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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?
We pretend to work.
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.
Hire a trial lawyer and sue the pants off of them.
...Sometimes that is all you can really do. Be thankful you are employed and have steady income.
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.
The company will find out the hard way that working 12 hrs a day, 7 days a week writing code is a sure way to get poor quality code and make a project cost more and take longer than decent working hours.
12 hrs/7 days in a thought-intensive job is fatiguing (I know, I've been there and done that). After about a 50 hour week, you start hitting diminishing returns. After about 60 hours, in my experience, you start getting negative returns (the project actually starts regressing) because more bugs than good code is put in.
Is there a proper software process in the firm? I think not if they agreed to those sort of terms.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Depends on what state the original poster is in, but most states have labor laws strictly limit what can be expected of a salary employee... if this isn't an illegal thing to expect from an employee, it should be.
...jobs are not hard to find.
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!
You have a steady paycheck and are complaining about what your reward is? It is the STEADY paycheck. Otherwise go contracting and start worrying about what to do once this gig is finished.
As someone with unsteady income and two children in private school I must tell you: STEADy is nice sometimes
Hajo Monogamy: Belief so strong that millions of people end perfectly good relationships in order to start a new one.
And yet, it is quite normal.
Perhaps it is time to think about 'organizing'.
I have been pwned because my
Or at least threaten to hold a strike ballot. Thats what I'd do anyway.
"XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, use more." - Anonymous Coward
Wildcat strike. Band together with a sufficient number of your colleagues, and everyone spontaneously call in "sick" the same day. Then, without overtly threatening, point out that while y'all are more than willing to put in the time, some measure of additional compensation would be appreciated.
Yeah, it really is! You go to work not even knowing what day it is, you walk around like a zombie, get less work done because you burn out much quicker. And the quality of work goes down the toilet, not to mention the moral of everyone involved.
And if you're married, it puts such a strain on your home life.
AND you're not being paid overtime either, which is icing on the cake!
"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." - John Lennon.
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.
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.
this is nothing compared to people in science (academics)
... it would be 3.4x the argument this person is complaining about
if we kept a time card and 'complaining' about the 'hours' they work (quantity and actual time during the day)
(note: we don't keep time cards, and we work all hours of the day, all week long)
when you start a job, dont you sign a contract in which is stated how much you have to work, what youll get for it?
V-I-R-U-S
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.
Yes. And quitting and taking a new job is simple. You do it all the time, right? Why not prevent this kind of egregious abuse of the labor system to begin with?
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Ah, but the problem is, what if there are so few jobs that the employee can't really quit? Should the employee grin and take the abuse, or are there basic protections that the employee should enjoy?
I'm not familiar with the laws in the US, but working more than 10 hours without a very good reason is illegal - at least in Germany.
A good reason would be something like solving emergency situation - if you are on call for instance. Or if life or property is in danger. Medical doctors for instance are used to more than 24 hour shifts. But hey, you're a coder.
If there isn't any law against it, quit or sue them for compensation.
Before ranting: I know, that 10 hour law is not always a good idea[TM]. I work in the telco business and i know that this 10 hour border is sometimes hard for projects. But come on, 12/7 for half a year... You're going to _burn out_, believe me.
Alex.
You look like a million dollars. All green and wrinkled.
Sure, the down economy is a macro-environmental factor in the IT field, but in this particular situation, it doesn't count as much - if you're employer really needs this done in 6 weeks, then they cannot afford to alienate their team.
The bottom line is, they can't force you to work 12/7, they can only ask - so start a discussion about bonuses, time off, goals, etc - and get their promises in writing, without generating too much animosity (you don't want to get fired after the project, either). If your PHBs are even remotely cool, then you should walk away from the project feeling adequately compensated for your lost summer.
Demand 6 weeks paid vacation after the project has ended. Where I work we work 12+ hours a day for either 7 or 14 day periods. When the work period is up we are compensated with an equal amount of offtime. The $ math comes out the same, the project gets done on time, and you get a sweet vacation to enjoy!
This is a state issue, not a federal one. Look up your state laws and maybe talk to a lawyer.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
The other 4 hours (and all Saturday and Sunday), simply sit at your desk with the classifieds section open, or monster.com up. Make sure everyone in your department does this. The message should get across after a few days.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
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.
Move to a country or state with decent labour laws.
You are insane if you do accept it. what worth is money if you don't have time to spend it or share it with anybody.
And don't think it will only take 6 weeks. if you accept it, they will demand the same thing from you on the next project.
Find a new job and when you leave make sure they know why you quit.
If you can't find a new job then try to gather as many fellow employes into a work slowdown. It is of the upmost important that management be made to understand that their behavior will not result in increased productivity at no additional cost.
Trust me.... if they see that they can get away with using the stick without the added incentive of the carrot they will continue to do so. Why should they pay you more if they can get additional work from you for free?
L-O-G-I-C B-O-M-B
:
Start corrupting the employee database when
SELECT Employee.Name From Employes WHERE Employee.Name='{YOUR NAME}'
returns no records.
There is no god
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"
What can you do when management agrees to a timeline and a workload that may make your job, as a programmer, difficult-to-impossible?
Isn't this the primary, if not exclusive, role of management?
Seriously, Ed Yourdon wrote a book about your predicament, titled "Death March". Read it and survive.
rld
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.
I can't give you any legal advice... just that this won't work, especially for programming work. After 2 weeks weeks your productivity will probably be lower than with a 40h week.
Be a team player and suck it up. BUT, demand something in return. More vacation, a raise, whatever. ANYTHING. I've been in this type of situation and let me tell you - in the long run it pays off. But asking something extra in return from the PHBs makes it feel like you're using better quality vaseline.
The part about the consultants - well, being one I can't really sympathize with you. Them's the dregs. You should've become one if you want to work more and get paid more as well. Employees are always whining about how we make so much more money, but they're rarely up to the challenge, both in terms of time and technical ability.
So, suck it up, play nice and demand something in return. You'll thank yourself in a few years, especially if you've decided to stick around the company for the long run.
if you don't quit (or sincerely threaten to) then you are caving in to your employer for the very same reasons that they caved into their "biggest customer". Sum'n other rolls downhill. If you have a family, they'll be feeling toward you just as you feel toward your employer just as they feel about the customer. We need Dr. Phil on this.
Some time back, I faced a similar situation, where my team of about 30 or so developers was told (very politely and in a sickeningly sweet way), that for the next 5 weeks we were to work 12 hours a day etc. Needless to say, we did..
result? extremely poor code, things like code reviews and so-called "processes" chucked out the window (primarily by managers who insisted that we could make an exception this one time)
in fact, the client got so pissed at the amount of difficulty we had to stabilize our release that we (the company) got booted off their list of "IT consultants" (amid muted hoorays from us developers)
what did i and most of us developers get from all of this? a $50 gift card for some clothing store and about 3 months after that.. the pink slip, as the company needed to cut down on personnel costs.. hmmm.. i wonder why they weren't doing so well..
anyways, i changed tracks and got into academia and swore of "consulting"
I don't know about the rest of Canada, but in Ontario, the provincial government modified the Employment Standards Act in 2001 to explicitly make this kind of exploitation legal for IT workers and several other categories.
Jason
ProfQuotes
Is delegate more work to the people below me who are getting paid to do it. If you don't have that authority then you shouldn't be salary anyway.
cat * >> sig
The National Labor Board has a page where you can contact your local office.
Ask them what you can do.
riding round the world on an old motorcycle
The most productive times for me at work are during the holidays between christmas and New Years- no one is in the office. Also, during Saturday and Sunday- again- no one is in the office.
As long as your work product is not dependent upon others you can get a massive amoutn done when not going from meeting to meeting to conference call to meeting, etc.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
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.
"Damn you! You are a squeaking puppy, and so are all those who will submit to be governed by laws which rich men have made for their own security. For the cowardly whelps have not the courage otherwise to defend what they get by their knavery. But damn ye, altogether! Damn them for a pack of crafty rascals, and you, who serve them, for a parcel of hen-hearted numbskulls! They villify us, the scoundrels do, when there is only this difference: they rob the poor under the cover of law, forsooth, and we plunder the rich under the protection of our own courage; had ye not better make one of us, than sneak after the arses of those villains for employment?" --- Samuel Bellamy
... I rest my case ...
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.
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?
If you do 12/7 for four weeks, that's 176 hours of overtime, so they seem to think at normal schedule would take about 8-9 weeks to do. Therefore, after completion in 4 weeks, there shouldn't be anything scheduled for 4-5 weeks after that. I would think any reasonable manager would exchange the 12/7 work for the next 4-5 weeks as paid vacation, if not 6-7 for time&half. And if they're really nice, allow you to defer that vacation for when you're ready to take it. I think you need to sit down with your manager and have a chat about alternative compensation instead of instantly threatening lawsuits.
If they need you 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, it sounds like they need you more than you need them. We live in a free market, and everyone who complains about being a slave-wage is wasting that very freedom.
If you can't quit and if they are screwing you over, then you've had it easy this whole time, and they should have screwed you over long ago. If you just give in, there's nothing to stop them from doing the same to you again later on.
Here's what you do, tell them, "Hey, this isn't right. You need to pay me overtime. This is going to be a big job and you need me. This goes above and beyond, and I'm here for you, but you need to be here for me to make this work."
I know, I'm going to hear, "but the job market is so tough right now!" Well, if it is, then either stick with the long hours and be thankful you have a job (if the long hours is better than trying to find a new job), or start typing up that resume.
You're an engineer, this is a simple problem. I think you are just afraid of what the solution is telling you. If they aren't going to pay you extra, they aren't going to pay you extra. The next move's yours. It's your life, take charge.
Let's see. Twelve times seven is Eighty-Four.
Employees are generally useless after 60 hours. After 80 hours, I can only recommend bringing a videocamera and selling it to "America's Funniest Home Videos."
Negotiate with your boss for A: two weeks of paid vacation starting as soon as the ludicrous crunch time is over, and B: two extra weeks of paid vacation to be taken sometime in the future. If that doesn't work, look for another job. It's unprofessional to demand such hours with no reward, and it is unprofessional to give in to such demands.
It would also help morale if the managers who made this mistake also stayed 12/7, though I don't know if it will help your position of you pointed that out to them.
The ______ Agenda
Either you signed a contract with your employer which states that you might have to work 12 hour days 7 days a week or you didn't.
If you did. Shut up.
If you didn't. Sue for breach of contract.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
These days, either you have a job that works your ass off, or you have no job.
Software people are a dime-a-dozen, and are viewed as interchangable from management (regardless of whether it is true or not). I am just the messenger.
This aint France: no cushy protections from greedy capitalists.
Table-ized A.I.
I used to work 6 days a week, 10 hours mon-fri and 4-6 on sat. It was a strain, and I didn't even have a girlfriend, and I was working from home so I could wear my pajamas, swim in my pool, and eat at convenient times.
You can probably sustain yourself for 6 days at 10 hours, maybe even 12, but you will burn out for sure if you attempt 7 days.
Tell the retarded management they need to meet you halfway and bulk the team up with contractors. That's what contractors are for. You can hire and fire them lightening fast and if you get the right sort they will provide the wedge you need to force your way through this unreasonable target. You will need to hire this week to really get value from them, and only hire 1 per team leader or you may spend too much time training them.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
Better still, be one of the Jewish sects (?) that believe that Christ was the messiah: get Saturday AND Sunday off.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
What drivel. This is why I hope very much that the pseudo-libertarians never, ever, get anywhere close to government.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
IANAL, but as for the "if you are in California" part, I do recall reading of a California labor regulation that requires giving a person at least one day off a week, and specifically a day off after each six days working (the last presumably to prevent an employer on Sunday telling a worker his day off has been moved from Monday to Saturday). The law states the employer is otherwise guilty of a misdemeanor.
At least in Pennsylvania, IT workers are considered "exempt from overtime. Thus, you have three options:
1) Threaten to quit and hope they don't call your bluff. If they call your bluff, you'll like like an idiot of you don't quit. See #2.
2) Just quit "in-force" and watch them panic. With any luck (and hoping your other team members do the same), they'll do what they can to retain you. Make sure you have something else lined up or you won't be able to collect unemployment.
3) Suck it up and look really hard for a new job and pray the fire you for poor performance (that way, you get out of any non-competes and can collect unemployement).
Well, there's a fourth option, that's to quit and join the consulting firm your company has hired. Of course, that may not work either as they may have a non-compete/non-hiring agreement with your company.
If you choose #3, be sure to do the absolute minimal amount of work, call in sick a lot. Complain of illnessess like carpal tunnel syndrome, headaches, dizziness, back pain. And, be sure to visit doctors to get these "illnessess" on record. Then, when they let you go, you nail them for creating an unhealthy work environment and take them to the cleaners.
Baring that...a measure of last recourse...be sure to mutter to yourself and yell "grenade" or some other war time saying whenever your boss walks in. And, cover yourself with water so it looks like your sweating profusely and having some sort of stress attack. It helps, of course, to have some real legitimate combat experience to pull this one off effectively. Alternatively, you can come to work wearing trench coats and talk alot about your cache of weapons you've been collecting with your other, less stable, coworkers (who also wear trench coats). Make sure your supervisors overhear you. When they let you go, sue for creating a hostile work environment as, I assume, you don't truly have a cache of weapons.
How many hard luck stories need to get printed on this website before we'll all just consider it covered. You're not the only one with problems involving employment. Be happy you're gainfully employed, read the PREVIOUS slashdot articles related to your question, decide on a course of action and get on with your life.
Belief that Perspectives matter more than Facts = Mark of the Truly Ignorant
Although situations like this, with no overtime, make being salaried look like a bum deal, I think you oughta look like it as balancing out those times a person gets to slack off during work (you know, get to work at 10, sneak out at 4, take a two hour lunch) when times are slow, and, because you're salaried, this does not affect your paycheck one bit. I think these times still happen more often than the work your ass off for a week at a time, at least where I've worked, so I think being salaried is still a better deal.
Put some god aweful easter egg in the software so the client never uses your company again and your company will have to lay you all off, that'll teach them!.... oh hold on
Since the company is the U.S. a law which is called the law of Parol Evidence applies. This law states that only things that are binding are the things written in a contract. If the contract said it would be completed in two months, but the execs said that it would be completed in one, then you have no obligation to finish it in one, even if they stated that. If they take you to court over that, you are not liable. This actually happened to a friend of mine, who bought a new washer/dryer that the sales man said would last five years, but didn't actually offer a warranty. In about a year and a half, it died. They were unable to get it fixed/replaced for free because it wasn't in the contract. It's the same law that lets people from Be$t Buy to sell computers to people, ("This computer will still be able to run all your programs after 10 years! It's the best you can get on the market! Yadda-yadda-yadda"). Salesmen can can lie to you all they want, and only the terms stated in the contract will be held in a court of law. The only problem is telling the people upstairs....
Prevent email address forgery. Publish SPF records for y
In the past six years, I've owned two small (~8 developer) software development shops. In both shops I've played the role of the "technical" partner, who leads the development team for the software projects we create. I've bitten off more than I (and my team) can chew on multiple occassions in the interest of delivering a big-dollar project for a big-name client, and as a result spent absolutely every waking moment possible trying to complete projects. I've really tried to push my limits as hard as I can, and in my situation, I WAS DIRECTLY REWARDED for my work.
Let me offer these idiots (the people requesting a 12/7 schedule) a piece of advice: 84 hours per week is f---ing insane. You wind up with diminishing returns after about 50-60 hours/week. While 84 (or more) hours is very possible for a week or two, such a schedule will QUICKLY become ineffective immediately thereafter. You might be at work for 84 hours, but your mind won't. Whoever is running this company doesn't know that, which means they don't know how to run a company, which therefore means that the company (or your department) isn't likely to be successful, which you should take as an indicator of its expected lifespan. Get out now.
What has *science* done?!? -- Dr. Weird (ATHF)
Why do you need laws? People aren't slaves. They have the freedom to quit and take a new job if they want.
I am still awaiting for my "freedom job" to kick in so that I can buy Freedom Fries........either that I will be serving them instead of eating them.
Table-ized A.I.
Hiring "temorary" workers usually ends up with a bunch of buggy code that has mispeled variables. I would avoid temorary workers.
This is a lot of money we are talking about here. 7 x 12 - 40 = 44 x 1.5 x hourly rate x number of weeks. Damn.
Make your manager read dilbert for as much time as you have to work overtime. At the end of every day, drop increasingly not-so-subtle hints that he is a phb.
Don't become a regular here, you will become retarded. -- Yoda the Retard
Clearly this situation is unacceptable. In order to remedy the situation you need to negotiate with the management of your organization.
... since the project undoubtedly will not in fact be completed on schedule.
As with any negotiations, before you meet you should have a concrete description of (1) what you want, (2) what you can tolerate, and (3) what you cannot tolerate. If the company can only offer you compromises that you cannot tolerate, you need to quit. You should make this clear to the management during your negotiation, so that they know where they stand. Your positions may be stated in terms of number of hours per week (for example can tolerate 50 hrs/wk; cannot tolerate 60 hrs/wk), or you could ask for other benefits - future pay raise, bonuses on completion, company stock.
Probably you will need to communicate through your immediate supervisor in the first case. However you can perhaps escalate the process up to the managers/decision makers, especially if you can band together with other employees who are also being asked to work overtime. In that case you will have to decide your negotiating positions together. This will strengthen your position.
