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Sustainable work-life balance with Personal SLA (2019)

evgenii.info

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Re: Sustainable work-life balance with Personal SLA (2019)

#11

Post by BurningFrog »

darkerside wrote: post #6
BurningFrog wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm happy to deal with emergencies 1-2 year. Things go wrong sometimes. It's never become the norm where I've worked. So I don't really have advice for that.

The reason is that tech leadership is doing what I described. Making clear to involved stakeholders that this is not normal and can't be expected every time. As parent commenter has seen, it doesn't happen automatically.

Yeah, I keep hearing that, but - over 10+ jobs - have never experienced it.

Maybe I screen out those jobs in my searches. Or they screen me out :)

My bigger point is that there are many different SW engineering worlds even in SV. You, and everyone you know, may be in the one you describe.

But there are other and better ones out here. One caveat: You may have to "level up" to join some of them.

Re: Sustainable work-life balance with Personal SLA (2019)

#12

Post by icelancer »

Ididntdothis wrote: post #3
darkerside wrote: post #2

A better approach might be: make sure everything you do for work is sustainable. When it's not, make sure you are letting beneficiaries know. (e.g. Yes, we're working weekends for this release, but it's for X and Y reason, and it won't happen regularly)

Once you start working weekends for a release it usually will become the norm. You can deal with this by putting a price tag on overwork, e.g. two times salary on weekends or comp time. Don’t give away things for free.

If employees work on the weekends, just feed them + pay them a premium, and give them an equivalent amount of days off later in the week/month.

It's pretty simple.

Re: Sustainable work-life balance with Personal SLA (2019)

#13

Post by Ididntdothis »

icelancer wrote: post #12
Ididntdothis wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once you start working weekends for a release it usually will become the norm. You can deal with this by putting a price tag on overwork, e.g. two times salary on weekends or comp time. Don’t give away things for free.

If employees work on the weekends, just feed them + pay them a premium, and give them an equivalent amount of days off later in the week/month. It's pretty simple.

It should be simple but a lot of companies don't seem to understand that principle and prefer free overtime.

Re: Sustainable work-life balance with Personal SLA (2019)

#14

Post by shostack »

Ididntdothis wrote: post #3
darkerside wrote: post #2

A better approach might be: make sure everything you do for work is sustainable. When it's not, make sure you are letting beneficiaries know. (e.g. Yes, we're working weekends for this release, but it's for X and Y reason, and it won't happen regularly)

Once you start working weekends for a release it usually will become the norm. You can deal with this by putting a price tag on overwork, e.g. two times salary on weekends or comp time. Don’t give away things for free.

Many do not have the privilege, particularly now, to push back on such requests if they need their paycheck.

Re: Sustainable work-life balance with Personal SLA (2019)

#15

Post by hkt »

_qwfv wrote: post #4
darkerside wrote: post #2

A better approach might be: make sure everything you do for work is sustainable. When it's not, make sure you are letting beneficiaries know. (e.g. Yes, we're working weekends for this release, but it's for X and Y reason, and it won't happen regularly)

I believe working on the weekends is a failure, and we should treat it like any other engineering failure. Why did it happen, how can we improve things so this failure doesn't happen again. Track and assign AIs, and hold people accountable to them.

Amen. Working more than 9-5 four days a week is a travesty. (yes, I said four)

Re: Sustainable work-life balance with Personal SLA (2019)

#17

Post by PunksATawnyFill »

war1025 wrote: post #8

Can someone please enlighten me what the heck an SLA is? I skimmed through the article and felt like he teased at providing a definition several times and then never actually did.

I guess some people feel all "leet" by using abbreviations without (or before) defining them and expecting everyone else to run around looking them up.

It's tired and lame.

Re: Sustainable work-life balance with Personal SLA (2019)

#18

Post by xupybd »

icelancer wrote: post #12
Ididntdothis wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once you start working weekends for a release it usually will become the norm. You can deal with this by putting a price tag on overwork, e.g. two times salary on weekends or comp time. Don’t give away things for free.

If employees work on the weekends, just feed them + pay them a premium, and give them an equivalent amount of days off later in the week/month. It's pretty simple.

I've never had time off in compensation for time worked. If it's busy enough to require me to work overtime, it's too busy to take leave no matter how much I have built up.

Re: Sustainable work-life balance with Personal SLA (2019)

#20

Post by red_admiral »

I like the Swiss approach to overtime.

1. It can only be demanded for exceptional circumstances, with justification. "Poor planning or lack of staff are insufficient." [1]

2. It must be compensated with 25% extra salary, or extra holiday (if the employee agrees). An employee cannot waive their right to this.

3. Even then, there is a limit by law on the number of extra hours you can do in a year, [2] says 170 hours per calendar year. Got a big crisis in January? Employer had better start planning ahead so everyone's time budget isn't exhausted by December.

4. Like many countries, Switzerland has an exception for "management". So you don't call your cleaner a "facility manager", the Swiss law specifies this as "management AND earning at least CHF 120'000 a year". [3] For context, according to expatica [4] the OECD calculated the Swiss average wage in 2017 as 62.3K.

I personally think the principle that you cannot be expected to work "all hours that are necessary" unless you're paid around twice the average salary is brilliant and gets rid of a lot of potential abuse of this rule.

[1] https://www.legalexpatgeneva.com/employment-law/contractual-... [2] https://www.ch.ch/en/overtime-and-extra-hours/ [3] https://www.kmu.admin.ch/kmu/en/home/concrete-know-how/perso... [4] https://www.expatica.com/ch/working/employment-law/switzerla...

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