
Overtime is Morphine - emiller829
http://erniemiller.org/2013/07/16/overtime-is-morphine/
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nawitus
Simple solution (from the software engineer's perspective): demand overtime
pay. If you are officially expected to work 40h/week for certain amount of
money, but in practise you're "expected" to work 50h/week, then your real wage
is actually 20% lower than what your contract says. And that is pretty similar
to theft.

It's time to start comparing wages instead of absolute income.

~~~
shailesh
One should never work for any management that values _hours spent_ rather than
_value created._ But then, it also translates to _work visibly._

~~~
vonmoltke
By extension, you should avoid working for companies whose customers pay more
attention to hours billed than products delivered.

~~~
shailesh
This advise (sentence) is worth its weight in pure gold. Kudos!

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esmale
Unfortunately there is a long history of management viewing overtime as
equivalent to a person's 'dedication' to the project.

One of my college Computer Science professors, the one I liked and respected
the most, worked at Novell for quite a while back in the day. Not sure if his
entire 20+ year programming career was spent there before going back to school
to get his PhD. In any event, at one point he was a team lead at Novell. He
made sure to hire, train and develop the right kind of programmers for his
team. The kind that write tests, solid code, and practice good engineering
principles.

To my memory, when he was telling us this story, the overtime he and his team
worked was somewhere between minimal to non-existant. Their code was clean,
well-tested, and worked. So at 5pm they would go home.

There was another team that was always scrambling at the last minute, and
clocking lots of overtime.

When it came time for company/management recognition, which team received the
accolades? The team that clocked all that overtime, because they MUST have
been working harder to get things done than the other team. Right?

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shailesh
True story: a CMM Level 5 software organization had precisely the exact same
issue. There was a PM, who would literally spend the entire day wasting time
and start real work around 5 PM. Then work till late night.

Once he advised me, "Always make sure that you send an e-mail, late at night
to anybody in the organization, before you call it day."

"Why?"

To make it short, per his advise, the single most important thing about those
e-mails, wasn't the contents, but just the _timestamp._

~~~
arethuza
You would think that PM would have learned about the feature that quite a few
email systems have to send an email at a particular time! (e.g. Outlook has
"Do not deliver before" option).

~~~
shailesh
:). The logs at physical security could not be faked: they used to have a pen
and paper system; it was a little more than a decade ago.

~~~
vonmoltke
The last place I worked, 18 months ago, that required after-hours logs still
used pen and paper. Plus, they left the log books out all the time, so it was
easy when you signed in to see who else was coming in after hours, going back
weeks sometimes.

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keithhanson
I like the article, and would love to apply, as "management" in my own
company, effective measures to cure the pain instead of treat it. In fact, I
generally try to do just that.

But what this is basically suggesting is "locking out" your employer. While I
agree that is absolutely what should happen, doing this without the leadership
AND the developer in agreement about why sounds like disaster.

I know it's likely impossible to capture all the work and discussion it takes
to reshape a company's process in a blog post, but I feel like if I had a
dependence on OT in my company (as the "patient"), and a lockout went into
effect, I would be focusing on the lockout, not every other problem in the
company that caused it (which as management, it's my job to figure _those_
problems out). What is being suggested is basically arm twisting to get what
you want :/

That never works when you cause more pain to the company than it's able to
alleviate over time. They'll eventually get tired of the pain and move on to
another drug unless you succeed in getting them to understand.

I feel like better advice is to tell developers that they need to discuss this
with their direct reports, boss, whomever, and talk about the problem and WHY
you'll actually make the company better gains at sustainable pace. And by all
means, point out and suggest ways for your boss to improve things.

If after educating your "patient" the issue still persists, of course, twist
away. But not everyone in this world needs these sorts of tactics to improve
their workplace, and even in those workplaces, there are likely more
successful ways to cure the pain, not just treat it.

~~~
emiller829
The suggestion isn't to introduce the lockout after the fact. In fact, what
you're describing would be the exact thing that would happen in the metaphor
-- acute withdrawal symptoms. The suggestion is to institute the lockout
before dependency has a chance to develop.

~~~
keithhanson
Ah, well, I completely agree there :) Forgive me, but I didn't really catch
the preventative portion of the essay. Looking back over it, I can certainly
see your point above and we're more than likely "violently agreeing", heh.

Seems like we're both saying "an ounce of prevention..." here

~~~
emiller829
Yep, absolutely. Thanks for the follow-up!

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epa
Consider the industry you are going into before complaining about overtime. I
am expected to work long over time hours on a regular (daily) basis during
busy seasons without extra compensation and this is what I expected going in.
Highly skilled individuals who have extensive training will be 'put to work'
in order to derive the benefits of this training by their employer.

You are willing to put up with this behavior because you believe that one day
your training and experience will lead you to a very high paying job. Lawyers,
doctors, accountants, engineers, the professionals, all understand that there
is a necessary grind in order to prove your worth.

If you are not cut out for it, there is always work as a desk clerk making
above minimum wage working 9-430. Yes, some employers have very relax policies
relating to getting work done. But who are the ones producing the highest
quality innovative work? The people working hard on a daily basis.

~~~
flyinRyan
What a disgusting post. "Pay your dues just like I did". Just because you
chose to be exploited with the hope that you'll some day get compensated for
it doesn't mean the model is right. And your quip about where the highest
quality innovate work comes from is unproven and probably unprovable.

~~~
epa
Maybe the issue here is that I know 100% that the effort I put in now will
lead me to success in the future.

~~~
flyinRyan
If you "know" that then you're wrong. Success isn't a guarantee even if you
work hard. Ask Nikola Tesla.

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ExpiredLink
Overtime makes sense from an _employer 's_ point of view. That's why the
problem will persist for employees.

~~~
comrade_ogilvy
If it really was a consistent win for the employers, then perhaps it is a non-
issue in the larger sense -- employees just need to negotiate hours vs.
compensation. Whatever.

I think the deeper insight of TFA is that there may be short term gains for
the employer, but the long term results are muddy or outright negative --
management becomes addicted to poor management habits that hurt the company
health in myriad ways.

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thejosh
Your website breaks the back button.

~~~
emiller829
It does? I have had no issues with the back button. What are you seeing,
exactly?

~~~
300bps
Don't you love problem reports with absolutely no details whatsoever?

I tested your site with Chrome 28.0.1500.72 m. The back button worked fine.

I then tested your site with Internet Explorer 9.0.18 and the back button
worked fine.

I then tested your site with Firefox 22 and the back button worked fine.

