Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why I Don't Do Unpaid Overtime and Neither Should You

thecodist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 263 posts

Re: Why I Don't Do Unpaid Overtime and Neither Should You

#21

Post by x5315 »

I work at Twitter, where i regularly work longs hours (my standard work day is something like 10 - 19:30) and am frequently on call. I even spend time at the weekends thinking and hacking on specific problems.

I feel that the author's post doesn't apply in my case, because:

- Some of the problems i work on are amazing. They're interesting and fun, and i enjoy them outside the normal "work hours".

- Twitter has an "unlimited"—be respectful to your team—holiday policy. I've probably taken about 6-7 weeks off in my one and a quarter years here.

- Breakfast, lunch, and dinner are served for free. While you might not count that as 'being paid overtime', the costs of food can add up.

- This behaviour is not required. I know people who do 9-5 and that's it. They get their work done within deadlines, and there's no issue with that.

So, am i to assume that Twitter is a huge exception? I'm not so sure. I think that while Twitter is a special environment, there are many companies that offer similar benefits.

Maybe the real statement shouldn't be "don't do unpaid overtime", but:

"Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle." - Steve Jobs

Re: Why I Don't Do Unpaid Overtime and Neither Should You

#22

Post by buff-a »

If you lose your job you may have to pay a lot more (COBRA) for a limited time

No, you'll pay the same as you were paying. Its just that before, you thought you were being paid $100,000 when in fact you were being paid $120,000, and out of that came your health insurance and the other (more-than-) half of your social security and income taxes.

Re: Why I Don't Do Unpaid Overtime and Neither Should You

#23

Post by fiznool »

Whilst I agree with the general principle of not working yourself to death (nobody ever says on their death bed, 'I wish I'd spent more time in the office'), I think the author of this piece is missing something crucial.

I regularly work more than 40 hours a week, not because I have to, but because I want to learn. One day I'd like to go freelance or perhaps start up a business, but I need to skill up first. I'm lucky that I have a job in my chosen sector of mobile web development, something which pays me to learn about the technologies I am passionate about. I am seizing the opportunity to learn as much as possible so I can be in a position to just work when I want to in later life.

IMO the author is looking at this from an experienced point of view. Juniors and those starting out often have no choice but to work a little longer to get where they want to be in 20 years time. There's nothing wrong with that, surely?

Re: Why I Don't Do Unpaid Overtime and Neither Should You

#24

Post by mathrawka »

minikomi wrote: post #18

I work 3 days a week for quite a large social game / mobile web company here in Tokyo. They are asking me every 3 months to become a "Seishain" - full time employee - but I will continue to take the no-benifits, paid by the hour option. The pay's not great but I'm learning a lot. And I can go home on the dot at 6.. However, everyone who is not part time is here before I arrive, and stays after I leave. . . .

I think that holds true for nearly any company in Japan though. The main reason people want to become "Seishain" is because you have much more job security. It is very hard to fire a full-time employee in Japan. And if it is a large company, there is the pension you get... a large sum of money when you retire, from the company. It is not uncommon to get an extra 10M - 20M yen when you retire.

Part-timers don't get any of those... but they get some more freedom in their lives (unless they choose to go against the grain, which most Japanese don't).

Re: Why I Don't Do Unpaid Overtime and Neither Should You

#25

Post by konstruktor »

smadam9 wrote: post #8

What about the part where programmers work overtime, but not because they are demanded to? I consistently see programmers, even in my own team, who happily stay 60-70 hours per week because the idea/concept they are working on means something significant to them. I find this phenomenon to be the exception of what your post has mentioned. Although the post was mostly accurate, I encounter this exception on a daily bas…

This really depends on the work you do, obviously. Just like no amount of off-by-one errors will make you a great coder (no, mistakes aren't always the great learning opportunity), 80 hours of writing DAOs in Java won't either. Remember it's 10000 hours of deliberate practice, not practice, so somebody working 40h in a better job may learn more.

Re: Why I Don't Do Unpaid Overtime and Neither Should You

#26

Post by latch »

This is stupid. Why? Because you are getting legal advice from someone who isn't a lawyer. The spirit of his post is fine, but the reality, for a lot of people, is very different.

