Slashdot Mirror
CA Legislature Torpedoes IT Overtime
An anonymous reader writes to mention that a recent piece of California legislation is enabling tech firms to avoid paying their workers overtime. Originally designed to deal with bonds for children's hospitals, bill AB10 was completely rewritten to prevent lawsuit damages over overtime nonpayment. "'This is the first time that the Legislature has done a takeaway of the rights of private-sector workers as part of the budget deal,' said Caitlin Vega of the California Labor Federation. 'We just think it is wrong. We think it will really hurt the groups of workers who will be expected to work through the weekend and not get paid.'"
Most of you IT people are libertarians, this is what a free market does to you. Don't like it? Find another job.
Good - I didn't want to work those weekends anyway, and now I have a good reason not to do it.
you can get paid for overtime?
We think it will really hurt the groups of workers who will be expected to work through the weekend and not get paid
Not only that, but as this legislation allowed massive abuse of employee's time, the state will suffer as skilled workers start looking elsewhere for employment.
Why is Arnold not doing something about this?
Website Hosting
The tech companies not making enough money. Poor, poor Apple with its money problems.
A balance must be struck between the freedom of each individual and the responsibility of each individual to support colleagues.
By joining a union, an individual gives up personal freedom and the opportunity for exceptional advancement. But he gains the power of collective bargaining and the benefit of a standardized work environment.
It surprises me to see how a group of individuals so smart in some ways would not also see the benefit inherent in joining together to avoid being subject to exactly the type of persecution described in the article.
No thanks, I much prefer individual bargaining than collective bargaining. I'm making more money and working at a vastly cooler company than ANY unionized employee could possibly be.
Comment of the year
That's what I wonder. If they do, how about cutting that as well?
I also happen to produce the most robust code, and seem to at least match everyone else for productivity.
Funny that.
You can tell if a bill is bad if the author of the bill's name is not on it.
Apparently, the author(s) were ashamed of the bill.
Fight Spammers!
I work 9 to 5. I work HARD 9 to 5, but at 5 I log out and go home. If you want me to spend extra time at work then we need to do some negotiation for a new contract and you're going to be giving me more money.
I am not going to give up time with my family so some middle manager can get some slaps on his back for bringing in the project on a date he never should have agreed to in the first place. What ever happened to accountability? oh right.... they get $700bn bail outs.
the preceding post was not spell checked... suck it.
After not having read TFA, I would suspect the suspension is only for overtime compensation, not an outright termination of payment for hours worked. IANAL, but this may fly in the face of Federal Law for OT Comp. Basically, Title IX says (paraphrasing, don't have reference in front of me) that any exempt, hourly wage earner should be compensated by means determined for working more than 40 hours in a week. Normally, this meant extra pay, not forcing work beyond 40 hours without being paid as I understand from the synopsis. They would still have to be paid at least their normal wage. Sounds like CA may be in violation of Federal Labor Law, but again IANAL.
Don't spend your life lamenting your life.
You don't even need an industry wide union. If EA's employees all walked out while they were being abused and picketed their offices, then there's no way they'd be able to find enough programmers to cross the picket line. If your company doesn't treat you well, go elsewhere. If there's nowhere else to go, start your own company and steal all the best programmers who are being treated like crap. With such a disparity between programmer skills and knowledge of the code base, the programming department has a lot of power.
Does this make America the Land of the (work for) Free?
If you are not getting paid for your time or getting equivalent time-off in-lieu of, why would you work it?
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
Seriously?
/. readership would go down... come on admit it... how many are at work right now.
Unions in this country have long outlived their usefulness.
Besides, if employers made reasonable demands of the unionized employees,
Religion and politics, without the flame. godgab.org
...but, just quit and get a job in another state. Why subject yourself to a job that you hate to work that much? The laws in Cali obviously favor the companies and not the workers. So...move. The cost of living is a lot cheaper anywhere else. If you are a good coder, you will get a job.
Bearded Dragon
Well just because we may not be in a union doesn't mean we can't agree to go on strike over this matter.
The industry would be crippled if all California IT workers stopped showing up for a while.
Muahahahah
A coworker of mine said this about five years ago: "IT workers are the janitors of the tech industry." I didn't believe him at the time, but it's been proven true. Get out while you can!
that'd be great. Thanks Peter.
If you don't suck, the job market for developers is still beyond fantastic, even with the economy how it is right now. The only reason to start a union is if you're too lazy to go find a new job, or your skills are too poor to think you can get one. Those two types of people are why most people in the industry want nothing to do with unions. Why should we protect your lazy/sorry ass while we're working hard? Hmm?
TFA also notes that California is the only state that requires tracking the hours of salaried IT workers in the first place.
In other words, this bill makes CA just like everywhere else in the US.
I know they must hate that. :)
If we put control over everything in the hands of the employers, they'd all decide to screw over the employees. You now have to work 200 hours/week for 80% less money -- because we said so.
The reason that government mandates this is to provide minimum standards, and not create abjectly crappy working conditions for people. You know, try to improve people's lives instead of making them indentured servants.
Of course, this is the point where you say that if you don't like it, you're free to leave and get another job. To which I'll respond that just leads us in the race to the bottom of crappy employment standards, and undoes several generations of changes in working conditions.
Setting the standard to whoever is willing to work in the worst conditions for the least money doesn't benefit any of us. It treats people like commodities, and devalues both their work, and their existence.
If all of the jobs are crappy and trying to screw you over, we all lose.
Cheers
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
The bill explicitly exempts those "computer professionals" who make at least $75,000 annually doing full-time work. I should be heartbroken that they're not entitled to overtime pay?
Yes, yes, we all know that IT guys toil long hours in the datacenter. Guess what? Salespeople have to travel all the time and often spend weeks away from their families. Operations managers need to crunch budgets and give presentations at the last minute. Team leaders are expected to spend their weekends doing "team-building exercises." Everybody has to work a lot in today's America.
Don't like it? Negotiate yourself a better deal. Being exempt from overtime status is a two-way street. On the one hand, you don't get paid for the long hours you put in. On the other hand, your employer can't make you report how many hours you worked. If you find you're working too many hours, maybe the problem is you. Either you're playing the game of "I don't want to be the first one to leave," or maybe you're working too much because you're not accurately budgeting your workload, or maybe you're just not that good at your job. If they're paying you $75,000 a year, you ought to be smart enough to figure out how to fix the problem.
Breakfast served all day!
Who modded you "insightful", someone else who didn't even read the summary?
You think it's OK to work someone for free? You actually believe that if I work for you and you don't pay me I shouldn't be able to sue you?
No wonder the economy is headed down the toilet; it's people like you who run things who are running them into the ground.
Free Martian Whores!
Thanks a lot
-Space for rent
It is not laziness to want to eat dinner with one's family. Nor is it laziness to want to spend the weekend caring for them.
It is ridiculous to think that the company owns so much of your life that work should take the highest priority in one's life.
Check out the approval rating for the CA legislature. Bush style numbers. Can't be bothered to get the budget done on time. Complete failure. It's absolutely time to flush the entire legislature and start over.
As someone reading this at work, albeit on my lunchbreak, it would seem to me that slashdot's "news" helps me stay informed of the larger IT culture (and occasionally actually gives me helpful tips towards doing my job better).
I disagree entirely. Overtime legislation is akin to forcing employers to pay for health care. I believe that employers of full-time workers should be handled by the companies, but it's not a government issue.
You have to realize that there's not exactly a surplus of good IT workers. Companies have to compete for the good employees, and you can be certain that overtime is going to be one of the ways they draw people in.
You see it as a step backwards, I see it as a step in the right direction.
Disconnect and self-destruct, one bullet at a time.
They aren't D or R. They are the ruling elite. What makes you think any of them are pro-worker when they remain complicit in human trafficking and wage slavery. There is only one party in America. You are given a choice to provide the illusion of freedom. Show them you see through the charade. Boycott the vote in 2008.
Outlived their usefulness? Oh really? That must be why IT workers are getting paid for the overtime work. Oh wait....
AMEN! If I had mod points, I would give them all to you.
As someone who has union employees, try making that fly in the union contract.
Religion and politics, without the flame. godgab.org
You have the choice of either renegotiating your employment contract or going elsewhere, where overtime is paid. Companies will use overtime as a way to compete with other companies for employees -- we'll end up with better jobs in the end.
Disconnect and self-destruct, one bullet at a time.
If you don't suck, the job market for developers is still beyond fantastic, even with the economy how it is right now.
I guess the same thing could be said for minimum wage, healthcare, vacations and the possibility of being authorized to eat once a day in order to work.
Take your strawman and go home please.
My point was that if your work environment is sub-satisfactory, you're a technology worker, and you're good at your job, you can go find a new job with conditions you approve of without too much trouble. Not that you need to work insane hours and give up your family life.
Unions are great if you're in an industry where geography or market dynamics mean that you don't have a choice as to who your employer is, and said employer can take advantage of that monopoly. As software developers, we don't have anythin even close to that situation. If you can't find a job that fits your lifestyle, chances are you're either lazy, or not very good.
