[HN Gopher] Australian employees now have the right to ignore wo...
___________________________________________________________________
Australian employees now have the right to ignore work emails,
calls after hours
Author : testrun
Score : 455 points
Date : 2024-08-26 00:08 UTC (22 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| UK is up next:
|
| https://www.euronews.com/next/2024/08/20/the-right-to-discon...
|
| By jurisdiction:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_disconnect
| billybuckwheat wrote:
| I don't live or work in any of those places, but I've been
| ignoring work emails and calls after hours for a long time. Helps
| that 1) I don't have a work phone, 2) apps that my company uses
| on my personal phone, and 3) never log into the company network
| or services on my own laptop.
|
| In the few instances when I was called out about it, I asked
| _Could the message /call have waited until the following
| morning/Monday?_ The answer was almost always _Yes_.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| This does not stop an employer from potentially disciplining or
| firing you. Laws do, because they bind. Implicit contracts and
| hope are not a strategy, with regards to worker rights and
| protections.
| Bostonian wrote:
| That's unrealistic. Managers who are unhappy with workers
| ignoring emails will find a reason to fire them, not promote
| them, or give them a smaller bonus.
| HeatrayEnjoyer wrote:
| With that logic you could throw out any labor protection
| law. Let's keep it constructive.
| ehnto wrote:
| It sets the rules, workers will have to fight for it to be
| followed still. But sociopathic management now knows
| workers have a foot to stand on in court, enterprises will
| be inclined to make it policy. Less sociopathic management
| might realise they were being assholes and dial it back a
| bit. Some managers genuinely don't realise that the current
| "norm" is not fair, since they are deep in the zeitgeist.
|
| Countless exceptions sure but there's no denying this is a
| good attempt at change.
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| What stops my employer from potentially disciplining or
| firing me is first of all, that I am good at what I do, and
| second that I negotiate from a position of strength.
|
| If my employer wants me to work off hours, I mean maybe I
| will, if I don't have anything going on, and I'll take some
| time the next day where I won't work as compensation for
| doing that, I won't ask permission.
|
| If I do have something going on, I'll say, "Can't do that.
| Have something going on". They're fine with it. They're
| reasonable people. Why would I work for unreasonable people?
| I would work for someone else.
|
| If they actually did fire me? OK, maybe I look for another
| job, but probably I'm retired. I saved my money. I negotiate
| from a position of strength.
| sfpotter wrote:
| Sounds like you live in a world of incredible privilege.
| Not everyone is so lucky.
| StressedDev wrote:
| Nope - A large portion of the world works like this. If
| you work for a place which demands you work all of the
| time, you either work for an abusive employer, or you get
| paid a lot of money to be at their beck and call.
|
| If the employer is abusive, find another job. If you are
| paid a large salary to be a slave to company, consider
| finding a job with a better work/life balance.
| sfpotter wrote:
| I think you have a poor understanding of what most of the
| world looks like. Most people on the planet exist in
| tenuous circumstances which do not allow them to simply
| go find another job, let alone an employer that isn't
| abusive, etc. The luxury of being able to worry about
| these things and take meaningful action to achieve them
| is truly a recent phenomenon that is not widely
| distributed.
| kergonath wrote:
| > Nope - A large portion of the world works like this. If
| you work for a place which demands you work all of the
| time, you either work for an abusive employer, or you get
| paid a lot of money to be at their beck and call.
|
| If you mean that most employers are abusive then yes.
| That's why there are laws like this one. Non-abusive
| employers can ignore it because they were already doing
| the right thing.
| yawaramin wrote:
| > find another job
|
| See the problem is that if labour laws didn't protect
| people, then everyone would be constantly under the
| stress of having one foot out the door and having to look
| for another job at the drop of a hat. Workplace
| productivity would plummet and the economy be quickly be
| tanked
| asimovfan wrote:
| There were no weekends before labor movement fought and
| got it..
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| You may do well because you're lucky; luck does not scale.
| yawaramin wrote:
| > What stops my employer from potentially disciplining or
| firing me is first of all, that I am good at what I do, and
| second that I negotiate from a position of strength.
|
| In other words, you are at the tender mercies of your
| employer, and you rely on them to uphold the implicit
| contract that they will not cross those unspoken
| boundaries. I'm glad this strategy works for you, but you
| are literally placing your livelihood, a roof over your
| head, and the food on your table at risk to keep it this
| way. If that's an acceptable risk for you, then sure.
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| I'm no lawyer, but I am an Australian and know the hoops you
| need to jump through in order to fire a full time employee.
|
| An employer who is prepared to put in writing that you will
| be fired for not working unpaid overtime (responding to
| email) is in for bad time.
| ivann wrote:
| Wait, can an employer fire you even if you didn't make a
| fault? What country are you in?
| NeoTar wrote:
| Probably the US - it's scary over there:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At-will_employment
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Our work culture is a strong part of why the US is so
| economically dominant.
|
| Reap what you sow "I work to live not live to work"
| crowd. Your destiny is to be further economically
| colonized by the "I live to work" crowd.
| TremendousJudge wrote:
| Or maybe it was all the military interventions that
| punished anybody who ever dared to question that
| domination
| ivann wrote:
| This strike me as a very naive view of the world.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Look at how dominant the USA is compared to the europeans
| who love to make fun of us for working so hard. The USA
| is about to be flung into another golden century due to
| its dominance in GenAI. Frogs/the EU will be too busy
| eating caiver served by rude waiters to realize that
| huggingface and mistral are all they have to compete with
| us. Eventually they won't be able to afford the caiver
| anymore. You laugh, but look at how the UK economy is
| doing. That's the future of Europe.
|
| Yeah it sucks to have a bad wlb work culture, but the
| alternative is losing what makes America so awesome.
| ivann wrote:
| And that's the confirmation. But given how emotional your
| response is I guess there is something personal to it so
| I won't push it.
|
| I'm just curious as to why did you make a distinction
| between France and Europe.
| StressedDev wrote:
| Same here. The fact is no one can be on call 24/7. People need
| downtime. I have never worked with a manager who demanded
| people be contactable at any time. I have been on call but that
| makes sense. Note that on a good team, being on call is easy
| because the service rarely goes down.
| patrick451 wrote:
| I have paging app installed my on phone, and that's it. If it
| is really, truly urgent they will page me. I have never been
| paged. Nobody has ever complained.
| Aachen wrote:
| > Helps that 1) I don't have a work phone,
|
| I have a work phone, but that's for making calls and doing
| other mobile stuff _during work hours_. Nobody expects me to
| use it outside of those hours, that 's not really related to
| having one. Do your colleagues only get one when they're
| expected to be online 24/7?
| space_oddity wrote:
| You've set some healthy boundaries when it comes to work-life
| balance, which is great!
| 0xEF wrote:
| This is important, right here; healthy boundaries. The best
| time to set them up is right at the start, too. I've had 3
| employers that privided me with a phone and laptop because
| the jobs involved travel, but I made very clear that work
| hours are work hours, so when I am off the clock, so are
| those devices. The respected that each time because the
| expectations were negotiated upfront, instead of waiting for
| one party to get ticked off and trying to pivot from that.
| aussieguy1234 wrote:
| Generally I'll only answer for actual production emergencies and
| I'll expect that I'll get time in lieu or overtime payments. I'll
| probably still keep doing that.
| Prcmaker wrote:
| With getting no overtime, no time off in lieu, and managers
| perpetually confusing a 'problem' with an 'emergency', I'm glad
| to see this happen. If it will actually make a difference though,
| I'm yet to be convinced.
| girvo wrote:
| I mean the FWC can straight up fine the company, and in general
| our commissions & ombudsmans are pretty decently run. It'll
| have an effect, I'm sure.
| Prcmaker wrote:
| I would like to see that happen, however, the current
| available guidance from FWC is worded very with a vast deal
| of of flexibility in it, and is highly open to
| interpretation. A manager may, in theory, decide any person
| responsible for any task may be contacted outside of hours.
| I've not seen anything truly restrictive.
| guidedlight wrote:
| It will be most interesting how this applies to teachers, who
| often have to prepare lessons and mark work outside of hours.
| Yodel0914 wrote:
| The teacher situation is strange. One the one hand, they
| often do seem to work outside of school hours on lesson prep
| and marking. On the other hand, they generally don't work
| during school holidays (12 weeks/yr).
|
| Also, given that most school days here are ~9am to ~3pm, I
| wonder how much of that "after hours" work actually falls
| within the standard 40hr work week.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| Like most things, there's a gaping chasm of variance
| between teachers that are phoning it in and teachers that
| want to engage their students in learning.
|
| I know a teacher who leaves for work at 6:30am, gets home
| after 5:30pm most nights, cooks dinner for the family, and
| spends the rest of her evening marking work and preparing
| lesson plans for the next few days. Then there's preparing
| reports, which is like a 6-week lead-time task in addition.
|
| During holidays she's definitely more relaxed, but still
| spends an absolute sh*tload of time preparing lessons for
| next term.
|
| She's specifically on one end of the spectrum, but that's
| also what it takes to get a class of up to 30 students to
| actually pay attention and make some worthwhile progress at
| their schooling. She chooses it though, she loves it, she
| lives for it.
|
| I couldn't do it to that degree without going insane.
| Yodel0914 wrote:
| That's amazing, but all-too rare. I think teachers have a
| very tough job, and many (most?) of them are not very
| good it at. My kids have had teachers who constantly
| shift assignment due dates because they're not ready,
| half-arse their lesson planning and tell the kids to do
| the rest at home, and are generally unable to manage a
| classroom.
| coldpie wrote:
| > That's amazing, but all-too rare.
|
| No, it's abusive and indicative of a failing system. We
| should not be celebrating overwork. If a system needs its
| workers to be doing double- or triple-time to function at
| the desired level, then the system is not working well
| and is on its way to failure.
| IshKebab wrote:
| I think it's also a lot more work for new teachers since
| they can't reuse lesson plans.
|
| I think it's probably quite possible after a few years to
| be a good teacher and also not spend all your free time
| marking and preparing lesson plans... but it's still hard
| work and underpaid. I'll stick with my overpaid and
| stress free programming job, thanks!
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| A lot of assignments can be partially machine graded,
| even if they think they can't be.
|
| Teachers are usually luddites though...
| rgblambda wrote:
| When you say preparing lesson plans, is that like
| printing out worksheets or is it literally planning out
| what the lesson is going to be?
|
| I'm not a teacher so am obviously missing context, but I
| don't understand how this part isn't standardised for
| every teacher following the same curriculum.
|
| It would be like asking each individual teacher to write
| a new textbook every year.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Experienced teachers likely have it down. Or can just use
| whatever was done in previous years. But you have set
| standards changed every 10-20 years at least. And maybe
| new textbook that has things in bit different order. Or
| there is some topical thing. Lesson planning is really
| looking at book and items there thinking how much time
| going over it with current group takes and then
| considering what items or things are needed in addition
| to reach those goals for this lesson.
|
| If you had to make a 1/2 hour presentation/workshop,
| there is some planning involved even if you can just copy
| paste the slides and training material.
| rgblambda wrote:
| Okay, I get it now. Lesson plans are something that can
| only be done on the fly and are more about adapting to
| things outside the control of the teacher e.g. one lesson
| took longer due to a disruption in the classroom.
|
| I was wondering why the people who set the curriculum
| couldn't just make a year's worth of lesson plans and
| email them to each teacher. Thanks for the explainer (to
| everyone who replied).
| majewsky wrote:
| It probably depends on the country, but in my country
| (Germany), the government only defines outlines of what
| knowledge and skills the students are expected to
| acquire. The teachers are expected to design a specific
| curriculum to convey these skills (though obviously
| constrained by outside factors, most prominently the
| available set of textbooks).
| aragilar wrote:
| Planning out what the lesson is going to be.
| Xylakant wrote:
| You have 20-30 kids with varying backgrounds, skill
| levels and learning habits. Some require challenges to
| figure out things on their own, others explicitly
| explanations. Some work well in a group, others need
| individual attention. Some go through a rough patch at
| home or with friends and are distracted. Some days are
| hot and you make no progress.
|
| A teacher needs to respond to the dynamics in a large
| group of non adults, every day, every minute. You can't
| plan that out in advance. Sure, experience helps to make
| the planning easier and to respond to situations you've
| seen before, but still, every day is different, and
| responding to the challenges in the last lesson requires
| a plan.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| You're going to get meme responses about why this is the
| case from Americans who have never been to countries with
| centralized education systems, but the only reason that
| America doesn't do this is our strong federalism and
| decentralized, local, education system.
| sethammons wrote:
| As a math teacher in the states some years back, I worked
| 6:30 am to 4pm in the building and from and a couple hours
| most evenings and usually 3-6 hours both days of the
| weekend. 70+ hours a week. Any holiday was spent catching
| up on grading. I often recruited my wife to help grade it
| was so overwhelming. And summer meant trainings and summer
| school otherwise the summer was unpaid and as a teacher we
| desperately needed the money.
|
| All in, I averaged three separate weeks (one at Christmas,
| and one week on either side of summer) a year of stay-
| cation since we could barely afford food let alone travel.
|
| When I transitioned to software, I nearly cut my hours in
| half and doubled my pay, nearly 4x-ing my effective hourly
| wage and had my first real vacation; heck, my first time on
| a plane even.
| notatoad wrote:
| a 9-3 school day for students means an 8-4 work day for
| teachers, minimum. that eats up the 40hr week right there,
| even for a teacher working the bare minimum.
| stubish wrote:
| This isn't addressing unpaid hours, just the expectation than
| your boss or coworkers can communicate with you after hours.
| Unpaid hours is already illegal. How to enforce that in the
| education system without it collapsing is the open question.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| Almost every message I send after hours saves me double the time
| during the workday. Otherwise, I would just save it for the
| workday.
| nwbort wrote:
| Yes, but 'Employers should be able to justify contacting
| professionals after hours based on common contract clauses that
| say a worker's high salary includes reasonable overtime'.
|
| See: https://www.afr.com/work-and-careers/workplace/the-right-
| to-...
| ehnto wrote:
| Indeed, but that doesn't effect most people since most people
| are not on high salaries.
|
| It should help for people like my mother, who get paid sweet
| fuck all but are expected to work 10-12 hour days, where 1-3 of
| it is homework and they are effectively on call 24/7 without
| compensation.
|
| There will be countless exceptions but it's a good thing to
| have in law, so it can be taken to the ombudsman or used in
| court.
| whatindaheck wrote:
| Go to college and get an education so you ~~can make a good
| living~~ have the opportunity to work more hours.
|
| I understand this should hopefully help low wage earners that
| are taken advantage of. That's great. The US, my country, could
| really take some inspiration here. But why are we rolling back
| the achievements of the standardized 40 hour work week for a
| certain group of people?
|
| It feels like this is pitting the poor against the middle
| class. All the while the wealthiest of wealthiest are relaxing
| in yachts complaining that their grocery baggers can't be
| called in to work overtime.
| RachelF wrote:
| For me, the interesting thing about Japanese work culture is
| that they pay white collar jobs overtime.
|
| Paid overtime seems to be a blue-collar only thing in most
| English-speaking countries.
| aragilar wrote:
| Paid overtime is covered in my contract (with rates detailed
| etc.), as is leave entitlements (and even how long I can be
| expected to work without a break). I suspect my contract is
| not unusual in Australia.
| selcuka wrote:
| > To cater for emergencies and jobs with irregular hours, the
| rule still allows employers to contact their workers, who can
| only refuse to respond where it is reasonable to do so.
|
| This clause pretty much invalidates the rest of the rule. Why
| should an employee need to justify their inability (or
| unwillingness) to respond? I can understand the "jobs with
| irregular hours", but otherwise shouldn't it be a best effort
| thing, without any obligation?
| hanniabu wrote:
| And what constitutes an emergency. If nobody's wellbeing is at
| risk then imo it's not an emergency, but I doubt that how a
| company will interpret it.
| simondotau wrote:
| The CEO might argue their wellbeing is at risk if they don't
| receive the bonus for reaching their quarterly targets.