If you get a deal, write it down and get it signed by the management. If you are making a deal to work overtime, make sure that there is a limit on the length of time you are expected to work overtime
You could always share the name of the company, anonymously, so we know who this is.
One other thing is that you make sure that you spend no more time at work than your boss does, and make sure that everyone in the department agrees.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
If you work for a company with good financial backing, the plan for the post project lawsuit. Contact laywer.
Work 40 hours a week. It would be hard to write you up for not working required unpaid overtime.
Or work whatever time they say. Submit timecards with the full hours to Payroll. Be sure to keep the supervisor signed copy. At end of project, ask for compensation for overtime. Present them with copies of the signed evidence.
I am sorry to disagree with my learned colleague autopr0n.
As I mentioned earlier, while wage issues are dealt with in state laws, they are pre-empted if a federal law exists, which in this case it does.
Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 lays out who can get overtime and what maximum hours are - 29 USCA Â 213(17) is the kicker.
 213. Exemption
(17) any employee who is a computer systems analyst, computer programmer, software engineer, or other similarly skilled worker, whose primary duty is--
(A) the application of systems analysis techniques and procedures, including consulting with users, to determine hardware, software, or system functional specifications;
You can't get overtime as a salaried programmer. I am really sorry.
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain with all your metadata.
I work in web design, and clients notoriously - almost universally - drag their feet on getting assets that you need into your hands. Very, very common problem. These kinds of jobs often revolve around a pretty firm delivery date. The idea behind 'clock-starts-when-you-say-go' is that the client is almost always to blame for making things late, and also that they are a wild card, you have very little control over. They, in turn, are being pressured from above in their jobs, this is the chain.
So, I really sympathise. Essentially your Account Managers (or whichever term they go by), in capitulating to this unreasonable demand, have agreed for you in proxy to be fucked in the ass. And it'll turn out badly too; no one wants to work under those conditions and it will reflect in the work. Which will likely make the scenario worse in the end.
I can't think of a good solution for you, guy. It's tricky, with todays wintry economic climate blah blah etc. But know this, you are not wrong, and they are. Definitely. The client was wrong first and now your employer has hopped the fence with them, and the two of them are staring at all you poor coders (or whatever) stuck on the other side of that fence.
I'm sure its illegal (the overtime for salaried workers), but is it illegal in any practical way? I mean, is it realistically fightable? I doubt it.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
"Because capitalism is self-regulating."
Tell it to anyone who ever tried to compete with Microsoft.
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.
"Obviously this isn't fair, but what are the alternatives in this down economy, where jobs are hard to find?"
Know what you're doing. Learn and study to become able to do the stuff your supposed to. In this "down economy" there are plenty of jobs for people that aren't still thinking javascript is a key to a six figure salary. Just because a decade ago anyone that had seen a computer was able to get a job means that now that they can't is a "down economy".
This industry is the only one where a people knowing what a clutch is used to be able to find a job as a car mechanic. Shame on all of you boom-spawned-know-nothings that give us capables a bad name.
A company forcing you to work for 12 hours a day 7 days a week and you're not up it or don't want to? Find another company! There are companies and contracts always available for those of us that can do our job well.
1 Earth is warming, 2 It's us, 3 it's royally bad, 4 we need to take action NOW
The way you deal with this is very simple -- you talk with most or all of your fellow developers, and you refuse to work more than 8 hours a day or come in on weekends. Don't threaten to quit, refuse to work overtime. The company needs its developers to get the product out; they can't just fire you all.
Don't bother with this passive-agressive crap like "spend 4 of the hours looking at Monster.com" or "turn out shoddy code and watch the company learn!" If you go ahead and work 12/7, all the company is going to remember is that they got you to put out a project on a short deadline and can get more hours out of you for free. Even if you do have financial responsibilities (a family or whatever,) working 12 hour days is no way to live. You're looking at less than four hours a day to see your family and live your life. You're better off getting canned than working on that schedule.
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: 1. when this project fails, there will be a scapegoat, so make sure you're not it 2. do your absolute best to NOT gripe about the situation with coworkers at the office; negativity is always seen negatively (in other words - be fake happy) 3. don't throw down ultimatums unless you're prepared to stand behind them 4. on the other hand, try to organize a very carefully worded notice of recommendations for improving the situation, and get all of the developers there to agree on it, and sign it 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.
Clearly you are being asked to make a lot of personal sacrifices - and ridiculous ones at that. One thing you didn't say is why they don't bring in more consultants to lighten the load? Clearly that would result in a more realistic work load and probably a better quality product.
Unless you have a really stupid management team, they are going to realize what you are doing, and have some regrets about it. Point out the absurdity of he situation and ask for some compensation down the road.
If neither of these approaches work, you are sort of stuck in this economy because of the risk of blowing it off. But you sure should start looking for another job if your management doesn't care enough about you and know enough about software development to force this on you.
Before you do anything drastic, keep your company's options in mind. For example:
1. they can bid this project to an offshore consulting group like Wipro or Infosys (India) with a fixed bid & fixed schedule. Nine women can't produce a baby in 1 month but at least these companies can throw a bunch of resources on it and make it seem like they're trying harder than anyone else (even if they fail, management will assume nobody else could have done better for the price).
2. they can replace less productive team members with superstars. In software development, it isn't uncommon for a talented developer to produce more results than 10 coworkers of average skills. Getting rid of the dead weight will reduce the time needed to explain things to them. With times being tough, some superstars were laid off just so companies can meet numbers--they're easier to find than in the past and a bit cheaper too.
3. replace the people who failed to manage client expectations and have the new people help do damage control by slicing away some time-consuming features or buying more time.
Obviously, these are just wild guesses and may not be relevant to your company. Before you decide, put yourself in your employer's shoes and try to imagine all the plausible options they have available before taking action. Good luck.
If they are paying the contract engineers for the overtime, talk with the contracting house to see if they need more people. You would be very valuable to the contracting house as someone who knows the product and could command a very pretty penny.
The dogcow says "Moof!"
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.
The long work hours is one of the catches of technology work. For that matter, it is one of the catches of most creative work. There is a great deal involved in getting a programmer to the point where they are totally primed for work. When they are, the extra twenty or so hours in the work week is magic.
Of course, trying to keep employees primed at 60-80 weeks leads to burn out. The IT work load generally is cyclical as well. There is a killer deadline, people have to be give their all to meet the deadline...then there is a shallow period.
In the ideal world, companies would realize this and allow IT workers much more time off with pay during slow times.
If management lets me use my favorite RAD tools and utils, I can crank out software pretty damned quick in most cases. (And often it is even maintainable code :-)
It is when they start arbitrarily dictating languages, techniques, conventions that have no clearly documented merit that things get bogged down.
Thus, maybe you can make some concessions to speed things up.
Also, if you do have to work your tail off for a while, maybe they can make it up to you some other way when the project is over, such as months of longer launches, afternoon naps, flex-time, etc.
Table-ized A.I.
This would be illegal. Thank god for the working time directive.
Beep beep.
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.
A lot of people seem to be suggesting that you just threaten to quit en masse. In its simplest form I don't think that would work, but a related approach might. I'd consider having everyone work regular hours, no matter what management wants. Make it clear that if they fire you for doing your jobs under the same conditions as existed before, you'll sue both them and the customer for wrongful termination, breach of contract, unfair retaliation, and anything else that has any chance whatsoever of sticking in your jurisdiction. Mention the adverse publicity too. Instead of allowing your employer to stick you with a choice between taking it up the rear or losing your job, stick them with a choice between getting the project done on a reasonable schedule or having it done even later and under a cloud of lawsuits that will forever poison their relationship with the customer. Sure, they can fire you after the project's done, but most of the grounds for lawsuits would still exist and the economy might be better then.
Slashdot - News for Herds. Stuff that Splatters.
File this one under covert ops. Find all the newspaper articles and legal cases about salaried employees working overtime without compensation and the lawsuits that the employers *lost*. Check your friendly search engines & findlaw.com to start out with. Print a lot of them (on company paper to really spite them) and put them under the management's office door after they have left to go home. That or send them through inter office mail envelopes. Do this all without attaching anything at all, especailly anything threatening, if you do it may work against you in a lawsuit. You just want to seed their minds with rather nasty thoughts of lawsuits and bad publicity. If you don't here any rumours in a week's time do it again but also leave copies in public places for other coworkers to find. Eventally someone else will bring it up and you won't be the target of any managment backlash.
Sun Szu, "The art of War", Chapter 13, On the Use of Spies.
You really have 2 choices:
Choice 1: suck it up
Choice 2: fight it, now this can be anything from only working 40, suing for overtime, quitting, or whatever.
That's really what it boils down to, rhetoric aside you can either fight the crap or take the crap.
Personally I got sick and tired of the crap, so when I knew layoffs were coming I welcomed it, used all the resources at my disposal to prepare to start my own business doing web hosting and when the axe came I was ready and waiting to do my own thing. Nearly 2 years later, I work at home, if I get pissed off I get up and leave on my motorcycle for a little while or pack the kid into the convertible and hit a DQ for some Blizzards, if I feel like taking some time off I pack up and go to the lake for a few days, if I want to go watch the Matrix Reloaded on release day at the 11AM showing (earliest we got) I just go. No time clock, no deadlines, no one standing over my shoulder (except my 2 year old who can be a slavedriver!). Can't be happier.
--- www.f-theocean.com
1. If it is a Fed Government contract it is probably illegal under the procurement rules (FAR).
2. If the if the client is paying the same amount of money (big IF), then you should be paid for all the work you do. Otherwise, the company is directly profiting from the reduced timeline. This was standard practice at my last compay for comercial contracts. It is not the traditional overtime (time-and-a-half) but at least you are compenstated for the BILLABLE work you do. If they are not willing to do that (i.e. pay for the billiable work you do) then get the hell out.
3. In situations where I had to "rescue" a poorly negotiated contract I always sought (and occasionally received) comp time as additional vacation. While I never used it because I was afraid of not geting on the next contract, I was able to cash it out when I left.
I saw an interesting study of MRIs conducted on human brains after excessively long work hours. The conclusion was that anything much over 8 hrs per day the MRI of the worker was indistinguishable from that of a sleeping person.
I wish you luck on a project coded by a bunch of sleepwalkers.
You insensitive clod!? Those poor bussiness people are the "risk takers". The sacrifices they have to make... the tough decisions. Think about what went through their heads. : .. Tough call. ;) You want to Get paid and relax playing Quake3 and compiling kernels all day long.
Do i take the job , make my people work 24/7 and get the extra monkey? Or do i find a fair solution?
Don't they deserve some forced (forced as in you get fired differently) unpaid labor?
But i know your kind.. you , linux bums.
Slashdot Sig. version 0.1alpha. Use at your own risk.
What does your contract say is required of you? If you don't have any clauses requiring you to work like a slave because the company takes on unreasonable clients, work exactly to the letter of your contract and no more.
Sure, the company could try and fire you (and lose in court if you haven't broken your contractual obligations), and then they're down a developer. If enough of you start playing the WTR game, the company has no choice but to start looking at the situation more closely.
WTR means that there's no possible way for them to get the project done on-time and on-budget (contractors are expensive).
The main thing with WTR is that everyone needs to be in on it. If only one or two people do it, the load just gets dropped on everyone else and they will, funnily enough, get mightily pissed off.
"God, root, what is difference?" - Pitr, userfriendly
In other words, if you were waiting for a month until work order gets signed, but now asked to work all the overtime in the world, isn't it logical? Contractors don't get paid at all if there's no work (not to mention kick in the rear with "thank you, the project is finished now"). Or am I missing something?
Hyperom.com
Two books that I've read come to mind that deal with this sort of "omg wtf 12 hour days stupid management" deal.
The first is "Death March Projects" by Edward Yourdon. The book deals with so-called Death March projects that everyone expects will end in failure (and similarly doomed situations). There are several sections on how to cope with situations like 12/7 work situations (as well as how to avoid them, but those passages might not be too useful at the moment). The book is interesting and (especially if you've never BEEN in a death march project) rather entertaining. Available at a local University library near you. Roughly 4 hours to skim through it.
The second is a book that should be on every programmer's bookshelf. I speak, of course, of "Code Complete" by Steve McConnell, the manual of 90s programming (when widescale 12/7 programming enforcements took place). In addition to much useful content about creating software, the last few sections deal with how to manage the product team, including help on how to deal with situations such as an enforced overtime. And yes, I know the book is published by Microsoft Press, so go ahead and post "ha-ha MS sux" and all that, thankyouverymuch now please sit down, because this is a GOOD book.
I highly recommend reading both these books, and keeping a copy of Code Complete handy. Now, as to when you'll find the TIME to read such things if you're working 12/7... all I can say is, I have no idea; I'm just a CS student, so I have plenty of time.
http://www.chmodoplusr.com/
Is employee burnout.
When you work so many hours you start to not care about the work. When that happens, productivity will go below what you'd get out of a 40 hour a week employee.
If you're making less than $41 an hour, you can file a grievance if they try to make you work these hours without time-and-a-half and double-time compensation. The California labor code is very specific about computer work and overtime. The state's website gives a complete rundown of your rights.
Another considerating: talk to your manager. Any manager worth the title will look out for the welfare of anyone involved in helping the company be successful. If your manager isn't sitting down with you individually and as a team and setting out a plan of action for making the schedule without killing you, look for another place to work.
I worked at a place where management usually didn't have to demand 12-20/7 of us; we did it on our own, if we had to. But that's because we had managers--for the most part--who thanked us for agreeing to do it, pampered us while we were doing it, and kept close account of what we did. Comp time, bonuses, and other compensation made up for the crunches afterward.
Take care of yourself; no one else will. HTH and good luck.
As a fully qualified whiner, I must say that these people really take the cake with their whining about 12/7. As a student, I can attest to the crazy deadlines Professors make. I'm sure we all remember those 6 day allnighters where by the sheer will of not dying we manage to finish the final project on time.
... only to be awakened by students who need the chairs for foolish purposes like sitting.
Believe me, there is worse than 12/7. My personal favorite was a ~23/6 project where my one hour rest was lining up enough lab chairs to make a makeshift bed
And the greatest part about being a student is that I make about -$40,000 / year despite being massively overworked. Overpay? Please, I'd just like to break even.
I am very flexible with the people who work for me. I don't clock watch them so if they need to leave early or start late from time to time I am pretty flexible. But if something needs to be done by Tuesday then I expect it to be done by Tuesday. If that means long hours for them, then I _expect_ it. That is the payback for the flexibility. Like your employers, I don't specify a project without resourcing it properly, and yet times are tough and so sometimes we do have to do things that we don't like just to make ends meet.
Most of the "projects" on which I work have a 12 - 18 month time frame and the stress through which we go in the closing three months of such a project, culminating in the horrible live date, are really nasty. But the sense of satisfaction at the end can be extremely rewarding.
Having said all that, this project will fail. I don't mean to be down on your team, but it is just not possible to work for the length of time that the schedule you have outlined demands. Your bosses probably understand this but will make a delivery to the client at the due time, regardless of it's quality and the final live date will slip whilst you fix the probelms resulting from the insanity of the preceeding 3 months. It really makes much more sense for the client to be made to understand this sooner rather than later.
"The first thing to do when you find yourself in a hole is stop digging."
You've been invited to participate in a "Death March" project - if it fails, the company fails, if it succeeds, you ensure they're going to have you do the same thing again as soon as they find the right opportunity.
If you want to do something about it collective action is the only route and you're leaving yourself wide open to being replaced by contractors. I've been in this place before but I was a one man band
I don't see anyone posting who is looking at the bigger picture here. Software jobs are getting exported to places like India, where someone younger/sharper than you works for 25% of what you make. Are you nervous yet? This is the same thing that happened to manufacturing in the US in the 1980s and its going to happen to white collar jobs over the first twenty years of the twenty first century.
Globalization got you cheap tennis shoes and you didn't understand that they were going to end up on someone's foot planted in your behind, did you?
Don't be too hard on them, they're getting the same treatment from the management above them, who is getting it from the CEO, who is getting it from the board, who is getting it from Wall Street.
I am very easy to get along with, but I don't have time to waste being nice to people who are being stupid. -Theo
and shaving. That takes up time that you don't have obviously. After 3 or 4 weeks, management will get the message.
Yet another reason to be happy to live in Holland :)
Normally overtime pays 150/200%
and there are alot of rules surrounding being required to putting in overtime and such.
That's what I did...Did I get another job right afterwards? Nope. Do I regret leaving the company I worked for...Hell no.
People who work for the company I recently left hate the place, but they all have 'pays the bills' syndrome, and in Eastern canada unless you are in a specialized field you are lucky to get a good paying job...Even if you are specialized, you probably will have to move away to make more money. I dont have children, I have a PlayStation 2 and a television. So me quitting really isn't going to hurt anyone. Older adults with families can't get up and quit like I did. Often I would hear them growl 'its life, live with it. someday you'll learn...'
The company I worked for provided tech support for MS. One month they would congratulate us on our great performance, they would give us more responsibility and then the next month they would send us out an email telling us we were slacking and then would take us into a meeting where we were told to keep our mouths closed and to listen. They would proceed to tell us how the job should be done and what the client (MS) expects. If numbers were down that month it probably was because of them cutting our between call time below half of what it was which we use to document the case and ready our stations (and heads) for the next call. That pissed us off royally...
