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Workaholism In America Is Hurting the Economy
An anonymous reader writes Work/life balance is a constant problem in the tech industry. Even though experienced and mature engineers have been vocal in fighting it, every new generation buys into the American cultural identity of excessive work being a virtue. Each generation suffers for it, and the economy does, too. This article backs up that wisdom with hard numbers: "The 40-hour workweek is mostly a thing of the past. Ninety-four percent of professional workers put in 50 or more hours, and nearly half work 65 or above. All workers have managed to cut down on our time on the job by 112 hours over the last 40 years, but we're far behind other countries: The French cut down by 491 hours, the Dutch by 425, and Canadians by 215 in the same time period. ... This overwork shows up in our sleep. Out of five developed peers, four other countries sleep more than us. That has again worsened over the years. In 1942, more than 80 percent of Americans slept seven hours a night or more. Today, 40 percent sleep six hours or less. A lack of sleep makes us poorer workers: People who sleep less than seven hours a night have a much harder time concentrating and getting work done."
I just need to finish this one thing...
You say that now.
Get back to us 20 years from now.
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
They've finally figured out why sleep deprivation kills you -- and its also why it makes you make stupid mistakes.
Sleep Drives Metabolite Clearance from the Adult Brain
Problem is it is mainly during slow wave sleep that the cleaning crew works on the CSF, and as people age they their slow wave sleep diminishes.
Seastead this.
I love having a roof over my head and some food, hard to be picky when the "job creators" hold all the cards. But hey, maybe less regulations, lower taxes and more h1b visa's will make things better! /s
Not seeing the outside of an office for most of your adult life is considered as a virtue only by fools. Sadly many will post here supporting this form of modern day slavery.
The wtf moment of missing what life is all about will come when it is too late.
totally people are addicted to working longer hours. Not, maybe, and this is just a shot in the dark here, the proles are being taken advantage of by the bourgeoisie, business as usual.
Calling it "Workaholism" implies we have a choice. Companies are demanding we do more with less. If you don't like it there's not much you can do. The job market sucks, and it's never going to get any better. Off-shoring and abundant work Visas guarantee that. You're given X amount of work to do and Y amount of time and if you don't do X you're fired, so you put in extra hours. Again and again and again. Heck, it's even worse for the Visa holders. They're practically indentured serfs. If they don't put the hours in it's back to where they came from with a black mark to boot. And those are the guys we're competing with for jobs....
Heck, is it just me or can nobody in the American Media do anything except blame the workers? Maybe it's because the capitalists own the media... Heck, I don't know.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Finding a job is not as easy as it once was in today's job market. If you don't like your job then recommend you suck it up and keep it, because mobility isn't always present.
This is very true. Loved computers growing up, got into programming and IT desktop, severs and infrastructure and after 20 years I can't stand doing it anymore. I am trying to figure out a career change that I can get enthusiastic about but not financially devastate me. It hasn't been an easy experience.
I do not do it because I want to as a direct desire.
I do it because I love my family, and they depend on my income, so I try to make sure, like running away from zombies and not being slowest..., that I am not the least productive worker, m'kay?
Uh, Linux geek since 1999.
what were we talking about? sorry tired. Hey, my 80 hour work-weeks are what kept me employed during the recession. They couldn't fire me -- I was doing too much work for next to no pay. Yeah, I made a few mistakes. But I fixed 'em. Sure, my salary history will work against me when I go apply for another job. At least I stayed employed in my field. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need some more coffee before I pass out at my desk.
Seriously. Try getting by on $30-35K a year. Now try doing it WITH KIDS.
Cost of living alone is insane. Let alone other things, like an apartment/house, utilities, etc.
Now have a bad month or two. Or get sick, or injure yourself in a way that prevents you from working. Rent/mortgage don't pay itself!
Most people in this country aren't working +40 hours because they WANT to, or because they LIKE it.
They're doing it as a buffer to stay ahead of instantaneous bankruptcy and poverty in case they cannot work for some reason.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Why, because the US is the most socialist country in the West? What planet are you on?
I don't work any more than 40 hours a week (in fact doing so requires management approval... but that's another story).
i sleep less because I help out around the home. I help my wife raise our children.
Gone are the days when a father would be in the pub while his children is born, celebrating the birth with his mates.
Men have the expectation of a much larger commitment when it comes to family these days. The cost for that is time.
With a title like that, maybe the summary could point to the amount of damage and evidence on the harm to the economy without having the reader to deduce it on their own?
Dear team,
After coming back from my vacation in Aruba, I've decided that in these times of trouble we need to do more with less. We're in a troubled economy -- do you realize how much yacht gas has gone up in the past year? In addition, the Affordable Care Act has made it cost ineffective for our FTNE (Full Time Non-Employee) initiative to continue.
Moving forward, we'll need to tighten our belts and take on other responsibilities. Some of you will work longer hours than usual. My performance bonus is based on how much money we can save, so I'm simply going to let go anyone who refuses to comply with this iniative -- I'm sure I can find someone to replace you.
Cheers!
PHB
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
I get 10 unpaid compulsory holidays a year. If I do come in to work on those days, I don't get paid any extra.
Your mileage may vary I suppose. I've been working in IS/IT for over twenty years now. I've programmed, done tech support, went into server and network infrastructure, then operations and project management for some years, now I'm back in an engineering role doing security work. I love my job. I look forward to it almost each and every day (I say almost because we *all* have bad days at work and in life). I guess I'm lucky for that. I really love my job, the company I work for, and my peers. The pay is awesome as well. Sure sometimes the hours get long and sometimes there are frustrations, but all in all I can't imagine being happier with a career path, realistically speaking.
I first heard it a long time ago, and granted I'm still pretty young but it still holds true to me:
"Live to work, or work to live."
I've known many people of each type, and while I won't say one is better than the other, I will say that one will give you a much greater risk of dying from a heart attack ;-)
The intersection between stuff I'd love to do and the stuff people would pay me to do = Ø, particularly if I got paid to do it. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy with my job (37.5 hour work week, decent pay with overtime, 5 weeks vacation, interesting and meaningful work) but I don't love it and it's not something I'd do without the paycheck. If you can't really think of anything else to do than work, you must have a very gimped imagination. I'm sorry.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The work part isn't that bad, in fact it is actually better than 20 years ago. Whats bad is the people you have to deal with in order to keep doing that job, they have gotten much worse over 20 years. I would change jobs, but those people are everywhere now.
Actually I do enjoy my work. It's great fun and I look forward to going to work a majority of the time.
Started working in 1976. Got into computers in 1980. Part time job programming in 1984. Full time job programming in 1986. Currently a Sr Unix Admin and still do programming for my own stuff.
[John]
Shit better not happen!
Muricans that don't get enough sleep aren't not sleeping because they work too much. They're not sleeping because they're playing any one of a couple hundred MMOs and watching exabytes of Netflix videos in 20 hour Soprano's marathons and .....................
Bingo. Lots of wasted time after the whistle blows, but also during the work day. Commuting times have a bigger impact, IMO. Many jobs have always required extensive hours... jobs like restaurant ownership & management for example. It is no different today. Besides, with all the time saving and work saving devices we have, we should be able to work a bit more.
The problem is, even if you have a job that you love (and I do), that doesn't mean that you want to (or that it's healthy to) spend every waking moment doing it. Variety is important for a healthy life.
Well it depends on what you negotiate with the company. I currently have 5 paid weeks a year and generally have another week in the bank just in case. One company I worked for a few years ago, I negotiated a weeks more vacation for slightly less salary, in part because I know I'd get increases. I'm just that good :D
[John]
Shit better not happen!
Uhh, you realise that the other countries highlighted, where this is going better, are more socialist than the US, right?
To see how workaholism saps productivity and rarely leads to better results, look at Japan. Overtime is sacrosanct in Japan, at the company I worked at previously it was a badge of honor that the average amount of overtime was 60 hours a month. Japan has the lowest per-hour output in the G7, and it's a small wonder why. Managers will often times not buy hardware that can increase productivity because hey, you can simply make the workers work longer hours for free, whereas hardware costs money. The result is a populace that is unhappy, unhealthy, and well dying. The low birth rate is well known, what is less well known is that the Japanese have the least amount of sex in the developed world. The technology industry that everyone once thought would rule the world has come to be dominated by the west because managers have very little incentive to innovate, to increase productivity. And as the cherry on the shit sundae, the low productivity means that wages in Japan are lower, i.e. longer hours for less money. Trust me, you don't want to go down this route.
Monstar L
I remember back in the 1990s (I think) reading news stories about corporations pursuing 'increased productivity' per worker as a strategy for success, particularly in relation to international competition. Is there any other way to translate that language into plain English other than to say that what was desired was less wages for the same amount of work? I never saw it put in quite those terms, but it seems fairly obvious to me that that's what talk of productivity means. And if that's so, there's clearly a downside to increasing productivity. It means less income going to workers in direct proportion to their increasing profitability to the corporation (what some old ruddy-duddies used to refer to as the exploitation of labor, I believe). It also means fewer jobs, as a smaller number of people handle workloads that were previously distributed across a larger number. Am I just not thinking about this correctly?
If you do not enjoy work then that is the problem to be fixed. Find a job you love.
After several decades I've decided it's better to work at something you enjoy. Every time I've done something I loved for a living, someone found a way to make me hate it.
YMMV.
I get 10 unpaid compulsory holidays a year. If I do come in to work on those days, I don't get paid any extra.
And you will be told you have to come in on those days because the company isn't doing well, and not put it on your timesheet in order to not get your boss in trouble. Failure to comply will show up in your next raise... if you are lucky enough to be employed by then.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
If everything I've read about it is true(and I mentioned this in another article here on /.) you literally can't get more than 40 hours of work out of people anyway. Oh sure, the first couple of weeks they do more work but then they get tired and slow and make mistakes. After a few weeks of that they're working more than 40 hours but aren't producing any more work. Go ahead, read stuff like Peopleware where they point this out. (That working overtime makes no sense, you don't get anything but pissed off employees.) Before anybody asks, no I don't work more than 40 hours a week. (And yes one of the big reasons is I'm old enough to recognize I don't get any more work done if I do. Plus the fact you do it and your manager quickly abuses it.)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
We've been following the Reageanist philosophy since the 80's and things have steadily declined. Data from the last 30 years prove you wrong.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Baaahhhhh says the sheep
Agreed but for me it is a fairly recent thing. Only for the last year or so. That's after years of 60 plus a week. No more.
SLOWER TRAFFIC KEEP RIGHT
I work my 45-50+ hours a week minimum like everyone else in tech land, but I also normally only have a 10 minute commute. (I'm currently visiting another office and the commute is 30 minutes from my hotel, bleah.)
I know people who are losing two hours of their life a day commuting each way, in addition to working our nasty hours, leaving fewer hours to actually live. It's either cut out eating or sleeping, and thus it's usually sleep that takes the hit.
I could make twice as much money if I committed to a horrible commute but I value my free time too much.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
Variety is important for a healthy life.
Variety is also important for a good job. Take on different assignments, learn new skills, volunteer to fly to Mongolia to get the new team up to speed, etc.
