Another day down...
 

...and another day to begin tomorrow. {sigh}

Anyone work crazy hours? I just got off a full blown 13 hour day of writing code and Im near retarded right now. Id like to think that this is all part of "paying my dues" to the man but damn, Im feeling life being sucked from my fingertips.

Don't other working professionals put in hours like this? Like lawyers and doctors and other important people? Surely Im important just like them...

Tell me... tell me Im important too....

{snore}

I once did 30 consecutive 16+ hour days.

It is possible to work a 120 hr week. I was consulting, partners got to bill my time at $200/hr. I got $30k per year and was not allowed to leave early on Christmas eve.

First job out of undergrad, learnt a lot.

I don't work like that anymore. I push for a 7 hour day. 4 days a week.

Shooting for semi-retired. ;)

Come to the track on the 11th.


KT

Yes Mat, you are important too :)

I also put in crazy hours but I can't imagine staring at a screen for 13 hours, let alone write code. When I work a long day, I am usually wining and dining customers or putting in lots of windshield time to see them.

Hey, there's one thing we have in common, that's about what I shoot for these days, too.

I haven't been getting much OT lately, but when I get it, it's always in 8 hour chunks. The first week I got permanent promotion, I put in 7 sixteen hour days & then worked my regular 8 hour shifts for a few weeks without a day off.

I do work a crazy rotating schedule. It starts on a Tuesday, day-shift 6am to 2 pm for 7 days, 3 days off, then 7 days patrol- shift 5am to 1 pm, 4 days off. Then comes swing-shift, 7 on, 3 off, & tonight I started graveyard. I get off shift next Thursday morning & start all over the following Tuesday.

I can't imagine staring at a screen for 13 hours, unless I'm playing a MMO. :D

do you get paid by the hour or by salary ?

I'm betting he is salaried and works in an "IT sweatshop" :). They can and will burn you out, but ONLY if you let them...

Liberals will tell U the indivdual is important, but they don't mean it. Sorry to say U are just another Cog in the wheel that has been going around since time imemorial. You will trade in your hours for a handfull of dimes, then they will give you a stipend to live out your days after your usefull life is used up. Then they will bury you with some fine platitudes and when everyone walks away you will be forgotten like everyone else your resting with.

Generally 9-5, but we have larger project releases every few months... they usually have me in here for 10-12 hr days for a couple weeks straight. Thankfully, projects like that are rarer in the summer.

Downside is I'm trying to finish my degree by taking night courses. Can get real dicey if we have a project go FUBAR; I had to duck out of two night courses last term in order to do help with a derailed site release. Company picked up the tab though, so I was out time but no $$.

Once I had two jobs and was going to college. I remember having five paychecks in my wallet. No time to go to the bank...

Am I supposed to be proud of U or sorry for U?

Well Boyz the sorry fact of life is that U will never get Rich working for someone else. The few that do succeed in making CEO and the big bux are especially adept at knowing how to bend over and how to not to gag as they swallow. However that is not being fair to CEOs most of them are in actuality working for themselves in that everything they do is to promote themselves.

The real key is how much money out of your paycheck that you put away for yourself. So in that sense I always considered that I was working for myself and not the company. For its up to U what U do with your money. Mother always says that if you have a nice big Bank Account bending over to pick up the stick is so much easier. Cause you can count your money and smile as your doing it.

tabs, Mr. Entrepreneur, here's the deal.

working full time for a company is a good way to gain experience, it pays the bills, allows you to save money (if you live below your means) and keeps your occupied. There's nothing wrong with it.

You want to start a small business? go right ahead.. most small business "entrepreneurs" don't make as much as a full time steady job. Out of those, a small % get rich.. And it can take 5-10 years to get your small business running on all 6 cylinders. Until then, work full time and make as much as you can. time is of the essence. however, don't let the company work you like a dog or abuse you along the way. there's a S U C K E R born every minute and anyone who puts in 50+ hrs for a 40 hr/week salaried job is someone who allows others to take advantage of them... no offense intended, just trying to be helpful.

I used to work with this guy, he was a mechanical engineer on salary. He would come in at 8 am on the dot, leave at 5 PM on the dot, and he did this religiously. He did fine. his philosophy was, you pay me for 8 hrs, I work 8 hrs. that's a very good philosophy.

