Working Off the Clock, How Much Is Too Much? 582
The Wall Street Journal has word of yet another suit against an employer who required an "always on" mentality to persist because of easily available communications. Most of us working in some sort of tech related job are working more than 40 hours per week (or at least lead the lifestyle of always working), but how much is too much? What methods have others used in the past to help an employer see the line between work and personal life without resorting to a legal attack? "Greg Rasin, a partner at Proskauer Rose LLP, a New York business law firm, said the recession may spawn wage-and-hour disputes as employers try to do the same amount of work with fewer people. The federal Fair Labor Standards Act says employees must be paid for work performed off the clock, even if the work was voluntary. When the law was passed in 1938, 'work' was easy to define for hourly employees, said Mr. McCoy. As the workplace changed, so did the rules for when workers should be paid."
Depends of course (Score:5, Insightful)
If you aren't exempt I'd say any is too much. You are screwing yourself and your fellow employees.
If you are exempt, as TFA says it get's a little murkier. I've happily put in extra time when needed but I expect my employer to be flexible when the heat is off. Otherwise my tendency is to then lean towards voting with my feet. Right now that is easier to say than do for a lot of people. But what is acceptable varies so much from person to person that it is impossible to come up with any kind of general rule to fit all those different cases.
Any at all (Score:3, Insightful)
Employers are always willing to make a push and demand you come in weekends or work late. But when slow times come around, do you get free time off? No, you do not. In fact, do you get anything at all for putting in the extra effort, besides the dubious benefit of retaining your job? No, you do not. So any at all is unacceptable, because there's no quid for that quo.
Is it really the employer's fault? (Score:1, Insightful)
I have found it is as much an employee problem as an employer problem.
We have people who (figuratively) punch out at 40 hours, whether they have finished what they were supposed to or not. When it comes to a new project, everyone wants the people who will get stuff done even if there are a few little hiccups.
When it comes to salary increases or layoff decisions, the most in-demand people always get preference.
Don't blame the employer, blame the co-workers and others in the industry that set the precedence. The employer sees "free" work being done and takes advantage of it.
Re:Where do I begin (Score:5, Insightful)
Solution: take it anyway, you've earned it. Don't give a fuck about evaluations. Realize that the best way to get a raise is to find a new employer. If you think you're being punished for using comp time, start interviewing.
these devices were supposed to free us (Score:3, Insightful)
Weren't we all sold on the idea that these devices were going to allow us to get so much more work done quicker that we'd have more free time to take little Timmy to the zoo more often?
Not that many of us didn't see this coming. I personally love the commercials showing a dude checking his work email or routing a package right from his phone while on vacation. Yeah, uh, blow me. This is supposed to make me want to buy your product?
Since I'm lazy, I won't even go down the road of how the socialist Europeans can get more work done than us USians and still take a month off each year....
Free time isn't free (Score:2, Insightful)
Asking employees to work extra for free is akin to stealing. If a worker needs some extra income, they can't just dip into the company coffers because it is convenient. It's a shame that so many people are willing to give up their free time so easily because their employer won't do the right thing and hire more help.
Employees tend to believe the employer has all the power, and as a result this is pretty much the case. It's hard for an employee in the tech sector to demand a reasonable 40-45 hour workweek when there are 15 other idiots lined up who are ready to give all their free time away.
Posting anonymously so that no one concludes that I'm not a "team player".
Get Clear First (Score:5, Insightful)
Before you even take a job, get clear on how often you'll be expected to work overtime and exactly how you're going to be compensated. If I need to have an "always on" mentality, the company needs to have an "always paying" mentality.
I realize that crunch time is the thing to do in the IT industry, but get clear up front so that kind of work cycle is something you understand when you accept the company's offer. If I need to put in an extra 10 hours every week or be on-call, I'm going to factor that into my salary negotiations. Once the deal is brokered, I'm left with a sense of satisfaction because I have the peace of mind in knowing I'm not being taken advantage of, I'm doing exactly what I signed up for.
40.1 hours is too much (Score:3, Insightful)
In what I consider my best career move, more than fifteen years ago I resigned as an employee, and I've worked as a contract IT consultant ever since. Really, made not much of a difference in the kind of work I do, except that I now get paid hourly, rather than on a salary.
