3 ms·

It's not the equivalent, as you're still required to work the same number of total hours. (You work 9-hour days -- 7-5 instead of 8-5.) The main problem is th

by jofer 12y ago

It's not the equivalent, as you're still required to work the same number of total hours. (You work 9-hour days -- 7-5 instead of 8-5.) The main problem is the culture of working through those Fridays off and many weekends. You may not be "required" to, but you're certainly expected to.

endzone 12y ago
what area do you work in? i don't know any (office bound) petroleum engineers that regularly work weekends
- jacquesm 12y ago
  I don't know any off-shore ones that don't. And there are plenty of guys that are away from home for months at the time.
- soperj 12y ago
  I worked in on gas pipelines for a while, and it was a 3 weeks on 3 days off, 11 hours a day schedule. Depending on where you were, it was often a waste of time to travel home during your 3 days stint so you just kept working.
- jofer 12y ago
  Exploration. I'm a geologist, rather than a petroleum engineer. It's a different culture than development or production. (Though there are crunch periods in those, as well. Plenty of situations where you're on-call 24/7, which doesn't happen in exploration.) In development and production, you're typically involved in smaller business decisions at regular intervals. In exploration, you do work to support very large (100's of millions to billions) business decisions with longer timelines, but very inflexible deadlines. Normally, you'd have a couple of months of crunch time before a bid round/prospect assessment/etc. You work 12-16 hour days for 60 days straight, and after that there's a period where no one cares if you head out early every day for a few weeks. During the crunch time, though, there's an expectation that you're "all in". However, I'm more of an internal contractor (I prefer the term "mercenary interpreter"). I rotate between teams that are understaffed and help out during the "crunch time". The downside to that is that I rotate off of one understaffed team and on to another with no down time in-between. It wouldn't be as bad if I were actually on a particular team long-term. (The upside is that I get to see a lot of neat geology.) Most of this is just me griping about my current role (I'm hoping to move to R&D soon). It's not quite this bad outside of the specific teams I've been on. However, there's a strong culture of working crazy weekends and long hours that I really wish we could change. I've worked for three of the majors. There are differences, but this part of it is the same. Overall, I just don't understand why salary is negotiable in a job, but time off isn't.
  - vinceguidry 12y ago
    > Overall, I just don't understand why salary is negotiable in a job, but time off isn't. Salary is fungible, they can give you more or less of it and have it not appreciably affect company goals. Time off often is not.
  - juanplusjuan 12y ago
    Consult. If you're valuable to your employer they'll want to keep you on-- esp since you know the understaffed teams so well and can fit in seamlessly (read: they don't have to train someone else). You should be able to charge more (50-100%) to cover health insurance et al. and will have more control over your schedule. I don't know your industry though so it would behoove you to make friends with someone else who consults for your company and figure out what arrangement they have. If the company has done it once they'll do it again.
nilkn 12y ago
It's interesting to see this mentioned. My roommate is a process engineer at Chevron and is on the 9/80 schedule. Keep in mind that I do not work in oil and gas and my knowledge is very limited, but his schedule seems to be very relaxed, more so than almost anybody else I know. I don't think I've ever seen him work on his Fridays off, and actually he frequently comes back early on the Fridays that he doesn't have off too. He also doesn't seem to work 9 hour days for the rest of the week either even though technically that's part of the 9/80 schedule.

by jofer 12y ago

endzone 12y ago

what area do you work in? i don't know any (office bound) petroleum engineers that regularly work weekends

jacquesm 12y ago
I don't know any off-shore ones that don't. And there are plenty of guys that are away from home for months at the time.
soperj 12y ago
I worked in on gas pipelines for a while, and it was a 3 weeks on 3 days off, 11 hours a day schedule. Depending on where you were, it was often a waste of time to travel home during your 3 days stint so you just kept working.
jofer 12y ago
Exploration. I'm a geologist, rather than a petroleum engineer. It's a different culture than development or production. (Though there are crunch periods in those, as well. Plenty of situations where you're on-call 24/7, which doesn't happen in exploration.) In development and production, you're typically involved in smaller business decisions at regular intervals. In exploration, you do work to support very large (100's of millions to billions) business decisions with longer timelines, but very inflexible deadlines. Normally, you'd have a couple of months of crunch time before a bid round/prospect assessment/etc. You work 12-16 hour days for 60 days straight, and after that there's a period where no one cares if you head out early every day for a few weeks. During the crunch time, though, there's an expectation that you're "all in". However, I'm more of an internal contractor (I prefer the term "mercenary interpreter"). I rotate between teams that are understaffed and help out during the "crunch time". The downside to that is that I rotate off of one understaffed team and on to another with no down time in-between. It wouldn't be as bad if I were actually on a particular team long-term. (The upside is that I get to see a lot of neat geology.) Most of this is just me griping about my current role (I'm hoping to move to R&D soon). It's not quite this bad outside of the specific teams I've been on. However, there's a strong culture of working crazy weekends and long hours that I really wish we could change. I've worked for three of the majors. There are differences, but this part of it is the same. Overall, I just don't understand why salary is negotiable in a job, but time off isn't.
- vinceguidry 12y ago
  > Overall, I just don't understand why salary is negotiable in a job, but time off isn't. Salary is fungible, they can give you more or less of it and have it not appreciably affect company goals. Time off often is not.
- juanplusjuan 12y ago
  Consult. If you're valuable to your employer they'll want to keep you on-- esp since you know the understaffed teams so well and can fit in seamlessly (read: they don't have to train someone else). You should be able to charge more (50-100%) to cover health insurance et al. and will have more control over your schedule. I don't know your industry though so it would behoove you to make friends with someone else who consults for your company and figure out what arrangement they have. If the company has done it once they'll do it again.

nilkn 12y ago

It's interesting to see this mentioned. My roommate is a process engineer at Chevron and is on the 9/80 schedule. Keep in mind that I do not work in oil and gas and my knowledge is very limited, but his schedule seems to be very relaxed, more so than almost anybody else I know. I don't think I've ever seen him work on his Fridays off, and actually he frequently comes back early on the Fridays that he doesn't have off too. He also doesn't seem to work 9 hour days for the rest of the week either even though technically that's part of the 9/80 schedule.