FWD: Lack of self-awareness in a writer...what to do

[Gene Kim-Eng]

If you're a salaried professional employee, your company is
not supposed to be "paying you for 40 hours a week," but to
accomplish your objectives and assignments as set by you
and your manager, and your manager should be evaluating
you accordingly.  The fact that Tom is working 40 hours a 
week compared to the rest of the team working 45 hours is 
only relevant because Tom is not accomplishing his objectives 
and assignments to his manager's satisfaction (I'm assuming 
here that Tom originally signed on to them) while the rest of
the team appears to be accomplishing theirs.  If Tom's work 
was otherwise on track and Anonymous was still judging him 
negatively on the basis of his 40 hour workweek, that would 
be another instance of bad management practice.

We can't judge whether Anonymous' team working 45 hours
a week is a bad sign or not because we don't know all the
circumstances for the rest of the team (did they join a startup
knowing everybody's working long hours chasing an IPO payoff,
do they take long lunch breaks, is the company paying premium
salaries compared to the prevailing market to attract people with
"high levels of dedication," or bearing down on them to charge 
PTO every time they take an hour or two off for something 
personal, etc., etc.  

Gene Kim-Eng


  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Suzette Leeming 


  If, however, a company is paying you for 40 hours a week and realistically you need to work more than that on a constant basis (I'm not talking about the two weeks before a new release is due), then there is a problem.