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Does Constant Access Shatter the Home/Work Boundary?
StonyandCher has passed us a link to PCWorld.au, once again raising the tough topic of work/life separation. A department of the Australian government went ahead with a purchase of dozens of Blackberry communication devices, but is now delaying their deployment. The reason: "Staff expressed fears about BlackBerries contributing to a longer working day and felt it was going a step too far because mobile phones are adequate for out-of-office contact. Not everyone agreed, however, with some senior executives claiming a BlackBerry can contribute to work/life balance by facilitating telecommuting and more flexible schedules. " For the time being this issue is on hold for those staffers, but how does this issue fall for you? Is constant accessibility freeing or just another chain around your neck?
I know employers can apply pressure, but employees should try to establish early and firmly what extended accessibility means. Pagers have been around for millenia, Blackberrys simply give better message.
Arrange and agree to a schedule for which you consider yourself "on call", publish those times, and make it clear you aren't "on call" when you aren't.
Personally, I see the encroachment more often by those who have some tension with their personal life whereby this constant connectivity to their job elevates somehow their status, and provides instant and real-time reason/excuse to be unavailable in their personal lives. In other words, lots of those who "get connected" like this do so willingly, and with a certain sense of self-importance.
My other observation has been that those who are not to be bothered by work when they're not expected to be available off-hours simply don't carry their Blackberry, or turn it off.
I know there's always the exception, but I think most employer-employee relationships can and do strike equilibrium with minimal fuss. If your employer is that horrid in their insistence and demands, find another employer. I did.
Aside from the fact that my manager sometimes asks me to take my BlackBerry with me when I go on vacation (which I refuse to do), it's really easy to just look at it in the evenings or on weekends to see if there's any mail and check on things. I have taken to setting the automatic power down/power on setting, so I am not tempted to sneak a peak when I walk past it when I'm at home. I never check work mail on the computer in my free time, but the BlackBerry makes it so easy, it doesn't feel like I'm working until I've sunk 2 hours into something that could have waited until the morning.
Staff expressed fears about BlackBerries contributing to a longer working day
Just going out on a limb here, but couldn't they switch it off when they don't want to be working?
At least, I know it does for me. There are plenty of times now I wish we had never gotten these stupid Blackberries. Once your management knows that they can get a hold of you via email any time, any place, they suddenly expect that to be the norm. With plain old cell phones, it requires a personal interaction that feels much more intrusive. When you shoot off an email, it doesn't feel the same. You don't feel bad about it, like you do when you call someone and interrupt their dinner. Which makes people much more likely to do it.
I've heard people say "thank god I'm not eligible [meaning high enough in the food chain] to get one of those" over where I work. So I'd say people definitely fear the intrusion of work into privacy and I understand totally. There's got to be a time where you have to be able to say "I'm sorry, but I was out and couldn't check company mail".
I would think this rather obvious: using a black-berry to receive emails when you are out in the field during your business day is enabling remoteness, while using it to return emails at dinner is removing the work/home distinction. I don't generally see a black-berry as offering a distinct advantage over a cellphone with text messaging in the case of those "get everyone on the phone, the server is down" emergencies... and if you are doing routine emails during your off-hours then they are not off-hours.
On the one hand, I enjoy the flexibility of having my laptop come home with me, so that if something happens and I can't get to my office, I can still work. On the other hand, I get obsessive with problems I can't solve, so there's the pitfall of going home, logging in, and continuing to work. It's up to the individual to control their use. Now, if your supervisor begins pressuring you to work more... that's a whole different ballgame, but still, you have to push back when work bleeds into your home life to the point that it interferes too much.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
The consequence is that I also don't work that hard when I'm actually at work.
It's easier for me to justify randomly screwing around on the internet or working on personal coding/whatever at work because I wind up checking email and working over weekends to get things done. I think it's fair. They steal some of my free time, I waste some of their paid time.
if you let it be one. A job doesn't necessarily mean 24/7 accessibility.
I'd rather have the crackberry (or mobile phone, or notebook) available if I *need* to do something, than have to run to the office on a saturday because of one forgotten task or reply. And yes, you can turn it off!
I have a blackberry 8800, which revolutionised how I work.
:)
I have several email addresses routed to it, which each have different notification tones. If I receive a Nagios alert to my "Oh Crap" email address, the notification is loud and insistent. If I receive personal mail, it's subtle. Business mail is also fairly quiet and subtle but different to personal mail.
Outside of "working hours", I can choose to ignore it easily enough. Only if our monitoring system picks up something alert-worthy do I have to actually bother actioning something immediately.
When I was first offered the blackberry, I made it clear to the MD that this would not intrude upon my personal life unnecessarily. If I *choose* to read my business emails outside of working hours, then all fine. I balance that with *choosing* to read my personal mail during work hours
P.
Beer Coat: The invisible but warm coat worn when walking home after a booze cruise at 3 in the morning.
I have one, and I almost never get called ever since I stopped pushing software updates on Friday.
Then again, you make me do work stuff at home, I'm gonna do more home stuff at work. Yay internet.
"...some senior executives claiming a BlackBerry can contribute to work/life balance by facilitating telecommuting and more flexible schedules."
You negotiate beforehand what happens when the pager goes off - either you get 'overtime', comp-time off, or your salary begins large enough to compensate you for the projected time spent on pager-duty. Not much different w/ a Crackberry...
If you get one issued to you, demand compensation for the added work that's sure to come with it - either through more flexible scheduling, more money, more comp/vacation time, or something substantial.
I have a decent setup where I'm at now - if I get a call, then the time spent gets deducted the next day or day after, or they pay me overtime based on 1.5x my salary broken down to an hourly rate (based on a typical 40hr week). Pretty simple after that.
Now, if you're adamant about delineated time-off vs. time-on, then simply state as much before you start.
But, like the parent said... most employers are perfectly okay with this, and it's only a minimum of haggle. Any employer who isn't needs to be dropped for one who is.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
yes
But simply have a corporate-issued laptop with VPN power to connect remotely has been both a blessing and a curse. A blessing, because I can work from home frequently. A curse, because I find myself still doing work-related activities at 9:00 PM without even thinking about it. I'd be lying if I said this hadn't led to some marriage-related stress; it is tough to make and stick to work/life boundaries when work is constantly available.
"To hope's end I rode and to heart's breaking: Now for wrath, now for ruin and a red nightfall!"
direct brain implants.
Remember everybody, nobody owns you. You can turn off your phone when you feel like it. You have free-will, use it at your discretion.
From TFS: "senior executives claiming a BlackBerry can contribute to work/life balance by facilitating telecommuting and more flexible schedules. "
More flexible for whom? Where I work, that seems to be a one way flexibility. Senior executives are making (SWAG alert) 3x - 10x what I am making. They have made the choice to have a large stake in how the company performs. While I have a stake, of course, it's just not as large or worth my personal/family life. It seems like despite being more accessible, people's work hours never get shorter. And that's what it's about in the end, isn't it? Getting more done in less time? But in rality, it just seems that it's about getting more done in more time. No good. I am glad I have no blackberry.
blah blah blah
To me the blackberry is a blessing, because it helps me find out about things sooner. If I didn't find out about some things on the blackberry, then I'd only find out about them when I next get to the office, except more time would have elapsed and the urgency would be higher. So for me a little bit of intrusiveness (urgent email when I'm on my way home) is more than offset by reducing the stress of getting to work and finding shit happened last night and I wasn't aware).
However I do establish limits on the intrusiveness of the blackberry. Mine never buzzes for email and is switched off entirely from about mid-evening to around breakfast the next day. During that off period people can contact me on my cellphone if they really need me.
If there isn't that time critical element to a persons responsibilities then I can imagine it being not worth it.
My take on all this is, I like to be well connected but hard to reach.
Blackberries I don't find appealing, because they have too many triggers to allow people to get to you right then - from email to paging to phone. It's really the email that's the worst, Blackberry users seem to stop whatever they are doing right that second to read and answer an email.
People need to be willing to let the mail queue at least a little bit... it would be nice to have a device have some kind of setting to only allow a notice once in a given time period (say every half hour).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
So the real place this comes into play is if you are on call for emergencies. If you are and you just have a phone then some one has to consciously escalate something to you as en emergency to pull you away from your life. If emergency and regular work email all get to you through the same channel then you have to keep checking the email box and evaluate all the incoming email, and you have to decide whether or not to treat something like an emergency, and since the consequences for being wrong can be severe you are likely to respond to a bunch of things that can wait til the next business day.
So if you already have an irrevocable work/life boundary you are safe, but if there are some degrees of work that may always interfere with your life a device like a blackberry can make work more invasive.
I'm not when I'm not.
Seriously people, if you don't want to be bothered at home, make it clear. My company had no problem with that. Turn off the company phone/blackberry/whatever or at least stand your ground. Granted I don't work in IT so I don't know what common policies are like=, but I am on call, during certain hours. If they call outside of those hours, they will get a polite no (they have never tried).
Gone!
To me, it's not much different than a cell phone.
