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Working Hard?
Two related stories about working hard in the U.S.: U.S. workers are granted less (and take less) vacation time than workers in other industrialized nations. And if that wasn't enough, changes to the overtime laws will eliminate overtime pay for many workers.
Is it just me or does it seem like almost everything Dubya does is intended to lower the quality of life for the average American?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Kinda scary loading up slashdot at work and seeing a headline that sounds like it's scolding you for not working....
-A
the more physical your labour, the less you get paid.
the less you get paid, the more you work.
the more you work, the less vacation you get.
the rich get richer, and you.. well.. you're still working hand-to-mouth.
I think this is probably not the right crowd to be asking this question ... a ton of us tech types are unemployed, those that have jobs sit at work playing solitaire and the ones that both have a job and actually do it are far too busy to join in this crappy discussion :P
-Rylfaeth
Don't work.
You can all bitch and moan all you like about no vacation time, not enough overtime pay, etc, but the more you take, the more you'll end up paying.
The only way you'll get ahead is to start contracting for yourself. But that's scary and risky!
Guess what... running a business is too. That's why they get compensated so much if they're successful.
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
Actually, the OT changes will benefit most Wal-Mart employees.
Under the current rules, any employee making more than $155 a week -- about $8,000 per year -- could be excluded from overtime...The good news is that the regulations would raise that cut-off amount to $425 a week -- about $22,100 per year -- actually adding about 1.3 million lower-wage workers to the ranks of people eligible for overtime."
The changes also make it harder for executives and those who make $65,000+ a year to claim overtime. Unfortunately, the majority of OT losses will come from "learned professionals", which could easily include computer techies.
...and eventually, no job.
Avarice, treachery, greed, lying, gluttony, cheating and petty office politics have become their own justification in the average workplace. Unless you "fit in," you will eventually be fired. In order to fit in, you must:
1) Do exactly as you are told: no more, no less.
2) Accept every lunch and meeting invitation
3) Reply enthusiastically to every e-mail, especially if it has a colorful signature.
4) Agree, even when the people you are agreeing with are wrong.
5) Never offer an opinion, or attempt to think about your job or the company.
The educations of an entire generation are being destroyed in the rush to below-average mediocrity.
Only the very few companies actually accomplish anything truly innovative. The rest simply exist, like tree moss, consuming resources and producing very little. This better get fixed, because this process is called "eating your own seedcorn."
Someday, hope will be born of something other than a business case.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
Democrats = The Gov provides for you. Repubs = You provide for the Gov. Libertarian = You provide for You. Now, which party are you with?
Life is not for the lazy.
I work in 'management'. In fact all of the geeks and tech heads work in management. Who do I manage? Myself.
Why is this important? Because I don't get overtime at all, and haven't for the past 10 years. Last week I worked 4 days out of 5 0800 (8am) - 2300 (11pm). Will I get a dime more on my paycheck? No. Do I have the satisfaction of knowing that I helped get a major project up and running? Yep. Will I have a job at the end of the year? Probably.
Who is getting layed off in my company? Not 'management' (at least not the techy ones); we know too much, and are willing to work until our fingers bleed...tough luck if you can't keep up or don't have useful skills.
Just a fact of life. Of course I'm probably going to die before I'm 65 to a massive aneurism...
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
Amazing! This is the direct opposite to the EU, where the employers power to demand you worked more than 40 hours, were stripped several years ago. I remember being asked by a former employer to sign a waver to allow me to work more than 40 hours if necessary. Naturally, guaranteed overtime was part of the deal.
Macka (UK).
We are a very materialistic nation -- the majority of us work to buy the things we want. The countries that take a lot of vacation days are generally the countries where the latest SUV and 5 bedroom house is not a necessity. Here in America, we need our ... STUFF!
Even with that said, America ranks up there with Japan and China (both very large countries surrounded by technology...)
Japan 10 days
China 15 days
U.S. 0 days
Besides, we go to work and read Slashdot -- the same thing generally happens during a 'vacation' day. May as well make money while you reload?
All this will serve to do is increase the power base of Unions. More and more workers will find that with Union help, they can negotiate to keep that overtime and employers will find themselves caught with having to negotiate Union contracts when before they wouldn't have to. As a Republican, I find this meddling in Labor laws to go against Conservative principles in that the Government should never get in the way of a guy making an honest buck. While these laws would not currently affect me (I'm salaried already) they will affect people like my little brother that busts his hump on a daily basis as a welder (as challening a trade as any IMO) to make the cash to keep take care of his family, let his wife be a stay at home Mom, and make a better life for his kids. That is a Conservative Philosophy and Bush is hurting it with this.
There is nothing inherently safe about liberty. That's why so many people died protecting it.
As long as it's either intellectually or monitarily fulfilling. I just wrote a long story about an all-hours project here, and despite some pain, I have nothing but positive things to say about the whole experience. One thing I didn't note in the article is that later that year my salary made a HUGE jump... the hard work paid off.
std::disclaimer<std::legalese> sig=new std::disclaimer; sig->dump(); delete sig;
Taking away overtime is just a slap in the face to every employee in that: If every worker out there puts in his/her all for their employer, and receives no benefit from it, where exactly is the motivation to continue to work hard?
"I didn't come here to tell you how this is going to end. I came here to tell you how it's going to begin"
The US also has one of the highest rates of burnout in the world. Japan who was 2nd lowest in the chart also has the same problem.
When will American compaines understand that having their workers take acations is good for the company. People who take time off, do more effecent work. It like the recent studies that show once workers start putting in more hours their productivity can increase to about 10 hours a day but an office worker that is doing 12 hr days less productive than when they were doing 8 hour days since they spend so much work time doing other things.
It will be interesting to see what happens in New Zealand. Its my understanding that they used to have a European model for holiday time but have recently removed some of thouse requirements so they are more like the US model. Maybe that explains why at least 50% of their labor pool is in Australia.
I've currently have 34.5 unused vacation days. Over the next year, I'll collect 20 more. I think its time for a round the world trip.
I'm justly compensated.
Now, 1.5 times salary is a very nice, very generous, compensation for overtime. But I'd hardly say that anything less is an injustice.
I'd say that as long as you get paid at least in direct proportion to how many hours you work, it's just.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
Email them while you can. Or fax them at this number (202) 693-1432.
If you work in the IT industry at all, this promises to remove any right you have to overtime pay.
just like the panic of 1929. I'm told that people are now working more than anytime since before then. Anyone know if that's true?
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
"The reason Americans have to work more than the rest of the world is because they are less productive."
Actually, just the opposite. Not only do Americans work more hours than all other industrialized nations (IIRC, only two other countries overall beat us), but we also tend to be more productive. For example, one of the big problems Ottawa has with NAFTA is that American workers are overall more productive hour-per-hour than Canadian workers, giving American businesses a competitive advantage over Canadian businesses.
"I doubt you could sit at a desk for 8 hours and really only be coding for 5"
What you're talking about happened during the so-called internet bubble. Welcome to 2003. And even if that were still true, how many US workers are coders?
I take it you haven't been to mainland Europe much?
I spend a lot of time in Italy and they don't work that hard, probably less productive than us lazy Americans. Now the thing is, jobs are hard as hell to find over there, and those with them got them through connections most likely and not performance. So what motivation do they have to actually bust their butt? (And let's not even get started on the government jobs there. oh boy....)
Now Italians, however, put more focus in their life on enjoying and living life (work to live; NOT live to work). So that no matter how crappy a job they have, they make time for family/friends and are reasonably happy.
