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Most Tech Workers Would Ignore a Call From Their Boss Outside Work Hours (zdnet.com)
In this age of instant communication, there is pressure on employees to be "switched on" all hours of the day. But do we really have the mental attitude to totally disconnect from work? From a report: A new study by UK-based HandsetExpert has revealed that almost two out of three tech workers would ignore an out-of-hours call from the boss. It surveyed 1,850 mobile device users in the UK to find out how we deal with the pressures of being an "always-on" society. This number might be the roll-up of various reasons -- from being on the toilet, in the bath, or in other compromising situations. The survey showed different behaviours from different job roles. Healthcare professionals seem to be most connected to their place of work. They were the least likely to cancel any calls from their boss, with only 42.5 percent stating they would not pick up the call. At the other end of the scale, real estate agents -- who already work some of the longest hours in the industry -- are least likely to respond. Almost three out of four workers (72.6 percent) in that industry sector would not respond to calls from their boss.
... if they even have one of those surveillance devices to begin with, let alone have the battery in and the unit turned on.
What a fucking shocker.
I ignore calls from my boss during work hours.
Trolling is a art,
Back in the early 70s, I had to have an extra phone line in my room so that I could get calls anytime at night to come in and fix any computer software production failure. Nothing new here. A boss has to know that if he bothers you after hours too much, that he is going to drive you out.
I know my boss respects my private life and work balance, so if he's calling me then it must be something dire.
With healthcare, there are literally lives on the line. "Did you give Mrs. Abernathy her heart medication or is the lack of entry in the chart an oversight? I'm calling cause I need to give it to her in the next 2 minutes if you forgot"
With real estate people: it's not the boss who buys the property and it takes quite a long time for a sale with all the bureaucracy. There is just no real urgency.
IT worker: for some it can be important cause the server might fall down and the downtime might be very expensive. E.g. some Amazon AWS downtime or maybe a nuclear power plant. But most IT workers work cupholder replacements or such, there it doesn't really matter.
Healthcare: if you ignore a call, people can actually be harmed or die.
I.T. outside of nuclear power plants and healthcare: if you ignore a call, people might not be able to use the latest fart app for two hours.
In one instance, selfless dedication is appropriate, in the other, less so. Also, was the 2 out of 3 number for techies for the US or the UK?
Half the time it's because he wants to hang out and have a beer.
I think a great determiner of whether or not one would pick up the call is if you are salaried or hourly. If salaried, the temptation may be greater to ignore the call as once you do start answering that may indicate to the boss that it's OK to call anytime outside of work hours. If hourly, then go ahead and pick up the call and then claim the time on your time card. It will get real expensive real quick if that's the case and that would naturally solve the problem. Also, it depends on the expectations and line of work. Are you the only one that can fix a critical business service/process/piece of equipment, etc? If so then ignoring a call could be dire for your career (but if that was the case then any self respecting organization would have an on-call plan set up anyways, so that may be a moot point). If not I would definitely ignore the call as it can always wait till the morning (or whenever you start your shift).
Really, such a surprise.
If it's done judiciously, it's reasonable to respond. Bleep happens. However, if the causes of after-hour problems are preventable but org resources are not devoted to prevention, then the org is dumping the results of their sloth into you.
If they are playing those games, it's time to fight back. Tell them you are too drunk to drive to the office, for example. If they keep it up, it's time to either ask for a raise to compensate, or move on to a different gig.
Table-ized A.I.
If I am available, I will answer the phone if my colleagues call outside work hours. But when I am out on my bike in the forest I put it on silent and place the phone in my backpack, if I feel stressed I'll put it on silent when I go to bed. If they want a guarantee that I answer, sober and ready to help, I want to get paid to be on standby because it is so bloody taxing, even if the phone doesn't ring, I once were on 45 minutes standby for a year 24/7(45 minutes to start problem solving/login remote)
My boss knows this and agrees. The same goes for my other colleagues. :) In other words, we answer if we can, but there are no guarantees and that is accepted.
L'Idiot
So you don't get any of my time outside of business hours.
I wonder how many Chinese high-tech workers would ignore a call from their boss after hours? Assuming they have any off-hours to begin with. I don't think the results would be the same in America (I hope anyway). In a globalized economy a country's competitiveness is really important to its long-term financial stability and viability. Europe has been a laggard in this regard for 200+ years so the results are not surprising.