The way I see it is that if I am doing my job I shouldn't have to come in on the weekends. If it is my job to guarantee uptime then its my job to put precautions in place to guarantee that uptime. If due to budget, oversight, or other unavoidable reasons that don't allow me to guarantee that uptime then I will find another job. There are plenty of jobs, especially for people with the experience to fill them if you know how to look. For instance, my current job pays me seven days a week, 12 hours a day to ensure uptime. They pay me very very well to ensure this uptime and since its my responsibilty our uptime is in the 99.999 range. I don't get woken up at night either now.
Erg, "I believe that health-care of full-time workers..." not "I believe that employers of full-time workers..."
Disconnect and self-destruct, one bullet at a time.
You can refuse to work beyond scope. If you bend the the corporate slave drivers, you've got nobody else to blame but yourself. If you don't like what is expected of you, then leave. If you're good, you should be able to find another job. If not, well. then they can depend upon you to work evenings and weekends.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
As someone whose girl friend works for the state of California, I can tell you that those unions are there for a reason. Without those union contracts, the state would just lay people off for no apparent reason. Although the contracts do protect the slackers to a certain extent, that small amount of bad is seriously outweighed by the good of protecting competent employees from rash actions by state legislators. There are a lot of state employees getting paid jack shit to do some pretty important jobs. I know some of the IT guys there. They are limping along two decade old Novell networks because the state can't find the budget to upgrade them. They don't get paid much of anything, but at least they have job security. In this economy, that is worth a lot.
This type of thing should be left to employers and not mandated by the government. Thank you for putting some control back where it belongs.
Correct. The neo-con fascists-in-sheeps'-clothing initiative has been very effective at getting their agents to infiltrate and dilute the ranks of the reasonable and civil-minded in this country and pervert and distort their aims. Well done, right-wing slimeballs.
I've worked some unpaid overtime in my life, but the amount is miniscule in comparison to the amount of time I've spent during normal working hours surfing the web, reading usenet, emailing my buddies, checking sports scores, ordering stuff from amazon, everything the internet allows. Easily two to three hours a day on an ongoing basis.
I just can't get mad about a couple hours of evening work or blowing a sunday afternoon in the office once a month when I'm just going to read slashdot while waiting for a batch job to finish.
A non-bad analogy post at the right time. I knew there was a reason you were awesome.
If you think IT is bad, try biomedical sciences, medicine, and science academia.
The concept of overtime does not exist for >90% of the workers in these fields. It's not uncommon to ASSUME that a 12-hour day is normal, at 6 days per week.
And yes, I am including students... because if your training extends into your 30s, you're an employee.
Oh, and by the way, ask your nearest ER resident (or even a junior attending) when was the last time they had a 40-hour week. Most of the time, the answer will be "high school".
The law may say that they don't HAVE to pay OT - but that doesn't mean they CAN'T pay overtime. Many of the contracts I get do allow for time and a half even though I'm well over the maximum hourly rate that qualifies for it. It all comes down to what kind of deal you negotiate with your employer. We don't need unions, IT workers need to grow a pair and stop allowing themselves to be taken advantage of. You can always find another job. The smart companies in California have learned that keeping workers happy means getting better productivity out of them. The not so smart ones will always have trouble finding good workers with a low enough self esteem to keep in indentured servitude.
Democrats are joiners; they consider groups rather than individuals; they believe that centralized power in the hands of a large organization is the best way to run things, while the peons have no responsibility for themselves. They like to receive healthcare, pensions, and womb-to-tomb "care" from such an organization, and believe the rest of us should as well.
Republicans are more likely to be self-sufficient go-getters, to work at startups where they have a hand in the direction, focus, and success of their endeavor. They expect to have to earn everything they get.
Yes, I do expect to be modded down.
"Unions in this country have long outlived their usefulness." While the model doesn't necessarily apply here, this country needs strong unions now more than ever. I used to work in a factory that voted down an attempt to unionize while I was there (in 1996) The factory workers started at $10/hr, health insurance was free and we got paid double time when we worked Sundays or and paid holiday (So holiday pay + 2X hourly pay). I checked in with a friend who is still there, employee's pay $200/mo for insurance, they still start at $10/hr and they no longer get paid double time. Its no longer possible for a skilled factory worker to live a middle class lifestyle....and yet your average CEO makes an insane amount of money. And the answer can't be "Go to College" because someone will always have to do the menial jobs and they should be able to earn a livable wage working those jobs
And tomorrows headline reads: Pornography Found on All Congressional Computers, Congressmen Run Out of Town on Rails.
I hope IT Professionals at their normal businesses and whom work for the State are well-compensated. You have to be careful about making a mess where you have to live.
Awk! Pieces of eight. Pieces of eight. Pieces of seven... ERROR: General Protection Fault. [Paroty Error.]
And if I had mod points they'd go to Ivan. :)
+1: correct identification of logical fallacy
There is no such thing as a "hardline, left-wing Democrat" in the United States.
Jeremy
of my fellow workers here on the farm collective lean monarchist theocrat, while my former unit in military intelligence leaned green anarchist. but hey, that could just be me
anecdotes, shmanecdotes
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
...believe you deserve extra pay? I'm not trying to start a flame war, I just really don't understand the justification. I've been salaried since I got out of school and I've always accepted that working beyond normal business hours was a possibility (and quite often a reality.) If you have a salaried job and don't like the overtime you have to put in, find a better job. Saying that, I now it isn't easy for everyone to do such a thing but there are significant differences (usually) between the benefits, hours, flexibility, and types of jobs when discussing an hourly position and a salaried position. I mean, the whole reason companies offer salaries is for this reason (afaik.)
Loading...
In Bangalore, this is not a problem. We will be happy to do your programing and be happy to take your jobs!
In my case, I'm never really away from my job. I'm constantly working from home on the weekends or weekdays. Either it's a phone call, R&D, or finishing some project planning. I feel I can accomplish more working away from the office, because when the kids and wife go to bed, I have absolutely no interruptions.
And to me, working all those hours and not getting paid for is my choice. But working all those hours has helped me advance with my current company. Going on 13 years, I've had 4 promotions and 4 major raises. I was just promoted again 3 weeks ago. I'm now in a place were I'm financially very comfortable. All because of hard work, dedications, and patience (remember that young guns!!). Besides this IS my life's work!
It's left blank because I have nothing to say to you punks!
It does sound ridiculous that a company can own all of your time. Alas many sociopath executives think exactly that. Last year I was offered employment with company that seemed like a good place to work. Then I saw the offer. Firstly their non-compete clause was so broad that I would need their approval before I could mow my neighbour's lawn for $5. Then there was an intellectual property clause stating that anything I created or conceived of regardless of its function, use or complexity during my tenure at the company, all day and all night was owned by them and not me. When I asked if, during a vacation, I invented an ever-cooling margarita glass the company would own that invention they calmly answered yes.
It turned the job down.
UNIX/Linux Consulting
Forming a union will only solve the problem for those who join the union, and for those union members whose unions are able to renegotiate with employers.
Lobbying the legislature, or even lobbying congress, unceasingly until the law is changed, will benefit everyone.
Which approach most benefits society?
So what you're saying is that someone who is not good (perhaps a newly-graduated engineer) should be forced to work any hours an employer sees fit? You don't have a problem, in general, with overworking employees and not compensating them for the overtime?
This is the most important reason why IT workers should learn the "business side" of things as well: not to please your current boss so much as to have something to fall back on should you decide you want to go into business for yourself.
...why people would take unpaid overtime. I'll divide my salary by my hours to figure it out my real hourly rate anyway, all overtime pay does is give you some predictability. If you only work 9-5, you get this much. You work more, you earn more. The only thing that could possibly happen is that they tell you there won't be any/little overtime but it turns out to actually be quite a lot. An employer that isn't lying to you won't have any problems adjusting your salary offer so that base+overtime pay equals the "no overtime pay" for the amount of overtime they really expect to have. Any employer that isn't willing to do that is going to try to rip you off. Plus the demands get a lot more reasonable once forcing you to work overtime costs money, otherwise why not squeeze as hard as possible since any hour is a free hour? If you want to complain about being screwed maybe you should stop to bend over so much.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The article explains everything towards the end of it - apparently the laws in California are setup in such a way that anyone not in exempted fields working more than 40 hours a week are required to be paid overtime.
If we put control over everything in the hands of the employers, they'd all decide to screw over the employees. You now have to work 200 hours/week for 80% less money -- because we said so.
If that's what you think then you have never put yourself in the employer's shoes. I am an employer with a small business and I know that to get good people and to get them to do a good job I have to treat them well. There is a balance of power between the employers and employees that depends on supply and demand, like anything else in a free market.
In a free society, I should not be forced by law to provide another person with a living, certainly not to any arbitrarily set standard that someone else sets. If the government wants to set the minimum standards then it should do it with taxpayers money so that this burden is spread evenly, instead of placing the burden on one particular group, the business owners/shareholders.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
"the tracking of hours generally is anathema to the creative and free thinking computer professional employees,"
Indeed. As is the tracking of inventory.
I'm getting my overtime pay one way or another.
Insanity is the last line of defence for the master diplomat. But you have to lay the groundwork early.
