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Why I Don't Do Unpaid Overtime and Neither Should You

• deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
• thurn 15y ago
  You should be paid to do a fixed amount of work (generate a certain amount of value for your employer), not work a fixed number of hours. If you can get that work done in 10 hours a week, everybody wins. If you need to work 70 hours a week to do that work, well, maybe you're not a good fit for the job.
  • okamiueru 15y ago
    How do you consider the factor "good work"? You can finish a job quickly, but it'll bite you (or a coworker) in the ass later, or you can do the job well, but take you longer. As a programmer, I can't thing of a worse way of management than the former. You'd have to start defining criteria for "good work", and then spend tons of time reviewing. Nightmare.
  • RDDavies 15y ago
    ^I'm inclined to agree with you. There's definitely NOT an economy of scale when it comes to developer productivity. Sure, my company has some guys making $60K a year, but they certainly get a lot less than half or a third as much as the senior-level folks. I've got a lot more to say on this, perhaps a blog entry is in order.
  • robryan 15y ago
    For a big company at least, I feel that this is an ideal world solution rather than a real world one. The amount of hours tasks take are going to be really hard to estimate, meaning that your work hours will on part depend on the luck of tasks allocated. Also you will have plenty of people out to game this by setting low expectations of what can be achieved in the week and making those in less hours.
  • fmx 15y ago
    The problem with that is measuring the amount of value you generate. For some jobs that's easy, like sales - and those jobs typically do pay based on the value generated (ie. commission), at least in part. But for software development and other knowledge worker jobs it's just about impossible.
  • praptak 15y ago
    I haven't heard of a company that lets you idle even if you produce an average employee's week output in a day. The 'fixed amount of work' only works one way. You need 70 h to do it? Stay long hours. You did it in 20 hours? Well great, we'll just pile more work on you.
• wyclif 15y ago
  which is not all that common in this industry In context, it sounds like he means "which is not uncommon in this industry."
• cletus 15y ago
  This is a rant that's a bit all over the place. The author points out a lot of exceptions (eg working at a startup or somewhere where you might get something out of it). If you take out all those exceptions, you basically end up with the crap jobs. The real problems with a crap job isn't the unpaid overtimes... it's that it's a crap jobs. The fact is though, you get as much out of pretty much anything in life as you put in. If you want to working 9-5 5 days a week, you can probably find a job that'll let you do that if you try, which is fine, but I probably wouldn't expect anything but stagnating in it. I too have been a contractor. Never again. It's the ultimate in transactional work [1]. When I did do it though, I always negotiated an hourly rate. Employers love a daily rate because what is a day exactly? An hour is unambiguous. Health insurance in the US is a problem. This is known. The lack of vacation here is (IMHO) a problem too. I now have a great job and I have it because I put in effort (both at work and outside). YMMV. [1]: http://cdixon.org/2009/10/23/twelve-months-notice/ http://cdixon.org/2009/10/23/twelve-months-notice/
  • moocow01 15y ago
    Sorry but I have to disagree. Thats a great philosophy for employer's to pitch and I suppose one that I might pitch to employees if I were employing them but is also in my experience a fallacy. Especially after working for a number of years and "rising through the ranks" jobs become "just" jobs - a decent way to receive a steady income and hopefully a way to enjoy and challenge yourself to a certain degree. I'd argue that the jobs that expect work outside of 9-5 / 5 days per week have some of the worst 'returns' of any. I avoid them like the plague in that it usually signals something wrong with the company. My current job is strictly 9-5 and is one of the most rewarding and interesting jobs I've ever had.
  • BadassFractal 15y ago
    I agree that if your own health and that of your family didn't depend on your employer liking you, true at-will employment would be a lot more realistic. Right now many people are afraid of rocking the boat too much or to stand up for themselves because in case they get fired they might go bankrupt in case of an accident (I think realistically it might not be as dramatic, I think COBRA retroactively applies to whatever issues you might have encountered in between real health care plans). If your manager doesn't care about work-life balance and is perfectly happy with making you work 60+ hour weeks without any sort of compensation, be it in money or time-off, your best bet is to start looking for a different position, possibly at a different company. That way you at least do not lose health insurance. In any case, yes, being afraid to lose your job because you don't know how to pay for a basic need such as being healthy is absurd in the First World.
• smadam9 15y ago
  What about the part where programmers work overtime, but not because they are demanded to? I consistently see programmers, even in my own team, who happily stay 60-70 hours per week because the idea/concept they are working on means something significant to them. I find this phenomenon to be the exception of what your post has mentioned. Although the post was mostly accurate, I encounter this exception on a daily basis. While those 60-70 hrs./week aren't at 100% efficiency, the idea that a programmer will stay the extra time to produce high quality work while maintaining their own personal life says a lot about their view of their job and career. To some, it's just that - a job. However, others see it as an art (just as any profession, I suppose) and strive to increase their skills - they understand that invested time equals increased knowledge and a more refined skill set.
  • kev009 15y ago
    This. I've worked like a dog on some projects simply because I was having fun. I try to instead channel that passion into side projects now, but occasionally get a bit carried away on my salaried job.
  • BadassFractal 15y ago
    If your job is such a great learning experience, or the mission so captivating that you want to work 70 hours a week on it, you should be allowed to do that. In my experience few positions will be so exciting that you'll want to do that though. One can only get so much thrill out of writing CRUD apis for years.
  • konstruktor 15y ago
    This really depends on the work you do, obviously. Just like no amount of off-by-one errors will make you a great coder (no, mistakes aren't always the great learning opportunity), 80 hours of writing DAOs in Java won't either. Remember it's 10000 hours of deliberate practice, not practice, so somebody working 40h in a better job may learn more.
• leppie 15y ago
  Like the old saying goes: "I work for money. If you want loyalty, get a dog."
