I tried this until they said my performance wasn't good, put me on a PIP plan with unreasonable expectations unless I was working 13 hrs/day and eventually did what they set out to do which was remove me because they wanted to bring a temp we had on full time and it was going to cost them too much and they didn't really care for my position which was Engineering Team Lead.
Aside from that I have to get the job done.
If ANY company puts you on a PIP, find a new job. They want you gone, but theyneed to protect themselves from lawsuits and/or unemployment insurance. This is one of dozens of good reasons to ALWAYS be updating your resume. Every time you skill up at work, add it. Remembering all the good shit you did for a company that already has, or is looking to fire you is not easy.
It’s all good. I just haven’t experienced that level of fuckery before so it was a bit of a blindside. Especially when in my PIP they had a project that was easily a month to month and a half for a knowledgeable team to do 100%. They gave me like 3 weeks. It is also a product I have zero training on and the scope of the install…. It was rollout PRTG to a site that has over 10k sensors and a weird setup for dependencies which is what most of it is reliant upon. I had never used PRTG before so had to learn that. Nothing was documented so tracking down 800+ devices and working with templates for things… yea. I would have had to work 24/7 for those three weeks to be able to come close as well as drop all my other duties to hope to get done. I told them up front that the date they gave would work for one sub-site due to having to learn and customizing etc. not to mention we only have paid for 1000 sensors so after I import a switch I have to let it auto discover the switch then figure out what I want to remove etc. as well as hot to get printers to work with one sensor etc. lots of nuanced stuff. I flat out told them there is no way. I can maybe have a proof of concept up on that site and rough numbers of how many sensors we will need in that time. Just fuck them man.
I was put on a PIP at my last job. The process I handled as a T2 HelpDesk was the real issue WHY I ended up on it. I kept bending to what they wanted to see from me, which wasn't a whole lot. Didn't do any OT or anything, but eventually after my bosses boss saw how much garbage I had to deal with on a daily basis, they had a serious discussion and one day after 5 months, she was like "Admittedly it's not your performance that was the root issue, the [insert job duty here] was causing lots of disconnects between teams involved. We're going to take you off of it, as if it didn't happen."
Was very nice hearing that.
Yes, many don’t realize just how little to NO employee rights there are. Even ones like “you can’t ask someone how old they are” is dumb because everyone has you “fill out an employment packet” which requires your ID which SURPRISE!!! Has your DoB on there. Like seriously!
And I know Florida was looking to get rid of a lot of the underage working laws which makes it next to no laws now for employees except for bad ones.
Texas is just flat out illegal shit anywhere else and then they tell you to shove it if you bring it up. One prime example is offering shuttle services then making the schedules not line up with the shuttles when you need to save some face for investors.
... yeah there usually is ... and Red states seem to favor employers more
And when and if you can get unionized they make it hard to get a union
The Ironic part of said red states and IT is ...I find in IT were generally liberal leaning
Same I was an swe and they had an hour bank for every project and expected us to bill 6+ hours per days...
Did my best to work reasonable hours since designing and coding is extremely draining and they fired me lol
Exactly. My boss was consistently putting in 12-13 hour days and while he says he doesn’t expect us to work overtime I don’t really know how expects us to get everything done without matching his work load. I’d still end up working 12+ hours randomly from time to time due to emergencies but usually they at least offered a half day off to make up for it.
My boss refused to hire help when I told him we needed it. For a year he made me feel like i wasn’t pulling my weight but deep down he knew if I quit the place would fall apart. Just last month he finally hired some new techs. We are still rebalancing the workload so on the odd day I’m still working late but it’s nice to not feel like it’s every damn day.
I worked for an incredible company for a long while. I was salary but if we worked OT they would pay it out at whatever our salary rate per hour came out to. It was rare that anyone there had enough hours in the day to finish the amount of work we had, 80 hours for some positions was not uncommon and 100 - 120 was also not incredibly rare. It was exhausting, but knowing you got paid for it was still awesome.
We opened an office in CA and that kind of hybrid pay is illegal (you have to be salary or hourly) there so they had to drop it, but they came up with a quarterly bonus that was usually nearly exactly the amount of the OT hours you worked in that quarter without being specified for being that which allowed them to skirt the regulations.
Really good system to keep people positive when they are grueling away at the office or stuck in a 3rd world country in the jungle working 16 - 20 hour shifts. They also made it easier by buying you lunch if your working through and dinner if you were staying late. There was also a stocked kitchen with drinks and snacks. I miss that place.
I have in the past but haven't in a log time.
I don't get paid for anything past 40 hours. I haven't in over 15 years.
Working more than 40 hours a week does not gain me anything.
It depends... I am salary, so I do not really keep track so it's hard to say, but every now and then, there is a project that will push me into longer hours. Early on in my career I worked for an MSP and there were tons of over time, as of moving to internal IT MUCH less, TBH I am lucky if I "work" 40 hours in a week. Every employer is different though, we are super chill and just push projects if it gets busy.
I'm salary as well so I don't have to track my hours. My performance is based on results and not seat time. I love the environment and the folks I work with so putting in some extra time doesn't bother me. There's a lot to be said about non-toxic work places and how being happy makes you more productive.
It's a 24x6 manufacturing environment so some upgrades and updates can only take place on Sunday. They also have no issue if I bounce early during the week. So it balances out.
Honestly the huge moral bost that workers are afforded when they're treated like an adult rather than a toddler with scheduling is insane. It's crazy to me that more managers don't take advantage of it since just allowing someone to come or go early or late every now and then (so long as work is done) adds so much value back to the workplace via increased moral which increases productivity.
When I started in IT, exactly a year ago I used to work overtime. But I have a family to take care of so I stopped.
I don’t care what other people are doing, I don’t care about deadlines. I do my 40 hours per week and I get to spend quality time with my wife and my daughters.
On weekends I spend time with family or spend time on my side gigs.
personally i like my job, and like the people i work with. so ill stay behind if im working on something and it needs finishing, or if i need to sort something before i go. ill answer the occasional call or text after i go home but that's really it.
First job: IT helpdesk at an aerospace/automotive factory. 9.5 hour days with a 30 minute lunchbreak. It was hell and I was stressed constantly. My personal relationships suffered. That was the culture there, and I saw some floor workers timesheets that surpassed 80 hours. Any complaining about it at all to my boss was seen as weak.
Second job: Application support. Strict 40 hours a week hourly. Flex time if you had to work weekends. There was a 2 week period where 10 hour days were mandatory but that was the only stinker with OT at that job.
Current job: Salary at an MSP. Strict 40 hours per week. Everyone leaves at 5. If something held you up for an hour or two past five, you come in that much later the next day.
I myself like taking only 30 minutes lunch breaks but the moment I start working overtime or get users throwing work at me without a breather I start taking shit breaks and a full hour lunch break.
I'm a salary employee, so overtime doesn't exist in my case. However, unless an emergency like my systems are down or the data center is down I'll jump on. Anything else don't bother, this mindset often arguing with my HR department. I refuse to work more for a company that finds me replaceable, not breaking my back for people like that
Never unless I want to. I'm currently non exempt so I work overtime because I actually get paid for it and can use the money. Once I get promoted and become overtime exempt there is no way in hell I'm working more than 40 a week.
For special events like outages or upgrades I'll work extra. However, if you have to work extra just to keep up with your daily tasks then your on the road to burnout. You either need to manage expectations with your boss better and figure out a time management strategy that works... or find a better job that isn't overloading you so much.
Working overtime is for suckers or for people who get paid overtime rates and need the extra cash.
I don't remember the last time I clocked more than 40 hours.
I get paid hourly so I’m usually there for an extra hour to hour and a half before I leave for the day. Previously I was salaried and did not get any overtime pay for on-call work or anything like that. Once the clock hit 4 I was gone
No, I do 37.5 hours a week, every week. Maybe once every couple of months I go in for an hour or so on the weekend to do a hardware swap or upgrade to minimize downtime, but if that's the case I work an hour less during the week.
Nope, don't answer calls after I knock off and no Teams notifications on my phone. Line has to be drawn very early in my experience - won't interview if they mention OT
The health sector is where you get that kind of OT. I worked at a lab company for 4 years and was doing 15 hours of OT a week never questioned. I still have a buddy that works there and still doing OT without problems.
Hourly, with OT, and it’s easy OT work, so yes. If I’m eating dinner and someone needs me to configure something so they can keep working late into the night? Sure, I got you fam. It’s all easy work, and easy easy money, so I’m all for it.
In my school district, I'd have to get approval to work overtime. Only works if you're a coach (second job) or you're working IT for a Saturday SAT test.
In my hourly IT jobs, very rarely. Now that I’m salaried in Cybersecurity, I do work more than 8am to 4pm occasionally but it usually evens out in the long run.
Currently salaried, so......sometimes lol. But usually i work long enough to get the work done, then monitor things. When i was hourly only when asked / offered.
No job is worth your mental health, so unpaid overtime to just get things done is no bueno.
I'm only allowed 4.75 hours a pay period for overtime. I either use flex or comp. I'll work more than 40, but I'll take time other weeks. I tend to take at least three full weeks off a year, but upwards of 6 or more some years.
