[bonestormii_]

The "confidence" of senior people to push back is greatly enhanced by the fact that they won't be expediently fired for doing so. And even so, plenty of senior positions suffer from this situation as well. I'm living this hell right now.

[Hamuko]

>The "confidence" of senior people to push back is greatly enhanced by the fact that they won't be expediently fired for doing so.

There's a problem with your country if you can be fired for refusing overtime.

[colejohnson66]

(in America) There’s no such this as “overtime” in most salaried jobs though. You’re paid just for being an employee, not for hours worked. Whether you work 35 or 60 hours, it’s the same pay.[a] As a result, employers don’t have to worry about overtime pay, only burnt out employees (but entry and junior levels are disposable, right? /s)

[a]: This also leads to the employer expecting one to be “on call” 24/7 regardless of your position.

[Hamuko]

>There’s no such this as “overtime” in most salaried jobs though. You’re paid just for being an employee, not for hours worked.

If there's no concept of overtime in most salaried jobs, there's a problem with your country as well.

I'm a salaried, full-time employee and I'm paid to work 37.5 hours a week, no more, no less. And the collective agreement for IT services industry (which is what concerns me as a developer) dictates that 40 hours/week is the maximum.

If you want to read our collective agreement, you can find it here: https://tietoala.fi/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/TES__englanti... Working hours are on page 19 (21 on the PDF).

[treis]

And you probably get paid 1/3 to 1/2 of what a developer in the US can make.

The reality of the world is that if you're the lead developer for some product you will have times that you need to work off hours. Like if production is down how can you say: "My 40 hours is up this week, I'll look at it on Monday".

It's a balance. You shouldn't routinely be working a ton of nights and weekends. But sometimes shit hits the fan at inconvenient hours and you need to respond. If not, you have to have routine 24/7 coverage which gets really expensive really fast ultimately leading to lower salaries for developers.

[theshrike79]

If shit hits the fan, the company should be prepared to pay for it.

If not, then clearly the shit hasn't actually hit any fans and I can keep relaxing on my free time.

Many times companies and clients like to pretend there is an emergency that needs extra hours, but if there is a price tag attached, the urgency disappears really fast.

Overtime is a mutual contract in Finland. The employee can't just decide to do overtime for extra pay (usually 150-200% hourly rate), neither can the company order an employee to do overtime hours. Both agree how many hours are needed and what should be accomplished by working extra hours.

I can _voluntarily_ work longer hours and "bank" those, I'm also free to use my banked hours at a time of my choosing or be compensated for those hours with money. For example I can do 9 hours from monday to thursday and leave at noon on friday for a nice long afternoon/evening with my family.

[ingvul]

> Like if production is down how can you say: "My 40 hours is up this week, I'll look at it on Monday".

It depends. If it's the first time production is down and I'm already off, I fix the issue. Once it's fixed I'll tell my manager: "we need on-call people. Please don't consider me for that position because I value more my free-time than money. Thanks". The second time production is down, I won't fix it.

If they fire me because I don't do on-call, then again it depends. I would revisit my contract and if it doesn't say anything about being on-call I would point that out. In any case, I would start to look for a new job asap.

[container]

I wouldn't start too much speculation around a comment that started with 'probably'. But in any case, I'm also a Finn, and my contract also refers to that agreement. Still, I don't think I even know anyone who just drops what they're doing when their hours are up for the day or the week. It seems that everyone's working around the clock, even on weekends and holidays. And just like you would expect by now, people take pride in it and boast about it too. Sure, that's pathological, but I really can't even imagine working 9 to 5 and then disconnecting for the rest of the time, union or not. I think you're considered exceptional in Finnish IT if you can do that.

[davidgay]

> It's a balance. You shouldn't routinely be working a ton of nights and weekends. But sometimes shit hits the fan at inconvenient hours and you need to respond. If not, you have to have routine 24/7 coverage which gets really expensive really fast ultimately leading to lower salaries for developers.

The not-uncommon answer to this is an oncall rotation, where you are paid at some fraction of your full-time salary, to respond to such problems.

The fraction likely works out better than 'overtime' pay, as it's for all the time you are oncall, not just when some issue occurs.

[ciceryadam]

Yup exactly, if I'm on emergency calls, I get payed 10% of my base hourly to be available, online in 15minutes and ready to solve issues. As soon as I get a call during this time, it's overtime (125% of hourly pay, bonuses for weekend/night calls). If I'm on holiday I'm out for the company, but I'm there for colleagues. With this system did daily rotations and weekly rotations, both lengths have their pros and cons.

