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Engineering Intern Ethical Question

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dan1750

Junior Member
Hi,

I'm a Computer Engineering intern that just started at (I'm not going to give the company name because I'm looking to keep this issue kind of private and I'm paranoid) ______, and I've kind of had this ethical issue.

Alright, so as an intern, I'm supposed to clock a 40 hour week using an online service (I get paid by the hour), clocking the hours that I work ahead of time (I have to do it on Thursday at the latest to get a paycheck). My manager said right off the bat that the core hours for working at the department are 9:00 am to 3:00 pm, so as long as I'm there at those times, I'm fine. He also said that the company stresses on work accomplished rather than hours worked, so that it's very flexible.. I assumed initially that meant I would clock in the hours from 9:00 am to 3:00 pm for every day and I'd have a 30 hour work week consequently. Instead, I've wanted to get in a full 40 hours so I get in at 8:30 am and out at 5:00 pm with a half-hour break for lunch.

The dilemma is multifaceted. First of all, when I come in at 8:30 I am literally one of maybe 2 people in the 15 people department there, and when I leave at 5:00 pm I'm usually the last person there (except sometimes my manager stays in the office until 6:00). I understand that everyone else is on a yearly salary so it's different, but the thing that bothers me is that it's difficult to get a full 8 hours of work. Usually around 4:00 pm I've finished up my goals for the day, and my work consists of scripting and running heavy jobs through design tools on a Linux box, which with a script modification I would do and running the job would keep me at the office very late, probably until 6 every day, something that would wear me down quite quickly (especially with the lack of any guidance; I'm an intern, I need help quite a bit).

Another problem is that if I actually clock below 40 hours I can get letters from the company that I agreed to work 40 hours and I'm not doing it, but I hate sitting idly with no one around when I know I'm not getting anything done. And sometimes the department will go out for happy hour at like 4:00, so then it's weird feeling that I have to make up for that hour by getting in at 7:30 am or staying until 6:00.

In some other departments with a similar situation the managers tell the interns to clock a 40 hour week and a lot of times the interns don't even end up doing 30 hours of work just because of the nature of their job.

One last issue is that if I clock say, 40 hours, and then on Friday end up working only 7 hours (maybe do to a department dinner thing again), if I change my hours online I don't get paid until the next week.

I'm afraid to ask my manager or anyone in the department about this, because I'm afraid of the impression I'll give them. I love the work I'm doing in my job, and I just want to be able to go to work without feeling guilty about the hours I work.

Anyone care to comment?
 
You are an intern, deal with it.

When you are full time and salaried, you can work from home or whatever. But you gotta earn that right.

It's the same thing with the new hires, they look at the senior software developers that has worked for 15 years at the company and wonder why do they have the luxury to work from home on Fridays. Well they earned that right, if they weren't producing, they would of been fired during all those years.
 
After being in this situation, your best bet is to ask the manager. It might be common practice for the people to clock 40 hour weeks as long as the work they do is equal to what would usually happen in a 40 hour period. As your manager stated,

he also said that the company stresses on work accomplished rather than hours worked,
Click to expand...

So ask him precisely this, do you clock only hours worked, or clock a standard 40 hour week as long as your work is completed.

Edit* this is the confrontational solution


The better solution would be what Imdmn said 🙂 Your call though.
 
If the boss invites you out for drinks/supper/whatever, he can't expect you to go back to work afterwards and stay until you've done your 8 hours for the day. Just bill 40 hours a week and don't worry about it.

I think that with the emphasis on the work accomplished rather than the number of hours worked, it's fine.
 
Originally posted by: orakle
If the boss invites you out for drinks/supper/whatever, he can't expect you to go back to work afterwards and stay until you've done your 8 hours for the day. Just bill 40 hours a week and don't worry about it.

I think that with the emphasis on the work accomplished rather than the number of hours worked, it's fine.
Click to expand...

That's just lying. Are you a liar? You're an intern, do the work, make the hours. That's what my internship was/is like. 8 hours each day in a cubicle screwing around with Java garbage collection in my case. That's simply how it's done.

If I finished early, I'd just screw around on the internet for 45 minutes or so, or I'd just log less than 40 hours. Check with your manager to see what's acceptable in regard to the latter. If you want to impress him, request more work.
 
alright, thanks.

i have a 1-on-1 meeting every week with my manager to see how i'm liking things and how the work is so i might bring this up to some extent.
 
Just do the required 40 hours and punch out. Ya, you may be getting shafted by other employees, but you don't know their situation and you're new. If it bothers you so much, talk to the manager.
 
There are two separate issues here:
  1. formal documentation of your hours each week and
  2. getting your work done.

They expect to see on paper that you worked 8 hours/day for 5 days/week. This is a formality and anything different will stand out.

Apparently, the way your office works is more relaxed, depending on performance and work completion. It seems that you need to work the hours you claim, unless a supervisor takes you away from your work. A 2 hour lunch or a get-together at 3:00pm that is accompanied by your supervisor will not need to be made up by longer hours the next day.