I felt mistreated, I felt like a child. After a while the joke became: "If they put watermelon in the lunch room we were going to loose a privlidge or a freedom."
So I quit one morning and decided to go to school.
I sure am glad we stay away from that civilized crap then..
First I think there is a law about being paid over time if you work more then so many hours, salaried or not. Second 12 hours 7 days a week what happened to religious freedom, if you don't show up on your religions weekly holy day, what are they going to do fire because of your religious believe, for Christians that would be Sunday, for Jews that would be sunset Friday to sunset Saturday, I don't know about the other religions (maybe some one could post a reply with the other days). And I do believe that it is illegal to firer someone based on their creed.
Walk out now... Or Bide your time and walk out in 6 months...
The company won't change, you have to decide how much you are willing to take. If you take a moment to think about it you already knew the type of company you were working for, but you decided to dance with the devil anyway.
You still have a choice... But will you exercise it?
I'd send a resume to the contracting company.
Starman97@Gmail.com (bring it on spammers)
You're making the same mistake you always make: You're making a gentleman's agreement with scum who are not gentlemen.
My contract said 40 hour five-day weeks, ten holidays, three weeks vacation. The work needed to be done, so *I* let them violate my contract. 60-90 hour weeks, travel on weekends (and no compensatory time off for missed weekends), and no holidays. Then, they fired me because my boss 'could do the work.'
DO NOT DO IT!!!
Now that I think about it: protest the hours, do the work (but get them to order you to do it *in writing* with signatures), then call the Feds. It's time to strike back.
Organize.
impatient aren't ya?
:-)
Things don't always happen overnight. For example, we no longer have slavery.
Eventually OSS will become more than a fad for profit making businesses and companies like MSFT will have to shape up or ship out.
We've turned from a dime-a-dozen society into a fairly organized open source community. I mean look at the early 80s. How many C compilers for the x86 were there? I personally used quite a few of them [from smallC, PCC, turbo C, MICRO-C upto the "elite" Watcom].
Now? Basically all OSS developers use GNU CC. In fact I don't even have another compiler install [aside from MSVC which is what I use for paying work... arrg].
On the distro front things are a bit different but mostly because many distros have horrible user support and flop. I see Debian and Gentoo sticking it out for a long time [Knoppix for instance is freakin awesome!]. Redhat and all the other "oh we're a distro too!" series will die off by the side lines like the Pacific C Compiler
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
good plan... i would add that leaving them in less conspicuos(sp?) places, like near a coffee machine, in the boardroom or on the back of a toilet would be more effective. this will make it seem that employees are reading them amongst themselves as if gearing up for something big... like a class action or a petition.
not only does the revised plan have fear, but it does not forget uncertainty and doubt. read a little tzu, make a little meme... presto, you're calling the shots without calling a thing.
scott king
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.
As others have pointed out, the quality of work produced under this kind of schedule is going to be utter shit. That means that even after the deadline, there will be way too much work to do. Plus, your employer may have a hard timing billing for any after-the-fact fixes - if they were such poor negotiators that they agreed to such a bullshit timeline, they've probably painted themselves into a corner on support issues to.
So, what this all means is that if your employer is small to medium-sized, there is a good chance that this job will break them. They may find themselves bankrupted by the results of pushing you guys to such an insane deadline. Either you quit now or you get laid-off later. I suggest you start looking for a job, do it on company time too because you don't have anything to lose (what are they going to do, fire you, during crunch time? no way). That way you get out under your terms with a perpared landing place, not just quiting to make a statement nor being laid off when "they" feel like it.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Aside from the obvious poor result due to fatigue from long work hours (as other posters have already mentioned), the company may get a bad name for putting out bad software, bad contracts they can't keep, will frustrate their staff...only negative things can come out of this move.
Don't they know what NASA does ? There was a slashdot article a few weeks ago about NASA software: they work strictly 8 hours per day. No more, no less. After 8 hours at work, things start go bad.
The managers did not even think that they jeopardise their own position if this deal breaks. Instead of talking the client into a more quality product, they have given into their crazy demands.
My ex-girlfriend went crazy in such a situation. She worked on a company that made web applications. After 3 months of intense work (14 hours per day, 7 days a week, 3 months), her nerves got so bad that we had to separate for a period, since she was making my life (and everyone else's) miserable!!! she even got to visit a psychologist!!!
The only thing you can do is to do a 'white strike'. Go to work as normal, but don't work. In the meantime, search for another job. When they fire you, you will get some money because they fired you, won't you ? (I don't know how it is in the US, I am in Europe, and here, If my company fires me, I get an amount of money for compensation).
At this place, being divorced was considered a badge of honor, as it meant you had your priorities "in the right place"
At these places, the carrot was making partner in your mid-30's, with a mean compensation of oh wbout $350,000 per year.
"dope will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no dope"
Find the person in management who made the business decision to get this project done on the client's deadline. This person is probably not your boss. Schedule a one-on-one meeting with that person. Ask this person, "what are the incentives for getting this project done on the client's deadline?"
If you can't get a one-on-one meeting with the person making the money decisions, it's time to seriously examine your career. You're as valuable to your company as a fry cook is to McDonald's. You'll have to ask some serious soul searching questions, like "am I a shitty employee, or am I working for a shitty company, or both?" and "is this a problem that I'm willing to expend the effort on to fix?"
Also, make sure you're actually negotiating. Know what you're offering to your company, and know what you're willing to accept in return. Know these things before you walk into that meeting. Last, note that it would have been much better to do this before your company agreed to the clients demands. Your company is as stuck as you are right now -- it doesn't sound like they have very much wiggle room left in the contract, and they may not have much wiggle room left in the developer budget, either.
Think very carefully before you negotiate a resolution like "you will give me a bonus next time, or I will not be working for you anymore."
And whatever you do, never, ever, ever bitch about work at work. All good managers appreciate you negotiating for what you want and what you deserve. No manager appreciates and employee who bitches and moans about what he has.
Slashdot is jumping the shark. I'm just driving the boat.
Let me get this straight. You're crying about working 12/7 for a month?
Some of us do that EVERY month.
SLACKER!!!
In my company, when you become a "full-time" employee, you have to sign a contract that states you as an exempt employee. This is due to odd government project regulations/etc, where no overtime is allowed because they don't want to figure out who should be charged the overtime fees.
If the government can dictate this style of work, what's to stop regular clients.
Check the laws with your State's labor section. They maybe breaking the law without even realizing it. This way your management can tell the client that doing what they want will break the law.
Perhaps a rotational/work at home may help reduce burnout and stress and keep production. Its a fact that just adding more hours and working through the week eventually production will drop. With programming this will equate to more bugs etc.
Finally, shows that getting payed by the hour can work better for most people. Of course, benefits is a big thing too.
Good luck, hopefully thinsg will get worked out for the better.
The goal of management to get the job done, on time and in the right way. In a case like this, this should mean that managers go to their employees and say things like "what can we do to help you accomplish this?". Since that would involve the manager seeing their role as inverted from their usual view where the manager is the big boss, most managers won't see it. (It may also help to remember the Peter Principle - that everyone "rises to their own level of incompetence" and thus any manager that has not moved quickly up the ladder is almost certainly incompetent.)
Perhaps the best option is to do some research into the badly managed software project, and write a memo to your manager detailing the problems with doing what he wants. The first and last paragraphs should say, bluntly (but professionally) that those methods proposed will end up with a poor product which may be late, and will also risk some of the things above, then ask him to sign off on it - with a "CC:" to his boss and his bosses boss and so on. And send those copies up the chain - if he signs it, and if he does not (in which case, add a note to that effect).
There are lots of good works on management that talk about such things, so a couple of hours in a good bookstore and a couple hours more online should provide lots of ammunition.
then you can sue them for even more money for wrongful dismissal. :)
I hope you're not pretending to be evil while secretly being good. That would be dishonest.
There must be some kind of limit to what can be demanded of a salaried employee. Technically a 40 hour workweek is standard and in a pinch salaried tech employees may need to work longer hours. Also when you take the job the description should include how many hours a week are expected.
The question I have is that there must be some reasonable limit. Unless stated otherwise it is reasonable to assume that you took a 8x5 job (40 hours a week) at a certain salary. Since you can't demand overtime pay your employer should compensate you for working extra hours either by paying overtime voluntarily or by shifting what would have been your off time.
What is reasonable? Can your employer demand that you work an extra 20 hours in a week, an extra 40? At one point does the employer violate your rights. There is no way an employer who hired you for 40 hours a week can suddenly demand 100 hours a week with no compensation. If so why can't he just demand your every waking moment, hell why not 24/7.
I had a similar issue this year. I work help desk at my University. In exchange for free housing during the summer they wanted two of us to work 35-40 hours a week (9-5pm or 10-5pm) at 7-9 dollars an hour and in addition be on call 13 hours a day (9am-10pm) 7 days a week. This meant that in exchange for their overpriced housing (2500 dollars each for 3 months= $833/month x2=$1666 for 400-500 square feet) we would work 40 hours a week well below the fair market wage for our jobs and in addition be on call 49 hours extra per week nuking our entire summer and probably making it unfeasible to take classes during the summer which would be the whole point of us staying there anyways.
Even our boss said it was a rotten deal and get this originally the powers that be wanted to only give housing to one person for those kinds of hours. One person on call or at work almost 90 hours at 3-5 dollars/hour under the fair wage and less than half of those hours paid in cash.
I still have not found a job at home yet after about a month but I have made almost as much money just doing a few computer gigs in the same time span that I would have been working so much for so little.
You know, for all you pussies bitching and moaning about how bad the economy is and how you got mouths to feed and bills to pay...
Just quit the goddamn computer job and go be a male whore. Seriously, if you don't have enough self-respect not to be someone's bitch, you can get a lot more money for your time getting ass-fucked by horny rich guys. No joke... you'll get to keep the big house, the fast car, the 2.5 kids, and have more time to spend with all of them as well. Plus your social life will probably improve, assuming you can adapt to the gay lifestyle.
Don't worry about your friends and family looking down on you. If you're already living a slave's life in fear of what masta will do if you stand up to him or leave, you're really not going to get much lower by turning to prostitution.
> 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?
I would say this is the point you should consider: can you trust your employer -- i.e., your boss, your boss's boss, & anyone else you can identify in the food chain, NOT the company or corporation itself -- to pull these kinds of stunts, or is this standard operating procedure where you work?
My guess about the person who submitted this question is that she/he is either: brand new to the company, & this is the first time she/he has been confronted with this kind of work environment; or probably has sensed this company has a tendency to ``manage by chaos" in every situation.
This all comes down to a matter of trust: do you trust the people who are putting you in this situation to remember that you are going the extra distance for them, or will they forget about this the minute the project is out the door? Decide accordingly.
Geoff
I think I see a trend here. Maybe for them it really would be easier to muzzle the entire internet than to produce p
Being salaried means that you are not merely employed by the company; you are a part of it. If you can't be depended upon to deliver in tough times, what is your worth? You are salaried, but want to perform only the duties of a dayworker. Cowboy up, do some hours, get the product out the door. Lose that "Not My Job" attitude, and maybe you will gain some respect. And maybe get a raise or promotion, too. That certainly won't happen if your boss feels he must bribe you to stay after 5p.m.
And please send me their address so I can send them my resume when they can your ass.
This is not a workers market these days, they can and will find someone that appreciates having a job and doesn't bitch about it.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Look at the bright side, they could be offshoring your roles to India!
Unionizing will only serve to give management the mistaken impression they should find cheaper labor in countries that can compete with lower salaries and fewer employment protections.
Look for another job while you're working this one, as best you can.
- Bill
If the work order becomes part of the contract then the client has to follow the original deadlien not theirs..
Your management's reaction leads me to believe its otherwise which is very bad usually workoprders becomes of the contract as and addendum..
If that is the case find a different company to work for..becasue tha tovertime they have to pay has to come somewhere and its not management's salary that is gettign reduced hear at year end due to this goof up its yours..
Don't Tread on OpenSource
Isn't that sort of behaviour of a company _illegal_ in your so-called Free World? Here in leftish Sweden, there are laws against such things.
At least, you do have a contract with your employer, don't you? And the company is as bound by that contract as you are. You should never agree to a contract that does not say how many houres per week you have to work! Never, ever.
And, in addition to some type of terms of an employment contract being illegal, we do have unions that forces some saner minimal terms on the employers... I've heard you more or less don't have unions over there, poor you...
If I where you, I would at least consider moving to any other country, out in the Free World, where there's no DMCA and where you do have some rights as a poor worker...
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
See this place This is where your jobs will go if you keep whining about unions and suing for overtime and everything else.
What you *really* want to do is get Indian workers to unionize.
Brian Ellenberger
I mean, just because the industry has been kind it doesn't mean that it will be kind forever. What is happening to you will be happening to more and more people if you won't start reacting. And reacting alone is not a good idea, so you've got to organize.
Now, you've probably have a well paid job, and your conditions will not be like 19xx with x Besides that, I don't think you can actually work the hours you specify and deliver a good product.
Good luck, glad I have my 36 hour working week (note: with not that great a salary, but you'll have to choose),
Warper
...IT jobs have been moved "offshore" to places like India where labour is cheaper and willing to work their butts off without complaining about "fairness".
First off: this story is a troll. No manager however insane would expect his employees would expect his employees to increase their hours worked by 110% for no additional compensation. You either misunderstood the situation, or made it up.
Second: if you weren't making this up, then in a 6% unemployment market what is wrong with you that you need to ask what to do when an employer tells you that you will work 84 hours a week for the next six months. You say NO, and if they insist then you quit and get a new job. Dope!
News flash: the current unemployemnt rate is not particularly high. From '80 to '95 the unemployment rate ranged from 5.3% to 9.7%. Today we're sitting between 6% and 7%, the lower part of that range. Believe it or not, folks found jobs during those years. You can too.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
Obviously this isn't fair, but what are the alternatives in this down economy, where jobs are hard to find
There are sectors of the economy on FIRE right now, find your self into one of those. For those still brainwashed by TV-news, people made just as much money 'betting' a stock would go down, as they did that it would go up in the tech bubble days. You make just as much if a stock goes from $100 to $.01 as you do if it goes from .01 to $100. You simply have to know the rules of the game and do your research. For example the housing market is still in its bubble phase for those of you interested in the quick buck. If you cant find a way to make money by selling your services to real-estate related sectors, perhaps a 40-hr week, peon job is the best you will ever have.
If you pigeon-hole YOURSELF into a particluar sector of the economy, then its simply your lack of flexibility, not the economy, that is the source of all your 'problems'. Oh, but you say you want the big reward without the big risk? right step in line, I think there are 5 billion others in front of you...
Worse off, your asking career advice on a community board. If you worked at my company you would have been 'let-go' long ago for a simple inability to make your own decisions and deal with the consequences of them, good or bad.
Do the majority of americans think their job is gauranteed?
...this as flamebait - I suggest you check your facts.
m es /correspondent/transcripts/30_03_2003.txt
I also saw this program and have checked out the link. Here is the program transcript (just eliminate the spaces):
http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/spl/hi/program
scroll down to 00.34.00
Don't mod things flamebait when they are infact very relevant, and very correct.
I was in a similiar situation at one of my previous jobs. There's really nothing you can do about it, short of quitting. The most you'll likely get is some sort of comp-time after it's all over, but don't expect more than a couple of days.
A couple of other things:
Once they've gotten away with this once, they'll do it again, and not just for customers like you describe.
If you decide to quit, don't make a big deal about how unhappy you are at your current job. They might need you until the deadline, but if you make a big deal about what's going on, they'll get rid of you soon after the deadline is over.
This might be a little weird to hear, but don't work more than those 12 hours. After you get used to those hours, you might have a tendency to work a bit longer to just get some part of the project completely before you leave...don't do it.
And btw, in case you haven't realized it yet, all that extra work for no salary increase has just effectively cut your salary by more than half.
Finally, start looking for a new job now. The new one will pay you more, and you might be appreciated a bit more. Do it quietly as possible, but do it. You'll end up happier in the end.
Man, you tech guys bitch way too much.
My summer job, until I go away to college in the fall, is at a landscaping company.
Normal hours are 6am till 6pm, and some crews stay out even later. Wednesday, I worked a 14 hour day. Everyone does that, its whats expected. The company policy requires you to work every other saturday as well. We deal with it. But you know what? You get alot of time off when it rains, and during the winter.
I'm sure its the same way at your job. Some times you work your ass off like that, and I'm sure you have some nice slack times too. I would kill for a 40 hour week, but its nice being on overtime starting around thursday morning.
All of you tell your management to go fuck themselves, and then form a new company. Go to the client in six months, after it's obvious that your current management has screwed the pooch, and offer to clean up the mess for a reasonable price, on a realistic schedule.
Oh, and don't forget to tell the world about your current batch of pointy-haired idiots on fuckedcompany.com.
-jcr (Man, I'm glad I don't have to deal with that kind of crap where I work.)
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Is The Company Publicly Traded? Is the project going to form a major percentage of their revenue?
Short the company's stock.
One thing is certain: The contractors will figure out a way to keep the contract going, wasting more money, and all the code written by your group will look something like this:
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I want to start by saying that this project is on a deathmarch and it hasn't even started yet. I doubt there is anything you can do to save it. When the project fails, there will be a lot of pissed off people and a big pile of shit will be heading for that fan at the end of the hall. Your number one priority should be to cover your own ass. Document everything. Keep copious notes. Print everything out and take it home.
