How dare they expect nights and weekends off.

Great Debates
21

[QUOTE=smiling bandit]
I’ve actuall;y throught about writing a book suggesting that many office workers become every-other-day workers, and work around 6 hours a day most days.

The reason is that opffice work is extremely inefficient. There’s huge messes, people everywhere, noise, and nothing gets done. The only good aspects are that, theoretically, the people you need to talk to are right there, and the managers are there to help guide you. But increasingly the managers can’t help do squat, and the peopel you talk to are in another country 3000 miles away.

I find, in fact, that the actual work done takes between 3 and 4 hours a day. Everything else is communicating and coordinating. There’s ultimately no reason to be in the office for the actual work, and sometimes none to be in it for the C&C.
[/QUOTE]

I couldn’t agree more. There is so much wasted time in C&C, along with silly office politics that makes work unproductive. What also would help is having 3 shifts available, 9-5, 10-6, 11-7 to go off the standard model. Several companies are no doing this and allowing their employees to set their own schedules regarding which shift they work on any given day. Not only does it help alleviate rush hour traffic issues, but employees love being able to get something accomplished outside the office if they need to, as opposed to having to schedule something three weeks in advance.

22

[QUOTE=Acid Lamp]
Here’s the deal. Young workers (late gen x, y, and millenials) are known as being petulant, lazy, and wanting something for nothing. What is more accurate is that they place their personal lives, family, friends, and happiness above the company. They actually will work amazingly long and hard hours IF management will recognize and reward them for their efforts. They expect, (and rightly so to my mind), that hard work and creative thinking should be commensurately rewarded with bonuses, pay raises or time off. At the minimum they expect a thank you. The issue is that management has come to “expect” this attitude from older workers who have devoted their entire lives to the company. Shamefully it is these same workers that companies consistently screw over with early “retirement” or “downsizing”. Having seen their parents go through it, the younger workers have little trust in the company to keep their end of the bargain on anything. Since they are the workforce that will replace needed positions, they feel free to shop around until they find a company that will treat them right.

I don’t see the work week increasing, I see the opposite. As telecommuting becomes more prevalent to save costs, a flexible 30 hr week will become more standard.
[/QUOTE]

I can remember in the 70s my father actually had a contract with the company he worked for, stating the exact job, duties, payment, raises, bonuses and the like.

I am willing to work mad hours myself - and agree I want a thank you, or even a $5 gift card to Dunkin Donuts or something. I telecommute, and tend to work 1-2 hours of OT a day [the time I would normally have been doing the commute] and have gotten my monthly bonus every month since I started this position … I didnt get any bonus in the last department … no matter how much work I did … I wouldnt piss on my old boss if she was on fire but I would gimp on burning coals for my current boss.

23

IT Manager job I turned down in 1998:

Note that at the time, I was working 7am-noon M-F, or 25 hours a week, for $32 an hour ($40k a year). It was summer, I had a nice yard, and I was enjoying life.

Description: “You’ll have to wear a suit at all times, and be wearing the suit coat any time you step away from your desk, even to go to the rest room. So you’ll need three or four good suits. GOOD suits. You’ll be required to be on site from 6am to 6pm, Monday through Friday. Most of that is going to be taken up with meetings with other management, so you can expect another 15-20 hours a week on top of that, evenings and weekends, to deal with whatever is necessary to keep your department running. Then there’ll be off-site training and trips to other offices. The salary is $75k.”

Any wonder why I turned it down?

24

I’ve seen a lot of bad managers. It’s amazing how different things can be when you’re busting your ass for a company you feel appreciates you versus one that treats you like crap most of the time. I don’t mind working hard but I don’t want to put up with petty baloney designed to degrade me. I want good benefits and pay I don’t need casual Friday or funny hat day.

Odesio

25

What a timely thread this is for me!

My oldest daughter recently started working at a local call center. They are constantly hiring. She only makes $8.50 an hour, but there’s potential for bonuses, as well. My understanding is they will hire just about anyone with a pulse, then let them sort themselves out.

I have experience with customer service and a lot of telemarketing experience. I thought if I could find a M-F job, say 8-5 or 9-6, I’d take it. Yeah, it’s not a lot of money, but it would get me back out there, I think I’d be good at it, and there’s room for advancement.

So I went in, took the testing, aced it. I was told there was a training class starting on September 15th for a project that runs 8-7. I wouldn’t be expected to be there the whole time, some folks will work 8-5, some 9-6, others 10-7. But I would have no control over which of those shifts I got. But I thought, well, 10-7 wouldn’t be too bad. Dinner wouldn’t be on the table until 8 or so most nights, but it’s not the end of the world. So I hung around for an interview. When the interviewer got there, he told me the project really runs 8AM-9PM. So it was possible I could end up with a noon-9PM shift (they schedule everyone for 9 hour work days so they don’t end up paying for the 30 minute lunch break or the two 10-minute smaller breaks).

