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Comment by mseebach | Hacker News Reader

So, I agree with the point made in another comment about this not being so much about overtime, but about crap jobs.

But:

> the deal is an exchange of money for time

It's not really, no. It's an exchange of work for time. If you're doing an exchange of time, you'll be punching in and out, and the boss worrying about your "butt in seat" productivity metric is reasonable.

It doesn't necessarily follow that you should work 80-hour weeks for months on end, but the case where some extra hours in a crunch is warranted makes more sense. Of course, a good employer would seek to offset that, either with money, time off in lieu or otherwise, but that ties back to the crap jobs again.

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There's an asymmetry here:

I want to see the exchange as money for time, because my work is not valuable to me (I don't get to keep the product!), but my time is. I want an upper bound on how much of the resource that's valuable to me that the company is entitled to in exchange for their money.

The employer wants to see the exchange as money for work, because they couldn't care less how the work gets done. They want a lower bound on the amount of the resource that's valuable to them that they get for their money.

And a difference of opinion:

I want to see the exchange as work for time, because I work much more effectively than many other people. An hourly-rate job is simply not attractive to me, because the hourly-rate will not effectively capture my value.

As explained by grellas above, overtime in the US is typically applied to replaceable workers who's hourly value is a more or less quantifiable resource. If I'm flipping burgers, painting a house, or banging out simple webapps based on someone else's design then it's fairly easy to quantify the value of my time.

However, if I'm working in an industry where force multipliers abound, for example software engineering, or any sufficiently advanced executive/management position, I would much rather capture the value of what I produce -- there simply cannot be a good fit with shoehorning me into an hourly value rate. It simply isn't an accurate way to represent my value.

This is best exemplified by jobs which supply equity stakes. If you give me a chunk of your company I'm no longer working for free, when I work overtime.

> I want to see the exchange as work for time, because I work much more effectively than many other people. An hourly-rate job is simply not attractive to me, because the hourly-rate will not effectively capture my value.

Why not? If you provide better value per hour than others, you should also get higher hourly rate. If you just work more hours without more compensation, then you're just cheap.

> No employer has ever, ever given me free money, and I have never expected it. There for, I have never ever given an employer free time, and never ever will.

This is a top-notch comment to me, Alan! Printed and pinned to my wall!

> It's not really, no. It's an exchange of work for time.

I agree with Alan. When it comes to basics, you do exchange your time for whatever it is employer wants you to do. Other worlds: you wouldnt be able to do any job for an employee if you wouldnt be asked by him, wouldnt have tools, wouldnt represent the company, etc. Of course quality of work is important, so does work etiquette and preferably stable family status. But again, this all boils down to an exchange: time for money.

> If you're doing an exchange of time, you'll be punching in and out

I'm sure "productivity metrics" did not exist before first employee started working. Its was a byproduct of how to deal with lazy workers, just like seat belts are answers to the fact that people had car accidents.

He will not punch in out because then he is fired, regardless how much time or knowledge he has to "share".

It is money for time. I'm renting my skills by the hour. If my skills are poor for the job is another issue. And a lot of managers can't distinguish real work from long hours work.

Excessive overtime is the way you make a highly skilled professional useless in the long term. No time to rest, no time for recreation, no time to play and experiment with new things, no time to study more stuff. In a fast paced industry this is death in a couple of years.

It's exchange of money for time spent according to the boss' wishes.

Employment contracts tend to be "$x units of money for $y hours per week, doing $job".

Your "work for time" proposal ignores money, so that can't be right ;-) "money for work" is "that website for $3000".

So to clarify, I'll propose "money for time spent on work". And in that case, punching out after working the agreed hours per week is okay. Idling in the office is not okay (exceptions apply if you just aren't given enough work units, which is the superior's duty).

If the exchange is work-for-money, why can't an employee finish an easy week's work in 25 hours and go home?

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