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Question: how many hours do you work or travel every week?

Former Member
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Hello,

How many hours do you work or travel every week?

I have had several jobs in the past:

Job 1: Inhouse analyst/trainee, large industrial company, Germany

The normal working time was 40h but they told me that they expect 10% overtime. I can't remember how travel time was treated.

Job 2: SAP consultant, medium sized consulting company, Germany

I think overtime was already included in the salary but there was a turnover-related bonus. One collegue told me that if he would calculate the average hourly wage for his overtime, he would cry. Once I was in a project in South Korea were I worked from 9-midnight every day and every 2nd saturday until the afternoon. Later I was often alone in the projects and could benefit from my efficiency.

Job 3: senior SAP consultant, large consulting company Germany

Here I was only a short time. I think, overtime was again included in the salary. One project manager forbid us to leave the office before 20:00 in the evening. That was very strict, I guess.

Job 4: senior technical consultant SAP, small consulting company, Germany

Here the salary is lowest but conditions are the best. We have 40 hours working time every week and travel time calculates as 50% working time. If we do overtime we can take time off afterwards. My projects are even mostly local or regional.

How is the situation for you or your country?

Thomas

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Answers (3)

Answers (3)

JL23
Active Contributor

Work is just the paid portion of my hobby, so who cares how long I indulge my passion.

It is not allowed to work more than 10 hours for insurance reasons, if I stay longer  then this should have been approved before it happened. I then should either sleep in a hotel in town or go home by taxi (€ 150 per tour).  There has to be a minimum of 11 hours uninterrupted rest time  between leaving and reentering the office (email in the night is an interruption and the time starts all over) The maximum time per week is 48 hours.

The average working time of the last 24 weeks must not exceed 8 hours.

The vacation time is per calendar year and has to be taken in the same calendar year (exception: illness only) Taking days into the next year has to be approved by management and HR  and is not wanted as it has a negative effect to the balance sheet.

Pretty clear boundaries, and the pressure rises each month to comply with it.

While I made it in general possible (just looking at this year - and ignoring this 11 hour rule since I am mixing hobby and work anyway) I still have to get my hours from the previous years down, which is the reason that I am at home in December.

Former Member
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Hello Jürgen,

I would not go so far as to call SAP my hobby but I like (international) travelling and computers so I guess I am relatively fine with SAP consulting.

Your working rules are quite strict in order to protect the employees. Are these US or german or trade union rules (I haven't found an indicator for your geographic location in your profile)? I frequently check my work's emails in the evening or even during vacation. Not because my boss tells me to do so but because I am very curious.

Best regards,

Thomas

JL23
Active Contributor
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Germany, I have to admit that this cannot be concluded from my online times.

These boundaries are actually a mix out of laws, wage agreements, claims of the local work council and some overreaction of HR folks.

Some years ago we did not even capture the time, then HR folks thought they get cheated and forced all to use the attendance clock, soon after 2 bigger  projects most of us had hundreds of over hours and HR wanted to convince the people that a good portion of this time is anyway covered by the salary and the silently expected. Work council disagreed and all hours got parked, not seen for years, then they appeared again (somehow an IT fault). Now we have the strict rules which just leads to the fact that we have to buy externals, which is actually cash out.

I already predict the next swing. 

Former Member
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Wonderful synopsis of how things pan out, but you forgot the organizational reorg which lead to all the ex-employees coming back as externals as well.

Cheers,

Julius

Jelena
Active Contributor
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I believe someone already had a similar question here - at least I vaguely recall explaining the US exempt/non-exempt employee concept on SCN.

It usually differs for the consultants / salaried employees and based on the company or even particular manager. As a consultant, I had to work 40 hours and overtime had to be approved in advance (I think it was needed only a few times). As an employee, there is no such thing as overtime (for the salaried exempt employees in the US) and, as Matt correctly pointed out, we are paid to get the job done and the number of hours it takes to do that may vary.

Unless we have a project or some kind of emergency (some of our locations are 1 hour behind us and I'm not going to leave them hanging if they need help just because it's 5 pm here), I stay within 40 hour work week. Personally I feel that in most cases when people have to work more than that on regular basis it's either the matter of poor work organization or severe resource shortage. Although once I worked with a manager who for some reason put too much value in the "a$$-hours", so we were casually asked to stay late or do work on the weekends, but at the same time leaving early on a slow day was frowned upon. Needless to say that place was not on the "most desirable places to work at" list. Fortunately, other companies / managers are better at allowing the employees to keep their own balances.

