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When Work Didn’t Follow You Home

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Re: When Work Didn’t Follow You Home

#21

Post by danwee »

NoahECampbell wrote: post #4

I mean this isn't actually a large problem, at least in programming where I am familiar with a lot of trends. It is very common for people to immediately sign off for the day the minute their work day/shift is over and not do anything else after. If people want to do that then sure they can, but they also trade off the ability to earn raises and promotions by doing the bare minimum. Getting a work-life balance is imp…

There is a huge difference between "doing the bare minimum" and working outside of your regular working hours. One can do nothing at all working 10h/day, while another can provide high value working 9-5 (or even less).

Obviously, there are people who work 10h/day and produce high value as well, but it's not a requirement and most sane tech companies out there do not expect that from you.

Re: When Work Didn’t Follow You Home

#22

Post by lumost »

ttul wrote: post #7

In the 1990s, even as a software developer, I never answered emails after working hours. Why? Because we didn’t have access to the office mail server outside the office. It was physically impossible to work from home. Add to this the fact that I didn’t have a cell phone or a pager, so when I left the office, nobody could get in touch with me even if they wanted to. On reflection, the separation of home and work was s…

I'm honestly surprised that more companies haven't invested in broader vacation policies. My experience has been that the constant "on" state wears you down. The only way to get to "off" is to be OOTO officially for a week+. Add in parental responsibilities and you really don't have any headspace for yourself.

Would love to have 5-8 weeks per year, that would let me take at least 1 week's worth of time per quarter to recharge from the constant 24/7 rush.

Re: When Work Didn’t Follow You Home

#23

Post by athenot »

jader201 wrote: post #6

I’ve been working from home 100% for going on 10 years. I’ve had a mix of experiences re: disconnecting from work, and three things that I believe are key: 1. Work out of a separate office, ideally with a door. Don’t go in that room except when you’re working. If you work from a laptop, (mostly) never take it out of that room. Obviously some don’t have this luxury, but if you do and you’re not doing this, I highly su…

Point 1 is very important, I can confirm with also a decade of doing this.

One note I'd like to add is pay attention to your lighting, have a special "work-mode" set of lights that you turn on when you work and then turn off when you are no longer working.

I use the same work desk for non work stuff, but I turn off my "office lights" and it's a completely different vibe.

Everyone's tastes will be different but as for me, these are my preferences:

- Office lighting: at least 20k lumens of 5000K light with high CRI. For me I like to approximate the brightness of daylight. It's especially useful during the cloudy days of winter. My office is in a basement so the cheapest way to do that is string lights (like for outdoor patios), but with high quality LED bulbs.

- Personal lighting mode: regular house lighting, 3000K (so skewing towards a more yellowish, incandescent-like light). I still enjoy high CRI because I can't stand things looking bland but that's less important. More spot lights, less ambient light.

Re: When Work Didn’t Follow You Home

#24

Post by danwee »

NoahECampbell wrote: post #16
lopis wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please, enough with this mentality. You don't need to work overtime or sacrifice your work-life balance to grow and earn raises or bonuses. For anyone reading that is working in a company that works like this, just know that there's a better world out there. Your brain can't focus for 12 hours a day no matter how much you try to convince yourself, and the more you push it the worse. It's ok to be paid to be on-call,…

I did say work-life balance is important, but also you are not being paid to sit at a desk for a few hours a day. If you work more then you should get paid more, I never said anything about working more for free, so please stick to what I was actually saying? Also try reading a book called Stolen Focus regarding the human brain's ability to focus, which is diminishing due to people actually not working on expanding t…

> If you work more then you should get paid more

I guess you meant "if you produce more then you should get paid more", right? If so, yes I agree. But if you imply that just by working 25% more hours peer week than my peers I should get paid more, well, that's idiotic (maybe I'm working more because I cannot be as good as others who need less time to do the same?).

At least in IT, working more doesn't necessarily mean to produce (things of value) more.

