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Comment by scandox | Hacker News Reader

Flexibility sounds good but what I have seen over the last year is that all boundaries in terms of when and where work begins and ends are being eroded. This started accidentally but it is now being actively exploited on an unprecedented scale.

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At will employment is the problem. You should be able to switch off at a certain time and ignore work comms. But I think in US you’d be scared of being fired. In other countries like UK this has never been a concern, and WFH doesn’t change that.

Yeah tell that to my teaching assistant wife who works at a Lincolnshire village primary school and is now 'always on' to the whims of the go getting headmistress 24/7.

She feels she can't practically ignore out of hours requests and she doesn't want to challenge the practice for fear of rocking the boat.

I empathize after two years in UK education. The working culture is almost cult like and self reinforcing - the Peter principle in action turns the best teachers at reinforcing the status quo into headteachers.

Unions are really powerful in education - it's one of the only benefits of the sector I can think of. Hopefully your wife has a union rep they can teach out to on behalf of all the staff if not just herself? Teaching assistant salaries definitely don't to high enough to compensate for anything outside of school hours!

As a counterpoint, I'm not in teaching but many of my colleagues workdays are heavily disrupted by childcare, so they compensate by working odd hours, sending emails or slack messages at 5am or 1-2am etc.

It's not that they expect everyone else to be working these odd hours at all, just that it's the only time they themselves can catch up on work.

One colleague who is a manager even has a note to this effect in his email footer, explaining he doesn't expect others to action or respond to messages outside of normal working hours.

I'm based in Ireland. I think your view is a bit one dimensional in terms of the employer-employee relationship. A lot of soft pressures exist for employees even when their actual employment is secure.

Agreed. Sone time ago I was in a meeting where my Head of HR was (US) talking with an auditor (US) about how amused the workers in Mexico are of the "at will" language of the US contract. Laughing because we do not have that here in Mecico. They had a good laugh about it.

I was silently thought it was very interesting how they have been convinced that at will employment is a good thing... and thanking my government work laws which require any company to pay for 3 months compensation if they desire to fire me.

The UK is basically 'at will' for the first two years. I've never worried about getting fired in that period. Just pick who you work for carefully and make yourself valuable.

The standard probation period is six months in the UK. I haven't encountered two years yet, is that even legal? And it's called probation period for a reason, it's a time for both sides to figure out if the arrangement works out and be able to quit with no or little notice otherwise. After that, 3 months notice periods are completely normal so it's good to not get locked into that from day one.

I'm not talking about contractual probation periods. There's a universal two year threshold after which you get extra protections, and before which you can be fired for any reason that's not specifically discriminatory on race, gender, etc + some other very narrow cases. Pretty similar to what 'at will' means in the US. We just have a short statutory notice period.

https://www.stephens-scown.co.uk/employment/employment-right...

From the link you posted:

> Even though an employee has fewer employment rights in the first two years of their employment, an employer would be foolish to assume they have carte blanche to dismiss at will.

So while it's true that there's less protection for workers, there is no at will employment in the UK. Probation period probably comes closest to it but is much shorter.

What are you talking about? The US doesn't give carte blanche either. Discrimination law exists. Other labor laws exist. Exactly as this article refers to as being 'not carte blanche' in the UK.

'At will' in the US and the 2 year qualifying period in the UK are practically identical, apart from that the UK has a 2-week statutory notice period. The protections that remain in both the US and UK are almost entirely about protected classes. Even the classes themselves are virtually the same.

"Have they been there less than 2 years?" is the first thing legal will ask you when you want to sack someone in the UK. It's a wholly different status to being protected after the period.

Although now we have "Inside IR35 Contractors" - which is in effect a zero rights employee. I wonder how long until that is the standard.

> Just pick who you work for carefully and make yourself valuable

you realise that's a relatively privileged position in the emplyment market, right? you:

a) have enough choice in employers to be able to pick one

b) have both a profession that allows you to differentiate yourself and the skills that can make you differentiate yourself

that's unfortunately not the case for the majority of employees

I've worked crappy jobs and never worried about getting fired. The crappier your job, the lower the threshold it's considered 'expensive' to replace you. It's not that hard to meet that threshold of contributed value. Employers generally have an incentive to keep you for this reason, unless you're truly terrible or something else is going on with their finances.

It's a little patronizing for you to assume I have no experience of being unprivileged just because our opinions about it differ. Or that those without privilege can't manoeuvre their way into choosing a slightly better job, even if they don't have an absolutely free choice over the space of all possible jobs, or even if they have to take a worse one temporarily in order to transition to where they want to be. Not all poor people are mindless cattle devoid of planning or agency.

Setting boundaries is your job, not your job’s job.

Almost everyone I know works normal hours or less even during WFH.

To be perfectly clear, this is true regardless of WFH. Your work will never set boundaries for you as they benefit from you working harder and longer.

Tech workers have a much stronger hand with their employers than many other groups. As a result I think we often don't see the kind of power imbalance that is going on and how hard it is to simply "do the rational thing" which seems so cut and dried to you.

The point I would make is that the WFH experience is very different for different groups. Like everything about the Pandemic it has had totally inequitable impacts on different people.

I'm in tech and I've had no issue, but many people I know are not and I've seen how it works out. Not everyone can just move to another job. Perhaps most people can't.

I disagree. The company has a responsibility to set rules around when it's ok to call people. Especially for junior employees it's very hard to decline calls from their managers late in the evening.

This has become a bigger issue as all communication is via phone or computer. Before, a lot was via personal interaction which just wasn't possible once you left the office. Now, no one really knows if someone is working or has already called it a day at any given point.

Get a work phone/computer. Make it clear that you won't be available outside of business hours unless it's actually an emergency.

My Dad resisted getting a mobile phone from his company from the mid eighties to the 2000's, on the principle that if they can't contact you, they'll figure it out themselves.

I wasn't talking about myself or really any senior person. But tell that to an intern or someone in their first job. And that's the problem with flexible working, it's often especially terrible for the most junior employees.

Not only that, but there's a great deal of privilege in being able to say "no". It is something the talented tech worker gets used to being able to do, because they have options elsewhere. They can design their employment because they have in-demand skills. But it doesn't necessarily mean everyone is comfortable with it or can afford to risk the consequences.

> Your work will never set boundaries for you as they benefit from you working harder and longer.

Some workplaces do set boundaries, and it is not universally true that "harder and longer" working brings benefits.

This might be a blessing in disguise. Hopefully it will force us to really examine our work culture, and begin to challenge this notion that 40+ hours a week of our lives should be devoted to work (unless of course, you're working that many hours voluntarily on something you love).

Work ends when you say goodbye in the chat and switch off the vpn.

I actually just keep my VPN running all-week long since I'm too lazy to authenticate every morning.

For me, work ends when I switch my monitor inputs to my personal computer.

That only works if you don't have the chat/emails on your phone and if you can just switch that off. There are enough companies that allow business phones for personal use (can be great to save costs) which means you always have your business phone with you. And on the phone no one sees if you're working before they call you.

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