Ask HN: Remote IT workers, are these practices frequent/legal?

I guess if someone is making a good living out of it and that avoids the person having to shift to another country its their choice and its OK. But I am surprised the law does not protect remote workers more from these things in european countries. I personally think that remote workers should be more protected.

One thing to bear in mind is that we humans beings have evolved to live during the day, and there are health implications for living most of the time at night. This is why petrol workers etc. can only work one week or so a month in the night, and are compensated accordingly.

But an employer can't just say that an employee will work all the time at night for years, its illegal AFIK due to the aforementioned health implications for the worker.

Shift works is one thing, working all the time at night because the employer is in a different timezone? sounds illegal to me and so the question of its it frequent.

There are other problems with working all the time at night: the impact on your social life, if you have kids they go to bed at 8h so if you start working at 6PM and work through the night basically you never see them etc.

This is why I found it very surprising, because this is apparently happening with engineers living in european countries, where the law is supposed to shield them against these things and there is a lack of software developers everywhere.

No I don't find it shocking, but one thing is early mornings and late evenings, that's different than working through the night. Petrol stations run on 'automatic mode' in most european countries after midnight / 1 o'clock, nobody is there at 4AM.

Exceptions are security guards, hotel receptions, hospitals those are cases where the person being up cannot be avoided, its the nature of the job.

I think its different (from a legal point of view) a job where the person absolutely needs to be up like in a hospital, or a desk job where the person is being asked to completely change its lifestyle just for convenience of the employer.

That's the type of things that would make remote work attractive to me, but working at night would basically change everything.

And do you recommend other sites as alternative to them where these things don't happen? Or was it all via contacts.

Because this seems to be one of the top sites for remote software development work and they put this in their welcome page, so I wonder if your case is not the exception.

Thanks.

Hello, and is the work at night all the time, or is it shift based only one week a month? Because that's what happens with people that work at hospitals, night guards etc. to avoid harming the workers health in the long-term.

Hello, and is it work at night all the time, or shift based? How was you experience doing it. Today couldn't do it myself, maybe at an younger age.

I don't think its shameful, I might have done it myself. Its a first world problem clearly.

Still I wonder about the legality, because in most countries there are laws that prevent workers from working at night all the time.

At most you make shifts, and workers do it one week a month, and not all the time for years to prevent long term health consequences for the worker.