Should IT Professionals Be Exempt From Overtime Regulations? 545
Paul Fernhout writes: Nick Hanauer is a billionaire who made his fortune as one of the original investors in Amazon. He suggests President Obama should restore U.S. overtime regulations to how they worked in the 1970s to boost the economy. Quoted by PBS NewsHour: "In 1975, more than 65 percent of salaried American workers earned time-and-a-half pay for every hour worked over 40 hours a week. Not because capitalists back then were more generous, but because it was the law. It still is the law, except that the value of the threshold for overtime pay — the salary level at which employers are required to pay overtime — has been allowed to erode to less than the poverty line for a family of four today. Only workers earning an annual income of under $23,660 qualify for mandatory overtime.
Many millions of Americans are currently exempt from the overtime rules — teachers, federal employees, doctors, computer professionals, etc. — and corporate leaders are lobbying hard to expand "computer professional" to mean just about anybody who uses a computer. Which is almost everybody. But were the Labor Department instead to narrow these exemptions, millions more Americans would receive the overtime pay they deserve. ... The twisted irony is, when you work more hours for less pay, you hurt not only yourself, you hurt the real economy by depressing wages, increasing unemployment and reducing demand and innovation. Ironically, when you earn less, and unemployment is high, it even hurts capitalists like me." If overtime pay is generally good for the economy, should most IT professionals really be exempt from overtime regulations?
Many millions of Americans are currently exempt from the overtime rules — teachers, federal employees, doctors, computer professionals, etc. — and corporate leaders are lobbying hard to expand "computer professional" to mean just about anybody who uses a computer. Which is almost everybody. But were the Labor Department instead to narrow these exemptions, millions more Americans would receive the overtime pay they deserve. ... The twisted irony is, when you work more hours for less pay, you hurt not only yourself, you hurt the real economy by depressing wages, increasing unemployment and reducing demand and innovation. Ironically, when you earn less, and unemployment is high, it even hurts capitalists like me." If overtime pay is generally good for the economy, should most IT professionals really be exempt from overtime regulations?
No (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No (Score:4, Insightful)
The cheapskate employees will be forced to hire an additional worker instead of forcing existing workers into 80 hour work weeks. Win-win for employees, the unemployed, and the economy.
Re: (Score:3)
It reduced unemployment when it was implemented. Who is it to say unemployment wouldn't be even higher if they had an enlarged working period?
Re:No (Score:5, Informative)
Just prior to the 2008 economic collapse, France's employment for those aged 25 - 54 was around 83%, compared to 80% in the US. Lately, after the collapse and some recovery, the rate in France is 81%, compared to 76% in the US.
France has good educational opportunities, skewing comparisons for those under 25, and good retirement benefits, skewing comparisons for those over 54. But apples-to-apples for the core years of productivity show France has the right idea.
Re:No (Score:5, Informative)
I am getting my data from the Federal Reserve's domestic and foreign data: http://research.stlouisfed.org... [stlouisfed.org]
Tons of data you can view there. Pull up France's 25 - 54 employment, and the US's. My statement is true.
You, and Business Insider, are pushing a narrative that relies on apples-to-oranges. You and BI are relying on unemployment data covering all 18+ year olds. But that's a ridiculous metric for a country with strong educational social programs for the younger generation and strong retirement social programs for the older generation. The young take the time to learn more skills, the old are able to retire at a much younger age than the wage slaves in the US.
But of course the free market fundamentalists are going to seize on faulty reasoning if it can be used as an argument to dismantle social programs and worker protections.
Re:No (Score:5, Informative)
No, that is how (one metric for) UNemployment is measured. The FRED data I referenced is the comprehensive employment (_not_ UNemployment) of all persons aged 25 - 54 in France and in the US. No issues about measuring who's looking for a job and who isn't. You should actually look at the data source I posted instead of making these inaccurate statements.
Re: No (Score:5, Informative)
Oh wait it has been tested. In Germany. Where I got overtime pay as a software developer so that when I had to do a production deploy on a sunday I could go home early for the next week or get a half day off or choose to get it paid out. Last time I checked the German economy was going strong despite (because?) of this. Obviously an American doesnt "understand" these things at all as these are foreign concepts. Its much easier to accept that youre doing 80hour weeks yourself if you dont have to accept that 40 hour weeks are possible but you just dont get them.
Re:No (Score:4, Interesting)
Like Stalin used to say cemeteries are full of irreplaceable people. That's why.
Re:No (Score:5, Insightful)
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So the whole tech industry business model is flawed ? Anybody in the SV sticking to 40h/week is pretty likely to get laid off, if not fired, pretty quick.
+1 if I had it.
Re:No (Score:5, Insightful)
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Not really.
Coders are expected to perform in a dynamic deadline oriented environment while maintaining a positive, can do attitude.