Realistically, "Go to college" is not a viable solution, so there we agree, but to assume that the union was the solution to the factory you worked in is a faulty assumption. They failed to unionize, which means (If I am reading you right) that they were making more money even without the union. Something happened, where the benefits of the employees were reduced. Perhaps the company is not doing as well. Perhaps premiums on Insurance went up, etc. etc. The point is that the union had nothing to do with that, and you cannot assume that the union would have been able to thwart those changes.
However, the majority of major unions are sorely broken. I am not against the *idea* of the union, but the way they are implemented today is completely broken.
The point of a union should be to protect from employee abuse or neglect. It is not meant to be a political action group, nor is it meant to function as a bully to the employee just because.
So what is a better solution? The purist in me says that the free markets (unions that abuse their power cause artificial changes in the free market system) would correct, and that certain jobs will grow to be a livable wage job, while others don't. However, to get back to a pure free market economy at this point is a pipe dream, so I would rather see some type of employee/employer agreement that allows for the items properly addressed by unions, that would disallow the advantages taken by both sides. Giving legal recourse that is easy to either sides is one solution. Perhaps minimizing the scope and size of unions is another, but what we have now simply doesn't work.
Religion and politics, without the flame. godgab.org
Why?
The employer has a much stronger bargaining position than the employee. As a result, the employee can be treated quite harshly for the enrichment of the employer.
Do you think it would be a better world if those who are willing to exploit others are the ones who benefit most?
More like all the companies in California will collude (whether actively or not) so that none of them will pay O/T. That is, there won't be competition in that regard. It takes that aspect off the table. i.e. it will be pointless to quit to find another employer who does pay overtime as none actually will.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
Prove your statement.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Sure! It worked pretty good in the mortgage industry didn't it? ummm.... wait a minute... never mind.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
AC, Since when have professionals been paid overtime? IT is (or at least has been) a White collar area of work. If you want to be pressed back to Blue Collar status then fine, I think I will pass.
Religion and politics, without the flame. godgab.org
Which is then, what -- 16% of your income? At that rate you can live quite comfortably on $75K.
Your figure assumes that the guy making $75K a year isn't paying federal/state income tax, or federal payroll taxes. After the government wets its beak, that $75K a year is more like $50K -- if you're lucky.
I write sci-fi for metalheads
So then even self-described Socialists don't fit in that category according to you?
Part of the hardcore faithful who believed in Apple long before it was cool again to do so
Under current law, which has no income restriction, a worker earning $80,000 and paid $36 per hour in overtime for 20 hours a week would earn about $117,000. Under the new law, the worker would earn $80,000.
So you look at this and think.. hey, 80k isn't bad, why complain about an extra 40k missing when you're making 80k... but what does this do to the rest of the IT community that makes $40,000 barely enough to live on, the overtime not an extra boat payment, its actual living expenses.. not everybody in IT makes $80,000/year. In fact it is hard to get above $45,000 without years and years of experience. Taking someone that works OT to make $50,000 down to $40,000 is just ridiculous. Its hard enough to make a living in the IT industry. Screw the government and their laws.. the people need to tell them this is not alright.
now if you agree to take a salary pay with no OT that is one thing, but if it is salary with OT.. they cannot take away your OT
Wouldn't the Fair Labor Standards Act preempt this law?
Dont like it. Fine. Go find another job. To work for me you must accept the deal i am offering.
If the market for IT guys gets too thin....then you can start making demands.
Last time i looked there was shortage of IT lackeys out there.
No you won't. Seriously, and it is not hard to think about that. Reason is simple, too few companies will decide to pay that overtime, and an even fewer positions will get that. And if I can't sue them for it, they can just claim on the interview that they will pay, and actually don't, and vÃila I can't prosecute them. And that idea of yours of "you don't like, go get another job", reality called and they want your silly beliefs back. It just don't work like that. Most people don't have the luxury to select another job, specially students just out of college with plenty of debt and not rich families that can pay them until they find that only job that they enjoy. And they need to get what they can.
--- "When you gotta do something wrong. You gotta do it right. (Fighter)"
Sure, if you want to pay IT support and computer programmers only base salary, that is fine. Just don't expect them to show up in the middle of the night or on Saturday when your severs crash. We will get to that bright and early at 9am next business day just like any other person who works 9-5. If you don't like it, well, that is too bad.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
One word. Japan.
Just ask the United Auto Workers union how well that's working out for them...
If someone were to ask me to work overtime, I'd say "what's the deal?".
If I didn't like it I'd say "no thanks".
End of story. What's the problem?
In Ontario, Canada it's been like this for some time. Here's a snippet from some exceptions:
Many workers are excluded from all hours of work and overtime provisions, including: agricultural workers, homemakers, residential care workers, information technology professionals, workers in commercial fishing, commission salespeople who normally operate away from their employer's place of business, most people involved in farming and horticulture, Crown employees, high school students on approved work experience programs and police officers.
Link: http://www.workrights.ca/content.php?doc=31&xwm=true
Another reason not to move back to California.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
What did you expect from a bunch of liberals running the state. Oh, and I bet since the unemployment rate in the tech sector is so high in CA that going to another job really isn't much of an option. Just another liberal screw up in your state.
Athiesm is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby.
I'm sorry, that's a bunch of crap. What you fail to realize is that employers want the best employees they can get and actively compete for them. If they are all busy screwing over their employees, they're not going to get a lot of talent and the whole business if going to suffer.
Ever been to a career fair? Employers go to these things for the sole purpose of selling themselves in order to recruit as much talent as they can. They literally compete with other companies for who can get the best of the best.
Take Google for example. They are widely regarded as the best employer to work for in the US. The result? A company that produces some of the best products in the industry and is consistently doing well on the business side of things. I can assure you this success has a lot to do with the talent they have been able to attract.
Personally, I see your type of mindset as an example of a lack of self esteem and self confidence. You have to realize the employers need you as much as you need them. Without their employees being happy and productive, they fail.
I'm a salaried sucker who works with information security (obviously I enjoy life less - according to research)... I haven't seen an dollar of overtime since I got this job! Yet, I also believe that I am paid fairly for what I do and the part of the country where I live. I make more than 66% of the people living in my county... given the medium salary for a family of 4 is $29,000 year.
That's a false dichotomy. It is possible to get a good IT job where you don't have to give up your life. It probably won't pay as well as one where you have to give up your life, but you know what? That's why those jobs pay so well.
You can't eat your cake and have it too. If you want an active family life, that will impact on your career.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
If that's what you think then you have never put yourself in the employer's shoes. I am an employer with a small business and I know that to get good people and to get them to do a good job I have to treat them well. There is a balance of power between the employers and employees that depends on supply and demand, like anything else in a free market.
You don't need to treat them *well*, you just need to treat them better than the next guy. When it comes to food, housing, and the work necessary to pay for those, this magical "free market" is a bunch of fooey. How can I be a fully informed absolutely rational actor when I *MUST* -- without fail -- work? The employer has the natural negotiating advantage, in that you need them far more than they need any individual.
Yes, we see how well that's worked for the US auto industry. It took a few decades, but look where they are now -- do you think they'd be there if they were able to pay wages as market conditions required? (Yes, I know there's also the question of working conditions/safety - perhaps the only valid reasons that a union should exist.)
You should be glad we give you a job in the first place. Now, quit whining and get back to work before you are replaced.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
How did this get modded insightful? If it was even remotely true that only government intervention can prevent total company domination, there would be not jobs today that paid more than minimum wage.
Exactly. And when you do that, get ready for your salary to be set back to a commensurate base salary with, say, $15/hr for overtime. You're already being compensated for your time, it's just most people are blind to it when looking at themselves. Do you really believe a DBA is "entitled" to $150,000+ a year for a 40 hour week because they know Oracle, more so than say, a licensed massage therapist with 1,000 hours of training in anatomy, physiology, kinesiology, etc, who "only" makes $20-30 an hour?
If that's what you think then you have never put yourself in the employer's shoes. I am an employer with a small business and I know that to get good people and to get them to do a good job I have to treat them well. There is a balance of power between the employers and employees that depends on supply and demand, like anything else in a free market.
Yes, because there are basic rules that all employers must follow. There is no equal balance of power, and for proof just look at the early 1900s in this country.
In a free society, I should not be forced by law to provide another person with a living, certainly not to any arbitrarily set standard that someone else sets. If the government wants to set the minimum standards then it should do it with taxpayers money so that this burden is spread evenly, instead of placing the burden on one particular group, the business owners/shareholders.
We already went down this road. Again, look at history to see how people will be treated unless we force companies to follow basic rules.
You have a company, and presumably in a form that provides some immunity to things like lawsuits, debt, etc. In exchange, you agree to be regulated, so that you can't use your company to destory people's lives and the environment.
When will you greedy working class people stop trying to abuse us hard working businessmen? First you ruin our Wall Street, now you want overtime pay? Whats next my million dollar salary? Never can make you people happy.
The problem is when you have employees who come to work and do a good job without slacking off, and are then expected to work weekends because of mistakes made by management.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
There are two parts to your question.