Disclaimer: If you actually do volunteer to go to Mongolia, try to go in the summer or autumn. The winters in Ulan Bator are really harsh. Also, it is not a great place for vegetarians.
They lie to you in the interview, "oh, it's rare, but there are a couples of weeks here and there, that we burn the midnight oil." Yeah, bullshit. 50-hours minimum, and everyone gives you the stink-eye, if you head for the door before 6PM. Suck it, corporate America. Sell your soul to the corporate idol for NOTHING in return. Once again, suck it.
the main source of sustenance was farming of one form or another, and sure they worked less hours as dictated by the sun, but even the most hardened desk jocky would fall over before the day's end
This country is losing it. Don't know if you realize it my fellow citizens, but you are getting your ass kicked in the world. Socialism is not working.
That's because whenever you try something socialist-ish it's implemented as corporate welfare. Instead of taxing the corporations and helping the people you're bailing out the corporations and handing the bill to the people. Your version of Robin Hood would involve trying to get a trickle-down effect by handing the sheriff of Nottingham more money so he could hire more tax collectors and guards. Or to use a car analogy it's like stabbing the tires and pouring sugar in the gas tank, then comparing it to a horse.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Yeah, nevermind that workaholism makes the overwhelming majority of people miserable--certainly that couldn't be more of a reason (or even a sufficient reason) to be concerned. Would someone please think of the upper class's ability to maximize profits by squeezing the life out of the working cla--I mean the Economy, would someone please think of the Economy?
OMG , you look like the problems in this context.
"Don't mourn. Organize"
Don't let the bosses control the work place.
Don't let the union leaders become bosses.
You have to fight for it, then fight to keep it.
Or you'll get used up.
The main problem is that people prefer money to working. The idea that you could make people LOVE going to work already fell communism, maybe it needs to fell capitalism, too, before we get wiser.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I got excited about computers when I saw a computer with BASIC in a chain store in the early 80's. Must have been a Vic20.
I took an 'Informatics' High School curriculum, got an M.Eng. in Computer Science, and started as 'The Computer guy' in a small, privately owned manufacturing company. Now the company has four plants, 50 warehouses, 600 PCs, and my card says CTO. I still do some programming on the job, but it's probably less than 5 hours per week.
But in my spare time, I take on real programming projects. My last three were a IDE interface for company that uses hardware that is WAY too old, a computer vision search tool, and a video game AI module. I earn more outside of my day job, and have to refuse projects... but of course the day job comes with security and health insurance.
But, yeah, mileage varies. There is nothing I would rather do to earn money than write code for applications where a small memory footprint and execution speed are the first priority. This has not changed since 1988, except that since then I've decided that maybe I can afford to use C as opposed to assembly. And, yeah, I have written AI routines for two games released in 2013 in plain old C, because pointy headed bastards think that AI does not deserve ANY resources...
No good deed goes unpunished...
"All workers have managed to cut down on our time on the job by 112 hours over the last 40 years"
In a summary addressing the "work week," how does one end up reducing it by 112 hours or more?
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Been there, done that, earned the burnout.
It just ain't worth it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Does anyone remember that, at one time, the big promise of technology and automation was that we would be able to reduce the workweek for Joe Workerbee?
Somewhere along the way the goal of tech has become to employ as few people as possible, preferably with lower skills so you don't have to pay them as much.
-- I have monkeys in my pants.
You seem to be suggesting that only people from a certain generation are applying for jobs. That just isn't the case. I'm 37 and along with 100 other people was laid off in February from a job I spent 9 years at. I would have gladly spent another 9 years there. I'd love to find somewhere to spend the next 9 years. I've been looking but the jobs aren't there. A few entry-level zero benefit positions here and there, like "network engineer" requiring nothing but HS/GED and the bulk of the job description is hauling servers around. Get fucked. At some point soon I'll have to take a job at Home Depot or something to keep the bills paid.
I don't blame the state of the economy, the economy by and large is doing alright. I blame the companies who continue their greedy race to the bottom. 100+ hard working loyal employees laid off, replaced less than two months later with 30+ fresh college grads and a 50+ "offsite team" in India, despite the jobs never being posted anywhere. I guarantee you bonuses were handed out all up the chain, I guarantee you the business will be hamstrung for the next 6-12 months as the new hires get acquainted to their job and the whole company figures out how the fuck to deal with India. But that's just dandy because nobody looks beyond the quarterly report. Execs and upper management figure 6-12 months from now will be somebody else's problem.
The entitled generation you mention, they seem like the only ones who are getting jobs now because many can afford to work for peanuts. I have a wife, and a mortgage. $8 an hour hauling servers around isn't going to cut it.
All things have a marginal utility. Either you are proposing a 168 hour workweek or we are just haggling about price.
But i'm addicted to workahol!
man I keep hearing stories like this and makes me depressed if I will ever need to find a new job... which unfortunately may be soon. Currently work 7-8 hour days and that includes 1 hour lunch and multiple breaks. Our boss has the philousophy I don't count hours as long as the job gets done. For a lot of people this may sound bad, but for us it works both ways. If work is a bit slow we can leave early, but if something is urgent we need to stay around to fix it. More often than not we leave 30-45 min early. Maybe once a month may have to stay hour late. I also get 4 weeks vacation, and minimum raise every year of double inflation (but often even more than that).
Unfortunately our boss doesn't have much of a succession plan and he is 70 years old... Multiple employees pitched buying company from him but he always turns it down
This.
I like my job. It's well paid and as a job perk I get to read board members the riot act if they act stupid (and being board members with an inflated ego and sense of entitlement, they do a lot), but if given the choice, I'd rather sit at home, develop a few programs I like or tinker with some hardware. That's what I LIKE doing. Nobody will ever pay me for it unless I am insanely lucky, but then again, would I want that? It just wouldn't be the same anymore.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Nah,. I'm 56 and i've had that attitude all my life. I'm not rich, but i'm a lot happier than i would be if i'd spent all my life working in a crap job just for the money. And i've done a lot of really interesting jobs - in possibly as many as 30 quite different occupations, from builder to seaman, from computer programmer to miner, from taxi driver to technical adviser in Afghanistan. Life's too short to stick at crap jobs for long!
That's basically the problem. If people would LOVE doing it, and if a lot of people COULD do it, someone would already do it for free and you needn't pay someone for it.
So having a job that you really love means you're one of the select few that has one that fewer people CAN do than what's necessary.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Thank goodness you're taking a reasoned opinion and not oversimplifying and overgeneralizing.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
You should learn what socialism is before talking about it.
And people ask what unions are for...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
In this economy, the question is rather whether you're not well enough connected to find something else. Skill plays little role anymore when it comes to unemployment.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Does anyone else find that 94% figure for professionals working more than 50 hours a week rather high? I know it isn't anywhere near that where I work and we are relatively well paid.
Thanks for proving wage slaves don't exist, John. I was all worried that many people are economically stick in crap jobs, but your anecdotal story has proven how wrong I was.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
If you do not enjoy work then that is the problem to be fixed. Find a job you love.
Ah... the age old myth. So you realize, that bullshit was started by marketing firms on the behalf of employers right?
Your reasoning played out: "Find the job you love, then you'll work for free!!"
That's also the where the idea of a "Career" came from.
"Well, my career is in computers, so even though I could make more helping my wife with her bakery, that would end my career!"
Bullshit all around. It's all intended to keep you working cheep because you like what you're doing, and afraid to leave because it would hurt your career. My ass.
I don't care if you're paying me to nail Scarlett Johansen. You're paying me, and expect a lot. When my shift is over, she'd better spoon with a pillow or something because I'm going home.
Exactly. BUT, if you're exempt and working more than 45 hours a week you are a chummmmp. So many positions out there just don't require it.
:P
And not only that, if you put up with it, you are making the problem worse for the rest of us.
Seriously.
YOU are the market. If you are putting up with BS, then YOU are making it that way.
If you are underpaid, and overworked, and yet have put up with it for the last 10 years, YOU are the problem. And you're pulling the rest of us in the wrong direction.
I mean, I found what I was looking for in my current position:
* 40 hour work week (more like 38-ish)
* friendly, non-hostile atmosphere
* vary my time slot spontaneously and not worry about being "late"
* generous vacation (>3 weeks right off the bat)
* company sponsored outings for coffee and such
* getting compensated more than any of my other positions, even accounting for inflation and cost of living
It's still work, but work doesn't get better than that. But, to get there, I had to job hop 3 times and move my crap around because of all you fat whiny farkers out there who just sit there and take BS that doesn't have to be tolerated, making the rest of us have to go out of our way to avoid any employer you've slimed with the miserable inertia of your big fat lazy ass
Morale of the story...keep jumping positions, cities, hell countries until you find a good work environment. Every two years. Chop chop.
The real path to male liberation
You can't be loyal to the company and not put in boatloads of overtime. Doesn't matter if you're gettting anything accomplished; the company is the be-all end-all and deserves the blood sacrifice.
I've read comments above about loving your job, about pressure from management, about socialism, about Obamacare, and none of them seemed really to address the issue -- at least, as far as I could see. I worked in IT for 25 years, plus another 15 or so in other fields. I absolutely loved programming, the others just paid the bills, but there was one constant: my productivity maxed out at about 45 hours a week. If I worked 50, I didn't get any more done (net, i.e., after fixing errors) than if I had only worked 40; if I worked more than 50, things just got worse. I'm sure I lost some job offers along the way, because I was always careful to ask about overtime and then describe my experience if I was told it would be significant. Yes, I would work overtime if it was necessary; if it needs to be done, then "suck it up" is the rule of the day. But long term, heavy overtime costs more than it gains -- even if it's unpaid.
The fuck is workahol?
That's at least what I tell my people. I can't use them if they burn out.
I made that mistake once and lost a very valuable employee that way. I didn't notice it. He was always around and, hey, who doesn't like an employee who seemingly never sleeps? Until one day he didn't show up anymore. Burnout. Boom, gone. To understand how severe that really is, it takes AT LEAST three months for someone to get our workflow down. If, and only if, they are not only clever but also know the relevant underlying security protocols and process systems. Else, double it. Including the hiring process, the screening, the preparation and all the crap associated with HR and security procedures to actually get someone into our crystal palace, from the moment you decide you want someone to the moment he is actually a full member of your team... let's put it that way, conception to birth is faster.
So we had the additional workload of that person for a whole year on our shoulders. Which, as you can imagine, nearly costed me more people due to overtaxing.
Never again. Of course I can't protect myself and my team against one of them having an accident or even becoming unable to return to work forever. Even though risky sports are already "unofficially" disallowed (can't really outlaw them legally 'cause what you do in your spare time is your business, but it is "frowned upon". Let your imagination come up with what this means in a corporate environment...).
But at the very least I can ensure that I don't add to the problem. Nobody here clocks more than 40 hours (unless the fecal matter got into contact with the air transportation device, and then you will go and take those hours out as soon as you can).
