Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by ketzo 1632 days ago
You’ve never had a teammate who was just ALWAYS online on Slack? Or found yourself working on a weekend because you thought of a bug fix?

I agree that there’s a lot of blame-shifting that happens at work. But lots of people struggle to disconnect from work for non-malicious reasons, either their own or those of someone else.

1 comments

> You’ve never had a teammate who was just ALWAYS online on Slack?

Yes, but I don't care if they are, it won't make me.

Where it becomes toxic is when the CxOs are on slack 24x7. Then it becomes a company direction, whether explicitly stated or not.

I've also seen the opposite, where the executive team set an exemplary tone about work/life balance in actions and words, so that becomes the company culture.

That's unfortunate. Anyone that isn't being paid similar piles of money shouldn't be made to feel any work-hour pressure based on what a CxO does.
Yeah after working for a boss who was obsessed with people being always on slack I decided I was done with it. I set myself to offline and in a meeting until sometime next year when I started at this job. No one has ever asked about it and its never been an issue. I hate that slack shows availability by default.
I've been in a company where the the CEO is on slack from 6am to midnight 7 days a week expecting a response within a minute to anything. Extremely toxic environment.

The worst of it, in some sense, is that they don't even do it from an angle of intentionally attempting to overwork people. It's just that they're an obsessive multitasker who doesn't really get that focus-oriented people need focus time, which is the complete opposite of what slack is.

Overwork means the manager can't manage time and doesn't get work done on schedule. Is there some memey site that explains this? Like https://www.managersresourcehandbook.com/lessons-from-bad-bo... (but that site focuses a lot on fluffy stuff like giving much attention to employees).
Yeah...signalling. Makes the world go around. Doesn't matter what you say, subordinates adjust thier behavior to match the signal.