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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.
If you aren't exempt I'd say any is too much. You are screwing yourself and your fellow employees.
If you are exempt, as TFA says it get's a little murkier. I've happily put in extra time when needed but I expect my employer to be flexible when the heat is off. Otherwise my tendency is to then lean towards voting with my feet. Right now that is easier to say than do for a lot of people. But what is acceptable varies so much from person to person that it is impossible to come up with any kind of general rule to fit all those different cases.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
I make my time back by slacking off at least 75% of my time at work.
The key is to *look* busy... and leave the cursor on the minimize icon.
Besides the effect of unrelaxed stress, there is a clear point of diminishing returns when you do a single thing overlong. For me it's a 10 hour limit. I also obey the 4pm Friday rule. To work beyond this point is stupid. But when you're always available, these limits are not communicated to the people who can reach you, generally, so you lose.
Answer? Turn the bloody things off at night.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
Hate to break this to you, but especially in IT, this is just the way it is. My boss, like many others, seems to think that by being my employer, he dictates what I work... even if that means I neglect my family and health. Don't like it? Leave and don't come back.
The laws in place too to protect against such things are way too mild and useless. Someone can fire you for being sick or taking off because your kid was in a car crash... sure it isn't legal, but the trouble you have to go through to fight it, then what you get in return for doing so is horribly skewed.
The only solution is to find another job. It may not be right. It may not be fair. That IS how it is.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
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.
Tell your friends about xenu.net
I informed my boss that my personal life involves me choking people and applying pressure to joints, and clarify that if my work life enters my personal life, then my personal life will enter my work life. Haven't had a problem since. You can't just let people walk all over you just because they have the title of "boss".
As a research scientist, I don't even 'work' ON the clock... hehe.
Ya, the whole cooperate "elite management" style is really troublesome to me; you know, the idea that the company pretty well owns you, and that the managers are superior human beings simply because they are above you on the food chain. That's why I'm staying the heck away from it all.
DISCLAIMER: I am very rarely serious. If the above comment seems asinine makes no sense, it is most likely a bad joke.
Employers are always willing to make a push and demand you come in weekends or work late. But when slow times come around, do you get free time off? No, you do not. In fact, do you get anything at all for putting in the extra effort, besides the dubious benefit of retaining your job? No, you do not. So any at all is unacceptable, because there's no quid for that quo.
I have found it is as much an employee problem as an employer problem.
We have people who (figuratively) punch out at 40 hours, whether they have finished what they were supposed to or not. When it comes to a new project, everyone wants the people who will get stuff done even if there are a few little hiccups.
When it comes to salary increases or layoff decisions, the most in-demand people always get preference.
Don't blame the employer, blame the co-workers and others in the industry that set the precedence. The employer sees "free" work being done and takes advantage of it.
This is best used as a weapon. If you want me to be "on call" then you're going to pay me half time to be sober. If I'm not "on call" then I'll answer the phone if I answer the phone. We don't do "comp time"; that shit has never worked in the history of PHB's. What we do it double time from when the phone rings, and that burns enough that I can leave when I want on friday (generally) because "I've got to leave, I'm over 40 this week." That and in your contract, put in that you won't return to work until 12 hours after you leave. Make sure the union puts that in if you're CWA.
Weren't we all sold on the idea that these devices were going to allow us to get so much more work done quicker that we'd have more free time to take little Timmy to the zoo more often?
Not that many of us didn't see this coming. I personally love the commercials showing a dude checking his work email or routing a package right from his phone while on vacation. Yeah, uh, blow me. This is supposed to make me want to buy your product?
Since I'm lazy, I won't even go down the road of how the socialist Europeans can get more work done than us USians and still take a month off each year....
What doesn't kill you only delays the inevitable
Asking employees to work extra for free is akin to stealing. If a worker needs some extra income, they can't just dip into the company coffers because it is convenient. It's a shame that so many people are willing to give up their free time so easily because their employer won't do the right thing and hire more help.
Employees tend to believe the employer has all the power, and as a result this is pretty much the case. It's hard for an employee in the tech sector to demand a reasonable 40-45 hour workweek when there are 15 other idiots lined up who are ready to give all their free time away.
Posting anonymously so that no one concludes that I'm not a "team player".
The greatest trick that Milton Friedman ever pulled was convincing the world unions don't exist.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
Before you even take a job, get clear on how often you'll be expected to work overtime and exactly how you're going to be compensated. If I need to have an "always on" mentality, the company needs to have an "always paying" mentality.
I realize that crunch time is the thing to do in the IT industry, but get clear up front so that kind of work cycle is something you understand when you accept the company's offer. If I need to put in an extra 10 hours every week or be on-call, I'm going to factor that into my salary negotiations. Once the deal is brokered, I'm left with a sense of satisfaction because I have the peace of mind in knowing I'm not being taken advantage of, I'm doing exactly what I signed up for.