I don't need my people to spend time in the office. I need them to get stuff done. That can mean that I might suddenly call them at some rather odd hours and ask them to come in, but I don't see any compelling reason to keep them around when there's nothing to be done on time. It's an agreement we have, and so far both sides can live perfectly with it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It seems we work for at least a couple of reasons. One is pretty obvious, that is, to earn income to support a hopefully comfortable life for ourselves and our family and provide a secure retirement. Maybe also something for our heirs. There's also the whole business of enjoying our work so as to feel accomplishment, contribute to our company's and society's improvement and success, and professional and personal associations with coworkers. What happens when all this becomes unbearable because over work compromises or destroys these features of work? You may be earning a living but without any joy not only affecting your personal life but your work and its quality. Is this burn out? Companies must begin to realize this and make changes.
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
And still balance your life. Don't work constantly. There is much more to life than work. Best to discover this while you're young enough to enjoy it.
It may nor be socialist, but one of the biggest problems is Obamacare.
Yup, a lot of the ideas came from that big socialist left-wing think tank the Heritage Foundation.
It absolutely kills small businesses.
So maybe MOAR SOCIALISM would help here.
Really? Look at the French economy, I certainly don't see a useful model there to aspire to.
Try Germany instead; they appear to work fewer hours than the French, and I have the impression the German economy's doing fairly well.
Nah, i just get bored easily!
The whole image of the 60 hour a week death-marching 'murican worker is a fiction.
When I was a graduate student, a 50- to 60-hour work week was basically a vacation, given that I routinely put in 70 to 85 hours per week. Moreover, it wasn't unheard of for students to basically not leave the lab for an entire week, let alone only sleep 5 hours per day on a couch during that time, while some important experiment was being conducted.
Nowadays, a 60-hour work week is the norm for me, and I've come to enjoy it. I have around three "productive" days where I work a total of 39 hours, two "semi-productive" days where I work a total of 18 hours, and an additional 3 hours that I spread out over the week for administrative tasks and meetings. While it would be nice to cut back to just 40 hours per week, I nearly double my salary by working those additional 20 hours.
I worked in the UK in the late 90s for a multinational. The company sent me to Philadelphia for an interview. Offer included two weeks holiday a year. I asked the recruiter why this was so low (in the UK it was four) - she replied that the folks there really loved to work.
Uh-huh....
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
No I won't.
I'm self employed, if it's not in my contract, I don't do it.
If I do work, I get paid.
There is no middle ground.
If you're talking about the US, there's nothing that resembles socialism. It's corporatism, socialism actually takes care of the weaker members in society, instead of further exploiting them.
Either you don't know what the term socialism means, you're not in the US, or you're smoking something that's not on the approved list.
True. He may not even be able to.
I like receiving bjs. But I have yet to find someone to pay me for the privelege.
I think the problem is that the nature of most of our jobs and work environments are repetitive, non-physical, dull, uninspiring, and often lacking in meaningful interpersonal communication. You can only take so many hours of that sort of stuff without burning out. In that context I understand and agree with the supposition that our productivity is hurting because of these long hours.
On the other hand, sometimes working long hours isn't that bad of a thing, but it depends on the context. Currently I'm working in a family partnership doing agribusiness (IE farming). Depending on the day I may be working from 8 to 14 hours a day. But since it's a lifestyle as well as a job, and family lives here on farm, it's not quite as soul-sucking as working 14 hours behind a computer screen, though sometimes I do spend hours doing things on the computer doing things like server maintenance, or the odd bit of software development, which is rather tiring after a few straight hours (maybe it's being behind a screen shining in one's eyes that makes jobs so fatiguing). Each day differs pretty significantly. Yesterday I put in some hours after supper and came in at 9:30 pm. Today I was done by 5. Those seasons that demand long hours do get old in a hurry, but they don't last forever, and there are other compensations. Also I take one full day a week off (Sunday). Most farmers really enjoy the lifestyle, and their families too, as well as many farm workers, despite sometimes putting in long hours, and they do find balance and it works out. At least for some people.
So it's not just a simple hours put in issue, but more of an inability to balance personal and family needs against an employer's demands, and the type of work these long hours consist of.
You're a CTO of a company with 4 plants, and you make more doing after hours work than what your job pays you? I'm not sure what to make of that, except that perhaps you're underpaid, and also appear to be working insane hours.
I also love my job, and what I do, but there is a balance, and I like my life outside of work as well and am glad to make enough from it to not have to worry.
Oh, is that what it is. Being a doormat. I thought there were fewer jobs than there were people looking for work.
Ah, of course: stating the realities of the supply and demand market is "bleeding heart."
Well, have fun. Your hard work has clearly served you well, and it's not like others work as hard as you do, or they'd be in your job and you'd be unemployed. It's not like you were lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time. It's definitely your hard work.
Well that's nicel Wait, you worked for the computer store and seasonal temp jobs for more than minimum wage? You were fucking lucky. In one of my previous jobs, at a computer store, when we got more work in than I could handle it meant that I just had to stay late. Every night. For free. That lowered me to about $5/hour beneath minimum wage.
My previous job had me working similar hours, and I was only $2.60 beneath minimum wage. I did start taking my breaks, until they gave me a written warning and a threat of dismissal.
But I guess it's just that I wasn't working hard enough, with a few 13 hour days and weekend work sprinkled in, and no pay for overtime work. If I'd only worked harder, or negotiated better ("If you don't want the job with these conditions, someone else will take it and you can stay unemployed") I'm sure I could have been in exactly the same position.
Lucky you. When I go to temp agencies, they look at my skill set (Computer Science degree, 10 years in IT support and networking, 6 years in media production) and tell me that there's just no work out there, and if I come back in a couple of weeks they might have something but I should probably look at getting my forklift licence and start at the bottom in retail or warehousing.
So what? Are you attempting to point out that you were "smart" enough to save some money? All you've done is point out that you were sufficiently well paid to save money, which is a completely different thing entirely - and something that minimum wage employees don't get.
Yeah! How dare people allow themselves to be forced to accept the first job offer that comes along as unemployment support requires in so many places? They should just harden up and work harder, like you did, and that way they'll get the Just World desserts that they so richly deserve.
You should go find someone who's desperately unemployed, and find out how willing they really are to work. You'll be surprised - more willing than you are, willing to work harder than you do, and by the sound of things, a damned sight less entitled than you are.
You "Just World" cunts make me sick.
Let's not forget that significant portions of the American workforce are 100% on-board with the idea that *not* slaving your life away makes you a worthless layabout. Slave mentality, indeed.
I supposed I should thank the unions actually.
I get paid more than the employees I work with for doing the same job. That's more to do with the employment law here, not the unions though. You can't fire someone for being not very good at their job without years of mediation, warnings and pumping excessive money into extra training and coaching for people who are essentially just a drop kick.
You can fire a contractor on the spot for no reason whatsoever.
I have yet to hear anything good come from a union in the last decade or so.
working 40 is not the "bare minimum", it's what most people are hired for -usually in a contract.
doing good work during business hours and sacrificing time from your real life have nothing to do with each other in most cases
If you do not enjoy work then that is the problem to be fixed. Find a job you love.
Yes but does the job love me?
Anyone who doesn't work unreasonable hours is a slacker? Fuck you.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
Juxtapose with this onion article:
"Magical Office Worker Able To Turn Everything He Touches Into More Work For Colleagues"
http://www.theonion.com/articl...
We've failed to work smarter, not harder.
Same here. I was involved in nuclear power then radiological controls. Got sick of that, took a huge pay cut and left. Started near the bottom of IT making in the $30's and worked my up into a position in the $150K range in 13 years. I'm now in my mid 40's. The bell is ringing again and it's time to move on to something else. This time something much different. A plumbers helper, stocking shelves at a home improvement store. Something where I put in an honest 6-8 hours a day and go home and be 100% away from work. Something I haven't had since high school. I live in the same house I did when I was making $30K/year and I still have cheap used cars. Everything I have is 100% paid for because I did not increase my recurring monthly costs as my pay went up.
Pure dumbfuckery. Do you like picking up the slack for lazy incompetents at your non-union company? Of course not. Would that change if you changed jobs and joined a union? Of course not.
So why, exactly, do you think union members spend all day thinking, "boy, I wish Bob over there would stop doing his job so I can do my work plus his!"
Aside from the lack of sleep and general burnout, working overtime also tends to skew expectations with management. Upper management is not going to be aware of exactly the amount of effort required complete a project. They are only going to see the results, the number of employees, and the amount of resources it took to achieve those results. So, if everybody gives it 110%, with lots of overtime and everything, that has the effect of raising the expectations of management. This leads management to believe employees can accomplish this great feat as a matter of course, when in fact, that type of effort can't be repeated. It all ends up with management making unrealistic demands while believing it is entirely reasonable.
When from the tone of the post it's pretty obvious I meant
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Where I'm from unions aren't at the company level, they're at the industry level. People don't voluntarily joins the unions, the unions opt everyone in and claim to work on their behalf and attempt to take over. They threaten employees who don't join in their stop-work actions and threaten employers who would let them come to work.
Unions don't protect employees, employment law protects employees.
Aww man, but there's all this money to be made! You don't turn down revenue, right? :0)
The purpose of existence is to make money.
In 1942, more than 80 percent of Americans slept seven hours a night or more. Today, 40 percent sleep six hours or less.
How do you even compare these two stats? I get that it sounds dramatic, but you can't work with this crap.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
Have you considered a career in the lucritive pornography industry?
It really depends on where you live and what your circumstances are. Do you have a car loan and student loans? That'll make it really tough, as those alone can easily be $5K/year or more. Do you not have a mortgage? That makes it easier. My parents live on about 25K a year, but this was after moving and buying a smaller house in cash from what they made off their old one. No mortgage means your household expenses could be dirt cheap depending on location ($200/month for property taxes and insurance for them). No mortage, no car loans and no credit card debt makes $1800/month much more survivable.
Plain numbers are tricky. The possibility of surviving on a certain income really comes down to what specific expenses you have to contend with. I could do 35K/year (gross) pretty comfortably with my current costs, but not 25K.
Most people who can't survive on the 35K number the OP tossed out are unable to do so because of existing debt that is dragging them down. If they had been able to avoid getting sucked into that position from the outset, 35K would be a much easier number to handle. Debt is a dangerous creature that we've become far too complacent about.
Some people may not afford to work less because they need the extra income from a 50 hours workweek.
Of course - this means either that they try to have a higher living standard than what's possible for a normal salary or that the salary is too low.
However there are demands for competent people, the problem is to find competent people because a lot of the unemployed can't even swing a hammer or do basic math - much less do engineering math. It doesn't matter that you are an expert in the works of Van Gogh or can play xylophone with your feet - only a few can live on that.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
If people are working 60 hour weeks, that means every two people are eliminating employment for a 3rd person.
One of the key drivers behind the 40 hour work week was 25% unemployment rates.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Bingo! This is definitely a HUGE factor for those of us living and working in the metro D.C. area! (I'm pretty sure Californians working in the Silicon Valley area have the same experience, but I can't speak about it with any direct knowledge.)
My commute is a little over an hour each direction. (Basically, I can take the train in to a station where I have to transfer to the metro and ride it for about 4 stops until I get to my workplace. Alternately, I can drive in but it takes about the exact same amount of time.)
