Salaried employees - how many hours is reasonable?

[twoforjoy]

The big difference I think is that for an hourly wage, you are expected to be in a place doing something for a particular amount of time. For a salary, you are expected to complete a particular job, however much time it takes. There is a sense in which you are being given a different kind of responsibility.

 

I think the thing I find frustrating is that this expectation only seems to work one way. If my husband has a day when he finishes what needs to be done in three or four hours, he's still expected to put in a full 8 or 9 hour day. But, he's expected to stay for a 10 or 11 hour day if there's a lot to do.

 

It really doesn't bother him, but I get frustrated by it. I feel like so much of the time put in at salaried jobs is often more for show than for completing tasks. I know that he's worked with several people who prided themselves on the really, really long days they put in--and looked like hard workers because they were staying until 8 or 9 at night--but who were either extremely inefficient or just spent much of the time they were at work not actually working. So it seems like it becomes this contest to see who can spend the most time at the office, rather than being about who actually gets stuff done, and I do think that's unfair because it puts people with children, and particularly those with many children or young children, at a disadvantage even if they are doing just as much if not more than the other workers.

 

I know this is a major concern my husband has about working in academia. He's 33 and has three kids, which is not at all the norm among the people he works with. So he always feels like he can't leave at 5, if everybody else is still there, even if he's done everything that needs to be done and even if they came in later or took a long lunch or have been chatting for much of the afternoon, because it will look like he's the one who doesn't take his job seriously.

 

And that's my rant for the day about jobs, I guess. ;)

[Renee in NC]

:001_huh: every full time hourly job I'm aware of here gives at least 1 week paid vacation after a year of employment.

 

My dh is hourly and has 12 days vacation a year (his first year.) He has never had a salaried job and has always had benefits (we couldn't always afford them, though.:tongue_smilie:) Vacation and sick days are standard for full-time employees, salaried or not.

[C_l_e_0..Q_c]

I'm going to take a guess: law or finance at a big firm. I know that one hundred hours is pretty normal for those jobs. When DH has been busy with a project a few times, we had a few months of one hundred hour weeks. Can't imagine doing that for years. Yowza!

 

Good guess, but wrong :D

 

It was in computer animation/video games

All of us were either involved directly or indirectly in movie production or video game production. In both cases, lots of dollars are lost if your project is late. And deadlines are extremely tight. Pressure is high - you gotta have the next big seller in your hands. I got tired of the futility of it.

Edited October 27, 2011 by CleoQc

[homeschoolmom]

I'm going to take a guess: law or finance at a big firm. I know that one hundred hours is pretty normal for those jobs. When DH has been busy with a project a few times, we had a few months of one hundred hour weeks. Can't imagine doing that for years. Yowza!

 

My first thought was 'finance.' Thank the stars I changed my major. Yikes.

 

Even when I have a hot project I'm managing my hours aren't that high. That would be a deal breaker for me as money has a diminishing value at a point when you can't spend time with your family. When I'm old, I want to be able to look back and feel accomplished outside of simply my career. JMO.

[homeschoolmom]

Good guess, but wrong :D

 

It was in computer animation/video games

All of us were either involved directly or indirectly in movie production or video game production. In both cases, lots of dollars are lost if your project is late. And deadlines are extremely tight. Pressure is high - you gotta have the next big seller in your hands. I got tired of the futility of it. I pulled in a week of extra hard work for a scene that lasted less than 2 seconds in the Lion King. Most of the scene ended up cut on the floor, not because it wasn't good, but because the movie was too long. I want that week of my life back. :001_huh:

 

Wow - I would have never thought. Makes sense, you're committed to deliver a game by x date and have to deliver or lose business and the game needs to be tight and defect free. Makes me appreciate the games more...

[regentrude]

I know this is a major concern my husband has about working in academia. .. So he always feels like he can't leave at 5, if everybody else is still there, even if he's done everything that needs to be done

 

:confused:

I can not recall any of my colleagues at the university to ever be done with everything that needs to be done. There is always more research to do, another paper to write, a proposal to write, a paper or proposal to review, a student to supervise, the lectures to improve, the homework to grade... Honestly, I do not know what it would be like to "have done everything that needs to be done". It.does.not.happen.

