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> To all fellow software engineers out there: STOP reading company emails after work ALREADY! I don't care what your boss has told you or what your co-workers do. Just don't do it.

Don't tell people what to do. You don't understand another person's situation or values.

I voluntarily pay attention to work matters on my own time in a reasonable and controlled way. I like my work and at times (not always) it's as fun and rewarding as whatever hobby I might spend time on instead.

I've also been rewarded in various ways, both tangible and intangible, by demonstrating above-average "discretionary" attention to work. Totally within the bounds of keeping a sane balance between home and work life. And absent of pressure to do it in order to keep my job.

I can understand why people who disagree feel strongly that no one else should put in extra time to get ahead either. Sometimes the rewards are zero sum. But there's a time and place for serious investment in a job or company, and other times it's only about a paycheck. Make sure you choose one or the other consciously, but don't pretend there's one right answer.

Ditto. I take vacations and I shut down after-hours when I don't have deadlines or timezone-dictated calls. But I do glance at my email from time to time in both situations if I have some downtime. And, if I can deal with some time sensitive matter quickly and with a modicum of effort, I honestly don't know why I wouldn't do so.

I can understand that somebody who is paid hourly has no incentive to do anything work related once they leave the door (or clock if you prefer). For salaried employees, there are going to be times you need to work late, weekends, check email at home, whatever. It comes with the job.

The problems occur when routine work is treated as high priority/time sensitive. But I'm not sold that legislating this is the best solution. Even the example given of somebody fixing bugs overnight w/ bad solutions - that is something management should have addressed. Unless a really critical system has crashed as a result, there is no good reason to fix it then and mgt. should make that clear.

> For salaried employees, there are going to be times you need to work late, weekends, check email at home, whatever. It comes with the job.

Explain this to me. Nothing "comes with the job". Your job is your job and if you are working, say, 40 hours a week, it's more or less 8 hours a day. After 8 hours working, you go home and enjoy YOUR time. If companies want people to do company work while they are awake, they should basically double payrolls and pay for 16 hours, not just 8. Actually, not even in that case should it be OK.

People are people and need to have their life and leisure time. If they don't have it, they start to feel overworked, stressed, depressed. In the end, it's not a net positive for the company either.

THIS is precisely the attitude that leads some abusive bosses to believe that it's OK to expect people to sacrifice their free time. This should be a major offense, and should not be tolerated AT ALL in my opinion.

The consequence of enforcing your attitude by law is that small companies will never be able to expand to compete with big businesses. Say your website goes down at an inopportune time for a market in another time zone. Sorry, there's no one that can fix it because you can't have someone handling emergencies that 'come with the job' off hours on a staff of five. Now you've lost a major market.

If you can't staff properly to service a market, maybe you shouldn't be in it. Having someone to answer level 1 support requests (and escalate with proper "on-call" pay when necessary) isn't that expensive.

Answering dnautics here, no idea why I can't reply directly to his post.

> The consequence of enforcing your attitude by law is that small companies will never be able to expand to compete with big businesses. Say your website goes down at an inopportune time for a market in another time zone. Sorry, there's no one that can fix it because you can't have someone handling emergencies that 'come with the job' off hours on a staff of five. Now you've lost a major market.

Emergencies are different beasts. In my opinion, being on call should be paid extra. Same as happens with emergency services. How is your service when the site goes down different than a medical urgency? (besides the obvious fact that most probably, nobody will die if your website goes down at night, but you get the idea).

I was talking regular work. I know (and have experienced this personally) that some companies make look every day as if it could be doomsday if you relax.

Of course, lines get blurry, as in life. But some situations are so obvious, it does not need to find edge cases.

In fact, at least in the US, this is not the case, and it works both ways. If you're a salaried exempt employee --- as virtually all software developers are --- you don't get overtime pay and can be expected to work in off-hours. On the other hand, your pay can't easily be docked, and must be docked in full day increments.