Either way, it's "lose, lose", really. Everyone loves to point out that if you take public transportation, the time is really "your own time" since you don't have to drive. But due to the lack of reliable cellular data connections through much of the trip, it doesn't let me do a lot of productive things I'd like to do with that time (like check email or handle trouble tickets that came in). It's good for reading a book or magazine, but honestly? I'm not too enthused about spending 45 minutes to an hour reading that early in the morning, or right after a long day of work. I like to read on weekends or possibly at night just before bedtime. If I opt to drive, then I'm out the cost of the gas money and wear and tear on my vehicle. I also get stuck paying about $8 a day for parking. (The train and metro fare is over $275 a month though, too.)
But in this part of the country, you don't have any other realistic options to live closer to your job if you have a family with kids. Singles or child-free couples can usually find a reasonably affordable apartment that's nearby, but adding kids to the mix really makes that unworkable unless you're one of the "elite" (such as govt. contractors getting huge paychecks or politicians or their lawyers).
Out here, it used to be, you were directed to one of the "inner D.C. suburbs" like Rockville or Gaithersburg or Silver Spring if you needed to find a 3 or 4 bedroom house at a somewhat normal price. But so many people have relocated up here for the government and military jobs and contracts, those properties were quickly snapped up and priced escalated with the demand. So you have to look further and further out to find something at a sane price point.
Other industry's also abuse OT also time off rules need to ban use it or lose vacation policy at least some pales the law is on the workers side.
It's not just tech the retail places want mangers to work 60-80+ weeks with no Pay and a pay that can be hit min wage or lower when you look at you per HR rate.
Even in tech your pay rate can hit number that make doing non tech jobs look good even for less pay with an 40 hour week.
And not only that, if you put up with it, you are making the problem worse for the rest of us.
So what are you going to offer me to work less? I don't care that you might in theory have to work a bit harder just because I do. What I care about is not being able to do the things I want to do, which including making more money than if I didn't do that extra work and doing things I would not otherwise get the chance to do.
I have a solution to your problem that doesn't involve any more work on my side. It comes right out of those pvp games with the whiners who complain because people who've learned to play the game, play better. QQ.
If you don't like it, quit. Pretty much what you suggest with the jumping positions. The problem solves itself. I might add that most of the people in my department don't have to work my hours. They have pretty nice jobs and I work hard to make sure it stays that way.
remove health care from jobs and then they can hire more then as right now it's cheaper to work 1 person 60-80 hours an week and replace them when they burn out
You could have saved a lot of time by just writing a three word post: "I've got mine."
Ah yes - the "libertarian" answer - just get Daddy to put up the money to start a business, stop whining, and if your Daddy isn't rich then you are nobody so you don't matter. It's posts like the one above that just give yet another petty little insight into a flawed human nature but provide no other useful information. Banks may as well not exist for people starting in the workforce so most people can forget about anything other than capital from family.
I like your posts and I cannot lie,
You other brothers can't deny
That when a guy posts in with an itty bitty unix trace
And a resume in your face
You get sprung...
But seriously-- grats on being in the 8 to 11 % who like their jobs. The other 89 to 92% envy you.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
how much is in meetings that can be better used by doing real work / finding other ways to the info most of the little to no use meetings?
Not if you're working in Seattle.
Why, because the US is the most socialist country in the West? What planet are you on?
Really high welfare payouts? Check. Significant amount of the GDP on military spending? Check. 1 in 4 of the workforce work for the government? Check. Vast amounts of government subsidized housing? Check.
Seriously, compared to Canada, the US is positively socialism even though republicans like to call Canada socialist/communist.
In Hawaii, you can get 60k on welfare.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Talent is usually worth paying extra for, so make your business a talent center and attract the top players. Then give them freedom to get things done and don't micro manage. Ask what isn't getting done (read: the small things, like documentation) and pay someone do to that. Grease the wheels. Allowing people to work from home *IS* a huge benefit for many people, and more importantly, lets people disconnect from the office. I tend to get way more done at home as the office is just pure interrupt driven non-sense most of the time. Technology work is difficult and frustrating, but on the bright side, can pay very well. Deal with it or don't play.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
One of the most dangerous conditions known to medicine - prolonged lack of proper sleep increases the risks of developing depression and psychosis apart from the other detrimental effects [which are many].
Sleep deprivation is a method of torture that leads eventually to insanity.
But don't worry, fellow Americans - your insanity is spreading fast around the world. Our brave leaders, here in Europe, work around the clock [with apparent lack of sleep - see symptoms above] to implement every detrimental [to humans and society] system and method disguised as "increased efficiency" and "cutting costs".
And here too, the new generation is brainwashed to accept all this as normal. "Work harder and we will make it" - yhea, right. Work harder under artificial, manipulative and downright abusive financial system which can delete your life [together with your hard work] in a second? Work harder when the rules of the game are not what they are professed to be? Work harder so that 0.1% of the wealth you actually produced trickles down to your ever shrinking middle class budget? Work harder and we will increase your children tuition fees by 100%. Work harder and will keep on increasing the costs of living [energy, housing, food, water, education, health care] with a rate that outpaces the increase in your income by factor of 2 or more?
I don't mind working and I do like to do many things. I love to feel appreciated and I love the thought that I am contributing in my own way to my life and the whole of humanity. But I do not accept to be a hamster in wheel who has to run ever faster [shortening my life in the process] in order to stand still [or go backwards as it happens in the last decade].
People, we have to stop this insanity and the first step is to realize that we are manipulated into "camps" so that we keep on fighting each other. Reading the discussions about such topics I notice that at least half of the population has bought into the scam and will defend the system with their lives. I do not see any way how this can be changed. I have spent years trying to convince a handful of people to look a bit further than the next meal without substantial success. And I am bloody good when it comes to talking and convincing people.
Any ideas?
In this economy, the question is rather whether you're not well enough connected to find something else. Skill plays little role anymore when it comes to unemployment.
If you are highly skilled and those skills are in demand, hire yourself. You can't be fired unless you fire yourself. You can't be underpaid unless you underpay yourself. You can take as many vacation days as you like.
If you succeed, that's great. If not, you have no one left to blame but yourself.
I agree, I love what I do and used to do it as a hobby. Now even as a job, I still come home and do my own programming...but at some point down the line you begin to realize that regardless of what you love to do, it is not more important than friends and family. Doing what you love and drowning yourself in your work, regardless if you love it or not...is not a substitute for socializing or creating memories that actually matter. Someday you will be to old to change the choices you made.
Productivity is going up, consumption is not (or at least not as fast) so fewer hours are necessary to meet demand. Either hours get reduced or employees do. If hours are reduced, (and pay isn't increased to compensate) people have less money to spend, driving consumption down. If employees are reduced, fewer people have money to spend, driving consumption down. The only way to resolve it without a collapse is to pay people the same or more than they are now while letting them work less. Unfortunately I don't see that happening any time soon.
Again, where do you get the contracts from if you lack the network?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Again, where do you get the contracts from if you lack the network?
From the gettin' place.
Disclaimer: You may or may not find that amusing depending on whether you've seen "No Country For Old Men"
...sometimes you have to start as the bottom.
Yep, maybe 3 headhunters from google contacted me about a sysadmin position for "hauling 30kg around every day", in a French site in some god forsaken site, and I told them in no certain terms to get stuffed. I agree with you, I would prefer to work in MacDonalds than work for peanuts in IT.
mod parent up. Given unemployment numbers, why not cancel H1-B altogether?
But who is going to bribe the politicians to pass employment laws?
Oh, don't worry, the parent poster is probably complaining about how the top tier got bailed out in 2007-2008. Goldman Sachs et al, because acorrding to Secretary Paulson, tanks would be in the streets if the 1% weren't bailed out. Elizabeth Warren disagrees with this position. but you'll never read about that in the mainstream media. Sad to say, Chomsky was right. 20 years ago, I would never have thought I'd say that....
"I know people who are losing two hours of their life a day commuting each way, "
I commute well over 2 hours, 4 days per week. I don't see it as lost time. I'm reading slashdot and other sites in the train like now (plenty of space since I travel after the peak hours). In addition, 15 km of cycling per day, which is my only exercise. Fortunately the climate over here allows cycling.
But the idea of driving a car for 2 h/day horrifies me...
Avantslash: low-bandwidth mobile slashdot.
I'm a french citizen and I don't know whether to laugh or cry at this whole debate. I wish anyone genuinely curious about this topic could live my situation for a couple years, just as I have gone and lived in other countries to see and learn. There is no way to get a useful view on this from a single vantage point.
Maybe we deserve this world ?
My salary is below 150K. We're an aftermarket automotive manufacturer, and times have been better.
Last year, I declared 170K from programing projects.
I billed anywhere from $110 to $350 per hour for side projects, and I prefer negotiating for payment upon completion rather than having to give an estimate, and charging per the hour. Many customers prefer it this way, are ready to just pay 5-10K to get something done, and do not really care how long it takes me, as long as I'm done before they need the results This is especially true for companies who are forced to migrate from one application to another, and who do not want to pay a new service provider to transfer old data to the new system, but still want to be able to access it.
It takes a fraction of a weekend to write a program to pull the data from a ADP payroll database, a Kronos timekeeper system, a Business Works Accounts Payable module, a Solomon Ledger, etc... transfer it to MariaDB and throw together a few reports that can answer 99% of the client questions about their past history.
Service providers easily charge 50k+ for stuff like this. Big companies pay without a second thought, but privately owned shops balk. And people in the same industrial parks talk to each other... to the point that I simply do not have the time to take all the lucrative projects that come my way. (Or the inclination, really. Computer vision and game AI is what really gets my attention nowadays.)
No good deed goes unpunished...
That's the most amazing thing to me, compared to here in the UK. I get 20 days paid holiday a year and my company is not considered the most enlightened when it comes to this. I know people who get 30. I also work 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. As a software developer I can't imagine staying an extra 3 hours a day just to make it up to the US average and actually getting any more work done than I do now. I mean my brain is burnt out by around 4pm in any case.
You don't need a union to GTFO of your job and go work somewhere else where the pay and conditions are more suited to the kind of lifestyle you want.
If you don't mind that your situation will never improve, no, you don't.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I do enjoy work, but I don't let it consume my entire life. 8 hours a day really is quite sufficient.
Where did you see "really high welfare payouts" in USA? And what does military spending have to do with socialism?
And automation was supposed to make our lives easier...
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
If you are refusing projects to keep your day job, you are losing money on the long run. Even better you are able to command 100-400 per hour. I have seen "freelance" jobs in elance for sysadmin as "high" as you earn per hour in MacDonalds, and that is quite a joke.
Only in the US would 3 weeks be regarded as a generous holiday allowance. In most of Europe 4 weeks is a minimum - many people have ~6 weeks+.
Hey, I can replace you with 3rd world labor in an instant ... look, they made a cup of rice a day for their labor before, and I'm now given them a cup and a half - literally a 50% increase in their pay ... and they breed like rabbits, so there's a never-ending supply. Odd part is, I can't seem to find any customers for my products, everybody says they can't afford them ... wonder why that is ? ... must be excessive regulation or confiscatory taxation, must buy politicians to remove those obstacles, then there will be customers ... still none ? ... hmmm, I wonder who is screwing with the system, there should be profits here ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Forget that its an ad for a bad product by a bad company... and just focus on over arching message... which is just a cultural difference between the US and a lot of other places.