Funny how once you start getting paid by the hour, all the demands to work 40+ hours a week disappear all by themselves. When I was an employee, and worked together with consultants, the difference in how we were treated, even though, for all practical matters, we did the same kind of a job -- the difference was quite an eye opener.
But rather than bitch and whine about the raw deal I was supposedly getting, I figured, well, if that's where the wind is blowing, I'll just come along for a ride. So I became a consultant. I do not remember the last time I had to work +40 hours a week. Must've been well over ten years ago. Although I still get the same calls that wake me up in the middle of the night, I now keep track of my time, and make sure that, at the end of the week, I put in, more or less, the same 40 hours.
It's nice having my life back.
Re:Where do I begin (Score:2, Insightful)
How it is legal to lose vacation time that is stated in contract I'll never understand. If they force you to use it, fine. If they mandate that you will lose it, then they should pay you at your equivalent hourly/daily rate for any amount over what can be carried over.
For example, if I make 100,000 but can only carry over 5 days of vacation but have 5.5 hours saved up, then I should be paid for half a day, or 4 hours. My equivalent hourly rate would be my (salary)*(1 year/2000 hours), or $50 an hour * 4 hours, or $200 less taxes.
Taking away vacation is literally like taking away earned money. If your contract stipulates that you earn vacation hours, then you're due them one way or another.
Re:Where do I begin (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Get Clear First (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually I believe that constant fire fighting is the mark of a poorly run organization. I would run from a company like this even if I was compensated.
Re:Don't like it? Too bad (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Where do I begin (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Depends of course (Score:3, Insightful)
"You are screwing yourself and your fellow employees."
If you're not exempt, and especially if you have a job that logs time, this has to be reiterated. You may be willing to trade your free time to help yourself, your team, or your company. A world where nothing ever goes wrong could accept this kind of behavior. Unfortunately, we live in a world with lawyers (apologies Ray if you're reading, you're my hero). If you're off the clock and anything that needs to be "official" (read: "documented") happens, your life just got a new headache. "Why were you there? Was it your fault? Were you involved? Again, why were you there?" If your coworker sues because they feel like their job depends on doing unpaid work, what will you say when they ask you the facts? Who have you helped then? You make yourself more of a liability by working off the clock. To me, the cost outweighs the benefit, from the perspective of both employer and employee.
Re:Where do I begin (Score:5, Insightful)
Firstly, get the nagios emails sent to your team at work as well as yourself.
Secondly, when you start to deal with the nagios error at 2am, send an email saying "I am looking into this now", and when you're done at 3am, send an email saying "All done now, see you at 10, I need my sleep more than ever now!". Screw what other people say, make sure your boss knows every single time you work out of hours via the aforementioned email. Bosses like reading emails that says "Problem fixed." anyway. Also make a note in a log book so you can demonstrate your out of hours company-saving efforts at review time.
Secondly, you only get one life, and within that life you only get one chance to be 20/30/40/50. Don't waste that time on work, unless you're working for yourself and doing well enough to retire well earlier than you would have otherwise. Take that time off, and be anal about it.
Thirdly, look for another job once the market picks up. If you're good, and willing to be on call, then you're valuable, and you can go somewhere where working hours aren't set in concrete, bound with leather and chained to the ground because the boss is ex-military and gets up at 6am everyday and expects everyone else to.
Re:Get Clear First (Score:3, Insightful)
If the company is big enough and you don't have to make a decision on an offer instantly, the best thing you can do is ask for a copy of their employee regulations. If they have a formalized policy on a specific aspect, like overtime pay or on-call hours, then you can have some security in your decision. But if all you have is a pat on the shoulder, a warm smile, and an empty promise, I wouldn't feel too secure.
Re:Depends of course (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd argue the reverse. If you aren't exempt (i.e. you receive overtime pay) then take be on the clock as much as you want, as long as you are actually getting paid for it (and if you aren't then you damn well better be talking to the DOL).
If you are exempt however, you are part of the problem by putting in so much time and not kicking up a fuss. America is full of 'idiots' who aim for that mythical salary wage thinking that they are going to get a fair shake from their boss (i.e. you put in 60 hours a week for a while, you should be able to cut back some in compensation afterwards).