That said the FIRST thing you should do Monday morning is to call your State Department of Labor. What you are being asked to do may be illegal.
NEXT, if you work at a big enough company, mention the situiation to your boss's boss or boss's boss's boss (aka Senior of Corporate Management ). They might not be in the loop about what is going on. This may be in violation of company policy. Or they may be smart enough to know the signs of a death march and take steps to stop it before it gets started.
But, if they can't help you you have a couple of options...
- Work the hours and don't complain.
- Explain to your management that it is not possible for you to put in those hours on such short notice. Explain the outside of work commitments that you have in your life. Apologise for not being able to work the extra hours, and then don't work them.
- Say nothing to them, just don't work the hours.
- Keep a log of when you and everyone else on the team comes in and goes home. Next time your review comes up show them what a good resource you are.
- Do the same as above, but put a packet sniffer on your managers PC. Next time you have a review, show them what a hard worker you are and what porn sites they have been surfing during business
hours.
- Start coming to work in a Star Trek uniform. demand that everyone refer to you as 'Commander'.
- Every day at 5pm hit the emergency power off in the server room and pull the fire alarm.
- Make generous use of the rm -rf * command.
If they refuse to recompensate you in some way (not even making an effort in totally unacceptable), you should walk. It's sort of like sex. After they've f***ed you the first time, it only gets easier. Try to approach management as a group as well. Individuals who try to approach management on the behalf of weak-willed or non-confrontational employees (for their own good) will only get crucified for their efforts and identify to management who they can walk all over and who they cannot.
This is one of those very important life decisions where you need to decide, "is it worth damaging my reputation with my boss(es) over something I think is wrong." The answer isn't cut and dried. You're not a coward, especially not in this economy, for saying no to that question.
Ultimately, you need to do what you will be happy with. In my case, I'd approach management with the tenet that my ace in the hole is walking right out the door after two weeks of sleeping...
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This sounds like an immediate need of the company as opposed to a long-standing practice. If this is in fact the case, then suck it up, do your job, and quit whining about it. Think back to all the times you used your salaried status to come in late, take a long lunch, and leave early while the hourly personnel marched to the 8-hr / day drumbeat. Now it's time to pay the piper. That's what it means to be salaried.
Sure, you can put in a month (year?) or more of 70 hour weeks. This will probably be followed by a month (year?) of recurring sickness, lack of motivation, whatever, bringing the average back to 40 hours/week.
No doubt many will argue against the above, but I'm basing it on observations of myself, work colleagues, family and friends over many years. It always seems that excessive working hours ultimately cause a loss of productivity, which brings the long term average back to 40hrs/week. In that case one might as well have stuck to a regular 40hr week in the first place.
As you can imagine, I've really pissed some bosses off by telling them this theory. Tell your own boss at your own peril. I'll be interested to hear, in a year, if it has applied to the people working on your project.
Do others observations back this theory up??
Doesn't matter whether you are considered salary or not - everyone is paid an hourly wage - whether it is stated up front or is derived from a yearly salary broken down into 52 weeks at 40 hours a week.
Don't let anyone tell you otherwise...
At both the Fed level and in CA, 8 hours a day and 40 hours a week is the non-overtime cut-off. CA goes further by breaking hours down using a 1/40 fraction. And you must have 1 day off for every 7 days...before continuing work unless (yep, there are usually exceptions) an emergency exists that threatens property or life.
Now here is where folks who fall into "professional" fields (not doctors or teachers in this example) get confused. Especially in CA.
If you for example as an IT person get loosely labelled a "computer professional" here in CA you pretty much can't duck it so long as you are not a trainee or paid less than 41.00/hr. The label sticks in most courts and Labor offices.
So what happens when you work overtime as a "computer professional"? Well, you don't get 1.5 or 2.0 multiplied to your hourly wage. Nor do you get minimum wage or a multiple of the minimum. What you really get is straight-overtime. In other words, you continue to get paid just your hourly wage. No more, no less.
This law under Section 510.00 onward under the CA labor code was obviously passed to keep companies from getting killed by mutiplier overtime on employees who are very expensive to being with. It was a break given to companies and the state as well for teachers, doctors, etc under different professional classifications and schedules.
Each state and the Feds have differences on professions and the minimum that professionals must be paid to be declared as such...do your research.
Keep records, and get ready to push the issue. Nice thing about the Fair Labor Standards Act is that if you keep track and provide a bill for overtime - and your employer hasn't done the same using a certified time piece or tracking system - they get stuck with the bill. Have an attorney ready too who if familiar with that act and other relevant labor info.
On the other hand, if you can't stand on your own two feet - you are better off quitting. My experience has been that companies or managers who try to claim salaried employees are not entitled to overtime are operating under questionable leadership and headed for recognition on Fucked Company.
=8-)
Companies go through tough times, and sometimes extra work needs to be put in. But you need to be compensated for your time.
I have been put in simular situations many times (though not as severe), and have never ever been refused compensation. Of course, I've had to negotiate compensation, often the management don't realise how much this will cost them. And when you do negotiate, do it up front, before starting the work. Oh, and make sure they know it is *not* negotiable. You need some sort of compensation.
Just remember, a normal day is 8 hours, so a normal week is 40 hours.
They want you to work 84 hours a week. Thats double. IE, in those 6 weeks you will be working an equiv of 12 weeks.
A few ideas:
* Get paid a bonus equivelent to 6 week wages.
* Get 6 weeks of paid leave.
* Some sort of combination.
* Be pepared to compromise a little...work 10 hour days, and get 12 days holidays (IE get back your weekend time, and work 2 free hours a day)
A few no-nos:
* a long weekend is not fair compensation.
* Providing you lunch on Sunday is not a "fair exhange" (How much are you worth?)
* Tickets to your favourite sporting match is not compensation.
I prefer the holiday option (time in luei), as I can spend time with family and friends.
Just remember...the managers are human too, and they do care. They are more likely to offer you the holiday option, as it doesn't cost them more. And they do understand that it is fair they compensate you for your time.
The thing to remember is to be firm. Don't offer or threaten to quit. Just tell them...yes, I will work the extra hours, but I expect to be fairly compensated for those hours. If they won't budge, work 8 hour days. They can't fire you for working what you were hired to do.
At the end of the day though, its your decision. Not the companies. If this is the life you choose to live, and you want to work for this company. Then do it.
As a professional in a "traditional" profession (I'm an attorney), I find this post to basically sum up why our generation (Gen-X and younger) is looked upon with such scorn.
Let me ask you this: When you took the job, did you agree to get paid for (a) results; (b) for showing up? If the former, then suck it up; if the latter, you should relinquish your salary (and all the juicy benefits that usually accompany it), and go hourly.
Essentially what you are saying is that you have no pride in your work, feel no responsibility or comittment to advancing the interests of the company that signs your paycheck, and are looking to do the bare minimum to getyour paycheck so you can scamper off.
In my profession, we are expected to bill around 2000 hours a year (40 hrs a week for 50 weeks). That may not sound like much until you consider that one generally has to work about 2500/hrs (or more) to actually produce that much billable time. During crunch times (trials, deals etc.) it is not unheard of for an attorney to bill 400 hours in a single month, and no, that is not inflated. Truth is, we work like dogs all the time, and many people can't take it and quit.
You took a salaried job. Now you are complaining because your managers did a poor job and made your life difficult. My advice: do your damndest to succeed. If you do, you are a hero. If you try hard and fail, it is your manager's fault. Bad managment is universal, the only way to prove it is to make a good faith effort. If your company is consistantly plagued by poor managing, then it won't survive anyway, so start looking for a new job.
Anyway, my point (if I have one): suck it up, some people are actually expected to work for a living.
I'm a lawyer with excellent karma. Something's gotta be wrong.
states with laborlaws that "strictly limit what can be expected of a salary enmployee."
Sorry, just being anal...
I am a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.
If you want to be paid by the hour become a contractor. When you are salaried you get paid, no matter what. You could have nothing to do for weeks on end and you still get a pay check. You could be working 80 hours a week and you still get the same pay check. If you don't like that, then become a contractor and get paid by the hour, by the day, week, etc. When there is no work to do, go home, learn a new skill, write some open source software. I think that you will see software development become more and more of a contract position over time.
Stuart Eichert
How does organizing help we IT workers from losing our jobs to countries that have substantially fewer employment protections and wages far below the minimum we need to live without government assitance? This isn't simply a problem in the US, but perhaps the EU and other affluent countries have more effective trade limits.
Ah yes, that sucking sound you hear is "free trade!" Great in a world where economies are less diferentiated from one another, not good on this one.
Bill
In Ontario, I believe the law says that a company cannot *require* an employee to work more than 50 hours in a seven-day period. They can *request* it but cannot require it. And if an employee is punished for refusing to work more than 50 hours, it is the responsibility of the *employer* to prove that the punishment was in no way related to the work refusal. Same with unsafe work condition.
One thing I do not understand about these work-issue articles on Slashdot;
Why the obvious political weight of the place is not applied to this situation.
Is the demand for work wrong? (I think it is.) Then name the damn company! (and the client) Better yet, put a link to their web site so they friggin notice.
The cat will be out of the proverbial bag then and all sorts of things might happen;
- the client realizes they are being dumb and backs off
- the company realizes a huge list of potential employees just decided not to work for them, and backs off
- potential purchasers of stuff from this client or company can avoid this product. I can tell already it's going to suck. What if it's the control system for the new Nuke plant... or computes YOUR salary or something, think about it.
- people can dig up facts about the laws in the state, county and city, forcing the company to back off
- they gotta pay for bandwidth, and the programmers can sit back and watch the smoke billow from under the server room door knowing something they did made a difference
Remember, it's not slander if they don't catch who said it, and it's not slander if it is true.
If you read the entire section there is an hourly wage basis as well. (17) any employee who is a computer systems analyst, computer programmer, software engineer, or other similarly skilled worker, whose primary duty is - (A) the application of systems analysis techniques and procedures, including consulting with users, to determine hardware, software, or system functional specifications; (B) the design, development, documentation, analysis, creation, testing, or modification of computer systems or programs, including prototypes, based on and related to user or system design specifications; (C) the design, documentation, testing, creation, or modification of computer programs related to machine operating systems; or (D) a combination of duties described in subparagraphs (A), (B), and (C) the performance of which requires the same level of skills, and who, in the case of an employee who is compensated on an hourly basis, is compensated at a rate of not less than $27.63 an hour. A company can cause an employee to become treated as an hourly if they treat certain thing to an hourly basis. Some but not all include: docking pay on an hourly basis, and causing vacation to be taken on an hourly basis instead of daily basis or giving comp time on an hourly basis. I.e. treating an employee on an hourly basis instead of a daily basis for pay and benefits. If a company does that, the employee is subject to all section of the FSLA. My former employer had to change some policies after getting caught. Salaried employee are deemed to be paid an hourly rate equivent to their salary divided by the number of hours worked the previous pay period. I am retired, but when I worked the pay slip had an hourly rate on it.
its not correct because the /. comment box is not a RDBMS. So I didn't bother to get out my O'Riley books on MySQL and figure out what would be technically correct.... why because im not a good little slashbot.
There is no god
before you do anything stupid you concoct out of advice from slashdot, friends, coworkers, whatever websites you're reading, and so on, TALK TO A LAWYER NOW.
Lawyers are professional negotiators. Go pay a lawyer, and you can find out if:
a) your employer is breaking any state, local, or federal law.
b) they can fire you for saying "no" and working forty hour weeks. i.e. if you'd have a case for a wrongful termination suit if you did.
c) there's any other games you can play in your negotiations with your employer.
Bring your lawyer with you to negotiate with your boss if your employer is breaking any law, or has any contractual obligations to you that they're breaking, or if they're doing anything actionable, or if you just want support if you decide to tell them "no, I'm working 40 hour weeks, sorry, that's all you're paying me for".
The other thing you can do is start looking for another job NOW. Your job sucks, and in this economy, it will take a while for you to find a better one. That doesn't mean it's impossible.
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)
If you think you've got the ear of the team you're working with (and they're loyal, not backstabbing assholes) you might want to try going ahead with the project, while quietly organizing your co-workers.
If you move too early, management may be able to easily replace people, but halfway to three-quarters of the way through a project an entire team opting to have a sit-down with management over where the project is going may be worth some leverage. The thought of them trying to bring in a new team that far into the project might put the fear into them and earn you some decent returns.
But it's a big risk to take. A few years back my mother tried to organize her co-workers to take a stand against the way the management at her Royal Bank branch were treating the employees. She had the support of all her co-workers, or so she thought. They all backed out at the last minute leaving her to hang in front of some very vindictive management types.
Good luck, whichever avenue you take.
I've been out of work for a year, as an Software consultant I was laid off by my former employer during the economic downturn. They summarily "contracted" me for two weeks after laying me off, and had contracted me again 12 weeks ago. After 4 weeks they offered my old job back.
The catch? The job is 100% travel now, and this project team has been working 7 days a week, close to 16 hours a day for the past 6 weeks (over half the projects implementation period).
The Boss, on thursday, just before leaving for the weekend to fly home, summarily requested once again we work this weekend (two full days sat, sun.. over 12 hours so far on each day). I'd kill for a consistant 8am-8pm schedule. Right now I walk into work and am never sure when I leave.
Yes, the job sucks. But to those of you saying there "are" jobs. I say bull. Competing against 3,000 resumes for every position, qualified or not, losing out to jobs because I have 4 years with Oracle instead of the requested 3 years (yea, that's right, I had 1 year more and still lost the job for exactly that reason) sucks. So after a year of barely making ends meet I sucked down the big one and took a lousy job.
There isn't a member on this team that isn't bitter, demoralized and working well below efficient ratings and we're all doing our best to get by. Management doesn't really care, I know this because no matter how hard you work, how good your reviews are, they'll lay you off if they have to. So long as that live date is met that's all that matters.
We all keep our eyes peeled for new work and hope we'll get through this. That's the best you can do, never stop looking to improve your situation. The reality is, Management won't concede to your demands, you're not as important as you think you are and there's a line of people waiting for your job. Look out for yourself, because no one else will.
And if you do find that magical utopia of a software company that is both hiring and maintains a solid balanced life for its employees in this industry, do us all a favor and let us know. Me? I'll be waiting for pigs to fly... my chances are better.
Everyone points to overtime and hourly workers and says how great it is, but at least in California if you make over a certain amount per hour (right around 36, I think) then you don't get paid any overtime bonuses. So if I work 45 hours a week those extra 5 hours are only paid at the regular rate, not at 1.5x. Now, to be honest, that's not that bad of a deal - at least I get compensated. If I'm paged and have to go in then I even get travel time paid.
The only thing I haven't figured out yet is the minimum number of hours per incident. For example, if I am on-call and get paged at 2am and it only takes 15 minutes of my time to fix the issue (bounce a switch, open a ticket with the telco, whatever) I think I should be able to bill more than a quarter hour - I just haven't figured out what California state law says in regards to this.
"Where quality is like a dead stinking rat - you just can't miss it."
I've been in a similar position in my current job.
I'm on a 2 year contract and the first 9 months to a year were flat-out. I was regularly putting in 12 hour days, overnight shifts and the occasional saturday afternoon or Sunday (Saturday morning is paid under the contract).
Since then, we've still been busy, but the management philosophy has been one of give and take. As long as you get your work done, you can come and go as you please.
The other advantage, as some have already pointed out is that you'll keep your job.
Overseas coding sweat shops...
To those of you whinney people who lament that "I have to work these slave hours, it's a bad economy" I say thanks for setting techinical professionals back a couple of decades.
I am so tired of hearing you aholes whine and yet do it anyway. Hear is an idea, try living below your means so you can be prepared for a situatiuon like this. If you are going to decide to work as a slave for these people then stick with you decision and stop whining like little girls.
It is a shame thay you will give up you life for a little bit of money.
Yeah, I'm bitter.
Just for the record, there is NO "off the record" record.
Make a record of that.
Tell them to put the request to work 12/7 for however many months in writing.
Then don't work all those extra hours - work 12/5 or 10/6 and let them fire you if they want. Then if they fire you for not doing 12/7, sue their ass for wrongful termination and for the unpaid overtime you did so far. As an exempt employee, they are not supposed to be counting your hours and penalizing you for going below a ridiculously high amount.
---------
There is inferior bacteria on the interior of your posterior.
What can you do when management agrees to a timeline and a workload that may make your job, as a programmer, difficult-to-impossible?
In this economy, you are lucky to have a job. Sure, you can quit, as several posters have suggested. But you may be unemployed for a long time, perhaps permanently.
Unionize? Be my guest. Most people who frequent slashdot bristle at the notion of unions like the teamsters because they restrict entry into the workforce, employ violence against scabs and require large dues.
Sue? Be my guest. You better win big because henceforth, you'll be known as th' suin' kind.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
i've only rarely worked sundays. if you want to know why, read Exodus 20:10. when i've been pressed to work without extra pay, i showed up, but i spent most of my unpaid time chatting with coworkers. generally, those calling for mandatory overtime are idiots and they can be easily bamboozled with the appearance of work.
why work for idiots?
can you call a company that lets itself get screwed in this fashion, are they really a long-term viable employment source?
when the market was hot, getting an employer upgrade was easy. now it ain't, so, cut back spending, play the game until the warchest is full, then if you don't get a better gig, goto grad school. of course, the employer may go bancrupt and that solves the problem another way.
