Slashdot Mirror
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.
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
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.
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?
It may be trite to say it, but...
If you were to die tomorrow, this would affect your family for the rest of their lives. You are irreplaceable. Your company would fill your position within days and except for your immediate co-workers, nobody would even care.
blah blah blah
A man gets a Bill from his lawyer.
That is an excellent solution to the problem, but I doubt many people would have the guts to go through with it.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
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.
What I find funny about the Blackberry thing is that, in a couple places that I've worked, they were being used pretty much exclusively for middle-management. The lowly helpdesk techs supposedly weren't important enough to get one, in spite of the fact that it would be really useful for them to receive e-mail when they were away from their desks "in the field". Then a bunch of managers who were at their desks all day anyway had them. But then, oddly, the executive team didn't have Blackberries.
I once asked one of the VPs about it, and he basically said, "We let the managers get them because it makes them feel important and they aren't that expensive. But I sure as hell don't want to be on-call 24 hours a day." I felt like I learned something right there. The trappings of power are usually most appreciated by those who don't really have any. Those guys who spend a lot of time trying to show you who's boss are specifically those who aren't "the boss". The people who are really in charge don't necessarily feel the need to prove it to you.
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.
The issue of whether constant connectivity is a benefit or not greatly depends on the individual.
For example, as an IT worker myself, I think having that 24x7 accessibility to my work can be a benefit, but it's also the greatest source of my frustration. As a result, I've stopped carrying such devices for business use.
I've been much happier carrying only a cell phone - that I pay for - that I can turn off when I'm out of the office. I've made it a point to separate work and home. Since I started doing that a few years ago, I'm much less stressed and can focus more. Work stuff stays at work and my personal life can stay out of the office.
When it's mandated that I be available 24x7 for a period of time (such as an on-call rotation or a major project), I still weigh my choices and, if it's too demanding, I'll decline. Yes, even if it's career-limiting decision. Usually, it's not a problem and, in fact, some managers have gained respect for such a decision (even if they didn't think so at the time they asked).
Obviously, others will have differing points of view. However, it's important to keep a balance. That balance will differ from person to person.
My sources are unreliable, but their information is fascinating. -- Ashleigh Brilliant
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.
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
For everyone saying they have no choice, I wonder if you've actually tried. My company offers to pay your cell phone bill if you'll be available during off hours. One day the CFO/CIO said "by the way, I notice we don't pay for your phone" and I said "no, I don't want calls at home." He said he respected my decision and that I was the only one on his staff to have made it. The cell phone costs me $40 a month. That's what they're getting paid to take calls at home. Whatever, their choice.
Try just not looking or not answering. Return the call during working hours. If they ask didn't you get my message, say no, I don't check messages off hours. Wait until they threaten to fire you.
If you were to die tomorrow, this would affect your family for the rest of their lives. You are irreplaceable. Your company would fill your position within days and except for your immediate co-workers, nobody would even care.
Not always the case. I got very tired of the working conditions at $VERY_LARGE_COMPANY and was vaguely entertaining the notion of leaving. Another company that was familiar with my work contacted me out of the blue and asked me for a resume. A week later I had a job offer in hand and gave notice.
$VERY_LARGE_COMPANY panicked. They had three different managers call me and try to convince me to stay, offered me a raise, more stock, better working conditions, etc. I told them that they should have done that before I got so fed up that I decided to quit, but that I would be more than happy to answer emails if they needed help with anything after I left.
I talked to a couple of my former coworkers recently. Turns out that a few months after I left, they gave up on finding a replacement, disbanded my old team and moved further development for the product I had been working on (which is used by millions of people and has at least one book written about it) to Bangalore, where it is languishing. And it's not like it was a crufty mess, either -- it was clean, very thoroughly documented and there were several developers who were very familiar with it. Unfortunately, they were also very junior, and apparently judged unfit to be in charge of it.
The moral of the story? Don't assume that just because you work at $VERY_LARGE_COMPANY that you're just a faceless drone and they'd be able to replace you at the drop of a hat. And conversely, if you're a manager at $VERY_LARGE_COMPANY, make sure you give your employees appropriate treatment before they're ready to walk out the door.
ZFS: because love is never having to say fsck
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.
I agree, senior developers are very hard to replace. I actually left my job for a few months. They wouldn't trust/couldn't find a replacement, and bought me back. I now work 20 hours a week for more than twice the pay -- along with a good piece of the action...
I'd rather have 24x7 access to work and limited access to my personal life, since that is where the stress comes from.
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.