places where this kept happening. First time I was junior enough to care and put up with it. Everyone understand: this is not normal. Unless you specifically signed up for pager duty sort of job, no one should put up with this.
  - onemoresoop 7y ago
    Or unless you get $100 every time your "pager" beeps you into duty. Or a day off the next day or some sort of payback...
  - spking 7y ago
    > First time I was junior enough to care and put up with it. I think that's the game at a lot of companies, to just prey on the young and hungry who probably don't know any better and are more likely to put up with bullshit like that.
    - WalterSear 7y ago
      I get the feeling that ageism in hiring is often driven by this.
      - yardie 7y ago
        As a fully formed adult with responsibilities and kids. There are so many job posts you can tell right away aren't for a certain demographic. People who may push back because they have a parent-teacher conference on the schedule already.
- pmoriarty 7y ago
  There's something to what you say. If you're responsible for handling emergencies then you have some incentive for making sure such emergencies don't happen. Thus, developers have incentives to write more robust code and sysadmins have incentives to design more robust systems. But what if your company doesn't give the resources you need to make these more robust? Your team may be too small to do much other than run from one fire to another, or to apply a bandaid fix rather than taking the time to do things right from the start. It's also not uncommon to come in to a company inheriting an unholy mess of spaghetti code which no one at the company fully understands nor has the time to document, redesign, or fix. In these cases emergencies tend to be a regular occurrence, and arguably of the company's own making, but the hands of the people who have to respond to them are effectively tied.
- jodrellblank 7y ago
  How do you say the current rate is much lower? By your definiton everyone on Earth still is at work to respond to their home being set on fire, but now many people are also on call to respond to a shopping website being mildly inconveniently down at a time most people are asleep, in a system which is abusively, inhumanely, choosing to define that as an "emergency" and choosing to make that happen as often as possible by squeezing design and engineering and planning resources, because both of those choices (uptime, and fast development) are more profitable, and screw the human factor. It's a totally different scenario. Even in situations where there are lives at risk, medical systems, or power grid control, there are plenty of options for planning in advance, for redundancy, for employing people in different time zones. When a peasant has to respond to their house burning, they're motivated to put the candles out before going to bed. When a peasant has to respond to their email system being down, but they're not allowed to allocate more time or money to fix it, that's worse.
kache_ 7y ago
I work remotely as well and I observe that a lot of people are available outside their regular working hours. I think remote work is part of the problem: the additional blurring between work and life will askew your work life balance. Pager duty can burn you out, but it really depends on how much you get paged and how many people are on rotation.
- pmoriarty 7y ago
  Overtime would be a lot easier to swallow if you were paid, say, time and a half for weekday overtime and double for weekends or holidays. But, no, most tech employees aren't paid anything extra for it, so management has no incentive to reduce the amount of overtime you actually work. I had one boss who acted very concerned and would keep telling me not to work so late. But at the same time he wanted the same amount of work done, which meant working overtime. When I finally did stop working as much overtime, he was disappointed that I wasn't getting as much work done, and my reviews suffered. Also, commuting time should be paid as work time. There are so many people with crazy commutes that don't get paid a dime for it. I seem to recall that some European country had in fact required companies to pay for their employees' commutes. The US should follow suit.
  - Mountain_Skies 7y ago
    Sounds like a way to make urban sprawl even worse.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  - lotsofpulp 7y ago
    > Also, commuting time should be paid as work time. There are so many people with crazy commutes that don't get paid a dime for it. I seem to recall that some European country had in fact required companies to pay for their employees' commutes. The US should follow suit. Yes, we need more discrimination against poor people who can’t afford to live near job centers.
dsfyu404ed 7y ago
>Last thanksgiving my boss (from the US) was on Slack. So were... all but one of my US colleagues I work for a startup in a customer facing role and if I'm not on the schedule I simply don't get called. The Jewish person is the primary contact on the days around Christmas and the non-Americans take Thanksgiving and the 4th of July (and the boring old Christmas-celebrating Americans cover the holidays that they want to take vacation around, everyone wins). I work 40hr/wk and up to two weekend nights per month (off hours production stuff). I used to work for BigCos and it was even easier, thanks to being global we had people everywhere and nobody ever needed to be woken up unless they were the owner of something broken in production. Every previous job has been reasonable like this. No employer I have ever encountered expects more than 40hr unless it's specifically negotiated. I know of one person that works 60+hr weeks but he works in education and voluntarily leads an extracurricular he is very passionate about. Of course my experience is anecdotal and I know there exist 60hr/week sweatshops but for white collar employees they don't seem to be the norm, at least in tech in my region.
codingdave 7y ago
I work remotely, and absolutely work off-hours, weekend hours, and some holiday hours. I also take long lunches on weekdays, sleep in if I feel like it, go out on long walks when I need a break, and just stop working mid afternoon if I'm not in the zone. Overall, it balances out. I work when I am productive, usually right around 40 hours a week. But I can see why people would think I'm working extra hours if all they are looking at is my Slack availability. The connectivity of my devices !== whether or not I'm actually going to respond if you send me a message.
- nightski 7y ago
  I'm kind of in the same spot. But while it feels like freedom to do the things you mentioned (go on long walks, stop working mid afternoon, etc...), in the end our lives revolve around work and not the other way around. I'm struggling with this as breaks aside, there are other things I like to do in life.
  - codingdave 7y ago
    You are correct. But working 9-5 in an office doesn't change that. Your work schedule still dictates the broad strokes of your personal schedule, whether you can travel, and such things. Even the concept of "the weekend" exists solely because of work schedules. Figuring out how to disconnect from work and use the 8 hours of your day that aren't working or sleeping to pursue personal interests is important. The exact answer of how to do that differs between people. But it is a goal worth pursuing.
  - thedaemon 7y ago
    Our lives revolve around surviving, not work. Work is a construct of civilization.
- quxbar 7y ago
  I think I'm somewhat in the same pattern. My background is that I quit my position as a team lead because I wasn't happy with the day-to-day experience. Now I work for myself (consulting, remote contract work) and I'm much happier. Establishing good practices with my clients has been key, and it makes me realize as an employee, I didn't have the right leverage to work effectively with my employer.

