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.

Comments

Learned Professionals?

[drinkypoo]

So let me get this straight. The more you know, the less likely you are to get overtime? This is just the incentive that millions of Americans need to go out and get the training they need for the jobs of today.

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?

Re:Learned Professionals?

[mrpuffypants]

In a word, yes.

If you own a petrochemical plant and need to drop a few hundred barrels of waste into a nearby river be sure to line some pockets and the regulations will relax, letting you kill everybody downstream slowly.

If you happpen to be a single mother working 2 or 3 jobs at minimum wage then you don't get tax breaks because you make too little, your federally-funded daycare gets cut back, you drink water that was just polluted upstream and can't say anything about it, then you get spied on because you could be a terrorist just because you have a friend named Abdul. /me prepars for oncoming flame war (No! Don't play the homeland security card!)

Re:Learned Professionals?

[drinkypoo]

Ever heard of a progressive tax? Our welfare system? The fortune helping the unfortunate?

Progressive tax doesn't necessarily help anyone. If you had a flat tax with no exemptions, everyone would pay less, except the rich, who currently get out of tons of taxes via loopholes, and corporations, which also currently get out of tons of taxes via loopholes. Of course, that means that many goods and services would cost more, but there's no sense in me paying for goods and services that you use. Food and medical services would remain untaxed.

And I'm on CMSP (Medi-Cal for people over a certain age) so it's not like I'm against all social services. But you do realize that this actually lowers the bar so that someone who went to ITT is now considered a learned professional (quite a joke if I've ever heard one) which means that they won't be getting the overtime they need to pay off their tuition loans... and I doubt the ITT loans are on terms as generous as the Subsidized Stafford Loan which I have used to pay for my expenses in community college.

The fact remains that we are punishing people for seeking additional training. Meanwhile, in California (where most of these technical people and jobs are) Davis' budget is about to cripple the Community Colleges all over, and the State Colleges and Unis are constantly raising tuition rather than expanding. They could expand and take more students, or they can simply sit around at their current size, raise tuition...

The result? Ever-greater stratification of society. A greater separation between the rich and the poor. The upper middle class becomes the lower middle class, the lower class continues to suffer, and the rich only get richer. Do you really think that the majority of people who are currently on TANF, Medi-Cal (and similar programs), Food Stamps and so on would rather collect that shit and live in poverty than have a good job and support themselves? There are always bad eggs but in general, that's not the way people think.

Re:Learned Professionals?

[mrpuffypants]

and if you want to give a kickback then call it a kickback, not a "Tax Cut"

Re:Learned Professionals?

[drooling-dog]

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?

It's not just you, but sometimes I think it might as well be. The repubs - with passive acquiescence from the dems, I'm sorry to say - have been trying to feudalize society for years. Sometimes through legislation, sometimes through more subtle changes in rules and procedures, but always to the same end. That's why they like to keep their working-class constituency (!) drunk on other things, like religion (as always), war, flag-burning (!!), xenophobia, and the petty advantages that some other working stiff is getting.

If everyone who is getting it up the butt by the Republican Party (which is legal in Texas now, by the way) were to open their eyes for just a day, it would hardly last until the next election.

Re:Learned Professionals?

[Tackhead]

> The repubs - with passive acquiescence from the dems, I'm sorry to say - have been trying to feudalize society for years. Sometimes through legislation, sometimes through more subtle changes in rules and procedures, but always to the same end. That's why they like to keep their working-class constituency (!) drunk on other things, like religion (as always), war, flag-burning (!!), xenophobia, and the petty advantages that some other working stiff is getting.

Grok, but I'd hardly call the Dems' tactics passive acquiescence.

The Dem base is equally drunk on a religion (albeit one of social engineering - witness phrases like "diversity" and "fairness" being waved around in much the same way as 'pubs use "God" or "family"), war (class war), flag-burning (well, only to piss off Republicans ;), xenophobia (Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Louis Farrakhan do a great job of keeping 15% of the population drunk on race war, who then vote Dem, even though there is no, and never will be, a Dem equivalent to Condi Rice or Colin Powell - Condi for VP in '04 and Prez in '08. Hilary vs. Condi grudge match! :), and the petty advantages that some other working stiff is getting.

Anyways, back on track, I'm just saying get used to serfdom. It's not that bad. The Lords demand tribute, we pay tribute, and for the most part, if we keep our fucking mouths shut and fill out the forms when they tell us to, they leave us alone.

Re:Learned Professionals?

[cheezedawg]

When you have more money to spend you can find more tax loopholes, so you pay less tax per dollar earned.

You are talking out of your ass. Lets look at the real numbers, ok?

