I don’t mind the drinks so much (also because the company does not mind if I skip half of them).
For me an off-site event means “the company decided to take away my free afternoon”. I am introverted. Most things that are fun for my colleagues, especially the managers (who make the decisions), are not fun for me. It is less of a burden for the family now that the kids are 6+; it was significantly worse when I had to take a one-week business trip and the kids were e.g. 1 and 3. Especially annoying when the company described the business trip as a reward (albeit one you cannot opt out from), and the days were meeting after meetings, and the evenings were mandatory social activities. I need to spend time alone to recharge psychologically.
I accept the occasional need to fix a production outage. It would be nice if I didn’t have to get to the work early the next day, right after I spent the night fixing the production bug. It would be nice if on top of production outages we didn’t also have various security tests that also have to happen at night so that we do not inconvenience our customers. Or if there were more people on the team to rotate these duties among. If I spend two nights awake during the weekend, doing some mandatory security testing, it feels like I am working a 12-day week, and then I get cranky and write articles like this. (Also, I start interviewing.)
Note that this did not happen during my first year or two in the company. In my experience, these things increase gradually.
I am happy that your experience feels better. I had occasional good jobs, too, but sometimes the situation changes dramatically in the same company, e.g. if there is a change in management.
Off site events always happen on what would otherwise be work days, is that different for you? They’re also optional for us, but we have to work otherwise.
I’ve never gone on any business trips—I think they’re far less common now after COVID.
In general all companies I’ve worked at have given some extra free time the next day if a prod outage took up a significant amount of time.
I guess it just seems our experiences are very different, it would be interesting to ask some more people to see which is more typical.
Ah sorry, I misunderstood the off-site event as business trip. (Not a native English speaker.)
Yeah, the business trips stopped since covid. In my current company, managers keep talking about restarting them, but so far it’s been just talk. When I interviewed for another company, I was told that the business trips would be regular and mandatory (maybe that was also just talk). But it seems that the companies are getting ready… Perhaps no one wants to be the first?
Similarly, companies around me are gradually limiting work from home. No one wants to be the first to remove it completely, because obviously half of their developers would quit the next day, but they e.g. limit it to N days each month, and then reduce N by one every year, trying to stay in sync with competition.
In my job, you get extra money for the evening/weekend work, but not extra free time.
Different experiences could reflect different countries. I wish we had reliable data to compare, not just anecdotes.
I don’t mind the drinks so much (also because the company does not mind if I skip half of them).
For me an off-site event means “the company decided to take away my free afternoon”. I am introverted. Most things that are fun for my colleagues, especially the managers (who make the decisions), are not fun for me. It is less of a burden for the family now that the kids are 6+; it was significantly worse when I had to take a one-week business trip and the kids were e.g. 1 and 3. Especially annoying when the company described the business trip as a reward (albeit one you cannot opt out from), and the days were meeting after meetings, and the evenings were mandatory social activities. I need to spend time alone to recharge psychologically.
I accept the occasional need to fix a production outage. It would be nice if I didn’t have to get to the work early the next day, right after I spent the night fixing the production bug. It would be nice if on top of production outages we didn’t also have various security tests that also have to happen at night so that we do not inconvenience our customers. Or if there were more people on the team to rotate these duties among. If I spend two nights awake during the weekend, doing some mandatory security testing, it feels like I am working a 12-day week, and then I get cranky and write articles like this. (Also, I start interviewing.)
Note that this did not happen during my first year or two in the company. In my experience, these things increase gradually.
I am happy that your experience feels better. I had occasional good jobs, too, but sometimes the situation changes dramatically in the same company, e.g. if there is a change in management.
Off site events always happen on what would otherwise be work days, is that different for you? They’re also optional for us, but we have to work otherwise.
I’ve never gone on any business trips—I think they’re far less common now after COVID.
In general all companies I’ve worked at have given some extra free time the next day if a prod outage took up a significant amount of time.
I guess it just seems our experiences are very different, it would be interesting to ask some more people to see which is more typical.
Ah sorry, I misunderstood the off-site event as business trip. (Not a native English speaker.)
Yeah, the business trips stopped since covid. In my current company, managers keep talking about restarting them, but so far it’s been just talk. When I interviewed for another company, I was told that the business trips would be regular and mandatory (maybe that was also just talk). But it seems that the companies are getting ready… Perhaps no one wants to be the first?
Similarly, companies around me are gradually limiting work from home. No one wants to be the first to remove it completely, because obviously half of their developers would quit the next day, but they e.g. limit it to N days each month, and then reduce N by one every year, trying to stay in sync with competition.
In my job, you get extra money for the evening/weekend work, but not extra free time.
Different experiences could reflect different countries. I wish we had reliable data to compare, not just anecdotes.