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Quite.
I read is as he's brilliant, and everyone else is sh*t, which is why he gets paid the big bucks as a contractor, but because the sh*t salaried people work longer hours than he is prepared to it makes his sticking rigidly to the clock and going home look bad.
He isn't bad, he's good, he's better in fact.
It's so unfair.
Beats fists on floor, threatens to hold breath until passes out, and so on.
Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them.
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meeee-kin-owww!
Put your claws back before you rip your handbag! 
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You can't worry about what you have no control over.
chriselst wrote: threatens to hold breath until passes out
Oh goody! 
"the debugger doesn't tell me anything because this code compiles just fine" - random QA comment
"Facebook is where you tell lies to your friends. Twitter is where you tell the truth to strangers." - chriselst
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Well...I *am* pretty awesome, but that's beside the point; thank you very much for noticing.
The larger point is that expectations of estimates get created based upon unrealistic results. Billing an 8 hour day but spending "14" hours on those tasks pollutes any project plan and makes honest assessments of the effort necessary to complete work look "slow." Then you lose more time trying to explain to people why things won't just be done when they come in the next morning as if by magic.
Past behavior sets future expectations and "your" lies end up directly impacting my ability to sell an honest product.
"I need build Skynet. Plz send code"
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Re-read the OP's post. You completely missed the point.
When management sees an estimated 1,000 hour project complete "on time" they estimate all future projects with that project as the scale. If the project actually took 1,500 hours to complete? Guess what, the next one will, too.
The worst thing is the people who KNOW this is true, but estimate that same project at 1,000 hours anyway as it's what management/clients expect.
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I didn't miss the point, I was making a joke, although some people don't understand what they are reading is a joke unless it has a joke icon.
Although his point wasn't quit your interpretation in my opinion.
Someone else nailed it when they talked about the phrase billable hours. Absolutely the management need to know who long something really took, but just because those on a salary stop all night to get something working doesn't mean that they were not recording their time against the project, I'd be very surprised if they were not.
Even more important they they understand what those hours were spent on. Did the initial dev take longer than expected, did it come back from testing with a load of extra work needing doing. Where the devs not good enough, the spec not good enough, the requirements gathering not good enough.
Maybe it really should have taken 1,000 hours, but took 1,500 because something went badly wrong.
Surely better to fix what went wrong and do the next one in 1,000 hours than just keep the crap and stretch it out to 1,500 instead.
Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them.
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jeron1 wrote: I have to ask, what do you care what the salaried employees do?
The real problem of course is that it means that the professionals don't understand the impact of that on the business. There are probably many but some include
- There is an expectation that everyone should work those hours
- Some employees don't want to work that long but do because of the expectations.
- Some employees cant work that long but feel like they are not contributing.
- Some employees that work that long, like doing so, but resent the ones that don' also do it.
- The above two impact moral in various ways. And moral is something that has been proven to impact productivity.
- When a normal work week consumes all the time that employees have then when an emergency develops something will fail because there are no hours left.
- Often such extra work is never added into the project thus there is no way a business can create an accurate project plan.
- The loss of a employee can hurt a normal project but, because employees have extra time, they can make up for that. Obviously when there is no extra time no one can make up for it.
- Over work very likely means cutting corners, which can impact quality. Doesn't of course mean that it it crap but it is unlikely that it as good as it could have been.
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if(this.signature != "")
{
MessageBox.Show("This is my signature: " + Environment.NewLine + signature);
}
else
{
MessageBox.Show("404-Signature not found");
}
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This girl I used to work with was complaining once about all the extra time we were putting in to get a job out the door...she said, 'All this extra time we're putting in reduces my hourly pay to "do you want fries with that?"'
...made me laugh...
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This may not be a valid comparison if McDonald's employees get their way...
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Very true but then they're going to be replaced by vending machines and robots...McDonalds will become a cafeteria.
More programming work for us...
'Woops, sorry!...the code threw an unhandled exception and injected special sauce into the cherry pie!' 
