7 ms·

European Court of Justice: EU employers must track working time in detail

62 points by adwn 7y ago

ovi256 7y ago
I suspect it's only a fraction of employees that work more than they're supposed to, but as they're workaholics that work a lot more, they move the mean and it has a big positive impact for employers. If this is true, this ruling is bound to have an impact on EU economic activity. And I don't see how it can be good, given that nobody's thinking that EU labor is too cheap. If it's applied at face value, it can only reduce worked hours at current costs, or have employers pay more for current output. Definitely can't increase EU labor competivity.
- brador 7y ago
  There’s more to life than productivity. The quality of life for EU citizens is high and getting higher.
  - adwn 7y ago
    > The quality of life for EU citizens is high and getting higher. But not thanks to this court ruling. The only thing that will bring employers and employees is more bureaucracy. Employees which let themselves get exploited before, will let themselves get exploited with precise time tracking as well. After all, who's going to check whether you actually tracked the time you spent working after hours – answering e-mails, calling back a client, or fixing bugs in your code?
    - panpanna 7y ago
      Seems very reasonable to me, don't know why you call this bureaucracy: "The Court holds that, in the absence of a system enabling the duration of time worked each day by each worker to be measured, it is not possible to determine, objectively and reliably, either the number of hours worked and when that work was done, or the number of hours of overtime worked [...]" ALL places I have worked at have this in some way. Maybe not every day and maybe not always 100% correct but how else will they bill projects internally???
      - adwn 7y ago
        For project budget and billing purposes, it is sufficient to track the number of hours each day. This court decision, however, would require to also track the start and end time, as well as the durations of all breaks. That's because there are laws regulating how much break time you have to take each day (dependend on how many hours you work) and also how much time has to pass between two work days. If you're working from home, you'd have to track every little interruption in which you walk the dog, take your child to kindergarten, etc., otherwise your start and end time won't fit your billed hours. Of course, nobody will bother with such tedious timekeeping, and will instead just enter plausible but made up values for start and end times, rendering this court decision useless.
        pergadad 7y ago
        No idea why you're so bitter about this, but obviously there is no expectation that each minute is recorded. This just spreads a common practice to the exploitative employers that don't respect workers rights - such as the right to have a20 minute break during the day.
        adwn 7y ago
        > obviously there is no expectation that each minute is recorded Bingo! In practice, employees will just fill in whatever values are convenient. Nothing's going to change for an employee who was pressured (explicitly or implicitly) to work unpaid overtime – now they'll be pressured (explicitly or implicitly) to not track the time they're working after hours. It's just more bureaucracy for everyone, including for honest, fair employers. And yes, I'm very bitter about this. Bureaucratic, ivory-tower decisions like this one are partly responsible for phenomenons like Brexit and the German AfD party, which in turn pose a danger to the prosperity and peace we enjoy in Europe.
        panpanna 7y ago
        Oh the "let's be sensible" argument... Please do not follow this road. According to EU the main target of Russian disinformation campaign during current EU parlamentet elections is to spread the picture that EU is colapsing due to bureaucracy/corruption/incompetence/all power moving to Brussels/migration/Islam (select one depending on your target) while their country is solid as rock. They have a ~1 billion Euro budget to spread that garbage this year. Please don't do their work for free.
  - sonnyblarney 7y ago
