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Comment by EddieDante | Hacker News Reader

If workers want the right to disconnect, they need to exercise it without asking permission of management or the government.

I sure as hell don't ask permission to turn off my company-issued devices at 5pm and ignore them until 8am the next morning. Nor do I ask permission to ignore work-related comms outside of business hours, because I don't work for free. I already have the right to disconnect. I have always had it, because I am a human being and autonomy is a human right.

Remember: power yields nothing without a demand, and direct action gets the goods.

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This is the standard argument as to why no government regulation is necessary -- "because you can just walk away/change jobs!"

You are lucky because you have the privilege of being able to do this. Not everyone does. A lot of people need they job they have to continue, and their boss will fire them for not responding to an email at 9pm.

Those are the people that need government protection and regulation, or a union, or both. Because their employer won't do it unless forced to and they don't have to privilege to ignore it like you do.

> This is the standard argument as to why no government regulation is necessary -- "because you can just walk away/change jobs!"

I didn't say this because I think government regulation or unionization isn't necessary.

I said it because I don't believe government regulation will happen in the US in my lifetime. Nor do I expect to see the big 4 consulting firms unionized before Judgment Day. And, yes, I have lost jobs for not picking up the phone at 10pm on a Saturday night. Freedom isn't free.

I look for individual solutions to systemic issues because I don't trust the collective to have my back. I understand that collective action is necessary, but let's face it: the left in the US is too busy dicking around with the culture war to show up for the class war. They think that labels describing race, gender, sexuality, etc matter more than whether you're working-class or owning-class.

I'm looking out for myself because I've given up on anybody else looking out for me. I advise others to do the same.

Just because you’ve given up doesn’t mean you should advise others to do the same. Like an airplane, put the oxygen mask on yourself before helping others. You’ve then de-risked individually while supporting improvements for workers collectively.

Who says I'm giving up? I'm engaging in industrial action on my own since others in my workplace are unwilling to join me. I'm being the change I want to see in the world by engaging in work-to-rule.

Work to rule only works if everyone does it, so that they can't single anyone out. If only people who can afford it do it, then it doesn't do anything at all.

I'm not sure what else I can do on my own.

> And, yes, I have lost jobs for not picking up the phone at 10pm on a Saturday night. Freedom isn't free.

Luckily you had the safety net to survive that.

> I'm looking out for myself because I've given up on anybody else looking out for me. I advise others to do the same.

Why not both? Look out for yourself but also try to help others?

I honestly think tech workers for all the big companies will be unionized in the next decade. There is already a perfect model out there: The screen actors guild. That union sets minimum rules around pay, safety, overtime, residuals, and so on, but still allows for "superstars" to make far more.

That's the kind of union developers need. One that specifies some minimums that companies must follow (like protecting after hours disconnection and making sure all the workers get a piece of the success) but still allows people to make more and get better benefits.

> Luckily you had the safety net to survive that.

The only safety net I had was two months' salary saved up. I didn't even get unemployment compensation; by the time the company got nailed for classifying me as a 1099 while treating me as a W-2 I had already found a different job.

> I honestly think tech workers for all the big companies will be unionized in the next decade. There is already a perfect model out there: The screen actors guild. That union sets minimum rules around pay, safety, overtime, residuals, and so on, but still allows for "superstars" to make far more.

I'd love to see that happen. I'm not counting on it. And I've given up on trying to persuade my coworkers to unionize. If I were at all charismatic or persuasive I wouldn't be working in tech to begin with.

> I honestly think tech workers for all the big companies will be unionized in the next decade.

0% to even lets say 50% instead of "all" in 10 years is just not possible. The "valuable" employees (engineers) for these companies don't even want to unionize. You'll have to convince them that somehow it would work out in there favor before you could even start the effort and that would take years alone.

I can’t see tech workers unionising over salary any time soon, but I can imagine it happening over something like the freedom to work remotely.

> The "valuable" employees (engineers) for these companies don't even want to unionize.

I know many engineers that want to unionize. It's not that hard to convince people once they stop drinking all of the anti-union kool aid that has proliferated in the US over the last several decades.

Look at pro athletes that are contracted under a CBA. They get to negotiate profit-sharing, minimum salaries, guaranteed raises, etc. Roughly half of the revenue generated by the NBA is allocated to player wages.

Apple generates somewhere around $1.9M per employee[0], with a median salary just shy of $160k. One of the most common criticisms of unionization is that it would cap salaries and people would earn less. If Apple employees were compensated like basketball players, the average salary would be somewhere around $1M.

0: https://www.emergingtechbrew.com/stories/2020/08/12/ranking-...

1: https://www.comparably.com/companies/apple/salaries

>"I honestly think tech workers for all the big companies will be unionized in the next decade."

I do respect unions in general and understand their vital role for protecting basic rights. But if I were a valuable software engineer for example there would be no way I would ever join union. Not my nature. Luckily I have my own company and aside of a business negotiations with my clients they can't really step on my rights.

