5 ms·

Simple solution (from the software engineer's perspective): demand overtime pay. If you are officially expected to work 40h/week for certain amount of money, bu

by nawitus 13y ago

Simple solution (from the software engineer's perspective): demand overtime pay. If you are officially expected to work 40h/week for certain amount of money, but in practise you're "expected" to work 50h/week, then your real wage is actually 20% lower than what your contract says. And that is pretty similar to theft. It's time to start comparing wages instead of absolute income.

deelowe 13y ago
Most SWEs are salary. Overtime laws are different for salaried employees(depending on jurisdiction). A lot of times, you can demand overtime all you want and the employer can simply deny it, and most will. Typically, your only options are to switch employers or file a lawsuit.
- kyllo 13y ago
  Then you go try to find a job where you're actually only expected to work 40 hours per week, and everyone goes home by 5:00. But then, you find that the salary offer is at least 20% lower than the place that worked you 50+ hours/week. High salaries come with high expectations. If you're getting paid a lot, expect to work a lot, too. If a good work/life balance were free, everyone would have it. It has a definite opportunity cost.
  - vonmoltke 13y ago
    All 11 years of my work experience thus far is in the defense industry, so keep that in mind as I state the following. I have yet to see an instance where salary scaled 1:1 with time put in. Where I used to work, the people that busted their asses for 50+ hours week in and week out, showing they were "team players", might get a 6% raise at review time instead of a 2% raise for a strict 8-5 engineer. They might also get a few thousand in extra bonuses, if their department has funding for them. After a while they might get to the point where they were making enough extra to justify the effort, but "a while" could be 10 years or more. Note that I am specifically avoiding any discussion of non-monetary considerations and that my analysis sounds rather mercenary. I am specifically trying to address the issue of engineers making more money for being expected to put in more effort. Discussion of the non-monetary considerations could be a lengthy tangent on its own.
    - kyllo 13y ago
      I have yet to see an instance where salary scaled 1:1 with time put in Agreed, and I also have yet to see an instance where productivity scaled 1:1 with time put in. So, it works out. :)
      - vonmoltke 13y ago
        Quite true. There were many in the workaholic group who could have cut multiple hours off their weeks by working smarter.
    - hgh 13y ago
      The 4% difference compounds reasonably well. Suppose you start at $80k and work at the company for 5 years. After five years the strict 8-5 eng in your example is making $87k--barely keeping up with inflation--and the hard worker is making $101k. The total compensation difference over 5 years is $35k. Unfortunately, real world compensation schemes often don't even work out as well as your example...
      - comrade_ogilvy 13y ago
        Indeed, a 4% difference compounds quite well. Unfortunately many people imagine they might get a 3% or 4% net bump, when they are really going to get 1% extra. Working an extra 20% so that you are paid appropriately larger salary 19 years down the line is not a terrible choice if you really need the money. It is also possible you will earn true grade improvement along the way and get a one time additional bump of 5% for your effort. Of course, if we reverse the equation, things might look differently. I have about 3 potential free hour per workday and 12 free hours per weekend day, for a net 39 hours of "my own time", earned by showing up to work. Giving 10 hours of those to the employer is a "pay cut" of 25%.
  - flyinRyan 13y ago
    Except there are plenty of places that expect 50+ hours/week and pay 20% less than market at least. Likewise, I'm sure there are jobs that pay market or better and get close to 40 hour weeks. The market doesn't work as efficiently as you imagine it does, nor could it since companies do all they can to hide what salaries actually are (i.e. imagine trying to buy fruit when nothing had prices, no one would tell you what they paid, and you had to negotiate in private for what they cost you).
    - kyllo 13y ago
      Agreed, employers often take advantage of market illegibility as it allows them to underpay people who don't know what their market value is. The employment market has very imperfect information, and the information asymmetry is usually in the employer's favor. In order to get the best of both worlds (reasonable hours and high pay) as an employee, you not only need to be a top-notch employee, but you also need to find a top-notch company to work for. Middling employers will either underpay you or overwork you, and the worst employers will do both.
  - nawitus 13y ago
    I don't have a problem with that, as long as the 50h/week is reflected in the contract and stated during the wage negotiation. The problem is that often(?) it's not, so you can't know your true wage until you've changed the employer and there's no turning back.
- georgemcbay 13y ago
  There are plenty of ways to pay for "overtime" without it being official overtime pay. eg. bonuses, time-off matching extra time worked during an unavoidable "crunch", etc. Of course, there are still employers that won't even consider giving you any of that but make it a regular practice of overworking their employees. Don't work at these places.
noarchy 13y ago
This is where being an hourly contractor really has its perks. If people expect long hours from a contractor, fair enough, but it will cost them. In my own situation, when overtime opportunities arise, I'm thinking of the money that I can make. This, versus being salaried, where I'd ponder the hit my private life going to take, with no extra compensation, to boot.
shailesh 13y ago
One should never work for any management that values hours spent rather than value created. But then, it also translates to work visibly.
- vonmoltke 13y ago
  By extension, you should avoid working for companies whose customers pay more attention to hours billed than products delivered.
  - shailesh 13y ago
    This advise (sentence) is worth its weight in pure gold. Kudos!
- jimwalsh 13y ago
  Many, many Fortune 500 companies still have plenty of old guard managers that think that hours spent is the most important metric out there. They are the same ones that can't grasp how to manage team members they can't see/touch.
- nawitus 13y ago
  Show me one company that can accurately measure value created. It's the holy grail of management in software engineering. Anyway, in such a company you as a software engineer could be able to work (say) only 30h/week, so there's no overtime problem.

