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

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

#131

Post by Spoom »

bdunbar wrote: post #91
Tichy wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really understand the logic, because it seems to me that as long as they pay taxes in the US, they are just as "socialist" as, say, Germany with their health insurance. What is the difference if you build roads for the common good or buy health insurance for the common good. Also I don't understand how capitalism makes health care tied to employment. In theory shouldn't there be health insurers who are willin…

In theory shouldn't there be health insurers who are willing to ensure you just as long as you pay your rates? There are, in actual fact, insurance companies in the US that will do this. Some make it a business to cater to self-employed folks who don't have company insurance. It's been a while since I thought about this, but (IIRC) the 'private companies pay for insurance' deal got started in World War II, as a perk.…

Having been a contractor previously, I can tell you that the main reason I moved over to being a full time developer for a company (complete with 1.5 hour commute) was that no private plan would cover both myself and my wife, mostly due to various medical reasons associated with my wife that I won't get into here. Suffice it to say that the only way we could get her covered without a ridiculous deductible and per-month cost was for me to get a full time job. She works as the director of a local teen drop-in center and as an HR secretary as a sheet-metal plant, and of course, since those are part time jobs, neither offers any benefits whatsoever. We were previously paying over $500 a month to cover myself and her on two private plans.

There are a lot of holes in the US healthcare system when you're doing something that's not what the majority is doing. I'd say this creates an argument for single-payer healthcare, but that's a debate for another thread. (Plus, I'm a little biased as a Canadian immigrant.)

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

#132

Post by Tichy »

campnic wrote: post #119
bdunbar wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In theory shouldn't there be health insurers who are willing to ensure you just as long as you pay your rates? There are, in actual fact, insurance companies in the US that will do this. Some make it a business to cater to self-employed folks who don't have company insurance. It's been a while since I thought about this, but (IIRC) the 'private companies pay for insurance' deal got started in World War II, as a perk.…

I think it's the convenience. I think its because employers for large companies get the only reasonable health care rates in the country. If you work for a large employer and you have a way as an individual to get comparative coverage for the same cost ignoring any pre-existing conditions, I'd love to hear it.

Hm, let me guess: does it work because the employer pools all of his employees, and the insurance can account for that? Like one employee gets seriously ill, but 10 stay healthy, so the costs average out? I think private insurance here in Germany just forms arbitrary pools of people, but the don't just insure anybody. If you have some risk indicators, they won't insure you. Maybe the employers in the US simply have a good bargaining chip, they can say "if you insure our one risky employee, you'll also get to insure our other ten non-risky employees".

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

#133

Post by Locke1689 »

mattmanser wrote: post #111
grellas wrote: post #48

The U.S. has a strong free enterprise foundation and its laws reflect this. Freedom of contract remains the rule even though it is much criticized in some circles and has been hedged considerably over the years. In employment, the old rule was that you could pretty much fire anyone at will for any reason and, if you did, you incurred no legal consequence. This is pure freedom of contract. In time, this unrestricted f…

There are two problems with your wall of text. Firstly your comparison to lawyering is disingenuous, lawyering has the partnership model, you take a load of young naive idiots, you dangle this partnership jackpot in front of their noses and then you work them to the bone doing dull and even pointless work that you bill your clients many $$$s an hour for while the partners take the bulk of that money home. Lots drop o…

It seems to me that you completely missed the point of grellas's post.

The second problem is your belief that working long hours = working 'exceedingly hard'.

That's not really what he said, but even if that's true, nothing in your post refutes that. Someone who is working long hours, is working hard. They may not be working smart, but they are working hard.

Now, the rest of your post addresses why working overtime may not be beneficial to your goals. This does not fundamentally contradict grellas's point that the US model is based around the theory that skilled professionals should have the choice and that they have the knowledge and power to exercise that choice. In the US, if you don't want to work 100 hours a week -- or don't think it's productive -- you can quit. There may be some problems with this view but I don't see any convincing arguments against it in your post.