• snprbob86 15y ago
  When I worked for a big company, I had a very simple rule: If I make a promise to my team that I can reasonably keep, I owe it to them to do so. I'd generally aim to under-promise and over-deliver, while feeling like I'm making a comprable (or bigger!) contribution in comparison to my peers. After some practice at this, I got reasonably good at estimating work. I'd work 20 to 50 hours per week depending on how accurately I estimate, usually aiming for (an achieving) about 35 hours of work. Only once or twice did I ever feel like I really put in any serious "overtime" and I blame that on estimation inexperience. I made it a point to explain this philosophy (sans actual target hours) to every manager I've ever had. I always fed them the "Work/Life Balance" party line and reminded them that if I wanted my work to be my life, I'd join a startup (I have since founded one). They all seemed to appreciate my being forthcoming. Once or twice I got a panicked email. The team was going to miss a deadline unless I stepped up to help out! Each time I replied that I had expressed my concerns about scope and timeline during the planning meetings. I'd remind the panicked person that we could simply cut the feature (always an option for a previously shipped product) and would offer my help and time in doing so. No one ever took me up on it.
  • spinlock 15y ago
    It's too bad you couldn't openly tell your team how you were scheduling your time. It sounds like you developed a very good, consistent process. In my mind, that's exactly what a large company should be going for because it can scale.
    • snprbob86 15y ago
      I did tell them! See where I wrote: > I made it a point to explain this philosophy (sans actual target hours) to every manager I've ever had. I simply didn't tell my manager exactly how many hours I targeted because it was less than the customary 40h/wk.
• leventali 15y ago
  If you are constantly needing to work 70-80 hours a week that generally implies an issue with planning and/or engineering practices.
• mefistofele 15y ago
  Many industries are forbidden, by law, from unpaid overtime. The law specifically exempts the software industry from this requirement. Like so many other things about the culture here, this issue seems to come down to the US being afraid of its own shadow. We're the greatest country on Earth... we say so all the time. But to change the law and forbid unpaid overtime for the software industry, something that will make people's lives better here in the greatest country on Earth, is to risk losing all these programmers jobs overseas. A terrifying prospect. So we do nothing out of fear.
  • BadassFractal 15y ago
    The whole "greatest country on Earth" thing needs to be dropped. We live in a global society and the age of the Internet, people need to move past the patriotic party line they're fed by their govt to somehow make them feel better about themselves.
  • crander 15y ago
    Programmers here are discussing if they choose to work unpaid extra hours or not. You don't make a country great by forbidding extra work regardless of the employee desires. You make a country great by allowing employers and employees to decide amongst themselves case by case. If labor wants to forbid this for other vocations good for them. I would like to keep my right to work more hours on salary or not.
    • moocow01 15y ago
      Nobody is forbidding overtime work - they are exempting tech employees from receiving pay for the overtime they work. Much of this legislation was passed in the US through the lobbying of big tech corporations (Microsoft) to increase profit margins. I personally would like to revoke my right to work overtime for free.
      • rprasad 15y ago
        They are not prohibiting tech employees from receiving overtime, nor are they prohibiting companies from paying tech employees overtime. The law simply does not require companies to pay overtime to tech employees (along with other, more traditional professionals such as doctors, accountants, and lawyers).
• minikomi 15y ago
  I work 3 days a week for quite a large social game / mobile web company here in Tokyo. They are asking me every 3 months to become a "Seishain" - full time employee - but I will continue to take the no-benifits, paid by the hour option. The pay's not great but I'm learning a lot. And I can go home on the dot at 6.. However, everyone who is not part time is here before I arrive, and stays after I leave. . . .
  • mathrawka 15y ago
    I think that holds true for nearly any company in Japan though. The main reason people want to become "Seishain" is because you have much more job security. It is very hard to fire a full-time employee in Japan. And if it is a large company, there is the pension you get... a large sum of money when you retire, from the company. It is not uncommon to get an extra 10M - 20M yen when you retire. Part-timers don't get any of those... but they get some more freedom in their lives (unless they choose to go against the grain, which most Japanese don't).
    • minikomi 15y ago
      Yeah.. I've been there (at an admittedly insane company), and "enjoyed" the benefits of cheaper health care, pension.. at the cost of sleeping under the desk a few nights a week, coming in at 6 or 7 just to read every single mail which circulated not to get caught out having missed some minor little thing by my senpai.. Now I balance this with really laid back face-to-face english teaching. It's actually quite nice. Half the week staring at a glowing box, half the week talking casually with people who are motivated to learn. edit: I'm quite broke though!
• x5315 15y ago
  I work at Twitter, where i regularly work longs hours (my standard work day is something like 10 - 19:30) and am frequently on call. I even spend time at the weekends thinking and hacking on specific problems. I feel that the author's post doesn't apply in my case, because: - Some of the problems i work on are amazing. They're interesting and fun, and i enjoy them outside the normal "work hours". - Twitter has an "unlimited"—be respectful to your team—holiday policy. I've probably taken about 6-7 weeks off in my one and a quarter years here. - Breakfast, lunch, and dinner are served for free. While you might not count that as 'being paid overtime', the costs of food can add up. - This behaviour is not required. I know people who do 9-5 and that's it. They get their work done within deadlines, and there's no issue with that. So, am i to assume that Twitter is a huge exception? I'm not so sure. I think that while Twitter is a special environment, there are many companies that offer similar benefits. Maybe the real statement shouldn't be "don't do unpaid overtime", but: "Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle." - Steve Jobs
  • dinkumthinkum 15y ago
    Right, if it is something you actually want to be doing then that is one thing. But, I bet you are not married and have kids or if you do, they may not be as happy with you as you might think. It's just reality. As for the Steve Jobs thing, yes I get that. But it's one thing to be Steve Jobs and have this legacy that they make documentaries about and it's another to have just been a cog, even if it's a popular company like Twitter, your whole life and not have any kind of family or life outside of your job. Perhaps everlasting glory is worth everything else but I doubt it's true for everyday programmers at Apple.
