Slashdot Mirror
12/7 and Overtime on a Salary?
over-timeout! asks: A company I work for (in the U.S.A.) had submitted a statement of work to a client, who waited for a month before signing the work order. The work order explicitly stated a timeline which would start from the time the order is signed. However, the client is insisting on the project being completed by a fixed date, as discussed with our company's management, instead of the deadline that starts from the signing of the work order. Although our company representatives tried to push back on the date, the client refused. Because the client is among our company's biggest customers, our company's management caved in and agreed to their deadlines. Management has told us meeting deadlines means that for the next month to six weeks all of the developers involved will have to work 12 hours a day, 7 days a week. The contractors involved are going to get compensated by being paid by the hour. But us salaried employees are going to get nothing in return for trading in what's left of our life so someone else in the company above us can make money. Obviously this isn't fair, but what are the alternatives in this down economy, where jobs are hard to find?" A related articles on this subject discusses suing for overtime, and California residents should find this companion article pertinent, as well. What can you do when management agrees to a timeline and a workload that may make your job, as a programmer, difficult-to-impossible?
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.
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.
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
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Say you'll be putting in 5 months of work in 4 months. Ask for 4 weeks vacation to be added to your personal leave.
If they say no, don't threaten to quit. Just interview elsewhere, get a job, and leave.
I used to be a narrator for bad mimes. (wright)
I 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
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
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.
--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??
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
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.
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.