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

VW deactivates employee email outside working hours

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 129 posts

Re: VW deactivates employee email outside working hours

#41

Post by Duff »

nostrademons wrote: post #19
vaksel wrote: 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…

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…

Health insurance makes employees "sticky".

Re: VW deactivates employee email outside working hours

#42

Post by nknight »

masmullin wrote: post #40
nknight wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Because the abstract concept pays your mortgage.

No, I pay my mortgage. (Or I would, if I were stupid enough to buy real estate in this part of the country.)

If my physical and mental health are trashed from overwork, I can't pay my mortgage, because I can't work for anybody.

Me and my family first. Company second or lower. Always. The company is replaceable, my life and health are not.

Re: VW deactivates employee email outside working hours

#43

Post by j45 »

yock wrote: post #8
j45 wrote: 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?

Interesting question. For me it's like this.

If we're really customer facing business, we're a proactive business.

Last minute fires mean reactionary mindset. You can never be the best business possible when reactionary. Learning to anticipate things and have them ready in advance is doable in every business.

If we look at every last minute thing and apply this simple test to it, we'll know where we're at:

1) Is this something we've dealt with before? 2) Could it have been dealt with in advance?

If so, I'm not a fan of feeding the monster.

If not, guess what, you have a first time occurence that can use some immediate attention.

How to plan for surprises? I only schedule 5-6 hours of work a day. I leave 1-2 hours a day free. Either that time gets eaten up with true surprises, or I get ahead on my schedule. Responsible scheduling helps everyone.

Re: VW deactivates employee email outside working hours

#44

Post by masmullin »

nknight wrote: post #42
masmullin wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the abstract concept pays your mortgage.

No, I pay my mortgage. (Or I would, if I were stupid enough to buy real estate in this part of the country.) If my physical and mental health are trashed from overwork, I can't pay my mortgage, because I can't work for anybody . Me and my family first. Company second or lower. Always. The company is replaceable, my life and health are not.

Sorry I misread your original post as "why should I be concerned about an abstract concept's wellbeing."

Yes of course you and your family come first. But you still have to care about the health of the place that gives you money.

Re: VW deactivates employee email outside working hours

#45

Post by nostrademons »

_delirium wrote: post #24
nostrademons wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

For a few months that's possible, but at 12 months it starts getting tricky if you ever want a job again. May be less of a problem in tech, but in a lot of areas if you're "long-term unemployed", HR just screens out your resume; companies seem to only want to hire employed or recently-employed people (cf. http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/tribu/ct-biz-0905-wor... ).

Start a blog about your experiences and then call yourself a self-employed travel blogger. Might even make a little AdSense cash off of it too.

There are all sorts of creative ways to get around HR.

Re: VW deactivates employee email outside working hours

#46

Post by nostrademons »

Duff wrote: post #41
nostrademons wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Health insurance makes employees "sticky".

If you're taking <12 months between jobs, COBRA takes care of health insurance. It can get expensive, but that's why you bank money while you're working...

Re: VW deactivates employee email outside working hours

#48

Post by nostrademons »

vaksel wrote: post #37
nostrademons wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

there is no job security with that, way too stressful for most people...if it's official vacation, it'll actually be a vacation to enjoy

There's no job security in having a job, these days.

I think that if you want job security, you're much better off at developing the skills to interview well and the resume to make people sit up and take note of you. You can take that from job to job with you, and know that if you ever get laid off or fired, you can just get another job.

Re: VW deactivates employee email outside working hours

#49

Post by j45 »

olefoo wrote: post #29
yock wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

You're ignoring the longterm effects of someone who chronically creates work for others due to their lack of preparation or ability. It is not good for a company to put itself under stress like that. It's especially poisonous when the person shifting and creating work like that is in a leadership position in the organisation because it sets the template for everyone else. Organisations that let that kind of behavior…

Totally, the "not my job" mindset only slows things down.

When one person starts being a joker and not taking things seriously and being thoughtful of the productivity of others or their team, it can spread like wildfire.

Re: VW deactivates employee email outside working hours

#50

Post by j45 »

thebrokencube wrote: post #15
yock wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's a matter of respect for yourself, and the time of others.

People who don't respect their own time won't respect the time of others that much. People who think their time is more important than others time will also abuse the time of others.

If I bust my tail getting something done for you that you needed and you can't do the same for something I needed, I'm now doubly under the gun. If I said hey, I have to be there for thebrokencube and you believe in not letting me down, guess what, we have that magical thing of having each others backs and supporting each other.

Sadly, most offices are daycares for adults. People act out their high school insecurities on an epic scale and wonder why they aren't getting anywhere in life.

The key is to be clear that I'm not here to play clean up for messy people. I am happy to pitch in when things go sideways, but do my job and lift the business up.

A broken person, or process will only drag things down.

Post reply on HN