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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?
If a couple of you band together, and threaten to quit, and they need to get this done right away, they may simply not have time to hire new people. As a result, they may give in to your demands to be paid overtime.
Q-U-I-T
If you cave on this, they might throw you a bone (they might give you a 3 day weekend or two). If you're succesful and you deliver a good product, your management won't have to think twice about doing this to you again. The fact that your management isn't willing to throw a carrot out there up front tells me they aren't going to make competent decisions in the future.
I know its hard to quit when you have mouths to feed, etc., but if quitting is not an option, you're really at their mercy.
Your story seems to demonstrate the needs for techs to unionize. In fact this could be a good opportunity to start in some way at your firm. It is truly absurd that they are demanding something like this from you without compensation. Any action you could take on your own (including a law suit) will probably be quite ugly in the short term (judging by your employers tendencies). However if you and your fellow developers act collectively you stand a stronger chance (plus can they meet the deadline if everyone familiar with the project leaves?).
I think if you act collectivel and keep the community informed you wil have a lot of support and could be the beginning of something.
Simple, bank these hours
6 weeks, 7 days, 12 hours = 504 hours
at 40 hours/wk this is 12.6 weeks
Yeah, you lose 6 rought weeks, but then almost 7 weeks of banked vacation to draw on, that's pretty sweet.
Another alternative if they argue some OT is expected, bank the weekends and everything over 9 or 10 hours a day, that would still be a few weeks off.
If you can do part of the work from home I don't see what the huge issue is. 12/7 is a bit much but 8/6 is certainly doable if you can work some of it from home [which if you're a coder why not?]
Why not ask for a compromise?
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
The more logical thing to do would be to hire some more temorary workers to create the needed man hours, but of course that'd cost the company money....
but what are the alternatives in this down economy, where jobs are hard to find?
1. Quit on principle and give your job to someone who doesn't have one.
2. Keep your job and lower wages for everyone.
You probably only have your job because you're salaried and cheaper than your hourly colleagues of equal skill. You made the concession long ago that you would take security over cash.
During the boom, labor will rule. During the bust, management will rule. Them's the rules.
I never follow the rules, but you're not me.
I totally agree. Most of my coding strategy breakthroughs come when I am at home in the shower, or in the mall, or generally, elsewhere not thinking about code. If you burn me that hard, I will not think about code when I am not on the job because I will need a break from it.
Thats when more equals less. Like having a car with the choke stuck. If you mash the gas, it will just stall...
I am a contractor and yes I do get paid for overtime. Yes I do get more variety in my work. Yes I don't have to take crap from the boss if I really don't want to. Yes I am often hired specifically for my skills and therefore get some respect for them.
The downside? I have worked for nearly a year away from my home in Seattle because there is no contracting work available there, and hundreds of qualified applicants for every full-time job. Health Insurance if far more expensive for me. I am not paid for holidays and the closest I come to vacation is the period between assignments that I must often spend frantically looking for the next contract.
Plus contractors always get the worst desk / cubes / equipment because they are not part of the headcount (which determines space, equipment and office furniture allocations). I have literally worked at a table in a hallway before.
I have been on both sides of the fence and you know what? Freelancing and/or working through a pimp is better in one respect: We know the customer is going to dump us sooner or later. While you full-timers labor under the mistaken belief you actually have job security...
- -
Are you an SF Fan? Are you a Tru-Fan?
You help the company out of a hole, then they can give you some extra time/bonus/spare computer/whatever afterwards.
If you can prove to be flexible and valuable, then the company will want to keep you around. The flip side is that you signed up for a reasonable workload, not 12/7. There is no need to be screwed.
Therefore try to figure something out to keep it win-win.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Sorry to read that there's such a high noise/signal ratio for the replies to your problem here. I was involved in a similar situation to yours (timeline slightly longer, but same demands on developers), and here's what we decided we learned afterwards:
On number 4: Try to make the list positive (tough, I know). Nobody (esp managers) like to be told they're wrong. And be sure that no one person is listed in a leadership position, to avoid being labeled as the 'rabble rouser'. This means delivering a printed letter anonymously, not via somebody's e-mail account. I know this is paranoid, but the person who delivered our list got the short stick...
Good luck with this situation, I feel for you.
To all of you who claimed your jobs require you to work long hours - suck it up. Nobody is making you work there.
BTW has anyone noticed this trend with MSFT? They produce a poor 1.0, and by 5.0 (a few rewrites later?) it's robust, feature-rich, and popular.
As I said, sometimes the "first version is meant to be thrown away", so it doesn't matter how many bugs. The time-to-market is more important in introducing a product. Moreover, the team can take a 2-5 day break, and come back to code version 2.0 at 8/5 pace.For projects, the more the no. of bugs, the better it is, because they can keep billing the client for the mythical man-hours put in for fixing them. Project-companies with hourly billing gain both ways (12/7 followed by bug-fixing cycles).
