5 ms·

You can’t compensate me enough to put in more than 40-45 hours a week. I get paid because of my expertise. Not because I’m willing to work for 70 hours a week.

kmlx 4y ago
> You can’t compensate me enough to put in more than 40-45 hours a week. some IT companies I worked for in a past life paid for overtime. it was a lot more than what you would get regularly and lots of coworkers did it. is this not a general experience? are companies not paying for overtime?
- saurik 4y ago
  They are saying that their life is more important to them than a pittance of extra money and there is no amount of overtime (within reason, assuredly: if I were willing to pay a billion dollars an hour that would likely work for at least the 46th hour ;P) that would convince them to stay and work longer than a reasonable amount of time.
- hansel_der 4y ago
  > are companies not paying for overtime? ime for most white collar contracts: no maybe because time tracking (esp. with remote work) is trust based and hence essentially just a formality where noone expects the employee to report under-time.
- efficax 4y ago
  in salaried positions in the us, you will never get overtime pay.
  - jrs235 4y ago
    This is a misunderstanding. Whether one is entitled to overtime or not depends on whether they are exempt or non exempt, not if they are hourly or salary. However, generally salaried positions won't be paid overtime because everyone thinks they [all] are exempt or should be, even though they may be incorrectly classified as such. A side note: there is one situation where you can have hourly exempt (meaning you are paid for how worked but not at 1.5 times hourly rate) which is "computer professionals" classification. Very few folks, even in HR, know this. Partly because just about 100% "computer professional" jobs are paid salary instead of hourly.
- zeristor 4y ago
  Perhaps I’m a bit slow. But there seems to be a lot of “time in lieu”, work extra take the time off. But that’s only a 1 to 1 ratio, not 1.5 or 2.0, and.
- makeitdouble 4y ago
  Overtime is usually paid on a curve with about 20~25% per hour more for regular overtime, and 50% for sundays and special days (from memory). That’s just not worth it for many people. I too wouldn’t give away a weekend for that money, considering I’ll be in a zombie state for the next two weeks and would probably straight get sick and waste many more days in paid leave depending on the timing. Even the money I’d spend to compensate for the stress could burn through the surplus. It would of course be a different proposition if I was someone who could work for weeks without any impact, I know some people fit the bill, just not me. PS: Forgot one of the most important aspect when you have family: is your overtime pay worth the time you’re not spending with them, especially on weekends ?
  - runamok 4y ago
    For "non-exempt" the general rate for overtime is "time and a half" aka 1.5 times your hourly rate. Holidays were usually double. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-and-a-half https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-and-a-half
  - rightbyte 4y ago
    It might be worth it to work Sundays for 50% more if you don't work Mondays. Cashiers where I live have those terms. And young people without children benefit alot from the deal.
- pjmlp 4y ago
  I get paid for overtime, yet I rather spend that time with family and friends than working to get sooner into the grave without enjoying life. Additionally those sacrifices won't count anything when it comes to select who's going away in the next layoffs round. The guy doing 40h is getting the same as the overworked ones doing 60h plus. Plus in Germany it is illegal to do more than 10h per day anyway.
  - gadflyinyoureye 4y ago
    I'd rather get paid to get in the grave sooner while having no debt on a home. I find most of existence boring, but don't enjoy the process of leaving this realm. Therefore I'd rather have a nice prison that I own as quickly as possible than to have freedom to stew in this hell hole with debt.
    - pjmlp 4y ago
      The first step is to avoid debt in first place. Only buy what one can afford, subscriptions only for infrastructure, credits only those that one can afford to pay from saving and no longer than 3 years. I have been doing this for quite a while, no need to get rich, not even money can cure everything, only make it less painful.