    "The quality of life for EU citizens is high and getting higher." This is debatable, moreover, ostensibly the primary driver of that improved quality is actually productivity, though obviously there are other things. EU excepting Norway/Switzerland/Lux etc. really does depend on productivity quite a lot.
  - 762236 7y ago
    Outside work the quality of life is good. But many people can't find employment in their field, which clobbers quality of life. I work few hours with great productivity --- would this new ruling make me have to increase my hours to keep my pay?
- pergadad 7y ago
  This is about labor rights. If you're paid for 40h your employer should not be able to press you to do more without compensation. Easy as that. If the added working time has much value they'll find a way to compensate. This way it simply means that you can't force a fastfood worker to do closing shift and then still clean after they've done their work. Outside of the pure "pair of hands" work there is a lot of evidence that more working time doesn't increase productivity. And, really, life is about more than just work. No need to allow companies to slowly erode the rights previous generations of workers have fought for.
  - ovi256 7y ago
    Yes, there is clear tension between labor rights and labor competivity, that's clearly established.
  - lima165 7y ago
    This is not about labour rights. In Spain at least, it is about the government making cash via labour taxes (as an employer, you must subtract a percentage from the employee's wage to pay for social security). As the taxes are so high, many employers resort to hire employees officially for 4-6h and under the table they pay them the remaining time free of taxes. Most companies here have less than 10 employees, they just can't cope with the high taxes, and the alternative is not hiring at all. Now this new law in Spain means nothing for employees. The govt just forces employers to have an accurate time log they can inspect at any time to make sure they are paying labour taxes. THEY WONT CHECK AT ALL THAT THE EMPLOYEES ARE BEING PAYED THAT NUMBER OF HOURS. Guess what, exactly 4h will appear for every employee in the log. There is no official approved system for time tracking, it's up to the employer, with even an excel being accepted, so it is absolutely manipulable by the employer.
- kriro 7y ago
  One area were overworking is very common practice is academia. There is no time tracking at most German universities (interestingly, universities of applied sciences seem to have them). It would actually be a pretty huge shift in the academic workspace if time tracking was mandatory. I suspect that most research faculty easily work 50% or more on top of their regular load without pay. Especially in fields where it's common practice to hand out 20h/week positions with the implied expectation that you put in a full week workload.
romanovcode 7y ago
I guess it's good for workers: No one will work over what he is suppose to work and also will stop answering emails/slack/etc after work hours and/or in the weekends. Employers have this stupid notion that the workers are slacking but in office setting IMO this would backfire by malicious compliance from the workers. Also, good job Spanish Trade Union in making things worse for everyone in EU.
- lima165 7y ago
  Spanish trade unions are corrupt, one of the two major unions is straight out a branch of the "socialist" party in power. Makes me laugh that bank employees are unionized. The bank employees that have survived the past layoffs are priviledged workers enjoying the luxury of indefinite contracts (thus qualifying for a gross compensation if fired) and have very good conditions as compared to everyone else. Last week I went to a bank office and they are opening only from 9 to 15 from May to September because of "Summer Time". Banks are nowadays subcontracting everything, most IT work is done by subcontractors working their asses for 8+ h in far away technological parks.
hn_throwaway_99 7y ago
> A German confederation of employers said that the ruling was tantamount to demanding a return to workers punching in and punching out on arrival and departure, calling this impractical given modern working practices, smartphones, home offices and the like. Not really in agreement with the ruling but that's a dumb argument. Tons of tech contractors bill by the hour where accurately tracking time is a financial requirement.
