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IT Night Shift Workers: Fat and Undersexed
wiredmikey writes "The results of a recent survey released today by Men's Health Network found that shift workers, people who work non-traditional hours including IT professionals working overnight shifts, report that these shifts are negatively impacting their health, work, well-being, and quality of life. The survey revealed that the majority of shift workers (79%) believe that they are negatively impacted by their shift work and voiced daily concern over their energy level (47%), weight (43%), and their sex lives (30%). Additionally, the survey showed that the average shift worker hasn't had a meal with their family in two weeks or exercised in 24 days. The results of this survey really shouldn't be surprising. While the survey infers that shift workers may be overweight, the issue extends far beyond and into the general population of the United States, including children. Childhood obesity is at an all time high in America, so this issue isn't just related to the night shift."
I had more sex and was way more skinnier when I did work the night shift.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
Damn.. that's pretty fucking harsh.
Let's just say that late night IT workers are under-exercised and over-masturbated.
The article doesn't appear to compare these statistics with non-shift workers in the same field. I'm sure that shift work has its own issues, but the gist of the article is that shift work also correlates to "voiced daily concerns" about fairly common maladies among office workers. How does the 43% who complain daily about their weight, for example, compare to non-shift workers?
Are you sure they determined the polarity of causality in this?
Because, really, it's the chubby, antisocial people with the bad self-care issues that tend to agree to take jobs that subject them to isolation and imposition for less money.
The fast food and inflatable doll industries extend sincere thanks to corpulent nocturnal IT workers across the globe.
People need it, shift workers don't get very much of it. Just the bit most get in passing going to & from work helps allot. Without it, people are in general a bit more unhappy & lethargic.
When I worked the Graveyard, I made sure that for my "lunch" I actually *left* the facility, often for a quick trip to the 24hr gym, and just as often went to a 24hr cafe. I made sure I had healthy snacks (I'm a serious snacker). I mean, you HAVE to take the initiative and think about how to create a healthy environment for yourself regardless of the time of day. In most cities, this is perfectly possible, you don't HAVE to spend your breaks sitting on your ass smoking and eating junk food.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Daytime IT workers are not overweight and have plenty of sex?
I chose late night work because I am fat and undersexed.
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Your post makes me SAD. =(
Night shifts working in the old "cold room" computer rooms was an awesome job as a university student. In a average twelve-hour shift, there was maybe six hours of work if you really stretched things and did a little extra. Yeah, there were the panicky emergency nights where you're literally running around fixing stuff, but on average there was six hours of time to fill waiting for jobs to finish, printouts to print, and error messages to not pop up. Nighttime TV sucks. Nighttime radio sucks. There wasn't always studying to do or a paper to write. And couldn't be out of the room for longer than a longish bathroom break length of time (5 minutes maybe) just in case a problem happened. That meant plenty of time to:
Great job that I'm not sure even exists anymore. But I was the Buff Operator From Hell for those few years.
Well I'm only the "swing" shift so maybe this doesn't apply to me (from 2pm to 11pm). I get home around 11:30pm. I have trained myself over the last year to be able to shower and go straight to bed when I get home (asleep by midnight). No TV or computer games. That way I have the next day to take a walk in the sun and go grocery shopping. I also haven't bothered with any kind of cable TV. No point in that really. I mean if I had a PVR of some kind then I could what? Spend several hours every day when i wake up watching last night's TV? No thanks. In fact even things I could following on Hulu I've instead found other stuff to do instead. If I really want to watching something it's on Netflix like ST:TNG. I try to have a semi-normal time breakfast and lunch and dinner at work around 7pm. Just can't do anything with friends and family at normal times like between 5pm and 10pm. No WoW raids (not necessarily a bad thing) and no dinner visits with family (would be nice sometimes). I am actually really tired and generally lacking in energy but then I was like that when I had normal hours. At least going to bed at midnight I have the option of staying in bed until noon if I really feel like it...
"UNIX is very simple, it just needs a genius to understand its simplicity." -Dennis Ritchie
You can't tell me it doesn't impact his life. Sleeping during the day is HARD. The body doesn't want to adjust to it.
Not all of us are day dwellers, some are night owls. Personally, I'm at my sharpest at night but then my family has been calling me "the nightwatchman" since I was about 8.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
IT Day Shift Workers: Fat and Undersexed
Back when I was younger and worked a night shift (4pm to midnight) the sex was great. Senior management couldn't be bothered to hang around and our shift turned into a big orgy*.
