9 ms·
I would love to see a mandatory scheme whereby employees are free to work more than forty hours per week should they wish to do so, or are required to do so, bu
by alter_ego 13y ago
I would love to see a mandatory scheme whereby employees are free to work more than forty hours per week should they wish to do so, or are required to do so, but overtime payments are guaranteed, on an increasing scale, so by the time the employer has their staff working 100 hours per week they have had to pay more than say 6 weeks salary, possibly 8. This would quickly shake out the bulk of big corps who simply encourage presenteeism and other negative cultures.
- nhangen 13y agoAs an employer in the tech industry, I would never hire someone that complained that more than 40 hours/week was too much, and I don't own a Fortune 500 company.
- toomuchtodo 13y agoAnd hence the need for labor laws to rein in employers. EDIT: If you don't like the rules, go open a company in another country. The ability to employ people is a privilege, governed by labor laws. You don't make the rules, you simply have to play by them.
- nhangen 13y agoYou act as if employment is a right. It's not. As I always say, if you don't like the rules, build your own company. Edit: 'The ability to employ people is a privilege.' I don't believe that, but as an exercise, remove that 'privilege' and tell me how many people would be able to survive long enough to have a hobby?
- mhurron 13y ago>You act as if employment is a right No, he acts like companies can not be expected to even work in their own best interests. And he's right.
- toomuchtodo 13y agoAs a business owner, you would employ workers at the lowest wage possible for as many hours as possible. This is why labor laws exist.
- nhangen 13y agoI never said anything about that. I believe in rewarding good value, and I often fight for employee raises more than most of my colleagues.
- montecarl 13y agoYour competitor might find it advantageous to compete with you on employee wages and poach your good employees leaving you unable to compete. Supply and demand works for salaries as much as it does for physical goods.
- damncabbage 13y agoAnd what about the poor bastards who are judged to be "average" employees by whatever metric?
- pyre 13y agoWhich is what history proves happens all of the time, and is the reason that we don't have any labour laws, right?
- willholloway 13y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_army_of_labour http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_army_of_labour
- nhangen 13y agoA business owner that engages in that practice is not going to keep his/her employees long.
- toomuchtodo 13y agoLike Walmart?
- ahoyhere 13y agoThe notion of a job/employment is a new one for the vast majority of the world's population, Americans included. Most people were peasants/subsistence farmers, or small time commercial farmers, or tradespeople (carpenter, blacksmith, furrier, etc.) who operated more like freelancers today than anything else. More recently, pre-WWI, many people were domestic servants, which is employment of course but not the same as working for a company today. Merchants are relatively new to human history. The legal construct of a company is much much newer than merchants. The company-employment boom is clearly ending. When you look at human history -- even limited to "civilized" history -- it's pretty clear that mass employment was the exception, not the rule, and now it's going away.
- NTDF9 13y agoThis is a very interesting perspective. I never thought of it that way. One might add the fact that pre-WW1, most women were not a part of the workforce/merchant class/trader class(sad but true). So yes, employment is a relatively new thing.
- toomuchtodo 13y agoLooking at BLS participation rate data (which, unfortunately, only goes back to 1948), I have to agree with you: http://data.bls.gov/generated_files/graphics/latest_numbers_LNS11300000_1948_2013_all_period_M08_data.gif http://data.bls.gov/generated_files/graphics/latest_numbers_... http://archive.is/Cdwzp http://archive.is/Cdwzp We have boomers exiting the workforce while unskilled/less-skilled workers are unable to find a job, and discouraged, they exit the workforce. This is compounded by rapid technological advancements that are slowly eating their way up the skills ladder ("software eating the world"). I know your comment has a much longer time scale in mind, and my data is of a much smaller and recent time period, but I believe the argument still stands: Mass employment is ending. I don't know what the solution is, but we need to find one.
