Should developers accept overtime/weekend work/denied bonus payments?

Question

I assume there are many developers in a situation like this:

• you are an employed software architect/engineer
• you are good at your job
• your company needs more good developers than they can find
• there are many options to get a new job or get self-employed
• work is not your first priority (you enjoy family/free time)

Aren't we stupid when we still accept overtime/weekend work/denied bonus payments?
I would think employers would need to give in, if we demand better working conditions.

What do you think would happen when we all demand better working conditions?

Answer 1

Yes, developers think working long hours is a sign of machismo, it really is stupidity.

Best startup I ever worked for had a solid testing framework, zero regressions, high code velocity.

Everyone worked 9-5, weekdays only. My wife was astonished to see me for dinner so regularly. If we ever had to pull long shifts, the company had a fresh team that was nowhere close to burnt out.

Of course it failed...NOT. You might have heard of the company, LinkedIn.

Any time you have worked long hours it is a sign of a broken process. Insist the process gets fixed before working the long hours.

Answer 2

One thing that astounds me is that software developers rarely belong to unions or collective wage agreements. I now work for a software house that is unionised, and have the best working conditions of my life, and the best in the city.

So to answer the question is probably covered by a broader issue - software engineers are (as a massive generalization), very poor employment contact negotiators, and do not even know they are. As a result, they end up with far worse working conditions than they could have.

Software development is a service industry, and as we all know, service industry workers are not typically well paid and have poor work conditions. With(out)* collective agreements, these will not improve.

*EDIT added 'out' to 'without' to better convey what the original answerer was trying to say.

Answer 3

In my opinion there should never be a reason to work overtime, weekends, etc. for a business where you are just an employee (if you are a partner, stakeholder, or if it's your own business then it's acceptable once in a while). Any time this happens, it indicates a much larger problem (usually at the management level) and that problem should be addressed immediately and finally when it rears its ugly head.

Note: Specifically referring to unpaid overtime/weekends/etc. It might be acceptable once in a blue moon if you get some kind of compensation (real compensation, not "Come in on Saturday and we'll buy everyone pizza and beer!" compensation), but IMO the sheer fact that overtime or off-hours work might be required indicates a deeper issue that needs to be addressed.

Answer 4

The most significant factor in working long (unpaid) hours, as I see it, is the culture of the department. If everyone else stays back in the office until 8pm then you're going to be expected to as well.

This culture is often brought about because 90% of the time, management are unable to see a true picture of the productivity of developers. The easiest thing for them to see is bums in seats.

If your company is in the situation where they need more good developers than they can find then that is their problem, not yours. They should recruit more or be realistic about deadlines.

If work isn't your first priority, then why are you working for nothing? You're using your own time to put money into the pockets of the company owners/shareholders. You don't have to do this. If you're a good developer then you should be able to get enough done from 9 to 5. Sit down with your manager and discuss deadlines. Agree on realistic milestones. If you can hit these milestones without doing 60 hours a week then you can leave at 5pm with your head held high. If you can't agree realistic milestones and your manager insists that you work regular unpaid overtime then its time to look for a new job.

Edit:
Some places (and some industries, like finance/banking) have the 60h/wk culture, and there's simply no getting away from it; telling your boss that you're only going to work 9-5 will just get you fired, or more realistically you'd never have been hired in the first place. When you go into finance you go into it with your eyes open, 60h/wk is regular and expected. Fair enough, but that's why salaries in finance are usually 30-50% higher than other industries. Its not really unpaid overtime, its salaried overtime.

Answer 5

From my first job at a consulting company: "We don't work for free." - CEO This is not to say that the sales team didn't do a lot of work, that they didn't do lots of marketing, etc, but that there were limits.

I have learned that employers will allow you to do as much work as you are willing to do, and if you are willing to do the work of two people, they will let you, but they are very unlikely to pay you the salary of two people.

Another valuable lesson from the Red Cross Lifesaving Manual- Rule 1 is Self-Preservation. Poor judgement when trying to help save a drowning person can equal 2 drowned people. This is very important at work, too.

I've done lots of work at the last minute to save the company's bacon, but I have discovered that most companies don't appreciate the miracle you pulled out at the last minute, they learn to EXPECT it, and don't change their poor planning behavior if they can depend on you.

Answer 6

A couple of points to raise here.

1. Job availability can be locally constrained. It's very hard to walk out on a job regardless of the conditions if there is no easy replacement.
2. Work disposal is not locally constrained as in off-shoring is increasingly an option for some companies. May not be wise but that doesn't generally trouble decision makers.
3. Most contracts will have some comment about operational requirements and flexibility which limits employee options for complaints in some respect.
4. Collective bargaining makes some of these problems go away depending on whose doing the bargaining. Sometimes, however, it makes the jobs go away too.

Answer 7

demand better working conditions

Are you kidding?

What sort of environment are you working in? Tents in the middle of the desert? Forced to deal with unearthed equipment? Are you beaten over the back of the head with a blunt object (not the rubber duck testing type, mind) if your bugs don't pass smoke tests?

Let's get a sense of perspective here: none of us are truly bad off in terms of working environment and there are a hell of a lot of people out there who are in comparison.

Answer 8

The culture for this varies wildly from place to place. I've been freelancing in London for 10 years, and I left my last perm place because there was a culture where people stayed late every night, and would sometimes come in at weekends, without overtime. It was ridiculous, but people did it, and just had no other life outside of the company.

I think that when surrounded by other people who do the same, people don't think any differently.

I've contracted at some places where they've had this late culture, and I've got some disapproving looks, but I'd stuck to my guns. I don't mind staying late from time to time when work demands it, but not just as a matter of course because a project manager is over promising things. It staggers me what some places get away with.

