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>I know people that connect everyday from home to the office network to work one or two hours (extra) otherwise it's impossible to keep up with the workload. T

>I know people that connect everyday from home to the office network to work one or two hours (extra) otherwise it's impossible to keep up with the workload. Then the work doesn't get completed on time! That's bad management not hiring enough people, not the fault of the employee. SMH y'all IT people need a union.

jusssi 6y ago
It's the difference between a junior and a senior. The latter has better expectations of what one can get done in an average workday, and the confidence to push back with "sorry, looks like this thing's more work than expected, going to need another two days for it". Btw. Looks like the Great America is woke and hates you for the word 'union' you used in your comment.
- bonestormii_ 6y ago
  The "confidence" of senior people to push back is greatly enhanced by the fact that they won't be expediently fired for doing so. And even so, plenty of senior positions suffer from this situation as well. I'm living this hell right now.
  - Hamuko 6y ago
    >The "confidence" of senior people to push back is greatly enhanced by the fact that they won't be expediently fired for doing so. There's a problem with your country if you can be fired for refusing overtime.
    - colejohnson66 6y ago
      (in America) There’s no such this as “overtime” in most salaried jobs though. You’re paid just for being an employee, not for hours worked. Whether you work 35 or 60 hours, it’s the same pay.[a] As a result, employers don’t have to worry about overtime pay, only burnt out employees (but entry and junior levels are disposable, right? /s) [a]: This also leads to the employer expecting one to be “on call” 24/7 regardless of your position.
      - Hamuko 6y ago
        >There’s no such this as “overtime” in most salaried jobs though. You’re paid just for being an employee, not for hours worked. If there's no concept of overtime in most salaried jobs, there's a problem with your country as well. I'm a salaried, full-time employee and I'm paid to work 37.5 hours a week, no more, no less. And the collective agreement for IT services industry (which is what concerns me as a developer) dictates that 40 hours/week is the maximum. If you want to read our collective agreement, you can find it here: https://tietoala.fi/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/TES__englanti_2020_web.pdf https://tietoala.fi/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/TES__englanti... Working hours are on page 19 (21 on the PDF).
        treis 6y ago
        And you probably get paid 1/3 to 1/2 of what a developer in the US can make. The reality of the world is that if you're the lead developer for some product you will have times that you need to work off hours. Like if production is down how can you say: "My 40 hours is up this week, I'll look at it on Monday". It's a balance. You shouldn't routinely be working a ton of nights and weekends. But sometimes shit hits the fan at inconvenient hours and you need to respond. If not, you have to have routine 24/7 coverage which gets really expensive really fast ultimately leading to lower salaries for developers.
        Symbiote 6y ago
        Is the American developer happier in life than the Finn? Do they have time to enjoy all that extra money? The 40 hours is averaged over several weeks (normally). You can have an extra 3 hours, but leave work at lunchtime the next day.
        treis 6y ago
        The American developer can retire in 1/3 to 1/2 the time of the Finn. And yes, I'd say working a bit more for that is an obvious yes.
  - BurningFrog 6y ago
    Then again, a competent senior engineer can easily get another job. I'm just one atypical person, but in my experience, the employer is usually more nervous about the employee breaking things off than the employee.
  - tdsamardzhiev 6y ago
    The juniors won’t be fired either, but they don’t know that and usually get abused because of it. If a company expects you to crunch, that means there’s too much work. If there’s too much work, it’s extremely unlikely that somebody doing a decent job would be fired.
  - MisterBastahrd 6y ago
    I currently work at an org where the least experienced dev has over 10 years of experience. Management is fine knowing that we will say what's on our minds if we don't think something is being handled properly.
- strictnein 6y ago
  > Looks like the Great America is woke and hates you for the word 'union' you used in your comment. Someday maybe our betters in Europe will understand that the American experience with unions is different than that of Europeans. And that American unions are a very different animal. Until that time, though, keep thinking we're just idiots.
  - stainforth 6y ago
    The destruction of unions in America was not for righteous reasons.
    - nickff 6y ago
      Previously-unionized industries declined in America, and new industries have been slow to unionize; I am not sure unions have been 'destroyed'.
      - MereInterest 6y ago
        So-called "Right to Work" laws mean that a union-negotiated contract may be made available to non-union members. At that point, the individually rational action is to leave the union, keep the dues, but benefit from the union's negotiation. As everybody does this, the union declines. "At-will employment" laws mean that the burden of proof for the cause of firing is on the employee, rather than the employer. This gives free rein to employer's to fire workers considering unionizing, so long as there is the barest pretext of another cause. As forming a union becomes economically risky, unions decline, or fail to form in new industries. Unions have been attacked in the US, through explicit policies meant to defund unions, and to prevent unions from forming.
    - eeZah7Ux 6y ago
      The level of anti-union violence in US is higher that what people might think: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_strike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_strike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-union_violence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-union_violence