There's a valid argument about getting adequate sunlight. But that can be done on the 4-12pm shift. Just hit the sack when you get home. Wake up a bit later then the masses. You've got the day to yourself after the 9 to 5 shift folks have gone to the office. The stores, coffee shops and gym are uncrowded.
*If your staff isn't that hot, you've got the day off. With all the housewives. Studies have shown that the best time for sex is mid-afternoon. Forget stories about orgies late into the night. People who get it on late in the evening do so because of kids or crappy work schedules.
Have gnu, will travel.
cause its harder to see how fat they are.
typical extraverts...projecting their priorities/imperatives on everyone else and labeling noncompliance as a sickness that needs a cure.
"Crunch time" - it used to be exceptional. It's now not just acceptable; it's become the norm. This is because increasingly, clueless management simply can't manage resources properly, and substitutes crazy hours to make up for it because we let them. Your body needs 2 weeks to a month to fully recover from a single 24-hour shift of high-stress in-the-zone concentration. It's not worth it.
"But it's the only way we can compete!" No, it's the only way YOU can compete. If you can't get the work without abusing your employees, YOU have the problem. I quit.
We all have the point where we've had our fill of it. It wasn't this bad prior to the Internet, so take your "Internet Time" and shove it. YOU need it - I'd rather be broke than further ruin my health to make up for managements' inability to do their jobs properly.
I'm happier and a lot less stressed since I "took the pledge" and decided to never again take a job writing code. There are things worse than not making enough money. Working in I.T. has become one of them.
Reminds me of an often-told story around these parts...
It's the night shift in Master Control at a major national Cable TV Network. One guy has been there since pre-launch days, let's call him "Joe." Now, Joe is enormous, pushing if not over 300 lbs, sports a perpetual four-day stubble, is known for -- among many other eccentricities -- coming to work in his pajamas. Not that he was a slacker, oh no. Joe is a rock, a superman, the exact guy you want on duty should there be a crisis, or even if there isn't. He's the "Mayor of the Overnight," as the CEO once referred to him. So all Joe's compatriots in Master Control, they do their time, eventually move into daylight shifts, but not Joe. "Not interested," sez Joe. "Like it on the overnights just fine." New generations of Master Control Operators are hired, Joe mentors them, and THEY move on and up. And so his legend grows. Years pass, Joe's an industry icon, his fame grown even beyond his own company.
Then one day -- five years later? seven years later? ten years later? -- he finds he's become an HR Nightmare. See, Joe got top marks on every merit review, got maximum pay raises for his job class, every year -- and now he's making more money than a lot of suits 2-3 pay grades above him. "Can't have that," HR informs Ops. And so Joe is finally prodded and cajoled into the sunlight. Shiny suit, skinny tie, shave and a haircut, congrats Big Guy, Welcome to Management!
He lasted six weeks. Was never clear whose call it was ultimately -- the other suits who now had to deal with "That Fat Guy from Master Control," or the erstwhile Mayor himself who came to finally see first hand what he probably suspected all along, that making banks of machinery and automation systems play nice together was easy compared to any comparable accomplishment involving people.
But HR was happy. With Joe gone, everyone's paychecks once again fit nicely inside the boxes that had been drawn for them.
It's worth noting that night cycles, when they are constant are not that much worse then day cycles on a body - the only issue is getting sleep if you live in area that is very noisy during the day, or you have really bad curtains/window blinds that don't darken the room.
It's also very personal, and something that can be taught even if you're naturally lacking this ability. I was strictly a day person till I hit 19 and went to the army (conscription, Finland). After I went to reserves a year later, having pulled countless night watches and drills, I noted that I could sleep essentially anywhere and at any time if I was sleepy. The only problem was cycle, which meant that if I had to pull a night shift, it would take me a few days to adjust (and a few to adjust back). But once you're in the cycle, sleeping is the same, provided no one decides to do something terribly noisy like drilling in the same building. And even then, I can just plug my ears - problem is I won't hear my alarm clock however so I usually avoid that. But sleeping isn't a problem. It's a bit more restless, but you can compensate for it by going to sleep a bit earlier.
But if you're someone not used to it, sleeping during daytime with its extra noisiness and brightness could be a real challenge. I know my mother has extreme issues with sleeping even at night if there are any sounds except for trains (she lives next to a railroad and finds train noise calming). In the end, it's about acclimating yourself to it.