My husband comes home when he needs a break and is hungry, around 7pm. He works some more after eating. But "done everything"? Has not once happened in the last fifteen years.

(I only teach part time, so get to the "done" part - but I am not regular faculty. they never ever do.)

[Plucky]

He's probably right that in this economy saying no could be bad for him. Almost everyone I know on salary works 50-60 hours a week on a regular basis, unless they work for the government.

[Murphy101]

I don't buy that at all. This leaves the door wide open for employers to hire one person to do two jobs and then claim, "Well, you committed to the job." A work week is 40 hours. If an employee has to put in more than 5 hours extra a week on an ongoing basis, that employee should be compensated.

 

When my dh left his last job, they hired 3 people to replace him. Over the years, they just piled on more and more work on him with no compensation for it. It's not that easy to just "get a new job" when you are being taken advantage of.

 

Tara

 

Yes. The place dh worked previous had to hire 5 costa ricans to do his job in another country when they laid him off. So even outsourcing, they had to hire 4 more of him to do the work he did for 14 years. And yes, if you are clocking 60 hours a week, that sure doesn't leave much time for job hunting!

 

That would be a deal breaker for me as money has a diminishing value at a point when you can't spend time with your family. When I'm old, I want to be able to look back and feel accomplished outside of simply my career. JMO.

 

Amen. One wants to work to live, not live to work.

If they paid a wage above food stamp qualifying, we wouldn't feel nearly so used.

[beaners]

 

Check your laws. We found out that DH's salaried job didn't meet the legal requirements for a salaried job. The law indicated what kind of jobs could be labeled as salaried vs. being hourly.

 

Usually you have to be in a position over a few other employees, have different responsibilities from those employees, and have a say in the firing and hiring within the company. My husband worked shortly for a company that was sued because of the way they structured management.

 

50 hour weeks are short weeks for my husband. 70 hour weeks are about as high as they go these days, and that's extremely rare now. It was the norm a few years ago.

 

This is a big part of what makes homeschooling attractive. My husband might be home one weekend every two months, but he will definitely be home on two weekdays every week. He may go in at 1 and work until midnight, but he will have been home all of the morning before that shift. Even with his long hours, he has more time with the children than most working parents.

[twoforjoy]

:confused:

I can not recall any of my colleagues at the university to ever be done with everything that needs to be done. There is always more research to do, another paper to write, a proposal to write, a paper or proposal to review, a student to supervise, the lectures to improve, the homework to grade... Honestly, I do not know what it would be like to "have done everything that needs to be done". It.does.not.happen.

My husband comes home when he needs a break and is hungry, around 7pm. He works some more after eating. But "done everything"? Has not once happened in the last fifteen years.

(I only teach part time, so get to the "done" part - but I am not regular faculty. they never ever do.)

 

He's working as a research associate right now, so in general he's working on a project or two at a time, but things seem to come in waves. He'll have weeks where he's running subjects or analyzing data for 10 hours a day, and weeks where there's no big projects going on and he's got a single grant proposal he's working on.

[kitten18]

My DH was a salaried (professional) employee for 13+ years before starting his own company. I don't think he EVER worked less than 50 hours in a week and most weeks 60-80 hours.

[TKDmom]

I guess we're spoiled. Dh is salaried, but if he works more than 45 hours in a week, he is paid for overtime. I would be super annoyed if he didn't get any compensation for working longer hours on a regular basis. Of course if he had a high-level (well-paid) management job I would expect longer hours. I'm just glad he doesn't have such a job. I think I would fall apart if he were gone any more than he is.

[Parker Martin]

Good guess, but wrong :D

 

It was in computer animation/video games.

 

Shoot! I should have included that in my guess. Seems like people who work on video games are expected to work pretty much all the time. I suppose that's because there is such a large pool of game lovers who would love to work on games during every waking moment.