| dopylitty wrote:
| This only makes sense if emergencies are strictly defined. For
| instance "don't come to the office there's a bear inside" is an
| emergency. "the crud app you support fell over" is not an
| emergency. If the latter is an emergency to the company they
| should staff for 24/7 support, not rely on exploiting people
| during their off hours to provide free support.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > "the crud app you support fell over" is not an emergency.
|
| I think a lot of people are going to be disappointed to learn
| that situations impacting business-critical operations would
| be considered emergencies.
|
| The assumption that Australia just outlawed the concept of
| having an on-call rotation is not supported by the article.
|
| The article says requiring an employee to be on-call 24/7 for
| general purposes would indeed be illegal.
|
| There was another example that someone could not be required
| to come in for a surprise shift with only a few hours of
| notice overnight.
|
| But completely eliminating planned on-call rotations is not
| part of the goal.
| dopylitty wrote:
| > But completely eliminating planned on-call rotations is
| not part of the goal.
|
| It certainly should be. You want your app supported 24x7
| then pay for three shifts.
|
| If the government won't make it a law then IT workers can
| make it a demand when they unionize.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Sounds like a great deal for the lucky 1/3 of developers
| who get assigned the day shift, but isn't it pretty rough
| for the majority? I'd much rather keep a normal schedule
| and get woken up every once in a while than work 5pm-1am
| or 1am-9am.
| selcuka wrote:
| > I'd much rather keep a normal schedule and get woken up
| every once in a while than work 5pm-1am or 1am-9am.
|
| It would be in the contract you'd sign when you accept
| the job. It's not like your current workplace will
| suddenly change the policy and force you to work at
| night. The world is already full of places with night
| shift jobs, and you are not currently working at one of
| those places.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Why isn't it like that? If my company decided to follow a
| new rule that nobody can be oncall after hours, wouldn't
| they have to force at least 2 engineers from each oncall
| rotation into the new shifts? Even if I escape being one
| of those 2, shouldn't I expect to have 66% fewer day
| shift opportunities in the future?
| Draiken wrote:
| Once again the lack of worker rights come into play here.
| Companies should never be able to change an employee's
| working hours like that. I'm guessing in the US they can,
| because they have almost no worker's rights. Where I live
| this would be illegal.
|
| As for new opportunities, well, maybe? The theory would
| say these weird hour shifts would cost more and companies
| would have to think harder about their operations and
| decide if the extra cost really makes sense. Employees
| would also ask for more money to work under these hours.
|
| I believe it would simply remove the inherent expectation
| that every tech product is guaranteed to be online 24/7
| without any extra cost to the companies, only to the
| employees lives. That's a great outcome in my view.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Sure, but this is one of the things people are talking
| about when they worry a regulation might make companies
| less competitive. Online 24/7 is table stakes for any
| company that aspires to have a global presence - nobody
| in Europe or the US would buy Atlassian products if they
| were only guaranteed to be available during business
| hours in Sydney. If Australia successfully shifted the
| culture on this, Australian software would struggle
| heavily to find success on the global markets.
| Draiken wrote:
| So what? If only companies could have slaves again to
| make them more competitive!
|
| I'm absolutely fine if companies "become less
| competitive" because they can't exploit their employees
| as much.
|
| Following this train thought would paint China's 996
| policy as a great idea.
| justinclift wrote:
| I'd actually be good with (and prefer) 5pm-1am. :)
| yawaramin wrote:
| Luckily, employees in other parts of the world are in
| different time zones and their business hours can easily
| cover our off hours.
| Yodel0914 wrote:
| A lot of prod support can't be done remotely, for
| practical (need access to this physical environment) or
| security reasons.
| chgs wrote:
| In which case you need 24/7 shifts on site. If you can
| fix a problem remotely from your home then someone can do
| it in Sydney.
| dukeyukey wrote:
| Even then, feels like.its easier and better for everyone
| if if instead of everyone needing multi-continental
| teams, you have one team, and if they get woken up and
| stupid o'clock to fix something, they get extra holiday
| or pay or something.
|
| I know I like it like that. And I get that not everyone
| does! But IME, the out-of-hours rota is usually
| voluntary, so you can choose.
| morgante wrote:
| Tripling the cost of running a tech company in Australia
| is effectively outlawing startups.
| wesselbindt wrote:
| If you can't afford to pay people to work for you, you do
| not have a viable business.
| MonortYp wrote:
| That's right, we should continue to exploit workers
| instead because of vague contract terms that they "must
| work extra hours when required". Workers should remember
| that the business is more important than their non
| contracted time.
|
| The capitalism dream right?
| Yodel0914 wrote:
| This seems like a bit of an over-reaction. I do rostered
| 24/7 on-call 1 week a month. I get compensated for both
| being on-call, and if I get called.
|
| To run 3 shifts would mean splitting our already smallish
| team into 3 cells that never worked at the same time. It
| would actually be cheaper for the org, assuming they
| could convince the current staff to do it. But it would
| be a terrible for the team, and for the individuals on
| the late shift (shift work is notoriously unhealthy).
| Ekaros wrote:
| In Finland companies pay for on-call support time. That
| is you get extra pay to be available in 15 minutes or
| whatever timeframe agreed. And really that sort of
| commitment should not be free.
| chgs wrote:
| I used to have such an arrangement, but that was far more
| stressful.
|
| I'm far happier with the "call me and If I'm able to I'll
| answer" approach. I've had 2 call outs in 4 years, at a 4
| hour cost a piece, both sorted with in 20 minutes.
|
| By charging that 4 hour fee it means the person making
| the call has to justify it.
|
| If I'm in an offical "on call" situation that limits me -
| can't go to cinema, can't go underground or on a plane,
| can't got to the country, because I have a contractual
| agreement to be on call. Forget that.
| sokoloff wrote:
| > You want your app supported 24x7 then pay for three
| shifts.
|
| 24/7 is typically covered with 5 shifts (3 weekday and 2
| weekend).
| chgs wrote:
| My first 24/7 role was
|
| Mon Tue Fri Sat Sun Wed Thu on earlies
|
| Then repeated on lates
|
| Then a week of nights Monday through Sunday
|
| Then a week off
|
| I believe it's changed now as they don't like 7x12 hour
| night shifts in a row. Personally I preferred to deal
| with the "jet lag" once every 6 weeks and be done with
| it.
|
| Those shifts tended to be fairly quiet with about 4-5
| hours of breaks (unless something went really wrong)
|
| You can staff a 24/7 shift with 5 people, but you really
| need 6 once you factor in holiday, illness, training etc.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| It's just a very narrow rule. The government has an explainer
| on it (https://www.fairwork.gov.au/employment-conditions/hours-
| of-w...), and their example of after-hours contact which might
| be legitimate involves 3 hours of document preparation due the
| next morning.
| taneq wrote:
| > who can only refuse to respond where it is reasonable to do
| so
|
| What does this even mean? I didn't think employees had an
| obligation to respond at all? Presumably it's actually "whose
| right to refuse contact is only protected by law where it is
| reasonable for it to be so."
| Daz1 wrote:
| Something which would materially affect the businesses ability
| to continue as a going concern?
| fuzztester wrote:
| dammit, i thought aussies were more freedom loving than even
| usians. i have met and interacted with some of them, and have
| read a good amount about them, too.
|
| did aussies not have this right, earlier?
|
| I don't know if it should even be called a right, because it
| seems obvious.
|
| to me, it sound more like an attack by employers on employees, to
| say they cannot do such a thing - before this so-called "right"
| was "given".
|
| thoughts?
| strken wrote:
| Employment contracts here usually state that you work X hours a
| week, likely 38 or less unless your union did a bad job, and
| can only work more if the hours are "reasonable" according to a
| bunch of criteria. This was previously enough to cut down on
| most of this kind of nonsense, but has not proven sufficient in
| the age of smartphones.
| fuzztester wrote:
| wow. just the existence of smartphones seems to be not enough
| of a reason to drop these contracts or criteria. in fact one
| would think it should be the opposite, because smartphones
| are so disruptive and distracting.
|
| maybe the unions need to understand that and incorporate that
| understanding while negotiating.
| hankchinaski wrote:
| Like in the UK where this already exists. In most contracts you
| get to sign a waiver. Show me the law and I'll show you the
| loophole
| walthamstow wrote:
| You may be confusing the right to ignore out of hours comms
| with the Working Time Directive that the UK got with EU
| membership?
|
| The UK doesn't have the former (yet). On the latter you are
| correct, I have signed away my right in every white collar job
| I've had. I couldn't sign the contract without signing that
| right away.
| nomilk wrote:
| Another 'good in theory' idea. Trying to run a business in
| Australia is 'death by a thousand paper cuts'. Far too many
| rules. Letting individuals interact freely creates good outcomes
| 90+% of the time. Most of these rules are cost-benefit negative
| because the administrative burden of adherence exceeds the
| benefit of the new rule. Politicians and govt departments like
| them though; they get to put a dot-point on their list of
| achievements.
|
| Unfortunately Australia has become a business-backwater (the
| upper bound of our capabilities is to dig stuff out of the ground
| and ship it overseas).
|
| Sorry if this sounds negative, but every rule - however well-
| intentioned - steals attention and creativity away from
| entrepreneurs, slows the economy, drives up prices, reduces
| customer service, and benefits large incumbents who can withstand
| the burden.
| joshgermon wrote:
| If you rely on exploiting the fact that your employee does not
| have the right to ignore your call outside of hours, your
| business shouldn't exist. What kind of take is this? It says it
| gives them the right to ignore, not to sue the business if they
| do call.
| nomilk wrote:
| Employees _benefit_ from calls out of hours. How? The
| employer is able to offer better service to customers, and
| make more money, and the employee can negotiate a higher
| salary from the more profitable business. Employees who are
| inflexible cannot offer the same level of service to their
| employer and its customers; they 'll on-average be paid less
| and measures like this increase production costs, making
| goods and services slightly more expensive.
|
| This law reduces the extent to which flexible employees can
| add (and extract, via hight salary!) value, and the extent to
| which customers receive timely service.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| If overnight service is that critical and profitable, hire
| a night shift.
| nomilk wrote:
| But who _really_ pays? The employer? Yes, _at first_ ,
| but the cost is passed straight on to consumers. Prices
| are sky high in Australia for this reason, businesses
| have many laws that each increase prices by a fraction of
| a percent - almost imperceptible - but cumulatively very
| noticeable.
| SturgeonsLaw wrote:
| Typical whinging Aussie business owner. You lot won't be
| happy until you turn us into another America, with at-
| will employment and healthcare tied to employment like a
| yoke around an ox.
|
| You are neglecting to mention the power imbalance that
| exists between employees and employers. Like economists
| who view all actors as fully informed and rational market
| participants, your viewpoint is fantastic on paper, but
| in real life there are centuries of examples of ordinary
| workers getting exploited if regulations like these are
| not in place.
|
| And hey, you might be one of the good bosses who will
| shrug and say "sure, no problem" if an employee wants to
| prioritise their life over their job. There are plenty
| who won't, and this law will help reign them in.
| yawaramin wrote:
| So your argument is that instead of consumers paying,
| employees should pay?
| intended wrote:
| But you know what helps ?
|
| More money in wages ! Instead of business owners getting
| more money? If that went instead to workers (aka
| consumers) then everyone would have more to spend!
|
| Then you know who would have more money ?
|
| Good business owners !!
|
| -----
|
| Demand side / supply side economics rhetoric is fun, but
| it's rhetorical.
|
| Success depends entirely on what is appropriate for the
| market at that given moment.
| lkois wrote:
| So, paying for a night shift will increase the cost to
| customers, but higher salaries negotiated by on-call
| employees won't?
|
| Or did you leave out the part where those employees
| discover how little negotiating power they really have
| morgante wrote:
| This is preposterous and basically kills startups
| completely.
|
| You genuinely think a seed stage startup should hire a
| complete "night shift" to ensure no engineers ever get
| paged "after hours?" This simply kills startups
| completely.
| intended wrote:
| I'm sorry, this insults quite a few startups and firms
| that don't believe in wage theft.
|
| Getting equity is not wage theft.
|
| If the principle behind your equity pay out scheme is
| wage theft with extra steps, you've got a huge problem,
| and an unsustainable business.
| morgante wrote:
| Asking employees to participate in a reasonable on-call
| rotation is not "wage theft." Your
| antagonistic/adversarial relationship is exactly what
| destroys cultures.
|
| If you attitude to an outage on a weekend is to ignore it
| and say that's the company's problem you should simply
| never join a small startup. You don't deserve equity if
| you refuse to share in responsibility.
| amonith wrote:
| If you do offer equity then that's a slightly different
| thing. That can be considered payment by those who are
| willing to take the risk. However, a lot of "startups" in
| EU do not offer such thing. They do standard employment
| with unpaid on-call. And those can f right off.
| morgante wrote:
| Yeah I agree those so-called startups deserve your scorn.
| intended wrote:
| Those are NOT the same things. It seems we will have to
| get into the weeds to be clear.
|
| Firstly - the conversation here is about startups -
| however its not specified if its what stage of maturity
| the startup is at.
|
| Assuming it's an early stage startup, which is typically
| what "startup" evokes; the risk and return profile is
| different, and _should_ be captured in the contract. The
| equity payout early stage employees get is different from
| what a regular work contract entails.
|
| This is how risk and reward are priced - (and risk and
| reward is the heart of pricing, which is what this
| conversation is really about.)
|
| If you want regular employees to do startup hours, or be
| on call for those times - then the pricing for that time
| must be commensurate.
|
| That's it.
|
| Nothing more, nothing less. Frankly, I think you would
| vehemently agree with this.
|
| Suppose, Shit happens. You have some emergency, you need
| staff to respond. Guess what though? The wording of the
| regulation seem to cover this scenario!
|
| However, you are in a bad spot, you need to make numbers,
| so you decide to make people work hours they aren't paid
| for?
|
| Well come on. That's crap, and I REALLY doubt you are
| advocating for this, because that's a corrosive attitude
| that only shields bad management and managers.
|
| That is why these laws exist. Not because of the golden
| situations where you can have a justifiable ask.
|
| It's because there's more people willing to use power
| over fairness. To cover up their deficiencies by saying
| "work harder", instead of fixing issues to actually be
| sustainable.
| joshgermon wrote:
| Yes, we know increased profits always go to the worker.
| Particularly when the business needs to rely on exploiting
| them to make those increased profits.
|
| Let me try your logic here...
|
| Employees benefit from no paid annual leave! How you ask?
| The employer is able to offer better service to customers,
| and make more money, and the employee can negotiate a
| higher salary from the more profitable business.
|
| Am I doing this right? Workers give up more rights but in
| theory they can negotiate higher pay because the business
| is more profitable?
| nomilk wrote:
| Start with a theoretical employee who offers no value and
| gets paid zero. Dial up their usefulness and consider
| what happens. The greater the value an employee offers,
| the stronger their negotiation power in pay discussions.
| It's not more complicated than that.
| coderenegade wrote:
| Start with a theoretical employee who offers excellent
| usefulness and is paid accordingly. Dial down the legal
| protections and security and consider what happens. The
| weaker the security of the employee, the stronger the
| negotiating power of the employer in pay discussions.
| It's not more complicated than that.
| ausbah wrote:
| this comment is a good example of why modern economics is
| seen as out of touch. you start with a theoretical model
| then try and apply it to the world vs starting with the
| lived expenses of workers and building off of that
| djbusby wrote:
| You forgot the part where individual workers are great at
| negotiating against a large entity.
| lysp wrote:
| > This law reduces the extent to which flexible employees
| can add (and extract, via hight salary!) value, and the
| extent to which customers receive timely service.
|
| If you're paying someone to be on-call, this is not an
| issue.
|
| This is about unpaid out-of-hours work.
| koyote wrote:
| > Employees benefit from calls out of hours. How? The
| employer is able to offer better service to customers, and
| make more money, and the employee can negotiate a higher
| salary from the more profitable business. Employees who are
| inflexible cannot offer the same level of service to their
| employer and its customers; they'll on-average be paid less
| and measures like this increase production costs, making
| goods and services slightly more expensive.
|
| The business can put that into their contract so that a
| prospective employee can make a conscious decision:
|
| For example, I have two offers, one for x% higher salary
| but the contract stipulates a requirement for me to be
| available after-hours between Xpm-Ypm on x days of the
| week, I can then make the decision whether the x% more
| money is worth the stress and the free time I have to give
| up.
