I barely check work email at work. One of the nice things about having slack, at least at my company, is that no one seems to communicate outside of business hours anymore.
My team has largely switched to slack as well. Initially I had it installed in my phone, and so then I would look at it anytime I got a message, even outside of work hours.
I wiped and reset my phone recently, and apparently IBM has upped the security requirements to sign into Slack since I first set it up: now I can't sign in on my phone for an undisclosed reason. (Probably because its rooted, I know that's why I'm not allowed to have my work email on my phone.)
I don't know about rooted but Microsoft's Exchange App on Android demands that it becomes a device admin so it can remotely delete everything on your phone if your company desires. There is an app called MailWise[0] that will allow you to get around that though. I did this as my company pays for my phone nor my service yet demands I install their email on my personal device.
My wife had a similar problem at work a while ago. Policies changed and the company required the ability to wipe her phone in order to get email on it. She basically told the company that, if they wanted her to have access to email/calendar on her phone (given that requirement), they would need to provide her with a company phone. She went for a couple months without access to email/calendar (when not at the computer) and then they provided a company phone.
Giving your company (or anyone) total access to your personal phone is insane. Your phone, with access to your email, is effectively a master key to your life. Through it, they have the ability to do almost anything to you (reset your bank password and take all your money, etc).
At my university this is the only officially supported way to access your email on Android, that was pretty horrifying when I was a freshman (so much so that I went without email on my phone for the entire first semester.)
If you hunt around enough though you can find the parameters needed to use IMAP.
It's probably a domain (as e.g. in Windows Domain, not DNS) setting that forces given phone to have a certain permissions before allowing integration with corporate services (including email), but usually it doesn't have a way to discover a rooted phone.
On the contrary you can disable other rules - like enforcement of PIN (if you know how) if you have a rooted phone.
many enterprises run a security requirements check before allowing corp email or other communications on. One of the checks is "is rooted" which android reports via api. This usually disabled access. Another is "full disk encryption", and "boot password". This is what big co I work at requires. Also small co we bought required it for 2fa on vpn. They also want remote wipe capabilities. Exchange does this on phones too by domain. But the place I work has a sidecar app that constantly monitors the phone and locks it out if the rules are violated, with is usually accidental by user or a sign of an attack.
I'm fine with not doing so as I don't want bigco's email on my phone, it's super spammy. It's more of a todo list than actual communications, forever base lining permissions.
In my case, they don't have publicly accessible email servers* - I have to run a VPN client. That client ensures all of the security policies are met before allowing me to connect. It's the same on my laptop and iPad.
* POP/IMAP/webmail/etc. Obviously the incomming SMTP server is publicly accessible, but that doesn't help me.
That's funny. Most people who are working in a place where they would be pressured to continue doing work after hours are not paid hourly.
And then there is those long term contractors that are hourly but basically on a fixed number of hours per week who still are 'encouraged' to do what little extra is needed to get this project done so their contract can be renewed for the next one once they've shown they can be counted on.
> That's funny. Most people who are working in a place where they would be pressured to continue doing work after hours are not paid hourly
Whether or not they are paid hourly, as long as they are not classified as exempt, they are entitled to overtime pay. (Tech workers are classified as exempt in California, which is indeed a problem and IMHO a mistake, but that's a much smaller issue)
> And then there is those long term contractors that are hourly but basically on a fixed number of hours per week...
Well, that's a bad way to write a contract, but even so, that's a totally different situation because they're not even an employee. And the French law referenced in the original article wouldn't apply in that situation either.
Yeah, I've had the latter. I refused. Had I had something to actually do in those hours it might have been different.
You really need to make it clear to the people you work with that this is an issue of integrity. You want to work with people who have and understand integrity.
I've generally considered out-of-hours checks to emanate from employees. There will always be employees who want to do a bit of extra, stay a bit longer, answer emails at 10pm, to help make progress in their career and get promotions.
Now, you obviously can't prevent these people from doing that without disabling corporate accounts and door access between 5pm-9am. So there will be people doing that, to appear in better light than others. The practice just spreads to less ambitious employees as well, and then to less motivated ones.
While I support that you should be able to cut off work after the day is done and switch to your free time I don't see how you could regulate something like that.
To even try you would have to ban giving promotions to people who work some extra for their employer (remove the incentive to do extra) or give some sort of employment protection to people who do disconnect (pretty much like you can't fire an employee who's pregnant or on parental leave because such is collectively agreed to be worth some serious shitstorm).
In the end, the only enforcement I can think of is that each person needs to make that decision themselves. If they value their free time and life outside work then they must equally deprioritise work in their life, to the extent where they might be fired because they will disconnect from work outside of the hours agreed, and then find an employer who shares the same values. If good employees do that, employers will have to realise that in order to retain or get good employees they must give in and let the employees enjoy their free time in peace. Now, the only problem is that there is always someone more hungry for money than you, willing to sacrifice more than you. The remaining question is that which people are the majority.
e.g. you're a workaholic and have nothing better to do.
I'm guilty of sometimes answering emails outside of hours, but it's more related to the desire to get stuff done rather than how it will impact my career.
I do it all the time but I neither do it to appear better nor do I care if others don't do it. If I find myself sitting there with nothing better to do and an email I can answer pops up I'll just answer it as, well, I have nothing better to do at that moment.
It's the same thing with doing work after hours. If it's something I find interesting and I've got nothing else going on I'll gladly take a peek.
Considering you have to pay people usually 1.5x or 2x their normal wage out of normal work hours in most of Europe, most employers just literally do that – and shove their employees out the door.
Overtime policy is part of federal law. Many industries abuse it, e.g. fast food "management trainees" work huge hours and get paid a low salary. That's why Obama attempted to raise the minimum salary for being considered exempt.
And for those who are wondering what I meant, this AP article covers both the history of "management trainees" being exempt from overtime and Obama's action, which is currently stopped by a court:
A sane and simple solution seems to be that any email sent after 8pm is delayed by the company smtp server, and will actually be sent at 6am.
You can still check your emails and get stuff done. But stuff will not accumulate after 8pm, you will not be bothered by other employees working at night, until early morning.
This configuration of the smtp server can be billed $5/employee/month which is a bargain to make sure your employees (1) have a sane life after 8pm and (2) can still get stuff done if they want to!
My experience provides a few counter examples, and I think in the world of making little items out of an SOC and some code, my examples are highly representative, so I wonder if you have a good source to back your supposition.
