topic Re: Out of Curiosity in Operating System - HP-UX

Out of Curiosity

Pete Randall — Tue, 27 May 2003 12:47:36 GMT

I got thinking after reading Tom's sad tale of his wasted weekend ( http://forums.itrc.hp.com/cm/QuestionAnswer/1,,0x9404595fae8bd711abdc0090277a778c,00.html ). There have been a couple of other similar threads recently and I'm curious about how different companies handle this kind of "overtime".

We used to have an official "comp time" policy. If we had to come in off hours, those hours were tracked and could be used for time off on a one to one basis. The place I worked before here paid an hourly wage and our payroll policies followed those of the union guys out on the shop floor, so we got paid overtime. I used to love doing an install on a holiday weekend at double time and a half. For 8 hours of work, I'd get paid for 20 hours!!!

Alas, I'm no longer paid on an hourly basis and the comptime policy was officialy banished, so now we're just supposed to suck it up and be "professional".

What are your policies like?

Pete

Re: Out of Curiosity

John Meissner — Tue, 27 May 2003 12:57:38 GMT

I also do not get paid an hourly salary. I have a set salary and the word "overtime" doesn't translate - however comp time does. If I have to work on my "off-time" I get to take a day off or half a day depending on how many hours I put in. This works out nice - but I'd probably rather have the extra money if I had my way.

Re: Out of Curiosity

Alexander M. Ermes — Tue, 27 May 2003 12:59:55 GMT

Hi Pete.
Thank God, that this is different here.
Cannot write more to this.
Rgds
Alexander M. Ermes

Re: Out of Curiosity

Geoff Wild — Tue, 27 May 2003 13:03:02 GMT

I'm pretty lucky - we get time and a half for all after hours work - when on the pager -(once every 7 weeks) we get a minor sum to carry the pager and a minimum 2 hour's pay for each callout (1st callout we net an addition 2.5 hours striaght time). We get to take that in pay or in time off.

Rgds...Geoff

Re: Out of Curiosity

Ross Zubritski — Tue, 27 May 2003 13:03:42 GMT

Same here Pete,

Management's philosophy at this point is....
"The economy stinks, it's a buyers market, if you don't like it, get out"...

Regards,

RZ

Re: Out of Curiosity

John Poff — Tue, 27 May 2003 13:05:34 GMT

Hi Pete,

Officially, we get paid by the year and we have no comp time policy. Continued employment is supposed to be the reward.

Unofficially, we have a great boss who will give us a day off here and there to compensate for a long night or a crazy weekend. We still wind up working a lot of hours but we do get a little time off here and there which helps.

JP

Re: Out of Curiosity

Steven E. Protter — Tue, 27 May 2003 13:06:56 GMT

Our policy Pete is suck it up as a professional.

In three years with my current manager, I've worked hundreds of hours per year both for unscheduled outages and twice monthly system maintenance.

While encouraged to NOT drive in and not collect milage, management keeps talking about how we are not a 24/7 shop and we should make sure we take time for our families. At the same time they pressure us mercilessly to get ahead on our project plans.

This weekend case and point.

The original schedule was that all applications were to be off our D320 box this coming Friday. The apps group fell behind on their testing schedule so it was decided I should play musical disks to get everything that needed to stay on off the disk array onto old local disk.

The original Saturday night maintenance schedule was this:

1) Tune a production L2000 boxes kernel to match some oracle improvements made on a L2000 sandbox. This never takes more than two hours. It took two reboots because I didn't take good notes and had to diff the two boxes kmtune output to make sure the kernels were an exact match.

2) Sendmail security upgrades which were a big deal when somebody learned about the vulnerbilities on CNN.

That was it.

Sendmail still isn't done. I feel bad about it because I drove Berlene nuts about it.

It took ten hours to build new logical volumes and transfer the data. I even cheated and used broken mirrors to make copies of some raw disk areas.

I put in 12 hours this weekend, during which you can see I was doing some itrc posts.

I plan on asking for Friday off as comp time to prepare for a weeks vacation. I won't get it.

SEP

Re: Out of Curiosity

Sachin Patel — Tue, 27 May 2003 13:07:07 GMT

Pete,
We have comp time but it is not perefect. We go on-call for a week every 5 week. one comp day only for one on-call rotation doesn't matter how many time you have to work.

Last week I was working till 1A.m on friday. Saturday almost all day. Sunday almost all day, Monday once and wed once after hour. I am gone a get one comp-day and I have to take it this week or loose it (this part sucks)

Sachin

Re: Out of Curiosity

S.K. Chan — Tue, 27 May 2003 13:08:18 GMT

Pete, here we still get to do "comp time" but I think there's a limit to it. On top of that we have unix admin in rotation to cover 24x7 on-call and for that we get paid. I have been in a company that expect you to work weekend (if needed)without additional compensation. Nowadays it's lucky just to have a fulltime job , don't you agree ?

Re: Out of Curiosity

John Meissner — Tue, 27 May 2003 13:15:33 GMT

wow - some of you guys have it much worse than I do.

fortunately in the United States there are laws (not always followed though) that protect you from working too much.

if you are salaried you are only (supposed) to work 45 hours in a week before some sort of compenstaion is paid. Wheather that be time off or pay.

