How many hours per week do you work? 1

[astructurale]

Along the lines of commute time (thread731-125181)...
(Which I should add is fun to read!)

How many hours are engineers working per week?
And...
How flexible is your schedule? (Are you an "8-to-5"er or were you able to choose your hours?

I'll go first,

40hrs per week (99% of the time)
8am - 5pm M-F
(But of course I'd love for my scheudle to be more flexible. I'm curious as to what the rest of you are living day-to-day; and are you lovin' it?!)

 

[GMcD]

After 24 years in the Consulting Engineering business (Building Design) I learned to control the panics (poor management on other peoples' parts do not make for emergencies on my part). I usually do about 43-45 hours per week on average, 40 hours goes on the timesheet since I don't consider the 30-45 minutes a day dealing with e-mail and e-filing to be "billable hours". Usually get in the office about 7:05AM, usually out of here by 5:45PM, sometimes drag the notebook home on weekends to work on proposals and presentations. The company here has a banked time option so overtime hours go into the banked time account, so if I wanted to take a couple long weekends, it can be done. I don't mind it at all, I'm on a direct express bus home and it stops about 4 minutes from my home and right across the street from the office. No commuting stress for me.

 

[NickE]

Uhhh.. 40-45 average hours. I'm here between 7:30 adn 8 till after 4:30 and as late as 7pm. On thursdays I'm an audio engineer till 2am. so on fridays I might not get in till 8:30 or so.

All in all here it depends directly on who you rdirect manager is. My boss is really laid back and has a get the work done sort of attitude.

 

[ScottyUK]

I work in power generation. My hours are usually about 40/wk, a few more than contract but not enough to worry about. Lunch should be an hour althought I often spend mine working, but I don't worry about taking five minutes back at the start or end of the day.

We have a fair bit of flexibility, and give a lot in return. If we want a late start it is rarely even questioned. It's not especially uncommon for us to start work in the small hours, or work through 'til midnight if we are on a particular task. There's no overtime but we get a reasonable salary by UK standards and there is a fair bit of unofficial lieu time.

We work a lot of weekend days during the long maintenance outage season - 11 turbine-generators over four months - and that can become a bit wearing. Last year I ran a major project on site where my team worked a fortnight of 16-18hr days culminating in a 25hr commissioning nightmare. I was asleep before my colleague had driven me home and I took the rest of the week off and booked no holiday. Overall a massive net loss in hours worked against hours paid, but we had the satisfaction of a tough job done exceptionally well. The sacrifice we made has saved us a lot of callout time since, and I got a nice achievement award too.

The work/life balance is a bit skew at the moment, so much so that I'm exploring the job market. For the first time in my career money has slipped to second place behind getting some quality time back, so things must be serious!I have some tough decisions ahead I think.



----------------------------------

If we learn from our mistakes,
I'm getting a great education!

 

[astructurale]

Scotty - Well said...

"The work/life balance is a bit skew at the moment, so much so that I'm exploring the job market. For the first time in my career money has slipped to second place behind getting some quality time back, so things must be serious!I have some tough decisions ahead I think."

I've found myself in the same boat earlier this year. I took a leap of faith and ended up with a great job that is less stressful and time consuming than my previous job. So take that leap!

Good Luck!!

 

[Heckler]

I physically spend 40 hours a week at work. My company has generous flexibility which all of us employees take full advantage. But I spend a lot of time thinking about work when I'm not at work! I've had jobs in the past where it was a manditory 45 hr/week for salaried folks.


Regards,

An apathetic slacker Gen-X'r

 

[HgTX]

Typically 40-45. The occasional surge of more, but we get hour-for-hour comp time and I am not shy about taking it.

I used to work 7:15 to 4:00. Now my official hours are 9:00 to 6:00 but I usually work through lunch and leave earlier (except when I still stay till 6, 7, 11 because I'm on a roll). My ideal hours would be noon to 6:00 and then two other hours to be made up sometime between 1 and 6 AM, but the bureaucracy doesn't allow that much flexibility even though I'd be much more productive that way. (Technically I'm violating the rules by skipping lunch.)

Hg

Eng-Tips guidelines: faq731-376

 

[Heckler]

My company has it set up with the State (CA) that our work hours are 8.5 hrs/day and we work 6 hours on Friday. It's nice getting off early on Friday....get a jump start on happy hour.


Regards,

An apathetic slacker Gen-X'r

 

[ctopher]

40-45
5 hr Friday's.

Chris
Sr. Mechanical Designer, CAD
SolidWorks 05 SP3.1 / PDMWorks 05
ctopher's home site (updated 06-21-05)

FAQ559-1100
FAQ559-716

 

[tmdixon]

7am till 5pm with every second Friday off, and an extra banked day every 8 weeks. Love the long weekends with my kids.