thaumasiotes 7y ago

> It depends on the industry but there's too many people who are de facto actually at work every waking moment If "at work every waking moment" means "needs to be able to respond to emergencies", then this is actually the norm for everyone in the world until very recently. Anyone who doesn't have an employer is "at work every waking moment" by this definition. Peasants, housewives, aristocrats... Given the nearly 100% rate of this for all of history, it seems weird to argue that the current -- much lower -- rate is too high.

yabadabadoes 7y ago
Given that chauffeuring is driving and we were driving before Uber existed, it seems strange that people expect compensation when driving for Uber and count it as part of their labor time?
- thaumasiotes 7y ago
  Try to make the correspondences in your supposed analogy explicit. I'll wait. My parent comment is not complaining about excessive labor time. He's complaining about being on call. Is it strange that people expect compensation for being on call? That depends on what you're willing to consider "compensation". No one is clocked in at an hourly rate while on call because the labor laws prohibit that, but that's an artifact. On-call positions are viewed as more undesirable than otherwise and pay compensation accordingly.
  - yabadabadoes 7y ago
    We all have personal lives where we do things employers would pay for. It doesn't follow from that that employers demanding constant availability is nothing new, we still have those personal lives, so this isn't a swap of fungible work. Even if it were, we aren't required to deal with professional bullshit in personal driving or family emergencies.
rixrax 7y ago
You mean emergencies such as your hot shot boss calling you 2am because he wants to discuss some bullshit idea he just had? I’ve worked in a couple of places where this kept happening. First time I was junior enough to care and put up with it. Everyone understand: this is not normal. Unless you specifically signed up for pager duty sort of job, no one should put up with this.
- onemoresoop 7y ago
  Or unless you get $100 every time your "pager" beeps you into duty. Or a day off the next day or some sort of payback...
- spking 7y ago
  > First time I was junior enough to care and put up with it. I think that's the game at a lot of companies, to just prey on the young and hungry who probably don't know any better and are more likely to put up with bullshit like that.
  - WalterSear 7y ago
    I get the feeling that ageism in hiring is often driven by this.
    - yardie 7y ago
      As a fully formed adult with responsibilities and kids. There are so many job posts you can tell right away aren't for a certain demographic. People who may push back because they have a parent-teacher conference on the schedule already.
pmoriarty 7y ago
There's something to what you say. If you're responsible for handling emergencies then you have some incentive for making sure such emergencies don't happen. Thus, developers have incentives to write more robust code and sysadmins have incentives to design more robust systems. But what if your company doesn't give the resources you need to make these more robust? Your team may be too small to do much other than run from one fire to another, or to apply a bandaid fix rather than taking the time to do things right from the start. It's also not uncommon to come in to a company inheriting an unholy mess of spaghetti code which no one at the company fully understands nor has the time to document, redesign, or fix. In these cases emergencies tend to be a regular occurrence, and arguably of the company's own making, but the hands of the people who have to respond to them are effectively tied.
jodrellblank 7y ago
How do you say the current rate is much lower? By your definiton everyone on Earth still is at work to respond to their home being set on fire, but now many people are also on call to respond to a shopping website being mildly inconveniently down at a time most people are asleep, in a system which is abusively, inhumanely, choosing to define that as an "emergency" and choosing to make that happen as often as possible by squeezing design and engineering and planning resources, because both of those choices (uptime, and fast development) are more profitable, and screw the human factor. It's a totally different scenario. Even in situations where there are lives at risk, medical systems, or power grid control, there are plenty of options for planning in advance, for redundancy, for employing people in different time zones. When a peasant has to respond to their house burning, they're motivated to put the candles out before going to bed. When a peasant has to respond to their email system being down, but they're not allowed to allocate more time or money to fix it, that's worse.

