Work Emails After Hours Finally Banned in France (fortune.com) 234
An anonymous reader quotes Fortune:
A new French law establishing workers' "right to disconnect" goes into effect today. The law requires companies with more than 50 employees to establish hours when staff should not send or answer emails. The goals of the law include making sure employees are fairly paid for work, and preventing burnout by protecting private time. French legislator Benoit Hamon, speaking to the BBC, described the law as an answer to the travails of employees who "leave the office, but they do not leave their work. They remain attached by a kind of electronic leash -- like a dog."
The BBC reports that France already has a 35-hour work week, while Fortune adds that many European companies have already taken steps to curtail after-work emails. "In 2012, Volkswagen blocked all emails to employees' Blackberries after-hours," and "Daimler took the step of deleting all emails received by employees while on vacation."
The BBC reports that France already has a 35-hour work week, while Fortune adds that many European companies have already taken steps to curtail after-work emails. "In 2012, Volkswagen blocked all emails to employees' Blackberries after-hours," and "Daimler took the step of deleting all emails received by employees while on vacation."
Slippery slope (Score:2, Funny)
It starts with vacation emails, next they'll be deleting first posts. Who would want to live in a world like that?
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I think the attitudes towards worker rights are with the two extremes with the United States and France. Americans tend to work too hard, and are generally afraid of being labeled lazy, so they work so hard that they miss out on opportunities in life. The French have so many regulations to curve how hard they can work, that they tend to take the easy lifestyle for granted, which then causes them to not be as ambitious or succeed, as they are more or less set on where they are at the time.
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Americans tend to work too hard, and are generally afraid of being labeled lazy, so they work so hard that they miss out on opportunities in life.
They also tend to accomplish a lot less. The ones who work the most hours are invariably the ones creating the most negative work, and they're also the ones getting promoted, leading to a downward spiral. More asses in seats, but less getting done. That's why the US is no longer a leader in many fields, other than how warm we keep our seats.
Sorely needed in the US (Score:5, Insightful)
along with that 35 hour work week - without a pay reduction.
I'm hourly and required to carry a work cellphone 24/7 despite not being paid to do so in any way (money/comp time/whatever).
But the demonization of unions by big corporate money has been very successful in fucking shit like this up for the US.
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Well, it's a trade-off. In the US it's easier to have more and bigger "stuff", but we work harder and longer for it, not always by choice.
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I'm aware of a great many people who are working longer and harder just to keep their head above water living paycheck to paycheck with nothing to show for it despite this supposedly super low unemployment rate and great economic recovery (with stagnant wages).
You might be right though, I know nothing about how "more and bigger stuff" translates overseas.
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But without a good solid education, moving to new jobs becomes hard. So if the local job dries up how do you get a new one if you don't have a decent education? No employer wants to pay for on-the-job training, especially for someone that was a C student in high school. This makes the schools fundamentally important to having a good economy with low unemployment.
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But without a good solid education, moving to new jobs becomes hard. So if the local job dries up how do you get a new one if you don't have a decent education?
Here's the problem. The issue with jobs in the US today is not about education per se, but about fungibility [wikipedia.org] of jobs.
A "fungible" job, or item, is one that can be exchanged equally at no loss or differentiation. (A US dollar bill is fungible, for example, because any dollar bill is equal to any other regardless of its source, condition or owner.) If one mechanical piece or the person who produces those pieces can be swapped out without any loss of productivity or quality then it is fungible. And as such it
Re:Sorely needed in the US (Score:4, Insightful)
So you want to earn the same money for fewer hours? In what world is that fair to your employer?
Don't want to carry the work phone, don't. If they fire you find a job with an employer that doesn't require it.
A couple years back I was told I could no longer work from home (company was purchased, new policy). Okay but I work 7:30 to 4:30. I do not check email after that time and will attend one evening meeting a week. Given I'm part of a team that is spread overseas that did actually matter and I work less now. Didn't get fired and am still working 7:30 to 4:30.
This is not something that requires laws. If you do not want to be tied to your work phone at all hours, don't do it.
