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Not the person you asked, but I've learned that if you're not careful about what you tell your employers and/or coworkers that it will almost invariably come back to haunt you in the form of unpaid labor.

It took me an embarrassingly long time to realize that (my 30's), and now I keep my conversations with my coworkers very utilitarian and divulge minimal information about myself. I try not to be a dick or anything, I'm polite enough, but pretty much everything I talk about is either directly relevant to work and/or so surface level as to border on "vapid".

ETA:

Just as an example, I used to have really bad sleep issues in my 20's that would make it so I wouldn't be able to get to sleep until around 4am, if at all. I made the mistake of bringing that up at work to my manager. Two weeks later I got a phone call at 3am because there was something he wanted to look at and "he knew I would be up". I was up, but I didn't really have much desire to get my laptop out and do work. I liked that job at the time and I liked my manager, so I did it anyway, and it wasn't until years later did I think about that incident and how utterly weird it was that I was sort of being punished for my insomnia.

My sleep issues have gotten a lot better now, so if someone calls me at 3am I probably won't hear it because I'll be asleep, but I remember that incident now and have it constantly spinning in my brain when I chat with coworkers.

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I'm fine sharing (some) things about myself with coworkers, but I'm also in a position where if someone says, "So you can be our on-call guy for on-prem servers?" I can say "Absolutely not without a really big fucking raise, and I am not kidding, if you call me at 3am to come in, I will hang up on you."
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If everyone had a spine like you we’d all be much better off for it
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Our masters keep us desperate so we can't
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There's only two answers to the question "can you be our on-call guy" which are:

* No

* Only if I get on-call pay

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The problem here is not divulging info about yourself, its not being able to say no to work. I will happily draw a line where my responsiblities end and if anybody asks me to go over that I will ask for a role review. Too many people get walked over at work, stand up for yourself and say no!
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I don't think I disagree with that at all.

Still, I do think there's merit in keeping your personal life to yourself and not telling your coworkers more than they need to know. I'm not saying you should be stoic or a dick or anything; by all means engage in conversations and be nice. I'm just saying that it's important to have boundaries.

I tend to be someone who overshares a lot (hence my enormous word count on Hacker News), so I just try and keep this in mind.

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Fair response. I guess it also depends on the working environment, the type of person you are, and whether your coworkers are more or less like you as a person etc.
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Exactly on point. Don't share anything that's not relevant to the job. In one of the previous jobs, I was coerced into doing a deployment to prod every 2 weeks at Friday 10 pm, since my boss knew I was single and not into partying or meeting with friends. Had I known better, I'd maybe even lie about my life and tell him to get lost.
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Becoming a surface level/"vapid" work automaton would be a heavy price for to pay, perhaps not for you personally, but for me and I imagine many others. So, I'm not sure your example would lead me to the conclusion of your behavior. You mention being called at 3am as one incident that didn't mean much to you at the time and didn't become a pattern of exploitation, so what was really lost?

Maybe I'm lucky. I've so far not had to endure a job for which I was underpaid and expected to meet and exceed every contractual obligation placed on me.

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I've learned that life is what you make of it. If you let yourself be used - others will use you. But if you showed your worth, but also showed others that you know your worth - things are different.

(otherwise where I work, I also avoid talking about politics for instance, but this is a different theme)

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I don't really talk about politics at work either, but that's broadly because I live in a very progressive area where pretty much everyone has the same opinions that I do so it would be a pretty boring echo chamber.
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Hehe, that got me laughing a lot.

A) because picturing at my current work place everybody learning of all my opinions at once and the resulting drama

B) I am in progressive spaces quite often, but they are far from an echo chamber with everyone having the same opinions either ..

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No because I imagined a future where instead of me being asked for emergency help I'd be expected to perform a list of tasks every weekend as the defacto facilities manager. They were already paying me a ridiculous salary at the time. I thought about bringing it up if they ever said no to any requests I had and they never did so simply accepted it was my mistake broadcasting too much information at work which I never repeated.

I received many strange requests like to come in Friday night while drinking at a concert and ransack the offices looking for a laptop or possible phone left behind that they suspected was triggering alerts by repeatedly trying to connect to a foreign server. "You want me to drunkenly rob the offices at night and walk out the lobby carrying a stack of laptops? Ok"

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