They MAY be true for some today. They are no longer true at my location. I've worked with them for 8 years now and they have consistently improved their communications skills, analysis skills, and coding skills. More importantly, they are getting better at negotiating reasonable work (they used to just say "Yes" to everything- which lead to bad code, failed deadlines. Now they negotiate much better, deliver on deadline and with reasonable quality.
They are sharp, highly motivated, and run about 2/3 our costs locally and 1/3 what we charge remotely. They are backed by huge corporations that can deliver 9 others just like them on demand and then take them away with no lawsuits or unemployment costs with the need goes away. Think of them as "cloud" programmers.
Do NOT underestimate them. Do NOT be an "ugly" american. They are not going to take the jobs away-- but they do take away the code monkey jobs.
Oh yea.. I read Questionable Content, XKCD, Real Genius, Blip, and Curvy web comics, wander through Kippage looking for cool images, and follow/update facebook (tho a lot less than i used to).
Oh and recently picked up Freecell and Soundhound on the iphone for tons of fun. Beat Angry Birds in September/October.
No. My personal life consists of hanging out with a couple girlfriends, playing D&D, taking care of my dog, slowly cleaning up the remains of remodeling, posting at least 2 hours a day on message boards, seeing some first run movies, plays, and planning the summer vacation plus some talking to friends, and a decent christmas and new years.
House, Supernatural, No Ordinary Family, and a couple other shows mostly had to go for now. I kept Big Bang Theory but watch it on DVR so about 22 minutes and Bleach (another 22 minutes).
I have never had a signed agreement with management in my life. Even when I was a contractor for six years.
I am old and wise and learned to avoid these kind of projects.
But push comes to shove, when put on it, you either get a good attitude, adapt and thrive, or you suffer.
The question was-- is it possible to work 10 to 11 hour programming days.
The answer is.. I laughed out loud (perhaps a little maniacally) before even posting. Clearly it's possible. 12 hour days are possible so why wouldn't 10 to 11 hour days be possible.
The long hours were true even when I started 30 years ago. The pay has gotten worse but it is still over double the national average. The respect has gotten worse but you still have a lot more freedom than many jobs.
When I started you could work 6 months and take off 6 months, then get right back into work with no risk.
We are all dust in the wind. 50 years from now, relatives will barely know you existed. Beyond that it will be as if you were never alive.
But... I completely agree with you- I focus hard on my personal life (hence avoiding this thing until forced on to it). But push come to shove, it's temporary (7 months total for me), the pay is good, the work and co-workers are fun, and unemployment SUCKS.
Not saying it's a fortune. Not saying I'd work these hours forever.
But jesus, I can't believe all the whinging and bitching over extra hours.
Try being a manager in the restaurant business. 70-80 hour weeks and LESS money and benefits.
Do what you love. If you are not coding when you get off after a normal 8 (really 7 after that long lunch, chats with work buds, etc.) hour day, you are not really doing what you love.
Absolutely. It's 30 years old. Leader in its industry. Usually pretty nice to it's people but when it's go time, the pedal goes to the medal. No failures so far-- part of it is the speed the projects are delivered at... part of that is the senior resources who've already made all the obvious mistakes and who are a bit more engaged than someone younger might be.
In light times in my 20's and 30's I could code 8 hours a day and then go home and coded on my own stuff recreationally for another 4-6 hours. I would sometimes code just for fun on work stuff 12 hours a day. Anything I could do after 8 hours was my idea, my time and the boss would let it go in if it tested okay so I got to see my ideas implemented which was cool.
There are people in india and china who will work 12 hours a day, 7 days a week for a third of your pay. Software is officially a sucky job. It was much better back when I started. You were like a priest king. No one knew what the hell you were doing. You got to do all kinds of cool stuff with the machine (which did pay dividends for the business but was fun).
I'm 17 years from retirement age-- need to make it another 3 years and I could lose my job and scrape by (paid for house, no debt, big savings) until retirement. But I get to play on computers another 8 years. It will be fun. I'll be up to about 160k more for 10 years so about 36k per year until retirement if I lost my job and couldn't find more.