1. Phone rings
2. See caller ID.
3. IF callID == 'BOSS' HIT silent
4. ???
5. More leisure/beer time... profit!
Do the executives wnat them for the reasons stated, or do they want them as a status symbol when they're on the golf course?
I'm an IT employee for a "state & local" govt organization in the US.
When we first started granting remote access for people to work at home, our legal dept determined that whenever someone accesses even just simply reading their office email from outside, beyond the scope of the normal work day, then it can be deemed to be working overtime. Due to this reason only salaried "exempt" employees could be granted remote access with the explicit instructions that remote access was to only be used for critical work and emergencies and they have to keep a detailed journal of when they use remote access and why and what work was done. It's made remote access almost more hassle than it's worth. Now that we have Blackberries, there's the added constraint that every employee issued one must keep a log of all personal, non-govt-business phone calls they make from the device, which will be compared against the master wireless bill each month, and the employee has to pay reimbursement for those calls.
First thing I did years ago when I got a BlackBerry was turn the email notification sounds/vibrations off. Aside from the fact I get way more email that I'd like to, I know I would want to check it once I hear it. By having it off, I check it on my terms. I don't have a typical 8-5, have to be in the office job, so for me the BlackBerry is a huge asset and time saver. When I wake up in the morning, the first thing I do is grab my BlackBerry and see how my day is lining up so far. Occasionally, I get a sneak a bit more sleep :)
Also, change your emails signatures to be identical from both your email client and BlackBerry and people won't know where you sent it from!
I agree with this.
After accidentally destroying my Motorola Razr, which I received alerts on, I went ahead and purchased a Blackberry Curve, the 8320.
The difference in phones is astounding, and not only that, the service was cheaper with the different provider I chose--and gave me many more options.
I can even use the blackberry as a modem to get online if my cable connection goes out, power, what have you.
I work remotely much of the time, and this blackberry lets me take my office anywhere I can use my laptop--and with the chat and email, I might not even be anywhere near my laptop, (such as slacking) and still respond to mail and chats and give the appearance that I am at work (chat is used as the "are you working" sort of attendance roll call), or can respond to things while on the way somewhere.
Before the black berry, being on call (with a 15 minute response time) meant being chained home during the on-call times. Not anymore. As long as I am within driving range of the data center, I can go out and do anything, and connect remotely with the blackberry as a modem. Sure, I have to take the laptop with me--but I can go out to eat, or even grocery shopping--without having to ditch the cart and rush home to check out a critical problem.
Granted, if my staff had more people, I wouldn't have been so restricted, so I had to think of a way to increase my flexibility. Cell phones are a leash, but the Blackberry makes that leash considerably longer.
I started using a BlackBerry 950 in 1999. Having been tethered with a numeric pager for 3 years in a prior operations job, I immediately set expectations about carrying it and responding to it after hours. I wasn't in an operations job anymore, so i wouldn't. If they needed me bad enough, they could look up my home phone number in the phone book and call. I don't believe in cell phones either.
Then I found the "auto-off / on" setting and had it turn off at 6pm and back on at 7am. Done.
A few years later, the new Blue-Berry model came out and I was part of a trial to determine if 14K upgrades were needed. Nope. Only the Mobitext network change forced that a few years later. However, I quickly set my auto-on/off settings to 6p/7a and didn't have **any** non-important email forwarded to it. I like to read and handle email only once since I was getting 300+ messages a day. Seeing them more than once is a waste of my time. After a while, everyone got used to me not responding immediately to emails (I was a technical architect, not some Project Manager or operations or other job where I can make up answers without double checking them first), including my chain of command. Managing expectations.
Fortunately, my managers never seems to have an issue with those settings because I almost never left something hanging that needed to be handled that day when I left. About 3 times in the last 8 years did I keep the pager on overnight, but I always KNEW that something could happen that would need my attention on a project. I routinely worked 20-50 projects each year from adding 2 disks to installing 60 fairly large HP servers across 15 locations ($24M budget) with redundant DS3 networking between them all.
I retired about a month ago at 41 yrs old. Nice work if you can get it. I turned in my laptop, SecurID, and BlackBerry 8200. I honestly don't miss them. I do miss the people, however. In fact, I'm meeting an old work friend for lunch today.
Blackberry's are a tool. Use them as such, don't let them, or your boss abuse you.
Work is that place you go to 5x9. Anything else isn't work, and work shouldn't have an expectation that you're available during that time. If work needs additional coverage, they need to hire additional staff. Period. Leads to: more jobs, more free time (and yes, less take-home pay for the type-As. If they want more, they can work 2 jobs). If work can't afford to hire additional, they have no business trying to operate beyond 5x9.
You are correct: employees *should* be able to manage this.
But, in the real world, situations vary.
Pagers have been around for millenia, Blackberrys simply give better message.
With pagers, someone had to make the conscious decision to bother someone at the other end of a pager. With Blackberry devices, someone in Japan might send an email - when it is convenient for them - to someone in New York when it is not convenient. If the recipient hasn't configured the device's privacy schedule, then they will be notified of the email. Again - not everyone is a geek and configuring a privacy profile on a Blackberry isn't easy for everyone.
I'd be inclined to agree with you completely if a technical fix weren't so trivial - if RIM simply created a privacy profile that could be enforced by employers, then we wouldn't be discussing this. If I set a week of vacation in my calendar, then the Blackberry should automatically force itself to disconnect during this period. And please don't get caught up in the minutiae - it goes without saying that exceptions could be easily accommodated.
More
If you're really too lily-livered to just turn the machine off when you're alseep/with the kids/can't be arsed just say the darn this was broken/malfunctionning and get back to it when you can.
I work from home with my job. I have a blackberry, PC Access cards, and am on the team that pushes issues with our product to the engineering team. I'd like to think that I'm well-connected, however, living in Ohio, which isn't known for it's technological feats, I have an easy time in setting my work hours and not blurring the line between home and work -- I turn the VPN off. Unless I'm on Call, when I leave for the night, my Blackberry sits in my top desk drawer. I still do things online, and I still have time to sysadmin my own servers and do my own thing, and not blur the line -- even though it's a subset of my current job, I still need to do sysadmin type stuff to keep my skill-sets sharp. I spent time with the wife, and if I'm really bored after she falls asleep, I might sneak back into my office for a few hours to get a jump start on the next day's work.
On the other hand, when I first started, I was constantly working, updating tickets at 3AM, trying to keep the upper hand with engineering. I do give a damn about my customers, but, it's not worth the added stress to myself and the family to be constantly working. I'm also not getting paid to work two shifts, so, why should I work them?
It's quite simple. When people started expecting their work to also be fun, or a vehicle for personal fulfillment, they stopped minding when they were asked to work outside of office hours.
To some of us, a job is something that we do for a paycheck. That means that we don't want to live "the lifestyle" and that we don't want our personal time to be intruded upon. You have to value something in your life higher than your work in order to understand this.
What some people don't get is that when your shift or day or whatever is done....YOU have the power to shut a Blackberry OFF. That off button can mitigate your work/life balance.
I wonder how many of the carckberry addicts got that way from gradually increasing service expectations, not managerial interdicts?
The problem in my group isn't so much that my boss wants everyone to be accessible 24/7, its that my co-workers try to out-do each other in the customer service area. Coincidentally, the people who keep the most lusers happy usually get the best raises because they have the lowest number of complaints. I guess that some people would rather have a juicy raise than a good night's sleep.
Here will be an old abusing of God's patience and the king's English.
I'd be fine with this if my company paid me for any "on call" time. Any expectation for me to be availabe during my off-the-clock time should be compensated, regardless of utilisation of that time.
To everyone saying they've told work when they'll be available on their Blackberry...
It must be nice to be able to set the terms on which you'll work for the company. You must have a lot of leverage there. A lot of us are not so lucky.
hot foreign sheep.
My workstation at work is so far and beyond anything that i have at home that replicating what i can do at my desk at home is impossible. I do mainly graphic design work, so a really big workspace is pretty important. Sure, my little tiny laptop can run gimp and scribus just fine, but it is just really really ineffective for getting any actual work done. Usually if I want/need to get work done (I really enjoy my job), I will just drive into work. Security is here 24/7...and sometimes the best work gets done in the middle of the night and on the weekends (at least for me).
;-) /i just realized i use a LOT of open soure software for work (apache, vsftpd, linux, scribus, gimp, mysql, openvpn, ...(i'm sure theres more) THANKS COMMUNITY!
So yes, I have the ABILITY to remotely log into work, but aside from the occasional session on our As/400 machine, or SSH session on one of our linux servers (which is usually just me goofing around with perl anyhow, or messing with openvpn) i don't really do ANY work from home...
my $0.02....oh, and a shameless showing-off of my workspace! Bragging
NewslilySocial News. No lolcats allowed.
Email doesn't feel intrusive precisely because it /isn't/ immediate. You haven't actually contacted the person until the time they choose to allow it. It's only "any time, any place" if you choose to sit there glued to that damned screen. Put the CrackBerry down and walk away. You'd be amazed how many people will never notice you're ignoring them.