Every time I think of moving out of Austria to greener pastures I read something like this and I stay the fuck put again.
>"Would ignore call"?
Are they on call or not? If we are on call, we get PAID for every hour we are on call. If someone actually calls in the period, we get paid MORE.
That article misses the most important part: Are they paid to be on call and not reachable? That's bad.
If not: Then of course not.
Seriously, do you actually leave your cell phone on during events?
If it's that important, it's Monday.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Is it possible that some studies are done purely to spark discussions on places like this and otherwise serve no purpose and provide no value at all?
I worked in a 24/7 high-stress environment where I was one of 3 people on call all the time. We had trouble with a vendor's system and were only authorized to reboot it when it failed. Anything further resulted in a suspension or getting fired. Most of the stress was from political B.S. (Surprise!)
One night, I got called at 11:00pm, 2:30am, 4:00am, and at 6:00am by the same people to reboot the same shitty system. I was written up because I wasn't cheerful and happy on the 6:00am call. After that, I stopped answering my phone. After hours, text me. Maybe I'll answer you when I arrive at work in the morning.
After 30 years, I found that I.T. is generally a high stress and thankless job that geeks are expected to perform grueling tasks after working normal hours while all the business degrees (our asshole bosses) are already out socializing at the bars. Why should we care when others don't?
I was 2 hours out of town on a Sunday at a friend's birthday party and my boss calls. He demands I come in and work on an issue that he believes I caused. And berates me for 5 minutes on the phone after I refused with the reason being that I'm out of town.
When I get into work Monday, I get reamed out further and put on a PIP (performance improvement plan). I was never told I was "on-call" for that weekend. And later on Monday, once I finally got to look at the problem. I discovered someone committed changes without running it through the mandatory integration process.
Those changes conflicted with my weeks old change and causes numerous test failures. In short, not my fault. Not even my responsibility to diagnose what went wrong. Needless to say I was out there quickly due to the PIP and my total dickishness with telling everyone at work I've been wrongly accused of such bullshit and how poorly the management handled it.
(not posting as AC, because you know who you are)
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
When I was a sysadmin, my systems were set up to page/text me when a problem occurred. If it was ultimately something that had a business impact (like having to keep a system down outside a maintenance window), I was the one calling my boss at 2 am... He always took those calls from me as he knew I wouldn't be calling if it wasn't important and I needed input or had to give him a heads up.
In the best of situations, it works both ways and the boss doesn't call you unless it's important and you're really needed. You both know the other will answer and you can count on each other to do what's needed to get the job done and also not abuse that trust or relationship. Less optimal situations may require that you find another job.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
I'd also charge a minimum of 2 hours for answering the phone too.
When my boss calls, it is something important so I answer. He also does my annual review & compensation. So, yeah. Everybody else can go fuck themselves, though! If it's something important, they can call my boss first and he decides if it needs my attention or not.
I tell anyone who needs to call me after hours to facetime me. Because i'll be nude. If they can handle that, it must be important.
if it's life or death, I'll get back to you. Otherwise, I'm on me-time.
So no surprise here. I wonder if the study was done in the US, what would it have been. All the Indian H1â(TM)s answer when I call them
I'm an SRE and I'm tired of being stuck holding bag. The devs deploy shit code that doesn't perform well, then my ass is up at nights on weekends or on vacation trying to keep the site up. I finally disabled alerts going to my phone and I get good sleep now. Also fuck my SRE coworkers for rarely jumping on alerts either.
Fire me, I don't care.
Same here. My boss wouldn't call without a darn good reason. In addition, if the shit hits the fan I'd MUCH rather fix it than have someone else TRY to fix it and leave me with a much bigger mess to clean up in the morning.
I've told my boss PLEASE call (or message) me because it's much easier for me to spend 10 minutes properly diagnosing a problem and fixing it, rather than try to figure out wtf all a co-worker did while randomly trying this and that at random hoping to make the problem go away.