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In the same one that says anything over 40 hours is overtime? At some level we've come to realize that we should work to live, not live to work. So if we decide that 35 hours is a reasonable upper limit on hours, even possible to the point of removing the option of overtime, so be it. With all the discussion of increased automation, we shouldn't be making moves towards greater overtime and yet that seems the m
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If you understood how life actually is in France... US salaries for technical fields are nearly double those in France, for one. Having lived and worked in both, I'd caution you to not fetishize the European lifestyle... one's not better than the other, they're just different, based on very different cultures.
There's a good book some years back from some Canadian journalists who lived in France for a while... the main point being, since the US/Canadian and French demographics are relatively similar, both i
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The book is called "Sixty Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong". It is a funny read but also has many flaws (wrong informations), but those flaws don't really matter, it is entertaining and to show the differences in culture it is pretty good.
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On the flip side, the only reason Bay Area housing costs are so unreasonable is that salaries are nearly double those in France. :-)
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Germany has seemed a lot more stable economically than France and with a better work ethic for as long as I can remember. It still has good social programs but also a good set of industries to drive it. Right now Europe is a lot like what the US would be if we were split into 10-50 different countries. Some poor, some rich, some with their act together, some stuck in the past. The EU should have helped but it got screwed up in a lot of ways.
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And it's well known in the US don't try setting a 09h00 CET meeting time because the French haven't finished coffee yet. I'm in the US and work for a 125 year old French company.
I disagree (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm hourly and required to carry a work cellphone 24/7 despite not being paid to do so in any way
Can you really not find other work? That seems unlikely for a technical worker these days. To put up with 24/7 duty with no extra pay is not something you should put up with. You should demand extra compensation, or leave.
Sorely needed in the US...along with that 35 hour work week
I disagree. When I was younger I worked 50-80 hour (or longer) weeks. But the thing is, I enjoyed it, a lot. More than that it set up a great base for a career to follow, because I had essentially got an extra year or two of experience over people who worked "regular" hours, indeed probably 2x the experience over people who worked 35 hour weeks...
It's not like i never take time for vacation, then or now (sometimes a lot). But I don't think there is any value mandating a cap on possible work, I feel like that is the best way to ruin and country and economy and frankly, a whole generation of people.
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I worked with people like you, and discovered very quickly that even though a lot of the people I was working with who were working a lot more hours than I was had quite a bit more experience, I was getting a lot more done.
Perhaps that is true, but I was learning more... which is my point!
And helping them get their stuff done.
Part of what I was doing in that time as helping a lot of other people get THIER stuff done... no-one was helping me.
And rewriting their stuff when it didn't work due to simply being v
Re:Sorely needed in the US (Score:5, Insightful)
The factory workers where I work stayed united and never lost any of their benefits. The non-union office people moan and whinge about all the "perks" they get, I say good on them.
Company profit last year? Approx $16 billion.
Also let's outlaw exercise so I don't feel fat. (Score:2)
That's pretty much what this amounts to.
There are, in fact, many people [like me] that enjoy working. My hobby is to casually log in and do some work. You're trying to outlaw my hobby...so, ummm, fuck you?
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The problem is that then you get bosses who say, "No, of course you don't have to work on Saturday, but it will look good when you come up for promotion next year" or "It isn't mandatory, but all your coworkers will be working more hours. You don't want to be seen as less productive than your coworkers, do you?"
Extra work without extra pay should be outlawed. If they want you to work an 80-hour week, they should pay overtime rates for those extra 40 hours. If they want you to be "on call" all week, they
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For me, I can't get up to productivity early. Too many people asking too many questions, too many meetings, too much email. In late afternoon I pick up and start getting stuff done. Now as a manager it's even worse. My enemy is me, saying in the morning "I'll just get this one simple 15 minute project done today" and it turns out I can't get to it. Now for a simpler job where there are simple tasks and you're paid by the hour, then sure, put a time limit on it. I'm more interested in flexible work hou
Re:Sorely needed in the US (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm in IT and not a teacher and I work K-12 and in my (red) state the legislature completely gutted the teacher's unions but people think they're amazing and that teachers barely work get summers off and have hot tubs in the lounge; couldn't be further from the truth.
The benefits get worse every year and it's standard operating procedure to keep people in fear for their jobs and to expect plenty of unpaid OT.
Teachers get shit on and everyone who supports them gets shit on worse (except managers, of course). The only thing their union does at this point that's worth anything at all is maintains legal counsel and usually they're toothless since the laws are.