    • x5315 15y ago
      I feel like you've got a little over-dramatic here. Firstly, i'm not married nor do i have children. Secondly, these things will come, in time. I find it discouraging that you feel that one can't take pride or enjoy work while being "a cog". This isn't about 'everlasting glory'; it's about enjoyment, it's about fun, it's about being proud about what you've created and owning it, it's about respect from your peers, it's about being a part of something. As you said, "if it is something you actually want to be doing then that is one thing". It is. It is exactly what i want to be doing.
• buff-a 15y ago
  If you lose your job you may have to pay a lot more (COBRA) for a limited time No, you'll pay the same as you were paying. Its just that before, you thought you were being paid $100,000 when in fact you were being paid $120,000, and out of that came your health insurance and the other (more-than-) half of your social security and income taxes.
  • awolf 15y ago
    You pay 10% more on COBRA than your employer was paying on your behalf. But the gist of what your saying still stands.
    • quatrevingts 15y ago
      Plus, COBRA payments are (generally) not tax-deductible, so add another 30-40% more.
      • buff-a 15y ago
        A self-employed person can deduct health expenses against gross income. You are correct in that COBRA cannot be deducted in this way. But it can still be taken as an itemized deduction. I'm not a tax accountant, but my tax accountant is. Another gotcha: if you're taking the 60% markdown on COBRA from Obama, then no, you're not allowed to write it off at all, but I wouldn't be complaining about that.
        • quatrevingts 15y ago
          Only the portion which is greater than 7.5% of your gross income can be deducted on Schedule A.
      • driverdan 15y ago
        If you have a HDHP with an HSA you can pay COBRA from the HSA tax free.
  • Intermernet 15y ago
• fiznool 15y ago
  Whilst I agree with the general principle of not working yourself to death (nobody ever says on their death bed, 'I wish I'd spent more time in the office'), I think the author of this piece is missing something crucial. I regularly work more than 40 hours a week, not because I have to, but because I want to learn. One day I'd like to go freelance or perhaps start up a business, but I need to skill up first. I'm lucky that I have a job in my chosen sector of mobile web development, something which pays me to learn about the technologies I am passionate about. I am seizing the opportunity to learn as much as possible so I can be in a position to just work when I want to in later life. IMO the author is looking at this from an experienced point of view. Juniors and those starting out often have no choice but to work a little longer to get where they want to be in 20 years time. There's nothing wrong with that, surely?
• latch 15y ago
  This is stupid. Why? Because you are getting legal advice from someone who isn't a lawyer. The spirit of his post is fine, but the reality, for a lot of people, is very different. <IANAL> In Ontario, the Employment Standards Act, which defines all of this (and a lot more) has a ton of exemptions. Here's the exemptions for "Information Technology Professionals": http://www.labour.gov.on.ca/english/es/tools/srt/coverage_government_it.php http://www.labour.gov.on.ca/english/es/tools/srt/coverage_go... Notice that we are exempt from "Hours of Work", "Daily Rest Periods" and "Overtime" to name a few. This means that, aside from your employment contract, there are no laws that protect your right to refuse unpaid (or paid) overtime.
  • dinkumthinkum 15y ago
    It's good thing you're not a lawyer because nothing he said violated the law or a contract. :) Unless I missed it, the only thing he discussed relating to laws was how other countries dealt with this sort of thing. Refusing to work unpaid hours is just fine, perhaps you will be fired, but it is definitely you're right but no boogeyman is going to come and lock you up for banging out mindless Java code to meet some unrealistic deadline.
    • latch 15y ago
      First, he suggests that no one should work overtime, which isn't practical for people who can't afford to get fired. Second, he suggest that there's no benefit to working over time, while many would see keeping your job as a benefit. I'm not sure if he realizes that refusal to work overtime can, in itself, be a reason to get fired, or if that consequence simply doesn't matter to him. Either way, saying that they shouldn't matter to any one else is incorrect. Also, the entire health care angle is weird. Both Canada and UK have public health care, but both work a lot of overtime: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/4149835.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/4149835.stm http://www.montrealgazette.com/business/Unpaid+overtime+growing+problem/1889928/story.html http://www.montrealgazette.com/business/Unpaid+overtime+grow...
      • mrleinad 15y ago
• ngokevin 15y ago
  Coming from a student, for those who might really enjoy the project they are working on and have a comfortable enough lifestyle to not worry about money, working more is its own reward. I am only paid for a maximum of 20 hours a week though I work more than that since I enjoy working.
  • toadi 15y ago
    Well explain to the your children that they can't get more food because daddy likes the work more over getting paid. A bit harsh but understand that not all people live in the same context. Single, student, ...
    • ngokevin 15y ago
      I said for those who don't have to worry about money, from a student. But thanks for restating that.
• wisty 15y ago
  Towards the end, he gets to the main point - the US health system is not set up for people who aren't wage slaves for a big company. The idea that a company should pay your pension is also kind of dumb.
  • BadassFractal 15y ago
    Bingo. What to do about it though? Would meaningful reform of the current system be possible? Where could one start?
    • etfb 15y ago
      The Australian system is quite functional and, unlike the USA, we still have a functioning economy. Granted it mainly comes from digging up bits of the country and selling it cheap to China, but it's not all bad news. The USA could do with a lot more socialism than it's currently got.
      • jacques_chester 15y ago
        Australia was successful before the mining boom started. The policy reforms of the 80s and 90s are the basis of our long-term success.
        • wisty 15y ago
          Well, we were OK in the 90s. The mining boom, and the fact that overseas lenders are only just starting to question our ability to take in more debt has what has kept us out of recession, for now. Medium term, we might be in for a beating, like the US. Long term, we need more innovation. Name Australian innovation. Easy, right? Now name one innovative Australian company.
