I mean, sorry. That sounds quite horrid. But that just sounds like a really shit agency.
I do work in tech and I also have to write up all billable hours minutely. But most of the work I do is on internal projects anyway, so I have to write up the time, but it’s not billable. Paid work usually takes priority though.
But when it comes to it, I’m required to work 8h a day. Doesn’t matter what as long as it is what matters the most right now. And I could easily just keep it there and work my 8 to 5 if I wanted, not giving a shit.
But I actually like my work, most of the time. So I do. So when you have to solve a lot immediate problems, the internal projects often get delayed and you risk overshooting the deadline. That’s bad for the company in general, so best to avoid it. That gives incentives to solve everything asap and still get the internal stuff done on time.
And if we risk falling behind the deadline, that means overtime (voluntarily of course), but all of our devs know that missing a deadline could set us back quite far, so everyone shows up. Of course all overtime is paid and at better rates. Hell, I’ll sometimes do overtime just to get the better rate and get ahead of things I’d have to fix eventually anyway.
And the boss very much appriciated the effort we put in. In fact, he makes less money then me. I know that because I’m a shareholder and can read the yearly financial report, they gave all the senior devs a share when the company went public.
It was indeed a shit agency, but I’ve found almost identical practices in other agencies. It’s the nature of the work and it sucks, which is part of why I won’t work at another agency ever again. Another issue I’ve run into are colleagues that don’t clock all of their time for a task, which makes management say things like “well X did this in 2 hours; why is it going to take you 6?” It took me a long time in my career to arrive at a place where I feel like I have actual control, so I can empathize with younger devs that are feeling crushed under the weight of work.
My role now is all internal product work and I always clock my time spent, but it’s not crucial. I do it mostly to gauge how long things I build take (a lot of which are greenfield projects) and keep the data on hand as a point of reference for myself.
I like what I do but don’t really like that it’s become a big part of what defines me as a person. That’s really besides the point though. I think white collar employees like us have it easier than others in the workforce elsewhere, and that’s somehow with the absolute onslaught of tech layoffs I keep seeing. I have a friend that has been laid off 5 times in the span of 3 years, and I was laid off myself for 3 months before finding a new role. I’m actually shocked at how many times previous employers have tried to take advantage of myself or others. Those things are the reason wage theft in the US is a 50b dollar industry and it’s just going to get worse as capitalists try to squeeze as much value out of things as they can.
That all sounds very dire, indeed. Not sure what to say.
It really is a problem that is unique to the US. So if you encounter a lot of us US folk that are angry and jaded due to work, that’s why lmao. The protections and time off that Europeans receive is leagues better than anything here. Europe is definitely something we’ve personally considered for the future.
