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The Programmer’s Guide to a Sane Workweek

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Re: The Programmer’s Guide to a Sane Workweek

#41

Post by [deleted] »

flanbiscuit wrote: post #18
patrickdavey wrote: post #5

I went to a talk once on leadership. One of the suggestions was to get your "go to hell kit" ready. That is, get enough money in the bank (whatever that means for you) so that you can walk away if things cross your personal lines, be they moral / work-life balance, whatever. It's a good thing if there's pressure to work silly hours. In my first job (recent grad) before I left the job, I'd been working 5 weekends stra…

> You're just reducing your hourly rate. This is how I've always explained to people who constantly work overtime in salaried positions where they don't actually get paid for that overtime. You can at look at it one of 2 ways. 1. Your billable self stopped at the 8-hour mark on a given weekday and every hour after that, including weekends, you're just giving away free labor to the company. Just think about that every…

[deleted]

Re: The Programmer’s Guide to a Sane Workweek

#42

Post by 67726e »

ThePawnBreak wrote: post #23
flanbiscuit wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're just reducing your hourly rate. This is how I've always explained to people who constantly work overtime in salaried positions where they don't actually get paid for that overtime. You can at look at it one of 2 ways. 1. Your billable self stopped at the 8-hour mark on a given weekday and every hour after that, including weekends, you're just giving away free labor to the company. Just think about that every…

Do you also account for the fact that you are way more likely to be promoted if you work overtime?

Promoted to what? A manager? I guess in a more hierarchical organization you get to be Programmer III instead of Programmer II and maybe get a higher salary?

What about those of us who don't have strictly defined roles like that? Where I work you're basically just a programmer. Experience has always seemed to count more for me than an arbitrary title.

Re: The Programmer’s Guide to a Sane Workweek

#43

Post by pjc50 »

ThePawnBreak wrote: post #23
flanbiscuit wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're just reducing your hourly rate. This is how I've always explained to people who constantly work overtime in salaried positions where they don't actually get paid for that overtime. You can at look at it one of 2 ways. 1. Your billable self stopped at the 8-hour mark on a given weekday and every hour after that, including weekends, you're just giving away free labor to the company. Just think about that every…

Do you also account for the fact that you are way more likely to be promoted if you work overtime?

Promotions are a myth told to people to get them to work harder, aren't they? They're quite rare and usually come with moderate increments. Whereas the best way to increase your salary is to move jobs. Salary is only vaguely linked to job title.

(I was once promoted en passant, when my first employer wished to inflate the number of Senior Developers assigned to a consulting proposal...)

Re: The Programmer’s Guide to a Sane Workweek

#44

Post by taeric »

jnordwick wrote: post #30

Let me come in with a contradictory opinion especially on the overtime. You don't work for your current salary, you work for your next one. If you are one of those 9 to 5 ers, don't complain when the guy working 60 hours and more gets that promotion over you. The higher up the ladder you go, the more that will be required of you. Also, startups or high paying jobs will require more of you since you will get getting m…

I have a simple rebuttal to that. It doesn't scale.

This is actually sign of poor management. You should not reward people for working 60+ hours. If you want to reward anyone, you should find the ones that can get the same work done in about 30 hours. Hard to believe, but they do exist.

What you will find, is that the people that need 60 hours at one level, are likely to think they need 80 hours at the next. Or more. This clearly is not going to be available.

Worse, you don't think so, but the odds are high that as you get older, you will get a family and possibly children. When that happens, the ability to get 60 hours is now in jeopardy. Heck, many weeks, that 40 is tough.

Note carefully, I do not believe you should punish people for working extra hours. But incentives should not be such that they are required or encouraged. Unless you like seeing ruined lives. And businesses.

Re: The Programmer’s Guide to a Sane Workweek

#45

Post by bendixso »

jnordwick wrote: post #30

Let me come in with a contradictory opinion especially on the overtime. You don't work for your current salary, you work for your next one. If you are one of those 9 to 5 ers, don't complain when the guy working 60 hours and more gets that promotion over you. The higher up the ladder you go, the more that will be required of you. Also, startups or high paying jobs will require more of you since you will get getting m…

I say meh to all of this. You're better off taking that extra time and spending it on side projects and side businesses that will give you independence from your current company.