      - Xylakant 4y ago
        That’s going to be hard to buy a flat/house then, or at least inefficient. The mortgage I paid on my flat was initially higher than the rent for a comparable flat. Within a few years, it evened out, and now it’s less. Financially, this has been a good decision to take on that debt. The important part is that the mortgage was backed by an asset - I could have decided to sell the flat and pay back the debt at any time.
        scarface74 4y ago
        Even today, your average enterprise CRUD developer with 3-5 years of experience in many major cities in the US can afford home using the standard metric of 3.5x your income. Not everyone needs or wants to live on the west coast.
- scarface74 4y ago
  Once you have “enough” money ceases to be the motivating factor.
- TheCleric 4y ago
  I have never been paid overtime in my multi-decade career.
- kevingadd 4y ago
  I've never been paid overtime in my entire career, and I've definitely worked overtime. Maybe if your boss is nice you get a PTO day.
bfung 4y ago
This statement actually got me thinking: > I get paid because of my expertise. Agree. > You cant’s compensate me enough to put in more than 40-45 hours a week Disagree. (There’s probably a speed to results + pay that has value here) The assumption is that there’s way more work to do than possible to finish.
- XorNot 4y ago
  The thing is if you can't budget the process into a regular work week, what is wrong with your project management? And why would throwing more hours at the problem fix it? In exceptional circumstances this would be true, but I seriously doubt many company's actually have those (as opposed to managers pushing the panic button at the last second after ignoring issues for months).
  - scarface74 4y ago
    I had “exceptional circumstances” once in my career. At my first tech lead job working for a company that sent home health care workers to take care of special needs kids. The field workers were making around $12-$17 hour (government reimbursement rates suck). I was leading an integration effort based on my own designs and we were migrating off of their current payment platform. If the integration efforts didn’t get done by a cut off date around Christmas, they would have received paper checks late. The office salaried workers wouldn’t have been affected. My management said that was an ok alternative - I vehemently disagreed. I fought for my team to get comp time and bonuses for working over time to meet the deadline. I could also see mandated overtime at TurboTax. You have hard deadlines to meet and often the “requirements” aren’t set by the government until late.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - danaris 4y ago
      Yeah, but TurboTax (et al) actually lobbies to keep those requirements high and changing, specifically to increase their own profits. Yes, in any given year, the specific nature and timing of the requirements may be out of their hands, but in aggregate, they absolutely bear some responsibility for that. Furthermore, it should also be their responsibility to ensure they have enough trained staff on hand to handle the tax season rush without harming their employees.
wiseowise 4y ago
Just say that you don’t work overtime. Being diva just looks and sounds cringe.
- JaumeGreen 4y ago
  Where I live 50 is already overtime. Not wanting to sacrifice your mental, social, and physical health for an indeterminate amount of money is not being a diva.
  - wiseowise 4y ago
    Wording matters. > I won’t work overtime Is personal preference. > You *can’t* pay me enough to work overtime Is being diva, implying that there is imaginable number of money that can convince them to do so.
    - bratbag 4y ago
      I imagine there is, even for people who said they just won't. So not a diva. Just honest.
- scarface74 4y ago
  I make “enough” now that more money doesn’t have an impact on my life. I made “enough” when I was making in the $150s in 2020 that we didn’t even notice the difference when I fell into my current BigTech job where the intern I mentored got a return offer that was that much. We already had the big house in the burbs, retirement savings, etc. We are spending less per month now than we were when we already had “enough”. See the story of the Mexican fisherman. https://bemorewithless.com/the-story-of-the-mexican-fisherman/ https://bemorewithless.com/the-story-of-the-mexican-fisherma...