Here's the facts of life, the more work you put in as a salaried employee, the less labor they have to pay out. Even the bosses that are honest have to budget and are going to base it on what's getting done now and what's not getting done vs. "Well things are going ok right now but that's only because Tim is putting in 50 hours a week..." things just don't work that way in real life. Trust me.
You are NEVER going to get a fair shake as a salaried worker in America without fighting for it. Frankly, if you are salaried, and you aren't looking to be the CEO some day, then letting yourself be put into a situation where you are putting in more than 40 hours a week on a regular bases is both foolish and harmful for the rest of your peers.
Re:Where do I begin (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, comp time is a scam. At a previous job my boss insisted I track all the hours of comp time I was racking up since he was sort of an idealist. When it totalled up to 4 months during a brutal stretch (80-100 hour weeks, working 30+ days straight) it just depressed me and I stopped counting any additional comp time hours. Shortly later I got promoted ($0 raise though) and moved to a new manager who asked what the deal was with the comp time hours my prior manager mentioned. When I told him it was 4+ months I was told "No". Later a week long vacation was offered up in lieu.
I quit and lived out of my truck for 10 months instead.
Now I work my 8 hours and go home. It's a job, no more, no less. I'm not working my butt off for 1-2% raises.
Re:Don't like it? Too bad (Score:4, Insightful)
The laws in place to protect against such things are way too mild and useless. Someone can fire you for being maimed in their own machinery or assaulted by their own managers... you can even get fired for refusing to have sex with your manager... and then get fired for getting pregnant if you do! Sure it isn't legal, but the trouble you have to go through to fight it, then what you get in return for doing so is horribly skewed.
The only solution, my dear child worker, is to find another job. Don't bother forming a union with others - strikes have never worked and never will. Don't bother protesting, or trying to raise awareness by getting your story out. Don't try the courts - they are just a horrific waste of time stacked against you. And especially don't bother voting - except with your feet to another employer. What? You can't leave because nobody will hire a child who has already run away from a factory? You can't leave because you don't have the money to go looking for another job because you're employed 17 hours a day just to eat? Well child, the best you can do is be resigned to your life of virtual slavery, complaining to yourself that the system just doesn't work for you. It may not be right. It may not be fair. That IS how it is.
Re:Don't like it? Too bad (Score:3, Insightful)
So what in fact he should have done was take a third off, not half?
The VP was/is an asshole (not at all surprising for a Hollywood exec).
But if the project took "months" (let's say 4) and was a week late, that means your original estimate was 8 months. At the very least, I'd fire a Project Manager who quoted me 8 months on a 4 month project.
Re:Get Clear First (Score:3, Insightful)
I work for the fire department you insensitive clod
Re:40.1 hours is too much (Score:3, Insightful)
I would have to addenda this. Up until a couple years ago I had that life and that job. I got paid, and well, for the hours I worked and still was able to live my own life (which is WHY I work)
Unfortunately, that only works if the hours keep coming. At some point you reach a critical mass which keeps your hours full and so your bank account but when the hours stopped coming I was hurting bad.. enough so that I eventually had to get a "day job"
Yes, there are bunches of trade-offs but as long as I maintain a spine with my employer it has been a nice load of stress off for a while to see the same nice big number appear in my account ever 2 weeks.
Some day I will return to my wonderful world of freedom but at least for a while I'm loving the indentured servitude that is salary.
Re:Where do I begin (Score:5, Insightful)
let me know how well you focus when you are scheduled to work 100% on 'task X' and 4-5 unscheduled tasks come up at the same time 'oh, we just need this one thing for this customer urgently' and you can't change the deadline for 'task X' because marketing is already going and selling it
In my experience programmers are quite good at predicting how long something would take them to code if they could code in uninterrupted chunks of time, pity that rarely happens, and the problem is that when it does happen then you end up overachieving the schedule, and next time that will be the yardstick that will be used (only next time you'll have all the other additional tasks coming in, thus making sure you won't hit the scheduled target unless you do gobs of overtime).
