Techies may have to work Saturdays also – Silicon India news item

By Rajesh Setty on Thu 19 Jul 2007, 6:27 PM - 4 Comments

Here is a quote from the article in Silicon India

“According to the sources, there is a move among
the BPO and IT companies to get their onsite and offshore employee to
work for 50 hours a week, instead of 40 now”

Background: Most Indian software companies depend on offshore projects. So the billing is dollars. The pay is in Rupees. When the rupee starts appreciating like crazy, the companies are caught off guard as the margins start eroding. They can’t reduce the salaries of employees without risking mass exodus. So they have to think of “innovative”ideas.

My point: This is a tough problem to handle. There needs to be fundamental shift in the way work is viewed. A shift from “hourly” rate to “value” rate. For God’s sake, we are supposed to be “knowledge workers” so isn’t the measure really the “value we pack in an hour” that counts?

What more “value” can a disgruntled employee add in the additional 10 hours per week.

On a lighter note, are companies thinking that techies are not even working 50 hours per week?

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Anonymous on July 19th, 2007

Working 50 hours would be fruitful for the company if the client’s is willing to pay for the extra 10 hours work. In many companies, managers do not allow more than 40 hours even if the chap worked 50 hours!

Anonymous on July 19th, 2007

I agree with you on the need to measure the value that we pack in. The problem is how do we measure it?
Take a look at my post Measuring Developer Productivity too
Also, I don’t know if increasing the official work hours to 50 will help in any way. Most people I know work for that long anyway.

Anonymous on July 31st, 2007

I agree with you… Since we are anyways working for that long, increasing the work hours to 50 will not help. But if officially they count working hours and include Saturday also then we will be in office late night on saturday also, irrespective of official hours (in turn screwing our sunday).
Think about it…

TJ on August 21st, 2007

working on saturdays is a ridiculous idea…. First of all, the average IT employee works for more than the stipulaated 40 hrs / week. They put in an average of 10-11 hrs a day. Hence making them work for 6 hrs on saturdays ,(which in actuality may be 9-10 hrs again) will increase the pressure on them tremendously… leading to a discontentment and resentment.