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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
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
... 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
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!
Libertarian=you keel over dead because there's no laws preventing people from putting toxic sludge from your soda.
Don't worry, The Holy Market wil fix it! All shall be solved through the promotion of commerce! So hath Adam Smith written, so it shall be
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
Obviously you have not or you would know that only a very small amount of your taxes per year (a few dollars) goes to support welfare recipiants. Unless you count companies like Phillip-Morris and Ford who get shit-tons of money to stay afloat.
On Wall Street they say "buy low, sell high" On the pad we say, "buy high, sell high" Isn't that somehow better?
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.)
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
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
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".
Adam Smith was a naive economic and political theorist who overestimated human goodness, and underestimated human greed when he wrote The Wealth of Nations, aka, the capitalist manifesto. Capitalism is an economic theory, not a religion. Those who have made it a religion, and made the 7 deadly sins virtues, are destroying society.
How ya like dat?
so...
there are 2080 hours in a work year (40/week). you mean to tell me, that for a mere $0.36 an hour that i work, i can ensure a social safety net that catches people ebfore they crash into oblivion?
damn, where do i sign up?
... hi bingo
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)
Have you seen the welfare numbers?
Yes. According to the Department of Health and Human Services, 3.3 percent of Americans are dependent on welfare.
Have you seen the unemployment numbers?
About 6 percent.
And let's go back to your opening statement:
I'm willing to bet that there is a small percentage in this country "working hard" and shouldering the economy while the rest of the nation "rests and relaxes".
You'd lose that bet. You're not basing this on any actual knowledge or experience, you're just making huge assumptions because by God you have to feel superior to everyone. So your insecurity and paranoia leads you to suspect that somehow you're getting a raw deal, that you're supporting some massive army of lazy, unemployed welfare recipients, a horde that exists only in your delusions.
There are people receiving welfare who work full time, at jobs you wouldn't last a day in, doing backbreaking work that you couldn't possibly imagine.
So show a little humility. As much as you'd like to believe it, you're not some square-jawed Ayn Rand hero supporting ungrateful parasites. The vast majority of the rest of us work just hard as you do; the only difference is most of the rest of us have a little freaking compassion and empathy. We know that we're all in this together, and if the guy down the road lost his job and needs to feed his family, then hell yes I'm willing to give up some of my paycheck to keep them off the streets. If you don't like it, then you can protest with your vote. If you can't change things with your vote, then you can emigrate. You can find a nice little country with no government. But be careful, true anarchies do exist in this world, but they're not very pleasant places to live.
You might want to take a look at how each country calculates its unemployment numbers. We are actually about even.
Well I'm the doctor and I say you're dead, so shut up and take it like a man!
"wondersparrow", you crack me up. So, your motto is: like your job, or pretend to like it, no matter what it is or how much you are paid? I should like to see the tight smile on your face if you ever worked for $5.50 an hour.
Mr, the highest expression of unique human qualities is not happily slaving away in the service industry 80 hours a week for $5.00 an hour and slapping yourself on the back for your "work ethic".
The point is: Virtually everyone wants time to do something of what makes us HUMAN, quite apart from WORKER BEES or ants!!! Ok, Mr. "wondersparrow"? And you won't get the chance doing that in the service industry. ("The get another job," wondersparrow retorts:))
It seems to be that you might, perhaps, be the most spectacular success of the propagandists who run human resources departments. In some places, they gather their (underpaid) employees in the morning and make them utter the various clarion calls --- With a smile on their (workers) faces.
Funny how close this sort of thing is to what one imagines might have been a local village C.P. meeting in China -- During the cultural revolution. heh, heh heh.
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!
As much as you'd like to believe it, you're not some square-jawed Ayn Rand hero supporting ungrateful parasites.
While I agree with your entire post, I do feel quite often I am supporting "ungrateful parasites." The parasites, are NOT the common man though, but the CEOs and Congressmen and the "privileged class." It really makes me sick when the **AA's whine about the "billions" they are losing, while eating one single dinner that cost them more than most people I know make in a month. When our Congressmen try to vote themselves a raise, using reasons like " I can no longer afford three house payments" (I don't remember which one of them said this, but one of them did,) I feel the rise of violent thoughts. It turns out, they had three houses, one in their district, one in Washington, D.C., and one, a vacation home in Aspen, CO!! That one they didn't even live in or rent out for most of the year!
Sidenote about Aspen: A few years ago, all the millionaire doctors, lawyers, and other business people who had made Aspen their playground of choice tried to get some sort of legal action going in the state, because they were slowly but surely getting pushed out of town by the billionaires, and could no longer afford houses there.
I get extremely angry when company CEOs claim their business is bad, and they have to lay off thousands of employees, and cut back the hours of those who get to stay, and then, then they have the gall to force the company to pay them millions of dollars in bonuses, whether they get fired, quit or stay on, and drive the company to the point where it goes bankrupt, which leads to the government bailing them out monetarily. That, in my mind is criminal, and makes me angry. Why should the taxes I pay go to these type people? I have no problem helping out some one who needs a hand, but that isn't where the money goes.
I have nothing against someone who earns millions of dollars. I hate, with every fiber of my being, any and all people who do what the "leaders" of Enron, MCI, and many more corporations, as well as the "leaders" of nations do on a daily basis. These people have enough money that if they never made another cent, could still live ten times better than any ten families I know could on what they make, yet they whine and cry, that they are going broke, or can't "afford" something.
All you so-called leaders out there, maybe you need to lead by example. You know, like, if you can own more than one house, but your employees or constituents have to work two or more jobs to rent a piece of a building to house their families in, and you don't try to help them in any way, you had better not ever whine about your finances, or claim life is hard. Until you get down in the shit with the common folk, you have NO right to your position in the community.
So, yeah, maybe I do feel like I'm "supporting ungrateful parasites," just not the ones you might think.
For those who describe their systems as 'boxen', do you order multiple 'boxen' of corn flakes also?
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
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.
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.