Plus, pretty much almost everyone goes away during the month of August for a couple weeks at least. August 15 is a national holiday for the workers where NOTHING is open (oh, and the highways aren't built to handle the traffic they get, so enjoy the sweltering heat in the bumper-to-bumper)
So yeah, socialism has overrun much of Europe, but on an average person basis, your average mainland Europeaner is happier than his/her American counterpart.
Can't say I blame them for enjoying life.. I know I really don't like the ratrace here, which is why I try to summer there whenever I can.
My $0.02
What these statistics measure is the amount of vacation people are entitled to by theirwork contracts, not the amount of vacation they actually take. Having worked both in Europe and the US, I am aware that even so Europeans get much more vacation, but the approach to it is much more regulated than in the US. Here, it's enough to ask the boss who gives his approval, in most companies I worked for or had friends working for. In Europe, you need to fill an application, and due to the amount of vacation for everyone, the management must carefully balance when to award a vacation to a particular worker. I personally prefer the US approach...
Another thing to take into account is what this hard work gets the country. Because of so much work and overtime, American workers are the most productive in the world. Cut this productivity by 20%, and you automatically increase the variable cost for a product by 20%. Legislate vacation time, and everything will become more expensive, the foreign trade deficit worsens, the dollar devaluates and everything will become even more expensive. True, we work hard, but our hard work reflects in the low product prices and high standard of living.
I was actually discussing this issue today with some friends of mine from Europe. The consensus was that yes, Americans work harder, but they're also rewarded more for doing so by being allowed easier upward mobility and better value for the money they earn.
:)
Work hard and smart in the US, and you'll find yourself retiring in your forties. The money that you make in a day will buy you more clothing, gasoline, food, etc., than most other places in the world.
As with anything in life, it's a trade-off. I have friends who take it easy at work. They come in late, leave early, etc. They're enjoying their lives, so to speak, but they'll have that same routine until they're all 65 (or older, if Social Security falls apart). Not me, bud. I'm working my ass off, and I'll probably retire within the next five years (before I'm 40).
If you don't like it, you can always move to somewhere more suitable to your work ethic, I guess. Personally, I'd move to Thailand.
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
Please don't insult genuine liberals by confusing us with the socialists and communists who lie by calling themselves liberals.
Socialists and communists are liberals the same way that script kiddies and crackers are hackers. In other words they're not. In both cases the terms have been misused to such a great extent that the original meaning has been largely forgotten.
If you want to understand genuine liberalism, read John Locke, Adam Smith, or basically anything written by the founding fathers of the US. If you want to understand the bullshit that people call liberalism today, read the Communist Manifesto.
Be sure to keep a bucket nearby when you do to catch your vomit. Also lock up any guns you might have so that you can resist the urge to go out and start shooting the bastards.
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
In fact, American workers are more productive per hour than their German and British counterparts.
Whoever modded the parent up got trolled hard.
Their implementation is already a foregone conclusion? Isn't the purpose of the public comment period to evaluate?
But...
The good news is that the regulations would raise that cut-off amount to $425 a week -- about $22,100 per year -- actually adding about 1.3 million lower-wage workers to the ranks of people eligible for overtime, according to the Labor Department.
All right. So more super-low wage workers -- we're talking people making under $10/hr here -- will be guaranteed overtime. That's a very, very good thing.
For one thing, many workers earning a salary of more than $65,000 a year will now be excluded from overtime -- at least 1.3 million workers, according to the EPI study.
And it's really hard for me to feel too sorry for those making $65,000+. Yeah, I know, it's not easy to support a family of 6 on...
But...
n another example, "executives" ineligible for overtime, according to the old rules, were people who hired and fired workers, set wages and assigned work. The new rules broaden the definition of "executives" to include any workers who occasionally supervise other workers, even if they spend most of their time doing manual labor.
This kind of change is insane. Meanwhile, real execs are collecting bonuses and kickbacks in record amounts.
"Once employers are not required to pay for overtime work, they will schedule more of it," the study said.
Exactly. I'd like to request a few things from my government and future employers while we're at it:
Oh. What's that? You mean you can't afford to give out and unlimited amount of finite resources at a fixed cost?
Yeah. Me too.
Tweet, tweet.
... is the official term. The standard joke at my place of employment is "Yeah, it means you're exempt from having a life."
"An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it." Col. Jeff Cooper
People keep posting about 'working hard', when, in fact, they should be 'working smart'. By that I mean:
1. Work long hours initially to set up automation.
2. Let automation do the work. --- this is the working smart part
3. Browse Slashdot and react when the blinkin' lights go off.
4. Profit.
They pay me the big bucks to set up systems so that one person can do the work of 10. If they want me to 'look busy', I just pop open a perl script and point them to it, and ask, "do you know what that is? Do you know what that does?". That is usually when they leave...
Granted, I do spend periods during the year when I am working my butt off - but, once I get into an operational mode things quiet down.
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
Also check out this piece about minimum wage...
But not anymore. I grew up and got out of that rat race. Work/jobs basically are an agreement where you trade your time for money. I realized that by passing up on upgrading my machine every 12 months and buying all of the cds and movies I wanted, instead eating in more than going out, and driving an older car I could live quite well working only part time.
So what do I do with all of this free time?
I spend it with my family, I go backpacking, skiing, etc. I indulge in hobbies in everything from laser light shows to weaving. I donate time to non-profits like the local farmer's market, church groups, Habitat for Humanity, the Community Farm Aliance, and local theatres.
Living on less is far more rewarding the getting caught up in life as a consumer where the only dominant more or social value is work more to buy more.
Opt out!
I know I'm going to get flamed big time for this, but it has to be said...
The reason Americans have to work more than the rest of the world is because they are less productive. If you were in Japan, I doubt you could sit at a desk for 8 hours and really only be coding for 5. In North America most companies let you get away with that, and then try and make up for the lack of productivity by forcing people to work longer hours... So 8 hours in the US = about 5 hours in the rest of the world.
I much rather work for 12 hours a day, than work hard for 8. You guys just don't know when to quit complaining!
I know you just should be flamed, but I'll bite...
As far as I know the americans work just as efficient as people in the rest of the world. Where you base your numbers on Japanese, I'll base my ideas on the Dutch. Most of my friends in Holland do not work nearly as long OR efficient as the people I am around here in America. Then again, they get rewarded pretty much for that effort (no where near as much as I am). Overtime isn't big in Holland either, but is rewarded. Here overtime isn't rewarded directly, but check the difference in pay between the top-hard working engineers vs the bottom of the pile at the same company. I know that at my company there is as much as a 2x difference in salaries between the hard-workers and the slackers. I'll admit that this isn't always very well balanced.
As far as slacking for 12 hours vs working efficient for 8, well...I'll take the hard work any time. Getting bored and wasting your time is one of the worst things that you can do to yourself. This is where the real issue lies, how come the americans all work so hard, yet don't have the imagination to take time of and do fun things with their hard earned money? Really, here is where we can learn from the Dutch and the rest of the world.
Hell, Wallyworld has been known to try to get away with making their employees work without any pay at all.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
Just as an example, as an ex-US employee and now a French one (Dubya made me flee ;^), I'd like to outline the difference in the vacation package for the approximate same work in the same company.
In the US, after 6 years in the company I was entitled to 18 days off. Each day you are sick is decounted on your vacation days. I only got a handfull of 'US Holidays' free vacation days (New year, Memorial day, Independance day, Thanksgiving and Christmas). That's it. And that's considered fairly generous.