          • jacques_chester 15y ago
            The boom was abruptly interrupted here, as it was everywhere else, in 2008 when the GFC kicked off. My old man works for Rio, who dumped tens of thousands of contractors almost immediately, freezing tens of billions of dollars of projects. What really saved our bacon was a) labour market flexibility (ie many companies renegotiated hours instead of being forced to sack people) and b) that the Reserve Bank had lots of room to manoeuvre. The Commonwealth could also borrow deeply because it had no long term debt. None of these conditions was accidental. They were, as I said, consequences of decades of sensible reform by both major parties. > Easy, right? Now name one innovative Australian company. There are thousands. They're just not necessarily talked about by the HN set. Off the top of my head there's Cochlear, the half dozen companies spun off from NICTA, Kaggle, Computershare which was the first of its kind and so on.
• jac_no_k 15y ago
  This doesn't work when one works in a multi-national company. My colleagues in other locations will eat my lunch because they are less concerned about work/life balance and a lot more hungry.
  • nostrademons 15y ago
    That's when you work smarter, not harder. I've found that the biggest benefit of working reasonable hours is that it gives you time & energy to self-reflect and look at your process as a whole. Most work processes have inefficiencies that can be eliminated if you look at the process as a whole. If you do that, you can easily accomplish more in 6 hours than your colleagues in other locations can in 12. That in turn gives you more time to invest in other process improvements and tools, which in turn let you accomplish still more, and so on.
  • hopeless 15y ago
    My US colleagues are constantly doing overtime and working weekends but this seems like a cultural thing (which they'd like to impose on us) rather a specific fear for their jobs (though that definitely exists). And the jobs keep flowing to us in Ireland regardless (i.e., US vacancies are generally filled in Ireland). In my experience, those extra hours haven't amounted to any great advantages for them but, then again, they are paid about 3x as much as we are.
• grellas 15y ago
  The U.S. has a strong free enterprise foundation and its laws reflect this. Freedom of contract remains the rule even though it is much criticized in some circles and has been hedged considerably over the years. In employment, the old rule was that you could pretty much fire anyone at will for any reason and, if you did, you incurred no legal consequence. This is pure freedom of contract. In time, this unrestricted freedom came to be deemed repugnant where it bumped into important social policies - for example, that employers not discriminate on the basis of race. Hence, protective laws were passed and these circumscribed the old unrestricted freedom to have pure at-will employment relationships that gave an employer an open ticket to fire people for any reason whatever, even a repugnant one. That said, however, when you get down to the day-to-day employment relationships that most of us encounter, the at-will rules still prevail and, with limited exceptions, it really does remain the case that most people can be fired for any reason at any time and almost always without legal consequence. This may be seen as good or bad but it is the way of life under U.S. law with its strong bent toward free enterprise and freedom of contract. The same pertains to overtime rules for employees. The U.S. does have a body of protective laws that require employers to pay overtime for excess hours worked, either by the day or by the week. But the historic relationship between employer and employee had a strong bias toward freedom of contract - that is, if an employer and an employee agreed to a certain working relationship, that was their prerogative and the government had no say in the matter. Again, this older form of unrestricted freedom led to consequences deemed repugnant as a matter of social policy (e.g., sweatshops). Thus, laws were enacted to abridge the older unrestricted freedom of contract (wage and hour laws, in the example considered here). But, as in the case of at-will rules, these laws did not disturb the large measure of freedom of contract that formerly prevailed except for the specific situations where a policy judgment was made that the workers were most vulnerable and in need of protection. Thus, U.S. overtime rules apply without question to low-skilled jobs and to low-paying jobs and to jobs where the employees have little or no independence or control over how they perform their duties. But these protective rules can and do peacefully co-exist with an equally important set of rules providing that high-skilled employees, skilled professionals, employees with substantial administrative responsibilities with managerial functions, and like positions are expressly exempted from the overtime rules. The idea is that, in a free economy, as a matter of policy, it is better for parties to retain freedom in defining the work requirements of a position than for the government to dictate protective rules where the parties are not deemed in need of protection. In other words, the employer-employee relationships for such exempt categories are deemed to be healthier if the parties are free to negotiate salary/bonuses or other compensation that is not tied to rigid rules about overtime. The laws let the parties have much more flexibility in deciding how to frame their relationships, and this basically reflects the old-style freedom of contract that has always characterized the U.S. economy. Protections were adopted as deemed necessary but they are limited as a matter of public policy. This can be seen as good or bad but it is the law in the U.S. What does this mean in practice? It means, for example, that a computer professional can be paid a salary of $100K/yr and be asked to work like a slave, all without overtime compensation. But that same professional, if paid $30K/yr, is required to be paid overtime for excess hours worked, even if that person is on salary. One case is treated as appropriate for free choice by the parties without overriding restrictions; the other is not. And the difference, in this case, turns on the amount of salary paid - the highly-paid worker is treated as being able to protect his own interests while the relatively low-paid worker is not. Europe clearly has taken a different approach and this too can be seen as good or bad depending on one's perspective. In general, in Europe, the idea of open-ended freedom of contract is suppressed in favor of more sweeping protective laws favoring employees. Whether this leads to a robust economy or chokes enterprise is open to debate but it clearly differs from the U.S. approach. In this piece, the author criticizes the U.S. employment pattern as, in effect, requiring exempt computer professionals to work for free when they are required to work excessive hours tied to a fixed salary. In making this point, the author admits that his European biases are showing. The "U.S. view," if I can call it that, is not that the worker is being made to work for free but rather that the worker has not agreed to be paid by any hourly measure but rather for an overall performance to be rendered, no matter how many hours it takes. This might be regarded as "slavery," but (taking, for example, the exemption for executives) does anyone really believe that top executives have as their focus the exact number of hours worked as opposed to broader goals related to their job performance. The same can be said of professionals, as many computer professionals look primarily to the task and not to the hourly measure as the mark of their jobs. In my field, lawyers too see the hours worked as entirely secondary to their jobs. For every such executive and professional who would be deemed "helped" by overtime laws that might be extended to apply to their jobs, there would undoubtedly be many who would recoil at the limitations of suddenly not being able to do their jobs without regard to the scope of hours worked. I don't believe that most such employees see their work as "slavery" when they have to work excessive hours. I think they see it as career development. And, in any case, the U.S. law gives such employees freedom to become "slaves" if they so choose for their own reason. It is the old freedom of contract and highly skilled, highly compensated workers in the U.S. retain that freedom to choose, as do their employers. Work-life balance is very important as well, a point the author emphasizes. He seems to have made that choice later in life (as did I) and I commend him for it. But, while I can exhort others too to strive for such balance, I will not begrudge them the choice to work exceedingly hard (especially as they are first developing in their careers) to achieve other "unbalanced" goals. People do accomplish insanely great things by working insanely hard. If they choose to do this in their work as employees, that is their privilege and, as long as they are highly-skilled and highly compensated, I say more power to them if they do it without the benefit of protective labor laws.
