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I normally work as a contractor, so I get paid for my time. So I'll work overtime, and in fact will work as much as my client wants. They're aware of the costs,

• jib 13y ago
  In long-term employment, once you're in a spot where you're doing clock watching, both the employee and the employer are much worse off. I probably work on average an hour or two a week above my contracted hours (depends how you count stuff like handling a few urgent things from home etc), but I see it as a loose agreement - I get a pile of cash each month in return for generating as much value as I can in roughly 40h/week. Sometimes that means that I work 18h in a row (rollout of a new product for instance) and sometimes it means I leave early on a slow day. While the agreement says in pretty black and white that I work 9-18 Mon-Fri (I think - it was a long time since I read it), neither side is trying to encode the agreement fully, nor follow it to the letter, because doing so would be detrimental to both of us.
• JonFish85 13y ago
  Or maybe it's about more than just maximizing, to the penny, the dollars-per-hour you can make. If it's as a contractor, then I'd give you more lee-way, but as a "full-time employee", there are other things that motivate me, at least: reputation, ability to get a job done on or under time (negotiating power in the future), responsibility to co-workers, pride in my work, etc.