In France it doesn't matter how long you've been in the company, we all get the same package:25 days of vacations plus another 12 days of RTT (you cannot cumulate those RTT with regular vacations days, and you can't take more than 5 consecutive RTTs). In addition there is a mountain of free 'French Holiday': New Year, Easter Monday, Labor Day, WWII veterans' day, Ascension, Whit Monday, Bastille day, Assumption, All Saints' Day, WWI Veteran day, Christmas. 11!
Total?
Us: A grand total of 23 days off.
France: 48 days off.
Guess where I choose to live?
More employees = more overhead (health care, taxes, etc.)
Overtime = overtime
I'm sure a little bit of overtime is less than another worker cost-wise.
But I realize you are just explaining their viewpoint so I'm trying to not slam you for saying it.
Yes, I know, "tell that to Dubya."
. . . Or hardly working?
If you're reading Slashdot, how is this even a question?
The coolest voice ever.
I think you need to pull your head out. People are paid extra on Saturdays and Sundays because IT'S THE FUCKING WEEKEND. Compare a guy that works 5 days a week, 8-10 hours a day, who's making $8.50 an hour with someone that's making $65,000 a year no matter how often (or more to the point, RARELY) he decides to show up.
'Standards' in computing only impress those who are impressed by things like 'standards'.
Vacations are good though, but you have to think of it this way, you should have a job you actually WANT to do, and you wont have a problem working 12 hours a day. Of course if you work at Mc Donalds you'll hate working 12 hours a day.
BZZZT. Wrong answer.
I have a job for one reason: to pay the bills. If I'm looking for something I want to do, I'll spend time at home (or maybe at Lake Powell) with my wife and kids. 12 hours a day seriously detracts from that. Therefore, 12 hours a day is out of the question.
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
Yes, anyone can do it. For about $500 in the U.S. you can get an "S Corporation". Then you are self employed and your own boss. Whatever your "deliverable" is, consulting, whatever, learn about SELLING. Learn to cold call, warm call, market, etc. Read three books on each at least, because chances are two are shit and one will be good. USE that book store. Don't just peruse Guns and Ammo and PC Mag. Now read up on accounting. Then basic tax law. Then get yourself an accountant and an attornet to handle the little bits. Initially, you need only $2000 or $3000 the first year (of course this is to keep the S Corp running, I'm not talking about savings to pay for rent).
Now sell your deliverable. DOn't spend money on adverts. CALL. USE THE PHONE. Sell. Then deliver. Sell more. After a year you might end up where I am after doing this, and where many small business people are... making a nice upper-middle class income that is comfy, and you are self employed and your own boss. Work harder... for yourself. Enjoy the great amazing tax breaks US Gov gives you for trying to start a biz. Work harder for less vacation time? Not if you are self employed.
It almost is that easy. After 5 years of GUI Java development, the last of the dot com bubble popped me out of the wall st area. Now I'm self employed and loving it. HARD WORK. You could make 0 but there is NO salary cap. Anyway, use that bookstore. Amazing what's in there. When I sit there reading a good selling book and a tax book, and I look around at all the slobs dripping coffee ofer their shitty little magazines before they have to go to sleep and be ready at their cubicle at 9:00am the next morning, I laugh. End of rant. Go sell. Good luck.
So, the EPI looked at only 3.3% (257 / 78)
Except you want to divide 78 by 257, which is 30%.
I never thought I would make one of those typical anal retentive slashdot posts correcting grammar, or some such, but it's actually a rather large point. 30% is a pretty large statistical sampling.
"Inattention makes clowns of us all" -Bean
The greedy bastards just don't get it... I have been ineligible for overtime for my entire career and I'm ok with that. When I get off work after a full day typing and my wrists ache and I can't seem to focus on anything outside the beamwidth of 19" at 2.5 feet, I just have to sit down for some Belgian Waffles at the local restaurant and watch someone really hussle for < 1/3rd of my wage and I just can't bring myself to snivel.
So it's not with any personal sense of unfair treatment, that I state the following:
A minimum wage, while coincidently fair to an employee, serves it's greatest purpose in motivating employers to make good business decisions.
As an average employee works more than 40 hours a week his/her work quality steadily declines and his/her chance of having some kind of accident goes up hyperbolicly.
The accidents cost everyone. That cost is spread around in insurance premiums and workman's comp., but we all pay for it. The cost of mediocre work in a global economy is that it makes slave labor from struggling countries more appealing to use because the quality differential has decreased.
Very few business owners are so farsighted as to spend extra cash to help with these problems. The primary benefit of the overtime pay that it forces them to.
When you have four employees working 50 hour weeks, it is cheaper for the business to hire the extra employee the need than it is to pay 40 hours a week in overtime. This system makes the bean-counters make better decisions for their own workplace and for the country as well.
If I find a place for public comment I will propose a counter amendment.
In order to ignore the welfare of the worker to the same extent as the currently proposed bill, continue to withhold overtime pay from people who have earned it, but force the employer to pay it directly to a non-profit hospital, food bank, or homeless shelter, so that the business is still motivated to keep employee hours sane, and the charitable systems that will bear the brunt of the cost for this extreme lack of foresight will be better funded.
But that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.
In all seriousness, I work harder than a gynecologist. I put in so many overtime hours that my employer is forced to give me comp time.
Yes, I'm on salary and yes I am already ineligible for overtime because of my pay scale. However, the laws that are currently in place enable me able to say, "Hey - enough is enough and this is too much." Fortunately I am in the enviable position where the company would likely fold if I were to leave.
If they were to relax the laws of overtime - there would be nothing stopping some unscrupulous employers from taking full advantage of their employees.
Good security is based upon reality and common sense. Common sense is a function of having common knowledge.
That's nice for you, I'm glad you are happy with your life. Some of us, however, want the satisfaction of seeing our children grow up and have other intersts. So while you voluteer to bust your ass, please don't think that's normal and that you should force everone else into your lifestyle. One day, when the non-technical managers decide to screw you in some kind of SCO like blaze of bullshit and stock manipulation, you might have regrets.
Slave driving is a bad sign. Some fields really are competitive like this. Most are not and an honest day's work brings an honest day's profits. Management that tries to squeze normal occumpations to frenzies like this are simply greedy. If your management is willing to screw you, the stockholders and cutomers are next and it's time to go.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Say your a grocery clerk earning $12.00 an hour stocking shelves. You work 4 days a week and you work on a sunday. You opt to NOT work that 5th weekday because you know that you can make double time, or time and half on sundays. So you work your way up the ladder and get that sunday as a "cherry" day where you could have simply worked that "normal day". There is SO MUCH of this, it's crazy.
If you think that typifies the experience of the average American, you're nuts. I'm unemployed, and my neighbors on either side both work two full time shit-jobs to stay ahead of their bills. And I live in a middle class neighborhood. Don't be so hard on the minimum wage earners, since you might be one yourself pretty soon. yeah, you think you're untouchable but scores mighter than you have fallen.
Give me a break! You speak if the "low wage earners" lounge around working 4 day weeks at 15 and 32 dollars an hour? You're fucking nuts. Around here, people are waiting in line for a chance to work at Wal-Mart. Earth to NIMROD, we're having trouble translating your message.
These are bad times, fella. And if that hasn't sunken into your head by now, there is something wrong with you.
When you work just for the money, of course you dont want to be there, you dont want to be doing what you are doing, but you do it because you get paid to.