They need to be self-starters who also comply well with bureaucratic documentation requirements of up to 6-8 signed off documents and meeting schedules of 4-6 meetings before they can do the project.
They need to be good and completing projects in a week doing "what ever it takes" after the executives sat on a project for 6 weeks after the requests were submitted early because "i
Re:You do set your own hours (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course, you seem to suggest, daddy can always find them another job.
Please be serious instead of this stupid little game where you roleplay a reactionary aristocrat.
Re:I have nothing better to do... (Score:5, Insightful)
but not much to do at home besides watch TV.
There are lots of interesting and/or frustrating problems to work on at home too. If TV's all you can come up with, then you aren't even trying. My work is within a fairly constrained field. I have a lot of ideas for things that I don't have the opportunity to do at work, and when one becomes sufficiently interesting, I find time to write it at home instead.
I go to work to do the things that my employer wants done. I go home and do the things that I want to do. It works out nicely.
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If all your itches can be satisfied at work, then you are asexual, since satisfying that one at work will get you fired. By identifying as a person who would gladly spend all their time at work, but not mentioning how statistically unusual you are, you're thus posing a Kantian Universal - That is, you're claiming that what is good for you should be good for everyone. If everyone stops having sex, the human race dies out in a generation. Why do you hate the whole human race?
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Why should he?
OMG, I's one of then their cormnust's!
Re:No (Score:5, Insightful)
It's called "race to the bottom". If the rules were legislated, everyone would have to stick to it.
As noted, many things since golden age of 70s have been systematically eroded to their current level.
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For programmers in CA, normally they are non-exempt, although I'm sure many skirt around it. My understanding is if you want a favorable equity package, you'll accept exempt status. If you want an hourly wage and a life, you declare non-exempt. .
Personally, I think if you're not a manager and you aren't getting a good chunk of stock, you should be getting overtime.
Re:No (Score:5, Informative)
For programmers in CA, normally they are non-exempt, although I'm sure many skirt around it. My understanding is if you want a favorable equity package, you'll accept exempt status. If you want an hourly wage and a life, you declare non-exempt.
Both the Department of Labor and the courts disagree with your assessment.
The actual job duties themselves, not the job title, not the method of payment (hourly vs salary), and not the contract, determine if an individual worker is exempt from overtime rules.
This has been challenged time and time again in the courts. The concept of a "working foreman" is often mentioned since management is exempt from overtime. If the individual can show that at least half the time is spent on non-management tasks they are not exempt. If you spend 49% of your time or less doing management tasks you are not exempt. Even if your job title is "Managing Director", even if your contract calls you an exempt worker.
Other companies frequently fight it claiming that since they pay on an annual salary basis rather than an hourly basis they don't track it and therefore don't have to pay. These arguments lose.
Many companies like to skirt around the law since it saves money. Many companies (wrongly) claim that workers on an annual salary are exempt from overtime. Many companies (wrongly) specify that a position is exempt from overtime when legally it should not be. Even if you are paid on a regular salary instead of hourly the company is still obligated by FLSA overtime regulations.
If in doubt, make a phone call to the department of labor or whatever your state's equivalent is. They can ask a few questions and determine your status. Businesses violating the law are generally forced to pay back wages to the individuals and back taxes to the government. Since government really hates to miss tax money they tend to enforce this whenever discovered.
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For programmers in CA, normally they are non-exempt, although I'm sure many skirt around it. My understanding is if you want a favorable equity package, you'll accept exempt status. If you want an hourly wage and a life, you declare non-exempt.
Both the Department of Labor and the courts disagree with your assessment.
The actual job duties themselves, not the job title, not the method of payment (hourly vs salary), and not the contract, determine if an individual worker is exempt from overtime rules.
This has been challenged time and time again in the courts. The concept of a "working foreman" is often mentioned since management is exempt from overtime. If the individual can show that at least half the time is spent on non-management tasks they are not exempt. If you spend 49% of your time or less doing management tasks you are not exempt. Even if your job title is "Managing Director", even if your contract calls you an exempt worker.
Although you are correct about the fact that the job duties matter, rather than the simple title, and you are correct about the fact that companies will give you a title, declare that you're salaried and therefore exempt, and try all sorts of other tricks to avoid paying overtime, you're wrong about one crucial thing - there's also an exemption for programmers [flsa.com]:
Computer workers may be exempt under any of the "white collar exemptions," as bona fide executive or administrative employees. (See, FLSA Coverage.) For example, a "network administrator" may be performing administratively exempt job duties. There are, in addition, some special rules which apply to employees who work with computers and permit them to be classified as exempt even if they don't meet the usual requirements for exempt executives or administrators. However, there are special provisions which exempt some computer employees who might not otherwise qualify as "professionally" exempt. These include systems analysts, programmers (who "write code"), or software engineers. More specifically, the special computer employee exemption applies to workers who apply systems analysis techniques and procedures to determine hardware, software, or system functional specifications, or who design, develop, test or modify computer systems or programs based on user or design specifications.