thot_experiment 4y ago
You CAN compensate me enough to put in more than 40 hours a week, however, you have to be aware that the cost of my time is ONLY determined by how much free, contiguous time I have. You're paying to disrupt my life, the more you disrupt it the more you have to pay.
- scarface74 4y ago
  If Elon Musk called you today would you work at Twitter for twice your current compensation?
  - PenguinCoder 4y ago
    Not a chance in hell.
  - thot_experiment 4y ago
    No lol, ahahahahah. He was saying 60+ hrs right? That means I have 52 hours free, and he wanted me to be there in person too right? So that's another 4-6 hours commuting. Then even being incredibly efficient it usually takes me about 2 hrs/day to do life upkeep stuff, so that's 14 hrs there, so that's 32 free hours/wk? All split up into small chunks too. That's really approaching "effectively zero time to do things that are important to me". You only have one life to live and while money enables some things, free time is much more precious. It's really hard to see a justification for giving up that much capacity for self determination.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
teerak 4y ago
Honestly, these days I'm doing closer to 20 hours of real work and that's fine in most gigs.
Nursie 4y ago
I'm mercenary enough that for a while, I could be paid enough. The client would be informed that they are unlikely to see any gain in productivity by doing so, but I'll happily take a hefty extra fee for a longer week, for a while, then take a few months off on the proceeds.
- scarface74 4y ago
  I’ve had plenty of chances before my current job to do a side contract that could have netted me $150/hour when I was making $150K I declined each time. Anything we couldn’t afford from my working 40 hours a week we didn’t need.
walkhour 4y ago
Good for you that you're so competent that you can work smart instead of hard, some people aren't as smart, and they need to work hard and longer to achieve the same you achieve in less time.
- scarface74 4y ago
  I know a lot of skilled craftsmen who are very adamant about not putting in extra hours - plumbers, electricians, car repairmen who own their own business, etc. My dad is a retired factory worker and he turned down overtime opportunities a lot during the latter part of his career. My mom (teacher) and my dad retired in their mid 50s and are still going strong at 77 and 80. They had ordinary middle class jobs and never got involved in the rat race.
  - walkhour 4y ago
    Did they incidentally live through the biggest economic boom humanity has ever seen? I don't think your parents decisions are an option for most people that want the same lifestyle as them.
    - scarface74 4y ago
      My mom as a teacher never got above cost of living raises after she got her masters early in her career. Her retirement is a combination of a government pension and social security. My dad as a factory worker just got shares of middling performing consumer goods company (Proctor and Gamble) for his retirement. They bought a house in 1978 in southern Georgia where they still live. It only increased in value along with inflation.
- ryanbrunner 4y ago
  Numerous studies have shown that in the long term, working excessive hours is a net reduction in productivity. You're achieving less by working more hours, particularly for knowledge work.
  - 4y ago
scruple 4y ago
Same. Hard stop at 40 hours. I have a family today, I have more important things to do. I wish everyone had the ability to not be afraid of their employer, it's liberating.
matheusmoreira 4y ago
Everyone has their price. I'd happily work long hours if it paid lots of money.
- scarface74 4y ago
  I seriously don’t have a price. I’ll be 49 years old and I’m living ny dream - everything my wife and I physically own are in three suitcases. We moved out of house two months ago and started “nomadding” across the US. We are settling into a grove of traveling six months, flying across the US with a couple of stays in Canada and Mexico, staying in hotels and the other six months living in what would usually be considered a second home/investment property. There is no amount of money that would make me give up my dream.