Enjoy your free time, euros... You're welcome to it. Americans want to work.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
You don't have to be insanely lucky, just lucky enough to be born in a country with unemployment benefits. You'll have 24 hours each day to tinker with whatever you want. It has its moments, but you're right, it really isn't that great. However, the option is there if you value free time over a lot of things (some of which aren't material, like respect).
Generous vacation allowance? Your generous vacation allowance is less then the government mandated minimum in many other countries, yet somehow you still feel you're being treated very generously. It goes further than that here too. Most companies will give you a leave loading of around 15%. That's right you get paid 15% more to go on holiday than you do to work.
Do you get sick leave too or does that come out of your pay / holiday? Again government mandated in Australia
What about option to cash in overtime on days in lieu? I work a 37hour week, but I get to do it over 9 days a fortnight. (This is just my job, nothing mandated here).
So I would have to correct you. It most definitely DOES get better than that. I was recently considering taking up a role in the USA, but I turned it down when I found out what the work conditions were from all the people at the other end who told me that I am crazy and they couldn't wait to trade places with me.
I don't know, we're tied with Denmark as the least corrupt countries in the world.
I'm self employed.
The people I work next to get paid half as much as I do but they get 20 days leave, get paid for those 10 public holidays, get at least 2 weeks paid sick leave and numerous other benefits of being an employee.
I have yet to hear anything good come from a union in the last decade or so.
Ahhh so because they have done nothing in the last decade means they are completely worthless and shouldn't exist at all? I don't like unions for much of the same reason you don't. They breed a slack workforce full of people who can't be fired for some bullshit reason.
But they do provide balance. Thanks to the union movement some 30+ years ago I have a government mandated minimum 4 weeks holidays. I have leave loading meaning I get paid extra on top of my salary as an incentive to take those holidays. Much of what the unions argued for in the past has made it into law that gives us (not the USA) the great conditions I enjoy today.
I'm all for getting rid of the unions now, but only if you get rid of the government at the same time. If you freeze employment / wage laws where they are it would be ideal. It's in balance. The problem is every time I turn on the TV it's yet another article about the government attempting to reduce my rights and the unions attempting to milk for all it's worth. In the middle I'm quite happy.
An ever-growing segment of the population doesn't work at all.
If you do not enjoy work then that is the problem to be fixed. Find a job you love.
I love sex. Doesn't mean I want to work as a whore.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
So why not simply make workahol an illegal substance, or at least license it's production and distribution?
Yeah, that's what everyone should do- become and independent contractor. All those big corporations that employ thousands of people can start negotiating a fresh contract for each and every independent contractor they hire. And for engineers who do things like design or manufacture semiconductors, well, they can all buy their own equipment and hire themselves out as contractors too.
Oh, wait, they might have trouble getting loans to purchase millions of dollars worth of stuff, just so they can do their work.
Hey, I have an idea, what if large corporations hired people as employees under a more or less uniform contract? Then they wouldn't have to do so much negotiating, and people who do work that requires massive investment in infrastructure could do that work without having to own that infrastructure themselves...
Now I can hire myself out as an HR consultant and explain the benefits of hiring employees to big corporations!
I think I would give up my 20 days to get paid twice as much. At least for a few years, or until I'd paid off my mortgage.
The whole image of the 60 hour a week death-marching 'murican worker is a fiction.
When I was a graduate student, a 50- to 60-hour work week was basically a vacation, given that I routinely put in 70 to 85 hours per week. Moreover, it wasn't unheard of for students to basically not leave the lab for an entire week, let alone only sleep 5 hours per day on a couch during that time, while some important experiment was being conducted.
Nowadays, a 60-hour work week is the norm for me, and I've come to enjoy it. I have around three "productive" days where I work a total of 39 hours, two "semi-productive" days where I work a total of 18 hours, and an additional 3 hours that I spread out over the week for administrative tasks and meetings. While it would be nice to cut back to just 40 hours per week, I nearly double my salary by working those additional 20 hours.
You're not in IT, then, because they're salaried. No extra pay for extra hours.
Actually thanks in part to people that think just like you, 40 is the bare minimum
It used to be that there was work that needed to be done, workers did that work until it was done, and then there was no work to be done.
Now there is work that needs to be done, but workers work until they hit their time quota rather than until the work is done. Sometimes they finish the work before the time quota is satisfied, and sometimes they dont finish the work.
All the negatives you can think of stem from time quotas having been forced upon the various industries that do not naturally have time-based workloads.
Factories for instance make money per unit of product manufactured, but are forced by-and-large to pay their workers per unit of time T (per hour, per day, etc..). The ramifications of this is that a factory owner is now faced with optimizing a completely artificial situation. They can sell X units per day, but instead of simply making sure that they have enough workers P to produce X units per day, they also must now try to have the amount of workers P that produces X in exactly time T.
This fucks up everyones incentives. The factory owner now has fucked up incentives, but also the workers too now have fucked up incentives.
Paid just enough not to quit while working just hard enough not to get fired.
There is work where the availability of the worker is part of the job, and it is really only these where it isnt completely fucked incentive-wise to pay per unit time.
Fucked up incentives lead to inefficiency, and not just for the employer. Everyone is hurt.
"His name was James Damore."
Take health insurance into account when you're figuring that. If I were to pay my health insurance myself it'd be another $1300 a month.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
This Post is a Choose-Your-Own-Post Post!
For Cheeky Sarcasm goto 10.
For Argument goto 20.
For Abuse goto 30.
For Mouthbreathing goto 40.
10 I knew Denmark had been going downhill, but I didn't know it was that bad over there.
20 [Citation Needed]
30 Stupid git.
40 *pant* *pant* *pant* *drool*
Well, when you consider that employers in the USA don't have to give any vacation, sick time, etc AT ALL, 3 weeks is pretty generous in comparison.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
And, it usually means you're not getting paid what you're worth, since they know that if you like the work they can pay you less.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
Ohh, the irony...
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
You should look into your local laws. It's called minimum wage for a reason, and I'm not aware of anywhere (in the US) where violations are not a big deal.
Either you are applying at the wrong agencies (there are many that deal exclusively in unskilled labor), or you are in the wrong market. Unpleasant as it may be, you might have to move to a different city/state to stay with that career.
OK will do! Stay far away that is. Yep, I work with people like you. Likely start late, long lunch, then wonder usually quite loudly, why others want to leave on time. I start quite early, get things done before the interruptions start. Leaving on time is my goal. You want me to work late, pay me. I'm sick of unpaid OT. It never got me anywhere.
SLOWER TRAFFIC KEEP RIGHT
I work in Boston, and I spend 4 hours/day commuting. It's a pretty lousy lifestyle.
So what you're saying is, I should give your something extra for free....how about no. ... thats called economics. free trade, etc.
"the minimum to get paid"
You want fair days work from me? You better pay me a fair days wage.
History. You should learn it sometime: There's a reason we instituted the 40 hours work week, and basically every other workplace/worker protection.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Rush hour in atlanta.
(Ugh...never going back)
We need more mass transit.
More cities with GOOD metro lines.
High speed commuter rail.
Etc.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
It's ambiguous, but it doesn't explicitly say "112 hours per week" which led me to assume it meant over the course of a year.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
Oblig. xkcd: http://xkcd.com/1346/
80/60/40 years ago, automation was going to lead to a life of leisure for everyone with a 20-hour work week.
Now those of us that are employed do the work of five people because employers are sitting on record profits and while not hiring more workers. While we have huge numbers of people that can't find work.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
That's right, unionize. So instead of overworked Silicon Valley, we end up with collapsed Detroit. That's best case; the more likely case is that the companies will find no shortage of non-union labor.
Sometimes you start as a bottom!
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
Unions just protect those that are incompetent or barely capable.
Fuck unions. I haven't even had to negotiate a raise in 3 years because they are a afraid of me leaving. >10% *grins*
Am I to understand that your personal experience negates the value of collective bargaining in general?
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
If by "socialism" you mean "corporate socialism", then we agree.
In the course of every project, it will become necessary to shoot the scientists and begin production.
146M out of 315M according to the BLS. Its 59% percent if you only look at working age adults. 26M of those 146M are parttime too.
Your examples only apply to people being paid hourly. Work until the job is done, you get paid until the job is done. People on salary really should get the fuck up and leave when the time is up. How is it my problem if the company is too cheap to hire enough workers to get the job done in the time allotted?
Many salary have things like on call and emergency times that they do not get paid for. In return their salary is compensated, bonuses paid, or other amenities to keep the employee happy. If the company does not compensate properly... the employees walk... usually to their competitors.
In your scenario, the company is rewarded for squeezing their employees and having them stick around "until the job is done", since the get free labor.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
But you don't have a rebuttal to his point that you (well, people like you, he didn't specify you) make the problem worse for everyone else.
What is there to rebut? His opinion is more or less self-consistent. It's just not taking into account my actions or for that matter the actions of most of the world who simply aren't on that page.
You would make more money and get to do more things you want under a better economy.
What's good for the economy isn't necessarily good for me. There's that. But I never took seriously the premise that limiting our labor and productivity would improve the economy. Nor do I consider the presence of hard workers in the world a "problem".
And in my case, my hard work actually does mean that a fair number of people don't have to work so hard. How do you get to decide that is making the "problem" worse?
I'm shocked at the stat that 94% of tech workers are putting in more than 50 hrs/wk!
I have a nice well paying 40 hr/wk job, which occasionally requires the rare 45 hr wk. Those 40 hrs/wk already seem unnaturally long for me.
BUT...I'm currently applying to new jobs, and this stat makes me concerned about expectations that my new employer might have for me. I'm up front in the interviews that I'm looking for a 40 hr wk. Some companies are cool with this and offer me jobs, others, like Amazon.com are openly not cool with it, and that's fine. I don't want those jobs. But still, makes me wonder how hard it will be to find a 40 hr/wk job.
BTW...I'm not counting general reading/studying/training required to remain an expert in my field. The 40 hrs I'm referring to are specific job tasking.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
I'm from Melbourne, Australia and I'm sure we have a very similar work culture to the US. A culture where a whole lot of people define their social value, and a great part of their self value to their work. I think we all get sucked into this to some degree. Then my girlfriend got a job in Paris and I threw it all in and tagged along. Now I work maybe 8-9 hours a day, down from 10-12. No one eats at their desk because food it respected enough to give it some respect. The work we do is of high quality because we're not stupid after staring and screens for too long. And we tend to spin our wheels less and waste a whole lot less time. So overall I'd be surprised if productivity is really down. And life is much nicer. France isn't perfect (far, far from it) and your anecdotal milage may vary but hey, so far, so good.
Interesting argument. I agree that people have more options than they often realize. Or that they unnecessarily limit their options by excessive spending, debt, etc.