I had a project at one large company, where a daily conference call was scheduled at 8AM Pacific Time, my local zone, so that the guy in France could attend at a reasonable hour. There were attendees in various other "Western" locations. The time zones ranged from -8 to +1.
Nowadays I see this happening with virtual companies, who rent offices all over the place and barely own anything. When I have dealt with such, no one has been expected to be operating more than 8-10 hours at a time. Expectations of email response are patiently kept in accord with the time zones of the recipients.
> my examples are highly representative, so I wonder if you have a good source to back your supposition
I think my previous points are reasonable assumptions most people who have and would not require proof. If you believe otherwise you should provide a source.
This may be true if measuring "most businesses" by legal entities. In the US at least, 17% of US employment (27 million) is for the Fortune 500 (2015) - definitely spanning multiple time zones.
> This may be true if measuring "most businesses" by legal entities.
It is. I assume most businesses are small businesses that keep to working hours in their local time zone. It would be a reasonable assumption.
> In the US at least, 17% of US employment (27 million) is for the Fortune 500 (2015) - definitely spanning multiple time zones.
So? Fortune 500 companies have web portals and databases with details on each employee. Why can't the email server check to see if the email should be sent now or later?
I don't get what this solves. If I want to send an email at 2am because I thought of something, I should be able to send it and the recipient receive it. It's not like we forced this upon each other.
This is so that the employer do not "politely suggest" that you should check your email just in case, or that if you don't comply they will take measures. You know it's not mandatory to check your email but if you don't do it you will be fired for another spurious reason.
> I've generally considered out-of-hours checks to emanate from employees. There will always be employees who want to do a bit of extra, stay a bit longer, answer emails at 10pm, to help make progress in their career and get promotions.
Another reason one might want to check email outside of work is to make work easier the next day. If something starts to go wrong at 9 PM, and I see an email alert from a monitoring system, I might be able to ssh in and fix the problem in a few minutes. If I wait until the next morning, the failure could be affecting other systems and I might be facing a whole day of annoying and tedious tracing the results throughout the system and fixing bad database items. Yuck.
I'd much rather hit "pause" on the cable box, or step to a reasonably safe spot and cast invisibility on myself in EverQuest, or stick a bookmark at my place in what I'm reading, at 9 PM and take care of it and then get back to my TV show/game/book and then have a nice day at work the next day where I can work on coding new things, than give myself a really crappy work day in order to save a few minutes of slight inconvenience at home.
This is all fine so long as you don't penalize people for getting things done quickly. Does it ever bother you that some people just show up to be seen?
> There will always be employees who want to do a bit of extra, stay a bit longer, answer emails at 10pm, to help make progress in their career and get promotions.
Additional work should not help getting promotions/a raise, but only a one-time bonus (proportional to the overtime/achievement):
- if the person stops overtime after that, (s)he will continue to enjoy the rise forever.
- working more does not help by itself to go to the next level (being more productive, getting new skills allowing to transition to another role)
- (it's even more toxic when stacked ranking is put it place: those who work "normal" hours will almost never get a raise/promotion).
You don't have to do it in the United States, it's just that your coworkers will.
In reality it has never made a difference for me. I can quickly scan my email inbox and if anything is urgent and important it's known that you should either call or speak to me in person.
Out of hours? So you should check email at 03.00 just in case some insomniac customer needs something that you can't probably fix/send/prepare till next day. That's called slavery even if it's volunteer.
Many companies these days have branches in all parts of the world.
1) Out of hours for oneself could be perfectly office hours for the customer.
2) you might be the only person knowing this part of the product or tech, and all is required could be just a quick yes/no answer.
I am not advocating for either side, but please -- the world is more complex than it seems.
Then my boss should contract some people that can service that customer during their work hours and the rest I'll answer the customer in my work hours, that's what i'm paid for, if my boss wants me 24 hour service he/she should pay me for it, otherwise it's voluntary slavery. They pay me to do my work during my hours not to be at his/her wishes.
> Then my boss should contract some people that can service that customer during their work hours...
See my pt 2.
> if my boss wants me 24 hour service he/she should pay me for it...
I think your boss wants result from you, not any random metrics like 24 h/on the job. If you consider that you are underpaid for the result you have been delivering -- have you demanded a raise?
Then he needs a brainwashed slave, that is happy being underpaid and being a nice servant to his master and not being valued. If i'm that good that he needs me that bad, then he should consider how bad would be me leaving.
I think your boss wants result from you, not any random metrics like 24 h/on the job
In my experience, the evidence indicates this is not the case. They may say they want results, but results are really hard to measure, so they end up actually wanting hours and often various other easy-to-measure metrics.
Re: point 2 - having a sole member of the team be the only person who can answer an urgent question is a failing, and a fairly obvious and large one, of the company, for reasons beyond just working overtime.
Think about it - were you in the managers shoes in this position, you're forcing someone who is the only holder of critical knowledge of your business to work extra without compensation, and against his will - don't you think there's a pretty big risk there?
Regarding metrics, I think any manager who has even a tiny bit of empathy for his employees would realize that "time spent at work" (or more accurately - time spent not at work) is an incredibly critical metric for his employees' well being, and any discussion should look at what's important for the business as well as the employee.
And this leads to a race to the bottom where everyone loses in the long term (pathological emergent behaviour), even the shareholders. So you sometimes need legislation that provides a legal (and level playing field) floor below which you cannot descend, voluntarily or otherwise.
Indeed. I work regularly with French colleagues in projects. My time zone is one hour ahead of France, and our office hours are generally 8-17 while the French are 9-18 their time. So when we work together, if the French hours are completely fixed, then either I have to work a bit off hours, or we lose two hours of that common time (when it's needed, of course not every day). I might send a message soon after I start work, say 9am my time, and if the French colleague can check his messages at 8am his/her time, things are easier.
I didn't require answering to insomniac customers at 3am, though I have actually received calls at 3am due to an emergency in Asia (which in my work may be an actual emergency with lives endangered).
Indeed, the world is a bit more complex than some people think.
How many people have works that can be called at 03:00 and lives are at risk? . I guess they pay you for being next to the phone if not they are abusing of you, your boss should have someone for answering at those times if that can be that dangerous..
Does it need to be a life? Can it be "we're losing 5 million dollars an hour while this is down". I'm perfectly happy to wake up at 3am to a call if it will save my client 20 million dollars. On the other hand, they're perfectly comfortable with me telling them, "I'll be in a bit late today because last night was rough". Give and take.
