compensation packages in the new world.

[shah269 0]

God knows I need a jump. I just spent two hours with our executives who all make over $150k (they are not that well paid executives) explaining why young folks who make under $100k do not wish to be paid with "time off" and would appreciate being compensated with overtime pay instead.

And that unless they start issuing over time compensation that the number and quality of what they will get for volunteers for jobs will be less than adequate to meet their needs. In the end I was asked to develop a six sigma type argument for OT over comp time.....my head hurts...

Speaking to a friend who works for one of the larger banks he stated;
companies dont have to pay you more.. you work for them.. and they dont work for u.. take the time off to be productive

My rebuttal was;
This is the US not China, we are not communists. Replace company with "state" and you got it about right. "The state doesn't have to pay you more or at all, you work for the in betterment of the state. If you don't like it find a new state. Work for free an use your free time to contemplate the greatness of the state."

I 99.99% sure that's what Carl Marx's view of society was all about. Work for others and not for yourself. And well we all know how communism went down.

Sorry, I'm a capitalist, I work because I get paid. Not because it gives me a warm and fuzzy inside. But with this slow crashing economy, can't believe full employment isn't predicted till 2020, it's just nuts. Can't wait till things improve.

But once the executives get it into their skull that they can get people to do work for free ( which by the way is illegal ) they will never pay again. After all why pay for anything when you once had it for free?
.....


What are your thoughts? Is this the new normal? Be happy you have a job and yes we will ask you to work harder and harder and not compinsate you accordingly and if you say shit you will be out the door?

Life through good thoughts, good words, and good deeds is necessary to ensure happiness and to keep chaos at bay.

The only thing that falls from the sky is birdshit and fools!

[marks2065 0]

Quote

What are your thoughts? Is this the new normal? Be happy you have a job and yes we will ask you to work harder and harder and not compinsate you accordingly and if you say shit you will be out the door?

you are correct that we work for pay not the company, but right now you make it look like you are doing it for the company. If you show anything else you will be unemployed.
The economy is getting worse by the day, I see it getting worse. My shop is the slowest it has ever been. You always have slow days but days have turned into months of late. My employess are loosing 10-15 hours each every week. I have never cut hours until the last 10 months. I thought it was my shop, but when seeing other shops close and sales reps begging for business is see it is a area wide issue.
The government is lieing to us when they say it is getting better.

[NewGuy2005 53]

You are lucky you are getting comp time. If you are an exempt salaried employee, I'm pretty sure they don't have to give you anything.

I don't get overtime pay or comp time. Wish I did.

[livendive 8]

At my last job, the only way exempt staff got overtime pay was to submit for it in advance. Your boss would have to show that it was for a specific project, with a finite duration lasting at least a few weeks, and no more than a few months. Then you could get a bonus on your paycheck (not hourly). I only saw one person actually get this in 10 years.

At my current job, we used to get a fair amount of (straight) overtime pay. Then comp time was offered and people split, about 50/50 on which they took. Now overtime pay is exceptionally rare and comp time is our only real option. Once they moved us 35 miles out of town to save on office rent three years ago, and started requiring that we document all "casual" (read "uncompensated") overtime so that it can be split equally between our projects, I quit donating my time. My door-to-door day is 12 hours, and I get paid for 9 of them, with every other Friday off. That's enough.

Blues,
Dave

"I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!"
(drink Mountain Dew)

[DrewEckhardt 0]

Quote

God knows I need a jump. I just spent two hours with our executives who all make over $150k (they are not that well paid executives) explaining why young folks who make under $100k do not wish to be paid with "time off" and would appreciate being compensated with overtime pay instead.

Henry Ford didn't give his workers 48 then 40 hour work weeks because he was a nice guy. He did it because it built him more cars with acceptable quality for less money.

When people average too many work hours productivity drops to less than what they would have done working 40 hour weeks with no overtime. This holds whether they're factory or knowledge workers, with some studies suggesting the tipping point is 35 hours for people using their brains. An increased error rate goes with the decreased productivity (this source http://www.ewin.com/arch/overwk.htm cites 10% after 8 hours and 28% after 10 hours). The lack of creative 'white space' means sollutions to problems are more likely to be brute-force, labor intensive, and therefore expensive rather than simple, elegant, fast and therefore inexpensive.

