No, it's unacceptable. When people are not at work, they should be thinking about work, planning for it, and hell, still doing it, only unpaid.
I say we shouldn't even have a distinction between work and home. We should set up dorms so that people don't have to leave the premises. Rent can just be taken out of their pay, talk about convenience! In fact, do they really need to get paid, when the company can provide all their needs? Isn't getting to do the work reward enough?
And once a company exec feels the need to embellish results by cutting salary expenses, those workers need to be the first to present resignation to avoid the extra cost to the company in salary, meetings and in paperwork.
Nobody wants paid for time spent in shower, we just wanna go home at night and be free to choose our activities and hobbies without being critiqued for having lives
I don't think firing middle management, documenters and designers with no trackable productiveness and forcing people to work in their free time is the same thing ?
Do you have evidence of this claim that it was only unproductive people?(Though I find your definition of who those people are is also suspect) I've read news of large parts of teams being fired, including gutting important groups like curation.
Statistically, by firing entire teams, you're bound to catch a few unproductive people. The acutally productive ones that you fired can be filed under "side-effects of making the company lean".
Be it family, hobbies, religion, other topics of interest, the scope of things to do in life is near-infinite.
You could spend your evening honing your skills for a while, yes, but even then at some point you might feel tired of just spending all your time on computer-related stuff.
Then you log on HN, like you did for the last decade or so, and see another "Ask HN: I don't feel passionate about coding anymore" post. It's okay buddy, passion will come back, or might not in a way that makes it okay, you just need a breather.
Sorry, went on a bit of a tangent, cause I do agree with you in fact. I do expect my colleagues to meet a baseline of competency, one that usually only met by "doing your homework", and at the same time, I don't think it's reasonable to expect them to do it out of habit.
Yes, it is acceptable. Nobody is entitled to expect a coworker to work outside of payed hours. If you think you are entitled to that, I believe you should move to China or North Korea.
Are you a founder, perhaps? Or just a toxic individual?
We should do both. Sometimes learn and read, often spend time with friends, family and hobby. It’s also fine to learn during the job. I find it sometimes refreshing to do fun side projects but for me it’s important for them not to be tight to a deadline, team discussion, quality expectations of others etc - everything which is expected at work. It’s an investment in myself that I sell to my employer with regularly increasing salary.
> It’s an investment in myself that I sell to my employer with regularly increasing salary.
I think this is a really important point!
Of course it's acceptable to go home and watch soccer.
But then you are relying on your employer to keep your skills current. Some employers will send you to a conference once a year, but I'm not sure that's enough.
If you don't keep learning you'll realize that when you are 45 your skills are 20 years out of date.
Considering how tech salaries exploded in the last decade, I think we're getting a fair deal for spending some of our free time learning.
Most jobs offer progression without the toil of deliberate study on your personal time. Good employers invest in their employees by allowing them to do gain skills while on the clock, be it through classes, independent study time, side projects, etc.
It's also dangerous to willingly give this away based on the salaries during a boom. The expectation won't go away when the boom goes away... In fact, it will probably get worse.
