Off-time phone calls? Ha, that's just the beginning.
Back around the turn of the century I worked at a company that was pushing hard into an IPO. We were shepherded through the process by a team of cutthroat investors and stand-in leadership, and everything reliably sucked. The company philosophy changed from "kind, supportive, collaborative, and communicative" to very much "move fast and break everything (people included), fire anyone involved with the broken part, and repeat until successful".
And, yeah, company or client calls flooding in 24/7, be sure to keep your cellphone on and be responsive.
We burned through people like kindling. The reduction in headcount was sold as "lean attrition", demonstrating to potential investors that we were cutting away the dead weight and doing more with less.
We pushed, god did we push. Ten hour days became fifteen became twenty became twenty-four. Dedication was measured in days without sleep or showers or change of clothes. We smelled like a frat house, we smelled like dead men.
And our exhaustion built failure, with code as a side effect
In the midst of this, and an entirely predictable divorce at home, I had a relatively minor heart attack lovingly distilled from pure stress and lack of sleep, was out of work for a couple of months, and returned not to my office but to the bullpen where new employees started and failing employees ended. I lasted maybe three weeks and hit the silk.
A few weeks or maybe a couple or three months after, I received a call from my equally-cursed successor, a good colleague - smart, capable, great with people. One of our teammates had committed suicide on the eve of their planned wedding. He was a good man. We lost him to effing software.
It is worth noting that this had no discernable effect on the great machine; it continued separating wheat from chaff and grinding each to powder. The IPO proceeded, remnant leaders succeeded. One former colleague acquired a gorgeous vineyard in Argentina, another executive bought a giant yacht and sailed around the world with his family.
The point of this recitation, dear reader, is that "we need you to take some calls after hours" is a gateway drug, just a little taste to get you hooked, a loyalty test hidden in a nod, a wink, and a secret handshake.
Don't sign up for that. Go do something sane and constructive that benefits you and the world around you as much as it does your clients or employers.
Icon for raising a glass to absent friends.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
