Secret of working 8-5

Late night heroics should be an exception and not the expectation. …don’t train your manager to permanently expect heroics.

Being a hero is a classic mistake, and consistently working massive amounts of overtime will give your managers a false perception of your daily output. As a result, they will pile an inhuman amount of work on you. Here are the 2 biggest reasons:

 

1. Overloading is unintentional, but you never correct them
2. Intentional overloading so to appear a productive manager, but you never set personal boundaries

 

It is your responsibility to set the expectations. Unless you are masochistic, don’t be a hero. Inform your manager of the true number of hours worked, and learn to set personal boundaries.

You have a life too.

 

I learned my lesson on this one when I watched my managers get bonuses for bringing the project in with a nice profit margin while all I got was a “thanks” for all those months of no weekends. Their profit margin came from billing the client for the actual time we programmers spent (60+ hour weeks for months on end) but paying us our salary as usual (based on a 40 hour week). They chose the option of overworking us rather than putting 50% more staff on the job, and that was a conscious business decision based on the profit margin of the project.

 

via [Code Squeeze]