California Overtime Law – Computer Professional Exemption (2013)

http://www.gotovertime.com/computer_pro.html

by greenyoda • 11 years ago

48 50 11 years ago

I was hired onto my first real coding job hourly at first. I asked to go "full time", and was hired "full time". Not long after that I asked my boss to authorize my working more than forty hours. It was only then that he pointed out that because I was "salaried", I was not paid any overtime, actually he could demand I work as many hours as he pleased.

What actually happened was that I studied like a demon until I qualified to work as a contract programmer - where I was paid hourly, and was never particularly expected to work excessively.

Given the pay that coders typically make I don't think it's unreasonable that we are exempt from overtime pay however that should not be regarded as carte blanche to demand we work as many hours as the management asks us to.

ecspike• 11 years ago

I've seen this get abused a lot in some companies when they grab interns straight out of school and then convert them to F/T.

One other possibly sneaky area is when companies shift to unaccrued or "unlimited" vacation and the company puts a culture in place that discourages using that vacation. I'm fortunate to currently work in a place where the unavoidable crunch times are followed by vacation my manager almost forced me to plan to avoid burnout.

amenghra• 11 years ago

The intern -> F/T conversion usually comes with some kind of equity grant. It's not all black & white.

lsiebert3• 11 years ago

Vacation, as best I can tell (IANAL) doesn't really effect the rate if you are on a salary.

from http://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/faq_overtime.htm

If you are paid a salary, the regular rate is determined as follows:

Multiply the monthly remuneration by 12 (months) to get the annual salary. Divide the annual salary by 52 (weeks) to get the weekly salary. Divide the weekly salary by the number of legal maximum regular hours (40) to get the regular hourly rate.

mauricemir5• 11 years ago

So? Tech occupations are almost all 100% salaried for Managerial and professional Grades.

GeneralMayhem• 11 years ago

Given the pay that coders typically make I don't think it's unreasonable that we are exempt from overtime pay

This is a very dangerous argument to make. It's the same sort of argument that makes people turn a blind eye to the wage-collusion class action. Just because we're slightly better paid than average doesn't mean labor protections don't apply to us.

mauricemir5• 11 years ago

It depends I know people would would be highly insulted if you called them hourly paid.

Having "no fixed hours of work" is a social class signifier in many cultures.

But you are right some one getting paid 250k is still a worker and does have "labor" issues just as some one on 25k does.

Obviously issues may present in different ways for high and low paid workers

Fr0styMatt82• 11 years ago

It gets more complicated when you ask the question "How much money is the software engineer making for the company vs. what the company pays them?"

For argument's sake, let's say you're paid $80K per year. On the one hand, you may think that is high (it always depends what your frame of reference is). If the code you produce directly makes the company millions of dollars though, does that change your assessment of the 'reasonableness' of that salary?

This is the argument I've heard as to why sports stars get paid so much (because you have to look at what they get paid vs the amount of money they're making for the comapnies paying them).

It's a real can of worms.

longlivegnu• 11 years ago

Also not all coders are well paid :(

mauricemir5• 11 years ago

He can demand all he likes - the point is with salaried employees is its "no fixed hours of work " and its up to you to decide how to compete your assigned tasks.

I recall one of my coworkers at BT commenting well that he was taking Friday off to play Golf as he was using up his TOIL.

If they are treating you as hourly paid you should be getting OT.

URSpider942• 11 years ago

That's not true at all. An employer can demand that a salaried worker be in the office during particular hours. It just means that if those hours are > 40 per week, the worker doesn't get overtime.

shams93• 11 years ago

Better pay gets confiscated in taxes for the most part, also outside Silicon Valley you can have tremendous wage insecurity, on top of that you can be owned, most employers expected literally 20 hours a day, 7 days a week work down here for 40 hours pay, when you are doing more than double overtime it starts to look more like slavery than employment.

mattlutze• 11 years ago

I'm curious, where is this that it was seen acceptable to demand 140 hours a week?

markc• 11 years ago

also outside Silicon Valley you can have tremendous wage insecurity

Oh, puleeez. I doubt you meant it so broadly, but this comes across as having a very insular view of the tech landscape. There's really no "wage insecurity" for a decent engineer in NYC, DC area, Seattle, Boston, Raleigh-Durham, etc. etc. either (sorry if I left your awesome tech hub out..).

If anyone finds themselves in a 20h/day situation and can't find a local alternative, then you'll need to move or find a remote gig. 140h/week might happen for short sprints, but if it's sustained then you're a fool for staying.

goatforce5• 11 years ago

On my first contract job I was paid a daily rate. An occasional 9th or 10th hour a day didn't bother me and I wouldn't say anything about it, but the days got longer and more regularly so I started to fill in my time sheet for 1.5 days.

The finance guy reminded me that I was on a daily rate and would be paid per calendar day of work, and it wasn't possible to get more than 1x the rate.

So I started to claim a days work every time I got a call on the weekend. Someone calls me on the weekend and I say "hit reset" or "send me an email and i'll fix it on monday"? I worked. I'm claiming my daily rate.

Those days were begrudgingly paid and I suspect it all evened out in the end.

lsiebert3• 11 years ago

It's 41 dollars an hour now, btw. Per the rules, that means if you make less then $85,280 you are eligible this year.

ghshephard2• 11 years ago

Given that's what we were paying our entry level desktop support employees in San Mateo in 2003, kind of hard to imagine what types of computing occupation would pay less. That might be the problem with a "California Wide" rule - I can imagine in some rural areas, that salary (and cost of living) might be less.

greenyoda2• 11 years ago

I'm sure that there are plenty of IT-type jobs in non-tech companies outside of Silicon Valley where developers make around $85K per year. If we work for tech companies, it's hard to remember that most programming work is pretty unglamorous stuff, like writing back-office code for a bank or supermarket chain. And $85K may not even be such a bad salary if you're not in an area with crazy real estate prices.

iebro1234• 11 years ago

Most people believe this law is to protect employees from being overworked and not paid, however it worked the opposite way at my workplace.