===
Heck, even my FORMER my boss, as I was leaving that job, I told them several times - you'll probably run into one or two situations where you have this choice:
A) you spend five hours trying to figure out what Ray did
B) I spend five minutes answering their email, answering their question
I'd much rather me spend 5 minutes answering their question than they spend 5 hours trying to figure it out without asking me.
Of course the old employer left me on as a "hourly employee" at a high rate of $xxx/hour, just in case they needed a couple hours of my time. At well over $100/hour, I'm happy to leave open the possibility of doing a little work for them. Even giving them a few minutes of my time for free.
As it turned out, I think they had one five-minute question for me, and once I asked them to send me a copy of a bit of code I'd written for them because it was a good example of a concept I wanted to demonstrate.
I'm self-employed, and after hours, unless I'm expecting a call, if I'm in the middle of something, chances are very good I'll let the call go to voicemail. Part of the reason I'm self-employed was to wrest control of my professional and personal life from employers that would take advantage of me at any opportunity.
I've been that guy on-call, and that's a different story. You know what you're signing on for when you take on that responsibility. I'm talking about situations where I'm expected to answer the call for "all hands on deck" without any additional compensation or consideration. Now, if I spend time on your system, you get billed, as it should be.
*** *** You're just jealous 'cause the voices talk to me... ***
Factor in pay.
Recently my employer spent 2 x my salary for a 3rd party audit, which to no surprise said our IT sucked and they could offer outsourced work to replace us. Needless to say, we received below CPI salary increases and were kept on.
I say fuck em. I refuse to answer afterhours calls now. That is not a right, it's a paid privilege.
You can afford to call people out on it. My dad for instance had that level of respect at his tech job. If you are average to mediocre, or there are a glut of qualified employees, maybe less so, as the other child post states.
Personally more power to people like you. If we don't call out businesses on this shit it will just keep happening and conditions will only get worse for workers than they already have.
My manager often called me to come in on my day off. There were 5 people to cover 5 different schedules. Sometimes I would work because the time and a half pay or comp time was good. Other times I'd unplug my phone because the ring or answering device would wake me. There are times when people need that mental health break or to be able to have time with family and friends, to goto a movie or to dinner.
I've been part of an on-call rotation, and I got ISDN (back when that was a big deal) and some pay differential... in addition to home access to the 9 net. And that entitled them to route calls to my house. Perhaps for some intermediate amount of compensation, managers could convince employees to take their calls.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
unless I am on call, which for me, is once a month. Once my wife and children arrive home, my phone is set aside for the evening, not to be touched until my alarm wakes me the following morning. I demand a work/life balance. If and when this becomes impossible in IT, I will move to another career field. I have told every boss I have ever had, since my first IT job in 1998, "I am unavailable to you unless I am specifically the one on call. I trade my time and talent for money and other tangible benefits. When 430 comes around, I'm unavailable until I walk in the door tomorrow at 0730." I refuse to budge on this.
I also refuse to put my work email on my personal mobile phone. It's my phone. Sorry. Likewise, I will not put the company app on my phone or any other that I do not expressly wish. I also never use the company Wi-Fi. T-Mobile offer unlimited data, and I use that for the limited surfing I do whilst on the mobile phone.
Most of my co-workers probably fit into this category. I routinely answer calls in the middle of the night from management or co-workers in a bind. Generally I think the authority you are entrusted with is tied to the the amount of responsibility you assume. Some people don't care about earning 30-40% more if it means any kind of commitment to the job and that's fine. Other people, they pick up the phone.
I have my phone (MY phone), work email set to be on only from 6:30am, to 5:00pm M-F, and from 5pm Friday, to 6:30am Monday. Before the advent of smartphones, the internet, email and the like, when you left at the end of the day, that was it until the next business day. If my boss needs something on the weekend, I expect to be paid, he knows it, and has paid me if needed. THAT is the way it should be, but, some people are "scared" to say no, think they are "on call" 24/7...when a boss knows that, you will end up being their beck & call man.
If it is only once or twice a quarter, I will answer. If it is more than that, I will find a new job. I once had a boss that refuse to make any improvement to the system. Every times we suggest, we will want us to prove that the modification will do exactly the same as current system, including all the errors. I am the first to pack my bag and out of the door.
Boss who calls you too often, either you are incompetent, or he is.