- consp 7y ago
  True, And those same contractors do not take the hours worked off contract into account which by experience is combined always more than the stated work week hours. It's a cheap way to not deal with overtime.
  - hn_throwaway_99 7y ago
    > And those same contractors do not take the hours worked off contract into account What do you mean? If I'm working on your project, I'm billing you for my time.
JanSt 7y ago
I'm punching in and out every day at work / in the home office. Either on a terminal or in the web browser. Best thing ever, takes 15 seconds a day. Being called at home (when not working) because of an emergency? At least 2 hours are added to my timesheet, even if I solve the problem in 5 minutes, so I only get called if it's really important. Adds a lot of sanity and stops abuse. We are very productive because we actually get to relax from work.
- sonnyblarney 7y ago
  That's great, but would be a contravention this new law apparently. The law doesn't want to know how much you bill or how much is allocated, but how much you actually work. I the context of labour, surely it makes sense, but there, most hours are logged. Outside of that it gets a little harder.
  - JanSt 7y ago
    I'm not a contractor, I'm actually tracking the time I'm working.
    - sonnyblarney 7y ago
      "At least 2 hours are added to my timesheet, even if I solve the problem in 5 minutes," You explicitly stated you'd get tracked for 2 hours for 5 minutes of work. This differential - which you must have brought up for a reason - is specifically not what the law is trying to address.
      - JanSt 7y ago
        You should read up on the ruling. Every country has to implement it's own law. It's allowed to include specific regulations on these corner cases. (FYI, I'm still tracking the exact time, but the time I have to work gets reduced from 38 to 36 hours)
      - usrusr 7y ago
        That differential is also specifically not what the ruling is trying to prevent. What's off the table with this ruling is that a timesheet does not exist, because "we're all friends here, we trust our employees (to work themselves to exhaustion out of fear)"
sonnyblarney 7y ago
Maybe a better idea would be to spell out expectations, so there's at least transparency in terms of comp. I grab emails, take calls and do little things quite often in the evening, impromptu, it's rather difficult to measure all of that in many management functions.
mar77i 7y ago
The ruling is strange, because in my opinion part of a modern working environment would be driven by some form of mutual trust. If you put the burden of "proof of accomplishment" on the workers, that may stifle workplace attractiveness and pose a bureaucratic hurdle. Hence cracking down on untracked, yet (or even therefore) quality employment relationships would naturally appear a step in the wrong direction. I get it, the Spanish workers may not have shared such mutual trust with Deutsche Bank, but I don't get how that has to have consequences for everyone else? Or am I (and maybe even the reporting journalists) reading this wrong and work contracts may, and from now on have to specify otherwise explicitly, if that's how they do business?
- phoe-krk 7y ago
  > If you put the burden of "proof of accomplishment" on the workers, that may stifle workplace attractiveness and pose a bureaucratic hurdle. An example of such a system is a glorified Excel sheet, given to your manager monthly, where you write how many hours have you worked on a given workday and which project you should report the time on, if you have multiple. Getting acquainted with the system might take half an hour. Filling it in, in most trivial cases, is a copy-paste that takes up to five minutes a month. In case you have a more complicated case of working times, you should already be accustomed to noting down your work time daily, even if for your own good.
  - mar77i 7y ago
    You have a point there, I stand corrected.
- sgift 7y ago
  > The ruling is strange, because in my opinion part of a modern working environment would be driven by some form of mutual trust. That's a nice theory which in most cases is abused by employers left and right. If you really have a mutual beneficial, trustful relationship with your employer this won't change it. If it does, it was all a lie.