And that's what the article and thread are discussing - programmers. Here [dol.gov] is the fact sheet from the DOL. If you:
Re:No (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:No (Score:4, Informative)
So the whole tech industry business model is flawed ?
Yes.
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For the most part it is.
The biggest myth. If you work harder then you get more.
As a salary employee if you work harder then you get paid the same. If you need some extra money for that week you just kinda have to wait longer. If you have the energy to work over 40 hours a week then you should get paid more for the over time.
By allowing IT people to have some control in their salary, it give more power to them and allow them to feel more accomplished. And they will be more willing to work those hours with
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Anybody in the SV sticking to 40h/week is pretty likely to get laid off, if not fired, pretty quick.
As a skilled I.T. technician, my contract prohibits me from working overtime. I haven't worked overtime in 10+ years. Being a contractor, I've gotten laid off plenty of times. However, I make 80% more than those who stayed at the same company for years and accept 2% pay raises as normal.
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Re:No (Score:5, Interesting)
I think the point is that currently the 50-60 hour work week is baked into a high salary. I think a lot of companies and employees would be better with a lower base salary but with overtime pay on top of that instead of fixed high salary. During lean times overtime could get cut back, making salary costs more flexible, and likely reducing layoffs as a result. Employees would likely work 8 hour days more often, and be more likely to have their productivity needs met rather than being expected to just burn more hours.
The current setup has a perverse incentive to work employees extra hours rather than hire the correct headcount. Anything over 40 hours of work is "free" for the company.
Companies that compete by expecting 60 hours of work from all employees necessarily create an unhealthy work environment, and defacto discriminate against workers with families.
Studies show hours worked past 40/wk unproductive (Score:5, Insightful)
So, ultimately, the whole thing is self-defeating in general. Crunch times may be one thing, but on a regular basis, productivity declines even as people look busy.
One example:
http://www.inc.com/jessica-sti... [inc.com]
"The most essential thing to know about the 40-hour work-week is that, while it was the unions that pushed it, business leaders ultimately went along with it because their own data convinced them this was a solid, hard-nosed business decision....
Evan Robinson, a software engineer with a long interest in programmer productivity (full disclosure: our shared last name is not a coincidence) summarized this history in a white paper he wrote for the International Game Developers' Association in 2005. The original paper contains a wealth of links to studies conducted by businesses, universities, industry associations and the military that supported early-20th-century leaders as they embraced the short week. 'Throughout the '30s, '40s and '50s, these studies were apparently conducted by the hundreds,' writes Robinson; 'and by the 1960s, the benefits of the 40-hour week were accepted almost beyond question in corporate America. In 1962, the Chamber of Commerce even published a pamphlet extolling the productivity gains of reduced hours.'
What these studies showed, over and over, was that industrial workers have eight good, reliable hours a day in them. On average, you get no more widgets out of a 10-hour day than you do out of an eight-hour day."
With software, it is so easy to introduce a bug when you are tired or distracted (one reason team programming often saves money). A bug (especially a conceptual one) might be very expensive to debug down the road, especially if it makes its way to production. How many times have programmers spent days chasing a bug that was a one line fix? So, it may well be the case that longer hours mean *negative* productivity and higher costs for the extra hours worked past 40 per week even when the employee is not paid for the hours.
There is another complicating factor. Big companies in the 1970s such as HP or IBM invested in actually training employees, creating the pool of workers that Silicon Valley drew from initially. Investing in employee training is now rare, due in part due to little loyalty on either side of the employee/employer relationship in many companies. So, given that the tech industry moves so fast, where does the training time come from (including to read Slashdot :-)? Ideally, training should happen during those 40 hours. But in practice, many people working in IT have to keep current on their own time.
Yet training produces many benefits:
http://www.psychologicalscienc... [psychologicalscience.org]
"A new study from a team of European researchers found that job training may also be a good strategy for companies looking to hire and retain top talent. When workers felt like they had received better job training options, they were also more likely to report a greater sense of commitment to their employer.
For the study, psychological scientists Rita Fontinha, Maria Jose Chambel, and Nele De Cuyper looked at IT outsourcers in Portugal-who must constantly update their skills in order to keep up with the fast pace of new technology. The researchers hypothesized that when people were happy with the training opportunities their employer provided, they would be more motivated to reciprocate with an enhanced sense of loyalty to the company.
This kind of informal balance of expectations between employees and management is known as a "psychological contract." When workers feel that their employer has fulfilled their obligations under the psychological contract, they're more motivated to uphold their
Re: (Score:3)
Add to that, companies that assume they will be able to get 60 hours a week in the future are assuming that the economy will still have all the problems it has right now, or more, in that future. That assumpion hardly sounds like a good business plan - "Our employment model is to assume the recession will never end.".