In 2001, the average tax burdon as a % of income for all tax returns was 16.1%. Here are some examples to see how that breaks down:

- People that made between $19k-$22k/year paid 7.6% in taxes
- People that made between $40k-$50k/year paid 10% in taxes
- People that made between $100k-$200k/year paid 17.3% in taxes
- People that made between $1.0M-$1.5M/year paid 29.2% in taxes

What do you know- the more money you make, the higher your tax burdon is. In fact, the richest 1% of taxpayers account for about 20% of all income, but they pay over 37% of all income taxes in this country (Source).

In fact, most people who make really excessive amounts of money per year pay less taxes per dollar than those in lower tax brackets as a result.

Wrong. The highest income group (people that made over $10M in 2001) paid about 25.4%. Compare that with the 2.0% paid by the lowest income level.

The next time Daschle is on TV whining about the "tax cuts for the rich", keep these numbers in mind...

Re:Learned Professionals?

[drinkypoo]

In 2001, the average tax burdon as a % of income for all tax returns was 16.1%. Here are some examples to see how that breaks down:

Maybe I'm just an idiot, but I'm having a hard time making complete sense of that document.

One thing I did notice is that footnote 1 says that "The number of returns with negative adjusted gross income, i.e., returns with an adjusted gross deficit, and the corresponding amounts for adjusted gross deficit, were excluded from Table 1. By excluding deficit returns, alternative minimum tax reported on some of these returns was also excluded. For Tax Year 2000, there were 5,714 returns with no adjusted gross income that reported income tax, mostly alternative minimum tax, totaling $100.6 million." I might have a spurious comma, the text was pretty small. :P

That means that those 5,714 returns averaged (assuming my math is correct) $17,605.88 in tax each, which is an alternative minimum tax. I'm interested how much money you have to pick up before your minimum tax is almost eighteen grand. Of course, 5,714 returns is not a very large number out of the some 300 million people in the U S of A. Moving on, the IRS will tell you "New IRS Report Shows Income and Taxes Surged in 2000; Alternative Minimum Tax Jumped". An interesting document High-Income Tax Returns for 2000 (PDF) has this interesting paragraph within it:

Overall, a large portion of high-income taxpayers were subject to tax on a large share of their incomes and, consequently, reported very substantial amounts of tax. (60.2 percent had taxable income equal to 80 percent or more of expanded income; and 96.9 percent had taxable income equal to 50 percent or more of expanded income.)

Or, read backwards (assuming I'm even reading it correctly forwards), nearly 40% of taxpayers whose adjusted income is over $200,000 completely avoided taxes on some 20% of their income. Around 3.1% of them avoided paying taxes on 50% of their actual income. Paying 30% on 50% of your income, for example, means you're paying only 15% on your income, right? The same document also shows that the primary reason for reduced income tax liability is Tax-exempt interest, accounting for 52.5% of the returns counted.

Incidentally, the top 400 tax returns averaged a tax rate of 22.29 percent. So I guess I really am full of shit. Carry on. However, based on figures I dredged up above, I do maintain that there's something to what I say, it just doesn't work as strongly as I thought it did. I guess I'll retire in shame, like I did on the Bose issue. :P

headline

[Angron]

Kinda scary loading up slashdot at work and seeing a headline that sounds like it's scolding you for not working....

-A

Barking up the wrong tree

[Rylfaeth]

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 like it?

[shepd]

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.

Re:Hmmmmmm I wonder...

[helix400]

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.

No Overtime No Vacation

[cubicledrone]

...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.

Management doesn't get overtime anyway...

[Lodragandraoidh]

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...

And in Europe ...

[Macka]

The proposal could also cause workers to work longer hours, since the Labor Department doesn't put any limit on the number of hours per week an employee must work, the group said in a study published on its Web site.

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).

Re:And in Europe ...

[the eric conspiracy]

But here you get medical insurance and education for your kids when you're unemployed.

An a 17% VAT, higher personal income taxes, etc.

Gonna Backfire

[Sergeant Beavis]

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.

Re:People work harder in the U.S.?

[bigmase521]

You're right, you're supposed to work hard. And many of us do just that. However I disagree with you. You use the word "slacker" in your post... How can someone who works OVER 40 hours a week be considered a slacker? Yes you're taught that hard work will get you whatever you desire in life, and in many cases that is true, however if you're a hard-working employee, you deserve the right to be compensated for all of the hard work you are doing for your employer.

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?

Vacation vs burnout?

[thogard]

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.

Re:Vacation vs burnout?