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Most districts don't want to pay anything, and the race is on to hand over everything to corporations for kickbacks (i.e. charter schools) - both sides of the red/blue aisle are guilty of that.
So they do shit like TFA (Teach For America) where they don't require licensed teachers to actually be in the classroom just kids fresh out of college with a BS in something who have no clue wtf they're doing and are supposed to "teach" kids that are roughly their own age and experience level.
They usually last a year
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Make the new generation stupid, then convince them that it's someone else's fault that their town is screwed up.
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I'm in IT and not a teacher and I work K-12 and in my (red) state the legislature completely gutted the teacher's unions but people think they're amazing and that teachers barely work get summers off and have hot tubs in the lounge; couldn't be further from the truth.
The benefits get worse every year and it's standard operating procedure to keep people in fear for their jobs and to expect plenty of unpaid OT.
Teachers get shit on and everyone who supports them gets shit on worse (except managers, of course). The only thing their union does at this point that's worth anything at all is maintains legal counsel and usually they're toothless since the laws are.
Keep your eye on the ball:
Lower teacher salary = worse teaching = less well educated students = a less-intelligent population = an easier future constituency to manipulate
With that logic, why WOULD any legislature invest in teaching?
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I'm in IT and not a teacher and I work K-12 and in my (red) state the legislature completely gutted the teacher's unions but people think they're amazing and that teachers barely work get summers off and have hot tubs in the lounge; couldn't be further from the truth.
This.
My housemate is a teacher, he works longer hours than most of us. 4 out of 5 nights he's preparing classwork or marking essays. Although in the UK it's a lot better than in the US, teaching is still not a highly paid career, most teachers do it because they genuinely care (which often leads to burnout).
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If the unions have been gutted and teachers are overworked, what's the proper response? To restore the unions? Maybe a better response is for the best teachers to take jobs at private schools for $20k more, and when the school district realized they're losing their best teachers, raise salaries to remain competitive with other districts?
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I don't know of a whole lot of other jobs out there that require a 4 (or more) year degree yet pay just about enough to live on. Add to that, many teachers put in unpaid hours at home. The 3 months off? That isn't paid, so they either have to find work over the summer, or some districts allow them to spread their pay over 12 months, which trades the amount of the weekly paycheck for at least getting one every (2) week(s).
Re:Sorely needed in the US (Score:5, Insightful)
Their work is dealing with your shitty kids. Some are glorified babysitters and they're scared to do anything because the law favors the kids and the kids know it and most of those shitty kids are shitty because their parents are worse.
Good teachers are doing lesson plans long in to their personal time and doing shit for their classes while "off" over the summer. I've seen many pay for basic school supplies for kids in their classes out of their own pockets because the kid's shitty parents won't or can't.
I suggest you actually go to the school and see how it is before judging from across the street. If you're in an affluent area it's a different set of problems but still a shit load of work dealing with helicopter soccer moms.
They couldn't pay me enough to be a teacher. I've been in enough classrooms to know I'd go to jail, my patience and temper aren't suited for it.
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My father taught at the high school level for over 30 years - English, Spanish, Geography, History - the stress of dealing with other people's ill-behaved, entitled oversized brats nearly caused a nervous breakdown. For about 1/2 those years, he also coached soccer & taught night classes to adults to make ends meet.
I'd sooner sell weed than teach high school. And there are a fuckton more hours spent working outside the classroom that in it.
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No. Tenure does not keep bad teachers in schools. It is not the same as college tenure. All high school and elementary tenure does is mean you don't have to negotiate your contract every year, but you still can be fired for incompetence or poor performance. Schools don't want to do that because it's hard to get replacements, not because tenure binds their hands.
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All high school and elementary tenure does is mean you don't have to negotiate your contract every year, but you still can be fired for incompetence or poor performance.
What you say various significantly from state to state. There are definitely places where unions make it nearly impossible to fire teachers even for cause.
For perhaps the most infamous example, in New York City, teachers who are accused of misconduct generally spend an average of 3 years in a so-called rubber room [wikipedia.org], being paid to do nothing, before their cases are arbitrated. New York spends tens of millions of dollars each year paying hundreds of teachers to do nothing. And in many cases the teachers a
Re:Sorely needed in the US (Score:4, Informative)
The teachers do barely work.
