Sometimes I wonder if it’s even possible to juggle work and life anymore. Lately, it feels like work is stealing every moment, leaving nothing for the people who matter most. All I can do is hope for a better job soon.
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Only slackers get balance. And most of the folks here definitely get excellent work life balance.
People aren’t on incentivized to have back ups because if you’re out for a few weeks and someone is able to keep the lights on, in a toxic organization, one might expect themselves to be on the chopping block. Even if the company knows it’s not long term sustainable, it’s a problem for tomorrow’s manager, not today’s.
When I first joined the bank many years ago, I installed outlook on my phone because I thought how great to be able to check your emails on the commute to work, be reachable if need be, etc. I quickly realised that this was a bad idea and removed everything.
I know it's hard but you need to be self disciplined - work the hours that you're paid to do, take your vacation as you're entitled to do, definitely don't work weekends. And remember one very important thing, the more you give, the more they will take!
Unless you are in support (like a barista at Starbucks ) mentally signing off is impossible. That is the nature of our jobs.
Another aspect that I have noticed in the firm is that there are no backups. The work is still pending and accumulating while you are on Personal Time Offs - In fact what I have noticed with many of the colleagues they dread the vacation - comeback. So they prefer to push PTOs to year end (and it creates another type of problems)
With the current Jira based measuring - how long the ticket is in your bucket - is actually causing more stress as one is focused on "punting" and clearing the Inbox than solving / addressing the task.
Personally I never took the laptop home until COVID. Used to lock it up and never installed anything on my phone. So in an emergency they have to call me and if and only if that is dire I used my personal device to login and commute to work. But COVID and loss of office cubicle has changed it.
The one important rule I follow. I consciously SHUTDOWN the laptop. Somehow shutting down gives me a closure. Locking up did not help me. It is a bit of a pain especially if you are writing code and have to reinitialize everything the next day especially the Docker environment. But that is a small price.
I still have to figure out how to stop thinking about work and fight the urge to go back and log in when I believe that I have found a way to address the issues - But that is the nature of engineering development
If after office hours if one wants to reach me it has to be through my manager ONLY. Any call on my phone is silenced. No Teams or Outlook on my phone. Phone is my personal device and used only for OTP.
I have been pulled up for this. But I have been strict about that. One reason why I keep an eye on this forum and keep wondering when this attitude and whether this attitude has made me a choice-selection for LO
So my suggestion is , if you do not mind being LO'd then logoff every day - physically and mentally. No company software on personal devices (keeps you compliant also)
Good Luck
Love the boundary talk. Absolutely yes. This place will drain you if you let it. Just log off!! I will never put teams on my phone.
Dont put in the extra work n time. Work your 8-5 or 9-6. I did that n still got laid off recently. Companies have no loyalty to people who work hard
Setting boundaries is fine. But ‘forgetting about it until the next day’ is an impossibility for very many. We are all human. We all want to do well and do a good job. We do not like abuse and unnecessary criticism along with dysfunction. We can do it but we aren’t designed to put up with it for a long time. Pain doesnt just go away by leaving the place whether for 10 hours or forever. Too many of us make a career part of our lives. And sitting at home at night or over weekends, your mind dwells on it. This place is very damaging that way. And it’s being done deliberately. RV values profit over people. Abuse is one way to get rid of people and raise profit.
Set boundaries. Work your contracted hours and log off. You get no thanks in that place for ki-ling yourself and no thanks for being loyal so what's the point. Do your job to the best of your ability in the time alloted for it and then forget about it til the next day.