Since 2017, larger employers in France have been required to agree with staff how and when people may switch off from work messages. Portugal, Belgium, the Canadian province of Ontario and Australia have since introduced rules of their own, and the idea keeps spreading. The details differ a great deal. The direction does not. In more places, the evening message from your manager is turning from a cultural question into a legal one.
It is easy to read this as a story about employers. It is also a quiet change in what will make you good at your job.
For years, being reachable has been a hidden part of how engineers earned trust. You answered at nine at night, so you were reliable. You fixed it on Sunday, so you were committed. That kind of reputation gets harder to build when replying at nine at night puts the company in an awkward position, and when half your team works under rules that tell them not to.
What replaces it is a different skill. Being so reliable during working hours that nothing needs you outside them.
That looks like ordinary habits done well. Ending the day with work in a state somebody else could pick up. Writing down the answer to the question only you can currently answer. Making the decision before you log off rather than leaving it hanging until morning. Raising a risk at four in the afternoon instead of discovering it at eleven.
It changes how you treat other people too. If you work across countries, the person you message at seven in the evening their time may be protected by a law you have never heard of. Scheduling messages, and saying plainly that something can wait until their morning, is becoming basic professional courtesy.
None of this removes on call or real emergencies. It makes them explicit, agreed and usually paid, rather than an expectation that leaks into every evening.
Find out what applies where you and your colleagues work. And start building the kind of reliability that does not depend on your phone being on.
Monday: find the last work message you sent after hours, and ask whether it could have gone out at four.
– Asael Shinder
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