The company I work for started bitching about that I got an hour less than I'm supposed to work in June, but they ignored the fact that I worked more than 12 hours overtime the month before that. :)
And that's when I started doing exactly 8 hours a day. On the other hand, the company I worked before previously didn't mind at all when I left earlier sometimes: they were very satisfied with my work. Before I left I calculated that I had about 32 hours of overtime after a year of work (ok, not a lot, but still). I know that won't happen when my contract ends with the other company
In what I consider my best career move, more than fifteen years ago I resigned as an employee, and I've worked as a contract IT consultant ever since. Really, made not much of a difference in the kind of work I do, except that I now get paid hourly, rather than on a salary.
Funny how once you start getting paid by the hour, all the demands to work 40+ hours a week disappear all by themselves. When I was an employee, and worked together with consultants, the difference in how we were treated, even though, for all practical matters, we did the same kind of a job -- the difference was quite an eye opener.
But rather than bitch and whine about the raw deal I was supposedly getting, I figured, well, if that's where the wind is blowing, I'll just come along for a ride. So I became a consultant. I do not remember the last time I had to work +40 hours a week. Must've been well over ten years ago. Although I still get the same calls that wake me up in the middle of the night, I now keep track of my time, and make sure that, at the end of the week, I put in, more or less, the same 40 hours.
It's nice having my life back.
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.
... How many Post-It Notes can I steal before I'm fired?
One? A pack? A crate?
Working overtime and not being paid is the equivalent of the company stealing your time.
Now, I'm a reasonable guy. I'll go home half an our late and not put in for overtime / TOIL. But you better believe that I'm taking some Post-Its with me.
If a square is really a rhombus, why aren't all triangles purple?
While I understand the general idea of your post, it seems to me like you're making a bad precedent for yourself: once your boss knows that he can ask you to work 60 hour weeks (instead of let's say 40 hours), that will be the standard that you're supposed to work and everything over 60 will be looked at like overtime.
The federal Fair Labor Standards Act says employees must be paid for work performed off the clock, even if the work was voluntary.
At my employer many of the IT staff are expected to work "on the weekends" with no additional compensation. Especially if they are claimed to be managers. So in essence, my management claims that we're always "on the clock."
I really enjoy what I do (web-developer) and I do end up taking a lot of work home with me but I'm still at the age (and the projects are interesting) where I can enjoy it. I can imagine it being an absolute nightmare of having to do something you hate or find boring and then being expected to work late on it for free. It's definitely a difficult area to balance, I guess it comes down to whats in your contract and if you are willing to argue it with your employer. If you do work late and you arent getting paid though, at the very least make them aware you're doing them the favour. Just dont expect it returned.
jaymz
$10 a minute is a "steal"
If you want to change the politics (and its all politics really) get involved. http://www.swt.org/ Its not gonna happen for you unless it happens for everyone.
A programmer who has never quite recovered from the 2001-2002 downturn.
You're doing something wrong.
Take into account that most jobs out there are offering less and less especially for IT positions... And like it was said before make sure your (and your employer's) intentions are 100% clear before taking a job... And unlike 9% of America right now be happy you have a position instead of a cardboard box... Aside from that more individuals need to take legal action against their employers simply because at one time it was a workers market and now it's an employer's market... Incentives used to be the reason you took a job... And they fought for you to come work for them... But look around... Those abandoned buildings aren't because someone is on vacation... Heratiki
...that was very strict with its clients about expecting off-hours duty from its employees.
They charged clients per day for on-call status, and charged them more for calling us. They passed the money along, so the sound of my work cell ringing was like a cash register. Just being on call, even if nobody did call, was an extra few hundred per week in my check.
I've joked and/or complained about my boss on here occasionally - but in this regard he's excellent. I do sometimes have to work on stuff in the evening, or on a weekend; but I get comp time and am allowed to use it in a timely manner. I can't remember the last time I asked for time off (either comp time or vacation) and was refused.
I don't have the choice of receiving extra pay, which some people would prefer; but I actually prefer the comp time. Heck, if money was my motivation I wouldn't be working at a university...
I know the economy is bad; but the folks who are saying "if you don't like your treatment, look for a new job" are spot on IMHO. Just be aware that there are tradeoffs with any job - in academia the tradeoff is less money for a better work environment.
#DeleteChrome
Yep, manage expectations. Don't let the expectations manage you.
"The Brady Bunch is back...working homicide"
I generally watch my email out of the office and hop on an issue if it's pressing, but I know when I know I've been working too much. It's that stress thing. My boss knows when I've been killing it and working weekends and overtime, she signs my hours every other week. If I'm stressed and working too much I'll tell her straight up, this is too much. I need a break or help or whatever. If you're not willing to work overtime, crunch on a weekend, come in on saturday or sunday once in a while, then this is not the right career for you. Adjust your hours so that a couple nights a week, you work off hours. Every Thursday I work from 12 - 9pm. Gives me a chance to bounce servers, setup workstations, and all the other stuff you'd normally be bugging people about if they were in the office. But yeah, be your own judge of what's too much and if your boss can't accept you won't come in on Sunday after you've already done 10 hours OT and came in on Saturday as well, then your boss is an ass. If you boss is an ass, then talk to his/her superiour or find a different job. A lot of what stresses me out are my other clients, friends/family/associate's PC"s and networks I work on outside of work. But that's where the real good money is so I deal with it and fix VPN tunnels on Sunday instead of taking a nap and send an invoice. If I was smart I'd drop my clients, but they're friends and family and they appreciate my help much more than the corporate dregs.