Come on, Slashdotters. I thought you cared about science. This "study" is awful.
1) Experimental controls. According to the article, lots of shift workers think their work impacts their lives, and are worried about their weight and their sex lives. Guess what? EVERYBODY hates their work, and is worried about their weight and their sex lives. How about asking people who *aren't* shift workers, and seeing if shift workers have bigger problems than the average Joe?
2) Conflict of interest. The summary says the study is by "Men's Health Network", but the linked article says it's by "Men's Health Network and Cephalon". Who's this "Cephalon"? Oh, they're a drug company. What sort of drugs do they make? take a wild freakin' guess.
So, congrats on sucking down free advertising from a drug company trying to turn your life into a treatable medical condition, without a single moment of skepticism.
Of course, I'm changing industries from Network Administration to Lab Science, should finish my coursework in about 2 more years, so I'll never have to worry about it again.
Interesting, I'm doing the almost exact opposite. I'm going from chemistry labs to a cube farm and I, too, have 2 more years of coursework before I do that.
You beat me to it. Then again, you are first post, so you beat us all to it.
Have you ever worked a night shift?
I let myself take an 11PM-7AM shift several years ago precisely because I considered myself a night owl. I was waking up in the afternoon anyway, I figured it wasn't really a big deal. Turned out, it was. Working nights pretty thoroughly sucks away your life-force, as nearly anyone who's done one can tell you.
I don't believe in time. It's a grand conspiracy designed to sell watches.
I am not an IT guy by any means, but I am a swing shift worker in a factory. My schedule includes two days of 3-11, two 11am-11pm days and then two more at 3-11. Im off two days and go back in for 2 days on 11pm-11am. Then I turn around the next day and work 7am-3pm for 5 days. Then, off two days and go back in on 11pm-7am. Then its off for 5 days total then rinse ne repeat. Not a fun schedule, and the guys that get to day shift permaneantly typically lose 20-40 lbs when they quit rotating. I've found personally that the midnight shifts leave me feeling worst, depression, lonliness and general angst are my best friends during the midnight rotations. I've found it affects my family just as much if not more than me because I'm so fun to deal with. On a related note, it takes me several days off to recover from the feelings incurred on the midnight shift. I suspect it'd be easier working one permaneant shift. One more thing then I'll get off my soap box, the divorce rate with this kind of work is ridiculous! I suspect that maybe the schedule has a lot to do with it...
I have. If I had my way I'd work nothing but nights. Unfortunately there's other considerations to be made like making sure you still see the kids and making sure you don't become "invisible" to your employer/manager. Someone in another comment described it as having your "mind work(ing) clearly as if it's unwrapped from a fog" which is a pretty accurate description, for me the fog lifts at around 23:00. I guess I'm a freak but there are people like us out there.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
Not necessarily harder just very different and requiring the application of different skills. You could give the same anecdote in a manufacturing or military setting but people would be less likely to draw the wrong conclusion as you did above.
It should be obvious - the newbie in an unfamiliar environment is not going to shine. If you expect them to shine instantly you weed out everyone apart from those with a protective sheild of highly polished bullshit.
A "people person" out of their depth in a technical environment can be as much of a problem as an isolated technical person that suddenly finds they do not have the required management and communication skills. It takes knowlege, observation and experience before you can get up to speed in a very different environment.
I used to be a Database admin for Interpoint, in Redmond. Before that, I worked in porn for IEG in Seattle - code monkey work.
I now work for the Air Force at McChord Field, I make slightly less but I'm 7 to 4, Mon - Fri, I can go to the gym 3 hours a week *ON THE CLOCK* in addition to my one hour lunch, and I'm a member of a union.
I've never looked back except to wonder how people put up with the bullshit they do.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
But if a company can only survive by treating its employees like battered wives, they deserve to die. And then to be exposed by using this wonderful thing called the Internet.
They're not going to sue if you expose them (though they may threaten it like all heck) - they know what the Streisand Effect is like. And don't worry about your NDA and non-disclosures. Most of them are SO illegal it's not a joke - and you can ignore them when they are signed in bad faith.
Since I quit in February, my blood pressure is back to normal - without any meds, thank you very much ... my eyesight is better than it's ever been in my life (it's the first time ever that I can watch TV without glasses, and it's all good except for one little blotch that is slowly going away now that one of the underlying causes of the retinal bleeding - stress-related hypertension - is gone, and I expect that blotch will also disappear over the next few months), and I have time to work on my tan, cycle, and actually visit people I haven't seen in over a decade.