Then you end up with coders padding their schedules, and managers assuming the schedules are padded and cutting them, it is really a no-win situation that is allowed to fester because the companies do not pay for overtime at time-and-a-half, if they did you can bet that they would majorly increase the efficiency allowing people to work better and so taking less time. If you have the power to basically tell people 'you either work 80 hours week, of which 40 are unpaid, or you get fired' then what incentive do you have in making schedules and working conditions better?
It's the same deal as why in most places you have cubes or open spaces, crappy monitors/chairs, etc. etc. etc.
Re:Where do I begin (Score:3, Insightful)
If the project is going to take longer than the deadline you are given, you need to explain in as simple terms as possible why the deadline is unrealistic with your current resources. It is then up to the project manager to make the appropriate adjustments to the schedule or push for temporary resources that allow the team to meet the deadline. If you get a reputation for providing accurate assessments, the boss will be more likely to to act on and/or defer to your experience...
Short, simple answer. (Score:2, Insightful)
It depends on the person.
If after you feel like you've been working too much for 3+ months, either make changes with your boss or find another job.
Re:Where do I begin (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm going to second (third?) this one. In my 11 years of engineering, I've found that staying with the same employer too long is a good way to have your salary limited, as companies simply don't give raises if they don't have to. If you want more money, you need to get a new job. Remember, employers (like most companies these days) are extremely short-sighted. If you're already working for you, they'll never give you a substantial raise, and instead will just give you excuses about the economy being bad, budget cuts, etc. However, when they have a position that needs to be filled (or else work won't get done), they'll pay the market rate or else they won't fill it for 6 months or more. This means that people who hop around from job to job every 2-3 years end up making much more money than people who stay in the same place for 20 years.
Because of all of this, evaluations are completely useless IMO. There's no point in "going the extra mile", or doing anything more than needed to keep your job. As long as your evaluation looks decent, or at least not bad enough to get you in trouble, don't worry about it. Stick around for 2-3 years, don't work too hard, don't stay late very often, and start looking for something new after that time. Repeat this cycle until you find yourself a more rewarding career (such as starting your own business, becoming a consultant, changing into an entirely different industry, etc.).
Re:Depends of course (Score:3, Insightful)
Screw the rest of your peers, just worry about yourself. Working more than 40 hours is wasting your own valuable time, which could be spent with your family, personal hobbies, relaxing so you don't have a heart attack, etc.
Must be nice... (Score:5, Insightful)
Must be nice to be able to do that.
Here in the Boston area, any computer job that pays enough to survive is exempt. And when I say "enough to survive" I mean "enough money to live indoors, have heat, hot water, electricity, and food".
If you insist on being paid hourly instead of salaried, most employers will refuse, and the few that will oblige will then put it in writing that you're not allowed to work any overtime without being authorized in writing in advance, and then they'll use that to screw you - if you try to put in for overtime, they'll insist that it wasn't authorized, and if you insist they pay you for it, they'll terminate you for violating the overtime policy. Of course, if you refuse to work the overtime they ask for (which you know you won't be paid for because there's no written authorization) then in your next review they'll say you have a bad work ethic, and refuse to give you a raise.
Personally, I'd like to see salary exemptions be eliminated.
Re:Where do I begin (Score:5, Insightful)
As someone below posted, they can cap your accrual. As in, they can't take away vacation time that you've already accrued, but once you accrue a certain amount, they can say you stop accruing until you use what you already have. Which is almost the same thing as taking your vacation away ... but only almost. People act like the company is cheating you, but what this really is is an incentive to take your vacation time.
The GP seems to be complaining that his employer is giving him all this comp time but then there's never time to take his vacation. "Sorry, boss-man, but at this company, taking my vacation time is HR policy. I don't have any choice. If I fail to take the vacation time, they reprimand me by restricting my compensation." (In this scenario, notice the emphasis on growing a pair.)
Let me throw another one out there: Everybody hates the office martyr. You know the one. She seems to be there every night until long after everybody leaves, but she never seems to get anything done. Whenever more work lands on her plate, she complains, "OMG, can I possibly get any more work? I never have time to get anything done as it is!" You suggest that maybe she's burning out and should take some vacation time. "I caiiinnn't! Have you seen how much work they pile on me? This place would fall apart if I took three days off." Eventually everybody else starts picking up work from this employee's plate "as a favor," because she never gets anything done, and still she won't take vacation, and still she keeps complaining. Encountered one of those before?