If you are so valuable good for you and your boss but i hope that they not only know but they pay you accordingly. that what i try to tell all the time if you need after hours you should show me love, but most of the times they want you to do it for free and not even a thank you and if you refuse they make look like the bad guy. Sorry it's my work not my life and is your business if you love it that much it's not my problem.
> On the other hand, they're perfectly comfortable with me telling them, "I'll be in a bit late today because last night was rough". Give and take.
I'm comfortable waking up at 3am in the morning if it's needed, and my clients are comfortable with me not always being in a seat from 9 to 6. Flexibility on both ends, give and take. Plus, they are always appreciative of any effort, in or out of normal work hours. I love the clients I work with. We're a team.
> 2) you might be the only person knowing this part of the product or tech, and all is required could be just a quick yes/no answer.
Then you can pay me for the answer. This doesn't make it impossible to provide timely customer service, just makes it so that you don't get to transfer the cost of doing so onto your employees.
That doesn't describe the vast majority of employees of a company. People are paid for time spent (with some degree of flexibility), whether you're salaried or hourly.
If you don't think that's true, try fulfilling your duties through a marathon session on Monday one week and don't come in the rest of the week. Even employers who claim to be "results-driven" will view that as evidence of you being under-utilized and increase your workload.
This is to protect the weaker part of the equation, the employee so that the employer can not force you to do it, anyway i always thought that configure the work email in your phone or home computer is apart from stupid a security and privacy risk.
> his is to protect the weaker part of the equation, the employee
Presumably you are in hi-tech industry -- software, hardware etc? These employees have never been weak part of the equation (not even in France ;-), since I can remember, as far back as 1997. One could always slam the door, cross the street and get a better job.
> i always thought that configure the work email in your phone or home computer is apart from stupid a security and privacy risk.
Agree! But what if the employer have given you the mobile phone you use, and pays the subscription fee?
If he gives me a phone , then i should have another one for my private use, never ever mix both of them, unless you are the owner then do whatever you want. Even if he pays the phone and fee , he should pay me for answering out of hours, i think we can all agree that is not the same to answer a phone call during my work hours at 09:00 or when i'm at home with my family sleeping at 03:00 , if i'm that needed and indispensable, show me the money! And not, i'm not on the hi-tech industry , but the worker is always the weaker link, look how many workers are fucked up the bosses and how many owners are fucked up by their employees.
To all fellow software engineers out there: STOP reading company emails after work ALREADY! I don't care what your boss has told you or what your co-workers do. Just don't do it.
Warning: this only applies to regular office workers, not management or freelancers.
Are you getting paid for checking company emails after working hours? You are not, right?
How is offering your limited, private time FOR FREE to a company worth it?
Is your private life SO boring, you need to do something that many of us do not even like doing during office hours?
Are you afraid to be the only one in your team to bring some sanity?
Do you think your boss is going to respect you less if you put clear boundaries between work and private life?
Do you think you might lose your job if you don't check emails at all hours? Might be time to start looking for a new job...
I know, this post is a bit on the rough side, but I'm just trying to challenge the status quo for some people. I have personally met a lot of good, nice people who would think that they MUST do stuff for the company for free, after hours. Without any good reason. Actually, I had this one colleague who would check emails even very late at night, and if there was someone reporting a bug would jump in and try to fix it. And guess what? Countless times his code was really bad and it caused many more issues than it intended to solve in the first place.
Managers manage people. If they are working, they require other people working to do their job.
Basically if they business isn't onboard with the idea of not working after hours, it won't happen and those that try to force it risk being replaced with people that 'fit the company culture.'
I understand what you are saying, and you are right. It's just that I didn't want to focus on management, since it's a whole different dimension. But I agree with what you are saying.
I can understand that somebody who is paid hourly has no incentive to do anything work related once they leave the door (or clock if you prefer). For salaried employees, there are going to be times you need to work late, weekends, check email at home, whatever. It comes with the job.
The problems occur when routine work is treated as high priority/time sensitive. But I'm not sold that legislating this is the best solution. Even the example given of somebody fixing bugs overnight w/ bad solutions - that is something management should have addressed. Unless a really critical system has crashed as a result, there is no good reason to fix it then and mgt. should make that clear.
> For salaried employees, there are going to be times you need to work late, weekends, check email at home, whatever. It comes with the job.
Explain this to me. Nothing "comes with the job". Your job is your job and if you are working, say, 40 hours a week, it's more or less 8 hours a day. After 8 hours working, you go home and enjoy YOUR time. If companies want people to do company work while they are awake, they should basically double payrolls and pay for 16 hours, not just 8. Actually, not even in that case should it be OK.
People are people and need to have their life and leisure time. If they don't have it, they start to feel overworked, stressed, depressed. In the end, it's not a net positive for the company either.
THIS is precisely the attitude that leads some abusive bosses to believe that it's OK to expect people to sacrifice their free time. This should be a major offense, and should not be tolerated AT ALL in my opinion.
The consequence of enforcing your attitude by law is that small companies will never be able to expand to compete with big businesses. Say your website goes down at an inopportune time for a market in another time zone. Sorry, there's no one that can fix it because you can't have someone handling emergencies that 'come with the job' off hours on a staff of five. Now you've lost a major market.
If you can't staff properly to service a market, maybe you shouldn't be in it. Having someone to answer level 1 support requests (and escalate with proper "on-call" pay when necessary) isn't that expensive.
Answering dnautics here, no idea why I can't reply directly to his post.
> The consequence of enforcing your attitude by law is that small companies will never be able to expand to compete with big businesses. Say your website goes down at an inopportune time for a market in another time zone. Sorry, there's no one that can fix it because you can't have someone handling emergencies that 'come with the job' off hours on a staff of five. Now you've lost a major market.
Emergencies are different beasts. In my opinion, being on call should be paid extra. Same as happens with emergency services. How is your service when the site goes down different than a medical urgency? (besides the obvious fact that most probably, nobody will die if your website goes down at night, but you get the idea).
I was talking regular work. I know (and have experienced this personally) that some companies make look every day as if it could be doomsday if you relax.
Of course, lines get blurry, as in life. But some situations are so obvious, it does not need to find edge cases.
In fact, at least in the US, this is not the case, and it works both ways. If you're a salaried exempt employee --- as virtually all software developers are --- you don't get overtime pay and can be expected to work in off-hours. On the other hand, your pay can't easily be docked, and must be docked in full day increments.