If I *ever* do overtime again, it will never be for less than 5x base pay. Even for a lousy 30 minutes. More than 10 hours extra in a week? 10x. Otherwise, bite me. Or hire someone else. Or figure out why management needs overtime (hint - it's your bad planning and not listening and trying to "negotiate away" the time required when we give our time estimates, and your insistence on taking shortcuts and using your stupid latest buzz-word methodology. Go buzz yourself!)
People should ask themselves if the quality of their life was better before they started in I.T.
Legalize and regulate prostitution in the US. Then books like "How to Lose Weight Through Sex" can be put into practice. I bet French IT workers aren't undersexed.
These problems have nothing to do with night shifts or the people that work them. Having worked a couple of 12 hour night shifts in my work history. I found that there are a couple of easy answers to these dilemmas. Prioritize your health! Don't drink soda. If you need a boost, those stupid 5 hour energies work just fine on a consistent basis. EAT FEWER CALORIES! A nice grilled chicken breast, and a piece of fruit for your first break,the same with something with a few carbs in it during your lunch, and a grilled chicken breast (season as you will) w/ a piece of a different fruit. during your last break. Drink lots of water...iced if possible.
GO TO THE GYM AFTER YOU GET OUT OF WORK! You don't have to be there long, or do it all in one visit. At least 45 minutes of cardio ( I break it up into 3 15 minute cardio sessions on 3 different machines) , 3 sets minimum of 20 reps for abs (any exercise, as long as it is like a partial or full sit-up) and maybe 2 or 3 muscle groups (shoulders, lats, pecs, bis, tris, quads, hamstrings, calves) a day. Do this 4 days (or more) a week and in 4 months you will look awesome! Also for guys....gyms in the early AM are filled with cougars and other single women...lots of opportunity, just remember that you are really only at the gym for yourself. Ladies, the better you look the more we want to look at you...admit it it is just the same the other way around. Also for men and women, there tends to be a strong differential between the attractiveness of someone who takes really good care of their body, and someone who does not....Case Closed.
Oh, and one last thing. Don't try to live like people who are not on the same schedule as you. Nothing causes more stress than bouncing back and forth from normal hours to night shift hours.
-Oz
I don't think it makes you a freak - I think it's part of natural human variation. And in a natural setting it's a valuable variation, too. It's extremely useful to always have one or two of the tribe awake and alert during the night in case nocturnal predators come calling. I would actually be very surprised if there wasn't a significant fraction of humanity that exhibited nighttime wakefulness.
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
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...an absolute shitload of money to get me to do shift work. Hell, I refuse to even do on-call anymore.
A few years ago, $BIGCORP tried to get my team to do shift work for an indeterminate period. They wouldn't tell us how long it was for, and also wouldn't tell us what sort of overtime pay we'd get for it. They even had the gall to say they would be "disappointed" if no-one took them up on the offer. Funnily enough, no-one did.
worldmobilenet.com -- World Prepaid Wireless Internet plans
I'm nearly the same; my brain kicks in around 8pm. In college, I stayed up all night/morning studying and skipped classes because I couldn't focus during the day (fortunately I was a CS major at a school that put recordings of all classes online, so this was acceptable option for me). After college, I started a job where I worked night shifts about 30% of the time. For a while, it was fine because I was traveling anyway so whether I was away from home and working nights or days didn't really matter - I was away from home. I'd work 10 hours, go back to the hotel and hit the gym, then sleep through the day. After awhile, the shifting from days to nights started to get to me, I left that job, and now I'm much happier with a more 'normal' work schedule.
I feel like my situation was a bit special though. Admittedly, I didn't have much of a social life, and I was ok with it. When I decided I wanted my social life back, I realized that it wasn't going to happen as long as I stayed at that job.
So yeah, it's definitely true that some people are more tuned for night shift work. I think the problem is that a lot of people aren't, but they need the job. Personally, I think employers should treat night shift workers differently and at least compensate them more for the sacrifices that they make. It's not like we can get rid of night shifts, so there needs to be some reward for the added hardships. Sure, that means that some people will be compensated for doing something they'd rather do anyway, but that doesn't seem like a bad thing to me either.
We're only "nobodies" if we let ourselves be treated that way. The comparison to Chinese labor conditions is a false dichotomy, and the sort of cowardly thinking that management drones use.
