In which country are you? We Europoors usually have labor laws to protect us from having to work so late. Where I live we have core working hours in our contract, 10:00 to 16:00, any work requests after that are voluntary for the employees. Is that not something you can use to push back on this?
Like real worker power comes from having good economic conditions and strong trade unions - the American engineers have far more bargaining power, because they can easily get competing $150k-250k offers which are unimaginable in Europe.
Mate, it isn't quite nearly the same for Europeans.
That said, Russian and Chinese developers had the same happening in companies in the UK.
Irrelevant. Just because you work for a US company that does not mean your kids should go to US colleges.
As an employee I want to be paid the highest that anyone else is paid for the same work. More so if the value generated is the same regardless of location. Yet I can understand employers wanting to help maintain sustainable communities, even where cost of living is high.
Governments too want some control over their currencies and its value.
This is one hundred percent a problem of exploitation and cultural expectations and needs to change.
I'm lucky that we have a "We'll dial into meetings slightly earlier, if you can dial in slightly later" entente and so it's rare for meetings with west coast to go past 18:00 GMT.
In my case, the company is extremely accommodating and doesn't schedule reunions at hours that are inconvenient for me, but even if they did, I'd still consider it worth it for the compensation they give out.
I dunno. Maybe I could get an even better deal if I pushed hard or if I unionized or whatever, but right now I just look at the fact that I'm getting 5x what a middle-school teacher gets while doing way less work, and I just... don't feel the anger?
(maybe other american companies pay a lot less, though)
Do you mean as an hourly wage? That would be $200,000+/year and a 6-figure salary.
I think I meant "3 digits before the K".
And with the on call shift (when on call, not every week) going till 6:30 pM, sometimes it is 12 hour work days by design.
on the other hand, they don't bug us much during the day with micro management so it is not all bad.
In India it’s routine (in fact standard) for US companies to have the Indian on-call person for 24x7 on-call. Rarely companies have follow the sun policy. Very few! Definitely not Ubers and Amazons.
And Indian managers are the enforcers of this - it’s probably one of the only significant USP these managers have “I’ll get it done by same engineers at the lower Indian rates“.
US HR and leadership wash their hands off the problem - “oh, we give you full ownership, you should decide and own this” :)
Joining late meetings and being paid typical local rates is hardly the same as being paid half the local rates and facing deportation.
The former sucks, but the latter is unconscionable.
For context, I’m a European in a US city. I’m not sure for how long I’ll be able to stay here.
Joining meetings at Seattle time (like 7-8pm CET), meanwhile you're being paid less than half of what the American engineers earn at the same level.
But they know there's so few options in Europe so they set the salaries according to "local market conditions".