Restated: salaried positions by definition include an expectation that your work won't always be confined to 9-5 hours.
Many times employees do not work 8 hours focused, sometimes they just do not come because of "sickness" just because they do not feel productive, or they come late-leave late occassionally because of a private need. Many employers understand that and tolerate that, as long as it is not impacting the general performance. So when company needs the employee occasionally out of office hours, the employee should do his/her best. If both parties are not abusing the situation everything is ok. Many times I am busy with a private issue at office hours but sometimes in a not-so-important private time my company needs me and I am happy to provide my support. With job contract I don't sell my 40 hours strictly, but I set up a continuous relationship with my employer to get the job done, which sometimes may require sacrifice of private time.
> For salaried employees, there are going to be times you need to work late, weekends, check email at home, whatever. It comes with the job.
That's a curiously un-European way to look at things. In every private company I've worked for, if they wanted more than my agreed salaried hours they either paid overtime or gave me TOIL (Time Off In Lieu). If they wanted me to be on call, they paid me an on-call rate.
If it was the other way around - you suddenly needed to leave early every day for a week - how do you think your employer would react?
When the poster writes a response, one can either honestly try to understand his position, and then ask followup questions that are relevant to what he actually wrote.
It seems like you didn't do that. Instead, you distorted his choice to read work email as "boring" and therefore, your followup questions (side projects? hobby?) had the tone of "lecturing" about his habit.
In reading all of your replies to everyone, the gap in your worldview is that some non-managers like their work such that reading email outside of office hours is a natural response. However, that doesn't mean everyone should do it. For workers that feel strongly that reading email after-hours is wrong, telling others not to do so isn't going to work.
If some people have different viewpoint about after-hours email, are you interested in thoughtful discussion about it? Or do you prefer to lecture people regardless of what they say?
I can't really start or contribute to a little side-project when I'm standing in a tram, sitting in a train for 15min, or waiting at the gate / before liftoff during a flight. I can read my company email from my phone during that time.
The HN guidelines ask you to please not use uppercase for emphasis: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. It's the online equivalent of yelling, and closely associated with ranting, which tends to have a poorer signal/noise ratio.
Consider that some people have meaningful jobs. If they're not working solely for the money, it's understandable that they'll do some work outside the office.
Consider that some people have meaningful jobs. If they're not working solely for the money, it's understandable that they'll do some work outside the office.
> To all fellow software engineers out there: STOP reading company emails after work ALREADY! I don't care what your boss has told you or what your co-workers do. Just don't do it.
Don't tell people what to do. You don't understand another person's situation or values.
I voluntarily pay attention to work matters on my own time in a reasonable and controlled way. I like my work and at times (not always) it's as fun and rewarding as whatever hobby I might spend time on instead.
I've also been rewarded in various ways, both tangible and intangible, by demonstrating above-average "discretionary" attention to work. Totally within the bounds of keeping a sane balance between home and work life. And absent of pressure to do it in order to keep my job.
I can understand why people who disagree feel strongly that no one else should put in extra time to get ahead either. Sometimes the rewards are zero sum. But there's a time and place for serious investment in a job or company, and other times it's only about a paycheck. Make sure you choose one or the other consciously, but don't pretend there's one right answer.
Ditto. I take vacations and I shut down after-hours when I don't have deadlines or timezone-dictated calls. But I do glance at my email from time to time in both situations if I have some downtime. And, if I can deal with some time sensitive matter quickly and with a modicum of effort, I honestly don't know why I wouldn't do so.
Making it harder to fire employees for another reason might protect the existing jobs, but it lacks the foresight to understand that these practices simply disincentivize employers from making future hires in the country. As a result, this is another move by the French gov to protect the status quo. The French labor market has already been regulated to the point of anti-competitiveness. This immediately hurts younger workers who are willing to work harder than their entrenched counterparts, but instead find themselves unemployed at a rate nearing 25%. More business as usual for paternalistic government lawmakers.
But in this case the alternative is to punish workers for having work/life balance. The "younger workers who are willing to work harder than their entrenched counterparts" are an actively harmful influence, and all this does is level the playing field.
Since when is being on call 24/7 "competitive"? I associate it with people who provide public-service type services - doctors, first responders, electric utility workers, even cable TV/modem techs.
This law does not seek to keep people from being on-call 24/7... it aims to provide a new "right" to workers where they can expect to go home after 7 hours and if they miss something important after hours (even if it hurts the business dramatically) not be concerned about losing their job. Again, this is in a country that already has 23% unemployment for young workers. I just want to make sure the rest of the world doesn't see these as "progressive" moves, but rather "regressive" as they strip the opportunity for young (currently unemployed) workers.
Those laws try to avoid a race to the bottom for employees who, being the biggest part of the population, should be who benefice most of the economy.
Of course, there is going to be downsides, but it's too easy speak about paternalistic government and not to mention the obvious conflict of interest between labour and business.
This comment illustrates an important socialist fallacy... employees are not the biggest part of the economy, consumers are! Consumers win when the products and services they buy are less expensive & better (ie the people who produce them are more efficient).
Ah, the old race to the bottom argument. Your comment applies to every single rule that applies to a corporation that any country creates anywhere. I'm unsure how this adds anything specific or new to this particular discussion.
Agree with this. Best thing I ever did was remove all work related apps from my phone. That way I only checked email if I'm on the laptop. More advantages include: saving on your phone bills, storage on your phone, employers spying on you, and of course your sanity. Doing this, I found that most "urgent" emails were not really urgent.
Also if there is ever a lawsuit for whatever, the company has a right to seize your phone if there is company content on it.
I like how old tech limitations acted as a natural weighting. Now with everything possible all the time we somehow loss an important source of information.
I was just thinking about that the other day, as it relates to kids and TV.
You definitely can still limit children's TV watching, but they're not dumb, and it takes more effort now that they know you could play an episode of their favorite show on Netflix any time you please than when your hands were tied by the broadcast schedule. "Sorry, you'll have to wait for next Saturday" was an easier sell when it was impossible for you to do anything about it (well, tape, but if you hadn't already recorded it there was nothing that could be done after the fact).
I meant more about value attached to signals. Before if someone came to see you it meant they made some effort compares to a SMS. Now that everything is the same, lines are blurred and we feel overwhelmed.