Are you that beaten down that you have to say to yourself "at least it's not as bad as in China" to justify working conditions that your parents, and most of your friends who don't work in I.T., would look at and say "Are you sick?"
There's life after I.T.
"If he wants to handle any of the usual things that people have to handle (yard work, banking, groceries, etc) he has to sleep from about 2pm-10pm in order to wake up and get to work for his shift."
Grocery stores are 24/7 , banking is done online or via ATM these days.
As far as yard work is concerned, while that is confined to daylight hours, at this time of the year sunrise is around5:45am and sunset is at 9:12 pm, all times when I am not at work. I prefer to mow the lawn on my day(s) off anyway. But the other day I mowed the lawn after I got home from work, and thn had a shower and went to bed.
What is needed mainly is a bedroom that has good enough darkening blinds and curtains, good a/c and either a quiet neigbourhood or good soundproofing. no children, or pets, and a supportive spouse.
If you are into TV programs a DVR or VCR is needed.
I have been working nights (11pm-7am) for the past 3 years, 9 shifts per fortnight. I couldn't do it if I had to sometimes work other shifts though.
Tonight is my night off.
Unfortunately there's other considerations to be made like... making sure you don't become "invisible" to your employer/manager.
That's not always a bad thing
They call it the graveyard shift for a reason, ya know.
"What would men be without women? Scarce, sir. Mighty scarce."- Mark Twain
It could be that some of you guys have what's called Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome, that is, if the "fog finally lifting" in the evening affects your ability to go to bed earlier consistently: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_sleep_phase_syndrome
Your experience gets nullified by my graveyard porn store job, on all counts you mention.
Sorry, pal. Your controls are weak and thus you have no valid experiment or conclusion.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
I have worked night shifts and I really, really miss the times. It was way more adjusted to my sleep cycle than a job that starts before noon. Or, in other words, it's no problem to have me at 8am still at work. The trouble is to have me there at 8am already.
it's currently 5:40am for me. And I'm still up. Not already. I easily adjust back to my sleeping habits from when I was a "night shift worker". Takes about a day. Returning to a day work cycle usually takes a lot of caffeine and almost a week 'til I'm more than merely physical present at work.
And no, living in Europe and having most of my friends in the US certainly doesn't help here either...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Come over to Europe. We need good coders and we treat them well. Our programmers arrive somewhere between 8 and 10am and go between 3 and 5pm. Mo-Fr. Occasionally (read: about twice a year) they might be asked whether it would be possible that someone could come in a Saturday for a launch so we can make sure everything's running smoothly. You get 1.5 hours of time off for every hour invested in such Saturday.
The work permit should be trivial if you're good.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
More like year 7 science class, where we learned and practiced the scientific method.
And where you should have damn-well remembered what to do after all these years, you failed.
Oh, wait, you have a UID in the two millions. Nevermind, you got killed by Dubya a long time ago.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
I can assure you there are plenty of night shifts in all sorts of laboratories. I wish you luck in your new career, but if you're doing it to get away from night shifts, you may want to investigate something else.
sustainable living
Or as I like to say:
The good news is, you get health insurance. The bad news is, you're gonna need it.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Got a specific opportunity? I'm an excellent coder and I'm eager to move myself and my family to a more progressive country.
Did he fight back?
Well, yes and no. I worked nights for a couple of years about five years ago. I *was* more tired on the night shift that I was when I was on a day shift, but I'd say it had more to do with the fact that I was getting five or six hours sleep than the fact that I was working nights. I'm pretty tired when I get only five or six hours sleep now that I'm back on a day shift, too.
FWIW, I kinda liked working nights -- nights were quiet, the phone didn't ring (much) at work, I'd get a couple of hours to myself in the morning (since my wife worked days), but I still had time with my family in the evening before going back to work. And I got an extra 12% shift differential on my paycheck (w00t!).
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
I'm reaching that point, myself. My boss gave me today off because of extra time I've been working a lot of O.T. lately. He called me at seven this evening to work a scheduled outage tonight.
Sigh...even when I get a day off, I can't get a day off.
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
That entire article sounds pretty familiar to me. "People with DSPS can be called extreme night owls. They feel most alert and say they function best and are most creative in the evening and at night. DSPS patients cannot simply force themselves to sleep early. They may toss and turn for hours in bed, and sometimes not sleep at all, before reporting to work or school." Pretty much sums it up.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
Thanks for sharing the link. I can relate with everything written within. It explains a lot. Thankfully, once I left school, I was free to set my own schedule so its impact on my life since has been fairly minor.