Yep!

Well Mr Onrump...Most people do work for someone for a paycheck. I don't make a value judgment just stating the facts of life. I always considered that whatever I was doing I was doing to further my own interests and not the company.

In actuality everybody is in Business for themselves, in that they have to manage the money that they get from their paychecks. I consider that what U do with your paycheck is your REAL Business.

I've often gotten curious looks when I say that "I work for myself" even though I've prostituted my brain power to several Fortune 500 Cos. since college. My whole dept will be outsourced within the next year, and I can hardly wait :)

Remember that EVEN Bill Gates found out that when the man says pick up the stick you have to do it. Remember when the Fed and a bunch of states went after him during the Clinton admin. He was so fking arrogant that he put his foot in his mouth during a depostion. He very quickly learned that he was no match for the Government. I think its a scale type of thing.

Wanna see Tabs elevate? Listen for Mother to say "jump" :)

the name is On-Ramp

for you, Mr. On-Ramp
:D

My worst day, 31 hour day,
worst 2 days, 2 x 20 hour days in a row
worst weekend starting after 5pm on a friday, 40 hour weekend (after a full work week)

avg 1 - 2 per year like this.

work happens.

I've had a couple of "40 hour days" & worked lots of weekends (earlier in my career) too but as you say "work happens" :). That's different than being in a "sweatshop" imo...

Yep. When I took my current position, it was explained that there would be "peak periods" and that the salary is adjusted accordingly. I don't know of many straight 9-5 positions in IT, or in other industries for that matter.

I normally have 60-70 hour weeks, but on occasion have pulled 90 hour weeks, usually when working on location. Those are a b*tch, and Uncle Sam usually profits pretty well from them.

If I seem confused to you guys, it's your own fault. It's statements like this, and that recurring theme that money and fear are the only two effective motivators. I could believe you guys if only I hadn't been seeing exceptions to these rules all my working life. First, it was my state's Labor department and the workers there who are not paid very handsomely, but who work their asses off to protect working men and women from unfair labor practices and wage violations.

Today, I'm still doing that work as a salaried consultant. Weeks of less than fifty hours are quite rare. My work mate tells people "At __________, we work half-days. Only twelve hours." It's not a joke. He's at his desk by five each morning.

Frankly, our job is part-commercial, part-religion. The money part is obviously not our motivation. The construction contractors we oversee make OBSCENE money. You wanna make money over the next twenty years? Open a minority-owned contracting business that does something like surveying and vacuum excavation. Or asbestos abatement. Or even just flagging.

Money lying right there on the table, and I'm not picking it up. So.....imagine how you guys look to me when you suggest that people whose professional goal is money are more motivated than I am. You guys who have strong opinions about organized Labor probably don't understand the most fundamental thing about the work of a labor representative. It is a church. Trust me when I tell you those guys are more motivated than you are. We have one representative here whose work habits are so extreme as to be almost unbelievable. Between her work (at least twelve per day) and her daughters' activities, the number of hours of sleep she gets on weekdays can usually be counted on two hands. Not kidding. You wanna get the jump on her in the morning, you'll have to be on task at least by 2:00 am.

I wish some of you guys could see the other side of the coin you are forever judging.

"Never run on the clock, and never take a ***** off the clock", words to live by....

In 1990 I was 19 or so and worked in a gold-exploration camp in northern British Columbia - my longest stint was 9 weeks of 14-16hr days, 7 days a week. I was close to the breaking point, or so I thought...

There was a Vietnamese guy there who never seemed to have taken his fly-out weeks. It turned out he had arrived in camp over Easter and worked every day till Thanksgiving - no small feat to split drill-core for 180 days straight. He said he made more in one day than his entire family of 12 could make in a month in Vietnam and he was working to bring them all to Canada.

I always think of him whenever work gets me down.

IN the early 1990's, When we hit the startup phase of the Gas Turbine projects, it would usually be "whatever" hours. I had 2 months where I averaged just over 100 hours a week. I try not to work like that these days, but my present project is getting me up at 2am for phone calls (Eastern Europe) and I'm working most weekends.