Don't Be the Workplace Martyr (Because the Workplace Don't Care)

I was talking to someone recently who mentioned that they would be probably be working in the office over the weekend. Again. He had mentioned before having to work over past weekends. Maybe you've met this type of person before. They work weekends without pay or compensation. It has to be done for the good of the department or the company. He or she may also be the last one to leave the office most days of the week; there's always stuff to be done, and if they don't stay it's going to lead to some dire unspoken consequences.

I used to be like that. I worked in a school system where I didn't have to come in the weekends (thank $DEITY!) but I did stay late to finish things up. Oh, the sacrifice! I would stick around to work on things despite being on salary, sometimes looking down on the unionized staff in Maintenance or the office staff who, when break time came, they were off clock. If you approached them you were asking for an eye roll and they would speak to you in a voice that was so heavily burdened that you'd think you just threw their universe out of whack by speaking to them about something work-related.

I was dedicated. I was paid crap, compared to market rates. That's how the school was...it reinforced my sense of martyrdom. I was working hard for the intangible reasons. It made them respect me more, working for the good of the organization rather than the pay (because the pay was below market so I sure wasn't doing it for that...). I was reliable. I made us look better as a department. I was important as an asset to the organization. It made me a good person that others could look up to as an example.

I was clearly delusional.

Part of this was conflating my identity with my job, then further conflating my job with my employer. There have been recent articles discussing the importance of loving your job, but not your company, because you don't know when your company will stop loving you. And no one is so important that a company won't be able to function without you.

Working in the school, I didn't often see people leaving...mostly because the majority of employees in schools are both protected by unions (I wasn't) and they had contracts for set periods of time, so when they want to get rid of people they did it with more politicking than efficiency. And sometimes it was absolutely brutal; people would jockey to get a good position for themselves before gathering together to lament the people that weren't able to get into a position that wasn't eliminated or a department without forced retirements.

I left the last position after 11 years or so of service to that district. Despite the extra hours I had put in, there was no noise made for my departure. No goodbye party. No lunch thing. I remember my last act being placing my ID badge and keys on a table in what served as the makeshift server room and saying goodbye to myself one last time before shutting the lights off and walking away.

It really felt like no one gave a damn.

And you know what? They're still chugging along. They hired someone to fill my spot kind of quick (guess I was easily replaced) supposedly with a similar pay, despite me having to work a decade with a degree to my name to get that amount. I doubt anything I did had a lasting effect.

A decade of my life...working on some small projects here and there...extra time put in without extra pay...and it amounts to nothing.

(Side comment: it's no secret that a lack of overtime pay also hurts employees trying to get ahead financially...)

My current employer is great; they offer perks like free snacks and lunches, they buy employees the tech they need to get their job done rather than the decade of having to try to make outdated scraps into something half-usable, and they offer a Christmas bonus and present for employees. But as a company grows, they also have had people leave...the first time I had to deactivate accounts, I was greatly affected by it. I'd never had a situation where one day someone's there, the next I'm locking them out and the company kind of acts like they didn't exist.

But the company goes on. No one is irreplaceable.

There are still times where I will be there late. Sometimes I'm working on something. Usually because there's a couple of things I wanted to get done and got tired of having to push it to the next day. Other times I was doing something that took about %20 of my attention so I'd babysit the process (upgrading a system, installing some software, running an AV check...) while watching something on our super fast Internet connection while drinking something from the free drinky-fridge. If it was after what was reasonably considered working hours, anything coming in as a trouble ticket, unless it's dire, is considered kind of optional. My employer isn't a slave driver, I was doing it because I didn't have something more pressing to do.

There are also times (much less-so in my current department, more for SRE-related tasks) when you would have to work over the weekend. Usually this was for an alarm situation (something is really broken, or some dickhead script kiddie is home from school and has nothing better to do) or something big and scheduled like a data center move. Most cases these were scheduled or, in the case of being "on call," was done on a rotation.

My employer has been cognizant of the idea of "work-life balance."

My previous employer wasn't.

And that's where I was delusional. I let my job define me. Kind of like the old days, when you see a strong middle class family whose head of household was defined as a Xerox man or an IBM man. The company was your team, and they cared for you and provided for you and your family. Today, you're lucky if you keep the same job for more than 5 years.

Working on weekends, voluntarily, when your boss isn't expecting it of you and you aren't compensated, and you're doing it repeatedly...that's a sign that you need more people working with you. Or you don't know how to properly get work done in an allocated time. Either way is a failure condition.

To be clear: there are times when it's valid to sacrifice for your company. These times are infrequent, and you typically have some recognition or support for doing this with actual results. Or it makes your life easier because you're making up for time you were out during the typical workday. Situations vary.

But if you are doing it because you claim that you've been overwhelmed all week, and there's still a load of things to get done, you're possibly:

1. Overloaded. The company/organization needs to hire someone to help with the workload.
2. Disorganized, and can't get things done efficiently enough to keep up.
3. Being taken advantage of. After all, you're paid to work X hours. If you don't get overtime, you're giving work for free, and that devalues you and your skills (unless you're somehow compensated by owning part of the company...)
4. Asking to be taken advantage of. Hey, you work extra for free? Soon it goes from being an occasional thing to an expectation. Don't be shocked. You conditioned others to treat you that way.

I've seen other people in situations where they worked their asses off for an organization, only to become embittered when they leave and the organization doesn't really care. Those people tied their identities to that employer, then were shocked to discover that their extra work in the practical sense meant very little. They were just another cog that was quickly replaced.

I fell for that delusion and I try not to anymore. The extra work I do...usually tying up loose ends at the end of the workday...isn't because I have to do it. Rarely am I swearing at the expectation of putting in extra uncompensated time. Because I understand that I need to do something with a little more meaning that will also outlast me, since at any time my employer can terminate my professional relationship.

For the most part I think my attitude has reached a healthy balance between "I want my boss to like me and I really love my job" and the people who I grew irritated with when I was trying to get something done and, for example, needed a door unlocked only to find staff in a lounge staring at the clock because "IT'S BREAKTIME WHY ARE YOU TALKING TO ME?!"

I'd like to think my employer likes me. I'd like to think I do a satisfactory job for them, and that they appreciate what help I can offer to other employees. But in the end I am me. I work for an employer. And I am not the company. You would do well to find that separation as well, for your own work/life balance and sanity. Maybe that's part of what happens as you get older...it's part of growing up and seeing the world with less optimistic lenses.