What does overtime really mean?

In the technology and design business, a lot of people work overtime, for example, more than 70 hours a week. All this is based on some kind of martyr complex. But let's look at everything soberly. This is what overtime really means:

You work for free

If you are an employee, you work for free. Every hour over 40 hours a week does not give you a penny. ^[one]

Overtime contributes to unreasonable and unreasonable expectations.

Clients and bosses will always expect from you the pace of design and development, which usually includes overtime.

Employers who allow overtime work have big ethical problems

80-100 working hours a week simply destroy a person. This is completely unreasonable and unhealthy, so people quit. When they quit, I guarantee that they will tell their colleagues the reason. There is not only the problem of high staff turnover, which is even worse, the company will have to refute the reputation of the merciless exploiter of its employees. Overtime is ultimately an extremely short-sighted approach to attracting and retaining employees.
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Overtime hours indicate poor leadership

Overtime means that no one had the courage to tell a client: “We respect ourselves and our employees enough to value their time and personal life, so we cannot agree to your deadlines.” When companies bend over customers in such matters, they lose respect and their status of equal partner. If this trend is maintained, overtime will be only the beginning of what the company agrees to make the client happy.

Overtime is a sign of poor management.

When teams of designers and developers work regularly on weekends and late at night, in order not to meet deadlines, it is either 1) known and expected, or 2) not known and not expected. In any case, the project manager did not allocate enough time for the project to complete correctly and / or was very, very wrong, estimating the time, and probably should be dismissed.

Overtime is too expensive

Every hour of work you could spend on something else. Often, overtime is reflected in our loved ones. But even single people have much less time for ordinary life, for example, washing, going to the grocery and cooking. This, in turn, reduces the time that can be used for sleep, rest and pleasure - something that everyone needs to feel rested and ready to come to work on Monday morning.

Some are proud of their overtime hours.

Many of us were asked, "How long have you been sitting since I left?" Or "I returned home after 10". ^[2] Let me directly tell people who are proud of working overtime: you have been deceived. Your company has deceived you and made you believe that you have to work longer and harder than others. I would venture to say that this is an unfair assessment of you as a person or employee.

Overtime ≠ great performance or better job

Ben Pierrat recently said beautifully: “I realized that when I work longer, the only thing that takes longer is procrastination. The difference between my productivity in 80 or 40 hours of the work week is almost imperceptible. ” ^[3] When you are tired, exhausted and you are under stress, it is not so easy to create creative solutions. Finished work becomes more important than excellent or just good work. If we take a long-term perspective, is it really worth building such a career and principle of work?

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But there are some advantages. Overtime is one way to advance your career at the very beginning. As a beginner, you are trying to determine the basic level of competence or make a name for yourself. Overtime hours make it easier - the most successful people I know used it.

However, overtime is best spent on projects and activities that are of interest to you, and not just make you stay in the office longer and do free work that you hate. When I discussed this topic with friends the other day, I realized that I was still working overtime, but I spend this time on personal projects, for example, ChiPD , studying Ruby on Rails , taking notes or learning . Because these are activities that fill me rather than devastate, they are sustainable. And since I manage them myself, then, when more pressing problems appear, I can easily put them aside.

That is, if you are going to work overtime, make sure you manage everything yourself. And if at some work you feel that overtime has become a matter of course, know that they are misleading, and you can find better conditions with some extra effort.

NOTES
1. Employees provide companies with some flexibility. This flexibility is often compensated, but it is compensated as if you worked 41-50 hours a week, not 80.
2. Thanks to Steve Woodson for these phrases. I have not worked in this area for a long time, so I forgot that people actually say that.
3. Ben Pierratt. Work versus Life. Greatness versus Family - an article on a topic that confirms the thoughts contained in this post.

From the translator: the translation was made on the order of SmartProgress - the achievement of goals .