VW deactivates employee email outside working hours • Hacker News Board

Re: VW deactivates employee email outside working hours

#91

Post by GuiA » Fri, Dec 23, 2011, 10:08 PM UTC

mahyarm wrote: post #86

s1rech wrote: 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…

How are wages in europe for engineers and developers? I look at wages in Europe compared to the USA, and even though we work a lot more, developers do get paid far more too, especially when you compare on a cost of living and taxation basis.

If you bring it down to numbers, the pay is definitely higher in the US. For instance, an average software engineer out of school can expect a starting salary between 25 and 35k euros on average in France. In SF, it's more $70-90k at the very least.

But then you have to account for the higher cost of living, transportation (even if you don't drive, French employers pay for a part of your public transportation tickets), and all the other perks that are inherent to your job (insurance, subsidized lunches,...) and inherent to the country (better public education, etc.).

So I think it's hard to say empirically that engineers are better off in one country rather than the other- although I'd be tempted to say that very high end engineers are better off in the US rather than Europe, and the average engineer is better off in Europe rather than the US.

Re: VW deactivates employee email outside working hours

#92

Post by j45 » Fri, Dec 23, 2011, 10:20 PM UTC

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.

Agreed, thanks for the clarification :)

Re: VW deactivates employee email outside working hours

#93

Post by LearnYouALisp » Fri, Dec 23, 2011, 10:24 PM UTC

hammock wrote: post #58

LearnYouALisp wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you know most stores close at 8PM on weekdays?

Is that supposed to be different from the states, where many retail stores close sometime between 7-9pm?

Nearly everything closes at 8pm, even the grocery stores. In Berlin there were only two or three normal grocery stores I knew of that were open on Sunday (individual stores). Of course, restaurants and cafes are open a little later.

Re: VW deactivates employee email outside working hours

#94

Post by LearnYouALisp » Fri, Dec 23, 2011, 10:27 PM UTC

cookiecaper wrote: post #63

hammock wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that supposed to be different from the states, where many retail stores close sometime between 7-9pm?

If you're a mom and pop or speciality shop you may close between 7 and 9 (usually closer to 9), but most of the regional or national "stores" close between 10pm and 12am. Grocery stores are even better, generally either closing at 12am or not closing at all. Wal-Mart, for instance, is mostly 24 hours, and Wal-Mart is very widespread.

H-E-B (mainly in central and south Texas) has similar hours at some of its locations.

Re: VW deactivates employee email outside working hours

#95

Post by j45 » Fri, Dec 23, 2011, 10:52 PM UTC

j_baker wrote: post #89

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…

No good deed goes unpunished. It's sad but true. The key is to be helpful without being too helpful. If you get a reputation for being the one to call in an emergency, you'll be the one who gets called in emergencies. If on the other hand, you get a reputation for getting back to people in a day or two unless there's an appropriate reason you need to get back sooner, people will expect you to get back in a day or two…

That was exactly the story of my life. I got a reputation for handling the work of many people and making emergencies go away (more) permanently.

What did it do? More problems sent my way. I became the catch-all.

The tough part was transitioning to the 24-48 hour response, not so much for me but the people who knew I can reply in minutes.

I added an email auto response saying

"I schedule my time in a new way --I check my email 2-4 times a day to reply to everything at once and work uninterrupted for 90 minutes at a time.

Call if it's an emergency that hasn't happened before. Otherwise please send me all the details I'll ask you about anyways and I can get back to you right away with an answer in the first email instead of going back and forth.

If you need something done right away please let me know what you can take off my plate while I give you a hand."

After this, I simply replied to the best emails that let me write them a 30 second response. When you're the guy who helps solve problems, believe me, people will do their leg work to set you up to get back to them quickly.

A lot of emails I just emailed them what I would google to find the answer, enjoyed that a lot too.

Re: VW deactivates employee email outside working hours

#96

Post by ugh » Fri, Dec 23, 2011, 11:00 PM UTC

hammock wrote: post #58

LearnYouALisp wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you know most stores close at 8PM on weekdays?

Is that supposed to be different from the states, where many retail stores close sometime between 7-9pm?

In the city I grew up in (in Bavaria) every store has to close by 8pm and no store can open on Sundays. The exception are bakeries and gas stations. (I also think that stores inside of train stations are exempted. And just so there is no misunderstanding, restaurants, cafes and pubs are of course also exempt from this.)

Where I grew up there is not a single open grocery store anywhere after 8pm or on Sundays for hundreds of kilometers. That makes a difference to places where stores can legally remain open longer.

I’m currently living in Thuringia where stores can be open until 10pm on weekdays – and sure, many smaller stores and even the big shopping mall still opt to only open until 8pm, but thee are always one or two big grocery stores that are actually open until 10pm.

The quantitative difference between no open stores and one or two open stores may be small, the qualitative difference, however, is big.

Re: VW deactivates employee email outside working hours

#97

Post by smiler » Fri, Dec 23, 2011, 11:14 PM UTC

mjwalshe wrote: post #39

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…

When you consider that in the UK NI is 11/12% and that covers the NHS and your state pension plus SERPS (second state pension) and unemployment benefits. I knew a guy who emigrated to the USA and was working for CITI and was paying a bigger % of his pay just for his health cover.

You do know employer and employee both pay NI, so total NI is around 24%

Re: VW deactivates employee email outside working hours

#98

Post by smiler » Fri, Dec 23, 2011, 11:18 PM UTC

wooyi wrote: post #21

Unions in developed countries with good labor laws don't make sense. They cater to the mediocre and the masses - and their policies go against the vien of competitiveness and innovation.

Are you saying the US has good labour laws? I think most would disagree with you

Re: VW deactivates employee email outside working hours

#99

Post by yummyfajitas » Fri, Dec 23, 2011, 11:47 PM UTC

GuiA wrote: post #91

mahyarm wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are wages in europe for engineers and developers? I look at wages in Europe compared to the USA, and even though we work a lot more, developers do get paid far more too, especially when you compare on a cost of living and taxation basis.

If you bring it down to numbers, the pay is definitely higher in the US. For instance, an average software engineer out of school can expect a starting salary between 25 and 35k euros on average in France. In SF, it's more $70-90k at the very least. But then you have to account for the higher cost of living, transportation (even if you don't drive, French employers pay for a part of your public transportation tickets…

You have it backwards - the cost of living is considerably higher in France than in the US. What costs $1 in the US costs $1.20 in France [1].

...better public education...

Um, no. Better students, but a considerably worse public education system.

http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/12/amazing-truth-abou...

The cheese, however, is considerably better in France, as are the women (fatties over here drag our average down).

[1] Since I'm too lazy to switch to windows and open up the Penn Table in Excel, I backed the numbers out of GDP tables: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomin...

[edit: Hi downmodders, sorry for providing facts. I'll try to avoid that in the future.]

Re: VW deactivates employee email outside working hours

#100

Post by frou_dh » Fri, Dec 23, 2011, 11:57 PM UTC

_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... ).

The obvious idealistic response being.. would you want to work somewhere that showed such shallow thinking?