Re:That's OK... (Score:4, Insightful)
I make my time back by slacking off at least 75% of my time at work.
A 40 hour week is far too much time to spend in a workplace; it does lead to slacking off, simply because most people can't maintain a high level of concentration for such long periods. And in reality we're talking about a minimum of a 45 hours a week, not 40, as most of us eat lunch at at our keyboards instead of leaving the office and taking the mandated break. This 40 hour work week minimum seems to be mostly an American tradition (misfortune?) too. Britain's typically have 35 or 37.5 hour weeks, often including lunch. I expect other European countries have similar or even shorter work weeks.
We should also not discount the effect long commutes have on our performance, either. I recently swapped a two hour daily round-trip commute for a 10 minute one and feel so much more capable each morning and much less dead at the end of the day.
I'm also unhappy about the insanity of the two weeks of vacation a year that most of us get starting new jobs, that just isn't enough to relax and recuperate, especially as it tends to be spread over a year and not taken as a single chunk. We should be aiming for a minimum of 4 weeks to start.
So to answer the original question - not a minute more and leave your work behind at the end of the day. Tell your employer that time spent outside of work with family and friends (and actually living life) will ultimately improve performance and productivity in work.
Re:Don't like it? Too bad (Score:1, Insightful)
Bullshit. Democratic governments are the mechanism of the populace to execute its combined power and will. Governments get their authority from the governed. If enough don't like a policy, the representative and the policy is changed. If not enough care, then it isn't. This myth that "government is the problem" is a lie propagated by those with a vested interest in changing popular policies for private gain, and promoted among a population that quite frankly have unpopular minority views.
If the barrier to entry to government was dogma such as in any single party, totalitarian regime, you'd have a point, but that's not the government we're talking about. Anyone can run. Anyone can (try) to build popular support for their ideas. If you can't get any support, maybe it's because *gasp* a majority of the voters believe your ideas suck.
Been okay for me (Score:4, Insightful)
I pretty much aim for about 40 hours. I'll do maybe closer to 50 during busy times. Anything past that, I expect them to make it up to me somehow -- and they usually do just fine about that. The management know that if we are working much longer hours, it means something is probably wrong, and they regard it as evidence that they need to fix the schedule. Sometimes, they really do ask for more work, but at least so far, comp time has been real and has actually worked out pretty well. I would not stay someplace that expected me to do 50+ hours regularly; that would indicate to me that they didn't understand basic facts about engineer capabilities. So I work a reasonable amount, put in a bit of extra time when it seems like it'll make a big difference, and sometimes slack a bit when things are slower and/or I'm a bit burned out. We make deadlines, the code's decent, and everybody's happy.
I've seen people whose managers wanted a lot more than that, and I've also seen people leave and go to other jobs, and I think that's pretty closely related. It is not healthy to try to work 60-hour weeks all the time, and since it's bad for developers, it ends up being bad for companies -- it produces worse code.
Re:Where do I begin (Score:3, Insightful)
Why are such pathetic working condidtions tolerated?
'Cause Americans are Hard Workers goldurnit and only a Socialist would mandate minimum vacation time! If you don't like getting treated like shit at your current employer, roll the dice and see if you can't get treated slightly less shitty at the next one!
We're still shackled by the Puritans and their lunacy. Who knows when we'll finally cast off THAT baggage. And then it's socialism city baby!!! Yeeee-haw!
Re:Where do I begin (Score:3, Insightful)
It would have been a death march, but unlike a true death march the product shipped, and is still a big seller 6 years after introduction.
I stepped in when the main IC took a dump, and the designer had already bailed. I actually managed to redesign the damn thing from scratch (old design had too many fatal flaws to salvage) and get it caught up with the rest of the project without ever becoming critical path (barely).
So I bailed out the 8 million dollar project, got the promotionalong the way, and was even shown my new salary curve. I was 30% off the bottom, and they refused to give me ANY raise. A year later I got a tiny raise and was still off the bottom of my pay scale, and was now being told my comp time was all a cruel joke. So with that I finally got the F$#@ Work epiffany and haven't worked more than a couple 60 hour weeks since, and can count the number of weekend days I've worked in the last 6 years on one hand.