kache_ 7y ago

I work remotely as well and I observe that a lot of people are available outside their regular working hours. I think remote work is part of the problem: the additional blurring between work and life will askew your work life balance. Pager duty can burn you out, but it really depends on how much you get paged and how many people are on rotation.

pmoriarty 7y ago
Overtime would be a lot easier to swallow if you were paid, say, time and a half for weekday overtime and double for weekends or holidays. But, no, most tech employees aren't paid anything extra for it, so management has no incentive to reduce the amount of overtime you actually work. I had one boss who acted very concerned and would keep telling me not to work so late. But at the same time he wanted the same amount of work done, which meant working overtime. When I finally did stop working as much overtime, he was disappointed that I wasn't getting as much work done, and my reviews suffered. Also, commuting time should be paid as work time. There are so many people with crazy commutes that don't get paid a dime for it. I seem to recall that some European country had in fact required companies to pay for their employees' commutes. The US should follow suit.
- Mountain_Skies 7y ago
  Sounds like a way to make urban sprawl even worse.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- lotsofpulp 7y ago
  > Also, commuting time should be paid as work time. There are so many people with crazy commutes that don't get paid a dime for it. I seem to recall that some European country had in fact required companies to pay for their employees' commutes. The US should follow suit. Yes, we need more discrimination against poor people who can’t afford to live near job centers.

dsfyu404ed 7y ago

>Last thanksgiving my boss (from the US) was on Slack. So were... all but one of my US colleagues I work for a startup in a customer facing role and if I'm not on the schedule I simply don't get called. The Jewish person is the primary contact on the days around Christmas and the non-Americans take Thanksgiving and the 4th of July (and the boring old Christmas-celebrating Americans cover the holidays that they want to take vacation around, everyone wins). I work 40hr/wk and up to two weekend nights per month (off hours production stuff). I used to work for BigCos and it was even easier, thanks to being global we had people everywhere and nobody ever needed to be woken up unless they were the owner of something broken in production. Every previous job has been reasonable like this. No employer I have ever encountered expects more than 40hr unless it's specifically negotiated. I know of one person that works 60+hr weeks but he works in education and voluntarily leads an extracurricular he is very passionate about. Of course my experience is anecdotal and I know there exist 60hr/week sweatshops but for white collar employees they don't seem to be the norm, at least in tech in my region.

codingdave 7y ago

I work remotely, and absolutely work off-hours, weekend hours, and some holiday hours. I also take long lunches on weekdays, sleep in if I feel like it, go out on long walks when I need a break, and just stop working mid afternoon if I'm not in the zone. Overall, it balances out. I work when I am productive, usually right around 40 hours a week. But I can see why people would think I'm working extra hours if all they are looking at is my Slack availability. The connectivity of my devices !== whether or not I'm actually going to respond if you send me a message.

nightski 7y ago
I'm kind of in the same spot. But while it feels like freedom to do the things you mentioned (go on long walks, stop working mid afternoon, etc...), in the end our lives revolve around work and not the other way around. I'm struggling with this as breaks aside, there are other things I like to do in life.
- codingdave 7y ago
  You are correct. But working 9-5 in an office doesn't change that. Your work schedule still dictates the broad strokes of your personal schedule, whether you can travel, and such things. Even the concept of "the weekend" exists solely because of work schedules. Figuring out how to disconnect from work and use the 8 hours of your day that aren't working or sleeping to pursue personal interests is important. The exact answer of how to do that differs between people. But it is a goal worth pursuing.
- thedaemon 7y ago
  Our lives revolve around surviving, not work. Work is a construct of civilization.
quxbar 7y ago
I think I'm somewhat in the same pattern. My background is that I quit my position as a team lead because I wasn't happy with the day-to-day experience. Now I work for myself (consulting, remote contract work) and I'm much happier. Establishing good practices with my clients has been key, and it makes me realize as an employee, I didn't have the right leverage to work effectively with my employer.