Namaste
Maybe I'm showing my age but the last time I worked a job where I was "on call", I got paid 1/4 my hourly rate for the duration of the time I was on call and overtime while working. About 16 hours of pay for a weekend and it usually resulted in not having to do anything. Another place didn't pay an hourly rate but whoever was stuck with "the emergency phone" got paid $250 if they got called in. Plus overtime for the actual hours worked. There were arguments over who got to carry the phone.
They put in their offer that I "would work uncompensated overtime." I asked what this meant and they said that I would be working 48 hours minimum every week and I replied, "and gettting paid for fourty?" and they said that was correct. I got a big grin on my face and said, "So that the following week I work 32 hours and get paid for fourty." They couldn't even crack a smile. I told them to go pound sand.
This is not the first time T-Mobile has had issues paying employees for work while they were off the clock. http://www.lawyersandsettlements.com/settlements/02742/tmobile.html
I'm an adult. I expect to be treated like one. I realize that situations will arise that require me to occasionally work OT. No problem with that - that's just life. I also realize that situations will arise that require me to take time off work on short notice. I expect my employer to have no problem with that (and, indeed, my boss has no problem with it). The proviso, in both directions, is that it cannot be excessive, either in duration or frequency. As far as always being "on call", that's why G-d invented the off-switch. Or, failing that, the Faraday cage (not for me, for the khest'n cellphone). If I'm on-call for a lot of hours on a regular basis, I expect compensation (you can roll it into my salary, as long as I'm told about it BEFORE I accept the job).
linquendum tondere
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.
I've been upfront in interviews. I work 40 hours/week. I get my work done and I don't hang out. I cook dinner every night so I don't have time to be drawn in to an issue because someone else has been procrastinating working the first 7 hours of the day.
If they have a problem with this, I don't consider them.
One big problem are the people who don't want to go home.
Does the employer benefit and did he ask for it? If yes and yes, then it is work. There is no such thing as a free lunch - it is a healthy capitalist principle and it works both ways.
It depends on the person.
If after you feel like you've been working too much for 3+ months, either make changes with your boss or find another job.
Exception Duck - may or may not contain chicken.
How much is too much?
That depends on who you ask:
Union: 'Too Much' work is *ANY* work that is performed off the clock, and/or is needed to finish the job on-time.
Personally, I HATE unions. I have had to work for them and they yell at you for stepping out of line even an inch. I used to work at a place where I was forbidden to touch or have any kind of contact with boxes while we were on break. Kind of ironic that an organization that prides itself on individuality would be so authoritarian towards their forced membership in their policies. We had MANY draconian rules that bordered on ridiculous.
Personally, if I have had to work off the clock, I've been generously compensated for my troubles. Working off the clock may not always come with money attached, but you can earn extra 'credit' with your employer by demonstrating a strong work ethic (or lack of social life) which pays off in performance reviews.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
Must be nice to be able to do that.
Here in the Boston area, any computer job that pays enough to survive is exempt. And when I say "enough to survive" I mean "enough money to live indoors, have heat, hot water, electricity, and food".
If you insist on being paid hourly instead of salaried, most employers will refuse, and the few that will oblige will then put it in writing that you're not allowed to work any overtime without being authorized in writing in advance, and then they'll use that to screw you - if you try to put in for overtime, they'll insist that it wasn't authorized, and if you insist they pay you for it, they'll terminate you for violating the overtime policy. Of course, if you refuse to work the overtime they ask for (which you know you won't be paid for because there's no written authorization) then in your next review they'll say you have a bad work ethic, and refuse to give you a raise.
Personally, I'd like to see salary exemptions be eliminated.
Every second off the clock is too much. Period.
Working off the clock means the partner in your deal wants to scam you.
It's the new pay cut.(TM) Comfortably under the radar. And always with an excuse rolling of the tongue.
That attitude -- especially in gaming development business -- , which in my eyes is criminal and should be illegal, drove me to creating my own independent business.
Where I work to always have enough clients, to be able to just say no to those who are not good enough.
It also gave me an idea: The root problem is, that while you can have multiple employees, you can only have one boss in a company. It's like a monopoly. With the same problems.
And if you do your own thing, you can have multiple "bosses", but pay with the added expenses of having to do all the accounting and management stuff.
So why not combine them inside a company? Let every employee take jobs from any other person in the company that he wants, and have his own employees with the budget that that gives him.
A bit like the Hollywood model, but without its problems.
The accounting would be just another job that an employee rents from the company's accountants.
You could still create long-term partnerships with some of those "bosses", to have the stability. But everything would be more fair and flexible.
That way it would be fair again, because bosses as well as employees would be an a healthy competition.