If I trusted my boss to only call me if it was really important. I would answer at any hour, on any day
If I observed that my boss interrupted my free time with stupid stuff.. I would block his number
When I was a sys admin I told my bosses and my co-workers that if I am not on-site, on-call or on-call backup, I will not answer.
If the "crisis" was business threatening and all hands were expected, then they could leave a voice mail or email to my non-business account or phone. Early on, we had a shared set of pagers that we kept when on call and on backup on-call. They eventually went to company supplied cell phones that I explicitly shut off when I went off site unless I was on-call or backup.
I did have a couple of instances where I was called by the on-call person when I was not a backup off hours. My answer to the first one was "read the documentation I produced to handle the situation - read, contact your backup (who would say read the documentation), contact operations (who would say read the documentation) or plead your ignorance to management." They read the documentation and fixed the issue. The other time was when I was about to be on-call and received a call asking me to "fix" an issue about 8 hours before I went on call. The on-call guy was too drunk to drive into the data center to fix the issue and the backup on-call told him to go to hell. The on-call guy called operations and said that he was handing it off to me. I was able to fix the issue remotely but it did me no good. The guy who called in was kept on, while I was RIFed about a year later. He had a MSCE for NT 4 while we were installing Windows 2008 plus I was almost 30 years older than he was.
Another way to fix this is get paid by the hour. Off hours work is time and a half and the more hours you work, the less the boss gets in their bonus.
You pay me to be ready to leap out of bed at a moments notice and not drink beer. You betcha that's gonna cost.
That's their responses to a survey. Let's check their phone records to find out what they're actually doing.
Debate is a form of harassment. Do not question my truth.
Genuinely curious because it's damn sure not the US. Most of us are "At Will" employees in "Right to Work" states (I bet you're English so you can appreciate our Orwellian double speak). At least that's how it works in the Bible Belt wasteland.
I.e. you can be fired for any reason that isn't EoE protected (LGBTQ/race/religion/sex) which is extremely hard to prove. Oh, and if you get fired you get no unemployment benefits because the state will invariably side with the employer and you have no choice but to look for work instead of fight them for your weekly pittance from the system you paid in to for many years (I'm employed but I've also not been and seen all of this first hand more than once).
... the phone is downstairs with my car keys. I won't even hear it ring.
It's sad but true. They're not a very bright group of people. They're skilled, but also idiots.
And hire people who give a shit about their jobs instead.
Note that in the UK, if your boss phones you late at night regarding work, you are well within your rights to tell them to poke it.
UK Employment law contains lots of protections for employees and you cannot fire people for fun and giggles. Also people consider that if you are going to phone me out of hours, it had better be really earth-shatteringly important. The only time I can remember getting such a call it was because the mains cable into the building had exploded and damaged a lot of infrastructure through a power surge. It was a request if I could come in early the next morning to help sort out the mess which was fine as it was an extremely rare event.
Once upon a time at a previous employer the boss realised that the on-call tech support staff were really overworked and decided to fix that. By adding non-tech-support employees (like me) to the afterhours rotation. I responded with feedback to the effect that, if tech support staff were overworked, they should be compensated for being overworked or their workload should be alleviated by adding more staff, and that I didn't see "being on-call after hours" in my contract. First time I got rostered on and assigned a support phone for the weekend I accidentally dropped it in the toilet at the pub on Friday night. I didn't get rostered on again.
Got made redundant in a restructuring about a year later and maybe I wouldn't have been if I'd bent over, but I'm glad I didn't because fuck them that's why.
If you want me to reply outside of work hours, you better be paying me outside of work hours.
I worked at a place where there were four of us on the admin team, and I was expected to be on-call for one week out of four. As sometimes happened, the Network Operations Center people would muff an "emergency," or just call out of an overabundance of caution, and we'd quickly determine it was no big deal, close the call. Then, there were other times where it would start with me, then snowball to my go-to guy - though I hated bugging him if I could avoid it - if it was over my head or costing us big bucks per minute of downtime. More than once - New Years Eve of 2017, for instance - it escalated to all-hands. Every one of us got roped into it for a good three or four hours that evening. We never did figure that one out, but it eventually went away. The good part of our group was that we all had each others' backs; it was a solid team of good guys, even the manager, who took regular weekly on-call shifts. The bad part was that we didn't get paid extra for it. I missed a number of family events - even had to take a call while in the hospital as my mother was dying, but I didn't mind so much because I needed to take a break from the sadness - and I won't deny I got pissed off more than once about being on-call, but I understood the job requirements going in. The lack of extra pay also kinda motivated us to get shit fixed quick-like.