I worked in a thought-intensive job 12/7 for months at a time without any apparant loss in quality. My entire shop did, as well (30 people). The day shift started work at 7am, and the night shift at 7pm. The only break was on Sunday where things moved back an hour to 8.
The differences between my situation and the original posters were several:
a) We were on an aircraft carrier, and had no say in our working hours. Frankly, they could have been much worse: some groups worked 5 hours on / 5 off, or 12 on / 6 off for months at a time.
b) We had limited outside distractions. No commute, no having to mow the lawn or paint the house on weekends, no grocery shopping, no cooking. Our job was just to fix avionics boxes, and the system was optimized to keep us on task and productive.
c) You have to get used to the hours. The 8/40 work week is a relativly modern invention - our bodies will work much longer, it's just that our brains aren't used to concentrating so long.
All that being said, if my boss told me that my job depended on working 12/7 for months with no bonus, pay raise, or comp time then I'd walk.
Difference (b) above is a big one - if I have to work 12/7 as well as commute, grocery shop, and maintain my house and car there is simply not enough time left in the day for everything. I didn't go to college for 6 years to work the hours of my great-grandfather the farmer, who got up before sunrise and slept after sunset.
Difference (a) is the clincher, though. Once you enlist, they *own* your ass and you will work whatever hours your semi-literate boss dictates to you. If you tell him to fuck off, you can go to jail, be fed bread and water, or in wartime, be shot. After eight years of experiencing that environment, I'm fully aware that as a civilian I can quit at any time for any reason - this is a luxury that I've earned, and I see no reason not to use it when the conditions of my employment start being arbitrarily changed.
Very true. And yet, it would be foolish to just let something like this slide, and suck it up like the good little employees that we all are. I have seen this a few times: sales manager shaves a few weeks of the proposed (and rationally planned) timeline, and closes the deal as a result. Meanwhile the implementation team bust their guts trying to get everything in on time. They fail, the sales guy gets the bonus for closing the deal while the project manager (and indirectly the team as well) get chewed out for missing the deadline.
There is something to be said to present a can-do attitude to management: yes, the team can deliver, if given a few perks as you suggested. (And you can bet your behind that with this workload and timeline, this will have to be a team effort). The downside is that it'll set a nasty precedent: management may see that they can cut timelines on future projects easily. Also, I fail to see why the compensation should be limited to a foosball table and lunches. If the deal is fixed-price, the gross take is the same, and the company will save the labor costs for the amount of time taken off the original planning (provided that during that time, the team can be gainfully utilised elsewhere). This savings could be paid out as overtime wages. If the deal is time & materials, the client will pony up for 12x7, not 8x5, and again the company could simply pay overtime at 100% rates without it costing them anything extra. Since this isn't happening, the company makes a very tasty extra profit on this project, and I also expect certain managers to do very well in bonus money. Again, I've seen this happen...
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Haha!
Reminds me of a story on TV in the UK a week ago (BBC2, Correspondant, Sunday night, all about the eurozone but no link unfortuately).
A German manufacturing company manager was being interviewed. He said a project was due on Monday but Friday night was not finished... so the workers decided to come in on Saturday to finish it. The manager did not know the workers were coming in. The project went out on Monday. Some months later the employer was called to court - someone had mentioned this to the authorities, and although they were working voluntarily he was ordered to change locks at the factory and hold all keys himself only, and if a worker did voluntary overtime he should fire them!!!!
Wow! That is a nanny state wrapping you in cotton woll and duct tape until you asphixiate.
No, you can't explicitly be fired.
But when getting promotion in a corporation, or if your refusal to do something 'avove 48 hours' cost the team, then you could get a bad reference, a bad personal recommendation (not on paper, can't be audited), a bad rep, plain passed up.
What bankers (yeah yeah yeah) in London don't do > 50 hours ALL of the time. Yes we'd like to do less, but we ALL know we'd lose our job if that were so, whatever the regulation says. Most I ever did was 400 hours/month, I didn't like it and I'm not paid by-the-hour, but it demonstrated my commitment and played a part in a promotion.
Regulation is to satisfy unionised work or protect low skill low wage jobs with no chance of promotion. For the most of us here, it is irrelevant.
And in the end, its not the hours we do, but finisheing a project in time.
If management is paying attention, you could get a reputation as a miracle worker by hitting this deadline.
The way to do that is not, of course, to work 84 hours a week. Read Yourdon's book _Death March_. It's about the tactics that allow pulling off a project with preposterous resource constraints.
In a nutshell, put all the coders in their own offices, unplug the phones, put up barricades against all bureaucrats, compromise quality and ruthlessly, viciously prune features.
If your management thinks that working 12x7 will get the contract done, they don't understand project management. If they're willing to learn, you can show them and make yourself look great.