Outside of such a system, my rule is: That's my price, and you can either pay it, or you won't get it. I don't need you. You need me. End of story.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
I pretty much aim for about 40 hours. I'll do maybe closer to 50 during busy times. Anything past that, I expect them to make it up to me somehow -- and they usually do just fine about that. The management know that if we are working much longer hours, it means something is probably wrong, and they regard it as evidence that they need to fix the schedule. Sometimes, they really do ask for more work, but at least so far, comp time has been real and has actually worked out pretty well. I would not stay someplace that expected me to do 50+ hours regularly; that would indicate to me that they didn't understand basic facts about engineer capabilities. So I work a reasonable amount, put in a bit of extra time when it seems like it'll make a big difference, and sometimes slack a bit when things are slower and/or I'm a bit burned out. We make deadlines, the code's decent, and everybody's happy.
I've seen people whose managers wanted a lot more than that, and I've also seen people leave and go to other jobs, and I think that's pretty closely related. It is not healthy to try to work 60-hour weeks all the time, and since it's bad for developers, it ends up being bad for companies -- it produces worse code.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Yeah Hiii. It's Bill Lumbergh again. Ahh.. I just wanted to make sure you knew that we did start at the umm.. usual time.. this morning. Yeah.. It isn't a half day or anything like that. So if you could just go ahead and get here as soon as possible, that would be terrific.
My brother-in-law works for Microsoft as a System Engineer guru they contract out to customers. He got his MCSE by paying 10k for a boot camp. I don't think it is possible for him to be any less interested in technology. When he is scheduled to work he works, when he isn't he doesn't.
I've been a computer geek for as long as I can remember and even when I was a Building Contractor I spent forty hours a week coding for fun. Fast forward thirty years and I'm developing software as a contractor for a Fortune 100 company Monday to Friday, 8-4:30. I still spend another twenty to thirty hours a week studying, coding and reading. My only rules are that my extra time must either further my skills or allow me to extend my contract by becoming invaluable to my current contract position.
If you are like my brother-in-law, the worker bee, you have every right to demand pay for any time you spend working. However if most of you are geeks like me, you just need to make sure you extra time either makes you better or extends your contract.
Let me get my Tony Robbins on and say: You have the power to make it how you want it -- your employment is a business deal between you and your employer. And you don't have to be a slave, make it better for yourself, because no one else can do it quite like you, and no one else will do it for you, but you.
I'm hired as a "web developer" by title, and last November, my team lost our sysadmin (he quit -- well actually got a job that paid twice as much or so he claimed). We work with production systems which must serve our customers 24/7, so that guy played a pretty critical role in our department. The company decided to not hire another one, and use a consultant. Seeing I was the only guy on the team who had experience with both production systems and linux, I became the de facto guy to look after the systems. That meant carrying a pager and being called on to work on systems at their beck and call, not to mention I'm still around available as a developer. In other words: I have written enough crappy code that half my life is dedicated to maintaining it, and that world doesn't stop spinning. (that and I work for a smaller company so, having tasks bleed is part for a course)
My job description didn't include anything about carrying a pager sending me dreaded Nagios messages in the middle of the night, nor did I intend for it to... When I had started the job 2.5 years before I made sure to critically evaluate what the other developers on the team had to say about their hours, and made it clear with my boss what my role would be. At first, I was pretty steamed, my hire letter specifically said that I "could schedule no appointment to discuss compensation", and I was expected to do it. I felt punished for competence: You are able to do this, so you must do this as well -- without recompense.
But I turned it around. I started saving extra money to sock away for a rainy day -- specifically to save up to the point where I could tell my boss with authority: to make a deal or I have to hit the road. You can do the same thing: save money, or find another job offer.
Then I broke my contract, asked directly for a raise, and said that my job description had gone severely out of bounds from where it started and that I needed to be justly compensated for it and would like to have my job title, job description and financial compensation adjusted to match. It took 3 months for the company to come back to me. I had to reiterate this to my boss 3 times as well, once a month I did. I had formulated my plans for negotiating, but, I had no chance to negotiate. They came back to me and said "congratulations you got the biggest raise, percent wise in company history! but our HR consulting firm shows that web developers don't make a lot of money..." hand shake, end of story -- I wasn't satisfied.
I went home, did my homework, compared what the HR consulting firm had to say with what the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics ( www.bls.gov ) had to say compared, and compared my roles with what they had listed (and stats work the same way they always do: I have my biases and clearly I saw that I was worth more than they said!). I went back to my boss the next morning and told him straight up: "Your HR consulting firm, and my HR consulting firm, don't match up... The thing is: I do actually want my job, and I do want to help and I want the deal to be good for both parties. I think I can offer you a better deal as a consultant". Maybe you can't afford to do that, but, I am a single guy and I would've wanted to.
There was no way they wanted that, I had proved my worth, AND I had shown that I put a value on myself and my time. They wanted to have me as a regular salaried employee -- I can only guess their reasons, but I'm sure it has to do with being ready and able to take on new tasks instead of getting a bill for everything they ask you to do [however a power negotiating tool, no?].