Everyone making less then the 80k mentioned were switched from salary employees to hourly. This would have been good if we all spent nights and weekends crunching code. It was quiet the contrary. No one worked overtime so now everyone's pay has been reduced.

We used to have flexible hours and still get paid our full salary. Now you have to make sure you clock out at lunch and God forbid if you take more than an hour.

Sometimes we are done with all our tasks but we still have to sit at our desk to complete our 8 hours if we want to get paid our old salary pay.

This worked to the advantage of the employer, not us.

contergan• 11 years ago

So why don't you get together and collectively do something about it?

I would never accept having my pay downgraded without good reason or having to suddenly endure less flexible work hours. My general rule is: pay & benefits are only supposed to improve, as soon as either one degrades, it's time to look for another job. And job prospects in IT are pretty good right now, at least in the US.

Jtsummers• 11 years ago

Like my sibling post, I can't imagine accepting a pay cut from a current employer unless I received something valuable in return. I'd accept either better benefits (401k matching, better health insurance or equivalent but at a reduced personal cost, something) or more paid time off. But if I was making strictly less than I did before, without receiving something I valued in return I'd be looking for a new job.

What happened to you happened to a friend of mine, and he refused to leave the job. Salaried to hourly. Then leave changed from sick leave being something you could take easily to requiring it to be dire circumstances and a doctor's note. This past year they changed their pension plan from X% per year of service to Y% (Y < X). Seriously, if a company is willing to cut one benefit, they'll find a way to cut the rest unless there's enough unrest (and even then, most seem to prefer going bankrupt and getting bought out).

noer• 11 years ago

If you have to clock out for lunch and are only paid for the hours you're working, who cares if you take more than an hour?

backtoyoujim• 11 years ago

Your boss who wants to have metrics/results/widgets to show her boss when she wants them.

edit: it ain't a daycare.

pzxc• 11 years ago

I'm not sure how that disadvantages you. You get paid for the time you work. Seems fair to me. So you have to stay a little extra and be bored if there's not enough work rather than being able to go home early. Boo hoo. For every one of you, there are ten people in the U.S. that get asked to work 45, 50, 60 hours a week for the same salary they were getting for 40 hours. Now that is to the advantage of the employer. You sometimes don't have enough work to fill 8 hours and have to sit there and be bored? Cry me a river.

I much prefer to (and currently do) work salary. I like being able to go home early when I finish my workload ahead of schedule, just like you. And I'm fortunate enough to have an employer that doesn't demand more than 40 hours even if the workload is high. But when it comes to employers taking advantage of and exploiting their employees, a salary structure can be far more exploitative than hourly wages.

Now, for hourly workers, reducing them to part-time and hiring twice as many people as you needed if they were full-time, so you can avoid having to provide the benefits that are required for full-time workers (health insurance, etc) -- THAT is the way to expoit hourly workers. Not making them sit at a desk twiddling their thumbs in order to get an extra hour of pay, that's not exploitation at all. I'd be thanking my employer for letting me do that if I were you.

rdsnsca3• 11 years ago

Here in Nova Scotia, we have the right to refuse overtime.... does that exist in the US?

EricSu• 11 years ago

Are you saying the employee has the right to refuse to work overtime or the employer has the right to refuse to pay for overtime?

As people have said, if the employer refuses to pay an hourly worker overtime when they've worked the overtime hours then there are labor law issues (which means that the employee must be paid overtime). But I do know employers can ask/assert that an hourly employee is not to exceed a certain amount of hours per week. If an employer refuses to pay a salaried employee overtime then that's where this article comes in and what people are discussing in the other comments.

If an employee refuses to work overtime then that mostly deals with workplace culture, pleasing your boss/your personal decision/getting your work done. There's a big difference between why or how an hourly employee can or would refuse to work overtime vs a salaried employee as explained by the way they're paid. An hourly employee mostly deals with not getting paid more money whereas a salaried employee most likely worries about a bad relationship with the boss/company.

I suppose everyone has the right to refuse overtime (not sure if there are legal foundations for this) but since the US has a work-as-much-as-possible kind of mindset it's difficult to simply refuse overtime.

rdsnsca3• 11 years ago

The worker can refuse to work overtime.

URSpider942• 11 years ago

In short, no. Employers can demand that you work whatever hours are necessary. Source: http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/question-work-overtim...

papercrane3• 11 years ago

Unless something has changed in the last couple years, no we do not have the right to refuse overtime in Nova Scotia.

Overtime is mandated at 1.5x normal hourly wage, but that doesn't kick in until you reach 48 hours, there are also exceptions, which include programmers. However, the minimum wage act still applies, which means you're only entitled to 1.5x minimum wage for every hour you work above 48 hours a week.

wes-exp• 11 years ago

Please don't complain about one of the most fertile job environments and wish for it turn it into another Europe.

bgun• 11 years ago

Isn't that a bit like saying, "Innovation and productivity in the tech sector are at all-time highs, why would you risk that by fiddling with patent reform?" The environment is flourishing in spite of, not because of, these issues.

pkaye• 11 years ago

So are a majority of junior computer professionals in other states paid an hourly rate?

cagey_vet2• 11 years ago

i argued against this and still won $5000 against a former employer a year after i got WARNed out.

cagey_vet2• 11 years ago

in short, dont let this stop you from claiming whats yours. it didnt stop me.

California Overtime Law – Computer Professional Exemption (2013)

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