• alan_cx 15y ago
  I don't know much about US employment law, and what I do know, I don't like. But what I do know is this: No employer has ever, ever given me free money, and I have never expected it. There for, I have never ever given an employer free time, and never ever will. To do different is insane. It lowers one's worth since the deal is an exchange of money for time. It makes the employer think your free time is theirs to exploit and frankly damn wrong. Like I say, the day employers give out free money is the time I give out free time.
  • BadassFractal 15y ago
    It's at-will employment, if you don't like it, you can leave at any point. Basically if you don't like being exploited, quit and get it over with. As people pointed out though, it's a different story once health care is part of the equation.
    • Tichy 15y ago
      That's so weird. As if there was some kind of conspiracy between health care providers and employers. I mean you probably take it for granted that health care is tied to a job, but that really isn't the case at all. Where I live (Germany) it is organized in a completely different way. If you lose your job, social insurance will keep paying your health insurance. It's ironic because "your way" actually seems to be taking freedom away from you, yet the US seems to consider a model like the German one to be the ultimate slavery (socialism).
      • Natsu 15y ago
        They've tried to change the health insurance problem. I'm not sure how much Obamacare will do in that regard, as a practical matter, but we'll eventually find out one way or another, assuming it's not repealed or struck down first.
      • alan_cx 15y ago
        Yeah, the thing is the USA is the flip side of the USSR. One was the definition of socialism, the other capitalism. Here in Europe we consider both systems as tools to use, rather than rules for running a state. Part of me wonders if the US obsession with uber capitalism is some sort of historic anti Europe thing, or a way that they remain different and separate. Its US identity. Having booted the Europeans and gained independence, the last thing they want to do is embrace European ideals.
• utkarshsinha 15y ago
  Do you know there are people working in sweatshops at really low wages? Be glad you're not there yet.
  • utkarshsinha 15y ago
    Seriously?
• forcefsck 15y ago
  I agree with the author. We work to make a living, not live to work. However, he thinks that in Europe there are more human conditions. Well, this is rapidly changing towards the american system. E.g. the bail out for Greece was offered with the exchange of passing new employment rules. Some of them are enabling employers to demand for more work time without extra compensation, or to fire much more easily without specific reasons. Another nice change, not yet implemented but soon to be, the employee will not get the full monthly salary if he had any sick days. Furthermore, the public pension funds and health care is being demolished. Soon the only option will be to get in a insurance plan offered by your company (big companies have already started to offer such plans). So except if you're one of the very few top talented people, soon you'll be very depended on your job and will be forced to accept to work more working hours without any additional benefit. Romania has already moved that way, and Italy will follow soon. And the rest of Europe after that. This mentality that you must sacrifice your life for the benefit of your company, it is just absurd. If the law was enforcing less working hours and bigger compensations for overtime, there wouldn't be any competitiveness excuse. And the developed world should enforce the same work rules to the developing countries. It's absurd, especially if you think about how much the unemployment rates have risen and how much the technology today automates tasks so no humans are needed, and the production of material goods is so high that most products are never sold and end in the recycle bin. It screams about lowering the working hours and the retirement limits instead of raising them.
  • eli_gottlieb 15y ago
    I have begun to wonder why we don't have a regulatory authority, something along the lines of a national central bank but for working hours, dedicated to regulating the work-week. When unemployment and overemployment are low, work hours are kept stable. When there is a chronic over-demand in the economy, the work-week is lengthened. When there is a chronic over-supply in the economy, the work-week is shortened. First World economies right now have an oversupply problem. Marx predicted the crises of capitalism due to overproduction and under-demand. We don't need a complete socialist revolution to deal with this issue (though I'm somewhat in favor of one), we just need to fine-tune the working week to productivity levels.
• djhworld 15y ago
  There is no contract stipulation in my contract that says I might need to do overtime. The only mention of overtime is the fact that it is unpaid. So I've never done it. I get in at 8:30am and leave at 5pm every day.
  • tptacek 15y ago
    There doesn't have to be; if you're told to get X done before leaving the office, and 5pm rolls around with X undone, you can be fired. That's the nature of at-will employment.
• mathattack 15y ago
  Sometimes the overtime is implicit in the rate. If you joint a sweatshop that pays 100K, you know going in that it's not $50/hour for 2000 hours, it's more like $40/hour for 2500 or $33.33 for 3000. It's not unpaid, it's built into the expectation. The real question is, "How much do you want to work?" If you are a talented hacker, you can answer that however you want. If you are 21 and looking for someone to teach you a trade while paying a good wage in a tough job market, it is a more difficult choice.
• Strom 15y ago
  In Europe your health is not tied to your employment in any way. This statement is just wrong. In Estonia, health insurance is subscription based, paid as a tax from your salary.
  • bnr 15y ago
    So you lose your health insurance when you lose your job? How is health insurance for unemployed people handled in Estonia?
• spiralpolitik 15y ago
  Generally IMHO not paying overtime usually masks inefficiencies in your business. If someone is having to work 70-80 hour weeks to get the job done then something is messed up somewhere in your process. Paying overtime is an easy way to spot these area as its immediately visible to any half brained manager.