So in short: I got what I wanted, more money and now I flex my time and my place at my job (what he couldn'
Just one hour glass at a time.
"Since I'm lazy, I won't even go down the road of how the socialist Europeans can get more work done than us USians and still take a month off each year...."
That's good, becasue it's false.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Most of us working in some sort of tech related job are working more than 40 hours per week
Huh, we are? Funny, 'cuz I'm not. Nor is anyone I know. Maybe the submitter just needs to get a less crappy job?
Conceptually, take: total time you agreed to and are paid of work per week, subtract time you actually worked (your ordinary 2 break times a day and lunch still count as work, but time spent goofing off on slashdot doesn't count).
If the result is 0 hours, then you are spot on.
If the result is POSITIVE, then you aren't meeting your obligation: work off the normal hours as necessary (or stop visiting slashdot during workhours) until the result is zero.
If the result is NEGATIVE, then stop working off normal hours, until the result is zero.
If for some strange reason you want to work more, you should make arrangements to get paid more when you choose to do so, if you can't, then it's obviously inefficient for you to do so (as you are reducing your average pay), you might as well start looking for a second employer you can work for during those off-normal hours (so that you can financially benefit from them)...
Maybe what you really want though is to select different normal hours from the rest of the population. This is perfectly normal for IT workers that don't deal with users (except in an emergency), since there is no inherent reason the work needs to be done during the day, except during an emergency, or except that some other people you may need to work with prefer to work during the day.
And more work can get done when you don't have all those people to contend with.
There isn't much traffic at midnight, and there won't be any lines to the snack machine, or random people wanting to chat about non-work-related things, for example.
I used to work for a very large computer manufacturer. There were times when we tech folk were expected to be available 24x7. The company had a way of dealing with that -- "standby pay". For every 8 hours you carried the pager, you got one hour of your regular rate. This applied to exempt as well as non-exempt employees. If you got paged, and you had to go in to the office, you got an additional $100.
Now, that was almost 20 years ago, and sadly that large computer manufacturer is no more, but it was not the "standby pay" that did them in. (Completely missing the boat was what did them in.) But I can tell you, my manager had to make rules about who could carry the pager, and how often, because everybody wanted to have it, especially around the holidays. If you carried the pager for a week, you got paid for 7 days instead of 5.
As far as pagers and smart phones, TURN THE DAMN THINGS OFF if you want to have a life. If your employer wants you available 24x7, then negotiate that into your wages, or find something else do to. Another employer of mine gave us two-way pagers that would acknowledge the page when it was received -- but it could not receive anything when dumped into an steel ammo can. "My pager never went off" and "my phone has no signal at home" do not have to be lies. Control your own life.
there are 3 kinds of people:
* those who can count
* those who can't
"All our jobs."
Bullshit, it is only those of you in the US that allow yourselves to be treated like crap by employers.
Thanks to strong unions, working conditions here are vaslty superior to the US.
I get paid for every minute I work, and 4 weeks leave 2 weeks sick leave per year. I have always given value for the money I am paid, and expect the same from an employer.
There is no chance of my job being outsourced.
Why do you advocate smiling whilst an employer gives to you in the ass?
When you give employers access to stupid conditions such as your laughably biased "At will"
system-you deserve to be screwed.
Stand up for yourselves and demand proper treatment, and join a union.
Um, no. Slave labor is why it's being outsourced. And the fact that owners of key methods and patents sold out to over seas manufacturers in the 70's and 80's
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I find it funny that the same group of people that encourages everyone to donate their time and labor for free has such a hard problem giving a couple extra hours to the company that is actually paying them.
They just changed our policy at my company. We were paid for both on-call and recall. Now we are expected to provide on-call availability for free and they will pay recall only in the case of serious system outages. Unfortunately, I am salaried/exempt in a right-to-work state, so there is not much I can do except quit. Double unfortunately, the economy is depressed and I am over 40 in an area not known for its high-tech job availability.
On the considerable plus side, I will be completely debt free, owning my own house and cars, in a little less than 4 years. So, I will just hold out for a while and wait for the economy to turn around. Then when I don't really need my current job and there are others to be had, well, in the words of a man named Jane, "Won't that be an interesting day."
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.
Obviously if its something that needs drastic attention then thats something unavoidable. I work for the entertainment union. I understand that the overtime is used to punish the employer for asking you to go beyond what's reasonable. If the overtime wasn't there, the producers would film non-stop around the clock, or even stopping to eat. We are like the police, you hate us till you need us.
As far as your situations go you could simply work it out with your employer stating that non-emergency calls, as a base-rate. 20$ a call. Or a dollar a minute after 7 pm. Explain that you feel that this shouldn't interfere with your personal life. You might even see these calls reduce.
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them.
An honest day's work for an honest day's wages. If they want you to work a 90 hour week they have to pay you for that, or that should have been made clear in the interview and contract. If you let yourself be bullied or taken advantage of, don't be surprised when you are.
The union makes us strong.
~.~
I'm a peripheral visionary.