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So the whole tech industry business model is flawed ?
Yes.
Anybody in the SV sticking to 40h/week is pretty likely to get laid off, if not fired, pretty quick.
Flawed.
Re:No (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, that whole model is flawed. SV may be making lots of money, but it's ruining people's lives if it expects insane work hours.
I work in the tech field (actually, I own a 10-person tech company) in Canada and I have never made my employees work overtime. Ever.
Unfortunately, given free reign, businesses will exploit employees and the labour laws in the US offer hardly any protection to workers.
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I own a 10-person tech company in Canada and I have never made my employees work overtime. Ever.
That is commendable. But hasn't it ever occurred that you promise a client to deliver a certain date, and you made a mistake in planning? I could imagine that rather than disappointing the client, you try and work overtime to make good on your promises. Obviously you didn't do that, so how do you solve those problems?
"Working hours: Get a life" at economist.com (Score:5, Interesting)
Thanks for the link, AC: http://www.economist.com/blogs... [economist.com] ... The Greeks are some of the most hardworking in the OECD, putting in over 2,000 hours a year on average. Germans, on the other hand, are comparative slackers, working about 1,400 hours each year. But German productivity is about 70% higher. ... So maybe we should be more self-critical about how much we work. Working less may make us more productive. And, as Russell argued, working less will guarantee âoehappiness and joy of life, instead of frayed nerves, weariness, and dyspepsia"."
"Working hours: Get a life
Interesting comments there like on work culture in South Korea, and I've just read the first couple comments of hundreds...
Re:"Working hours: Get a life" at economist.com (Score:4, Interesting)
Another misconception, you are looking at the effect of a higher productivity - fewer work hours and then you decide that it is the cause of it.
I live in Germany on and off for half a decade now, so I can tell you this: it is the capital savings and investments that make Germans so productive, they have the savings that allow them to acquire/build the tools and train management and afford investments into technology that make their workers more productive and the more productive workers can work fewer hours. Unproductive workers can work a thousand hours and not be as productive as productive workers at a tenth of that time due to the difference in capital savings and investments.
Re:"Working hours: Get a life" at economist.com (Score:5, Insightful)
Gees, troll much. What are the modders asleep. I have found those that work the hardest get paid the least. Just look at all the poor schlubs on minimum wage working two jobs, IT workers get it real easy compared to them. So a mandatory minimum wage that pays for the cost of living in conjunction with full overtime awards and to cap it off and get rid of often substandard health insurance and replace it with universal healthcare.
Re:"Working hours: Get a life" at economist.com (Score:4, Insightful)
People who work the harder in their industry will almost always get paid more (barring other factors).
That's unfortunately nothing to do with how well they get paid.
Your pay level is largely about politics and self-promotion. (within a particular field and experience level)
Re:No (Score:4, Insightful)
True, maybe there should be no overtime exemption for anyone making less than say $85,000. It's hard for me to see how a business can justify really owning your time for $23,660. It's easier to swallow the idea that someone who is highly compensated would be expected to be fully invested in their job.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Salary has not inflated with work hours so they really would be willing to pay you that same $150,000 without the extra work if they had to pay the overtime and do staffing properly since reduced unemployment drives wages up.
Then by all means, ask for it. Better yet, start your own software firm offering that deal and poach all the good programmers. If the money is just sitting on the table, why aren't you out grabbing it?
The answer is, of course, that salaries are generally at equilibrium. Employees negotiate for as much as they can (I certainly do each time I change jobs), employers push back equally hard. Everyone arrives at the best deal they can. It's extremely unlikely there's a ton of extra salary just sitting there beca
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That's nice and all except that without some sort of law or regulation, stating that a company cannot work you over 40 hours without additional compensation, is pointless. Every single company I've worked for has been happy to have me working 60+ hours a week and I doubt I'm in the minority.
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It actually depends. Back a while ago, a large consulting / outsourcing firm had faced a lawsuit, that a bunch of their IT employees were mis-classified. The outcome of that suit is that they were all reclassified as hourly, eligible for overtime -- but their pay got slashed by about 30%.
For myself, I like not having to punch a clock or fill in a time sheet. And if I have to run out an hour early, I like that my pay won't be docked by that amount. (Note, that employers can deduct hours from your vacatio
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but their pay got slashed by about 30%.
A somewhat predictable result. However, it would be a teachable moment in how much overtime they are expecting from you.
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Back a while ago, a large consulting / outsourcing firm had faced a lawsuit, that a bunch of their IT employees were mis-classified. The outcome of that suit is that they were all reclassified as hourly, eligible for overtime -- but their pay got slashed by about 30%.