I think they have done more to break down the work/home distinction than any other modern tether. The problem with them is that if you have one you are usually expected to respond to all email that comes in, regardless of the actual urgency of the email. If a device like a Blackberry can be used to get away from the office equal to the amount of time that the office intrudes on personal life, I'm all for it. But more often then not you are expected to put in your 40+ hours at the office and then be on instant on-call once you leave the office. They are not used for balance, but rather for intrusion. I have a cell modem that I use to dial-up when I'm on the train, and so I use it to leave the office early and come in late about once a week. In other words, my company understands that the balance extends both ways. They get to intrude on my home life, so my home life gets to intrude on work. I work late when when work issues come up, so when home issues arise I come to work late. I use the devices to create the balance, not to let work intrude.
As far as I know, all the communications devices I own have an off switch. I use them frequently.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
I don't have a Blackberry but I was finally given access to our corporate VPN ... which is the greatest thing ever as far as I'm concerned.
It means I can leave the office, relax in different surroundings (the house or the coffee-shop) and hack away in a change of scenery. Better yet, if something strikes me at ten p.m. I can log in instead of trying to hold onto an idea until the morning.
I find, however, that when I leave work I'm very conscious of having spent my eight hours sitting in front of a screen ... I'm aware that this is my downtime (i.e. more expendable but more treasured) and I try to enforce that. As such, I've never found myself lost in work at home.
"Shoot for the moon, even if you miss, you may hit a tree"
I went to work at Comcast, and they made it mandatory that I buy a cell phone. Not only that, they told me which carrier I had to go to. I accidentally mixed up Sprint and Nextel, knowing of their merger and thinking they were the same company. For that mistake, I was at first reprimanded. I fixed the mistake after 4hours at the mall. Then the wave of calls from my boss hit. I mean this dude called me every 5 minutes. Sometimes less. It got to the point where I got home and he would keep calling. I was using my own vehicle, and didn't want to drive and use the phone at the same time, and if I stopped everytime he called, I would not have made it to a single stop. Within a week, I was in the hospital with panic attacks. I still get them, but I don't have the job to pay for medical care. All I have is /. and my neighbors wireless signal that he lets me use. A constant state of worry started when Comcast broke the boundary of home/work. And even at work, it was a nightmare. I still have collection agents after me from the hospital, and from the two cell phone companies. Needless to say, the kids aren't having a Christmas because of Comcast, and their terrible policies.
My company has cel phone (not blueberries) on all the people in my group. We're the top end of problem solvers in the support side of the organization. They also encouraged us to work from home one day a week to help make up for the occasional weekend day or late night we were pulling.
This ended when a director level person walked through our area one day and didn't see enough butts in seats for their liking. Now they wonder why they have so much trouble getting people to answer the cel phones and work those long/extra hours from home.
I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore
There are a couple of reasons why its very beneficial to me having a smartphone (let's call it what they are). I also have my office phone forwarded to my cell which means my clients can reach me ALL day. No voice mail, no missed calls. Happy interactions and accidents all day. Here's why:
:)
1. If I come in late, I've already been responding to my emails and early morning calls on the bus 30 minutes prior. Tick tock - I'm getting paid for my time regardless where I am. +1 karma bonus
2. If a client calls me (internal or external) they can actually talk to me. And I can check my calendar for future availability and schedule meetings while on the phone.(i.e. portable office)+2 Karma bonus.
3. If I'm walking between meetings, I check my calendar for recently sent appointments or meeting notices - it keeps me plugged in and on time - not a bad thing becuase it improves my work performance and perception that I'm punctiual and a good employee.+1 Karma bonus
4. If I'm leaving work, and someone calls, they hear and ask - "are you out of the office" "yes, I'm heading home but that's ok - how can I help you?" It means that my clients think I'm committed to the services I provide. +3 Karma bonus.
5. Finally, if I forget a document, or an email with key details, it's always at my beck and call by simply looking it up on my device. It also means I have answers to questions that can come out of left field - making me seem prepared for all challenges. +1 Karma bonus.
Besides, the text messaging to my staff during a meeting is a huge tactical bonus - "What is this issue about blah blah" texted staff-"It was because of this" - making me appear connected to my happenings. Of course, I may get texted msged "THE EMAIL IS DOWN. RUN!" It also gives me ample time to hide.
Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things. - Peter F. Drucker
Here is the issue I had. I am a Network Admin for a company of about 60 users and 25 servers. When I first started my Boss was the director of IT. He had his Blackberry and for the most part did all the work not directly related to servers and Cisco equipment. He always warned me that if I step to far out to help or take care of an issue, that I could never step back. 1 year later I still work for this company and I am now the director of IT. I have hired a new guy as a programmer and IT mook to setup new users and what not. I now have a Blackberry and I see what my old boss meant. Now that I respond to emails, it's like your EXPECTED to be "Johnny on the spot." If you don't then you get a negative look on your shoulders. Yeah you can balance work with home, but when your users start taking advantage of you it begins to consume your life. It becomes more routine to have to check your email every hour, and respond to specific issues. Yeah I could simply turn my phone off, but again... you will have CEO's CFO's COO's who expect that work to be taken care of or at least responded to that night. When you start to cut back people begin to ask questions "Does this guy still care for the company?" To this day I somewhat regret getting my phone and reaching out. Yeah being the Admin here I do need to be "Johnny on the spot" but only for more critical issues, like the Exchange Server went down.
The greatest revenge in life is massive success.
Did anyone notice the stark contrast between the view of the Executives and the workabees?
The Executives believe that the Blackberries can facilitate telecommuting and a balance between life and work. The grunts fear this is just a way to ensure longer workdays.
Why do you think that might be?
Could it be that relative to the workers, the execs don't really have that much work to balance with their life?
I think there is at least one other very important aspect here relative to telecommuting. Telecommuting really only works when there are a few key ingredients:
-
Trust. The manager needs to trust the worker.
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A way to measure work. I find the managers the most comfortable with telecommuting, flex-time, etc., were those in situations where counting widgets was easy. If there is no clear way to measure output, this becomes a bit more of a challenge.
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Good management, including proper escalation. My current management has clearly expressed that they expect routine escalation since we're understaffed. We're all comfortable about it since it then becomes the manager's job to prioritize. A bad manager simply attempts to appease everyone and twist the arms of employees to get them to do everything despite burnout.
If you are in a situation where the environment isn't already very comfortable with flex-time, telecommuting, etc., picking up a device which may lead others to expect immediate responses to email at all hours of the day may be a rather horrible idea.There are times I honestly wish work would call me when I'm off duty to ask about things. At least once a week something happens where people aren't sure of what to do in a given situation so they just make something up and I'm left to clean up the mess the next day. Would it be worth the five minutes of personal time to save that hour of work time? Usually. The only downside I see is that if I didn't spend most of my days putting out fires I end up not having a whole lot to do.
....sitting in the bathroom.
I'd say it helps to multi-task.
I am in IT and I have to carry a phone for on-call purposes. I have seen the transition to blackberries happen at my own work. On the sum of things, I believe that the blackberry has been somewhat more beneficial for me as compared to those with whom I work. Unlike a lot of them, I turn off all email notifications. Instead I rely on SMS alerts for emergencies, and only read email when I feel like it. This keeps me from feeling stressed about having to answer every single email right when it comes in. There are other things you can do to control the email flow (filters, important/normal flags, etc.). The blackberry has helped me as I am able to be somewhat useful even when I am on the bus traveling into work. Blackberries (as well as an increasing number of other phones) can do a lot of what a wireless radio enabled laptop can do. Instant messaging, web browsing (including corporate networks), bluetooth headphones, as well as SSH, VPN, telnet in a pinch.
The difference is you have clients. You are your own boss. But if you are a wage slave where the rewards for your good performance are much more indirect (if there are any), it's a huge intrusion into your life. Most people would rather stop thinking about work when they clock out and I don't blame them one bit. Try to put yourself in their shoes.
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
They are messengers. Messengers are not as intrusive as a phone call. A phone call has to be answered (optimally) while an instant message can be answered with a delay.
But then again, my feng shui is broken anyway, my office is my living room, and I have 6 computers on all the time - well since I am a treehugger they hybernate/powersave themselves as much as possible.
I still prefer IM as I can simply ignore them, and my asterisk server goes into "we are closed this time" mode for business calls after 7pm, and does not allow anyone in after 9pm (unless you enter an emergency code, which is only known by close family)
I'm a systems administrator. I have had a Blackberry for several years but only recently started checking it constantly.
In my opinion, it has been dangerous to my health. Previously, when a server would have an issue (major or minor) I wouldn't really address it until users started complaining. Sometimes I'd get an email notification, sometimes I wouldn't -- regardless, repair wouldn't begin until 9 AM the next day.
Some people may view that as bad administration (and it is, to a degree), but there was a clear delineation between when work ended and "brain reset" time began. Now, I'm constant checking my Blackberry, always monitoring servers, etc. Great work ethic, right?
Problem is: I can't sleep at nights. I wake up at 4 AM to check backups. I check that the work other admins have done has been done correctly.