by nawitus 13y ago

deelowe 13y ago

Most SWEs are salary. Overtime laws are different for salaried employees(depending on jurisdiction). A lot of times, you can demand overtime all you want and the employer can simply deny it, and most will. Typically, your only options are to switch employers or file a lawsuit.

kyllo 13y ago
Then you go try to find a job where you're actually only expected to work 40 hours per week, and everyone goes home by 5:00. But then, you find that the salary offer is at least 20% lower than the place that worked you 50+ hours/week. High salaries come with high expectations. If you're getting paid a lot, expect to work a lot, too. If a good work/life balance were free, everyone would have it. It has a definite opportunity cost.
- vonmoltke 13y ago
  All 11 years of my work experience thus far is in the defense industry, so keep that in mind as I state the following. I have yet to see an instance where salary scaled 1:1 with time put in. Where I used to work, the people that busted their asses for 50+ hours week in and week out, showing they were "team players", might get a 6% raise at review time instead of a 2% raise for a strict 8-5 engineer. They might also get a few thousand in extra bonuses, if their department has funding for them. After a while they might get to the point where they were making enough extra to justify the effort, but "a while" could be 10 years or more. Note that I am specifically avoiding any discussion of non-monetary considerations and that my analysis sounds rather mercenary. I am specifically trying to address the issue of engineers making more money for being expected to put in more effort. Discussion of the non-monetary considerations could be a lengthy tangent on its own.
  - kyllo 13y ago
    I have yet to see an instance where salary scaled 1:1 with time put in Agreed, and I also have yet to see an instance where productivity scaled 1:1 with time put in. So, it works out. :)
    - vonmoltke 13y ago
      Quite true. There were many in the workaholic group who could have cut multiple hours off their weeks by working smarter.
  - hgh 13y ago
    The 4% difference compounds reasonably well. Suppose you start at $80k and work at the company for 5 years. After five years the strict 8-5 eng in your example is making $87k--barely keeping up with inflation--and the hard worker is making $101k. The total compensation difference over 5 years is $35k. Unfortunately, real world compensation schemes often don't even work out as well as your example...
    - comrade_ogilvy 13y ago
      Indeed, a 4% difference compounds quite well. Unfortunately many people imagine they might get a 3% or 4% net bump, when they are really going to get 1% extra. Working an extra 20% so that you are paid appropriately larger salary 19 years down the line is not a terrible choice if you really need the money. It is also possible you will earn true grade improvement along the way and get a one time additional bump of 5% for your effort. Of course, if we reverse the equation, things might look differently. I have about 3 potential free hour per workday and 12 free hours per weekend day, for a net 39 hours of "my own time", earned by showing up to work. Giving 10 hours of those to the employer is a "pay cut" of 25%.
- flyinRyan 13y ago
  Except there are plenty of places that expect 50+ hours/week and pay 20% less than market at least. Likewise, I'm sure there are jobs that pay market or better and get close to 40 hour weeks. The market doesn't work as efficiently as you imagine it does, nor could it since companies do all they can to hide what salaries actually are (i.e. imagine trying to buy fruit when nothing had prices, no one would tell you what they paid, and you had to negotiate in private for what they cost you).
  - kyllo 13y ago
    Agreed, employers often take advantage of market illegibility as it allows them to underpay people who don't know what their market value is. The employment market has very imperfect information, and the information asymmetry is usually in the employer's favor. In order to get the best of both worlds (reasonable hours and high pay) as an employee, you not only need to be a top-notch employee, but you also need to find a top-notch company to work for. Middling employers will either underpay you or overwork you, and the worst employers will do both.
- nawitus 13y ago
  I don't have a problem with that, as long as the 50h/week is reflected in the contract and stated during the wage negotiation. The problem is that often(?) it's not, so you can't know your true wage until you've changed the employer and there's no turning back.
georgemcbay 13y ago
There are plenty of ways to pay for "overtime" without it being official overtime pay. eg. bonuses, time-off matching extra time worked during an unavoidable "crunch", etc. Of course, there are still employers that won't even consider giving you any of that but make it a regular practice of overworking their employees. Don't work at these places.

noarchy 13y ago

This is where being an hourly contractor really has its perks. If people expect long hours from a contractor, fair enough, but it will cost them. In my own situation, when overtime opportunities arise, I'm thinking of the money that I can make. This, versus being salaried, where I'd ponder the hit my private life going to take, with no extra compensation, to boot.

shailesh 13y ago

One should never work for any management that values hours spent rather than value created. But then, it also translates to work visibly.

vonmoltke 13y ago
By extension, you should avoid working for companies whose customers pay more attention to hours billed than products delivered.
- shailesh 13y ago
  This advise (sentence) is worth its weight in pure gold. Kudos!
jimwalsh 13y ago
Many, many Fortune 500 companies still have plenty of old guard managers that think that hours spent is the most important metric out there. They are the same ones that can't grasp how to manage team members they can't see/touch.
nawitus 13y ago
Show me one company that can accurately measure value created. It's the holy grail of management in software engineering. Anyway, in such a company you as a software engineer could be able to work (say) only 30h/week, so there's no overtime problem.