I work for a large online retailer for 10 years and I can assure I never worked more than 40 hours per week in that time period, and I’ve been part of the on-call rotation for half of it.
And besides, overworking software engineers is a stupid waste of money because our productivity starts going to shit even before the 40 hours, let alone on overtime.
FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 10 months ago
But should it be true? Why should businesses people work for expect or require them to use more than the minimum amount of time required for a full-time job, which should be lower anyway?
RedditWanderer@lemmy.world 10 months ago
As an almost FAANG sized company engineer, I stay because I have work to do.
They ask me: Hey RedditWanderer, how much money /people and how long will it take to do this? I’m free to say whatever number, but I need to hit it. And when I don’t, I often feel personally responsible that I wasn’t able to foresee delays. They pay me a lot to get it right so I work a lot to look like I’m right.
On top of that the studio is like a 4 star hotel. Running late and would like to finish this one thing? That’s cool they’ll cook me food and pay my cab home. Got this project right? Here’s $80,000 worth of stock as bonus. Don’t feel like working today and you’re ahead of schedule? Then just don’t come to work. It’s all about the social contract that they’ll let me do whatever I want because they’ll know I’ll do as much as I can.
I’m not saying it’s the proper way to do anything, and I definitely don’t expect my teams to stay late. Ideally I do my job well and nobody (aside maybe for me) needs to feel like they should work later.
FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 10 months ago
It’s definitely not the proper way to do anything if you have a family. You should not have to choose between being a present parent and being paid what you’re worth. But a lot of companies, Google included, take a dim view of people who refuse to work as many hours as they can.
RedditWanderer@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I get to choose though. I have unlimited time off/sick days, roll into work at whatever hour I want and can take time that I need to do other things. Nobody is forcing me to stay, and I had the opportunity to tell them how long it would take. I am also free to call it off and extend if I need.
I work a lot, but the company isn’t enforcing bad work life balance. Imagine if you had a job where your boss paid you hundreds of hours of overtime beforehand, and left it to you to decide when and if to take it, would you not sometimes do overtime when you feel it’s your responsibility?
gian@lemmy.grys.it 10 months ago
I would say that it is not the proper way even if you have not a family
Tetsuo@jlai.lu 10 months ago
The sad reality is that a lot of people evade parenting by spending way too much time at their work. To some extent using work as an excuse to spend less time educating and spending times with kids.
So you either get the social stigma of not willing to have kids, or you do get some kids and actually don’t want to spend time with them ?
Obviously, some parents find the right balance between the two and actually care about the kids enough to keep work in check but I’m starting to think that’s more an exception than the norm.
Sorry if this is rough to read or offensive. As I said, I work 39h a week and most of the higher ups at work do 41/42+ hours a week easy. It’s obvious than they choose work before education. There is a point where it’s just physically impossible to be there for your kids while spending that much time work. Don’t even get me started on these higher ups spending so much time working even when they do get home.
Pheonixdown@lemm.ee 10 months ago
Your talk of providing estimates just reminds me of this scene from Star Trek TNG.
gian@lemmy.grys.it 10 months ago
Everyone has work to do.
If you stay once in a while it’s ok, shit happen from time time but if you always (or most of the days) stay, then you and your company have a problem: bad management. And that is not solved with overtime.
RedditWanderer@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I stay more than I need to for sure. And I encourage people to leave. I guess I just feel like my employer isn’t forcing me, as this title might imply. I know not everyone lives like me so it should definitely raise alarm bells when most people have that work schedule.
raptir@lemdro.id 10 months ago
You can argue that it shouldn’t be true, but the fact that this is presented as breaking news about Google is ridiculous. This is true about many positions in the US.
FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 10 months ago
The breaking news part seems to me to be the part where they got the memo saying it was basically an understood policy. That is true about many jobs, but it usually isn’t spelled out so clearly, certainly not for a company the size of Google. I think it’s good for workers to know for a fact that they’re being exploited at every possible opportunity.
Tetsuo@jlai.lu 10 months ago
I don’t get it either. I work in IT in France and do 39 hours a week. It’s fairly close to that google figure.
And we have one of the most protective unions and so on here in France.
This is absolutely not unusual in EU to see people working 40+ hours a week and I’m sure there is much worse.
I agree that we should all work less than 8 hours a day, no matter the field honestly, but that’s just how it is right now.
Now the main difference is we probably have much more holidays than in the US but that’s a different story.
Hasuris@sopuli.xyz 10 months ago
But he said they get paid more. That makes it ok for some reason.