[IanCal]

> Like if production is down how can you say: "My 40 hours is up this week, I'll look at it on Monday"

"Tell whoever is on call to deal with it"

[colejohnson66]

It is a balance. But the point GP is making (it seems) is that if “shit [does] hit the fan,” you should be paid overtime for it, not have it be part of your job. It’s a cultural difference really.

[treis]

It doesn't really work because the incentives become misaligned. It becomes a good thing for workers to have things go wrong and for them to be inefficient with their time. Organizations end up much less flexible because they then don't trust their workers not to milk them.

Ultimately it changes from paying someone to get a job done to paying them for hours worked. Anyone that's hired a plumber knows that you get far faster and efficient work in the first situation.

[ytwySXpMbS]

Well yes, everything is hunky dory if you work in an atypically well paid industry. It’s still a problem for the rest of the country, I imagine teachers aren’t too happy about unpaid overtime for instance.

[908B64B197]

At 1/2 1/3 the pay, I can't really see why a dev would work more than 30 hours a week. Especially if there's no stock comp.

[bonzini]

Paid time off, paid paternity leave, decent retirement paid by the employer, world class single payer healthcare and paid sick days, no at-will work, affordable childcare, don't have to set up a college fund for my sons' education when they're born, etc. etc.

[Frondo]

> Like if production is down how can you say...

Come on, man, it's not your company and if they're not paying you for that time, it's not your responsibility. Volunteering your time for someone else's business? Is this really what you want to do with your life?

[colejohnson66]

The unfortunate reality is that most people don’t have a choice. If they refuse the work, they’re fired because it’ll be easy to find someone who will do the work even during off-hours.

[Symbiote]

Is the American developer happier in life than the Finn? Do they have time to enjoy all that extra money?

The 40 hours is averaged over several weeks (normally). You can have an extra 3 hours, but leave work at lunchtime the next day.

[treis]

The American developer can retire in 1/3 to 1/2 the time of the Finn. And yes, I'd say working a bit more for that is an obvious yes.

[buran77]

I think the problem is usually overtime is interpreted as time doing extra work, not time to finish the work you were expected to finish anyway. The company can claim you were unproductive and probably has an easier time proving this that you have proving otherwise.

Most companies try to extract the most value from their employees and this may mean overloading them and they use "industry benchmarks" to set the bar for what you're expected to deliver. Those are very debatable but effective in supporting their point.

Then in the bulk of the push comes from incentivizing people to do overtime by offering promotions, bonuses, good projects only to those who go above and beyond. Refusing overtime may not only be received with a lack of incentives but with concrete disincentives like getting the really nasty activities and treatment. If you're building a career, want the position, or want/need the higher pay, you'll do it. Depends on the company, the job, the person.

[Viliam1234]

> Most companies try to extract the most value from their employees and this may mean overloading them

Exactly this. If managers notice that your team is doing everything on time, they will remove a member or two from your team, until you can barely meet the deadlines. Then they get a bonus for reducing the company costs.

It requires some experience to realize that it is not your fault if the deadlines are in danger. That is system working exactly as intended. But of course the company will pretend it's your fault. That is also system working exactly as intended. (In USA, this results in you doing a lot of overtime. That is also system working as intended. The urgent situation is not something unexpected; it happens every year in every project, it is a part of the plan.)

[texasbigdata]

You guys unioned as a cross company group of 1 (or several closely related) functional roles? That’s super interesting! Do any entry level people NOT accept membership to the union or undercut in any way? Do you require your employee to be a “union” shop to work there?

I think it’s beautiful your vacation hours are set out, etc.

It seems like there could be some issues if every vertical had one of these (“oh no, the real estate team has 7 weeks of vacation but the HR team only has 2?”) but outside of that it’s beautiful what y’all did as a collective entity. This is super eye opening, thanks for sharing.

[SuoDuanDao]

I think part of the reason this works so well in Europe is because guilds have been around for a long time, and there's a sense in which they also look out for the quality of work their members put out. There's an implication of providing training to junior members and serving the public that give a depth to the organisation beyond a charter of 'we negotiate for the highest pay the market will bear'

[Hamuko]

Joining an union in Finland is voluntary but most collective agreements are just that - collective. They apply whether or not you're in the union for the entire sector. I think most Finns belong to unions though.

[notkaiho]

Depends a bit on age groups but membership is still pretty high [0].

The collective point is critical - unions negotiate wages as part of a tripartite arrangement in Finland. It's industry-wide sets of wages.

[0] https://yle.fi/uutiset/3-9036556

[talentedcoin]

This sort of thing makes the (Canadian) hair on the back of my neck stand up. I can see a collective agreement for a govt employees, or for a specific set of trades within an industry. But for an entire sector?

As others in the thread have pointed out, these types of arrangements don't always correspond to the reality of the business. If you are, for example, paid a yearly bonus, then the concept of "unpaid overtime" doesn't really apply.