iovrthoughtthis 7y ago
I worry this will have a negative impact on culture in work environments with more of a return to “bums in seats” management rather than outputs focussed management. That’s a pretty myopic view though many jobs have no objective outputs which makes hours one of the measurable metrics.
- mordae 7y ago
  This. It solves nothing, since the crooks will just continue to cook the books. This is already "mandatory" in Czechia and I have yet to hear about anyone being sued for not upholding the Labor Code. On the other hand, the tech employees will have to take extra care to manage their attendance sheet with arbitrary requirements such as no weekends and/or no late-night work contrary to the actual practice of being on-call as needed with it being already factored into the pay. Unless there is a significant bounty for employees who report such breaches for their current employer, the only businesses upholding the law are the very same businesses who would have done so nevertheless.
holstvoogd 7y ago
ITT: Office & IT workers who have no clue that this might not be just about them but the millions of factory workers, shop attendants, builders etc that are forced to work overtime without pay. And you better not say anything, because you are very replaceable. My personal experience? I've had to record my work times accurately for a few years, it was kinda annoying, but also freeing. Wanted to work in the weekend? no problem. Wanted to leave early or sleep in? no problem. Now I 'just kinda have to make sure I work my 40 hours' and always feel pressure to stay 9 till' 5 and do as little as possible outside of that.
- maaaats 7y ago
  It's a common theme here on HN when it comes to worker's rights and unions. Being a one-percenter where companies bend over backwards to cater to you, it's easy to dismiss these things.
  - sweeeety 7y ago
    Not my experience in Europe though. My last two employers here constantly over promised (e.g.: unlimited vacations/parental leave, flexible hours, work from home, etc) and really really under delivered. I would rather have things set in stone first nowadays b/c the mindset of most managers here are still not ready for those.
    - maaaats 7y ago
      Unlimited PTO is more an American thing in my experience. And is never really unlimited as you will be judged when using it. In Europe it's common with 5+ weeks of vacation, which is also often mandatory by law to take.
      - sweeeety 7y ago
        well, what can I say, this company had a real problem following the union agreements and EU laws: no paid extra hours (on-call), no notice, no paternity leave according to local laws, etc. On the other hand, was really adamant to keep the 9:30 stand-up meeting for the sake of face time.
mcv 7y ago
I've got mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I hate the added administration of overly detailed time-keeping, on the other hand, it's often too easy to employers to pressure employees to work for more hours than they're actually paid. The gripping hand, though, is that many employers aren't interested in hours, but in results. If they just pay you for certain results, and getting those results takes too much time, is it because the employer is too demanding? Or is it an employee who is slow to do that kind of work, but still prefer it over other kinds of work? It might also lead employers to pressure employees to work faster within the hours they're supposed to work, and fire those who can't keep up. I don't think it's going to solve the problem of overly demanding employers, though it probably helps in some cases.
kerng 7y ago
Interesting how used I got to the compensation model of a lump sum per month (or every 2 weeks) for software engineering jobs. One of my first programming jobs required time tracking and so there was really no need to work more then 38 hours a week - because working more cost the company extra and always required approval from manager. Weekends and holidays were compensated 2x, during week after 5pm 1.5x I believe.
yason 7y ago
Traditionally, what is on the records and what happens in real life are two very different things. In each case I've seen in private companies, public offices, or universities, the timesheets are duly filled with what is expected and then the work and life continue as before.