The U.S. is neither genuine socialist nor fascist, but a perverted development of what USED to be rampant free market. In both socialism and fascism, the state controls/directs the engine of production, either cooperatively (fascism) or by seizing it (socialism). In the U.S., the engine of production has run wild and seized control of the state, mostly through rampant corruption. To the extent the U.S. flirts with socialism, it is a distorted, perverted kind of socialism. In the real thing, the state operates with the welfare of the people at heart. In the U.S. form, the state has only the welfare of special interests at heart: narrow constituency blocks, filthy rich operators who have the goods on the pols and their appointees, and the like. Simply put, the hard working middle class is robbed to support an essentially valueless, parasitic bottom layer and top layer. All the real people get is a kick in the ass by a fat, smug, self satisfied system. And there is a similar perversion of the real thing when the U.S. flirts with fascism.
The U.S. is an inbred, self perpetuating corruptocracy, plain and simple. Uncontrolled free markets cannot exist stably. This is what they degenerate into.
The company I work for told me that overtime, in emergencies, is just part of the job. At first, that's really how it was. Then it started to grow into everything being an emergency, and bothering me all the time at home. I started to make it very clear that I was bothered by this and they were interrupting me in my life. Then I moved onto being in a pissy mood at work. Suddenly things started to clear up.
Every once in a while, they fall back into it. Now I just have to make it clear that they are bothering me and it never has to get to the pissy mood part. Yes, I still do overtime... But it's generally for an actual emergency.
The last time my direct boss manufactured an emergency "because it's the only way things get done around here", I let his bosses know quite clearly what I thought of that. Attitudes changed very, very suddenly.
Also, they usually give me a day off if I have to work several hours from home on something, now. Smart, too, because they aren't likely to get any actual work from me for the rest of the week otherwise.
You don't get away with screwing your good employees.
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.
Because I think your pointed sarcasm (hint to dense overly analytical readers: it was sarcasm) is pretty much spot on. The puritans and their lunacy haunt public policy ranging from alcohol, censorship and drugs to labor laws.
I guess people on slashdot just have a hard time with Colbert style humor.
Hopefully sooner rather than later. Chip #1: Gay marriage. Chip #2: Medical marijuana. Chip #3: ??? Hell Chip #3 is when my state, Washington State, finally lets me buy a jug of Vodka from Costco. Talk about puritanical bullshit.
If you are going to do "online research" make damn sure you make it very, very clear to yourself that you are doing it *for your own enjoyment*. Do *not* bust open your text editor and write code for work. Apply what you learn to your own project. If what you are researching isn't apply to your own project? Don't do the research.
People must learn to speak to management eye-to-eye.
Say: "I did so and so over the last few months and I believe I've earned my month-long vacation"
Or: "I'll gladly work more than 40 hours a week when necessary - but I do like coming to the office later than most"
You should develop a straight forward, explicit business relationship with your boss. If you act like a kid, you deserve to be treated like one.
Now, if you feel you don't have any leverage to negotiate, it might be time to look for a new job!
Tech people tend to make the mistake of working in private. Thus they loose visibility to the management. When you are not seen you are forgotten or expected to not be working, If you are going to do something a Midnight just because it is easier then during the day sure that is more efficient however you lost visibility time. If you have to fix it. Keep a log of it, make such log visible to people who matter.
To explain visibility I will use a real life example.
Last Year I got Laid off from my job. I got a new job within 2 week after getting Laid off because the CEO of the company who Laid Me off recommend me to the CEO of my current employer. Now about 1/2 of the company was Laid off including many people in my position. However the CEO only recommended me to the other CEO. Why Because I took it on myself to be visible. I attended and contributed to the Interdepartmental meetings, I talked to the boss and gave honest feedback. When I came to work early people know I was there early. I was seen and recognized in the company. Sure it didn't keep me from getting Laid off but it did help get me noticed well enough to get an other job quickly.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Become a consultant. I did. When "Lumbergh" announces "yeah, I'm gonna need you to come in on Saturday", you get to hear the lovely sounds of "CHA-CHING!!!" Overtime turns an "MP" (my problem) into a "YP" (your problem, as in the employer.) Face it- bureaucracy and inefficiency are free and abundant! Like wind and solar energy. Harness it! Their screw-ups are your profit! "Gee, the release date slipped a month, and we are going to need weekend work until then." This is gravy for a consultant!!! Think it over! --ecto
"Nature bats last..."
With the economy going into the tank my company changed its vacation policy. We use to earn x weeks per year (earning a few days each month) and could keep a bank of 6 weeks (and then lost days if we had a full bank). Apparently this vacation time appears as a liability on the books so it saves the company money if we all take our vacation. So the new rule is you have to consume all your earned vacation plus your bank by the end of 2010. Starting in 2011 you will earn x weeks per year and must use it all up that year - you do get your full x weeks at the beginning of the year.
This has freed me to actually take vacation time. Before the culture was to not take much vacation - reasons listed by others here. But now the new rules allow me to take the time and screw the workload. I have to miss certain meetings - well so be it. I now take 1.5 days off each week religiously, and any other day I have the whim (I need to use 9.5 weeks of vacation in 2009 and 2010). Every excuse to take time off is taken advantage of. Probably the only lemonade I can think of from the lemons coming from the economy. Not sure what I am going to do in 2011 when I only get 6 weeks.