Oh, and no sick time for the first 90 days.
Oh, and the “accumulated paid time off” is sick, vacation, personal time, etc. They prefer if you schedule it. If I’m sick, and I have “pto”, but I call and am “denied” the time, my record gets “dinged”.
Oh, and the starting pay is $7.50, with 25 cent raises every six months, up to $9.00 an hour.

I didn’t quite tell the guy to go screw himself, but I wanted to. Of course, the interviewer didn’t seem thrilled with my demands that I not work past 7PM. He told me if I had “the least inkling” that I wouldn’t be able to work any available shift, this wasn’t the project for me, and they’ll save my application for when they’re hiring for a days-only project.

The thing is, while I was there they hired a girl who radiated “stupid”, and had to take the data entry test three times to get a passing grade. But she’s available any hours they want her.

Seems counter-intuitive to me. The crappy pay wouldn’t have stopped me. I’ve been out of the work force for 10 years, I don’t expect much. But I’ll be damned if I’m willing to never see my 8YO for a crappy $7-8.00 an hour.

Oh, and yeah, this is the kind of work environment that tries to raise “morale” by having “casual Fridays” and “crazy hat day”. :rolleyes:

26

[QUOTE=norinew]
My understanding is they will hire just about anyone with a pulse, then let them sort themselves out.
[/QUOTE]

This is exactly the kind of place which gives horrific customer service. I’ve seen the type. In fact, if they are dying for labor, but the HR manager doesn’t feel like doing anything, nobody gets hired. When the number of warm bodies falls sufficiently, then they hire. (Yes, I applied to one. My fully-qualified application when they were desperate for new hires languished for three months until I went to a job fair. Bam, got hired the next day.)

But they dont’ actually care about service here, just minutes. Everything is about the mibnute. They want you off the phone fast, and they can and will jerk you around schedule-wise.

27

[QUOTE=Acid Lamp]
Here’s the deal. Young workers (late gen x, y, and millenials) are known as being petulant, lazy, and wanting something for nothing. What is more accurate is that they place their personal lives, family, friends, and happiness above the company. They actually will work amazingly long and hard hours IF management will recognize and reward them for their efforts. They expect, (and rightly so to my mind), that hard work and creative thinking should be commensurately rewarded with bonuses, pay raises or time off. At the minimum they expect a thank you. The issue is that management has come to “expect” this attitude from older workers who have devoted their entire lives to the company. Shamefully it is these same workers that companies consistently screw over with early “retirement” or “downsizing”. Having seen their parents go through it, the younger workers have little trust in the company to keep their end of the bargain on anything. Since they are the workforce that will replace needed positions, they feel free to shop around until they find a company that will treat them right.
[/QUOTE]

Exactly. The company I work for often has multiple layoffs a year–I have no job security. On the other hand, I am treated well, and they don’t demand abusive overtime. They aren’t putting much into my 401k, and for a long time I was underpaid (not true now). But every time I think about leaving, I remember how well I’m being treated. That’s what has stopped me from bolting outta there after the layoffs at the beginning of the month.

If they started demanding a lot of overtime, I’d leave. There is no benefit to me for that kind of loyalty. They benefit from keeping me happy, because I have acquired specialized knowledge they can’t easily get off the street, and I work my butt off for the 40 hrs I am there each week. Plus, I tend to think about complex problems and come up with ideas outside of work, so they actually do get some overtime from me in that respect. I care about getting things right and doing a good job for them–because I’m treated well, and I want the company to succeed.

28

I’ve also noticed a little more of the opposite as my career has continued (about eight years and counting). My current boss is a huge proponent of the fabled “work-life balance”. On his first day with the company, he gathered the managers working under him and asked “How many hours do you work per week?” One of the managers answered “About 60 hours,” to which my boss said “Then you’re doing it wrong.”

I recognize the value of putting in extra hours when the work makes it absolutely necessary. I’ve worked from 6 am to past midnight before and I’ll probably do it again. But if my company just wants me to work an extra two hours a night because more work will get done, they can stuff it. If you want more work to get done, hire another person.

And don’t even get me started on companies that offer less than two weeks of vacation a year. That shit makes me want to move to France :wink:

29

[QUOTE=gigi]
Um, yeah. I’m going to need you to go ahead and come in on Sunday too, m’kay?
[/QUOTE]

I was just watching Office Space last night! Great movie.

30

[QUOTE=Acid Lamp]
Here’s the deal. Young workers (late gen x, y, and millenials) are known as being petulant, lazy, and wanting something for nothing. What is more accurate is that they place their personal lives, family, friends, and happiness above the company. They actually will work amazingly long and hard hours IF management will recognize and reward them for their efforts.
[/QUOTE]

Nitpick but Gen Y and Millenials are the same thing.