I've loved computers since I was 16. bought my own. cracked pest patrol. wrote games for hte apple and amiga. never broke big but they fit my personality better than most other jobs. I'm a decent supervisor these days. as the hands started to hurt, I went down that path from pure coding. It gives me downtime to post on slashdot-- even during these long days (another 2 hours til I'm off. )
I have been amazed by that. So far less illness that I usually see. I have to think that most people are in the office and don't get sick going out to lunch and dinner. We have hand sanitizers on our desks but I don't use them. Sick time is minimal and discouraged tho regular doctor / dentist visits / annual checkups are encouraged. If you are sick and have a deadline- you work from home and deliver the work anyway. The effort is world wide- we hand off to a few hundred overseas folks every night.
Morale is actually pretty high. I'm one of the leads so I have to maintain a positive attitude and low negativity.
You get negative people they can bring everyone down really fast. We are realistic but not negative in private- each level above projects enthusiasm downwards and realism upwards. Back about 17 months ago they just fired a few negative people really fast at the start and that was that. It was clear you could work happy or you could leave- your choice.
Hmmm. Well the offer makes it pretty certain I'll earn another million dollars in salary before I retire while also getting 30 paid vacation days a year for that entire time.
I think you underestimate the value of tax free high quality food.
$24 a day tax free is like $50 a day post tax. $250 a week. It will be sort of like getting a $8,000 bonus. I've really noticed it in my cash flow.
Bottom line- I'd lose a lot if I left. This is temporary. Things will get better. You are a wuss if you can't put in a 12 hour day for a few months every once in a while.
I agree wholeheartedly that you are a fool if you do it when you could leave and get a better job. Shrug... I like my 4 weeks (soon 5 weeks) vacation. Plus sick time of which I usually take 5 days a year of-- so about 6 weeks time off, good pay, successful company.
My bud over at HP put in a 39 hour day recently. That I consider insane. All I've had to do is give up some TV. Still have time for D&D, the odd movie, and 6-9 hours a week of frolic with the girlfriend.
Oh.. and this year's ski trip (that does upset me) and this year's Owlcon (that not so much- it's okay). Maybe I'll take the ski trip in December instead.
No over-time? No extra paid vacation days? Nothing else?
A tiny and inadequate "bonus" has been offered (5.5%).
I could spend my days pissed off. But what good would that do? I don't have as much freedom of movement as a college student. I'm still three years away from minimal "survival to retirement without losing everything". And it offers pretty much certain 6-8 years of more normal hours rock solid job security (based on talking to other friends at other companies who've already been through this).
Where else can you get 6-8 years of rock solid job security at a well paying job with reasonable hours? This is a cost of entry.
Basic point- clearly it is feasible to work 10-11 hours a day for at least 18 months.
Yup. If I get through this 7 months, I get 6-8 years of job security with reasonable hours again. I have friends who have been out of work over 24 months. They are not very happy with their "one life".
Mine sucks but not that badly.
I didn't say I like this. And people who can change jobs SHOULD do so in these cases. But it is possible to work 2 years of 10 to 11 hour days. We consider a 10 hour day a recovery day. Lol
I managed to avoid this the first 13 months. They asked "who wants to be on the new exciting project in new technology that will really beef up your resume!?!?
90% of the team hopped on it-- I said, "I want support!" Old technology. Put in 13 months of 40 hour light duty work.
Then they tapped me. Two frikkin days before my vacation. Ruined almost all of it.
It's finished in two more months. So I'll have been on the new software team for about 7 months. I hate it. Feels like they stole a year of my life.
While I heartily recommend leaving- there is a high cost to the 8 hour day.
You spend 30 to 45 minutes coming up to speed. Then you work about 6 hours (minus food and potty breaks). Then you STOP just as you are in the zone.
I prefer to work to a deadline. I prefer to work long hours- finish the project and then take time off. My productivity in the 6 to 11 hour period is very high because I have the code fully loaded in my head at that point.
The worst thing for productivity is 2 hours of coding, 2 hours of meeting, another hour of coding, then an hour of meetings-- then go home. Sleep. Then come back. Spend an hour on change documents. Code some more. BLEH!
