Hours in your work week

[viper37]

That said, many (many, many) people here work far less than 40 hours per week for their 40 hours a week paycheck.

I was afraid of something like that at my new place, since it's public service, but so far, I have yet to see somebody slacking off.

That being said, a lot of work is longer than it should be simply because their processes are somewhat antiquated and the accounting software, while being a global management solution for cities is crucially lacking in some small quality of life improvements.  Strange fact, the makers of this software is part of the same conglomerate for the software I used in my previous employment situation.  Some improvements do not seem to have crossed corporate walls.  Maybe Harris Computers is simply a financial investor and does next to zero management of their individual acquistions, I don't know. 

By and large, the software looks&feel antiquated.  You can't save a report directly to PDF, you have to use a PDF printer driver (like Microsoft Print to PDF) which somehow doesn't always work for all reports, at least remotely.

Ah anyway, I digress.  Everyone does what they have to do, but things could be done more efficiently with less paper, more Excel and possibly some non relational database.
Once I've managed to get all the accesses everywhere, learnt the software properly (I had full access only mid last week) and get some free time I'll work on some things.

Jeez, they didn't even have an online password management system, they relied on little handwritten notebooks scatterered everywhere across the office... 1st thing I changed, even though I'm not supposed to install any software that isn't licensed to ther city.  But someone is working on this...

[Habbaku]

No, it definitely isn't the norm.

The video game industry, some Google jobs (and surely plenty of developer jobs), and investment banking are significant outliers.

[viper37]

I easily work over 50 hours per week.  Even after getting off work, we check our mobiles and emails often.

For a Chinese, these are superb work conditions, right?

[merithyn]

I easily work over 50 hours per week.  Even after getting off work, we check our mobiles and emails often.

Fuck. I have a job like a Chinese state worker.

[merithyn]

That is, your schedule is dictated by your workload.  There are no set hours.

Fuck off. That's a shit attitude. If there is more work than your team can manage in the available time, you are a shitty manager. You need to either reduce workload or increase capacity then. Just whipping the team will not lead to sustainable results.

Indeed. That is just dumb management.

Isn't the norm in the US?  I mean the >40hrs workweek, not the dumb management?  I believe people in the video game industry, devs, namely, often do a lot more and can spend a year in "crunch mode", I kept hearing stories about Google were engineers were spending their entire night in the office, not going home to sleep because there was too much work, and it seemed to be widespread to a lot of industries.  I seem to recall some petition to get a 50hrs workweek in some big US bank, instead of the typical 80hrs per week.

My ex used to work 12-14 hours a day, six days a week as a video game programmer. I left him because he told me he wouldn't leave that industry.

Prior to this manager coming in, I worked 40 hours a week except for one or two months toward the end of the year where I would work around 45-50 for a few weeks to hit deadlines. Same job, same work. New manager was hired last October. She has decided that 45-50 should be the norm. God only knows what she'll consider the "busy season".

[Monoriu]

I easily work over 50 hours per week.  Even after getting off work, we check our mobiles and emails often.

For a Chinese, these are superb work conditions, right?

A lot of people have worse hours, yes. 

[DGuller]

I think poor people management training of managers is probably the biggest drain on productivity in the corporate world.  Some people should just never be allowed into management, because they have authoritarian or sadistic tendencies, but others are just badly trained and are making the lives of their employees miserable for no good reason.

[Habbaku]

New manager was hired last October. She has decided that 45-50 should be the norm. God only knows what she'll consider the "busy season".

Why on earth would you acquiesce to that when the norm was already established at 40?

[Monoriu]

I think poor people management training of managers is probably the biggest drain on productivity in the corporate world.  Some people should just never be allowed into management, because they have authoritarian or sadistic tendencies, but others are just badly trained and are making the lives of their employees miserable for no good reason.

Let's be fair.  Sure there are problematic managers.  But there are also problematic employees.  Some of them just can't work in an organisation in which they are not the boss. 

[Monoriu]

I easily work over 50 hours per week.  Even after getting off work, we check our mobiles and emails often.

Fuck. I have a job like a Chinese state worker.

Congratulations 

[viper37]

New manager was hired last October. She has decided that 45-50 should be the norm. God only knows what she'll consider the "busy season".

Why on earth would you acquiesce to that when the norm was already established at 40?

I don't know, but the life of Merry seems to follow a disting pattern since I've been reading her:
Get a job with decent working conditions, decent wage and a qualified&understanding manager.
Said manager leaves the company/moves higher up/retires.
New manager comes in and somehow picks on her or poison her entire team.
Moves to a new job with decent working conditions, decent wage and a qualified&understanding manager.
Said manager leaves the company/moves higher up/retires.
New manager comes in and somehow picks on her or poison her entire team.
...Repeat... 

The first few times, I thought maybe, well, I don't know her personally, so maybe once she gets to work, she goes from Dr Jekyll to Ms Hide?   But now, I think she just has natural bad luck with work.  I only know of one other person in my life like that.

Well, whatever it is you find next Merry, I only wish you the best and for a long time

[garbon]

New manager was hired last October. She has decided that 45-50 should be the norm. God only knows what she'll consider the "busy season".

Why on earth would you acquiesce to that when the norm was already established at 40?

At my last job it became part of a knock out brawl with our new manager (in Canada) vs my employees here. They had no choice but to acquiesce as he would tell them off if they werent getting things done at his desired pace.

[Syt]

Salaried, 25h.

[The Brain]

I think poor people management training of managers is probably the biggest drain on productivity in the corporate world.  Some people should just never be allowed into management, because they have authoritarian or sadistic tendencies, but others are just badly trained and are making the lives of their employees miserable for no good reason.

If you have something to say just spit it out.

[The Brain]

I worked hourly until I got into management, then it changed to salaried. Obviously I've worked weekends etc when the situation demanded it, but I've never worked an insane amount of hours. My impression is that I am reasonably good at prioritizing tasks.

Addendum: I've never had a boss who judged my performance based on my hours.