Work never "ends". I'm always getting the emails about new work that needs to be done. Recently I went to the doctor because I had tremendous stomach pain. Turned out to be something I ate and stress. I've lost weight (unintentionally).
People may say (and they're right to a degree) that it is my own psychosis that's the issue. Clearly I haven't delineated in my own mind what is "important" work and what isn't -- what needs to be checked constantly and what doesn't.
However, to say the Blackberry isn't contributing to this is crazy. Years ago, nobody would communicate with me from work after I went home. Now I'm constantly being communicated with -- there's no way to shut it off (without fear of a server blowing up somewhere).
It's funny -- a few months ago there was a similar Slashdot story that mentioned Blackberries and I was on the side that they were helpful. Clearly, though, this one attached to my hip has caused great problems with my health. It's enough that I'm thinking of getting out of systems administration altogether.
I'm a sysadmin by trade, and I work for a large time-zone-spanning company that solely uses servers that have almost complete lights-out admin capability (and a 24/7 staff of trained monkeys on site when that fails. Though in this case I may have insulted trained monkeys...)
If I have a network connection and my cellphone, I can get my job done from anywhere. I have, in the past, put in my 8-12 hours from various places-- Mom's house, varied poker junkets, travelling to help out a friend, whatever.
Note I didn't say "on vacation"-- everyone needs their down time. But if I want to spend a few evenings in Atlantic City, I can bring the laptop, do my job by day, be a degenerate gambler in the evenings...
Of course, I'm also in something of an ideal situation-- I'm actually getting to use the tools that can "facilitate work-life balance" for exactly that. My boss is cool with it, but I'm sure if the wackjobs who run the company knew what was happening, they'd put the kibosh on it in a hurry; to them, "work-life balance" is what happens when your work is your life so they're by definition balanced...
It means that I don't have to be in the office to take care of matters, which means more at-home time for me. As far as constantly checking my e-mail, I generally don't. Even if I do, that doesn't mean I have to respond. I also like knowing what to expect before I arrive at work. Bottom line, I'd rather be able to satisfy an overly demanding boss from home, rather than spending my evenings and Saturdays in the cube.
The nice thing about being a public employee (or any classified shop with a decent union), is that even if you carry a blackberry, the second your fingers touch a keyboard from home, and its work related, you get instant overtime. If they say "no overtime" you can easily say "no work" and there isn't a foot for them to stand on. (see above caveat). The real luxury is that some shops (like mine) give you on-call pay of $3.40/hr if you're carrying a BB even if you don't get called, which turns into about $400 extra a paycheck. Getting a message here or there from the boss asking you to do something first thing in the morning, or server alerts is kind of nice, and better than a call from home for me.
All that being said, it would be a cold day in hell before I'd carry one of these things if it was "just expected" that if my boss gets some crazy idea at 11:30 at night that I'm on the hook to do whatever he wants by 8AM the next day all the time, and I didn't have a union that would ensure that I got OT it, and cover me when I say "No" if he gets it in his head that he's entitled to my services, for free, after hours.
Forgive my spelling from time to time. I'm often posting during short breaks.
I find it rather hilarious how many mechanisms we have for communication these days.
But what is very interesting is the inconsistency of it all.
I use the following means to communicate to my peers at work:
Due to cost reduction efforts, many workers no longer have work cell phones nor pagers. But some do. Furthermore, many of us permit others to call us on our personal mobile phones but don't publish these numbers in the official directories.
Next, for a variety of reasons different individuals seem to prefer one channel over another. I often go very long periods without even bothering to check voice-mail (which when coupled with extensive telecommuting renders futile attempts to contact me via that channel). Some in my group simply won't use Internet Messaging. Some aren't as responsive to email.
A lot of this has to do with various coping mechanisms or frustrations. Some who do use IM get rather frustrated when half-a-dozen of us in a virtual meeting all conclude we need to involve them. Simultaneously they'll get half-a-dozen IMs asking questions or inviting them to join the meeting. Others of us cascade avenues of contact to minimize extra work. Those that need to know (i.e. management or close peers) do know how to reach us but all others are kept at arm's length so as to be able to prioritize work and avoid getting buried.
When I here the complaints of these workers regarding Blackberries, it seems as if they're rather afraid of the expectation of fast response to email. At the moment they likely have any old excuse for not responding to email promptly. That'll vanish overnight.
Of course, I'm sure you're a genius and you can try to impress us with stories of how your managers love you so much you go to work when you wanted on your last job.
Idiots like this guy is why the average union electrician has a better career than the average. But of course, why should such a genius as you have to deal with things like job security and seniority - since you have no social life and your life revolves around work, you are superior to your co-workers and recognition of that is the important thing. Barf.
Here's how it's done in a union shop. This is an Animation Guild contract.
Time worked on the employee's sixth (6th) workday of the workweek shall be paid at one and one-half (1 1/2) times the hourly rate provided herein for such employee's classification. Time worked on the employee's seventh (7th) workday of the workweek shall be paid at two (2) times the hourly rate provided herein for such employee's classification.
Minimum call for the sixth (6th) and seventh (7th) days shall be four (4) hours. In the event the actual time worked by such employee exceeds the four (4) hour minimum, s/he shall be paid for all time actually worked in 1/10th -hour increments.
All time worked in excess of fourteen (14) consecutive hours (including meal periods) from the time of reporting to work shall be Golden Hours and shall be paid at two (2) times the applicable hourly rate provided herein for such employee's classification.
Now that's the way it's supposed to work. There may be crunches when hours are long, but pay goes up, which discourages employers from overdoing it.
Note the "minimum call" provision. Calling someone at home to do work outside of normal hours triggers that, and costs the employer at least 4 hours pay. Again, emergencies are provided for, but they're billable, so employers don't overdo it.
I'll do email. I'll take phone calls (but often I will let the machine filter the call, first).
I refuse to do IM. I feel too tethered with that. I like the store/forward idea of email. get an email, reply to it, you are done. IM is too chatty and requires you to BE there at the time. tethering. I hate it. too many people just accept, it though - and that's scary.
I have a cell phone for emergency use, that I leave in the car. I also don't like having a phone with me. I don't want to live where so many redundant modes of communication all seem 'necessary'.
if you are expected to carry a pager or BB, then they expect they will be using it offhours. slippery slope, of course.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
I work from home-office and it works great for me... I arranged with my manager to which extent will my work interfere with my life and we stick to that. At least now I have an option to do a lot of off-hours work from home!
I work production support as a DBA. Even though we have an on-call rotation, I might get a call or page at any time. To make things worse, I work from home 100%, so I am essentially always at the office.
I don't have a Blackberry, but I have a rather ordinary cell phone, which these days includes the capability to get SMS messages from any goober with an email account. The thing is, I have the servers send me alerts directly on certain events, and can often fix a problem before Ops even knows about it.
However, I am a contractor, and get paid for every hour I work. If I was a salaried employee, you can bet I would be pushing back on this kind of intrusion. And that, I think, is the key. As long as your employer pays no penalty for disturbing your personal time, it is not your personal time.
I had forgotten how much cooler teenagers look when they are smoking. Oh, wait
in all things, moderation. I turn my phone (HTC Hermes) off when I go to sleep, but mostly just because the incessant GSM buzz on my clock radio drives the wife and I nuts. I have to say, when I finally got email on my phone (push email, that shows up all the time), it made things SO MUCH BETTER for me. Primarily because now I can be connected and involved in what's going on without having to warm a chair at work (or in my home office), or even having to pull out my laptop. I can present the appearance of always being available and working, even when I'm neither. :) It does make me more efficient (when I sit down to _work_ at the laptop, I spend more time working and less time chasing mail), and certainly has made my life more flexible (I don't feel the need to be at the laptop all the time trying to stay in the loop and responding to the fire of the day). My family appreciates it, because I can telecommute (or just take a long lunch, or leave late in the morning or come home early) more easily and frequently, giving them my presence while still remaining visible at work (which keeps mgmt happy and ensures that projects don't get stuck waiting on a response from yours truly and that I am up-to-date on the issues du jour).
... substitute TiVO and gaming for those of you still single; the benefits are similar. :))
I have co-workers that can't handle the mobile email though, because they don't know when to turn it off or just ignore it, so they end up looking like they're awake and working 24x7, but rarely get any time to truly relax and unplug.
(yeah, yeah I mentioned wife and family
illum oportet crescere me autem minui
I have found that having a Blackberry has greatly enhanced my work life balance. Having a manager who's not afraid to let us work from home, I can put in several hours each morning in the office and then finish the rest of my day from home. I get up early, get to work, finish whatever needs to be done and any morning meetings, then head home or run errands. All the while staying in touch with my coworkers & boss. At 5pm most communications stop anyway. What could be better?
...then I have a bridge I want to sell you.
It's not about access, it's about choice. If you have the freedom to say "no", to turn it off, to refuse to carry it, you're going to be fine with it. If you don't, you're not.