If my pay were slashed by 30% but I got paid even 1-for-1 overtime, I would still come out ahead. If I got time and a half, my pay would be double even with a 30% cut in wage.
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The rule that works.
All employees making 60% or more of what the CEO makes including salary, stock options, bonus, PTO, and any other perks can be included in being exempt from over time.
All others below the 60% mark get overtime.
Salary versus wages (Score:2)
Are they not on salary? if so there's already an exemption in place.
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I used to work for a bank that would entice the lowly field techs with offers of exempt positions and once they had them, they'd work them to the bone. It was purely a scam to get more work out of already productive employees.
Re:No (Score:5, Insightful)
As a newly unemployed individual contributor, I vote yes, because we're at the point where most businesses are too entrenched (or incompetent) to correct their business model. Well over 75% of the job listings I review have phrases like "Availability to occasionally work some evenings and weekends", which could mean anything from once a quarter to every single week, depending on staffing (or lack, thereof). Also, in multiple phone screens and interviews, I have heard the expectation of departmental employees working over 40 hours a week, even for locations with long train commutes. Just because I'm single doesn't mean I want to stay that way forever; I need to eat right, exercise, have a decent amount of life in my mythical "work-life balance", and so on.
We are past the point of companies regulating themselves in this matter; we need a law to enforce it. There are going to be many companies whining about lost revenue, but most of that revenue will come back to them in consumer spending, and frankly, it's the fault of the United States government for leaving these regulations so stagnant for so long.
IT Professionals should receive overtime (Score:5, Insightful)
Project managers should be held accountable for their dubious scheduling practices and failures to estimate and manage project schedules effectively. Greater reward for IT professionals working overtime would hopefully translate into more regular work schedules, rather than being coerced into taking time away from families and loved ones in order to cover a PM's butt.
Everyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why not have everyone who works overtime (defined as work done after 40 hours for a given week) be paid time and a half, regardless of their profession/job?
And while we're on it, why not have a normal work week go back to 35 hours instead of 40?
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Why not have everyone who works overtime (defined as work done after 40 hours for a given week) be paid time and a half, regardless of their profession/job?
I believe this is the correct answer. Any employee, up to and including the CEO, who works more than 40 hours should make time and a half for overtime. That may mean many employees have their base salary adjusted to match the new expectations but overall it would be better for society and the economy.
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They Deserve It Too (Score:5, Insightful)
Medical is likely to remain that way because of how hospitals work
Hospitals don't need doctors and nurses pulling insane 24-48 hour shifts (I know they do this because a friend is a nurse), they just do it to save money and not have to hire anyone new. We should let them get overtime and force hospitals to hire more staff and make better shift schedules -- maybe that would help cut down on the crazy wait time just to see your general practitioner, as well as medical mistakes from sleepiness too.
managers pretty much have to have OT on big projects
How about managers (upper management?) learn to make realistic project schedules instead of overworking the employees while they high-five and go to the golf course to celebrate getting a job "done early". Again, let's let managers get paid overtime, and expect employers to make real schedules.. or if they need it to be faster, hire more people before the project starts!
salesmen often work in a manner that makes tracking actual hours of work impractical.
Salesmen often have to travel and I agree that makes it more difficult. However, we can treat it like we would for truck drivers, etc. -- salesmen are allotted x number of hours/days of travel (the travel itself should be considered work, meaning they work 14-16 hour days if we don't include sleep and food), and when they get back, they MUST have mandatory paid time off or they earn overtime on their regular work in the office for the rest of the month. I'm just spouting off an idea here, I'm sure it has some flaws and could be refined, but the point is there is a way to handle odd schedules and still be fair to the employee.
IT could certainly use updated laws. Too many times you have to be on-call, come in on weekends at 3am to fix a server, rush a software project out the door, etc. Same things as above hold -- companies will learn to make better schedules or hire more people if such labor laws are in place. They will bitch about it at first, but they will adapt. There is nothing sacred that makes 60+ hour weekly schedules the only way to do work in these fields.
Re:Everyone? (Score:5, Interesting)
So, I've been an IT professional in the past and transitioned to industrial control systems. In IT I was a contractor that only got payed for my billable hours. I spent long days but got payed very fairly for the hours I billed.
When I moved into control systems my pay was negotiated as salary, I got insurance and retirement. But when I actually started working it was all figured hourly. The problem was it didn't matter how many hours I worked, I got payed for 40. I was always told to 'take time off', but there was never time. Always another project, always another emergency. 50 hours a week and on call every night became the norm. Eventually I got sick of it and switched jobs.
