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Comment by nkozyra | Hacker News Reader

Employers and managers seem incapable of understanding the cost these conditions impart. I understand it: morale is hard to put a dollar amount next to.

But most tech companies don't need everyone 24/7. They just don't. They should condition employees to value their free time, it will pay off in a lot of ways.

Unless it's an absolute emergency I don't send emails past five. People are conditioned to respond to them. Same with slack messages. There's this belief that being available 24/7 is a positive attribute in employees and we really need to squash that. It's unhealthy for everyone.

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It's the fact that there are so many workers willing to work 24/7 whether out of choice or necessity and companies will almost always hire the guy that is willing to work nights and weekends over another guy with the same skill level who is only willing to work 8 hours per day.

Is that a smart business decision though? Will that grinder actually put out more productivity?

It is when your site goes down on a Friday night and the 40hr a week guy doesn't care.

Ops generally have someone in those sorts of on call scenarios. You don't ask everyone to have that availability, that's insane.

Exactly. Unless you're a startup, just have a rotation for people on call. Also, resolving these issues tends to go far more quickly when you have as few people as possible looking at the issue. Those calls where you have multiple engineers debugging are generally a waste of time for most people on the call. It gets even worse when management and product ownership are also on the call asking questions. Like please, for the love of god let me work and I'll get an RCA to you when we find and resolve the issue.

Honestly, it's really about money.

No amount of preaching will change their minds because they simply think: I'm paying you therefore you should work for all those hours. If you work less , they feel like they are losing money, even though they get the same throughput from you.

I also think part of it about control, they want to keep a close on you, ensure you're don't have time to work on a side project or interview at a competing company .

I think it's absolutely fine for people to send slacks, emails, etc after 5pm.

Being _expected_ to, however, is a different story.

The reason I don't is because it tacitly sets an expectation for the recipient(s) that they do the same.

I agree, though sometimes you are working at a particular time and need to get things out of your queue. The onus is on each person to switch off non-emergency notifications out of hours and preserve their personal time.

I also think it's crucial to never reply quickly to non-emergencies. Just creates the expectation you're available and encourage more of the same.

That is, unless it's a situation/relationship you want to foster to establish yourself in a team, outpace someone for promotion, etc.

I'm not saying you shouldn't work when you want to / have to. Just do your best not to broadcast that you are, because that's how expectations get set unrealistically across a company.

I sometimes send emails out of hours but I have absolutely no expectation that they will be replied to soon and I do not check or reply to emails after hours. Sometimes I just have something I need to send before I forget or remember that I forgot to reply to something.

Sure, but the more people do this the more managers expect it.

We’ve reached total work[0] globally. The world is a heterotopia, particularly for those who are in low skilled service sector jobs. This will not change, it will only get worse.

[0] https://medium.com/the-ascent/is-total-work-taking-over-our-...

Until war reboots to a level playfield.

> There's this belief that being available 24/7 is a positive attribute in employees and we really need to squash that. It's unhealthy for everyone.

For whatever reason, employers seem to value this for certain roles, and they often pay a premium for it. This is a Good Thing for people who value money over flexibility; why lock them out of a natural fit? Perhaps you would argue that this isn't good for them, but surely they should be free to make the choice? For those who value flexibility over money, they shouldn't take those jobs. As long as expectations are communicated, there shouldn't be a problem.

Maybe this isn't a real problem, but I want to address it just in case: I'm concerned that some people may feel entitled to a high low-flexibility salary _and_ high flexibility. This sort of entitlement comes up often, and as far as I can tell, it fundamentally ignores economic realities. In other words, if these things are compatible, then proponents need to explain themselves (and provide a lot of support for their arguments) because it's far from obvious.

What is a high low-flexibility salary?

I'd guess there should have been a comma there, i.e., "high, low-flexibility salary." I'm young and don't have a family to worry about; I can work really hard, advance faster, earn more, and still have a little free time for teaching myself more interesting stuff. I have a salary which is higher than others who fill the same role, because my flexibility is less. I put more time into my job and available more, so I am compensated accordingly. I think that's fine.

Work 60 hours a week if you must, but I don't see the point of high availability.

Developers are not paramedics, our jobs should not require instant availability and the systems should be stable. There is a difference between being productive and being available for random unplanned bullshit.

Maybe not, but if someone is willing to pay you for it and the deal is agreeable to you, then good deal. If the deal isn’t agreeable, then negotiate a better deal. If you can’t negotiate a better deal, find a new job, if you can’t find a new job, then your current deal is optimal. This applies where we’re talking about working more hours or less flexibility. It’s economics all the way down.

The problem with this mentality is that it leads to ageism and encourages companies to hire 20 something's who they expect can bend to their schedule. They are going to assume anyone in their late 30s or older has kids or wants kids, so won't be able to be flexible enough for the role.

Even though CVs don't (at least in my country) have DoB you can infer it from years in education. You might not even get a chance for an interview to say "I never want kids, I just want to work hard".

Let's pretend all jobs are like this, where flexibility pays more, if you do ever plan on having kids, could you afford and would you be willing to take a big pay cut so you can spend time with them?

This isn’t a new concept; it’s been around for 60 years or more. And ageism hasn’t been the problem, because age correlates with valuable experience (tech may or may not be an outlier here); sexism is traditionally cited as the problem (the argument goes, “employers think a female candidate may have or want children and therefore be less flexible”) although to my knowledge there isn’t much evidence to support this (obviously 60 years ago sexism was a problem, but afaik there’s no evidence that links it to rigid work hours). That said, there is abundant evidence that women really do want to spend more time with their children (compared with men) and therefore prefer jobs with smaller salaries and greater flexibility.

In any case, we can’t function as a society by limiting everyone’s opportunities because someone might be discriminatory. We need to address the discrimination, and we’ve made great strides as a society.

Is paying more for more hours worked on-demand ageism? If a company meeds that type of worker, it is hiring that type of worker rather than that age. Age just happens to be a rather strong proxy for reasons listed above.

I know a number of people who have done just that - taken a big pay cut - to spend more time with kids. And why shouldn't that be the case? Less work => less pay.

Thats not really what I'm saying. As a late 30 something you may be willing to work long hours, but the company may not even consider you due to your age. That is ageism.

That’s unclear on my part. Prior to that sentence, I noted that some salaries are high because employers are effectively paying for the employer to be available at specific times, even around the clock. So these low-flexibility jobs have high salaries.

We'd need to identify these positions somehow - at the moment the weird hours and overtime seem to creep in insidiously. Few are going to label themselves low-flexibility.

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