You realise that "workers rights" is not given by a single data point, yeah? Even if in this specific case the US has it right, saying that "France is catching up to the US" is ludicrous.
Ridiculous. You have a moral right to refuse to enter into an employment contract that obligates you to respond to emails out-of-hours. You do not have a moral right to prohibit business owners from offering employment terms that include an obligation to respond to emails out of regular work hours.
Once again, demagoguery wins over human rights. And people wonder why Europe's economic growth rate has steadily stagnated over the last forty years. The answer is social (demagogic) democracy.
I think what's more ridiculous is unpaid overtime and letting employers, who naturally have the upper hand in any employment negotiation, set the rules for all employees in the exploitive manner the US does.
People have every right to refuse to enter into an employment contract that imposes such obligations.
What they don't have a right to do is deny employers the right to offer any terms they want. You're promoting authoritarian infringements on the right of consenting adults to engage in voluntary interactions.
Yes indeed, and it's also a disgrace that children lack the freedom to work! Many children want to work in factories, why let the state interfere? Absolute bollocks.
Children are not "consenting adults", but in any case, child labour was essential for survival in the 19th century, because productivity was much lower than it is today.
If you were to invade Myanmar today, and impose a social democratic government that bans child labour, the result would be an increase in mortality.
Child labour only became unnecessary as a result of economic development increasing the average level of wealth in society.
Going back to the article, it's telling that you're trying to justify the authoritarian prohibition by comparing adults to children. Your ideology sees ordinary people as effectively children, and the state as their parent.
Then how are workers supposed to win better terms from their capitalist employers, outside of collective bargaining or state intervention? Is a football player being infantilized when he joins a union -- because he ought to be able to negotiate contracts by himself? When a union helps him extract a more equitable share of the profits, is he being infantilized, or is he being smart?
You're free to frame this argument in terms of individual rights or "economic competitiveness" or state paternalism. Unfortunately it amounts to little more than economic handwaving. At worst it's a disingenuous ploy to undermine the interests of the labour class, deluding workers into thinking you're giving them economic rights and freedoms ("you should be able to choose when you work!") when really you're just justifying your extraction of an even bigger share of their labour.
The common labourer has no economic power. The state, the firm, and (to a diminishing extent) unions do. I hate paternalistic states (and unions) as much as you do, but when you place no limit on firms' ability to extract labour from their workers, you end up in twisted situations where people are being paid sub-livable wages and expected to be on call 24 hours. Not because it's an economic "inevitability" (child labour inevitable? You seriously believe that?), but because it's the most amenable socioeconomic arrangement for the capitalist class.
This isn't free market dogma. This is what 400 years+ of economic history shows us, and what any economist would confirm.
Wages and benefits improve as the wealth of society increases, and wealth increases as a part of the normal course of history, particularly when market institutions are strongly in place. Wage growth slowed as a result of the institution of economic-growth-destroying socialist laws and programs in the US and Europe.
And putting all of this aside, you have no moral right to violate another person's right to freely contract to increase your own wages. So even if economies didn't work as they do, such authoritarian prohibitions would be unjustiable.
I can't stress enough that the conditions found in Dickens's time had nothing to do with a lack of prohibitions limiting contracting rights, and everything to do with people being poor and technology being less advanced.
That is what all the statistical evidence suggests.
Anecdotally, I've spent a fair bit of time in the developing world, and to me at least, it's obvious that the root source of the difference in working and living conditions between the developing world and the developed world is the comparatively lower levels of capital (tools, equipment, machinery, social capital, skills, knowledge) in the developing world.
According to this logic, civil rights legislation is also an authoritarian infringement on employers' right to discriminate based on their racism, sexism, etc.
Yes, it is. It shouldn't be illegal to exercise racist values in one's business decisions. The job of government is not to police our motivation and values, or, in the name of making the world more fair, to play the role of a self-righteous Robin Hood and commandeer the resources of private citizens in order to redistribute them equitably.
The subtext in my comment is that the proper role of government is not to do those things I mentioned.
And policing violations of other's right to their person or property, in prosecuting murder, and managing public property, in instituting and enforcing traffic rules, is absolutely a proper role for the government.
I got the subtext, thanks. The role of government is to avoid unnecessary pain and disorder. Discouraging bigots and racists from hurting others is arguably also a proper role. Consider: things done in the name of racism anywhere but on the premises of their otherwise-public business could be classed a hate crime. But we want that to be ok in special places? Really?
Then why did you write: "Except for the numerous cases it does", when you understood that I was making a normative statement, rather than a positive one?
The role of government is not to avoid unnecessary pain. Government is a collectively formed institution given a set of powers to provide goods we cannot provide for ourselves individually. There is no objective reason why people, acting through their government, have a right to violate the rights of others, when clearly people have no such right when acting in the individual capacity. They do not have a right to make racist motives or hiring practices illegal, because it hurts their feelings.
That's one view, not substantiated by history or anything. Government constantly and pervasively controls the actions and defines the rights of the individual. Almost by definition. "Providing goods" may be an ideal government that could be achieved some day somewhere. But not a working definition of any government in existence.
And trivializing the harm done by racist hiring practices is disingenuous. Its not just 'hurting feelings'; its marginalizing citizens en masse.
Suggesting a moral view can be substantiated by history, and that because mine is not, it is not valid, is intellectually dishonest. Moral views can neither be validated nor invalidated by the historical record.
Many practices, like slavery, that we now consider deeply immoral, were in place for thousands of years before the majority came to believe in their immorality. The fact that something has been done throughout history neither tells us it is moral, nor that it is immoral.
I think if you strip away the ideology (modern liberalism), the labels (government) and the appeals to convention ("this has been done for hundreds of years"), and look at the practice you are endorsing for what it is, it is clear that it is immoral.
You're saying that you and I have a right to threaten John with violence, because John won't hire Rhonda due to her race.
That is what all government mandates are based on: violence, and you want to use them to make actions that in no way violate another party's rights subject to violently enforced punishment, if they are based on a particular set of values, or refuse to help a particular party we want helped.
Idealist sophomores always leap from 'rule of law' to 'threats of violence'. Sounds gruesome and extreme.
But most government most place most of the time its just social pressure. Fines for parking in the wrong place. A visit from a social worker. Lines painted on the highway.
"idealist sophomores" Personal attacks suggest a weak argument.