 

[casseopeia]

The office is officially 80/9 (80 hours in 9 days with alternate Friday's off). Monday through Thursday is 8 am to 6 pm. Working Friday is 8 am to 5 pm. No official comp time policy. I would guess most people here are salaried like myself.

My schedule is a bit more flexible because I have to put in some long days in the field (10-14 hours) two or three times a week. I take off early on Tuesdays and whenever I have an excess of hours. The boss doesn't complain as long as I find someone to go to any scheduled inspections in my absence. It's handy for the times when I am taking classes. I generally can't manage to take off all OT hours and lose them at the end of the month.

If you are going to walk on thin ice, you might as well dance!

 

[MadMango]

The "office" work day is 8am-5pm, the shop runs 24hrs Monday-Saturday, one shift on Sundays. I'm usually here 7:20am-5pm. About 2-4 weekends a year I'll have to come in on a Saturady for 4 hrs, depending on maturity of a project (working in product development).

[green]"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."[/green]
Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943.
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[TravisMack]

work for myself from the house...avg 70+ hrs per week...it is always busier in the summer...avg 50+ other times of the year.

 

[metengr]

On average about 45 hours/week. I would agree with the assessment by ScottyUK, that we are pulled in numerous directions in the Power Generation business during unit outages (scheduled overhauls) that can vary from 6 weeks to 8 weeks (depending on the scope of overhaul work). During this time, I do work some overtime depending on problems found or critical-path inspections that need to be performed on our equipment. Time is money in our business.

Overall, the "emergency" overtime averages out between the scheduled outages in Fall/Spring, and our summer and winter availability to generate electricity. Usually, during the summer months I can slip out on Friday's. The only difference with my job is that I am in a corporate support/oversight function to our Power Plants and am on-call 24 hours a day/7 days a week. It really is not as bad as it sounds, but I have worked at least once every scheduled holiday with the exception of Christmas Day over the last 24 years.

 

[Theophilus]

Official hours are 8:00AM - 6:00PM (self-employed), but often spend between 35 and 70+ hours, depending on workload, per week. This depends on how much time is "counted" on piddly, behind-the-scenes stuff that must be done, but doesn't pay. Also busy in the summer.


Jeff Mowry

http://www.industrialdesignhaus.com

Reality is no respecter of good intentions.

 

[GregLocock]

I work 37 hours a week. My starting time is 'before 0930 please'. In practice in summer it is more like 0700, in winter 0830 seems a bit of a struggle.

Finishing time varies between 1400 and 2100, usually 1700.







Cheers

Greg Locock

Please see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.

 

[ruggedscot]

1820 is the magical figure....

averaging out over the year our shift system works to an 1820 hours system,thats 5 seven hour days a week average.

Hmmm it seems longer....

Rugged

 

[haggis]

In my business, Car Assembly Plant, hours are unpredictable. Sometimes life is the same.

At the moment, due to company financial restraints, I am working a straight 40 hrs/wk, 7:30-3:30, Mon-Fri. and I’m loving it. It’s like being on vacation. In normal times, my work week would be between 50-60 hrs, 6 days on a regular basis week in week out. This time is split between design work and plant floor. If Sat. was construction supervision, I was in for 6:00, if it was design time, come in whenever. During plant shutdowns which are typically 2 weeks in July and 2 weeks at Xmas, it is 14 straight 12’s starting at 6:00 except for Xmas day and Boxing day. These times are almost 100% plant floor time on construction supervision.

The longest stretch at one time during construction was 93 straight 12’s. The longest single day was 18 hrs supervising 2 shifts of construction. I should add, that there is no way that I would attempt to spend these kind of hours solely on design work as I think that would be a recipe for disaster.

I thrived on it, made lots of money and still have a good family life. In retrospect, would I do it over again, NO! Have 6 years to retirement at 65 but who knows. I’m not much into building bird feeders and model planes.

 

[EngJW]

40
That's it. Don't mind if the phone rings early or during lunch time, though. Also, I spend a lot of time thinking about how to solve a problem or reading to learn new things.

No flexibility is allowed in how we set our hours, even to the point where they think we should go to a doctor after hours. Actually I don't mind. I like things regimented. I get up the same time each day, leave the house at the same time, and have a pretty good idea what I need to do doing the day. Always have a list, even at home. This avoids surprises and emergencies. Some people thrive in chaos but I can't deal with it, so I have my work-arounds in order to get by.

 

[astructurale]

haggis,

Good point... "I should add, that there is no way that I would attempt to spend these kind of hours solely on design work as I think that would be a recipe for disaster."

In the past I've been requried to stay late frequently to finish tasks. Usually I'd end up loosing sleep over it and realize a mistake, which means I have a re-do to take care of first thing the next morning. When I don't have time to unwind in between shifts I generally don't sleep well, and you can bet I'm not producing my best work under those conditions. THANKFULLY that is no longer the story of my life! To those who it is, "Get out or BURN out" as I like to say!