When you take taxes into consideration, the promotions don't really add up to that much. You're just adding to your yearly income, which tends to get taxed quite heavily anyway. You need to find a way to take your effort and put it into something that doesn't get taxed as much as regular income does.

I would be more interested in building passive sources of income that don't rely so much on my being present to bring in the money.

I also generally don't like the idea of someone else telling me what my contributions are worth. By putting in all those extra hours, you're basically pinning all of your hopes on someone else's judgment. If they like you, then maybe you'll get that extra money.

But what if they don't? What if they're just some sociopath who couldn't give a rip about your career goals? In my experience, that's been the case more often that not.

It would take one hell of a leader to convince me it's worth putting in all those extra hours. I would basically need assurance from the very beginning that I would be getting a bigger cut of the pie.

Re: The Programmer’s Guide to a Sane Workweek

#46

Post by antirez »

dx034 wrote: post #31
antirez wrote: post #13

I don't know what's the perfect amount of work every week, but I'm sure anything > 40h is wrong, and you should add commute time if more than 30min/day, otherwise it's a fake figure. In 36-40h/week it's possible to do a lot of things. If you can't often is not because of the time, but because the same people wanting you to work more vaporize your time with meetings, conference calls, emails, phone calls, at a rate th…

I wouldn't necessarily draw the line there. It always depends on your situation. If you don't have a family, working 7.30am-5.30pm (my approx working hours) 5 days per week still allows you to have enough time to spend with friends and for side projects. If your really dedicated to your project and have no family waiting at home, why should you always leave after 8 hours? Sitting in front of the TV at home isn't nece…

7.30/5.30 works, but if you think at the lunch pause and the inevitable things to do a few hours a week, you are into the 40h limits more or less... This is why I say 40h is likely the limit. Then if it's 38 or 43... is a small percentage, but 50 is already out of order and 60 crazy IMHO.

Re: The Programmer’s Guide to a Sane Workweek

#47

Post by kraftman »

jnordwick wrote: post #30

Let me come in with a contradictory opinion especially on the overtime. You don't work for your current salary, you work for your next one. If you are one of those 9 to 5 ers, don't complain when the guy working 60 hours and more gets that promotion over you. The higher up the ladder you go, the more that will be required of you. Also, startups or high paying jobs will require more of you since you will get getting m…

If I'm sitting here doing 35 hours a week and some guy is doing 60 and gets promoted I'd be fine with it, because you can guarantee he won't be getting a 40% pay increase, and I get 25 hours a week more of my life.

Re: The Programmer’s Guide to a Sane Workweek

#48

Post by komali2 »

ThePawnBreak wrote: post #23
flanbiscuit wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're just reducing your hourly rate. This is how I've always explained to people who constantly work overtime in salaried positions where they don't actually get paid for that overtime. You can at look at it one of 2 ways. 1. Your billable self stopped at the 8-hour mark on a given weekday and every hour after that, including weekends, you're just giving away free labor to the company. Just think about that every…

Do you also account for the fact that you are way more likely to be promoted if you work overtime?

If you value your worth based off what label an organization slaps on your paychecks, sure. If you are getting better and better at your job, you can tell your company or other companies you require $x.xx salary, or want to move into management, etc. Why wait for them to promote you?

Re: The Programmer’s Guide to a Sane Workweek

#49

Post by dilemma »

ThePawnBreak wrote: post #23
flanbiscuit wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're just reducing your hourly rate. This is how I've always explained to people who constantly work overtime in salaried positions where they don't actually get paid for that overtime. You can at look at it one of 2 ways. 1. Your billable self stopped at the 8-hour mark on a given weekday and every hour after that, including weekends, you're just giving away free labor to the company. Just think about that every…

Do you also account for the fact that you are way more likely to be promoted if you work overtime?

People are promoted and given new opportunities based on business needs, not performance, beyond some table stakes level. Overtime is not what gets you promoted.

Re: The Programmer’s Guide to a Sane Workweek

#50

Post by jnordwick »

jnordwick wrote: post #30

Let me come in with a contradictory opinion especially on the overtime. You don't work for your current salary, you work for your next one. If you are one of those 9 to 5 ers, don't complain when the guy working 60 hours and more gets that promotion over you. The higher up the ladder you go, the more that will be required of you. Also, startups or high paying jobs will require more of you since you will get getting m…

Why am I getting down voted for this?
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