Lastly, I would like to echo tptaceck's comment that grellas is always informative, helpful, and exceedingly polite. Your disrespect was completely uncalled for.

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

#134

Post by justinhj »

I have worked at game development companies for nearly 20 years. Initially I worked a lot of overtime for free,but after a couple of years I started to feel the effects on my life. After that I mostly just did not do OT unless it was paid. One year on a badly run project I doubled my salary through OT pay, and though my life outside work was not good I was able to put a significant amount of money aside. The following year hourly OT pay was gone, but the expectations were not. I made it clear I would only do OT on rare occasions, such as my work falling behind and a colleague being dependent on it at the weekend, when he would be working and I would be having a life. Even this caused resentment and I had to do the walk of shame at 5pm every day, and I was laid off as soon as the game shipped. The sense of personal failure was very hard on me at the time, but 12 years down the line, I've had a successful career in games, while being upfront at the hiring stage about my attitude to OT. I have worked a handful of weekend days and never later than 8pm in the week. I didn't miss my son growing up, and I read him a bedtime story every night. I don't think this is possible for every programmer and every company, but you can make it work.

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

#136

Post by ccoggins »

pilom wrote: post #122
orblivion wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would they keep their job if they refused to work more than 40 hours? Is there a 40 hour a week job out there that pays and furthers their career comperably? If not, I don't know what to call it other than career development.

"Is there a 40 hour a week job out there that pays and furthers their career comparably?" The defense industry in the US is like this. It is illegal for a company to have employees work more that 40 hours a week without overtime pay. The rationale is: If Company A has a company culture of all employees working 60 hours a week and Company B has a corporate culture of working 40 hours a week, Company A could charge the…

This is not true at all. I work in the defense industry and their is certainly not any law requiring my company to pay me for overtime. I think what you are referring to is the fact that any hours worked on contracts must be billed to the government. Say a company receives 1000 hours to do a job and an employee works on the project 80 hours per week. At that rate, the government will only pay for 12.5 weeks of work(1000/80), not 25 weeks.

This prevents the problem you mention, but it still isn't good for the employee. It does create an incentive for the company to encourage their employees to work more. If they charge for 80 hours in one week, but only pay the employee for 40 the company just made a bunch of extra profit at the employee's expense.

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

#137

Post by larrys »

tptacek wrote: post #113
mattmanser wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are two problems with your wall of text. Firstly your comparison to lawyering is disingenuous, lawyering has the partnership model, you take a load of young naive idiots, you dangle this partnership jackpot in front of their noses and then you work them to the bone doing dull and even pointless work that you bill your clients many $$$s an hour for while the partners take the bulk of that money home. Lots drop o…

You're not arguing with Grellas so much as cherry picking sentences out of his comment and howling at them in isolation. If we extract the signal from your comment --- that partner-track law careers are problematic, that working unreasonably hard is a bad idea for employer and employee alike --- from the emotion, we find a series of arguments that Grellas himself likely agrees with. In some cases I can guess that he…

"You're not arguing with Grellas so much as cherry picking sentences out of his comment and howling at them in isolation."

That's certaintly a creative way to put it. But that is what everyone does when they make comments. They respond to things they don't agree with. The use of "cherry picking" in your context seems to indicate taking unfair pot shots. The use of "howling in isolation" brings up an image of a lonely dog in the dead of night. Why is that necessary exactly?

"I think I speak for a lot of people on HN when I ask that you not berate one of the more uniquely valuable contributors to HN for writing "walls of text"."

Then why do you need to say this? If there are people that think that they will downvote, right?

By the way this is not to say I agree with his language. I think it's great that grellas takes the time to write a "wall of text".