|
| That's how our business introduced on-call: it's opt-in and
| there is specific remuneration for being on call and for
| responding to an issue.
| coderenegade wrote:
| Nice in theory, but I've generated a tremendous amount of
| value for some of the places I've worked at, and it's rare
| to see any of it flow back the other way. Secondly, this is
| a right. An employee can waive that right if they choose,
| but they have the power. They can't be punished for
| exercising it, which is the important part.
| kergonath wrote:
| > This law reduces the extent to which flexible employees
| can add (and extract, via hight salary!) value, and the
| extent to which customers receive timely service.
|
| Not at all. It means that if they want employees to be on
| call they have to pay for it.
| buro9 wrote:
| This is nearly always a myth.
|
| On call has a huge precedent, it's not tech, it's the
| health sector.
|
| "Paid" on call is already defined as the active portion
| where you're responding to a page, not the passive
| portion where you're carrying the pager.
|
| Some countries have rules around time to respond within
| the definition of active vs passive, but most do not and
| the carrying the pager isn't compensated at all.
|
| Even with the active part, time-in-lieu can be the
| definition of paid... still 40h per week (or whatever),
| but if you only responded to 1h of active on call in a
| week, finish work an hour earlier one day the next week.
|
| People in tech like to imagine that their salary rises by
| some significant %, but it seldom does... nurses and A&E
| staff aren't paid far more for being on-call and carrying
| a pager, and that precedent travels far, countries aren't
| legislating in a way that makes their health services
| untenable.
|
| Some countries do legislate hard in this area, i.e.
| France, but then... they have a much smaller tech sector
| as a lot of companies will avoid hiring there or setting
| up an office there (especially when neighbouring
| countries do not have such legislation).
|
| To be clear I don't know what the exact text of the
| Australian law is, but I'm just clarifying that on call
| does not have to be paid, and as soon as one thinks about
| the health service and the impact of such legislation
| it's clear why. Sure one can also view this as wage theft
| in every industry, but in that case workers need to go
| make that case. Most large companies will likely continue
| to avoid such legislation by treating their workforce as
| fluid, and just withdrawing from some countries and only
| hiring in others.
|
| Note: None of the above is reflective of where I
| currently work, but are things I've learned from prior
| places of employment.
| jen20 wrote:
| Payment buys time that people can't be doing what they
| want to. If what they want is to be drinking 10 beers,
| then the options are either paying them not to (i.e.
| paying for passive on-call time), or accepting that if
| there is a call they might not be able to handle it since
| they could be half in the bag.
|
| This practice will only continue as long as people accept
| it.
| antimemetics wrote:
| Surely you are joking
| yawaramin wrote:
| What you are describing is called wage theft.
| lkois wrote:
| But, but, if the employer doesn't steal wages from
| employees, where will they get the money to pay them
| higher salaries?
| intended wrote:
| Employees != customers.
| stephen_g wrote:
| Absolute nonsense - if you need on-call support from your
| engineers, put it in the contract and pay them the extra
| for the time when they're on-call, you're literally
| complaining that you can't rely on unpaid overtime for
| something you should be paying for!
| Daz1 wrote:
| > your business shouldn't exist. What kind of take is this?
|
| Your take was worse
| dabiged wrote:
| I have to respectfully disagree here. You place far too much
| stead in "individuals freely interacting" and none in
| "micromanaging bosses constantly hassling you at ridiculous
| hours for pissant assignments that can wait until the morning".
|
| My experience in working at Australian businesses, especially
| as an IC, is that there is far too much of the latter, and far
| to little of the former. This is especially true the younger
| the reporting staff member is.
| givemeethekeys wrote:
| While I support his new law, more rules do act as a barrier
| to entry / competition for new / smaller businesses. Larger
| companies can more easily adhere to increasingly complex
| employment rules than smaller ones.
|
| The new law protects people from being bothered by
| micromanagers during off hours, but reduced market
| competition keeps people stuck with a shitty boss, and
| reduces their chances to get a raise.
| intended wrote:
| Yep. Rules and enforcement create compliance costs.
|
| So do contracts.
|
| We aren't removing contracts though.
|
| If we are discussing market forces, an abundance of roles
| doesn't equal an abundance of good managers.
|
| It does increases search costs for workers.
| jp0d wrote:
| It's indeed a very negative take on a pro-labour policy.
| Entrepreneurship doesn't equate to exploitation of workers. If
| your business depends on that then it's not a death by thousand
| paper cuts, rather a death by poor management. Germany has
| similar laws and it hasn't exactly become a 'business-
| backwater'.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> but every rule - however well-intentioned - steals attention
| and creativity away from entrepreneurs
|
| Really? Every rule? How about safety in the workplace? Hardhats
| for construction workers? No more asbestos in the walls? I
| think the rules setting standards for cars/trucks have
| prevented vast numbers of accidents. Lord knows what insurance
| rates would be like without limits on how much a truck can
| carry, how fast it may drive. The innumerable rules that create
| and protect intellectual property rights have served
| entrepreneurs well too. And there was that ozone hole thing.
|
| Here is an idea: Lets remove the rules about embezzlement. When
| an employee takes from an employer that employer can fire them
| and sue to get property back. No need to involve the police.
| Let the hand of the free market separate the trustworthy
| employees from the bad.
| moorow wrote:
| I own a tech consulting company in Australia. What rules are
| you talking about? The only change that's come in recently
| that's affected us is the changes to fixed-term contracts, and
| that's an entirely fair change to stop employees from getting
| dicked over by bad employers. Likewise, moving super through
| one-touch payroll is a great change that literally only affects
| dodgy employers.
|
| The reason we're a country that digs shit out of the ground in
| lieu of doing anything else is the same reason why virtually
| all investment in the country is in real estate: it's not taxed
| highly enough to encourage people to diversify, and it's a
| sector that's too big to fail. Why would you invest in your
| mate's new tech company and potentially lose it all when you
| can throw it into a property with almost literally zero risk
| and far better returns?
| zooq_ai wrote:
| In Tech consulting, you can pass of all your regulations and
| cost to your client.
|
| In fact consulting thrives exactly because of government
| overreach.
|
| Startups are complete opposite of Consulting
| trog wrote:
| Huh? If you're a startup you still have to absorb
| regulatory costs somehow.
|
| If they're not getting passed on to the customer, they are
| getting picked up by the VCs. This is pretty normal.
| moorow wrote:
| Dunno about you guys, but we're not charging doing payroll,
| management or regulatory compliance to our clients unless
| it's specifically requested/required by the client.
|
| You could say "oh but that cost is bundled into your
| rates", but that cost is also bundled into your product
| fees for a product start-up, so..?
|
| We don't have to do r&d documentation but we also don't get
| r&d reimbursements. Not a lot else different from a back-
| office perspective.
| crossroadsguy wrote:
| Right. Let the exploiters and the exploited, with that glaring
| power gap, settle it among themselves and keep it in the house.
| Couldn't agree more.
| Yodel0914 wrote:
| Sometimes governments attempt to make rules to promote a value
| other than the economy. Yes, those rules can (usually do) have
| negative economic impacts. More wealth is good, but lets not
| pretend that there are no tradeoffs.
|
| The last 10 years (and especially the last 3) have seen a
| massive shift in work culture and the once-precious work/life
| balance has essentially disappeared. Many people in white
| collar jobs are hooked into work every waking hour. That sucks,
| and a lot people don't want to live like that. Many people
| (myself included) are in a position to set clear boundaries,
| but many others aren't.
|
| I'm not a huge fan of government as a guardian of culture, but
| sometimes it is. In this instance, the law is essentially
| mandating a return to the cultural norms of ~10 years ago. If
| your startup fails because of that, well, that's OK - perhaps
| you can come up with something more pro-social.
| PlunderBunny wrote:
| Maybe we should think of these things as employment flags?
|
| There's no right-to-disconnect in my country, but sometime this
| year my boss started putting "I don't expect a response to this
| email outside of your normal working hours." on the end of his
| email signature.
|
| I might not be earning FAANG money, but it's just another sign
| I'm working for a 'good' company.
| frosting1337 wrote:
| A lot of companies here are pretty good. It's the ones that
| aren't that necessitate the law change.
|
| My workplace, for instance, published the formal policy last
| week and the accompanying announcement was honestly bordering
| on anger about it. My team is pretty good, but other teams have
| been having to work out of hours. It's a good change.
| warbeforepeace wrote:
| I work for FAANG and have had one page outside of working hours
| over that last 12 months. I do not respond to emails on
| weekends or evenings. I do not turn my work laptop on during
| vacation at all. I leave at home in a safe.
| Insanity wrote:
| Totally different experience here working for FAANG, at least
| as it pertains to pages. For emails / slack etc I found it
| easy to ignore while working as an engineer, but much harder
| now in a management role. Even entirely disconnecting when
| going on vacation can be tough.
|
| That said it is mostly self imposed. Over the past 2 years it
| was rarely the expectation to work outside regular hours (but
| did happen).
| antimemetics wrote:
| > it is mostly self impose
|
| This is the key. Of course companies don't object to you
| working extra hours. You shouldn't do it - it sets a bad
| precedent for those who you manage.
| xmprt wrote:
| The hard part of disconnecting as a manager is feeling like
| the team is blocked on you when you're not there. If you're
| a good manager then you enable the team to function without
| you. It's just tough to get that level of confidence in
| your management abilities.
| test1235 wrote:
| >I work for FAANG and have had one page
|
| literally a page? with a pager?
| erklik wrote:
| Usually via a Pager app these days, not a physical device.
| y-c-o-m-b wrote:
| I have a literal pager because my company wants to take
| over my phone with their software and have the ability to
| wipe it out any time they wish. No thanks, kiss my ass.
| They will not provide a work phone either. An actual pager
| was the only alternative.
| y-c-o-m-b wrote:
| I envy you. I've been on-call numerous times just this month
| and got paged almost daily, many of them between 10pm and
| 6am, 2am on average. Our on-call duty is basically house
| arrest for a week. The worst part is 90% of the pages are not
| real issues or I can't even do anything about them other than
| wait for them to self-resolve. It drives me insane and
| because it's FAANG, it's nearly impossible to get this
| changed. If I could find another job (and I'm trying!), I
| would bail in an instant.
| nvarsj wrote:
| That on-call doesn't sound healthy at all. Have you tried
| improving it? You have a strong case for it - such a noisy
| on-call will miss real issues.
| lkois wrote:
| I recently had a slack message on my Friday evening from my
| delayed-timezone manager starting his Friday. There was no
| expectation to answer out of hours, but it was some small
| detail I could answer in a few seconds. And this was from a new
| and intense 24/7 workaholic ex-FAANG manager, whose high
| expectations I was still getting used to, and who would likely
| spend his whole weekend working on this project. So I gave a
| quick response.
|
| He said thanks, told me to turn my phone off, and sent a group
| message to the team reminding us not to work outside hours,
| with a link to instructions on disabling slack notifications.
| And then he started scheduling his own overnight/weekend DMs to
| send at 9am Monday.
|
| It was an awesome response, and those firm self-imposed
| boundaries helped allow the work to be rewarding, rather than
| an absolute nightmare.
| Aachen wrote:
| I'm so confused that the manager felt the need to say this or
| that your country would need such a right for you to have that
| right (because unless it's in your work contract, you've not
| agreed to work when you're not working)
|
| Two questions: assuming you have fixed hours, does anyone
| (colleagues, direct supervisor, big boss) expect you to see
| messages or emails outside of your working hours? Second
| question: what culture does your answer apply to?
|
| For me the answer is a confident "no", having worked in the
| Dutch and German tech sector, mainly in small companies
| dan-robertson wrote:
| The upside to not including such a thing seems pretty low.
| Maybe people save a few seconds not reading it? The downside
| seems quite high if you actually want people to understand
| your expectations about working hours. The signature may not
| mean much to someone who has been working for a long time but
| it could matter more for someone who is just starting their
| first job, or who has come from a quite different working
| environment, for example.
|
| I guess one thing you might say is 'why is this manager
| sending emails at such times' but I think lots of people like
| the flexibility of working strange hours, eg maybe they tend
| to wake up very early, or want to fit their work-schedule
| around some childcare obligations like breakfast or a school
| run.
| Aachen wrote:
| I don't understand the first paragraph, what does "such a
| thing" refer to?
|
| As for the second, yes that seems like a given. We send
| each other messages day and night because of that, but
| nobody expects a response outside of the recipient's
| working times
| latexr wrote:
| > I don't understand the first paragraph, what does "such
| a thing" refer to?
|
| The signature in the email.
| duxup wrote:
| That's been the policy at every company I worked at.
|
| The only exception being when I was paid extra to be on call.
| space_oddity wrote:
| Yes, it is! You are the lucky one
| madeofpalk wrote:
| Your boss is telling on themselves, admitting that they do
| expect you to work outside of normal working hours, even if to
| just read the email.
|
| _Sending_ that email out of office hours itself is a red flag.
| anon-3988 wrote:
| This is fine for big companies and government but startups is
| going to die because of this.
| ern wrote:
| Startups, and anyone else can still roster support.
| joshgermon wrote:
| Keep in mind all the low-income employees who are harassed after
| work for trivial reasons that can absolutely wait by power-trip
| managers who will now feel a tiny bit more empowered to say no
| than they did yesterday. I think it's a great thing even though
| it doesn't benefit me directly.
| Gustomaximus wrote:
| For emails, I generally feel these are a 24hr thing. I turn off
| email alerts so I can focus on my tasks then check a few times a
| day only.
|
| I used to filter CC emails into their own folder for reading
| maybe once a day which worked mostly well but occasionally people
| can't seem to use to/CC as they are supposed to.
|
| Calls I always try to pickup or callback asap but my job calls
| usually means urgent.
|
| Chat like Teams I'm mixed. Often it's urgent but too many people
| use Teams in my current company like email and it's really
| disruptive to work flow getting 50 unimportant messages a day +
| long "just one more thing' task requests. Ive considered putting
| an auto-reply of "if it's not on JIRA it's not a task" but that
| would not come across well.
|
| But generally I feel a better law change would be right to work
| your contracted hours. Put the onus on the company that they have
| to get your workload to the contracted hours or pay overtime.
| Some exceptions for execs on top end pay, but generally this
| would be a better win for employees, and then you can get that
| after work call but your being paid extra, which in itself will
| make people think twice about calling etc when they know there is
| a cost.
| cj wrote:
| Isn't what you're describing the difference between exempt and
| non-exempt employees? In the US, the protections you're
| describing exist if you make less than ~$60k. Above that amount
| and you're exempt from being entitled to overtime.
| anon373839 wrote:
| > if you make less than ~$60k. Above that amount and you're
| exempt from being entitled to overtime.
|
| This is incorrect. Entitlement to overtime pay varies from
| state to state. In California, for example, there are complex
| rules but for most employees, the analysis ultimately boils
| down to whether you spend more than 50% of your working hours
| performing exempt duties. If you don't meet this threshold --
| even if you are highly compensated and have an executive
| title -- you are not exempt and you must be paid overtime. It
| also does not matter if the company is paying you on a salary
| or hourly basis.
| steelframe wrote:
| I've dabbled in management a few times in my career. This meant
| attending manager-only meetings and trainings. I'll never forget
| one time when a manager in a focus group said something along the
| lines of, "The tech sector is going through a rough patch, so we
| can turn the screws on our employees and they'll have to take it
| because they will have a hard time trying to find a job somewhere
| else." This is at a company where most of the employees are on
| work visas, so losing their job can very rapidly escalate into
| having to leave the country in short order.
|
| After I picked my jaw up off the floor I realized I simply lacked
| the scruples I'd need to be "one of them." I also started looking
| into every legal protection I had available to me in my
| jurisdiction.
|
| I know not every manager is like that. I'd like to think I
| wasn't. But there are enough of them that think that way that
| legal protections often need to be there.
| nine_zeros wrote:
| > After I picked my jaw up off the floor I realized I simply
| lacked the scruples I'd need to be "one of them."
|
| This is the reason why I always tell young engineers to treat
| companies with utmost business-only mentality.