BUT....not everyone wants to become an employer. And I think there ought to be room in this economy for both skilled and unskilled workers to earn a living wage with a 40 hr work wk.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
I was getting buy just fine in grad school on $12K/yr. Never felt poor. Lived cheaply and had everything I needed. Even saved a few bucks each month.
I was making $36K/yr in my first job and was living the good life, nice apartment, going out, etc. and still saved a bit each month.
Now I make much much more than that, but I've been hit with up to $10K in medical bills the past few yrs, despite having good health insurance. I also have a family and a house in a good school district, and suddenly things are tight even though I now make 6 figures.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
I have to first laugh at the neckbeard movie theater employees claiming people chained to desks want to defend their lifestyle, "defending the man" and whatever "modern day slave" type comments they want to pull from the beatnik bible. Very few people WANT to work a 60+ hours week. But you don't have much of a choice in the matter. The big problem is that if you won't do it, there's someone waiting to replace you who will, so you have to do it. Even if you're salaried, with no overtime - the best you can hope for is a little recognition and a bonus. If you don't work those exhausting hours, you will be replaced by someone who will. Employment is better than unemployment, so that's what you do, unless you want to work 22 hours a week and live in your parents basement.
My first job out of college I averaged 70+ hours a week - and I was on a salary BELOW $30,000. I had graduated 7 months ago and took a bad offer just to finally have "a" job. But it wasn't worth it. I got to a point where I worked through my weekends, ten hour days, and got to 34 days in a row when I finally told my boss I was clearly being abused. Within a few weeks, I was fired. The guy they hired to replace me started at $46,000. Valuable lesson learned: never undersell yourself just to get in. Raises don't happen as frequently as they did in our parents' generations, and frankly, you'll never even get one of those if you don't stick your neck out and ask.
I've job hopped a bit, and was even at a job where I would work about 50 hours a week, clients would call and email at all hours of the night and I had to be able to respond to those calls, too. My boss, one day, would tell me that these things weren't expected of me, and the next day ask me why a project wasn't moving as quickly as he wanted it to. To mitigate some of those problems, I asked him to prioritize the multiple tasks I had in front of me. He would decide what got finished in what order (usually forcing him to choose between pet projects and profits).
The simple fact is that it's still an employer's market out there. Unemployment is still just high enough that they have their pick of the litter and if you don't live up to their expectations, you're gone, and another warm body can fill your chair. The problem isn't so much that people are willing to do this, the problem is that employers are expecting them to do this. It is the expectation set by the "driven" few at the top, who expect all of their employees who earn a tiny percentage of what the guy up top earns, to be just as driven as they are. I'm not going to "make partner" as an IT guy, why should I have to work just as hard at your law firm, accounting firm, medical practice, etcetera?
Bob isn't able to do the new work. Management needs to send him to training. Frank can take care of it in the meantime
Bob is still having issues with this new system, more training. Frank can take care of it in the meantime
3 years down the road, Bob still doesn't know how to stop/start a Unix service or manage the backup system. Well, actually he might if he tried, but Frank is still the one that gets poked to handle it all. Really, Bob is just somewhat lazy and is milking the system. Bob *could* be fired, but it would take another several years of fighting between the union and management, and that's expensive. So install Bob manages a few servers in the old system, and Frank gets 1.5x the work.
And yes, this *does* happen in unions. I worked in one shop where the guy wasn't coming to work, was mis-using company resources, and basically did it all with a smirk. It took them *years* to get him out, and years again of fighting to keep him from being brought back.
I've also been in union management. Even if you know Bob is being a useless turd, you still need to defend his lazy ass. Meanwhile, Frank is being overworked, and Sally is being screwed over but you're too busy dealing with the Bob's of the world to help out the honest employees to the extent that's needed.
Oh, but *everyone* gets a 3% raise this year based on negotiated contracts. That includes Frank - who more than earned it - and also Bob, who definitely did not.
I really miss my old commute. When I started, the office was a five minute bike ride away. I could ride home, have a nice lunch, and ride back. Six months later, they moved 15 miles north. That 15 miles represents over an hour of rush hour driving. Ended up moving to a spot that wouldn't require me to deal with the worst rush hour roads, but I'm still a good 20-minute drive away.
The worst I've seen are devs at a client in DC. Between driving in from the surrounding area to a parking garage at the tail end of the Yellow line and then taking the metro into town, they spent an absurd amount of time in transit to their jobs (not to mention the $200/month or so they had to pay for parking).
But who is going to bribe the politicians to pass employment laws?
Not the unions. They get around the law with the union contracts the companies are forced to take.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
totally people are addicted to working longer hours. Not, maybe, and this is just a shot in the dark here, the proles are being taken advantage of by the bourgeoisie, business as usual.
You say that like socialism is the solution, when it's the problem--all it does is let the ruling classes say and perhaps even truly believe that in screwing the plebeians they are doing them a favor.
When you make it expensive to employ additional people, you're going to ensure giving people overtime is favored over adding another employee, even when it would be otherwise preferred to have an additional employee.
When you make it expensive to have somebody work full-time, you increase the number of part-time workers--and the number of people having to work two part-time jobs in order to pay bills.
There is a problem when you set up the economy so that a company can be punished for deciding to be kind to their workers and not make a single worker do the labor of many...
Corporate welfare isn't the problem as much as bureaucrat welfare & the granting of functional monopolies to large corporations by screwing the smaller guys for them.
You should look into your local laws. It's called minimum wage for a reason, and I'm not aware of anywhere (in the US) where violations are not a big deal.
Minimum wage does not typically apply to salaried workers who are generally "professionals" which are exempt from minimum wage. There are also a host of positions (such as working at a movie theater) that are also exempt. (See http://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/co... for details.)
Now, if you are hourly and in a position that qualitifes, then you are generally good. Restaurant workers that receive tips are guaranteed by law at least minimum wage - that is, they get the greater of minimum wage or their base of $1.20/hr plus tips for the pay period. Beware - not every position qualifies.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
I feel for you. The price of housing inside the beltway (or near it) is insane, and only going to get worse. There's really no space to build more w/o tearing up existing structures. I fought the daily commute from western Fairfax Co. to inside the beltway for several years. Once I was able to afford better digs, I attempted to find a place closer to work, but even an additional $70k increase in property value wouldn't have got me something comparable within five miles of the office. That was back in the mid-90s, and the housing bubble bursting didn't really improve matters here.
Just another day in Paradise
Institutions pushing ultimately destructive long-term behavior in favor of short-term returns.
It may nor be socialist, but one of the biggest problems is Obamacare. It absolutely kills small businesses.
They're paying you too much, because you suck at this.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
If you are refusing projects to keep your day job, you are losing money on the long run. Even better you are able to command 100-400 per hour. I have seen "freelance" jobs in elance for sysadmin as "high" as you earn per hour in MacDonalds, and that is quite a joke.
There are many reasons to keep a particular job - money is but one. In a discussion about work - life balance, this seems to be a pretty important point.
A rare healthy person!
Nice to see all the douche bags on Slashdot now. Can't even make a comment without folks taking some offense.
Nowhere did I say there weren't wage slaves and folks weren't stuck in crap jobs. My anecdotal story is just that. A little bit from me responding to the original poster indicating that while the US doesn't have mandatory vacations, you are capable of asking for more.
Chill out a little. It's not all about you, or me.
[John]
Shit better not happen!
I wonder if it's more that I've tried other jobs and have settled into a job that I'm good at at a company that generally appreciates my talents. As we age, we might just realize that while the job might be crappy at times, it's the attitude you bring and the realization that a job at a different place really doesn't offer much difference. Just different idiots. Better the idiots you know :)
[John]
Shit better not happen!
Nah. I'm not all that good with thinking about the unlucky others. Must be what makes me a BOFH. :)
[John]
Shit better not happen!
Of course we should. But the oligarchs who run this country don't want anyone getting that idea.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
I believe that the GP said "organize", not "unionize"
More specifically, he makes the statement "Don't let the union leaders become bosses", which is indeed part of the problem these days.
The problem with working until the job is done is that, for me at least, the job is never done.
If I finish one part there is always the next step there, waiting to get done.
Then your company has gotten pretty close to optimizing P * QUOTA * Productivity = X , but why are they optimizing that?
If a company can sell X units per day, they should have enough workers to produce X units per day.
Of course, they should never every have have enough workers to produce 2X units per day. That would be preposterous, right? Gotta fire some people, maybe replace some of the more efficient people with less efficient people too... /sarcasm
See the problem with your circular argument yet? You have forced the time quota into both sides of the argument.
Simply replace T with (work) day and the two situations you describe are identical.
See, there you are forcing it in. Why not T = half day? T must after all be a full day!! Thats the essence of the your argument, and its the flaw of it. Can't possibly pay anyone $200 for 4 hours of their time.. must pay them $200 for 8 hours of their time....
"His name was James Damore."
Yeah, I think I saw your banner ad on a news site the other day...
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
If you're exempt from overtime pay, it's quite the loophole to effectively cut wages in half while still looking OK on the books.
Everyone - bar none, and including myself - who claims that they "work 60 hour weeks" might indeed be AT WORK 60 hours a week, but they do things like post /. comments at quarter after two in the afternoon or spend hours playing farmville, solitare, or updating their facebook posts.
-Styopa
Indeed, indeed, nothing is black & white. There are too many variables at stake, and quality of life is not easy to come by.
I've had this idea in my head since the economy downturn in 2008/2009.....
If we have a federal law that mandates maximum 50hrs of work per week, this will force companies to hire more regardless of their profitability.
I said this because I have couple friends who worked at AMD/Intel/Cisco at the time... they came to my birthday party Sunday noon time, and at 2PM they had to split because they have to get some work done at the office.
I think that's a serious violation taking advantage of employees' resources... they knew the job market was dry, they squeezed every possible drop of juice out of their employees' energy because they knew there was no where else to go.
If US corporate management think more for the general economy than their own corporate interests... we would actually boost economy, people got jobs and have more buying power... it automatically increases service/product demands and we're back in shape. But it's easier said than done.
I laughed, consider this +1 Funny.
Here are the 10 least corrupt countries in the world, according to the index:
Denmark.
New Zealand (tied with Denmark for No. 1)
Finland.
Sweden (tied with Finland for No. 3)
Norway.
Singapore (tied with Norway for No. 5)
Switzerland.
Netherlands.
Please tell me that 90%+ of my fellow IT professionals are not really working 50+ hours a week.
You guys do realize that software developers/engineers/database dudes are in very high demand right now, right?
If you don't want to work over 40 hours a week, then don't!
Over the past 6 years of being a software developer, I've had three jobs and all have been 40s hour a week.
They've actually been less. You know why? I come in late and typically leave early. I get the job done and my bosses didn't/don't want to lose me.
So, just get the job done and don't worry about "what people think" about you leaving at 5pm. If you're good at what you do, they're not going to let you go.
If the demands are unrealistic, then again, find another job. There is PLENTY of work out there right now.
I wish CS majors were required to take economics. If these punk arse companies that like to play games and force long hours were actually hit with an informed workforce, they would have empty cubicles and we wouldn't have conversations like this.
Don't forget, you can still take unpaid leave.
Although, you need to be good at your job, since they can fire you on a whim and when projects end you can be out on your ass too.