In the early days of the labor movement when factory workers went on strike they had the problem of scabs -temporary workers brought in. These days any job done fully online can be outsourced, do you think we'll see instances of virtual scabs?

>A lot of people need they job they have to continue, and their boss will fire them for not responding to an email at 9pm.

If you have a boss like that, no amount of regulation or protection is going to help you. They will find a way to manipulate you and get around the rules. That isn't to say there shouldn't be any rules and regulations, but it is to say that this is the point of diminishing returns.

The way the regulations help is that it sets the expectation that the next person will probably also say no, or that someone might try to fight you on it because they have stronger ground to stand on.

Child labor laws work because company owners know that eventually they'll get caught. OSHA works the same -- because they know there are penalties for it. Sure, sometimes companies get away with stuff, but there is always the chance that they won't.

Well... It does, I work for an US based company but from Europe, they expected me to be available almost 24/7 and extra hours are "part of the salary" That's illegal in my country, as soon as I mentioned "Illegal" the discussion ended. Also If I accept to take any extra hours there are limits to that and I can't start working in the next 10 hours (we assume that ppl need rest and sleep).

I think is important to realize that ppl need to rest and have a life outside work and not to see workers as a disposable utility, and as a modern society we need to protect others from the power imbalances.

There are certainly situations where if you say "not it" the work just falls to other people (or worse, a single person) who is less comfortable or able to say no.

But there are also situations where a person has been said 'yes' to so many times that they just assume something is wrong with anyone who tells them 'no'. Enough people have to say 'no' that it becomes normalized. Either a more 'fair' process is made or they finally hire enough people to do the job right (haha, who am I kidding, they'll never do that, but you can at least get to 'less wrong').

It's really a tough matter of reading the room. Sometimes if you see someone asking for something that doesn't necessarily interest you, asking for it too makes it okay. Other times it causes the boss to catastrophize (well now everyone will want to do this so I'm not going to let anyone do it) and shut down.

Asking people to follow labor laws that are almost 100 years old is not that big of an ask. I know everyone is busy LARPing feudal England half the time but someone has to call bullshit, and it's mostly the people with just a little bit of power who can actually do anything about it.

IMO it's not about changing jobs, it's about setting expectations at jobs. That boss will only fire them for not responding at 9pm because they have the expectation that you will respond at 9pm. You need to set expectations early in the job when you aren't defying a standard behavior but setting that.

If you are already stuck you might need to have a sit down with your boss and try to work something out. Maybe they are actually usually OK with your not responding until morning but you just have no way to differentiate between normal and urgent. It is possible that you could work something out that doesn't require changing jobs to reset expectations.

> Maybe they are actually usually OK with your not responding until morning but you just have no way to differentiate between normal and urgent.

Yep, there are undoubtedly companies that really expect people to work unreasonable hours, but I think this is the common case. I very much don’t normally check work communications out of hours, but my boss has my phone number for emergency situations where I’m really needed (has been about 3 or 4 times over the 3 years I’ve been employed at the company).

> You need to set expectations early in the job when you aren't defying a standard behavior but setting that

100% to this.

It's all about expectations.

I'm not sure how regulation can hope to really solve this when the problem isn't that an employer is forcing anything on you, but usually more one where your coworkers are independently making decisions about out-of-hours availability that create an unspoken culture, and usual and customary expectations that differ from the official written ones.

You're perfectly free to completely ignore work after 5pm! Nothing bad will happen! A company will swear up and down all day long that they support flex time and you're not expected to ever answer any queries outside of your own working hours!

But if a number of your coworkers decide of their own volition they're going to be in touch at all hours of the day and that becomes the default soft expectation, then you might look worse in comparison. Maybe not in the short term, maybe people will make a strong effort to un-bias themselves during performance reviews and not pay that any mind, but over time, you're sharing the bonus and raises pool with workers who valued their time less than you and perhaps ended up getting higher visibility for it.

Should regulation then mandate that your coworkers disconnect? Maybe. We do it for truckers, pilots, and flight attendants in safety-critical jobs: they're not allowed to work more than a certain set of hours regardless of whether they'd gladly do so.

It's just about pay isn't it? If you're fine working less hours for less pay, that's fine. That was always the choice. Of course there is a threshold below which you get no job at all but that isn't the case mostly. It's about pay vs. peers.

> You're perfectly free to completely ignore work after 5pm! Nothing bad will happen!

Maybe not in a big tech job. But I have worked at startups where ignoring work after 5pm was grounds for a negative performance review and being passed over for promotions. This was not the unspoken culture, it was the clear from-the-top direction. Deadlines existed and features needed to ship, and that required evening and weekend work.

If you in a role with even less power, ignoring work after hours can wind up with you being terminated.

> You are lucky because you have the privilege of being able to do this.

Plot twist: If everyone did like EddieDante, then the boss can't fire everyone and will accept the new status quo.