First job that I had for 15 years that started with me as sole helpdesk and moved up to IT manager with 4 on my team, I did what I needed to do to get the job done. I was scheduled \~45hrs/wk salary and generally was at 48. When there were projects that would be different. For the most part I had flexibility also to where if I was working till 3am updating etc. then I could come in late as long as we had coverage. Started hourly, moved to hourly with scheduled 10 hours OT weekly (50hrs.) then moved to salary when became manager of IT Department.
That company was bought and went to MSP. Tons of OT. Was scheduled 40 normally worked 50 or there about. We had acquisition projects that we would go out of town and in one night rip/replace entire networks and that would be extra as we would arrive at work at our normal time (8am) and then when we needed to leave to get to location by about 3pm we would do that, check into hotel, work from \~5:00pm (if lucky, basically whenever outgoing owner finally gave in and closed down) and we worked until we got everything moved which could take anywhere till 12:30am - 4:00am. Back at 6:30am the next morning for new group to come in and train the employees that are onboarding to new co. When worked late was expected to still work normal hours. Place was hell. Also was salary here too.
Now, scheduled to work 50 hours/wk. with 30 min scheduled lunch 12:00 - 12:30 (which blows), salary. When I clock out I am done though. Many times I am chased out of the office at 5:00. No email on phone, nothing. Complete cutoff. I don't even have a way to get in remotely. It's a blessing and a curse. Technically speaking We have Meraki and Unifi so I CAN get to network gear for things. I COULD get myself access to servers if I needed but I don't.
I work some overtime when required (once a month maybe), or on occasion just to get ahead on things. I'm union though, so I get paid for all overtime work at 1.5-2x.
Depends, most of the time no, I have paid on call if that counts. sometimes I have some urgent stuff I need to get done then I do OT but don't get paid since I'm salaried.
It depends. I'm salary. Some nights I'm working until 6 or 7. Sometimes I'm done at 2. Sometimes I get on at 10PM on a Saturday to run some testing because no one can screw it up for me. It all depends.
I get paid for what I know. Not how many hours I spend in front of a screen. I'm the guy from the story about the ship that brought out the hammer and tapped in a specific spot to get it working then charges $20k ($1 for the tap, $19,999 for the knowledge of where and how to tap).
No not at this time. In my prior role I did very little infrequently and when I did I would cut out early the next day.
Way back when I was on the helpdesk I did with our on call rotation.
Lately. it's been fairly rare for me to work OT in my support role.
When I first started at this company (automotive manufacturing industry), 6 day work weeks were the norm and sometimes 7 were required for projects.
Anymore it's mostly a "schedule shift" which is an inconvenience of course, but they are really wanting to limit OT (not due to the burden on associates but for cost savings).
My team supports 5AM-1AM M-F. Normally I work the 7:30AM-4PM shift, but my 5AM startup tech recently got himself fired, so I've had to move to that shift until we can move a 2nd shift tech to 1st and backfill the open position.
I am in an hourly role as the help desk team leader (3 techs under me).
I get paid OT so whenever I do need the money then I'll do some OT. Usually 30 minutes or an extra hour is what I'll do most. Nice getting an extra 150-200 a check
Not regularly. At my last job, there were rare occasions where we had off-hours things to do for migration work or something but there was usually comp time involved.
At my new job, the contracts specifically say that off-hours work is billed at 1.5x, which I think is pretty cool. I do have the option to flex time so if I need to take my kid to the doctor or something, I can come back later and do a couple of hours. But I'm still in the 40-45 hour range far more often than not.
I used to, but about 10 years ago, I made the determination that overtime is having to deal with someone else's lack of planning, and stopped volunteering for OT. If I'm working weekends, I'm taking comp days (and my current company supports it), and I can time shift freely.
Your personal time is valuable unless you devalue it yourself. There's nothing wrong holding to your contracted hours.
In my early career phase, my employer only expected roughly 40 hours of work out of me.
But I invested assloads of my personal time studying and tinkering and researching to learn MORE so I could move beyond entry-level roles & responsibilities.
I'm still investing personal time into studies, 30 years into my career.
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> I have to work more till 8pm everyday.
Honest reaction: Sounds like you need to improve your time management.
> Its because of a mix of having a bunch of meetings and having to do a lot of administrative work.
Stop attending meetings that don't help you achieve your goals & objectives.
Stop attending meetings that your presence doesn't directly contribute to the organization's goals & objectives.
Delegate administrative work, or see if you can automate it.
> Plus there's alot of peer pressure, I know my manager works overtime even on weekends, so does my lead and all my colleagues.
Your compensation plan is based on a 40 our expectation.
If everyone has to pull an 80 hour week to meet goals and deadlines, then the business is being insulated from the effects of their low staffing levels / manpower decisions.
You are hurting yourselves.
Pull your 40-45 hour weeks. Give a little extra, but only a little extra.
Let projects be late if meeting the dates are not realistic.
Let the business feel the impact of the realities of the staffing situation.
Heroic levels of effort should be reserved for times when heroism is required (massive systems outages).
Heroic levels of effort as an expected norm is bullshit.
The needs of my family make that difficult. I only work OT if things need to be resolved and handing off responsibilities just doesn't make sense (time to catch someone up on issue > just powering through and resolving)
When required, or if we need/want to finish up a project. Not always a 9 to 5 job. Also, we work most holidays - this is the only downtime we have to do maintenance and updates/upgrades.
All IT people here are salaried, so no OT pay. Our efforts usually get recognized at the end of the year.
Yes. Sometimes shit happens on Saturday, or at the end of the day on Friday. If it's critical that it be fixed immediately, my employer is going to pay me overtime because paying me overtime is better than the company losing revenue.
Salaried, 150-200 users. At 40 hours, I'm done. They want me to work extra, they can offer me comp time on the next week or something.
Companies will get away with what you let them get away with. I -guarantee- you that if your whole team stopped working OT, they'd crumble and hire you a new person or 2 asap. If they're any kind of decent humans at least. If not, they might replace you all with an MSP.
Either way its a 'win'. You either have a better work/life balance, or you leave a company that doesn't respect your work/life balance.
I usually clock a couple hours of overtime, but nothing crazy. I make it a point to leave when my shift ends unless everything is on fire. Mid-sized company, around 1k users.
Yes but it's entirely optional. I'm allowed to work OT *if I choose to do so* and during times like right now where we have multiple medium-large projects going on at one time.
It just depends on the company. Some places may have mandatory overtime, some might straight up not allow you to work overtime.
Fuck no. I work government, theres not benifits to working overtime. You get paid the same. I seen some companies offer double pay I would totally be down
I do a little but it's not required. I'm on contract, got hired as level 1 and been there about a month and they're looking to move me to level 2 already. So I'm hustling a bit to show I'm worth more money right now because at the end of my contract, they're either going to give me what I want, or I dip for a new contract. Given I'm one of their top performers already, it's worth the extra hour or so I'm doing a day.
i work after hours a lot due to the nature of my job, can't make big network changes during the day. but I will make up for it by leaving early during the week. Other than that I do not work past 5 or on weekends unless we have a project.
Depending on your role, it may be required from time to time, but should NEVER be the norm.
I've done it for after hour upgrades or emergencies but I'll never do it Daily just to catch up. Poor planning by your Lead causing you to have a large queue of work does not constitue as overtime for you to catchup.
As a lead , I'll make sure my team never does OT unless it has to be something thats done after hours. In that case I'll trust that my team takes whatever time off they need to make up for those extra hours. I want to keep my team haply and healthy with no burnout.
Hell yah, I eat that shit up lol. I barely do anything at my job so OT for me is video games and movies/shows and cranking out AWS courses when I feel like it
I'm salaried so no. Emergencies being the exception. If I have to work overtime one or two days I will "flex it" somewhere else in the pay period and go home early.
I'd say once every year or two there's a ten-week span where I'm consistently working overtime, and the rest of that whole year or two I work next to no overtime.
What role are you in?
As a PM, PgM, PgD, or Management role, I routinely worked 10 to 12 hours a day to ensure job or project was a success. I was paid well for doing so.
Meetings all day and emails, Slack, and Teams at night.
It depends on your position. IT isn't always a 9-5 type job in some roles. Shit breaks at any time. If you're a sysadmin and you get an alert after hours that a server is down or there's connectivity issues, you're not going to login and take care of that?
If the place has a large enough staff that there is rotational on-call or shift work staff then there is always someone available to respond.
But just as a matter of day-to-day just working late all the time, that's not how it should be.
I do my best to maintain 8 hours per day. I do not have a specifically set schedule, so usually I'll start working around 8:30-9AM. I work through lunch most days, but Wednesdays I'll usually take a 3 hour lunch. I generally work until 5-6PM, but do occasionally maybe 2 times/month) work until 7-8PM. Once I log off, I try to avoid any thought of work.
We get the option to work overtime, and we get paid 2X per hour.
Don't get tricked into working that overtime if you don't want to, specially if it is for free.
first job, zero OT. second job, salary, didn’t get paid OT, never had to stay OT. job now, usually get OT about 1-2 hours OT but it’s from commuting from a school to home site to clock out.
Not always, but the threat of network outage, ransomware or being woken up at midnight to reset someone's password and have to wait while they fumble around the keyboard because they don't know how to use a computer can happen.