• orblivion 15y ago
  Well, I have an American way of looking at things. Why is 40 hours the magical number? Why is it that you're working for free after that point? He was correct in the first place that it's devaluing your hourly worth (assuming time is fungible). But guess what, if you can't get the job done that the employer wants to pay you the given salary for in the 40 hours you expected to satisfy him with, and the employer would let you go if you told him that this wasn't what you signed up for, you are devalued. The employer hired you for a certain amount of work and was willing to pay a certain amount of money for it. If you made an agreement about the work to be accomplished, and did not make an agreement about hours, and you end up working 80 hours a week, you are being paid overtime. Your base salary is just much lower because you're not worth very much to that particular employer at the base salary. Now, if the employer would not fire you if you put your foot down, it's a matter of knowing your true worth. And I definitely agree it's worth doing this if you end up in this sort of situation. Either you part ways from a job that isn't worth it to you, or you get the conditions that are worth it to you. Negotiations have some leeway, you don't really know what the other person is willing to give up.
• SonicSoul 15y ago
  i'm never a fan of these blanket statements such as "i won't work unpaid overtime". Some jobs are 35 hours, and some jobs are 70 hours. Some jobs pay 40k, and some jobs pay 200k. Who said that 40hr week is the holy and undisputed threshold everyone should abide by? Look at construction workers, some of them work from sun up to sun down, 6-7 days a week (i sure did when i was younger) and there is no such hour standard. Sure they are often paid on how much work gets done, but at the end of the month, many won't make more than someone with a good salary working in an office writing code. I am not trivializing writing code. that's what i do, and i often work 60-70hr weeks, and sometimes it's a stressful time. But i do get paid accordingly (not in overtime, but i consider my salary to be great), and i do get a lot more done than average person would in 40hrs. I guess if your employer tells you it will be 40hrs and it turns out to be 70, thats a problem. but in my experience most of the time you know exactly what you're getting into when accepting a job (besides occasional crunch times couple times a year).
• brudgers 15y ago
  The title is misleading. [IANAL] In the United States, for a person in a salaried position, work week hours beyond 40 are not legally classified as overtime. For salaried positions, the length of the workweek and compensation for additional hours are always subject to negotiation (for hourly positions compensation for overtime is also negotiable but cannot be less than the statutory minimums). In my opinion, the author's analysis of economics entailed by salaried positions is rather naive. Hourly rate of pay is often less important than the monthly or weekly or yearly rate, i.e. cashflow is often the more important consideration. For example, if one's household maintenance is $10,000 per month, then monthly income, rather than hourly rate, is likely to be a more critical issue in regards to compensation.
• smallegan 15y ago
  I'm not a big fan of unionized work but it is worth mentioning that when developers agree to work in poor conditions like this it changes the social norm and negatively impacts the economics surrounding software development. If 2 developers are working 60 hours a week they are essentially putting a third developer out of work. (I understand that studies show you can't be as productive over a certain number of hours but the principle remains the same) Unless there is a large pool of unemployed developers in the market this need for developer number 3 will in turn drive the cost for a developer up as the market will be more competitive. This is simply supply and demand at work.
  • jandrewrogers 15y ago
    The weakness in your argument is that developers are not fungible commodities in practice. You can't just hire a third developer in many cases so no one is being put out of work. For many companies (like mine) there are far more open positions than we can find qualified developers to fill them. The reality in the market is that there is a shortage of developers, or at least developers with the talent and skill required. This is not an argument for working 60 hours per week, just that you can't solve that problem by hiring more developers. There are not enough good developers as it is.
    • smallegan 15y ago
      I understand what your saying but if the need for developers truly outweighed the market the cost would continue to rise until an equilibrium is approached. In many areas as the cost goes up balance is found with outsourcing.
• mirsadm 15y ago
  I have noticed that the example you set when you start somewhere new is what is expected of you for the rest of your time at that company. To clarify, if you start a new job and work for free an extra 40 hours a week then you will forever be expected to do that. I made the mistake of doing that to 'prove' myself and I ended up working very long hours at a place which I wasn't particularly fond of. The person sitting close to me worked exactly 8-5 from day one. Everybody knew he wouldn't be at work after 5 and they never expected it.
• railsmax 15y ago
  That's really true And you are right about over hours. Why should I work more hours and receive money only for 40 hours a week? But sometimes(I mean my case) if you like your work and project and it is intereting to you to do this job, why not to work a little more for example, because sometimes you should finish task today - for your own purpose - not to forget smth. tomorrow. But I said that only for 1-or max 2 hours a day and only sometimes, and you can use this hours if you want for example leave work in friday earlier.
• dustingetz 15y ago
  you get a bad deal when you negotiate without leverage.
• Flow 15y ago
  If there are no cost of overtime, I think the company lack a feedback on how well planning, estimation and execution do. With no feedback there are less reason to change the company for the better.
• pullo 15y ago
  first world problems
• justinhj 15y ago
  I have worked at game development companies for nearly 20 years. Initially I worked a lot of overtime for free,but after a couple of years I started to feel the effects on my life. After that I mostly just did not do OT unless it was paid. One year on a badly run project I doubled my salary through OT pay, and though my life outside work was not good I was able to put a significant amount of money aside. The following year hourly OT pay was gone, but the expectations were not. I made it clear I would only do OT on rare occasions, such as my work falling behind and a colleague being dependent on it at the weekend, when he would be working and I would be having a life. Even this caused resentment and I had to do the walk of shame at 5pm every day, and I was laid off as soon as the game shipped. The sense of personal failure was very hard on me at the time, but 12 years down the line, I've had a successful career in games, while being upfront at the hiring stage about my attitude to OT. I have worked a handful of weekend days and never later than 8pm in the week. I didn't miss my son growing up, and I read him a bedtime story every night. I don't think this is possible for every programmer and every company, but you can make it work.
• jcromartie 15y ago
  All I want to know is: why do I have to work as many (unpaid) hours as necessary to get the job done, but I have to count the hours I take off?