kmlx 4y ago

> You can’t compensate me enough to put in more than 40-45 hours a week. some IT companies I worked for in a past life paid for overtime. it was a lot more than what you would get regularly and lots of coworkers did it. is this not a general experience? are companies not paying for overtime?

saurik 4y ago
They are saying that their life is more important to them than a pittance of extra money and there is no amount of overtime (within reason, assuredly: if I were willing to pay a billion dollars an hour that would likely work for at least the 46th hour ;P) that would convince them to stay and work longer than a reasonable amount of time.
hansel_der 4y ago
> are companies not paying for overtime? ime for most white collar contracts: no maybe because time tracking (esp. with remote work) is trust based and hence essentially just a formality where noone expects the employee to report under-time.
efficax 4y ago
in salaried positions in the us, you will never get overtime pay.
- jrs235 4y ago
  This is a misunderstanding. Whether one is entitled to overtime or not depends on whether they are exempt or non exempt, not if they are hourly or salary. However, generally salaried positions won't be paid overtime because everyone thinks they [all] are exempt or should be, even though they may be incorrectly classified as such. A side note: there is one situation where you can have hourly exempt (meaning you are paid for how worked but not at 1.5 times hourly rate) which is "computer professionals" classification. Very few folks, even in HR, know this. Partly because just about 100% "computer professional" jobs are paid salary instead of hourly.
zeristor 4y ago
Perhaps I’m a bit slow. But there seems to be a lot of “time in lieu”, work extra take the time off. But that’s only a 1 to 1 ratio, not 1.5 or 2.0, and.
makeitdouble 4y ago
Overtime is usually paid on a curve with about 20~25% per hour more for regular overtime, and 50% for sundays and special days (from memory). That’s just not worth it for many people. I too wouldn’t give away a weekend for that money, considering I’ll be in a zombie state for the next two weeks and would probably straight get sick and waste many more days in paid leave depending on the timing. Even the money I’d spend to compensate for the stress could burn through the surplus. It would of course be a different proposition if I was someone who could work for weeks without any impact, I know some people fit the bill, just not me. PS: Forgot one of the most important aspect when you have family: is your overtime pay worth the time you’re not spending with them, especially on weekends ?
- runamok 4y ago
  For "non-exempt" the general rate for overtime is "time and a half" aka 1.5 times your hourly rate. Holidays were usually double. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-and-a-half https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-and-a-half
- rightbyte 4y ago
  It might be worth it to work Sundays for 50% more if you don't work Mondays. Cashiers where I live have those terms. And young people without children benefit alot from the deal.
pjmlp 4y ago
I get paid for overtime, yet I rather spend that time with family and friends than working to get sooner into the grave without enjoying life. Additionally those sacrifices won't count anything when it comes to select who's going away in the next layoffs round. The guy doing 40h is getting the same as the overworked ones doing 60h plus. Plus in Germany it is illegal to do more than 10h per day anyway.
- gadflyinyoureye 4y ago
  I'd rather get paid to get in the grave sooner while having no debt on a home. I find most of existence boring, but don't enjoy the process of leaving this realm. Therefore I'd rather have a nice prison that I own as quickly as possible than to have freedom to stew in this hell hole with debt.
  - pjmlp 4y ago
    The first step is to avoid debt in first place. Only buy what one can afford, subscriptions only for infrastructure, credits only those that one can afford to pay from saving and no longer than 3 years. I have been doing this for quite a while, no need to get rich, not even money can cure everything, only make it less painful.
    - Xylakant 4y ago
      That’s going to be hard to buy a flat/house then, or at least inefficient. The mortgage I paid on my flat was initially higher than the rent for a comparable flat. Within a few years, it evened out, and now it’s less. Financially, this has been a good decision to take on that debt. The important part is that the mortgage was backed by an asset - I could have decided to sell the flat and pay back the debt at any time.
      - scarface74 4y ago
        Even today, your average enterprise CRUD developer with 3-5 years of experience in many major cities in the US can afford home using the standard metric of 3.5x your income. Not everyone needs or wants to live on the west coast.
scarface74 4y ago
Once you have “enough” money ceases to be the motivating factor.
TheCleric 4y ago
I have never been paid overtime in my multi-decade career.
kevingadd 4y ago
I've never been paid overtime in my entire career, and I've definitely worked overtime. Maybe if your boss is nice you get a PTO day.

bfung 4y ago

This statement actually got me thinking: > I get paid because of my expertise. Agree. > You cant’s compensate me enough to put in more than 40-45 hours a week Disagree. (There’s probably a speed to results + pay that has value here) The assumption is that there’s way more work to do than possible to finish.

XorNot 4y ago
The thing is if you can't budget the process into a regular work week, what is wrong with your project management? And why would throwing more hours at the problem fix it? In exceptional circumstances this would be true, but I seriously doubt many company's actually have those (as opposed to managers pushing the panic button at the last second after ignoring issues for months).
- scarface74 4y ago
  I had “exceptional circumstances” once in my career. At my first tech lead job working for a company that sent home health care workers to take care of special needs kids. The field workers were making around $12-$17 hour (government reimbursement rates suck). I was leading an integration effort based on my own designs and we were migrating off of their current payment platform. If the integration efforts didn’t get done by a cut off date around Christmas, they would have received paper checks late. The office salaried workers wouldn’t have been affected. My management said that was an ok alternative - I vehemently disagreed. I fought for my team to get comp time and bonuses for working over time to meet the deadline. I could also see mandated overtime at TurboTax. You have hard deadlines to meet and often the “requirements” aren’t set by the government until late.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - danaris 4y ago
    Yeah, but TurboTax (et al) actually lobbies to keep those requirements high and changing, specifically to increase their own profits. Yes, in any given year, the specific nature and timing of the requirements may be out of their hands, but in aggregate, they absolutely bear some responsibility for that. Furthermore, it should also be their responsibility to ensure they have enough trained staff on hand to handle the tax season rush without harming their employees.

wiseowise 4y ago

Just say that you don’t work overtime. Being diva just looks and sounds cringe.