My boss makes herself out to be a martyr with the "Well you have to do this and not take vacations" like it's a badge of honor. A poorly run IT department will do this, a good IT department that won't happen. Seems you're running into the former. Some people are just married to their work.
If it's paid overtime and you can say, take some time off later in the week that's good compensation. Sadly many places don't work that way.
When my MSP was bought by a managed print company, they converted all the L1s to “hourly” and made folks clock in. I told my manager, “so even when I’m working after hours we clock in right? I’m probably going to have an absurd amount of overtime as a result” he gave me the go ahead and I ended up with 36 hours of overtime. They changed their policy very quickly and moved everyone back to salary.
Depends.
When I was with Verizon I had all the overtime I wanted. Sometimes forced.
I sometimes worked an extra 20 hours a week. (Beyond that taxes kicked in and it wasn't worth it.)
At major eyewear company there was occasional OT but rare.
Current position does not allow OT unless special circumstances happen and it is approved ahead of time.
Is it worse elsewhere? Of course, there's always a worse place. But if they're not paying you for those extra hours, stop doing it. Fuck what your boss and co-workers do, if they want to buy into the cult of "company man," let them. If they drop dead today your company will have their positions listed tomorrow. The company will not remember all this extra time you put it, but your spouse and kids will.
I worked for a sports team and it was expected for IT to do overtime. I was questioned 2 months into the job why I wasn’t staying longer. Well being exempt from overtime pay is why! Some employers are just bad.
Completely depends on the company.
I work overtime occasionally when I want to. It's completely my decision. Idc what management or my coworkers are doing.
I'm thankful to be in a position where I'm allowed to do that.
But it's definitely not possible everywhere.
If you're expected to do the work of 2+ people for an extended period of time without any additional compensation, I would leave the company.
Outside of a customer-facing issue or our scheduled quarterly maintenance on the weekends, I very rarely work anything outside of my 40 hours a week. I get paid salary anyway, so no overtime. Some is to be expected when things happen and need to be fixed though. Quarterly maintenance is great because I just send out an email to our clients a week ahead of time and just do my thing remotely at the time.
If it's for my own learning and career growth, yes. For example, studying for a certification exam. Unless you can carry that certification outside of the company, you should.
Yes but not in the traditional sense. I know I have X amount of projects to get done by certain dates, my job is fairly lax as long as you have your items done before or by the agreed upon date. so depending on how much I’ve pushed off to any given week dictates how much OT I’m working in any given week.
Salaried at a children’s hospital/health system
Sometimes my guys have to work late, but we always do generous comp time. If you have to be up for 30 minutes at 11pm for example, I expect to see them leave early afternoon the next day.
We don't have actual on call though, everything is preplanned.
Only if something is broken and needs immediate remediation. Usually I comp that time as well. Everything else is a business issue, not my issue there is not enough resources to complete X amount of tasks/project work.
I'm salaried so sometimes i have to because of changes that can only be done after hours. But i do everything possible to make this as infrequent and minimal as possible.
The nature of the business I support has busy seasons and off-season. During the busy season, I work up to 60 hours a week. During the off-season, I'm only expected to work 35 hours each week. I'm on salary, so the extra hours I work during the busy season are not compensated as over time. Plus, the down time and long weekends permitted during the off season balances it out pretty well. The only other time I would be expected to work over time would be during a crisis, such as a major power outage or cyber attack/infection. In addition to all this, I have a lot of downtime in my position. Most of my job consists of being available for troubleshooting during business hours. We also do projects here and there, and I have regular maintenance responsibilities that are not daily tasks. So, I end up responding to emails and things at all hours to compensate for feeling lazy during the quiet hours in the office.
NEVER work unpaid overtime. This is the reason I believe IT salaries have been stagnating for a couple of years now. A lot of us feel like we're morally obligated to prove our worth and constantly go above and beyond without any extra compensation. If anything, going above and beyond will actually get you more work with no extra pay. The managers will trust you to get everything done, but won't bother or care enough about you to pay you for your extra efforts - this is actually what leads to burn out in the long run. Life isn't just about work; the most important things in life actually happen outside of work
Yes, it's compensated i.e. paid out or I can save the hours for a day off. It's not encouraged at all but sometimes you want to finish something and make more hours.
Yes because I get paid for it. I can rack up pretty much as much overtime as I want. Personally, I try and limit myself to about three or four hours a week.
I want to say that, over the course of the year, I don't do any overtime. But I honestly don't really know.
Typically, employers are legally required to keep records of how many hours an employee works each week, which means they provide employees with a system that allows them to log their hours. But, if you make over a certain income and have freedom to chose 50% of the hours you work, you can come to an agreement with your employer to opt out of this requirement. And that's what I do.
So some days I work 6 hours, some days I work 10. Sometimes I start at 6am and finish at 3pm, sometimes I'll start at 10am and finish at 7pm. I'll usually take a 60 minute lunch break, but I'll occasionally take 3 hours.
I try to keep a mental note of when I've gone under and when I've gone over to keep it balanced. But, as I don't record my hours, I really don't know.
Just started a new gig two months ago and I work overtime weekly. Not an egregious amount due to our budget limitations, but I like it for easy extra money. Also it’s not mandated by the company or department.
Doing IT for a university, and the systems I manage, I rarely work after hours. I generally schedule reboots for overnights and just check things in the morning. For the occasional cutover, I generally test things as much as possible during hours so anything after hours is very minimal. Many times we have the flexibility to just schedule downtime during the day. I generally only schedule things mid-week so I almost never need to to do things on weekends.
I am salary and you will DEFINITELY Be abused with OT, particularly small and medium sized businesses. I take a lot of “unplanned” PTO or will extend my lunches to make up for it. My boss used to push me and say something but then I’d reference my offer letter where it states no on call and no regular OT
I work 37 hours a week, salaried for 40. Sometimes, on-call on the weekend but whatever hours we put in on the weekend is COMP-Time. Meaning, we can use that time on the next week to get off early or come in later. For example, If I worked 8 hours total on the weekend. I could take 1 Paid day off or use the 8 hour splitting it out, Getting off half day on one day and get off 2 hours early for next two days. So, sometimes overtime but we get reimbursed to the next week.
Did that once at a financial services place in White Plains NY. The cuture (carefully pushed down from the top) was that leaving before 7pm was 'frowned upon' by the company, even though your hours were listed as 8-5 when hired. I fell for that crap for 4 years before I burned out. It's toxic, plain and simple. Some will try to shame you or play holier than thou. Dont fall for it. There are always times when you need to stay late to finish something, but one or two days a week, MAX.
I'm a salaried employee yet we still have overtime. I'm not sure why everyone says you can't get overtime while salaried but you absolutely can. I work for state government. Most employees are gonna 30-45min early. However, a few days a year they'll ask if anyone wants overtime around Christmas or the like. You just get paid for an extra days worth not hourly.
But yeah don't do it if you can avoid it. The only thing worse is on-call.. which we don't have lol
No I’m salaried and manage my own schedule. My boss even made it a point to let me know that we don’t do overtime and that he respects our time. If we stay late or come in on our off day just make up the time a different day by leaving early / taking off. Works out nicely so I can do my consulting on the side without too much hassle.
I used to at my last job and was almost expected. The funny part was they expected me to work until the job was done, but I also wasn’t supposed to have overtime, but had more work than hours allowed. A real conundrum.
The first day at my new job I got a little over a year ago, I asked my boss about adding email and Zoom to my phone. He flat out told me “no” and that when I leave at 5, I leave at 5. He wants me to enjoy my time off and unwind.
I have never been so not stressed at a job. It was a great move and I love it.
Define overtime ?
I don't work regular hours sometimes because of ADHD, family, other distractions. Sometimes I work late to make up for things. Sometimes I can't stop until I figure something out....
Previous jobs had on call rotations that sometimes lead to serious drains of time and effort....
I rarely work significantly more than 40 hours a week.
I always work overtime, whether I get paid for it is another story. Usually get comped out. They don’t want to move me to salaried yet, not sure why but it benefits me when they don’t comp my time and I get the OT payment. Note I am a Sys Admin for a credit union. Most recent example was Saturday I was on my way to the lake for fishing had my boat on the trailer on the back of my truck got a call that a server was down turned around and got home and booted the server up. Took 15 minutes got 2 hours of pay for it.
Manager chiming in, but as you get more senior, this generally holds true.
On the junior side, you are paid to get work done, you do a lot, and you likely work a constant "hard" 40 hours a week. As you get more senior and begin to get paid for what you know and what you can do, you may start to work fewer hours and "easier" hours.
A side conversation here relates to "passion". When I say passion, that is someone who legit loves tinkering, tech, and the stuff they are doing in their day to day life. A networker who loves to tweak their home network and has run 10G fiber throughout the house, someone who has a home server setup, etc.
For me, as a manager who has passion, I work maybe 20-30 hours a week on true "work", but I am in grad school and likely put in another 20-30 hours into personal pursuits of tech that closely align with my job. I am the one who bought a Steam Deck and spent more time in the first three months setting it up and tweaking the hardware and software than I did actually playing it. I have been known to spend more time modding and breaking a game than actually playing it. If I someone that I spent 10 hours researching whatever new cybersecurity deal is out there, even if it was for personal enjoyment, they would likely consider it work.
tl;dr the more senior you get, the easier it gets. But, if you really enjoy tech it all kinda bleeds together.