I always love these statements. Perhaps you live near one of the few public schools in the U.S. where ALL of the teachers are lazy bums. When I actually worked in public schools for a few years (a little over a decade ago), working at least 8-9 hour days was standard, because there was no possible way to get your grading, planning, and other random administrative work done during school hours... unless you were a terrible teacher who never assigned anything or did anything in class. (And yeah, there were some of those people I knew who were out the door with the bell every day. Most of the other teachers looked on them as slackers. The only other teachers who weren't hanging around in their classrooms for at least a couple hours after school were generally those that coached afternoon sports and activities.)
Anyhow, sure, you can doubt me or maybe your school district is different or whatever. I'd just note that there are MANY states that have major teacher shortages -- estimates are that we're now short by tens of thousands of teachers nationwide. And attrition rate is HUGE -- roughly half of new teachers leave the field within 5 years, and ~2/3 of vacancies are due to "pre-retirement attrition," i.e., people who leave the field early in their careers.
So -- here's my question: if it's such a "sweet deal" to be a teacher, why do we have so much trouble finding them, and why do so many teachers leave the field so quickly? (And, by the way, the median salary for teachers in many states is much less than 60K -- in some states median salary is barely above ~40K. Starting salary in many states is frequently in the low 30s or even high 20s.)
Re:Sorely needed in the US (Score:4, Informative)
My father was a teacher and he saw the changes over his thirty years teaching. Restrictions on discipline, not even talking about corporal punishment but not even being allowed to raise a voice or keep a student after hours because the parents would bitch and whine about it. Even grabbing a child to keep him from running into the street got the parents furious. Then the school hours got shorter and the classes got bigger. And the "experts" coming in and saying how everything was being done wrong, so that every couple of years there was a new set of curriculum and workbooks to buy. And a school board easily manipulated. And students more unruly, parents not caring, and so on.
On the other hand I still have people coming up to me telling me what a great thing it was to have been in my father's class. He earned more respect in one year teaching a student than I can ever earn in an office job.
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School isn't even out at 2pm most places. And it's not like the start their day at 10am, or end the work at 2pm. It's a hard job, it's a low paying job, and now days it has no respect either. There's little reason to be a teacher anymore except for a bit of civic pride. All these yuppies sending their kids to private schools to get away from minorities and lower income classes are a big part of the problem even though they're the first ones to start accusing teachers of malfeasance.
Re:Sorely needed in the US (Score:4, Informative)
The teachers do barely work.
Yeah. They totally don't spend all day with your children, all of their lunchtime and break time supervising your children. They don't prepare lesson plans after hours, or mark your children's exams on the weekend. They don't have a requirement for professional development, they don't supervisie your children multiple times a year for 24 hours a day while they are on camp. They most definitely don't spend much of their holidays preparing for the upcoming semester.
So behalf on my middle school teaching wife who works far longer than my 40h per week + on call roster, FUCK YOU.
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I've seen that too. Some have 2nd jobs because they have no choice.
More time for TV (Score:2)
Re:More time for TV (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is it becomes expected that you be working/in touch 24/7.
Re:More time for TV (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is it becomes expected that you be working/in touch 24/7.
That happened to a friend of mine. HIs employer kept calling him out at all hours of the night so we just told him to ask to be paid to be on call. He came back and told us the answer was, 'sorry, no budget for that'. So we advised him that since his wife was giving him a hard time and he was thinking about quitting over this anyway he should just shut his work phone off when he left the office. It took about a week before there was a major emergency and the shit hit the fan. Hours upon hours of downtime, the upper management started riding lower management about what the fuck had happened. He gets called into a meeting with management and he tells them 'pas d'argent pas du Suiss' I'm not on call so I figured it's only fair to shut off the work phone. Next thing you know there is alluvasudden money in the departmental budget for keeping him on call. So come end of the month he checks his pay-slip, no pay for being on call so he goes and asks payroll what's wrong and they send him to the department head. It seems when they said that they had found money in the budget to pay him for being on call, what they meant to say, it was as of the following quarter but of course they expected him to be on call until then, sans pay. So he turns off his work phone again after work hours, shit hits the fan *again* and he finally gets his on-call money, paid retroactively. Give an employer an finger and they will devour your entire arm.
What this also shows (Score:2)
This is a good anecdote that shows not only that a company can and will take advantage of you, but also just how much power an employee really has even if it doesn't seem like they have much. The thing is that it takes a long time to find a good employee to hire in, longer still to train them as a replacement for most work... if you are being told to do something you do not think as fair, don't do it or demand compensation. Most middle managers will fold.