JaumeGreen 4y ago
Where I live 50 is already overtime. Not wanting to sacrifice your mental, social, and physical health for an indeterminate amount of money is not being a diva.
- wiseowise 4y ago
  Wording matters. > I won’t work overtime Is personal preference. > You *can’t* pay me enough to work overtime Is being diva, implying that there is imaginable number of money that can convince them to do so.
  - bratbag 4y ago
    I imagine there is, even for people who said they just won't. So not a diva. Just honest.
scarface74 4y ago
I make “enough” now that more money doesn’t have an impact on my life. I made “enough” when I was making in the $150s in 2020 that we didn’t even notice the difference when I fell into my current BigTech job where the intern I mentored got a return offer that was that much. We already had the big house in the burbs, retirement savings, etc. We are spending less per month now than we were when we already had “enough”. See the story of the Mexican fisherman. https://bemorewithless.com/the-story-of-the-mexican-fisherman/ https://bemorewithless.com/the-story-of-the-mexican-fisherma...

thot_experiment 4y ago

You CAN compensate me enough to put in more than 40 hours a week, however, you have to be aware that the cost of my time is ONLY determined by how much free, contiguous time I have. You're paying to disrupt my life, the more you disrupt it the more you have to pay.

scarface74 4y ago
If Elon Musk called you today would you work at Twitter for twice your current compensation?
- PenguinCoder 4y ago
  Not a chance in hell.
- thot_experiment 4y ago
  No lol, ahahahahah. He was saying 60+ hrs right? That means I have 52 hours free, and he wanted me to be there in person too right? So that's another 4-6 hours commuting. Then even being incredibly efficient it usually takes me about 2 hrs/day to do life upkeep stuff, so that's 14 hrs there, so that's 32 free hours/wk? All split up into small chunks too. That's really approaching "effectively zero time to do things that are important to me". You only have one life to live and while money enables some things, free time is much more precious. It's really hard to see a justification for giving up that much capacity for self determination.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

teerak 4y ago

Honestly, these days I'm doing closer to 20 hours of real work and that's fine in most gigs.

Nursie 4y ago

I'm mercenary enough that for a while, I could be paid enough. The client would be informed that they are unlikely to see any gain in productivity by doing so, but I'll happily take a hefty extra fee for a longer week, for a while, then take a few months off on the proceeds.

scarface74 4y ago
I’ve had plenty of chances before my current job to do a side contract that could have netted me $150/hour when I was making $150K I declined each time. Anything we couldn’t afford from my working 40 hours a week we didn’t need.

walkhour 4y ago

Good for you that you're so competent that you can work smart instead of hard, some people aren't as smart, and they need to work hard and longer to achieve the same you achieve in less time.

scarface74 4y ago
I know a lot of skilled craftsmen who are very adamant about not putting in extra hours - plumbers, electricians, car repairmen who own their own business, etc. My dad is a retired factory worker and he turned down overtime opportunities a lot during the latter part of his career. My mom (teacher) and my dad retired in their mid 50s and are still going strong at 77 and 80. They had ordinary middle class jobs and never got involved in the rat race.
- walkhour 4y ago
  Did they incidentally live through the biggest economic boom humanity has ever seen? I don't think your parents decisions are an option for most people that want the same lifestyle as them.
  - scarface74 4y ago
    My mom as a teacher never got above cost of living raises after she got her masters early in her career. Her retirement is a combination of a government pension and social security. My dad as a factory worker just got shares of middling performing consumer goods company (Proctor and Gamble) for his retirement. They bought a house in 1978 in southern Georgia where they still live. It only increased in value along with inflation.
ryanbrunner 4y ago
Numerous studies have shown that in the long term, working excessive hours is a net reduction in productivity. You're achieving less by working more hours, particularly for knowledge work.
- 4y ago

scruple 4y ago

Same. Hard stop at 40 hours. I have a family today, I have more important things to do. I wish everyone had the ability to not be afraid of their employer, it's liberating.

matheusmoreira 4y ago

Everyone has their price. I'd happily work long hours if it paid lots of money.

scarface74 4y ago
I seriously don’t have a price. I’ll be 49 years old and I’m living ny dream - everything my wife and I physically own are in three suitcases. We moved out of house two months ago and started “nomadding” across the US. We are settling into a grove of traveling six months, flying across the US with a couple of stays in Canada and Mexico, staying in hotels and the other six months living in what would usually be considered a second home/investment property. There is no amount of money that would make me give up my dream.