My advice is, negotiate for comp time
I've repiped significant amounts of my house and I've also laid a lot of wire 120 and 240, and I can put up sheet rock or a porch with the best or worst of them, I also know almost none of my neighbors can, it's not unskilled work, but I wouldn't even come close to comparing it to coding or sysadmining.
The biggest problem I've seen with unions are when membership is mandatory and I have no direct say in my own wage or health care yet I am required to pay dues to some groups that supposedly talks on my behalf.
Make sure you give them the full and proper 80 hours notice. ;^P
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Organize a boycott of the product/service. If the client knows that they will make no money off the product/service unless those working on it get better treatment, it may change their mind on the deadline.
Making money later is a better choice than spending money you won't make back.
"Let him go, Ralph. He knows what he's doing." --Otto Mann (simpsons)
My pice of advice, vote soon and vote wisely. Its amazing how quickly things can go from top to bottom, but rarely does it happen to everyone.
GPLv2: I want my rights, I want my phone call! DRM: What use is a phone call, if you are unable to speak?
Stop whinging, find somewhere else to go, and quit. It should be patently obvious.
Unemployment is not that high, there are plenty of jobs in the US. If you live in an area like the SF bay area, and can't find work, *MOVE*. Clearly, if your in an area with a large population density that your going to be more vunrable to economic ups and downs (that's why people move to large cities, to catch the upsides - the don't think of the downturns).
And to those who make excues like 'I have a family' - if you are unable to do something as basic find work that you like and still provide for you family then please for the love of grud don't have any more children.
You are not going though a major depression, so what if the economy isn't growing at 8% a year? That was never going to continue indefinately.
It's as if the big crunch at the end of the 1980's never happened.
I can't belive people have such short term memories.
When this happens again in 10 years time people will still be whinging, and I will still have no sympathy for all the inadequates who get caught up the hoopla du jour and subsequent stock frenzy.
Anonymous Coward:
That's right. We're not serfs. You can leave the company if you're not happy with the ultimatum. However, what works better is to voice your concerns and threaten to resign if your concerns are not met. If you are Barney Goofoff, then they're not going to care, but if you are valuable, then if management knows what is good for them, they will listen, especially if others are likely to follow your example. If they don't listen, you probably don't want to work there anyway.
Better not do it without a damn good reason or if you have poor skills.
If you're a slacker, you're better off joining a union or better yet, spend all your time trying to start one, be a trouble maker, and then when you get fired, you can sue! (Maybe it's too bad that people can't sue when they are forced into a union against their will.)
you really ARE a slave to your employer. none of the mental cage stuff any more. "Work when and how I tell you or you will suffer"
I am a contractor and refuse to be an employee. I have the same job insecurity as everybody else, but for quite a lot more pay...
Oh well, what the hell...
But...have you asked about compensation of some form? If you don't ask, a money-tight company (or insensitive boss) won't think to offer. However, if you ask they just might see your point...
I'm not saying that it's right that you are in a position of having to ask. But if you don't ask, then you won't know for sure that the above statement is true. If you do ask and they say "no", then see those "Q-U-I-T" threads above ;-).
I've been in a similar situation (though not quite as bad when I left). The client was insisting on at least 50 hrs a week billable (+ travel), and there was no real incentive for my employer to refuse since anything above 40 hrs a week was pure profit for them. A couple of months after we moved to 50 hrs a week billable (+ travel), I quit, and the two other original consultants quit a little while later (when the number of hours was increased again).
I'd recommend that you remember that you are in a marathon (and not a sprint) and try to pace yourself. The time that you're working 12/7 will be >6 weeks (if things go like usual), and you won't be properly compensated for the time invested (no matter what perks). But, given the current job market, I'd recommend sticking with the current job until you find a new one.
Start looking for that new job and pace yourself for now.
Tis is just unlawful (in Germany) We have a law on worktime and it states explicitely: The maximum daily worktime is 10 hours. No exception allowed. The regular time of work per week is 48 hours on 6 days.
Everything over 8 hours is overtime which must be compensated in money or offtime.
Work on Sunday is only allowed for the usual services like Healthcare Gastronomy Fuelstations etc. and Plants that cannot be interrupted like Powerplants Steelworks etc.
CU
quote "Wel, i gotta tell ya...I'd be very, very careful who you talk about that. Because the person who wrote that...is dangerous. And this buttoned-down, oxford-cloth psycho might just snap and then stalk from office to office with an Armilade AR-10 carbine gas-powered semi-automatic weapon, pumping round after round into colleagues and coworkers. This might be someone you've known for years...someone very...very...close to you"
Fight CLub 1999
Umm, that isn't a troll. The FLSA was originally passed in 1938 and all subsequent changes have been in the form of amendments. So referencing it as "the FLSA of 1938" is correct, though arguably as "the FLSA of 1938 as most recently amended in $year" would be more correct...
Nitpicking aside, I think it's *high* time this law was scrapped and rewritten. ~65 years of duct tape and chewing gum is far too much cruft for something so central to the lives of the American workforce, IMHO.
As a salaried employee, you don't really have many legal options unlike your hourly co-workers for overtime. I would, however, work with your company about compensation for the extreme amount of work. Things like more vacation time, bonuses, options, whatever. Although you can't do much for the pay, you can sue for other things like pain and suffering. I imagine working 12/7 will cause a number of problems for you, medically, psychologically, and emotionally. You can sue your employer for these pains.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Seriously, whatever you choose to do: good luck. But never be afraid to take a risk/leap/chance; follow your happiness and personal well-being, not your wallet.
Rock!
It's not necessarily just about this one time. Maybe you can manage 84 hours a week for a month or two. (I couldn't!) But suppose they decide that it worked really well, and decide to bump you up to 60 hours a week all the time, since you got so much more done? Now, when they first try this nonsense, is really the time to say "No way." If you don't, chances are this will happen again.
A bunch of people have also mentioned that you should ask for vacation time at the end. Maybe I'm overly cynical, but I'd have a hard time trusting people who expect 12/7 labor to not "forget" my vacation. While it might cost you your job, you really have to ask yourself if you want to keep working there. And don't be misled if they offer to "reduce" the hours from "impossible" to "excessive." Just because 70 hours a week is 14 hours less doesn't make it any more acceptable.
I don't think you have a choice but to try to organize with your coworkers, and tell management what you're willing to work and what you're not. They really have no choice but to listen to you -- they might be in trouble if you work fewer hours, but they'll definitely be completely screwed if you all quit.
________________________________________________
suwain_2
You really have three options...
1. Lie down and get kicked.
2. Q - U - I - T
3. Organize, play along, and turn then turn the tables at the end.
You didn't mention the margin on this deal and that would be a very good thing to find out before excercising Option #3. If they are making 500% profit off your blood, sweat, and tears then I would definately go after some of some of that cheese. If they have no cheese to give, you might as well start looking for another job since this project probably won't finish on time and the company is sunk anyway.
However. if there is money to be made. First, I'd organize with the the key people on the development team. Then I would start the death march and work hard on the project. On death marches, people start quitting after the first few weeks because they can't handle it. Once the pack leans out a bit and there is no hope of finishing this project with replacement developers make your collective demands. This is called collective bargaining. Also, get any CASH you want UP FRONT. Don't take promises, take CASH UP FRONT or you will NEVER SEE IT.
Also, if the mandate is 7x12 then make sure everyone one the team works 7x12. If anyone is excused from working for any reason then make sure you take equal time off. Those with kids and families tend to get breaks like working from home and weekends off.
Remember that no matter how much they yell and scream, you are NOT a slave.
I guess this is what Greenspan was talking about when he said, "Employee productivity gains have been made."
After about 60 hours, in my experience, you start getting negative returns (the project actually starts regressing) because more bugs than good code is put in.
...For all of about five minutes. Both guys were fidgeting and sure they were feeling dozens of the critters crawling up their pantslegs. I pointed out the advantage of a skirt (company dress code)... clear scorpion visibility. The lead decided to go back to the hotel after all (where more security-camera footage would have doubtless revealed paranoid bedding-checking). We knocked the code out in a couple of hours the next morning, and drove home.
I was trying to convince a lead "programmer" of that one Friday at 11 pm... we were on an out-of-town project, and I suggested we knock off, get a night's sleep, and finish the project in the morning. Nope, he wanted to finish that night and drive home in the morning. So us programmers went back to work.
About fifteen minutes later, a scorpion turned up in his cubicle (this was the Oklahoma panhandle, and not an uncommon occurrence). After the other two programmers screamed like little girls and I disposed of it (did I mention I'm female? What I wouldn't have given for security-camera footage) we went back to work again.
Unfortunately, staging a Scorpion Incident would only work for the article-poster if the decision-making management is also working the same hours, is arachnophobic, and will fall for the same trick 28-42 times in a row...
Slashdot's token middle-aged housewife
All people involved in the overtime without pay should strike. All other people who agree with them from the company should also strike. If you are in a union you should already have talked to your union rep, they would organise everyone in the union to rally behind you. They would also negotiate an overtime pay rate for you with the employers.
These problems were all solved decades ago, but everyone has forgotten about how important these changes were and what it took to get them changed. It took many people who banded together through thick and thin, life and death, becoming unionised to help everyone together instead of everyone being picked on individually.
If we forget the past as we move towards the future we will have to learn the same lesson again and again, and it is not an easy lesson to teach those in power.
Saying your OS is the best because more people use it is like saying MacDonalds make the best food
I would leave this position. I would make my reasons clear, and I would leave in such a way that a reaonable person would consider hiring me again (as opposed to burning bridges).
I think we have our selves to blame when we can't afford to do this, and I've been guilty of it in the past, which is why I changed my habits. You see, I generally can afford to quit a job, and I've done it before. By having saved for more than just those days when I stop working for good I was able to quit. By being sucked in to the consumer machine we spend and spend without thought to consequences. While many of us save for retirement and a rainy day, not to many save six months to a year of living expenses so that we can be in control of our work day.
This company believes they have you. For most of the poeple there they probably do. You can't afford to quit long enough to find a new job, so they will do to you what they can. If you can't afford to leave the job, at least use it as a reminder next time your looking at that new CD or adding 20 new cable channels you will never watch, or upgrading that computer you bought last year. There's a deeper price to pay than the money. That money is your freedom. Freedom from control.
When you shop, when you buy things, when you use the credit card, think about it. Think about what you could do if you could afford to take a year off to find the perfect job. Think about what you could do if you could take a year off to get a consulting business off the ground. Think about what you could do if you have the choice to do it. Money gives you that choice. When I'm working my goals are to get one year salary saved, seperate from retirement and savings for other things like a new car or home, and it's worked. When a previous company was going the wrong direction I was able to simply walk in to my managers office and hand him a polite letter saying that I was leaving for personal reasons and planned to take some time off.
Darthtuttle
Thought Architect
and claim that your religious beliefs require sundays off. They cant fire you, or they'll be in for a nasty lawsuit.
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
Quit if you must, but there are several people standing in line to replace you. Now isn't the time to be whining about getting your fair share. I vote you suck it up.
Try being a contractor its sucks and the overtime is small compensation. As a full-timer you get benefits and that is considerable, then vacation, and sick leave. As a contractor most agencys don't have any of the above or they are so skimpy they are useless. Then they can cut your pay at any time and lately it happens a lot. Sure you can bitch, they just tell you to quit and hire someone else cheaper. Then they can end the contract with no notice. It appears to be a growing trend hiring contractors. Soon as company hicups they can dump people at a moments notice to cut costs. Also no benefit or unemployment costs to the company, the contracting firm gets hit with that. I would gladly give up the overtime I get paid for the benefits and (a bit more) security a full time position offers.
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.
As a contractor, I've always felt sorry for the salaried employees who worked tons of overtime while I was limited to 40 hours per week because companies did not want to pay my billing rate for more than 40 hours per week. At my billing rate I made roughly twice what the regular employees made.
The other thing though is I produced more during my 40 hours per week than the poor boobs who worked 60 hours per week. I didn't do more work, but I did very little rework....fixing bugs is all rework and it's productivity = zero.
If you go from a 40 hour work week to a 60 hour work week, more work is produced for 3 weeks. The fourth week results in the same amount of work accomplished as the 40 work week. After that less work is performed in 60 hours than used to be done in 40 hours.
I know that everyone thinks they are doing all kinds of work and they are. But most of the work they do is fixing mistakes they made due to fatigue and has zero productivity.
------------------------------------
knout (n) - A leather scourge used for flogging
stop, seriously, right now.
Open up your phone book and lookup the department of labor in your state.
You need to talk with someone there.
Just because you are a salaried employee, does not make you a slave.
in some states, there is the 'Exempt' employee. This type of employee is usually upper management who's job is to steer the company by use of their discretion.
I happen to know that the state of CT has a checklist to go through to identify whether or not one's job function places them as exempt.
if your job is simply to code up a storm and report to a project leader or other some such management, you're probably not exempt.
IANAL, talk to your state's dept of labor to find out what your options are. If you are not exempt, you may be able to apply stress anonymously and make your employers realize that they're way out of line thinking that they can force you or coerce you into working for nothing because of their own foolishness
As a practical matter, I don't think anyone can realistically expect to be fully compensated for the extra hours. It's part of the job.
But this is summertime when people like to spend time outdoors, with their kids, etc. This much OT eliminates all of that - no weekend hikes with the kids, no evening Little League games, etc. Giving them an extra two weeks vacation gives them a chance to make it up to their family and decompress....
More importantly, announcing this upfront gives people something to focus on and help them get past the initial hurdle. I know that I can keep focused for 12x7 for two or three weeks, but beyond that point I start to fade fast. But that's because it's psychologically oppressive to feel that things will be like this forever. With that scheduled time off, I'll know that every day brings me closer to a realistic break (not something months away) and it will actually be motivational.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
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?
If you don't like it then quit your job.
Nobody is forcing you to work there. Employees should have no rights that are not explicitly stated in their contract =/
I remember reading somewhere that long hours such as 12/7 can really be determinental to a project not just because of burnout, but because employess tend to merge their home and work lives when they spent too much time at work. For example, if you don't see your wife/significant other/family, I would imagine you would probably be taking some work time to call them. If you have errands or business to tend to, you'll probably be making the phone calls from work, or surfing the web to shop for that gift for the birthday party you won't be able to attend.
Mandating the number of hours worked for a salaried employeee makes no sense. If they do not want to compensate you, then you need a results based system that shows the tasks to be completed and project milestones. If it takes someone 35 hours a week to hit the deadline, then let them work 35 hours a week. If it takes more, then they need to work more. In my opinion, being a salaried employee goes both ways; it shouldn't always mean 40+ hours a week are worked.
I've done all kinds of jobs, and anyone who whines about having to put in overtime, even extreme overtime, as a programmer, needs a swift kick in their lardy ass. Having to sit in a chair in an air conditioned environment and do what you love is *heaven* compered to putting in overtime digging a ditch, working in a factory, washing dishes, or selling life insurance. Be very grateful for what you have, then go whine somewhere else.
Next story -- Hollywood actors go on strike because craft services forgot the caviar for the bagels and cream cheese... waaaah!
Pushing a team over 40 hours a week seldom produces real gains.
We need to go back to the system of promoting people who actually know how to do it to management.
Most IT managers I have worked with have never actually built anything.
For a company to agree to a ridiculous deadline because the client delayed the startup date, shows that the company is desperate for projects and the management is easily bullied by clients. Sometimes you have to make certain compromises, but you don't last long in this business if your clients can bully you like that.
If a client insisted to IBM or EDS that they must have the project finished by the same fixed date after the client delayed it, they (the client) would get the contract shoved up their ass.
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There is inferior bacteria on the interior of your posterior.
Now, this situation has already taken place, so get everyone who will work 12/7 on this project and together demand that until the project is completed to the customer's satisfaction, all of your salaries will be increased to 175% of what they are normally. (By increasing the day from 8 hours to 12, the salary must go up to 150%, and for adding Saturday and Sunday, the salary should go up a little more.) Tell management that by working the additional hours, you are creating value for the company and are therefore going to be compensated for the extra work involved. Tell them that reduced morale and motivation will only ruin the company and therefore the pay must be increased to compensate. This is how you do business. If they don't like it, tough shit. They are the ones who fscked up, not you. If they accept your proposal, you'll make more money.
If they deny your proposal, then they are being unreasonable managers and you should teach your fscking company a lesson. Pretend to accept the situation as it is, but you and all your coworkers sabotage the project to such an extent that the company loses the customer and bring the entire company down. Pretend it was not deliberate and was simply a result of mismanagement. They obviously don't appreciate you and the value you are creating for them, so fuck 'em.
find a coworker who is suicidal (that shouldn't
take too long). give him an armalite rifle for
his birthday. go to the gym with him and convince
him that steriods are they key to happiness. get
a magnetron tube, a parabolic antenna and a voice
modulator, and sit outside his apartment at night
beaming into his brain stuff like "your boss is
the antichrist, and we're depending on you to
stop him".
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
If your company is desperate enough to screw itself with a work schedule they know won't work, then you need to bail. And don't wait til the work schedule eats you up, just bail.
Weare all familiar with how customers screw us during the life of a project. They wait til it is too late to sign the statement of work, push our net 30 to net 45 or worse, come up at the last second with mods we never agreed with and are NOT in the contract, etc. All these are normal. The problem is when your company lets the customers screw them even before the contract is signed. Just because they are your biggest client it is no excuse to risk losing money on the contract just to keep them happy. The customer knows exactly what they are doing, and if you let them do it now they will do it again and again.