It's likely one of those areas like harrassment or discrimination, where people have different points of view not because they think in a fundamentally different way but because their personal experience is different. Such personal variation masks a lot of bad things. People tend to make decisions on the basis of problems they can see personally or have felt personally, not problems they can understand intellectually. So if they're not seeing/feeling the pain, they're not likely to be very accommodating.
In the case of cell phones and blackberries, since the exploitation is done by the people with the choice upon people with no choice, there's a high potential for the people doing the asking either without realizing the effect, or without caring.
If there were an absolute right not to be discriminated against by one's employer for having refused to start carrying a blackberry or cell phone or pager, that would be a big step forward. It's one thing if it's part of the initial job description you sign up for, and another if it's thrust upon you on penalty of losing your job. That's not a choice. Of course, the way things go, eventually there might be no jobs that didn't require you to waive this right as a condition of employment... but one problem at a time, I suppose.
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer
If you have a choice in the first place of not having a smartphone at all, or having one, then you should have a more full range of choice, and be able to use that to your best advantage professionally, but at the same time having the discipline or backbone (whichever is applicable to the person) to shut it down/ignore it as if you didn't have it at all when appropriate.
I think some people get too wrapped up in their work and absolutely need to know how to cut out and enjoy the rest of their lives. But even for them, a smartphone/constant access can be a good thing, depending on how overboard they are. Take for example on guy at work with a family I know. He feels he absolutely *must* be there, and will work from 8 am to 11 pm *frequently* (and is salaried). His wife will call and complain to him, and he says he just can't pull himself away. For someone like him, maybe he'd be working all hours of the day still, but at least be at home. He is someone who at least outwardly expresses he wants not to be at work, though who knows if that is his reality...
Others are at risk who normally leave work, but don't have much backbone. If they have a *hard* excuse (I'm in a bus and can't possibly reach what you are talking about) they can get out of being overused. However, if they could easily get in from a technical standpoint, and they are left without a hard, physical fact to preclude them from doing the job, they can't say no.
Personally, I feel I have a good balance down. I leave work no more than 10-15 minutes late, with the *rare* exception of an hour if something is really bad. I work from home in off hours maybe 2-4 hours over the course of a month, with no more than twice a year logging in on Saturday to do something in full. But I know when to disconnect and not look at all, knowing if something was so critical, a *human* will somehow find a way to call me, which happens rarely, and that rare occasion is when I can triage it and still either take no action or redirect to someone else if I so choose. Anything else I don't know about can always wait until my next business day.
Of course, I don't have a data plan at all, but I don't think I'd be using a smartphone form factor to do my job to any significant extent, it's just not a job feasible for that usage. And most of the time I have full internet access throw my laptop somewhere anyway, and when I don't I'm probably either driving, eating, in a theater, or some other place where I couldn't possibly be productive, so I couldn't do anything anyway, so I can confidently say a smartphone wouldn't change my work habits one iota
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I don't see what the problem is.
If I can process PERSONAL email and phone calls while I'm at the office, I can be an agent for my employer outside of my normal work hours.
As long as boundries and expectations are healthy, and clear - I don't see the problem with this.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I notice that nearly every post has the attitude about work that "you're on when you're on, and you're off when you're off." But, that's a fairly one-sided view of things. Personally, my work is my life. I grew up programming, it was my hobby, and now it's my job. But, it's still my hobby. So, when I hear something has gone wrong, hours after my usual shift is over, I am more than happy to get an email on my phone, and decide if it needs immediate attention.
Usually it doesn't. Frequently I can send a simple response such as "It sounds like it might be a bug, I'll look into it tomorrow" and everyone's happy. Occasionally I decide it's important and get to work on a fix immediately, or begin discussion on how to address it or whatever. It's all part of why I'm appreciated, and quite frankly, besides occasionally going to a show or whatever, what else am I doing? The diversion is actually welcome at times.
I read the script, and I think it would help my character's motivation if he was on fire. -Bender
Just out of curiosity, do you expect the same unusual level of commitment from your staff? If you do, do you pay them substantially more than the going rate? Oh, and I hope if you do text in the meeting you mention it - "Let me check, I'll drop a message to one of my guys.". If you just went ahead and did it the impression I'd be left with is no one of someone who is connected with their happenings, but of someone who is rude and disinterested.
Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
It all depends on your employer. I carry a Blackberry for work, but I don't worry about it at all. I'm almost *never* called after hours. Even without these things, I think stressful jobs would still creep into your personal life, regardless of what device you have clipped to your belt.
I work for a 3rd party field rep company who handles many electronics manufacturers (Sony, Panasonic, Toshiba, Samsung, and a host of GPS companies as well). I have been a rep for quite some time and in Feb took a District management position overseeing half of California. The company got everyone a phone in April, I was issued a Treo which auto syncs to work mail every 30 minutes. This is my first management job, so I had a lot to learn, I was expected to work from 9AM-6PM Monday-Friday with a few calls to be made on the weekend for people who were late with work. At first I was getting calls as early as 7AM and as late as 9PM. I would check my mail all night, stop what I was doing and work on things whenever I was at my computer and I always spent a good hour right before bed on work. It really began to annoy my wife, alot. We talked about it, as she had worked in the computer industry and was used to this style of work and kept telling me to push back. It took me a while, like 6 months, but now I don't answer the phone after 7. I only check my email once before bed after work hours and not even every night, and despite not taking calls over the weekend unless its a repeat caller signaling emergency, my district numbers are on their way up and I have never been called to task for taking my own time as *my own time*. So all in all I agree the Employee has the power to set the tone and should do so. Obviously, you need to go about it correctly, but the fact is I got lucky as my boss the regional manager "broke" before I did as she was called all weekend any hour of the day so when she signaled to me that she was tired of it, it was easy for me to agree and push back to the office that I needed to be off at some point in the day. It was a new thing for our company, so I imagine it happened alot, I just dint hear of it given our lack of a central office for the field people.
Most of what I do does not require me to be in the office or to work 9 to 5. So if I can work from home or work off hours and still get my job done, then I have a much higher quality of life. I do have to be careful to monitor how much I work though. It's easy to get burned out.
It drives me up the wall to see people work 40 or 60 hours of overtime for free. If it was their own business, I could see it, but this is to make corporate fat cats richer.
Chief executives think that it enhances flexibility for everybody. In my experience, those executives spend more time not in the office than basically everybody else - they're the king, and they can do whatever strikes their fancy. They give presentations to big clients, or go to see about buying other companies, or even just go golfing. Sure, it enhances their flexibility; they can still get their mails when they're (inevitably) elsewhere. For the rest of the suckers, they've gotta be in the office 8 hours a day anyway. So how does that enhance flexibility, when the people are already there?
Second, on a more personal note, when I'm out of the office, I'm not working. Period. I'm not being paid hourly, and I don't feel the need to give away freebies. I don't have to go on-call at my current job, and unless I get scheduled for a downtime window, my work will still be there the next morning when I get back to the office. A few years ago, I realized that work is not everything. The paycheck is important, but there's much more to life than doing work. I have a lot of hobbies which I like doing infinitely more than working, and they occupy my time and interest just fine, thanks. I like visiting friends and traveling to new places, and I don't want to be interrupted while I'm doing either. If my boss and/or company require the level of fealty that a lot of companies seem to require these days, I'm working at the wrong place.
Back when I was going on-call, I would do my on-call duties when it was my turn, and when it wasn't, I was not very nice about calls I received. I never slept well when I was on-call. I had my Christmas morning of opening gifts with my family interrupted by the on-call phone ringing one year. I used to carry a blackberry, and never read emails on it. The volume of what I got was so high, it quickly (like over the course of the first day or two I had it) turned into the boy-who-cried-wolf device; 99.9%+ of the mails didn't need a response, and the rest could have simply been replaced by an SMS or a phone call of "hey, we need help".
Since your boss can reach you, you're not tethered to your desk. I find I am able to leave my office earlier, now that I am confident that I can address any critical issues that arise during my commute. I take a little bit of my office with me, but I get home much earlier, and more regularly.
I think for many, the problem is that when you first get it, you create a precedence. 2 years ago I got my first crackberry. It was purely for off-hours support only when I was on call.
First couple weeks I'm thinking, oh hey fun, I can send work emails while bored on the crapper on a Thursday evening. People see the emails, and think I'm "working" all the time. Of course the email could've waited until Friday morning. But after you do that a few times, people are expecting responses.
Learned my lesson, got a smartphone for off-hours stuff at my current employer, but I refuse to answer emails unless I'm scheduled on call for production support. If its important enough, and I'm not on call, they'll actually just call me. Which, of course, I let go to voicemail and only do anything if its a real emergencyAdmittedly, it could be a problem if management is pushing you to be on call without being 'on call', but there are ways around that too, depending on how devious you want to be (though I'm guessing you can only use the old 'my battery died' excuse a few times before they'll start to cotton on ;) ).
You can learn a lot about a person if you just take the time to inject them with sodium pentathol
I volunteer at the local youth sports league, doing some work on their website for them. They offered to get me a blackberry (I had told them I didn't have a cell phone, when in fact I did), and I politely declined. I would've been at their beck and call if they had a cell # for me, and would expect it doubly so if they had paid for the phone.
