Even after work, you can’t relax and go have fun, nor can you sleep peacefully at night, because the number of reported issues will crush you. Only when you get there will you find out that they’ll make it sound very nice: you can work shifts, but you have to be on call at all times.
Yesterday morning, after the regular Taipei meeting, I went to see a company-arranged presentation titled “Agile Development Is Actually Easy,” and also went to Shin Yeh for afternoon tea. Officially, it was employee care; in reality, it was to placate everyone’s emotions. On the surface, everyone seemed to have a great time.
At bedtime that evening, Supervisor A suddenly asked me in the group chat: “Why do you need to work overtime? Why can’t you be on call at any time?”
He actually started venting emotionally while asking.
Junior employee Pidan: “Not every system can necessarily be on standby 24 hours a day, and not everyone should necessarily have to sacrifice their personal lives. What’s going on?”
Supervisor A: “Then what am I supposed to do if the higher-ups ask me about it?”
Junior employee Pidan: “Just tell them no, no—the team is understaffed and the PHP system is outdated. And doesn’t HR usually stop this?”
Supervisor A: “What if HR pretends nothing is happening?”
I began to feel that he had an image of the future of this job that frightened him, but that he couldn’t bring himself to say out loud.
Supervisor A said: “Do you think this kind of work arrangement is frightening? Who told you that?”
Later, Junior employee Pidan said there were two senior colleagues on the project, Senior A and Senior B, and they both said that this industry was just like this: you couldn’t complain or refuse, otherwise you wouldn’t be able to stay.
I never expected words like these to be treated as workplace truths as well.
Still, these outside influences will probably only increase in the future.
I could only change the subject: “Don’t be afraid. Your technical skills will be more mature than mine in the future, and then it’ll be your turn to protect the system!”
Junior employee Pidan: “In the future, I’ll understand engineering better than the manager!”