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What Tech Workers Need To Know About Overtime
onehitwonder writes "The class-action lawsuit that current and former Apple employees have filed against the company raises questions about what kinds of workers are covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) — and thus, what kinds of workers are eligible for overtime pay. Some tech workers are covered under it; some are not though perhaps they should be. The lawyer who got IBM workers a $65M settlement from Big Blue for violating labor laws explains why employers often deny tech workers overtime pay and the circumstances under which certain tech workers may or may not be covered under the FLSA. From the article: 'It's not uncommon for employers to err on the side of classifying employees as exempt [from the FLSA], says Sagafi... In fact, the dirty little secret among employers and HR departments is that classifying employees as exempt — even if it means breaking the law — is in their best interest[,] provided... that they don't get caught... "In a sense, they may see it as economically viable for them to skirt the law and wait to see if they get sued because the exposure is not that huge [if they don't get sued]," Sagafi says. "If they can settle [a complaint] for less than 100 percent of what they owe people [for overtime], they've gotten away with a good deal."'"
Some government entities I know have simplified the exempt issue: only managers can be classified as exempt. All non-managers go by the clock. This removes most ambiguities and abuses. General labor law may also want to consider this (except in rare and well-documented circumstances).
Table-ized A.I.
I once saw a cartoon where the boss simply put up a big India national flag behind his desk. Nobody bothered to ask for raises.
Table-ized A.I.
Now I'm going to use this to take a dig at the free market and capitalism. This is why pure capitalism doesn't work. Companies don't try to "compete", they will lie, cheat, steal and break the law just to make a buck. That's because people will lie, cheat and steal to make a buck. Which is of course why communism doesn't work either. Because of people. And the company will keep selling the products because this makes them cheap. And people will keep buying them because they don't care about whoever is getting cheated.
Remember, it's not the company doing this to people, it's just people doing it to people. In the end that's all it is.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
It would only be like that, if the punishment for stealing a car was less than the purchase price of that car.
Also bear in mind that, for the IT field, California has additional laws about who's overtime-exempt and who's not based on, among other things, salary and effective hourly rate. Relevant law is California Labor Code section 515.5. As of 2007 the effective hourly rate needed to qualify as overtime-exempt was $49.77/hour. SB 929 changed that effective 1/1/2008 to $36/hour, or not quite $75K/year in salary. Anyone in the IT field not being paid at least that amount is not exempt from overtime in California regardless of other qualifications (the exemption requires that all conditions hold).
The suit is being filed by a Network Engineer. These are the guys who keep the local infrastructure running - its tough to outsource that kind of thing to India.
Just have an Indian support professional walk any secretary though any network maintenance procedures over IP phone. Easy! Efficient! Almost free! Then you can "let go" a few better paid network professionals, and hire an extra secretary or two (at minimun pay of course) to be the hands and eyes of the Indian network professionals. Guaranteed to save you big bucks on the long run!
And remember, young female secretaries in skirts reaching up to change some cable is a much more aesthetic view, than a slightly overweight, bearded male engineer doing the same, Even assuming he doesn't wear a skirt... (Just try not get a mental image of him doing it in a skir...AAaaieee
I really don't get overtime for programmers. Well, perhaps if you need to ship in a few days and aren't quite finished yet, so you work overtime for a few days. That could work.
But constant overtime? It just doesn't work.
If you're building a wall and putting one brick on another, you're probably going to do about twice as much work in twice the time. This does not apply to programming. I've noticed that I have about 4 to 6 hours of programming in me each day. Some days it's more; perhaps up to 10 hours. But most days, it's around 4 to 6 hours.
After I've run out of "programmming" time, I have to stop programming, because if I continue to write code, I'll have to spend time rewriting it the next day. I simply start writing crap code after about 4 to 6 hours of writing code. I can't properly concentrate on writing code anymore, I guess. Once I reach this point, I typically start doing administrativa, replying to mails, answering support calls, writing documentation and such. Or I just go home (happily, I can do that at my current work place; as long as my output is good, I don't need to put in the time).
In my experience, most programmers work the same way. Nobody codes well for 10 hours a day, each day.
This gets us to overtime. If you force people to continue writing code after their natural code writing limit is exhausted, they will write crap. And they will have to refactor that crap. So in effect, forcing programmers to work overtime will slow down your project, because they'll start spending more and more time fixing broken code instead of writing good fresh code.
Partially, yes. But I'm also partially serious. We're talking about a law that requires companies to pay over time to employees when neither the employee or the company want that.
For instance, I currently work a salaried position in IT which is exempt from over-time. I enjoy the benefits of that position. I can come in a little late. I usually stroll in around 9AM and leave around 5PM. I usually take a 1.5 hour lunch. No one cares because they all see the next day that I also worked from home that evening for about 3 or 4 hours. I enjoy my work enough to work more than 8 hours a day, but in a cubicle farm, I get interrupted so much that I can get more work done at home in the evenings. I participate in an on-call rotation, but even when I'm not on-call, I often times take notice of emergencies and hop online and help out my co-workers with on-call issues. I have no wife or children, am generally anti-social, so I sit at home and work. And I enjoy it.
Enter the law about over time. What happens when these law suits become all the rage and my employer decides that, even though my position doesn't appear to be affected by this law, they make it hourly anyway? Now, I've lost my flex time, have to punch a time card, and must be at work from 8AM to 5PM with a strict 12PM - 1PM lunch. At the very least, I will be unhappy enough that I will no longer work more than 8 hours a day. I will perform worse during the 8 hours that I am there. Sooner than later, I'll probably leave for greener pastures. This is now a negative for both me, my team, and my employer and it's all because someone else somewhere else that has no relationship to me what-so-ever opened his mouth and bitched and complained.
We've got to stop this kind of non-sense. Let me live my life the way I want to live my life for fuck's sake! I'm tired of people bitching about every little thing, going on to spawn new laws that destroy my lifestyle, and then proceeding to bitch about even more shit! We have to stop catering to these people who want life handed to them on a silver platter. It only makes all of us suffer. They need to take initiative to make their lives better through action rather than using a flawed legal system to their advantage. When companies do this, these same bitchers raise holy hell and cry foul. When they do it, it's a self-righteous holy war that is destructive to everyone around them.
This kind of behavior attempts to normalize the work environment for our entire nation. In the end, all this senseless bitching will do is end us all up in a THX 1138 world. That is what a normalized world would look like and whether they know it or not, that's what they're trying to achieve. They decide it's too much work to stand on their own, so they attempt to pull down those who can by constant complaining.
A previous poster had it right. This is people doing this to people, not the companies doing this to people. The companies are just adapting to the crap the people are throwing at them.