62 points by adwn 7y ago

I suspect it's only a fraction of employees that work more than they're supposed to, but as they're workaholics that work a lot more, they move the mean and it has a big positive impact for employers. If this is true, this ruling is bound to have an impact on EU economic activity. And I don't see how it can be good, given that nobody's thinking that EU labor is too cheap. If it's applied at face value, it can only reduce worked hours at current costs, or have employers pay more for current output. Definitely can't increase EU labor competivity.

brador 7y ago
There’s more to life than productivity. The quality of life for EU citizens is high and getting higher.
- adwn 7y ago
  > The quality of life for EU citizens is high and getting higher. But not thanks to this court ruling. The only thing that will bring employers and employees is more bureaucracy. Employees which let themselves get exploited before, will let themselves get exploited with precise time tracking as well. After all, who's going to check whether you actually tracked the time you spent working after hours – answering e-mails, calling back a client, or fixing bugs in your code?
  - panpanna 7y ago
    Seems very reasonable to me, don't know why you call this bureaucracy: "The Court holds that, in the absence of a system enabling the duration of time worked each day by each worker to be measured, it is not possible to determine, objectively and reliably, either the number of hours worked and when that work was done, or the number of hours of overtime worked [...]" ALL places I have worked at have this in some way. Maybe not every day and maybe not always 100% correct but how else will they bill projects internally???
    - adwn 7y ago
      For project budget and billing purposes, it is sufficient to track the number of hours each day. This court decision, however, would require to also track the start and end time, as well as the durations of all breaks. That's because there are laws regulating how much break time you have to take each day (dependend on how many hours you work) and also how much time has to pass between two work days. If you're working from home, you'd have to track every little interruption in which you walk the dog, take your child to kindergarten, etc., otherwise your start and end time won't fit your billed hours. Of course, nobody will bother with such tedious timekeeping, and will instead just enter plausible but made up values for start and end times, rendering this court decision useless.
      - pergadad 7y ago
        No idea why you're so bitter about this, but obviously there is no expectation that each minute is recorded. This just spreads a common practice to the exploitative employers that don't respect workers rights - such as the right to have a20 minute break during the day.
        adwn 7y ago
        > obviously there is no expectation that each minute is recorded Bingo! In practice, employees will just fill in whatever values are convenient. Nothing's going to change for an employee who was pressured (explicitly or implicitly) to work unpaid overtime – now they'll be pressured (explicitly or implicitly) to not track the time they're working after hours. It's just more bureaucracy for everyone, including for honest, fair employers. And yes, I'm very bitter about this. Bureaucratic, ivory-tower decisions like this one are partly responsible for phenomenons like Brexit and the German AfD party, which in turn pose a danger to the prosperity and peace we enjoy in Europe.
        panpanna 7y ago
        Oh the "let's be sensible" argument... Please do not follow this road. According to EU the main target of Russian disinformation campaign during current EU parlamentet elections is to spread the picture that EU is colapsing due to bureaucracy/corruption/incompetence/all power moving to Brussels/migration/Islam (select one depending on your target) while their country is solid as rock. They have a ~1 billion Euro budget to spread that garbage this year. Please don't do their work for free.
- sonnyblarney 7y ago
  "The quality of life for EU citizens is high and getting higher." This is debatable, moreover, ostensibly the primary driver of that improved quality is actually productivity, though obviously there are other things. EU excepting Norway/Switzerland/Lux etc. really does depend on productivity quite a lot.
- 762236 7y ago
  Outside work the quality of life is good. But many people can't find employment in their field, which clobbers quality of life. I work few hours with great productivity --- would this new ruling make me have to increase my hours to keep my pay?
pergadad 7y ago
This is about labor rights. If you're paid for 40h your employer should not be able to press you to do more without compensation. Easy as that. If the added working time has much value they'll find a way to compensate. This way it simply means that you can't force a fastfood worker to do closing shift and then still clean after they've done their work. Outside of the pure "pair of hands" work there is a lot of evidence that more working time doesn't increase productivity. And, really, life is about more than just work. No need to allow companies to slowly erode the rights previous generations of workers have fought for.
- ovi256 7y ago
  Yes, there is clear tension between labor rights and labor competivity, that's clearly established.
- lima165 7y ago
  This is not about labour rights. In Spain at least, it is about the government making cash via labour taxes (as an employer, you must subtract a percentage from the employee's wage to pay for social security). As the taxes are so high, many employers resort to hire employees officially for 4-6h and under the table they pay them the remaining time free of taxes. Most companies here have less than 10 employees, they just can't cope with the high taxes, and the alternative is not hiring at all. Now this new law in Spain means nothing for employees. The govt just forces employers to have an accurate time log they can inspect at any time to make sure they are paying labour taxes. THEY WONT CHECK AT ALL THAT THE EMPLOYEES ARE BEING PAYED THAT NUMBER OF HOURS. Guess what, exactly 4h will appear for every employee in the log. There is no official approved system for time tracking, it's up to the employer, with even an excel being accepted, so it is absolutely manipulable by the employer.
kriro 7y ago
One area were overworking is very common practice is academia. There is no time tracking at most German universities (interestingly, universities of applied sciences seem to have them). It would actually be a pretty huge shift in the academic workspace if time tracking was mandatory. I suspect that most research faculty easily work 50% or more on top of their regular load without pay. Especially in fields where it's common practice to hand out 20h/week positions with the implied expectation that you put in a full week workload.

romanovcode 7y ago

I guess it's good for workers: No one will work over what he is suppose to work and also will stop answering emails/slack/etc after work hours and/or in the weekends. Employers have this stupid notion that the workers are slacking but in office setting IMO this would backfire by malicious compliance from the workers. Also, good job Spanish Trade Union in making things worse for everyone in EU.

