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)