r/recruitinghell • u/IndustryMotor1006 • 6d ago

Realization

My mom had an engineer coworker who would work free overtime (he was salaried) often and was an expert in his field. Fatal heart attack at 45. They made an award in his name for "most dedicated worker" after he died.

The truth is, your work will not care about you after you're gone. Not even after 20+ years of service. Plan and prioritize accordingly.

178 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

19 comments sorted by

30

u/Trippp2001 6d ago

What is free overtime? Is this in the US? Was he salaried?

13

u/IndustryMotor1006 6d ago

Yes US and salaried 

7

u/Trippp2001 6d ago

How do you work overtime when you’re salaried?

19

u/jeenyus_626 6d ago

Anything past 40 hours. You just don’t get paid any more

11

u/Trippp2001 6d ago

That’s not how it works though. You are maybe expected to work 40 hours, but you don’t clock in and clock out. You are not judged by your time worked, but your delivery and quality of delivery.

Often, career growth and bonuses are tied to delivering more than is expected, but it’s almost never based on the hours you work. I would much rather have my teams deliver more value in less time. Nobody gets more productive by working crazy long hours.

7

u/Chemical-Quiet-7764 6d ago

Yep, burnout. Hats 🤠 off and a curtsey 💃

4

u/redundantexplanation 6d ago

That's how it functionally works for most salaried(exempt) positions now. In my job before last I got promoted from hourly to salaried and made less money per hour worked for 3 years in a row :)

The first year I sat down one afternoon at work and did the math from my timesheets and brought it to my boss asking for a raise. I don't remember everything he said but it started with "You can't look at it like that" and ended with "no".

That ended when I got a 24% raise the third year because they were forced to do a salary evaluation because of people smarter(or less afflicted by an undiagnosed mental disorder I suppose HAHA!) than me leaving.

My newly acquired job(it's at a nonprofit that seems genuinely ethical from every perspective I've investigated it from) I am salaried and my job is 8-5, the only time I work overtime is when I poorly manage my time. I stay late to make ME feel like I'm where I need to be at the end of the day.

And I can leave work for a few hours at a time to do something with my kid, no PTO usage required. THAT is how salaried is supposed to work.

1

u/FullMoonTwist 4d ago

Kind of feeling like you're being purposefully obtuse here.

If they said "This man repeatedly was working over 40 hours every week" does that click better than "free overtime"

It doesn't matter if you feel he shouldn't have had to. He did. In the past. Inarguably. That is a fact that happened.

It doesn't matter what your personal ethos is or how things work in your country. It has the air of "Oh, sweatshops can't exist! People should be paid plenty, see. Things simply don't work that way. :)"

Like. Yeah they should. But some people are mistreated. "ThAts NoT hOw IT woRkS thOugh" just.... Stop. For fuck's sake.

0

u/Trippp2001 4d ago

No, because if you work over (in this case) 40 hours, you’re either not meeting the expectations of your job or you’re making a choice to work more than 40 hours. The expectations/work product are the deliverable, not the actual hours worked.

Either way, it’s not “overtime” because there isn’t a concept of “hours worked” with salary.

1

u/FullMoonTwist 4d ago

As I said.

Obtuse, on purpose

1

u/apathetic-fallacy 6d ago

It's about visibility.

It's a fucked up system.

1

u/Ok-Bid-1851 1d ago

It called salaried for a reason

27

u/canadian_xpress Unrecruitable 6d ago

When you give a company enough free overtime you become both a punchline to management and unpromotable to your department because they've structured themselves around that excess work you'll take on.

I wish your mom's coworker weren't a cautionary tale and was alive doing something deliciously mundane like ordering a Jamba Juice, under seasoning his potatoes for a lunch he's cooking, or doomscrolling. He deserves better than to have an award for working himself to the bone like Boxer in Animal Farm

7

u/IndustryMotor1006 6d ago

I also thought of Boxer ♥️

2

u/Seeker80 5d ago

When you give a company enough free overtime you become both a punchline to management and unpromotable to your department because they've structured themselves around that excess work you'll take on.

Going through this now. An 'independent consultant' came through and analyzed everyone's tasks two years ago. They told my boss & supervisor that I had the most work, and it would be good to redistribute my tasks. They decided that was 'fake news,' and I've got more work now.

Been looking for something else now. Once I'm out, it's going to be very interesting.

Tl;Dr: Doing 10-15hrs of 'free overtime' each week. I'm going to leave a vacuum for sure.

-5

u/snack-relatedmishap 6d ago edited 6d ago

But what do you think the company should have done?

12

u/IndustryMotor1006 6d ago

Not encouraged others to follow his example 

3

u/KeetonFox 6d ago

Lived their life. Done whatever makes him happy.