Well, in some cases people will do it because otherwise their employer may fire them. Living in the US most of us are at will, and don't have that much luxury to give employers the finger.
If you're not willing to stay late to do a cross time zone meeting then I agree that you're worth a bit less to your boss than you otherwise would be.
Personally I would rather accept a bit less pay to be rid of a nuisance like a boss who thinks I'll inconvenience myself and my family for stupid shit like adjusting myself to his outsourced labour's schedule. I do stay late when shipping a release or working on an urgent bug. But stay late so some delicate flower off in India can work 9-5? Fuck that.
But, reflexively, why are you putting yourself above the "delicate flower" in India, who, by the way, probably has a hell of a lot worse working conditions than you do? I'm entirely okay with staying late for an overseas call because I recognize that the price I'm paying for staying late is probably less than the price they'd pay for staying late, and I'm more able to pay it. It's a simple matter of not being a wanton asshole towards people I'm supposed to be cooperating with.
Sure if you're 99% confident you can walk into another job of comparable total comp, then you have the luxury to walk out. If you're the sole or main breadwinner, deep in a mortgage, possibly with healthcare issues, and living in an area where comparable employers are slim to none, then you may do much worse things than stay up late or work odd hours for an employer.
We don't have much of a safety net in the US...
Don't get me wrong I'd much prefer if it was E.g. Germany where your boss can't email you after work.
I hear you. I took a pay cut (albeit with the possibility of a pension after 5 years), largely so I would not have to deal with offshore hours.
That said, the guys in India on our support team were fairly accommodating about working what was for them swing shift, so that their schedule pretty much matched NY Stock Exchange hours. 6 AM Pacific Time would have been pretty brutal for me, personally. 7 AM was bad enough.
> But stay late so some delicate flower off in India can work 9-5? Fuck that.
Um, you realize clifanatic was talking about this "delicate flower" sleeping in their office because of an 10 am CST meeting and not the other way around?
Um, yes I do realize that. But think about what his employer is asking of him. Is the wellbeing of these offshore workers his charity? Why should clifanatic EVER be put in the position of saving the offshore workers that his boss hired?
Clifanatic's boss can ask those offshore workers to stay late, and then he can damn well shell out for them to take a taxi home. Maybe he can even let them come in late, given what an amazing savings he's realizing in labour costs.
>> Is the wellbeing of these offshore workers his charity? Why should clifanatic EVER be put in the position of saving the offshore workers that his boss hired?
But that is _not_ what the GP is saying. You're creating a strawman argument where The Boss forces his employees to stay late in office while the 'labour' gets to work within his time.
If anything, based on the work timings mentioned in his post - the work-life balance of the offshore employees is screwed and not of clifanatic's him/herself.
The USA is a country of some 300 million people, and if you think the 20% of the country's population that voted for him somehow represents everyone here you're completely wrong.