|
| It's not that all managers are bad. It's that the company
| rewards psychopathic behaviors - that aren't easily apparent to
| humble people.
|
| Companies are merely out there squeezing and exploring
| employees. Employees should feel free to return the favor.
|
| In short, Fuck the corporations. They fired the first shot.
| antimemetics wrote:
| Corporations are a form of "slow" AI - this is literally a
| war against the machines
| bruce511 wrote:
| Unfortunately the word "company" encompasses hundreds of
| millions of entities, of enormously different cultures,
| attitudes, ethics and so on.
|
| Personally, I think behavior does (and likely has to) evolve
| with size. Unfortunately bigger tends to be worse.
|
| Culture is also primarily a top-down flow. I'd the CEO is a
| screamer expect screamers all the way down and so on.
|
| Of course there are companies, too many of them, that behave
| badly. There are too many people who treat other people as
| nameless, expendable and exploitable. There are also many
| others, the ones that don't make the juicy comments on
| reddit, which behave well, treat people as people, and so on.
|
| Treating your work-place as a hostile environment can be
| emotionally and mentally draining. It can be counter-
| productive if the environment desires to support you.
|
| Equally, if your environment _is_ hostile then at least be
| looking elsewhere. Not all companies are created the same so
| there are likely better options elsewhere (although getting
| those posts is harder because people tend not to leave.)
|
| Your advice rings true for many companies. But people stay in
| those places because they believe everywhere is the same. So
| a more nuanced advice might be to understand the culture and
| behavior where you work and decide if that's a culture you
| want to assimilate, and support, long term or not.
|
| For the record, the place where I work has never expected
| anyone to do emails etc out-of-hours and you'd be laughed at
| if you suggested people should behave otherwise.
| steelframe wrote:
| I wonder how much of a thing "long-term culture" really is
| in the tech industry. The culture at Google in the year
| 2024 looks very different from the culture at Google in
| 2010. In many ways the culture at Microsoft in 2024 is
| radically different from the culture at Microsoft in 2001.
|
| I do agree with the notion that company culture trickles
| down from the CEO over time. So that suggests that company
| culture can shift as CEOs come and go. Another factor that
| can impact culture include market pressure. I can say with
| some confidence that the relentless squeeze that
| shareholders put on operating costs undeniably has a direct
| impact on practices and policies that govern the quality of
| the average employee's experience at work.
| consteval wrote:
| I disagree. The fundamental idea of a company causes this
| behavior. They, the company, actually doesn't have a
| choice.
|
| You have to turn a profit and the only way to achieve that
| is exploitation. You have to take labor and pay less than
| it's worth and pocket the difference. There's no way around
| it.
|
| You might say "well you can be less exploitative" - but not
| really. Because you ALSO have to thrive in your market.
| Even if you are an angel sent from God to save corporate
| America, your competition isn't. They lie, they cheat, they
| steal. If you don't you're a sucker, and it's only a matter
| of time until your company goes under.
|
| Because consumers will choose the cheaper option almost
| every time. And they don't actually know much about the
| company, they only know advertising. And they don't know
| much about the product either, because products are
| complex. Even domain-specific products, like, say, medical
| equipment - the buyers don't know shit. They know what the
| product should do, but do they know the materials are
| reliable? Do they know the power system is reliable? Do
| they know the software is written in a memory-safe manor?
| No, they don't.
|
| So you lie (advertise). And you steal (pay your employees a
| low wage). And you cheat (use capital to undercut
| competitors, sometimes selling at a loss in new markets).
| And if you say no, then you will be replaced by someone who
| does. Nobody has any choice in this system.
| nine_zeros wrote:
| > Because consumers will choose the cheaper option almost
| every time.
|
| Largely true - but the key word is "almost".
|
| > You have to turn a profit and the only way to achieve
| that is exploitation. You have to take labor and pay less
| than it's worth and pocket the difference. There's no way
| around it.
|
| But this is NOT the only way to achieve lower prices.
| Lower prices can be achieved by simple things like
| keeping your employee turnover at a minimum, not going
| through rounds and rounds of layoff+hiring cycles, not
| wasting time on "performance reviews" and other BS
| management activities - and generally treating employees
| and customers as an asset. This is automatic cost savings
| that can be passed down to the customers.
|
| Do you know why customers are willing to pay higher
| prices at Trader Joes? It is because the store is always
| staffed, clean, and full of inventory with happy
| employees.
|
| There is clearly a higher quality way of winning. The
| factory-style squeeze and replace seems rather naive and
| stupid from a branding and long term return perspective.
| consteval wrote:
| As I've said, you can be less exploitative. You can't be
| not exploitative.
|
| > happy employees
|
| Trader joes employees are not actually paid very well.
| They're paid okay. Also trader joes is not very
| successful. They're a small niche, only profitable in the
| whitest and richest parts of the country.
|
| > seems rather naive and stupid from a branding and long
| term return perspective
|
| Yes, to an extent. But branding, as I've alluded to, is
| mostly advertising. The reality of your product is a tiny
| tiny part of your brand. How your brand is advertised is
| a much bigger part.
|
| Luxury goods are often not actually higher quality. They
| just advertise to rich people and have big "no poors
| allowed" signs on the front door. They create an
| artificial scarcity in people's minds, and monkey brain
| says "ooo ooo rare = valuable!!"
|
| Trader joes is cleaner, sure, and the experience is
| nicer. But from a food quality perspective, how much
| better is it than Walmart or Target? ... not much. I can
| find produce and whole-foods at both locations and I can
| live an equally healthy life with a diet consisting of
| only foods from Walmart.
|
| But Walmart doesn't have the prices written on cute
| little chalk boards, so...
| nine_zeros wrote:
| > You can't be not exploitative.
|
| This is not true. Specifically because you are pointing
| out that exploitative companies will retain more money
| than non-exploitative ones and thus not be beaten in
| competition.
|
| However, it is paradoxically also true that the same
| competition is beaten merely by high quality - leading to
| higher margins. Cost cutting is not the only way to
| squeeze margins.
|
| > Trader joes employees are not actually paid very well.
| They're paid okay. Also trader joes is not very
| successful. They're a small niche, only profitable in the
| whitest and richest parts of the country.
|
| And yet, they are nowhere close to running out of money
| and have a firm loyalty against cheaper competition.
| Exploitative cheap is not the only way and you are
| proving that same point.
|
| > Yes, to an extent. But branding, as I've alluded to, is
| mostly advertising. The reality of your product is a tiny
| tiny part of your brand. How your brand is advertised is
| a much bigger part.
|
| > Trader joes is cleaner, sure, and the experience is
| nicer. But from a food quality perspective, how much
| better is it than Walmart or Target? ... not much. I can
| find produce and whole-foods at both locations and I can
| live an equally healthy life with a diet consisting of
| only foods from Walmart.
|
| Yes you can find the same produce at whole-foods or
| walmart or target. And yet, trader joes survives and is
| expanding. Once again, you are proving the same point -
| cheap exploitation is NOT the only way to win.
| consteval wrote:
| No, because if you're not exploitative that would mean
| you're producing exactly as much money as you're paying
| out to your labor, or less. This is impossible in a
| capitalist system, because you go under.
|
| It can be done and sometimes is, but we call that
| charity. I've seen some businesses that take 100% of
| their profit and just redistribute it to their employees.
| But they can never expand, only float, and the company
| exists on borrowed time.
|
| The difference here is made up with capital - as in,
| we're told the myth that capital is the reason why
| businesses pay less for labor than it produces. Because
| they provide the capital.
|
| In reality, capital can be democratically owned and
| capital is also not the cornerstone of our economy.
| People, labor, is.
| nine_zeros wrote:
| > No, because if you're not exploitative that would mean
| you're producing exactly as much money as you're paying
| out to your labor, or less.
|
| This is an incorrect understanding of exploitation. Even
| in the most ethical corporation to have ever lived, 100%
| of the money earned will not go to labor. The money
| earned by a corporation is always paid out to
|
| 1. Employees/suppliers
|
| 2. Government
|
| 3. Shareholders
|
| 4. Company's own balance sheet
|
| The exploitation part happens when companies cut on 1 to
| boost 2, 3, and 4. They do so to boost margins.
|
| But strictly speaking, they could cut 2 via tax deduction
| maneuvers, cut 3 via shareholder return cuts, and cut 4
| via plain old not saving more.
|
| Cutting 1 is the most visible cut there is. Within 1,
| they could cut labor, quality, suppliers, advertising,
| what have you. Everything is shortchanging the company.
|
| There are so many levers at play here. Exploitation only
| starts at stripping your company's assets (labor,
| loyalty, real estate, supplies, customer goodwill) in
| order to boost other aspects - usually 3 and 4.
| consteval wrote:
| There are economic systems in which 100% of the value
| produced is paid out to laborers. We're just not in one.
|
| > Exploitation only starts at stripping your company's
| assets (labor, loyalty, real estate, supplies, customer
| goodwill) in order to boost other aspects - usually 3 and
| 4.
|
| First, this is merely an opinion. It's not a matter of me
| "misunderstanding" exploitation. It's an opinion that
| this is when exploitation starts.
|
| Also, this is UNAVOIDABLE. You MUST, necessarily, take
| some money away from labor to give it to 3 and 4.
|
| Your entire thought process rests on this word here -
| "stripping". What is that? When does that begin?
|
| Is one dollar stripping? To me, yes, to you, no. What is
| that magic number? And, if you can find that magic
| number, why is it correct? And who decides?
| nine_zeros wrote:
| > There are economic systems in which 100% of the value
| produced is paid out to laborers. We're just not in one.
|
| You will need to give examples.
|
| > Also, this is UNAVOIDABLE. You MUST, necessarily, take
| some money away from labor to give it to 3 and 4.
|
| Absolutely. Can you point at where this was not implied?
|
| > Your entire thought process rests on this word here -
| "stripping". What is that? When does that begin?
|
| This where your understanding is completely off. It seems
| that you are missing the forest for the trees. Instead of
| focusing on "stripping", try to ask the question, "What
| steps can the company take when they are stagnating in
| revenue or margins?"
|
| Peace!
| benjaminwootton wrote:
| In a strong market the management and owners will have to pay
| more and improve conditions.
|
| Maybe some managers will be faster to exploit things when
| supply/demand turns in their favour, but pretty quickly the
| invisible hand of the market would have readjusted anyway.
| throwaway984393 wrote:
| The invisible hand of the market does not make shitty people
| with power become less shitty people with power.
| alvah wrote:
| I had a similar experience with an HR manager in Australia,
| boasting about how they'd used a recent downturn to cut
| individuals' hourly rates by 10% (including many of my
| friends), while not reducing the charge-out rate to the client.
| Corporate management (as distinct from small business) selects
| for people like this.
| crossroadsguy wrote:
| I am from India and this is very common thing from Indian
| managers whether they are in India or working abroad (and I am
| sure this is not limited to India but since I am from there I
| am sharing this example). It's just a thing. I often am a
| pariah at workplace when it comes to views on work-life
| balance. So I have learnt to never get into discussions about
| it and just shut up and keep my head down while never giving in
| to any manager's pressure and still trying to maintain calm and
| composure avoiding direct conflict. It's like walking on egg
| shells.
| abhinai wrote:
| I've had Indian managers and never experienced this. You're
| probably extrapolating from a small sample size which may all
| be from same company / industry.
| sitkack wrote:
| I have had 7 managers from India at big US companies over a
| 30 year span and 6 of them where like this. It is an
| interesting phenomenon, in another timeline I'd like to be
| a tech ethnographer.
| potamic wrote:
| Most people who have worked both in the west as well as in
| the country will say there is a stark difference in the
| superior-subordinate dynamic between these two places.
| Concepts of professional respect, upward feedback and
| personal boundaries are less evolved here. It's a byproduct
| of the region's culture which is inherently hierarchical.
| While there are places which actively eschew traditional
| ways, especially those that are part of global
| orgranizations, given the size of the industry there are
| many more where a strong hierarchy and subordination is
| unfortunately the norm.
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| Basing the claim, _" you're probably extrapolating from a
| small sample size"_ on only your experience, is
| extrapolating from a small sample size.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| This isn't some Indian specific thing.
|
| Private equity is destroying US infrastructure to make a
| quick buck. It's happening in almost every sector of the
| economy you can imagine. I'm not exaggerating when I say that
| PE firms are buying up nursing homes, transfering ownership
| of the land and building off into a separate entity, and have
| that entity charge the nursing home rent which keeps going up
| and up. This forces management of the nursing home to find
| ways to cut expenses until there's nothing left to cut except
| stuff directly related to resident care, safety, etc.
| Families see the writing on the wall and move their relatives
| out which accelerates the demise of the nursing home and it
| has to shut down (or is shut down, by the county/state.) Then
| the PE firm bulldozes the building and sells the property
| (which is what they really wanted.)
|
| The US suffered a massive toxic fire in Ohio that destroyed a
| big chunk of the town and left a huge area heavily poisoned
| because a private equity firm bought the railroad and was
| squeezing it for every penny, and despite plenty of warnings
| by union officials and experts, the FRA did nothing and
| then...boom. Wheel bearing seized, train derailed, town
| polluted by hundreds of thousands of pounds of incredibly
| toxic chemicals like vinyl chloride.
|
| https://www.tiktok.com/@moreperfectunion/video/7198354503823.
| ..
|
| Precision railroad scheduling means:
|
| - insanely strict rules about when engineers can request time
| off even for family medical emergencies, and sick days (so
| you have train engineers and other staff working while sick
| as dogs. Totally safe! Really stressed out employees, too -
| and stress means mistakes.) RR unions tried to strike twice.
| First congress and then and Biden bitch-slapped them back to
| work with a "compromise" that was still oppressive as hell
| because the economic disruption from the trains not running
| was more important. All because the railroads want to cut the
| number of employees down as low as possible so there aren't
| available engineers to replace sick ones, and they don't want
| delays while replacement engineers head out to trains that
| had to be left somewhere because the engineer was sick.
|
| - dramatically reducing the time rolling stock maintenance
| crews have to inspect a car for problems - from three minutes
| to a minute and a half. Not only does this save labor, it
| means those maintenance crews don't find as much stuff wrong
| which takes a car out of service and costs money for the
| repair...woo, saving more money!
|
| - reducing the number of employees per train; I believe it's
| currently two, and they're trying to push the FRA into
| allowing them to run one employee per train.
|
| - increasing train lengths to reduce labor costs by moving
| more cars per people they have to pay. This increases the
| chances of derailments, and also causes other problems, like
| slower brake response time (the longer the train, the longer
| it takes for a pressure reduction in the brake line to make
| it to the end of the train, though I believe some end-of-
| train devices can be set up to remotely release brake
| pressure.)
|
| - reducing track crews _and_ time allocated to track
| maintenance so the tracks are more available and maintenance
| costs are lowered.
|
| Keep in mind locomotive engineers are paid a median wage of
| $35/hour with a 10/90th percentile spread of $28/$44. These
| aren't enormous sums of money they're saving by going to one
| person on the train, particularly since it will be a lower-
| paid employee who is removed.
|
| The crash was caused by overheating bearings which caused a
| wheelset to seize and derail the train.
|
| It gets worse. The railroad pushed to have tanker cars
| intentionally burned, lied to the public, and turns out it
| was likely just because burning off the chemicals was cheaper
| and faster than a proper cleanup. Sources: https://www.tiktok
| .com/@moreperfectunion/video/7247656170347... and https://en.
| wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Palestine,_Ohio,_train_de...
|
| Hilariously, the EPA, the railway, and "independent
| scientists" all declared the area safe but EPA employees
| visiting the sites became sick in ways similar to how
| residents were being affected.
|
| The railroad companies responded to public and congressional
| furor by saying they'd self-regulate (!) better, and join a
| program similar to the FAA's close-call incident reporting
| system. Only one railroad has joined that system, and all but
| one raiload saw an increase in derailments in the following
| year.
|
| The PE firms know their maintenance and staffing cuts are
| causing increasing problems and will destroy the railroad
| companies. They don't care. They're milking the railroad
| companies for every dime they can squeeze, leaving them in
| tatters from all the deferred maintenance and repairs. These
| companies are responsible for moving massive amounts of cargo
| around the country, and when they fall apart, it will be a
| national crisis, and the federal government will have to step
| in and bail the companies out because they're 'Too Big To
| Fail.' And the PE firms that own trucking companies will see
| record profits...
| Obscurity4340 wrote:
| I couldn't breathe reading this. I had no idea it was THIS
| bad, these private equity firms need to be reined the hell
| in if not eliminated and legislated against. Make them do
| something useful to society or tell them to get bent
| Akronymus wrote:
| I am sure you heard of red lobster going bankrupt because
| of endless shrimp.
|
| Well, that wasnt actually the case but once again private
| equity.
|
| They forced red lobster to sell off their land/buildings
| to a PE controlled entity. Which rented it back to them.
| Also forced them to go to a specific, PE controlled, fish
| seller.
|
| In fact, they got forced into starting the endless shrimp
| stuff because that seller had too much shrimp.
|
| And for the privilege to be managed by them, the bought
| companies get forced to take on the debt that PE took on
| to buy them in the first place, along with paying an
| outrageous amount of money every month.
|
| And lets not even get into what they do to elderly
| homes..
| neom wrote:
| Darden group sold Red Lobster to GGC because it was
| massively underperforming in it's portfolio due to
| mismanagement through the 90s. GGC wasn't able to make
| much headway with it, and so it sold 25% to a vendor on
| the supply chain as part of debt restructuring and
| forgiveness, that allowed them to get some unit economics
| back into reality and the owner of the supply chain
| company took the rest of the position to continue the
| work of re-building the supply chain. Should the PE firm
| have involved the vendors in that way, maybe not, however
| it seems it was a decent enough strategy in terms of
| thoughtfulness.
|
| Red Lobster had a death rattle long before PE got
| involved, PE is just a convenient story.