[ciceryadam]

In here that only means a guaranteed minimal salary, agreed upon yearly by the tripartity (government, employers union, employees union), jobs are classified into 8 categories. Higher category means higher guaranteed minimal salary, but it is most of the time payed better than that, so this is usually below market rock bottom. Examples are: 1st category is kitchen helper, 2nd is janitor, 3rd barber, 4th nurse, 5th preschool teacher, 6th network admin, 7th dentist, 8th CFO. IT jobs are category 4-8.

[Mauricebranagh]

Wouldn't go down very well in UK M&P unions

I recall a delegate at my Union conference getting very upset at the thought that our members where such low grade / status employees

The Uk is possibly different that no fixed hours has a district class / social status.

Interesting to see a eu style agreemnet

[geodel]

Don't know specifics about you. But officially/legally fixed hours comes with list of measurable tasks that must be completed by certain time. Now in most places I worked things invariably get delayed due to vendors, other teams, servers, network issues and so on. When issues are finally resolved one is expected to complete allocated task in 'extra' time. Saying that my 35 hours are over is not gonna cut in my experience. Even for highly demanded skills this kind fix hour negotiations is not possible for an individual employee or contractor.

Besides one can't really compare IT jobs in UK and USA. In UK they are generally at lower end of pay and reputation compare to US.

[GoblinSlayer]

Granted, in USA you're paid 10 times more than in the rest of the world.

[bonzini]

Not really. Italy has abysmal IT wages, a 30.000 euros wage in Italy is probably for roles that would get an 80.000$ salary in the US. That's not even 3x but then:

* there's 7% extra that is paid as a lump sum when you change employers, and 33% paid into a retirement account (vs. perhaps 20% for a 401k; employer/employee proportion of 25-75 vs. 50-50 for 401k matching)

* you don't enter work with any debt, because university is paid by the state if you're poor. I have seen directors from America (easily $200k salary) saying they can't afford a vacation in Europe because they have two sons/daughters in grad school.

* you don't have to pay for healthcare (and taxes are comparable for lower income tax brackets). If you have a child, pregnancy+delivery costs €0.00.

* nowhere in Italy are you going to have a real estate market as crazy as Silicon Valley

* childcare will cost 150-500 euros a month depending on age vs 1000-3000$ in the US

Putting everything together, maybe you're paid twice as much. Go to Germany or Finland and there's even less difference.

[ingvul]

In which country are you working? My full-time work contract explicitly says that I will receive X EUR/year for working 40h/week. So, yes, they are paying for hours worked.

[colejohnson66]

USA. Should’ve mentioned that.

[reaperducer]

There’s no such this as “overtime” in most salaried jobs though. You’re paid just for being an employee, not for hours worked.

This used to be true, but has changed in a lot of states and cities in the last decade or so. Many people still think that salaried=work as long as the boss says.

In those places, being salaried doesn't mean you have to work unlimited hours with no compensation. This only applies to managers. If you don't directly manage people, you are legally entitled to overtime. Pre-pandemic, some states were cracking down on this.

It's worth checking your state and city's labor laws every couple of years because things change all the time.

[koonsolo]

Wow. It's very much regulated here in belgium. 38 hours and 20 holidays. If you do 40 hours, you get extra holidays for those hours.

It's clear in the contract how many hours you do for which pay.

Working on Saturday needs to be 150% compensated and Sunday 200%, but I might be wrong on this last part.

[aaaxyz]

Why would you ever sign an employment contract that does not even mention overtime?

[Viliam1234]

It's interesting how the same situation has completely opposite implications in different countries.

In my country, if the contract doesn't mention overtime, that's great, because it means the company must pay you nicely for overtime, and there is a limited amount of overtime per year. However, if it is explicitly a part of the contract, there may be more overtime per year (within some limits), and less compensation per extra hour (again, within some limits). So if you find overtime mentioned in your contract, that is a bad thing.

[snow_mac]

This is why being a contractor is the best idea. You need need me to work 60? I'm billing for every, single hour. 35? Great! I'm going to leave early on Friday and not check my email until Monday morning!

[BurningFrog]

Then again, a competent senior engineer can easily get another job.

I'm just one atypical person, but in my experience, the employer is usually more nervous about the employee breaking things off than the employee.

[tdsamardzhiev]

The juniors won’t be fired either, but they don’t know that and usually get abused because of it.

If a company expects you to crunch, that means there’s too much work. If there’s too much work, it’s extremely unlikely that somebody doing a decent job would be fired.

[MisterBastahrd]

I currently work at an org where the least experienced dev has over 10 years of experience. Management is fine knowing that we will say what's on our minds if we don't think something is being handled properly.