Colleen
Advisor
Advisor
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As a contractor in Australia, I am technically charging for a 38-40 hour week. However, in reality, I'm there to deliver results. Depending on the client and management culture my team will "ramp up" and "ramp down". In the quiet periods we might not work the 38 hours (that is, 6-7 hours per day) but in the busy periods it can get hectic and a 12-14 hour day isn't unreasonable. Generally, if you find yourself coming in on the weekend then you would be discussing charging additional days.

I have also been an employee and had the 40 hour week. Dealing with an SAP incident doesn't always fit in with the timeframes and I'm always getting curious so I'll stay back to figure something out. Australians are seen as laid back but we do work some relatively long hours. However, sometimes the extra hours don't translate to efficiency (people take more time to grab coffee and chat about random stuff).

I have worked with global teams and it's always a challenge when each area has its own culture (and sometimes country requirements) for working hours. In one case, one of our key members was based in Germany and took leave so he wouldn't lose his leave entitlements (they don't accrue annual leave?) during cut-over. For us, that was unheard of. If you have go live coming up you clear your schedule and leave a photo with your family so they remember what you look like.

For me, I work with the client and ensure I deliver quality results. In most cases, I'm usually working more hours than I need to.

Former Member
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Hello Colleen,

Thanks for your reply. Of course weekly working time depends heavily on the customer and the project (phase).

About our vacation-system in Germany. We normally have 30 days vacation every years (some unlucky guys might have 28 only). Of course this is quite a lot compared to other countries, like US, I guess. Still our economy is doing relatively fine with it. You can normally take some days over to the next year until end of march if there is a business reason for that. Nobody will complain. I am not sure if there is a minimum vacation time by law so that you have to take at least 20 days a year.

Maybe some innovative companies over here offer sabatical systems as well.

Best regards,

Thomas

Matt_Fraser
Active Contributor
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"Use-or-lose" vacation can be an issue sometimes at my employer. Our fiscal year runs from September 1 to August 31. We are allowed to "carry over" a maximum of 6 weeks of accrued vacation into the next fiscal year. That sounds like a lot, but people are earning anywhere from 4-6 weeks each year, so if they don't use it all then they typically have some carryover. When projects come around and everyone gets busy, it gets tough to take that much vacation, and so the carryover amounts start to add up. It's not unusual when August rolls around for people to suddenly realize that they are going to have more than 6 weeks on the books when the month ends, which means they'll simply lose the excess. That's when they start suddenly announcing "bye, I'm taking the next week off," etc, and it tends to drive managers and coworkers a bit wild. So, on my team, we're typically asked in the late winter or spring to ensure we plan ahead so there are no "use-or-lose" surprises for anyone.

In the year that we converted HR from PeopleSoft into SAP the entire team was working so much that everyone had an unavoidable use-or-lose situation. We obtained a special dispensation from HR to allow an unlimited carryover, but it was made clear it wouldn't occur two years in a row. So, in the second year, it became an even bigger problem, because now people had carried over much more than 6 weeks, and were still accruing 5 or 6 weeks more in the new year. That meant pretty much everyone would have to take a minimum of a month off just to not have a problem at the end of the second year. On top of this, we don't pay overtime -- you do whatever you need to do to get the job done -- but some of us were working so many extra hours and days every week that some amount of "comp time" had to be granted. Rules didn't allow for overtime pay for salaried employees, so this amounted to extra days off not counted as vacation. So, that meant even more vacation was saved up, because it wasn't being used. Personally, I dealt with this -- after the project was completed -- by taking every Friday off for the better part of a year, in addition to the vacations I would normally have taken.

This always reminded me of the Dilbert comic strip which I have pinned to my corkboard:

  • Boss: Alice, you need to use up your vacation days before the end of the year.
  • Alice: You told me I had to finish my project before the end of the year. I have 19 vacation days to use and there are 19 work days left in the year. That leaves zero days to do 19 days worth of work.
  • Boss: You could work on weekends and use weekdays for vacation.
  • Alice: Why the *%&!# would I do that?!!
  • Boss: Because vacations reduce your stress. Duh.
  • Boss (thinking to himself): You'd think that would be obvious.
  • Alice puts her fist through the cubicle wall.

(link to original strip: http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2006-12-03/)

Former Member
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Funny Dilbert.

My collegue just took 2 or 3 months off after working heavily in another Project last year.

Thomas