Re: Out of Curiosity

John Bolene — Tue, 27 May 2003 14:15:42 GMT

We have no overtime or comp time policy. Work after hours is considered extra effort by upper management. My immediate boss sees it a bit differently and lets us at least have a flex work schedule. We can sleep in an hour or so, or take off an hour early for the weekend if we have put in extra effort during the week.

We are mostly happy to have continued employment.

Re: Out of Curiosity

Marco Santerre — Tue, 27 May 2003 14:30:05 GMT

Yeah John, I know what you mean, and actually there are some laws in Canada as well. We do have comp time when it comes to working overtime, but unfortunately, like others have mentionned, times are hard on businesses and those that have to suck it up actually do it, because they also have other obligations. I know that was it the case with me, I'd suck it up too. Reason is, I got a family, I got a house to pay, I got bills, and to go out there on the market today, I don't know that I'd find something "quickly". So is it worth the risk? For some, maybe.. for others, maybe not.. then what do you do in that case? That's when you say you suck it up.. and you hope it's only temporary.

Re: Out of Curiosity

Bryan D. Quinn — Tue, 27 May 2003 14:38:59 GMT

Hey Pete,

We do not get comp time and do not get over time pay. We do however get an extra day off here and there. The philosophy is that they will get the time back out of us sooner or later.

-Bryan

Re: Out of Curiosity

BFA6 — Tue, 27 May 2003 14:46:41 GMT

Hi Pete,

I don't get paid overtime. I should get time off in lieu for any extra hours worked.
On-call is a bit of a mess at the moment, we get paid a fixed price per call/subject, but the on-call is not just for unix servers, it's basically a helpdesk service.

Regards,

Hilary

Re: Out of Curiosity

Dario_1 — Tue, 27 May 2003 14:55:21 GMT

Pete:

Same as you. As Ross mentioned "buyer's market".

DR

Re: Out of Curiosity

Nick Wickens — Tue, 27 May 2003 15:04:42 GMT

We used to get double time weekends and time and a third for midweek evenings up until midnight, when double time kicked in. I also got 20 hours pay each month for being on call.

This worked well for several years until a former DBA here got greedy and the overtime budget increased in line with the cost of diving holidays in Mexico for some reason.

As a result it was clamped down and now I get paid ??125 per week for being on call and the first 10 hours worked overtime in any calendar month is converted to 10 hours time off in lieu. After that the above overtime rates kick in.

However this still seems better than some of you guys and gals but then we only have one SysAdmin and one DBA here so we do get a fair amount of weekend work if that makes a difference.

Re: Out of Curiosity

Basheer_2 — Tue, 27 May 2003 15:11:13 GMT

Pete:
on call 7x24, 365. No plociy for first 2 years, overtime during week nights, weekends. After a heated discussion, now I can track overtime to get time off. comp time is 1:1

Re: Out of Curiosity

Tom Danzig — Tue, 27 May 2003 15:16:20 GMT

Overtime?! ... I wish.

I'll usually be allowed to take a day off to comp for additional off hours worked as long as it's convenient with company. Not a particularly fair trade getting a day off during the week for (2) 4-5 hour shifts on weekend evenings.

Beeper support is 24/7 every day. I remember well the days of beeper support rotation (that was when there were multiple admins on support .. if such a thing exists any more.)

My previous company gave 1:2 comp time for off hours (i.e. work 8 hours on Saturday and get 4 hours off during the week as comp ... Wheeeee, how nice of them).

Re: Out of Curiosity

John Payne_2 — Tue, 27 May 2003 15:28:57 GMT

Pete,

I got an extra paycheck for y2k. It was great! (Especially since nothing happened...) That was when I was hourly. Back then, if I had overtime for one week, they would count it as time and a half and I would get kicked out of here early the next week, whenever possible.

Once I was made administrative (read salary) that went away. Now, there is no real 'comp time' policy. If I work all night, though I usually go home when I can. (And sleep it off.) My bosses offical stance is that if we work nights and weekends, but had plans that were cancelled, we should take the 'appropriate time' during the work week to make up for it. If I work 60 hours one week, that doesn't mean I only work 10-20 the next and knock off, though. (There's usually too much to do.) If I get called during vacation, I don't post the days as vacation. Usually that means I take about half the number of days in vacation as what really happens, because I always get called.

If I work really hard, in the past I usually get a meal out of it...

Other than that, we are professionals, and we do what it takes to get things done around here.

I can't complain here, though. The benefits are good. They paid for all my tuition after I started full time, the environment is nice, etc, etc. Our medical plan is really nice. (I get discounted tickets to all the sporting events. :) ) I wore shorts the entire summer last year. (I was up to my knee in a cast for the summer last year... Still trying to figure out how to wear shorts this year without hurting myself.)

Hope it helps

John

Re: Out of Curiosity

Victor BERRIDGE — Tue, 27 May 2003 15:56:58 GMT

Well,
I get truncated what exceeds 40extra hours every months, so to reduce the frustration as said previously in SEP's thread I go out and play the organ at noon when I can, on some cases I am paid 1:1 (rare!!) the rest of time If its a direction's request it goes to a overtime counter I can use to take days off when its suits my hierarchy... but like many of you I worked overtime including 2 week-ends in march and it looks like I did it for glory (it didnt finish in overtime counter or was I paid for this special request - a server migration).
Anyway my hope is before I retire being able to take my previous years vacation and mabe a bit of the special counter...
All the best
Victor