Young People Have No Idea What We Used to Do After Work. Let Me Regale You

I used to watch Work Slack 24/7 because I was gigging and I needed to respond to gig offers immediately. I don't do that anymore, and my work comms are completely isolated from my personal comms. If I'm not logged into my work account, I won't see anything work-related. It's paradise. Working is 100% discretionary for me, but I'm highly motivated to put in the hours each week. 90% of our communications are over Slack channels. Corporate and HR sends emails to let us know stuff, but of course that email goes only to my work email box, which I can't even read if I'm not logged into my work account.

I don't care what time my employer emails me or sends me a slack message I'm going to ignore it if it's after normal work hours until the next day, unless I'm very bored, but there is no expectation. I do participate in an on call escalation rotation but there is exactly one way to contact someone through the escalation process. If something doesn't come through that process you are not getting me after hours when it's my turn to be in the rotation. Additionally the employer understands that if you are contacted after hours for an escalation there is comp time to make up for the time you worked after hours.

Having interviewed at other companies I understand that I work at a decent employer who understands work-life balance and strives to give that to their employees. This also fosters extremely loyal employees. During the height of the pandemic I know I worked many extra hours because I'm single I live alone and being bored work is something to do. But that did not become the norm that the employer expected they were simply grateful extra work got done.

Ultimately I believe it is employees at these other companies that allow their employer to abuse them. It can be difficult as a single employee to stand up against this kind of nonsense but as a group it becomes a lot easier.

Additionally for the more passive aggressive, simply record all of the after hours expectations and report this to your state agency. A lot of people in IT are often salaried usually at 40 hours a week in the United States. Employers love to classify these workers as exempt workers thus not having to pay them overtime for additional hours, but when you actually look at what it takes to qualify for exempt status you don't actually meet it. Again this kind of enforcement really comes down to employees reporting this up to State and Federal agencies so audit can be done and back pay handed out.

I worked for one company in a services department where we were required to track our hours because they were billed to customers. It was not uncommon to bill out more than 40 hours per week because there was just that much work to do plus you also recorded your hours for the mandatory paperwork and everything else. I actually mentioned when they switched to this process of recording hours this would be a bad idea because we were all salaried but they insisted this would be better. When I left I sent the copy of my timesheets off to the states wage an hour department reporting violations and failure to pay overtime. Took a couple years to wind through the entire process but a check finally came.

If you don't protect your time it's unlikely anyone else will do it for you.