Clerk Jobs, and many of these other meaningless jobs, of course no ones going to be motivated to work long and hard doing that, how the hell can you motivate yourself to go to your mc donalds job everyday? Whats your motivation? To be the best burger flipper who ever lived? No thats not it, to help people by making them fat? Maybe thats not it either, you see there are no motivations to these jobs.
This is why I hate the corperate world and the corperate attitude, I myself would prefer to work for a non profit because I dont see myself ever being motivated by money.
Say your a grocery clerk earning $12.00 an hour stocking shelves. You work 4 days a week and you work on a sunday. You opt to NOT work that 5th weekday because you know that you can make double time, or time and half on sundays. So you work your way up the ladder and get that sunday as a "cherry" day where you could have simply worked that "normal day". There is SO MUCH of this, it's crazy.
You see? Thats the exact problem, it doesnt matter how much you pay a grocery clerk, they will NEVER care about their job, but you know what? It also doesnt matter how much you pay a manager because they will never care about their job either.
Most jobs people have simply dont matter, they dont improve the world in any way, they dont improve you as a person, and no one cares if you are good at it. Why not be a teacher? Even a construction worker matters more than some guy in an office working in a cubical.
Remember, these laws cost us. The employer eats this salary and doesn't get to claim that employee's hours on the books -- it's considered "overtime" and not part of the 40 hours work week. It effects unemployement taxes and is a huge burden on the accounting side.
Who cares about the empoyer? Most of the time Employers dont matter any more than Employees, does Bill Gates matter to society? No, maybe he did back when he made Windows95, but that was the 90s, right now he doesnt matter.
So it depends on who your Employer is, and how important they are to both the industry and to society as a whole. Some Employers are better off being hurt.
It eventually hurts the employer by costing them lot's of money which they eventually push back to us by keeping the prices up and/or hiring less employees.
Bad logic, if they raise prices and we dont buy, they go out of business. If they hire less employees they cannot expand their business.
I say "shit or get off the pot". If you want sunday to be a "holy day" or you don't want to have overtime pay for over 40 hours for certain types of "non-exempt" employee's then you can't have "wishy washy" blue law's that just don't make sense anymore in 2003.
I think workers should be able to decide their contracts, I dont think the government should have any control over this. If I sign a contract to work 7 days a week 12 hours a day, THATS THE AGREEMENT. If I sign on to do it at a certain price, THAT IS THE AGREEMENT.
If I sign on to work 5 days a week 40 hours a week, THAT is the agreement. If my employer wants me to work overtime, they must sign a new overtime agreement with me!
I know one thing. My brother-in-law who's in a union and works for a grocery chain here in MA was complaining recently that he has to now pay for health insurance. I thought (that sucks), then he told me it was $50.00 a month. I almost puked. We (I own a software company here in Boston) pay $925 per family to BCBS -- I'd kill for $50.00 a month... But, yet, he complains.
If your brother had a job that MATTERED, your brother wouldnt be complaining. He must not really like his job if he complains, perhaps he should quit.
Yes, he's very angry that he can't earn $34.00 an hour on sunday's anymore instead of making $22.00 on a n
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Think how much this will help the economy!
Overheads will be lower for almost all companies since overtime will be gone, so everything will be cheaper!
And even though you the consumer will have less money to spend on the finer things in life, it won't matter because you will be working 72 hours a week and will not have time to spend your money anyway! So you will be saving money, which according to old Ben, "a penny saved is a penny earned" so it will be like doubling your wages!
See! win-win situation!
On Wall Street they say "buy low, sell high" On the pad we say, "buy high, sell high" Isn't that somehow better?
Check out the numbers for China (second lowest in terms of average time taken). Their average vacation time taken is exactly the same as the minimum amount that must be offered. Maybe someone made the mistake of collecting that data by asking the Chinese government.
-- . . ramblin' . . .
"Someone who is married with children can never dedicate themselves to any job."
Tell that to Martha Stewart. Or better yet, tell her kids.
Actually, 52.3% of the population is married. 1.3% are married but seperated. 6.3% are widowed and only 28.5% have never been married.
If you make over 75K a year the married percentage climbs to 81.7%
WORK HARDER! Millions on welfare are depending on YOU!
(swiped from a bumper sticker)
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
Just want to throw this out there, see if anyone else has had similar experiences...
I work for a company in a Boston suburb, hit three years there this June. At the beginning of this year I was finally given an explanation of my paid time off (10 days vacation, 0 days sick). In early January, my grandmother had a stroke, and asked for a few days off to go back to Maine to visit family. The CEO said I could and I wouldn't have to worry about losing vacation days. I came back the following Monday to find a message from the CEO asking to talk to me. The long and the short of it was, in the 4 days I was away, I had forfeited all my vacation days. Fine, I can deal I suppose. In April, my grandmother passed away. Again, I asked for time off to go to Maine to visit family again. It was granted, including by the person I was working under on a project at the time. I went to Maine again for 4 days, returned the following Monday. This time the CEO was furious that I didn't have the current project I'd been working on done, and suffered a 20% pay cut that week, 'to compensate for lost time.'
Fun fun. If I recall (I don't have the paper at the moment) I will gain an additional 5 vacation days per year when I hit 5 years at the company, if I last that long...
So the US doesn't guarantee any vacation time and its workers take less vacation time per year compared to other countries ... but what about legal holidays? There are quite a few legal holidays in the US, and a lot of people (not all) get most of those days off. Do other countries have more or less legal holidays? I mean if Japaneese workers take 7 more vacation days, but they get 10 less legal holidays ... well you do the math. I'm not saying this is the case, just that these statistics are necesarry for proper analysis.
Yeah, sure, wait until you pull a 20 hour shift one night. See how you'd like doing that for the same pay you get normally.
There's a difference, hard work is expected during your 40 hours, then you go home and do the family thing.
Overtime, is taking from your family time and giving you a higher pay in trade for that.
When you look at it, it's basically a slap in the face, saying "Your not worth jack to us, why should we pay you more for messing with your life?". If you pull an 80 hour week, you should get more than 2 normal weeks worth of pay since your outside life is being taken.
I guess you never had to do a real job and push pencils or keys all day. Any schmoe can come in and type for 18 hours, now go and install 70 servers in a day. Tell me how your arms and back feel now that you have been mounting 60pound machines onto racks all day and have had a chance to stretch and strain every single muscle and ligament in your back, shoulders, and arms. Any job requiring heavy lifting is as bad.
Not all jobs are working the ticket booth at the theatre or phone service. Plenty of them are quite physical, some downright abusive.
BTW I'm up to hour 76 this week, and I have a nice shift tomorrow, lifting those 70 pound servers onto a banch, configuring them and putting them back. Not to mention moving the carts we keep them on, which probably weight as much as an old vw bug. Have fun with your desk work chap.
I rate this troll's attempt a 12/100. You can do better...
Ok, so I'm ineligible for overtime based both on my pay scale and my degree. I make what most snivelers would call "damn good money" but somehow after two years out of school, and under the crushing load of student loans, it doesn't seem like a whole hell of a lot of money to me. After Uncle Sam and the Commonwealth are finished raping me for more than 55% of my income (including all taxes, like sales, property, gasoline, income, wage, etc), I actually end up making just as much money working for $7.25/hr at the bikeshop where I have my moonlight job. The bike shop is a hell of a lot more fun, so I'm wondering why I don't just do that.
Oh yeah, those student loans... all $60k worth of them.