Bears: Shit in Woods
>>Working nights pretty thoroughly sucks away your life-force, as nearly anyone who's done one can tell you.
I work for myself, and 11PM-3AM is always my period of peak productivity.
Your mileage may vary.
Tell me about it... try me shift... Saturday and Sunday I work 8am-8pm
Mon/Tue/Wed I work 12midnight-9am.....
So I go straight from regular days on sunday right into a night shift... so I have the choice of either staying up ALL night sunday after working a 12 hour shift, so I can sleep during the day monday (So I can be rested for work)... or I just pass out (what happens all of the time) from exhaustion sunday night, wake up around noon monday and end up staying awake until it's time for work at midnight....
i've been doing this for a year now and i'm used to it.... but it sucks
Excuse me, I don't mean to impose, but I am the ocean
Let me explain this little thing I learned from working a couple of years in Portugal (neverending crunch time), then Holland (8h a day and your manager tells you to go home if you're still in at 5:30 pm) and then England (overwork as norm).
Your total daily productivity working on a norm of 8h/day is significantly better than working on a norm of 10h/day - to put it simply, if you pace yourself and work fewer hours you deliver more.
This is because:
- Working more than 8h/day causes chronical tiredness
- Chronically tired people in intellectual professions make many more mistakes (that also includes managers, who will take the wrong decisions).
- The cost of fixing those mistakes far outweights the gains of working those extra hours.
To put things in software development terms:
- If you constantly work longer hours you're constantly tired. If you're constantly tired you make more bugs. Bug fixing consumes a lot more time than doing things right the first time around (often by a factor or 1000x if the bug ends up in Production), so the increase in bugs means a HUGE increase in time spent in bug-fixing. More time wasted in bug fixing means that the project starts to run late, which means clueless managers demanding even more overwork. In other words, a feed-back loop.
So how did I solved it:
- Well, in England if somebody tries to get me to overwork is say "No" (I will, however, do a little extra in the last couple of days before a release if needed).
Surprisingly (or maybe not if you read what I wrote above), by working just 8h/day I still manage to deliver more than any of my colleagues that overwork. At the end of the day, in the vast majority of places results are what counts, so managers still keep me around (and I'm a freelancer, so easy to get rid of) and I have almost universally good feedback from all managers I worked with.
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
What country are you speaking about? Certainly that's far from my experience in the UK... but then again, the UK is only in Europe nominally (spoke as something of a Europhile). We seem to be desperate to suffer everything our American cousins do!
I concur. I work in the Financial sector as a web developer in the UK. 35 hours a week Mon-Fri is all I work. Maybe the very occasional weekend on release weekends (every two months) 35 hours is pretty much the norm in our financial industires in my experiance.
And the people shall be oppressed, every one by another, and every one by his neighbour Isaiah 3:5
I was like that once when I was a student. Then some day I've tried to correct my internal clock taking melatonin for a few weeks. Worked surprisingly well, only on vacations my schedule slips a bit.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Tried that. And for as long as I took it it actually worked. The moment I stopped, I bounced back immediately.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
This last experience was the limit - I simply cannot face the thought of writing code as a 9 to whatever job. And everyone I know is at that point - it's pretty bad when a minimum wage job where you just do your work and go home at night and your time is your own looks appealing.
I've had co-workers quit because even delivering pizza sounded better, others that were suicidal because they were treated with contempt every day (management would wait until I had left for the day, then they'd gang up on him - and tell him that if he told me about it, he's fired), and others who figured out that the best way to get ahead was to do nothing all day (they'd sleep at their desk, then check out someone else's code and put their name on it, and check it back in) and then brown-nose like crazy.
What do you do when the situation is so toxic that one of your coworkers comes to you in tears because the boss has rejected every idea for getting her job done - from everyone - insisting she do it the boss's way, and every time it fails, blaming her, and she knows she's going to be fired because she's failed, and I'm the only one she can talk to about it because I have a door to my office, and not a cubby? And the boss is a misogynistic s.o.b. who in meetings, if the suggestion came from a woman, he ignores it? And another boss ^W^W two other bosses who swear they will never hire another woman because "it interferes with the guys getting their work done and I can't scream at them because they're women and they're probably lesbians anyway so what's the point"?
And people wonder why so few women stick it out in I.T.
.