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| McDonald's, a non-failing firm, not owned by PE, was once
| described by a former CFO thusly: _" We are not
| technically in the food business. We are in the real
| estate business."_ They realised that owning the land
| upon which their restaurants, allowed them to succeed.
|
| Red Lobster's PE firm, on the other hand, did _the exact
| opposite_ : sold the most valuable asset out from under
| their restaraunts, to another PE firm, which then
| squeezed the restaraunts on rent and ruined their store
| economics (along with the aforementioned supplier further
| ruining their unit economics) until they went out of
| business.
| neom wrote:
| They're in Chapter 11, they're not out of business yet.
|
| Why do you think that is what happened? It doesn't seem
| to be in line with what GGC told their LPs, so I'm
| curious where you get your interpretation of the events
| from? Do you have any links or reading you could provide
| me with?
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| _> Why do you think that is what happened?_
|
| The reason I think that is what happened is because _that
| is what happened_. Here are some links, as requested:
|
| _How a bad real estate deal sunk Red Lobster [0]_
|
| _When a private-equity firm bought the iconic seafood
| chain in 2014, it sold the real estate under the
| restaurants for $1.5 billion. Then the restaurants
| struggled to pay the rents [1]_
|
| _It Was A Bad Real Estate Deal, Not A Bad Meal Deal That
| Killed Red Lobster [2]_
|
| _Ultimate Endless Real Estate Costs at Red Lobster [3]_
|
| _Golden Gate crippled Red Lobster by selling off one of
| its most valuable assets, the real estate it owned [4]_
|
| _To help fund the deal, Red Lobster spun off its real
| estate assets in a transaction known as a sale leaseback
| agreement. Red Lobster had long owned its own real estate
| but would now be paying rent to lease its restaurants.
| Sale leasebacks are very common in the restaurant
| industry, but the arrangement wound up hurting Red
| Lobster because it became stuck with leases it no longer
| could afford to pay. [5]_
|
| _But again, it wasn't because of the shrimp. Following
| the sale of Red Lobster to Golden Gate, the chain's real
| estate assets were also sold off, which meant that the
| restaurants now had to pay rent on these locations to
| their parent company. As such, the company was stuck in
| leases for underperforming restaurants that it couldn't
| afford [6]_
|
| 0: https://www.restaurantdive.com/news/bad-real-estate-
| deal-sun...
|
| 1: https://www.nbcnews.com/business/consumer/private-
| equity-rol...
|
| 2: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/bad-real-estate-deal-
| not-1730...
|
| 3: https://artofprocurement.com/supply/ultimate-endless-
| real-es...
|
| 4: https://prospect.org/economy/2024-05-22-raiding-red-
| lobster/
|
| 5: https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/03/food/red-lobster-
| seafood-rest...
|
| 6: https://www.eater.com/24160929/red-lobster-bankruptcy-
| endles...
| neom wrote:
| The vendor wouldn't have been able to afford the price of
| the business with the land in the deal, it would have
| massively complicated chapter 11 if they needed to enter
| it (they did), given were the company was, reducing tax
| burden was important (sale was done at near breakeven).
| Sale+Rent back is a very traditional move in clearing up
| a business that has very little value and is leaning
| heavily on a real estate portfolio (not it's core
| business). You can read all the court filings and
| disclosures over the years, it paints a different story.
|
| I understand the media told a story, but the story isn't
| the whole story, in fact it's just that: a story.
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| The 6 reliable sources provided, which I trust you read
| in the 30 minutes between their posting and your reply,
| speak for themselves.
|
| If you can convince all 6 reliable sources I linked, to
| correct their story, such that it reflects your own
| personal narrative of what happened, I will believe you.
|
| Alternatively, you could provide 6+ equally-reliable
| sources which explicitly point out that the 6 reliable
| sources I cited are wrong (rather than just reframing the
| issue, or attempting to predict what _would have
| happened_ had reality been different than what it was).
|
| While I respect you as a person, and as a valuable
| contributor to this forum, your personal narrative simply
| isn't as reliable as the 6 reliable sources I provided.
| neom wrote:
| https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/940944/0000940944
| 140...
|
| https://goldengatecap.com/vereit-announces-sale-
| of-204-milli...
|
| https://fortune.com/2014/06/30/why-private-equity-
| investors-...
|
| Darden had a very interesting pitch to GGC, going so far
| as to secure covenants from franchisees holders in
| advance to sale+leaseback - GGC in spite of S+LB,
| obligations, the in fact bought millions more in real
| estate to try and shore up the stability in locations.
|
| Then here, you'll see it play out: https://bankruptcy-
| proxy-api.dowjones.ai/cases/Florida_Middl...
|
| Story is considerably more complicated than PE is evil.
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| It seems we're in violent agreement: The sources you
| provided don't actually dispute the ones I did: indeed,
| they confirm that the real estate was sold out from under
| the restaurants. To further cement this point, your last
| link flat out says what we're all already saying: Private
| Equity can't/didn't save Red Lobster.
|
| This action further distressed individual restaurants,
| rather than helping them out.
|
| Instead, the sources you provided instead simply say that
| it was advantageous for Private Equity and the Private
| Equity deal, which is the point here: it was good for PE,
| bad for the individual restaurants.
|
| Which makes sense, it's not a complicated concept: how
| does jacking up rent on an individual restaurants help
| it? It doesn't, as the sources I provided pointed out. If
| you were paying X today, and now you have to pay >X, that
| doesn't help you.
| neom wrote:
| Why was it worse for the restaurants than the
| alternative?
|
| Why was the rent increased, by how much, and by who??
| What was the difference between the payments and how much
| did it diff from market over time or at whatever time
| you're talking about.
|
| I'm an LP in GGC so I have lots of thoughts, happy to
| hear yours in detail!
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| Was the rent increased? Yes.
|
| By how much? By enough to hurt the restaraunts. I'd be
| happy to hear from you the specifics of how much it was
| increased, per-restaurant, if that's what you're
| referring to.
|
| Was it worse for the individual restaraunts than not
| jacking up the rent? Yes, paying more is worse than
| paying less.
|
| Was it worse than not being bought out by PE? Probably,
| but that's the sort of prophesizing about what would have
| happened had reality been different, in which I'm not
| interested in participating. What we _do_ know is that a
| lot of value was extracted from Red Lobster into the
| pockets of PE, leaving the company a withered husk of its
| former self, a common PE playbook.
| ghaff wrote:
| A lot of the time, private equity (like MBAs etc.) is a
| convenient bogeyman for why crappy underperforming
| companies are crappy and underperforming. But private
| equity often gets involved because they _are_ crappy and
| underperforming (or are just in a line of business that
| doesn 't have good prospects any longer).
| mapt wrote:
| A small fraction of the time, private equity is brought
| in to make an ailing, breakeven business profitable.
|
| Much more often, it's to bite off limbs until it dies,
| feasting on cashflow and assets.
|
| And then the third portion of the time, the business is
| generating reliable, modest long-term returns, a "blue-
| chip" company. Private equity doubles down on future
| growth that is not projected, gets the company into debt
| to the owners, makes it worthless, compensate themselves
| in stock with bank leverage, issues themselves further
| priority stock, files bankruptcy to get rid of the
| pensions, and on, and on, and on with various tricks to
| sack whatever assets the have on their books and whatever
| cashflow was generating a reliable 5% return before
| private equity got involved.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| That's a fair bit of revisionist history trying to make
| PE look like it's not the bad guy.
|
| Red Lobster was flourishing in the 1990s; it was one of
| the most popular sit-down chains back then. There were
| lines around the block at most locations.
|
| In 2013, Darden Restaurants decided to spin-off Red
| Lobster and Olive Garden by selling them to a PE firm
| which coveted the ability to exploit these profitable
| chains. (Average EPS was approximately $0.77/share, and
| Red Lobster remained the countries' most popular seafood
| chain until COVID.)
|
| The sale to the PE firm GGC included a sale-leaseback of
| all of Red Lobster's real estate. The purpose of this was
| to fund the acquisition, since PE never puts its own
| money down; it funds acquisitions with the assets of the
| acquired company. Red Lobster's operating expenses jumped
| more than 50% overnight, as it now had to pay rent on
| locations it used to own.
|
| Within 2 years, this PE-driven cash grab had Red Lobster
| on the verge of bankruptcy. Selling Red Lobster to its
| biggest supplier didn't fix things because the problem
| was that PE had the bright idea to ruin the company
| through the sale-leaseback arrangement.
|
| PE was not just a convenient story, they are the cause
| for Red Lobster's demise.
| treis wrote:
| It's all bullshit. Buffet bought BNSF but the rest of the
| major railroads are publicly traded companies. And
| Berkshire Hathaway isn't private equity either.
| neom wrote:
| What PE firm are you referring to when you talk about the
| railroads and the Ohio incident?
| mapt wrote:
| I know a number of nursing homes had >50% mortality from
| COVID, as there was not even a real attempt at isolation.
| While visiting hours may have been restricted, we pretended
| that nurses and staff (already scarce) were simply unable
| to transmit COVID, taking them on and off premises on
| regular shifts, and the result is hundreds of thousands of
| people killed.
|
| Murdered.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| A lot of old people in red states straight up voted for
| the day of the pillow and gleefully accepted it.
|
| https://www.vice.com/en/article/texas-lt-governor-thinks-
| old...
|
| These comments from the lt governor and trump were
| extremely popular with their base and with the population
| of Texas.
|
| What do you do when the people being murdered vote for
| their own murder?
| phatfish wrote:
| Don't worry, this happens everywhere that caves to free
| market ideologies. In the UK local government (tax payers)
| get ripped off exactly the same for social care. Private
| equity firms know the local government has a legal duty to
| provide care for the elderly and those with chronic
| conditions. So they can charge whatever they want.
|
| Obviously the global investors have no problem morally with
| this, they are more than arms reach away. It's an executive
| in one of the companies they own that takes the heat for a
| couple of weeks, and then it goes away (and the executive
| gets their bonus for being the face of immorality).
|
| If anyone wonders why public services are crippled, this is
| the main reason.
| jonathrg wrote:
| Sorry for the annoying language comment: your issue was not
| lack of scruples but presence of scruples.
| steelframe wrote:
| Not annoying at all. I'm more annoyed by people just letting
| me keep making the same mistake without saying anything. In
| fact when I first wrote that something in my brain said maybe
| it wasn't right, so I looked up the word "scruples" and saw
| the definition "motivation deriving logically from ethical or
| moral principles that govern a person's thoughts and
| actions." I thought maybe that it might be a valid
| interpretation for the ethical or moral principles to be
| flawed in that context. What I should have done was look up
| examples of "lack of scruples" being used in sentences; that
| would have made it clear that I wasn't using it right.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| He's right, and I think we're seeing this done across the
| industry (especially FAANG).
|
| However, just because employees "have to take it" doesn't mean
| that it's better for the company to have employees that
| actively hate it and are just staying because of a lack of
| alternatives. Especially in a field where work output and
| especially quality is hard to measure, and the success of many
| companies hinged on motivated employees...
| zmgsabst wrote:
| I always like analogies, eg:
|
| Skimping on feed because the penned milk cattle have to take
| it.
|
| I would actually appreciate if our systems were coherently
| sociopathic rather than chaotic due to individual personality
| faults. At least then, conditions "on the farm" might make
| sense rather than look like an expression of mental illness
| and unchecked antipathy.
| pjerem wrote:
| The thing is that it's not that important if it hurts the
| company long term. If the company is big enough, any of those
| "managers" have plenty of time to make a great career there
| for several years if not more.
|
| imo, that's the issue when company's ownership gets so
| diluted that nobody have personal interest anymore in the
| company's long term viability.
|
| Heck when your company is owned by private equity, even the
| company itself becomes a line in some excel spreadsheet. And
| you'd better not get that conditional formatting turn to red.
| matwood wrote:
| This has nothing to do with being a manager or not, it's just
| that many people are jerks. I've seen non-managers do something
| similar when they consider themselves hard to replace. It's
| unfortunate this is where we have ended up as a society.
| fergie wrote:
| Ex-manager here as well. I have always been surprised at how
| many managers will jump at the opportunity to put pressure on
| employees, even when there is no real benefit to the manager
| themselves or the organisation.
| zhengyi13 wrote:
| Normalize it now; take advantage of it later when there is
| some sort of benefit, however short-term/sighted it may be.
| dools wrote:
| Early on in my career when I was first put into the position of
| hiring both employees and contractors, a guy I was working with
| said "We can ask him for a better price and promise to give him
| a better deal on the next one", and I said "but we won't have
| any more work after this one" and he said "yeah I know but we
| can just tell him that to get a better price".
|
| It was one of the first times I realised that people are
| actively being jerks in business negotiations.
|
| Another time was when I put my prices up to $160/hour from
| $80/hour after I realised I wasn't making any money (in fact by
| my calculations I was losing $3/hour for every hour my staff
| worked).
|
| I didn't lose a single customer. They all just said "oh, right,
| well, okay when will you have it done?".
|
| The same guys who had been crying poor a couple of months prior
| about how they "just didn't have the budget" were now paying
| double the rate and they could totally afford it.
|
| People be jerks yo.
| xivzgrev wrote:
| Being a jerk extends all around.
|
| As a manager I've had two employees tell HR that I was
| racist. The evidence? One I fired for performance, the other
| I had on a performance improvement plan. Mind you I had other
| minorities on my team in parallel that had no performance
| issues and strangely enough did not say I was a racist.
|
| Also one time the HR guy (who also doubled as office manager)
| ran a large scheme where he claimed employees were expensing
| things, he did it on their behalf and got reimbursed. I found
| this out after the fact where I was asked if I ever asked him
| to order laptops or ran up huge Uber bills.