Back at my previous job we had a lot of business with about 5 divisions of a huge american conglomerate. My programmers used to hate working on these projects because the internal clients sucked. I started keeping track of all these separate customers (I was managing the programming team but was not project manager, so I did not have day-to-day contact with all the clients) and noticed a disturbing trend: except for a wild variation in the mood of the customer, all of them tried to screw us with the same excuses and delays! I started digging around and found out ALL employees that have responsibility over software projects are trained by that company in how to intimidate small shops into this kind of behavior!
Don't be misled by all the BS talk about the economy going to the crapper. There are tons of jobs out there! It took me over a month to find a good consultant to offload some of my excess work because there are not enough good programmers out on the street.
Pedro
----
The Insomniac Coder
I was in the same situation working for a dying dot-com a year ago... Management "must not dissapoint the client" so command the geeks to work 12/7 (whilst they spend their weekends on the golf course).
This dragged out for quite a few months...the workload combined with dodgy office furniture gave me a full-on case of RSI (repetitive strain in arms). Since I was a foreign worker no compensation, and it took me 6 months of physio and gym before I could type again...
So yeah, your health is waaaay more important than any single project or job...
First, send your resume out as far and wide as possible. Then, start showing up at work late once a week in a white shirt, suit trousers and wing tips, so it looks like you came from an early job interview. (Have the suit jacket hanging in the back seat of your car, with a tie strewn across the back seat for effect.) Have some friends call you at work through the switchboard four or five times a week, using business-like manners, and have them be evasive if the receptionist asks questions, so it leaves the impression you're being headhunted. Hopefully, people will take notice and start to suspect things.
Then discretely go to your boss, or whoever has the authority to make the decision, and tell them you want paid for the time you're going to put in, period. You'll never have greater leverage than you do right now, at the beginning of the project. Don't be greedy, just try to get paid straight time for the hours you'll be working. It might be worth it to you to settle for a little less. Assure them that no one else will know about the arrangement.
Tell them that if they don't accept, you'll start looking for another job, and from the number of headhunter calls you get a week, you don't think you'll have a problem finding one. Tell them you understand completely if they can't accomodate you, and you'll have no hard feelings. If get a song and dance about going the extra mile for the team, tell them you're willing to, but not six months of 80+ hour weeks without extra compensation. That's basically demanding that you do the work of two employees for the pay of one, all because of someone's poor management decisions.
Act as cool as possible, like you could care less what they decide. Will they fire you on the spot? Mabye, but not likely if you're a top developer with a proven track record. If they give in to your demands, at least you're getting paid for the death march you're about to embark upon. If they don't, your choices are clear. What I would do would be to put my job search into hyperdrive, and jump on the first opportunity to get out. (True to my word.) I might even take something crappy at a lower pay, just on principle.
If you don't quit, then shut up and take it, just like you deserve to.
I really don't see a need of burning out everyone and wasting people's lives like this to "try and make a living". Is this mentality of working 12/7 or 12+ hour days just a mentality of corporate "North America"?
It would seem to me that several European countries have imposed maximum work hours (Germany is 40 hours I believe) which are strictly imposed by the gov't. Any company in defiance is fined and the employees compensated.
Who are in turn like children, wanting everything right now. The trick is just giving them what they need.
When you told them it'd take six weeks, you didn't actually mean six weeks, did you?
Still, I'd be pissed if my employer told me I'd be working 12 hours a day. That could equal almost THREE HOURS of productive work per day!
Even 4-6 weeks of working people 12/7 is going to burn people out and cause productivity to fall to the point where the job won't get done on time, no matter how hard management cracks the whip.
Good managers understand this, most managers don't. Any company that employs these practices on a regular basis will end up with a high employee turnover rate, pissed customers, and a bad reputation that will make it difficult for them to recruit talented people. In other words, they're shooting themselves in the foot (or head).
How many people here have worked on significant software development projects that DIDN'T have something go wrong along the way. A common way to handle such problems without slipping the schedule is through overtime.
What is going to happen to this project when 3 weeks in, a problem happens that would otherwise require overtime? If the developers are already working at the max (or beyond it, as this case seems to say), then the managers have lost the flexibility to deal with those problems.
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.
Well, you'll probably get to keep your job. Probably. Why don't you talk to your boss and ask for 1) more money or 2) a contract. Don't make it an ultimatum or anything. Just ask.
Then, when you get your answer. Then you can complain, quit, or be happy. But at least ask first. No one's ever been fired for asking, have they?
My suggestion would be to get with your Project Lead and Technical Lead, and ask them to put together a brief comparison of a) work under "normal" conditions and b) work under "extreme" conditions, and put it in terms of money.
Here's an example. Your PM estimates that the project will take ~5000 workhours to complete. Under normal circumstances (no overtime compensation, healthcare costs held constant, normal quality processes enforced, et al.) s/he estimates the job would cost $X.
Then, s/he factors in a few things, and re-calculates costs under the extreme circumstances: overtime savings (how much did the company SAVE by not paying OT, healthcare cost increase (stressed people stay sicker = stay out longer), cost of quality degradation (more bugs = more time/money to fix in future). So your PM figures out that the job under the extreme conditions actually costs $X + Y.
Now the PM/Tech Lead take this set of numbers to the person who agreed to the deal in the first place AS WELL AS the Finance people, and asks them the reason the company lost $Y in potential revenues...just a thought.
- Jack
A former employer pulled a similar stunt on a friend in a different department (5+ hours per week unpaid overtime). He quietly logged his hours on a daily basis with a brief description of what he did. After two years of this he quit (better job) and filed a law suit againt them. IIRC he just had to go to the state labor board and they got him his back pay and fined the company.
IMO I'd do the same. Mention once that you don't agree with unpaid overtime and log your work activities. BTW, judges/lawyers love to see hand written logs. Also check with your state's labor relations board. I wouldn't do anything big until you start work for someone else.
On a side note: where does it stop? Is the next step to start working programers (et al) like MD residents (70 - 80 hours per week, sometimes 36 hours straight). How many hours over 40 per week is too much?
Good Luck.
"And a voice was screaming: 'Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?'" - HST
Call a union certification election. This is from the federal agency, the National Labor Relations Board (they can't retaliate). I don't think you can be fired for calling this.
IANAL, but you might want to find a labor law specialist. A few hundred to a lawyer now is likely to save thousands later.
The other possibility is to jump to one of the contractors.
Another possibility is to exercise your vacation or sick days (this is where the lawyer comes in - he can read the fine print in your employee handbook).
You have no promise that you won't be let go AFTER working the extra long hours.
the spectre of communism - well, maybe not, but this is appaling.
The main thing that upsets me about this is that managment can ask you to do these insane hours with a straight face. This may be legal but it is undeniably immoral. If someone pulled this shit on me i would first ask what the compensation would be, then if there is none i would merely ask managment "do you believe that is reasonable?", if they answer yes, or bs the answer, you need to start looking for a new job. Slavery was abolished in this country over a century ago and work without pay or compensation is definitely slavery. One might try to reason that it is not because you have the ability to quit but that's bull and they know it. If you quit you have to worry about the consequences of that (can i make rent?, etc.) i.e. - they have your ass in a sling.
In your heart and mind you know this is disgusting, don't allow yourself to be taken advantage of!
My religion does not allow me to work on Sundays. It isn't extreemly strict, as the preacher say, illness doesn't wait, so if I need an emergency room I don't want the doctors to wait until monday to do surgery. So we cannot tell doctors to not work sundays. And there are many other reasons that you may have to work sundays. However if your job isn't critical to life in some way (you know if your job is really critical to life) and you have to work a lot of sundays, then there is a problem. Doctors are encouraged to find some other doctor who doesn't care about working sundays and switch, but that isn't normally possiable.
More improtantly, about half the people in the US belong activly to a religion that prohibits working on a Holly day. (normaly sunday, but some saterday, and I think Muslims have a different day) You should have no problem telling your boss that your religious health is more important than anything on earth. (in most religions anyway).
p.s. check your local unemplyment laws. In Minnesota the law allows you to get unemployment if quit for a reason that would cause a normal person to quit, and a change in working conditions is one example givin. You should seriously check this option out. Unfortunatly it is a tight market, I've been looking for a programing job for almost a year, which is longer than unemployment lasts. Consider it, but I don't know your situation, or your local laws.
But in the words of Mary Boppins(?) solve the problem the American way... by doing a reaaly half-assed job.
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy
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...
Forget coffee and breakfast in the morning - if I were the manager I would treat everyone to a nice dinner - with spouses if available - every single night. Either go out or get it delivered - pizza, corporate chain food (Chili's, Bennigan's, that type), whatever they want.
This won't totally compensate for the long hours, but the staff won't feel ignored or forgotten. A good boss would also try to make other compensatory arrangements for employees, e.g., arranging cars to be washed, or spending his weekend moving their lawns, or whatever. Small gestures can go a long way... and no gestures at all will not be soon forgotten.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
I pointed out the advantage of a skirt (company dress code)... clear scorpion visibility.
So, did they start wearing skirts? I'm ok with the idea, but I'd probably call it a kilt.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
E-Q-U-I-T-Y
I'd take the stance that, if the work is that important to my employer, then that employer should be willing to give me some (more?) equity in the company itself. *That's* your win-win; if the company does well out of all this, then they should be willing to share some of this with me *after* it's all over.
It sounds like you're not going to get overtime; maybe your company has bet its future to some extent on this piece of work, and paying employees extra when there's no guarantee of a successful outcome probably isn't going to happen.
Someone higher up in your company has stuck his neck on the line, saying "we can do this" when presumably the workers have said "no we can't". You can bet that, if you pull this off, that "we can do this guy" will become a golden child, and he'll be getting a bonus or equity or some other tangible form of compensation. However, if you don't pull this off, that guy will be gone.
You need to align yourself with this guy's win/lose approach; if you win, you should both win by virtue of sharing in some tangible loot-like compensation, and if you lose, you get nothing. It sounds like you're already getting the "nothing" courtesy of your employer's "work-for-free" scheme, so put it to them in this light.
"If I do this, then I want something, but only if we all succeed" - that's your approach in a nutshell
Another pair of bills, H.R. 1119 and S. 317, would allow employers to give employees one hour of comp time in exchange for one hour of overtime, thus avoiding overtime pay completely. When you take the comp time is up to the employer and he has up to a year to give it. You leave the company before taking it, you lose it.
Also see: "Bush Proposal Could End Overtime Pay for Millions of Workers."
"And a voice was screaming: 'Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?'" - HST
Check what out? You didn't post a link.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
In the past employers have asked me to choose between ludicrous overtime and my family/life.
I wonder what those companies are up to now...
Presumably still spiralling down the financial abyss that forced such desperate measure to begin with.
Q.
Insert Signature Here
So, did they start wearing skirts?
Naw. And, in retrospect, it was a bad idea to point out *any* benefits, considering that I really wasn't all that fond of wearing 'em (or, more accurately, the pantyhose associated therewith). Though, being that the company was a dealership (MAI/Basic Four, just to give you an idea of the timeframe I'm talking about) and we had to go to client sites all the time, it was understandable, I guess. Not too many of the clients had scorpions running loose in the office areas, though.
Slashdot's token middle-aged housewife
Get over it and be thankful that you have a job right now. I know 100s of people that would love to be in your situation right now.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
Interestingly enough, we discussed something very similar at usenix this last week. First, I want to agree with those few people here who have pointed out that lawsuits are severely overrated. As stated, when you resort to them, only the lawyers benefit. As an additional negative, once you've done it once you become a liability to employ. Not a good position to be in. My suggestion to you would be to take your managers part, to some extent. Get started on the project and start working the time. Make it plain that you are dedicated to meeting the clients needs. Now that your manager understands you aren't trying to butt heads with him, and you've got some time on the project under you, start bringing small pieces of the problem to him. "We've been doing this time schedule for a week now, and I've been noticing a gradual decline in code quality" Have examples. Not made up ones, obviously. Morale is also a valid point to bring up (and obviously there are already problems here.) But instead of making it an argument, make it supportive. Demonstrate how these problems are going to make it difficult to produce the desired end result and have alternative suggestions. Yes it's politics, and yes it sucks, but it's reality.
"No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare."
--James Madison
in retrospect, it was a bad idea to point out *any* benefits, considering that I really wasn't all that fond of wearing 'em (or, more accurately, the pantyhose associated therewith).
Agreed. Smooth female legs = very nice, nylon = nasty.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
You have two options:
1) Salaried workers can get bonuses. That makes up for the fact that you are not hourly workers, but still require compensation for work above and beyond the call of duty. Get your management to agree to bonuses for all the salaried workers for the extra time they'll be putting in.
2) 6 weeks is plenty of time to find a job. It's not THAT tight of a labor market. There's still plenty of open positions out there for skilled tech workers. If the bonus thing doesn't fly, then spend the time job hunting and leave the work for management to finish since they agreed to the timeline...
+1 Insightful, -1 Troll. What can I say, I'm an Insightful Troll.
I agree; I've also worked in academic research, and there was very rarely any overtime worked. Definitely less than in any of my private industry jobs.
And if he's talking about college professors, those guys don't work that much either. They might work some odd hours, but the total amount isn't that much. Any serious overtime work they may do is generally for securing research grants, which earns them a lot of extra money. Academia is definitely not a sweatshop (except for grad students...)
Because I *am* willing to work past 5pm and to do 12-hr days to help the company succeed. As a result, they pay me a lot more than yours apparently pays you.
That doesn't make me better, it simply means that I'm getting paid more to do more -- effectively being paid well for overtime that I'm choosing to work.
"Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."
Quit! Let 'em hire some H1-B coolies to do the job on-the-cheap. They'll get what they pay for.
Best Buy can have you arrested
then it's they who should be working overtime.
That's all.
Management made a lousy decision because they knew they could lean on you to do what they wanted.
Guess what happens if you follow thorugh and do it this time?
The client comes back and demands it again. Or another client does. Or your employer starts offering expedited service, etc.
If you've really been working at a steady job for a whiel, you've accrued some unemployment compensation. Yes, the job market sucks. On the other hand, you do get your life back however this situation ends.
Get off my launchpad!
In your predicament, Time is fixed. That means you can adjust Quality and/or Features. Since this project is for a valued external client, Quality is very important. You cannot ship poor quality product to the customer and expect them stay a customer (unless you are Microsoft). That leaves Features. You will have to limit the scope of the project - at least for the first release to the customer at the agreed-upon time.
My recommendation is to prioritize the requirements (features) of the product. This usually requires customer input, and, obviously, everything cannot be the highest priority. Next, estimate the time required to implement each feature (in person-hours, not real-time). Then pick a selection of features that can be implemented in the time allotted that produces a reasonably functional product. This requires some careful juggling, selecting enough of the higher priority features that make a coherent first release by the deadline.
Calculate the hours worked at 8 hours/day, 5 days/week per person, but expect to work at least 10 hours per day, perhaps upto 6 days per week. With meetings, eating, bathroom breaks, and unexpected delays taking the rest of the time. Do not fall into the trap of 12-16 hour days, 7 days per week. It can be done, but most people can only keep it up for 2-3 weeks before their productivity falls way off. When you are fatigued, it becomes more difficult to focus and think clearly. Mistakes happen; more bugs are written; and quality suffers.
At the end of your six weeks, you should have a product that is good enough for the client to play with, try on real world problems, find bugs, and request enhancements. As long as the missing features are well delineated and don't prevent any work from being done, the customer will be glad to have something experiment with. The next release of the product (a few weeks later) should roll in addition features and bug fixes.
Convince management to bring in food and fun to provide reasonable breaks from the stress of the crunch. Watching the Simpson's projected on the screen in the conference room while eating Chinese take-away provides a great 45 minute respite from the grindstone. And the team feels less exploited (for 2 hours at least).
I know the following to be near certainties:
If you revolt, you will likely be terminated - or worse, exploited to the max first, and then terminated. In your predicament, the fault lays squarely with the project manager and/or the sales guy that committed to an unreasonable schedule. Applying the whip to the development team does not fix this problem. So if anyone should fear for his job, it should not be you (unless you are the project manager...). If this kind of screw-up happens repeatedly, it does not go unnoticed by upper management. If upper management does believe in a chain-gang worker philosophy, your job is toast no matter what you do, because it will be outsourced to India or the Philippines next year.
Yeah I know , some people will whistle and yell "commie!", but you know there is a good reason I will never want to work outside E.U. First they can't AT ALL make you work more than 10 days in a row, and they can't AT ALL make you work more than 11 hours including 1h pause. And even if you do, you can't work again until 11 or 13 hours passed with full rest. And that is for salaried/normal worker. Those law, in the firm where I code, are very well respected. If they "break" a bit them, they offer big compensation to worker (lot of money, travel for 2 persons etc...).
The result:well they never bow to the will of the client, and the main client beeing aware of limited resource (worker) never try to push down our throat short time limit. On the contrary we pushed sonme of his "pet" project for future release because no time was available. I can't say this is a generality in the industry but if firm respect law , this should be.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Yeah, your "geek union" is a pretty unrealistic concept, unfortunately. First of all, the very idea that it would hold together on an international basis is absurd. There are simply too many countries with a large difference in cost of living/quality of life from what's found in the U.S. or Canada. Some programmer in Romania is going to be quite well off if he accepts a $10 or $12 an hour coding job from a United States owned company. He's not going to play along with a "geek union" demanding he refuse to work until they pay him much more than that. He'd rather take your job away and proudly be "non union".
