<p>I am curious if other CCers have seen this issue with their working children.
One of my children and now I notice the children of a number of friends have jobs that are labeled 50 hours a week. The salaries are a yearly salary that is put through some mathematical Olympics to come up with an hourly rate for the first 8 hours each day and a different hourly rate for the last 2 and a different rate if the day goes over 10 hours. Why is this done versus just having the job salaried with overtime required when needed? Some of the jobs are considered management. They are expected to work 10 hours even if they don’t have enough work to fill the day.
Not to sound like one of those in my day old people but my jobs have been either hourly 8 hour jobs, salaried jobs at a higher rate where you were expected to work as needed. Now self employed none of the above apply. </p>
<p>Do you live in California or one of the other states with ridiculous wage and hour laws? Many jobs have to be classified as non-exempt in the states that are crazy and the 50 hours eliminates some of the overtime.</p>
<p>It seems like all of the jobs I hear about the kids getting now are 50-80 hours a week… Actually most are higher than 50 as the norm. </p>
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<p>This makes me so sad. I’m used to working 50+ hour weeks, but there is just so much more to life than working :(</p>
<p>I have not noticed 50 hour weeks advertised in my field but my field tends to discourage unhealthy habits. </p>
<p>We are clearly going backwards. :(</p>
<p>Am I right to assume that these work hours are becoming the norm across the board in many fields?</p>
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<p>Perhaps the employees’ time is directly related to hours billed to customers?</p>
<p>My fiance has a weird job where he’s technically hourly on paper for reasons that mystify me but it works as though he was salaried and it’s not like he punches a clock. They say they give him “flex time” when he works overtime (which is frequent), but nobody is really counting. This works in our favor because it’s pretty much assumed (and rightly) that he works enough overtime to come and go as he pleases, which he does. We’re not complaining. Especially because his overtime hours are done remotely at home and are usually late in the evening after dinner, so rarely more than a minor annoyance. I love his job. But I do think it’s weird! </p>
<p>The typical employee at my job works anywhere from 50-80 hours a week whether there is work to do or not. Pay starts at 30k salaried and tops out not a whole hell of a lot higher. There is absolutely no reason the work can’t be done in 40 hours, but for political reasons things are done the way they are done and there is nothing anybody can do about it. As you might imagine, we have a pretty high level of burnout and employee turnover. I think I would rather be hourly. As it stands, I work the hours I am explicitly required to work (40), with extra where explicitly required or when needed to finish a project on time or if we are shorthanded or someone needs help or any other justifiable reason, I don’t hesitate to work as much as I need to to get the work done, but I won’t work extra for appearances. I will not spin my wheels and let the quality of my work suffer because I am wasting energy showing off. The people that do that burn out and quit. So far this has not hurt promotions, I’ve risen through the ranks at an unprecedented rate, but everybody hates me. I get more done in 40 than they do in 60, but I am the lazy one. So be it. When this gets tiresome I’ll go elsewhere. Being the loser of the team does get old even if I am getting promotions and raises. </p>
<p>I’m told young people aren’t supposed to have “work/life balance” in their vocabulary, in fact I do believe I was told that here! I was told I’d have to be crazy to expect a 40 hour a week job. To an extent I agree, one has to pay their dues, but this is also the age many of us would like to marry and have children, so I guess there are choices to be made. I guess a lot of my coworkers are making them, because I don’t think anybody I started with 3 years ago is still there. </p>
<p>I think part of this is that companies were laying off people to save money and just dividing the work up among the remaining staff. Unemployment was through the roof so no one left jobs even if they were being pushed to the time limits. People were just happy to have a job and put up with whatever was thrown at them. I have a friend who works for a big insurance company and they keep laying off staff and redistributing the workload. </p>
<p>Is it too much to hope that if the economy actually rebounds and unemployment drops that there might be a chance that employees can get their lives back? </p>
<p>It looks like your employer is rewarding you with raises and promotions at an unprecedented rate for getting your work done (i.e. what should be the case), while the rest of your co-workers have not gotten the message and believe it is about how long one is present at the workplace. Or perhaps they resent you because they are incapable of doing their jobs in fewer than 50 hours, but you doing your job in 40 hours or less makes it obvious how less capable they are.</p>
<p>I would bet many of those 50-80 hours are unproductive. I have had several friends and family members tell me it is not uncommon for people to think they need to “work late” to impress the boss when in reality those same people are unproductive during the day and stay late to do work others have done during normal hours.