Jumping ship too soon will cause you to loose any unvested retirement funds. Also, if you switch you get bumped back to the bottom of the PTO ladder. Not to mention all the time one usually spends the first year just getting the hang of things. Then there is also the likelihood that if there are any layoffs at the new place, you may one of the first to be cut. And the more you bounce around the harder it becomes to explain.
What I learned is it is best to work for a large company. You may be a number but they tend to have better benefits and yearly raises. Also the pay scales tend to be a bit more standardized. On the other hand the small companies I worked for never dished out raises unless you went and asked. Even then I had to give a sales pith and still walked away with less than I wanted.
Isn't there a bell curve to this in that the more hours you shovel in there is diminishing returns?
Our Government already has! In the some odd 30+ years of my life, I've never experienced just how bad it has gotten. The unemployment, crime, corruption, incompetence, hubris: It's just nuts!
It has been much worse in my life tyme than it is now. In the 1970s we had staqflation, high inflation and unemployment. We had lines blocks long just to get gas, the lines in the southeast after Hurricane Katrina offered a taste of it. Crime was higher then too, crime rates have been falling since the 1990s.
Good thing our politicians have premo health care. I suspect they're going to need it after the angry mobs get done with them.
Especially if politicians try to socialize medicine.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Get out under that fucking rock you live under and watch as this bill is attempted to being rammed down the throat of the American public.
What bill? Did Obama submit one? Or are you talking about all the bills floating around congress Obama had nothing to do with? And you are wrong, Bush not Obama imprisoned people denying them habeas corpus and pushed the unitary executive theory wherein the president holds almost all power. Actually those still at Gitmo, whom Bush put there, Obama wants to put on trial. If that your definition of tyranny then you need to learn what it really is. May I suggest OneLook.
Should there be a Law?
http://tinytimetracker.sourceforge.net/php/ "Tiny Time Tracker is an unobtrusive personal time tracker that fits nicely at the bottom of your screen. Switching between tasks is made easy with auto-complete and a "task history" dropdown. Times may be viewed in an Excel spread sheet."
I only discovered this app a month ago, and I've fallen in love. It doesn't really integrate itself into your task bar, it's just a very small window you can drag anywhere. I keep it near the top of my screen, because it can get lost as I dock and undock my laptop all day. I'm only using three tasks, not the dozen they show in the screen shots: Personal, Non-billable, and Client. I've discovered that I was actually working more hours than I thought, about 50 hours per week. I'd already figured out the "send emails as you start and stop work from home" so everyone knows what I'm doing. Now I'm taking a four-day weekend every other week or so just to burn my comp time. It does help that the client bought a fixed number of my hours, and really doesn't want my contract to expire 25% sooner than planned.
Nothing for 6-digit uids?
Even now. Retraining and hiring isn't cheap. This isn't a factory job. Its still cheaper to keep you on then it is to train a replacement, so long as you don't shirk your 40 hours.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Unions are better for students and teachers.
Teacher unions are better for bad teachers but not for students. Try to fire a bad teacher in California or New York public schools, it's nearly impossible.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
"Greg Rasin, a partner at Proskauer Rose LLP, a New York business law firm
Somehow that seems to be code for someone who facilitates activities against citizens. It wouldn't be that too far off to suggest that he would be willing to do the same if asked.
I'm working now. And I should be reading Slashdot!
(Sadly, a true story. Back to the grind.)
A bit late, but I'll throw my 2 cents in anyway. I'm a computer engineer at a big company, and I tend to work ridiculous hours. My method is really simple, though not applicable to a lot. During the week I essentially live at work. That means if I want to relax, surf the internet, or even play games late at night, I will do so. Considering that even with that, I spend well over my 40 hours at work, no one really complains.
I guess the moral is, get your job done, do it well, and enjoy doing it. If that means taking a few hours to slack off, then do just that, or if you feel you are working too much, then talk to your manager. If you keep working more than you can handle, eventually you will burn out. I would wager that your worth to the company is far greater if that does not happen.
I was astonished to find that in WA state, many geek jobs are not exempt from OT. http://apps.leg.wa.gov/WAC/default.aspx?cite=296-128-535
Real programmers use "copy con program.exe"
After 30+ years in the work force, my immediate answer is "ANY".
It has been my experience that "off the clock" time is ALWAYS considered to be a free gift by the the employer.
And, to make it worse, if one works 10 hours off the clock this month, then, they will
expect 20 hours next month...and be shocked and surprised if they do not get it.
So...do not do it...it is not worth it. Follow Nancy Reagan's advice and "just say no"
Regards
Dave Mundt
YAB - http://blog.beemandave.com/
When on of my previous UK companies asked me to opt out of the EU Working Time Directive I said no.
I was told how my career would suffer, about not getting bonuses, etc.