Restated: salaried positions by definition include an expectation that your work won't always be confined to 9-5 hours.

Many times employees do not work 8 hours focused, sometimes they just do not come because of "sickness" just because they do not feel productive, or they come late-leave late occassionally because of a private need. Many employers understand that and tolerate that, as long as it is not impacting the general performance. So when company needs the employee occasionally out of office hours, the employee should do his/her best. If both parties are not abusing the situation everything is ok. Many times I am busy with a private issue at office hours but sometimes in a not-so-important private time my company needs me and I am happy to provide my support. With job contract I don't sell my 40 hours strictly, but I set up a continuous relationship with my employer to get the job done, which sometimes may require sacrifice of private time.

> For salaried employees, there are going to be times you need to work late, weekends, check email at home, whatever. It comes with the job.

That's a curiously un-European way to look at things. In every private company I've worked for, if they wanted more than my agreed salaried hours they either paid overtime or gave me TOIL (Time Off In Lieu). If they wanted me to be on call, they paid me an on-call rate.

If it was the other way around - you suddenly needed to leave early every day for a week - how do you think your employer would react?

"un-European"? The need to give "nationalities" to ideas and behaviors seems divisive.

If it was the other way around - you suddenly needed to leave early every day for a week - how do you think your employer would react?

Every employer I've had (all in the US) would be perfectly fine with that.

> Is your private life SO boring, you need to do something that many of us do not even like doing during office hours?

Yes. Or rather, what happens at work is so interesting that it usually beats refreshing reddit for the 5th time in 10min while in the train.

Boring private life is the leading cause of internet trolls.

Why not start a little side-project? Try new things? Or maybe find a hobby that is going to fill those boring hours with joy?

You write: "fill those _boring_ hours"

... in response to what the poster actually wrote: "work is _so interesting_"

If you're rewriting what the poster wrote into words of opposite meaning, it doesn't seem like you're engaging in real discussion.

What are you even talking about?

"interesting" != "boring"

When the poster writes a response, one can either honestly try to understand his position, and then ask followup questions that are relevant to what he actually wrote.

It seems like you didn't do that. Instead, you distorted his choice to read work email as "boring" and therefore, your followup questions (side projects? hobby?) had the tone of "lecturing" about his habit.

In reading all of your replies to everyone, the gap in your worldview is that some non-managers like their work such that reading email outside of office hours is a natural response. However, that doesn't mean everyone should do it. For workers that feel strongly that reading email after-hours is wrong, telling others not to do so isn't going to work.

If some people have different viewpoint about after-hours email, are you interested in thoughtful discussion about it? Or do you prefer to lecture people regardless of what they say?

I can't really start or contribute to a little side-project when I'm standing in a tram, sitting in a train for 15min, or waiting at the gate / before liftoff during a flight. I can read my company email from my phone during that time.

Consider that some people have meaningful jobs. If they're not working solely for the money, it's understandable that they'll do some work outside the office.

The HN guidelines ask you to please not use uppercase for emphasis: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. It's the online equivalent of yelling, and closely associated with ranting, which tends to have a poorer signal/noise ratio.

> not management

If management isn't also not reading mail/doing work after office hours than the whole thing falls apart.

Yes, but I don't care what managers do, they have other incentives and their time is (and should be) tracked differently.

Managers manage people. If they are working, they require other people working to do their job.

Basically if they business isn't onboard with the idea of not working after hours, it won't happen and those that try to force it risk being replaced with people that 'fit the company culture.'

I understand what you are saying, and you are right. It's just that I didn't want to focus on management, since it's a whole different dimension. But I agree with what you are saying.

Managers manage people. If they are working, they require other people working to do their job.

Not really. The thing about email is that the boss can send one out after hours, and it will still be there in the morning.

> they have other incentives and their time is (and should be) tracked differently.

Huh? The only difference between a manager and a non-manager is that the former manages others.