No Overtime

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Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Posted Saturday, December 03, 2011 11:24 AM

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Comments posted to this topic are about the item No Overtime

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Post #1215879

cfradenburg

Posted Saturday, December 03, 2011 12:04 PM

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The last place I worked QA was on a deadline and the team for one product had their vacations cancelled. After the HR rep heard about it and went ballistic someone else was asked multiple times to cancel a vacation so she could participate in a conference that happened to be the same place she and her kids were going. Somehow them paying for her plain tickets didn't make up for the time she would need to be working so she refused. Fortunately by both having a great boss and insisting on only working critical issues off-hours I mostly avoided a lot of overtime. Even with the critical issues we got paid for being on pager.

My current place I'm doing some more overtime but that's mostly due to the fact I'm the only DBA so there are times it's needed to keep things running. Since I'm given comp time (sometimes without even asking for it) it doesn't work out to be much overtime though.

Post #1215885

george sibbald

Posted Saturday, December 03, 2011 12:14 PM

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Unbelievable. How can you exempt support staff such as DBAs and network staff when a lot of their work by its nature has to be done outside of normal working hours?

sounds like one of your lovely politicians needs to butter up big business by kicking employees.

It could be a try-on, raise the idea see what the reaction is, so I suggest you react to it.

Salaried employees should be compensated for out of hours work. Executives get their compensation up-front but probably see working long hours as making a sacrifice for the company, expecting employees to do the same is reverse envy or a cost cutting exercise.

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Post #1215886

Lynn Pettis

Posted Saturday, December 03, 2011 2:48 PM

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Perhaps the point that overtime drops of the radar should be moved up the pay scale. I have seen many places that require produce moves to occur late evenings and weekends, requiring people to work additional hours above their scheduled 40 hours per week.

First thing I'd want to be sure of is that highly compensated individuals (read CEOs, CFOs. CIOs, company presidents, vice presidents to name a few) are not allowed to be paid overtime. What level becomes highly compensated, that may be open for discussion, but I don't think it should include those of us in the trenches even if we are making $90K + a year. But I also don't think companies should expect us to work 50+ hours a week just because we are salaried professionals. You want us to work that number of hours every week, pay us for it. The occasional extra time is one thing, but constant is over the top. If you give us comp-time, give us time to use it, and also don't limit how much we can accrue and use during the year. Don't cancel vacations that are planned in advance. This means management needs to plan in advance as well.

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Post #1215892

bitbucket-25253

Posted Saturday, December 03, 2011 4:09 PM

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Lynn Pettis
The occasional extra time is one thing, but constant is over the top. If you give us comp-time, give us time to use it, and also don't limit how much we can accrue and use during the year

If memory serves me correctly, I think in the U.S. the federal gov limits that to a maximum of 120 hours accumulated, reasoning that more time than that is deferring income to a time of a lower income, thus potentially placing an individual in a lower tax bracket.

At one time I worked for a company, that did not pay salaried employees over time unless they worked more than 40 hrs OT in a given month, in which case hours over 40 up to 80 were compensated at 90 percent of the annual salary divided by 2000, over 80 to 120 compensation was at 80 percent of the annual salary divided by 2000.

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Post #1215906

cfradenburg

Posted Saturday, December 03, 2011 4:14 PM

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george sibbald (12/3/2011)

How can you exempt support staff such as DBAs and network staff when a lot of their work by its nature has to be done outside of normal working hours?

I've never expected to get paid extra for scheduled off-hours work since it is part of the job and I knew it coming in. My expectation is that I get comp time for it so I'm still around 40 hours a week.

george sibbald (12/3/2011)

Executives get their compensation up-front but probably see working long hours as making a sacrifice for the company, expecting employees to do the same is reverse envy or a cost cutting exercise.

I agree with that. The CEO of the place I mentioned before would work almost constantly and at one point was trying to make a deal Christmas or New Year's Eve (I can't remember which.) That expectation filtered down the organization and it was tough on some people. Support pager started getting executive escalations on the weekend for low priority tickets. Which, since carrying pager was optional, caused a some people to opt to not carry it. I understand that executives need to put in a lot of hours a lot of places but until my pay is much closer to theirs they can't expect that of me. And, since family and time outside of work is important to me, it isn't going to get to that point.

Post #1215907

cfradenburg

Posted Saturday, December 03, 2011 4:22 PM

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Lynn Pettis (12/3/2011)

The occasional extra time is one thing, but constant is over the top. If you give us comp-time, give us time to use it, and also don't limit how much we can accrue and use during the year.

I'm okay with limiting how much can be accrued at one time. There are accounting complications with infinite, un-expiring time off. However, not allowing employees to use time-off in a timely fashion isn't acceptable either. I've heard of an hourly employee getting compensated for overtime with comp time (which was legal for another of the owner's businesses but not this one) but not allowing her to use the comp time and then telling her that it had expired.

Post #1215908

george sibbald

Posted Saturday, December 03, 2011 5:07 PM

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cfradenburg (12/3/2011)

george sibbald (12/3/2011)

How can you exempt support staff such as DBAs and network staff when a lot of their work by its nature has to be done outside of normal working hours?

IMHO You might be selling yourself cheap, I think getting paid for out of hours work should be the default position. Having said that I am all for a bit of flexibility and if it suits you to have time off in lieu and the company is happy with that, why not. However remember that is compensating you at 1:1 for working unsocial hours, rather than time and a half or whatever. Also it can be difficult finding the slack to take the time off, and you end up having to work harder to make up for the lost time!

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Post #1215912

cfradenburg

Posted Saturday, December 03, 2011 5:28 PM

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george sibbald (12/3/2011)

The occasional off-hours work isn't a big inconvenience and doesn't really cut into social life. And I usually get more in comp time than I put in off-hours. And even though I'm the only one things mostly run smoothly enough that it's not hard to take the time off. It certainly won't work for everyone but it does for me. And since my wife doesn't work full time any time off I get means I get to see her more.

Post #1215913

Michael Valentine Jones

Posted Saturday, December 03, 2011 11:17 PM

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The worst abuse is when they set short project deadlines without any attempt to match the workload to the available staff, and then expect people to work extremely long hours to meet the deadline.

A occasional long workday to get a critical task done is one thing, but when people are put in a position where they are expected to work long hours for weeks or months, then that is just abuse.

I see this coming on a project that kicks off next week. The plan was put together by non-IT people who made no allowance for the considerable programming time required, no allowance for time to purchase and setup new systems, and no allowance for the fact that a number of key people have significant vacation time scheduled.

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