Re: When Work Didn’t Follow You Home

#25

Post by bamfly »

NoahECampbell wrote: post #20
bamfly wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is very common for people to immediately sign off for the day the minute their work day/shift is over and not do anything else after. If people want to do that then sure they can, but they also trade off the ability to earn raises and promotions by doing the bare minimum. So, when this happens, the employer is offering more money if the employee continues working? The employer is asking them to do that, and empl…

So what you're saying is you made an assumption about what I said, took that assumption and wrapped your entire thing about it without knowing it was true. I recommend taking things at a surface level and not trying to read 50 layers into it

I am reading the surface level, in which your described compensation for overtime work is an advantage at promotion time.

Again: are these workers being offered overtime pay, and refusing it?

Re: When Work Didn’t Follow You Home

#26

Post by rqtwteye »

jader201 wrote: post #6

I’ve been working from home 100% for going on 10 years. I’ve had a mix of experiences re: disconnecting from work, and three things that I believe are key: 1. Work out of a separate office, ideally with a door. Don’t go in that room except when you’re working. If you work from a laptop, (mostly) never take it out of that room. Obviously some don’t have this luxury, but if you do and you’re not doing this, I highly su…

Good points. I religiously turn on my laptop at 9 in the morning and turn it off at 17:30. During that time I am always reachable but after that the laptop is off and I have no work related apps on my phone.

Also: when I am on vacation I am gone and won’t work. My team has my phone number for extreme emergencies but that never happened so far.

Re: When Work Didn’t Follow You Home

#27

Post by tra3 »

jader201 wrote: post #6

I’ve been working from home 100% for going on 10 years. I’ve had a mix of experiences re: disconnecting from work, and three things that I believe are key: 1. Work out of a separate office, ideally with a door. Don’t go in that room except when you’re working. If you work from a laptop, (mostly) never take it out of that room. Obviously some don’t have this luxury, but if you do and you’re not doing this, I highly su…

How do you disconnect and shutdown the problem solving part of your brain?

I’ve found that writing a log or a daily summary, a core dump, if you will, helps me disengage. But not always.

Re: When Work Didn’t Follow You Home

#28

Post by danwee »

NoahECampbell wrote: post #10
mjmsmith wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If people work hard in the hours that they're paid for, that is not "the bare minimum".

If something breaks and suddenly no customer can use the product and its 5pm and the engineers say "Welp sorry, my shift ended a few minutes ago so I'll fix it tomorrow!", that is in fact the bare minimum. If an engineer does that, they can be expected to not be earning any raises for actually doing what they're supposed to do, which is not to sit at a desk for a few hours a day, but to deliver a product

If the company doesn't have a decent on-call plan for such issues that happen outside of regular hours, then why on earth should I be the one who has to fix that? The company is not making me a favor by giving me a job, nor I am making a favor to the company either; it's just a regular business transaction and contracts matter. If my contract says 40h/week, then why the company should expect more? If my contract says that I'm getting paid X per week for doing on-call, then sure it's my job to fix shit outside working hours.

If you tell that "you break it, you fix it", I say "agree, but during working hours"

> which is not to sit at a desk for a few hours a day, but to deliver a product

Please, let's be professionals. You work is whatever your contract says (which yes, it usually says "to deliver a product" but it also says "40h/week"... at least mine says so)

Re: When Work Didn’t Follow You Home

#29

Post by sdf4j »

NoahECampbell wrote: post #10
mjmsmith wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If people work hard in the hours that they're paid for, that is not "the bare minimum".

If something breaks and suddenly no customer can use the product and its 5pm and the engineers say "Welp sorry, my shift ended a few minutes ago so I'll fix it tomorrow!", that is in fact the bare minimum. If an engineer does that, they can be expected to not be earning any raises for actually doing what they're supposed to do, which is not to sit at a desk for a few hours a day, but to deliver a product

No. If the product needs to be available 24/7 then is sensible to expect a budget to do that. As in every other industry, you have around-the-sun resources allocated, proper oncall shifts, and whatever other safe net you can think of. Expecting a proverbial engineer to jump and fix things adhoc is poor business planning and fantasy-football level management.
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