Slashdot Mirror
12/7 and Overtime on a Salary?
over-timeout! asks: A company I work for (in the U.S.A.) had submitted a statement of work to a client, who waited for a month before signing the work order. The work order explicitly stated a timeline which would start from the time the order is signed. However, the client is insisting on the project being completed by a fixed date, as discussed with our company's management, instead of the deadline that starts from the signing of the work order. Although our company representatives tried to push back on the date, the client refused. Because the client is among our company's biggest customers, our company's management caved in and agreed to their deadlines. Management has told us meeting deadlines means that for the next month to six weeks all of the developers involved will have to work 12 hours a day, 7 days a week. The contractors involved are going to get compensated by being paid by the hour. But us salaried employees are going to get nothing in return for trading in what's left of our life so someone else in the company above us can make money. Obviously this isn't fair, but what are the alternatives in this down economy, where jobs are hard to find?" A related articles on this subject discusses suing for overtime, and California residents should find this companion article pertinent, as well. What can you do when management agrees to a timeline and a workload that may make your job, as a programmer, difficult-to-impossible?
is enquire what the bonus structure is going to be like if you get the project done on time. Asking for things like extra vacation time or serious profit participation would be very appropriate.
Is the company entitled to expect you to make this sacrifice? No. But then again, you're not entitled to expect that they will continue to employ you.
Negotiate. If you resort to lawsuit, the only people who will make money are lawyers.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Well .. you have several options:
- Do the work like a good worker bee
- Do the work, but piss and moan to
/. about it
- Do the work, but piss and moan to you supervisor about it
- Start doing the work while looking for a new job
- Quit immidately
Summing it upThe question to ask yourself is: "How much do I like my current job and position? ... and ... Is it worth the lack of a life?"
Just $0.00232 (after taxes)
Karma? Karma? I don't need no stinkin' karma.
Listen- I hear you. "principles" of software engineering; you know, making estimates of work based upon metrics of past performance, and the idea of fully clarified requirements specification before starting a project? Yeah, its all BS. Doesn't happen where I work, and I work an enormous Software Engineering projects and my customers are the FAA and NATS (UK's equivalent). They throw tantrums, and they act like children. But they pay the bills.
So 6 weeks? Is it limited to that? Because that's do-able. You work real hard, the end date comes and goes, and then its over- time to have a party.
Can you hold this over your managers head for compensation during the next performance review? It is worth a shot to mention it to him/her in clear language- I am a team player. I am busting hump. I want this reflected in my performance evaluations.
Also, are there any perks? Lunches provided on Sunday? Foosball table? Free movie tickets?
Maybe this should be suggested to management- 12/7 does NOT improve morale, and with tight deadlines thats when you need morale the most.
IF its only 6 weeks, this can be sustained. When it grows to 6 months, to a year plus, that is NOT sustainable. You break down. You wear out. Productivity goes down the tubes. And you break out into stress-related rashes. Its not a pretty sight.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
R-E-N-T
It's easy to say "oh, well just quit, then" when they situation is purely hypothetical to you. Unfortunately, not many of us are in a position where we can just tell our boss to get fucked, as much as we'd like to.
In the last year my department has been whittled down from eight employees to me and another guy. It sucks ass, but I've got to pay the bills.
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
There's always such a lot of non-programming, "administrative" work (read mails, write status updates, all the boring stuff), that working 60 instead of 40 hours can easily double your output, because the extra 20 hours tend to go into productive work entirely. BTDT, and for a limited time (like 6 months to a year, before people start quitting) it does actually work.
"hard to quit when you have mouths to feed, etc."? It's downright irresponsible in this economy. I'm all for the entrepreneurial spirit and I am certainly for the rights of the worker but to quit an IT job right now...without another job already lined up...is likely to spell 6+ months on unemployment and a lower paying job at the end.
I realize you are not saying the parent poster should quit but it just strikes me as funny that so many posters to slashdot yell "Quit!" as if jobs are growing on a 1990's-esque tree somewhere.
