4 ms·

At least in the states most places require you to "make up" your lunch. So normally you'd show up at 8 and work until 5 to make up for an hour lunch. This is tr

by xf1cf 5y ago

At least in the states most places require you to "make up" your lunch. So normally you'd show up at 8 and work until 5 to make up for an hour lunch. This is true for both hourly and salary.

viceroyalbean 5y ago
I think the question is whether that "make up" time is always 1 hour or can be adjusted. At my previous job I would regularly take 15 minute lunch breaks and leave 45 minutes early (compared to a 1 hour lunch). Where I work now local laws require taking at least 1 hours of breaktime per day so I can technically not do that.
- xf1cf 5y ago
  I think this is based on local laws, yeah. Where I am at you're required to take a 30 minute break for 6 hours of work. The stipulation is that 30 minutes must be a continuous 30 minutes. I'm not aware of any law anywhere that says you can't just make your last 30 minutes of the day "lunch" but every company I've ever worked at has frowned upon or discouraged this. Usually by "forced clockouts" ostensibly for legal protection. My salary career has been more lenient but when I was an hourly employee if we ran over the 6 hours we'd get yelled at by HR and/or force clocked out (and told to go to lunch). Labor laws in the states are quite precarious for employers so it's semi-understandable why they do this.
irrational 5y ago
That’s insane. I’m in the states, but my company treats us like adults. I roll in when I want, work out in the gym for 2 hours during the day, leave whenever I want. I can’t imagine working for a place that tracked my hours.
- ghshephard 5y ago
  You've never worked at a job where you had to submit time sheets at the end of each week? Lots of "professional" gigs where people have to do that in order to accurately track time to customers - particularly when they are billing you out at $500/hour on the contract.
  - MereInterest 5y ago
    "Billable hours" != "Working hours". A lawyer may work 70 hours/week to produce 40 billable hours/week. That doesn't mean that they aren't working for 70 hours per week. It just means that the "8 for what we will" and "8 for sleep" have been shaved thin and added to the "8 for work" by shady accounting of time.
    - Sanguinaire 5y ago
      Yup - I stumbled into consulting in my first job and carried on doing it in my second, timesheets are the main source of misery/annoyance for me. Non-consultant, non-sales roles are hard to find for people who are technically focused but not actual software developers.
  - irrational 5y ago
    Nope. Never. I guess I've been lucky, but now that I know how pleasant work can be, I don't think I'd ever stay with a job that was that way.
  - ryandrake 5y ago
    Most software employers I’ve worked for had us fill out time sheets, and they didn’t do hourly consulting so no need to calculate hours for clients. I only recently found an employer who does not require a time sheet. I thought this was pretty standard, at least in the USA. There will definitely be someone who replies to this comment and says “I’ve been working 20 years and never had to fill out a time sheet.” So it’s probably not universal.
- bjustin 5y ago
  Lucky for me, I’ve had the same experience at multiple jobs. I’ve kept these kinds of “lax” habits at places where other people spend 9+ hours at their desks every day. I always thought it was a waste for other people to work long hours when it wasn’t even a company policy and I never got flak for my hours. Maybe more people at bigcorps can do this if they explain it and show they can still be productive.
_delirium 5y ago
True in a lot of places, e.g. even in pretty labor-friendly Denmark, most union agreements in the private sector call for a 37-hour work week, but with lunch not counted as working time. So workers typically take short 30-minute lunches to avoid extending the day more. The public-sector unions have managed to get 37 hours with a 30-minute lunch counted though.

by xf1cf 5y ago

At least in the states most places require you to "make up" your lunch. So normally you'd show up at 8 and work until 5 to make up for an hour lunch. This is true for both hourly and salary.

viceroyalbean 5y ago

I think the question is whether that "make up" time is always 1 hour or can be adjusted. At my previous job I would regularly take 15 minute lunch breaks and leave 45 minutes early (compared to a 1 hour lunch). Where I work now local laws require taking at least 1 hours of breaktime per day so I can technically not do that.

xf1cf 5y ago
I think this is based on local laws, yeah. Where I am at you're required to take a 30 minute break for 6 hours of work. The stipulation is that 30 minutes must be a continuous 30 minutes. I'm not aware of any law anywhere that says you can't just make your last 30 minutes of the day "lunch" but every company I've ever worked at has frowned upon or discouraged this. Usually by "forced clockouts" ostensibly for legal protection. My salary career has been more lenient but when I was an hourly employee if we ran over the 6 hours we'd get yelled at by HR and/or force clocked out (and told to go to lunch). Labor laws in the states are quite precarious for employers so it's semi-understandable why they do this.

irrational 5y ago

That’s insane. I’m in the states, but my company treats us like adults. I roll in when I want, work out in the gym for 2 hours during the day, leave whenever I want. I can’t imagine working for a place that tracked my hours.

ghshephard 5y ago
You've never worked at a job where you had to submit time sheets at the end of each week? Lots of "professional" gigs where people have to do that in order to accurately track time to customers - particularly when they are billing you out at $500/hour on the contract.
- MereInterest 5y ago
  "Billable hours" != "Working hours". A lawyer may work 70 hours/week to produce 40 billable hours/week. That doesn't mean that they aren't working for 70 hours per week. It just means that the "8 for what we will" and "8 for sleep" have been shaved thin and added to the "8 for work" by shady accounting of time.
  - Sanguinaire 5y ago
    Yup - I stumbled into consulting in my first job and carried on doing it in my second, timesheets are the main source of misery/annoyance for me. Non-consultant, non-sales roles are hard to find for people who are technically focused but not actual software developers.
- irrational 5y ago
  Nope. Never. I guess I've been lucky, but now that I know how pleasant work can be, I don't think I'd ever stay with a job that was that way.
- ryandrake 5y ago
  Most software employers I’ve worked for had us fill out time sheets, and they didn’t do hourly consulting so no need to calculate hours for clients. I only recently found an employer who does not require a time sheet. I thought this was pretty standard, at least in the USA. There will definitely be someone who replies to this comment and says “I’ve been working 20 years and never had to fill out a time sheet.” So it’s probably not universal.
bjustin 5y ago
Lucky for me, I’ve had the same experience at multiple jobs. I’ve kept these kinds of “lax” habits at places where other people spend 9+ hours at their desks every day. I always thought it was a waste for other people to work long hours when it wasn’t even a company policy and I never got flak for my hours. Maybe more people at bigcorps can do this if they explain it and show they can still be productive.

_delirium 5y ago

True in a lot of places, e.g. even in pretty labor-friendly Denmark, most union agreements in the private sector call for a 37-hour work week, but with lunch not counted as working time. So workers typically take short 30-minute lunches to avoid extending the day more. The public-sector unions have managed to get 37 hours with a 30-minute lunch counted though.