1. Management. If they reward based on face time, then more often than not employees learn the behaviour over time. If this is organisation culture, then in some sense it starts from hiring stage itself.

2. Peer pressure. If most of peers are working OT, it is difficult for the other few to justify avoiding it - even for genuine reasons like family needs. In such cases, it is crucial how management behaves. Usually employees take cues from managers and there is no explicit clarification(or just platitudes). Especially if managers themselves are working hard, then one can avoid OT only by being highly productive and known for it. It may still not help your social standing in organisation though.

A lot of it is probably buried in human psychology and sociology and group behaviour. If management allows too much flexibility, they fear losing control. If manager makes concession for a highly productive employee, it may cause resentment in others. And if the highly productive employee was made manager (exact reverse of Dilbert principle), he/she may have trouble managing others. Throw in competition, constantly changing technology environment, and customer pressures, and the recipe is perfect for OT.

Now if I think about it, it seems a necessary condition for OT should be change of some sort. The evolving technologies, competition, and customer needs are constantly impinging upon the organisation, and it probably creates need for OT. In a stable business environment/technology/, it may not exist, probably there might be some research on this already. But how many businesses / industries today exist in such conditions, save for some public services etc?

I never really thought about it while writing the article, but your comment has me thinking that unrealistic deadlines are probably one of the leading causes of overtime. Another leading cause is probably corporate culture (i.e. Microsoft, EA, start-ups).

I deliberately did not go into the issue of uncompensated overtime. I don’t agree with the practice, and have been able to avoid working at places that expect it.

First, None of this is new, yet the syndrome persists. Have you ever read “Soul of a New Machine”, which is about the hardware side of the same subject? I think most people miss the fact that most of the team burns out and everyone quits by the end of the book. And that book is hitting its 25th anniversary this year. Nothing changes. So, Basil, what’s the cure, beyond unionization?

Second, where’s your head? “Just say no to overtime”? It must be nice to be independently wealthy. It’s the economics of the situation (see the Dilbert “Engineers in the Mist”) that drive unnecessary OT, so only those of you that can afford to be unemployed can say screw the OT. Personally, I can’t. I can hate it, and I can change jobs when it’s too much, but I can’t avoid it.

Third, I am sure you know that, at least in the province of Alberta, IT professionals have been singled out by the gov’t as being ineligible for overtime pay, by law. Your employer has, sadly, every right to ask for OT with no compensation. You can only vote with your feet, and there’s always another set of feet so the employer doesn’t see the problem. The short-term dollar in the bank beats the long-term dollar cost of turnover every time.

The business I currently work for (and most of those I have worked for before) _explicitly_ ignores internal costs, in terms of work hours, for its projects. Of course, this bizarre behaviour is perfectly sane when overtime is free, and believed to be free of consequence.

Finally, some more whinging. :-) Almost all deadlines are artificial, but deals are made and broken based on them, and the people that make the _real_ money from the deals (sales people, business owners) have _no_ incentive to change things. Too many deals come down to pissing contests between vendors and clients, or vendors and their competition. I doubt that this will ever change. I once challenged a friend that was starting a new consulting company as to what he would do if a client demanded an unrealistic deadline. He bravely stated “screw that”. I checked on this later and, yes, the golden rule won out: “the man with the gold makes the rules”.

Can’t tell that OT is a sore point with me, can you?