Maybe, possibly. Or maybe you aren't familiar with, or are unable to recognize hyperbole.
;-)
About 9 months ago I was about to be a college grad and was looking for work. I went down to CitiGroup in Manhattan to interview with one of their IT programs. While some of the work there sounded interesting, what really frightened me were the Blackberries.
That is, we all were taken out to lunch. And while we're eating, our guides (CitiGroup employees already in the program) kept on checking their Blackberries. It was about then that I decided that any situation where my personal time was expected to be preempted by work without notice was not a situation I wanted to be in.
An enlightenment painter would paint a grand house on a lawn; A romantic painter would paint it on fire.
Turn it off on weekends and other time when peace is more important.
duh!
I'm a software developer and have found that many companies dish out dingleberries as a way of getting people to work 24/7.
And sure enough, there are schmucks that fall for it all the time because they think a blackberry makes them look important or whatever.
We've all seen them, people outside of office hours that can't get off the damn blackberry. Pity them for their lack of priorities and probable lack of family home life.
They seem to forget that you're in an equal business relationship with your employer. If your contract says they give you money for a certain amount of your time you should hold them to it because sure as anything, your employer will hold you to the bits you don't like.
So basically, Blackberries only are fair if and only if your employer also gives you some extra flexibility for carrying one, such as allowing you to work from home during office hours, or making the hours more flexible.
Otherwise come on people, be men not mice, turn the damn thing off when you're not on scheduled work hours, or better yet, refuse to carry one in the first place.
I have my own personal Blackberry. My immediate supervisor got my number and e-mail address from one of my co-workers and started calling and e-mailing me at home to ask stupid questions. I have him blocked now and personally "explained" to him that if he ever called me again at home, he better be ready to sign two hours overtime pay at a minimum. He knows it's either do it my way or find another body to replace me, because I'm already drawing one retirement check. ;) It's good to be able to do that, but some of you obviously cannot take that chance.
The "power" button is always there for you to push...problem solved.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
When it comes to Blackberrys, or even cell phones and webmail (our email is accesible through a webmail portal, and I have VPN access), I personally make everyone at my company stick to an on-call schedule; I am on call on X days, at X times, and don't call me otherwise. If someone makes a mistake, I'll help them, but at two, not only am I hanging up, but I'm making it a management issue at that point.
But I'm exceptional in that I demand my personal space. I tell my employers that I do have a life outside of work, and I will adhere to it, and if they don't like it they can go forth and multiply. But even in my own company - where job security is pretty good - people have this fear that if they don't make themselves available 24/7 that they will be fired or otherwise replaced, after which they will end up homeless in the streets. I'm guessing at other companies parallel to what we do, it's worse, as it's implied that if someone can't be reached, OK, we'll find someone that can. Naturally, someone with a family can't afford to be unemployed, even for a small time, and there's so much fear of corporate overlords able to effectively end someone's career with a penstroke that they overcompensate, and make themselves effectively serfs. And at my first job in this industry - my first real job in the civilian world since getting out of the Navy - my boss at the time would see me working late all the time (something I do partially because I do personal stuff during my normal workday as I see fit; hence, why I'm on Slashdot during the work day), and he gave me sage advice: the more you give, the more they're going to expect, and it's going to be impossible to put the bar back down. He was right, and I'm seeing that elsewhere.
Therefore, people that are given Crackberries from their jobs have a right to be worried, because companies aren't going to make that investment without expectation of a return. That return is going to be 100% availability, and frankly, if I was in that position, that's a concession that I'm not willing to make. The DIFFERENCE is that I'm not scared to look for another job, or tell the company to go forth if it came to that. A lot of people are.
Let's stop dilly-dallying and just change "-1: Overrated" to "-1: Disagree" or "-1: Doesn't Subscribe to Groupthink".
So no, if you can hit ignore, or simply let the phone ring, well you are doing it wrong.
My work knows they have a 1/4 shot of getting a hold of me outside of work. 0/4 if it is before noon on a weekend.
Work/life boundaries are artificial, anyway. I love my blackberry, and I only work 35-45 hours any given work week.
Many, many people give me a hard time when they see me using/wearing it. Frequent comments are that I'm chained to it, that I can never leave work, etc. These couldn't be further from the truth: it's a liberation.
It's just a tool. Like any other tool, the secret is in how you use it. Here's some benefits/advice:
1. Forward your desk phone to it. Answer all email and phone calls using it. This way, everyone learns to expect a response from you using your blackberry. Now nobody knows where you are. You could be in a meeting, in your office, at the pub, or on the bus home. You now operate in stealth mode and have great freedom of movement and schedule.
2. Days off become less stressful. If you're in a similar position than I am, taking time off is problematic. I frequently come back to more chaos and work after I take a day off, and it's very stressful worrying about what goes wrong when you're not there. No more. A glance at the 'berry and you can head problems off at the pass. I'd rather spend 30 seconds emailing a corrective note off than 4 hours fixing a problem that's reached upper management the next day.
3. You can blend work and home life. Many people don't like this, but I do. Sometimes I come in late or leave early, if this means I have to spend a couple of hours on the weekend firing off a few emails when I have a clear head, so be it.
4. Typically, you can use it for personal use, as long as you don't get out of hand. This means that you don't need to pay for a personal cell phone.
5. It forces brevity. You don't want to write multiple page emails or have long conversations on the 'berry. Get you message crafted and out there in a short period of time.
6. Google maps rock on a blackberry. Especially with the "location" feature, which doesn't need GPS.
"You disturb me to the point of insanity. There. I am insane now." - The Sprockets
Love that the Home/Work boundary is shattered.
I'm a computer programmer; I enjoy writting code. I don't enjoy traffic or getting up early go even going to work, for the most part. It used to be that from 8-5 I *had* to be at my desk. That meant waking up early, sitting in traffic and generally being not too happy about it. That meant that on a Saturday when I actually felt like coding - I couldn't.
Thanks to my cell-phone (that recieves my e-mails as text messages), VPN and call forwarding on my office phone when I'm at home I *am* at work. That means nobody cares where I am, as long as I'm not supposed to be in a meeting, as long as I'm doing work. I always put in 40 hours a week, but I'm a lot, lot, lot happier when I have the flexibility to sleep an extra two hours in the morning and put in a productive 8 hours instead of sitting at my desk all day trying not to fall asleep.
I had a job where everyone had to wear a beeper on a rotation. The person wearing it got paid an hour extra every day and two hours minimum for coming in. They should work out something like that.
A black berry will only contribute to work/life balance if I can work from home at will and only come in when I absolutely have too. Otherwise it will stay in an office filling cabinet off hours.
Pay me one rate for availability and another for actual time at work. We can work out the rates before the occurrence.
My present boss doesn't even get my cell phone number. That is real work/life balance.
I've had a cell phone, pager capable of sending receiving email, cell phone capable of sending and receiving email and IMs or some sort of "leash" type telecommunications device for at least a decade, and I never felt any work pressure from these devices on my off time.
Then about 6 months ago I got a blackberry. Something about that device changed (ruined) my personal life. I felt the intrusion of work like never before.
Logic tells me it's just another email device. But there was something insidious about it, and I just can't manage to put my finger on what it was.
I carried the thing for two weeks, and then returned it to the IT department. I could not tolerate the thing.
Anybody have more of a clue than I do about what is so evil about these devices?
-Vort
I am the original techie (architect/engineer/developer/programmer/administrator/etc) in the company. Over 20+ years, the business has grown and gone public, and my systems have become the mission-critical part of the business. There really are some problems for which I am the only person in the world who knows the systems well enough to solve them. And, some of those problems are extremely expensive (per-minute) until they are solved. They pay me well enough that I don't mind a few extra hours occasionally, and a lot of extra hours very occasionally.
A typical "emergency" ends up being most of a night to put the systems back online and stable, followed by a few days of follow up to fix the underlying issue, communicate what happened, and to coordinate who is going to do what to make the fix permanent. We had a bad month last September -- I ended up working 100+ hours/week for several weeks straight. That doesn't happen very often.
To balance, I feel free to take some under-time, whenever I need it, or I judge it to be appropriate. My usual office schedule is probably about 35 hours a week, and much of that time is spent "walking around" (mentoring, tutoring, and a lot of listening).
A few times over the years, a "senior management" type has fussed at me about my hours or schedules. None of those people work here any more. It's amazing how that happens. Some people think they can just issue orders. Others understand that they need to cooperate with the people who can actually make things happen. It doesn't take long to see the difference.
The wise lieutenant understands that the senior sergeants actually run the army, do what they recommend, and don't piss them off. The life expectancy of a foolish lieutenant on the battleground is just a few days.
We've only had jobs in the modern sense for a short time. Historically speaking, jobs are a recent invention.
In my opinion, their main purpose is to keep the rabble too busy to cause trouble to the ruling classes.
The device for my staff is voluntary. If they have one, and I text them a msg and they reply, I really don't care where they are since I can get answers quickly - and they can send them back when they have time.