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"special sauce" 
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I thought it was apple pie[^] 
"the debugger doesn't tell me anything because this code compiles just fine" - random QA comment
"Facebook is where you tell lies to your friends. Twitter is where you tell the truth to strangers." - chriselst
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When I came to that same conclusion at a job, I found another job.
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I've been freelancing for 20 years now...if I'm working overtime because of something I did wrong, I don't charge them for it...if it's because of something they did wrong or just underestimated, no mercy
The girl in question didn't really have that much to complain about...a couple of overtime nights maybe 4 times a year...I've worked 36 hour shifts to deliver on ridiculous deadlines...have the nervous tick to prove it
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I understand. My situation was as a salaried employee who worked 7 days a week, 12+ hours a day, for two months straight. It stopped at 2 months because I took a previously scheduled vacation. When I returned it was more of the same with a few weekends off.
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Yeah, I'm not unsympathetic...they do go way overboard sometimes asking people to put in 'extra'...those places are rightly called 'sweat shops'.
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I agree, but the bigger issue is that working "unbilled" hours will often adversely affect estimates for future projects. The project manager must know the actual time spent for the current project. Remember that "extra" hours spent on the current project are probably due to a bad estimate based upon what was understood from the previous project.
While no estimate will ever be accurate, at least start with good data.
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Sorry, but if the dev is crazy enough to accept more work without moving the planning, then he/she should be bitten by it.
Bastard Programmer from Hell 
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
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But the whole team can be bitten.
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What's wrong here is the entire premise of hourly pay.
If you are a contractor and you are charging me for every hour you work - then I want you to be working for every hour you bill. Not having a break, stretching your legs, writing a shopping list or getting on Farcebook.
with a company charging a customer for a job of work, the customer isn't paying for a number of hours - they are paying for a product - and if people need to work longer hours to get the product out the door, then that's a good thing; a happy customer is a good customer.
of course, this shouldn't become a constant requirement of the employer - the next project, folk should be able to chill a little, safe in the knowledge that they have learned from the bad experience, and adjusted their estimates accordingly.
Alaric_ wrote: "heroic effort" to making their screw ups not look like screw ups
so are you saying that, when you screw up, you charge the customer for the time it takes you to fix it?
So, if a plumber comes to fix a washer on your tap, then breaks a pipe and takes all day to fix it, do you just grab your cheque book and hand over a day's work for a 1/2 hour job?
PooperPig - Coming Soon
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_Maxxx_ wrote: so are you saying that, when you screw up, you charge the customer for the time it takes you to fix it?
What I intended to say was salaried development employee commits "heroic effort" to making whoever made an unrealistic promise not look like they made an unrealistic promise
Of course I account for my own mistakes but a lack of proper planning on "your" part does not constitute an emergency on "mine." When sh*t hits the fan because someone walks over to a fan, points their butt directly at it, and then takes a crap into the fan blades, they have absolutely no ability to convince me that I should do any more than the terms I agreed to in my contract say I have committed myself to and operating pooper scoopers ain't my bag, baby; especially on nights and weekends.
_Maxxx_ wrote: f you are a contractor and you are charging me for every hour you work - then I want you to be working for every hour you bill. Not having a break, stretching your legs, writing a shopping list or getting on Farcebook.
...yeah; that's the way that works. I charge for every hour I work. The hour I take in the middle of the day for personal business? Not billable. I'm not entirely sure why you felt the need to provide that explanation.
_Maxxx_ wrote: of course, this shouldn't become a constant requirement of the employer - the next project, folk should be able to chill a little, safe in the knowledge that they have learned from the bad experience, and adjusted their estimates accordingly.
I don't believe in "employers." I have customers, even if -for a time- I work on a W-2 for a single client on multiple projects: they are my customer. I owe them nothing more than I would owe any customer; they can expect nothing more from me than they can expect from the terms of my contract. Decomposing the "employer->employee" relationship to its basic structure where the "employer" is purchasing skill on the market and the "employee" is a single-person entity that supplies said skill to the market, you arrive at these beautiful things called contracts and with slightly more investigation, you realize that every "employee" is really a consultant.
Far too many people treat the "employer->employee" relationship as if the employee is beholden to the employer like a vassal to a lord.
