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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

#141

Post by Yodel0914 »

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…

Sometimes governments attempt to make rules to promote a value other than the economy. Yes, those rules can (usually do) have negative economic impacts. More wealth is good, but lets not pretend that there are no tradeoffs.

The last 10 years (and especially the last 3) have seen a massive shift in work culture and the once-precious work/life balance has essentially disappeared. Many people in white collar jobs are hooked into work every waking hour. That sucks, and a lot people don't want to live like that. Many people (myself included) are in a position to set clear boundaries, but many others aren't.

I'm not a huge fan of government as a guardian of culture, but sometimes it is. In this instance, the law is essentially mandating a return to the cultural norms of ~10 years ago. If your startup fails because of that, well, that's OK - perhaps you can come up with something more pro-social.

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

#142

Post by intended »

morgante wrote: post #112
intended wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Those are NOT the same things. It seems we will have to get into the weeds to be clear.

Firstly - the conversation here is about startups - however its not specified if its what stage of maturity the startup is at.

Assuming it’s an early stage startup, which is typically what “startup” evokes; the risk and return profile is different, and should be captured in the contract. The equity payout early stage employees get is different from what a regular work contract entails.

This is how risk and reward are priced - (and risk and reward is the heart of pricing, which is what this conversation is really about.)

If you want regular employees to do startup hours, or be on call for those times - then the pricing for that time must be commensurate.

That’s it.

Nothing more, nothing less. Frankly, I think you would vehemently agree with this.

Suppose, Shit happens. You have some emergency, you need staff to respond. Guess what though? The wording of the regulation seem to cover this scenario!

However, you are in a bad spot, you need to make numbers, so you decide to make people work hours they aren’t paid for?

Well come on. That’s crap, and I REALLY doubt you are advocating for this, because that’s a corrosive attitude that only shields bad management and managers.

That is why these laws exist. Not because of the golden situations where you can have a justifiable ask.

It’s because there’s more people willing to use power over fairness. To cover up their deficiencies by saying “work harder”, instead of fixing issues to actually be sustainable.

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

#143

Post by Yodel0914 »

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #137
Yodel0914 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The teacher situation is strange. One the one hand, they often do seem to work outside of school hours on lesson prep and marking. On the other hand, they generally don't work during school holidays (12 weeks/yr). Also, given that most school days here are ~9am to ~3pm, I wonder how much of that "after hours" work actually falls within the standard 40hr work week.

Like most things, there's a gaping chasm of variance between teachers that are phoning it in and teachers that want to engage their students in learning. I know a teacher who leaves for work at 6:30am, gets home after 5:30pm most nights, cooks dinner for the family, and spends the rest of her evening marking work and preparing lesson plans for the next few days. Then there's preparing reports, which is like a 6-week…

That's amazing, but all-too rare. I think teachers have a very tough job, and many (most?) of them are not very good it at. My kids have had teachers who constantly shift assignment due dates because they're not ready, half-arse their lesson planning and tell the kids to do the rest at home, and are generally unable to manage a classroom.

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

#144

Post by KoolKat23 »

red_admiral wrote: post #140

I like the Swiss implementation of this. A manager _can_ contact an employee on a Sunday, but then the employee is immediately on weekend-rate overtime even if they just got an email with "deal with this next week". So, many companies have systems that hold back e-mail sent outside of working hours until the next working day unless specially authorised and costed. Never underestimate an economics-based solution to a…

I'd rather not work on the weekend, even for an overtime rate. Thanks.

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

#146

Post by IshKebab »

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #137
Yodel0914 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The teacher situation is strange. One the one hand, they often do seem to work outside of school hours on lesson prep and marking. On the other hand, they generally don't work during school holidays (12 weeks/yr). Also, given that most school days here are ~9am to ~3pm, I wonder how much of that "after hours" work actually falls within the standard 40hr work week.

Like most things, there's a gaping chasm of variance between teachers that are phoning it in and teachers that want to engage their students in learning. I know a teacher who leaves for work at 6:30am, gets home after 5:30pm most nights, cooks dinner for the family, and spends the rest of her evening marking work and preparing lesson plans for the next few days. Then there's preparing reports, which is like a 6-week…

I think it's also a lot more work for new teachers since they can't reuse lesson plans.

I think it's probably quite possible after a few years to be a good teacher and also not spend all your free time marking and preparing lesson plans... but it's still hard work and underpaid. I'll stick with my overpaid and stress free programming job, thanks!

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

#147

Post by silisili »

KoolKat23 wrote: post #144
red_admiral wrote: post #140

I like the Swiss implementation of this. A manager _can_ contact an employee on a Sunday, but then the employee is immediately on weekend-rate overtime even if they just got an email with "deal with this next week". So, many companies have systems that hold back e-mail sent outside of working hours until the next working day unless specially authorised and costed. Never underestimate an economics-based solution to a…

I'd rather not work on the weekend, even for an overtime rate. Thanks.

That's the benefit of working on a small team/startup. Whoever smelt it dealt it kind of situation. Basically, at first at least, whoever's application is erroring is getting a call when it breaks.

It sounds bad, but it encourages everyone to write more fault tolerant code. Way moreso then a random bigcorp with an on call team.

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

#148

Post by asimovfan »

StressedDev wrote: post #51
sfpotter wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like you live in a world of incredible privilege. Not everyone is so lucky.

Nope - A large portion of the world works like this. If you work for a place which demands you work all of the time, you either work for an abusive employer, or you get paid a lot of money to be at their beck and call. If the employer is abusive, find another job. If you are paid a large salary to be a slave to company, consider finding a job with a better work/life balance.

There were no weekends before labor movement fought and got it..

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

#149

Post by lnsru »

2-3-7-43-1807 wrote: post #145

I thought that's normal? I switch off my work phone and laptop and then I do not even know if I get any mails ... is this only a thing in Germany?

Some people work on weekends even in Germany. Saturday is normal workday according German law. It’s more or less personal preference. At least one has a choice.

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

#150

Post by grecy »

silisili wrote: post #147
KoolKat23 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd rather not work on the weekend, even for an overtime rate. Thanks.

That's the benefit of working on a small team/startup. Whoever smelt it dealt it kind of situation. Basically, at first at least, whoever's application is erroring is getting a call when it breaks. It sounds bad, but it encourages everyone to write more fault tolerant code. Way moreso then a random bigcorp with an on call team.

I used to get called all the time because our in house infrastructure would fall over, and my apps would crash. It didn’t matter how many times I explained my apps couldn’t run without good infra, and that I wasn’t on that team, and that I had no access or authority to do anything… when my apps when down I got called.

So actually, I really don’t like your idea.

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