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I hate receiving emails because I'm lazy and incompetent.
Fixed that for you.
I was calling for this, so you nailed it :) But seriously - not wanting to work on weekends when my contract is for a 40h week is not lazy nor incompetent. Everyone looses if we all compete in this game except for the company shareholders.
Re:More time for TV (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't work for free because I'm not a slave.
Fixed that for you.
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If you like doing off-the-clock work, great. Not sure what that has to do with labor laws, tho.
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In the US, if you are hourly, you cannot legally work "off the clock". Ever. Period. Not even answering emails on a work-issued phone. Those saying they do that would get their employer completely screwed if they complained to the DoL.
Now, if you're salaried... "Off the clock" doesn't really exist, so feel free to act like a slave... But fuck you if you think I'm responding to your "look at what a good li
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I think the law isn't forbidding employees from reading the email, but in forbidding companies from requiring it.
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Why, Slashdot, why? (Score:2)
Why do you insist on linking to older versions of your own stories which provide no new information or no -redundant context?
So this law takes effect, and employers are now required to set hours "when staff should not send or answer emails". Is there anything preventing the employers from declaring those hours to be 1:00am - 6:00am?
What if your boss physically just comes over? (Score:2)
You can probably ban all forms of technological communication between employer and employee after work, but can you prohibit absolutely all forms of contact outside of work hours if the purpose happens to be work-related?
Generally speaking, it is not illegal to require employees that are not telecommuting to live in a certain geographical area, so it may often be entirely possible for an employer to bypass this prohibition on emails by just physically showing up at the employee's door and talking to him
I'd be totally on board with this (Score:2)
I'm OK with this, which is probably going to get me labeled a lazy French socialist. (I'm in the US.) But, I've worked jobs where I've had to be available 24/7 on an on-call rotation basis. Weeks where I've had to do this sucked badly. It was earlier in my career pre-kids, but the feeling is exactly like having a newborn at home in terms of the sleep quality you get. You're never fully asleep after being woken up at 3 AM for yet another false alarm (or real emergency!) And, I was lucky it was rotation work
GDH (Score:2)
Re:Good luck getting contracts! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Then move the jobs back to the USA! EU has to meany workers rights now India needs to do the same as France
Re:Good luck getting contracts! (Score:5, Insightful)
Companies who give a shit about their customers and their employees can have enough people not to require people to be available 24/7. Note how this only applies to companies over 50 people. If you do business with people, your comment doesn't apply. If you do business with companies, nothing prevents a larger sized company from being available 24/7 without their employees being available 24/7.
Anyhow, what the OP says is mostly true. The minimum is doing no work. The maximum is being "at work" every minute you're awake. It's amusingly naive to believe that those who make themselves available all of the time are inherently better at what they do, or are more valuable. Anybody with a decent amount of experience in life and exposure to different working environments and disciplines knows this.
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Re: Good luck getting contracts! (Score:2, Insightful)
A better analogy is that Americans keep buying lottery tickets because they believe they will win, while French people understand they will not win at a tricked game and keep their money.
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How is that a better analogy? There are over 8M millionaires in the US, and less than 500K in France. And while the American number is increasing, that French number is *decreasing* - http://money.cnn.com/2016/04/0... [cnn.com]
What these policies are accomplishing is to get the entrepreneurs to leave France for other countries. Now, you might argue (as many in France do) that quality of life is more important than money. But for some quality of life it to be left the hell alone and not have your life run by a nan
Re: Good luck getting contracts! (Score:4, Insightful)
What these policies are accomplishing is to get the entrepreneurs to leave France for other countries.
I live in San Jose, California, and I know four French tech entrepreneurs just in my neighborhood. All of them left France with the goal of starting a company here.
Now, you might argue (as many in France do) that quality of life is more important than money.
Having plenty of leisure time is not as important to quality of life as having a job. Unemployment in France is over 10%, twice the American level, and youth employment is over 25%. They are funding their budget deficits by borrowing from the Germans, and that is not sustainable. They are demanding more and more benefits without being able to pay for those they already have.
Oh, and one other thing: California wine is better too.
