Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Emails while commuting 'should count as work'

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 179 posts

Re: Emails while commuting 'should count as work'

#3

Post by s-shellfish »

AndrewDucker wrote: post #2

Well, obviously. Doing things which are part of work counts as work is hardly an innovative statement. The question is, how did companies persuade people that they should work for free on the way into the office?

Pressure to compete. I don't think it's anything companies convinced people into doing, it seems more like one of those unwritten rules. Especially in tech. Your system breaks, you are responsible. Not good to simply look at the clock and say 'well that's a day' if you want more responsibility, leadership, respect, trust etc.

Re: Emails while commuting 'should count as work'

#4

Post by stephengillie »

Please don't read/send email while driving.

Use your bus/train time to study things that will help your career, at this job and the next. Don't just give that time away to your current employer for free - unless your employer is a charity.

Edit: Even if you work for a charity, giving away your time for free may not be a good idea. ;)

Re: Emails while commuting 'should count as work'

#5

Post by mstade »

s-shellfish wrote: post #3
AndrewDucker wrote: post #2

Well, obviously. Doing things which are part of work counts as work is hardly an innovative statement. The question is, how did companies persuade people that they should work for free on the way into the office?

Pressure to compete. I don't think it's anything companies convinced people into doing, it seems more like one of those unwritten rules. Especially in tech. Your system breaks, you are responsible. Not good to simply look at the clock and say 'well that's a day' if you want more responsibility, leadership, respect, trust etc.

> Not good to simply look at the clock and say 'well that's a day' if you want more responsibility, leadership, respect, trust etc.

Sadly, the effect of this is that there's less incentive to build resilient systems, since there's always someone available to fix things quickly. Trying to convince corporate to spend more time and money on building a system that looks/smells/feels the same, but is presumably more resilient, is very very difficult.

Re: Emails while commuting 'should count as work'

#7

Post by dfxm12 »

AndrewDucker wrote: post #2

Well, obviously. Doing things which are part of work counts as work is hardly an innovative statement. The question is, how did companies persuade people that they should work for free on the way into the office?

If you get paid by the hour and you're required to be in an office during a set period of time, then yeah, I hope you aren't working for free on the train. This is far from the only situation though...

I guess I'm lucky enough that my managers have never hounded me about when I come in and leave, so if working an hour on the train means I get my work for the day done an hour early, it also means I leave the office an hour early. Yeah, maybe I could use that hour to read for fun instead, but I'd rather finish everything sooner and get on with my day sooner.

Re: Emails while commuting 'should count as work'

#8

Post by craig1f »

AndrewDucker wrote: post #2

Well, obviously. Doing things which are part of work counts as work is hardly an innovative statement. The question is, how did companies persuade people that they should work for free on the way into the office?

I don't think it's this black and white. First, I'm sure plenty of companies are basically stealing from their employees, but this is also situational.

I answer emails and slack whenever I can. On the flip side, I get work from home privileges, I show up when I want, I leave when I want, and I get put on exciting projects instead of boring ones. People who don't check their phones after-hours cannot be trusted to lead projects with demanding clients. I typically don't bill time until my laptop comes out.

I'm two-minds about this. Companies really do abuse their employees and try to get all the work they can out of them. This is a problem that leads to abusive employers. But employees also look for ANY entitlement they can receive, whether or not it is useful to their professional development. This is also a problem that leads to lazy and useless employees. It's sort of a feedback loop. It's also probably very different outside of my field (and probably most people's field on this site), which is software development.

Re: Emails while commuting 'should count as work'

#9

Post by craig1f »

mstade wrote: post #5
s-shellfish wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pressure to compete. I don't think it's anything companies convinced people into doing, it seems more like one of those unwritten rules. Especially in tech. Your system breaks, you are responsible. Not good to simply look at the clock and say 'well that's a day' if you want more responsibility, leadership, respect, trust etc.

> Not good to simply look at the clock and say 'well that's a day' if you want more responsibility, leadership, respect, trust etc. Sadly, the effect of this is that there's less incentive to build resilient systems, since there's always someone available to fix things quickly. Trying to convince corporate to spend more time and money on building a system that looks/smells/feels the same, but is presumably more resil…

Sad but true. As I climb the ladder, all the decisions management use to make that I use to regard is idiotic make a lot more sense to me.

It's so hard to predict which projects will succeed and fail. People will spend time setting up Jenkins pipelines and all kinds of unit tests, and their stuff still breaks. I argued for unit-testing on our current project to add resiliency, and I swear 70% of my energy is fucking unit tests now. Whoops!

Post reply on HN