1) workers decide who they work for. If they don't like the work, they are FREE to leave. They are NOT slaves.
2) An Employer can treat his/her employees anyway they see fit. The employees are free to leave anytime.
I do see a problem with overworking employees and not compensating them. I won't work for anyone that does these things, because if they cheat these people, then what else are they willing to cheat at? If you have no problem signing up with such a company, then you get exactly what you deserve, and should expect.
I wonder how many "shady" things went on at the various Wall Street firms that people "overlooked" because they wanted to keep their job. It is easy to go along with "shady deals" when you're making $. I have no sympathy for anyone involved in this latest boondoggle. There were clues as early as 1995 that things weren't kosher at the FMs.
It always starts with something innocuous and seemingly benign, like Overtime Pay. The question is, why are YOU willing to work for a company / boss who doesn't value you properly, and compensate you accordingly? Why are you complaining about it? In my opinion, if you're in that position, YOU are part of the problem. Don't ask me to fix your problem you make for yourself.
And this goes for the $425,000 per US citizen bailout bill we're about to get. Think about what you could do with an extra $425,000. Now imagine us handing that over to those who have already raped this country.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Ultimately, to the corporations, we are.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
A friend of mine worked a high tech job that required lots of flying to other cities and living out of a hotel room. He would spend weeks away from home, fly home for a weekend on occasion, then fly out again. One day he realized he was missing his little girl growing up and he was becoming a stranger to his family. After completing a particularly grueling job that took several months, he chose to take two weeks off and spend it with his wife and daughter. His boss thought otherwise because they had already booked him for another job. He flat out refused to go to it. They fired him. He took them to the labor board. They lost big time. My friend had documented every minute he had spent waiting in airports and in the air. Under California law those were paid times (at least they used to be). As he had never been paid for the travel time, they not only had to pay him, they had to pay a penalty to him. He's now much happier with a local job. He gets to have dinner with his family and sleep in his own bed. The pay is only slightly lower and he is much happier (and so is his family).
So what is your time worth to you? If you are willing to work unpaid overtime, then you put a very low value on your life. I flat out refuse to work unpaid overtime on a regular basis. Yes, I've occasionally put in a couple of extra hours, but this is the exception, not the rule. Typically, if an emergency requires me to work late, I'll leave early the next day (or come in late). If a project consistently requires overtime, management has not done their job. Either they didn't assign enough people to the project, or they set too short of a deadline. Improper planning on their part does not constitute an emergency on mine. One or two days of crunch time isn't a problem. Shit happens. But weeks or months of it is not acceptable and your project is NOT going to be on time because my life is worth far more. You say you'll fire me if I don't work unpaid overtime? Not a problem. Go ahead and fire me. We'll talk further in a hearing.
I should repeat this. Emergencies happen and require extra time. Failure to set a reasonable deadline (or changing the requirements at the last minute) is NOT an emergency. Also, if I'm expected to carry a pager and be on call, my salary better reflect that requirement. I don't get up at 3am to fix your server for free. At one job, they decided to stop authorizing overtime pay, so I changed nagios to never send out alerts outside of work hours. Five nines of uptime aren't free. In this case, management didn't have a problem with it. The systems did not need to be up 24/7. Oddly enough, an ecommerce job, where 24/7 uptime was essential, was least willing to make the investment to keep things running (thus one of the reasons I no longer work for them).
-- Will program for bandwidth
Then they have nobody to do the work. Oh wait, Americans live in debt. Sucks for you guys.
Being a salaried employee, I get no paid overtime. If I have something that needs done during off-hours (evening, night, or weekends), I just budget the amount of time it will take and then not work that during the week. If I have a 4 hour change that needs done on Saturday, I only work 4 hours on Friday or work one less hour a day during the week and then do the 4 hour change on Saturday. My company doesn't like us working more than 40 hours, and many of us appreciate that. Some work more than 40 hours (myself included) and that's rewarded at performance review time. Unless you're completely awful, my company rewards you for your extra work. I've never felt like I've been "owned" by my company. Any extra work I do is because I care about the systems and people I support. They are the people who will send an e-mail to your boss and say "Hey, he did a great job! We appreciate it!" To all the young guns out there reading this, do your job and do it well. People always appreciate hard work.
I've seen instances at other places I've worked where employees really abused the overtime system. They would sit around all day and read websites and send stupid e-mails to their friends, then when it was time to go home, they would start working and call it "overtime". That downright offended me. If you're working hard all day and then have a problem and have to keep working, then that's overtime. Sitting around waiting for your 8 hours to be up so you can rack up overtime is a slap in the face to honest hard working people everywhere.
And those people will always exist.
The federal Fair Labor Standards Act, brought to you courtesy organizer labor, provides certain exemptions ..."
"Sections 13(a)(1) and 13(a)(17) of the FLSA provide an exemption for computer systems analysts, computer programmers, software engineers,
"The beatings will continue until morale improves."
It's time to start a union how long before more stuff comes up that cut's you pay.
What the hell, how is this trolling? Just because there is a big chunk of libertarians rolling around in Slashdot doesn't make this an invalid observation.
To those who agree, consider organizing shop-by-shop initially via the 'Wobbly Method' (checkout http://iww.org/ for a union that shares your independence and belief in autonomy)
Hang on a second, I thought anything over $27.50/hr was already exempt from federal overtime laws and salaried positions are almost always not only exempt, but you don't get paid AT ALL additional work.
[RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
We voted down unionization at my workplace because IT are treated fairly well. But if you cut out overtime, even if you were just taking overtime through compensatory time, that's a slippery slope.
We'd be mere mortals...
It's time to start a union how long before more stuff comes up that cut's you pay.
Why did this get a -1 troll?
Okay, let me explain how this works. Just because somebody posts something that doesn't agree to "the great libertarian ideas of Ron Paul" doesn't mean it should be marked as a troll. There is no -1 "I Disagree". Stop modding people down for having differing political views.
In the past when workers were getting screwed, they formed unions and things got better. Now, union membership is dropping and they're getting screwed again. It seems pretty obvious to me that workers need to start unionizing again. (That and voting out corrupt union bosses who sell out to the companies.)
That's it all you neo-con youngsters... keep voting republican... someday you'll see that you are not part of the right wing club unless you are born into it. R. Ray-gun and his ilk really sold you all a bill of goods regarding everything from working and unions to dealing with the world. Just keep grabbing everything you can for yourselves like those thieves on wall street. Someday the tech jobs will comeback from India after our economy collapses and we *are* the new India. Keep voting republican ... go ahead.
Ha! You're delusional.
I'm a Java developer and DBA, and since I work for the government, I'm in a strong union as well (we have over 50,000 members). I've worked both union jobs and nonunion jobs, and let me tell you, you have NO IDEA what you're missing. You think you're bragging, but really you're flashing this huge neon sign over your head; it reads "NOOB!"
I get paid around 70K for a strict 9 to 5, monday through friday job, with NO OVERTIME REQUIRED, incredibly good health, dental, and vision plans, almost four weeks vacation per year, PLUS five personal days, PLUS 2 1/2 weeks of sick leave, PLUS education benefits.
I'm responsible for about a million dollars' worth of hardware and software, and my cubicle is more like an office -- it's ten feet wide and deep, with thick, soundproofed walls six feet tall, complete with windows and walnut trim. I'm sitting in a genuine Herman Miller Aeron by the way. And the agency buys me all my books. If I need software to get my work done, I ask my boss, and I get it, usually within a day.
Everyone in the office is well rested and well adjusted, because we SLEEP AT NIGHT, and get to spend our evenings with our families. And the work we do is interesting; my current project is a 31KLOC Java desktop application involving data processing and calculations. I'm using JDK6 and NetBeans, with Oracle Application Server as a servlet engine for some of the server side stuff. It's a blast.
Go ahead. Tell me how great your private sector, non union job is. I like a good laugh.
Do you really believe a DBA is "entitled" to $150,000+ a year for a 40 hour week because they know Oracle, more so than say, a licensed massage therapist with 1,000 hours of training in anatomy, physiology, kinesiology, etc, who "only" makes $20-30 an hour?
Sure, so long as they can create that sort of value. I don't want to be paid for my effort, just results - if I can get something done in half the time as my coworkers, on average, I should get paid about twice as much.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
I have a problem with thinking that an employee should make more than he is worth. Let's say your newly graduated engineer is making $40,000 a year, and working 60 hours a week. This says to me that this is what the company views his worth as, and it's also what he views his worth as. If he is worth more than that, he needs to go find somebody that will pay him what he is worth. If nobody exists that will pay him what he is worth, then I guess he's wrong about his worth (seeing as the purest definition of worth is what somebody else is willing to pay).
An employment agreement to be paid $40,000 a year to "get the job done" is very different from an employment agreement to work as much as required at $19.23/hr for as many hours as needed. You know the compensation when you agree to do the work. The amount you're willing to work in order to keep receiving that $40,000/yr shows just how much that money is worth to you
Why is this such an issue? Overtime is something that is mentioned in your offer letter when you join with a company. There's no legislation required here. If the employer agreed to pay overtime, then they should pay it. If they said you get a salary, then you get it. If they agreed to pay you hourly, then you get paid hourly. Why is that so difficult?
