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When you're the boss, or self-employed, there is no such thing as 'overtime'.
You do what you have to - to get the job done.
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There is the billable hour, and accurate estimates, though. If you don't have those under control, you're not going to be the boss for long.
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I guess I am in the minority here, but I negotiate a salary with an employer to complete a certain job, then work until it's complete. If I work, 30, 40, 50, 60 hours than thats what it takes. It would be my fault for not negotiating a better salary for my time. I look at my job not as something that has to be done, then I go home, but as a part of everyday life. Most of your adult life is spent working, why separate the two like one is a bad dream that has to be suffered through. I think of my job as a craft and software as an art. Sure, my employer benefits from my hard work, and if I thought I was being taken advantage of, I would speak to him directly. No one is holding a gun to my head, I could always find another job if the one I have is not working out. Besides, I have vested enough time in the company to want the company to succeed as well as myself. I don't draw a line between the two of them, if I succeed, then so does the company, and vice versa. (And no I don't have stock options) I guess thats what I have been taught is loyalty, and just plain fair.
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1) You work 90 hours a week, the company gets 90 hours a week of value you get paid 40.
2) You work 90 hours a week, you get paid 90 hours a week
Then reality:
Business needs change and both employees are fired.
The moral:
It doesn't matter how hard you work for free they will can your A** the second they no longer need you. Unfortunately, there is no loyalty these days from company to employee.
The most realistic thing you can do, if you are paid salary and no overtime is to divide your annual hours per year, divided by total compensation package and say, "Am I really only worth x per hour?"
Need a C# Consultant? I'm available.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know. -- Ernest Hemingway
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In Indian IT industry many firms wont pay for over time....I have seen by friends who r working in India in good firms like IBM and accenture..they work approximately for for 11 hours a day..on paper their duty timings are only 8-9 hours a day. 
Unfortunetly this has become a tradition in Indian IT companies that new commers especially upto 4 years exp...work more than their duty times..in working days..and they also go to office in Off days....some times either the work alloted to them is more or they want to make their Boss happy.
This is cheap way to deal with employees who are the real assets of any Company.
Believe me this happens only in India..if you come to gulf...u wont feel any thing of that sort..over time is always paid...whether you are a loabour ar a having a white , yellow collor job. 
RAAbbasi
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It never ceases to astonish me that people would willingly give up their free time for no compensation. Imagine asking that friendly plumber that came over to fix your washing machine if he wouldn't mind just fixing the shower head in his own time. You know, as you're here. Or that lawyer not charging for that extra phone call or letter they had to do for you.
In the good old days of hourly rates I would usually work 60+ hours a week; now, with daily rate, I do my time and leave. I do, however, insist that my contract allows for the notion of paid overtime and that my 'day' is finite in length: that way I won't end up getting paid 8 hours money for 12 hours work.
To not compensate a person for the work that they do for you is entirely disresepctful.
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digital man wrote: To not compensate a person for the work that they do for you is entirely disresepctful.
In Indian industry, politically powered people act as 'blood-sucking leeches' putting their load on others treating them as scapegoats. And they credit for the same. Credit Theft is order of the day in many small organizations. 
Vasudevan Deepak Kumar
Personal Homepage
Tech Gossips
All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players.
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts... --William Shakespeare
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Yeah, totally agree with you. But in nowadays' China, some company won't think like that.....
They will give you low perfermance and even fire you if you ask extra pay for overwork. 
What a pity.
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Used to be paid for a nominal 35-hour week, no overtime. I was working in a Client's office to the Client's times and I, and my manager, had no control of the hours we worked.
At times we worked 15-20 hours in a single day; pb 28 hours in a single 'shift'. Worked one day out of most weekends and often both. It was very rare for us to work under 60 hours in a week and 100+ hours in a week was not uncommon.
So why did we do it?
Firstly, we had salaries equivilent to about twice the market rate. Ten years on and I am still only just earning more.
Secondly and more importantly, we had pride in the job we were doing. Dare I say, even passion. We knew that without a huge effort, the project would fail and it was the kind of operation that if the project failed, so did the company.
The money become, quite honestly, rather unimportant. I owned - no mortgage - my own place and had a very good and expensive life style. I took long relaxing holidays a couple of times a year to recharge and then back to work like a mad man for six-mionths or so.
However many hours I worked, I got the same amount of money. On the flip side, the less hours I worked, the less work got done. So I willingly give up my free time for no compensation. Was it worth it? Yes.
Panic, Chaos, Destruction.
My work here is done.
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For every 1 hour I work overtime, I receive 1.5 hours of leave.
For every 1 hour I work overtime on a Sunday/Public Holiday, I receive 2 hours of leave.
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That is really a cute lucrative option.
Vasudevan Deepak Kumar
Personal Homepage
Tech Gossips
All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players.
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts... --William Shakespeare
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The Project Managers sometimes go crazy and promise rocket launches to Mercury and Pluto in two weeks time. And the poor young developers need to enter office before dawn and struggle till well past mid nights. That is the state of affairs at least in India.
Vasudevan Deepak Kumar
Personal Homepage
Tech Gossips
All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players.
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts... --William Shakespeare
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You're getting screwed, and it's hurting other developers.