bobthechef 6y ago
While I sympathize with the need to push back on bad management, the situation is a bit like being between a rock (bad management) and a hard place (unions). Tyranny of the few vs. tyranny of the majority or the mob. The latter is worse. It's also kind of a mediocre bandaid for deeper social problems. An employer that can get away with asking you to do unreasonable amounts of work, work ridiculous hours, or achieve impossible feats OR ELSE probably doesn't have much market competition. Also a quote from C.S. Lewis: “Of all the tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under the omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber barons cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
- tboyd47 6y ago
  That's an amazing quote.
  - minikites 6y ago
    Really? >The robber barons cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated. We wouldn't have any billionaires if this was even remotely true. If having 999 million dollars doesn't satiate you, I submit there is no amount of money that will. We look down on hoarders who fill their house with old newspapers and knickknacks but when it's money hoarding we lionize it.
    - tboyd47 6y ago
      I'm more interested in the bit about "omnipotent moral busybodies." If shutting down 100,000 businesses, pausing children's education including special education services for a whole year, forcing the entire populace to wear cloth masks, shutting down religious services protected by the Constitution, mandating where you can & can't stand in the grocery store, and demanding the right to censor the news on all digital platforms doesn't satisfy their thirst for power, I submit that no amount of power will.
chrisseaton 6y ago
> Then the work doesn't get completed on time! Do you realise in some fields work not getting completed on time could in some cases cause people to die? Sometimes there is an emergency, and a professional saying 'sorry nope on vacation your fault for not having enough people to cover every eventuality' just isn't reasonable.
- CalRobert 6y ago
  It is reasonable. The buck stops somewhere. If you're on call sure but there are rules around that. Don't guilt people who happen to have lifesaving jobs for taking vacations.
  - chrisseaton 6y ago
    > Don't guilt people who happen to have lifesaving jobs for taking vacations. In many cases taking that job means accepting you may be forced to come in and work. Often called 'unlimited liability' for example. If you can't accept that, then leave the job to someone who can. > The buck stops somewhere. In this case apparently it's fine for it to stop with a dead person.
    - notreallytrue 6y ago
      > In this case apparently it's fine for it to stop with a dead person. People that do a job where they can save lives accept the fact that saving lives is not granted. People don't die because someone is slacking. Do you realize how stupid that sounds?
      - chrisseaton 6y ago
        > People don't die because someone is slacking. Not sure where you read this argument?
        notreallytrue 6y ago
        That's a terrible apology... Free time is a right If someone dies during your free time it's not your responsibility Besides: US have the worst life expectation of the whole west. You should ask yourself why.
ericd 6y ago
Are you familiar with the mythical man month? Hiring more people might not get the same amount done as a few working really hard. That said, burnout can make working harder worse than working a sane amount. But that doesn’t fall on the employer as much as the employee.
- aaaxyz 6y ago
  >Hiring more people might not get the same amount done as a few working really hard. That is highly dependent on when the new employee is added to the project. If it's done early (as a result of proper planning), it's most likely not gonna hurt.
  - ericd 6y ago
    One of the key points of the mythical man month is that communication overhead starts taking a larger and larger chunk of the total productivity as you scale the number of people involved, just to keep everyone synced up and rowing in the same direction. It's not really based on when the people are added.
    - Viliam1234 6y ago
      There is definitely such thing as too many people. But with reasonable amount of people, if you start with the full team at the beginning, you can assign different responsibilities to different people. For example, one can do database, one can do web API, one can do web design, one can do integration with other systems, one can build and maintain continuous integration; you can also divide the domain knowledge among multiple people. Each person can focus on doing their part in such way that the others do not need to understand every single detail, and only use the agreed API. However, if you add a new person late in the project... all simple things were probably already done, and all difficult things require a lot of knowledge about the existing code, that other team members already know, but if they spend their time explaining it to the new member, then their own work gets slower, so the overall speed reduces. (And yes, given enough time, the new member would learn everything and become just as productive as the old members. But the thing is, there is not enough time left at that moment.)
centimeter 6y ago
> SMH y'all IT people need a union. Or just some balls. Don’t work more than you want to - either your employer will deal with it or you go find a new job. Not a big deal. I work fewer hours than the median person at my company and I don’t think it has negatively impacted me much or at all. Any time someone tries to get me to do something that would require working additional hours I just say no or take extra vacation days in lieu (eg if I need to do something for a few hours on Saturday - I take an extra vacation day to make up. If it’s not worth it for the company, it doesn’t really need to get done on sat). Literally the worst case is you get fired, but probably nothing will happen.