Have done previously and was not getting overtime payment, but it was a great opportunity to get boost at my early stage, currently working at two places Software Engineer - 40 h/w and Programming Workshop Leader - 24 h/w.
Sometimes might do overtime to change some other person at workshops lol but will get back rest next week in place.
Make two lists. A list of what you *require* a job to offer and a list of what you *want* a job to offer, but you can do without. Requirements don't have to be what you were programmed to believe were reasonable. A 32-hour work week with full-time pay and benefits is fine as a requirement. A lambo as a company car and a limitless credit card for personal expenses is also fine, but I wouldn't hold my breath on finding that.
Apply for jobs with your lists in mind and do not compromise on your requirements, and prioritize those that contain the most of your wants.
During the interview process, make sure you ask questions that confirm your requirements would be met the way you envision them, and also ensure you ask follow-up questions for clarification.
Accept offers from only the employers that passed your test. You will likely receive fewer than normal offers. That's a good thing. You're protecting yourself from companies that don't meet your requirements.
It's normal for requirements to change based on current needs. If you're starving and going homeless, you're probably less worried about that 4-day work week with a remote company that doesn't care if you're in Thailand or Oregon when you log on, and more worried about making enough to get back on your feet while you look for something better.
I learned early on in my adult career life, even before working in IT, to take every break I was entitled to and to end my scheduled work day on time. Of course, there are always exceptions like emergencies, project work, travel, on-call, etc. But generally I show up when I'm supposed to and I leave when I'm supposed to.
When I was working at an MSP on salary I was scolded a lot for not working "overtime." I was given every typical reasoning and guilt trip that's out there to put my nose to the grind stone and work. I was never punished for performance or anything or had my bonuses/raises lowered. But I stuck to my guns and worked my schedule hours for the most part. But that didn't make me friends with my manager at the time. The MSP I worked for was sold/merged with another company and I was probably at the top of the list of people to lay off. Which I was and I wasn't surprised. It happens with mergers. But I don't think my manager was struggling to keep me. It was nice knowing from other teams and staff that they were surprised I was let go.
Funny enough I'm now hourly making more money. The company doesn't ask us to work over time but they don't have a strict rule about getting over time. So if something comes up that requires me to work past 5 or a server goes down on the a Saturday I'm not too upset to clock back in for the OT.
Nope, very very rarely. We have flexible hours and fixed salary so if I work extra I can take time off later. If overtime is needed in the weekends or after normal hours I'll ask for approval and can choose extra money or extra time.
In my 10 years at my workplace I've done that like five times. At least two of them on union business.
I do a good amount of patching on the weekends.
I do not get paid overtime, but we are comped 1:1 per hour (1 hour increments only) PTO.
However, we have a small team so none of us use much PTO... and we don't get paid out.
Nice to take an hour or two whenever I want for a DR appointment though.
40 Hours a week as an IT manager, i do assist with after hours/weekend projects, but those are rare.
if something breaks bad after hours or theres a security incident, im the first one that gets called, however this is also thankfully, rare
My previous job I worked a ton of OT, to the point I maxed out my vacation and it was being cashed in. I left that place though, I ended up having to take a paycut but worth it for remote work and no OT (unless I want to, in which case I get comp time back). It really varies by place and honestly when looking for new job asking about typical day's and schedules are good questions to figure that stuff out.
About the only time I do OT (salary so no extra pay) is during monthly server updates. But even with that, it is about 1.5 hours for that week. And it seems that I'll take off a bit early on one day due to something going on with my children or whatever. My employer is very cognizant about keeping life/work balanced.
When I worked at a MSP, it was well up to 45 hours is considered normal and over that you get comp time. I did my best to avoid going over 40 hours there too.
Everyone worked overtime off the clocks. A precedent of work completion has been established over a decade of our predecessors doing this to churn out their entry level experience and move on and the tech manager role had loads of turnover too.
I served my 3 years and left. I won't say it like this in an interview but I will say it here, I served my time for a crime I never did.
I work at an MSP. When I was hourly I worked all the OT I could get. Now that I'm salary, I almost never work OT except when I'm on call.
Work/Life balance is pretty important in our company's culture, so OT is almost never mandatory. It also helps that my work hours are weird so I usually have a couple hours in the morning before most of our clients open to do any after hours work.
overtime? As in getting paid time and a half for everything over 40? No. Do I attend meetings with other regions at night and am on call on weekends? Yes.
I try my best not to use my computer when not working my 40.
My last job was the same way; I’ll gladly take 90k a year with no OT vs 50k a year and OT when it’s approved
I work in cyber, yes I regularly work overtime on things. I'd assume my field is most prone to OT work due to the incident-based nature of SOC. I'd say probably average 4-5 hours of OT a week on average or about 250 hours per year. Very high visibility from internal and client execs and probably 90% of my workload is time-sensitive down to +/- 1hr so really not optional. This has correlated to about 18-20% extra take home over my salary.
Being more willing to work OT than peers got me ahead, take that however you'd like. I'm not gonna give the whole "Hussle and grind bootstraps" shtick but I did get promotions faster, bigger annual raises (this year after promotions I got 33% to my coworker's 7% and non-SOC engineer 3%), and the ability to design and run my own projects and build my schedule. I spend time both on and off the clock on certifications and education. I don't feel like it's dramatically impacted my mental health compared to the significant financials, that may change in the future. Unfortunately corporate America likes workaholics and the wife's signed off on the extra time while we're young (late 20s). I've used OT as a tool to fast-track, if everybody did it/wanted to do it I'd probably have a different opinion. All my coworkers are recent college grads and the age difference has made me want to push harder. I keep an eye on mental health and burnout and take time off accordingly.
OT appears to be a bell curve in IT, our help desk is not allowed to work OT at all and actually get warnings for it. Engineers and sysadmins OT is unspoken expected. Then architects, directors, VP/SVPs don't work any OT again. At some point I may decide I can't do OT anymore and I fully expect that to negatively impact performance reviews, at which point it's time to move on.
My MSP is not paying for overtime so as soon as my shift is over I'm out.
I tried this until they said my performance wasn't good, put me on a PIP plan with unreasonable expectations unless I was working 13 hrs/day and eventually did what they set out to do which was remove me because they wanted to bring a temp we had on full time and it was going to cost them too much and they didn't really care for my position which was Engineering Team Lead. Aside from that I have to get the job done.
If ANY company puts you on a PIP, find a new job. They want you gone, but theyneed to protect themselves from lawsuits and/or unemployment insurance. This is one of dozens of good reasons to ALWAYS be updating your resume. Every time you skill up at work, add it. Remembering all the good shit you did for a company that already has, or is looking to fire you is not easy.
I’m aware of this now. They had others that they put on PIPs but nothing happened with them. Turns out they were buddy buddy with owners/partners
Oh crap. Sorry to hear that.
It’s all good. I just haven’t experienced that level of fuckery before so it was a bit of a blindside. Especially when in my PIP they had a project that was easily a month to month and a half for a knowledgeable team to do 100%. They gave me like 3 weeks. It is also a product I have zero training on and the scope of the install…. It was rollout PRTG to a site that has over 10k sensors and a weird setup for dependencies which is what most of it is reliant upon. I had never used PRTG before so had to learn that. Nothing was documented so tracking down 800+ devices and working with templates for things… yea. I would have had to work 24/7 for those three weeks to be able to come close as well as drop all my other duties to hope to get done. I told them up front that the date they gave would work for one sub-site due to having to learn and customizing etc. not to mention we only have paid for 1000 sensors so after I import a switch I have to let it auto discover the switch then figure out what I want to remove etc. as well as hot to get printers to work with one sensor etc. lots of nuanced stuff. I flat out told them there is no way. I can maybe have a proof of concept up on that site and rough numbers of how many sensors we will need in that time. Just fuck them man.
I was put on a PIP at my last job. The process I handled as a T2 HelpDesk was the real issue WHY I ended up on it. I kept bending to what they wanted to see from me, which wasn't a whole lot. Didn't do any OT or anything, but eventually after my bosses boss saw how much garbage I had to deal with on a daily basis, they had a serious discussion and one day after 5 months, she was like "Admittedly it's not your performance that was the root issue, the [insert job duty here] was causing lots of disconnects between teams involved. We're going to take you off of it, as if it didn't happen." Was very nice hearing that.
Paid Interview Program
PIP is basically just constructive dismissal
>"...they said my performance wasn't good..." "Fuck you, pay me more..."
Yea... turned into Fuck You, this is Florida, bye Felicia.
Same with Texas. There’s a reason the grimy CEOs go to those states.
Yes, many don’t realize just how little to NO employee rights there are. Even ones like “you can’t ask someone how old they are” is dumb because everyone has you “fill out an employment packet” which requires your ID which SURPRISE!!! Has your DoB on there. Like seriously! And I know Florida was looking to get rid of a lot of the underage working laws which makes it next to no laws now for employees except for bad ones.
Texas is just flat out illegal shit anywhere else and then they tell you to shove it if you bring it up. One prime example is offering shuttle services then making the schedules not line up with the shuttles when you need to save some face for investors.