His action was a form of passive-aggressive behavior. Give him a taste of his own medicine.
Don't go. If it's a scheduled outage, it's not an emergency. You're at a party and someone kept filling your glass when you weren't looking and now they've taken your keys away because friends don't let friends drive drunk.
And next time he schedules an outage, he should actually schedule it, and not just throw it at the wall and hope it sticks. Even restaurant owners know how to schedule people better than that.
So what's the purpose of work? What's the purpose of an economy....how should we, as individuals, judge its success?
Its purpose is to produce the highest welfare possible for its citizens given the resources its got. An individual's welfare is mostly about how he spends his time - money and physical stuff gives you more options, but it's not the goal. If career achievements are fulfilling for you and you have a good working environment then that's great, but making your life miserable in order to be macho is not (and you won't work well, either). It's not a pissing contest to see who can make the most or lead the shittiest or most orderly life.
Western economies are very successful, historically and compared to many others. Why would you wish them to be less successful, like China?
I remember back in middle school hearing my social studies teacher explain how much the poor suckers of workers in China were. He explained that if they did not meet their quota they would be punished (stick) but they had a goal where they would get bonuses for rising that far above the quota (carrot). If they got their carrot that would become the new quota they always had to meet.
Jump ahead 1.5 decades and what I am hearing a near identical thing from U.S. workers.
by Anonymous Coward: I, for one, welcome the shift from car analogies to pizza analogies. um.. overlords?
Ok, the title of this one was enough to get me laughing this morning. Thanks.
And then people wonder why there's such a high turnover rate in the industry here. Simple - why hire one person who knows what they're doing when you can get PAID to take on 5 for free, and hope that they'll muddle through, and if they do or they don't, either way it cost you nothing.
That sort of rot makes employers skeptical of the quality of all freelancers after 15 years. Crazy, isn't it?
If there are T-Rexs wandering around the woods everyone is a light sleeper.
Come over to Europe. We need good coders and we treat them well. Our programmers arrive somewhere between 8 and 10am and go between 3 and 5pm. Mo-Fr. Occasionally (read: about twice a year) they might be asked whether it would be possible that someone could come in a Saturday for a launch so we can make sure everything's running smoothly. You get 1.5 hours of time off for every hour invested in such Saturday.
The work permit should be trivial if you're good.
This is actually something I'm working on. I'm a dual citizen (US/UK) and getting my UK passport soon just so I can more easily do this. I just need to work out if I want it to be more of a permanent move. Things like this along with the better health care systems over there are very enticing.
Kids go to school right?
I used to work night shift, right out of high school. My GF at the time was still in school. I'd get off work at 7am, pick her up, and take her to school. I'd then go home and sleep until school got out and pick her up. That gave us the entire evening together every day.
It's entirely possible to adjust your schedule to best fit the lifestyle your family leads. For example, I work mon - fri 8 - 5 right now. Kids are in bed by 10PM every night. Wife is a stay-at-home mom/housewife. I could, theoretically, take a night job from 11PM - 7AM, which would have me leave after kids go to bed, get home around the same time I get up anyway, and go to bed after they leave for school. With my current schedule, I could sleep until 5PM and still be able to have as much time with my kids during the week. It also still affords me the ability to have a sit down, family dinner every night, same as I do now. The statistics listed in the summary are sad, but also partially the worker's own fault. I found time to be with people I wanted to be with while I was on night shift.
Homer: I'm looking for something loose and billowy, something
comfortable for my first day of work.
Salesman: Work, huh? Let me guess. Computer programmer, computer
magazine columnist, something with computers?
Homer: Well, I use a computer.
Salesman: [quietly, to self] Yeah, what's the connection? Must be the
non-stop sitting and snacking.
[more audibly] Well, sir, many of our clients find pants
confining, so we offer a range of alternatives for the ample
gentleman: ponchos, muumuus, capes, jumpsuits, unisheets,
muslim body rolls, academic and judicial robes --
Homer: I don't want to look like a weirdo. I'll just go with a
muumuu.
-- Homer, inconspicuous, "King-Size Homer"
Watta ya' live under a rock?
Was Abe Lincoln too honest?
Do woodchucks chuck wood?
Do dogs chase cats?
I worked night shift, 00:00-08:30, and I agree, it seems okay at first, especially if you are a bachelor. But sleeping during the day sucks, especially during the summer. People you know can't seem to understand that your sleeping hours are different and are always waking you up.