[release7]

You need to consider that the US compiles its unemployment statistics very differently than these countries. For instance, they consider those who don't receive unemployment checks any more as people who have stopped looking. Even though they don't have a job and are still looking for work, they aren't counted. The US is probably at least close if not above the 10% unemployment mark but there is no way to know.

Hurry up and let the DoJ what you think.

[mikeophile]

The US Department of Labor is only accepting public comment on the changes to the FLSA until this Monday.

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.

Re:No surprise

[Guppy06]

"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?

Liberalism != (Communism || Socialism)

[leereyno]

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

Re:Liberalism != (Communism || Socialism)

[Jonathan]

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.

As has been said many times -- it only takes twenty years for liberal to become a conservative, even without changing a single idea. The whole *point* of liberalism is to be avant garde. Adam Smith, believe it or not, was a *radical*. Being a Smith fan today is just as silly as being an Velvet Underground fan today -- what was once outrageous is just old hat today. Heck, even the conservative economists at the University of Chicago don't totally subscribe to the idea of the free market anymore. And Marx is over 100 years out of date, btw.

Is it worth it?

[aethera]

Is it worth it? That's my question for all the geeks who work the incredible hours. I know, I was once there too. Luckily although my employer did not pay overtime, my supervisor did his best to reward it with food, (near-giveaway) employee auctions of obsolete but perfectly functional equipment, etc. So sure, we all worked 80, 90, even the occasioanl 100+ hour week.

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!

US vs French vacation packages

[James 007 Bond]

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?

Well...

[Faust7]

. . . Or hardly working?

If you're reading Slashdot, how is this even a question?

Re:Not working hard enough.

[Phred T. Magnificent]

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.

The greedy bastards just don't get it...

[OwnerOfWhinyCat]

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.

try not to share the wealth.

[Erris]

I work in 'management'. ...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). ... I have the satisfaction of knowing that I helped get a major project up and running

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.

Re:Working Hard?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

HEY YOU!

[zulux]

WORK HARDER! Millions on welfare are depending on YOU!

(swiped from a bumper sticker)

Re:HEY YOU!

[smack_attack]

WORK HARDER! Millions on welfare are depending on YOU!

I didn't know there were that many corporations.

Curious...

[Mortanius]

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...

A tale of two jobs

[EmagGeek]

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.

Re:hardly working

[August_zero]

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.

Re:3.3% of the data is good enough for me!

[fliplap]

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?

So?

[foobario]

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?

What's the story here?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it just me or is the US tech market grossly inflated with dead weight? I understand that the economy is slow and you have to work hard and create success. I'm also utterly shocked at the amount of talent out there; there isn't any. We hired a CCNAed network engineer, bastard couldn't configure a tap on a cat. switch without spending 6 hours on Cisco's site (probably closer to 7 since he took lunch during that time) looking at the documentation. Yeah, he talks a good game but he doesn't do shit. I'm a lowly software engineer without a CCNA and I could have read Cisco's site and got the switch working faster than he did. Yeah we work long hours because the work has to get done and people like that are the talent pool. Worse, this guy is "good" compared to the guy he replaced. There is too much dead weight. "High fives, we got the switch working, want a game of foosball before we cut out?!"

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?

Yes, It's Worth It.

[Tackhead]

> Is it worth it? That's my question for all the geeks who work the incredible hours. I know, I was once there too. Luckily although my employer did not pay overtime, my supervisor did his best to reward it with food, (near-giveaway) employee auctions of obsolete but perfectly functional equipment, etc. So sure, we all worked 80, 90, even the occasioanl 100+ hour week.

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.)

Research says otherwise...

[Tetravus]

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

Re:The problem is people take jobs just for the mo

[telecaster]

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).

Re:Jobs dont have to be enjoyable.

[MidnightBrewer]

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.

Re:Democrats....Repubs

[macdaddy357]

I wish I had mod points. That was insightful. If you give greedy businessmen a license to rob and loot, they use it. That explains Enron, Worldcom, Imclone, and all the corporate scandals. It also explains why American workers work harder and longer for less than workers in any other industrialized nation. We need to forget the myth of rugged individualism, and organize to bargain collectively. A lot of the big unions, like the AFL-CIO forgot that this is their very purpose for being, and got in bed with the bosses. They are just businesses now themselves. That is why I joined the IWW.

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.

Re:hardly working

[EnderWiggnz]

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?

Like this is something new...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ya know, I swore I wasn't gonna get involved in this, but reading all these posts, I just didn't have a choice.

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. ...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.

Herbert Hoover
The Profession of Engineering (from his memoirs)

Re:hardly working

[nomadic]

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.

Uh-huhn. Now let's look at the IRS' real numbers

[MickLinux]

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.)