By the sounds of this, you guys have a poision work environment. My staff have been empowered to make their own decisions - including the abiltiy to carry a cell phone, or a smart phone. The device is not mandatory. If your perception that this device is another chain on the employer prision - change your job becuase it sounds like you hate it. The device is just that - a device. How you view it, and how you use it, is completely within your power. Expecations? You set them. Not your employer. Don't blame the device - it's just a tool, no different than an office phone or a workstation.
Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things. - Peter F. Drucker
Does Constant Access Shatter the Home/Work Boundary? Yes as an Access SQL programmer/Data Analyst, Access can shatter more than the Home/Work boundaries. It can shatter your soul.
http://www.cushingproductions.com
Everyone appreciates employee benefits, good working conditions, and balanced work/life relationships.
However, some laws of economics seem to be as incontrovertible as laws of nature. Every attempt to avoid the laws of economics has resulted in economic disaster. Too many times, "Social Justice" is a euphemism for "unsustainable.".
One very well establish law of economics is the law of supply and demand. If there is a demand, there will be a supply. If supply exceeds demand, prices will fall. If demand exceeds supply, prices will rise. Labor is not immune to the law of supply and demand, and historical efforts to distort this law through protectionist tariffs or artificial labor constraints or social justice programs have all failed.
The only form of social justice that has ever worked is "equal opportunity" which in fact is the removal of artificial constraints. It has never been possible to assure equal outcome.
Hate the laws if you want, but you can't change them.
Advice? Yes.
1) Live **well** below your means - I was saving/investing over 30% of my gross income the last 10 years and always at least 20% since getting out of college. As much as I could were placed in tax advantaged accounts. I've lived (and continue to live) in fairly low cost of living parts of the country. Not California, DC, New York, although I suppose someone could make a bunch of money there then move to a lower cost place.
2) Invest early and often in the stock market - automatic every month. I started in 1989 automatically with 15% of my salary going into the 401(k) plan at work + an extra 4% in taxable accounts. I've been using http://better-investing.org/ principles since 1991.
Never take retirement money out of retirement accounts, always roll it over. Get at least 15% annual rate of return. I've done much better in recent years. I buy/sell stocks less than 10 times a year total across all accounts - no day trading here. I have less than 15 stock/company investments.
3) Have fairly high paying jobs for 11+ years. I've never been very high in any company. Just a regular technical arch/software developer guy. I've had stock options that paid off in a small company when we were bought by a larger company. Think 10s of 1,000s, not $100,000+.
4) Manage your debt. Don't have a car payment. Pay all credit cards off monthly. If you can't pay cash, don't get it. I haven't had a car payment since 1994.
5) Don't have a mortgage longer than 15 years and pre-pay it. I was paying 3x the normal payment before paying off the house a few years ago. I paid off the mortgage in 6 years from when we moved in. No real estate investing happened.
6) Don't have any kids. I have no idea how much my life would be different. College costs are up to them, just as it was for me. Kids don't appreciate things unless they have to save and pay for them themselves. I come from a large family with lots (20+) of nieces and nephews and I've seen what too much money does to kids. Kids need to poor, regardless of the parents finances. Spoiled kids come from lazy parents.
7) Be charitable. I like the The Pediatric Brain Tumor Foundation - http://www.pbtfus.org/ as my primary charity.
8) Be healthy, but not stupid. Health problems and stupidity cause all sorts of expenses. Motorcycles = stupid. Sky diving = stupid. Bicycling in the country = healthy.
More stuff is here: http://jdpfu.com/ - please don't slashdot me I have no bandwidth. Feel free to email if all the garbage there doesn't say enough. Tag = "investing"
Also, "retired" is the same as "contract ended" to me.
I may elect to work again, we'll see after 6 months or so off.
Perhaps I need to enter the lucrative field (hah) of e-books and get people to send me $49.95 for my e-book on How to Retire Early and another $49.95 for How to Lose 100lbs of Weight in 6-8 Months?
My company has firewall rules that block using email from yahoo, gmail, msn, etc etc. They also have some pretty strict rules about using wireless devices to access outside networks. Funny I have similar rule and policy on my home firewall that blocks work email. On the same token I doubt a blackberry would be allowed under "home" policy either. Such a device would "clearly be in contradiction to the required activities demanded of me at home". Oddly work has a similar rule that "any device that is in contradiction to your required job activities is not allowed". It's amazing how my work and home policies are so similar. Like they were written by the same lawyer or something. I've often told my manager that if the companies policy where to change that I'd talk to the admin of my home firewall and see if she'd do the same. It very hard for work to argue the point. After all it is their policy!
My contact information usually begins with things like "Drive to the Stevens Lake trailhead", and usually ends with something like "I should be able to reach the office within 24 hours". If it's urgent enough that they'll send a runner after me, or foot the search-and-rescue bill, then it's urgent enough that I probably want to be in the office.
Being a sysadmin (and I'd wager a significant portion of /.'s readership is also), this is a non-issue. I've been dealing with exactly this sort of thing for almost two decades. No big deal. I take it a step farther, in fact, because I work from home - work/life balance really gets weird by normal office jockey standards.
The big deal here is that the people who are having their lives invaded (and that's what it is to them) by these little devices are the kinds of people who have never carried a pager, cell phone, or other communication device for anything work-related ever. For people like me, it's a part of how things are for me. For these folks it will be a radical change.
Don't think for a minute that I am sympathetic toward them. Absolutely not. People like that have no clue about the daily extra effort IT folk put into their jobs, yet people like that have also been the least considerate when making demands of IT folk. Let them have a taste of what it's like to have dinner interrupted every evening, or to frequently get less than 4 hours of uninterrupted sleep, or to sacrifice time with loved ones because oncall duty interrupts it. I've got no problem with letting as many people as possible know what that's like.
Yeah, I'm bitter, but also experienced. I've got no problem not answering the cell outside of my posted work hours unless previous arrangements have been made. The world never collapsed as a result of a missed call.
This is clearly an intractable problem that cannot be solved any other way. Blame the technology!
Seriously, no piece of technology can be blamed for poor time management. Neither can one blame one's manager for allowing that person to manage your time poorly for you.
This is an issue of ownership. Own your job, own your time, and take responsibility for yourself. If everyone's doing what they should be doing, then this discussion is moot. If everyone's not doing what they should be doing, then how about having that discussion instead of some hypothetical potential abuse you fear by those above you?
My attitude toward my managers is this: if you're a good manager, then you're going to remove the obstacles I tell you are blocking me from doing my job. If you're not going to behave that way, then you're irrelevant to my core duties, and I'm going to invert our relationship. In other words, now I'm your manager, in the sense that I have to manage you as yet one more obstacle in my path to completing my tasks. If I do my job as your manager correctly, you'll trundle along happily and never know that I think of you as essentially a child out of your depth. If you become too much of a problem, I'll take me and my record of success somewhere else where I can work with adults.
but have you considered the following argument: shut up.
You have the right idea. Start early. I was 23.
You have to have taxable investment accounts too. Sadly, I was unable to save as much as I wanted in tax advantaged accounts - i was always a W-2 employee, never a 1099 or corp-2-corp type, so $12K-15K was all I could save each year. Then add $4K/yr in IRA (or Roth-IRA) account. So, you're making $130k/yr and saving 30%, $45K. Only $19K is tax advantaged, so $26K goes into taxable accounts. Do that for 10 years - $260K+ returns (about $780K over 10 yrs) for taxable needs. Don't worry that the math isn't really right; the real number is $696K. It is close enough.
Not having kids was the biggest help to my finances, I think. That and always beating market returns, sometimes by large amounts, really helped. In 2000-2001, I sold when everything dropped 20% and I'm not afraid to lock in a few gains as stock prices keep rising above what I consider "fair value". In short, when everyone else is selling, I'm probably buying stock when it is historically cheap. Don't get me wrong, I've had some 20% losers too. I'm not so proud that I can't admit a failure and sell at a loss. SBUX is my current loser. I bought in June, July and August - I thought it was cheap all those times (I buy 1/3rd at a time). Seems I was wrong. I'll be selling it on the next up day to get the IRS to help with my loses (offset gains) and I might buy it back in 32 days when it is even cheaper if the fundamentals hold up. This is the difference between owing $2+K at tax time and getting $2+K back this year. BTW, I try to always owe money.
On balance, the Blackberry helps me, it doesn't burden me. For me at least, a Product Manager working from a home office, my employer is generally not the demanding entity. It's my customers (independent distributor/manufacturer's reps), and their customers (building owners, design/build engineering companies). It's a global economy out there, and they can chose to go to someone else. All too often, somebody decides they need a bid on my products just before some deadline. Yeah, they're knuckleheads for not requesting a bid earlier. But, the issue isn't who left it to the last minute, since it happens all the time and I cannot influence proactive/responsible behavior in people several links removed from me. The issue is, if I have the energy, and it doesn't impact family plans, then I can chose to respond. Voila, superior service. Without the Blackberry, I would not have had the option. If I chose not to reply, well, they sent the request after hours (my hours, not necessarily theirs). Not to mention being able to move work requests along while travelling, running errands, etc. For my situation, the Blackberry enlarges freedom, it does not decrease personal time.