jusssi 6y ago

It's the difference between a junior and a senior. The latter has better expectations of what one can get done in an average workday, and the confidence to push back with "sorry, looks like this thing's more work than expected, going to need another two days for it". Btw. Looks like the Great America is woke and hates you for the word 'union' you used in your comment.

bonestormii_ 6y ago
The "confidence" of senior people to push back is greatly enhanced by the fact that they won't be expediently fired for doing so. And even so, plenty of senior positions suffer from this situation as well. I'm living this hell right now.
- Hamuko 6y ago
  >The "confidence" of senior people to push back is greatly enhanced by the fact that they won't be expediently fired for doing so. There's a problem with your country if you can be fired for refusing overtime.
  - colejohnson66 6y ago
    (in America) There’s no such this as “overtime” in most salaried jobs though. You’re paid just for being an employee, not for hours worked. Whether you work 35 or 60 hours, it’s the same pay.[a] As a result, employers don’t have to worry about overtime pay, only burnt out employees (but entry and junior levels are disposable, right? /s) [a]: This also leads to the employer expecting one to be “on call” 24/7 regardless of your position.
    - Hamuko 6y ago
      >There’s no such this as “overtime” in most salaried jobs though. You’re paid just for being an employee, not for hours worked. If there's no concept of overtime in most salaried jobs, there's a problem with your country as well. I'm a salaried, full-time employee and I'm paid to work 37.5 hours a week, no more, no less. And the collective agreement for IT services industry (which is what concerns me as a developer) dictates that 40 hours/week is the maximum. If you want to read our collective agreement, you can find it here: https://tietoala.fi/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/TES__englanti_2020_web.pdf https://tietoala.fi/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/TES__englanti... Working hours are on page 19 (21 on the PDF).
      - treis 6y ago
        And you probably get paid 1/3 to 1/2 of what a developer in the US can make. The reality of the world is that if you're the lead developer for some product you will have times that you need to work off hours. Like if production is down how can you say: "My 40 hours is up this week, I'll look at it on Monday". It's a balance. You shouldn't routinely be working a ton of nights and weekends. But sometimes shit hits the fan at inconvenient hours and you need to respond. If not, you have to have routine 24/7 coverage which gets really expensive really fast ultimately leading to lower salaries for developers.
        Symbiote 6y ago
        Is the American developer happier in life than the Finn? Do they have time to enjoy all that extra money? The 40 hours is averaged over several weeks (normally). You can have an extra 3 hours, but leave work at lunchtime the next day.
        treis 6y ago
        The American developer can retire in 1/3 to 1/2 the time of the Finn. And yes, I'd say working a bit more for that is an obvious yes.
- BurningFrog 6y ago
  Then again, a competent senior engineer can easily get another job. I'm just one atypical person, but in my experience, the employer is usually more nervous about the employee breaking things off than the employee.
- tdsamardzhiev 6y ago
  The juniors won’t be fired either, but they don’t know that and usually get abused because of it. If a company expects you to crunch, that means there’s too much work. If there’s too much work, it’s extremely unlikely that somebody doing a decent job would be fired.
- MisterBastahrd 6y ago
  I currently work at an org where the least experienced dev has over 10 years of experience. Management is fine knowing that we will say what's on our minds if we don't think something is being handled properly.
strictnein 6y ago
> Looks like the Great America is woke and hates you for the word 'union' you used in your comment. Someday maybe our betters in Europe will understand that the American experience with unions is different than that of Europeans. And that American unions are a very different animal. Until that time, though, keep thinking we're just idiots.
- stainforth 6y ago
  The destruction of unions in America was not for righteous reasons.
  - nickff 6y ago
    Previously-unionized industries declined in America, and new industries have been slow to unionize; I am not sure unions have been 'destroyed'.
    - MereInterest 6y ago
      So-called "Right to Work" laws mean that a union-negotiated contract may be made available to non-union members. At that point, the individually rational action is to leave the union, keep the dues, but benefit from the union's negotiation. As everybody does this, the union declines. "At-will employment" laws mean that the burden of proof for the cause of firing is on the employee, rather than the employer. This gives free rein to employer's to fire workers considering unionizing, so long as there is the barest pretext of another cause. As forming a union becomes economically risky, unions decline, or fail to form in new industries. Unions have been attacked in the US, through explicit policies meant to defund unions, and to prevent unions from forming.
  - eeZah7Ux 6y ago
    The level of anti-union violence in US is higher that what people might think: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_strike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_strike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-union_violence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-union_violence

