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I'm currently studying for a career switch to software development and I'm midway through my CS degree. I sort of expect that if companies will expect work at c

by MRD85 8y ago

I'm currently studying for a career switch to software development and I'm midway through my CS degree. I sort of expect that if companies will expect work at crazy hours then I'll be compensated for such. Is this not the case? Maybe I'm dreaming but I'm in a non-US market which has fairly strong workers rights.

mac01021 8y ago
I've never worked crazy hours. Never more than 50, sometimes more like 35. But if you work on a product that the business depends directly on for it's income, you should expect on-call time. If your team has it's act together, they might have a rotation where you're pageable at all hours for one or two weeks per month. Compensation is mostly dependent on your ability to negotiate your salary.
- pmiller2 8y ago
  Even one or two weeks a month might be an exaggeration. The most on-call time I’ve had has been about one week out of every 6. As far as actually getting paged, I think it’s happened about 8 times in 5 years. This is primarily at smaller companies. YMMV at a large tech behemoth.
em-bee 8y ago
in a country with strong workers rights you most likely get overtime pay which makes crazy hours to expensive. more likely you'll get reprimanded for working more than 40 hours because the company would be liable to pay you even if you did not report any overtime.
cableshaft 8y ago
Most software development jobs in the US are salaried, and since we are seen as professionals, we are exempt from the government requirement for overtime pay, and thus most companies won't offer it (this may be different in SV, I'm not sure, I don't work there). As such, any time a deadline gets tight, management can be tempted to ask people to work later or come in on the weekends. The risk of losing the employee is the only thing that stops them sometimes, and sometimes not even then, they're only thinking short term. And since most of the software development world has switched to some bastardization of 'Agile' development, with 2 or 3 week iterations, deadlines can get tight as often as every two or three weeks, especially if the company is trying to make do with less employees than they should have and people have too much on their plates (pretty common after a round or two of layoffs and the best employees also leaving afterwards...currently dealing with that now, should have left a long time ago myself, I've just had too much going on in my personal life to want to go through the job process again). I've pretty much never seen compensation offered for overtime. I have seen 'you can take a few days off afterwards' offered, but not always granted afterwards, since it was just verbal, managers suddenly get forgetful, the company is still playing catchup even after your extra work and doesn't think they can let you take time off, and/or it usually has to be done off the books so people up the chain don't see it, because the higher up executives really, really don't care about you and only see you as a number (in big corporations, at least).
bdavis__ 8y ago
when you make $20 an hour, 1.5 times pay for hours over 40 makes sense to all. when you make $50 an hour, 1.0 multiplier seems reasonable. at $100 an hour, 'shut up and get it working' is the cry.
astura 8y ago
No, most software development jobs are 9-5 with (usually unpaid) overtime only done on an exceptional circumstances. It's been years since I worked more than 40 hours a week.
bobblywobbles 8y ago
My first position was for a company who sold goods as an ecommerce vendor. We had a small shop and found myself working between 41-42 hours a week. This did not include on-call time where I was expected to answer any problems that arose with the site. On-call time was usually minimal but when it happened, it happened at some odd times during the night. After we were down to 4 people (we lost 2), I was routinely working 43-47 hours a week

by MRD85 8y ago

mac01021 8y ago

I've never worked crazy hours. Never more than 50, sometimes more like 35. But if you work on a product that the business depends directly on for it's income, you should expect on-call time. If your team has it's act together, they might have a rotation where you're pageable at all hours for one or two weeks per month. Compensation is mostly dependent on your ability to negotiate your salary.

pmiller2 8y ago
Even one or two weeks a month might be an exaggeration. The most on-call time I’ve had has been about one week out of every 6. As far as actually getting paged, I think it’s happened about 8 times in 5 years. This is primarily at smaller companies. YMMV at a large tech behemoth.

em-bee 8y ago

in a country with strong workers rights you most likely get overtime pay which makes crazy hours to expensive. more likely you'll get reprimanded for working more than 40 hours because the company would be liable to pay you even if you did not report any overtime.

cableshaft 8y ago

Most software development jobs in the US are salaried, and since we are seen as professionals, we are exempt from the government requirement for overtime pay, and thus most companies won't offer it (this may be different in SV, I'm not sure, I don't work there). As such, any time a deadline gets tight, management can be tempted to ask people to work later or come in on the weekends. The risk of losing the employee is the only thing that stops them sometimes, and sometimes not even then, they're only thinking short term. And since most of the software development world has switched to some bastardization of 'Agile' development, with 2 or 3 week iterations, deadlines can get tight as often as every two or three weeks, especially if the company is trying to make do with less employees than they should have and people have too much on their plates (pretty common after a round or two of layoffs and the best employees also leaving afterwards...currently dealing with that now, should have left a long time ago myself, I've just had too much going on in my personal life to want to go through the job process again). I've pretty much never seen compensation offered for overtime. I have seen 'you can take a few days off afterwards' offered, but not always granted afterwards, since it was just verbal, managers suddenly get forgetful, the company is still playing catchup even after your extra work and doesn't think they can let you take time off, and/or it usually has to be done off the books so people up the chain don't see it, because the higher up executives really, really don't care about you and only see you as a number (in big corporations, at least).

bdavis__ 8y ago

when you make $20 an hour, 1.5 times pay for hours over 40 makes sense to all. when you make $50 an hour, 1.0 multiplier seems reasonable. at $100 an hour, 'shut up and get it working' is the cry.

astura 8y ago

No, most software development jobs are 9-5 with (usually unpaid) overtime only done on an exceptional circumstances. It's been years since I worked more than 40 hours a week.

bobblywobbles 8y ago

My first position was for a company who sold goods as an ecommerce vendor. We had a small shop and found myself working between 41-42 hours a week. This did not include on-call time where I was expected to answer any problems that arose with the site. On-call time was usually minimal but when it happened, it happened at some odd times during the night. After we were down to 4 people (we lost 2), I was routinely working 43-47 hours a week