I negotiated a contract with a weekly rate, paid every two weeks. This week, I am working 100+ hours. That's crazy. But I'm not complaining about overtime, because it is what I negotiated. I called the company and said "I expect a paid week in exchange for this" and they either agree, or not. If not, we part ways. We discussed it, we negotiated it. Everyone is happy. As is usually the case with business, communication is key.
But if they don't pay, you can't sue them. Those little words "at will" mean that you automatically agree to whatever they do by staying employed. The first time they write a short paycheck, and you don't quit, you agreed... and you can't sue. What fun.
It wouldn't be so bad if the people demanding the overtime would work it too. (for no extra $$ of course) But all too often, the people demanding that you stay and get your stuff done are the same ones running over people to get out the door right at 5.
UAW.
Wow. 70K for a Java developer AND DBA. Yup, we're the idiots out here.
...once he needs someone to update his firmware. He can't afford to become an obsolete Governator, after all.
I'm a Java developer and DBA, and since I work for the government,
Which government? Which level? I used to work for a county hospital, and it sucked bad. That's my main experience of government work. Well, that, and going into a DMV and seeing how depressed everybody looks.
I get paid around 70K for a strict 9 to 5, monday through friday job, with NO OVERTIME REQUIRED,
Ok, I got that.
incredibly good health, dental, and vision plans,
I got that.
almost four weeks vacation per year,
Alas, I only have three.
PLUS five personal days,
Two personal days, plus three "company days" (normal work days the company gives us off). So I got that.
PLUS 2 1/2 weeks of sick leave,
We don't have a limit on our sick leave, as long as you make arrangements.
PLUS education benefits.
Got that. Also psych benefits. And quarterly expensive team activities (we did a seaplane tour last time, a cruise most recently), weekly "tiki bar" fridays, monthly happy hours, plus tons of ad-hoc celebrations for no reason at all. And cab vouchers, if you drink a bit too much.
And the agency buys me all my books. If I need software to get my work done, I ask my boss, and I get it, usually within a day.
Check and check.
my current project is a 31KLOC Java desktop application involving data processing and calculations.
Wow, data processing and calculations? (I think "data processing and calculations" describes every computer program ever written in history.)
I will say this:
1) You have a better cube than I do.
2) It sounds like you have a great job and enjoy where you work, but!:
3) I doubt many, if any, of the benefits you describe above are yours due to your union membership,
4) You didn't mention the amount of union dues you pay
5) You have a vastly, vastly, vastly, better job than 99.9% of government employees. You're literally the first government IT employee I've ever talked to or heard of who prefers that work to private sector work.
I am assuming you're talking about some US government, here, and I'm guessing Federal level? I have no idea what other nations' governments are like.
Comment of the year
Have you not noticed the dog spew that passes for acceptable these days? These are the "results" you get when people don't put in the effort.
Or can't. When price is more important than quality, those who can deliver quality get pushed aside.
I'm a Java developer and DBA, and since I work for the government,
Which government? Which level? I used to work for a county hospital, and it sucked bad. That's my main experience of government work. Well, that, and going into a DMV and seeing how depressed everybody looks.
I get paid around 70K for a strict 9 to 5, monday through friday job, with NO OVERTIME REQUIRED,
Ok, I got that.
incredibly good health, dental, and vision plans,
I got that.
almost four weeks vacation per year,
Alas, I only have three.
PLUS five personal days,
Two personal days, plus three "company days" (normal work days the company gives us off). So I got that.
PLUS 2 1/2 weeks of sick leave,
We don't have a limit on our sick leave, as long as you make arrangements.
PLUS education benefits.
Got that. Also psych benefits. And quarterly expensive team activities (we did a seaplane tour last time, a cruise most recently), weekly "tiki bar" fridays, monthly happy hours, plus tons of ad-hoc celebrations for no reason at all. And cab vouchers, if you drink a bit too much.
And the agency buys me all my books. If I need software to get my work done, I ask my boss, and I get it, usually within a day.
Check and check.
my current project is a 31KLOC Java desktop application involving data processing and calculations.
Wow, data processing and calculations? (I think "data processing and calculations" describes every computer program ever written in history.)
I will say this:
1) You have a better cube than I do.
2) It sounds like you have a great job and enjoy where you work, but!:
3) I doubt many, if any, of the benefits you describe above are yours due to your union membership,
4) You didn't mention the amount of union dues you pay
5) You have a vastly, vastly, vastly, better job than 99.9% of government employees. You're literally the first government IT employee I've ever talked to or heard of who prefers that work to private sector work.
I am assuming you're talking about some US government, here, and I'm guessing Federal level? I have no idea what other nations' governments are like.
Comment of the year
1. Don't work overtime; at least not without your boss there as well.
2. If you routinely have to work overtime then chances are you need to point out to your manager, or their managers, that someone is failing to assess projects and resources correctly. Continuously making the same mistakes means that they are not competent enough to be in the position they are in. Otherwise if it is your fault then maybe you need to get better at your job or say "no" more often.
3. In reality, the occasional overtime, i.e. once or twice a year, is the norm and the company is expected to pay for lunch, dinner at least. It is reasonable to expect the supervisors, and the people who caused the overtime to be needed, to be there as well. In this world of Sarbanes Oxley compliance and distributed permissions amongst staff, expecting a single person or a small group of people to work overtime without the full availability of the company's assets to be at their disposal is far fetched.
4. Get trained in project Management! Even developers and coders and engineers should know the steps necessary to manage a successful project and how to track time and tasks. Knowing how to say "No" is a better skill then always saying yes to projects doomed to fail.
Learn to account for missed deliverables by others and lean on your project stakeholders and supervisors during meetings to make people accountable.
"If we couldn't get the job done between 8 to 5 M-F with everyone here, what makes you think a couple of us can get it done over the weekend with a skeleton crew?"
** I recommend the book "Death March" which is available via Amazon.
I'm not going to say that you're wrong, as I believe it is part of the reason companies offer saleries.
But you're not totally right either. There are a lot of benefits for a saleried employee, such as getting a consistant, predictable paycheck, even when you're on vacation, or you're sick, or whatever. You're gone a small amount of time? No problem.
Additionally, it allows employers to pay less because it is expected that you will not be there all the time every day (but instead will be there almost all the time almost every day).
It's just like benefits. Why do companies offer them, when they could just offer the pay that would go to the benefit to go directly to the employee? Because, in short, they can save money this way while at the same time imparting trust and value to their employees.
Now, more to the point, should overtime be allowed? Definately. Here's the thing: we all* agree to about a 40 hour work week, and I think most people are fine with the fact that sometimes it's 35 hours and other times it's 45, and I think within that range, it's fair for both parties. But when people start working 50, 60, 70+ hour weeks on a consistent basis just because someone set some unrealistic deadline, then that's really not fair to the employee, and overtime should be paid, or otherwise some additional benefit should be given to the employee; extra days off or whatever.
Of course, that's just what I think of as fair. It's all about your own idealogy here, and what you think it deserved to you, and what you think is expected of you. If both parts aren't equal, then someone is getting screwed.
$425,000
Bzzzt...not close. Not even in the same ballpark.
Let's assume that every third person in the US is a taxpayer. It's a bit of a stretch but not too much. So there's roughly 300M people in the US so 100M taxpayers. The bailout is 700B.
The math is:
$700B/100M = $7000
Which is pretty close to the figure the news has been throwing about $10,000 (I think there are a bit less taxpayers.)
I've said it before and I'll say it again; You're either being disingenuous or stupid.
cat sig >
Nice broad and false statement.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I think you made a pretty large leap from the OPs comment about not being forced to provide a living for another person and destroying people's lives. This is government injecting itself where it shouldn't. If you want to force OT pay, then why not have the gov. go ahead and set salaries too. That's really what they are doing in a round about way. While we're at I think the gov. should push that everyone own a home too...err, never mind I think we're seeing where that got us.
Yes, all the companies are bad, so just get a few million and start your own company.
Hmm.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I'm a zOS systems programmer with almost 30 years experience. I simply can't move from one mainframe environment to another since there aren't too many of them left in the area that I live and I can't pickup and move my family at the drop of a hat . I can't start my own company since I don't happen to have a mainframe in my back pocket (nor several million dollars to create a proper mainframe environment). All in all however I'm not in too bad shape. My pay is good, working conditions are tolerable. I manage my own work and with few exceptions I decide what I want to do when I want to do it.
But my situation can change at anytime and I don't have the flexibility to move to another company down the street.
The problem is that salary is rarely a good deal. Because it doesn't work both ways. Most employers think of your salary as "at least 40 hours, but maybe more - whatever is required." If the job takes me longer, I would have to stay until it is finished. But if I get done early, I can't leave until my 40 hours is up.
Well I'm sorry, I don't roll that way. I work, I get paid. I don't do nuthin' for free. I am not here for my health. I am not here to promote the company's well-being or bottom line, and it doesn't exist for mine. The companies have demonstrated that they care little about me, so I care little about them.
