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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

#171

Post by timwiseman »

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…

I believe Grellas' main point is that, outside of a few areas society has deemed vulnerable and thus in need of protection, that the US gives skilled employees the ability to choose and negotiate with freedom.

If, for isntance, someone (even someone holding a JD) does not like the partnership model, they do not have to agree to it. They can seek other employers more conducive to the way they want to work or start their own firm or go into another industry.

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

#172

Post by dclowd9901 »

urbanjunkie wrote: post #55
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…

"I don't believe that most such employees see their work as "slavery" when they have to work excessive hours. I think they see it as career development" That made me laugh. "Top executives" typically have compensation packages that, to some degree, directly tie their compensation to the overall company performance. Thus, the harder they work, the more likely it is that the company will perform to or above expectation…

You're not helpless and beholden. There's just simply always a smaller fish.

If I turn down the job that requires 60 hours a week, they will likely find someone who is willing to do that. It's partly from a week job market, partly because people are so bad at understanding their own financial situations, and partly because the availability of financial leveraging systems like financing and credit.

And, of course, a company that's willing to take on an employee who's willing to work 20 unpaid hours a week probably also has a lower level of quality demand on a per-employee basis. What's particularly infuriating about this is that they could probably pay a more qualified candidate more money and get better work, and yield the results of two poor candidates. Essentially, companies are stepping over dollars to pick up dimes, and execs are laughing all the way to the bank. How pointless.

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

#173

Post by liber8 »

mattmanser wrote: post #138
tptacek wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>>In my reading this is what I perceived: Historical employer/employee relationship + Freedom of contract = unshackled startups encouraging hard workThen you should read more closely. (Sorry, I say what I honestly feel.)

I think the comment you extract in the second to last sentence of your post is much closer to what OP is arguing. "It's not for me, but who am I to tell you that you can't reach for that brass ring?" If you read it in that light, from the perspective that free choice is a good thing, the argument doesn't "fall flat on its face".

>>There is no choice if that is the culture of the company or even, as it seems in this case, the country.This would be true, except such countries don't exist. There is always a choice, even in places with notoriously bad working conditions (China, India, Vietnam, etc.) This culture may exist in some companies, but luckily, in more free market systems, most industries aren't controlled by one or two companies. To wit, even in the legal field in the U.S., there are many positions available that only require 40 hour workweeks.

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

#174

Post by grecy »

andylei wrote: post #123
alan_cx wrote: post #53

I don't know much about US employment law, and what I do know, I don't like. But what I do know is this: No employer has ever, ever given me free money, and I have never expected it. There for, I have never ever given an employer free time, and never ever will. To do different is insane. It lowers one's worth since the deal is an exchange of money for time. It makes the employer think your free time is theirs to expl…

> No employer has ever, ever given me free money, and I have never expected it some firms offer a bonus. i guess that counts as free money way in the way that overtime counts as free time. > the deal is an exchange of money for time if that really was the deal, then you'd be paid hourly. i think most programmers exchanging results for money.

> some firms offer a bonus. i guess that counts as free money way in the way that overtime counts as free time.

I've always disliked this way of thinking. A bonus is a reward for the good work (already) done, NOT incentive/payment to add additional work.

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

#175

Post by smallegan »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #145
smallegan wrote: post #125

I'm not a big fan of unionized work but it is worth mentioning that when developers agree to work in poor conditions like this it changes the social norm and negatively impacts the economics surrounding software development. If 2 developers are working 60 hours a week they are essentially putting a third developer out of work. (I understand that studies show you can't be as productive over a certain number of hours b…

The weakness in your argument is that developers are not fungible commodities in practice. You can't just hire a third developer in many cases so no one is being put out of work. For many companies (like mine) there are far more open positions than we can find qualified developers to fill them. The reality in the market is that there is a shortage of developers, or at least developers with the talent and skill requir…

I understand what your saying but if the need for developers truly outweighed the market the cost would continue to rise until an equilibrium is approached. In many areas as the cost goes up balance is found with outsourcing.

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

#176

Post by tptacek »

gruseom wrote: post #163
mattmanser wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Grellas writes thoughtful, balanced posts that come out of more years of experience than the median HN user has been alive, in a domain where most of us know little and are in serious need of a trusted guide. What he wrote above is a high-quality legal and historical and cultural explanation of why programmers don't get paid overtime in the US, something I've often wondered about. p.s. I'm sure it's true you didn't m…

Hm. Was it Newton? No wait! Gandhi! Nah, couldn't be. Dante? No... maybe it was something they used to say at Burroughs. Oh wait no, I know! Eleanor Roosevelt!

:)

Aside: I have roughly the same feeling for someone who's glazed over all Grellas' posts as I do for someone who's never watched more than a single episode of The Wire: envy. You missed out, Matt Manser! Go read his backlog. It's great stuff. Also 'anigbrowl, 'tzs, and 'dctoedt.

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

#177

Post by gph »

larrys wrote: post #141
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…

"What does this mean in practice? It means, for example, that a computer professional can be paid a salary of $100K/yr and be asked to work like a slave, all without overtime compensation. But that same professional, if paid $30K/yr, is required to be paid overtime for excess hours worked, even if that person is on salary. One case is treated as appropriate for free choice by the parties without overriding restrictio…

Yea, came here to say this.

I'm not happy about it. But there isn't much I can do right now, I'm fairly confident I'd be let go if I point blank refused to do any OT. I'm unfortunately in a very expendable position at my company.

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

#178

Post by zeroonetwothree »

ootachi wrote: post #147
dpritchett wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pi…

Long hours are the key to profitability, as Philip Greenspun put it: "From a business point of view, long hours by programmers are a key to profitability. A programmer probably needs to spend 25 hours per week...Thus a programmer who works 55 hours per week is twice as productive as one who works 40 hours per week.... A product is going to get out the door much faster if it is built by 4 people working 70-hour weeks…

If it takes you 25 hours for "coordination time" you have serious structural issues in your business that need to be addressed. It should really be more like 0-5 hours.

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

#179

Post by Androsynth »

I used to work at a company that routinely worked people well over 40 hours/week. I left because I felt I was losing the best years of my life doing tedious projects, however I know a lot of people who stayed and who still work there. Its not like people don't know the situation. No one looks at routine 60 hour weeks and says 'yeah, this is about right'.

Everyone has their own reasons for staying, or for leaving. One big reason is the 120k yearly salary they make (in SF). But NONE of these people are slaves. Anyone who uses the term slaves loses all credibility. Feel free to call them sheeple all you want, but they're not slaves.

People need to learn from their own mistakes. You can't teach people lessons on a grand scale. Everyone needs to find their own career paths.

The biggest problem with employment is not that we need more regulation (no no no we dont), its that we have a culture where we view jobs as privileges rather than simply: me exchanging my time for your money. (as others have pointed out, health care issues are a big factor here)

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

#180

Post by zeroonetwothree »

Tichy wrote: post #62
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…

Didn't read all of what you wrote, just one question: if there is freedom of contract, why wouldn't an employee be free to negotiate a contract that can't be cancelled on short notice?

You can certainly do this, but you'd have to expect less in other compensation. It seems like most people don't think they will be fired, so they'd rather take more pay without a minimum employment term.
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