Something being the law doesn't negate its qualities. The law is enforced through the threat of violence. Ignoring this fact is euphemizing what your political ideology is actually endorsing. The fact that laws are enforced through the threat of violence is extremely important, because it tells us why a humane society does not use the law to punish consensual activity or noncompliance with morally illegitimate demands (e.g. the demand by income tax law on the population to surrender its private property and privacy rights).
There is a discussion about this going on my company whatsapp group and all are talking about how good it is to respond to emails at any time of day or night. The company has a culture of pushing people to work more and more? Think you have too much in your hands? Guess what, everyone else does as well so it's no big deal. Sometimes I feel I am in the wrong type of company
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 166 ms ] threadI wiped and reset my phone recently, and apparently IBM has upped the security requirements to sign into Slack since I first set it up: now I can't sign in on my phone for an undisclosed reason. (Probably because its rooted, I know that's why I'm not allowed to have my work email on my phone.)
It's been kind of nice, honestly.
[0]http://support.mail-wise.com/knowledgebase/articles/391797-w...
Giving your company (or anyone) total access to your personal phone is insane. Your phone, with access to your email, is effectively a master key to your life. Through it, they have the ability to do almost anything to you (reset your bank password and take all your money, etc).
If you hunt around enough though you can find the parameters needed to use IMAP.
On the contrary you can disable other rules - like enforcement of PIN (if you know how) if you have a rooted phone.
[0]https://developer.android.com/training/safetynet/index.html
I'm fine with not doing so as I don't want bigco's email on my phone, it's super spammy. It's more of a todo list than actual communications, forever base lining permissions.
* POP/IMAP/webmail/etc. Obviously the incomming SMTP server is publicly accessible, but that doesn't help me.
And then there is those long term contractors that are hourly but basically on a fixed number of hours per week who still are 'encouraged' to do what little extra is needed to get this project done so their contract can be renewed for the next one once they've shown they can be counted on.
Whether or not they are paid hourly, as long as they are not classified as exempt, they are entitled to overtime pay. (Tech workers are classified as exempt in California, which is indeed a problem and IMHO a mistake, but that's a much smaller issue)
> And then there is those long term contractors that are hourly but basically on a fixed number of hours per week...
Well, that's a bad way to write a contract, but even so, that's a totally different situation because they're not even an employee. And the French law referenced in the original article wouldn't apply in that situation either.
You really need to make it clear to the people you work with that this is an issue of integrity. You want to work with people who have and understand integrity.
Now, you obviously can't prevent these people from doing that without disabling corporate accounts and door access between 5pm-9am. So there will be people doing that, to appear in better light than others. The practice just spreads to less ambitious employees as well, and then to less motivated ones.
While I support that you should be able to cut off work after the day is done and switch to your free time I don't see how you could regulate something like that.
To even try you would have to ban giving promotions to people who work some extra for their employer (remove the incentive to do extra) or give some sort of employment protection to people who do disconnect (pretty much like you can't fire an employee who's pregnant or on parental leave because such is collectively agreed to be worth some serious shitstorm).
In the end, the only enforcement I can think of is that each person needs to make that decision themselves. If they value their free time and life outside work then they must equally deprioritise work in their life, to the extent where they might be fired because they will disconnect from work outside of the hours agreed, and then find an employer who shares the same values. If good employees do that, employers will have to realise that in order to retain or get good employees they must give in and let the employees enjoy their free time in peace. Now, the only problem is that there is always someone more hungry for money than you, willing to sacrifice more than you. The remaining question is that which people are the majority.
I'm guilty of sometimes answering emails outside of hours, but it's more related to the desire to get stuff done rather than how it will impact my career.
It's the same thing with doing work after hours. If it's something I find interesting and I've got nothing else going on I'll gladly take a peek.
The same is true in the US.
The only difference is that California considers tech workers to be exempt. But other industries and in other states, this still applies.
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/4aacfcafa43a42539d0e56e44ce93...
You can still check your emails and get stuff done. But stuff will not accumulate after 8pm, you will not be bothered by other employees working at night, until early morning.
This configuration of the smtp server can be billed $5/employee/month which is a bargain to make sure your employees (1) have a sane life after 8pm and (2) can still get stuff done if they want to!
Also, a mail can have multiple recipients, each in a different timezone, but only one sender.
I had a project at one large company, where a daily conference call was scheduled at 8AM Pacific Time, my local zone, so that the guy in France could attend at a reasonable hour. There were attendees in various other "Western" locations. The time zones ranged from -8 to +1.
Nowadays I see this happening with virtual companies, who rent offices all over the place and barely own anything. When I have dealt with such, no one has been expected to be operating more than 8-10 hours at a time. Expectations of email response are patiently kept in accord with the time zones of the recipients.
I think my previous points are reasonable assumptions most people who have and would not require proof. If you believe otherwise you should provide a source.
It is. I assume most businesses are small businesses that keep to working hours in their local time zone. It would be a reasonable assumption.
> In the US at least, 17% of US employment (27 million) is for the Fortune 500 (2015) - definitely spanning multiple time zones.
So? Fortune 500 companies have web portals and databases with details on each employee. Why can't the email server check to see if the email should be sent now or later?
Another reason one might want to check email outside of work is to make work easier the next day. If something starts to go wrong at 9 PM, and I see an email alert from a monitoring system, I might be able to ssh in and fix the problem in a few minutes. If I wait until the next morning, the failure could be affecting other systems and I might be facing a whole day of annoying and tedious tracing the results throughout the system and fixing bad database items. Yuck.
I'd much rather hit "pause" on the cable box, or step to a reasonably safe spot and cast invisibility on myself in EverQuest, or stick a bookmark at my place in what I'm reading, at 9 PM and take care of it and then get back to my TV show/game/book and then have a nice day at work the next day where I can work on coding new things, than give myself a really crappy work day in order to save a few minutes of slight inconvenience at home.
Personal time where I can be interrupted by an emergency isn't personal time to me.
Additional work should not help getting promotions/a raise, but only a one-time bonus (proportional to the overtime/achievement): - if the person stops overtime after that, (s)he will continue to enjoy the rise forever. - working more does not help by itself to go to the next level (being more productive, getting new skills allowing to transition to another role) - (it's even more toxic when stacked ranking is put it place: those who work "normal" hours will almost never get a raise/promotion).
In reality it has never made a difference for me. I can quickly scan my email inbox and if anything is urgent and important it's known that you should either call or speak to me in person.