Or, when it gets that bad (I got a phone call 4/5 days on vacation once...) don't answer the phone.
Ok, this is like 20 questions... um, I'll take the first guess. Are you a poll dancer?
I8-D
Wow! Talk about a new discovery!
Who would have thought that fat geeks don't have sex as much as normal people with normal bodies do....
Previewing comments are for sissies!
Very few stores are 24/7, and it's usually those big supermarkets with terrible quality food and ridiculous mark-ups.
I just hope you didn't quit hormonal therapy cold turkey.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Wait?!?
I always thought it was "whoever dies with the most stuff wins!!"
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I was going to mod this down, but thought, at this is not bad as Digg so I let it go... :)
Yeah except that Humans and T-Rexs never co-existed so there's that.
I got here through a series of tubes
The UK health care system is BETTER than where you're now? The US is in a creek THAT deep?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Or tigers, wolves, bears or another tribe of humans that want to kill you in the name of their god.
Mexico: 100% conservative's America now!
It seems like the only good reason for these issues would be, being up when most people are not, and sleeping is hard when most people are wide awake. I think that we should basically just decide, screw it, our days are actually 24 hours. Its already going that way after all. Plus we'd have like a bazillion new jobs without much new cost, and people who like being up at night can do so rather than people who prefer being up in the day.
If this can make you feel better, your schedule is far, far, far more sane than the one my team has been following the last 5 years.
Mexico: 100% conservative's America now!
http://i56.tinypic.com/29vcwnn.jpg
His action was a form of passive-aggressive behavior. Give him a taste of his own medicine.
It certainly looks that way, but in all honesty, I don't think he was being passive-aggressive. First, he's not passive anything, lol. He speaks his mind, and if you don't like it, tough. Passive-aggressive is definitely not his style. Second, he's a pretty good guy and a pretty decent boss; I've certainly worked for far worse. Third, there's only two of us network admins in the office, him and me, and we're under the gun from our parent company due to a number of external factors, so any pressure to work this outage came from his higher ups. If I have a beef with anyone, it's management in the parent company; my boss is just as burned out as I'm getting (if not more so). Fourth, he was on the conference bridge working the outage with me, so it's not like he was like, "Hey, I don't feel like doing this, so even though you're off today, here ya go!"
Don't go. If it's a scheduled outage, it's not an emergency. You're at a party and someone kept filling your glass when you weren't looking and now they've taken your keys away because friends don't let friends drive drunk.
I probably should have been a little more clear. He, and the admins from the parent company who are a client on the network that was having the problem, scheduled an emergency outage for later in the night. It was scheduled in that they put it off until later that night because they planned to do intrusive troubleshooting (rebooting network cards, etc.) and didn't want to impact other customers on the network in the middle of the business day, but it was an emergency in that this particular customer's traffic on the network was severely degraded.
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
You don't know Dubya? George 'Dubya' Bush?
You've been living in a cave and it's OBVIOUS you're new here.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Doesn't make it such less for you, of course ...
I don't really know where you are in the world or what industry you're in, so I can't really comment.
Where I am (Software Development, Finance, London, UK) freelancers (aka contractors) make about 2x as permanent employees. From what I've heard from people I know, the ratio is more or less the same in IT inside companies in other business domains.
In Holland, IT Contractors made about 3x as permanent employees.
As far as I know, certainly in IT, in Europe freelancers are always paid better than permanent employees. This is probably because freelancers have almost no rights, while permies get things like paid sick-leave and vacation days. Also, the "premium" that freelancers get seems to be related to how hard it is to fire a permanent employee (hence it was higher in Holland than it is in England). Lastly, going freelancer seems to be a natural career evolution path for those of us who are experienced, above average techies who don't want to move into management, so while it's hard to find really experienced people who are permies and willing to move, it's a lot easier to find those as contractors.
Personally, after having gone through the fallout of the end of the Internet bubble (number 1, we seem to be heading for a Web 2.0 bubble) I realised that job security was an illusion anyway and you're better off ditching illusionary job-security in exchange for a faster rate of filling-up your war-chest of savings so as to be ready for the next time the brown mater hits the rotary impeller ...
I know, I was just mixing time periods to make the joke sound better. Gotta admit it is a funny sounding situation. Big ass T-Rex wandering around, smells a few proto-humans in a cave. Takes all night but the T-Rex patiently takes the cave entrance apart and has a nice snack to start his day. I mean they are more intelligent than we give them credit for right?