"Make an investment in your future" they tell you. "You'll be worth so much more money" they tell you. I drive a 15 year old car with 200k miles on it, live in a dumpy three bedroom house in the ghetto with two other technical "professionals," and have a very hard time making ends meet on what's left of my biweekly pittance.
What I've learned from the last 10 or so years of my life is that a) a college degree isn't worth it - as it will only be used to prove that you're capable of training your replacements from India and b) get a job because you enjoy it, not because it pays well. It's amazing how much I sit in my cubicle teaching the three guys from Bangalore how to do my job, looking forward to making my seven bucks at the bike shop.
If the only thing that keeps you showing up at work every day is your paycheck, then I suppose you have a reason to want to be paid overtime for enduring another hour of hell. You do that knowing that you're just another warm body.
However, many occupations exist where performance counts more than just putting in hours. Millions of these jobs exist in the U.S. -- in the traditional professions, in new professions, in the government and military, etc. It has been my experience that people in these jobs routinely work 50-70 weeks per week.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Wow, just wow. WHO modded this up and WHERE did you learn math? You do know that what you are actually saying is 257 of 78 job right, at least by your math.
I mean, you didn't even do it quickly in your head before you posted? It didn't even occur to you that 78 is kinda close to 80 and that 257 is kinda close to 240 and that 80 out of 240 is 33% and that its WAAAAY different than 3.3%?
Where do you work?
American workers are also more stressed, shorter lived, more irate, more likely to commit suicide, more likely to murder someone else, less fulfilled, and more likely to trade their humanity for The Company than their German and British counterparts.
I wonder if there's a correlation?
Java coders are the same way. I'm all about making it easier to write good software, garbage collection and clean syntax rules. Nothing against java or the people who use it but I'm just amazed at how many of these guys call themselves software engineers and have no idea what is actually happening in the system on with the hardware. I was working with a team working on a tomcat based JSP web application, the question came up, why does this app need 512MB of RAM and a 800Mhz Pentium-III to run slowly with only 2 clients attached? We need it to work with at least 20 clients attached. Does that strike anyone as a little heavy? (It just reads a few tables from a SQL database and formats them in to html, not even fancy shit yet... it's practically serving up static HTML) silence, has anyone done any performance work? How about memory consumption, how can we improve it? silence. Do we need to rewrite this using a different technology? Panic! "Maybe if we bump it up to a dual or quad processor machine with 2GB of RAM...
I'm not a superstar. I did well at a good university, there is a lot more that I don't know than I do, I've only got about 15 years of professional experience, but there are a shit load of people who know next to nothing, and they are trying to draw down $70k, $80k, $100K a year and the job simply doesn't get done with that kind of talent flooding the workplace.
I can count the number of top notch professionals I've worked with. I care about my craft, I'm always learning and like to keep current and know about things, there just more people who like to play video games and surf the web and somehow equate that to being a professional tech worker. 10 years ago there was a lot more talent amongst the people in this biz, I looked up to people I worked with knowing I could learn from them. Now I'm just floored by the kids we bring in, they want the money, they want the sexy work, they just can't do it and they think that they can.
So why do we work long hours? Well now the teams are twice as big if not bigger than they were in the 80's and early 90's, the expenses are higher, the costs are higher, we have to produce more. The talent is dilluted. The expectation is there but there isn't the talent to deliver on it. Result? Fewer people can actually do the work, you'll be damned if they will stand by and let you cut out after a rough 6 hours or web browsing. We're working dumber. People do shit manually. People write code that get's rewritten because they can't read their own damn perl. People do things the only ways they know how and then they get redone completely because the web based calendar system takes the biggest computer in the client's office to serve up 2 calendars at a time... I hope 4 of the 50 employees don't want to see the vacation schedule too close to the same time.
Maybe I'm getting too old for it but the people in this biz aren't as good as they were as a whole, there are just more of them and they make a lot more money. You do the math, why don't we get overtime pay?
If the business plan is fundamentally flawed, no amount of above-and-beyond effort will save the company. Take what you can, punch out, try again.
Eventually, you'll land at a company whose business model isn't fundamentally flawed, and where you still get most, if not all, of the perks of the fuckedcompany.com bait.
> Work/jobs basically are an agreement where you trade your time for money. I realized that by passing up on upgrading my machine every 12 months and buying all of the cds and movies I wanted, instead eating in more than going out, and driving an older car I could live quite well working only part time.
Extend and escape. You'll still work part-time for the rest of your life.
I've discovered the same thing, except that as long as times are good (and after a few jumps, I've been lucky enough to land in a pretty fucking nice niche in this here economy of ours :), stick around and make hay while the sun shines.
In 10 years, my skills will be obsolete. 15 if I really push at keeping up with my industry. Then I become unemployable.
But after about 10 years of work and living "beneath my means" (like you - limited system upgrades, drive the car until it falls apart, etc), I've accumulated about 5-10 years of savings. Good investments (yes, even during the bear market, one can make money) have added about two or three more years to that.
In short, if a girder fell on my head, nuking the part of my brain that I use for work, I could pull the plug on my job today and last a good 10 years, with no change in lifestyle, on what I've accumulated.
By the time my skills are well and truly obsolete, that figure will be "the rest of my probable lifespan".
And since I'm not in the game to rack up the highest score (Bill, for all his evil, has already done that. Larry was the only guy who could have come close, but the dot-com fiasco took Oracle down to the point that the best use of his capital is buying his competitors out of the market ;), it'll be time to sit back, crack open a cold one, and figure out what to do with half a lifetime of freedom.
> Living on less is far more rewarding the getting caught up in life as a consumer where the only dominant more or social value is work more to buy more.
As you say - work is where you trade your time for money. Opting out is much easier when you trade that money back for time.
(We're doing the same thing - the only fundamental difference is that you're doing it a few hours a day, and I'm gambling that I won't get hit by a bus before I cash in a two-decade time card. To the reader - whichever option is "better" is up to you to figure out. IMO there's no right answer to this one; I'm just tossing out an alternative version of the same strategy.)
Coincidence? There's an article in The Age about the Australian workplace: The office, Australia style.
... oh, go ahead, everyone's heard me mouthing off about it anyway."
:-)
Quote: Perth-based American computer technician Tom Cash agrees. "This is not what I'm used to," he says. "Not that I'm complaining! Australians are more into holidays and weekends and having a life than Americans. They're a bit lazy, though. Don't print that
I'm French and have lived in Melbourne for more than five years now, I really like the Australian culture and work/life balance. And I can be lazy too (any programmer who isn't?
QUOTE: "Because of so much work and overtime, American workers are the most productive in the world. Cut this productivity by 20%, and you automatically increase the variable cost for a product by 20%. Legislate vacation time, and everything will become more expensive, the foreign trade deficit worsens, the dollar devaluates and everything will become even more expensive. True, we work hard, but our hard work reflects in the low product prices and high standard of living." END QUOTE
Hmmm, I found this which states that "overtime leads to an average drop in worker productivity of about 15 percent for work weeks exceeding 40 hours." from the Penn State College of Engineering.
Increased time at work != increased output.
-> Increased time at work != cheaper output.
-> Decreased time at work != more expensive output.
~Tetravus
He's just as proud and ambitous as anyone -- your SO wrong.
The problem with everything you replied too? Your assuming that people in lower wage jobs don't like thier job. Actually, my brother-in-law likes his job very much and is very good at it (he's a grocery manager). He has pretty good hours too, he's up at 3am and back home by noon ot have the rest of the day to do the things he enjoyes in life (golf, woodworking etc.). He makes about $60-75K a year and has a great house and three kids. A very typical American if you ask me.