I do not prefer to work the way they are working us now. But times are tough- jobs are in short supply. I have friends out of work for over 24 months now.
Your mileage may be different. You may be able to easily leave and find a new reliable job.
My company has been working 12 hour days for 18 months. I don't think they are feasible in a normal economy (people would leave). I don't think they are feasible for too much longer (now having to bring in outside resources for the first time-- people are fully loaded).
However, they are providing us high quality lunch and dinner at our desks. The crew is mostly senior resources (35 to 50 years old) with 12+ years experience). They did this back in 1995-2000 and had a hard time hiring anyone for several years.
The quality is there in my opinion. SO mostly we are just giving up personal lives. I do not watch much TV any more. Every 4 or 5 weeks we get a week or two of 10 hour days as a break. Dinner is not provided those days.
Many gamers will not only go into that part of the game but go as far as the game allows them too. They are not put off but instead laugh gleefully as they find they can kill their crew and the cute cat they are supposed to love.
They would only adapt to mars after several generations if...
1) Some were better at having more babies. 2) Some were dying and having no babies.
The more extreme 1 or 2 is, the faster the adaption.
Humans won't adapt if their procreation isn't affected.
Society greatly slows down adaption these days because the one guy who is well adapted to mars doesn't get to have 73 children. Instead the ill suited guys also have ill adapted children and slow the process down. The same applies some to women but less so.
Currently, California governments contribute about $13 billion per year to the state's public retirement systems for pension This amount probably will increase by several billion dollars per year over the next few years due mainly to unfunded liabilities resulting from the systems' investment losses during 2008.
Currently, California governments pay around $4 billion to $5 billion per year for retiree health benefits.
So 17 to 18 billion dollars per year in pension costs now, 20 to 21 billion in the next few years.
$13 billion is about 10x the 1.3 billion figure- so I guess there are a lot of municipal managers and firemen/policemen who "spiked" their retirements with overtime who are eligible for those multi-million dollar pensions.
$10,000 per working citizen is a LOT of money to be paying for a maximum of 10% of the population retired.
Assuming only 100,000 even, that 2% is 91 million dollars.
Using your numbers, the other 98% consume 1,335,4756,800 (1.3 billion).
So even as a tiny 2% and artificially limited to $100,000 , they take about 7% of the total benefits. they probably get more like 10% of the benefits.
However per http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE66K6BX20100721 (Reuters) - A municipal manager in California who makes nearly $800,000 a year working for a small, poor city could draw pension payments exceeding $30 million in retirement, according to an activist who has been calling for an overhaul of the state's public pension system.
For some reason I can't find a simple 2010 total pension payments. Anyone??? But, with a 500 BILLION dollar deficit, I'm betting the pensions do not add up to 1.4billion your figures suggest.
I'm all for limiting the top pensions to $50,000. That would probably instantly preserve the pension system.
People are going to move rather than face $10,000 per worker taxes to support the current pension obligations.
California has many $200k+ pensions for people who worked 10 years to vest. Some of them didn't even have salaries that big while working.
On top of that, the stock market and low interest rates are making even reasonable pension liabilities unreasonable.
The only way to escape unreasonable pension obligations is bankruptcy
None of this will fly while the pensioners have a large voting block unless people flee high taxes. But-- when their numbers drop sufficiently, the young folks are going to cut those pensions somehow.
Such a tiny amount to close a multibillion dollar budget number. If even 25% of those employees use the phones effectively, then it will increase costs or lower quality of service.
There are probably $5 million to $10 million of real savings there- the rest will have a cell phone again in a year because it turns out the job requires one.
It's a good start-- but i hope they find some real meat.
Slashdot Mirror
Those stories WERE true back in 2003.
They MAY be true for some today. They are no longer true at my location. I've worked with them for 8 years now and they have consistently improved their communications skills, analysis skills, and coding skills. More importantly, they are getting better at negotiating reasonable work (they used to just say "Yes" to everything- which lead to bad code, failed deadlines. Now they negotiate much better, deliver on deadline and with reasonable quality.
They are sharp, highly motivated, and run about 2/3 our costs locally and 1/3 what we charge remotely. They are backed by huge corporations that can deliver 9 others just like them on demand and then take them away with no lawsuits or unemployment costs with the need goes away. Think of them as "cloud" programmers.