Answer 9

Recently, I moved jobs. I was working as a young developer, happy for having a full time job in a professional environment. I was working with big name clients, on large projects, with other good programmers. However some days I would start at two in the morning and leave at 7 in the evening. I would get paid basically nothing for this. I would miss going home to my girlfriend and child, and I would be tired when it came to the weekend, yet I felt it was my responsibility.

Only 2 months ago I moved to another company. Same set up, however now I am asked a couple of weeks in advance to do overtime, paid very well for it and requested not to over work myself. I've enjoyed a healthier and happier life outside of work now I work 9-5.30 every day, I can actually go home and have fun etc.

It depends on your outlook, some work to live, others live to work. If you don't enjoy it, and earn enough, don't do it. They can't dismiss you for it.

Answer 10

It is a good idea to demand better working conditions.

Unfortunately, management is rarely aware of the value of individuals working in their IT department.

Management always thinks that people are replaceable. This is not always true.

Another reason for the sad situation is that management don't always understand the value if individual contribution because they are not involved in the details. They'd know the PM and Web Designers, but not the DBA who is recovering the database.

Developers, or IT workers in general, should have a union.

However, until then, don't quit and don't make your management angry.

Show management your value instead. Maybe they would listen.

Answer 11

I think what you're asking is: Isn't it stupid to accept regular overtime? I don't think anyone denies that there's going to be times when you have to stay late or come in on a weekend... The problem arises when that becomes a regular pattern, as is often the case at many companies.

Part of the reason why this is predominant in our culture is due to the nature of a lot of programmers -- highly obsessive, and one dimensional (as in limited non-programming interests). Often young and without families to boot.

Google is the prototype here: Less than 1% of its employees are over 40, and they try to take away all the reasons you would have to leave the campus - from on-site meals to fitness centers/classes to shiny new laptops to dry-cleaning, etc...

So if they weren't spending 60 hours per week working at a startup, they'd spend 40 hours per week writing code for their employer, and another 20 per week doing something on the computer, whether that was contributing to open source or just chatting about programming on sites like these.

As for employers needing to "give in", for the most part it's a buyers market for talent right now so they don't need to. Just take a look at the stackoverflow classifieds, and see the amount of hoops some of these companies want you to jump through -- solve some puzzles, take a test, have a prolific github account, have X+ years in specific versions of technologies, make a custom page declaring your love for the company, etc...

They can do this because they'll still be flooded with resumes from people that can meet most or all of the qualifications...

Answer 12

I agree that programmers/developers should factor in the quality of the job and request good working conditions. If your job sucks, apply and get something better. Try getting your fellow employees to follow suit.

But unions as they typically work in the US are not the answer. Unions treat all workers as equal fungible commodities, while one programmer may be 100x more productive than the next guy. Take a teacher's union as an example. Your salary and job security as a teacher is based solely upon how many years you've worked at the job without committing any fire-able offense.

If its a union job; you can't negotiate a better salary, even if you are the super productive programmer who happily works 60+ hr weeks or the guy who's just doing the minimum and barely scrapping by. Everyone would get grouped into their appropriate group (based on seniority) and get paid the same.

Also the non-productive dead weight is much harder for management to get rid of in a union atmosphere; as there's extra bureaucracy. (Meaning that you know have to deal with them messing up your code for much longer and they have no incentive to get better at their job.)

Answer 13

Given that most of the software developers I know are big-L Libertarians who think of unions the way most of us think of child molesters, I don't see many programmer's unions popping up any time soon.

I've seen the whole spectrum. In the late '90s I worked for a bunch of workaholics; they were miserable people who were only happy in the office, so naturally they put in 60 hour weeks at a minimum and expected everyone else to as well. They also had a nasty habit of tying management bonuses to setting and beating aggressive schedules, meaning projects were always rush jobs - if it didn't crash the system on installation, it was good to ship. Miserable, miserable place to work.

Contrast that with my last job, where there was a serious effort to limit everyone to 40 hours/week. Schedules were mostly sane, projects were mostly properly staffed, and on the rare occasions where people did need to put in extra hours, they would pay those hours (depending on the contract).

I do see a change happening in the industry, at least in my neck of the woods. I won't speak for Silicon Valley.

Answer 14

If you are constantly working long hours without appropriate compensation, then I would suggest you re-evaluate your employment with the company. However, as a professional in this or any industry, you must recognize that there will be times where schedules get a little out of whack from internal or external influences. In those times, we need to step up and get the job done. If we expect the company to stand by us and take care of us, we need to do the same for the company.

Answer 15

Your scenario goes for nearly anyone not just programmers/developers.

Some people are good salespeople and will be able to convince others to work in less-than-ideal (or downright bad) conditions with a promise. The problem is not all bad situations end in disaster (but perhaps the majority of situations do) and because such scenarios pop up with regularity it can be very hard to keep saying no. If you only get bad offers you are going to have to settle eventually. Worse, being known for repeatedly saying no will cause you to get a reputation for having unacceptably high standards which can mean you are no longer in a position to accept the good offers.

Answer 16

This is up to you. If you company get for you a lot of advantage, not only money. Afterwards you have a chance to developing your career work. And if you just think working is a temporary, you have a lot of fun things outside. So you don't need to work overtime for getting a paid money. To me, I will try to work hard on working time, and try to avoid working overtime. And some cases, if company have many work need to finish on time, I will work on weekend or even overtime. To be honest, I don't like overtime and working in weekend days. IMHO...

Answer 17

there are many options to get a new job or get self-employed

Not everyone has better options, only professional developers have.