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Whoa, the four French tech entrepreneurs you know in San Jose left France to start a company there? What are the odds?
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Having plenty of leisure time is not as important to quality of life as having a job
I think we have similar opinions on some of these issues, but this still does depend on what "leisure time" really means. While the American mentality is often to work to keep accumulating wealth ("he who dies with the most wins"), the European mentality is much more about leisure time as the payoff, not "stuff". Of course, there are SO MANY other theories on this - Puritianism vs Catholicism, income and sales/VAT tax levels, social welfare, social/family structures (aka "living with your parents") - that
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Having experienced doing only a month or two of work-from-home contracting over the course of almost a year, I beg to differ. Having more leisure time, at least from my perspective, is far more important to quality of life than having a job unless you are in a financial situation where not having a job means constantly fretting about whether you'll be able to pay your bills.
Having a job is only crucial to quality of life i
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How is that a better analogy? There are over 8M millionaires in the US, and less than 500K in France. And while the American number is increasing, that French number is *decreasing* - http://money.cnn.com/2016/04/0... [cnn.com]
What these policies are accomplishing is to get the entrepreneurs to leave France for other countries. Now, you might argue (as many in France do) that quality of life is more important than money. But for some quality of life it to be left the hell alone and not have your life run by a nanny state.
In other words you have a %2.6 chance of being a millionaire in the U.S vs a %1 in France. Well I guess %99 of France is smarter then the %97.4 of the U.S in demanding policies that work for them instead of hoping that one day they will get lucky and be one of those tiny percentages
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In other words you have a %2.6 chance of being a millionaire in the U.S vs a %1 in France.
Note quite. If you work both hard and at least a little smart in the US you are almost sure to become a millionaire by retirement. It would take less than 10% of median income in retirement savings over a 45 year career to reach millionaire status (in 2017 dollars). Either way for it to be nearly 3x harder to become a millionaire, which is by no means rich for a someone in the developed world, in France vs the USA is a serious problem.
Well I guess %99 of France is smarter then the %97.4 of the U.S in demanding policies that work for them instead of hoping that one day they will get lucky and be one of those tiny percentages
As long as the 97.4% don't need salaries paid for by millionaire owners y
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In other words you have a %2.6 chance of being a millionaire in the U.S vs a %1 in France.
Note quite. If you work both hard and at least a little smart in the US you are almost sure to become a millionaire by retirement. It would take less than 10% of median income in retirement savings over a 45 year career to reach millionaire status (in 2017 dollars). Either way for it to be nearly 3x harder to become a millionaire, which is by no means rich for a someone in the developed world, in France vs the USA is a serious problem.
In the U.S thanks to the disappearance of private sector pension systems, you better be a millionaire (in 2017 dollars) or soon after retirement you will be living just on the Social Security Income which is only supposed to be a safety net retirement income. In France the Social Security System is more like a pension system then a safety net
Well I guess %99 of France is smarter then the %97.4 of the U.S in demanding policies that work for them instead of hoping that one day they will get lucky and be one of those tiny percentages
As long as the 97.4% don't need salaries paid for by millionaire owners your logic is valid.
Millionaires don't pay salaries, the companies they are shareholders of do, they end up making more in dividends from those shares, then all the salaries paid to the em
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In other words you have a %2.6 chance of being a millionaire in the U.S vs a %1 in France.
Note quite. If you work both hard and at least a little smart in the US you are almost sure to become a millionaire by retirement. It would take less than 10% of median income in retirement savings over a 45 year career to reach millionaire status (in 2017 dollars). Either way for it to be nearly 3x harder to become a millionaire, which is by no means rich for a someone in the developed world, in France vs the USA is a serious problem.
Well, that seems to be dubious math to me. According to this article [wikipedia.org], median personal income was about US$ 32000/year in 2005, and has mostly gone down since then. 10% of that is US$ 32000, and summed over 45 years, gives you US$ 144000, or US$ 856000 short of the first million. You need a very good return on investment to make up that gap (and that ignores inflation).
Moreover, the basic comparison is skewed. In the US, you mostly rely on your own accumulated funds for retirement. Social security is not
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Depends on what you call a "very good return on investment".
At 5% per year, $3,200 per year for 45 years comes to a bit under $550k [calculator.net]
To end up with $1M after 45 years investing $3,200 per year, you need a return of under 7.1% [calculator.net]
Compound interest makes a big difference...