So long as the office goals are met, the standard workers may take longer lunches, arrive later, leave earlier, or all three.

EDIT:
It appears that you could probably get away with randomly taking 7 or 7.5 hour days but this will be noticed if you do it regularly. As the new/temporary worker, you are expected to put in your time.
 
You need to learn better time management, stretch out 4 hours of actual work over an 8 hour day. People don't appreciate efficiency. If people don't see you doing something, they'll think you're slacking off, not because you finished early.
 
Work the 8 hour days, and durring the down time find things to do. Ask others if they need help with something or another. Ask your manager if there are things that you can help with. Clean their desks. Pretty much, take it upon yourself to find things to do that will be productive.
 
Originally posted by: digiram
Work the 8 hour days, and durring the down time find things to do. Ask others if they need help with something or another. Ask your manager if there are things that you can help with. Clean their desks. Pretty much, take it upon yourself to find things to do that will be productive.
Click to expand...

cleaning other peoples desk is not a good idea. but the rest of the advice is good.
 
if you have nothing to do, find some work to do. if you are finishing your daily tasks ahead of schedule, you are most likely competent enough to handle some additional workload. if they have NOTHING for you to do, then nef on ATOT and earn those precious 40 hour paychecks.
 
If your manager invites you to a departmental dinner or party when you would normally be working, that's considered billable time in most organizations. Enjoy yourself, and don't worry about it.

As for the other stuff... well... billable hours are billable hours. If the boss asks you to stay from 8:30 AM to 5 PM and doesn't give you any work to do from 3 PM to 5 PM, so be it. Bring some homework do to or something.

If you're feeling guilty about doing nothing, you could ask your boss to give you something extra do to, but I wouldn't recommend it. That's a good way to get stuck with busy work like cleaning and writing documentation that nobody else wants to do. Doing busy work usually doesn't impress anyone, either... it just makes you look like a sucker.
 
Originally posted by: Imdmn04
You are an intern, deal with it.

When you are full time and salaried, you can work from home or whatever. But you gotta earn that right.

It's the same thing with the new hires, they look at the senior software developers that has worked for 15 years at the company and wonder why do they have the luxury to work from home on Fridays. Well they earned that right, if they weren't producing, they would of been fired during all those years.
Click to expand...

Eh? When I interned at the MathWorks, they allowed me to work from home. I also often did 4 10hr days and just took friday off. I also didn't have to make-up hours from company events (lunches, parties, guest lectures, etc).

-Eric
 
Originally posted by: Imdmn04
You are an intern, deal with it.

When you are full time and salaried, you can work from home or whatever. But you gotta earn that right.

It's the same thing with the new hires, they look at the senior software developers that has worked for 15 years at the company and wonder why do they have the luxury to work from home on Fridays. Well they earned that right, if they weren't producing, they would of been fired during all those years.
Click to expand...

You guys crack me up. Ass-in-seat time is not a valid productivity/work done metric if your jobs requires you to use your brain, though too many people don't think so. I've been working FT for several years now, and I can remember only one week where I worked over 40 hours (we were doing final acceptance testing for the Blackberry Pearl, which was a big deal).

It's even funnier at my current job - two of my coworkers spend absurd amounts of time working (10+hr days), so they end up doing the mind-numbing, time-consuming stuff, while I get the interesting stuff that projects that require thought, which only works when you're trying to make your work easier and less time-consuming.


Anyway, as for the OP, if you just started there, get and get a better sense of what exactly they expect, ie the unwritten rules. If you're putting in hours you're not expected to (like, going for happy hour and then going back to work.. wtf?!) and making it obvious, a lot of your coworkers will likely start to think of you as a clueless dumbass who doesn't actually know wtf he's doing. That's not the image I like to cultivate at work.
 
I think you should work the 40 hours. Work what you bill and bill what you work. Come up with things to do, small projects that might help around the company or seed ideas, if you're having trouble filling the time.

I'm very sure that your boss(es) are seeing that you come in early and leave late. That only makes you look better. The strategy is to be a little bit more vocal about what you're doing with your hours -- not bitching about it or anything like that, not even pointing it out, but using the time for things beyond what you're being asked to do.

You might impress them to the point where you get a permanent offer. Keep in touch with these people after the summer. After all, once you join, you get to participate in all of the fringe benefits they're taking now, so it seems like it'd be a pretty fun work environment. Not every employer is going to take you out for dinner or drinks on a regular basis, and in my experience, the ones that do realize the value of rewarding hard work.

Also, the philosophy of production vs ass-in-chair is rare these days. You want that, but as an intern, produce for 40 hours ass-in-chair, and you'll impress the company.
 
Are you getting all your work done? Then take the money they want to pay you for doing that work. Your manager said that's what he wanted.
 
Originally posted by: dan1750
I'm afraid to ask my manager or anyone in the department about this, because I'm afraid of the impression I'll give them.
Click to expand...
You're worried about the impression you'll give when you're uncomfortable because they're not giving you enough work? Not likely to be a problem.