After a few weeks at 60 hours a week people are getting less done than they were at 40 hours a week.

Demarco and Lister write about this some in _Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams_.

You can get short bursts of increased average productivity with more hours provided recovery time is included bringing the average back to normal although some of that comes from working around sub-optimal environments ("I can't get anything done until the office gets quiet after the sales guys go home at 5 pm") and you'd be better off fixing the root causes.

There are a few people in a few situations who can sustain much more work for a lot longer; but those are the exceptions not the rule. The people probably have mild cases of Aspbergers and the project is probably some sort of all-consuming passion. I've done that (105 hours a week for a few months or 60-80 for a couple years) but it's not really something you just decide to do or can order up and people are notoriously bad observing their own productivity or lack thereof (it sure feels like you're getting a lot done when you're working too much).

Managers who don't know this have their heads in the sand and are bad due to ignorance. Ones that do and still over-schedule people because the hours of work are a metric that makes them look good to their bosses are bad for putting their appearances ahead of the company's productivity. Ones that just can't schedule don't have management skills (this does take some feedback - although people are good at estimating the scope of projects they're bad at accounting for interruptions and turning that into calendar time. So you track things, figure out that Mary takes 1.5 weeks to do 1 week of work and John takes two, and build that into the schedule. Some organizations scope things in points, gumdrops, or other non-time units to avoid the negative connotations that go with the work hours and calendar time disconnect)

All this ignores the indirect effects that arrive via increased turnover. It can take 6-24 months for a new employee to be fully up to speed depending on how much domain knowledge their job takes (Demarco and Lister have specific examples). Combined with the cost of interviewing and recruiting commisions you can spend another year's salary on some one who quits with even less productivity to show for it (you also loose productivity from your existing team members that spend time brininging the new people up to speed).

[Remster 30]

What is this "overtime" you people speak of?

Remster

[shah269 0]

DrewEckhardt

As always thank you for the very thought out response and thank you so much for the link.

I will look at it later this evening. I concur, anything over 45 hours and any one worth their creative salt is burned out. And yes Blackberries count as work. Thus why VW had passed a mandate that no one shall utilize their BlackBerries past a given hour of the evening. So far from what I have been told it was very successful.

However with respect to the OT vs. Comp Time vs. doing it out of the goodness of their hearts.....if you ask me the gene is out of the bottle. Once executives understand that they can get people to work for free based on fear of losing their job....why should they ever pay anyone ever again?

Most people don't realize this but in a for profit organization, free labor is against the law and last I knew the IRS was not very happy about the fact that the company was making out like a bandit with respect to free labor and not having to pay any form of tax on that labor!

In my opinion....it's not only illegal but it is also unethical.

Life through good thoughts, good words, and good deeds is necessary to ensure happiness and to keep chaos at bay.

The only thing that falls from the sky is birdshit and fools!

[billvon 3,080]

>But once the executives get it into their skull that they can get people to
>do work for free . . . they will never pay again.

. . . because they're capitalists too.

That's the "problem" with capitalism here in the US. Employers use it too.

>I 99.99% sure that's what Carl Marx's view of society was all about. Work
>for others and not for yourself.

Communism is requiring people to work for others. Capitalism is letting people work for whatever they want. Want to make $250K a year? Great, demand that. Want to work for free? That's fine too.

[davjohns 1]

I'm a Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Army. Comp Time? Overtime?

I know that government civilians can get comp time easily and after a year it turns into overtime in their paycheck if they haven't burned it. I don't see the difference, really.

I'm trying to figure out how the workload is so great that they need you to work extra, but you can take comp time off. Obviously, there are lows and highs in the demands that make that possible. So, how are you ending up on the short end of the stick?

I know it just wouldnt be right to kill all the stupid people that we meet..

But do you think it would be appropriate to just remove all of the warning labels and let nature take its course.

[kelpdiver 2]

Quote

I'm a Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Army. Comp Time? Overtime?

I know that government civilians can get comp time easily and after a year it turns into overtime in their paycheck if they haven't burned it. I don't see the difference, really.

I'm trying to figure out how the workload is so great that they need you to work extra, but you can take comp time off. Obviously, there are lows and highs in the demands that make that possible. So, how are you ending up on the short end of the stick?

Huge difference in the non union, non government world. Comp time is more of a fantastic joke.

