Just very diplomatically told the VP of Engineering to kick rocks (fuck off) for calling me at nearly 9pm to talk about project planning for a thing that isn’t even in active development.

Asked point blank if we were dealing with a life or death thing. He said no. I replied “then we can talk about this tomorrow”.

He balks and tries to tell me how important it is.

I cut him off “I wasn’t asking you, I am telling you it’s a quarter to 9 and I’m at a bar. This call is over. We’ll talk tomorrow. Good NIGHT”. With as much aggression and pissed off emphasis as I could muster on the ending.

Stay tuned to find out if I still have a job after this.

And this is why I don't answer outside of working hours. If it's a life or death, production is down thing, I get an automated alert from a number I recognize after someone opens a major incident ticket. Otherwise, I just leave it for the next workday.

Congrats on a healthy work-life balance. So many of these losers dont have that these days and it shows

I'm more curious about his thought process that led him to make that phone call.

I think his 'thought process' is that he wants to be able to bother you whenever he likes. You've been clear that he can't, and your life will be better for it.

I think you handled it as best as you could. Just keep the same calm but firm stance when you talk to him tomorrow and everything should work out.

Today, they take your free time. Tomorrow, they will take your weekends. The day after tomorrow, they will take your salary.

You did the right thing. It's important to build healthy relationships at work, and it involves bidirectional communication.

If you allow them to walk over yourself like this, they will walk over you, and then they will treat you as if you were weak and useless, no matter how much work you do.

If you don't, they will be happy about you being a strong team player. You gain independence, you gain appreciation, and there is no risk involved. It's counterintuitive, but the submissive stance and obedience is what compromises your job security.

You have nothing to lose but your overtimes.

Way to go!

I always use teams chat if I have any questions that are not panic.

That way the other party can always decide when they have time to answer.

Off hours most keep teams muted or use device they leave at home or at the office.

But since we have quite a bit of flexibility of hours its not to uncommon for people to take a few hour off during daytime if they need to do something and then work a few hours in the evening, especially on days where they work from home.

Only time I would even consider calling (for most I would not even know the number ;)) is if production is down and we know who can solve it, and even then it’s voluntary to help out.

But I thing that has happened twice the last three years ;)

I'm at the edge of my seat, what happened next?!

@ars1 As of end of the week I still have a job.

Project planning got done, arbitrary goals were set. Veep didn’t bring up the phone call or my terse response.

A mental note has been made of this whole affair for my eventual exit interview though.

@EmberQuill what if the incident is so major the ticketing system is down lol

@Tonnoman if it's the ticket system then it's not my team's problem lol