- Do your work and submit your claim for overtime pay.
If you are in California, they MUST pay it, nor can they get you to sign an agreement to waive overtime compensation. After submitting your overtime claim, if they fail to pay you the proper amount on the next paycheck, submit your claim to the Labor Board. If they fire you, great, now they also owe you big bucks for illegal termination. Oh, IANAL, so you might want to verify this information.-- Will program for bandwidth
Say you'll be putting in 5 months of work in 4 months. Ask for 4 weeks vacation to be added to your personal leave.
If they say no, don't threaten to quit. Just interview elsewhere, get a job, and leave.
I used to be a narrator for bad mimes. (wright)
I go in at 7:30 a.m. and I leave around 4:30 p.m. I have an 45 minute lunch break and 15 minutes of bullshit time. The is far better than when I first started working for the company. Back then I used to come in at 8:00 a.m and leave 6:30 p.m for a period of 6 months.
When stuff needs to get done ASAP, I stay until 9 p.m or 10 p.m. I even come in on the weekend. This is OK with me because if I don't the company won't make money or get the next contract and I will probobably end up unemplyed.
Plus, I like the company I work for. People are great and we are a real team. It is not like everyone is slacking off and I have to work lots of hours. Oh and our management also work lots of hours. They are always last to leave. These guys even stay until 9 p.m. on Friday nights.
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One is born into aristocracy, but mediocrity can only be achieved through hard work.
Don't delude yourself. If you are so much of an asset that you were worth your pay, why would they let you go (unless the company had their heads up their ass to begin with in which case, why stay there?)
Why in the name of Sanity do supposedly smart individuals allow themselves to be treated this way? If you figure what your salary is reduced to after a year (and I hope you were exaggerating....) of 12/7 (or 12/6, or yes, 12/5) you may have well just dropped out of high school for what you are earning.
Yes, Real Life often makes harsh demands in the modern workplace; families must eat, gas tanks filled, bills paid. But when all is said and done, I suspect the Geek is far more likely to be coerced in this fashion than other employees. Call it a holdover from the schoolyard. In my experience, the only other people who get worked (exploited?) that thoroughly are business-fodder. You know, what investment bankers are before they get the big accounts.....why are the Geeks right alongside them? I truly wonder.
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Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
I can't remember the details, but the gist was simply this,,, if you were an hourly worker, federal law would require compensation for you overtime and that compensation would be at an inflated rate. If a company chooses to make you a salaried employee, the concept is supposed to include a certain amount of flexibility in your job that acts as compensation for the overtime pay an hourly employee would get paid. Things like flexible lunch breaks and flexibility in when you work are expected.
In the case I heard about, a company had treated their employees like hourly employees, absolutely dictating every detail about their schedule and even requiring them to punch clocks for record keeping purposes. The employees brought a lawsuit against the company for back pay on their overtime using the same 1.5X normal pay to 60hours, 2X normal pay on Sundays, 3X normal pay on holidays rules that they would have received by law if they had been classified hourly employees. I heard that they won, but didn't hear whether any appeals process was followed.
So, there is a limit to what they can demand. If they are offering some form of compensation like 3 day weeks for a while later, I would think that you've got no case. If not, and they are treating you like hourly employees, you should consider breaking the business relationship if you can as a first resort, but if that isn't possible (i.e. another job can't be found) you should keep careful records including anything written that describes this policy and any other policies that seem like the kind that would be employed with hourly workers and consult an attorney.
I would start looking for new opportunities for employment. No job is worth this, no matter what the corporate whores will tell you, your company does not own your soul, and they have no right to demand such an absurd workload.
It's when people roll over and take it up the pooper from employers, that it makes it harder for everybody. Tactics like this work because people cave in and let it happen to them, You have an education, you have a degree, there are plenty of other places that will hire you.
On Wall Street they say "buy low, sell high" On the pad we say, "buy high, sell high" Isn't that somehow better?
>>and your employer insists on making you work
>>more, without additional pay, you are being
>>SCREWED.
Yep. I am on Salary but my employer still pays overtime up and above 40 hours.
Grow up. Some of us need just as much education to run the cable that you rely on, get paid less, and have alot more stress. My system has a 90% turnover rate, but I'm not going anywhere. Contracting to do that for various Multi-Service Organizations is a nightmare that is our waking lives, especially when our corporate office is so distanced from the labor aspect that they will sign any agreement that they can profit from.
Over worked and under paid? Join the club. Most of America does manual labor for 1/4th the wage of your yearly salary, and works harder, longer hours than anyone you probably know. The top 5 people I work with are about the boat, not the captain, and will do whatever it takes to keep us cruising. That is why we are still here. It isn't about the money, its about the game. Its about being reliable and sleeping well at night knowing that your motivations aren't built on greed. Its about looking at yourself in the mirror and being able to see in your own eyes that you aren't corrupt.
