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VW deactivates employee email outside working hours

reuters.com

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Re: VW deactivates employee email outside working hours

#12
post #9
post #3

I live in Germany, and I know many engineers who work for one of the big carmakers (either directly or through some external company). Most of them are under some form of collective bargaining agreement. They have a lot of nice perks, like paid overtime (in the form of days of) and pretty good salaries. Meanwhile I work as a developer for an internet company. I've never heard of anybody working under a CBA, or any ki…

[deleted]

Germany has plenty of unions and Mercedes, BMW, Audi seem to be doing well enough

You have two sides, with U.S. on one side where workers just work, with little thought for quality of life, and the other side is Europe, where they get paid a bit less, but they have 4 weeks vacation and much less demanding work load.

I dunno about you, but I'd gladly sacrifice $10K(which is pretty much the whole difference between the two) to get all the perks that europeans get

Re: VW deactivates employee email outside working hours

#13
post #12
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

Germany has plenty of unions and Mercedes, BMW, Audi seem to be doing well enough You have two sides, with U.S. on one side where workers just work, with little thought for quality of life, and the other side is Europe, where they get paid a bit less, but they have 4 weeks vacation and much less demanding work load. I dunno about you, but I'd gladly sacrifice $10K(which is pretty much the whole difference between the…

4 is the absolute minimum, and in most countries that minimum is 5. The average is more like 7 weeks.

Re: VW deactivates employee email outside working hours

#14
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany has plenty of unions and Mercedes, BMW, Audi seem to be doing well enough You have two sides, with U.S. on one side where workers just work, with little thought for quality of life, and the other side is Europe, where they get paid a bit less, but they have 4 weeks vacation and much less demanding work load. I dunno about you, but I'd gladly sacrifice $10K(which is pretty much the whole difference between the…

4 is the absolute minimum, and in most countries that minimum is 5. The average is more like 7 weeks.

and in the states, you are lucky if you get 3...with 2 weeks being much more common...and that's the middle class jobs, the lower class ones, you are lucky to get a day of paid vacation

Re: VW deactivates employee email outside working hours

#15
post #8
post #6

Cool idea. Sounds like you can still send emails but not receive any until work. I noticed that mobile email doesn't always help get more work done, unless you're the person asking the questions in the emails. If a bb user is busy answering other people's questions... you're likely doing their work too. The culture of "we're waiting on you" that grows in an organization is the real enemy. Interruptions are bad too. W…

Poor planning on someone else's part doesn't make an emergency in my part. I've always hated this statement. I can understand, to some extent, not bailing out those who are habitually poorly prepared, but how can you justify not bailing someone out if it's what's best for your company?

In a lot of cases the stuff is habitual, at which point you get extremely irritated that people keep screwing up and all the time you're the one who has to clean up the mess. Yea sometimes stuff happens, and I don't think most people have a problem with helping out. But so many times it makes people feel used, which (at least IMO) is why people have this sentiment.

Re: VW deactivates employee email outside working hours

#16
post #8
post #6

Cool idea. Sounds like you can still send emails but not receive any until work. I noticed that mobile email doesn't always help get more work done, unless you're the person asking the questions in the emails. If a bb user is busy answering other people's questions... you're likely doing their work too. The culture of "we're waiting on you" that grows in an organization is the real enemy. Interruptions are bad too. W…

Poor planning on someone else's part doesn't make an emergency in my part. I've always hated this statement. I can understand, to some extent, not bailing out those who are habitually poorly prepared, but how can you justify not bailing someone out if it's what's best for your company?

Why should I be more concerned about what's best for an abstract concept than what's best for me?

Re: VW deactivates employee email outside working hours

#19
post #12
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

Germany has plenty of unions and Mercedes, BMW, Audi seem to be doing well enough You have two sides, with U.S. on one side where workers just work, with little thought for quality of life, and the other side is Europe, where they get paid a bit less, but they have 4 weeks vacation and much less demanding work load. I dunno about you, but I'd gladly sacrifice $10K(which is pretty much the whole difference between the…

You can quit and take time between jobs. $10K should let you backpack around Europe for about 3-6 months, which is more of a perk than Europeans get.

I'm not quite sure why more people don't do this. Bank a bunch of money at a nice professional job, then quit and be funemployed for 6-12 months while they do lots of cool, life-affirming things. A bunch of my friends have done it - either backpacking around the U.S, or buying a Eurail pass and traveling around Europe, or vacationing in Thailand, or helping orphans in Uganda, or joining the Peace Corps - and have said it's one of the best things they ever did. It doesn't even take much money - most of these are liberal arts majors, not computer programmers, and make much closer to $50K/year than $100K/year.

Re: VW deactivates employee email outside working hours

#20
post #3

I live in Germany, and I know many engineers who work for one of the big carmakers (either directly or through some external company). Most of them are under some form of collective bargaining agreement. They have a lot of nice perks, like paid overtime (in the form of days of) and pretty good salaries. Meanwhile I work as a developer for an internet company. I've never heard of anybody working under a CBA, or any ki…

"extreme cases, like working on sundays"

Oh, Germany.

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