I had this happen in an internship once. There was a certain amount of stuff I was really good at and the rest I was useless for (deep business-related knowledge required). When they ran out of the former, I ended up sitting on my ass and I hated it. I bugged my boss constantly for new work and he tried, but there just wasn't enough to do. Nevertheless, they agreed to pay me for a certain amount of work, so I billed it; fair is fair. The real bitch was that my hours were billed to specific projects which had total costs which the project manager had to justify. Luckily, I wasn't being paid very much so it had a minimal effect 🙂

I will never again work in an evironment where hours have to be recorded per task. Even the full timers had to do it there, although it didn't affect pay.
 
Originally posted by: Martin
Originally posted by: Imdmn04
You are an intern, deal with it.

When you are full time and salaried, you can work from home or whatever. But you gotta earn that right.

It's the same thing with the new hires, they look at the senior software developers that has worked for 15 years at the company and wonder why do they have the luxury to work from home on Fridays. Well they earned that right, if they weren't producing, they would of been fired during all those years.
Click to expand...

You guys crack me up. Ass-in-seat time is not a valid productivity/work done metric if your jobs requires you to use your brain, though too many people don't think so. I've been working FT for several years now, and I can remember only one week where I worked over 40 hours (we were doing final acceptance testing for the Blackberry Pearl, which was a big deal).

It's even funnier at my current job - two of my coworkers spend absurd amounts of time working (10+hr days), so they end up doing the mind-numbing, time-consuming stuff, while I get the interesting stuff that projects that require thought, which only works when you're trying to make your work easier and less time-consuming.


Anyway, as for the OP, if you just started there, get and get a better sense of what exactly they expect, ie the unwritten rules. If you're putting in hours you're not expected to (like, going for happy hour and then going back to work.. wtf?!) and making it obvious, a lot of your coworkers will likely start to think of you as a clueless dumbass who doesn't actually know wtf he's doing. That's not the image I like to cultivate at work.
Click to expand...
Agreed.

OP - talk to your manager and ask him how he would deal with this. Talk to him as you would with someone older than you, and genuinely seek their advice, if they get a bad impression and relay that to you, I think it's best to know this as early as possible.
 
I've worked as an intern at two different companies. My advice is to follow your fellow coworkers, that is what will give you the best review and job offers later. At both jobs I was hourly employee, but if I went out to lunch with coworkers and it dragged on for more than the 30 minutes that I was supposed to have of unpaid break during the 8.5 hour day, I didn't worry about it. At one company a secretary automatically entered me in for 40 hours unless told otherwise, and at the other I put in my own hours (which were always the same 8 hours per day--in fact their software wouldn't let me put in more than 8 hours one day). Office happy hours are definitely considered paid time. Enjoy life, and as both your manager and my manager said, they are interested in work done--don't worry if they are paying you for a couple of hours more than you are actually in the office, because they clearly don't care either.
 
Originally posted by: irishScott
Originally posted by: orakle
If the boss invites you out for drinks/supper/whatever, he can't expect you to go back to work afterwards and stay until you've done your 8 hours for the day. Just bill 40 hours a week and don't worry about it.

I think that with the emphasis on the work accomplished rather than the number of hours worked, it's fine.
Click to expand...

That's just lying. Are you a liar? You're an intern, do the work, make the hours. That's what my internship was/is like. 8 hours each day in a cubicle screwing around with Java garbage collection in my case. That's simply how it's done.

If I finished early, I'd just screw around on the internet for 45 minutes or so, or I'd just log less than 40 hours. Check with your manager to see what's acceptable in regard to the latter. If you want to impress him, request more work.
Click to expand...

What's the difference between doing that and going home early?
 
Originally posted by: chusteczka
There are two separate issues here:
  1. formal documentation of your hours each week and
  2. getting your work done.

They expect to see on paper that you worked 8 hours/day for 5 days/week. This is a formality and anything different will stand out.

Apparently, the way your office works is more relaxed, depending on performance and work completion. It seems that you need to work the hours you claim, unless a supervisor takes you away from your work. A 2 hour lunch or a get-together at 3:00pm that is accompanied by your supervisor will not need to be made up by longer hours the next day.

So long as the office goals are met, the standard workers may take longer lunches, arrive later, leave earlier, or all three.

EDIT:
It appears that you could probably get away with randomly taking 7 or 7.5 hour days but this will be noticed if you do it regularly. As the new/temporary worker, you are expected to put in your time.
Click to expand...

If he is always one of the first ones to arrive and the last to leave, it will not be noticed, ever.
 
Finish off all your tasks as fast as you can and then ask your manager to give you more work. This way you won't have any idle time to worry about.

Try asking for more challenging work. I don't see anything wrong with that.
 
thanks for all your help guys.

today i tried better time management with a lot of success; part of the problem was that i was getting really mentally wore down after about 7 hours it was hard for me to even WANT to find more work to do. today i really paced myself and i ended having a great and productive day.
 
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