Phones Made the World an Office, Like It or Not | Hacker News Reader

Phones Made the World an Office, Like It or Not

nytimes.com

The phone isn't the issue. It's the office culture towards it.

I just carry two phones & look at the work one only when it suits me. Europeans are generally quite good at respecting work hours vs non so I don't ever catch flak for it.

...and it's a convenient tool when I need it. The global roaming is also nice.

I have my phone set to do not disturb at 6pm and only starred numbers can call through.

If work wants me to answer my phone out of hours they can pay me for it, they don’t (since they don’t need that) so I don’t.

My quandary is that my work does pay me to be on-call, and if I take a call, but what do I do when I get a robo-call?

It technically is because my employer’s device ringing me.

>I have my phone set to do not disturb at 6pm and only starred numbers can call through.

What type of phone/setup is this?

It’s completely stock on android 9.

It’s in the do not disturb settings, you can set start stop times and who can break through by starring them in contacts.

>I just carry two phones

This. I actually gave up my smart phone a year ago. I've been with a feature phone (Nokia 3310) for a full year. Office-mates can't believe that I don't check my e-mail on the go. My position at work is this: "Given that I'm at my workstation 85% of my day, if I'm important enough to need to check e-mail 'on the go' or outside of work, I'm important enough for the company to get me a second phone - one dedicated to work and work only."

> if I'm important enough to need to check e-mail 'on the go' or outside of work, I'm important enough for the company to get me a second phone

Quite. Though there is something to be said for the raw network effects of "everyone gets an iphone with email, calendar and instant messaging".

>if I'm important enough to need to check e-mail 'on the go' or outside of work

Depends on the role & type of work more than "being important" I think.

I can't imagine performing my current role without 24/7 access to be honest. Emphasis on access...very different to expectation of checking it 24/7. On most of my long vacations I actually take my work laptop with me...but with a out of office on. If there is a fire I'll jump in...if there is just smoke...well clearly I'm out of office.

Not having a job-provided phone is great. Otherwise people have the wrong expectation to reach my co-workers almost 24/7, despite not being required to answer, given the nature of their jobs.

Some time ago I made the error of installing my corporate email on my personal phone and i feeled compeled to read every new email, causing me anxiety and stress. I prompty deleted it, not only for taht reason, but because I understood some legal implications of having job-related info on my personal device.

There is another problem with using your own phone for work: many companies now require you to install their MDM profile to access email or other services. This gives them a lot of power to do whatever they like with the device, remotely. If a security breach occurs and they deem it prudent, they can wipe the phone remotely, for example. And I don't even know what they can access from the phone's content, probably everything.

It's quite simply an issue of ownership: if they don't pay for the phone, they don't get that. If you want root on a device, pay for it and issue it to the user.

So, in that sense a device issued by the employer is better. I'm not installing anyone's MDM profile on my phone, that I pay for, that contains my personal photos, messages, etc.

I thought this has been changing so that it's isolated now, and a remote wipe will only wipe business-related accounts and not your entire phone?

iOS 13, I think. Probably supported on Android, though.

To any employer requiring I use my personal cell phone for work: No. Give me a company phone and you can install anything you want on it (I might still put it in a Faraday cage when not on duty, however).

You may be totally unwilling to work at a startup (a very reasonable position), but I haven't seen company phones become a thing until the company becomes fairly well-established.

But a startup which is unwilling to reimburse people for work phones or provide a phone probably doesn't require mobile device management either.

The best way to handle the MDM issue is to forward emails to your personal email. This has the added benefit that you can select which emails to forward, so I forward emails from my boss, his boss, and the monitoring system.

That sure seems like the exact thing they would want to be preventing...

> The best way to handle the MDM issue is to forward emails to your personal email.

That's a quick way to get a visit from your local InfoSec department for exfiltrating company information to non-company controlled servers.

On Android, MDM profiles create a separate isolated sandbox which doesn't see any of your personal information. This also means that the company can only remotely wipe that sandbox and not your personal data.

There's also very convenient quick setting which disables all work apps and silences all work notations. A critical feature for work/life balance.

Great in theory but a recent post on HN made light of the fact that if your company is investigated then your personal phone can be taken off of you because company data touched it.