Both parties have bargaining power, abstractly speaking. The real power comes from the organization/leadership and not the work itself. Otherwise, there will be no CEO, manager, governments, etc... It'll be just workers exchanging goods between one/another.

>You are lucky because you have the privilege of being able to do this.

Maybe the person you replied to is skillful because they prepared for it? Not everything is just the result of life's crap shoot of luck and privilege. If you're finding your employer requires more of you than you wish to give, drawing boundaries and sticking with them makes sense to some people. Psychologists use the term agreeableness[1] to express this sort of sentiment, a person who would demand not to be bothered after work would be classified as less agreeable than a person who is willing to take calls in an "emergency" or just as a regular function of their job, you can see the differences in the continuum there. Many of the most highly paid people have lower agreeableness in tech.

[1]https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/agreeableness-conscientiousne...

This is my attitude. Come 5pm, the phone goes into a focus mode ignoring work. I ignore any other desktop communications, frequently closing Slack and Superhuman. Disconnecting from work is the only way to stay sane. No one has yelled at me yet at this job. Previous jobs were awful though. We started work at 10am everyday and the CTO woke me up by calling twice at 7am to break through my do not disturb, just to tell me to push a feature asap. Nothing critical at all. Some bosses absolutely have zero respect for personal time and space.

Last place I worked, I was on call once every 4 weeks or so which entailed getting up in the middle of the night at least 3 days and often more then once. They also practiced dog-pile trouble shooting where everyone was expected to hop on "red alerts" and stay on the call until the issue was resolved.

I've seen it take 6hrs+, running past 5 o'clock or sometimes starting in the evening and running for hours.

During the pandemic, I unplugged around 3pm to grab some new shoes for a kid that had ripped theirs out, because other guys were around and after 5pm I'm on my own. Boss starts texting me, "where are you" and "you should do this stuff after hours"...

This really left a sour taste and I've since moved on.

We need some sort of ability to demand OT, hour for hour comp time, and after hours compensation. One person can fight back, but we are constantly undercut by management. I would often try to comp time and get hit up because it's a busy week, then later that comp time would evaporate and I'd get alot of flack trying to claw it back. My preference is not to comp my time in the morning, but I'd end up clocking in an hour later afew times a week just to try and get some of my time back.

Did you get a new job and does it have better options for you requiring less time?

Yes, more pay and better on call hours. All remote.

Compensation or time off in lieu for overtime and callouts is the bare minimum we should expect. That shouldn't even be up for debate, and I'm glad to say, everywhere I've worked (in the UK) respects that.

Where I have problems is being expected to be available while "on call" but not being paid for it. In my opinion: if you can't get shit faced, you're working, and should be compensated accordingly with all working time regulations applying as normal.

Yeah, we didn't get anything above our regular salary.

Remember the hurricane that hit Virginia in 2012 or 2013? I wasn't even "on call" - i was just the only person with credentials. I told the DBA and the boss and the CTO that you can't just fix an outage at a cloud provider due to hurricane with telnet and a prayer candle.

Then i opened a bottle of whisky, and listened to them try to figure out how much data we lost, until about 5 AM. I don't remember if i was hourly contract or hourly employee at that point, but i did get ~8 hours of pay that evening for doing nothing but not unmuting my voice on the phone call!

I don't do Disaster Recovery anymore, no one really listens.

> We need some sort of ability to demand OT, hour for hour comp time, and after hours compensation.

The word is "union". You want a union.

> Some bosses absolutely have zero respect for personal time and space.

Pecking order is everything.

In most organizations, exercising said disrespect for subordinates is a key method for management to demonstrate, enforce, and enjoy their higher social status.

Similarly, subordinates must exercise respect and deference to the time, space, and attention of management. This is a key method to help employees demonstrate, acknowledge, and internalize their lower social status.

Any threats to the status hierarchy threaten the structure of the organization and are usually dealt with harshly.

Indeed. I'll never work for a company like that again. And it's another reason managers want people back in offices.

Does it mean you work with focus from 8am to 5pm? And suppose that you're working in a competitive environment and you won't meet the expectation for your job if you don't work a few extra hours?

I entirely agree it's your right, but if you're ambitious and working more can help you to achieve certain goals, it's not unreasonable to work more than the bare minimum. As long as it's a personal choice, I think it's fine.

Same here, when my hours are up I'm done, work will be there for me in the morning. I'm surprised how many of my coworkers say they "feel" like they can't do that. I'm working in an engineering organization with major retention issues so at this point there's no way we will be punished for insisting on work-life balance.

I think at least 50% of the problem is on the employee side.

Hell, most of the time I don't even reply to things immediately during work hours.

Unless it requires absolute immediate attention, don't expect an immediate response. If you want sync comms for collaboration, organize a meeting and I'm all yours for two hours or as long as it takes. Otherwise, I'm putting myself on DND and checking my email and IMs every few hours so I have some space for deep focus.

"We are taught that corporations have a soul, which is the most terrifying news in the world" (Deleuze, Postscript on the Societies of Control).

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