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EU pushes for 'right to disconnect' from work at home

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Re: EU pushes for 'right to disconnect' from work at home

#411

Post by ghaff »

notreallytrue wrote: post #378
tzs wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I check email and sometimes answer when on vacation, because often 10 minutes spent addressing a small issue while I'm away prevents several days or a week or two of dealing with a huge issue when I get back. I'm the guy who if something messes up has to go through the databases trying to figure out what data is incorrect, and goes through logs and reports to try to infer what the data should be, and then figure out…

> I check email and sometimes answer when on vacation, because often 10 minutes spent addressing a small issue while I'm away prevents several days or a week or two of dealing with a huge issue when I get back. The question is why ten minutes from home save days of work. There's something horribly wrong going on if that's the case. I'm on call a week every month, I get payed for it. When I go back to work something h…

In my case, it's not so much saving days or weeks of my time. Rather, it's being able to answer someone's quick question, direct them to someone, take a quick look at a doc and say it looks OK (or make a quick edit), etc. I don't feel it's something I have to do--and I'll only rarely do something that requires more effort--but it often seems like a pretty good cost/benefit tradeoff.

Re: EU pushes for 'right to disconnect' from work at home

#412

Post by Viliam1234 »

buran77 wrote: post #215
Hamuko wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There’s no such this as “overtime” in most salaried jobs though. You’re paid just for being an employee, not for hours worked. If there's no concept of overtime in most salaried jobs, there's a problem with your country as well. I'm a salaried, full-time employee and I'm paid to work 37.5 hours a week, no more, no less. And the collective agreement for IT services industry (which is what concerns me as a developer)…

I think the problem is usually overtime is interpreted as time doing extra work, not time to finish the work you were expected to finish anyway. The company can claim you were unproductive and probably has an easier time proving this that you have proving otherwise. Most companies try to extract the most value from their employees and this may mean overloading them and they use "industry benchmarks" to set the bar fo…

> Most companies try to extract the most value from their employees and this may mean overloading them

Exactly this. If managers notice that your team is doing everything on time, they will remove a member or two from your team, until you can barely meet the deadlines. Then they get a bonus for reducing the company costs.

It requires some experience to realize that it is not your fault if the deadlines are in danger. That is system working exactly as intended. But of course the company will pretend it's your fault. That is also system working exactly as intended. (In USA, this results in you doing a lot of overtime. That is also system working as intended. The urgent situation is not something unexpected; it happens every year in every project, it is a part of the plan.)

Re: EU pushes for 'right to disconnect' from work at home

#413

Post by bonzini »

908B64B197 wrote: post #376
treis wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you probably get paid 1/3 to 1/2 of what a developer in the US can make. The reality of the world is that if you're the lead developer for some product you will have times that you need to work off hours. Like if production is down how can you say: "My 40 hours is up this week, I'll look at it on Monday". It's a balance. You shouldn't routinely be working a ton of nights and weekends. But sometimes shit hits the…

At 1/2 1/3 the pay, I can't really see why a dev would work more than 30 hours a week. Especially if there's no stock comp.

Paid time off, paid paternity leave, decent retirement paid by the employer, world class single payer healthcare and paid sick days, no at-will work, affordable childcare, don't have to set up a college fund for my sons' education when they're born, etc. etc.

Re: EU pushes for 'right to disconnect' from work at home

#414

Post by [deleted] »

op03 wrote: post #189
vfc1 wrote: post #106

You got to admit that the EU at least has the courage to take some controversial measures in the best interest of their people. I can't see this soon enough, I have family that answer emails in vacation all the time, that get phone calls like its nothing. I know people that connect everyday from home to the office network to work one or two hours (extra) otherwise it's impossible to keep up with the workload. Most ma…

It's all very courageous until you try to get projects done. The EU reminds me of how the UN unravelled into irrelevance back in the 70s-80s. Lots of good intentions, cash flowed, all kinds of progressive projects were seeded but then what happened?

[deleted]

Re: EU pushes for 'right to disconnect' from work at home

#415

Post by notreallytrue »

chrisseaton wrote: post #408
notreallytrue wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ook at how people criticise presidents who are golfing during a national crisis where people are dying Isn't the job of a president to handle crisis? The job of a doctor is not to prevent any death, just those that they can prevent during their work hours. > What's the US got to do with it? Because they are the champions of working non stop and yet their results when it really matters (you brought up saving lives)…

> Isn't the job of a president to handle crisis? Do you think he stops handling the crisis at 5pm? No? Why do you think not?

