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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.
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.
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!
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
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.
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.
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.
R-E-N-T
It's easy to say "oh, well just quit, then" when they situation is purely hypothetical to you. Unfortunately, not many of us are in a position where we can just tell our boss to get fucked, as much as we'd like to.
In the last year my department has been whittled down from eight employees to me and another guy. It sucks ass, but I've got to pay the bills.
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
There's always such a lot of non-programming, "administrative" work (read mails, write status updates, all the boring stuff), that working 60 instead of 40 hours can easily double your output, because the extra 20 hours tend to go into productive work entirely. BTDT, and for a limited time (like 6 months to a year, before people start quitting) it does actually work.
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
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.
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 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
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.
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
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)
Hiring "temorary" workers usually ends up with a bunch of buggy code that has mispeled variables. I would avoid temorary workers.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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/
Another good book to read for this situation is:
"Death March: The Complete Software Developer's Guide to Surviving 'Mission Impossible' Projects"
by Edward Yourdon
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.
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.
"--- Samuel Bellamy"
Damn, I was half expecting to see that quote attributed to "--- Gollum".
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
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.
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.
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.
...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.
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.
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.
Grin and bare what, your ass? I don't think mooning management, smiling or not, will help here. :)
everything in moderation
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
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)
anything that you do in the US constitutes a reason to move all your/our jobs offshore.
show up for work. send job offshore.
dont show up. send job offshore.
take a vacation. send job offshore.
apply for a job. it gets sent offshore.
quit a job. it gets sent offshore.
why ? because everything is cheaper offshore and there are no laws to protect us.
unions are a GOOD thing. if tech workers had a union we could get laws institued that could heavily tax the offshoring of tech jobs when there is a sufficient supply.
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe." --Albert Einstein
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.
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 ;-).
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
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
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
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
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?
Threaten to quit if you don't get overtime bonuses.
And tell senior management that the bonuses should come directly from the commissions that the sales team who negotiated the deal earned. Sales and account management should be pillaged to pay for their fuck-up.
This may actually work, too. They can do the math with you, if need be.
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.
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
If you don't quit, then shut up and take it, just like you deserve to.
I don't know. I know quite a few people who are in unions and nearly every one hates it. You are right we need laws to protect us, but I don't think unions are the answer. Besides the fact they they seem to all get corrupt fairly quickly, the general complaint I hear is "everyone gets paid the same regardless of the quality of their work, so I'm just going to coast along like everyone else."
Finkployd
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
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.
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...
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
- 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
--What good is your extra money if you never have TIME to do anything with it? What good is buying things with your extra money if you never spend any time at home?
--A balnace *has* to be struck between work and personal life. I don't care if you're a single bachelor even - if you devote your entire life to work, you rob yourself. Your employer does NOT CARE about you. Stand up for your personal time, and don't agree to be a slave.
.
== WolfriderV6 == I'm willing to admit that *I just might* be wrong... Are you??
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.
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."
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
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.
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.
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 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.