5 ms·

If you really didn't want employees to answer email in the middle of their night, you would configure the company mail server to not deliver things in the middl

If you really didn't want employees to answer email in the middle of their night, you would configure the company mail server to not deliver things in the middle of their night. Some companies actually do this.

parpfish 3y ago
how do you handle multi-timezone teams or international companies with people spread around the world? it would be counterproductive to tell a team in london team that they can't message each other because the the email server server only sends things during california working hours.
- grugagag 3y ago
  Could be solved with a simple expectation for reading emails during work hours company wide. Btw, I don’t check my email when outside workhours and don’t care what anyone thinks... There’s an emergency path directly to my phone but that isn’t to be abused or gets banned away. It hasn’t happened in years…
- ElevenLathe 3y ago
  Don't deliver mail to a London recipient if it is midnight in London. If it's noon on a weekday for another recipient, go ahead and deliver it to them. Also, there would be no need to have restrictions on sending -- email is store-and-forward already. Send all you want, it will get delivered when the receiving party is available. These used to be the default expectations around email: your recipient will see it during business hours, when they next dial in. Broadband and always-on internet creeped up without us really examining this, so Outlook is now just a chat client with a weird UI.
foobiekr 3y ago
Sometimes emergencies happen. Having random IT systems do this means it is guaranteed to go wrong several times a year.
- ElevenLathe 3y ago
  This is true of literally all automation. We put in place automation all the time that saves like 5 minutes a month, and this is something that would directly benefit the mental health of all employees. Seems like a fair tradeoff unless you value ALL employees' mental health at less then 5m of an engineer's time per month.

parpfish 3y ago

how do you handle multi-timezone teams or international companies with people spread around the world? it would be counterproductive to tell a team in london team that they can't message each other because the the email server server only sends things during california working hours.

grugagag 3y ago
Could be solved with a simple expectation for reading emails during work hours company wide. Btw, I don’t check my email when outside workhours and don’t care what anyone thinks... There’s an emergency path directly to my phone but that isn’t to be abused or gets banned away. It hasn’t happened in years…
ElevenLathe 3y ago
Don't deliver mail to a London recipient if it is midnight in London. If it's noon on a weekday for another recipient, go ahead and deliver it to them. Also, there would be no need to have restrictions on sending -- email is store-and-forward already. Send all you want, it will get delivered when the receiving party is available. These used to be the default expectations around email: your recipient will see it during business hours, when they next dial in. Broadband and always-on internet creeped up without us really examining this, so Outlook is now just a chat client with a weird UI.

foobiekr 3y ago

Sometimes emergencies happen. Having random IT systems do this means it is guaranteed to go wrong several times a year.

ElevenLathe 3y ago
This is true of literally all automation. We put in place automation all the time that saves like 5 minutes a month, and this is something that would directly benefit the mental health of all employees. Seems like a fair tradeoff unless you value ALL employees' mental health at less then 5m of an engineer's time per month.