  • cconroy 15y ago
    This seems to be a cultural problem with the US. I agree with everything the author has said, but let me play devil's advocate: What is stopping a employee -- in a free market with specialized skills -- from adding a provision in his/her employment agreement for payment for hours worked >40 hrs/wk. If the employer values you they will either tell you not to work more than the 40, or tell you when you can -- shifting the power to you. There is no rule -- or should there be, about negotiating such terms. Switching back, I think this should arrive more from our culture as it takes an assertive individual to do this as of now. I am a little hesitant to make such terms gov't mandated -- but I would like to hear arguments for it.
• ChuckMcM 15y ago
  Wow, that's a pretty disjoint rant. It boils down to this: "I'd rather have a work and life balance that I can enjoy." Which has nothing to do really with working overtime and everything to do about how you approach work and life. I think one could boil down the philosophy into 'if you're working too much and your balance is out of whack, then quit.' And it is quite reasonable. In the Bay Area families can be especially hard hit by people who over commit. That being said, in spite of the Author's disdain for economics, the interrelationship between who is available to work, pay, and whether or not they are willing to stay, does 'fix' the problem magically.
• TDL 15y ago
  Please stop comparing overworking or non-optimal work conditions as slave labor. Slavery means you can not, either because of the law or threat of violence, leave the service of your master. I've had bad jobs in my day. One I left (I was a "partner" @ startup) and it was a financially bad decision, yet it was one of the best decisions I ever made. Here is the difference between slavery & a crappy job; a person can choose to leave the crappy job even if it means living hand-to-mouth a slave can't. I generally agree with what this author is saying. The best way to start thinking about your job is as though you are a contractor and your employer is your client. Remove the boss/employee template from your mind and start using the client/contractor template.
• spinlock 15y ago
  Here's my problem with people who put in 80 hours a week: they don't write good code. At my first job - way back in the last millenium - we were creating a carrier class network device. I was hired to run the mail servers but ended up building an embedded linux that ran the PowerPC on our hardware - we also had a Strong ARM that ran a gig ethernet but that was under another guy. So, how did I go from mail server to an integral piece of the product? I took over for the guy who put a lot of time into not solving a problem. Before you can even get linux running on your hardware, you need a boot loader to initialize your hardware and get it into a state where linux will run. Our "hard worker" volunteered to write a boot loader and spent 60+ hours a week for the next 6 months writing it. But it never worked. Management decided to let me take a crack at the boot loader. Now, I was in my early 20's. I had bars to drink at, a girlfriend to get some lovin' from, and parties to go to. I didn't want to spend 60 hours a week at my desk. So, I did what any lazy hacker would do: I found an open source project that was close to what we needed. The project I started from was PPCBoot and it was started by Wolfgang Denk for the purpose of booting hardware running a Power PC processor. I spent 2 weeks telling everyone else in the company that I needed their help on X, Y or Z; getting them to write some code; and burning the new version of PPCBoot onto the flash chip. After 2 40 hour weeks, something amazing happened: it worked. It configured the hardware and handed control to linux which booted up. Anyway, that's my reason not to spend more than 40 hours at work in a week. All of the people who I've seen put in all those hours aren't really working. They're just playing with a neat project because they've always wanted to write a boot loader. The purpose of you job isn't to write code, it's to ship a product. If you keep that in the front of your mind at all times and focus your efforts on shipping product, you can "work" 40 hours a week and code a pet project on your own time.
  • ajross 15y ago
    Honestly that anecdote just proves that you were a better engineer than the 60 hour boot loader guy. It doesn't say anything about hours other than that some people will work hard even if they aren't making progress. You aren't claiming that he'd have done better by spending only 2/3 the time, just that a solution (that he couldn't find) existed that fit. Honestly I find myself amused at the extent of the argument here. Most people I've known in the tech world who work long hours generally do so because ... they like it. It's a way to define your life. It's a way to feel good about yourself. I'm sure there are programmers trapped in death march dungeons somewhere for exploitative wages, but they are the exception, not the rule.
• joedev 15y ago
  "Work hard and go home!" - Amen, amen, amen!
• joedev 15y ago
  Work does, quite literally, kill us - http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-22/the-worse-the-economy-gets-the-longer-people-live-peter-orszag.html http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-22/the-worse-the-econo...
• Androsynth 15y ago
  I used to work at a company that routinely worked people well over 40 hours/week. I left because I felt I was losing the best years of my life doing tedious projects, however I know a lot of people who stayed and who still work there. Its not like people don't know the situation. No one looks at routine 60 hour weeks and says 'yeah, this is about right'. Everyone has their own reasons for staying, or for leaving. One big reason is the 120k yearly salary they make (in SF). But NONE of these people are slaves. Anyone who uses the term slaves loses all credibility. Feel free to call them sheeple all you want, but they're not slaves. People need to learn from their own mistakes. You can't teach people lessons on a grand scale. Everyone needs to find their own career paths. The biggest problem with employment is not that we need more regulation (no no no we dont), its that we have a culture where we view jobs as privileges rather than simply: me exchanging my time for your money. (as others have pointed out, health care issues are a big factor here)
  • jsharpe 15y ago
    A better term than "slave" is probably "golden handcuffs". You are trapped by what you are given, whether that's healthcare, salary, vesting, etc.
• phomer 15y ago
  When I get paid to work I really care that the work I do is worth the money I am paid. That is, if I'm paid for 40 hours, I feel its important to give my employer 40 hours of good solid work. From time to time, I don't mind going above and beyond, things happen and sometimes it takes a significant effort to correct them, a bit of overtime is fine. But I strongly feel that any of those companies that pay people for 40 hours of work, but generally expect them to work 60 or 80 hours most weeks are abusing the relationship on their side. What they are looking for is a seriously large discount in labor costs. Unless there is some 'other' form of compensation that balances it out, then it is clearly abusive (and quickly leads to burnout, so they aren't even getting value for the hours worked). Paul.
