[jpollock]

Speaking from personal experience, if you allow out-of-hours calls, they creep in and become the norm. Then you're expected to both be at work during work hours for meetings and to take the out of hours meetings too.

This can be perfectly acceptable, I was happy to do it for a previous employer. I was also compensated for it.

[mreome]

I don't think that's what the article is describing though. It's talking more about allowing off-hour calls/work/etc, but dropping the expectation of being at work during "normal work hours." Just a general flexibility to set your schedule as long as you're getting your work done.

[jpollock]

The way it happens is:

1) you get asked to take out of hours client meetings.

2) those become regular.

3) you end up on a project which is high priority.

4) those have daily standups to make the schedule.

5) that becomes regular.

Congratulations, you've now got both out-of-hours and in-hours meetings, frequently at 10AM and 10PM. Even if the offset is a "Tuesday/Thursday WFH", that will eventually become consumed by a scheduled something in the face of some time pressure.

For example, we have regular "no meeting weeks", and the team just scheduled one. However, everyone on Project Y, had daily standups. We were even told "no meeting week doesn't apply to you".

Another piece of well-earned experience is what happens with a company phone out of hours. When I did that, I got pinged by well meaning ops people when they started looking at their bug queue. The only problem? I was in GMT-7, and they were in GMT+3. If it's important, they can page me, instead of messaging me.

Again, I can be happy to do this. If I believe in the company mission, and/or I'm compensated for it. I need to negotiate with my partner, but that's what being in a relationship is all about.

[mreome]

I'm not at all discounting your experience; mine are quite similar. I was just saying that what the article is discussing is not how things are now most places but looking at a possible projection of a trend seen in some companies that appears driven by a new generation entering the workforce.

Basically the premise (as I interpret it) is that younger generations have such a drastically different relationship with their employers and work-life balance expectations that it may not be possible for employers to make the kind of demands and "take-backs" your describing because they would just not be considered acceptable anymore. It's basically a positive (and I think more accurate) interpretation of "Millennials don't want to work hard" that says "Millenials aren't willing to sacrifice their health or happiness to make their employers more profits", and looking at what employers may have to change in the future to account for this.

[secabeen]

That has not been the case for me. My personal cell phone number has been on my voicemail for a decade now, and I get about two calls a year, generally for system outages or weird issues for a user with a deadline, or for true special cases.

We have automated monitoring of services, and except for the core routers and environmental monitors, all SMS notifications are disabled from midnight to 6am. 'tis lovely.