- eli_gottlieb 13y agoUuuh... actually... there were merchant and wage-worker classes all the way back to ancient Mesopotamia's very first civilizations. What's new is to have almost all of society basically split into merchants, wage-workers, and holders of political office.
- eli_gottlieb 13y agoYou act as if employment is a right. It's not. And we can say in return: you act as if employing someone is a right; it's not. Employment is a contract. It lays obligations like "come to work, follow orders, and don't steal your boss's secrets" on the employee, just as it sets obligations like "pay wages and don't overwork people" on employers. Those obligations, on both sides, are enforceable via the legal system, which is a service provided by the State under such conditions as the State wants to provide it. If you want to operate without obeying reasonable labor laws, why shouldn't your employees operate without obeying rules against industrial espionage?
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- woofyman 13y agoOr form a labor union.
- capisce 13y agoAren't you worried about missing out on the best performing hires then? Why would a person who can pick and choose work at a place where ass-in-seat time is used as a metric?
- nhangen 13y agoNot really. I'd be more worried about hiring the wrong person and wasting valuable cash on someone that lacks the necessary work ethic to keep pace. The same person that complains about 41 hours is the same person that wants to clock in and clock out. I want people that think about the product even when they aren't in the office. They are rare breeds sure, but IMO anything else is a waste.
- minikites 13y agoYeah, how dare people think about their family. There's work to be done.
- outside1234 13y agoI think that's great. So you pay them overtime as well for this extra work? Or are you exploiting them? You can't have it both ways.
- consultant23522 13y agoThat's not really the way it works. Most people who are slaves and work those crazy hours do so because they are avoiding their home life or have low self esteem and don't realize the value of the work they're doing. I used to be that way. Now I make a lot more money and work a lot less hours.
- v13inc 13y agoI've personally found that it is much easier to think about the product outside of the office when you aren't wearing yourself down with a 40-hour work week. When you hit the 40 hour mark, work dwarfs freetime (excluding sleep, of course), which I believe causes people to throw up the work / life boundary walls. For me, when I was working 20-30 hours / week freelancing, things seemed to invert a bit -- my freetime now dwarfed my work, and I no longer felt that I wasn't taking advantage of my free time if I was thinking about work. Also, how long do your engineers spend on non-work activities during their 8+ hour work day (including lunch and breaks)? Edit: missing word
- frenchy 13y agoWould you mind explaining why? I have no problem working overtime if the conditions necessitate, but an employeer with these sorts of opinions is something that I would try hard to avoid.
- nhangen 13y agoBecause I want to hire people that are invested, not wage slaves. If you're counting every hour, then you're already clocking in and out, and you're probably either a) always looking for a better opportunity or b) the kind of person that wants to be comfortable and taken care of. I find that in the case of either, I get burned.
- v13inc 13y agoThis threw up a bit of a red flag for me: "the kind of person that wants to be comfortable and taken care of". Wouldn't that person be more productive? Likewise, I tend to think that the ass-in-the-seat 40+ hour workers tend to correlate with the "always looking for a better opportunity" workers.
- nhangen 13y agoI'm talking about the kind of person that wants to work 9/5 and retire with a watch. The baby boomers that are now struggling to find jobs and the millenials that are more concerned with self-discovery than in making a contribution and earning their wages.
- 4hthth4 13y agoWould you expect your HR or finance people to not work only 9-5?
- TheZenPsycho 13y agoYou want someone you can easily cheat, in other words. Someone who isn't looking after their own interests, and will gladly sacrifice their own time for no additional reward? Someone with no personal sense of identity, whom you can manipulate like a puppet on a string?
- adeaver 13y agoI suggest you examine why they are complaining. Are they being forced to work that many hours because of your process? Might want to rethink that. Do you have so much work that it can't be done with your current staff in 40 hours/week? Hire more. Is your management so inept that your employees are forced to work more to keep up? Training will help. Many people will willingly work extra when they need to (trying to squash that one last bug or trying to squeeze in that new feature) but rail when it's expected and demanded for no legitimate reason.