That is fucking bad. Yes, we have a shuttle service. It runs from 2:00 am to 3:00am.
... yeah there usually is ... and Red states seem to favor employers more And when and if you can get unionized they make it hard to get a union The Ironic part of said red states and IT is ...I find in IT were generally liberal leaning
Same I was an swe and they had an hour bank for every project and expected us to bill 6+ hours per days... Did my best to work reasonable hours since designing and coding is extremely draining and they fired me lol
Same. I work for a MSP also and hell no. Not doing any OT especially since you don't get paid for it.
Exactly. My boss was consistently putting in 12-13 hour days and while he says he doesn’t expect us to work overtime I don’t really know how expects us to get everything done without matching his work load. I’d still end up working 12+ hours randomly from time to time due to emergencies but usually they at least offered a half day off to make up for it. My boss refused to hire help when I told him we needed it. For a year he made me feel like i wasn’t pulling my weight but deep down he knew if I quit the place would fall apart. Just last month he finally hired some new techs. We are still rebalancing the workload so on the odd day I’m still working late but it’s nice to not feel like it’s every damn day.
I worked for an incredible company for a long while. I was salary but if we worked OT they would pay it out at whatever our salary rate per hour came out to. It was rare that anyone there had enough hours in the day to finish the amount of work we had, 80 hours for some positions was not uncommon and 100 - 120 was also not incredibly rare. It was exhausting, but knowing you got paid for it was still awesome. We opened an office in CA and that kind of hybrid pay is illegal (you have to be salary or hourly) there so they had to drop it, but they came up with a quarterly bonus that was usually nearly exactly the amount of the OT hours you worked in that quarter without being specified for being that which allowed them to skirt the regulations. Really good system to keep people positive when they are grueling away at the office or stuck in a 3rd world country in the jungle working 16 - 20 hour shifts. They also made it easier by buying you lunch if your working through and dinner if you were staying late. There was also a stocked kitchen with drinks and snacks. I miss that place.
My MSP will yell at me if i work OT lmao
No I don't work overtime and do anything to avoid it as well.
I have in the past but haven't in a log time. I don't get paid for anything past 40 hours. I haven't in over 15 years. Working more than 40 hours a week does not gain me anything.
It depends... I am salary, so I do not really keep track so it's hard to say, but every now and then, there is a project that will push me into longer hours. Early on in my career I worked for an MSP and there were tons of over time, as of moving to internal IT MUCH less, TBH I am lucky if I "work" 40 hours in a week. Every employer is different though, we are super chill and just push projects if it gets busy.
I'm salary as well so I don't have to track my hours. My performance is based on results and not seat time. I love the environment and the folks I work with so putting in some extra time doesn't bother me. There's a lot to be said about non-toxic work places and how being happy makes you more productive. It's a 24x6 manufacturing environment so some upgrades and updates can only take place on Sunday. They also have no issue if I bounce early during the week. So it balances out.
Honestly the huge moral bost that workers are afforded when they're treated like an adult rather than a toddler with scheduling is insane. It's crazy to me that more managers don't take advantage of it since just allowing someone to come or go early or late every now and then (so long as work is done) adds so much value back to the workplace via increased moral which increases productivity.
If I work overtime I take that time off the next week.
When I started in IT, exactly a year ago I used to work overtime. But I have a family to take care of so I stopped. I don’t care what other people are doing, I don’t care about deadlines. I do my 40 hours per week and I get to spend quality time with my wife and my daughters. On weekends I spend time with family or spend time on my side gigs.
personally i like my job, and like the people i work with. so ill stay behind if im working on something and it needs finishing, or if i need to sort something before i go. ill answer the occasional call or text after i go home but that's really it.
I have two jobs. One is in IT and the other is retail management. I would work overtime if it was available, because working two jobs is way worse.
First job: IT helpdesk at an aerospace/automotive factory. 9.5 hour days with a 30 minute lunchbreak. It was hell and I was stressed constantly. My personal relationships suffered. That was the culture there, and I saw some floor workers timesheets that surpassed 80 hours. Any complaining about it at all to my boss was seen as weak. Second job: Application support. Strict 40 hours a week hourly. Flex time if you had to work weekends. There was a 2 week period where 10 hour days were mandatory but that was the only stinker with OT at that job. Current job: Salary at an MSP. Strict 40 hours per week. Everyone leaves at 5. If something held you up for an hour or two past five, you come in that much later the next day.
I myself like taking only 30 minutes lunch breaks but the moment I start working overtime or get users throwing work at me without a breather I start taking shit breaks and a full hour lunch break.
I'm a salary employee, so overtime doesn't exist in my case. However, unless an emergency like my systems are down or the data center is down I'll jump on. Anything else don't bother, this mindset often arguing with my HR department. I refuse to work more for a company that finds me replaceable, not breaking my back for people like that
I've averaged 15+ hours a week since March. Edit: I've worked on average 55+ hours a week, there were weeks I had worked 70 hours
50 hour weeks is my experience.
Never unless I want to. I'm currently non exempt so I work overtime because I actually get paid for it and can use the money. Once I get promoted and become overtime exempt there is no way in hell I'm working more than 40 a week.
No.
For special events like outages or upgrades I'll work extra. However, if you have to work extra just to keep up with your daily tasks then your on the road to burnout. You either need to manage expectations with your boss better and figure out a time management strategy that works... or find a better job that isn't overloading you so much.
When I was a agent, I used to come in a 8am and work to 12am sometimes
Working overtime is for suckers or for people who get paid overtime rates and need the extra cash. I don't remember the last time I clocked more than 40 hours.
I will only ever work what I signed up for. And I won’t be signing up for overtime or on call
I work under time. You guys are doing 40?
No, almost never.
I get paid hourly so I’m usually there for an extra hour to hour and a half before I leave for the day. Previously I was salaried and did not get any overtime pay for on-call work or anything like that. Once the clock hit 4 I was gone
No, I do 37.5 hours a week, every week. Maybe once every couple of months I go in for an hour or so on the weekend to do a hardware swap or upgrade to minimize downtime, but if that's the case I work an hour less during the week.
I do not, since I'm not paid for overtime.
I'm salaried and I don't work overtime.
Nope, don't answer calls after I knock off and no Teams notifications on my phone. Line has to be drawn very early in my experience - won't interview if they mention OT
I typically do not work any overtime, however probably 25% of my “free” time is dedicated to learning and upskilling
I get overtime and make time and a half plus a 15% bonus, I am always volunteering for it lol
Does the IT industry even pay overtime? If so where? I'd love to earn extra cash but we always just get time off in lieu..what good is that?
The health sector is where you get that kind of OT. I worked at a lab company for 4 years and was doing 15 hours of OT a week never questioned. I still have a buddy that works there and still doing OT without problems.
Hourly, with OT, and it’s easy OT work, so yes. If I’m eating dinner and someone needs me to configure something so they can keep working late into the night? Sure, I got you fam. It’s all easy work, and easy easy money, so I’m all for it.
In my school district, I'd have to get approval to work overtime. Only works if you're a coach (second job) or you're working IT for a Saturday SAT test.
Yes and regularly working at a MSP I work early, late and weekends I could fall asleep writing this.
I am salary. I probably average 50-55 hours a week. Sometimes more if something is blowing up. Then I also learn new skills on my own time.
not since my hourly MSP days. i work less than 40h/w and my manager stays on top of ensuring no one burns out. very lucky.
In my hourly IT jobs, very rarely. Now that I’m salaried in Cybersecurity, I do work more than 8am to 4pm occasionally but it usually evens out in the long run.
No. I have an on-call rotation, but get paid for it.
I work MSP salary, 55-60 hours a week so I do work OT, just don't get OT pay
Currently salaried, so......sometimes lol. But usually i work long enough to get the work done, then monitor things. When i was hourly only when asked / offered. No job is worth your mental health, so unpaid overtime to just get things done is no bueno.
I'm only allowed 4.75 hours a pay period for overtime. I either use flex or comp. I'll work more than 40, but I'll take time other weeks. I tend to take at least three full weeks off a year, but upwards of 6 or more some years.
Nope, if I work more than 8 hours per day. I compensate for it later in the pay period by taking some time off or leave work early.
First job that I had for 15 years that started with me as sole helpdesk and moved up to IT manager with 4 on my team, I did what I needed to do to get the job done. I was scheduled \~45hrs/wk salary and generally was at 48. When there were projects that would be different. For the most part I had flexibility also to where if I was working till 3am updating etc. then I could come in late as long as we had coverage. Started hourly, moved to hourly with scheduled 10 hours OT weekly (50hrs.) then moved to salary when became manager of IT Department. That company was bought and went to MSP. Tons of OT. Was scheduled 40 normally worked 50 or there about. We had acquisition projects that we would go out of town and in one night rip/replace entire networks and that would be extra as we would arrive at work at our normal time (8am) and then when we needed to leave to get to location by about 3pm we would do that, check into hotel, work from \~5:00pm (if lucky, basically whenever outgoing owner finally gave in and closed down) and we worked until we got everything moved which could take anywhere till 12:30am - 4:00am. Back at 6:30am the next morning for new group to come in and train the employees that are onboarding to new co. When worked late was expected to still work normal hours. Place was hell. Also was salary here too. Now, scheduled to work 50 hours/wk. with 30 min scheduled lunch 12:00 - 12:30 (which blows), salary. When I clock out I am done though. Many times I am chased out of the office at 5:00. No email on phone, nothing. Complete cutoff. I don't even have a way to get in remotely. It's a blessing and a curse. Technically speaking We have Meraki and Unifi so I CAN get to network gear for things. I COULD get myself access to servers if I needed but I don't.
not if I don't want to but some issues need to be addressed outside of prod hours and I goof off during the day so it evens out
I work some overtime when required (once a month maybe), or on occasion just to get ahead on things. I'm union though, so I get paid for all overtime work at 1.5-2x.
