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Australian employees now have the right to ignore work emails, calls after hours

reuters.com

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Re: Australian employees now have the right to ignore work emails, calls after hours

#111

Post by intended »

nomilk wrote: post #37
ceejayoz wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If overnight service is that critical and profitable, hire a night shift.

But who really pays? The employer? Yes, at first , but the cost is passed straight on to consumers. Prices are sky high in Australia for this reason, businesses have many laws that each increase prices by a fraction of a percent - almost imperceptible - but cumulatively very noticeable.

But you know what helps ?

More money in wages ! Instead of business owners getting more money? If that went instead to workers (aka consumers) then everyone would have more to spend!

Then you know who would have more money ?

Good business owners !!

——-

Demand side / supply side economics rhetoric is fun, but it’s rhetorical.

Success depends entirely on what is appropriate for the market at that given moment.

Re: Australian employees now have the right to ignore work emails, calls after hours

#112

Post by morgante »

intended wrote: post #109
morgante wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is preposterous and basically kills startups completely. You genuinely think a seed stage startup should hire a complete "night shift" to ensure no engineers ever get paged "after hours?" This simply kills startups completely.

I’m sorry, this insults quite a few startups and firms that don’t believe in wage theft. Getting equity is not wage theft. If the principle behind your equity pay out scheme is wage theft with extra steps, you’ve got a huge problem, and an unsustainable business.

Asking employees to participate in a reasonable on-call rotation is not "wage theft." Your antagonistic/adversarial relationship is exactly what destroys cultures.

If you attitude to an outage on a weekend is to ignore it and say that's the company's problem you should simply never join a small startup. You don't deserve equity if you refuse to share in responsibility.

Re: Australian employees now have the right to ignore work emails, calls after hours

#113

Post by lkois »

nomilk wrote: post #37
ceejayoz wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If overnight service is that critical and profitable, hire a night shift.

But who really pays? The employer? Yes, at first , but the cost is passed straight on to consumers. Prices are sky high in Australia for this reason, businesses have many laws that each increase prices by a fraction of a percent - almost imperceptible - but cumulatively very noticeable.

So, paying for a night shift will increase the cost to customers, but higher salaries negotiated by on-call employees won't?

Or did you leave out the part where those employees discover how little negotiating power they really have

Re: Australian employees now have the right to ignore work emails, calls after hours

#114

Post by crossroadsguy »

In 2024 it hurts really bad to read all such great news from other nations while sitting in India where industry leaders, startup founders, and politicians are actively trying to impose things like 70 hour work week or so and take away whatever labour protections (which is very little and mostly ineffective and practically none if you are in "corporate") we have and even encroach upon the Sundays and Saturdays (the latter being working for most of the Indian workers anyway).

Re: Australian employees now have the right to ignore work emails, calls after hours

#115

Post by crossroadsguy »

steelframe wrote: post #39

I've dabbled in management a few times in my career. This meant attending manager-only meetings and trainings. I'll never forget one time when a manager in a focus group said something along the lines of, "The tech sector is going through a rough patch, so we can turn the screws on our employees and they'll have to take it because they will have a hard time trying to find a job somewhere else." This is at a company w…

I am from India and this is very common thing from Indian managers whether they are in India or working abroad (and I am sure this is not limited to India but since I am from there I am sharing this example). It's just a thing. I often am a pariah at workplace when it comes to views on work-life balance. So I have learnt to never get into discussions about it and just shut up and keep my head down while never giving in to any manager's pressure and still trying to maintain calm and composure avoiding direct conflict. It's like walking on egg shells.

Re: Australian employees now have the right to ignore work emails, calls after hours

#116

Post by bruce511 »

nine_zeros wrote: post #62
steelframe wrote: post #39

I've dabbled in management a few times in my career. This meant attending manager-only meetings and trainings. I'll never forget one time when a manager in a focus group said something along the lines of, "The tech sector is going through a rough patch, so we can turn the screws on our employees and they'll have to take it because they will have a hard time trying to find a job somewhere else." This is at a company w…

> After I picked my jaw up off the floor I realized I simply lacked the scruples I'd need to be "one of them." This is the reason why I always tell young engineers to treat companies with utmost business-only mentality. It's not that all managers are bad. It's that the company rewards psychopathic behaviors - that aren't easily apparent to humble people. Companies are merely out there squeezing and exploring employee…

Unfortunately the word "company" encompasses hundreds of millions of entities, of enormously different cultures, attitudes, ethics and so on.

Personally, I think behavior does (and likely has to) evolve with size. Unfortunately bigger tends to be worse.

Culture is also primarily a top-down flow. I'd the CEO is a screamer expect screamers all the way down and so on.

Of course there are companies, too many of them, that behave badly. There are too many people who treat other people as nameless, expendable and exploitable. There are also many others, the ones that don't make the juicy comments on reddit, which behave well, treat people as people, and so on.

Treating your work-place as a hostile environment can be emotionally and mentally draining. It can be counter-productive if the environment desires to support you.

Equally, if your environment is hostile then at least be looking elsewhere. Not all companies are created the same so there are likely better options elsewhere (although getting those posts is harder because people tend not to leave.)

Your advice rings true for many companies. But people stay in those places because they believe everywhere is the same. So a more nuanced advice might be to understand the culture and behavior where you work and decide if that's a culture you want to assimilate, and support, long term or not.

For the record, the place where I work has never expected anyone to do emails etc out-of-hours and you'd be laughed at if you suggested people should behave otherwise.

Re: Australian employees now have the right to ignore work emails, calls after hours

#117

Post by abhinai »

crossroadsguy wrote: post #115
steelframe wrote: post #39

I've dabbled in management a few times in my career. This meant attending manager-only meetings and trainings. I'll never forget one time when a manager in a focus group said something along the lines of, "The tech sector is going through a rough patch, so we can turn the screws on our employees and they'll have to take it because they will have a hard time trying to find a job somewhere else." This is at a company w…

I am from India and this is very common thing from Indian managers whether they are in India or working abroad (and I am sure this is not limited to India but since I am from there I am sharing this example). It's just a thing. I often am a pariah at workplace when it comes to views on work-life balance. So I have learnt to never get into discussions about it and just shut up and keep my head down while never giving…

I've had Indian managers and never experienced this. You're probably extrapolating from a small sample size which may all be from same company / industry.

Re: Australian employees now have the right to ignore work emails, calls after hours

#118

Post by crossroadsguy »

nomilk wrote: post #22

Another 'good in theory' idea. Trying to run a business in Australia is 'death by a thousand paper cuts'. Far too many rules. Letting individuals interact freely creates good outcomes 90+% of the time. Most of these rules are cost-benefit negative because the administrative burden of adherence exceeds the benefit of the new rule. Politicians and govt departments like them though; they get to put a dot-point on their…

Right. Let the exploiters and the exploited, with that glaring power gap, settle it among themselves and keep it in the house. Couldn't agree more.

Re: Australian employees now have the right to ignore work emails, calls after hours

#119

Post by abhinai »

crossroadsguy wrote: post #114

In 2024 it hurts really bad to read all such great news from other nations while sitting in India where industry leaders, startup founders, and politicians are actively trying to impose things like 70 hour work week or so and take away whatever labour protections (which is very little and mostly ineffective and practically none if you are in "corporate") we have and even encroach upon the Sundays and Saturdays (the l…

Oh you're same guy from another thread. You seem like you're on some kind of a mission here. My experience was 100% different than you. You seem to be generalizing from a small sample and paint an entire country with that baseless generalization.
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