Why it's okay to leave a tech job at 5 P.M.

N2IT

Agree with Jibba

People having to work extremely long hours is a result of poor human resource planning and direct management. One off situations arise and that's part of the deal but having to consistently stay in the office or even VPN from home for hours upon hours indicates to me either the employee is in over his head or poor staff planning. I've seen both happen a lot.

When I get back into management this will not happen and I can proudly say in both my management roles I had a plan in place and the right amount of resources to allow our service to meet the customers goals and for my staff to get home to see their friends, families, animals, whatever.

jibbajabba

Had a discussion once

Me: <insert random moans about long hours>
Director: "I am working even more hours"
Me: Look in the car park .. Me : 12 year old Audi .. you : Porsche GT2 RS ... comes with the territory I said ...

he didn't get it ..

So I turned around and left at 4.30 ...

tpatt100

erpadmin wrote: »

I don't take issue with people who leave work at 5PM, because that's what their hour is.

HOWEVER, I do take issue with those who leave "on-time-all-the-time" who will call me five minutes before they leave. I made this developer hold while I fixed her issue (I told her flat out, she called me and if she hung up, I would drop this issue). I don't give two flying ----s about her kids, her work-life balance or any of that nonsense. My issue is that you don't call a fellow colleague at the end of the day just because it is convenient for you.

In any event, I just find that rude. If you want to be a 9-5er, more power to you. But don't be a 9-5er that asks a colleague to do something for you five minutes before you walk out of the door. That's just rude...

I was doing Checkpoint coverage one weekend for a government DOD site. Pushing a bunch of changes, creating rules, monitoring traffic, etc. The government employees were all on the conference call because they had to verify stuff worked for an exercise on Monday. I get getting "so where we at?" around 3:30. I was like "still got some more rules to push". Around 4:30 somebody starts with "hey we have to be done by 5". I said "sorry you want to test each of these rule groups and the pushes take a while between each group".

Around 5 I said it would probably be another 90 minutes at the rate we were going. Oh the grumbling that I heard. I was thinking "dude its not like this is a regular thing, this is one exercise so it is best you test it asap rather than wait until monday morning"

the_Grinch

Six Career Beliefs That I Got Wrong | Brass Tack Thinking <--definitely related to this thread

DevilWAH

the_Grinch wrote: »

Six Career Beliefs That I Got Wrong | Brass Tack Thinking <--definitely related to this thread

[h=3]Bad management is solely the responsibility of the bad manager.[/h]this leads on to working long ours, as much as your manager may be at fault for expecting you to, you are as much at fault for doing it.

I think some people worry that they will get fired or disciplined if they don't do the work asked and so stay late to complete it. However as long as you can demonstrate that during you core hours you do put in the work (and don't sit looking at face book) then no company if going to have a leg to stand on if they try to take action against you.

the_Grinch

I've always made it clear, I'll stay late if needed, but I expect some compensation for it. Now if I stayed an extra 15 minutes, no I'm not going to expect 15 minutes of comp time. But once it turns into an hour, then I don't find it unreasonable to get something (comp time, come in late, leave early). I had a boss who use to say "you can stay past 5, you won't spontaneously combust" to which I always replied "I don't know that and I don't want to be the first person to find out."

N2IT

@WAH

Agreed, there is nothing wrong with saying no and having a backbone. I've done it several times, I have also gone the other way and called the wife and told her I was going to be late.

Long hours never did much for me. Productivity and delivery is what I am interested in. If employee A surfs the web 1 hour a day but delivers at 120% utility and employee B puts in 4 hours over every night and delivers at 80% , employee A is doing a better job.

erpadmin

I think at the end of the day, it's going to boil down to corporate culture and how an individual fits in with that that culture. If there is a culture where folks are just expected to stay until the job is done (whether that be 5, 6, 11, whatever) then that's pretty much considered normal. That is dictated by management. However, if management expects people to leave at 5 on the dot, no exceptions, then that is also normal.

Being a guy who expects comp time everytime one goes an hour over at an organization (or in our case, our field) pretty much means that one's unhappy at his job/chosen field. My VP has made it clear that if nothing is going on, then we leave on time. But if we're in the middle of a huge project and we have deadlines to meet that have been dictated by our users, then it is expected that it gets done. Many titles in state government have a "No-Limit" clause. Essentially, that means that if there is an emergency/something critical then you are to work on that issue until it's resolved. "No-Limit" employees are "exempt" from overtime, as well...but once you reach a certain salary, the hourly pants come off and the salary pants go on...