I don't have work email on my phone, but I do have slack installed with notifications disabled. this works pretty well for me if i want/need to check on something while also preventing me from random interruptions and feeling like i need to respond to things in my free time

I have my cell phone set up to automatically block all calls that aren't scheduled. I consider it a device to enable me with internet access outdoors. That's it. Not a device to allow others to interrupt my work.

I fear the world of 50 years from now when you're not only expected to answer calls, but your boss will randomly show up in the middle of your bedroom or in the middle of a hiking trip with an AR headset you're expected to wear 24/7, and demand that you work.

> I have my cell phone set up to automatically block all calls that aren't scheduled.

This isn't really a viable option if you have kids and need to be available in case something happens to them, but can you go into some detail about how you did this?

Unless you have multiple phones or multiple numbers on one phone. I think some phones allow for dual sim cards. Perhaps you could do this on per phone number if you knew every number that was expected to call you about work.

I don't have kids and white-list my parents. If I had a SO I would white-list them too. This group of people presumably understands me well enough to not call me at random times unless it's an emergency.

By white-list I mean it doesn't auto-hangup, but I see the call, so I call back if it's one of the above. If it's not one of the above I don't even see the call. I still don't enable phone ringer sounds or vibrations a lot of the time. That sh*t scares me enough that it could cause me to fall of my bike, crash a car, or something else dangerous.

By auto-hangup I'm talking about everyone else. I simply can't work if people call me when they feel like without knowing what I'm actually doing. I might be standing on a cliff, trying to merge onto a highway, or trying to saw a piece of metal, and that's the wrong time to yell "HEY! What's up! Did you see my e-mail?"

> detail about how you did this

Twilio. You can write scripts to forward calls (or not) based on time/date, or even receive and play back some "interesting" recordings if you want to get back at spammers.

If you just want simple call-blocking with white-listing there are some apps on Android that can do that as well, and you can disable the blocking when you have a calendar event.

I’ve switched over to Do Not Disturb mode 24/7. No phone calls, no text messages, no notifications, no alerts. I use the phone when I choose to, not when other people/companies/apps want me to. It’s improved my quality of life tenfold!

And to answer the inevitable objection “But what about emergencies?” Emergencies happened long before cell phones existed and were dealt with. I’m not going to attach myself to a leash and collar just to handle a 1000-to-1 outlier situation.

Agreed. I usually leave my voice mailbox 100% full as well.

Dame, and the message says I do not do voice mail. Use SMS or email plz, thanks.

You can (and I do) whitelist select contacts. If my family wants to contact me, that is fine. Random people will go to voice mail and I deal with them when I get the time.

Totally agree. Also in my book the only kind of emergency is the one where you are hurt or in imminent danger of being hurt. Business emergencies are not emergencies. Businesses have thrived for hundreds of years without cell phones. Microsoft and Apple built their empire without needing to reach employees 24/7.

AR Headset is WAY TOO uncomfortable, nobody would ever want to wear it 24/7, humans will never inconvenience themselves to that extent. Maybe someone will invent mini screen implant to the eye.

50 years? AR? Your vision here is way too conservative.

Did you see the Neuralink presentation? They currently have a chip with 1000 tiny electrode threads attached. There is a robotic system that inserts the threads rapidly. They plan to implant several chips with up to 10000 total electrodes for the first phase. They talked about eventually getting a version directly attached to the visual cortex. I am not making this up.

Personally, I like it.

My team and I can spend less time at the office because of it. We also don't need a strict on-call schedule since the team is good about responding if they happen to be available and near a computer.

This gives everyone more overall freedom and flexibility.

And yet we continue to waste massive amounts of time and energy commuting in heavy traffic.

I start a new job next week and am planning on a new strategy with my devices. I'm going to leave my laptop in the office and use my personal computer more often, and I'm not going to add any of my work accounts onto my phone.

http://archive.is/plCtZ

I have a flip-phone to eliminate this exact problem.

More than the technical aspect of it, you may have less jerks in your life (lucky you).

There a people who will take any occasion to phone. I had a client who phoned 5 min after sending a mail to check if I saw it. Some would wait a few hours before phoning.

After a while, more than any change in what I use, completely blocking work calls outside of the duty team and ignoring mails/message/ whatever when off was the most straightforward way.

I don’t even have to hide my phone number anymore, it’s just dropped and they have to go to the support team if it’s really something important.

I certainly do not have to deal with what you are dealing with. I don't carry my phone with me everywhere I go, particularly when I off of work.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com