Do NOT underestimate them. Do NOT be an "ugly" american. They are not going to take the jobs away-- but they do take away the code monkey jobs.
Oh yea.. I read Questionable Content, XKCD, Real Genius, Blip, and Curvy web comics, wander through Kippage looking for cool images, and follow/update facebook (tho a lot less than i used to).
Oh and recently picked up Freecell and Soundhound on the iphone for tons of fun. Beat Angry Birds in September/October.
Did you ignore the rest of the post entirely?
No. My personal life consists of hanging out with a couple girlfriends, playing D&D, taking care of my dog, slowly cleaning up the remains of remodeling, posting at least 2 hours a day on message boards, seeing some first run movies, plays, and planning the summer vacation plus some talking to friends, and a decent christmas and new years.
House, Supernatural, No Ordinary Family, and a couple other shows mostly had to go for now. I kept Big Bang Theory but watch it on DVR so about 22 minutes and Bleach (another 22 minutes).
I have never had a signed agreement with management in my life. Even when I was a contractor for six years.
I am old and wise and learned to avoid these kind of projects.
But push comes to shove, when put on it, you either get a good attitude, adapt and thrive, or you suffer.
The question was-- is it possible to work 10 to 11 hour programming days.
The answer is.. I laughed out loud (perhaps a little maniacally) before even posting. Clearly it's possible. 12 hour days are possible so why wouldn't 10 to 11 hour days be possible.
The long hours were true even when I started 30 years ago. The pay has gotten worse but it is still over double the national average. The respect has gotten worse but you still have a lot more freedom than many jobs.
When I started you could work 6 months and take off 6 months, then get right back into work with no risk.
Today- that's not true.
We are all dust in the wind. 50 years from now, relatives will barely know you existed. Beyond that it will be as if you were never alive.
But... I completely agree with you- I focus hard on my personal life (hence avoiding this thing until forced on to it). But push come to shove, it's temporary (7 months total for me), the pay is good, the work and co-workers are fun, and unemployment SUCKS.
Absolutely.
Comp time has been recommended more than once. The answer from the top is no.
Now, go find a job elsewhere or lose your house, job, retirement.
Be miserable or adjust your attitude, make the best of it, and have a decent time.
Apparently with 9% unemployment many of you are just rolling in opportunities compared to the rest of the country. More power to you.
I agree and find the attitude a little wussy at the same time tho.
No... but you will NOT believe this...
We implemented a subsystem that uses those certain initials and has some kind of form. They are not cover sheets tho.
Not saying it's a fortune. Not saying I'd work these hours forever.
But jesus, I can't believe all the whinging and bitching over extra hours.
Try being a manager in the restaurant business. 70-80 hour weeks and LESS money and benefits.
Do what you love. If you are not coding when you get off after a normal 8 (really 7 after that long lunch, chats with work buds, etc.) hour day, you are not really doing what you love.
Absolutely. It's 30 years old. Leader in its industry. Usually pretty nice to it's people but when it's go time, the pedal goes to the medal. No failures so far-- part of it is the speed the projects are delivered at... part of that is the senior resources who've already made all the obvious mistakes and who are a bit more engaged than someone younger might be.
I don't understand that attitude personally.
In light times in my 20's and 30's I could code 8 hours a day and then go home and coded on my own stuff recreationally for another 4-6 hours. I would sometimes code just for fun on work stuff 12 hours a day. Anything I could do after 8 hours was my idea, my time and the boss would let it go in if it tested okay so I got to see my ideas implemented which was cool.
There are people in india and china who will work 12 hours a day, 7 days a week for a third of your pay. Software is officially a sucky job. It was much better back when I started. You were like a priest king. No one knew what the hell you were doing. You got to do all kinds of cool stuff with the machine (which did pay dividends for the business but was fun).
I'm 17 years from retirement age-- need to make it another 3 years and I could lose my job and scrape by (paid for house, no debt, big savings) until retirement. But I get to play on computers another 8 years. It will be fun. I'll be up to about 160k more for 10 years so about 36k per year until retirement if I lost my job and couldn't find more.