Then 2 months later the company reorganized personnel, several of the people that issued the "advice" were moved or let go, and I got my bonus and career progression continued as expected, but without ever killing myself (for the last 11 years I rarely have worked more than 35 hours per week).
In another job I knew I was the person clocking the least hours (35/week). Other people were doing 50 or 60. At the end when the crisis came that devotion counted for precious little, since people were made redundant irrespective of their contribution to the company.
People allowing companies to exploit them have nobody to blame but themselves (unless you live in Cuba or Vietnam, then you may be screwed).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
- is the short answer. It is perfectly possible and maybe even desirable to work more than 40 hours a week/8 hours a day for a time, but on average it should work out as 8 hours per day and weekends off.
The reason is not even that "it is not fair" or something; it is simply the most sensible way to manage your workforce. A person can only do good quality work for so many hours a day - if you are on a roll, perhaps you can work through the night, or even several nights, but it will cost dearly in terms of quality for a long time after. We use our rest and sleep to process the things we've learned through our active hours; if we neglect sleep or rest, then we soon become unable to learn new things and see solutions.
He who plays the bills, calls the tunes.
If there is someone who is on the same skills as you, but is prepared to work more hours for the same pay, then your job is at risk.
That is all. If you don't like your terms and conditions, then quit and find somewhere better. If you're lucky, you'll manage it, and can laugh at those shmucks you left behind. If you're not, then they'll be laughing at you.
Employment law only goes so far, and in the real world it's of marginal use - companies will push as hard as they can get away with, and then a bit more.
All U.S. workers pay 1.45% of their wages for medicare. All employers pay a matching 1.45% (self employed pay 2.9%). This goes to pay for universal coverage of the elderly.
If you all can get total coverage for the same/less tax rate than we do it, it only shows how costly American coverage is. On the other hand, the vast majority of health care services are consumed in the last years of life in the US.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
In order to control my personal life vs work life, I set my blackberry to wake up a hour before I go to work and shutdown a hour after I leave work. I figure that gives me time in the morning to understand what I'm walking into and time at the end of the day to answer any quick questions.
After it auto turns off, I rarely turn it back on.
That feature helps me control my blackberry habit and I highly recommend it.
"Only one thing, is impossible for god: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." Mark Twain
You have a myopic world view.
It's not much to get upset about, most people do. Let me explain something to you and maybe next time you'll refrain from insulting generalizations.
America is populated by immigrants. A large portion of these people came to America because their prior communities failed them in one way or another and their desire for a better life drove them to move across the oceans to find work. Many of them have succeeded using hard work and conservative ideals to save themselves and their families. You can see how this can maybe switch ones priorities/values from having:
God
family
community
self
to having priorities/values that look like:
God
family
self
community
Of course, in Europe, those that still live there may have been better served by community in general, and therefore hold it dear.
By the same token, someone who places less value on the community based on past deep-rooted misgivings and failure is not justified in being called an 'inbred moron'.
FUNK!
But where you and I apparently differ has to do with our views of the viability of a "free marketplace".
I'd say where things REALLY went wrong in the US was where government started bowing to big business interests. When government officials became corrupt enough to allow companies to buy votes, and eventually, to place their own people in office, it all started coming apart.
If you had a far *smaller*, more limited government (as Libertarians are constantly advocating), much of this would be rendered a non-issue. (EG. A large and powerful food and drug administration is a perfect target for special interests like Monsanto to try to "take over", so they can pass legislation stamping out small, organic farms, and force all farmers on-board with buying their genetically modified seeds and pesticides. If government gets out of that arena completely, there's no more advantage for Monsanto to leverage there.)
You can't ever stop corruption. People will always be out there trying to "game" things for personal advantage. But I'd rather have a relatively free and open marketplace out there, where the scammers and manipulators can be pressured and eventually stamped out by their own competition, vs. the potential of the corruption taking hold at the "top of the chain", in a powerful government that's much harder to unseat or "fix".
Here's one that I have gone round with. The employer says that a critical situation may occur during the weekend or holiday and they would like you to stay at hand to come in if called. I have one reply. I fish offshore and have no radio or cell phone. If you row out in a canoe we can talk. Or I can stay at home if overtime wages are paid 24 hours per day.
Working over 40 years I never once had an employer mess with me with that reply. If I sensed any form of retaliation I knew just how to handle it, Slow down and do as little work as possible and let the jerks know that employees are also "in business" and your terms will be met or else.
I was just going to add that, thanks!
It's so common in the financial industry that to NOT have it that way would be weird.
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
It's not slave labor, it's relative cost of living. The average wage in China is under $1,000 a year. if a job is offered at $2,000 a year, that's more than double the wage, yet is still many orders of magnitudes below the U.S. minimum wage.
We hear talk of U.S. socialism under Obama, yet the fact is that our fabulously high standard of living is getting averaged out across the world. We are all going to have to get used to living with less. It's inevitable over the next few decades, unless of course we use our nukes to just steal the resources.
And so I point out, perhaps awkwardly, that we should be glad for our jobs while we have them, and work hard to keep the U.S. competitive.
I hate being bipolar; it's awesome!