Lately, I've seen some pretty poor results from labor oursourced to India and the like, though. I think in the long run, companies doing these things to cut costs are going to find they shot themselves in the foot. Customer satisfaction is going down the toilet....
It may not happen immediately (and I feel it will get still worse before it gets better), but eventually, good quality people from the U.S. will be in demand again for tech. jobs. All this outsourcing is a trend they'll try for a while and then realize was a long-term failure.
Or at least that's the way it should be and the way it is in most of the western world. But in Soviet Russia - er, sorry I mean corporatist America - the system screw you.
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
Then theres only 1, maybe 2 things to do:
1 (optional) Figure out what you want out of this sort of work schedule and make a proposal. It usually comes down to more cash or more time. Come up with whatever compensation or benefit you think is worth it and tell your boss this is what it takes for you to stay.
2. (if 1 skipped or didn't work out) Quit and encourage as many of your coworkers as possible to do the same. Get a job... go flip burgers or stock shelves if thats what it takes to get by, but find another job and stop workin for these folks and make sure they know why in very clear terms. (no seriously, clear terms, not vulgar terms).
3. Live a more anjoyable life.
When you accept a salaried job in I.T., you generally do so under the assumption that you'll be working 40 hour weeks, on average. If more is asked of you, fine, but you expect your boss will be fair about it and give you comp. time, a few extra perks, or at least a bigger raise the next year in return.
There are other professions out there such as doctors or lawyers, where it's generally understood that these "rules" don't apply. It's the nature of the career. (You're not reporting daily to a workspace in someone's company, to sit in one spot all the time and work on whatever you're ordered to do.) As an attorney or a doctor, you're directly involved in decisions that can drastically change the course of a client's life. It's vastly different from I.T. - where mistakes or "slacking off" probably just means a deadline for a project doesn't get met, a server crashes more than it should, or some code is more buggy than average.
Last I checked, doctors and lawyers were earning considerably more than most I.T. workers, too. Ask yourself if you'd still put in those same number of billable hours if your take-home pay maxed out at, say, $35,000 or $40,000 a year.
My Advice to your colleage:
You now have them over a barrel. It seems like management only went in to the contract knowing the capabilities of thier workers. Management went in knowing/hoping/thinking/praying it could be done.
Talk to all your co-workers and get them to form a Union. If the work orders and going out for 12x7 operations, it seems like they'll be scared shitless just hearing the rumours. Even if you can't change the deadline, you might at least be rewarded for it. God knows that the parasites in management will be awarding themselves bonuses for a job well done.
If nothing else, it lets you stand up and call your management all the names they rightfully deserve.
Management have (mostly) PA, legal departments, etc when issuing work orders, creating contracts. Why shouldn't the workers also?
Q:I was listening to a CD in Grip and it sounded horrible! What's up? A:Perhaps you are listening to country music
If you don't like what you're being paid or your work condition, you *should* quit and then go into contracting. You'd make on average twice as much per hour and you get paid for every hour you're there. There are some downsides, however.
- Lower/no bennies
- When you're not working, you're not paid - no vacation - no nothing.
All these things balance out. I've had to work long hours - it's just part of the game.
Deal with it.
Polymorphism -- It's what you make of it.
I had an employer back in Texas who was advised by their legal department about this. The issue was folks in the phone support center. They were on salary, but the company mandated work schedules and shift. There was some OSHA rule that stated if someone was on a mandated schedule (management told them when they needed to start the day, and stop it), they had to be on hourly rate.. and thus were eligible for overtime.
The company switched them all to hourly wage.
I am not a lawyer. Does this rule still apply?
It's very simple. It's a layoff.
They wouldn't do this just to complete a project, it isn't going to speed it up. They know that. It's just a brutal way of deciding who stays.
The chumps. Quit.
by soft media do you mean toilet paper?
There is no god
- Physiology: increased stress = decreased function of your immune system. Insufficient sleep = increased stress.
- Human factors: if you're on a team, you don't want to appear to be doing less work than the others.
- and the numbers: 168 hours in a week. 84 for work, 56 for healthy sleep...28 for everything else
Assume all developers find a way to work 12/7: they cancel all vacations, classes, conferences, workshops, ceremonies, weddings and funerals; they telnet into religous services (and never mind all the caselaw protecting rights of religious expression when, for example, it includes having a day of rest); they suspend all taking care of children or parents (nevermind the family medical leave act)...So what happens the first time one developer gets exposed to a cold or the flu? Under regular 9/5 circumstances you might just say "Look, I'm coming down with something. I'll head out early today to sleep it off": you make up the time later, and everyone appreciates that you didn't expose them to the bug. Instead, under the 12/7 situation you're going to try to tough it out. You won't get the extra sleep you need, so the illness just gets worse. Because everyone else is sleep deprived, more people are likely to catch the cold from you. Because there is no room for errors / illness / humanity in the schedule, anyone who falls behind will be aware of how they're holding everything up. This causes stress. Stress causes illnesses to last a lot longer. Interesting negative feedback loops ensue.
And this is assuming everyone is gung-ho for the 12/7 plan. What happens when one developer gets creeped out over having to skip a funeral and decides the only choice is to quit? There won't be time to train a replacement: those 84 hours'll have to be absorbed by everyone else.
And that's just the people: that 12/7 schedule doesn't have wiggle room for all the standard crashes, viruses, connectivity failures, power outages, traffic jams, major news events, and other standard slowdowns in modern office life. Someone in management there needs to buy a spine and give the client an honest timeline.
You need to do these things, since it seems there isn't anything you can do but quit.
Since I assume you don't have enough money to coast, you'll need to start saving. You'll need to work this shitty project, and work it hard. Squeeze every last penny. Spend nothing. Get used to it (saving your money), you'll be doing this for the next 6 months. Get together enough money that at your current expenditure level, you can last another 6. Live like a college student if that's what it takes. $1,000 a month is actually enough to run a family, even today. Be prepared to jettison luxuries if you have to (extra car, movies, eating out, cable TV, ADSL, cell phone, etc).
Do the best damn job you possibly can on the project. Once the project is over, look for jobs. Test out the market. Get a feel for how bad it really is. If IT is as bad as it is for jobs (it really isn't) look for some other work (security jobs are boring but are ALWAYS hiring just about anyone trustworthy enough not to steal the bosses' twinkies). Once you see a decent set of jobs that you're sure you'd be hired for, you can either try to get hired (always nice, but leaves you with unspent ammo [your earlier hard effort]) or hope (risky).
So. Next step. Now you've got the money saved up, you go up to the boss and tell him point blank you will never work those hours again without overtime pay, or you'll quit. If he says you have to quit, be happy -- he was never willing to be reasonable and this situation would come up again and again.
Unless you are truly a useless lump, you'll find something, perhaps even at a reduced salary, elsewhere. You have 6 months to do so, so you aren't rushed. If you can't find anything after 4 months, time to set up shop and get your own customers. Why not phone all the past clients of your old company? I'm sure they're all pissed off and are looking for new people to do their dirty work.
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
It's not just a good idea, it's the law.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
The next thing to remember is to put next things next.
You know, I read this, and it just doesn't sounds like enough information to really give the original question-asker an answer. My answer would range from "quit now" to "don't even think about quitting" depending on the mitigating circumstances.
I was in a situation where people were asked to work 12/7 for several weeks--I was working for a telecomm when the CWA went on strike, and all managers had to not only work 12/7, some had to do it from 7PM to 7AM and they were working a job they weren't trained for. I think they ended up getting a small additional bonus...but it was less than minimum wage for the additional hours worked. On the other hand, the company had to continue to provide service...without 70% of their workforce. What else could they do?
So, the questions I have for the poster are:
A)Is this a habitual thing for this company to do? Have they put you in similar situations before? Do you normally work a nice 40-45 hour weekday, with plenty of time spent browsing slashdot and the like? Do you believe they're likely to repeat this death march? (Previous posters have asserted that they will certainly, but that's not always the case).
B)What does this really mean for the company? Are you talking a small firm kept alive by one or two main customers? If the management took a hike on the deadline...would jobs or the solvency of the company be at risk? If so...recognize that your short-term welfare is that of the company...
C)What is the work environment like? Are your immediate managers going to bat to make sure you get food provided, your plate cleared of superfluous work? Are you being asked to not only work those hours, but forego other important events? (For instance, could you still leave for a kid's special event and come in later that night? Could you work partly from home? Is the dress code loosened, particularly for those hours you wouldn't normally be working?
D) Historically, what experience have you had working for the company? Have they provided for you in other ways? Training, conferences, good benefits, etc?
E) Is there an external factor influencing the deadline, or is it something purely political on the part of the two companies? For instance, does the project need to be done by a specific date in compliance with a regulation or an event?
I think some of these questions really influence what should be done...
Even in your country you probably have a legal maximum working hour, and if you need help to do the argument, join the union.
The simple approach is this.
Your employment contract states that you are contracted to work a fixed amount of hours per week (say, 40). Often - mine does - it also says that you are to work some degree overtime when necessary. However, this doesn't extend to the sort of overtime that your organisation is demanding. You are within your rights to state that you can't work 12/7 - and you should try to negotiate and state that you are prepared to work some amount, say 50 hours a week, that is "reasonable" amount of overtime. The organisation cannot dismiss you otherwise it is wrongful termination. You can simply refuse to work to their excessive demands.
Winfax Pro was outsourced 2 major versions ago. Do a strings on it.
It should be left up to each worker whether or not to participate. For these workers, the strike might mean that they lose the job permanently. This might be OK with some workers, but not others.
The whole idea of the union is that if the whole union strikes, an employer can't fire the strikers cause there won't be anyone to do the work. In a sufficiently widespread strike, every individual is much better off breaking the strike; the point of the union is that individuals aren't allowed to break the strike if it is decided that it's in the general interest of the union. This means you sign away some rights when you join a union, like the right not to strike when it'd be to your disadvantage. So if you want to be able to choose whether or not to strike, then don't join a union, and find out what kind of power you have when you have only your own work to bargain with.
What do you think the ratio is between managers and programmers on slashdot posting?
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
What good is your extra money if you never have TIME to do anything with it?
...don't agree to be a slave
"Never"? I told you about what I was doing now, not what I was going to be doing for the rest of my life.
Go ahead, stand up for those rights, and leave work every day at five o'clock. I'm working on being able to leave work, period.
What a politically "progressive" society we have, where someone with my life is encouraged to consider himself a victim of oppression.
"Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."
If a group meeting occurs with higher ups: Ask the following of the department presenters attempting to clarify... 1. Has HR and Legal approved of the project schedule and related compensation plan? 2. IF in CA - Are they aware of the Labor Code Sections 510 onward? 3. IF in CA - Are they aware of the absolute requirement that Computer Professionals must be paid a minimum of 41.00/hr and cannot be trainees/interns and that overtime is simply straight pay? 4. Are they planning to institute a time-tracking system for purposes of compensation? (If there isn't one already.) Write down the time and date of such meetings, politely push for non-vaque answers for 1-3. This becomes evidence that you attempted to inform the higher ups as well as legal and HR that a problem may exist. If a 1-1 situation occurs... 1. Don't argue or complain. 2. Repeat 1-3 above. 3. Work if told too. 4. But most importantly...write down every single day you work overtime...every hour...even the minutes. Note categorically what work was done during each overtime period. Number 4 is important because if a legal confrontation occurs either between attorneys, or in court...the company will have to respond to your itemized claim under the Fair Labor Standards Act. Failure to respond to your itemized claim with tracking system generated data of work hours if a guaranteed win for you. Of course, the company may create false data that lowers your overtime...or deny it happened at all. So it certainly helps to have a few others on your team talking to your attorney, and testifying in court providing the same claim. This makes gives a denial a lot less weight. Be prepared though to be on a RIF hit list. Too many companies out there, especially a lot of dot coms, simply never matured and tend to be lead by non-leaders or bullies. They aren't worth working for anyway. From experience, I find that things of this nature often happen because some dipshit of a manager doesn't realized that their authority ends where compensation and contractual policy begins - they forget or don't realize that those areas are strictly the realm of HR and Legal. Usually, when the heat leaks from pissed off employees, Legal gets wind of it, calls the manager and his boss into a meeting upstairs - and rips the manager a new butthole. If such a correction doesn't take place, then the policy originated from the top - either hold your ground or leave and sue. =8-)
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
If you really are getting stressed then make a claim on you health insruance for depression.
Report that work stress is causing you health problems and the conditions are making it unsafe to work.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
I believe that indentured servitude was made illegal more than a century ago, and now we have this wonderful thing in the US called "at-will employee". The vast majority of us salaried employees are just that.
:
For those of you who don't know, if you do not have a specific contract, your a probably at-will. This means that you are free to leave at any time you like, just as your employer, with some restriction, is permitted to terminate your employment. This is wonderful when faced with an environment that becomes unsuitable or hostile, an employee is free to leave as is his wont.
When face with such a situtationas described, you have two choices
1. Work the requested time and try and gain some concession from your employer (additional vacation, bonus, free pot, 'ludes).
2. Tell them to stick it and walk out the front door.
If the economy is that bad, perhaps staying is your best option. Remember, if the deal is that important to the company, there is most assuredly some decent revenue riding on it. With out revenue, you can't have profit, and without profits, or at least solid or increasing revenue, your stock won't go up, your company woan't do well, and later on, you are out of a job any way.
So stop whining and be a man and make a decision.
When submitting said video, don't forget the obligatory "person being hit in the nuts" shot..otherwise you have no chance
- Emails Bounce
- Domain names don't resolve
- Bandwith is reduced due to AOL iso image transfers
- Spam Filters stop working
- Code isn't optimised n^n iterations:)
Anyway I hope everyone gets the drift. Lets stop being used like doormats and start cracking down on companies that abuse there work force.Calcualate what you think is owed, based on 1.5x OT for hrs >40. Say nothing. Calculate interest at 18%/yr as the wages accrue. Your option to do something useful won't materialize until the economy picks up. When that happens and the disgruntled workers start to pack up and ship off, you are looking for a salary that amortizes the back wages over a reasonable time, even though you will say nothing about this to ANY employer.
If properly executed, you not only get paid for the time, your future salary includes payment for the next project when this stunt is pulled.
It is important to avoid trying to solve this problem during the wrong side of the IT cycle. Patience is required.
I am a reasonably senior manager in IT. I have been around a bit and here are the facts.
A)
It is the resposibility of your manager to report to his manager, up the line to the CEO. The CEO works for the board. The board DO WHAT IS BEST FOR THE COMPANY SHAREHOLDERS. Not you. I'll come back to this point as its important.
B)
Any student of HR will understand that 12*7*6 is not tenable. Per day, assume 12 hours work, 1 hour break, 2*0.5=1 hour commuting, 8 hours sleep, 1 hour breakfast/wash/shave, 1 hour evening meal. Add it up. That is 23 hours. That leaves 7 hours a week for other things. Grocery store 1 hour, washing clothes 1 hour, etc. 12/7 working not only destroys your social life, it is MATHEMATICALLY intractable.
C)
Any student of psychology will know that in a given team of (say) 10, 2 will go the distance, 2 will do it under duress, 2 will do it but badly (see B, above), 2 will do a half-assed job and 2 will simply quit. Its a bell curve of human behaviour and RESPONSE UNDER PRESSURE. Thats the key. Some personalities (like mine) - Briggs-Meier ENTJ will simply quit. Google for Briggs-Meier, look at the behavioural motifs and then the responses of each type under stress. I predict you will lose 25% of your effectiveness over the duration of the project.
D)
I assume most people are familiar with the mythical man month so I wont go there other than to say hiring new contractors wont help.
OK. So what do we do. There has been good advice about not being the guy to put his head above the parapet. Especially in this market. So draft a letter, all sign it, and deliver ANONYMOUSLY to your management.
Make the points above. As a responsible manager, they SHOULD see impending doom and go straight back to the client and negotiate an extension such that critical cuntionality is delivered on-time and less critical thereafter. They can sweeten this with free support later. They HAVE to spread this load or the team will walk. There, you have turned this debate from a "they are trying to screw us - f*ck them" into a BUSINESS DECISION. Business is about weighing up risk. They need to clearly understand the risks. I can now refer to to point (A). The company's interests are clearly not served by doing this. What are the penalties if they fail? Can they risk failure if some of you guys take the ultimate sanction and walk. I refer you to point (C): other posters tell you to quit whiing and/or knuckle down. Yeah. Whatever. The truth is that certan personalities will QUIT whether it is logical to do so or not. Some personlaities UNDER PRESSURE will resort to self-destructive behaviours such as walking out with no job to go to and even sabotage. I have seen it happen.
Document EVERYTHING. If HR get involved (they will have to in this one I think), if people get fired, quit, sue (the whole gamut is possible - nay, probable here) you want to have some arrows to fire. Even if there is nothing to document - document the fact that there is nothing. Do it NOW.
If you win concessions, carrots, etc from management, get it up front and guaranteed IN WRITING from the guy who will ultimately write the cheque. Clue: that wont be your line manager. In these times, it's likely senior management/CFO. Your manager will piss and moan about you mistrusting him but the risks here are too great to not do it.