We’re pretty much talking IT workers here, right? I don’t know what it is about IT workers but there is something that makes them fundamentally different from the rest of the work force. Maybe because IT attracts so many of the type of people who would rather sit in front of a computer all day instead of dealing with other people BEFORE they joined the work force. Maybe because so many IT workers have built up the Microsoft/Apple/Google mythology in their minds and think if they bust their ass for 5 or 10 years, they will end up millionares.

From what I’ve seen, the hours are a lot better in Corporate America. When I was a consultant, I never saw people at our clients staying past 6pm. My office is pretty much empty after 5pm.

Of course the people I work with disgust me with their patheticness so there you have it.

31

[QUOTE=Acid Lamp]
Here’s the deal. Young workers (late gen x, y, and millenials) are known as being petulant, lazy, and wanting something for nothing. What is more accurate is that they place their personal lives, family, friends, and happiness above the company. They actually will work amazingly long and hard hours IF management will recognize and reward them for their efforts.

<SNIP>
the younger workers have little trust in the company to keep their end of the bargain on anything. Since they are the workforce that will replace needed positions, they feel free to shop around until they find a company that will treat them right.

[/QUOTE]

Some of us Gen-Xers (born 1972.. where does that put me- early or late?) have been on the receiving end of some of those layoffs and downsizings, and have seen it at other companies we’ve worked for.

It’s hard to have real loyalty for a company that you’ve seen lay people off who have worked there 25 years, and are 50 years old (and who are kind of fucked as a result), or where you’ve heard talk about the “last round of reorganization and right-sizing” that happened not long before you showed up.
The old-time compact between workers and their employees like my grandfathers and my father had is gone, and IMO primarily because companies feel free to lay off people willy-nilly to improve their bottom line, yet expect all the professionalism and sacrifice that they expected out of our ancestors, without ponying up something comparable to the job security they had in compensation.

That’s why Gen-X and Y people seem kind of ungrateful- we feel like we’re getting the short end of that stick relative to our parents and grandparents, and we don’t like it.

32

I’ve quoted it before on this board, I’ll quote it again:

Boss (Circa 1995): “Where’s your loyalty to this company?”
Me: “Where’s this company’s loyalty to me?”
Boss: “Good point”

33

[QUOTE=JXJohns]
Project Manager here, mostly IT deployments etc. I usually work an average of 35-40 hours per week. During crunch times however, that will usually double. It lasts for a few weeks and then gets back to normal. I get paid for every hour I work as a contractor so that is nice.

At the end of the year however, the weeks that I don’t work a full 40 usually nip away all of the extra hours that I work the rest of the time. The company and I both show a wash on the books. That needs to be considered in this discussion as well.
[/QUOTE]

“Comp time.” That’s the recommended compensation for overtime in Spain, although very few companies follow it; in most companies, you get either money over the table (very rare), money under the table (mostly for tradesfolk) or not even a thank you.

It was the way we worked at one of my employers, while we were on the SAP Project, and it worked well for us. We were able to do things like come in after lunch on Monday (we got our “homework” for the week at the 3am telemeeting with the US), because we’d recover those “free hours” during the week; we had weeks when we took “extra” days off (extra over our alloted vacation days) to compensate for the time already spent on “pull extra” periods, etc.

The look in HR managers’ and Project managers’ faces when I point out that part (comp hours as the preferred method to compensate for extra work) of the Spanish Basic Labor Law is always kind of interesting.

Thank you, Voyager.

34

Eh. Depends on what book you read. Still, I’ve found the phenomenon to be in all fields, not just IT. A lot of it has to do with the access to information that younger people have grown up with. Personally I feel a there is a huge cultural gap between those born in the late seventies and very early eighties, and those born after 1985. I can remember a time without computers, when only executives had the brick-like cell phones, and one had to consult an encyclopedia or library to do a report. GenY has grown up with the ability to research and comprehend the underlying mechanics and reasoning of pretty much any topic they choose. This leads to a fundamental conflict between them and management who utilize the old style of secrecy and authoritarian communication. They have NEED to know WHY we do something this way, espescially if they can do it more efficiently in another manner. Everything from fast food service to law is being affected, though some fields more heavily than others. They absolutely work the clock, not the job; though curiously they will work furiously to complete a project if it earns them recognition or reward of any sort.

35

Huh – I always wondered why I work the way I do.

No, really. For example: when I was first hired to a company I’d longed to work for on a project I really loved (yeah, y’all know what this is) there was a project within my first few weeks there that Had To Be Completed, it Had To Be Completed On Time, and it Had To Be Done By Me. I was the only person with all the information, I was the only person who knew 100% what needed to be done and how to do it, and it would take two or three days of focus.

And then I got the fabled December flu.