Used to be a guy could stay with a company for 30 years and retire with a nice pension and have pride in helping to build something solid. Not anymore. Now companies come and go at the slightest whim of a merger. There is no more company loyalty anymore. And out the window with it went my concern for it's long-term well-being.
My job is the best job I've ever had. I am a government contractor, making $67K/yr plus benefits, creating databases and web-based front-ends. I get to be a creative mind, and I am doing things that really do matter and make a difference in the world. Plus, I can't work more than 40 hours in a week, and I love it this way. It means I can actually plan other life. And they know where my loyalties lie: with my family and my friends, not my job. And if they want more of my time, they are going to pay for it through the nose.
Sure, there are other guys who can do what I do probably better and for cheaper. But I'm a proven known quantity. Let the market set the demand.
Some of you may not like unions (hey, I'm opposed to them), but that's no reason to flag as "Troll" a simple comment that suggests that IT workers unionize. Sheesh! And some of you are worried about thought police in the larger society. Examine yourselves!
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
I've been job hunting, and noticed several listings in CA for tech positions. (Second major is CS).
I will now be submitting cover letters decrying the legislation, and a resume which carries a copy of this article.
I WILL NOT become a 90 hour/week slave.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
As software developers, we don't have anythin even close to that situation. If you can't find a job that fits your lifestyle, chances are you're either lazy, or not very good.
Please. There are two interview questions that are always present anytime you try to find a job in he tech industry:
"This job requires 'some' unpaid overtime during crunch periods. How do you feel about that?"
"Why did you leave your last job?"
The first question always need to be followed up with "exactly how much overtime are we talking about?" but even then the interviewer isn't going to be honest. If the question is even being asked, expect to work 60 hour weeks every week. Answer, "I'm willing to work overtime during crunch periods, but I'd like to be compensated for the extra hours" and you don't get the job.
For the second question, answer "they expected me to work many hours overtime without pay" and they'll classify you as lazy and you don't get the job.
Did you quit more than 3-4 jobs in your life? You're a flight risk, they're afraid of you leaving after training for somebody else. So quitting because you dislike something about your current job is a way of making you sure it'll be more difficult to find another job. So, take every job expecting to make that your life-long career, and only quit if there's something seriously wrong with that company. I guarantee you every place is almost exactly the same anyway, you're not going to find a better environment.
Queue the google people, who don't realize the reason they have so many perks is so that they can be expected to be in their office at all times of the night and weekends...
"My point was that if your work environment is sub-satisfactory, you're a technology worker, and you're good at your job, you can go find a new job with conditions you approve of without too much trouble. Not that you need to work insane hours and give up your family life."
That demands on a lot of factors. Economy, location, companies not needing to treat you like a human.
The bubble burst, and it was very hard to find work for a number of years, and with the way unemployment is going, software developers may not have this luxury much longer.
Now it's funny you bring up strawman, becasue:
A) the poster who repliud to you did NOT use a strawman.
B) You post DID use a strawman.
"The only reason to start a union is if you're too lazy to go find a new job, or your skills are too poor to think you can get one"
That is a strawman.
I'm not lazy, and according to my peers,I am very good.
I am also in an engineers union. Why? becasue skill often has very little reason why you are let go from a company, becasue I want good healthcare, becasue I want to get compensated when I work OT.
I played the corporate gig for a very long time, and quite frankly I had enough.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
He was responding to a logical fallacy, he didn't create one.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Did it put on the lotion~
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
You just need a decent boss and a fair company. I have ten kids and a wife, and we make it work. Sure, sometimes I lose evenings or weekends, but my up-line has been fair and allowed me to comp the time. I'll never join a union. I saw what they did to my father, and how newcomers made wages it took him years to attain after multiple contract negotiations. And those young slackers didn't work anywhere near as hard or well as he did. [They put it to a test by putting a full union crew on a set of houses on one street while my father worked alone on the next. At the end of the week, the full crew had one house roughed out for HVAC, and was on or finished a second. My father had finished five houses that week, unassisted.]
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
The idea for "salary" workers is that you get paid x amount regardless of hours (either overtime, OR undertime). The law states as long as you work 1 hour a day, you are to get paid for that day.
But companies will only hear what they want, and force a minimum of 40. In which case, if you force overtime, then make sure your employees get undertime as well.
Disclaimer: I am not god.
We may not be created equal
But we can be treated equal.
There is a big difference working for a place where OT is a "necessary evil" when servers need taken offline or production rolls need to occur; and a place that says "Hey, we give ourselves raises if we can make our IT folks work 80 hours a week with no overtime" Jr. Programmers and Jr. System Analysts are cheaper anyway, out with the old, in with the new!
At the county, this came up when we knew the state was going to try this. The consensus is that the only thing stoping management from setting project goals that would require overtime to even have a chance of meeting the deadline was the knowledge that unless the world was on fire (which it was; literally; at the time) OT was not in the budget and out of the question.
It made me glad that I was in a union shop that even if the state says "Go for it!", it is still in the contract. Now I'm management, but at a place that considers OT a necessary evil, and expects we'll take off that time later.
Forgive my spelling from time to time. I'm often posting during short breaks.
Overtime legislation is akin to forcing employers to pay for health care. I believe that employers of full-time workers should be handled by the companies, but it's not a government issue.
Hardly; it's akin to forcing employers to pay for hours worked, since salary is based on a 40 hour workweek.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
I just really don't understand the justification. I've been salaried since I got out of school and I've always accepted that working beyond normal business hours was a possibility
I never understood that from Americans. In every other nation in the world, a salary is what you earn for normal hours. If they ask you to work any more than that, they pay you more. Nobody would have it any other way.
The justification for a company to offer a salary is that nobody would take a job where, if you're so damn good that you finish all your work earlier, you actually get paid less because they'll send you home. Except Americans, I guess.
That is in no way proof of your statement.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Please ignore the frat-boy supermen and sad divorced bastards who are currently razzing you for this comment. I just wanted to stand in support of this post.
I've worked since I was fifteen (yes, illegally, shocking I know). I've supported myself since I was seventeen, starting out with a stint of homelessness. I paid for my own college. I hit every single damn step on the ladder. It took decades.
It's simple. If you don't want the next generation to be raised as feral animals, then Mom and Dad need to be involved in their life. Absentee parents mean children go looking in the wrong places for love and guidance.
As a society, our choices are clear. We can either allow parents the time to care for their children, or we can build prisons and pay in excess of $50,000 a year to care for that child for the rest of their life, to say nothing of the carnage they'll cause on the way there.
I'm tired of listening to clueless jackasses. Children are not a "consumption choice." They are not "crotchfruit." They are literally, whether they're your kids or someone else's, your future. Twenty years from now, those children will be crossing your path, and they can either do it as your smiling waiter or your grinning mugger knifing you for the fun of it.
I'm tired of listening to milk-fed idiots talking about the harsh realities of life when they've never missed one meal or spent a single night on concrete. My patience wears thin with Social Darwinists with 40 percent body fat.
Having a child is not the moral equivalent of a trip to Cancun. Making sure our next generation gets raised right is more important than Larry Ellison's next yacht.
what company do you work for.
They appear to be one of few who do this.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
How so? They pay you for work, and that pay is required to continue living. It's probably good business sense to use those that rely on you for survival as much as you can (despite that it's morally questionable, at best).
There is no real downside to organising, it after all only improves the negotiation position of the workers.
You actually believe that if I work for you and you don't pay me I shouldn't be able to sue you?
Absolutely. Now, we had a contract, and that contract wasn't followed, that would be grounds for a lawsuit. Sometimes it makes sense for a contract to specify pay in proportion to time or effort expended, but that often isn't the case. In many areas, generally including IT, a fixed salary makes more sense. You don't have to work on those terms, but neither do I have any obligation to meet your preferred terms. Gainful employment can only take place when both sides agree on a set of terms. Forcing either side to accept the other side's terms would be nothing other than slavery.
Here there is an agreement in place, one which specifies a fixed salary, and which probably wasn't at all specific about the amount or kind of work expected in return. Either party is free to back out of the agreement at any time. This agreement is perfectly fair and reasonable.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
I am surprised that IT workers were not exempt already.
Here is the list of workers who are already exempt from overtime (IT is already on the list): http://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/FAQ_OvertimeExemptions.htm
Did you know, in many states, IT workers don't meet the state requirement to be a salary employee? That they are forced into there so the company can hire fewer people?
In fact, pretty much all IT work is counter to the reason salary exists in the first place.
All that, and based on the number s you gave, you make shit.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
UPS. Probably the nations biggest unionized employer; they are keeping the teamsters alive. 3rd biggest IT employer at the time I worked there. We got good benefits thanks to the Union, but they treated anyone below regional level as a complete peon. It was a crap job, with little chance of advancement. If you were to advance you had to take whatever position they offered - usually not in IT - usually some crap management job. No facial hair, strict dress code (management had to wear suits in 100+ degree weather), and any fun on the job was strictly prohibited.
Overtime implies the work hours exceed the amount that was negotiated on. The problem is that most companies do not dictate what hours one is expected to work. If they say your job is 8am-5pm, and they have you working beyond those hours - wouldn't it be a breach of contract?