Regardless, get the company to formally request each of you in writing to do the work. Even if you as salaried employees are expected to do certain unpaid overtime, in a LEGAL situation the court will generally ask whether the request was REASONABLE. 12/5 or even 8/7 (sixtyish) hours might be reasonable but 84? for two months? in summer? Hmmm. A judge will have a long hard look at that.
And final
I wish at was Friday, but I dont want to wish my life away. So I wish it was last Friday.
If you have never worked on a project like that before and survived, then you are a wuss. It can be done and not THAT big of a deal.
They werent talking the rest of his career. its JUST a project.
Ya it sucks, but its not forever.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
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.
I recently had the privilege of working on a massively underscheduled project. On the order of putting in almost 3 months of overtime in a 6 month project. Once the project was almost wrapped up, and management was feeling good about things working properly; I complained a fair amount.
I complained to my manager, to the HR department and to my VP (nicely). I let them know exactly how much overtime I put in and why. I wanted some type of compensation.
Our VP raised the issue all the way up and got approval for some compensation. In the end, everyone in our office got an extra paycheck, myself included, and I got a couple of weeks extra vacation in lieu of my overtime. Not perfect, but it was recognition, in difficult times. We are now hiring people to assist me, and I haven't had to put in any overtime in months. Everyone has become extra careful in planning time. There are also no questions asked if I need to work from home, leave early, or take more days off here and there in lieu of the overtime I put in before (so long as current projects are not heavily impacted).
All in all it's worked out well.
1. Quit your job and move to a more enlightened company.
2. Go on strike if its not illegal in your country.
3. Live in a country that protects its employees. For example France or some other European country with laws to protect the rights of workers.
Sorry, but I do not feel sorry for those involved in working overtime. I have done it and countless others before done it and those in the future will continue to do it. Personally, I like the idea of companies setting target dates for contracters. I compare it to State construction deals on highways/buildings/etc. Construction companies accept a deal but know they must be done by a certain date or forced to pay penalties. Contracting deadlines are rarely achieved ontime, and this is an alternative to stop this nonsense.
Get back to work...
string.Empty();
You are free to quit at any time. Your employer is free to fire you at any time.
If at any time you feel that the relationship is not to your advantage, then if you can find something better, you should quit, or at least attempt to negotiate something better.
If you can't, then be grateful you have a job. If you find that difficult, then move back in with your parents.
Amazing magic tricks
QUIT! If you are legally in the salaried category there is nothing you can do, except tell them to bite the big one. If enough of you do it, they might get the message. Obviously the folks running this company are assuming you are all sheep and they can get away with this.
I can tell you one thing - i produced much more (as in results) working 8h/day than doing 10x6. In one specific situation, after about 2 months of doing an average 60h/week i was so incredibly tired that i produced less that i would be if i had worked only 20h/week (no kidding).
My pet theory is that a tired mind produces more bugs. Now, finding a bug and fixing takes a lot more time (like 10-1000 times more) than coding it right. The outcome is that the total time is longer because you end up wasting a lot of unecessary time in bugfixing.
If you are really really tired, than things get so bad that you even type wrong (at my worst point i was doing something like 1 spelling mistake every 4 or 5 keypresses - that's when i decide to quit and ended up moving to another country, my best decision ever).
<RANT>
I definitely can't understand the management mentality that believes that someone that's working 80h/week can produce more than someone doing 40. I suppose it's a mix of stupidity - more hours = more work done - and a "cover your ass" approach - when the project fails (not if), the manager can always say that it's not his/her fault, he/she made the coders work really hard (and working long hours is a highly visible thing).
</RANT>
Someone in your management should read "Start with NO...The Negotiating Tools that the Pros Don't Want You to Know" By Jim Camp All projects are a balance of quality, time, and money. If you decrease the time without increasing the money, quality will go down. Your management negotiated a contract and probably gave this VIP client a good discount. Then the client comes back and asks for more. The response should have been "OK but we will need more money to hire or to allocate more resources to keep quality high. Without it you are asking us to discount it below were we can make a profit.
My feeling has always been that if I'm consistently working more than 40-odd hours a week then the company needs to hire someone extra. However, I'm perfectly happy to work (unpaid) overtime when necessary.
This works to my benefit. My empolyer knows that I'll be there when he needs me, so he doesn't much care when I'm there during lighter times. "Comp time" is a great equalizer. Even during times of normal workload, my hours are very flexible and I have the option of working from home when I want. Nothing better than working with a group who trusts each other.
This has paid out in some tangible ways as well. Last year, after working particularly hard to get some projects done on time, the entire engineering group (all 5 of us; it's a small shop!) was given a week extra paid vacation, plus a performance bonus.
To the original poster, try to negotiate some sort of compensation. You guys are being asked to put in more than double time for 4-6 weeks. It's not unreasonable to expect something in return for the effort. Since the project will be finished a month before your original deadline, ask for a month paid time off. This way the company will keep the customer and the employees happy at the same time. Also ask that the company pick up the tab for things you can't do around your homes. Simple things: hire a gardener to keep your lawns maintained for the duration. Hire someone to do the shopping or handyman projects or whatever it is you'd normally do around the house in your free hours. Remind them that they're not simply inconveniencing you, but your spouses and families as well.
And especially, go pick up Edward Yourdon's book "Death March". It has a lot of good ideas on how to compensate employees who put their lives on hold to successfully pull of projects like this.
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
They sued and won 12 years of back-pay.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
This is one of the things that labor unions were created to solve. The fact that so many IT people sit back and take it is also one of the big reasons none of the unions has made significant headway into the IT field (that, plus the fact that all the employers scream bloody murder, as they don't want the gravy train to stop running).
Let's face it, even the best of employers will (politely) ask their workers to stay late if a problem or deadline is looming. It's hard to resist, and many don't even try. With no union rep standing around with a billy club, and no legal responsibility (unless your contract is carefully worded for that exact circumstance) if the worker agrees to it... they see no reason not to twist the thumscrews.
Once upon a time, switching from hourly to saleried meant job security. Most salaried people knew they'd work more hours, and not get compensated, but at least they'd be the last to be cut if the axes started swinging. That's no longer true, so the benefits are all with the employer now (when's the last time you finished your work for the day at 3pm and management said, "Go on home"?).
So, while I hate the idea of having to go "on-strike" for things that happen half across the country and aren't related to my company at all... I also am not keen on working from the time I get up to the time I go to bed (even peasants had a sort of job security).
> I'm being forced by my boss to apply for a job that I dont want to do (its a long story that basically comes down to 'do this or I dont renew your contract'). I'd love to just tell him to fsck off to his face and walk, but I have financial commitments that simply will not allow me to do so.
Consider this an object lesson, then, in getting yourself into a financial position where someone else has this much power over your decisions. Suck it up, and bust your butt getting your financial independence so you never have to be in this situation again. The term "wage slave" may be overused, but you're getting a firsthand look at how it works.
Vi
When your employer takes such a contract, you end up making a lot of mistakes
-- Please put this in your sig if you think
...report this to the approriate contracting agency.
IF this is federal government contract, what your company is doing is illegal.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
unions were pushing for us to implement a 'last in, first out' rule. Managent didn't want that, and especially the employees didn't want that (they'd prefer the deadwood getting fired instead, on a merit basis). But, for, some reason, this rule is a big deal for unions.
As my old bolshie uncle Ivan used to say, "Nobody really believes in capitalism. It's always 'Socialism for me, capitalism for you.'"
The unions are right, from their perspective, to take this position. Most people are decent and cooperative by nature, and management takes advantage of this. While the workers magnanimously play the game as plus sum, management is never above playing it as a negative sum game if their returns would higher. The union position is simply based on mistrust of management. Can you really say that this mistrust is not justifiable?
I've often thoguht that the 'survivor' method would be good. Let the workers (by this I don't mean the union leadership) vote out the weakest link. That's not a perfect system either, but it certainly could make for some interesting dynamics.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I worked for a company like that - a real kool-aid-drinking place called Trilogy Software. The sales team and the sales engineers were crappy at estimation and the corporate culture encouraged long hours in pursuit of unrealistic goals. The end result was always a more-orless timely delivery, crappy quality and poor post-deployment customer support. As a project manager I let myself and my team get burned by these unrealistic commitments over and over again. I was a fool.
I realized after leaving Trilogy that much of the fault was mine as a project manager. 8 hours per day is PLENTY of time to get your job done - if your team cannot generally execute a project on time while working 8-hour days, you have done a poor job planning, estimating or setting expectations. If you are doing frequent replans (monthly at least) and are adjusting client expectations as you go, and if you have a contract that supports you from a legal standpoint, you should be able to manage a project where 8 hour days are the norm, and longer days or weekends are a rare occurrence that should raise questions within the team about how they could have been avoided. Sure, some crunches are unavoidable, but most of them can be mitigated with better planning and communication.
I have been managing my teams this way for a few years now, and I really like the results - happy clients who are successful thanks to my team's work, a happy team, and a feeling that I am always dealing with everyone with a high degree of personal intergrity and honesty. You cannot buy that feeling.
If everything does not work out for you, just move. There are lots of countries where slavery has been outlawed.
The scenario makes no sense at all. If the company is that close to deadline then they have no option to hire new staff. There is no way they can train them in time.
If the company wants to force workers to work twice the number of hourse they can pay twice the pay.
If the company would otherwise go under well, it is almost certain to go under anyway.
So the answer is to work the hours you contracted for and use your spare time to look for new employment. You are almost certain to have to do so anyway.
The story about the contract sounds like utter bullshit.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
If your company goes thru with these insane working conditions you will understand the meaning of this word soon.
What you need to do is simply organize a walkout. You don't have to fully organize to get the point accross. Appoint a negotiator, and start with a simple demand, pay us the overtime too. Chances are they won't make any money now on the contract, but they keep their customer as their customer, which should be even more important to management than simply breaking even.
Don't think you have to go to a lot of pre-organization here to get the job done. Another tip, figure out how many developers they can't afford to lose at all, and make that your core group. It is also like going to help your cause not to ask to keep the overtime after the project is complete.
Salaried employment has its advantages, unless they aren't allowing you that professional working environment, i.e. making you punch a time clock or refusing errand runs, requiring 4 weeks notice for even one day off, in which case, f'em, ask to go hourly, you already are an hourly grunt anyway in that case.
Good luck!
Anyone seen my low uid? last seen 10 years ago while panning the #@$# out of Taco's 'web based discussion system'
On time.
On budget.
Functional.
Pick any two....
I've been in your shoes a few times with the web consultancy where I used to work. Here's my take:
Since your company is asking you to do this for them, they are probably badly hurting financially. Otherwise, Why would they worry so much about pissing off the client by pushing out the end date? So, even in the best case scenario, if you and all your co-workers pull off the project on time and the client is happy, the company will be a little better off financially....but they probably won't be a company that can offer you much in the way of job security. What work do they have lined up for you after this project?
The more likely scenario is that the timeline was estimated too short to start with. 4-6 week timelines are a big red flag, unless you're working on something really simple, they probably didn't leave much if any time for testing, bug fixing, or unforeseen issues.
I think you're project will go a lot like this: You'll end up working 16 hours a day 7 days a week, and many of your co-workers will too, but you'll miss the deadline anyway. About 2 weeks before the deadline your client will figure out that it's getting behind schedule and will insist on having a Come to Jesus with everyone even remotely related to the project where you will make the "Go / No Go" decision regarding moving forward with the proejct. This "Go / No Go" decision always results in your project manager getting fired and replaced by one of your client's project managers (who has more experience motivating people), your client will never choose "No Go" at this point because they feel like even though they'll miss the deadline, they have too much invested in the project, and believe it will be finished within 2-3 weeks after the deadline which is faster than they could find replacments for you. Your new minimally experienced project manager will conduct a meeting with all the developers where he will be trying to create a checklist of all tasks on the "Critical Path", once this checklist is developed he will check up with you daily to make sure you've gotten a few items checked off his list. Eventually, there won't be anything left to check off his list, but your software still won't work, which will really piss of your PM, who can't understand where things went wrong since everything on the list is done. Another Come to Jesus, Go/No Go, another new PM. About 4-6 weeks past your deadline you'll finally go live. Client will be pissed, your management will be pissed, your company will be worse off financially than before the project.
If I'm ever in this situation again, I'm leaving for the first decent job I can find. I'd recommend you do the same, yeah the job market is bad now, but it's better than it will be when your co-workers are laid off with you and competing for the same jobs as you.
If you stick it out (like I did), tell your management you won't work more than your regular work schedule without overtime. If you're lucky, they'll fire you and you'll get some severance. If they'll concede to give you overtime then work as much as possible, get a couple of fat paychecks before the company goes under.
This is how I pitched this to my management and project leaders:
I wouldn't even consider this without some sort of compensation. Add to that, that in this poor fellows situation the guy next to him may be getting payed for the OT! Start looking for another job, cause if they get away with this they will do it again.
Also, this is a win-win for the company. They are getting the contract, they are looking good to the company that has ordered the work, and they are paying less in wages than if you worked the same amount of hours in 40 hour weeks. They are actually saving money!
www.madeofwinandawesome.com
Consider the corporate world as composed of entities in a sort of society. There's not much in the way of rules- human society is MUCH more regimented. In human society you're not allowed to kick old ladies, mug people, or eat the wounded, and in corporate life this is not only expected but celebrated.
At the same time, each corporation has not only a volition, but 'muscles' to do what it wishes to do. Those muscles are you.
Consider the weight-lifter. He develops additional strength through straining himself and actually damaging his muscles so they'll grow back stronger- he tries to find an optimum where he's damaging his muscles enough to make them desperately try to be huge to meet his expectations, but not to the point where his body breaks down completely.
That's you with your 84 hour work week right there- you're the muscle, and you're being tortured for the benefit of the larger organism, which is the corporation.
A lot of you seem ONLY interested in that total breakdown point: beat me, whip me, make the corporation stronger! Half-kill me for the good of the company!
This only makes sense if you're tying your own survival to the corporate survival, and in addition are committed to an eat-the-wounded corporate ethic in which there is actually no civilisation in the corporate sphere at all- you're looking for it to be like wild beasts fighting each other, possibly because it's exciting, and you're pledging your body and your life to your Corporate Fighting Unit.
Under those circumstances, it makes a kind of sense that some people are cheering the 84 hour work week sans over time. They are identifying directly with their corporate owner (if you're the 'muscle' you're part of it and it owns you) and looking to beat up the other corporations and companies.
Human life doesn't work that way.
Corporate life is, in the final analysis, a constructed thing, following rules that define it- without rules there IS no corporation in the first place.
Think about it. In some ways, this is about questioning the very legitimacy of the corporate battlefield. Either go whole hog and permit me as an individual to kick your butt and take your money (I'm sure I'm physically bigger and meaner than some of the yay-corporate-death-march weenies ;) if they're so secure why are they subordinating their identities to a fictional construct?)...
Time to examine these collective entities as entities, not just as 'yay business!'.
1. Get your co-workers together, gather up your employement agreements, pool your money, and buy a couple hours of the local employment law attorney's time. S/He can tell you if what the company is doing is legal or not (primarily whether you still fit the definition of salaried employee in your area), and whether there are any ways you can turn down the company's demands without giving the company cause to termanate you (i.e. religion says I can't work on xday). Also find out what the laws says unempolyment benifits shoud you decide to quite, what provides cause for your employer to terminate you, and what your rights are should the company decide to terminate you.
2. Draft a letter which is signed by everybody involved and delivered in an anonymous fashion as possible to everybody above you in the chain of command. In this letter, state what is wrong with the current demands, anything usefull from the visit with the lawyer, and what you belive is a fair arraingment (maybe a reasonable amount of overtime with bonus/comp time/extra vacation) later.
Hopefully, this will allow you and the employer to come to a mutually benifical agreement regarding how this progress will proceed. If not, the advice from the lawyer will be to your advantage should you decide to quit or should you be fired after you decide to limit yourself to 50 or 60 hours a week instead of the 12/7 requested.
Come test your mettle in the world of Alter Aeon!
Ok, one example...
I was working at a local flea market over the weekend, where I try to sell used/refurbished computers and offer tech. services to people.
A guy came up to me and we got in a long conversation about the "old days" of computing. Turns out he used to be a big computer geek when machines like the Kaypro II and Osbourne I were in vogue. Around the time of Windows '95, he got burnt out and changed careers. Since then, he's been working for oil companies, assembling and repairing their holding/storage tanks.
He told me how they started outsourcing labor to India, and ever since then, they've wasted considerable time redoing the shoddy repair work the workers from India are doing. He said they'll often leave a tank dripping oil or other chemicals, and consider it perfectly ok - because the leak isn't "bad".
Also, previous articles right here on Slashdot were talking about call centers for PC customer support being outsourced to India - and you'll find numerous stories of the problems that's created. They're taught just enough English to read from a card and answer basic questions.
I'm self-employed, so this is something I don't ;^)
understand. Would over-time be that stuff I work
instead of getting sleep (or having a life) most
days? For NO additional pay! The sun must shine
out your asses, you lucky dogs!
People are inequal with or without impaired free trade - the disadvantage shifts to the United States when Americans are forced to compete with countries where the costs of production are substantially lower than our own.
I don't equate our achievements with the inability for the rest of the planet to feed their people. But I believe we're going to have to set up artificial fences to level the playing field where countries are subsidizing production costs or fail to introduce comparable regulations which push up production costs as they do here in the States.
I say we freely trade with partners who uphold similar standards to our own and tariff those who do not.
- Bill