I came in – I warned everyone to keep out of my work space, I popped Vitamin C all day, I drank a lot of water, and I worked all day long. I got it done and I was happy to do it. Nobody expected me to do it that way, but the work environment was wonderful at the time.

At launch, I put in a week of fourteen-hour days – in at 5 pm, home at 8 am, but I did get an hour’s lunch. I was the only person present on the midnight to 8 am shift answering help requests from a few thousand people. It wasn’t fun, except that it was, kind of. But when that same job was expecting absolutely no more of me than the minimum, I didn’t want to give them even that.

I proved to myself that I can handle overtime and working to the job, and I can do it happily… in the right environment. It’s why I’m in the industry I have: it’s a lot easier to get that sort of environment, even if I do have the constant worry that there’s always someone out there who wants my job more desperately than me. But because of that very fact, the people around my work harder and very rarely slack off. If they’re falling behind, the supervisors actually DO sit down with them and try to figure out what the problem is, if it can be fixed, if it’s just a case of “this is a really bad month” or “the jerk I’m sitting next to needs to tone down his volume, I’m getting frustrated” or “I just hate talking on the phone, maybe I need to be transferred.”

Born in 1979, but I tend to identify more with the X-ers (which I am one of depending on what book you read :wink: )

36

I was given a report done by GM a few years ago. They did a study which compared the amount and quality of work by hours. From 8 to 10 hours the amount and quality of work dropped significantly . From 10 to 12 hours it was a waste . Very little positive was accomplished. This was in the design engineering field.
They then scheduled a 12 hour 7 day workweek for their project. They had a delivery date they knew was impossible . But they had to show the big bosses they did all they could do make the date. It lasted about a year and we were all sick of work by the end. It is hard to go to work and do a good job when you are mentally and physically exhausted.

37

[QUOTE=Nava]
while we were on the SAP Project
[/QUOTE]

I’m sorry. Did you get hazard pay for that?

38

[QUOTE=Acid Lamp]
This leads to a fundamental conflict between them and management who utilize the old style of secrecy and authoritarian communication. They have NEED to know WHY we do something this way, espescially if they can do it more efficiently in another manner. Everything from fast food service to law is being affected, though some fields more heavily than others. They absolutely work the clock, not the job; though curiously they will work furiously to complete a project if it earns them recognition or reward of any sort.
[/QUOTE]

I have a kind of intermediate view and I think I understand both ends. I am a bit old to be Gen Y but a bit young to Gen X. Sucks be to me, I guess.

Thing is, the key here is that a lot of these people really fundamentally expect that their employer is untrustowrhy (which is often true). They don’t expect real rewards for hard work, and they’ve seen that hard work actually gets punished. The management can and probably will take their profits, stiff you, and then fire you later. So we don’t expect any loyalty but don’t give any. We dream of working for ourselves. And some of us (like me) really, really deeply hate the BS that goes on. We don’t care about ceremonies (had to many meaningless ones). We don’t care about Procedures or doing things the old way if the ol way doesn’t work or is inefficient or just takes everyone’s time. We want to change thigns and put our mark.

Although it doesn’t apply to me, I think general Helicopter Parenting and Self-Esteem Building has partly caused it. We tend to think that we are very helpless and resent it, that we’re not “allowed” to fail, but also that we can’t make a permanent mark upon the world. And that burns, and we want to change things all the time.

Gen X is partly with this, but a lot of their psychology comes from competing with the older Baby Boomers, who just will not let go fo the reigns of power. So Gen X wants to compete and do well but can’t because the older generation mostly won’t let go. They’re only now beginning to get into anything.

39

[QUOTE=gonzomax]
I was given a report done by GM a few years ago. They did a study which compared the amount and quality of work by hours. From 8 to 10 hours the amount and quality of work dropped significantly . From 10 to 12 hours it was a waste . Very little positive was accomplished. This was in the design engineering field.
They then scheduled a 12 hour 7 day workweek for their project. They had a delivery date they knew was impossible . But they had to show the big bosses they did all they could do make the date. It lasted about a year and we were all sick of work by the end. It is hard to go to work and do a good job when you are mentally and physically exhausted.
[/QUOTE]

This ties in directly to rewards. If your only recompense is your salary or hourly pay, what is your motivation to ensure the success of the project or the company? In smaller businesses you often work alongside an owner, who receives bonuses and significant rewards for his or her efforts. That project means nothing to you personally since it’s all the same.

40

[QUOTE=smiling bandit]
Gen X is partly with this, but a lot of their psychology comes from competing with the older Baby Boomers, who just will not let go fo the reigns of power. So Gen X wants to compete and do well but can’t because the older generation mostly won’t let go. They’re only now beginning to get into anything.
[/QUOTE]

I don’t know if I like being a member of the Prince Charles of generations.