Essentiality of Rest and Killing Oneself for Vicious Companies
Working for Microsoft is foolish. In the news: (KXAN Austin)
One year ago: (months after Microsoft had laid off tens of thousands of his colleagues)
In January 2025 I began resting and sleeping a lot more. I made this decision as part of a "resolution" after ~20 years of minimising sleep (physical limits do exist) and to my surprise this resulted in far fewer typos, better focus, and a healthier life. In the IT sector, this is not always attainable because of the nature of some roles (not only working hours; there are other factors). In the services 'industry', many jobs are strictly nine-to-five, so there are clear boundaries in terms of time, and everyone takes a break at roughly the same time, with some peers using that time to socialise with colleagues.
In my experience of work (25+ years), with the exception of "remote work" (remote as in home; it's a misnomer really) the IT sector is good at squeezing the life out of workers. Many are 'voluntarily' working very long hours (no overtime rates/pay), they conflate life with work, and since their country foolishly allows this, the company pays them with "shares" (I've seen some disturbing misuses of this; like getting people to work for free under a false premise or promise of 'owning' the company). The company hoards workers' capital and in some cases colleagues work while ill, skip entire nights (for "work"), and basically destroy their health, family, etc.
What is this all for? Money? Addiction? Maybe the combination of the two things. In IT, it's not typically "workaholics", it's people subjected to peer pressure, gamification (like # of commits), and pursuit of quotas/goals. It seems like the EPO has adopted this sort of mindset and it results in strikes this year.
People who don't rest don't live long. Companies don't seem to mind this because they try to get rid of older people regardless and whether those people reach their pension age (or last long once past it) isn't of any interest of those companies. That's why we need stronger regulations to govern companies. Joining a union is what people do with such regulations are absent or too weak (barely enforced, ineffectively applied). █