Your assumption that people in blue-collar jobs are miserable. You forget, people actually like to do these jobs and enjoy it.
Not everything is high-tech, and not everything is geek related. When you buy a gallon of milk, remember how that milk got to the store and got priced. Someone had to do it, last time I checked the 2.4.20 kernel couldn't actually move mile from a dairy to a store (yet).
What is it with this assumption that people who make good money don't work. I have relatives that make $15 - $20 an hour, and, for some reason, assume people who make 6 figures are lazy.
Most executives I know, especially these days, work insane amounts of hours, with no overtime pay, at all. If you do the math on their hours and pay, you see they aren't making that much more than the normal working person (I'm not talking officers like CEOs, etc, just normal Director and VP level executives).
People that work hard and do the right things (the right things over the course of their life, not just in the past couple years or when it suits them), by and large, get promoted and make good money.
All of this overtime, FLSA, etc, just interfere with the natural flow of markets (the labour market, in this case).
Sarcasm and hyperbole are the final refuges for weak minds
If your brother likes his job whys he complain?
and he makes good money
Well i guess some people do enjoy flipping burgers and selling shoes.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Every job I do, I do to the best of my ability.
I appreciate your idealism, but very few people in the world, including the hard-working Japanese, take their jobs that seriously. It's just human nature. Many people are motivated by the fear of being unemployed.
What you experience in America also does not hold for the rest of the world. When I lived in Germany, it was common to see or hear about worker strikes on TV, both in and outside of Germany. Firemen, sanitation workers, you name it. And the public supported them (Cologne went for two weeks without a trash pickup. It was nasty.)
Not everybody views work as their life. For some people, it's family. For others, it's about experiencing the world. What you get paid for is not necessarily your life's work; sometimes, you find your life's work in a hobby, even though nobody pays you for it.
There just isn't enough room in the limelight for everyone to be remembered for the profound contributions they made to society - and it's also unlikely that a grocery clerk's contributions were that profound. If you want to have a profound sense of satisfaction for your time wasted on earth as a grocery clerk, then more power to you.
Life is about the little moments. A sunset enjoyed with loved ones while camping out at the local lake can be a far more profound and beautiful experience in a couple of hours than you'll ever find in stocking the peas on aisle four for the next twenty years.
"Give a man fire, and he'll be warm for a day; set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life
In Alberta, the OT was (when I moved to Ontario two years ago anyway) anything over 8 hours/day AND anything over 44 hours/week. I don't give a shit, the labour laws should ALWAYS be in the workers favour. If a company can't compete, then hit the road and let a company that will play by the rules move in. I'm a labourer, don't fsck me on pay, and I'll bust my ass for you. Ya that might mean overtime.
First Quote: "If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their money, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them (around the banks), will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered." Second Quote: "I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country. " {{End of Quotes}} I believe it is no hyperbole if I were to declare now the vastest majority of American children now wake up, "homeless", their "fatheres conqured".
Ya know, I swore I wasn't gonna get involved in this, but reading all these posts, I just didn't have a choice.
...He wakes in the night in a cold sweat and puts something on paper that looks silly in the morning. All day he shivers at the thought of the bugs which will inevitably appear to jolt his smooth consumation. ...unlike the doctor his is not a life among the weak. Unlike the soldier, destruction is not his purpose. Unlike the lawyer, quarrels are not his daily bread. To the engineer falls the job of clothing the bare bones of science with life, comfort and hope. ...as years go by people forget which engineer did it, even if they ever knew. Or some politician puts his name on it. Or they credit it to some promoter who used other people's money with which to finance it. But the engineer himself looks back at the unending stream of goodness that flows from his successes with satisfactions that few professions may know. And the verdict of his fellow professionals is all the accolade he wants.
I am 50 years old. I have an engineering degree. About 20 years ago, an engineering student, whose assignment was to interview a working engineer, interviewed me about my career. Well, having just come off a series of 80 hour weeks, trying to meet unrealistic schedules assigned by unknowing bosses, I blasted him. The poor kid probably switched majors. The one question I remember clearly (probably assigned verbatim by the teacher who dreamed up the assignment in the first place) was "exactly what has your engineering degree meant to you in your career?".
My answer was: "My engineering degree is nothing but a license to work free overtime. Sure, I make some money but, if you divide the number of hours I work by the pay I get, I probably make less than factory workers!"
Engineers, at least in my work experience, have always been exempt from overtime pay. And that has led to nothing but abuse by the companies I have worked for. I burned out, left engineering as a career, and then returned to engineering.
I returned because there is nothing else I would rather do. I don't have he words, but let me leave with a quote from someone who does:
Engineering: it is a great profession. There is the satisfaction of watching a figment of the imagination emerge through the aid of science to a plan on paper. Then it moves to realization in stone or metal or energy. Then it brings jobs and homes to men. Then it elevates the standards of living and adds to the comforts of life. That is the engineer's high privilege. The great liability of the engineer compared to men of other professions is that his works are out in the open where all can see them. His acts, step by step, are in hard substance. He cannot bury his mistakes in the grave like the doctors. He cannot argue them into thin air or blame the judge like the lawyers. He cannot, like the architects, cover his failures with trees and vines. He cannot, like the politicians, screen his shortcomings by blaming his opponents and hope that the people will forget. The engineer simply cannot deny that he did it. If his works do not work, he is damned. [It] haunts his nights and dogs his days.
Herbert Hoover
The Profession of Engineering (from his memoirs)
The USA is advancing on a course of economic feudalism. A small elite of "Equity Lords" with a vast army of "salary peasants" to support them. The sad thing is the system is being exported to the rest of the world on the point of a cruise missile.
Although I worried like hell about finding another job, the hours that I was working up until now were killing. 12 to 14 hour days regularly 7AM to 7PM with a boss that got upset if I applied for overtime. This was so bloody exhausting that I might very well have had a breakdown if I hadn't been canned.
This is in Switzerland, and you'ld be surprised at how many workers here in Europe will do this in order to hold on to their jobs.
On, Mr/Ms. "Zebra X", that would be a most exellent idea of the United States was not working like hell to "globalize" its wonderful economic model.
I'd still rather live in the US, where 6% unemployment is considered "bad," than a country like, say, France, in which double-digit unemployment is the norm and perpetual dependence is more of a way of life due to the myriad entitlements, paid for by those foolish enough to work, that are a strong disincentive to keeping a job that is more difficult than watching TV.
I work at one of the few dot-com's to survive the downturn, and am overworked for sure; but I choose to do this because I want the rewards that come with hard work. I'm only 27: I've seen how fast people can progress if they are willing to work long and hard, and am happy to put off some pleasure today to reap the rewards of tomorrow, as long as I have some fun along the way.
[ home ]
Your assuming that people in lower wage jobs don't like thier (sic) job. Actually, my brother-in-law likes his job...He makes about $60-75K a year and has a great house
So 60-75k is not "good money"?
--Joey
Man, not be too harsh, but you people complain too much. North America has the worst work ethic i have ever seen. Alot of other places, u'd be happy to have a job. There is nothing i hate more than to run into someone who dislikes thier job, and lets it show. If it is that bad, get another job. If ur too lazy to do that, stop whining. You try to compare urselves to people from all over the world, but you neglect to realize that, in my opinion, many are grossly overpaid. When was the last time you ran into an employee in the service industry that obviously did not want to be there. If you answer more than 24 hours, i'll be impressed. If you are going to take the time to do anything, do it right. if you believe u are under-valued and under-paid, find a better job. Can't, ur likely not worth it. My 2 cents!
