Professional Engineers
The Enemy of All Professional Engineers: Working Overtime
The work of an engineer often requires more amount of time than the others. When there are deadlines need to be met like presentations, models, reports or systems that have to be crammed, to work overtime is already compulsory. And you will have no choice, being compulsory, and just say yes.
It is part of the professional work, and that the word “overtime” should already be familiar to every engineer.
The urgency of overtime depends with the kind of engineer work.
There will be overtime that will only show up when you are about to leave the office, demanding a stiff requirement that cannot be done the next day.
There will be overtime that is instantly figured out on the first minute at work because there’s just so much to do for the day.
Instead of thinking of overtime as a burden, use such time as an opportunity to shine under pressure.
It is the perfect occasion to turn some heads in your career, which will leave an impression to others that you get the job done with a few sacrifice of hours after work.
Since it’s already there and it does not cease to exist in our engineer work, what we can do is overcome the problems that go along with it. Here are tips:
Let others know about it.
Overtime means that you have to sacrifice time off of work. And sometimes, that will have to entail cancelled appointments, delayed hangouts with friends, or postponed dinners.
Don’t have those people wait for you. Let them know right away if you are going to be on an immediate overtime and you won’t be able to make it or come late.
Make sure you know you will get paid or not.
Some companies do not have provisions with overtime work and you should know about it.
It’s also the same if the company you are working for has overtime pay.
Figure out how you will be paid about your overtime.
If it’s worth the experience and time according to your own judgment, take the extra hours at work.
Have a plan and write it down.
The first minute of overtime should be allocated to laying out what you will do in the next few hours.
Arrange what needs to done and set a target. You don’t want to spend more hours at work by being disorganized.
Once you’re done, write what you have accomplished.
More often than not you will be asked about what you have done during the overtime.
It should have results; when it’s time to present the results, you won’t have a problem anymore if you have done a summary of what you’ve done. Your higher-ups should know that you are making effective use of your overtime rather than slacking