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| No idea why you're being down voted. I've had the very same
| experience once. Employee just sucked, after some nudges
| that went either ignored or just unnoticed I gave a very
| clear speech on where they're standing. Three months later
| I got him fired. He went to HR and claimed I was racist,
| and threatened with a lawyer. This really stressed me out
| for a good while, this was dragging along for weeks, with
| ugly mails and calls.
| mulmen wrote:
| The details _really_ matter here.
|
| I won't assume you or GP were racially motivated but
| "just sucks" can easily be code for "wrong race/culture".
|
| "Some nudges" is a red flag to me, regardless of race.
| You think you communicated a message but aren't sure if
| it was understood. That's your responsibility as the
| messenger, not theirs as the unknowing recipient.
| mulmen wrote:
| In my experience "performance" is code for "I don't like
| you". I have never seen a performance metric that isn't
| arbitrary and inconsistent. Not just between peers but day
| to day for an individual.
|
| PIPs are just CYA for HR.
|
| I can't speak to these specific situations because I wasn't
| there but when managers speak about "performance" they're
| using a euphemism for their perception. This can easily
| feel like racism because it comes from a place of
| discrimination.
|
| "I have friends who are x" is a common refrain of racists
| so isn't a defense, especially in an asymmetric power
| structure. Maybe you aren't, or maybe your employees feel
| you are but they tolerate it to keep their jobs.
| runsWphotons wrote:
| In your experience what are legitimate grounds to fire
| someone?
| mulmen wrote:
| Theft and fraud.
| vitaflo wrote:
| If you're bad enough at your job to get fired you
| basically are a fraud.
| mulmen wrote:
| Is it your assertion that power asymmetry,
| discrimination, and retaliation do not exist?
| nine_zeros wrote:
| > If you're bad enough at your job to get fired you
| basically are a fraud.
|
| Depends on who thinks you are bad enough and how they
| came to the conclusion.
|
| If your boss thinks you are bad enough - the question is
| why do they think so? Is it laziness, incompetence, or
| merely small nonsense that the boss couldn't accept
| retroactively? Is this all via stack rank or fake BS
| quotas? What is it?
| Drakim wrote:
| It does indeed extend all around, and I'm sorry you had to
| go though that. But you have to keep in mind that there is
| an extreme power imbalance between an employee and a
| manager who can have them fired, which means the jerk-
| factor is very much slanted heavily in one direction. For
| regular employees having those above you abuse their power
| over you in various ways is often a daily occurrence.
| takinola wrote:
| Context matters. When I walk into a high-end store and see a
| shirt on sale for $X, I assume that I need to pay $X to get
| the shirt. If I see a shirt at a flea-market priced at $Y, I
| assume I can get the shirt for some percentage off by just
| bargaining. The sellers are also aware of this context and,
| presumably, set their prices accordingly. The same thing
| regularly happens in business. For most services, people
| understand that pricing is not fixed and act accordingly.
| They are not (necessarily) jerks, they are just reacting to
| the context they are operating in.
| Suppafly wrote:
| >They are not (necessarily) jerks, they are just reacting
| to the context they are operating in.
|
| That's a good point and honestly is often caused by the
| seller in the first place. A lot of tools used by
| businesses are intentionally not priced or priced on a
| floating scale so that the sales team has an opportunity to
| introduce fake discounts to make the sale, but ultimately
| this signals to the buyer that negotiation is part of the
| transaction. Almost all enterprise software and hardware
| sales work like that. Often the buyer would rather have a
| set price upfront than how to deal with the haggling
| process but it's the sellers that are creating this
| problem.
| fullshark wrote:
| Yeah i got a peek at how the sausage gets made at the higher
| levels and I decided I needed to keep my HH costs down and
| reach FI(maybe)RE asap. Until that happened I was ultimately a
| wage slave, and that's how they wanted it, with a gun to my
| head in the form of rent/mortgage/kids's schooling whatever
| keeping me desperate to perform for them.
| eric_cc wrote:
| > turn the screws on our employees
|
| This is gross..
|
| > I also started looking into every legal protection I had
| available to me in my jurisdiction.
|
| But so is this. I'd rather quit some crappy place than rely on
| legal protections.
| geoelectric wrote:
| I had a manager relate to me overhearing almost that exact
| comment made in a manager meeting at a mid-size corp I worked
| for in 2008. He left in part because of that attitude, and I
| ultimately did too. It's egregiously abusive.
| kalyantm wrote:
| You pretty much summed up managers that have most of their
| employees on H1-B in the US. I know multiple managers that
| offload most of the work to the Asian immigrants on the H1-B
| visa, have them work 10+ hours a day and know that they can get
| them to do anything they want, because if they don't, they are
| scared that they can get fired and have to leave the country. I
| know multiple friends who silently work on weekends to
| potentially avoid being fired and leave the country!
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| I'm an Australian and I'm really surprised this law is needed. I
| would be very surprised to hear somebody was fired for ignoring
| email after hours.
| 2muchcoffeeman wrote:
| I'm in Australia too. I've never been at a company that
| dysfunctional either.
|
| But there's always some manager that's not reasonable. This is
| just a formality that puts what most reasonable people already
| do into writing.
| ghiculescu wrote:
| Lots of people missing nuance or seeing this rule change say what
| they want it to say, rather than what it actually says.
|
| Employers are still allowed to contact employees anytime.
|
| Previously you could theoretically be terminated for not reading
| or replying to messages from your employer outside hours. Now
| there are restrictions on that. That's all that's changed.
| sumedh wrote:
| "Previously you could theoretically be terminated for not
| reading or replying to messages from your employer outside
| hours. Now there are restrictions on that. "
|
| Now you will be terminated for "some other" reason.
| tialaramex wrote:
| Previously, when you show to a tribunal or whatever
| institution that they fired you for not working out of hours
| despite insisting it was some vague "job performance" reason,
| the tribunal says well, that's technically legal anyway, it's
| just rude, so too bad.
|
| Now, it's illegal. So "some other reason" has to be
| watertight. If in the process of concocting a "some other
| reason" you trip another law, you don't get a Do Over because
| you were trying to break a different law, instead you have
| _more_ trouble.
| ludston wrote:
| My personal experience is that Australia doesn't have a huge
| problem with this generally. But mileage may vary. If it were a
| huge problem then vested interests would lobby fiercely against
| the law, and it seemed to pass without much challenge or comment
| from the public here.
|
| This law might seem like a big deal if you're working in a place
| without labour protection laws, and therefore you're used to
| constant abuse from management and live in permanent anxiety of
| some petty retaliation. But here it really ought to just be a
| formalisation of normality unless you're working with
| particularly poor managers.
| tagh wrote:
| I also personally haven't had issues with this in Australia,
| but have seen it happen to friends who work in legal (many
| times).
| scorpioxy wrote:
| This hasn't been my experience in Australia. I don't believe
| this law will make a difference at all either. The reason is
| that if you refuse to do it, then this will come up during
| performance reviews as something else. "More responsive" or
| "available for your teammates" or "more of a team player" etc.
| Of course the manager won't be asking you in any direct way or
| in written form to be available outside working hours. The
| incentive system will just be changed to make it your choice to
| do so.
|
| Conducting interviews over the last year or so had people
| telling me of their stories. The labor protection laws didn't
| seem effective except for clear cut cases and even then you'd
| probably just get a bit of money and you would've ruined your
| reputation of getting hired ever again because you're a trouble
| maker.
| ludston wrote:
| The law won't make a difference for us, but it will probably
| make a difference to the super-market employees being phoned
| at 6am and asked to take on an extra shift today.
| paranoidrobot wrote:
| Being called to change/schedule shifts is one of the things
| that I saw in news reports that it's explicitly permitted.
| I-M-S wrote:
| > To cater for emergencies and _jobs with irregular hours_
| , the rule still allows employers to contact their workers
|
| Doesn't seems it will make a difference for them either
| unfortunately
| paranoidrobot wrote:
| My personal experience differs quite significantly.
|
| I burnt out severely at two different companies.
|
| Both issues were directly attributable to management failing to
| acknowledge or deal with systemic issues, which resulted in
| huge amounts of overtime and callouts. All with zero
| compensation, because I was a salaried employee.
|
| One company had a problem with continuing to promise the world
| to clients, but not setting realistic timelines. When,
| inevitably, the goal posts were shifted, timelines were not
| updated to recognise the issue. There was never an explicit
| "You must work longer hours to finish this", it was "The client
| expects this to be done by this date.". There was also pressure
| that if I didn't work more to finish things, that it would fall
| upon some other member of the team who was also known to be
| burnt out.
|
| Another company refused to require teams to conduct any form of
| peer reviews, testing or take on responsibility for monitoring
| or resolving issues.
|
| Regularly people would commit code and push changes to
| production, and then walk out the door to go home. When that
| caught on fire, I'd be required to remote in and resolve
| whatever issue they had caused. Typically this happened right
| as I was getting home and trying to eat dinner.
|
| I'm not certain if this law would've helped me in these cases.
| I like to think it would, but I'm usually not one to make waves
| until things start to get overwhelming. But it might give
| others some ammunition for dealing with management and HR.
| nine_zeros wrote:
| I think a much favorable law should be that employers must
| automatically log after hours overtime and pay for such overtime
| for ALL employees besides the C-Suite.
|
| Aka, any communication sent to employees MUST be billed to the
| company. The company can figure out if they want to pay ALL
| employees overtime pay or shut down their communication systems
| after 5 pm.
| frays wrote:
| Interesting to see the US perspective on this.
| paradox242 wrote:
| I already do this in the US.
| kyriakos wrote:
| If an employee doesn't respond outside working hours can't he be
| penalised in a different way or miss out in promotions if other
| employees do? Clearly this law is a good thing but i find it hard
| to see how it can be enforced.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Between this and the New Zealand government's ruling on Uber,
| seems like ANZAC countries still maintain worker's rights.
| sailfast wrote:
| How on earth would one even begin to enforce reverting the
| dismissal of an employee "because they didn't answer their phone
| after hours"?
|
| "Employee was dismissed due to poor performance." "Employee was
| dismissed because they were not delivering enough value compared
| to their peers..."
|
| These ideas and protections are great in theory, but very hard to
| manage in practice, and I'd imagine it gets tested on the first
| serious appeal.
| Yodel0914 wrote:
| The same way any other labour protection laws are enforced?
| anewguy9000 wrote:
| do they have the right to employment??
| stephen_g wrote:
| Please define 'right to employment', I think that has a special
| meaning in the US that isn't really a thing elsewhere?
| crossroadsguy wrote:
| In 2024 it hurts really bad to read all such great news from
| other nations while sitting in India where industry leaders,
| startup founders, and politicians are actively trying to impose
| things like 70 hour work week or so and take away whatever labour
| protections (which is very little and mostly ineffective and
| practically none if you are in "corporate") we have and even
| encroach upon the Sundays and Saturdays (the latter being working
| for most of the Indian workers anyway).
| abhinai wrote:
| Oh you're same guy from another thread. You seem like you're on
| some kind of a mission here. My experience was 100% different
| than you. You seem to be generalizing from a small sample and
| paint an entire country with that baseless generalization.
| crossroadsguy wrote:
| Why would you go this length and do this witch hunting? Do
| you have some issue in reading other people's views? I have
| commented this same view twice in different context and you
| consider that a "mission"? This is a behaviour I have seen so
| widespread here that it seems like a trend. In fact it's a
| thing! Go asking on r/india and see how that is. Now that
| would also be a very small set for you, isn't it? Well, that
| is definitely orders of magnitude higher than hn when it
| comes to this particular country. So get a feel there maybe?
|
| Well, what is your mission? Since I mentioned my country's
| name (which I guess could be yours as well but I am not sure)
| is this somehow become a "prestige" issue for you?
|
| I don't know whether a tag works here, but @dang is this kind
| of witch-hunting or attack acceptable here? Or is it rather
| kosher?
| zombiwoof wrote:
| Eric Schmidt : hold my beer
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| As an unambitious fellow happy to grind away at the bottom of the
| ladder, this is how I've conducted myself most of my career. My
| brief forays into management have generally impacted my work-life
| balance too far the wrong way, and correcting said balance ran
| into incompatibilities with expectations (not in performance mind
| you, just in the ambiguous and subjective 'that which is required
| of leadership').
|
| Y'all can have it.
| red_admiral wrote:
| I like the Swiss implementation of this. A manager _can_ contact
| an employee on a Sunday, but then the employee is immediately on
| weekend-rate overtime even if they just got an email with "deal
| with this next week". So, many companies have systems that hold
| back e-mail sent outside of working hours until the next working
| day unless specially authorised and costed.
|
| Never underestimate an economics-based solution to a legal
| problem, a.k.a. "if you really want to ban it, tax it".
| KoolKat23 wrote:
| I'd rather not work on the weekend, even for an overtime rate.
| Thanks.
| silisili wrote:
| That's the benefit of working on a small team/startup.
| Whoever smelt it dealt it kind of situation. Basically, at
| first at least, whoever's application is erroring is getting
| a call when it breaks.
|
| It sounds bad, but it encourages everyone to write more fault
| tolerant code. Way moreso then a random bigcorp with an on
| call team.
| grecy wrote:
| I used to get called all the time because our in house
| infrastructure would fall over, and my apps would crash. It
| didn't matter how many times I explained my apps couldn't
| run without good infra, and that I wasn't on that team, and
| that I had no access or authority to do anything... when my
| apps when down I got called.
|
| So actually, I really don't like your idea.
| majewsky wrote:
| Or, to be more specific, you don't like your company's
| implementation of their idea.
|
| We have the same setup in my org, but we get to define
| alerts ourselves. All our own alerts are built so that
| they don't go off if the underlying infra is borked, and
| only if there's something we can actually do on our
| level. We are being kept honest because there is a big
| kerfuffle when an incident is reported by customers first
| (instead of alerting).
| potamic wrote:
| What metrics do you alert on? How do you distinguish
| between error due to faulty database client vs error due
| to database disk failure?
| dullcrisp wrote:
| Define SLOs based on what can realistically be achieved
| with underlying infrastructure, only alert if those SLOs
| are breached?
| majewsky wrote:
| Taking my managed container image registry service as an
| example.
|
| - The only critical alert that can actually page people
| is if the blackbox test fails. Every 30 seconds, it
| downloads a test image and if the contents don't match
| the expectation, an alert is raised (with some delay).
|
| - Warning alerts are mostly for any errors being returned
| from background tasks, but these are only monitored
| during business hours.
| perfect_wave wrote:
| i dont see how that is separated from the underlying
| infra. If the network/server/some dependency goes down,
| the blackbox test will fail and you'll get paged.
| silisili wrote:
| You can test for this. For example, we had routines that
| were called on repeated HTTP failures that would then get
| 5 or so of the top US websites. If those fail too, it
| moves from an application error to an infra one.
| sgarland wrote:
| If your endpoint is failing, it might be you. If
| everyone's endpoint is failing, it's almost certainly not
| you.
| latexr wrote:
| Pretty sure your parent poster meant a small _overall_
| team. As in, the company is small enough that everyone
| knows who everyone else is and there's little to no
| bureaucracy to reach the right person.
|
| Doesn't seem like your case at all.
| watwut wrote:
| Unless of course the "guilty" is not immediately apparent.
|
| If it happens frequently, the guilty is the process, team
| lead or whoever runs the things.
| aqme28 wrote:
| This is how you end up in situations where no one wants to
| work on the team that actually needs the most help
| teeray wrote:
| > Whoever smelt it dealt it
|
| Until whoever dealt it just leaves the team. Then it's
| everyone's problem.
| amrocha wrote:
| I joined a startup a couple years ago, and got handed a
| poisoned chalice.
|
| It was a project that was critical to the company, but that
| was not very reliable, and broke overnight very often,
| sometimes 3-4 days per week.
|
| I was the 4th dev on it. Everyone else who worked on it
| before had burned out and quit. The dev before me couldn't
| tough it out another 2 weeks and quit before i joined.
|
| Eventually I burned out after a year and quit too. All this
| to say, that's great when it works, but when it goes bad
| it's real bad hahaha.
| Flop7331 wrote:
| There's also the call you get when the founder breaks
| something and blames the person who touched it before them.
| dukeyukey wrote:
| That's fine, but I'd be willing to. Always a chance I'm I'm
| far from a laptop or even signal, but if I'm having a quiet
| weekend and something comes up, some overtime sounds great.
| KoolKat23 wrote:
| I understand. Problem is this kind of thing is a race to
| the bottom.
|
| Because of the silly ways humans work (mostly due to
| imperfect information), I'd feel obliged and will agree to
| it, despite not wanting to (concerns I will automatically
| be perceived as a lesser employee).
|
| And then we're all working weekends.
| dukeyukey wrote:
| This is one of those things that I can see happening, but
| also has never happened anywhere I've worked.
| Xylakant wrote:
| A sufficiently large overtime/weekend bonus will prevent
| that easily. I've had quite a few conversations both
| internally and with customers that started with "we need
| that by monday" and went via "we can do that, but it will
| cost X extra" to "well, i guess wednesday is fine, too."