lima165 7y ago
Spanish trade unions are corrupt, one of the two major unions is straight out a branch of the "socialist" party in power. Makes me laugh that bank employees are unionized. The bank employees that have survived the past layoffs are priviledged workers enjoying the luxury of indefinite contracts (thus qualifying for a gross compensation if fired) and have very good conditions as compared to everyone else. Last week I went to a bank office and they are opening only from 9 to 15 from May to September because of "Summer Time". Banks are nowadays subcontracting everything, most IT work is done by subcontractors working their asses for 8+ h in far away technological parks.

hn_throwaway_99 7y ago

> A German confederation of employers said that the ruling was tantamount to demanding a return to workers punching in and punching out on arrival and departure, calling this impractical given modern working practices, smartphones, home offices and the like. Not really in agreement with the ruling but that's a dumb argument. Tons of tech contractors bill by the hour where accurately tracking time is a financial requirement.

consp 7y ago
True, And those same contractors do not take the hours worked off contract into account which by experience is combined always more than the stated work week hours. It's a cheap way to not deal with overtime.
- hn_throwaway_99 7y ago
  > And those same contractors do not take the hours worked off contract into account What do you mean? If I'm working on your project, I'm billing you for my time.

JanSt 7y ago

I'm punching in and out every day at work / in the home office. Either on a terminal or in the web browser. Best thing ever, takes 15 seconds a day. Being called at home (when not working) because of an emergency? At least 2 hours are added to my timesheet, even if I solve the problem in 5 minutes, so I only get called if it's really important. Adds a lot of sanity and stops abuse. We are very productive because we actually get to relax from work.

sonnyblarney 7y ago
That's great, but would be a contravention this new law apparently. The law doesn't want to know how much you bill or how much is allocated, but how much you actually work. I the context of labour, surely it makes sense, but there, most hours are logged. Outside of that it gets a little harder.
- JanSt 7y ago
  I'm not a contractor, I'm actually tracking the time I'm working.
  - sonnyblarney 7y ago
    "At least 2 hours are added to my timesheet, even if I solve the problem in 5 minutes," You explicitly stated you'd get tracked for 2 hours for 5 minutes of work. This differential - which you must have brought up for a reason - is specifically not what the law is trying to address.
    - JanSt 7y ago
      You should read up on the ruling. Every country has to implement it's own law. It's allowed to include specific regulations on these corner cases. (FYI, I'm still tracking the exact time, but the time I have to work gets reduced from 38 to 36 hours)
    - usrusr 7y ago
      That differential is also specifically not what the ruling is trying to prevent. What's off the table with this ruling is that a timesheet does not exist, because "we're all friends here, we trust our employees (to work themselves to exhaustion out of fear)"

sonnyblarney 7y ago

Maybe a better idea would be to spell out expectations, so there's at least transparency in terms of comp. I grab emails, take calls and do little things quite often in the evening, impromptu, it's rather difficult to measure all of that in many management functions.

mar77i 7y ago

The ruling is strange, because in my opinion part of a modern working environment would be driven by some form of mutual trust. If you put the burden of "proof of accomplishment" on the workers, that may stifle workplace attractiveness and pose a bureaucratic hurdle. Hence cracking down on untracked, yet (or even therefore) quality employment relationships would naturally appear a step in the wrong direction. I get it, the Spanish workers may not have shared such mutual trust with Deutsche Bank, but I don't get how that has to have consequences for everyone else? Or am I (and maybe even the reporting journalists) reading this wrong and work contracts may, and from now on have to specify otherwise explicitly, if that's how they do business?