I'm just stating this matter-of-factly. Leaving on time doesn't bother me. Leaving an extra few minutes, and hour doesn't bother me either. To think otherwise is being penny-wise and pound-foolish. At the end of day, I want a lot of pounds. (They're worth more than dollars anyway... )

N2IT

@ERP

Corporate culture does dictate quite a bit of how business is performed. This is called Environmental Factors if/when you study PMI process groups and knowledge areas you'll get a lot of exposure to this term. It's very important to synch up with the corporate culture. It's also managements job to set expectations with the employee in advance. This circles back to human resource management. If the company expects that type of effort, then that needs to be communicated to the employee in advance. If they fail to do that and then expect the employee to stay longer hours than what their hours of operations are documented then that is a major failure on the HR manager/hiring manager. Projectized work is always different, longer hours are usually the norm especially in execution, however a good PM will/should again set expectations with the project team and the participants. If not the PM isn't doing his job.

Bottom-line ad hoc "Oh by the way" we need you to stay 4 hours before you leave is poor management. There should be processes in place to handle emergency type work, like having employee A on call for that week. So he/she can plan accordingly. I would hope most places of employment have compentent managers in place who follow these basic principals. Heck, I learned this in the late 90's early 00's when I graduated from Missouri State. This is basic management 101.

erpadmin

N2IT wrote: »

Bottom-line ad hoc "Oh by the way" we need you to stay 4 hours before you leave is poor management. There should be processes in place to handle emergency type work, like having employee A on call for that week. So he/she can plan accordingly. I would hope most places of employment have compentent managers in place who follow these basic principals. Heck, I learned this in the late 90's when I graduated from Missouri State. This is basic management 101.

A lot of managers didn't take HRM-type classes. Many of the one's I've dealt with either didn't have a degree at all, or had degrees where organizational behavior was not part of their curriculum.

Realize that a lot of those fancy-schmancy org behavior courses were RECENTLY (I include the 90s as recent... ) introduced in a lot of curriculae that wasn't a part of a pure business program. Many of those managers didn't learn about expectancy theories or how corporate culture effects an organization as a whole. Even those 2 hour "how-to-be-an-effective-manager" courses that some new managers take will gloss over those learned in MBA program or just deal with just the minutae of management (how to do reports/budget, basic conflict resolution, team-building, blah blah blah.)

But getting back to this topic, I believe you're right, to a point, on how such details such as work hours need to be communicated to an employee right off the bat. However, the prospective employee needs to do at least a little research on the organization to get a feel on how the organization is. You got sites like LinkedIn where you can invent a name and query someone who works for the company just to ask how it is. You got sites like Glassdoor, which may/may not have something about the organization.....there's a bunch of things one can do to figure out if they want to work at that company and see if they're a 9-5 organization.

I'll say this much though...in programs with a AACSB-accreditation (such as Missorah State and my own), Innovation is pretty much the theme of what's expected for an organization to succeed. Very difficult to achieve (or in the case of Information Systems/Information Technology professionals, support) innovation when you're working from 9-5, though it is certainly not impossible.....

N2IT

ERP

I agree about the part that the employee is responsible for doing research on the companies history and culture. You couldn't be more right from that angle. BTW I'm from St. Louis and we pronounce it MissorEE not Rah, but I think it's hiliarous either way!

erpadmin

N2IT wrote: »

ERP

I agree about the part that the employee is responsible for doing research on the companies history and culture. You couldn't be more right from that angle. BTW I'm from St. Louis and we pronounce it MissorEE not Rah, but I think it's hiliarous either way!

My biggest thing was I didn't put that in quotes...but trust and believe when I tell you that I would pronounce the name of your state the same way the other 49 states (plus US territories) would pronounce it; if you were to hear me say the way Missourians [outside St. Louis] say it, it would be in a quasi-mocking tone.

N2IT

Lol we do it ourselves Next up IllnoisES, ugh I hear that from time to time.

TLeTourneau

N2IT wrote: »

Lol we do it ourselves Next up IllnoisES, ugh I hear that from time to time.

You live in MN now, you are required to watch (and despise) the movie "Fargo".

N2IT

Funny stuff T!

I have never seen Fargo but I promise to watch it this week!

erpadmin

TLeTourneau wrote: »

You live in MN now, you are required to watch (and despise) the movie "Fargo".

Is it because you guys love saying you don't sound anything like "Fargo" [even though you do...]?