• eli_gottlieb 15y ago
  If you don't like unpaid overtime, move to Massachusetts! Programmers aren't overtime-exempt here.
• hpguy 15y ago
  If you hate your job and have no interest in the success of your company, good advice. If you love your job, there's nothing wrong doing it a bit more. I sometimes see myself work 12 hours a day just because I can't get my mind of a coding problem. And I sincerely hope the company I work for become successful.
• gnosis 15y ago
  The culture of overwork in America in general (not just in IT) seems simply pathological, and I just don't understand it. The crazy overtime that people in the medical profession are expected to put in is probably one of the most egregious examples, because lives could literally be lost as a consequence of errors made due to lack of sleep and overwork. Lawyers are typically worked to death at law firms. Wall St is famous for making people slave away virtually non-stop -- making work your life and having no life outside of work is quite common. Of course, big bonuses are promised -- and delivered to senior people -- but more junior people often aren't so lucky. Even teachers, who many people think "have it so easy", actually spend a huge amount of time outside of school hours grading papers and making lesson plans. Their "long vacations" are also typically filled with work-related activities. And don't even get me started on how low-wage employees and undocumented workers are typically treated. It seems no matter where I look, people are working their assess off in America -- and suffering the consequences: burnout, a shitty life/work balance through which their families, friends, and their non-work lives suffer. And for what? It's not like many of the companies these people work for couldn't afford to hire more people to reduce the workload to sane levels. I'm really amazed at how highly skilled employees at prestigious law firms and Wall St firms are made to work like mad. Those firms could easily afford to hire more junior people to pick up some of the lower-level work -- but they don't. As a result, a lot of these firms are like revolving doors, with people dropping like flies. The carrots of money are dangled in front of their faces, but otherwise the firms don't really seem to care about their employees -- and will often drop them without a second thought (even if business suffers as a result, which it often does). And it's just so incredibly dangerous and downright unethical to make doctors and nurses work a crazy amount of overtime with little or no sleep. Why is it so difficult for these companies to offer their employees a healthy life/work balance? Why is a big paycheck is supposed to solve everything? Why don't more companies offer their employees a healthy amount of time to sleep at night instead of just more cash? Business will improve as productivity improves as a result (and business should know this well by now, as there have been tons of studies to show it). Employees and their families will be healthier and happier. Healthy and happy employees are clearly better employees, especially compared to the super-stressed near-burnout heart attack candidates that so many of these firms seem to prefer to cultivate. Improving the life/work balance seems like a huge win-win situation for both employers and employees, and a no-brainer. What am I missing?
• teflonhook 15y ago
  As an employer, and that's your attitude, first of all I wouldn't hire you, because I couldn't rely upon you to get the job done- particularly when things go wrong. And if I did employ you, you certainly wouldn't be part of any stock option or participation scheme for the upside.
• deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
• ggwicz 15y ago
  "For men fright at relinquishing their material goods, but shackle their time to others willingly." This is a paraphrased quote from a weird version of the Stoic Philosophy of Seneca; I'm sure the correct quote is out there, but hopefully you get the point: Your time is your most valuable asset. Dole it out like your employers (or clients, etc.) dole out their money: carefully. I know people who'll complain about taxes, drive further to get to a cheaper gas station, order goods in bulk to save money, etc. all to save some cash. Rarely do these people have this diligence with the allotment of their time. Be careful and cautious with how you use your time. View it as something being spent, and if higher dollars means less free hours then don't do it. This philosophy, in my (albeit small amount of) experience, helps you avoid a lot of the issues OP brings up. Be careful, people. Paper money can blow away in the wind but then be recouped fairly easily. The few seconds you spent reading this comment, for example? Permanently gone. Be wary of how you spend your time...
• kamaal 15y ago
  Its not always about the money I earn now, or over the next two weeks. Looking at thing from that perspective is not just a narrow minded way of looking but a very destructive thing over the longer run. I push 16 hours work day packed with productivity at the extreme, why? Sure I don't get paid for all that immediately. But bear in mind incrementally over the years I have learned tons more than the average guy. I am also better trained to perform on my current job than my peers. The chances of me doing some thing big are higher, I am better aligned to a good job/promotion or a raise. Basically when somebody is talking of career development and over time this is what they mean. I joined this industry 5 years back. Without fancy degrees, Ivy league brand, marks and grades. Today I'm far ahead of most of my peers who joined with me then. Ofcourse I have faced a lot of ridicule, mockery as to why like a fool I do so much work for free. I am not doing anything for free, I am just ok with temporary loss in compensation for a premium later. In you and your research by Richard Hamming - http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html , This point is mentioned: Now for the matter of drive. You observe that most great scientists have tremendous drive. I worked for ten years with John Tukey at Bell Labs. He had tremendous drive. One day about three or four years after I joined, I discovered that John Tukey was slightly younger than I was. John was a genius and I clearly was not. Well I went storming into Bode's office and said, ``How can anybody my age know as much as John Tukey does?'' He leaned back in his chair, put his hands behind his head, grinned slightly, and said, ``You would be surprised Hamming, how much you would know if you worked as hard as he did that many years.'' I simply slunk out of the office! What Bode was saying was this: ``Knowledge and productivity are like compound interest.'' Given two people of approximately the same ability and one person who works ten percent more than the other, the latter will more than twice outproduce the former. The more you know, the more you learn; the more you learn, the more you can do; the more you can do, the more the opportunity - it is very much like compound interest. I don't want to give you a rate, but it is a very high rate. Given two people with exactly the same ability, the one person who manages day in and day out to get in one more hour of thinking will be tremendously more productive over a lifetime. I took Bode's remark to heart; I spent a good deal more of my time for some years trying to work a bit harder and I found, in fact, I could get more work done. I don't like to say it in front of my wife, but I did sort of neglect her sometimes; I needed to study. You have to neglect things if you intend to get what you want done. There's no question about this. And trust me this incremental learning and productivity give mindblowing results over time.