Boss questioning my commitment!

Try suggesting to management that if they set ludicrous deadlines that will guarantee excessive hours of overtime, you will expect to see them logging the same kind of hours. Would it be fair to guess that most of the people working for this company are young and single? It sounds like they want employees who don't have an outside life or commitments that might interfere with their ability to work silly hours at short notice.
 
Yes that would be a fair assumption, most of the people who are at the standard developers level (same as myself) would be single, one or two "commited" people in relationships (im in a 5 year one) or married and half of the developers are from former soviet bloc countries.

Most developers who are married or in long relationships are senior developers who are also expected to work long hours but are on 50 - 60k p.a. at my best guesstimate.

I dont know, maybe a career change is on the cards, become an apprentice mechanic or stone mason or something.

Surely there are decent paying I.T. 9 - 5 jobs out there with a good renumeration package for overtime? I mean in retrospect if he had said, come in sunday and we'll give a good money for it, or look we will compensate you for being on call on saturday and for the couple extra hours friday night, then it would become unreasonable (barring the v short notice) for me to refuse.
 
morpheus said:
Most developers who are married or in long relationships are senior developers who are also expected to work long hours but are on 50 - 60k p.a. at my best guesstimate.
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50-60K is at the lower end for senior developers from what i see. Juniors shouldnt be expected to do the same over time as a senior imo as it is implicit that a senior will have more responsibility. I think your company is taking the piss.

morpheus said:
Surely there are decent paying I.T. 9 - 5 jobs out there with a good renumeration package for overtime? I mean in retrospect if he had said, come in sunday and we'll give a good money for it, or look we will compensate you for being on call on saturday and for the couple extra hours friday night, then it would become unreasonable (barring the v short notice) for me to refuse.
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Alot of companies will give you a day in lieu or pay you for being on call or at the very least have a bonus structure to award people who went the extra mile during the year but it shouldnt be expected that you do it.

As for a decent paying 9-5 job in IT, I'm afraid not, unless you work in a bank or civil service where IT is not the companies main business. Software houses tend to have their people work long hours coming up to deadlines but compensate in some way.

Contact some recruiters and look around to see if there is a more suitable IT job out there for you.
 
I'm not in IT so I can't comment on how reasonable it is to support systems at the drop of a hat etc. However, one thing I wanted to comment on is that its very short sighted for your boss to reflect on your annual review with this one (recent) incident in mind. Its an annual review and shouldn't focus on your response to this weekend emergency work.

If your mobile phone is supplied by your employers then answer it during office hours only, if someone phones on a private or overseas number don't answer it out of hours. What you do with your private mobile if your own business but you're not obligated to answer your private phone.

Finally, you've been asked to work on project that you're not equipped to do so (no experience of) within a tight deadline, this is just plain crazy. You should ask them to send you on a course or else you can't commit to deliver.

Your boss sounds like a nut, hang in there 'till something else pops up, get trained on SQL and then leave.

Good luck
Miss Thing
 
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Morpheus reading between the lines I think your company are in serious trouble and rather than being able to 'step back', appraise and manage the situation to steer to calmer waters they are drowning in crisis mode and unintentionally passing this on to yourselves.

From your remarks about the colleague with whom you were 'twinned' for that overtime weekend work you are not alone in asserting that work is not your entire life.

Whilst moving on is certainly one option my feeling is that you value and wish to remain where you have invested so much time and energy and have established relationships. Changing employment is costly in energy, time and sometimes initially entails a dip in income or an increase in commute-time.

Would it be productive to approach this matter in the manner in which your management ideally should (but cannot)? This would kill two birds with one stone in obtaining better management and conditions for yourselves and injecting a dose of sense into the organisation. Get together in a semi-formal meeting with colleagues affected - as you are - by the current chaos in your firm. Elect a Chair and set an agenda of 3 main items. With your contracts to hand write out a simple two or three paragraph statement signed by you all suggesting pre-planned rostering, 'unsocial hours payments', annual review system etc...........just the main beef without going into individual cases or getting into complaint-mode.

Accomplish what your management are not currently capable of doing...........manage the situation! If they accept your perspective and ideas and change accordingly everyone wins! If they get defensive or don't value it this confirms its time to go - but you will be leaving from the perspective of maturity and engagement with the issues rather than driven out by unacceptable levels of chaos. All the best with it!
 
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