[Bootsie]

It absolutely depends on the job.

In some fields, 60 hour weeks are completely normal.

My DH works at least 9-10 hours daily and brings some work home for weekends; some of our colleagues work significantly more than that.

(If you are in academia, overtime pay does not exist)

 

And paid vacation doesn't exist in academia either.

[TravelingChris]

My dh is in management in the government (military) and routinely works 12 hour days.

 

He isn't home for lots of birthdays, anniversaries, performances, etc. I am not even counting the hours he spends traveling on what should be his free time like when last week he spent overnight Friday and most of Saturday traveling. Although dh hasn't ever deployed, he has spent years away from us in total over the last 24 years. This year looks like it will be somewhere between half the time and three quarters of the time away from home.

 

I know he is doing very important work and I know that he makes sure the job he does is done right. It does help to know that when he was waiting for his assignment this year, he had eight different people trying to get him to work for them. It helps me to feel a bit more relaxed about his getting employment after he retires.

[Bluegoat]

THIS!

 

Dh's company is in full tyrant, indentured servant, employees are property, mode and they will off shore any position as soon as the employee stands up for him or herself. So, there is no saying "NO" and remaining employed there. That would be okay if there was somewhere else to go. But in Michigan, the I.T. industry has tanked for the most part. According to colleagues who work for the competition, the hours are every bit as evil.

 

Dh never, ever, ever works less than 65. He is supposed to have 3 weeks paid vacation per his contract plus most federal holidays. He works the holidays except Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, and Easter Sunday. They rarely agree to let him take more than 1.5 weeks of his paid vacation because vacation is only approved at there discretion during "down time" and there never is down time because they are billing him out as 100% allocated to one project and 50% allocated to two others. He's supposed to be 200% of a person. :001_huh: :glare:

 

A 65 hr. work week is low in all actuality. He's on call 24/7. So even if he takes a vacation, he is supposed to drop everything if a colleague calls, find internet, and get online asap. When we went to Viginia/Washington D.C. this past May, the account manager for one project called him 8 times in 4 days. He worked 9 hrs. over the course of the 6 days we were gone but the full four days (we were gone over a weekend in addition to the four weekdays) of vacation were taken out of his vacation log.

 

Last week he worked 42 out of 48 hrs. His.boss.did.not.care. and told him to "suck it up" for the "team" (code for, the CEO wants a 28 million dollar bonus this year and we are taking it out of your hide).

 

The company policy on comp time is that you are supposed to take it the day after it is earned or it is lost. Hmmmm...give that most days are booked in advance with deadlines and meetings and the bosses know this, then it's impossible most days to take any "comp time" the very next day and the bosses know that too! The policy is designed to make sure the employee is run ragged and the company never has to pony up any time off with pay that is owed.

 

No pay raises, no bonuses, and pay cuts were instituted two years ago.

 

25 months and our last payment will be made. Dh is walking off the job and either going back to school and finishing a PH.D in math and will teach in college, or he's going to take a paid position with 4-H.

 

Reasonable, not more than 52 hrs. or there better be some time off without complaint of the company, or compensation.

 

In the last three years 2 months, dh's total comp time added up to 1 year and 1 week. That's right! They owe him a year paid sabbatical from the job.

 

Faith

 

Yeah, I think this is a prime example of a company taking advantage of people.

 

There is something wrong when employees are asked to work this way and the CEO gets the bonus pay and the workers get a wage freeze.

[Mrs Mungo]

My dh is in management in the government (military) and routinely works 12 hour days.

 

He isn't home for lots of birthdays, anniversaries, performances, etc. I am not even counting the hours he spends traveling on what should be his free time like when last week he spent overnight Friday and most of Saturday traveling. Although dh hasn't ever deployed, he has spent years away from us in total over the last 24 years. This year looks like it will be somewhere between half the time and three quarters of the time away from home.