In Ontario, the Employment Standards Act, which defines all of this (and a lot more) has a ton of exemptions. Here's the exemptions for "Information Technology Professionals":

http://www.labour.gov.on.ca/english/es/tools/srt/coverage_go...

Notice that we are exempt from "Hours of Work", "Daily Rest Periods" and "Overtime" to name a few. This means that, aside from your employment contract, there are no laws that protect your right to refuse unpaid (or paid) overtime.

Re: Why I Don't Do Unpaid Overtime and Neither Should You

#27

Post by rickmb »

cletus wrote: post #7

This is a rant that's a bit all over the place. The author points out a lot of exceptions (eg working at a startup or somewhere where you might get something out of it). If you take out all those exceptions, you basically end up with the crap jobs. The real problems with a crap job isn't the unpaid overtimes... it's that it's a crap jobs . The fact is though, you get as much out of pretty much anything in life as you…

In the real world, there aren't only great jobs and crap jobs. Most jobs are just jobs. Period. You put in work, you get paid. It's not horrible, it's not always great fun either, but it's neither awesome nor crap.

This is what most people do for a living. If you call that "stagnating" or "crap", you missed out half the point of the post: that the majority of people don't live to work, they work to live. They don't expect to get any fulfillment out of their job, they get it out of their life outside of work.

The idea that you cannot expect to get much out of life if you only put in 40 hours a week is bullshit that reduces the majority of the population to drones who's happiness is irrelevant.

Re: Why I Don't Do Unpaid Overtime and Neither Should You

#28

Post by minikomi »

mathrawka wrote: post #24
minikomi wrote: post #18

I work 3 days a week for quite a large social game / mobile web company here in Tokyo. They are asking me every 3 months to become a "Seishain" - full time employee - but I will continue to take the no-benifits, paid by the hour option. The pay's not great but I'm learning a lot. And I can go home on the dot at 6.. However, everyone who is not part time is here before I arrive, and stays after I leave. . . .

I think that holds true for nearly any company in Japan though. The main reason people want to become "Seishain" is because you have much more job security. It is very hard to fire a full-time employee in Japan. And if it is a large company, there is the pension you get... a large sum of money when you retire, from the company. It is not uncommon to get an extra 10M - 20M yen when you retire. Part-timers don't get an…

Yeah.. I've been there (at an admittedly insane company), and "enjoyed" the benefits of cheaper health care, pension.. at the cost of sleeping under the desk a few nights a week, coming in at 6 or 7 just to read every single mail which circulated not to get caught out having missed some minor little thing by my senpai..

Now I balance this with really laid back face-to-face english teaching. It's actually quite nice. Half the week staring at a glowing box, half the week talking casually with people who are motivated to learn. edit: I'm quite broke though!

Re: Why I Don't Do Unpaid Overtime and Neither Should You

#29

Post by crander »

mefistofele wrote: post #12

Many industries are forbidden, by law, from unpaid overtime. The law specifically exempts the software industry from this requirement. Like so many other things about the culture here, this issue seems to come down to the US being afraid of its own shadow. We're the greatest country on Earth... we say so all the time. But to change the law and forbid unpaid overtime for the software industry, something that will make…

Programmers here are discussing if they choose to work unpaid extra hours or not. You don't make a country great by forbidding extra work regardless of the employee desires. You make a country great by allowing employers and employees to decide amongst themselves case by case. If labor wants to forbid this for other vocations good for them. I would like to keep my right to work more hours on salary or not.

Re: Why I Don't Do Unpaid Overtime and Neither Should You

#30

Post by dinkumthinkum »

latch wrote: post #26

This is stupid. Why? Because you are getting legal advice from someone who isn't a lawyer. The spirit of his post is fine, but the reality, for a lot of people, is very different. In Ontario, the Employment Standards Act, which defines all of this (and a lot more) has a ton of exemptions. Here's the exemptions for "Information Technology Professionals": http://www.labour.gov.on.ca/english/es/tools/srt/coverage_go...…

It's good thing you're not a lawyer because nothing he said violated the law or a contract. :) Unless I missed it, the only thing he discussed relating to laws was how other countries dealt with this sort of thing. Refusing to work unpaid hours is just fine, perhaps you will be fired, but it is definitely you're right but no boogeyman is going to come and lock you up for banging out mindless Java code to meet some unrealistic deadline.
Post reply on HN