| Mandatory weekend work is an extremely rare occurence
| here, I can count all occurences in the last five years
| on one hand and still have fingers to spare.
| KoolKat23 wrote:
| It tends to be an issue with more "vulnerable" workers,
| ones with less leverage. Shift work, nurses and
| hospitality. Margins are ample to cover low wages.
| Xylakant wrote:
| That's true, but that's always true - people with less
| bargaining power will always have a harder time. Nurses
| (and other care workers) also suffer from the effect that
| the people that suffer most from a hard stance on work
| time are their wards and not their bosses.
| latexr wrote:
| There's a relevant quote attributed to Bob Carter:
|
| > Poor planning on your part does not necessitate an
| emergency on mine
|
| Instead of going into an immediate frenzied panic when
| someone says they need something _now_ , stop and ponder
| for a minute how it will impact you and them. Only then
| make a decision.
|
| I remember a friend who was asked for something urgent
| from a client. They rushed to do it to their own personal
| detriment and uploaded the result. About a week later,
| they could see the file had never been downloaded. Turns
| out the matter wasn't _that_ urgent and the client had
| other priorities. My friend was understandably upset, but
| it was a valuable lesson.
| Xylakant wrote:
| I'll steal that quote :)
|
| The advantage of framing it in monetary terms is that
| clients are very used to thinking in monetary terms. It's
| not a "no, we won't do that", but a "yes with a cost"
| that they'll very likely reject on their own terms. And
| it clearly leaves the door open for something that is
| really really urgent - be it a genuine emergency or just
| the result of poor planning.
| prmoustache wrote:
| Law again takes care of that, because the right to rest also
| exist. So if you are asked to work 1h during the weekend, you
| usually gain 2.5 to 3 hours of rest in exchange.
| Propelloni wrote:
| Does the manager also get weekend-rate overtime if she sends
| out e-mails on the weekend? I mean, she _is_ working! Sounds
| like an incentive mismatch here. Or is this just a protection
| of workers on a tariff and does not cover "exempt" employees,
| ie. most IT people.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| Weekend work etc. needs to be approved by a person's manager,
| so weekend-work without approval would in practice not be
| compensated (it's possible that technically they should
| compensate it then fire you for insubordination).
|
| The hurdles for "exempt" are way higher than in the US.
|
| I doubt it is actually done much in practice, although an
| employee who wants to be left alone on the weekend certainly
| could. I would also expect that guidance of "don't read your
| e-mail outside of working hours" would be sufficient to be
| able to send e-mail to employees at any day or hour without
| triggering overtime etc.
| technothrasher wrote:
| > I would also expect that guidance of "don't read your
| e-mail outside of working hours" would be sufficient to be
| able to send e-mail to employees at any day or hour
|
| I sometimes want to send my employees emails over the
| weekend as I think of something and don't want to forget.
| But there are certain employees that I know will
| immediately act on the email, which I actually don't want.
| So I end up emailing myself and then forwarding them the
| email on Monday morning.
| IanCal wrote:
| Does your client not support delaying emails? Gmail has
| schedule send for example.
| latexr wrote:
| > So I end up emailing myself and then forwarding them
| the email on Monday morning.
|
| Certain clients (like Apple's email app) allow you to
| schedule emails to be automatically sent at a later date.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| > I think of something and don't want to forget.
|
| This is a you problem. Fix the forgetting part, you are
| management that's literally your job. Leave a post it
| somewhere, start keeping a checklist, whatever.
|
| Stop making it your employees' problem.
| graphenus wrote:
| Upper management does not need to log working hours and can
| work unpaid overtime. So, they can easily exchange emails on
| weekends. But when they involve a regular employee, who has
| to reach working hours, then it's overtime.
| jajko wrote:
| Even that is not out-of-blue call to devs, rather just PROD
| support guys if some massive issue happens suddenly.
|
| I live and work here 14 years, 2 companies, and never had to
| pick up phone I didn't want to pick up, or react anyhow. Even
| if for some reason they would expect to - 'sorry hiking in the
| mountains, 5h from computer' and they know it. But since
| everybody is in same mode, there is nobody to call me. Our Pune
| colleagues on the other hand, I see them working regularly long
| weekend hours on top of long week days during crunch time.
| amelius wrote:
| But employers will strike back with a law: if you read HN
| during work hours, your rate will be halved.
| oezi wrote:
| Surveillance of employees is obviously banned anyway.
| duckmysick wrote:
| No need to speculate, we can check if such situation indeed
| takes place in Switzerland.
| skizm wrote:
| Is everything hourly there? Would this work with salaried
| employees that don't log hours? Or maybe everyone does? A
| running joke in my first company out of school was "can't wait
| to see that overtime check!" whenever we saw someone working
| after 5. The implication is no one ever gets overtime as a
| salaried employee.
| amonith wrote:
| I don't think true US-like "salaried contracts" exist at all
| in EU. Speaking as a Polish contractor. There might be fixed-
| price short-term project-based contracts but it has nothing
| to do with employment and definitely it's not a
| monthly/yearly thing without any hour limit. At best you have
| something like "minimum X hours per week" but there's always
| "up to Y" and while those hours are technically "preordered"
| upfront, you are supposed to log them.
|
| That being said lots of people still do unpaid overtime, but
| only because they're afraid about losing the job / care too
| much. Not because they actually legally have to. There are
| legal means to defend yourself from that.
| rolandog wrote:
| Heh. At a $SOME_PREVIOUS_EMPLOYER, they literally disabled
| the option to log overtime in the portal, because workers
| were "getting confused", and the official policy was "no
| overtime".
| semanticist wrote:
| Even 'salaried' in the UK means a contract that has a
| specified number of hours in it. In theory if you work more
| than that you should be getting either overtime or time in
| lieu, but in practice that might not always happen depending
| on your role in the company and the type of company.
|
| I don't get overtime, but I do get time in lieu - I did about
| four hours extra the week before last doing set up for one of
| our busiest days of the year, and I'm taking Thursday
| afternoon off to make it up.
|
| Things like 60 hour work weeks also aren't even legal without
| signing away your EU Working Time Directive
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_Time_Directive_2003)
| rights (which isn't even an option in every EU country). I
| don't _think_ the post-brexit legislation did away with that,
| but it wouldn't surprise me.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| This is probably closer to the billing of on call staff than
| just "overtime".
|
| For instance when getting an alert on PagerDuty in the middle
| of the night, you might get paid by 30 min increments while
| dealing with the emergency, even if your regular pay is by
| the day.
| Suppafly wrote:
| >The implication is no one ever gets overtime as a salaried
| employee.
|
| The flipside is that no one ever gets paid less as a salaried
| employee either, but most employees are too afraid of getting
| fired to remember that part. Any day that you work any
| portion, you get paid for the full day.
| eric_cc wrote:
| Overtime rates are not worth being interrupted during time off.
| I'd rather lose out on money and have my precious time.
| 2-3-7-43-1807 wrote:
| I thought that's normal? I switch off my work phone and laptop
| and then I do not even know if I get any mails ... is this only a
| thing in Germany?
| lnsru wrote:
| Some people work on weekends even in Germany. Saturday is
| normal workday according German law. It's more or less personal
| preference. At least one has a choice.
| 2-3-7-43-1807 wrote:
| some people work at night and on sunday ... i didn't know
| that means i'm not allowed to sleep. thanks for letting me
| know.
| lnsru wrote:
| You're welcome! You should read your work contract and/or
| Betriebsvereinbarung regarding work on weekends. It's
| clearly defined.
| 2-3-7-43-1807 wrote:
| I have a Betriebsvereinbarung with your [insert female
| family member of your choice] for this weekend.
| tuggi wrote:
| http://archive.today/jv4nz
| nicbou wrote:
| This is already the case in Germany. It also applies to vacation
| and sick days. Above all, it's deeply ingrained in German
| culture, so that no one expects to reach you outside of your
| working hours.
|
| I help people settle in Germany, and it's one of the main
| cultural aspects I cover. The other is how normal it is to take
| sick days.
| Aachen wrote:
| Netherlands also
|
| The only people that I see working 24/7 are those who run their
| own business, which made sense to me because everyone else has
| a contract that stipulates the obligations of both sides.
| Unless that doc says that you're expected to work outside of
| work hours (which sounds self-contradictory), that's not part
| of the agreement. I'm surprised Australia needed a law for that
| nicbou wrote:
| The culture extends to self-employed people to an extent, but
| it can be hard to set boundaries for yourself when you are
| building your own thing.
|
| I've been in business for 7 years and fully self-employed for
| 4 years. Last week was my very first vacation without my
| laptop.
| ryan69howard wrote:
| Result: complete loss of freedom to have flexible working hours
| and use the company office space
| lljk_kennedy wrote:
| I don't think that's true. I'm in EU and I've allowed
| engineers to shift their working hours based on personal
| circumstances - like start remotely at 7am and finish at 3PM.
| I also encourage engineers to take the time they need for
| life stuff - kids school run, doctor, physio, sick aunt,
| whatever - because ultimately we measure the outcome of their
| work, and not the sum of hours worked.
|
| For the office space - do you mean popping into the office at
| odd hours, like evenings or weekends? I'd probably be
| encouraging my engineers to talk to me about why they need to
| do it and not enjoy their non-working hours. If the work is
| too much, we solve for that. If they're going all in on
| something they love, I'll want to make sure they're not on a
| path to maybe burning-out.
|
| Everything in context.
| ralferoo wrote:
| I feel bad for people in this situation, but at the same time I
| think it's kind of strange to allow yourself to be in this
| situation. Personally, I maintain a very strict separation
| between work devices and personal. Work email, slack, and
| whatever else I need for work lives on my work devices only.
| Personal email, whatsapp, etc live on my personal devices only.
| Most of the companies I've worked at add a remote wipe
| functionality to the phone, and even though I understand the
| business case for this and I've never heard of it being misused,
| that's not something I want on _my_ _personal_ devices.
|
| I usually only have a couple of exceptions to this policy - I
| usually have my personal gmail logged in at work, and
| occasionally for very specific reasons, I might temporarily
| install "work" apps on my personal phone, for instance when I
| want to leave work early to catch a train, but need to be in a
| work meeting later in the day, or to stay in contact with
| colleagues when out at a conference, etc. These apps get removed
| again when I no longer need them.
|
| When I leave work, the work devices get switched off. In most
| cases, I leave the work devices at work, including laptops and
| phones, assuming I have somewhere secure to leave them at work.
| Almost every company I've worked at, I've had a lockable chest of
| drawers, so I just put things in there. In the ones without, the
| laptop stays on the desk plugged in, and I might take the phone
| home even though it's switched off.
|
| I've almost never been asked why I haven't seen or replied to an
| out-of-hours communication. On those few occasions, I've just
| said "All my work devices were switched off for the weekend" and
| there's been nothing further said. In the very few cases where I
| was expected to be on call, it was previously agreed and so I
| took the necessary devices home.
|
| Obviously, things changed a lot with the shift to remote working
| during and after COVID, but I still maintained the same
| boundaries. Even now I have my own company, I have separate
| computer, desks and even chairs for work and personal use. Slack
| and work related e-mail is only on the work devices. If I want to
| do some work over the weekend (which feels acceptable now it's
| for my benefit), I physically sit in a different half of the
| office to do that.
| Draiken wrote:
| I don't think it's always an explicit choice. I joined a
| company and despite asking many questions to try and avoid
| weird policies that could affect work-life balance, after
| joining I discovered they had certain types of code that had to
| be shipped outside of their client's business hours. Due to
| timezone differences, that meant extremely early or late hours
| for me.
|
| I like the company but absolutely hate this. However I can't
| just leave because of this. Even if I wanted to, finding a new
| job is not an easy task and it's exhausting.
|
| This is why laws are important. You don't have to figure this
| out for every company you interview. If they do it, it's
| illegal. You can change your default to a reasonable
| expectation.
| ralferoo wrote:
| > that meant extremely early or late hours for me.
|
| Especially if you had asked deliberate questions to establish
| work-life-balance and they'd withheld this, I personally
| wouldn't have just agreed to doing it without discussion of
| extra remuneration. Despite it clearly being a big deal for
| you, if you don't provide at least some pushback, it won't
| even be on their radar as an issue that's causing you pain.
|
| Maybe if it's very occasional, say once a month, it's not too
| bad to do it. If it's every week, it'll significantly impact
| your life. If it's every day, or worse several times per week
| but unpredictable, then your life is being severely disrupted
| without compensation of that fact.
|
| I remember once, a company ordered us all to work a month of
| 12-hour days (which itself is a symptom of bad project
| management, but that's a different discussion). At the
| meeting when we were told this, lots of people who were
| worried about losing their jobs just looked unhappy but said
| nothing. I knew I could find another job easily enough, so I
| brought up overtime pay. The company _really_ didn 't like it
| - and in fact threatened me later, but there was nothing they
| could really do, as they weren't in a position to let people
| go. The manager's reply was that they didn't want to pay
| overtime because they were worried that people would game it
| for extra money. I very firmly told them in this meeting
| (this was still the same meeting) that people didn't actually
| want to be there any longer than necessary - they wanted to
| go home to their wives and kids, and fortunately a few of the
| previously silent people added things like "my wife always
| complains whenever I have to do overtime". The outcome was
| that we had another meeting the next day where we were told
| that the overtime was voluntary and we'd be paid our normal
| salary. Nobody volunteered. The day after, the offer was
| increased to 1.5x salary. A couple of people volunteered.
| Even at the final overtime rate of 2x salary, there were
| still a few people who said that their personal time with the
| family was more important than the extra money. The company
| _finally_ understood that people 's time is precious.
|
| In your case, I would simply start a discussion about sharing
| the responsibility for the out of hours work. Say you can
| provide detailed instructions, and be available by phone for
| the first couple of times to provide _verbal_ help if they
| have any difficulties. At first, they might try to unload it
| onto someone else who doesn 't complain, but you should still
| push for it to be shared across the wider team, maybe on a
| rota if it's _really_ essential and with a bonus each time.
| You might find you have someone who needs the money and
| volunteers to do extra. And if the managers themselves ever
| find themselves having to do the process, you can be sure
| they will hate it, and very quickly find a way of getting the
| work done at another time in the week instead.
|
| Sometimes, you can rationalise it as part of the nature of
| the job. My last two jobs have been UK based but working with
| US teams, but even just working a time-shifted day of
| 10am-6:30pm still causes me to have to turn down lots of
| evening events with friends because I simply cannot get there
| in time for a 7pm start. I really hate this aspect of the
| job, but in this case I knew the situation coming into it,
| and my daily rate is high enough that I consider it to be
| worth it.
|
| > Even if I wanted to, finding a new job is not an easy task
| and it's exhausting.
|
| I know it's always easy to say, but you don't have to do
| anything you think is unreasonable. There may be
| repercussions to that, and I can understand the fear many
| people have for losing their job, but silently putting up
| with things that cause you stress or pain just means that the
| situation never gets addressed.
|
| For most people, I'd suggest the single best thing you can
| possibly do in your life is to save enough money for a 3-6
| month emergency buffer, so if you were to lose your job it's
| not such a big deal, as long as you can find another job in
| that timeframe. While this advice is typically given for
| unexpected layoffs, or dealing with house or car emergencies
| (all of which are great reasons in their own right), it has
| the side benefit that you can start to loosen the hold that
| your job has over your life - you can start to push back on
| the work-life balance, because the consequences of losing
| your job are so much less important.
| Draiken wrote:
| I pretty much agree with everything you said, but I still
| feel like your take is a bit too absolutist. If you're not
| afraid of losing your job, all of these are 100% accurate.
| But if you are, some of this advice can get you fired.
|
| In my personal situation I did pretty much what you said. I
| brought it up and I'm hoping it will be resolved at some
| point. The reality is that these kinds of problems can
| almost always be solved, it just costs resources so
| companies de-prioritize it constantly.
|
| I definitely agree that some push-back is necessary and a
| lot of companies have this culture of suffering silently
| that is very hard to change. It takes a lot of social
| capital and a fair amount of risk, depending on the type of
| people in charge. I know that I wouldn't have brought it up
| if I didn't have a safety net of savings in case I lost my
| job.