Where the hell do you guys work? InitTech? Why dont you just burn the damn place down?
Patent: from Latin patere, to be open
Why so many people think that not being paid overtime will help the economy? I mean, if I make more money I will spend more which is what the government wants from me, no?
"Once employers are not required to pay for overtime work, they will schedule more of it," the study said.
Which mean they'll be able to lay off some employees... Since when unemployment is a good thing for the economy?
Is there something I don't understand?
The quote is:
"People who work all day have no time to earn money."
by
John D Rockefeller
You have the kind of class envy we need more of. Unfortunately, we have too much of the "I'm not rich, so you should not be permitted to be rich either," variety.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Boy is life easy in the US. Why complain? Just be happy that you have a job and tough it dude...
I switched from 12-14 hours a day jobs in Japan (plus 2h train) to a quiet 9-5 job here in the US. I switched from no vacations to a nice 15 days a year vacation. I worked over y2k overnight. Here, there's no one to complain if a server crashes over the weekend. Ok, I earned a sh!tload of money but was it worth it? I think so but then again, I consider myself a mild workaholic.
Heck, I even got married over the weekend over there and no one was surprised that I didn't go for a honeymoon. Never took a sick day (so anybody else did). Even went to work when I badly twisted my ankle. I can tell you that over there, everyone works hard. It's a dog eat dog world.
I think that USA's economy is going down the drain and if you guys want to kick it up, it won't be done by getting more vacation days. Don't you think?
-- Leeeter than leet
You're absolutely right. To date, voting in elections has proven to be the single most effective means of bringing about change.
Employee: Boss, I've been working here for thirty years. When can I retire?
Boss: That depends. When do you expect to die?
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
You can make your statistics say what you want them to say, as long as you read them correctly.
As of 2000 [it takes a while to compile data], the IRS says otherwise.
Let's try looking at things slightly differently.
Let's suppose that each of us was a slave. If each of us was a slave, then our masters would have to pay for our upkeep. So when you talk about real tax rates, you have to first take the poverty-level upkeep, and then see how much disposable income is paid by each group.
Do that, and you'll quickly see that things are just as the wealthy want it to be: the poor pay for everything, there is a significant fraction of people who are worse off than slaves and working very hard, and the wealthy have both the time and assets to buy the laws. [Rush limbough asks "how can the poor pay for everything"? They pay just as the Egyptian slaves did: with their labor. Let's remember that real wealth is things, not money, and most of that is manufactured by the poor, not the wealthy. Go to a grocery store, and it's a poor person stocking the shelves. Go to a farm, and it's poor people producing the food. Nor is the quantity of food significantly improved by the machinery. I'm writing from an area that has very limited machinery, and much greater food production efficiency than America, with correspondingly lower prices for food.]
I would contend that under this viewpoint, America is very corrupt. But I'd also contend that if your viewpoint makes Daschle look bad, my viewpoint makes him look worse.
But it also makes Bush look much worse.
Things are worse than you see, not better.
(Bible quote with one interpretation: "You say that your sins are as scarlet [like a sore or wound]? I shall make them as white as snow! [look again, that's not a sore, that's leprosy!]". Actually, that's not too far off. Zechariah 11, the people get the masters they deserve. But what you deserve is based on your own individual sins. You want to get out of this, start voluntarily living rightly by your family and neighbors. Which includs no porn, no abortion, and so on.)
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
RTT is for "Reduction du Temps de Travail" (Work time reduction).
These have been introduced with the 39->35 hours work week transition : in many positions (managerial, tech workers) where it's just not practical to work only 35 hours a week, people still do the 39 hour week, but are awarded "RTT" days in compensation.
Airbus doesn't get any subsidies any more. Boeing still gets plenty of juicy military contracts, OTOH.
Geez! I got my BSEE at Cal State University, Long Beach. It was about $500 a semester at the time (mid 1980's). Graduated in 1988. It was the largest EE program west of the Mississippi at the time, and fairly well thought of in the industry as far as I could tell. One interviewer told me that the perception was that CSULB grads had nothing to prove, and just showed up and did the work.
My employer paid for my MSEE from USC, but, honestly, I think I'd be where I am now anyway without it.
I now make $140K a year, just bought a 2003 Mustang GT for cash, and am planning retirement for about age 48... maybe 45 with a bit of luck. That is when I will build the 30" autoguiding, computerized, motorized reflecting telescope in my backyard as my ultimate geek life project (assuming I don't also start work on the directed energy weapons). The mirror alone will set me back $10K or more.
I realzed early on, thanks to some advice from an engineer I knew in high school, that, yeah, the degree isn't worth all *that* much, even from a prestigious school. He told me to learn a lot of hands on stuff, so I joined a ham radio club and built Heathkits all through college (I still use my Heathkit voltmeter at work). Once I was hired post graduation, I learned everything I could, read every application note and data sheet I could get my hands on, and continue my education into the real world stuff.
All that stuff that's so emphasized in college is so unimporant in the real job. I haven't used Kirchoff's law since college. I haven't seen an integral in years.
And, kids, go into hardware engineering. The Indians can't touch me- they're all software weenies. Oh, and take extra courses in electromagnetics. I've lost count of the pure digital guys who don't understand why I am so meticulous about trace impedance and termination stubs when I want to get 10 gigabit data into an FPGA. RF and digital are converging. I regularly deal with digital data streams at 3 GHz or higher, and I don't mean multiplied inside a chip. I mean 3 Gbps data on 20 layer PCBs distributed all over the board, and traces of a couple inches become efficient transmitting and receiving antennas.
--- Ban humanity.
I realize that on /. the demonization of capitalism in general and corporations specifically is as obligatory as praying in church, but the truth of matter is that the overwhelming majority of businesses are small businesses and sole proprietorships. Once you change shoes from being the employee to being the business owner, everything changes. Your main focus is now how to make enough money and minimize your expenses in order to stay in business. If you can't stay in business then your employees' real or imagined sense of entitlement is of little consequence. Now, employees have every advocacy group and government agency under the sun fighting for their interests. Who fights for the interests of small business owners who can't afford to give people vacation or give people 2 weeks off for family and medical leave because it could break the business? A small business owner these days can't dare let someone go these days due to repeated, abusive requests for time off for fear of lawsuits and bogus harrassment/worker's comp. claims by vindictive employees. If there is a system of tyranny, it is the small business owner that suffers most from it. And if you're one of the "business is evil, workers of the World Unite" crowd, do me a favor and start a business someday, and I guarantee that in less than 1 year you'll despise people who think like you do now.
No, most professionals DON'T get overtime, but they are definately well rewarded for their efforts. Tell some guy on a $35,000 a year salary that he should be like the doctor that gets almost 10 times that amount and not ask for overtime to compensate for long hours.
And lawyers, sure when you're billing at $200 an hour, time and a half don't mean shit to you.
I think YOUR reality needs adjusting, "dude." Not everyone here is a devoted wage-slave who thinks that "company knows best."
This message brought to you by the Council of People Who Are Sick of Seeing More People.
If you're qualified, you don't want to join a union. Want to teach high school and have skills that are in demand for high school teachers (science and math)? Too bad, you'll get paid the same as the dime-a-dozen social studies teachers: union says so. Want to negotiate your own pay? Too bad: union membership (and paying union dues) is mandatory for employment. Etc.