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Depends on what you call a "very good return on investment".
At 5% per year, $3,200 per year for 45 years comes to a bit under $550k [calculator.net]
To end up with $1M after 45 years investing $3,200 per year, you need a return of under 7.1% [calculator.net]
Compound interest makes a big difference...
It does. But at the moment, getting 5% or even 7% for a small time investor seems to be unlikely. And the compound interest effect is contributing less if, realistically, your income increases over time as you get experience and promotions - you're able to safe less in your early career, with lower pay and (often) higher expenses.
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Well I guess %99 of France is smarter then the %97.4 of the U.S in demanding policies that work for them
Sure, except that the policies aren't working. French unemployment is sky high, productivity is stagnant, and their public debt is unsustainable. So instead of dealing with any of those issues, they vote themselves more bread and circuses.
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Well I guess %99 of France is smarter then the %97.4 of the U.S in demanding policies that work for them
Sure, except that the policies aren't working. French unemployment is sky high, productivity is stagnant, and their public debt is unsustainable. So instead of dealing with any of those issues, they vote themselves more bread and circuses.
We just elected Trump, a populist egomaniac with no experience and ambiguous, often contradicting policy agendas. Are you sure you want to talk about the circus?
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We just elected Trump, a populist egomaniac with no experience and ambiguous, often contradicting policy agendas.
... and Marine Le Pen is leading the the French presidential polls.
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Not necessarily. There might have been Sanders vs Trump on the second voting round.
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Man, I love saying stuff nobody can prove or disprove! I'm so right!
Re: Good luck getting contracts! (Score:4, Insightful)
Why is the number of millionaires a good measurement ?
How about quality of life, longer life and overall higher standard of living, good education, less stress, easier to get healthcare, etc. ?
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If you are implying that long work hours like common in USA makes it easier for people people to get rich, that is demonstrably false. Norway have more millionaires per capita than USA. It even has more billionaires per capita than USA. And we have 37.5 hours per week as standard, just 2.5 hours more than the French.
Also notice that in Norway the government intervenes with many things that you probably think classifies as "nanny state". And we have higher much taxes. Despite of this we have more rich peo
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If an American and a Frenchman both see someone drive by in a Mercedes, the American thinks, "Someday, I'll have a car like that". The Frenchman thinks ...
The Frenchman thinks "oh, look, a taxi driver".
Seriously, a Mercedes is not exactly an amazing status symbol here.
The owner of the small business making electric window shutters near me drives a Maserati GranTurismo. Whenever I pass it with French friends they tend to say things like "Vroom! Vroom!"
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In all my manager roles (25 years by now) I have never expected anyone working for me to be available 24/7.
Good for you. But it sounds like you are managing a development team, where 24/7 availability makes no sense. If you were managing a team admining customer-facing servers, your situation would be different. We have a few people in that situation, and they were told at the time they were hired that they need to sleep with their cellphone on and the company number whitelisted. If they weren't willing to accept that, they could have declined the job offer. We only needed to call someone twice in the past
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This law and similar ones are for those situations where people were informed when they started a job that it was 9-5 without being on call, but now they are expected to be on call for no extra pay and without ever agreeing to be on call.
It's not there to punish employers who where honest up front. It's about those who decide to change employment conditions without consent and get some free extra work out of their employees. From looking at th
Re:Good luck getting contracts! (Score:5, Insightful)
Those who give a shit about their customers and try to do their very best for them DO make themselves available 24/7. These are the people I will do business with. In my experience, the most important selection criteria for anything is the quality of the product itself, and the second close behind is the type of support you'll receive.
Of course usually you expect to pay premium price for premium service. In MY experience, the world is full of shitstains who want 24/7 availability but don't want to pay for it.
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Those who give a shit about their customers and try to do their very best for them DO make themselves available 24/7. These are the people I will do business with. In my experience, the most important selection criteria for anything is the quality of the product itself, and the second close behind is the type of support you'll receive.
Of course usually you expect to pay premium price for premium service. In MY experience, the world is full of shitstains who want 24/7 availability but don't want to pay for it.
As someone who's had to deal with more than a few such cheapskates, I take particular pleasure in waking them up when there's a service outage.
