Programmer's unpaid overtime.

The concept of "fair" really has no meaning. In a free market, fairness is regulated by the ability to quit and go elsewhere if you don't want to work free overtime, or, to look at it another way, lower your hourly wage. Perhaps you mean "legal". But employers of salaried people have quite a bit of leeway in this area.

Normally the laywers who file a class action lawsuit get a lot of people to sign up and then make a settlement with the company that involves paying a large sum to the lawyers and giving the members of the class a gift certificate to Hardee's. The question of whether the overtime is legal or not is probably beside the point, since the company would rather settle by paying off the class action lawyers. The settlement actually hurts employees, because some of the money that would have been available for salaries goes to pay the lawyers. So I must guess that you represent the lawyers.

-Kevin

A free market would include slavery and assorted other evils that we have made political decisions to ban, and remember that "fair" has no meaning in a completely unregulated market. "Fair" is a political concept. We have a regulated market, that means that there are rules determing the relationships between employers and employees. If you are "salaried", you don't get overtime.

The current law makes salaried people not get paid overtime. If you don't think that is fair, you need to convince voters to elect people that will change the laws.

Now, back to FPGAs...

think

the

Surely all the law says is that if you sign a contract of employment which say you don't get paid overtime, then you can't expect to get paid for overtime?

It's up to you whether you sign in the first place.

Nial

I've been a programmer for over 15 yrs. I'm still a programmer and I employ programmers in my company.

Programmer output can vary (easily) by a factor of 10 from programmer to programmer. (This is documented BTW - see "Rapid Development")

If you are an average or above programmer and you are *actually writing code*, your output is so incredibly high that overtime will almost always be unecessary. Also, average to above average programmers *love* to write code and would work extra hours just for the enjoyment if they didn't have families to go home to.

One more thing. As an employer/business owner - we have no incentive or inherent desire for people to work unpaid overtime. We just need the work done to keep the business moving forward. If you can do your part in 10 hours/wk. great, if not then whatever it takes is what it takes.

Ken

don't

change

I've always been amazed that at a big company there can be two coders sitting next to each other with outputs that vary by a factor of ten, and their pay varies by a factor of 5%. Companies seem to be very good at laying off large swaths of workers, but not at firing really useless ones.

-Kevin

be

code

And some companies are very good at promoting and throwing great fistfuls of cash at coders with outputs of 100x the average who can also solve other technical problems.

It's really hard to fire a useless person without being able to prove in court that they guy really IS useless, was given the appropriate number of chances to remedy his uselessness, and that the company bent over backwards to keep him gainfully employed in spite of his limitations, especially if said useless person is a member of some EEO "protected" class. You have problems even if you give such a person a charity layoff and a few months of severance pay.

Carry on...

Followup to: By author: The Real Bev In newsgroup: comp.arch.fpga

What's much worse than deadwood are people who are active obstructionists. They can also be really hard to get rid of, unfortunately.

-hpa

I have been very efficient in companies, because the environment was positive and good: there are places where accomplishment are not only reconized, but easy.

I have also been very inefficient, in other places, for the usual reasons: too much politics, too many red tapes, unability to comply with constantly changing specifications, or more simply a boss who delayed on purpose or by incompetence a project.

So I would suggest here some prudence. Accountability does only make sense (and a lot!) if proper authority is given. Most of us like what they do, and try to do it right a reasonably fast. If there is somewhere a non performer, blaming the non performer beside being a hiring mistake, is a very convenient way to push under the rug many structural problems. (a facist and/or network administrator is a very common one, an undefined level of authority/responsibility is another one).

To me if things works, appreciate the "boss", if they do not blame "the boss", unless (s)he is not given and proper authority. One common problem is that promotion to supervisory position is often given to people who haye their job! This should be hierachily neutral: a good single performer, is just as important as a good director in an orchestra. And by the way, in music the best musicians usually become orchestra directors. Do the same in engineering, things will be good.

- UL2K - ps: false/fake achievements are so comm> >