Comment by maxbond 12 hours ago
Reminds me of the Siemens contractor David Tinley, who programmed an Excel spreadsheet to deliberately break periodically so that they had to hire him to "fix" it. But then it happened while he was on vacation, and he was forced to explain to Siemens employees how to "fix" the spreadsheet.
Tinley plead guilty and got 6 months.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/siemens-contractor-pleads-guil...
I worked as a freelance contractor for years. Being available is not part of the job, in fact not having to be available at specific times, aside from occasional planned meetings, is one of the major perks of the job.
If I was expected to be available all the time, you can be damned sure I would have expected to be paid by the hour for that.
Most of us don't have work phones, that's stuff from early 2000s at best. Lugging around another brick just for work, no thank you.
That being said, answering anything work related outside of work, unless they are your truly close friends is lame and considered a character weakness, to be abused. And don't expect any extra bonus points for that.
Having a good private (aka actual) life you are willing to defend ain't a sign of weakness, in contrary.
Every serious place I’ve worked at wants to put MDM on all devices with corp data on it. So one you leave, try can wipe all the apps with their data on it
And that’s fair. But I don’t want that on my personal devices. It’s literal spyware.
If work wants that level of control on my phone, they can just give me a phone they own outright. I’ll give it back when I’m done working there.
Seriously, it’s a huge mistake to mix personal and professional data on any device. Too many risks I want nothing to do with.
This. My work phone and computer are locked down to a ridiculous degree because I work a government job. Using my own devices is out of the question.
When I was younger I would answer calls and emails outside of work hours, because I wanted to be a Good Employee, but it's a huge mistake because management (and sometimes coworkers) will exploit it and after a while expect you to do it. Set hard boundaries immediately.
> Lugging around another brick just for work
Mine just stays on my desk when working and goes to a drawer when not. It is basically just a 2FA device. There is nothing to lug around.
No only do I have a separate work phone, but my personal phone has two SIM cards (one physical and one eSIM), one of those numbers is my general spam number that I give to businesses and acquaintances, and the other is my actual personal phone number that only the people close to me in real life get. I have a widget on the home screen that can disable/enable the spam SIM card at will.
Makes it real easy to control how available I am to different groups of people.
I do, daily.
After work, I put my work phone away. I have been in this industry for over a decade and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
I will never let an employer steal time away from my family again. Especially now that they want us all to RTO. Office time is theirs, home time is mine.
People who are serious about a wall between work and personal business.
Who answers their work phone while on vacation? I don't even have mine turned on outside of working hours. What a rookie.