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Working Off the Clock, How Much Is Too Much?
The Wall Street Journal has word of yet another suit against an employer who required an "always on" mentality to persist because of easily available communications. Most of us working in some sort of tech related job are working more than 40 hours per week (or at least lead the lifestyle of always working), but how much is too much? What methods have others used in the past to help an employer see the line between work and personal life without resorting to a legal attack? "Greg Rasin, a partner at Proskauer Rose LLP, a New York business law firm, said the recession may spawn wage-and-hour disputes as employers try to do the same amount of work with fewer people. The federal Fair Labor Standards Act says employees must be paid for work performed off the clock, even if the work was voluntary. When the law was passed in 1938, 'work' was easy to define for hourly employees, said Mr. McCoy. As the workplace changed, so did the rules for when workers should be paid."
Oooo, an opportunity to whine! I'll start.
I don't mind working in the middle of the night if nagios wakes me up because something went wrong. Sure beats having to deal with it first thing in the morning. But what ticks me off is when I roll into work 30 minutes "late" the next day and it's like "Oh look, weave is rolling in late again."
But the big scam is comp time. Work after hours? Gotta take comp time. But then there's never an opportunity to use it, and if you do manage to use comp time, you don't get a chance to use all of your vacation time, and at the end of the year you lose unused vacation time. If you insist and take all of your comp time and vacation time, people are whining that you're always on leave and never around and then when projects don't get done, you get dinged on your performance eval.
It is quite easy to define 'work' for employees in any field in 2009. If management don't want perform the task themselves and someone e, then it's work.
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George: Right now, I sit around pretending that I'm busy.
Jerry: How do you pull that off?
George: I always look annoyed. Yeah, when you look annoyed all the time, people think that you're busy. Think about it... [puts on an annoyed face]
Elaine: Yeah, you do! He looks very busy!
Jerry: Yeah, he looks busy! Yeah!
George: I know what I'm doin.' In fact Mr. Wilhelm gave me one of those little stress dolls. All right, back to work. [puts on the annoyed face]
For me, the choice is simple, I'll do what it takes to get the job done so long as management's expectations and goals assume a 40 hour week. I'll work after my 40 hours if to help out as needs so long as their expection and goal hits that mark. If they every give me grief about being a few minutes late due to traffic, etc... but don't pay me for the 20-30 minutes I worked over the day before, we'll have a problem and I'll never work another second over 5o'clock ever again.
Aside from that, they know the law and if they want something done bad enough to tap over 40 hours, they can pay time and a half, or decide that it can wait until tomorrow.
What I cannot imagine is how an employer can reasonably expect someone to work extra without pay except as part of a "lets keep it friendly and I might need you a little late every now and again and you'll want to ditch out a little early now and again and lets not make a federal case over it" mentality. If you had to contract out work to a plumber, per-se you'd instantly assume they would get paid hourly... period. What I understand even less is geeks who work insane hours knowing their company probably considers them at best, a necessary evil, full well knowing that it is the (legal) responsibility of the employer to either fund enough positions to get the hours of service they feel they need to cover, or fully expect to pay when they use the workers post 40 hour free-time.
I feel that if you are setting the employer's expectation that a technician (or whatever) is willing to work 60 hours' for 40's pay, you're harming all the technicans who do want to pursue outside interests on their own time, and when the day comes that you're ready to scale back to 40... you could have painted yourself into a corner.
Forgive my spelling from time to time. I'm often posting during short breaks.
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Alt-Control-H. Hide application. Not minimize or to the tray, but completely gone.
Alt-Control-R. Pop up the dialog to return an application.
(Shift-Control-* minimizes to the tray).
Not just useful for hiding slashdot, but for getting "mandatory" windows out of the way.
That plus my middle button (or is mapped to "Show Desktop") anytime I hear those footsteps, quick tap to the middle button and all that's up is my desktop.
I'm a software developer on a federal contract. My hours are _capped_ at 80hrs/2wks.
If I have to stay late early in the pay period, I have to leave early later in the pay period. Working extra hours requires advance approval and enough paperwork that it is almost never done. My contracting company faces penalties if they let/force us to work "off the clock". I have been told that this is to prevent preferential treatment in future contract bids (it would not be fair if a company had a reputation for working more than they bill), but I don't know if that's the actual reason. I have also heard that it is because we are at a client site, and cannot work unless government people are there to babysit us, and they rarely work extra hours. Either way, I have a lot more free time, and better pay, compared to when I was in dot-coms.
Come work in the EU: we understand what you say, pay overtime and have a acceptable climate.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.
I'll work overtime or after hours if the team really needs it, but I always expect to get paid. If they don't pay overtime, then I'll either arrive late the next few days, or leave early.
If they raise a huge stink about it, I'll start looking elseware. Even in todays job market, I can be gone in 3 or 4 months max. Never in a million years would I *not* be actively looking to bai.
I dont work for free and I suggest nobody else should. Nobody makes you work unpaid. You let yourself work unpaid and if you do, you are a coward fool for letting people walk over you. If they have a problem with you having a life outside of work, fuck em. If the job market sucks, mentally detach yourself from the job and spend every ounce of energy you have looking to bail at the first good opportunity.
But this is easy for me to say, I live in an area with a lot of tech jobs. If I lived in bum-fuck nowhere with only one tech firm around... I'd probably have to consider either moving or switching careers. Working unpaid is for chumps.
It's a reasonable trade-off between paying someone overtime or hiring another body. Don't want to hire another body, even though one's needed? Then pay overtime. Don't want to pay overtime? Then properly staff the project/job/whatever.
This is a management screw-up, not a worker screw-up.