Amazingly common, sadly enough. I probably see something that outright retarded at half or more of the server rooms I see.
I have been offered, with one exception (and I found out later it was one of those “we are hiring the board member’s nephew, but we have to interview for it to look good” things), every job I’ve got an interview for–even saying up front that I absolutely insisted on working 40 hour weeks.
I answer this question here: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=13813405
Which makes sense since not only the more you work, the more you’re tired, but also the longer you stay, the more likely you are doing things that aren’t nearly as much important as what you did first in the morning. Also, it might be possible that some people at least don’t work anymore when they stay longer at the office, in practice (My only evidence here is anecdotal : friends who had worked in the USA and said that people there were staying for untold hours, but hardly ever worked, spending plenty of time “socializing”, drinking coffee, reading and writing their personnal mail, surfing on the web, etc..).
It also shows in statistics : last time I checked, the USA was about 4th or 5th in productivity by year, while France (with a theorical 35 hours week) was ranked somewhere like between 20th and 30th, but for productivity per hour, the ranking was almost exactly reversed (IIRC, Japanese were 1st for yearly productivity, Belgians first for hourly productivity at this time). So, Americans with their longer hours had produced more than French people at the end of the year but were producing less every hour.
Note also that a mandatory X hours week typically comes with a lot of exceptions (doesn’t applies in some industries, for some jobs, agreements with unions, overtime, etc… Not even counting jobs were it should applies but never does in practice (restaurants’ employees over here, for instance). Despite the 35 hours/week limit in France, my basic work schedule is 40 hours, occasionnally more, and I don’t get overpay, just days off. Which is fine with me, I’m always in favour of more vacation time rather than more money.
That sounds funny.
Why wasn’t the person in charge (who ok’ed sending the code to the client) terminated?
My husband and I were talking this morning.
His team doesn’t play computer games. They don’t have time. They are too busy staying up on the latest technology when at home.
Now, his field is one of those ever changing highly competitive and highly compensated ones (IT architecture).
I’m not sure how you could mandate these guys not learning their field in their off time. And since their job is to learn and work with new technologies and ideas, the time they are spending “off hours” playing with technology is contributing to their jobs.
I have a different issue. My job is largely a thought job. Sometimes my employer gets no value out of a day at my desk, but gets a lot of value when I’m in the tub at home and my mind wanders to the problem at hand. I saved the company hundreds of thousands in the car the other day.
Wait, your husband has a different issue from you, right? Yours is a thought job. What kind of job is his? It sounds like a thought job to me…
His is also a thought job. But his involves far more “staying on top of technology” than mine does. i.e. he will also think and solve problems on the way to work - but he also reads and learns at home on work related materials - I seldom do.
Do you feel that you and your husbands’ jobs are in any way typical of jobs for most American workers? I’m betting maybe five percent of jobs are thought jobs, tops. Two or three percent is closer to the truth. Should we order the general structure of our employment practices to suit you and your husband?
You know, something is fundamentally wrong with a given industry when your job forces you to take your work home. I worked that kind of job until recently and retired to run my own business. And I hardly ever even take any work home now.
Most people who take their work home just accept that it has to be done. Few stop to think, “Hey, I’m not even getting paid for this”. And the sad part is? Many who do this are not even getting profit sharing or stock options, which is the only honest way of telling an employee that they have a stake in the company’s success.
No, Government regulations won’t stop this crap from happening. However, people who have to take their work home have the biggest opportunities to take company IP somewhere else, or to even start their own businesses and run their employer out of the game. I wish it would happen more often just to bite employers in the ass who encourage this kind of at-home overtime.
Why is there something fundamentally wrong with it? I don’t mind it. My husband doesn’t mind it. Our jobs are flexible - if we need to be out Wednesday afternoon it usually isn’t a problem. And we get paid enough that by 40 our house was paid off, by 43 our kids had fully funded college educations, and we could semi-retire if we desired.
There is something wrong with not being properly compensated for the work you do. There is nothing wrong with working long hours or taking work home if you are properly compensated and the arrangement is mutually agreeable. What is wrong is when an uninvolved third party sticks their nose in your perfectly acceptable and mutually beneficial arrangement.
About 5 years ago. One look at the place and I figured they were getting what they were paying for. Louse work conditions, louse workers.
Nobody cares if you work night and day and love it. What they care about is others, who don’t want to work endless hours having to do it and not get compensated for it.
We are at the beginning of a push that will take away the rights of the workers more and more. Heavy unemployment gives the company all the leverage. They will use it to lower wages, remove benefits and force workers to obey . They will not reduce exec pay though.