I thought some of you were unionized there.
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Hello, for the IT department they call us salaried so if they call on a weekend they do not pay extra. Also I like to come in early but I can not leave until my scheduled time so I routinely have 42 hour weeks (I realize a lot of people in the world work more) but they do not care. If I want to leave 1/2 hour early once in a while, then I need to use comp time. 
djj
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The survey period should be active (today is 19th, August 2008) but I am not able to participate on this survey. What's wrong?
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Log in and make sure "Remember me" is checked. Kill the window, then open it again. This worked for me.
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Thank you for your answer. Tried this and even more but it not worked for me ...
(tried with FF3 and IE7)
Any other suggestions?
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Did you try voting on the front page and not on this page where the results are?
John
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 Ups... But where can I find that "front page"? Is there a link I can't see?
Thanks for your help!
OK, found it ... It is just at the start page / root page  
(always looked at Surveys and if I was at the start page I never scrolled to the very bottom of the page...)
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Once upon a time, I was an employee of the US Federal Government. I learned a lot of the rules and laws (made quite the nusiance of myself). One of them has to do with entitlements.
Skipping the anecdote that is used to introduce the concept, I learned that one must accept an entitlement. At first this sounds crazy, but I discovered that the Federal Work Rules are very well thought out. Here's why:
Suppose employee 1 and 2 are both asked to stay late and work.
Let's profile employee 1 as single, living alone.
and
Let's profile employee 2 as supporting a family, mortgage, college, etc.
Both are asked to stay late. Employee 1 is in a better postion to work free if he so chooses. This gives him an (unfair) advantage over employee 2. The federal law requires that both receive either overtime, or if they're in a higher position, compensatory time off. They cannot, in fact, refuse this compensation. Why?
Let's consider something like a minimum wage law. If an employee were to be legally allowed to voluntarily work for less, then, by definition, there is no longer a minimum wage law.
The same should apply to overtime (certainly if it's more than an occasional emergency event). Otherwise, the employees will be put at one anothers' throats to undercut and stay employed (ref: See trade unions)
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
"How do you find out if you're unwanted if everyone you try to ask tells you to go away?" - Balboos HaGadol
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No such thing, however, as overtime, per se. No "overtime rate", either, that many other craftsmen enjoy.
The (Sort of) cavaet is that I don't nickel and dime the people who put the food on my plate. If I get in a coding mode, or whatever, I will often just do it because it's something I like to do.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
"How do you find out if you're unwanted if everyone you try to ask tells you to go away?" - Balboos HaGadol
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If I have committed to a date and it looks like I'm going to miss it with just a regular 37hr week then I will put in extra unpaid overtime.
However, if its my boss or a project manager that has committed to a deadline without my consent then thats their own fault and they can put the extra hours in themselves!
I often get approached by others to do *urgent jobs* but always ask the question 'OK I can do it - but what do you want me to drop to make room for it?'. If they have to make these hard decisons themselves then quite often they wander off and try their luck on someone else. In most circumstances *Urgent* jobs are simply *importantant* jobs that haven't been given enough priority in the past.
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If I had been paid for all the overtime I've put in I might well have a house as nice as my employer. That irks me if I think about it so I try not to think about it.
It's my fault but I do the extra work through necessity (like just about everyone else on codeproject) and because I have to pay the bills, however, I'm changing my job this September and going to work for a company where the hours are 35 per week. I will also be working flexitime so what I now call overtime will just be taken out of my weekly work requirement.
I think flexible working hours can be a partial answer to this problem of expecting IT bods to work till they drop. If one has to work out of hours because there's no other practical time to do something then knowing one can legitimately take the next morning off makes a big difference and goes a long way to removing stress caused by annoyance and others bad judgement.
Companies are run in a very immature way generally, with back biting, one upmanship, seeing who can squeeze the most out of their subordinates etc, and all these things at the cost of someone. That someone being more often than not you and me.
I would love to see the entire IT community simply refuse to do unpaid overtime. Unpaid work happens because of bad planning, bad targets, bad management and badly trained developers. All of these problems are curable!
Any company that makes no effort to be realistic when quoting for work is signing away your personal life and possibly your health too, and the bad news is that this happens all of the time. You know it. I know it. Are you someone who craves to keep up with developments but your company is stuck in the stone age? That's incredibly stressful and leads you to devalue your own worth and abilities. It also ties you into their draconian life style. Retrain, leave.
Yes the market is tough, but who trusts a company to deliver if they quoted a ridiculously short or cheap project cost? You and I know that they'll lose their developers like leaves blowing away in autumn, and a project that doesn't have consistent developers is either going to be an unmaintainable rats nest or simply fail.
It isn't rocket science, it's just a matter of you and I suffering the consequences of someone elses untruths.
Slavery is not dead, but how much of that "employer owns you body and soul" attitude are you willing to put up with?
Ah, we're all too professional to make waves, me included! So we just steadily migrate between jobs looking for the one that causes the least pain...
Maybe the answer is for us to start a database of "good" employers, with reasons why we think they are. If there was an award for a "Top Employer" that they could stick on their website, wouldn't that be a nice carrot? Mind you, they would be inundated with CVs!
Cheers all. Good luck.
Dave
Software Developer
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