My current employer had to implement a policy restricting access to web mail (Outlook Web Access) so that only salaried employees could use it. Like just about every other HR based decision it came after the company got sued. An employee wanted all sorts of back pay for "working from home" even though her boss didn't ask her to.
The last part of your comment, regarding working from the bar, can lead to BIG problems which mean more work tomorow. Trust me, I know.
It's different for salaried staff who are on an existing contract. They can get the worst of both worlds:
On one hand, they get handed the crackberry and expected to respond to it on lunch, breaks and after hours.
on the other hand, it can be 2-4 years before the next round of contract talks which would deal with this change -- and, even then, the crackberry issue (if it's only one, small department affected) could just fall off the negotiating table due to time constraints, or whatever.
I'd say that it's fine for senior management who are expected to work overtime, handle issues when home or even on vacation and then factor that in to things like the time that they take off.
On the other hand, it really does need to be properly negotiated, beforehand, for middle and lower tiers who don't have the kinds of freedom that upper management have.
As the exec said: it can lead to things like telecomuting, etc. etc. etc.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
and those dumb fuckers sure haven't noticed.
The notion that employees need to be available at all hours is horseshit that deserves to be eaten by anyone weak enough to buy into it.
I have constant access to pr0n and it doesn't mean that I am forced to spend my free time masturba... err... never mind!
I work in Residence Life and Housing at a large-ish university. I don't have an on-call rotation at the moment, but the nature of my job dictates that I should be available for major issues or crises 24/7, unless I'm on vacation. I also have a WM5-based smartphone with Direct Push enabled.
The student and professional staff know that they can e-mail my university address during business hours (8AM-5PM) and they will generally receive a prompt response. I have my phone set to synch items as they arrive up until 8PM, which isn't something I tell the staff members, but just in case something urgent comes up and it's sent via e-mail (which is a rarity, urgent issues are handled by phone or in person contact), I'm still aware of it.
After 8PM, I don't check my university mail.
The few staff members who have my mobile number or my home number know to call after hours only if an urgent situation arises.
I used to tell my staff just to e-mail me or text me because it would synch with my phone 24/7. They were more likely to e-mail or text with minor issues they were able to handle themselves or that the on-duty staff member was supposed to handle than they do now. Having to actually speak with me has limited the number of issues I'm contacted about.
If your boss or co-workers are e-mailing you constantly try doing something similar... either turn off push email or adopt a voice call only policy.
Technically I'm on call 24/7, but:
I'm third man on the list, and I receive a pretty decent cash bonus if they call me at home.
This is good enough for me. I don't really carry a cellphone, but my gf and I share one. Work doesn't interfere in my life that much . So I find this to be a reasonable arrangement.
Would I take an iPhone if work was offering it? Hell, yeah. Blackberry? I would have to think about it.
IMAGE VERIFICATION IS EVIL!
Wow, you can extrapolate a hell of a lot from zero data. When did I mention anything at all about my work environment? I was just curious about whether your obvious enthusiasm for breaking the work/life boundary (which isn't inherent to a device, of course) extended to your staff's work/life boundaries too.
As you seem so curious though: I have a smartphone of my own (more for fast data rather than email etc. on the device itself - tiny screens suck, my Nokia 770 is much nicer), which work can and do use to contact me, and that's fine by me. They only contact me outside work hours if it really can't wait. That's pretty rare and is usually a change in where I'll be working the next day or the offer of an extra days work (at overtime rates, of course) to cover for someone. If I don't find out till it's the next day and I'm already at the wrong site that's no big problem, so I can turn my phone off if I want to and there will be no repercussions. I do have one issue with my work's use of SMS though - my boss quite regularly uses txtspk. Ewww. I'm sure with T9 it's actually slower to type than proper English.
Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
Getting a Blackberry decreased time I spent "at work" and improved my personal life.
My Blackberry is set up so it only beeps if the CEO sends me something, and it vibrates and the LED flashes only when something is sent directly to me. It takes me only a couple of minutes to respond to something that could save someone else hours of time (especially at our offshore Vietnam office), and if it takes more than a few minutes, it must be something important that I should be told, anyway.
That's in contrast to how it was before when I had my laptop on the dinner table and sometimes the bedroom. I had to check it just to see if there was something urgent (which could take several minutes), whereas now it takes me a few seconds to look at my Blackberry for the red flashing LED.
It automatically shuts off during my normal sleeping hours. It's also my alarm clock, and it's actually good to start the day by reading my e-mail so I know what kind of fires I need to put out when I reach the office.
In addition, it reminds me of Outlook appointments, I can surf the web, instant message, and even update my Facebook.
I would encourage managers to get a Blackberry and can even encourage superiors to justify the purchase as "cheap overtime" when really it should save you time if you're already staying extra hours at the office or you're already taking work home with you. I got the Blackberry 8830 model (with GPS) from Sprint, and it's great.
Seriously, there's a boundary around here somewhere?
Whoops! My 30 second "take a breath" moment is up. Back to the grind! Only another 30 years of this and I can have a whole minute of time to myself!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
I'm really shocked at these comments. Everyone feels they are entitled to closing up shop after 40 hours - or being compensated for it.
Try working a little harder, being a little more flexible, maybe you'll get somewhere with your career. The 40 hours for a crummy salary is a self-fuffilling prophecy. I've always worked 50-60 hours a week, whether its in a shitty or now a rewarding job. It's not always fun and you are always making less then you feel you deserve. But all that hard work pays off, you too might be one of those executives one day.
Or continue bitching, I'll laugh as I pass you on the ladder.
I may be old fashioned but I question the professionalism of anyone that avoids efficiency from technology because they are concerned more productivity might be expected.
Thank a veteran -- George
... not a serf.
If my company says jump from a cliff I would not.
Same applies to many things. It is not like they are god or something like that.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Sorry, where you sold in auction with a broom, a donkey and a pair of potato sacks? Did your owner checked your teeth???
Jeez...
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
... where the fuck is the off button?
....
Honestly guys
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
This has been discussed here many times before. There are integrators and seperators.
:)
Figure out who you are and structure your life accordingly. I am an integrator, and me and my family have few problems with this. Vacations are occasionally problematic - but we deal with it
I can't comment on Australia (where the article was written) but having worked in the USA and Europe I can say for certain that it's more of a cultural difference and that Blackberries, etc. are just another tool to enhance those differences. I'll explain a bit further.
It's very bizarre, that a the EU which is far more socialist, has a more capitalistic (in the true sense of the word not the warped media definition) than the USA does. In Europe, everyone works with a contract of employment (just like the contracts used in business every day) which state that the employee, will work X hours for Y dollars per hour/week/year and receive Z days vacation. Because it's a legally binding contract the employee doesn't expect an extra $1,000 dollars to magically appear in his pay packet at the end of the month, and the employer doesn't (by EU law) expect or force anyone to put in an extra 20/30/40 hours of work each week, if they choose to, then great, it's their choice, but they have to let the employer know.
On the contrary in the USA there are "At Will Employment" which dictates that the person has no guidelines as to how many hours to work, and in order to get ahead in your job often means that you have to work harder than your peers, often meaning you have to take work home, and work an extra "N" hours a week in order to get noticed, once you set that standard and everyone is doing the same, you open the door to a situation where anyone that doesn't do so, can potentially be disciplined. Because there is no black and white contract to guide either side, it's down to who has the biggest cahonies, the employee to say screw you, my family comes first or the employer to say you're not pulling your weight, get out of here.
So, using that assumption, many Europeans have Blackberry's and other mobile devices, and have for sometime, as to whether the they get used in anger during downtime or family time is more about whether the employee has a "capitalist contract" clearly defining what either side is able to do, or whether they have an at will employer of which they live in fear of, because they can't afford to lose their job/healthcare/pension/dental, etc.
Anyone who's in a position where taking vacation (or genuine sick days) may mean that they get passed over for a promotion/raise/job is bound to blur the work/life boundaries, the tools with which you make that blur happen are inconsequential, mobile computing simply made it easier to do so for those that were already doing it. Just my 52 cents
You'll get dozens if different answers here because everyone has a different situation. I work somewhere now where it's cool if I have to leave early because my kid is sick. So it's also cool with me if an hour or two after work they call me because they have some problem they need help with.
I used to work a part time 20 hour job where they wanted 40 hours of work and on call. That was not OK because if they wanted 40 hours they needed to pay me for it. So I wasn't available when they called.
Comes down to if your bosses are trustworthy for how they use your time and if you can afford to walk away if they are not.
Mollymoo said: "Wow, you can extrapolate a hell of a lot from zero data."
:)
:P
It's what I do for a living - climb that assumption ladder right to the top.
Valid points MM. I am looking through this issue with smoked lenses - as a manager and it is refreshing to see an alternative perspective. Sorry to hear that your boss txtspk's with the 'ewww' factor attached. Maybe you could just l33t-spk back to him? Could get him to stop txting you.
Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things. - Peter F. Drucker
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