I've loved computers since I was 16. bought my own. cracked pest patrol. wrote games for hte apple and amiga. never broke big but they fit my personality better than most other jobs. I'm a decent supervisor these days. as the hands started to hurt, I went down that path from pure coding. It gives me downtime to post on slashdot-- even during these long days (another 2 hours til I'm off. )
I have been amazed by that. So far less illness that I usually see. I have to think that most people are in the office and don't get sick going out to lunch and dinner. We have hand sanitizers on our desks but I don't use them. Sick time is minimal and discouraged tho regular doctor / dentist visits / annual checkups are encouraged. If you are sick and have a deadline- you work from home and deliver the work anyway. The effort is world wide- we hand off to a few hundred overseas folks every night.
Morale is actually pretty high. I'm one of the leads so I have to maintain a positive attitude and low negativity.
You get negative people they can bring everyone down really fast. We are realistic but not negative in private- each level above projects enthusiasm downwards and realism upwards. Back about 17 months ago they just fired a few negative people really fast at the start and that was that. It was clear you could work happy or you could leave- your choice.
Hmmm. Well the offer makes it pretty certain I'll earn another million dollars in salary before I retire while also getting 30 paid vacation days a year for that entire time.
I think you underestimate the value of tax free high quality food.
$24 a day tax free is like $50 a day post tax. $250 a week. It will be sort of like getting a $8,000 bonus. I've really noticed it in my cash flow.
Bottom line- I'd lose a lot if I left. This is temporary. Things will get better. You are a wuss if you can't put in a 12 hour day for a few months every once in a while.
I agree wholeheartedly that you are a fool if you do it when you could leave and get a better job. Shrug... I like my 4 weeks (soon 5 weeks) vacation. Plus sick time of which I usually take 5 days a year of-- so about 6 weeks time off, good pay, successful company.
My bud over at HP put in a 39 hour day recently. That I consider insane. All I've had to do is give up some TV. Still have time for D&D, the odd movie, and 6-9 hours a week of frolic with the girlfriend.
Oh.. and this year's ski trip (that does upset me) and this year's Owlcon (that not so much- it's okay). Maybe I'll take the ski trip in December instead.
No over-time? No extra paid vacation days? Nothing else?
A tiny and inadequate "bonus" has been offered (5.5%).
I could spend my days pissed off. But what good would that do? I don't have as much freedom of movement as a college student. I'm still three years away from minimal "survival to retirement without losing everything". And it offers pretty much certain 6-8 years of more normal hours rock solid job security (based on talking to other friends at other companies who've already been through this).
Where else can you get 6-8 years of rock solid job security at a well paying job with reasonable hours? This is a cost of entry.
Basic point- clearly it is feasible to work 10-11 hours a day for at least 18 months.
Yup. If I get through this 7 months, I get 6-8 years of job security with reasonable hours again.
I have friends who have been out of work over 24 months. They are not very happy with their "one life".
Mine sucks but not that badly.
I didn't say I like this. And people who can change jobs SHOULD do so in these cases. But it is possible to work 2 years of 10 to 11 hour days. We consider a 10 hour day a recovery day. Lol
I managed to avoid this the first 13 months. They asked "who wants to be on the new exciting project in new technology that will really beef up your resume!?!?
90% of the team hopped on it-- I said, "I want support!" Old technology. Put in 13 months of 40 hour light duty work.
Then they tapped me. Two frikkin days before my vacation. Ruined almost all of it.
It's finished in two more months. So I'll have been on the new software team for about 7 months. I hate it. Feels like they stole a year of my life.
While I heartily recommend leaving- there is a high cost to the 8 hour day.
You spend 30 to 45 minutes coming up to speed. Then you work about 6 hours (minus food and potty breaks). Then you STOP just as you are in the zone.
I prefer to work to a deadline. I prefer to work long hours- finish the project and then take time off. My productivity in the 6 to 11 hour period is very high because I have the code fully loaded in my head at that point.
The worst thing for productivity is 2 hours of coding, 2 hours of meeting, another hour of coding, then an hour of meetings-- then go home. Sleep. Then come back. Spend an hour on change documents. Code some more. BLEH!