|
| People also forget that they are not alone. Our
| individualistic society promotes this kind of thinking that
| sometimes prevents solutions from being reached. As in your
| example, many folks were unhappy, but nobody wants to be
| the one that brings it up.
|
| Overall I only really want to emphasize that it's really
| not always a choice. There's a very big power imbalance in
| employment relationships that can't be solved by
| individuals.
| rapht wrote:
| At individual contributor level, such schemes may work --
| anyways, people are paid by the hour so anything outside hours is
| already dubbed 'overtime', and companies are bound to care.
|
| At management level (i.e. top management talking either between
| them or with the management levels just below), where hours don't
| get counted (in some countries such as France, it's just 'days'),
| it really boils down to the top management's culture. Workaholic
| top management = every manager is expected to be workaholic...
| and Darwin does the rest: soon enough, only workaholics remain.
| DavidPiper wrote:
| I wonder what this will mean for the various forms of on-call.
| I've seen several policies, I'm sure there are more:
|
| - "Ad-hoc" on-call with no process and you just get a phone call
| after hours from the boss
|
| - "Voluntary" on-call with a stipend, rotation based among a
| particular team
|
| - "Mandated" on-call with full over-time pay / penalty rates
|
| Are all of these now up for review? Presumably anything written
| in a contract takes precedence I suppose.
| 627467 wrote:
| So, before this "right" they were physically attached to their
| devices unable to freely decide to ignore emails? Or there was
| some kind of timer and expect SLA for answers that needed to be
| met?
|
| Or maybe because not replying under a given SLA led you to be
| fired? In which case my question is: is your only option to work
| for companies that have this culture? And you have to force all
| companies to behave in the same way?
| skizm wrote:
| I'm guessing it is something like, you can't be fired
| specifically for not answering outside of working hours.
| Nothing stopping companies from firing you for not fitting
| company culture (the unspoken part being company culture is we
| all answer calls outside of work hours). Still a step forward
| because there will be some careless/incompetent companies that
| leave a paper trail indicating they fired you for this so you
| can sue and get paid.
| 627467 wrote:
| So, hiding true intentions and needs is better? Why is
| regulation not to force companies to be clear that you may be
| expected to be flexible with your corp comunication before
| signing the contract?
| Vegenoid wrote:
| > So, hiding true intentions and needs is better?
|
| No, it is illegal. Your proposed law would have the
| opposite effect of the law that passed: every company would
| include this in their employment contract and would have
| legal protections to make employees work overtime.
|
| In addition, there are exceptions:
|
| > To cater for emergencies and jobs with irregular hours,
| the rule still allows employers to contact their workers,
| who can only refuse to respond where it is reasonable to do
| so. Determining whether a refusal is reasonable will be up
| to Australia's industrial umpire, the Fair Work Commission
| (FWC), which must take into account an employee's role,
| personal circumstances and how and why the contact was
| made.
| 627467 wrote:
| I'm aware of the effect intended of these types of laws:
| to enforce a single culture, outlaw diversity and freedom
| of engagement between parties.
| wredue wrote:
| It never ceases to amaze me that people argue against
| things that are good for them.
|
| You remain free to answer calls after hours. You simply
| cannot be fired or reprimanded for not being at your
| employers beck and call after hours *if you choose not to
| be*.
|
| Even in situations where after hours calls require pay to
| immediately start, you remain free to negotiate with your
| employer how that works. If anything, creating such
| regulation *increases your freedoms*.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| I mean... this is a nice thought and all, but all this means is
| that Australian employees now have the right to be the part of
| the "difficult decision to reduce our workforce in order to
| better align with our long term strategic objectives".
| snapcaster wrote:
| This doesn't end up being totally true right? Americans have
| MASSIVELY more labor protections than Vietnamese people but
| we're more productive. I don't like the assumption we can't
| ever improve anything for anyone because it reduces
| competitiveness. It's unproductive and also appears to be
| ahistorical when we look at other changes to labor practices
| over time
| space_oddity wrote:
| When I first started working, I would respond outside of working
| hours, work overtime, and try to please everyone. As I got older,
| I developed a rule: as soon as I finish work, I just ignore all
| work chats, calls, and emails. Did it affect my well-being? Yes,
| I highly recommend it to everyone!
| corytheboyd wrote:
| Seriously, just don't install (or log in to) Slack on your
| phone. Started doing this myself a few years ago and it has
| been great. I have a pager, page me if you need me. It's
| just... normal to not be obsessed with work.
| ryandrake wrote:
| And/or: Have separate work and personal devices and never
| cross the streams. When I'm done working on Friday, I put my
| work laptop and work phone in a soundproof drawer and don't
| open the drawer until Monday morning.
|
| At the very least don't install work Slack on your personal
| phone!!
| CalRobert wrote:
| Are people here treating emails like IM's?
|
| An email is inherently asynchronous. Why would I expect a
| response to an email before working hours? When did people start
| confusing them with synchronous communication?
| fred_is_fred wrote:
| Sometimes I get a random thought on a Saturday and send an
| email so I don't forget. I have people on my team who view that
| as a "drop everything, cancel the wedding, pull the car over"
| level emergency. The issue is they ALL do this to themselves.
| They put work email on their phones, they have notifications
| enabled. Nobody asked them to do this, nobody asked them to
| read email all weekend. Even if I tell them "please ignore all
| weekend email", it's like they physically cannot do it. It's
| almost an addiction.
| glitcher wrote:
| Help them out by scheduling the email to be sent during
| business hours?
| CalRobert wrote:
| When did this shift happen? People shouldn't check email
| when they don't want to read it.
| glitcher wrote:
| Often others don't behave in the same way we would or
| even the way we would expect. My suggestion is in the
| spirit of trying to offer a little help to your fellow
| teammates with a few extra clicks, in what seems like a
| very low effort compromise.
|
| I suppose it depends on your team dynamics, size,
| structure, etc. I work with a small, tight knit team and
| if I already knew someone was going to act a little
| neurotic with regards to a low priority weekend email, I
| would do the extra few clicks to make their life slightly
| better. In a large corporate setting maybe I would be
| less sympathetic, who knows.
| Flop7331 wrote:
| That's what paper is for. Not email.
| CalRobert wrote:
| Are you really suggesting people use snail mail simply for
| async?
| CalRobert wrote:
| E-mail should not have notifications
| nikolayasdf123 wrote:
| like oncall or incident alerts for example.
|
| (^say management unilaterally decided you have work offwork
| hours and it is "urgent" or else look for a new job)
| gwbas1c wrote:
| > But the Australian Industry Group, an employer group, says
| ambiguity about how the rule applies will create confusion for
| bosses and workers. Jobs will become less flexible and in doing
| so slow the economy, it added.
|
| Whenever I encounter someone professionally who can't deal with a
| little ambiguity about when it's appropriate to interrupt
| someone; I feel like I'm working with a child trapped in an
| adult's body.
|
| "Children," who don't have the maturity to understand this
| ambiguity, shouldn't be managers.
|
| I also find that rules like this come into play because some
| people (cough, children stuck in adult bodies, cough) just refuse
| to self-regulate. It takes maturity to think through if an out-
| of-hours contact is appropriate; these kinds of rules only come
| about because of widespread immaturity in management roles.
| InDubioProRubio wrote:
| Some loners, cant be alone at home with themselves. After
| hours, they put the alpha dog away, in a little box, were
| nobody can be forced to play with that creature. So they call
| those they can torment.
|
| If somebody calls after hours, for unimportant stuff, s/he
| needs to be marked up for therapy and re-socialisation.
| dathos wrote:
| I mean interrupting is one of the harder social actions in my
| opinion, especially in the workplace. So much of this comes
| from culture, family and your personality.
|
| I say this as someone who interrupts, and loves to be
| interrupted. Am I a kid in an adult body, or are my norms
| different than yours?
| MrDarcy wrote:
| That depends entirely on if you ask permission before you
| interrupt another person.
| dathos wrote:
| I really don't mean to be pedantic, but that would already
| be interrupting someone right?
| mylies43 wrote:
| Eh I mean it would depend on how your doing it really, Im
| thinking its the difference between "hey sorry to
| interrupt, I have a question do you have a minute?" vs
| "hey {question}"
| Linux-Fan wrote:
| What became of "don't ask to ask"
| (https://dontasktoask.com/)? Although it may take some
| getting used to, I find it convincing that one shouldn't
| need to ask about whether it'd be OK to ask for short
| questions because the question for permissing is
| interrupting just as much as the actual question except
| that with the former it may be impossible to estimate how
| complex it is whereas it may be much easier to decide if
| the question is known.
|
| For longer issues, could it make more sense to schedule
| an (online) meeting?
|
| And on the receiving side of interruptions: Ocasionally
| it has helped me to just keep the "chat app" closed when
| I want to concentrate on something. If anyone has
| something urgent, they could always elevate to performing
| an old-style synchronous phone call, but interestingly
| this rarely happens with "text-chat" people :)
| Suppafly wrote:
| that's similar to the no hello movement. if you're going
| to ask a question over chat, just ask it, we don't need
| the pretend conversation around it, and by saying hello
| you've already interrupted me.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Not to worry, I usually just say "hi" and wait for them to
| respond before asking the question.
| eric_cc wrote:
| > "I ... love to be interrupted"
|
| Can you elaborate on this?
| sharkjacobs wrote:
| The imagined exchange is something like this
|
| "To get you up to speed on foo I'll explain some important
| ways it differs from bar. First, of all--"
|
| "Wait, I'm not familiar with bar, can you use a different
| frame of reference or briefly explain bar to me first?"
|
| "Oh, I'm so glad I didn't waste your time and mine trying
| to give you information you don't have context to make
| sense of."
| gwbas1c wrote:
| Well that depends on your ability to self-regulate!
|
| Do you constantly interrupt people and prevent them from
| doing work? If someone says they are busy and need a few
| minutes, do you ignore them and continue to interrupt what
| they do? Do you get angry if someone can't drop what they are
| doing to cater to your impulse?
|
| Do your co-workers feel like working with you is like working
| with a child?
|
| That is what my children do to me, and that is what "children
| in adult bodies" do in the workplace.
| wesselbindt wrote:
| On behalf of humanity I ask you to please stop interrupting
| us.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| I'll try to explain it a different way:
|
| I once had a manager who, after working with for 6-8 months,
| gave me the impression of "working for a child."
|
| He would interrupt me all day for very trivial matters, and
| insist that I drop what I'm working on to address some email
| that just came in. (And what I was working on was from email
| that came in yesterday, that I dropped what I was working on
| yesterday to start...)
|
| Any time I started any task that required any significant
| concentration, I'd start to panic that I'd be interrupted
| before the task was complete. (And if you understand
| concentration, you realize that you just can't pick up an
| interrupted task where you left off.)
|
| ---
|
| Where it came to a head was, late one Friday afternoon, I
| realized I needed to cherry-pick or revert something in Git.
| At the time, I was a bit of a novice to Git. I skimmed an
| article on how to do what I needed to do in Git, decided it
| would take me ~10 minutes, and that I'd leave when I was
| done.
|
| No sooner did I make it through the first paragraph did my
| manager interrupt me with a question. I answered it, and
| tried to find where I was reading (in the article that
| explained what I was trying to do). Then the guy next to me
| interrupted me with a technical question. The two of them
| continued, ping-ponging each other, me being stuck trying to
| read a paragraph, until I was able to construct one single
| command.
|
| Then my manager pulled me into his office. I saw that he was
| putting together a presentation, and I spent 10 minutes
| answering his questions.
|
| I thought I was done and could complete my ~10 minute task,
| but no. After I constructed the 2nd Git command, my manager
| and the guy next to me resumed ping-ponging me with
| questions.
|
| Finally there was a lull, and I started constructing the 3rd
| git command. My manager comes up behind me, and in a rather
| condescending tone, said to me: "What are you doing here?
| It's a long weekend, go home!"
|
| I responded, "I'm just trying to complete a 10-minute task
| before I go home, but I keep getting interrupted!"
|
| My manager didn't apologize. He grunted, and then ran out of
| the door, like a child caught making a mess, but not owning
| up to it.
|
| ---
|
| This manager, BTW, is why laws in the linked article exist.
| He once "forgot" to tell me he wanted me to work on a
| Saturday. I had plans so I ignored his Saturday morning call.
| Thankfully he was fired (or quit, it was ambiguous) about a
| month or two later.
|
| ---
|
| So, are you like my old manager, constantly interrupting
| someone, and not having the emotional intelligence to
| apologize or to pace yourself? Or, do you think before you
| interrupt, give people a chance to pause what they are doing,
| and pace yourself so you aren't monopolizing others' time?
| hi-v-rocknroll wrote:
| It gets worse when infantile bully managers treat other adults
| like children, such as adversarial treatment or imposing
| unnecessary inconveniences like RTO.
| albert_e wrote:
| Interpreting that headline literally ...
|
| If person A is working late (maybe they started their day late,
| or they work from a different timezone) and send a memo during
| off hours of Person B ... the memo can be "ignored" by Person B
| even when they come back to work next day?
|
| Same for all off hours when person B is on leave - planned or
| otherwise?
| sharpshadow wrote:
| ~300 hours unpaid overtime per year and having to respond after
| work to emails and calls? That's crazy.
|
| And they worry now that the economy will slow down. I think
| people will start to work normally now, in the previous
| conditions I would work much slower as a compensation.
| lemoncookiechip wrote:
| You have the right to, and can't be punished for it. But you can
| still be punished if they just say it's unrelated to it, whether
| through missed opportunities, increased workload, undesirable
| assignments, or even termination with flimsy justifications.
|
| It's the age-old: "No one is pointing a gun at their head.
| They're doing it because they want to." -Manager XYZ
|
| I can see two ways to prevent it:
|
| 1. Ban employers from doing so with potential fees, except in
| cases where it's a stipulation on the contract. Although this
| would eventually lead to employers adding it to every contract.
| Not a fan of this approach.
|
| 2. You make them pay you weekend-rate overtime, this would still
| allow your superiors to contact you, but they would think twice.
| I would definitely support this, although it might not apply to
| all circumstances.
|
| 3. I honestly don't know, there's probably better solutions from
| smarter people.
| Rygian wrote:
| I don't know about Australia, but in my jurisdiction any
| illegal contractual clauses are unenforceable.
|
| If the law says "X is forbidden" and the contract says
| "employee agrees to do X" then the employer has no legal
| recourse to force employee to do X.
|
| Point 2. is the usual on-call, and it's still regulated (in my
| jurisdiction) by mandatory rest periods during which a person
| is legally mandated to not work.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| This new-ish problem speaks to a major reason I personally prefer
| hybrid/on-site work cultures - there is usually a clear barrier
| between work/free-time, at least IME. When I'm not in the office
| there is very little expectation that I am working. I personally
| prefer this separation - when I worked a fully remote job it felt
| like I was being pinged at any given hour and expected to
| respond.
|
| This law would never happen in the united states. 0%.
| prmoustache wrote:
| I am suprised they didn't have that right to begin with.
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| I can't believe they didn't have this right previously. I have
| almost always (except when I was paid specifically for being
| available anytime) had a habit of turning my phone off/airplane
| as soon as the business hours end.
| left-struck wrote:
| As an Aussie I'm glad this is has been codified in law but I've
| personally not had any issues with people expecting me to reply
| outside of work hours.
|
| Then again I've always acted like I had this right anyway, if I
| were contacted outside of working hours I would just ignore it
| within reason. I always thought there hadn't been much
| consequences but perhaps the consequence were respected
| boundaries...
| Yeul wrote:
| In my country it is not unusual for people to work 36 hours.
| You'd imagine that a nation like Korea or Japan would be twice as
| rich because they work 70 hours yet it doesn't seem to go that
| way...
|
| Obviously if you do have a 50-70 workweek your job IS your life.
| Your co workers are your best friends and it doesn't matter if
| they call you up in the middle of the night. I have observed that
| in Workaholic cultures people spend a lot of time socialising
| with co-workers and less time on actually working.
|
| I prefer the Dutch style of "working to live". Even if that means
| that you have to bring your own food and eat it behind a laptop.
| You can socialise at home.
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