ABSTRACT
The software industry is a highly labor-intensive one. So long as software is built using human effort as the primary tool, all of the factors associated with work patterns and overtime will continue to be significant. The Organization for International Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) publishes general work hour data for all countries. Unpaid overtime averages more than 10 hours a week in the United States and more than 16 hours a week in Japan. The majority of professional US software personnel are termed exempt, which means that they do not receive overtime pay for work in the evening or on weekends. Indeed, many software cost-tracking systems do not even record overtime hours. As exempt software personnel are normally paid on a monthly basis rather than on an hourly basis, the differences in apparent results between normal and intense work patterns are both significant and also tricky when performing software economic analyses.