My only regret is that I now work for my former employer's direct competitor, so I kind of wish I was working harder to put them under than I am, but it's 5:00 so I'm going home. F$#@ Work...
Isn't Open Source always "off the clock"? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Where do I begin (Score:5, Insightful)
I completly agree. I've worked in IT as a contractor or full time employee in one way or another since 1997, and had my own business since 1992 prior. I have not stayed in one job longer than 3.5 years. Most have been 18-24 months. I took the training I needed, learned the new job skills, and got a few certifications the company paid for. At some point, when I felt either I was not going to get a "fair market value" raise, I'd put out resume's, take 1-2 weeks off, and interview everywhere I could, and accept an offer somewhere with both a massive pay raise and new training opportunities. Usually by this point I'd still have 3-5 weeks vacation and comp time pent up, and I'd blow that while working on addsitional certifications. In 2 cases I convinced the employer to "lay me off" instead of another poor sap, and saved a buddy's job by putting my own head on the block. In both of those cases I got severance pay added on top of my unused vacation.
I went from making less than $20K anually in 1995 trying to run a startup web publishing company, to 2000 where I was making 30K as a field technician and had about $8K in training budget access. By 2002 I was MS certified and took a job in IT analysys and helped a large firm rework their bench service and sales policy and develop a revenue model based on services making well over 40K. In 2005 I left them and joined a BVC working in DR. I quickly moved up the ladder there taking 3 promotions and leaving making over 60K, and received a massive amount of Linux/Unix training and DR planning experience in the process, and was exposed to hundreds of unique network systems in enterprise companies. In 2007 I worked for a regional reseller as a presales engineer working mostly on government bids in VoIP technology and major network systems, and learned Cisco networking as well as several other enterprise class systems and took in over 75K in just under a year. Now, I'm a contractor for a major firm in the state working in IT analytics and system architecture where we have near a dozen mainframes and about other 3,000 servers and should pull in close to 120K this year including my overtime pay, and I'm lined up to become a full time part of their group and within another year I should be on the management side of the systems architecture group and cross the 150K mark.
At this point, I'm well into my 30s, and feel I'm nearing the top of the food chain without expanding into the executive IT market. The particular firm I'm with if offering a pension plan and a lot of nice benefits, and I have lots of systems I can get experience on, and my fingers on a nearly $100m IT budget. I experience new challenges daily, and the pace the company deploys systems at is nearly frightening. I have a dozen directions my career can go in, and many of thel lead into the mid six figures, and if I play my cards right, with my vast experience and ability to manage teams and projects, I have a good shot at making the leap into the executive arena, so I'm starting night classes and working on a business degree to supplement my IT degree and numerous certifications.
If I had stayed with one of the original firms I was with (I still know some people there), I;d say I'd have a good job and a good life, but I'd be lucky to be taking in more than 60K, and that only if I was one of the top managers. Work tyour way in from the bottom, basic system services for a small retailer, move on to larger fish and consulting firms. Get into pre-sales and buff up your speaking and presentation skills, learn EVERYTHING about any system you come across. When you're coming up on your anual reviews and expecting a raise, ver WELL AWARE of what your market value is, and if possible, have an offer in your pocket to throw back at them if the raise/promotion is not at your value level. Do not let the fact that you grew up somewhere keep you from moving to a good job market area, and don't be afraid to take a job working with systems you don't know how to operate if there's training involved. Do not settle for a job that
Re:Must be nice... (Score:5, Insightful)
Here in the Boston area, any computer job that pays enough to survive is exempt
So move somewhere with a cheaper cost of living. I have a friend who moved to Boston because she got tired of living in a small town and wanted to experience the big city lifestyle. Too bad she's too busy working 60 hours a week just to afford the crappy little apartment that she has to share with a roommate to enjoy much of anything.
Try living in the sticks sometime. There may not be as much to do but you can actually afford to live out here. Combine that with lower crime, less traffic, better air quality and less stress overall and it's a win-win.
Re:US laws are not the best (Score:5, Insightful)
We know. But the EU doesn't hire Americans.
