http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071130/od_nm/overwork_dc

"A Toyota Motor Corp employee died of overwork after logging more than 106 hours of overtime in a month"

I worked 12 hours of overtime last week, and I thought that was too much...

It is a cultural thing. But we are starting to see it here, to. Not this extreme, but there are a lot people who are salaried that do 60 and 70 hour weeks regularly.

"Salary", becuase 13th Amendment abolished slavery.

My normal work week (when I'm working) Is 60-80 hours and when the crunch is on at the end of a job it can go a lot higher. I can't complain though when I was in the military it was a lot more hours and a lot less pay.

There was a story of a young man who went directly from high school into the Army and then to Vietnam. When he came back, he went looking for a job. One prospective employer asked him what he could do. He said, "I don't really know, but I can do it 24 hours a day, seven days a week".

Sue

65+ hours a week is the norm in our department. Not to mention the 2am calls from hong kong that garentee that you don't have a full night sleep. We just chalk this up to the norm, and in the IT field its quite the norm.

But like what raydarkhorse said, when the crunch is on, your at the office (or remote) till the project is done.

Kris

It's worth mentioning that there's a difference between working behind a desk, and doing physical labor. I don't know what y'all do for a living, so I'm not directing this comment at anyone in particular. I'm just saying that 80 hours at a computer is nothing like 80 hours of heavy lifting.

"...I can do it 24 hours a day, seven days a week..."

And for zero in overtime pay to boot!!!

The way they tax overtime is so messed up, you really are bringing home less per hour than your normal wage.

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=6187

I may have missed it but he didn't take out taxes on the normal $20 wage and compare it to that.

My 60-90 hours a week is construction sometimes as a carpenter, foreman or superintendent depending on the project.

My 65+ hours a week is as a computer nerd, but i was very conservative, and hitting 80 hours in a week is more the norm.

Yeah, but the military does not get paid any overtime at all, they just do the time for one monthly salary.


But I hear what you are saying. That is one reason I used to take a lot of my O/T as comp time...

That is for sure. I'm not the most in shape person, but I swear I can do more physical labor than I can mental labor in the same period of time. The brain just uses up too much stuff trying to think. Just "doing" something is alot less draining, at least for me.

On being salaried and working long hours, I believe alot of people in the computer industry (software especially) have become jaded for the relatively low return on investment. You bust your ass and pray for 3%. In the end, you will be making less per hour and losing valuable personal time you can never recover.

[quote=ki4buc...snip...In the end, you will be making less per hour and losing valuable personal time you can never recover. [/quote]

Which is why the smartest job move I ever made was taking a lower paying job 10 years ago.

I was working for a consulting house - they paid me flat rate, but billed me by the hour. See the rpoblem here? They expected you to average around 75 hours a week - and that included the weeks you were off on vacation

I left for a job that paid 20% less - but expected you to work 35-45 hours per week, and not at all on your weeks off. I Have ended up on a crazy project that requires insane hours - say 75 hrs/week, every other week, for about 3 months, every 4 years (yes, it has to do with the presidential elections - and yeah, I'm just heading into the crazies). The GOOD news is that I actually don't do much during that time, just have to be there if something goes wrong (aka sleeping in the office during the overnight is OK, so long as one person stays awake to monitor the systems and wake the others up - and yeah, they setup cots)