[sokoloff]

I had a new director starting a few years ago when my kids were 1 & 3. Literally the first email I sent to him was at 11 PM the evening before his first day, so I started with, "Don't pay any attention to the time of this email. I'm sending it now because the kids are asleep and I'm still awake; I have no expectations that you'll be online answering emails all hours of the day."

[zafka]

That was a rather nice touch. I will bet your new director appreciated it.

[crpatino]

Was it really needed to send that email at that time, or it was something that could have been sent first time in the morning?* And, where you already committed to work on something else next morning so the only/most-convenient time slot available was late the night before?

I don't know you, so I cannot in good faith accuse you of anything. But maybe if you reflected on your ambivalence towards work-life balance, you'd find the kernels for personal growth in there. Let me explain myself.

Speaking in general terms, there is a psychological phenomenon called the double-bind. It happens when a parent or authority figure states some expectation verbally but then subtly undermine it with his/her actions. i.e. I can chastise my kids for spending "too much time in front of screens", but then never have time to take them to play outdoors, or come back home and either keep working or root myself in front of TV, or buy them a video-game to reward some special achievement.

The root cause of the problem in this case would be my own unresolved feelings towards electronic entertainment, which I enjoy a little too much and I am aware to be not quite healthy. But from the point of view of my children's psyche, the situation is much more destructive: each of them can either embrace the label of "coach potato", absorb all the guilt from my chastising, but keep enjoying screens as a hidden pleasure; or they can try to live up to the impossible ideals I've set up for them and embrace the label of "troublemaker", because enjoying some healthy outdoors activity inside the house will invariably end up causing a bunch of disruption, nuisance and the occasional accident.

What they cannot ever dare is to say: "Hey Dad, you always say we should play more outdoors. Turn that gadget off and take us to the park", because if they do I will burst in anger. We all face some of this while growing up, and most of us learn to turn a blind eye to some intractable problems. In the most pathological cases, though, the children can grow up with a shattered sense of reality and develop serious psychiatric problems when they face the correct triggers in their adult lives (I have read, though I have not the reference now, that the double bind was fist discovered by the military while investigating the clinic histories of veterans who had gone into full-fledged schizophrenia instead of the more common PTSD).

What I am trying to say while I have read about this phenomenon from the point of view of development psychology, I have observed the same patterns of interaction in the workplace a few times. In those cases, we are all adults, so there is probably no risk of anyone's mental health; but lot's of needless stress comes from the unspeakable hot buttons, the packs of elephants that dwell in corporate rooms all over the world.

[sokoloff]

Well, it was his "welcome to the company, here are a few things that will be helpful as you settle in, and here's the scoop on where to go for orientation" email, so it would ideally get to him before he arrived, and certainly before orientation started.

Having two kids 3 and under doesn't lend itself very well to methodically planning out a carefully choreographed morning with just enough time to dash off an important email.

(That said, I do have a comfortably blurred line between work and personal, because I genuinely enjoy both and don't see a need for a strong wall between the two. Other people make other choices and I do what I can to not project my preferences onto their behaviors and choices. It's not perfect, but nothing is.)

[crpatino]

> Well, it was his "welcome to the company, here are a few things that will be helpful as you settle in, and here's the scoop on where to go for orientation" email...

You could have said welcome and provide helpful advice at any time during the first day, as long as there was someone ready to great him first time in the morning. The same person could have taken him to the place where orientation will take place. If you are big enough to have structured orientation, you are big enough to delegate the reception of new employees.

I want to say I am not judging you or your work style. I simply notice that you have shared candidly and think you may appreciate a comment with an outsider's perspective.

===

By the way, there was an asterisk in my first post. I was going to say that I am somewhat biased because my current boss prefers to write untimely emails first thing in the morning. I know he's a family guy and has to wake up pretty early to check and respond email before setting the kids up for school. I find his style very refreshing, specially in comparison with the archetypical past-midnight workaholic messages (which I confess to indulge in sometimes).

[sokoloff]

I appreciate the sharing of your point of view and didn't take any offense (nor anything else negative).

I understand the people working for me who don't ever answer email unless they're on-call. Nothing negative as 24x7 email SLA isn't part of the bargain.