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I developed a pathological need to monitor Slack at all hours. It was largely based on the culture at my company (a startup, at the time) - while there was no w

I developed a pathological need to monitor Slack at all hours. It was largely based on the culture at my company (a startup, at the time) - while there was no written rule to install Slack on your phone, responding to Slack messages at 10pm was clearly a way to get ahead at the company. I switched jobs and continued to run Slack on my phone, as everybody seems to do. Some time in 2021, I got a new phone and just... didn't reinstall Slack. The world didn't end. I found myself just as much on top of things as I was, in spite of the fact that I was now making intentional visits to my laptop off hours (I didn't quit it entirely). You're probably expecting me to say that this was rainbows and unicorns from there on out, but the exact opposite is true. Two years later, I'm still finding myself anxious much of the time, that I'm missing an important Slack message - sometimes at 10pm, sometimes at 6am. Sometimes I have, indeed, missed an important Slack message. Not having the capability to be notified instantaneously isn't a panacea. I'm only finding it better than the alternative.

atleastoptimal 3y ago
There's something that never sits right with me with the constant status-anxiety go above and beyond, nothing is ever enough hustle/schmooze culture. Part of me thinks "hmm well that's how the most successful/high status people in society do it/favor so it must be the way things ought to be", but who knows. To me, it seems to maximize for the appearance of competence and relative importance, and thus favors political/aggressively social types over anyone with a reasonable desire for work life balance, and not just because they have the audacity to demand time to themselves, but giving your body/mind time to rest improves the quality of your work.
safety1st 3y ago
So I run a remote-first company and our team is all over the globe. We had some people (including me) who had this issue at one point. I solved it by establishing two expectations: 1) No one is expected to be on Slack outside of their work hours. Full stop, pretty much. 2) Everyone must provide their personal mobile number to the company. They're all stored in an "emergency directory" (it's just a Google Doc). If there's an urgent emergency which can't wait until someone starts their next workday, you are allowed to call this number to reach them. In five years there's been one call through that emergency system, I think it was a big customer getting hacked. There have been many times where people just routed around the issue, like, "Oh, XYZ won't be available for the next 12 hours, I will talk to ABC instead and tell the stakeholder that I'll be able to get the expert engaged tomorrow" and it all worked out fine. Never been a big deal from what I've seen. We lost half our revenue in a very short period of time during Covid - it didn't trigger a call. Why should it have? Very bad news, but learning about it at 10pm wasn't going to improve anything. People all got a good night's sleep and then woke up and saw the terrible news in the morning, probably for the best because they were refreshed and relatively prepared to deal with it. Could you argue we're overall less responsive as a company because of this? Maybe but I don't think so, we haven't had customer complaints which would point to this. On the contrary we get customer feedback that our people thoroughly attentive to their needs. (Even with our customers we are clear up front about everyone's availability hours.) I do know that nobody is an anxiety zombie, and our people seem to be quite good at making rational and clear-headed decisions all the time, our company culture felt more panic-driven and knee-jerk before I instituted these rules. I'm pretty sure that allowing people to be totally unplugged for 16 hours a day if they want makes them better performers during the 8 when they're on the clock.
- smoldesu 3y ago
  That's a really nice solution. I'm not sure if everyone would be on the same page handing in their personal cell number like that, but I'd consider it 'problem solved'.
- milesvp 3y ago
  Being able to tell a client when you can get back to them will go a very long way towards mitigating their needs. For them it may be urgent, but knowing when it will get someone’s full attention, I’ve found is often enough. It’s basically saying someone is on this, and it’s in their priority list. It feels almost magical every time I’ve done it. The trick is having someone who can triage at odd hours in a way that doesn’t purpetuate the problem of having people be on when they shouldn’t.

atleastoptimal 3y ago

There's something that never sits right with me with the constant status-anxiety go above and beyond, nothing is ever enough hustle/schmooze culture. Part of me thinks "hmm well that's how the most successful/high status people in society do it/favor so it must be the way things ought to be", but who knows. To me, it seems to maximize for the appearance of competence and relative importance, and thus favors political/aggressively social types over anyone with a reasonable desire for work life balance, and not just because they have the audacity to demand time to themselves, but giving your body/mind time to rest improves the quality of your work.

safety1st 3y ago

So I run a remote-first company and our team is all over the globe. We had some people (including me) who had this issue at one point. I solved it by establishing two expectations: 1) No one is expected to be on Slack outside of their work hours. Full stop, pretty much. 2) Everyone must provide their personal mobile number to the company. They're all stored in an "emergency directory" (it's just a Google Doc). If there's an urgent emergency which can't wait until someone starts their next workday, you are allowed to call this number to reach them. In five years there's been one call through that emergency system, I think it was a big customer getting hacked. There have been many times where people just routed around the issue, like, "Oh, XYZ won't be available for the next 12 hours, I will talk to ABC instead and tell the stakeholder that I'll be able to get the expert engaged tomorrow" and it all worked out fine. Never been a big deal from what I've seen. We lost half our revenue in a very short period of time during Covid - it didn't trigger a call. Why should it have? Very bad news, but learning about it at 10pm wasn't going to improve anything. People all got a good night's sleep and then woke up and saw the terrible news in the morning, probably for the best because they were refreshed and relatively prepared to deal with it. Could you argue we're overall less responsive as a company because of this? Maybe but I don't think so, we haven't had customer complaints which would point to this. On the contrary we get customer feedback that our people thoroughly attentive to their needs. (Even with our customers we are clear up front about everyone's availability hours.) I do know that nobody is an anxiety zombie, and our people seem to be quite good at making rational and clear-headed decisions all the time, our company culture felt more panic-driven and knee-jerk before I instituted these rules. I'm pretty sure that allowing people to be totally unplugged for 16 hours a day if they want makes them better performers during the 8 when they're on the clock.

smoldesu 3y ago
That's a really nice solution. I'm not sure if everyone would be on the same page handing in their personal cell number like that, but I'd consider it 'problem solved'.
milesvp 3y ago
Being able to tell a client when you can get back to them will go a very long way towards mitigating their needs. For them it may be urgent, but knowing when it will get someone’s full attention, I’ve found is often enough. It’s basically saying someone is on this, and it’s in their priority list. It feels almost magical every time I’ve done it. The trick is having someone who can triage at odd hours in a way that doesn’t purpetuate the problem of having people be on when they shouldn’t.