I think that if you look closely inside yourself you'll find the answer.

Hints:

how many presidents any country has?

And who put them there?

Do they send CVs and get selected after a black board interview where they have to invert a binary tree?

Re: EU pushes for 'right to disconnect' from work at home

#416

Post by bonzini »

treis wrote: post #270
colejohnson66 wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a balance. But the point GP is making (it seems) is that if “shit [does] hit the fan,” you should be paid overtime for it, not have it be part of your job. It’s a cultural difference really.

It doesn't really work because the incentives become misaligned. It becomes a good thing for workers to have things go wrong and for them to be inefficient with their time. Organizations end up much less flexible because they then don't trust their workers not to milk them. Ultimately it changes from paying someone to get a job done to paying them for hours worked. Anyone that's hired a plumber knows that you get far…

And instead in the US case it becomes a good thing for companies not to bother about employee well being and for them to be bad at allocating the employee time. Organizations end up much less efficient because, after milking their workers too much, they leave and the high turnover means higher onboarding costs.

Ultimately there's also a moral aspect of whether the employer owns the whole life of the employee or they are on a more balanced relationship. Anybody who's had to endure micromanagement knows that you get far more engaged and efficient work in the latter situation.

Re: EU pushes for 'right to disconnect' from work at home

#417

Post by lallysingh »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #387
mewpmewp2 wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm afraid this type of law will decrease salaries in Europe compared to US. For instance I work at an international company and I already get paid 2-3x less than same level engineers in US. I feel like this would increase the gap even more. And I'd prefer to have the option to over-achieve if this is what I choose to do with my life.

I definitely get 3-4x less than US in the EU country where I live. But who cares.. I like the low-pressure life here. Rents are lower than the US too. We have socialised healthcare, safe gun-free cities. That's worth a lot more than a number on a bank statement. I hear that in the US people will lose their healthcare when they lose a job and it could cost $1000 a month (which is more than my monthly rent)! Here it's…

If you have a family, it's more like $2500/month for healthcare.

Re: EU pushes for 'right to disconnect' from work at home

#418

Post by notreallytrue »

chrisseaton wrote: post #409
notreallytrue wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He works. He draws a salary. What do you think the difference is? Well... Let's say that if I have to explain it too you, we have bigger issues to solve first. > Why can't the Vice President delegate out of hour Because that's not how it works By the law

That's not how it works.. and that's the law... because it's not reasonable for some people to not respond out of hours. Applies for ordinary people as well - such as soldiers and police who are liable for recall at any time.

> soldiers

In my country they have 28 days of paid holidays every year

Ant it's still one of the few jobs left where they can retire after 15 years, 6 months, one day of work

> Police

In my country they have 28 days of paid holidays, 35 hours a week contract

In my country there are 1/10 of the homicides per 100 thousands people of the US

Re: EU pushes for 'right to disconnect' from work at home

#419

Post by throwaway45349 »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #377
lotsofpulp wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a management issue of having no redundancy for someone performing something so crucial. If you're that crucial to operations, then you should be paid extremely lavishly, or be the owner, otherwise you're getting the short end of the stick.

Not really. If you formalise this kind of redundancy it leads to super annoying things like on-call rosters. Which are awful for a worker because it means you MUST be available immediately, can't drink or go out to the shop or whatever. I much rather just have them call me for that one critical issue that happens in a very long time, and appreciating me putting in the time after hours, than being forced to sit at hom…

You can be on-call and still do other things -- it's not all or nothing. My workplace has tiered SLOs for on-call, some being as relaxed as O(30 minutes) for first response.

Re: EU pushes for 'right to disconnect' from work at home

#420

Post by tboyd47 »

minikites wrote: post #314
tboyd47 wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an amazing quote.

Really? >The robber barons cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated. We wouldn't have any billionaires if this was even remotely true. If having 999 million dollars doesn't satiate you, I submit there is no amount of money that will. We look down on hoarders who fill their house with old newspapers and knickknacks but when it's money hoarding we lionize it.

I'm more interested in the bit about "omnipotent moral busybodies." If shutting down 100,000 businesses, pausing children's education including special education services for a whole year, forcing the entire populace to wear cloth masks, shutting down religious services protected by the Constitution, mandating where you can & can't stand in the grocery store, and demanding the right to censor the news on all digital platforms doesn't satisfy their thirst for power, I submit that no amount of power will.
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