Unions have a bad habit of discouraging merit. It doesn't matter if you have useful skills, or if you're a better employee than the others; all that matters is your seniority. This is why there are absolutely horrid teachers who are getting paid more than everyone else, because they've been there 40 years (oh, and you can't fire them either, unless they do something completely blatant like molest children: union says so).
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
1) How effective are you after working 4 16 hour days? How about several weeks of this?
2) How much training have you done in the past few years? If yes, where did you find the time to do this?
3) How long will the "major" project be up an running?
4) How long do you expect it will be before your job heads to 3rd World/India?
Writing from Australia, I am unsure how relevant my post is for you guys in the US and the rest of the world.
The interesting thing I have found about the IT industry in Australia is the divide between people who joined a union and those who didn't join any union.
In Australia, as far as I know, there is no union directly for IT staff, but I know a few people who joined the ETU. This is the Electrical Trades Union, which is about the most left-wing, hard core union in Australia. Those that did this are on easy street. They had the ETU negotiate their pay and conditions and those guys take no prisoners. If the ETU blackbans a workplace, you don't get electricians to fix things, you lose your unionised IT staff, you effectively stop functioning.
Those who are not unionised have really fallen apart in terms of pay and conditions.
As for me? Well, I am joined another union, for media workers, and now enjoy nine weeks per year guaranteed holidays. So am I complaining, yeah, from my kabana in Cuba!
Is there a union just for IT staff in the US, and if so, what is the density of membership?
If the pattern goes 9am, 10am, 11am, why isn't noon 12am?
At one company I worked at, with the typical "go-go-go" mentality (that expected a "50 hour professional work week" and most of us put in much more and were for some reason proud of it), there was a guy who had an amazing work output. Nearly every day we would get emails on stuff from him written at 3am or some other ungodly hour. We would talk about it because it was pretty impressive/sick.
He was a real nice guy, young (early 40's?) with a 12-year old kid. I saw him keep up that schedule for about 3 years when a coworker told me that Ron had died of a heart attack.
Sure there were other factors, (like his extra 40 pounds) but he was active and into white-water rafting, kayaking, camping with his kid, etc., so I know he was no couch potato either. But he's the only one I ever knew that worked so hard for so long, and the only person I've known that died of a heart attack so young.
Just remember -- you may work-work-work for the glory of your company and maybe a bigger paycheck too, but is NOT A LIFE and might even take yours.
The problem with this article is that it does not reveal all of the changes that the Bush administration is planning on making to the FLSA. In a column by Molly Ivins published in the middle of last month (unfortunately I can't find a link to it at her site at www.creators.com, nor is there a link at www.sacbee.com where I normally read her column) she described a bill making it's way through Congress which will allow employers to give TOIL (time off in lieu) rather than paying overtime. This bill will also allow employers to defer awarding the TOIL for up to a year.
The upshot of these two proposals is to deny more workers the right to overtime and to allow employers to pay straight time for those workers who are entitiled to overtime. When you consider that the overtime rules were passed to encourage employers to add more workers (creating more jobs) rather than forcing their workers into overtime, which has costs to the workers far beyond the mere hours worked. In the end, this will have negative consequences for employment and will exacerbate the growing rich-poor gap in the US. It is not good policy.
Isn't theory a great place? Everything works in theory.
Nope.
His employees, who make $19 to 30k plus the income of their working spouse, are typical Americans.
[Set Cain on fire and steal his lute.]
Ok,
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I have supported alot the man has done, but this
one is WAY OUT of line
Ppl work plenty hard as it is without cramming longer
hours down their throats without OT pay
This means if they want to start slave driving ppl
6 days a week there is nothing to stop them from doing it
I have bit my lip on the US patriot BS, and others,
but this is the straw that broke the camel's back
Bush and his pro-corporate crap crowd can take a flying leap
I have had it, and enough is enough
They allow cheap Visa labot to pour in unabated, and
ppl have to train their replacements
This piece of garbage cares nothing for the common
hard working american, and we need to kick his butt
to the curb
Bye Bye Bush baby !! You just lost me and my whole families vote
Why ??? We all work you corporate owned lackey !!!
Grrrrr....
Ex-MislTech
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
Your existence is very probably it seems, the result of the carrying on of blind natural forces which operate without purpose and without interest in or care for what is produced.
You obviously don't have children. That is such an uneducated statement about parents I choose to not even respond to it.
If you are going to quote "forces which operate without purpose and without interest," may I suggest the poor in the USA. They don't care about their kids, and it shows. The rest of us (especially immigrants that grew up in crappy countries where you had to bribe to get government employees to approve necessity paperwork, police forces are on a for hire basis, or where flush toilets are a luxury, or where you slept at night fearing the next of an endless string of insurgency groups wanted to kill you because of your ethnicity, shall I go on?) are busting our collective asses to get it all done and get to work.
I am a news photographer in Nashville, TN. A city that has the highest per capita earnings in the USA for a city over one million. People live well out here. Still, every time I go to "the ghetto" I see people out sitting on their porches and talking all day during the week. THEY ARE NOT WORKING. I am working. This is my sixth day in a row. I have five deadlines. They are doing NOTHING. Don't give me crap about not enough jobs around in America. No one just up and deserves 45,000 and a company car.
I hate it when politicians call the ghetto "working class neighborhoods." That is predicated on the idea that they are working. They are not. They are just sucking up to lazy ass voters.
I understand the new labor laws stink. But, entitlement is not what America is about. And yes, you're right about the schools. Who is to blame for this? WE ARE. We care more about roads than schools. We care about convenience store zoning more than schools. WE ELECTED THESE BASTARDS. Now we have to lay in the filth they give us.
Do not call people "the working poor." Just because they are poor doesn't mean they are busting their ass to get a job, or want one. Some carry two jobs. I understand those are the breaks. I have carried two jobs while at a university myself. I got out, though.
Those people need to get off of their asses.
And don't tell me that they "don't know how to work," or have never been taught that work is important.
That talk is just as much an insult to me as it is to them. You're calling them too naturally stupid, and me too naturally entitled.
By any objective standard we should be very pissed off at teachers today. Collectively they've been creating a work product that is at the bottom of the barrel in the industrial world. We can't read, count, or properly reason to match our international competitors and that's a fact that's been true for decades.
Teacher unions are the structure that work very hard to maintain that sad record of poor achievement. The good teachers don't get rewarded sufficiently, the bad teachers don't get moved out to something more appropriate to their talents (fruit picking perhaps?), and the entire system is bureaucratized and rigid.
The Archdiocese of NY offered to take over the 5 worst schools in NYC and turn them around over 5 years while keeping all the kids and doing it for less money. Who blocked this plan? The AFT was horrified and stopped it. They can't stand the idea that they will be visibly demonstrated to be incompetent and damn the kids if that's what it takes to hide their results.
Do the numbers. If you have 10 or 15 days, then
- You keep 2 or 3 in reserve for illness or emergencies
- You use up 3-4 for the obligatory visiting one set of relatives.
- If your company is anal you use up 3-4 just to have some long weekends each year, or to stretch out time near holidays. (vs. some companies which let you work longer days for a few days to make up for it)
- You have one trip to Hawaii or Disneyland...
- That's it, you've used up your vacation time.
A proper exploration vacation, where you spend 2-3 weeks in one country or learning one new skill (cooking classes in Provence, learning Spanish by being in Spain, a 2 week Japan Rail Pass for exploring the top castles of Japan) is right out. Only semi-sarcastically would I say "Of cource Europeans know more about the US than Americans know about Europe: Europeans actually have time to visit the US."