Now I'm actually an exempt employee. Most weeks are 40 hours, some are more like 50 and I get an occasional call at night. My boss is rabid about me taking a day off when I get a crappy week and never quibbles when the day is slack and I leave early. My team is expected to work 40 and OT is authorized as long as the employee isn't getting burned out. The only problem with this setup is it's easy to get slack. Without the constant pressure it's easier to let things slide. I find that if I drive my team hard on a project every couple of months, they stay more productive when the workload is normal.
It's been interesting to see how the individuals react to working conditions, what motivates them (and myself), and how to make sure they don't drive themselves too hard while still getting the job done.
No way, not for me (Score:5, Funny)
I'm a self-made man - I built the hospital I was born in, started teaching myself at age 11 months, and I got to where I am on my own.
I don't need the nanny state to make sure I and my peers are fairly compensated.
What's next, mandatory clean water? Then clean air? Where does it end?
Socialism, that's where.
No way, not for me!
Re:No way, not for me (Score:4, Funny)
Strawman arguments. Liberals love them!
But you failed. You forgot to mention Somalia!
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Ha! Best comment on /. today.
Very nice.
Nicely done. (Score:3)
“There is no such thing as a 'self-made' man. We are made up of thousands of others. Everyone who has ever done a kind deed for us, or spoken one word of encouragement to us, has entered into the make-up of our character and of our thoughts, as well as our success.” -- George Matthew Adams
Not just yes, but HELL, YES! (Score:4, Insightful)
Old-style "salaried" meant that you didn't have to worry about your hours, and neither did your managers - you'd get you work done, and could take off, say, for a federal holiday. Now - I'd put down a $10 that 99% of you who are in IT work, or have worked, over 40 hours, had vacation time or holidays that you couldn't take, or, like I do, have to "make up" the hours if the federal gov't shuts down or has a holiday, and we *don't*.
By definition, it means what you're really just fairly well-paid hourly employees. *Hourly* employees get time and a half overtime, and double time for working on, say, holdiays. But you're all making *so* much money that you don't care (nor do you have a life outside of work), right?
mark "would be seriously tempted to strangle a manager who said, 'whatever it takes'"
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As an IT Manager (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm an IT Manager. I weekly am required to make my dudes work 45-50 hours. Two or three times a year, they put in 65 - 70 hour weeks. They get nothing for the OT except MAYBE comp-time. I don't even get the comp-time.
I am in favor of this. If the IT dudes were treated the same as everyone else, they wouldn't be required to work themselves half to death and get a reputation for being sullen.
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Also an IT Manager. I try to keep my team capped out at 42 hours per week. Every once and a while we'll have some sort of emergency, but that's where comp time comes in.
As an IT manager, my week starts at 42 hours and grows from there. I'll be pushing 50 on this week by the time I leave for the night.
And my day today included interviews for an additional permanent BA/PM, 6 mainframe developers, and I was told by my boss that we were going to "load balance" from the C#/GSI team onto my Java team, that I woul
Re:As an IT Manager (Score:4, Insightful)
Why put up with this? Seriously, family is much more important. If everyone worked 40 and went home, then what? It's ridiculous that pointy-haired bosses think this is acceptable, and then they spend Friday on the golf course. Go home at 40 hours. If they fire you, find a job where you'll be treated like a human being.
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Seriously, family is much more important.
Unless, of course, it's not. Assertions are always true, except when they aren't.
Abuse of overtime is resulting in unemployment (Score:5, Interesting)
Exempt status used to be reserved for highly paid professionals (doctors, lawyers, managers).
At my last company, they made people work 72 hours a week for months. We had multiple heart attacks- and several divorces. They took advantage of the bad job market created partly by the fact that companies can work IT people 72 hours a week.
Anything over 45 hours a week should be overtime until you hit the top 20% of income or you are supervising, hiring, firing, and making pay decisions over at least a few other people.
Any work on actual holidays should be double time.
Conditions in many IT shops in the united states are horrific now.
Re:Abuse of overtime is resulting in unemployment (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Abuse of overtime is resulting in unemployment (Score:4, Informative)
Good developers will even be able t ojump in a bad market.
The people who most desperately cling to a shitty job are the wretched incompetents who couldn't get employed elsewhere. It's 100% the best way to have the most useless people working for you.
Re:Abuse of overtime is resulting in unemployment (Score:4, Informative)
Anything over 45 hours a week should be overtime until you hit the top 20% of income
Most people working in the IT industry ARE in the top 20%. The top 20% of wage earners(not households)
in the USA starts at about 53k.
I think exempt status should only be allowed for people that both don't track their hours and have a fixed workload.
Most of the IRS rules for contractor vs employee should also apply. If an employer can tell you when to start,
how long to stay, can give you more work, tracks your hours, etc... then you shouldn't be allowed to be exempt.
Yes. (Score:5, Interesting)
And double time on Sundays.
Unions - the people who brought you the weekend.