_Maxxx_ wrote: with a company charging a customer for a job of work, the customer isn't paying for a number of hours - they are paying for a product
Wait..are you talking about a company turning around and selling a finished product to an end consumer? What I'm talking about is their production structure. You can't compare the production structure of a good to the marketability of the finished good. That's where entrepreneurship comes into play and that's why business owners deserve to amass as much profit as their ability allows: they have to not only commit capital to the production structure but they are the ones to bear the risk that the end product might not meet the market's expectations. "Profit" to the entrepreneur is their reward for correctly estimating the future at some point in the past when they began their production process. But that is not germane to the discussion at hand.
Within the production structure of that product, said company pays for billable hours because that's how working on a "Time and Materials" basis works. What you are talking about is known as a "Fixed Bid" arrangement.
If you are a salaried employee and your "fixed bid" salaried rate pays you for 40 hours worth of work each week but you deliver more than 40 hours worth of work in that week, you.are.a.FOOL.
"I need build Skynet. Plz send code"
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OP:
It sounds like you are expecting the salaried employees to work the way you do, which in their case I guess you assume means that they should work a 40-hour week and nothing more.
That's not how it works, salaried employees aren't paid by the hour at all, they are paid to take on a role and do whatever needs to be done. Set work hours are a minimum expectation, if you are on salary then you work evenings and weekends to get things done if necessary, that's part of the job.
If the salaried employees you work with took your advice and refused to work more than 40 hours in a week without extra compensation they'd likely be fired, and for good reason.
I once had to work 18-hour days for two weeks straight to build a banking site that a sales guy had sold but neglected to tell anyone about until two weeks before we had to deliver it. This was at the end of December: I worked through the weekends, I left work to have Christmas dinner with family and then came back to work until 2 in the morning, I worked through New Year's, I worked every waking hour, taking a few hours to sleep, change clothes, and shower. No holiday for me.
Why did I do this? Because a contract had been signed and I was the only one who could deliver. It didn't matter that it wasn't my fault, it didn't matter that it wasn't fair, it was my job. And I didn't get a dime more for doing it. That's pretty extreme and I left that place, but my point is that when you're on salary you don't have a choice about working long hours at times, other than the choice of having a job or not.
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That is ridiculous. See Alaric_ above. If you chose to confer more to a relationship than what actually exists that is on you. Employers/clients do not own you. The only exception to my next statements are scenarios where the developers were given equity - in which case they are enriching themselves with extra effort.
The correct course of action would have been for you to tell them no, and force the sales person to go make a mea culpa - I mean as you said you were the only one who could deliver it; what were they going to do fire you? Sales people will take a mile if you give an inch, it happens all the time regardless if you are in consulting or FTE. It is completely appropriate for you to help educate your sales people on acceptable conduct on their part as well.
You know why they have contracts in writing - because the things in writing are the easiest things to change... changes to contracts happens constantly all day everyday. Changing a contract is not a big deal.
This mind set around working insane hours is I think analogous to the same mind set you see in hazing rituals. "I went through it so you should too", basically complete garbage logically. I have been on death marches - it shouldn't be something people go through.
IT wages haven't gone up in 15 years and people are running around acting like employers did them a favor by hiring them...
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You're blaming the victim for being exploited, and ignoring reality. I work in the American South, where workers have zero rights. Like you say they weren't in a good position to let me go at that time, but they could have punished me in many other ways. The sales guy was let go.
The contract wasn't flexible, the client had to deliver on their end, if we didn't make deadline it meant a lawsuit. I had responsibilities to meet whether I liked it or not, no matter how unfair it was. Refusing would have been insubordinate, pretty much the same as walking out (and believe me, I considered it, even packed up my stuff at one point).
I'm not defending the situation, I'm pointing out the reality of it. We're being exploited, many of us, but not everyone is in a position to refuse unfair assignments. If you want to do something about it, lobby for unionization and fair labor laws, that's the real problem. Expecting people to put their jobs on the line in the hopes that wages will go up and you'll get paid more for fewer hours is total fantasy.
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