I wasn't told, at all, that I needed to be on call this weekend. He's the CEO (small company) and this company is the most important thing in his life, so he expects it to be the most important thing in his employee's life too, you're expected to drop weekend and evening plans on a moment's notice for what he think is important.
This is normal behavior practice for him. I was out for evening drinks with friends last month and he started blowing up my phone saying he needed something fixed by the next day. Got super pissed when I said I wouldn't be at my computer until very late that night. Earlier this year there was a period where some of my team worked three weekends in a row to rush out some functionality that he'd already sold but didn't exist. One of our project managers has basically not had a weekend off in maybe a year, because project managers keep quitting on us.
The last straw for me at this company is that the CEO is extremely hostile to remote work, he forced everyone back into the office full-time as soon as he could get away with it, summer 2021. But a couple months ago he and his wife (who is the CFO) spent a WHOLE FIVE WEEKS fully remote in his cabin. But he chews people out, publicly, if they need to work from home to wait for a plumber or something. Working remote is bad for “culture” and “morale”.
No one is here is paid nearly enough to deal with this kind of 24/7 on-call expectation and inflexible in-office requirement. On Friday I got an offer for a fully remote job that pays a lot more, like life-changingly more. And from what employees I talked to in the interviews + glassdoor tells me, they seem to have great work/life balance. Overtime is generally discouraged there. (I know that could just be management meddling and trying to lure in recruits, but I'm optimistic.)
Ignoring that text was the most cathartic thing I've felt in a while. I'm not going to put in my notice until I formally accept a written offer (only verbal at this point) so if he questions me about it on Monday I'll just play dumb and say I didn't see it. I'm guessing he got a hold of someone else since he didn't call me over and over like he did last time I was busy for one of his “emergencies”. I hope whichever of my coworkers had their weekend ruined figures out that they can do better too.