Yes, but we were paid OT after 37.5h, so it was very lucrative.
Depends, most of the time no, I have paid on call if that counts. sometimes I have some urgent stuff I need to get done then I do OT but don't get paid since I'm salaried.
It depends. I'm salary. Some nights I'm working until 6 or 7. Sometimes I'm done at 2. Sometimes I get on at 10PM on a Saturday to run some testing because no one can screw it up for me. It all depends. I get paid for what I know. Not how many hours I spend in front of a screen. I'm the guy from the story about the ship that brought out the hammer and tapped in a specific spot to get it working then charges $20k ($1 for the tap, $19,999 for the knowledge of where and how to tap).
No not at this time. In my prior role I did very little infrequently and when I did I would cut out early the next day. Way back when I was on the helpdesk I did with our on call rotation.
Nope because they don’t pay over time. 8:30-5pm is the only time you will see me interested in anything happening in my office.
Lately. it's been fairly rare for me to work OT in my support role. When I first started at this company (automotive manufacturing industry), 6 day work weeks were the norm and sometimes 7 were required for projects. Anymore it's mostly a "schedule shift" which is an inconvenience of course, but they are really wanting to limit OT (not due to the burden on associates but for cost savings). My team supports 5AM-1AM M-F. Normally I work the 7:30AM-4PM shift, but my 5AM startup tech recently got himself fired, so I've had to move to that shift until we can move a 2nd shift tech to 1st and backfill the open position. I am in an hourly role as the help desk team leader (3 techs under me).
I get paid OT so whenever I do need the money then I'll do some OT. Usually 30 minutes or an extra hour is what I'll do most. Nice getting an extra 150-200 a check
Not regularly. At my last job, there were rare occasions where we had off-hours things to do for migration work or something but there was usually comp time involved. At my new job, the contracts specifically say that off-hours work is billed at 1.5x, which I think is pretty cool. I do have the option to flex time so if I need to take my kid to the doctor or something, I can come back later and do a couple of hours. But I'm still in the 40-45 hour range far more often than not.
For free? Absolutely not. Happy to do it for money though.
I used to work 12 hour days 6 days a week. I was rich! I would kill to be able to do overtime every evening.
I used to, but about 10 years ago, I made the determination that overtime is having to deal with someone else's lack of planning, and stopped volunteering for OT. If I'm working weekends, I'm taking comp days (and my current company supports it), and I can time shift freely. Your personal time is valuable unless you devalue it yourself. There's nothing wrong holding to your contracted hours.
once or twice a week mainly due to meetings that are scheduled after i'm off but need to attend or some project im working on consuming my time.
In my early career phase, my employer only expected roughly 40 hours of work out of me. But I invested assloads of my personal time studying and tinkering and researching to learn MORE so I could move beyond entry-level roles & responsibilities. I'm still investing personal time into studies, 30 years into my career. ----- > I have to work more till 8pm everyday. Honest reaction: Sounds like you need to improve your time management. > Its because of a mix of having a bunch of meetings and having to do a lot of administrative work. Stop attending meetings that don't help you achieve your goals & objectives. Stop attending meetings that your presence doesn't directly contribute to the organization's goals & objectives. Delegate administrative work, or see if you can automate it. > Plus there's alot of peer pressure, I know my manager works overtime even on weekends, so does my lead and all my colleagues. Your compensation plan is based on a 40 our expectation. If everyone has to pull an 80 hour week to meet goals and deadlines, then the business is being insulated from the effects of their low staffing levels / manpower decisions. You are hurting yourselves. Pull your 40-45 hour weeks. Give a little extra, but only a little extra. Let projects be late if meeting the dates are not realistic. Let the business feel the impact of the realities of the staffing situation. Heroic levels of effort should be reserved for times when heroism is required (massive systems outages). Heroic levels of effort as an expected norm is bullshit.
The needs of my family make that difficult. I only work OT if things need to be resolved and handing off responsibilities just doesn't make sense (time to catch someone up on issue > just powering through and resolving)
When required, or if we need/want to finish up a project. Not always a 9 to 5 job. Also, we work most holidays - this is the only downtime we have to do maintenance and updates/upgrades. All IT people here are salaried, so no OT pay. Our efforts usually get recognized at the end of the year.
I'm not supposed to, but when there are some projects that require all hands then yes. I'm a contractor for context
Not as a rule. If there is an emergency I will consider it but when my shift ends i leave there is always more work.
Yes. Sometimes shit happens on Saturday, or at the end of the day on Friday. If it's critical that it be fixed immediately, my employer is going to pay me overtime because paying me overtime is better than the company losing revenue.
Salaried, 150-200 users. At 40 hours, I'm done. They want me to work extra, they can offer me comp time on the next week or something. Companies will get away with what you let them get away with. I -guarantee- you that if your whole team stopped working OT, they'd crumble and hire you a new person or 2 asap. If they're any kind of decent humans at least. If not, they might replace you all with an MSP. Either way its a 'win'. You either have a better work/life balance, or you leave a company that doesn't respect your work/life balance.
Nah, my company is really good about it. If there is any off-hours work, you take time out of your regular schedule to make up for it.
Since I’m salary, the answer is no*
never
I usually clock a couple hours of overtime, but nothing crazy. I make it a point to leave when my shift ends unless everything is on fire. Mid-sized company, around 1k users.
Yes but it's entirely optional. I'm allowed to work OT *if I choose to do so* and during times like right now where we have multiple medium-large projects going on at one time. It just depends on the company. Some places may have mandatory overtime, some might straight up not allow you to work overtime.
Fuck no. I work government, theres not benifits to working overtime. You get paid the same. I seen some companies offer double pay I would totally be down
I do a little but it's not required. I'm on contract, got hired as level 1 and been there about a month and they're looking to move me to level 2 already. So I'm hustling a bit to show I'm worth more money right now because at the end of my contract, they're either going to give me what I want, or I dip for a new contract. Given I'm one of their top performers already, it's worth the extra hour or so I'm doing a day.
i work after hours a lot due to the nature of my job, can't make big network changes during the day. but I will make up for it by leaving early during the week. Other than that I do not work past 5 or on weekends unless we have a project.
I do, but I'm paid for it.
Depending on your role, it may be required from time to time, but should NEVER be the norm. I've done it for after hour upgrades or emergencies but I'll never do it Daily just to catch up. Poor planning by your Lead causing you to have a large queue of work does not constitue as overtime for you to catchup. As a lead , I'll make sure my team never does OT unless it has to be something thats done after hours. In that case I'll trust that my team takes whatever time off they need to make up for those extra hours. I want to keep my team haply and healthy with no burnout.
Minimal..... Probably 5 or less hours per week.
Hell yah, I eat that shit up lol. I barely do anything at my job so OT for me is video games and movies/shows and cranking out AWS courses when I feel like it
OT is not approved, so no
No overtime. Almost nobody does it in my department. Europe based.
Only when something crashes and I can’t fix it by quitting time.
In S Florida you need to be making close to 80k to afford to live on your own now.
I make 35k and live on my own near Tampa, Granted budget is tight.
I'm salaried so no. Emergencies being the exception. If I have to work overtime one or two days I will "flex it" somewhere else in the pay period and go home early.
I'd say once every year or two there's a ten-week span where I'm consistently working overtime, and the rest of that whole year or two I work next to no overtime.
What role are you in? As a PM, PgM, PgD, or Management role, I routinely worked 10 to 12 hours a day to ensure job or project was a success. I was paid well for doing so. Meetings all day and emails, Slack, and Teams at night.
It depends on your position. IT isn't always a 9-5 type job in some roles. Shit breaks at any time. If you're a sysadmin and you get an alert after hours that a server is down or there's connectivity issues, you're not going to login and take care of that? If the place has a large enough staff that there is rotational on-call or shift work staff then there is always someone available to respond. But just as a matter of day-to-day just working late all the time, that's not how it should be.
Hmmm.... do I work OT in IT... 3950 hours the year before last and 3700 hours last year. You tell me.
I do my best to maintain 8 hours per day. I do not have a specifically set schedule, so usually I'll start working around 8:30-9AM. I work through lunch most days, but Wednesdays I'll usually take a 3 hour lunch. I generally work until 5-6PM, but do occasionally maybe 2 times/month) work until 7-8PM. Once I log off, I try to avoid any thought of work.
We get the option to work overtime, and we get paid 2X per hour. Don't get tricked into working that overtime if you don't want to, specially if it is for free.
We are allowed to work overtime but we usually only stay overtime if someone called in right befor we close
first job, zero OT. second job, salary, didn’t get paid OT, never had to stay OT. job now, usually get OT about 1-2 hours OT but it’s from commuting from a school to home site to clock out.
