Can an at-will exempt salaried employee express any reservations about performing a task?

Question

I've been working in my position (at-will, exempt salaried, not a startup, United States - U.S. Citizen) for a few months, and the environment has been mostly okay.

Recently, a few other co-workers and I have been put on the 20-person team of a very big financial project, at about two-thirds of the way through its scheduled life. It took us a little bit of time to acclimate to the project, but since then we have felt that we have been making good progress in good time on the tasks assigned to us. However, the management communicating with the project lead don't see this the same way.

In the time that should reasonably be devoted to task A, we can get through tasks A, B, and C, but we are still expected to have done A, B, C, D, E, F, G, etc.

This confused me for a while, until I learned that a few months were scheduled for a project that should normally take several, several years. The project is fast approaching its HARD deadline with no real end in sight, and most of the ground-level people working on it have realized this.

Today I learned that management is pressuring to have us come into work both full days of the coming weekend. I've also learned that this won't be a special case – they are likely planning to do this every weekend, and eventually ask us to complete extra work from home at nights, with the potential for a few all-nighters as a group. I feel kind of swamped as it is – at the same time, I'm still juggling other work that needs to be done on other projects by myself. On top of this, a few people have already quit, and they aren't being replaced.

When I was hired, I was explicitly told that I would only be expected to work outside of normal hours in the event of an emergency. Emergencies have occurred since then, and I've handled them on my own time without any real complaint. I don't know if this qualifies as an emergency, but I'm not sure that this kind of work load is even possible (maybe it's expected in startups, but I'm not working for a startup).

As an at-will exempt salaried employee, is it unwarranted to be dissatisfied with this kind of environment?

I know that this type of employee doesn't have many protections, but is it normal to be asked to work like this?

Answer 1

You are on a death march, and there are no good options. Edward Yourdon wrote an entire book about this, which is worthwhile reading. I don't have a copy on hand, so I'm summarizing from memory, but the options are:

• Quit. Try to line up your next job first.
• Get transferred out. Difficult because death marches are usually by definition high priority.
• Cut down project scope. Unlikely to be an option unless you're a manager.
• Pull off the impossible and deliver. Exceedingly unlikely without a really dedicated crack team laser-focused on sending a man to the moon or whatever and a supportive management team. (Yourdon goes into a lot of detail on the sorts of perks that can get a team to pull insane hours for a while, but it sounds like yours aren't offering anything at all.)
• Work to rule: 9 to 5, zero overtime. Management and coworkers will hate you for it, but they're unlikely to fire you because that would make them even more late. Obviously you should be looking for a new job while you do this.

I would recommend the last of these. Your health is not worth sacrificing on the altar of managerial hubris and/or incompetence.

Answer 2

Short answer: Leave. As soon as you can.

I have worked on a project that was like this. The expectations of the key stakeholders were unreasonable. Dates were chosen arbitrarily then try to fit the project within that timeframe. They would throw people into already overworked teams, expecting that to reduce workload and neglecting that for the first three months new people are a drain on existing staff.

I was the lead developer in one of the teams involved in the project, and despite my pushing back over and over to my manager, our warnings went unheeded. I jumped before the project hit critical failure, which happened about five months later. All staff were shed and saturated the market, which made it difficult for them to find another job. There was also a significant stigma attached to people who had been involved in this very high profile project.

As @jpkatol says, it's a Death March project and the best thing to do at this point is to exit as soon as you can before the whole things goes completely pear shaped. You have no reason to assist poor management. Get out while you can and find another job that is managed properly.