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LeMeow
4y

What is the general rule/idea around meetings outside of your work hours?

It has happened several times that I wasn't able to join some meetings that were outside of my work hours. I try to join but some thing or the other comes up and then I miss it. I make sure to join any meeting that's highly important or if it's about anything related to my work (or if I'm required to attend).
I work with people in different time zones and there was a meeting set after 8:30pm my time, and I wasn't able to join. My coworker messaged me, in a passive aggressive way (seemingly), asking if he needs to remind me before every meeting in my calendar so that I would join.

I feel like I'm not being paid enough for the work that I do, and I work around 8-9 hours (sometimes 10 and I don't get paid for overtime).
On top of that, am I obligated to attend every meeting and not have anything planned or unplanned to do after work hours? (I don't think I should have any obligation)
I don't have previous experience of working with international teams/clients before, so I'm not sure what I should do here.

Comments
  • 2
    I think this depends on your relationship with the company, any understanding with your manager, and etc.

    For some folks those kinda work situations are just part of the job, others less so.

    I am not opposed to a meeting that has some obvious complications due to who is participating falling outside work hours.

    Within reason...

    To me a rando meeting isn't 'hard' or anything. If you're worried about the time you're putting in overall that's more of a conversation with your boss and about coming to an understanding with them.
  • 1
    What, you wanna do annoying meetings OUTSIDE OF WORKING HOURS?

    u madlad. The maximum of „meeting“ was when I met a co-worker in front of the company building fixing his car and me getting something from work I forgot to take with me before the weekend.
  • 3
    Have you agreed working free in your contract?
  • 3
    If it's outside work hours it should be planned a pretty long time ahead. Otherwise I am not bound to be there.
  • 0
    And also it has to be a very critical and important meeting to be scheduled outside work hours.
  • 0
    Ask for your start time at work to adjust as well and to be given a differential pay for working outside normal hours.
  • 0
    I'll cancel international telecons even within my working time if there's no proper agenda and prep. I just won't sit there, write down questions and say that I'll look into that. I fully expect the other side to write their questions down in an email. Got no time for pampering customers, I'll leave that to the PMs. Telecons are mostly to get out of an email ping pong situation.

    Otherwise, it has to be exceptional that I'll do weird time telecons, and never ever unpaid. I don't work for free.

    But yeah, e.g. next week, I'll have a tech telecon at 6AM European time. With commuting, making coffee and possible Windows update fuckery, I'll have to get up at 4:45AM.

    The American co-workers are in for a nightly meeting at 9PM their time, and the only one to have a civilised telecon time is the Asian customer around noon his time.
  • 0
  • 0
    @LeMeow then you can decline or negotiate what you get in return
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