Re: (Score:2)
Are you really saying there should be one day of the week where this applies (the day being irrelevant), or can you give an argument why Sunday should be special -- an argument has nothing to do with religion?
Re:Yes. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
I see no need to make Sundays special, but I do think the government should mandate triple overtime for work done on the three major secular holidays - Memorial Day, Labor Day, and Thanksgiving. This would be for work performed from 2AM day of until 6 the next morning, so you can close the night before but then have a day with your family.
The public would happily pay for police, EMS, fire, and medical staffs, who would appreciate the extra pay. I suspect Walgreens and CVS would stay open with a few stores
A big fat no! (Score:5, Insightful)
These programmers desperately need protection. The few places where happy people love their jobs do not justify allowing companies (especially game companies) to exploit their workers to the point where their wives start an organization to protest the horrible working conditions (literally).
Salaried positions only make sense in a few cases (Score:3)
Salaried positions only make sense in a few special cases.
An accountant who is really busy at the end of each month but has very little to do in the middle
is one example. Most IT doesn't fall in that category. In most jobs if you finish what you're
doing there is always something more to do. If you can't run out of things to do then you shouldn't
be salaried. Even for those few jobs where you can run out of things to do, if you required overtime
pay then compensation would adjust accordingly where their hourly wage would be reduced a little
to make up for the busy time where they are making time and a half.
Another option for those few rare cases would be to allow yearly averaging and only require paying
overtime if the average for the year is over 40. That would make for a nice christmas bonus.
At the company I work for everyone is hourly and if you don't hit your 40, no big deal, you just get
a slightly smaller paycheck that week. We encourage people to try to get close to 40 and encourage
people to not go over 40 but if they do occasionally go over we pay overtime and don't question it.
Most companies seem to use exempt as just a way to get more hours out of people for free.
Overtime system provides the wrong incentives (Score:5, Interesting)
Overtime of 1.5x or 2x discourages employers from having overtime, and instead hire more people. It's generally better for unemployment numbers to employe more people full-time than it is to over-employ fewer people by having them work lots of overtime.
Employees are somewhat discouraged to work overtime long term because usually the extra money is not worth it. But let us not pretend that employees have much say in when and how they work. They don't usually have a lot of bargaining power.
But labor unions do have a lot of bargaining power, and they have consistently pushed to have lots of overtime hours at a high pay so that union members can effectively net higher incomes. Higher incomes are usually good for individuals, unless they are doing it just to scrape by or have no choice in finding a good work-family balance. Higher incomes are almost always better for unions as it can increase the dues they collect without diluting their voting blocs with the introduction of a lot of new members.
The system of employers and unions is quite corrupt, I hope that isn't a surprise to any of you.
I think employers should pay 3x overtime, but only give 1.5x to the employees and 1.5x goes into a social program. I don't really care which one, but best to pick one that has the right poetic justice. Like financial support for the unemployed, or healthcare for the poor. If you're force to work 10 hour days, might as well force you to send the money to someone who can use it rather than line the pockets of your union reps. I was tempted to suggest that it would be 1x to the employee and 2x to a fund, but I know that it would make it easier for people to collude to work off the clock if there is zero benefit to whistle-blowing. (not that 50% of your hourly rate is much payment for something high risk like reporting your company for fraud)
The other advantage of having the overtime go to a fund is when a business tries to commit fraud it becomes a type of tax fraud. The IRS is way more aggressive at pursuing tax fraud than the various state agency that handle prosecution of compensation that violates state code.
Re: (Score:2)
So... my overtime pay should be more, but taxed at a flat rate of 50%?
I am not in your voting block. :)
Re: (Score:2)
I think economists have debunked the idea that working hours are zero sum and that reducing them (eg, to 35 hours a week from 40) gets you more jobs.
I would assume it would be much cheaper to pay 1.5x for extra time than to hire more employees. More employees means benefits and additional work resources (desks, phones, computers, office space, supervisory time, etc).
I think the blue collar OT incentives are mostly about low pay to begin with -- they don't make much money to begin with, so the OT is seen as
Another billionaire proposes to help the economy (Score:2)
Betteridge (Score:4, Informative)
No.
Strange. because it has been a few decades since I was in the salaried worker pool. But way back then, I wasn't aware of a threshold. I got overtime (1.5x) or not depending on the definition of my job. And back then I was bringing in around $150K/year.
The OT/no OT decision was based on the definition in the National Labor Relations Act [wikipedia.org] of an exempt professional: doing work
"involving the consistent exercise of discretion and judgment in its performance"
and
"of such a character that the output produced or the result accomplished cannot be standardized in relation to a given period of time"
So when the boss walked up and told me how to do my job, or told me that he expected me to work to a rigid schedule, I just replied, "Thanks buddy. That'll be $120/hour for anything over 40 hours per week. Or get your damned nose out of my cubicle and I'll solve the problem as best I can."
