I don't understand this expectation that employees work more, and stigma if you go home on time, yet we don't have a corresponding stigma for when the amount of money that reaches my account is "only" what we agreed my salary would be.
I don't understand this expectation that employees work more, and stigma if you go home on time, yet we don't have a corresponding stigma for when the amount of money that reaches my account is "only" what we agreed my salary would be.
Since I'm (mostly) work-from-home, my wifi router is configured to firewall my work devices outside of working hours.
This is frustrating for the IT department because it likes to push software updates overnight, but tough noogies.
The company pays for 30% of my internet connection, so it only gets to use my internet connection 30% of the day.
I had a huge row with my prospective US investment banking client manager because we had a conversation that went something like "we'll pay you for 8 hours but we expect you to work 10" (or 12). I said, why lie immdiately in our contract? We could try adjusting the expected hours or the hourly rate or both...
Anyhow I got to be paid for the hours that I actually did for well over a decade on off IIRC, and survived most of the purges of consultants/contractors there over the years, so demanding honesty from management was apparently survivable even if unusual!
You give an inch and capital will take a mile, especially in this environment where they have completely eliminated any opposition from unions and we have an economy that is failing to create jobs.
It took a while, but I reached a point in my career where I just said, "Fuck it", and went for a run (or walk) a few times every day "on the company dime" so to speak.
What happens when the companies band together to compress wages? Like what happened with the high-tech employee antitrust litigation.
Individual employees are far more numerous (therefore harder to coordinate) and have way shallower pockets than companies, so the negotiation power is always going to be lopsided.
> What happens when the companies band together to compress wages? Like what happened with the high-tech employee antitrust litigation.
What happened with that litigation is it got shut down and those companies pay some of the highest compensation now.
One of the few jobs you can get that pays that much compensation with fewer educational requirements and better hours than alternatives in that compensation range (surgeon, specialist doctors, lawyers at demanding firms)
I don’t think that’s a great example for your point since by comparison FAANG employees have some of the best pay you can find in an attainable job for someone with a 4 year degree and the demands are lower than many of the similarly paid jobs that require a lot more education.
Possibly it's just a one time thing that was limited to just these companies.
Or possibly the incentives that led to this are still in place, and the current judicial climate is way more lenient towards big companies. Who's to say?
Sure, but why does this rhetoric both persist, and only go one way? You never hear anything about an expectation from employers to pay more than what was agreed.
If I'm an employee with miniscule equity, why would I put in any more time and effort than what was agreed?
Are you actually agreeing to specific hours? For example, in a contract, as an hourly worker, or with some formal arrangement with the company?
If so, then yes you should only work those hours.
However, if you’re a typical full-time employee in most countries you don’t have agreed upon hours.
> If I'm an employee with miniscule equity, why would I put in any more time and effort than what was agreed?
Again, if something was agreed upon you should follow that. In most full-time jobs they’re not going to specify a maximum number of working hours. It’s your job to explain what can be done in a workweek and push back when something can’t be done. If it persists and you don’t like it then you find another job. Vote with your feet.
People without equity will work harder if they expect it to bring career or compensation growth.
If it’s a great company, people will work extra hours to move ahead, knowing it will pay off in their careers. “Great company” is always relative to the individual and where they are in their careers.
As people mature in their careers, they split off into “people with equity who continue to work hard for it” and “people without equity who have a good work/life balance”.
But as long as there’s the promise of a life-changing development, people will (sometimes rationally) work outside of their agreed hours.
I got this quote from a great boss, that didn't understood that here in Hong Kong, in traditional companies, employees needs to leave office only after their boss: "Boss like us are paid more, we are expected to work more, no need to wait for me". It was the only one however that thought like that
Yes it is, it's fine if the deal I'm making is 996, then I can judge whether I'm getting paid enough. What I don't like is "you may have to put in the extra hour here and there" and it's 996.