phoe-krk 7y ago
> If you put the burden of "proof of accomplishment" on the workers, that may stifle workplace attractiveness and pose a bureaucratic hurdle. An example of such a system is a glorified Excel sheet, given to your manager monthly, where you write how many hours have you worked on a given workday and which project you should report the time on, if you have multiple. Getting acquainted with the system might take half an hour. Filling it in, in most trivial cases, is a copy-paste that takes up to five minutes a month. In case you have a more complicated case of working times, you should already be accustomed to noting down your work time daily, even if for your own good.
- mar77i 7y ago
  You have a point there, I stand corrected.
sgift 7y ago
> The ruling is strange, because in my opinion part of a modern working environment would be driven by some form of mutual trust. That's a nice theory which in most cases is abused by employers left and right. If you really have a mutual beneficial, trustful relationship with your employer this won't change it. If it does, it was all a lie.

iovrthoughtthis 7y ago

I worry this will have a negative impact on culture in work environments with more of a return to “bums in seats” management rather than outputs focussed management. That’s a pretty myopic view though many jobs have no objective outputs which makes hours one of the measurable metrics.

mordae 7y ago
This. It solves nothing, since the crooks will just continue to cook the books. This is already "mandatory" in Czechia and I have yet to hear about anyone being sued for not upholding the Labor Code. On the other hand, the tech employees will have to take extra care to manage their attendance sheet with arbitrary requirements such as no weekends and/or no late-night work contrary to the actual practice of being on-call as needed with it being already factored into the pay. Unless there is a significant bounty for employees who report such breaches for their current employer, the only businesses upholding the law are the very same businesses who would have done so nevertheless.

holstvoogd 7y ago

ITT: Office & IT workers who have no clue that this might not be just about them but the millions of factory workers, shop attendants, builders etc that are forced to work overtime without pay. And you better not say anything, because you are very replaceable. My personal experience? I've had to record my work times accurately for a few years, it was kinda annoying, but also freeing. Wanted to work in the weekend? no problem. Wanted to leave early or sleep in? no problem. Now I 'just kinda have to make sure I work my 40 hours' and always feel pressure to stay 9 till' 5 and do as little as possible outside of that.

maaaats 7y ago
It's a common theme here on HN when it comes to worker's rights and unions. Being a one-percenter where companies bend over backwards to cater to you, it's easy to dismiss these things.
- sweeeety 7y ago
  Not my experience in Europe though. My last two employers here constantly over promised (e.g.: unlimited vacations/parental leave, flexible hours, work from home, etc) and really really under delivered. I would rather have things set in stone first nowadays b/c the mindset of most managers here are still not ready for those.
  - maaaats 7y ago
    Unlimited PTO is more an American thing in my experience. And is never really unlimited as you will be judged when using it. In Europe it's common with 5+ weeks of vacation, which is also often mandatory by law to take.
    - sweeeety 7y ago
      well, what can I say, this company had a real problem following the union agreements and EU laws: no paid extra hours (on-call), no notice, no paternity leave according to local laws, etc. On the other hand, was really adamant to keep the 9:30 stand-up meeting for the sake of face time.

mcv 7y ago

I've got mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I hate the added administration of overly detailed time-keeping, on the other hand, it's often too easy to employers to pressure employees to work for more hours than they're actually paid. The gripping hand, though, is that many employers aren't interested in hours, but in results. If they just pay you for certain results, and getting those results takes too much time, is it because the employer is too demanding? Or is it an employee who is slow to do that kind of work, but still prefer it over other kinds of work? It might also lead employers to pressure employees to work faster within the hours they're supposed to work, and fire those who can't keep up. I don't think it's going to solve the problem of overly demanding employers, though it probably helps in some cases.

kerng 7y ago

Interesting how used I got to the compensation model of a lump sum per month (or every 2 weeks) for software engineering jobs. One of my first programming jobs required time tracking and so there was really no need to work more then 38 hours a week - because working more cost the company extra and always required approval from manager. Weekends and holidays were compensated 2x, during week after 5pm 1.5x I believe.

yason 7y ago

Traditionally, what is on the records and what happens in real life are two very different things. In each case I've seen in private companies, public offices, or universities, the timesheets are duly filled with what is expected and then the work and life continue as before.