I think the better approach is to first ask yourself whether or not the employer has a history of doing this kind of thing. Do they treat you well when times are good and call on you to step up when times are bad?
Case in point: I recently led a small team developing a web application. The completion date was set by the customer even before we were able to analyze the requirements and once I had a chance to look at the requirements I told my managers that it would be really difficult to meet the date without working alot of overtime for an extended period of time. Management replied that their hands were tied (they were) and that we had to hit the mark i.e. I walked in this geek's shoes.
I had no choice. I wasn't going to walk out of my job on the off-chance that I might find another job. I'm salaried. I knew I was getting screwed, etc.
What happened: every step of the way, my management team was there fighting to get the schedule extended, attempting to reduce the requirements, etc. In the end, the schedule was extended by about a month and a half and a particularly troublesome requirement was dropped. Now that the job is done things have slackened off some, my team is looked upon favorably, nobody gives us hassles if we are not busy 100% of the time or come in under 40 hours for the week because they know that when push comes to shove we will get the job done and leave the attitudes, etc. for the project's post-mortem review.
So...if you are employed, like your job overall and management generally treats you well overall, etc. you might want to consider just biting the bullet for a the time it takes and go from there. The pendulum has swung from one extreme (the employee's market of the 1990's) to the other (employer's market of today) but it will eventually swing back towards center and, when it does, management will have, as Ricky Ricardo would say, "some 'splainin' to do". The fact that you stuck it out when times were hard can be leveraged into either a fat raise, new position or another job at a company that appreciates you more.
Ask the boss to cancel the contract, and to restart the negotiation.
They need to look at any penalities that will incur for not delivering on time, or delivering a poor quality product that would incur a lawsuit for delivering a poor quality product, and the loss of bussiness from this and other companies when you get a reputation for delivering poor quality products.
There is no way you will make the deadline, so be sure that they know the potiential for them to LOSE MONEY is greater than the possibility of EARNING A PROFIT on the contract.
The timeline unrealistic. Any bonus for being on time will not be awarded.
Expectation of quality from overworked employees is unrealistic. They will be spending money on fixing this thing, even if they don't get thier ass sued for a poor quality product.
Large potiential to lose any reputation you have for delivering on the above two.
There is NOTHING wrong with a 9-5 attitude. Life is short; we work because we have to contribute to society and get compensated as a result. If you agree to work 40 hours a week, and your employer insists on making you work more, without additional pay, you are being SCREWED.
I make it a point to always leave at 5PM when I can. If there's some emergency or important project that requires me to stay late, I do so, but I make up for it by leaving early at some point in the future.
I suppose this is an advantage of working for the state (state university), but you have to remember that if you let work control you, you can never be truly happy (unless you're a workaholic but that's something else)
Work 9-5. If your employer abuses you, put up with it until you can find another job, then leave. There's no reason to put yourself through hell.
Okay, I can come in on Saturday, but I can't work on Sunday. An Orthodox Jew can't work from Friday Evening until Sunday. A muslim can't work on Friday.
That is well within the demands of our religion. Get laid off? Ask why, in writing. If they say "could not work to meet the demands of our contract", that is enough to haul them into court: religious discrimination, and sue for company ownership.
No kidding, that 1-day-off is God's minimum-benefits plan. It is also extremely important for a different reason: people who don't get 1 day off tend to start making very bad decisions. Ask my brother, who was working 7 days per week on his grad program. He got an ion trap working that had never worked before, then got data; it was given to a previous student for her PhD. He accepted it, and went to get more data... but long story short, destroyed the million dollar superconduncting magnet through a series of plausible, but erroneous mistakes.
His grad professor approved every one of the decisions, but was not overseeing the work, since he too was making bad decisions...
I really think 1 day off a week is quite important, and the 3 major religions of Jewish origin provide a good means for that 1 day a week.
But if you aren't religious, that's okay. Go ahead and put bugs in the customer's code [you can't help it... it'll happen.]
Or go back and argue this one out with your management, saying "this isn't acceptable -- you need to hire more workers or the work isn't going to get done right, and you need to charge the customer the extra."
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's