To those of you who find my stance entertaining enough to reply with cyinicism: you are the kind of trash I would fire in a heartbeat. Someone on here brought up cutbacks and evaluations, and that is what you should be thinking about. If your little 6 week stretch of waking up early and not having time to mow your lawn or wash your Volvo is too much to handle maybe you should try a different career like selling hot dogs.
Managerial crap aside, you have a good point. I was pissed too when my "promotion" turned out to be a cut in pay with more responsibility. Since I had the balls to tough it out I get to be the boss! Hah!
You are about to give someone a piece of your mind, something which you can ill afford...
Just hire more people...
You DO know that in most states emplyment is 'at-will' which means that you can be fired at any time with no notice for no reason at all.
Really, the only defense against IT people being marginalized into the sub-$14.00 per hour category, in the long term, is massive geek organization. The corporations view you as any resource - as labor that can and will be paid the absolute minimum for the skill set. If industry folk get together and conspire to hire for smaller and smaller sums, every geek loses. A geek union, not affiliated with the labor unions whatsoever, and run democratically, is probably the thing most feared by EVERY medium to large tech house in the world. The union needs to be international, and unafraid of action. That way, slimy businesspeople wouldn't be able to outsource to India for any less money than their current labor. Do geeks have the spines to strike, though? Somehow, I think not.
My experience with unions is this:
0 - 10 years: Big improvements.
20 - 40 years: Some improvements, not too many.
40 - 60 years: Employees are given so many rights it takes 3 notices and police standing at the door to sack people stealing thousands of dollars of equipment.
60 - 70 years: Company is in debt.
70+ years: Company gives up and goes bust. All employees lose their jobs, and the "disease" starts to spread nationwide.
Notice how excellent and ubiquitous these "asian" vehicles are becoming. It isn't just because of the low wages. It's because some of their plants are North American, and they aren't unionized (and the workers want to keep it that way - they like their jobs).
>Do geeks have the spines to strike, though?
In a union, it doesn't take a spine to strike. It takes a spine to stand up for what's right, and more often then not, nowadays, that means staying at work and walking through the picket line. 95% of today's strikes (if not more) are unnecessary and are causing you to put the company you so dearly love (for money) out of business.
It's easy to stand outside around a warm barrel fire and get drunk. It's even easier to pop people's tires as the enter the building. It takes courage to ignore the hooligans and do what's right.
The minute I see a tech union is the minute I make sure I avoid it. Mob rule is unjust, and will put this already shaky part of the economy down the toilet.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
>BTW, judges/lawyers love to see hand written logs.
To make them even better, use a log book with prestamped, numbered pages (not done by you). You should be able to find them in most university bookstores. Ensure the book is designed in such a way that if a page is removed it not only breaks the numbering sequence (of course) but will also leave evidence (bits of paper stuck in the spine).
This way you can NEVER be accused of tearing out a page if you haven't.
To ensure you aren't accused of modifying anything, also ensure you cross out any blank writing spaces and NEVER use pencil, only pen.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
IMHO 'they' lay off a selection of people, based on (in no particular order):
1) Who they think they're going to be able to generate revenue from in the future,
2) Which personalities they like,
3) How much a person costs to keep,
4) A suitable number of token managers to keep the troops happy (approx. 1 chief per 15 indians, no racial discrimination implied).
This is not a sig
For example, how about religion, where a person refuses to work a non-emergency-type-job [that is, programming, as opposed to police/fireman] on holy days [including one day a week: Sunday, Saturday, or Friday depending on religion]?
Because if so, then that definitely provides a good reason not to work 12/7. 12/6, maybe, okay. 12/7, no.
[Actually, I'd kindof assume, it being America, that religion is legally frowned upon, and so the answer will be "constitutionally, it should, but in practice, it's okay to fire over religion. It's just not okay to fire over no religion." But I'd really like to know what the answer is.]
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
Get all the programmers and engineers together and
demand the overtime (actually DOUBLE time) and tell them you will all walk out in mass if they don't agree. Also have them sign an agreement guaranteeing everyone at least a year's employment after the contract is over (anti revenge clause).
If management doesn't agree they will doom the company by loosing the contract.
And it is still bullshit reporting by BBC. I'm german and i checked some german sources including a description (in german) by the person sued himself.
He DID know, that his employees worked on saturday and sunday as he ASKED them. So this was bullshit number one.
Bullshit number 2 is that he was sued by "the authorities". He was sued by the companies "Betriebsrat" (workers council, protecting the rights of the employees), because the employer has to negotiate such extra work with them. This is basically a good think, as it prevents companies from exploiting their employees, but gone bad in this case. The Betriebsrat was probably nuts, dunno.
But still very poor and angled reporting by BBC. Shame on them.