Live data from Hacker News

When Work Didn’t Follow You Home

calnewport.com

121–130 of 155 posts

Re: When Work Didn’t Follow You Home

#121
post #55

So as someone who has worked as a developer for 15+ years now, this is an honest question. What kind of things are you getting emails about after hours that can’t wait until tomorrow? I have heard these horror stories for years but never experienced any of it. Everyone who would be sending me email wants to be off work as much as I do. They’re not working after hours so neither am I. Even when I worked for an agency…

Enterprise works different hours. If I need to relay something important and where email could cause broken communication, I need to work after hours. East Coast in five hours behind of me. West Coast is eight. If we have the regulators chasing us upon an urgent thing you need to be have the information ready for the next day. Unfortunately the whole "don't email after work" can only be applied to roles where staff a…

> regulators chasing us

Unless I've got serious equity the regulators are chasing you, make it worth my while to solve your problem.

Re: When Work Didn’t Follow You Home

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Add in parental responsibilities Out of curiosity, how many of your coworkers have kids? I have 3, and I've always found it a bit ominous that even when I'm on large teams (8+) I'm typically still the only person with kids. So far: 1. job 1, team of 8, only 1 other IC had kids 2. job 2, team of 10, nobody else had kids 3. current job, team of 8, nobody else has kids. If you expand it to the suborganization we're in,…

Children seem like a liability in almost every aspect. I'm honestly a bit surprised when anyone mentions they have/want them, and I'm not even a type A/career climber, who I would think would see them as even more of a liability.

They're amazing. They're a lot of work, and a lot of that work is at odd hours ("3am: dad I'm scared of the wind also I accidentally peed on the floor") and/or highly frustrating ("me: son, please stop leaning out that window. son, balancing precariously halfway out his playhouse window: why. me: because if you fall out of it, it will hurt. 2 mins later: falls out of window and it hurts.") (also - feeding kids of any age).

But it's so worth it. My oldest is old enough to be playing with legos, and teaching him how to follow the instructions, and then seeing him both follow the instructions and then also deviate from them sometimes with his own creativity without compromising the rest of the build (well, usually) is just amazing to see happen. And then take this sentiment ^ and apply it to practically every facet of life. Having kids is about finding magic and bonding in both everyday things, like watering the garden together, and in the once-in-a-lifetime things like going on a vacation to someplace.

But of course it's not for everyone! It is really hard work and it takes a certain maturity and disposition for selflessness to be good at it. So I of course respect people who want to opt-out.

But - setting magic aside - so much of our economy is literally predicated on populations either continuously growing or at the very least not shrinking that we need to be careful about fertility rates. I think we can look to Japan to see what happens when you make your society too much of an economic rat race: people either solely focus on it or drop out of it, and both will cause fertility rates to drop.

A good step in the right direction here is that it's probably in the interest of us all that people who want to have kids are enabled to do so. (And indeed we have some policies like this already - public schools, child tax credits, etc).

And note that my concern about none of my coworkers having kids is mostly in this vein ^: it seems to me like it's a bad sign if a bunch of people with ample means are all still deciding not to have kids despite nominally having the funding to bankroll it.

Re: When Work Didn’t Follow You Home

#123
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…

It's still like this in some limited cases. My brother-in-law is a glazier. He clearly needs to be on-site to do this. Work can't follow him home. My wife works in software just like I do, but she's worked exclusively on classified projects for 20 years, so work can't follow her home because she can't legally receive any of the relevant data at home. Work phone and work e-mail are on airgapped networks not accessible from home.

Re: When Work Didn’t Follow You Home

#124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seeing the amount of people that answer late night chats from people in other timezones upsets me. What upsets me more are the people on vacation answering chats as soon as they’re pinged. That behavior changes work culture and expectations the more it happens. Bad managers love this sort of thing. I learned a long time ago that to keep my sanity I need a wall up between work hours and my personal life.

Having managed teams in Asia from the US, let me provide the alternate view. You are in Asia and it's 10am HKT/10pm ET. You are facing a problem/issue that you are 90% sure someone in the US knows the answer to. You are faced with: - being blocked all day till US business hours - trial and erroring your way through the problem My view as the manager was always "I trust you to send me a message up till 10:30pm if you…

That sounds like the company really hasn’t set up their teams for success. There are a lot of assumptions here that it’s on the individual contributors to solve these issues at a high cost to their personal lives.

Re: When Work Didn’t Follow You Home

#127
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>Add in parental responsibilities Out of curiosity, how many of your coworkers have kids? I have 3, and I've always found it a bit ominous that even when I'm on large teams (8+) I'm typically still the only person with kids. So far: 1. job 1, team of 8, only 1 other IC had kids 2. job 2, team of 10, nobody else had kids 3. current job, team of 8, nobody else has kids. If you expand it to the suborganization we're in,…

Do you really have 2-3 hours after kid bedtime? By the time my kids are asleep, it's already late and have no left time to do anything more than going to sleep myself

Re: When Work Didn’t Follow You Home

#128
post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, his comment is spot on. A 2nd year CS student doesn't know jack shit about working in a professional capacity, and should not be sharing terrible advise that leads to burn out that other people may follow because they too don't know shit about working in a professional capacity. Advice carries accountability, and if you don't have the necessary experience to carry advice, it is much better to shut your trap than…

So you think it is ok to dig up someone's past threads and show that they are 2nd year CS student to discount their point? If their point is incorrect or wrong, why can't they be discussed on its own? Why is it necessary to discuss the person? May I suggest reading DH1 of http://paulgraham.com/disagree.html ? > Saying that an author lacks the authority to write about a topic is a variant of ad hominem—and a particula…

The background can usefully affect one's choice of whether, and how, to engage.

In this case, the post already was pretty poor, on its own merits, as has been pretty well covered all over this thread. The added info took it from poor, to poor and risible, and also probably worth ignoring or quickly dismissing with a post (for onlookers) then not continuing to engage, even for those who might otherwise be inclined to start a back-and-forth conversation about it. Like, one is unlikely to dig up some well of hard-won wisdom on this specific topic that might change one's mind, from this poster, by engaging with them, given that background info.

Who's speaking (or writing) matters. It may not matter for determining whether they're right or wrong, but it matters for how (and whether) one responds.

Re: When Work Didn’t Follow You Home

#129
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…

I follow these similarly except use a coworking space and use a separate phone for work in case on call or something.

Re: When Work Didn’t Follow You Home

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Enterprise works different hours. If I need to relay something important and where email could cause broken communication, I need to work after hours. East Coast in five hours behind of me. West Coast is eight. If we have the regulators chasing us upon an urgent thing you need to be have the information ready for the next day. Unfortunately the whole "don't email after work" can only be applied to roles where staff a…

> regulators chasing us Unless I've got serious equity the regulators are chasing you, make it worth my while to solve your problem.

I can't go in to detail because NDA.

Three letter agencies, something something war, trading, cyberattacks and more stuff.

Post reply on HN