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

#138

Post by mattmanser »

tptacek wrote: post #113
mattmanser wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are two problems with your wall of text. Firstly your comparison to lawyering is disingenuous, lawyering has the partnership model, you take a load of young naive idiots, you dangle this partnership jackpot in front of their noses and then you work them to the bone doing dull and even pointless work that you bill your clients many $$$s an hour for while the partners take the bulk of that money home. Lots drop o…

You're not arguing with Grellas so much as cherry picking sentences out of his comment and howling at them in isolation. If we extract the signal from your comment --- that partner-track law careers are problematic, that working unreasonably hard is a bad idea for employer and employee alike --- from the emotion, we find a series of arguments that Grellas himself likely agrees with. In some cases I can guess that he…

You are reading it rather more harshly than it was meant and ironically your comment has probably exacerbated that. While I wish the discourse here could be my primary focus, I can't spend hours researching each commentator, I say what I honestly feel.

It is a wall of text, it's hard to really pick out what he is arguing.

It is the top comment at the moment and I felt it hadn't been effectively challenged and this is an area that I actually feel strongly about. I fundamentally disagree with the conclusion of his comment, which admittedly may just be mine. In my reading this is what I perceived:

Historical employer/employee relationship + Freedom of contract = unshackled startups encouraging hard work (with an overarching definition of a 'professional' and hard work = lots of hours)

There's an overall theme to his comment which is 'it's a factor of the historical way of the relationship between the law and the employer and the employee'. I don't fundamentally disagree with that. But only if we were talking about accountants or lawyers or retail employees or engineers or architects, etc.

I am cherry picking out the arguments as to why this theory should apply. Why is this a particularly compelling argument for the field of modern startups or programming, neither of which have to be shackled by convention as they're not established industries.

Perhaps he does agree with the general gist of my comment, ignoring any unintentional insult, but the comment and the underlying assumptions about what is career development and hard work certainly didn't. I am attempting to demonstrate that there is no link between many 'professional' industries as they operate on different models. I fundamentally disagree with several statements in there like I think they see it as career development and I will not begrudge them the choice to work exceedingly hard (especially as they are first developing in their careers) to achieve other "unbalanced" goals.

There is no choice if that is the culture of the company or even, as it seems in this case, the country.

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

#139

Post by dtparr »

pilom wrote: post #122
orblivion wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would they keep their job if they refused to work more than 40 hours? Is there a 40 hour a week job out there that pays and furthers their career comperably? If not, I don't know what to call it other than career development.

"Is there a 40 hour a week job out there that pays and furthers their career comparably?" The defense industry in the US is like this. It is illegal for a company to have employees work more that 40 hours a week without overtime pay. The rationale is: If Company A has a company culture of all employees working 60 hours a week and Company B has a corporate culture of working 40 hours a week, Company A could charge the…

Can you cite a source on that? As a software engineer for a major defense contractor who works closely with other major contractors, I can say with some degree of certainty that being paid overtime is certainly not the norm, and 60 hour weeks aren't terribly uncommon during crunch periods. We have to report our hours accurately, but they've always been pretty clear that we're exempt employees and so they're under no obligation to pay us overtime. (They sometimes will, at a manager's discretion, though rarely is it 1:1 for hours worked)

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

#140

Post by dpritchett »

tptacek wrote: post #120
campnic wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem I see with many of these lines of thought are that they grossly over simplify the effects of situation and environmental factors. Even if there exists a comparable job with better hours, its existence doesn't always make it a viable alternative. Is being stuck in a mortgage or with a sick spouse license for an employer to demand you work 70 hours a week?

Look at it from a mechanically rational perspective. Your protagonist has a mortgage and a family and we're on a tech message board so let's stipulate that this is a technology worker making the average wage for, say, a programmer in Grand Rapids, MI. That's $73,000 (before benefits), or $35/hour for 40 hour weeks. You ask, "is being stuck in a mortgage with a sick spouse license for an employer to demand 70 hours a…

I'd imagine the only time you'd see an economic rationale for systematically overworking your team would be in a moon shot / burn the ships scenario, neither of which seems necessary for a service company.

Perhaps if the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow was a buyout in the tens of millions you'd be tempted as a part owner. Even then the front-line employees being whipped would be unlikely to get a significant piece of that pie, no?

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