And every time we try to make the US a livable place like Europe has become, inbred morons (aka Libertarians) start shouting "commie!" Just look at the hassle we're having trying to set up a relatively simple health insurance reform to be something akin to what Japan has (I live in Japan--it works!).
Basically, the super-wealthy here have convinced the lower-middle class that they're on the same side, and that what is good for the new nobility is good for Joe the Plumber. This isn't too hard, because Joe the Plumber is a moron.
Europe and Japan are run by the middle class. It's better that way.
Re:US laws are not the best (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Where do I begin (Score:5, Insightful)
"So with that I finally got the F$#@ Work epiffany and haven't worked more than a couple 60 hour weeks since, and can count the number of weekend days I've worked in the last 6 years on one hand."
Somewhere, this is the subject of a dark European satire of life in America.
Re:Where do I begin (Score:4, Insightful)
Yup. I've got a RAFT of glass awards and "excellence" plaques from my 8 years at Comcast. yet every time I had a review I was "satisfactory".
My last year there I went ballistic. "I received 4 awards THIS YEAR and Single handed saved the company millions with my personal custom project that none of you approved until I demoed it and you saw what it could do."
I refused to sign my review. The divisional manager came to "talk" to me, I reamed him a good one as well. I did not have a review that year. Which is ok. I got the same raise as everyone else did. I left the company for a better job and a promotion 2 months later. when asked why at the exit interview I gave them a sanitized bullshit reason about family to be nice and PC with them. Everyone in the department knew I was leaving for a very different reason.
There are three things I tell everyone.
1 -NEVER EVER trust your employer. they will screw you any chance they get.
2 -Never EVER trust a manager, even if you are friends. They will NOT go to bat for you.
3 -The fastest way to higher pay and promotions is to quit your job. Breaking an employment contract silently and working for the competition is a very good way to get even higher fast, going to a different state to work for the competition will keep you from getting caught.
Honestly, you are doing your employer a favor, You aregiving them your talents for cheap, they are NOT doing you any favors. Keep that in your mind at all times.
Re:Where do I begin (Score:5, Insightful)
You sound like the perfect employee that corporations love: willing to work really hard, but not interested in money.
you are doing exactly what most corporations do, which is care about the bottom line and only the bottom line at the expense of everything else.
My time is valuable to me. I choose to sell some of that time to the highest bidder. What's the problem? Why would I sell my time to a low-ball bidder when someone else is willing to pay more for my services?
If I didn't need money for housing, food, etc., I wouldn't go to work at all. I have far more interesting things I could be doing with my time than working on some boring BS for a corporation. When I figure out how to make more money doing those things than my regular job nets me, I'll quit.
What about building something you can be proud of?
WTF? What corporate job are you ever going to have where you can build something to be "proud" of? Sorry, but most of us don't work at NASA, or on some great science project like the LHC, discovering the mysteries of the universe. Instead, we do much more boring and useless things, so the only yardstick to measure by is money.
What about earning the respect of your peers?
WTF? Who cares? Besides, my peers don't care about these employers either. All my friends from my last job were laid off the same day I was. I'm sure none of them are regretting spending more time at work.
What about responsibility?
What about it? What about the responsibility of an employer to its employees? If they're not going to live up to that, then we have no responsibility back towards them. The only responsibility I have is to show up every day and do my duties for 8 hours, in exchange for a paycheck. This doesn't mean I'm going to completely slack off during that 8 hours, but I'm not going to put in heroic effort, or stay 12 hours either.
Ever tried enjoying what you do and taking satisfaction from a job well done?
I was cured of that naivety long ago. I get satisfaction from doing interesting personal projects at home, not from anything I do at work.
Don't get me wrong, if you think you deserve more you should be able to negotiate more but who do you think gets the promotions and raises?
You don't get it: there ARE no raises, dumbass! The only raises given out are bare-minimum, "cost of living" raises, like 2-3%, IF you're lucky. Usually, instead you just get a pat on the back and "sorry, but there's no money in the budget this year for raises." (And this is told to the entire team, not just you.) But switching jobs can easily get you a 15-30% raise immediately.
Go ahead, keep on never going the extra mile and doing only the bare minimum. Then stop and try to guess why *you* need to job-hop every 2-3 years to get a raise, newbie.