If companies actually stated that they intend your work-week to include 60 hours, at this salary - then no one could complain. You'd have a choice before joining the company, or would be in a position to negotiate a higher pay.
If your cover letter reads like a manifesto, expect it to find the fast path to the circular file. Get your foot in the door first, then you can bring that sort of thing up once you find there's a little chemistry. (Kind of like dating...)
(Unless that was pure sarcasm, and that "whoosh" I heard was the joke going over my head)
ON DELETE CASCADE
This isn't a safety or human dignity issue. This is a contract issue. And it is a sorely needed clarification in who is eligible for overtime. The law change says that any computer professional earning over 75k a year is not required to be paid overtime. If you think that this means working for free, you're mistaken.
What it means is that computer professionals who want overtime must negotiate that themselves. If you do not negotiate it, you are not required to be granted it. Does a lawyer, doctor, accountant, or architect work for free? No, and whatever hours they work are considered to be part of the job. Everyone will pursue their own interests here, and for many that will mean the end of overtime. If labor is already properly valued, the end of overtime will mean an increase in base pay.
To say that support of the legislature's action means that someone believes "that if I work for you and you don't pay me I shouldn't be able to sue you" is dishonest. Support means that we should be able to agree what your pay will be based on, provided I pay you at least 75k a year.
It could be billable hours, instead of hours worked. It could be a merit bonus schedule. It could be primarily stock options. It could be the joy of not getting fired. As long as the base pay is 75k, the government of CA has decided to stay out of it, and let you and I decide for ourselves. This is a change that will increase efficiency overall, and I support it.
My fellow Americans, let's restore the death penalty for child rapists. Let's do it . . . for the children.
Four words: Governors Reagan and Schwarzenegger.
The make-up of the government does not always reflect make-up of the people.
One more word: Pelosi.
DINO and right-wing plant or sell-out? Your pick.
This is the first time that the Legislature has done a takeaway of the rights of private-sector workers as part of the budget deal
... if there's one thing legislatures are good at it's stripping away rights.
Oh I don't know about that
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Do the rest of you really, really want Kalifornia-style politics?
I'm making more money and working at a vastly cooler company than ANY unionized employee could possibly be.
Really, you made more money last year than Alex Rodriguez? Who's IN A UNION and made over $27 MILLION last year?
Nurses and techs get overtime, or comp time. Nurses and techs also get generous shift differentials. Teachers are unionized, and will walk out in the middle of a meeting if it's past 5:00 PM (I have know this to happen). Teachers also get vacation time up the wahzoo. Surgons may not get overtime, but it is not unusual for a surgon to earn over $500K/year, so it's hard for me to have too much sympathy.
Afraid that's wishful thinking. A cell company could rake in a lot of business if they'd drop rates, not hold you contracts, and not be dicks in general. But it's more profitable to have high rates and charge 15 cents per text message, so they all do it. So why would IT departments engage in a price war when it's expected that workers will kill themselves with no overtime?
So you are ABSOLUTELY sure that you are "making more money and working at a vastly cooler company than" such companies as IBM, HP, Boeing, Verizon, or AT&T. I DON'T THINK SO.
If you can't find a job that fits your lifestyle, chances are you're either lazy, or not very good
What a load of horseshit. You can be the best at what you do, but employers aren't always going to be fair to you or your skills. I've seen the best of the best laid off when times got tough.
I assume that you are young, probably have no kids, and haven't worked in the real world very long.
Because when I negotiate my salary, I do so with the understandin that I will be working a 40-hour week, with overtime an occasional, intermittent possibility. If overtime becomes a regular thing, then yes, I do believe I should get paid for it.
I don't work for free; that's not professional, and employers don't value your work if you do.
Examples? We up here always sort of snicker when we read slanderous things about American Democrats having "hidden socialist agendas" or even being "liberal" (Is it a bad word down there or something?). Truthfully, I haven't heard a single American politician even approach (from the right) what a Canadian or European would consider a moderate or centrist viewpoint.
Jeremy
This is one of the reason why companies are outsourcing to places like India an parts of the former USSR, people there are too poor and desperate to pull this stuff.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Because comparing humans to cell phones is a massive non-sequitur? Also, because the difference between a good programmer and a great programmer is huge, and the difference between a good programmer and a bad programmer is just as big. I'm not saying that all companies will treat their employees great, but the good ones will. Why would you employ only the programmers who put up with your shit when you know that the best programmers are at least 10x as productive and get treated like pure gold at other companies?
Don't blame the workers - they made the best of a bad situation,. and if the car makers weren't so completely incompetent in the world's largest car market, they would justify their conditions and wages as a small fraction of the overall cost of a new vehicle (it's about 1/4 of the car's cost, if you're interested).
The automakers failed in several ways:
a) To this day, they produce crap cars no one wants, with awful quality compared to their peers. Compare a VW door shutline on the next Jetta (produced in Mexico) you see with a shutline of your average US made SUV. VW's shutlines are 4 mm wide at the top and bottom of the openings, and less than 1 mm wide for non-openings such plastic mouldings to body panels. The Dodge Nitro I hired a while ago had a gap between the rear bumper and the tail gate I could see through, and don't get me started on how much that Nitro sucked - it nearly killed me five times with its terrible road manners.
b) Once they realized that no one wanted their shit products, they moved into SUVs as the other manufacturers were producing cars folks actually bought. I am still surprised that folks bought such agricultural SUVs, but ...
c) They made so much money from these crap boxes that they cut back on designing any other type of car and really scaled back investment in cars the US used to be leaders in (large sedans like the 50's Chevy's and Cadillacs). No US maker has a small fuel efficient car in their domestic line up (say 40 mpg+, which nearly ALL EU cars can manage without difficulty)
d) They forced the US govt to implement effective protectionism, under the guise of safety standards, which prevents cars from outside the US from being imported. This is now biting them really hard because no matter how much Ford or GM WANT to bring in *profitable*, *well made*, *extremely safe* and *desirable* cars from Europe, they can't.
e) they lobbied hard against any form of fuel efficiency standards, and got CAFE. They fought extremely hard to keep CAFE standards low, even to the extent that the SUVs are not subject to safety standards or fleet average fuel consumption figures that slug sports cars and some of their elderly models like the Crown Victoria. CAFE does not address consumption or demand when fuel costs are low. Thus you have the most wildly inefficient country fleet in the world and no domestic models that can manage 30 mpg combined (only the Cobalt comes close, and the Focus is a Euro car). The same manufactures in EU have average fuel consumption figures in the high 30's / low 40's. They addressed the bottom line - CO2 emissions and heavy taxation of fuel to make it artificially expensive. They have efficient cars.
f) Those huge profits they made on SUV's? Wasted on a binge of consolidation, wasteful depreciation inducing inducements ($5k on the hood of perfectly good cars, employee pricing scams, etc), and all sorts of other shenanigans. They failed to invest these bumper profits in new products consumers actually want, saving up for a rainy day or diversifying their range to cope with all buyers, not just guys with exceptionally small penises (Hummer, anyone?) Women buy and / or approve more than 50% of all the cars on the road. Makers and advertising do not target women - at all, which is a huge mistake.
Car makers have royally hung themselves by their own petard. I'd love it if I wasn't a car guy.
But it's not all the car maker's fault. They are burdened with the dumbest idea since dumb idea were invented. No national health care plan.
The US fails all its citizens and burdens its companies unnecessarily because it has no national health care plan like every other first world country. The US pays three times the amount for medical costs compared to Japan or Australia for worse health outcomes and a shorter lifespan.
If the US had a national health plan and decent medical costs, some of the costs now forced on the UAW by the last deal (or other auto makers without the UAW deal) wouldn't be holding them
Andrew van der Stock
I said "data processing and calculations" because if I give away too much detail, I might get into hot water. I'm not sure the bosses would appreciate my blabbing about the job online, OR the software, which hasn't gone into release yet (it's still Alpha). ;)
Ok, let's try this: translate "data processing" as "processing of ridiculously complicated legal forms whose proper use isn't fully clear to anyone" and calculations as "attempting to do accounting on said forms, even though at best, you're hoping your algorithms are correct given all the legislation that passes all the time, very little of which is ever fully explained to you, and some of which you may not be aware of".
Honestly? I think the coding I've been doing is more like voodoo than science. But so far, it's been working. So have the aspirin.
The rest of the job kicks masses of ass, though. :)
Oh, and YES, the benefits come directly from our UNION CONTRACT. I had to take examinations to get promoted to this point, and some of them were ridiculously hard (as in "had a very low passing rate").
Hey, you know what ELSE our union contract says?
We are not "at will employees". We can't be fired unless we actually break the law (at the felony level) or directly defy our boss' orders. Also, it's very difficult to lay us off, and if they DO lay us off, historically we'd get picked up by another department within two weeks (if we don't, we get a HUGE stipend to go back to graduate school, which actually would be kind of nice).
I bet you can't say THAT...
Oh, and yes, I'm a U.S. State Government employee. Our benefits are a little better than the Fed's. I won't tell you which state, though, other than to say "it's up North".