 

I know he is doing very important work and I know that he makes sure the job he does is done right. It does help to know that when he was waiting for his assignment this year, he had eight different people trying to get him to work for them. It helps me to feel a bit more relaxed about his getting employment after he retires.

 

Sort of like when Congress decided to give members of the military extra pay of they were gone x # of days per rolling calendar year, but then had to cut off the program when they realized it pretty much included everyone? And that was before 9/11.

[vonfirmath]

I've never heard of an hourly employee getting paid vacation.

 

Now you have. I have been in several jobs where I was paid hourly and got paid vacation.

[LisaKinVA]

I voted 10-20, but for us... that changes seasonally.

 

When I worked, I usually put in less than 10hrs/week overtime. Occasionally, during very busy times (and before laptops and the internet were common), I would put in about 20, but that didn't happen often.

 

My dh who works for the government routinely puts in 10hrs over a week of uncompensated overtime. :001_huh: They don't call it that. They don't compensate him, because the work he's doing he's just "doing." They aren't saying, "you must work overtime." It's more, this is DUE on X date, period. How you get it done is your business. Of course, then they send him off to a 2-day meeting, schedule interviews for him to oversee... and he brings the work home to do at night and on the weekends, because it *still* has to get done on X date.

 

My father also works for the government... if he works an hour over... he gets credit time. There is no such thing as overtime for my dad's branch of the gov't.

[Sebastian (a lady)]

It absolutely depends on the job.

In some fields, 60 hour weeks are completely normal.

My DH works at least 9-10 hours daily and brings some work home for weekends; some of our colleagues work significantly more than that.

(If you are in academia, overtime pay does not exist)

 

This is pretty much the situation in the military too. Even when I was on a ship that was inport, I worked from about 630 am until 6-7 pm. (That's 3-4 extra hours a day, 15-20 extra a week.) And of course that was under normal circumstances. There were other times when I was on the ship until 8 or 9 pm because we were getting ready for an inspection.

 

DH's hours are still similar. In fact one of his recent jobs had Saturday as a full extra workday and Sunday as a rotating workday for 2-3 of the senior guys. That was only when they were in homeport. If they were underway, then everyday is a workday and the day is about 18 hours long.

 

This is what makes me get hot when I hear people talk about military retirement as a "social welfare" item (thanks NY Times).

[Home_s_Cool]

My dh rarely works 5 hours above the 40 hours/week.

 

He has flex time, so he normally works more hours earlier in the week and is home by 1PM on Fridays.

 

Yes, I recognize we are blessed with hardly any OT plus the flex time.

 

He has been there 15 years and in a senior position - so at times he is expected to work extra but not often.

[SewLittleTime]

Well, my dh has been working as much as 17 hours a day on a salary of $45,000. In my opinion, that is too much, but after an 18 month unemployment, he doesn't say anything about it. We are so thankful to have a job at all. It's by no means a dream job either, just a job. We are still looking for other employment, but right now this is where God has us.

[Haiku]

Dh is salaried, but if he works more than 45 hours in a week, he is paid for overtime.

 

My dh now works for a large (largelargelarge, even when you don't contrast it with his last company, which was down to five employees when he left) company and, in addition to a generous salary, he gets paid time and a half for any overtime he puts in.

 

:blink:

 

I can't believe it. We were always anti-corporation, but I have to say ... when working for a large corporation means that you a) actually have the resources to do your job well b) get health insurance for a fraction of the cost and c) get paid time and half for overtime ... well ... gosh, I don't even know what to say.

 

Tara

[lailasmum]

My dh can do up to 70 hrs a week in the weeks before a show opens. He doesn't get paid overtime but can take the extra hours back as time off. He is getting better at playing the system though because he can get to the point where he runs out of time to take the time off plus his 5 weeks holiday. There are other members of staff where he works who do get paid overtime at double time and can cover some of his duties. When he can he gets them to cover extra things that need doing.

 

The place he works has minimal respect for their employees and are pretty unpleasant generally.