Funny story:
In my old company (smaller), the company modified the IT policy to make it easier for employees to access email and company data on personal devices. This made it more likely that I would check email off hours, and possibly respond if necessary (which was not uncommon).
In my new (bigger) company, the IT policy is more rigid, and you cannot access company info (including email) without jumping through several hoops (corporate device, multi-factor auth, etc.). So I no longer check email/phone off hours, or feel any obligation to answer anything (if they wanted off hours interaction, they are either idiots, or should not have erected so many barriers).
The morale, I suppose, is that if you want to encourage good employee work/life balance, you should implement more security policies. Or not, I guess, depending on your corporate goals.
If you earn 30/40% more, and your contract states that out of hour phone calls are within your responsibilities, that makes sense. If it doesn’t, and you still pick up the phone, you’re a tool.
I'm not on call, I'm not being paid to be on call, if you wish to have me on call you will need to pay me.
When I leave the office for the day, my work phone goes into my backpack, and stays there. I don't walk around after hours with it. I don't obsessively check it. I don't care about it.
Do not for a minute think you have 24x7 access to me, and don't expect that I feel I owe you that.
Every now and then my company takes on a client, and says "yes, we'll give you 24x7 coverage in case of a disaster". But what they fail to do is account for 24x7 coverage with their employees. We tell them we're not 24x7 workers, and that they should have minimal expectation that we're sleeping with our phone next to our beds. Or sober. Or not otherwise engaged in that all important work-life balance they tell us to maintain.
Sorry, I didn't sign up for that, you're not paying me for that, and I don't give a fuck that you promised it to someone else ... you don't get to change the terms of my employment because you promised someone something you don't actually have.
What needs to happen is for employers to stop assuming their employees are available around the clock and should be expected to answer out of office hours.
You're goddamned right I'd ignore a call after hours, because I never promised you I'd answer it. And the only way not to get sucked into that vortex is to refuse to answer the damned phone, texts, emails, and everything else outside of work hours.
Remember folks, your company will not show loyalty to you. You are not their indentured servant. And unless your employment terms specifically include this shit, your employer has no real expectation you'll answer.
Not my problem.
Same here. My boss wouldn't call without a darn good reason. In addition, if the shit hits the fan I'd MUCH rather fix it than have someone else TRY to fix it and leave me with a much bigger mess to clean up in the morning.
I've told my boss PLEASE call (or message) me because it's much easier for me to spend 10 minutes properly diagnosing a problem and fixing it, rather than try to figure out wtf all a co-worker did while randomly trying this and that at random hoping to make the problem go away.
===
Heck, even my FORMER my boss, as I was leaving that job, I told them several times - you'll probably run into one or two situations where you have this choice:
A) you spend five hours trying to figure out what Ray did
B) I spend five minutes answering their email, answering their question
I'd much rather me spend 5 minutes answering their question than they spend 5 hours trying to figure it out without asking me.
Of course the old employer left me on as a "hourly employee" at a high rate of $xxx/hour, just in case they needed a couple hours of my time. At well over $100/hour, I'm happy to leave open the possibility of doing a little work for them. Even giving them a few minutes of my time for free.
As it turned out, I think they had one five-minute question for me, and once I asked them to send me a copy of a bit of code I'd written for them because it was a good example of a concept I wanted to demonstrate.
Now, THIS ^^^ is how a boss/employee professional relationship should work.
I, too, am privileged to work for a fair, knowledgeable boss, and we respect each other's skills and abilities. If he calls me on the weekend, it's important, and I don't mind taking a little time to straighten out whatever it is. In earlier times, this kind of responsibility was taken into account at salary review time, but in the past 15 years, the MBAs have infiltrated themselves into management and the review process so thoroughly that unless your talents include walking on water, it's cost-of-living or less at raise time, regardless of your contribution during the previous year. The relationships you build, though, may be useful in your next employment search.
