Bonkers

[Paul Makepeace]

On 5/6/07, Peter Corlett <abuse at cabal.org.uk> wrote:
> On 6 May 2007, at 09:00, Jonathan Stowe wrote:
> [...]
> > I think part of the thing is that it is not clear that the intangibles
> > *are* covered and that the salaries being quoted are not sufficient to
> > compensate for (doing web development|maintaining an awful code base|
> > putting up with crap management) which seems to be the perception that
> > people have of most of the jobs we are seeing and something no-one
> > seems
> > to be stepping forward to counter.
>
> It doesn't help that some of the claimed benefits are taking the piss.
>
> Another place seemed to suggest that long hours was some sort of
> perk, because you could willy-wave with the rest of the staff as to

Well this is illegal under EU Working Time Directive, and even the UK
afaik can no longer opt of this. Big companies certainly take this
very seriously, in fact it seriously impacts how our oncall schedules
are planned owing to all the ins & outs we have to abide by. In the US
they don't have those laws which makes planning much easier there...

> Another taking-the-piss perk: free pizza if you stay back late.
> Because sharing twenty quid of pizza with three other people is fair
> compensation for four hour's work. I have heard people complain that
> when they were starving after a late one, we found that the pizza
> place wouldn't deliver because the employer hadn't bothered paying
> them from the last time, so they would have to do without.

There seems like some obvious solutions here: call another pizza
place; pay for it yourself and expense; get Indian. I dunno, that
paragraph sounds like whinging to me :-)

> My latest "perk" appears to be that I'm going to be getting a
> Blackberry. That can sit on my desk, and if they've got a problem on
> a Friday evening, they should page it and I'll get right onto it with
> top priority when I get into work on Monday morning.

If you don't have weekend oncall then fair enough.

> Really, the only worthwhile figures to look at are the hours and the
> salary. Everything else is just smoke and mirrors to make long hours
> and poor pay not look so bad.

I think if you worked at a company with a proper compensation package
you may well have a different view.

OTOH, if you think 40hrs is "long hours" then I'm not sure how many
companies could help you out there...

P