 

I think any more than the odd half an hour a day is really asking too much, it adds up so fast. I keep thinking of all the extra hours my mum does for the school she works in as an administrator, they expect staff to be super flexible and commited but aren't flexible back. If she needs time off for a funeral or a medical appointment it always seems so hard to get.

[Murphy101]

Well, my dh has been working as much as 17 hours a day on a salary of $45,000. In my opinion, that is too much, but after an 18 month unemployment, he doesn't say anything about it. We are so thankful to have a job at all. It's by no means a dream job either, just a job. We are still looking for other employment, but right now this is where God has us.

 

Yes. This. It took dh almost 2 years to get this regular full time job, so he is bending over backwards not to mess it up. But months and months of that comes at a cost too. After doing it for 14 years at his previous job, he was almost happy to be laid off. You know it's bad, when your health is actually better within months of losing a job.

 

My dh now works for a large (largelargelarge, even when you don't contrast it with his last company, which was down to five employees when he left) company and, in addition to a generous salary, he gets paid time and a half for any overtime he puts in.

 

:blink:

 

I can't believe it. We were always anti-corporation, but I have to say ... when working for a large corporation means that you a) actually have the resources to do your job well b) get health insurance for a fraction of the cost and c) get paid time and half for overtime ... well ... gosh, I don't even know what to say.

 

Tara

 

Dh has always worked for huge corporations and none of them have even been like that. Sure wish they were though.

[QueenCat]

Dh usually works 45-50... his contract offer when he was hired had a normal work schedule that included 45 hours/week. With a special project, he may have to go in on Saturday. His company is very flexible about letting him (and others) leave early or come in late for appointments without using their "personal time off" (instead of vacation and sick days, it is combined as pto).

[amy g.]

My husband has been out of town for 6 of the last 7 weeks. He worked all day last Saturday, and this morning he was on a plane from NYC at 4:00am so he could make a meeting in Houston at 9:00am.

 

We are just use to it. I'm accustomed to being alone with the children, and I feel very grateful that he is able to do work that he loves, while still providing a nice lifestyle for all of us.

[Catwoman]

We have never asked any employee to work extra hours without paying them for their time. I know that's not helpful for someone whose employer feels differently, but we just don't think it's right to ask anyone to work for free. Our practice makes money from every hour of their hard work, so they should be compensated accordingly -- and they shouldn't have to work so many hours that they don't have time for their families and friends.

 

I know that in a lot of jobs, extra hours are expected, but I always felt it was unfair, unless it was an "exception to the rule, must finish this huge project" type of situation where everyone is pitching in (including the boss.)

[LizzyBee]

I'm surprised at how much OT is considered normal and necessary. I work OT to meet deadlines, but take comp time during slower times of the year. I can't imagine working 60 hrs/wk year round for $40-$60k unless it was early in my career and I was paying my dues, knowing that in a few years I'll be making much more.

 

As far as working however long it takes to get the job done, well, that just leads to more work being piled on. I'll do that to meet a deadline; in fact, I've been known to work overnight, go home and sleep a couple hours, then come back to work. But I don't and won't do that on an ongoing basis. If I can't get the job done in a reasonable amount of time, there's something not right about my job description and it needs to be changed.

 

I admit, I have an advantage because I work in a field in which there is a shortage. I am not too worried about job security. If anything forces me to stop working in the foreseeable future, it will be my health, not the economy.

[Annie G]

Dh has always been salaried and worked between 50 and 60 hours a week. However, 5 years ago he had a heart attack and now has 8 stents. His employer (large corporation) has -for 5 years- let him go to cardiac rehab three times a week during work hours, and every doc appointment during work hours, and has never once asked him to use vacation or work to make up for it.

 

If they'd been this accommodating earlier, he might not have those stents- it was truly a stressful job. But that's water under the bridge, and we are so fortunate that he has this job.

[kalanamak]

I said other because it depends entirely on the field/job/location/etc. I was salaried and it was expected you do about 20 hours per week extra. Now I'm salaried and I get comp time or flat salary for any time I spend over. However, on the downside, I am much less my own woman as far as when I come and go.