Many companies these days have branches in all parts of the world. 1) Out of hours for oneself could be perfectly office hours for the customer. 2) you might be the only person knowing this part of the product or tech, and all is required could be just a quick yes/no answer.
I am not advocating for either side, but please -- the world is more complex than it seems.
See my pt 2.
> if my boss wants me 24 hour service he/she should pay me for it...
I think your boss wants result from you, not any random metrics like 24 h/on the job. If you consider that you are underpaid for the result you have been delivering -- have you demanded a raise?
In my experience, the evidence indicates this is not the case. They may say they want results, but results are really hard to measure, so they end up actually wanting hours and often various other easy-to-measure metrics.
Think about it - were you in the managers shoes in this position, you're forcing someone who is the only holder of critical knowledge of your business to work extra without compensation, and against his will - don't you think there's a pretty big risk there?
Regarding metrics, I think any manager who has even a tiny bit of empathy for his employees would realize that "time spent at work" (or more accurately - time spent not at work) is an incredibly critical metric for his employees' well being, and any discussion should look at what's important for the business as well as the employee.
EDIT: fixed grammar
I didn't require answering to insomniac customers at 3am, though I have actually received calls at 3am due to an emergency in Asia (which in my work may be an actual emergency with lives endangered).
Indeed, the world is a bit more complex than some people think.
> On the other hand, they're perfectly comfortable with me telling them, "I'll be in a bit late today because last night was rough". Give and take.
I'm comfortable waking up at 3am in the morning if it's needed, and my clients are comfortable with me not always being in a seat from 9 to 6. Flexibility on both ends, give and take. Plus, they are always appreciative of any effort, in or out of normal work hours. I love the clients I work with. We're a team.
There should never be a reason to wake someone up at 3am to fix a "we're losing 5 million dollars an hour" website problem.
Then you can pay me for the answer. This doesn't make it impossible to provide timely customer service, just makes it so that you don't get to transfer the cost of doing so onto your employees.
But what if the employer does pay you correctly for your results? So correctly that you are actually willing to do it?
If you don't think that's true, try fulfilling your duties through a marathon session on Monday one week and don't come in the rest of the week. Even employers who claim to be "results-driven" will view that as evidence of you being under-utilized and increase your workload.
Presumably you are in hi-tech industry -- software, hardware etc? These employees have never been weak part of the equation (not even in France ;-), since I can remember, as far back as 1997. One could always slam the door, cross the street and get a better job.
> i always thought that configure the work email in your phone or home computer is apart from stupid a security and privacy risk.
Agree! But what if the employer have given you the mobile phone you use, and pays the subscription fee?
Or a worse one. Otherwise companies would be offering infinite benefits and salary and reject zero candidates.
Look up salaries in France compared to norther Europe or US.
Warning: this only applies to regular office workers, not management or freelancers.
Are you getting paid for checking company emails after working hours? You are not, right? How is offering your limited, private time FOR FREE to a company worth it? Is your private life SO boring, you need to do something that many of us do not even like doing during office hours? Are you afraid to be the only one in your team to bring some sanity? Do you think your boss is going to respect you less if you put clear boundaries between work and private life? Do you think you might lose your job if you don't check emails at all hours? Might be time to start looking for a new job...
I know, this post is a bit on the rough side, but I'm just trying to challenge the status quo for some people. I have personally met a lot of good, nice people who would think that they MUST do stuff for the company for free, after hours. Without any good reason. Actually, I had this one colleague who would check emails even very late at night, and if there was someone reporting a bug would jump in and try to fix it. And guess what? Countless times his code was really bad and it caused many more issues than it intended to solve in the first place.
If management isn't also not reading mail/doing work after office hours than the whole thing falls apart.
Basically if they business isn't onboard with the idea of not working after hours, it won't happen and those that try to force it risk being replaced with people that 'fit the company culture.'
Not really. The thing about email is that the boss can send one out after hours, and it will still be there in the morning.
Huh? The only difference between a manager and a non-manager is that the former manages others.
The problems occur when routine work is treated as high priority/time sensitive. But I'm not sold that legislating this is the best solution. Even the example given of somebody fixing bugs overnight w/ bad solutions - that is something management should have addressed. Unless a really critical system has crashed as a result, there is no good reason to fix it then and mgt. should make that clear.
Explain this to me. Nothing "comes with the job". Your job is your job and if you are working, say, 40 hours a week, it's more or less 8 hours a day. After 8 hours working, you go home and enjoy YOUR time. If companies want people to do company work while they are awake, they should basically double payrolls and pay for 16 hours, not just 8. Actually, not even in that case should it be OK.
People are people and need to have their life and leisure time. If they don't have it, they start to feel overworked, stressed, depressed. In the end, it's not a net positive for the company either.
THIS is precisely the attitude that leads some abusive bosses to believe that it's OK to expect people to sacrifice their free time. This should be a major offense, and should not be tolerated AT ALL in my opinion.
> The consequence of enforcing your attitude by law is that small companies will never be able to expand to compete with big businesses. Say your website goes down at an inopportune time for a market in another time zone. Sorry, there's no one that can fix it because you can't have someone handling emergencies that 'come with the job' off hours on a staff of five. Now you've lost a major market.
Emergencies are different beasts. In my opinion, being on call should be paid extra. Same as happens with emergency services. How is your service when the site goes down different than a medical urgency? (besides the obvious fact that most probably, nobody will die if your website goes down at night, but you get the idea).
I was talking regular work. I know (and have experienced this personally) that some companies make look every day as if it could be doomsday if you relax.
Of course, lines get blurry, as in life. But some situations are so obvious, it does not need to find edge cases.
Restated: salaried positions by definition include an expectation that your work won't always be confined to 9-5 hours.
That's a curiously un-European way to look at things. In every private company I've worked for, if they wanted more than my agreed salaried hours they either paid overtime or gave me TOIL (Time Off In Lieu). If they wanted me to be on call, they paid me an on-call rate.
If it was the other way around - you suddenly needed to leave early every day for a week - how do you think your employer would react?
Every employer I've had (all in the US) would be perfectly fine with that.
Yes. Or rather, what happens at work is so interesting that it usually beats refreshing reddit for the 5th time in 10min while in the train.
... in response to what the poster actually wrote: "work is _so interesting_"
If you're rewriting what the poster wrote into words of opposite meaning, it doesn't seem like you're engaging in real discussion.
When the poster writes a response, one can either honestly try to understand his position, and then ask followup questions that are relevant to what he actually wrote.