The friends and family that have said this have had very successful careers so I do not think they are lying to cover for their situations.</p>
<p>Sons engineering job has been 44 hrs a week. He flexes his time as he wants as long as he gets in 88 hrs every 10 days. He will often work towards taking a Friday off as his flex time.Those 4 hrs extra a week are for lunch. If he works through lunch it would be 40 hr weeks. Anything more he gets compensated with overtime pay. There has not been a need in 3 years.</p>
<p>He is pretty well compensated for a young engineer.</p>
<p>I could swear I heard a thing on NPR last week about some country reducing the work week to 30 hours. They said they felt it would reduce sick time and personal time, and also improve productivity. I want to say it was one of the Scandinavian countries…but I’m not sure!</p>
<p>This makes me sad. I agree we’re going backwards. One reason young kids can’t get jobs is because everyone else is working too many hours.</p>
<p>You must mean France’s 35 hour work week.
<a href=“35-hour workweek - Wikipedia”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/35-hour_workweek</a></p>
<p>However, in the US, there is a high per-employee (as opposed to per-hour) overhead cost of hiring someone. This includes the traditional employer-provided medical insurance* as well as other per-employee administrative costs, as well as risks and costs of hiring a bad employee who may have to be dismissed later. So there is a strong incentive to increase existing employees’ hours up to the limit of what employees can do with acceptable quality rather than hire additional employees.</p>
<p>*This tradition is so widely favored that PPACA strengthened it, even though PPACA’s other aspects presented an opportunity to break that linkage between medical insurance and employment.</p>
<p>I don’t know how many other companies are offering this, but D’s employer offers unlimited vacation. Of course, with that comes the expectation that you get all your work done. And I’m guessing that she probably works some extra hours prior to taking vacation so that things will flow smoothly while she’s out. I think a lot of companies are now offering much better vacation in general than when we all started our careers, and two weeks was the norm to start out with, and you weren’t eligible until after your full first year.</p>
<p>One proudly worn t-shirt at a high tech company in the mid eighties stated “90 hrs a week and loving it”. This is nothing new.</p>
<p>Part of the reason we work as much as we do is because we are ALWAYS short staffed. However, they stop trying to staff when we are about 1-3 people short… then people burn out of that because it sucks and they quit… so then we end up 5-6 people short… We’ve had total turnover of my department twice in the last year. Which means in addition to doing the job of 3-4 people, you’re also training which DEVOURS your time. A new hire, regardless of the amount of experience, can do absolutely nothing by themselves for the first month until they learn the ropes, you have to hold their hand all that time instead of getting anything done, and takes a good 6 months to really become a fully functional member of the team. The odds of them even staying 6 months are not very good. </p>
<p>As a result we outsource to China now, because we “can’t” get enough workers here. I am responsible for my depts Chinese employees, and it’s interesting because they are WAY more productive than we are and work fewer hours. Which is why the company likes them, but I see no reasons why the Americans wouldn’t do just as well if we would LET THEM… I am stuck in a position where I can’t bear the thought of wasting any more time training people that are just going to quit, and even if I am philosophically opposed I would rather train a new Chinese girl because she won’t leave and she learns faster anyway. My Chinese team learned in a week what my American team takes 3 months to learn. This is what American entry-levels are up against.</p>
<p>Sweden to trial six-hour public sector workday</p>
<p>Sweden…there is a town in Sweden that is reducing full time status to 30 hours per week.</p>
<p>Maybe 10 years ago, my healthcare employer reduced FT hours from 40 to 37.5 per week.
AND they INCREASED non salaried employees per hour rate so we ended up with shorter work week and same compensation.
Employer is often cited for exceptional employee practices and benefits.
My dept works crazy hard and often short due to leaves or turnover but it is worth it for most.</p>