It’s not as black and white as that.
First of all, lots of salaried people get stuck with mandatory unpaid overtime. So they’re not being compensated for a lot of the work they do; plus many also don’t get stock options or profit sharing. Employers take them for granted, especially in this economic climate. Worse yet, the more people you have doing overtime, the less you need to hire anyone else. Fewer workers putting out more production; it’s the entire nature of our ever-increasing GDP. This hurts the entire country, which makes us all “second” parties, because everyone has to bear the cost of workers doing overtime: more stress, fewer jobs, more strain on our social safety net, lower tax revenues (since that work is not being paid for), etc.
Second, employers use peer pressure to force others into giving free work (as in unpaid overtime), at best. Equally as often, they simply fire you (or lay you off or eliminate your position) if you don’t comply with even the most onerous demands, even as bad as 20 or more hours of overtime.
In short: overtime is often NOT voluntary, and in sufficient quantities it negatively affects society at large.
Working people overtime is a strong sign that the company is poorly managing their workforce, and at worst, is trying to get work for free. Especially when it involves people without stock options or profit sharing.
BTW congrats on having most of your life goals achieved by 43. Not too many people can even dream of that anymore.
CA has a breif stint in the world of allowing over 8 to not be OT and at the amusement park I worked at, it was a dream given form.
If it was busy, the owners would let people stay on, by request you could work 10-12 hour shifts and get a hefty chunk of your paycheck in 3 days. Since many entertainment centric businesses are heavy on weekends it allowed the park to operate on fewer bodies getting more hours and those employees were fairly happy campers because they had steady full time work.
Yep. But as you said, it isn’t black and white. You can’t control an attorney who takes briefs home with him to read. Or a developer who learns another language in the evening. Put controls around “mandatory” overtime - fine, I’m good with that, but beware of the unintended consequences of that action. Work is competitive. And those willing to put in the extra time are the ones likely to be rewarded (not always, sometimes its nepotism, or luck. But without some competitive edge, working forty hours with the attitude ‘that’s all I get paid for’ probably isn’t going to result in being in a situation where you can realize your financial life goals by 43).
In many places, there are people willing to work that overtime - if it becomes optional, you’ll find the people who will work it anyway and hire them - if that is how you choose to run your business.
You can require that the company (those over x00 employees) award either profit sharing benefits or stock options to those who are mandated to work overtime.
Oh and you don’t get to realizing your financial goals by 43 by working overtime. You get there mainly by being lucky. If you pick the right industry to jump into at the right time and apply the right amount of effort in the right place, you get to retire in your 40s.
There was a time when I would have believed the above whole heartedly. It makes sense. It might even be true.
However, I had kids.
My parents really believed in the ‘you gotta be tough’ philosophy. They were not big into helping their kids and thought helping their kids was hurting them. I got shit nothing growing up.
Because of this, I coddled my kids. They did not lack for much growing up. Shit, I probably spoiled them rotten. I worried that I was hurting them by doing this…that I really should be ‘getting them toughened up’.
You know what? They are doing fine as adults. I look at my parents family and kids and they all pretty much had the ‘toughen up’ philosophy and their kids seem to be having some issues. I wonder what would have happened to me if I had grown up under my type of parenting then what I actually grew up under. Maybe I would have flew high into the stars 
While Society 1 above may really provide more innovation…I no longer buy into the fact that a stable, reasonably comfortable existance in Society 2 will necessarily hurt innovation because people are content. This contentment may actually inspire more innovation. Hell, just the fact that one could find another stable job may make the risk in doing your own start up company seem not so risky while, in society 1, people cling to whatever slim reed they have in a storm.
Sometimes being subjected to nasty forces just makes you diminished while others living under stability, light and sun and birds chirping makes them stronger.
I have both profit sharing and stock options. So does my husband. That doesn’t mean there has been profit to share, and our options are underwater. We haven’t made much on profit sharing or stock options for the past three years…maybe not anything.
Stock option plans are really expensive to administer…the accounting rules for them are horrid and they are a really costly way to give employees ownership. Stock options, IMHO, should be dropped for EVERYONE as a compensation mechanism.
Did you get to the point where you can semi-retire at 43? I’ve been in a shit industry for the past dozen years. I got there by working enough to climb the corporate ladder to being a highly paid employee - and being pretty darn frugal in my day to day life. My industry sucks - and has for the twelve years I’ve been in it.
I’m personally more in favor of ESOPs than I am of options, but then again, my ESOP’s value amortized over my tenure has amounted to about 2.5% of my gross salary.