How the Smartphone Killed the Three-day Weekend 232
An anonymous reader writes "As we in the U.S. settle in for Memorial Day weekend, this article points out how our cultural addiction to technology is making it less of a vacation than it used to be. 'The average smartphone user checks his or her device 150 times per day, or about once every six minutes. Meanwhile, government data from 2011 says 35 percent of us work on weekends, and those who do average five hours of labor, often without compensation — or even a thank you. The other 65 percent were probably too busy to answer surveyors' questions.' Even for those of us who don't have any work to do over the weekend, we'll probably end up reading all of our work-related emails as they roll in, and take time out of our day to think about what's going on — to the detriment of our weekend activities: 'A study at the University of California, San Francisco, found that new experiences fail to become long-term memories unless brains have downtime for review.' I imagine it's even worse for your average Slashdotter, who's likely plugged in to more technology at home and at work. How can we make our employers understand that downtime needs to remain downtime? 'It took labor unions 100 years to fight for nights and weekends off, some say, while smartphones took them away in about three years.'"
No way to change (Score:5, Interesting)
(this is NOT a troll)
As a person (senior management) who has been told by his CEO "I don't care about what happens to the employees, I care about my company making money," I don't see there is anything you can do to get 'companies' to recognize the value of vacations... other than quitting and making them scramble to find someone else they can screw over. Sadly, the perception of vacations, much like IT and paid training in general, is that it is a drain on the company (doesn't produce IMMEDIATE revenue but DOES result in IMMEDIATE costs), and if it was possible to run the company without it, most companies would do so in a heart beat. Of course, those companies are often hell-holes to work in and fail on a regular basis.
Not me (Score:4, Interesting)
We have an on call rotation at work, and I am plugged into my work smartphone when on call. That's it. When I'm not on call, the smartphone stays at home (and gets ignored while I'm at home).
There are those who get forced into spending weekend time on work, and I do have a lot of sympathy for those people (though I would encourage them to find a job with an employer who isn't abusing them). But a lot of people who spend weekend time on work don't do so because they'll get fired or anything... they just do it out of a misguided sense of loyalty to their employer and dedication to their job. Those people are fools, unless their employer is repaying them for that devotion (which almost none do).
This is a cultural problem (Score:5, Interesting)
Unfortunately, in the context of the American mind this makes sense but in fact it's totally incorrect. Nights and weekends off has been lost over the last 30 years or so because corporations and governments worked together to reduce labor laws that protect workers and reward offshoring of labor as another avenue to damaging worker rights. Taking away our right to unionize did not make them enough money, so they had to exploit slave labor in Southeast Asia to have another implement to control workers: threatening not only individuals but entire communities with factory shutdowns.
And then they realized that with the militarization of our police forces they didn't have to threaten anything, so now they're just taking.They take our national wealth through tax loopholes, they drain our coffers with lucrative government contracts, and yet they continue to demand more and more money because there's no such thing as enough. Apple can't afford to pay full taxes, and they can't afford to pay Americans a living wage to build their products, but somehow they have over one hundred billion dollars in hard cash. They have so much money they haven't figured out how to spend it yet, and pretty much every corporation operates in a similar fashion.
Corporations continue to take and take and the only thing that will stop them is a popular labor movement, which may or may not be around the corner. Until Americans understand the root of the problem -- corporate power far outpacing democratic will -- corporations will continue to take our rights, our money, and the inheritance of a living planet away from our children. That's not because corporate people are evil, it's because absolute power corrupts absolutely, and despite all of their protestations to the contrary, they operate as any warlord or king or priest does when they are in centers of power. If they see something they want and they can get away with it, they will take it.
Smartphones don't have much to do with it.
Re:You forgot to mention... (Score:5, Interesting)
I was 'on call' for almost 2 years with one company I worked for, and almost got fired because I slept in on a Saturday and didn't answer my phone for about 3 hours. After that, I called a meeting with my manager and HR exec. I told them if I was to be considered 'on call' at all hours of the day, 24/7/365.. then they needed to pay me for the hours I was expected to answer the phone.
I then laid out the math, considering 1/4th of my salary for 'on call' status outside of normal work, they would have to raise my salary to 75% greater than my current pay. I was told they would hire another person, and divide the 'on call' status across the group to make it 'fair'. After that, I received almost no calls outside of work(except on my 'on call' weekend). They figured spanning the 'on call' status to everyone on the team, was cheaper than any one of us getting that extra 75%.. and that's just at 1/4th of MY pay, and I was a mid-level dev at the time.
I got my free time back, and they were happy that I brought the fact that I was upset with the matter to them, rather than just leaving because I was mad at the situation.
On a side note: I used to work for a very well known in-house tech service.. on my week, once every 6 months, I was paid 1/4 time 8hrs a day for them to be able to call me at any hour, and have me answer. Even when I worked that day.
Re:Not me (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Crap. (Score:4, Interesting)
What took away the three day weekends is having unreasonable deadlines... and wanting to keep a job.
I know the common reply here is simply, "Find another job if you don't like it." And that's one possibility, but not feasible for many people. Do you know what fixed unreasonable working conditions in the past? Collective bargaining. If you're afraid of sticking your neck out there by talking to HR and your boss about how you're being treated, get together a group of your coworkers and do it together.
Do they want people on-call on three-day weekends? Fine -- pay you to be on-call. Do they want ridiculous amounts of overtime to meet "unreasonable deadlines"? Fine -- pay you bonuses for that overtime to meet special deadlines.
If you have reasonable requests, and a lot of your coworkers feel the same way, you can probably negotiate some changes. You shouldn't feel like your job is on the line if you can't commit to doing overtime whenever asked and coming in over holiday weekends whenever is convenient. Unless you're mid-level management or above, you probably don't get paid enough to deal with that sort of crap.
On the other hand, a lot of tech companies in the past couple decades seem to have developed some sort of crazy work ethic where you have a bunch of guys all under 35, with no lives, who are willing to work 80 per week all the time. I know a few guys who thrive on this sort of thing -- they just seem to keep looking for jobs that will punish them like that.
If all of your coworkers are like that, then your only recourse probably is to find a new job to improve working conditions. But if you spend your lunchtime complaining about these things with your coworkers, you can probably work to change it.
(Of course, this is all assuming that your company isn't ready to fire all of you and outsource the work to India. But if you and your coworkers are actually doing good work in your positions, that scenario is unlikely.)