Most of my co-workers probably fit into this category. I routinely answer calls in the middle of the night from management or co-workers in a bind. Generally I think the authority you are entrusted with is tied to the the amount of responsibility you assume. Some people don't care about earning 30-40% more if it means any kind of commitment to the job and that's fine. Other people, they pick up the phone.
If your organisation relies on you answering calls in the middle of the night (when you're off duty) there is something wrong with your organisation. If a role needs 24/7 coverage, you need to employ at least 3 people to cover that role.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Most of my co-workers probably fit into this category. I routinely answer calls in the middle of the night from management or co-workers in a bind. Generally I think the authority you are entrusted with is tied to the the amount of responsibility you assume. Some people don't care about earning 30-40% more if it means any kind of commitment to the job and that's fine. Other people, they pick up the phone.
Also other people ignore the phone because they aren't payed to do so while some are or are just full of themselves which is fine either way if it didn't make upper management think it is ok to not pay some for the same amount of work.
It is very easy to decide whether you should take a call from your boss outside of work hours. If the answer to those questions is no, then don't answer the phone:
1. Do you have a personal relationship with your boss outside of the workplace?
2. Are you on-call or part of a backup rotation in accordance with a written company policy?
3. Is there a policy applicable to your positions which provides compensation for work requested during off-duty hours?
You could have been watching a movie, swimming in a pool, or competing on the sports field. You could sleep with the phone off, and your battery could die at any time. All of these things are normal. The only reason to avoid these situations is when your job description and compensation impose restrictions.
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According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
I have several "bosses" at my job. Let's focus on two of them.
For one of them, I will answer at any time. Day or night, work day, weekend, or even a day off when I'm out with my family. I know that he is knowledgeable enough to handle most issues on his own, and respectful enough of my time that he won't call unless I'm really the best (or only) person to handle what needs attention. He also has enough strength of character that I know he won't panic when management does. When he does call, he apologizes to me, my wife, and anyone else around for the interruption.
Another boss, on the other hand, is the opposite. He's earned the reputation for calling folks during dinner to discuss incorrect paperwork, threatening HR consequences if the issue isn't resolved immediately. Whenever management panics about something they should have addressed six months earlier, he will jump and sound the alarm just to show that he's doing something. Rather than think about who else is on duty that could handle the problem, he goes straight to his senior people, both interrupting their lives and depriving the junior folks of the experience they would need to become senior. Since this boss doesn't respect me or my time, I have no inclination to answer his calls when I'm not obligated to do so.
For what it's worth, I'm salaried, but working time is tracked and overtime is paid. Nothing I do affects life-threatening situations, but a lot of money is involved.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Not just three people. There are 168 hours in a week, and standard practice is 40 working hours, except for things like holidays and vacations and sick time. I'd figure five people is the minimum to cover something 24/7.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Do you in fact make 30-40% more? In many companies, you wouldn't.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
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This is simplistic.
Most people, especially those with families, prefer to work during local daylight hours. 24x7 coverage means local off-hours shifts (which most people don't like), or having people around the world. Finding qualified people in appropriate timezones is difficult; the paperwork to be able to employ and pay them is also considerable.
Then you have the challenge of keeping everyone in sync when you rarely if ever have everyone in a single conversation. Sure you can set up NOC-type teams this way, and document routine situations for them to execute unilaterally, but there are always going to exceptional situations.
On-call rotations aren't going anywhere.
Agreed. I'd also rather address something sooner, vs. later after it's had time to get worse and piss off more customers.
Which also might mean getting an escalation at 7pm when I'm awake already, vs 3am which disrupts me and my family.
There once was a time that I had no real frame of reference to differentiate contracted hours of employment from private time. I had no boundaries, was pretty much always on call, and thought I was lucky to have the employers that I allowed to (and were happy to) treat me like that. I pretty much always took the call. Several employers did pretty well out of me during those years.
Then I grew up and developed a modicum of self-esteem.
Ahh - My eye!
The doctor said I'm not supposed to get Slashdot in it!
If it's after office hours and not previously scheduled, it goes to voicemail, allowing my boss to explain clearly what is wrong, and I can explain that I was out of contact when I do call back