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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.
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.
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.
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.
- 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?)
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.
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