If you think that the vast majority of workers who spend 20 years at a single company are making top dollar, then you're a complete idiot. Keep on spending all your waking hours at work and being a complete tool, while your wife bones other men and eventually leaves you. It happened to tons of people at Intel while I was working there.
Re:Where do I begin (Score:3, Insightful)
Your advice is a little overly-cynical.
There are still good companies out there, worth building a career within the company. They are few and far between, but they are gems and you don't want to miss them because you follow some blanked idea that "All companies are evil, all managers are bad, and the only way to get a raise is to quit."
I am a contractor with an engineering group of a large company, so I essentially have two managers. One who I work for, and one who actually determines my pay and employment. The one I work for recently changed, the old manager was a bulldog and fought for his subordinates, stood up to upper management, and generally was so effective they strong-armed him into a promotion to groom him for upper management. His replacement is not as hard-nosed and bulldogish, but he's still a quality manager that goes to bat for his people. He's actually working to get me and another employee in the same position moved to another contracting company, which would both lower his costs and double our pay.
On the flip side, my manager who actually determines my pay and such, sucks monkey nuts. She's a nice lady, but rolls over for upper management. She actually told me that she should have paid me more initially, but couldn't get me a raise now. What do you think that did for my work ethic?
Seriously though, keep an eye out for the gems out there. If you find one, jump at it, it is a much much nicer environment to work in, and they do exist. Particularly with companies that have histories that stretch back further than the early 90's.
Re:Where do I begin (Score:2, Insightful)
All counted for nothing
I threatened to quit, but they thought I was bluffing.
You should have seen the looks on their faces when I announced my resignation. ("Priceless")
Have a new job now and am much happier.
My advice: if you're not happy, then start looking elsewhere
Re:Isn't Open Source always "off the clock"? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:US laws are not the best (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Where do I begin (Score:3, Insightful)
I still find the concept of sick time bizarre. The culture I'm used to is that you have as many sick days as days you are genuinely sick. You can take a single day on your honour, but for more than that you need a note from a doctor.
Re:US laws are not the best (Score:3, Insightful)
Dude, European politicians are too eager to copy the worst of the USA.
Re:US laws are not the best (Score:4, Insightful)
Australia, with it's socialised health care and education (not to mention a sustainable welfare program) seems to be doing just fine. Over here you wouldn't know about the Financial Apocalypse if it wasn't on the news every 5 minutes (and we don't have anything like fox news over here either, we get actual news backed up by fact). The AUD steady at 0.84 USD. Our government forced the banks to maintain a certain percentage of liquidity and kept interest at a rate that reflected the true state of the market (high because too much money was being thrown about for house and car loans) so when the inevitable bust happened the banks didn't fall over when all the imaginary money they'd been handing out disappeared.
But of course those wonderful right wing nutters will just keep ignoring the fact that good regulation of Australia's banking system avoided the kinds of financial crisis's suffered in the States and UK because decisions based party politics is more important then doing a good job running an economy.
Re:That is your fault. (Score:2, Insightful)
Compensation can take many forms - time off in lieu, overtime pay, or
I've come to realise that companies don't actually expect a man-day out of someone, they just expect them to look busy all day. Actual productivity is something of a moot point - the more you do, the more you'll be asked to do. (Barring bare minimums of 'doing your job' below which they'll sack you)
I used to have a good solid work ethic. It burned out over a course of about 6 months where I _was_ doing the hardcore '60-80 hour week' thing. I even got paid for it, at a healthy rate, but it wasn't worth the price.
Overtime is
Re:Where do I begin (Score:1, Insightful)
When you get your SECOND job in your live maybe you will understand. but you kids who work for taco bell who think you know everything are entertaining to the rest of us. Hows that hair-net working out?
The Parent is 100% correct and you are as blind as a bat.
sounds like you are the one who is a major idiot. Please feel free to trust everyone, they all have your best interests in mind....
Moron.
Re:US laws are not the best (Score:3, Insightful)
I have never heard the new health care bill described as "Just like what they have in Japan!"
Maybe it's not the "Inbred Morons", maybe it's those who think they're mentally superior. In other words, it's you and your attitude that you're just too good to explain the health care bill to the populace.
And citing platitudes is not explaining.