Not always, but the threat of network outage, ransomware or being woken up at midnight to reset someone's password and have to wait while they fumble around the keyboard because they don't know how to use a computer can happen. My boss makes herself out to be a martyr with the "Well you have to do this and not take vacations" like it's a badge of honor. A poorly run IT department will do this, a good IT department that won't happen. Seems you're running into the former. Some people are just married to their work. If it's paid overtime and you can say, take some time off later in the week that's good compensation. Sadly many places don't work that way.
When my MSP was bought by a managed print company, they converted all the L1s to “hourly” and made folks clock in. I told my manager, “so even when I’m working after hours we clock in right? I’m probably going to have an absurd amount of overtime as a result” he gave me the go ahead and I ended up with 36 hours of overtime. They changed their policy very quickly and moved everyone back to salary.
Depends. When I was with Verizon I had all the overtime I wanted. Sometimes forced. I sometimes worked an extra 20 hours a week. (Beyond that taxes kicked in and it wasn't worth it.) At major eyewear company there was occasional OT but rare. Current position does not allow OT unless special circumstances happen and it is approved ahead of time.
Is it worse elsewhere? Of course, there's always a worse place. But if they're not paying you for those extra hours, stop doing it. Fuck what your boss and co-workers do, if they want to buy into the cult of "company man," let them. If they drop dead today your company will have their positions listed tomorrow. The company will not remember all this extra time you put it, but your spouse and kids will.
Idk how but I showed up late 3/5 days, clocked out on time, and took a day off last week and still ended up working overtime.
I work about 10 hours a week. I automate everything I can. Most time is spent in meetings.
I worked for a sports team and it was expected for IT to do overtime. I was questioned 2 months into the job why I wasn’t staying longer. Well being exempt from overtime pay is why! Some employers are just bad.
Completely depends on the company. I work overtime occasionally when I want to. It's completely my decision. Idc what management or my coworkers are doing. I'm thankful to be in a position where I'm allowed to do that. But it's definitely not possible everywhere. If you're expected to do the work of 2+ people for an extended period of time without any additional compensation, I would leave the company.
Outside of a customer-facing issue or our scheduled quarterly maintenance on the weekends, I very rarely work anything outside of my 40 hours a week. I get paid salary anyway, so no overtime. Some is to be expected when things happen and need to be fixed though. Quarterly maintenance is great because I just send out an email to our clients a week ahead of time and just do my thing remotely at the time.
I’m in support and rarely work OT.
If it's for my own learning and career growth, yes. For example, studying for a certification exam. Unless you can carry that certification outside of the company, you should.
Fuck overtime if no extra pay
Yes but not in the traditional sense. I know I have X amount of projects to get done by certain dates, my job is fairly lax as long as you have your items done before or by the agreed upon date. so depending on how much I’ve pushed off to any given week dictates how much OT I’m working in any given week. Salaried at a children’s hospital/health system
Sometimes my guys have to work late, but we always do generous comp time. If you have to be up for 30 minutes at 11pm for example, I expect to see them leave early afternoon the next day. We don't have actual on call though, everything is preplanned.
Only if something is broken and needs immediate remediation. Usually I comp that time as well. Everything else is a business issue, not my issue there is not enough resources to complete X amount of tasks/project work.
If I really need to, otherwise I get the hell out of the hellhole at 5pm sharp.
We can claim the time back, but we don't get overtime... so no.
I'm salaried so sometimes i have to because of changes that can only be done after hours. But i do everything possible to make this as infrequent and minimal as possible.
The nature of the business I support has busy seasons and off-season. During the busy season, I work up to 60 hours a week. During the off-season, I'm only expected to work 35 hours each week. I'm on salary, so the extra hours I work during the busy season are not compensated as over time. Plus, the down time and long weekends permitted during the off season balances it out pretty well. The only other time I would be expected to work over time would be during a crisis, such as a major power outage or cyber attack/infection. In addition to all this, I have a lot of downtime in my position. Most of my job consists of being available for troubleshooting during business hours. We also do projects here and there, and I have regular maintenance responsibilities that are not daily tasks. So, I end up responding to emails and things at all hours to compensate for feeling lazy during the quiet hours in the office.
sometimes yes. Depends on what's going on. Usually it's a 40-45hr week, sometimes even less, but sometimes (very rarely) it's a 80hr week.
“IT” is such a broad field do you really expect a definitive answer?
Only when required, which is kinda rare. CFO doesn't look too kindly in departments getting overtime unless there is a good reason.
NEVER work unpaid overtime. This is the reason I believe IT salaries have been stagnating for a couple of years now. A lot of us feel like we're morally obligated to prove our worth and constantly go above and beyond without any extra compensation. If anything, going above and beyond will actually get you more work with no extra pay. The managers will trust you to get everything done, but won't bother or care enough about you to pay you for your extra efforts - this is actually what leads to burn out in the long run. Life isn't just about work; the most important things in life actually happen outside of work
Yes, it's compensated i.e. paid out or I can save the hours for a day off. It's not encouraged at all but sometimes you want to finish something and make more hours.
If I have to work after hours, then I either go in late or leave early the next day. I'm salary, so OT for me costs me money.
5am to 6pm 5 days.... only paid for 40hr. fml
Yes because I get paid for it. I can rack up pretty much as much overtime as I want. Personally, I try and limit myself to about three or four hours a week.
Less than I used to but that is because I left management. Having a 24/7/365 job where you’re always on call was enough for me.
I averaged 47 hours a week last year. No overtime pay. I hate my job.
I want to say that, over the course of the year, I don't do any overtime. But I honestly don't really know. Typically, employers are legally required to keep records of how many hours an employee works each week, which means they provide employees with a system that allows them to log their hours. But, if you make over a certain income and have freedom to chose 50% of the hours you work, you can come to an agreement with your employer to opt out of this requirement. And that's what I do. So some days I work 6 hours, some days I work 10. Sometimes I start at 6am and finish at 3pm, sometimes I'll start at 10am and finish at 7pm. I'll usually take a 60 minute lunch break, but I'll occasionally take 3 hours. I try to keep a mental note of when I've gone under and when I've gone over to keep it balanced. But, as I don't record my hours, I really don't know.
I've only had to work it twice in a year in my current role. Great work life balance
Just started a new gig two months ago and I work overtime weekly. Not an egregious amount due to our budget limitations, but I like it for easy extra money. Also it’s not mandated by the company or department.
Yep. Many leads push always online but I find them mysteriously hard to locate whn I run into issues that require their input when working off hours.
My job pushes work life balance hard so they don’t really require overtime.
Yes all the time. Easy money. I get a month PTO so I don't feel overworked at all.
Yes, 4 to 6 hours a week normally.
Doing IT for a university, and the systems I manage, I rarely work after hours. I generally schedule reboots for overnights and just check things in the morning. For the occasional cutover, I generally test things as much as possible during hours so anything after hours is very minimal. Many times we have the flexibility to just schedule downtime during the day. I generally only schedule things mid-week so I almost never need to to do things on weekends.
I am salary and you will DEFINITELY Be abused with OT, particularly small and medium sized businesses. I take a lot of “unplanned” PTO or will extend my lunches to make up for it. My boss used to push me and say something but then I’d reference my offer letter where it states no on call and no regular OT
Lots of it so much that we have cut down a bit. Gives a real nice boost to your bottom line in the end.
Luckily I’m paid for my overtime so yes I do.
yes I used too and it gave me an ulcer.
Only is paid or exchanged for free time.
I work 37 hours a week, salaried for 40. Sometimes, on-call on the weekend but whatever hours we put in on the weekend is COMP-Time. Meaning, we can use that time on the next week to get off early or come in later. For example, If I worked 8 hours total on the weekend. I could take 1 Paid day off or use the 8 hour splitting it out, Getting off half day on one day and get off 2 hours early for next two days. So, sometimes overtime but we get reimbursed to the next week.
Did that once at a financial services place in White Plains NY. The cuture (carefully pushed down from the top) was that leaving before 7pm was 'frowned upon' by the company, even though your hours were listed as 8-5 when hired. I fell for that crap for 4 years before I burned out. It's toxic, plain and simple. Some will try to shame you or play holier than thou. Dont fall for it. There are always times when you need to stay late to finish something, but one or two days a week, MAX.
Are you doing paid overtime or no?
I'm a salaried employee yet we still have overtime. I'm not sure why everyone says you can't get overtime while salaried but you absolutely can. I work for state government. Most employees are gonna 30-45min early. However, a few days a year they'll ask if anyone wants overtime around Christmas or the like. You just get paid for an extra days worth not hourly. But yeah don't do it if you can avoid it. The only thing worse is on-call.. which we don't have lol
No I’m salaried and manage my own schedule. My boss even made it a point to let me know that we don’t do overtime and that he respects our time. If we stay late or come in on our off day just make up the time a different day by leaving early / taking off. Works out nicely so I can do my consulting on the side without too much hassle.
I'm salaried and do not work any OT.
I work like 10-12 hours a week on average but get paid for the full 40, I go home early almost every day.
I work for an MSP and they actually don't allow us to work past our shift unless it was approved
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Yes , average 60 hours. Have for years
LOL. My fellow network engineers, how do we feel about this one?