What Shah talks about illustrates a big disconnect between the East and West coasts, one I experienced directly with my last company which was acquired by a NYC based one.

6 or 7 years back, my company, like many in the SF area, had class action lawsuits over the inappropriate classification of people as exempt when they shouldn't be, per IRS guidelines. As a result, large groups of technical workers were now eligible for OT. This resulted in a better overall situation - if the company wanted us to work on weekends, for example, they had to pay extra for it. This lead to consideration of when it was really necessary. Vacation time was another aspect - our yearly balance rolled over and you could have a balance max of 240 hours. Many, particularly the Indian employees would use 3-4 weeks at a time but infrequently. (traveling to India is a pretty time intensive task).

Move forward to our new Overlords. The guys working in the Wilmington DE office did not get OT. Their vacation time did not roll over yet their requests for time off were frequently denied. Their version of comp time for weekend work often meant getting Tuesday off (useless). Exactly to what Drew wrote about - they were working hard, but dumbly and it was reflected in their output and in their attitude to the company. They may have acquired us, but they were cavemen in comparison to what my team was doing and had already accomplished.

Unfortunately, I think the only way Shah's execs get the point is if their policies lead to turnover that leads to actual loss of business. If they view workers as replaceable commodities and don't see the costs of lower quality, then there's no incentive to change.

[shah269 0]

Quote

Unfortunately, I think the only way Shah's execs get the point is if their policies lead to turnover that leads to actual loss of business. If they view workers as replaceable commodities and don't see the costs of lower quality, then there's no incentive to change.

Bingo Kelp!
Yeah well they can be total assholes and know full well that these young guys and gals won't walk.
But on the same time these guys or gals won't be working any Saturday any time soon....not in their contract....and since a good number are Fed employees...good luck firing them!

But in the civilian world, yes these guys and gals in the long run could be let go. Thus they are now being held hostage. If they work they will work for free and may keep their jobs in the future. But if they don't the odds they may get let go is higher.

Now I don't know about you but the IRS isn't happy and I'm sure black mail and coercion isn't very nice either.

As for me, I was able to convince my executives that it was in their best interest to have these guys on the clock for OT due to potential liability suits which may come up if they get hurt on the job.
Spend $1 today and save $100 tomorrow.

It wasn't easy but it's what we middle managers have to do to keep peace in the world I guess?

Life through good thoughts, good words, and good deeds is necessary to ensure happiness and to keep chaos at bay.

The only thing that falls from the sky is birdshit and fools!

[kelpdiver 2]

as a general rule I try to find companies that do value quality, get away from the ones that do not.

[shah269 0]

Quote

as a general rule I try to find companies that do value quality, get away from the ones that do not.

You are talking to a Six Sigma Black Belt.....
thank god i didn't have to do a project on this.
Jus a simple cost evaluation of OT vs a day in court.
And the guys now have OT for working on saturdays at events around the country.

Life through good thoughts, good words, and good deeds is necessary to ensure happiness and to keep chaos at bay.

The only thing that falls from the sky is birdshit and fools!

[shah269 0]

Holy crap I just got a call from our legal office thanking me for helping the executives understand the concept of liability and accountability?

Wow, maybe it was just a very short sighted view of a bigger problem?

Our head lead person said she was going to write a letter of commendation to my supervisor for proper articulation of a serious issue and potentially saving my employer a good big of risk.

Now I feel all warm and fuzzy inside! Who knew this MBA thing was going to pay off!

Life through good thoughts, good words, and good deeds is necessary to ensure happiness and to keep chaos at bay.

The only thing that falls from the sky is birdshit and fools!

[shah269 0]

Dudes I'm a freaking hero! Legal called me up this morning thanking me for making sure that all our people were on the clock so that the liability of injury was covered. And that they were very worried and almost cancelled the Boy Scout Jamboree for fear of liability concerns. My little one page memo that I sent using what we learned in my business law class has made it up to the executives desk and they are strong indications via emails to my supervisor that they are very happy with my offices strategic thinking.

Hey see, sometimes when you fight for the little guy, the big guys win too!
Maybe I'll have a drink!
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-04-12/why-you-should-drink-at-work

Life through good thoughts, good words, and good deeds is necessary to ensure happiness and to keep chaos at bay.

The only thing that falls from the sky is birdshit and fools!