No problems ars long as you follow two rules:
Don't be a dick
Be good at what you do
So move. DC is not exactly a great area to live in. There's plenty of awesome places that offer much more at a lower cost of living.
Really, I thought the only reason people actually moved to DC, was because they were offered one of those "elite" jobs you referred to.
I want to be honest here, if you're in your mid-50s, you might have a hard time convincing me that you're a good candidate for me. I'd probably ask you VERY personal questions (that I may not even ask you legally, but they'd be of course completely voluntary to answer on your part with you refusing you having no impact on your chance to be hired. Yeah. Honestly. You bet...). The reason isn't even that you're going to retire in about a decade and, as mentioned before, training will require about a year. With relevant prior experience that may even be less the reason (of course, if you neither ever worked in the business field nor in security, your chances might be getting a wee bit thin...).
The reason is that you're most likely not "compatible" with our work style. We do offer a great range of freedom (come as you are, pretty much whenever you want, and your average work load will probably be considerably below the 40 hours you get paid for), but there's of course the backside to it. Odd work hours ("Mind staying 'til 5am today? You get tomorrow off and the next Monday."), odd phone calls at odd hours ("Can ya come in? Yes I know it's 4am, and it's your day off, why're you asking? Be here in an hour, ok?") and the kind request that you inform us should you plan a vacation abroad so we know that it's kinda futile calling you to come in.
These are, of course, rather "insane" requests. Ok, let's call a spade a spade, requirements. We do offer a lot in compensation, including training programs that pretty much triple your salary, VERY liberal work hours unless there's an emergency (which basically amounts to "come when/if you feel like it"), no asshole PHBs breathing down your neck, near perfect work security and a few more tidbits and benefits, but that all comes at a price: It is near impossible to have a functional relationship when you try to hold down this job. Twice so if you have kids. I know for a fact that this line of work killed more than a few relationships. It isn't really possible to have a rich family life or even plan something. Want to explain your 8 year old why you suddenly had to leave just when he had his first big role in that school theater performance?
This job is something for the younger audience. Where having an unpredictable life may even be entertaining. I just learned that most people prefer more stability and predictability when they get older. Of course you may be that odd man out who pushes 60 and still gets an adrenalin rush when his boss calls at 2am with a "Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You are my only hope.", but I'd guess even that joke gets old quickly. I tried it a few times with people who claimed that they "don't mind" and that they still have the drive, but in the end they all eventually folded.
I would not mind having someone older than me on my team. But there's a reason why most here could call me "dad", from an age perspective... I guess I AM already the odd man out.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
That is not true if you're as hard of a worker as you make yourself to be. The coming tide lifts all boats.
That isn't true here since the alleged "rising tide" is caused by me willingly earning less (as a consequence of working and doing less). I sacrifice substantially so that certain Slashdot posters can slack off more? Doesn't work for me.
And why should people take you seriously?
This isn't a popularity contest. 40 hours isn't that much for a lot of work and I think the original research is absurd. Sure, if I'm doing original mathematical research (something I've done in the past), I won't get 20 hours of such work done in a week except in unusual circumstances. But on the other hand, working a moderately physical job like security, I could work 50-55 hours a week for months.
How do you get to decide you aren't?
Reason and awareness of the situation at the place where I work. Why do so many people think that I can't evaluate such situations?
To elaborate on my situation, I train and supervise a number of people who work overnight to process a bunch of paperwork for people who work in the daytime. If that work doesn't get done, then life sucks for the day people who have to work much harder. Similarly, there are problems which come at night which can lead to life sucking for the night people and for which, I happen to have dealt with before. Finally, I act as a reserve of manpower so that when a high labor problem shows up, I can work on it in place of the poor night person who stumbled across it so that they can finish their job.
Finally, I started the job rather recently and am working somewhat inefficiently as a result. I expect the hours to decline a little bit as I get more experienced with the job.
Currently, that work means 45-60 hours per week. I'll probably hit 60 hours this week.
You're free to do not take him seriously, but turn around is fair play. You don't take him seriously. He doesn't have to take you seriously. So why bother replying?
Debate and discussion are processes by which rational, sincere, truth-seeking beings can communicate with one another.
(and unlike you, I have time to deal with people who choose to argue insincerely
I don't know why you bothered to post that. If you're human, you can't have that sort of time. You can spend some of your copious free time, but there's far more insincere people here alone on Slashdot than time you could possibly have. After all, there's only 168 hours in a week to respond to all those trolls and such. And if you're not human, then you probably still can find something better to do with your time.
No, really, what the heck is their deal? If I get only 7 hours of sleep for more than 2-3 days, I start turning into an ornery, unfocused, weak, idiot zombie who's as likely to pour a cup of coffee into his lap as into the mug!
I don't understand how people do it.
-
The "life is too short" speech doesn't work when your 18 year old goes from high school to college, and then is 22 and saddled with $40,000+ in debt. Then they have to pay $700+ every month in rent (not the $150 it was for my parents in the 1970's), because a six figure loan to buy a house is complete nonsense. In order to keep my job I have to work, as the article suggests, 50+ hours every week, sacrifice sleep to do some work from home and allow my boss to bug me via my smartphone on the rare day when I take a vacation day.
That's just a summary of my experiences and everyone I went to college with. Ask one of your three kids, if any of them are in college. Or wait until they graduate. It is terrifying that prices of many things have inflated far faster than incomes, the income gap is the largest its been in decades, and not ONCE has anybody ever uttered the word pension in the near-decade I've been out of college.
Life is too short, but if I don't work it'll be even shorter, because I'll be out of food and shelter.
You're not in IT, then, because they're salaried. No extra pay for extra hours.
You're correct: I'm currently not a salaried employee. I also hope to never be salaried again, let alone work for a company that bars me from overtime simply because I'm considered a "computer professional" in the eyes of the government.
As an aside, I can definitely empathize with those who are salaried employees. I had to deal with being labeled a salaried employee all throughout graduate school, despite my contract saying otherwise, and basically miss out on $100k to $125k/year (USD) in overtime; pretty much everyone else in the EECS department was in a similar situation. Suffice to say, when I had the chance to join a start-up company as a fairly compensated employee, I jumped at the opportunity.
You should keep in mind that reading comprehension relies on what is written and is not mind reading. I strongly suggest you improve your writing skills before attempting to lecture people for reacting to what you wrote instead of what you may have meant.
Now I can hire myself out as an HR consultant and explain the benefits of hiring employees to big corporations!
You jest, but this is a necessary task. The C-level executives have managed to insert their heads so far up their asses they're in danger of disappearing entirely.
Except for Charter Cable. Which I was absolutely ASTONISHED to learn has dumped basically all of their contractor technicians, hired employees, instituted training regimes that insist those employees spend a mandated minimum amount of time doing fresh installations before they're ever sent on trouble-shooting calls, and, wonder of wonders, hired quality inspectors who follow after those technicians and independently and apparently rather severely criticize their work.
It seems there is one executive in the country who escaped the echo chamber. I can only assume s/he'll be fired next year for spending all that money without generating miraculous profits.
A software project that actually ends? What kind of crazy company do you work for?
According to that link, even if you are salaried, you must work over 62 hours to drop below minimum wage.
You didn't specify what position, but I doubt that working in a theater would count as an "executive, administrative, professional and outside sales employees. "
Again, check local laws. Many (most?) have restrictions beyond what the feds require.
According to that link, even if you are salaried, you must work over 62 hours to drop below minimum wage.
You didn't specify what position, but I doubt that working in a theater would count as an "executive, administrative, professional and outside sales employees. "
Again, check local laws. Many (most?) have restrictions beyond what the feds require.
Here's the link. Working in a movie theatre would fall under "Employees of certain seasonal amusement or recreational establishments".
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
You have a very funny way to interpret the English language. You seem to always pick the interpretation which makes the other guy the most wrong and ridiculous. That sort of attitude is not conductive to rational sincere truth-seeking individuals
I can only base my perception of you and your activities on what you write. And you corrected my mistaken impression of you in the normal way it is done. Drama averted.
It's an indirect way of telling you that you're the one of the insincere people on slashdot.
Maybe you should just stay with the direct methods.
There is a problem in this country..
I go to Nashua, NH, around the Oracle and other labs residential areas, and there are basically nothing but H1B Indians all over. Go to Herndon, VA (another tech hub), same thing, go up and down the office parking garages, streets, and basically nothing but H1B Indians all over again. Americans are virtually nowhere to be seen..
I talk to my university placement officer of a top 25 US business and tech school, and he says that he cannot place half of his new grads..
Tech salaries are falling year by year, even though there is this 'supposed' shortage..!
It is a fraud, there is no shortage. The recession for the middle class tech people would have ended 5 years ago if it wasn't for H1B. We'd all have permanent good jobs, with high salaries, strong benefits and good vacation, with respect from management..if it wasn't for H1B. Apparently 1 out of 2 new tech jobs in this country now goes to an H1B, while there are millions of high educated Americans out of work or underemployed in 'junk-jobs' and tempwork.
Campaign money by large employers are corrupting the law and steal money from regular middle class educated Americans as long as this continues.
It is NOT racism to say that this is wrong.. !
There probably is not much that can be done about offshoring, but 'fake shortage' H1B is happening right here in this country. We are being rubbed out, and being replaced.. in our own country! It *CAN* and *SHOULD* be stopped...now!, if we rise up..
Why don't we take action?. Maybe not a union like the Teamsters, but Lawyers have a union (the American Bar Association), Doctors do (you need to be 'licensed' to practice..that is just like a union..). How about we all wear our Guy Fawks masks(so we can still keep our jobs the next day..those of us that have jobs anyways..) and have a day of protest in tech parks across the country this summer, in front of senate and representatives district offices all over the country.
Be loud, be vocal, like those French unions do. Be disruptive to company bottom lines. Protest in front of their clients when they contract out to firms that use H1B, like those Anti-Abortionist and NRA people do, make the companies feel pain so this changes!.
We don't have to do nothing... If we unite and make disruption enough that it costs more to companies to not listen to us...then they will listen to us, and stop doing things like 'fake shortage' H1B that destroy the middle class.
The majority of engineers value getting the job done and extra pay, not merely working longer hours. The companies that employ them often egregiously take advantage of these particular aspect of the work ethic and draw them into working longer hours to the point that it becomes commonplace. This is a big reason for the current trend towards wholesale contract workforces. and there is an ebb and flow to it that will reverse soon enough. companies will realize that they're paying the contract workforce much higher then they would directs and they're not all that much more disposable because it now takes up 75-80% of their total headcount. So they'll try to pull in more to directs at lower rates, arguably more perks and the illusion of increased stability. If you've been talking into believing that simply working a longer day is at the heart of a strong work ethic, you're clearly not thinking for yourself. and, with that, you're probably not truly an engineer (applies hard sciences vs. "sales engineer", "social media engineer" or any of the drivel). I still remember a remark one of my professors made about an intrinsic characteristic of engineers: we're lazy. we're always trying to find simpler, better ways to do mundane, time consuming tasks LONG TERM and we're willing to put in 100 hours now if we anticipate it saving us and a million other people 1000 hours of work down the road. benefits always have to outweigh the risks and costs.