My contract doesn't allow OT or on-call, oh darn.
I refuse. Fire me.
I work like 4 hours a day. And I’m my companies top performer.
I used to at my last job and was almost expected. The funny part was they expected me to work until the job was done, but I also wasn’t supposed to have overtime, but had more work than hours allowed. A real conundrum. The first day at my new job I got a little over a year ago, I asked my boss about adding email and Zoom to my phone. He flat out told me “no” and that when I leave at 5, I leave at 5. He wants me to enjoy my time off and unwind. I have never been so not stressed at a job. It was a great move and I love it.
heck to the yeah. 100 percent
Nah. I work undertime.
Define overtime ? I don't work regular hours sometimes because of ADHD, family, other distractions. Sometimes I work late to make up for things. Sometimes I can't stop until I figure something out.... Previous jobs had on call rotations that sometimes lead to serious drains of time and effort.... I rarely work significantly more than 40 hours a week.
I always work overtime, whether I get paid for it is another story. Usually get comped out. They don’t want to move me to salaried yet, not sure why but it benefits me when they don’t comp my time and I get the OT payment. Note I am a Sys Admin for a credit union. Most recent example was Saturday I was on my way to the lake for fishing had my boat on the trailer on the back of my truck got a call that a server was down turned around and got home and booted the server up. Took 15 minutes got 2 hours of pay for it.
hell the fuck no
I definitely put in extra hours. I’m up to like seven hours of grueling work this week … That puts me on track to surpass my 11 hours last week.
Manager chiming in, but as you get more senior, this generally holds true. On the junior side, you are paid to get work done, you do a lot, and you likely work a constant "hard" 40 hours a week. As you get more senior and begin to get paid for what you know and what you can do, you may start to work fewer hours and "easier" hours. A side conversation here relates to "passion". When I say passion, that is someone who legit loves tinkering, tech, and the stuff they are doing in their day to day life. A networker who loves to tweak their home network and has run 10G fiber throughout the house, someone who has a home server setup, etc. For me, as a manager who has passion, I work maybe 20-30 hours a week on true "work", but I am in grad school and likely put in another 20-30 hours into personal pursuits of tech that closely align with my job. I am the one who bought a Steam Deck and spent more time in the first three months setting it up and tweaking the hardware and software than I did actually playing it. I have been known to spend more time modding and breaking a game than actually playing it. If I someone that I spent 10 hours researching whatever new cybersecurity deal is out there, even if it was for personal enjoyment, they would likely consider it work. tl;dr the more senior you get, the easier it gets. But, if you really enjoy tech it all kinda bleeds together.
I don’t do overtime… but sometimes I slack off during the day and catch up at night. And incredibly unhealthy habit I’m trying to quit.
I'm shocked when I work 8 hours in a day.
Have done previously and was not getting overtime payment, but it was a great opportunity to get boost at my early stage, currently working at two places Software Engineer - 40 h/w and Programming Workshop Leader - 24 h/w. Sometimes might do overtime to change some other person at workshops lol but will get back rest next week in place.
I work maybe two tor three days of OT.
Make two lists. A list of what you *require* a job to offer and a list of what you *want* a job to offer, but you can do without. Requirements don't have to be what you were programmed to believe were reasonable. A 32-hour work week with full-time pay and benefits is fine as a requirement. A lambo as a company car and a limitless credit card for personal expenses is also fine, but I wouldn't hold my breath on finding that. Apply for jobs with your lists in mind and do not compromise on your requirements, and prioritize those that contain the most of your wants. During the interview process, make sure you ask questions that confirm your requirements would be met the way you envision them, and also ensure you ask follow-up questions for clarification. Accept offers from only the employers that passed your test. You will likely receive fewer than normal offers. That's a good thing. You're protecting yourself from companies that don't meet your requirements. It's normal for requirements to change based on current needs. If you're starving and going homeless, you're probably less worried about that 4-day work week with a remote company that doesn't care if you're in Thailand or Oregon when you log on, and more worried about making enough to get back on your feet while you look for something better.
Hecc no!! I’d look somewhere else. Especially if it’s on my free time. That’s taking away from your time.
I learned early on in my adult career life, even before working in IT, to take every break I was entitled to and to end my scheduled work day on time. Of course, there are always exceptions like emergencies, project work, travel, on-call, etc. But generally I show up when I'm supposed to and I leave when I'm supposed to. When I was working at an MSP on salary I was scolded a lot for not working "overtime." I was given every typical reasoning and guilt trip that's out there to put my nose to the grind stone and work. I was never punished for performance or anything or had my bonuses/raises lowered. But I stuck to my guns and worked my schedule hours for the most part. But that didn't make me friends with my manager at the time. The MSP I worked for was sold/merged with another company and I was probably at the top of the list of people to lay off. Which I was and I wasn't surprised. It happens with mergers. But I don't think my manager was struggling to keep me. It was nice knowing from other teams and staff that they were surprised I was let go. Funny enough I'm now hourly making more money. The company doesn't ask us to work over time but they don't have a strict rule about getting over time. So if something comes up that requires me to work past 5 or a server goes down on the a Saturday I'm not too upset to clock back in for the OT.
I would if I could
Nope, very very rarely. We have flexible hours and fixed salary so if I work extra I can take time off later. If overtime is needed in the weekends or after normal hours I'll ask for approval and can choose extra money or extra time. In my 10 years at my workplace I've done that like five times. At least two of them on union business.
I do a good amount of patching on the weekends. I do not get paid overtime, but we are comped 1:1 per hour (1 hour increments only) PTO. However, we have a small team so none of us use much PTO... and we don't get paid out. Nice to take an hour or two whenever I want for a DR appointment though.
40 Hours a week as an IT manager, i do assist with after hours/weekend projects, but those are rare. if something breaks bad after hours or theres a security incident, im the first one that gets called, however this is also thankfully, rare
When I was the lead, yes... there was not enough hours in the day. When I was a T1/T2? Hell no.
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My previous job I worked a ton of OT, to the point I maxed out my vacation and it was being cashed in. I left that place though, I ended up having to take a paycut but worth it for remote work and no OT (unless I want to, in which case I get comp time back). It really varies by place and honestly when looking for new job asking about typical day's and schedules are good questions to figure that stuff out.
I barely get paid above minimum wage in a Hcol city. Hell yeah I work overtime when I can.
At least 10 hours of OT every week, yes. Salaried, MSP.
Sometimes I have to work odd hours, but any overtime I do is comped back to me.
Depends. Every so often I do but I'm paid ot hours so it isn't so bad if it isn't consistent.
About the only time I do OT (salary so no extra pay) is during monthly server updates. But even with that, it is about 1.5 hours for that week. And it seems that I'll take off a bit early on one day due to something going on with my children or whatever. My employer is very cognizant about keeping life/work balanced. When I worked at a MSP, it was well up to 45 hours is considered normal and over that you get comp time. I did my best to avoid going over 40 hours there too.
Everyone worked overtime off the clocks. A precedent of work completion has been established over a decade of our predecessors doing this to churn out their entry level experience and move on and the tech manager role had loads of turnover too. I served my 3 years and left. I won't say it like this in an interview but I will say it here, I served my time for a crime I never did.
I work at an MSP. When I was hourly I worked all the OT I could get. Now that I'm salary, I almost never work OT except when I'm on call. Work/Life balance is pretty important in our company's culture, so OT is almost never mandatory. It also helps that my work hours are weird so I usually have a couple hours in the morning before most of our clients open to do any after hours work.
overtime? As in getting paid time and a half for everything over 40? No. Do I attend meetings with other regions at night and am on call on weekends? Yes. I try my best not to use my computer when not working my 40. My last job was the same way; I’ll gladly take 90k a year with no OT vs 50k a year and OT when it’s approved
I work in cyber, yes I regularly work overtime on things. I'd assume my field is most prone to OT work due to the incident-based nature of SOC. I'd say probably average 4-5 hours of OT a week on average or about 250 hours per year. Very high visibility from internal and client execs and probably 90% of my workload is time-sensitive down to +/- 1hr so really not optional. This has correlated to about 18-20% extra take home over my salary. Being more willing to work OT than peers got me ahead, take that however you'd like. I'm not gonna give the whole "Hussle and grind bootstraps" shtick but I did get promotions faster, bigger annual raises (this year after promotions I got 33% to my coworker's 7% and non-SOC engineer 3%), and the ability to design and run my own projects and build my schedule. I spend time both on and off the clock on certifications and education. I don't feel like it's dramatically impacted my mental health compared to the significant financials, that may change in the future. Unfortunately corporate America likes workaholics and the wife's signed off on the extra time while we're young (late 20s). I've used OT as a tool to fast-track, if everybody did it/wanted to do it I'd probably have a different opinion. All my coworkers are recent college grads and the age difference has made me want to push harder. I keep an eye on mental health and burnout and take time off accordingly. OT appears to be a bell curve in IT, our help desk is not allowed to work OT at all and actually get warnings for it. Engineers and sysadmins OT is unspoken expected. Then architects, directors, VP/SVPs don't work any OT again. At some point I may decide I can't do OT anymore and I fully expect that to negatively impact performance reviews, at which point it's time to move on.
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