In spite of this sounding like a rather snotty attitude, it did serve to remind my employer of the economics of employees as a resource. You want X done at a certain rate (lines of code, sheets of engineering drawings or pages of specifications), fine. Pay for the work by the hour. You want me to take on some risk for getting a challenging job done? I'll work for a fixed price, but only if I have the flexibility to control my processes, tools and working environment. Quite a few enlightened managers saw the value in the latter option.
any salary at or under 100k/yr should get OT (Score:2)
In my opionion any salary, IT or not, at or under, US$100k/yr should be paid overtime for over 40hrs/wk.
It should be inflation-adjusted each year, as well.
N/A (Score:4, Interesting)
Hey have I ever mentioned (Score:2)
That reminds me, you know who doesn't do overtime? (Score:2)
Finally stuff that matters! (Score:3)
Throw in Orion splashdown news, and there will be hope for slashdot. And Mars.
Nobody should be exempt (Score:5, Insightful)
Nobody should be exempt from time and a half except the owners of a business. Anyone who works for pay should get paid overtime, if only to punish companies and businesses that insist on overworking their employees instead of hiring more staff to handle the load.
Re: (Score:3)
Computer game development.
I've worked for several companies in this industry, and although certainly some are better than others, there's not one of them I've encountered that won't at least occasionally expect you to put in whatever extra unpaid time it takes to get the job completed on schedule. Ideally, such crunch scenarios wouldn't happen, but the reality is that estimating the time it will take to complete certain things is something as complex as a computer game is an art that even highly experie
Re:Nobody should be exempt (Score:4, Informative)
Game development is the worse plague in the industry. Only finance companies come close, and they're not nearly as bad (because they pay up the wazoo. Game development shops do not).
Too many college kids went in with the thought having their name in the credits of the next Final Fantasy or Call of Duty. Supply and demand.
I'll just leave this here (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
How many people actually agree to working free overtime during negotiations with potential employers?
Re: (Score:2)
Decades ago workers figured out that they collectively they have a lot more negotiating power than individually and companies have been fighting that ever since.
Re: (Score:3)
Well, seeing as with Citizens United corporations are now people, maybe tech workers need to lobby to be considered as people too ...
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
As more workplaces in the 30's and 40's became unionized, the middle class grew. A public and free high school education was enough to get you a decent job, a good work/life balance and a pension. Not only did that benefit the workers themselves, but those workers had disposable income that they could spend on other products and services, which meant more jobs for other people. These same people could afford to send their kids to
Re: (Score:2)
Re:The road to hell (Score:5, Insightful)
No, you don't "deserve" anything other than what you negotiate
Did you negotiate to have a safe work environment? How about handicap accessibility should you ever end up, even temporarily, in a wheelchair? Id you negotiate a lower salary in trade for not having to endure sexual harassment? Your statement is very naive and immature (read Ayn Rand much do we?).
There is huge value in have the playing field somewhat level for a lot of basic things. Employment is inherently a lopsided arrangement. The employer has a lot more power than you do, so it become necessary to have some bigger entity keep things fair, safe, and liveable. Unions along with state and local government end up balancing the scales.
History is littered with examples of company towns, H1B abuse, child labor, black lung, and many other dark chapters for employees who could choose between whatever the company chose or starving in the street (or worse). Arguing that most employees have almost any meaningful bargaining power is just moronic.
Re: (Score:3)
However, you need to know the precise definition of "computer employee" in California. It is intended to cover programmers, and specifically exempts people who work mainly with hardware. And if your primary job is manipulating data, you're an administrative employee, not a computer employee.
(I know all this because our then-new HR director tried to classify me as a computer employee, which would mean I'd have to start punching a timeclock. I objected - it'd be a pain in the ass to have to track whether or n
Re: (Score:2)
Being salaried, but worked so many hours that you effectively make less than minimum wage, is exploitation pure and simple.
I thought it was called "graduate school"...
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
The 40 hour work week and overtime pay was a part of Roosevelt's New Deal as a scheme to get more people employed, at least part time. It wasn't part of anyone striking or dying.
Re: (Score:3)
You do realize that died right?
S. 1747 (112th): Computer Professionals Update Act
Introduced:
Oct 20, 2011 (112th Congress, 2011–2013)
Status:
Died (Referred to Committee) in a previous session of Congress
Re: (Score:3)
I wouldn't want your life.
After 15 years in IT, including self-employment and employment, state and private, and I haven't worked an hour of overtime unnecessarily. If something blows up, yeah, I'll hang around to get it working for the next morning - but I'll make sure I'm paid for it or get it off in lieu. Apart from that, I'm not a clock-watcher but will certainly work as my contract states.
And the line "other reasonable duties" is a joint interpretation. If I don't think it's reasonable, I won't be d