It seems like you didn't do that. Instead, you distorted his choice to read work email as "boring" and therefore, your followup questions (side projects? hobby?) had the tone of "lecturing" about his habit.
In reading all of your replies to everyone, the gap in your worldview is that some non-managers like their work such that reading email outside of office hours is a natural response. However, that doesn't mean everyone should do it. For workers that feel strongly that reading email after-hours is wrong, telling others not to do so isn't going to work.
If some people have different viewpoint about after-hours email, are you interested in thoughtful discussion about it? Or do you prefer to lecture people regardless of what they say?
Don't tell people what to do. You don't understand another person's situation or values.
I voluntarily pay attention to work matters on my own time in a reasonable and controlled way. I like my work and at times (not always) it's as fun and rewarding as whatever hobby I might spend time on instead.
I've also been rewarded in various ways, both tangible and intangible, by demonstrating above-average "discretionary" attention to work. Totally within the bounds of keeping a sane balance between home and work life. And absent of pressure to do it in order to keep my job.
I can understand why people who disagree feel strongly that no one else should put in extra time to get ahead either. Sometimes the rewards are zero sum. But there's a time and place for serious investment in a job or company, and other times it's only about a paycheck. Make sure you choose one or the other consciously, but don't pretend there's one right answer.
We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13291386 and marked it off-topic.
Even if that's true, the solution should not be to actively penalize young workers, which this might do.
Of course, there is going to be downsides, but it's too easy speak about paternalistic government and not to mention the obvious conflict of interest between labour and business.
This kind of mentality is what destroys an economy.
Also if there is ever a lawsuit for whatever, the company has a right to seize your phone if there is company content on it.
You definitely can still limit children's TV watching, but they're not dumb, and it takes more effort now that they know you could play an episode of their favorite show on Netflix any time you please than when your hands were tied by the broadcast schedule. "Sorry, you'll have to wait for next Saturday" was an easier sell when it was impossible for you to do anything about it (well, tape, but if you hadn't already recorded it there was nothing that could be done after the fact).
You realise that "workers rights" is not given by a single data point, yeah? Even if in this specific case the US has it right, saying that "France is catching up to the US" is ludicrous.
Please don't do this here.
We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13291684 and marked it off-topic.
Once again, demagoguery wins over human rights. And people wonder why Europe's economic growth rate has steadily stagnated over the last forty years. The answer is social (demagogic) democracy.
What they don't have a right to do is deny employers the right to offer any terms they want. You're promoting authoritarian infringements on the right of consenting adults to engage in voluntary interactions.
If you were to invade Myanmar today, and impose a social democratic government that bans child labour, the result would be an increase in mortality.
Child labour only became unnecessary as a result of economic development increasing the average level of wealth in society.
Going back to the article, it's telling that you're trying to justify the authoritarian prohibition by comparing adults to children. Your ideology sees ordinary people as effectively children, and the state as their parent.
You're free to frame this argument in terms of individual rights or "economic competitiveness" or state paternalism. Unfortunately it amounts to little more than economic handwaving. At worst it's a disingenuous ploy to undermine the interests of the labour class, deluding workers into thinking you're giving them economic rights and freedoms ("you should be able to choose when you work!") when really you're just justifying your extraction of an even bigger share of their labour.
The common labourer has no economic power. The state, the firm, and (to a diminishing extent) unions do. I hate paternalistic states (and unions) as much as you do, but when you place no limit on firms' ability to extract labour from their workers, you end up in twisted situations where people are being paid sub-livable wages and expected to be on call 24 hours. Not because it's an economic "inevitability" (child labour inevitable? You seriously believe that?), but because it's the most amenable socioeconomic arrangement for the capitalist class.
I recommend you study a bit of economics.
Start with Adam Smith:
>It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.
Then read this:
http://nyti.ms/2cfMjs4
This isn't free market dogma. This is what 400 years+ of economic history shows us, and what any economist would confirm.
Wages and benefits improve as the wealth of society increases, and wealth increases as a part of the normal course of history, particularly when market institutions are strongly in place. Wage growth slowed as a result of the institution of economic-growth-destroying socialist laws and programs in the US and Europe.
And putting all of this aside, you have no moral right to violate another person's right to freely contract to increase your own wages. So even if economies didn't work as they do, such authoritarian prohibitions would be unjustiable.
That is what all the statistical evidence suggests.
Anecdotally, I've spent a fair bit of time in the developing world, and to me at least, it's obvious that the root source of the difference in working and living conditions between the developing world and the developed world is the comparatively lower levels of capital (tools, equipment, machinery, social capital, skills, knowledge) in the developing world.
And policing violations of other's right to their person or property, in prosecuting murder, and managing public property, in instituting and enforcing traffic rules, is absolutely a proper role for the government.
The role of government is not to avoid unnecessary pain. Government is a collectively formed institution given a set of powers to provide goods we cannot provide for ourselves individually. There is no objective reason why people, acting through their government, have a right to violate the rights of others, when clearly people have no such right when acting in the individual capacity. They do not have a right to make racist motives or hiring practices illegal, because it hurts their feelings.
And trivializing the harm done by racist hiring practices is disingenuous. Its not just 'hurting feelings'; its marginalizing citizens en masse.
Many practices, like slavery, that we now consider deeply immoral, were in place for thousands of years before the majority came to believe in their immorality. The fact that something has been done throughout history neither tells us it is moral, nor that it is immoral.
I think if you strip away the ideology (modern liberalism), the labels (government) and the appeals to convention ("this has been done for hundreds of years"), and look at the practice you are endorsing for what it is, it is clear that it is immoral.
You're saying that you and I have a right to threaten John with violence, because John won't hire Rhonda due to her race.
That is what all government mandates are based on: violence, and you want to use them to make actions that in no way violate another party's rights subject to violently enforced punishment, if they are based on a particular set of values, or refuse to help a particular party we want helped.
But most government most place most of the time its just social pressure. Fines for parking in the wrong place. A visit from a social worker. Lines painted on the highway.
Jumping from those to violence is disingenuous.
Something being the law doesn't negate its qualities. The law is enforced through the threat of violence. Ignoring this fact is euphemizing what your political ideology is actually endorsing. The fact that laws are enforced through the threat of violence is extremely important, because it tells us why a humane society does not use the law to punish consensual activity or noncompliance with morally illegitimate demands (e.g. the demand by income tax law on the population to surrender its private property and privacy rights).