One where 6 month contracts turn in to 2 years.
its not about personal freedom.
reagan didnt do anything to increase personel or worker freedom.
the people he gave freedom to was the corporations.
and the result of all that deregulation was an isntant decoupling of productivity and wages, after they had tracked in parallel for over 6 decades,. wages have been stagnant ever since, while revenues go ever higher, leaving the ACTUAL producers with a smaller and smaller piece of the pie they are creating.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Nope, you're right.... DC is really *not* that great an area to live in. However, I'm pretty happy with the small town in Maryland we wound up buying a house in. Only about 20 minutes outside Frederick, MD, which is a fairly nice city itself.
The only reason I moved up to the the DC area in the first place is a need to get out from a dead-end I.T. job I was in, in the midwest, working for a steel supplier and fabricator. In general, I.T. careers in the midwest doing server/network administration on hands-on PC support are mainly found in the manufacturing sector. (Exceptions would primarily be hospitals or education -- both of which handle I.T. fairly differently than the typical business.... sort of their own worlds.)
Not just one, but two of my friends who used to live near me and also worked in I.T. wound up moving away and taking jobs with the company that offered me the DC area position. The fact I'd get to work with two of my long-time personal friends (albeit each of us in different offices in different cities) was a major reason I accepted. This was also a company which was actually growing during the recession, while most were downsizing.
Truthfully? I think a lot of folks up here relocated for jobs that were far from "elite" - simply because they were promising-sounding career jobs in a bad economic climate. (I've met several people who moved here from other parts of the country for jobs with MedImmune in Gaithersburg, for example. Probably pays well, but not "defense contractor well" or anything like that.)
I don't know why everybody assumes there is only one life/work balance that's optimal throughout your life. When you first get out of school, want to make a mark, and don't have a family, it's often very rewarding to put more hours into work. But later on in life when you get a family and other interests, work just isn't as important for most people. It's not that one is better than the other, it's that priorities change as you age.
Must be nice to have a government that allows a tight labor market to keep benefits high and dependency low. Our politicians adore dependency and buyers market here in the US...we've had more immigrants+graduates than jobs created for the last 7 years, making it tougher and tougher to negotiate benefits like that.
You CAN get vacation like that in plenty of companies in the US, but it is based on years of service. 5 weeks isn't terribly uncommon but you'd have to stay at the same company for a decade.
So you have to be pretty much done growing your salary if you want your 5 weeks. Almost nobody gets raises based on the market value of the experience earned at the company. Just inflationary raises if any. Even that is based on government reports of inflation, which are underreported to keep benefit costs down.
The real path to male liberation
Cute story, and I'm sure that oceanfront property you're selling in Nebraska is beautiful as well. Just a few problems, though:
1) There is nothing about unions that prevents people from being fired for cause
2) Bob is management's problems, not the unions.
3) Because Frank, and Frank's union friends, would be the ones standing outside managements door demanding that Bob be retrained or "encouraged" to find a different job. Because, once again, joining a union doesn't mean you get a hole in your head and a desire to do your work plus someone else's.
Oooo, black and white anecdote time! Enron stole money from customers and shareholders, therefore all capitalism is bad, mmkay. And Wells Fargo ripping off homeowners means that all for profit banks are bad and should be banned immediately!
Of course, no one would be stupid enough to make those kind of leaps of bad logic with business. But people do it all the time with labor - why is that?
So you're saying workers are less abused, better paid, with greater benefits and vacation time? And this is a bad thing for you?
Here, why don't you try an experiment: go down to the office of your local Chamber of Commerce, and tell them you want to enjoy all the benefits of being a CoC member, but without having to pay membership dues. Write down the responses, and come back to us.
Why don't you go work at the Tyler Pipe factory for a while and say that again. Negligence that would land your ass in a federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison gets shrugged off if done by a monied corporation.
Unions are a check on greed, and the robber baron class as only gotten more as time goes on.
Well sorry if my experience with 3 DIFFERENT UNIONS and THE SAME SHIT isn't good enough for you.
Sorry if my experience being a SHOP STEWARD as well as a member of the UNION COUNCIL wasn't good enough for you.
1.
For the record, no, being in a union DOESN'T prevent one from being fired for cause. It does however, tend to prevent one from being fired in a reasonable time, as they have to give a bunch of warnings (because, hey, not coming to work is apparently not a known problem) and then log multiple concurrences before "Bob" can really be fired. Unions don't prevent people from being fired, they just make it very time-consuming and difficult to do so, even oft-times when there is cause. Hell, "Bob" even managed to accuse a few co-workers of various things before it was finally found to be him at fault.
2. Bob is management's problem. However the union filing motions to keep him from being fired is also a problem.
3. Yes, that one happened as well. The problem is that it's pretty hard to get somebody for being a lazy turd, and some people are particularly good at making it look like they're trying when doing absolutely minimum and little more than warming a chair.
Wells Fargo ripping off homeowners means that all for profit banks are bad and should be banned immediatel
No, banks aren't necessarily bad. Stripping regulation from industry, having it fail, then bailing them out is bad. If banks were like a Union, then if 90% of banks are doing good and the rest were going down the road of Wells Fargo, then you'd give them all a 3% pay increase regardless of how screwed up or piss poor that other 10% were.
Unions aren't bad, but they share a common issue: it's difficult to hold members accountable when they go bad. I certainly don't want to go back to the days when there weren't unions and *employers* had no accountability, I just suggest we move the pendulum more back towards the middle. Let people be judged on merit, but treated fairly overall.
Why don't you go work at the Tyler Pipe factory [pbs.org] for a while and say that again. Negligence that would land your ass in a federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison gets shrugged off if done by a monied corporation [huffingtonpost.com].
Why would I want to go and work in a country with shitty employment law?
Sorry my TWO DIFFERENT ANECDOTES weren't enough to get you on board to summarily ban capitalism. Three's the charm? Okay, one more:
I used to work at shop that made Wal-Mart look pro-union. One old codger did more talking than working, and one time this "talk" included telling a woman 30 years younger than him that he would, quote unquote "like to rape the shit out of you". Nothing was done by management. Now, since three different examples are what you needed, you're down for banning capitalism, yes? Or were you just getting your confirmation bias on?
Not. If. There. Is. Cause.
It's called due process, to make sure the real reason Bob's getting fired isn't because he refused to come in on his day off, work off the clock, or balked at doing a dangerous job he wasn't trained or equipped to do.
Exactly! Judging entire groups of people based on the actions of a few is just silly when it's the boss class. But for those uppity proles who don't know their place, it just makes sense.
So you had a talking point, not an argument, by admitting that employment law doesn't necessarily protect the employed? Why didn't you say so earlier? Let us know how the meeting goes at your local Chamber of Commerce goes, when you ask for all the benefits of membership without having to pay membership dues.
Unions don't prevent people from being fired, they just make it very time-consuming and difficult to do so
Not. If. There. Is. Cause.
Again. 3 unions. With cause, people did get fired but it. still. took. a. long. f*cking. time.
But for those uppity proles who don't know their place, it just makes sense
Don't see where I said that. I'm not management myself, more of a prole than such. I just prefer to see people actually do their damn job.
I used to work at shop that made Wal-Mart look pro-union
I didn't say non-union shops didn't have issues, I've seen plenty of them in private as well (lazy or poorly trained management, nepotism, etc). As per the codger, a harassment suit would probably have been useful if one had a witness to such behavior.
What I *would* like to see is for unions to get back to the days of "Proudly made in a union shop" where unions and management both don't fight like spoiled children over stupid shit, and deal more with important issues *LIKE* harassment, discrimination, unsafe conditions, and fair wages (including fair wage increases) etc.
I'm not anti-union, but I do believe that unions have lost "the power of the people" because of the crap like what I've described. We all still need to put in a real work effect (not to the bone, just good, decent, hard work), but we also need to deal with when some people - management and employees - aren't contributing to a positive workplace.
Unfortunately, in many places unions have become just another layer of middle-management. They do work for good things in a broad sense, but they've become large, unwieldy, and have their own layers of fat/pork just like businesses do.
Certainly there are tradeoffs and depending on what kind of person you are depends on what is better. USians, by and large, go for goods over time off. Big homes, big SUVs and big partying have to be paid for somehow. Most 60-hour-a-week Americans wear their work life on their sleeves by driving around in obnoxiously large vehicles and having homes and lawns that eat away at what little down time they have by having to maintain all this abundance that they never really use anyway aside from as a social trophy.
Unfortunately, as an American who's trying to move to a suburban minimalist kind of life you find that you can't trade the extra pay for more time off. At least not in the short term. At that point you have to ask yourself if maybe it's ok to be paid less and have a less stressful role or to keep pushing up the ladder and hope that you can retire early...
You're assuming this is all very different to elsewhere. If you ever visited Australia you'll find in the cities things are very similar. The McMansion phenomenon is alive and well here and driving property prices through the roof. I myself am guilty of it. We are 2 people living in a 2 story 5 bedroom house. While I don't have a gas guzzler that's more the reality of the cars for sale here. Other than a hummer most of the cars here generally have smaller engines and are more fuel efficient on account of the petrol price here being double that of the USA. But certainly splurging is alive and well.
You failed to point out what clue there was to identify you as putting it forward as a serious suggestion. Your rants about "reading comprehension" and "second language" appear to only be an attempt to blame your own stupidity for putting up such an inflammatory statement on others by pretending you never did it. Quite disgusting and even cowardly in my opinion.
Very true. I made a lot more during my management years. Now I barely top the low six figure mark. That being said I'm very happy with my job right now, and between my wife and I we have a very good income and standard of living. There is far more to life than just making the maximum amount of money you can.
Indeed. I worked in a consulting firm 5 years, and my life was pretty miserable.
Building radio stations in Afghanistan was pretty challenging!
I'll never be able to afford to retire, but if i do i'll be riding buses for entertainment and movement, too!
Obviously the post I replied to in the first place.
I made *lots* of statements and I don't believe any of them are contradictory. If you want to point out which of my statements you think contradicts another I made, go ahead, otherwise I am not going to try and guess what you are referring to.
Funny how you are now taking that line after your "take one sentence from someone's argument and ignore the rest" comment.
You know perfectly well what it was so stop trying to weasel out of it just because you do not want to admit you posted something so utterly stupid and insulting to just about everyone who's worked for more than a week in their lives.
You got nothing. You can't even cite one example where I contradicted myself. All my posts are public for everyone to see. I don't need to admit anything. Either cite where you think I have contradicted myself, or shut up.
"Well if the job market is so terrible (for employees) and never getting better, then the obvious thing to do is to exploit that and become an employer. You can hire people for essentially nothing, and rake in huge profits for doing very little work."
Are you going to start this whole naive authoritarian bullshit all over again with a "take one sentence from someone's argument and ignore the rest" like you did before? Who is this audience you think you are playing to and why would they bother to read your drivel this far down? Lay off the ego stroking mass debate bullshit and start taking responsibility for what you preach to others, because you are making us all look like clueless and heartless pieces of shit.
Ba-dum!