I do not prefer to work the way they are working us now. But times are tough- jobs are in short supply. I have friends out of work for over 24 months now.
Your mileage may be different. You may be able to easily leave and find a new reliable job.
My company has been working 12 hour days for 18 months. I don't think they are feasible in a normal economy (people would leave). I don't think they are feasible for too much longer (now having to bring in outside resources for the first time-- people are fully loaded).
However, they are providing us high quality lunch and dinner at our desks. The crew is mostly senior resources (35 to 50 years old) with 12+ years experience). They did this back in 1995-2000 and had a hard time hiring anyone for several years.
The quality is there in my opinion. SO mostly we are just giving up personal lives. I do not watch much TV any more. Every 4 or 5 weeks we get a week or two of 10 hour days as a break. Dinner is not provided those days.
Many gamers will not only go into that part of the game but go as far as the game allows them too. They are not put off but instead laugh gleefully as they find they can kill their crew and the cute cat they are supposed to love.
Someone give this guy an evolution primer.
They would only adapt to mars after several generations if...
1) Some were better at having more babies.
2) Some were dying and having no babies.
The more extreme 1 or 2 is, the faster the adaption.
Humans won't adapt if their procreation isn't affected.
Society greatly slows down adaption these days because the one guy who is well adapted to mars doesn't get to have 73 children. Instead the ill suited guys also have ill adapted children and slow the process down. The same applies some to women but less so.
More goodies here:
http://www.lao.ca.gov/ballot/2009/090734.aspx
Currently, California governments contribute about $13 billion per year to the state's public retirement systems for pension This amount probably will increase by several billion dollars per year over the next few years due mainly to unfunded liabilities resulting from the systems' investment losses during 2008.
Currently, California governments pay around $4 billion to $5 billion per year for retiree health benefits.
So 17 to 18 billion dollars per year in pension costs now, 20 to 21 billion in the next few years.
$13 billion is about 10x the 1.3 billion figure- so I guess there are a lot of municipal managers and firemen/policemen who "spiked" their retirements with overtime who are eligible for those multi-million dollar pensions.
$10,000 per working citizen is a LOT of money to be paying for a maximum of 10% of the population retired.
Assuming only 100,000 even, that 2% is 91 million dollars.
Using your numbers, the other 98% consume 1,335,4756,800 (1.3 billion).
So even as a tiny 2% and artificially limited to $100,000 , they take about 7% of the total benefits. they probably get more like 10% of the benefits.
However per http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE66K6BX20100721
(Reuters) - A municipal manager in California who makes nearly $800,000 a year working for a small, poor city could draw pension payments exceeding $30 million in retirement, according to an activist who has been calling for an overhaul of the state's public pension system.
Per here:
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2010/10/california-pension-promises-exceed-550.html
In 2009, the pension liability came out to $3,000 per working-age adult in the state. By 2014, it will triple to over $10,000 per working-age Californian.
For some reason I can't find a simple 2010 total pension payments. Anyone???
But, with a 500 BILLION dollar deficit, I'm betting the pensions do not add up to 1.4billion your figures suggest.
I'm all for limiting the top pensions to $50,000. That would probably instantly preserve the pension system.
People are going to move rather than face $10,000 per worker taxes to support the current pension obligations.
It's pensions. Pensions pensions pensions.
Look at pensions.
California has many $200k+ pensions for people who worked 10 years to vest. Some of them didn't even have salaries that big while working.
On top of that, the stock market and low interest rates are making even reasonable pension liabilities unreasonable.
The only way to escape unreasonable pension obligations is bankruptcy
None of this will fly while the pensioners have a large voting block unless people flee high taxes.
But-- when their numbers drop sufficiently, the young folks are going to cut those pensions somehow.
But calls from 7pm to 7am and on weekends are basically free so that doesn't make sense.
Such a tiny amount to close a multibillion dollar budget number. If even 25% of those employees use the phones effectively, then it will increase costs or lower quality of service.
There are probably $5 million to $10 million of real savings there- the rest will have a cell phone again in a year because it turns out the job requires one.
It's a good start-- but i hope they find some real meat.