It's even better when the outage is resolved quickly or goes on so long that it overlaps shifts - the plebs get relieved but most of the senior mgmt can't leave the conf calls for very long
Re:Good luck getting contracts! (Score:5, Insightful)
I've had clients like you who felt they should be able to buttonhole my developers whenever they had a brainwave. As far as I'm concerned people like you can find yourselves another victim to work out your personal dominance issues. Hire me and I'll do a great job for you, because I know how to manage a friggin' development team. You don't.
The seldom-mentioned corrollary to "the customer is always right" is that you should be picky about who you work for, if you can manage it. I almost said "if you can afford it", but really the question is actually whether you can afford to work for an obstreperous, intrusive client who doesn't understand boundaries. Customers like that will eat up your slack then bleed you dry every... single... time.
Re: Good luck getting contracts! (Score:5, Insightful)
You keep insulting me, the customer. I will not be doing business with you and will slander your name.
Dickhead clients will slander you anyway because they use up all your reasonableness until you have to put your foot down, usually in the middle of a big mess they've created. You will always be the villain, but keep the story small and it'll soon be replaced by lamenting their next "useless" contractors.
Re: Good luck getting contracts! (Score:5, Insightful)
I actually feel sorry for clients like that -- although preferably from a safe distance. The thing is what they're up to isn't business, it's working out their intractable personal issues. What they need is not a vendor, it's a therapist.
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You keep insulting me, the customer. I will not be doing business with you and will slander your name.
Dickhead clients will slander you anyway because they use up all your reasonableness until you have to put your foot down, usually in the middle of a big mess they've created. You will always be the villain, but keep the story small and it'll soon be replaced by lamenting their next "useless" contractors.
This,
What dickhead clients forget is that vendors also rate and talk about them. Slander one provider, you'll find that others will also stop taking their calls. When it was revealed that Uber also allowed drivers to rate passengers I was completely unsurprised. Businesses rate their clients all the time, just not on public forums.
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Good luck with that.
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I've personally fired one asshole client who thought the money he paid my organization meant he somehow owned the staff. We gave him a refund for the services we had not delivered and sent him on his merry way, because what he really was was a pathetic prick with the patience of a three year old, and an infantile disposition to match. Yes, we lost some sales, but when the staff heard he was gone, it did more than a bonus would have done for morale.
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The danger with indulging clients like that is that you end up focusing on them and short-changing your reasonable (and more profitable!) customers.
You're much better off making a reasonable customer delighted than making an unreasonable customer less disgruntled.
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You're generally better off dumping said 'customers' in the lap of your competing suppliers.
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Sure, I'll pick up after hours, but I start charging the moment it rings. You're not getting work for free.
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Good, likewise. I like to work at 3AM. What was that thing you wanted again? Let me call and find out.
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Good. Please do that. Thank you.
35 years in IT. I've never seen anyone outside a large business or an ISV that truly needed 24x7x365, and when they did, they simply staffed appropriately. It's only cheap skates that want a free ride that work people to death.
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Re:Cue the incredulous comments from the Americans (Score:5, Interesting)
In meetings with the Germans they can't understand why no American ever takes more than two weeks of vacation in a row while they routinely take the entire month of August off. They have less hours, have better pay, vastly superior vacation time, vastly superior benefits, and they have job security unlike our right to work for less/fire at will states...but look Americans! There's some dude on food stamps buying a potato with MUNNY DA GUBMINT STOLE FRUM U!
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There's some dude on food stamps buying a potato with MUNNY DA GUBMINT STOLE FRUM U!
They terk our jerbs to buy that potatoe!
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In meetings with the Germans they can't understand why no American ever takes more than two weeks of vacation in a row while they routinely take the entire month of August off.
I also work for a multinational corporation.
In the US office, the middle and higher level managers routinely take all of August off. It's the rest of us that have trouble trouble taking even 2 weeks off, Not because management won't approve 2 or more weeks, but because after even a week off, the pile of problems we come back to is very oppressive. After 2 weeks, it's almost not worth having taken the time off.
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At the company I work for, the European office has customers that are willing to pay 3 times the prices the US office is able to get from its customers. The European engineering staff is twice the size of ours in the US. Corporate manage seems happy to let the European office have that many engineers, but expects us in the US to handle twice the total workload as the European office.
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Work has never been popular in France.
Slave work has never been popular in France.
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Simple solution. Work the graveyard shift.