- nhangen 13y agoMy point is that if you are counting hours every week, then you're already doing it wrong.
- adeaver 13y agoYou do see the irony in your statement right?
- nhangen 13y agoI see what you're getting at, but if you re-read my original statement you'll see that I'm targeting people that complain about working more than 40 hours. I don't count hours, but I do notice people that clock in/out, and I definitely notice people that complain about having to work more than 40.
- vvvVVVvvv 13y agoIf you are the owner, then it totally makes sense to not count your hours since you reap what you sow. If you're nothing but an employee (without any incentives such as stocks), I don't see why you would continuously do overtime. And as another user said, if your employees need to continuously do some overtime, there's a bigger issue underlying.
- discreteevent 13y ago
- segmondy 13y agoI would if they worked well, but they will be paid for only the time they worked. I'm kinda not a fan of salary, people slack off, and companies think they can get more productivity by making them work more. However, if you paid them hourly and micromanaged them to hell. You can get more out if you only hire them for 10-20hours a week.
- eropple 13y ago> I'm kinda not a fan of salary, people slack off Salaried workers are not paid for their time, they're paid for what they do, so this makes no sense. > if you paid them hourly and micromanaged them to hell. You can get more out if you only hire them for 10-20hours a week. Have you ever been in a management position? Because this is exactly what no competent manager ever does. You frighten me.
- anonymoushn 13y agoIt must be terribly expensive to pay overtime every week!
- beat 13y agoAs a rational person, I would never (again) work for an employer that regularly insisted on more than 40 hours a week of my time. Then again, I like to do things other than make money for someone else.
- nhangen 13y agoWhat if that person paid you a premium for it?
- 4hthth4 13y agoHow much is "a premium" exactly?
- ulisesrmzroche 13y agoYou're not paying that much making santa apps and wordpress themes, get real.
- pm24601 13y agomoney != time. I can always get more money. I can't live any longer.
- Touche 13y agoPlease let us know what company you work for so I can avoid interviewing there.
- reledi 13y agoIt's in his profile.
- gordjw 13y agoIt's gone now, could you (or anyone that remembers) name it?
- nhangen 13y agoI'm not that hard to find.
- TheZenPsycho 13y agoQuoted in a (currently higher) comment " I'm the co-founder of Virtuous Giant, where we make WordPress plugins like Ignition Deck, and iPhone apps like Santa Strike."
- eterm 13y agoAs an employee in the tech industry I would never work for a company that thought more than 40 hours a week was reasonable. Oh, and I hate clocking in/out, I wouldn't work for a company that time-tracked like that either. Trust me to get the work done, don't worry about my hours. I won't be an ass and leave at 5pm while there's something that needs to be finished today because "it's my hours" and you don't be an ass if I turn up after 10am. My current company is great, flexible working hours and a lot of trust around working hours and working conditions. You on the other hand sound like you run a terrible place to be employed. Edit: "My" as in the company for which I work, I just re-read this and it sounded like I run a company which isn't the case.
- nhangen 13y agoI disagree with you on the first line, but the rest is reasonable. No manager (at least not me) wants to measure hours, but when an employee's production is waning, that's one of the things you CAN measure to see if that's part of the problem. But if I find someone constantly looking at the clock when the hand strikes 5, I know they've already checked out, and that's not the kind of person I want on my team.
- flatline 13y agoI'm constantly looking at the clock when the hand strikes 5 because I've got to pick up the kids from daycare. Sometimes if I finish whatever I was working on 10 minutes early, yeah, I'm checked out. What does it matter? You either do good work in the time you're at work or you don't. There are definitely places that want people to put in an appearance of slaving away as they don't know any other way to gauge productivity. The other thing I've seen (and done, in the past) is working 80+ hour weeks because everything's out of control, no one has a solid pulse on the business, and the job is a constant putting out of fires. Granted, some of this is endemic to start-up life, but if the shit is constantly flowing downhill, not a good sign.