bobthechef 6y ago

While I sympathize with the need to push back on bad management, the situation is a bit like being between a rock (bad management) and a hard place (unions). Tyranny of the few vs. tyranny of the majority or the mob. The latter is worse. It's also kind of a mediocre bandaid for deeper social problems. An employer that can get away with asking you to do unreasonable amounts of work, work ridiculous hours, or achieve impossible feats OR ELSE probably doesn't have much market competition. Also a quote from C.S. Lewis: “Of all the tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under the omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber barons cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”

tboyd47 6y ago
That's an amazing quote.
- minikites 6y ago
  Really? >The robber barons cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated. We wouldn't have any billionaires if this was even remotely true. If having 999 million dollars doesn't satiate you, I submit there is no amount of money that will. We look down on hoarders who fill their house with old newspapers and knickknacks but when it's money hoarding we lionize it.
  - tboyd47 6y ago
    I'm more interested in the bit about "omnipotent moral busybodies." If shutting down 100,000 businesses, pausing children's education including special education services for a whole year, forcing the entire populace to wear cloth masks, shutting down religious services protected by the Constitution, mandating where you can & can't stand in the grocery store, and demanding the right to censor the news on all digital platforms doesn't satisfy their thirst for power, I submit that no amount of power will.

chrisseaton 6y ago

> Then the work doesn't get completed on time! Do you realise in some fields work not getting completed on time could in some cases cause people to die? Sometimes there is an emergency, and a professional saying 'sorry nope on vacation your fault for not having enough people to cover every eventuality' just isn't reasonable.

CalRobert 6y ago
It is reasonable. The buck stops somewhere. If you're on call sure but there are rules around that. Don't guilt people who happen to have lifesaving jobs for taking vacations.
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  > Don't guilt people who happen to have lifesaving jobs for taking vacations. In many cases taking that job means accepting you may be forced to come in and work. Often called 'unlimited liability' for example. If you can't accept that, then leave the job to someone who can. > The buck stops somewhere. In this case apparently it's fine for it to stop with a dead person.
  - notreallytrue 6y ago
    > In this case apparently it's fine for it to stop with a dead person. People that do a job where they can save lives accept the fact that saving lives is not granted. People don't die because someone is slacking. Do you realize how stupid that sounds?
    - chrisseaton 6y ago
      > People don't die because someone is slacking. Not sure where you read this argument?
      - notreallytrue 6y ago
        That's a terrible apology... Free time is a right If someone dies during your free time it's not your responsibility Besides: US have the worst life expectation of the whole west. You should ask yourself why.

ericd 6y ago

Are you familiar with the mythical man month? Hiring more people might not get the same amount done as a few working really hard. That said, burnout can make working harder worse than working a sane amount. But that doesn’t fall on the employer as much as the employee.

aaaxyz 6y ago
>Hiring more people might not get the same amount done as a few working really hard. That is highly dependent on when the new employee is added to the project. If it's done early (as a result of proper planning), it's most likely not gonna hurt.
- ericd 6y ago
  One of the key points of the mythical man month is that communication overhead starts taking a larger and larger chunk of the total productivity as you scale the number of people involved, just to keep everyone synced up and rowing in the same direction. It's not really based on when the people are added.
  - Viliam1234 6y ago
    There is definitely such thing as too many people. But with reasonable amount of people, if you start with the full team at the beginning, you can assign different responsibilities to different people. For example, one can do database, one can do web API, one can do web design, one can do integration with other systems, one can build and maintain continuous integration; you can also divide the domain knowledge among multiple people. Each person can focus on doing their part in such way that the others do not need to understand every single detail, and only use the agreed API. However, if you add a new person late in the project... all simple things were probably already done, and all difficult things require a lot of knowledge about the existing code, that other team members already know, but if they spend their time explaining it to the new member, then their own work gets slower, so the overall speed reduces. (And yes, given enough time, the new member would learn everything and become just as productive as the old members. But the thing is, there is not enough time left at that moment.)

centimeter 6y ago

> SMH y'all IT people need a union. Or just some balls. Don’t work more than you want to - either your employer will deal with it or you go find a new job. Not a big deal. I work fewer hours than the median person at my company and I don’t think it has negatively impacted me much or at all. Any time someone tries to get me to do something that would require working additional hours I just say no or take extra vacation days in lieu (eg if I need to do something for a few hours on Saturday - I take an extra vacation day to make up. If it’s not worth it for the company, it doesn’t really need to get done on sat). Literally the worst case is you get fired, but probably nothing will happen.