- nhangen 13y agoBut that's a completely different scenario, and one that I'm sure you would discuss with your hiring manager before accepting the position.
- bowlofpetunias 13y agoIt's a good thing not all employers have this stereotypical exploitative attitude, or socialism would have won a long time ago.
- jthol 13y ago> I'm an idea guy learning how to code and build better products. I'm the co-founder of Virtuous Giant, where we make WordPress plugins like Ignition Deck, and iPhone apps like Santa Strike. My passion to work overtime for you is absolutely overflowing! What a visionary! What Ideas! WordPress and Santa Strike!?!? Who wouldn't want to put in 60hrs/wk to be part of something so glorious?
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- nness 13y agoIf we put aside all of the valid concerns about burn-out, work-place satisfaction, work-life balance, buy-in\equity, and flexibility that have been raised here by others, it looks like there is another problem: It sounds like the effort you require does not match what you can\are happy to spend. If you need more effort-hours against your development, you need to hire more developers. If you can't afford to hire additional developers, other considerations are necessary. One of which you've explored, and that is to require everyone to work 40+ hour weeks. But as you're seeing here, that's not always desirable. Its a old-school concept, but the Iron Triangle is always relevant: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_triangle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_triangle.
- angersock 13y agoYou know, this: "As an employer in the tech industry, I would never hire someone that complained that more than 40 hours/week was too much" ...may be the cause of this... "and I don't own a Fortune 500 company."
- Toenex 13y agoAre you paying by the hour?
- nhangen 13y agoIn some cases yes.
- johnjlocke 13y agoIn SOME cases? Major red flag there. Why would you NOT pay your developers hourly wages?
- radiusq 13y agoHey Mr. "Idea guy learning how to code", do you honestly believe your pathetic company and apps are worth spending more than 40 hours/week? Get over yourself.
- jdavid 13y agoThere is more to a person than the hours they spend at work. A whole person has taken the time to consider the grander things in life, they plan ahead and are considerate. They take care of their family and friends, and they participate in the community. There are companies out there like 37signals that feel that working too many hours a week actually injures productivity. For years I worked at startups working 50-60 hours a week, but recently I started working at a consulting company where I might have 35-40 billable hours a week of work and I have never felt more productive. I think there are ways management can increase productivity without asking people in the information age to work more hours. The truth is, if you are a programmer and you love to solve problems those challenges sit with you after you 'clock-out' you think about them on your commute home and while you prepare dinner while you relax and unwind. Archenemies even invented volumetric math while in a bath tub, and many people claim to have brilliant ideas in the shower. I think the notion of confining someone to an office or a chair to work is the least productive thing you can do. Give your team the space to let their mind expand into and inspire them to solve good problems. Focus your efforts on the right tasks and you will see your productivity increase. Provide people with good tools and you can see their craftsmanship improve. Acting as a manager, your job is to tackle the challenges that are holding back your team. I think a lot of the stagnation of this nation is based on Americans overworking themselves, and in exchange we have sold short our family, friends, and community. We have sacrificed short term gains for the long term security of our culture. Imagine if we had more time to spend in our communities articulating our needs to our peers, working out our differences and solving problems. We would have stronger communities and greater accord with our neighbors. We could become a united nation again that was empathetic with our local needs. We would have the margin and freedom to explore big things as a nation and we could take ownership in what our nation sets out to achieve.
- ctdonath 13y agoReality has a better scheme: you can quit any time and work somewhere preferable.
- ctdonath 13y agoovertime payments are guaranteed, on an increasing scale Shades of Dilbert's "I'm gonna write me a new minivan!" http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1995-11-13/ http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1995-11-13/ You're encouraging workers to slack their 40 hours to compel the employer to require overtime. National productivity would crash.
- Kluny 13y agoI disagree... it would take much more than money to persuade me to spend more than 40 hours a week at the office. And I like my job.