Whenever I read a little Republican screed, I always think of this from an American master of rhetoric:
Little Republicans would make me laugh if it didn't mean we all had to deal with Big Republicans. Big Republicans are smart, they know that there is practically no class mobility in this country and that their policies are transferring what little wealth the working class, including the Little Republicans, has managed to aquire into their own pockets. (They also know that they have more in common with Wesley Mouch than Hank Rearden, and they don't care because they think Rearden was a chump.)
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
I think you're the "NOOB" if you think 70K is a lot for a programmer. Most of the developers I know in California make 90K-120K, so don't think your salary is near the top. In fact, 60-70K is like the starting salary out of university now for many students.
Also, I make more than double your salary with no overtime. If you factor in that I can CHOOSE to work extra hours each week whenever I want, and get PAID for them all, I can easily make triple what you make (and will this year).
My health benefits are through my wife's job, which is a fantastic plan, but even if I didn't have that, for $100-150/month I can get equivalent coverage.
Oh, and is a 31KLOC application supposed to be large? My current project is well over 500KLOC and involves network protocols, graphics, and even "data processing and calculations".
So I am glad you are enjoying your cushy government job and making a measly 70K, but don't think you are at the top of the heap compared to public sector employees. If you want to see programmers getting treated right and making a ton of money, look at Google.
Well let's see. Here is the former board of AIG. This is going to be a quick Google of each one, and may not be correct or comprehensive.
M. Bernard Aidinoff: Democrat
Pei-yuan Chia: Democrat
Marshall A. Cohen: Can't tell. He appears to be Canadian, maybe he's not active here politically.
William S. Cohen: Democrat (2 out of 3 to Dems, also was Clinton's Sec of Defense)
Martin S. Feldstein: Republican
Ellen V. Futter: couldn't find any evidence.
Stephen L. Hammerman: Democrat (mixes it up some, likes Rudy as he was NYC police commissioner, but mostly Dems)
Carla A. Hills: mixed
Richard C Holbrooke: Democrat
Fred H. Langhammer: Republican (actually this is pretty mixed, but recently leans Republican)
George L. Miles, Jr: Republican
Morris W. Offit: Democrat
Martin J. Sullivan: Democrat
Michael H. Sutton: Democrat
Edmund S. W. Tse: Can't tell. Also not originally American.
Robert B. Willumstad: Can't tell.
Frank G. Zarb: Democrat
I believe that's 9 Democrats, 3 Republicans, and 5 unknown. I don't have time to do WaMu at the moment, but you're welcome to.
Oh, by the way -- I agree with you about the county level. I had a county job during Y2K and it was the WORST job I have ever had.
Although, county level work has one advantage over state level work.
County level employees are relatively stupid, so when they try to be evil, they do it very poorly and often score a Mega Fail. County level evil people are often nothing more than comic relief.
State level employees are rather more professional and educated. The advancement tests are MUCH more difficult, so intelligent people tend to rise in the organization. This of course means that when you encounter Evil(tm) it's DONE VERY WELL. This can be pretty damn scary (trust me, I know).
Still... Working for the state ROCKS. It's way better than working for the county...
Once I knew a good DBA that got hired by a typical crappy company as an "exempt" employee. One week she worked 38 hours, the next she worked 42 to make up for the 38. They docked her pay for the 38 hour week but didn't pay her for the extra 2 hours she worked the next week. She quit the next week. During the few times I have worked as an exempt employee, I have always made sure they got exactly 40 hours and no more. If I had to work late or got paged, I always made sure I took time off the next day. I haven't worked as anything other than hourly in many years.
"Be grateful for what you have. You may never know when you may lose it."
It's been this way for awhile now. I can't remember what the cut off is, but it's something like anything over $30 an hour is considered exempt. You get straight time no matter what. I've been in the IT industry since the early 90s and it's been that way for as long as I remember, except for a brief stint in the late 90s when we all made a killing writing "y2k compliant" software.
If most IT workers were illegal Mexicans, then this would become a cause celebre. All the Hollywood elites and beautiful [liberal] people would be fawning all over themselves as they "battle" this grave injustice.
In America, there is only justice for politically correct favored groups such as Negroes and Mexicans.
If you are successful and Asian or White, you will receive no mercy.
This will simply bring California closer to being in line with the FLSA like most of the rest of the country.
An interesting related topic has been brewing in Ohio lately, where certain governmental entities decided to pay overtime to exempt employees. (ODOT and Columbus City Government are two examples).
It all depends on what type of employee you want to attract, and whether you have enough other reasons for them to stick around. Some businesses may determine that they don't need to pay exempt employees overtime because it has no impact on their bottom line. (Maybe they offer a great health insurance package, and so people are willing to work without overtime pay and still be happy). Other businesses may decide it is better to offer exempt employees paid overtime.
The federal government has set the floor requirements. The problem with individual states going above those minimum requirements is that they run the risk that company XYZ may decide to locate where they can decide for themselves whether or not to pay overtime to exempt employees.
What?
I was jealous right up until "Oracle Application Server". I'm sorry dude, I'm so sorry.
Seriously though, you work for the government. Which means that your employer is spending somebody else's money (specifically, that of the taxpayers). It is not a union vs. non-union issue. It is private business that must pay its own cost vs. reckless government spending.
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
If you have to give up your entire life to your company, does it really matter how much they pay?
The downside is that the company figures out you're trying to start a union before you've succeeded and fires the troublemakers (ie, you).
why managers wouldn't?
they do nothing
but they talk shit
Apu, you should be glad we give you a job in the first place. Now, quit whining and get back to work before you are replaced.
Have gnu, will travel.
If he wasn't salaried he'd be paid less per hour to make up for whatever overtime he needs to take. Companies don't magically find money to pay overtime, they simply make your base rate lower. If you're salaried you're NOT being paid for 40 hours a week but rather for X hours a week. That X should have been agreed upon before hiring and if you don't like it then grow a spine and do something about it. However don't expect to make as much working 40 hours as you do working 60 hours or even a straight percentage drop (due to fixed costs).
The only thing this means is that they'll get 8 hours worth of work out of me. Even if your head falls off and you need me to be there for 12 hours. go fuck yourself corporate america, us overvalued IT workers can take down your economy faster than any investment bank. And we can make it so it won't come back.
You're essentially average it seems so unions work fine for you but some people are quite a bit more than that. Seems like you're one of those fools who can't negotiate or sucks so much no one except a government shop would hire you for any decent pay. Neither me nor my coworkers fall into that group so I can't help but chuckle at what you describe as a "great job."
I get paid around 70K for a strict 9 to 5, monday through friday job, with NO OVERTIME REQUIRED
I make over twice as much just a couple years out of college. I generally work under 40 hours, have flexible hours (usually 11 to 7, lets me avoid rush hour) and can work from home at will. Some weeks I work under 20 hours because I don't feel in a productive mood (I make up for it but I'm almost never required to).
, incredibly good health, dental, and vision plans,
Same here, your point?
almost four weeks vacation per year, PLUS five personal days, PLUS 2 1/2 weeks of sick leave, PLUS education benefits.
If I wanted extra vacation I could just take it unpaid which given my salary would still put me way ahead of you (yes I did work that out during the hiring process to make sure my boss wouldn't mind). I of course also get educational benefits of various kinds.
I'm responsible for about a million dollars' worth of hardware and software, and my cubicle is more like an office -- it's ten feet wide and deep, with thick, soundproofed walls six feet tall, complete with windows and walnut trim. I'm sitting in a genuine Herman Miller Aeron by the way. And the agency buys me all my books. If I need software to get my work done, I ask my boss, and I get it, usually within a day.
Right, circuses to keep the peons happy. So yeah you beat me on the cubicle and chair but that's rather irrelevant. I have a decent cubicle (too big for me as it is), decent ergonomic chair, nearly unlimited ebooks worth of reference books and I get to request things if I need them. I've probably made my company millions in the time I've been here and I was influencing a lot more than that (ie: a million does not impress me)
Everyone in the office is well rested and well adjusted, because we SLEEP AT NIGHT, and get to spend our evenings with our families. And the work we do is interesting; my current project is a 31KLOC Java desktop application involving data processing and calculations. I'm using JDK6 and NetBeans, with Oracle Application Server as a servlet engine for some of the server side stuff. It's a blast.
Right so you're like my co-workers and me, well except you make half of what they probably do (I'd be surprised if any made less than me). They work with java, oracle, terrabytes of data, complex calculations and all that pretty stuff developers enjoy.
I am paid to do pretty much whatever I want for 60+% of my time as long as I feel it will make the current project more successful. In other words I get stuff done so my boss trusts me enough to let me do my own thing most of the time. Keep in mind that officially I'm at the bottom of the corporate ladder and I shouldn't have anywhere near as much leeway as I do.
The op of this thread probably also thinks that people can't be paid more because of the minimum wage. There are those that think like that... upside down, and out of their asses, I shit you not.
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
I don't necessarily disagree with the sentiment you expressed, but let me try to compose a counter-argument.
When you take a job, there's an understanding and a contract. Clearly, your compensation is outlined: you make $X per year, you get this many vacation days, your benefits are this. But there's no clear expectation of what's expected from you that would allow you to make an informed decision as to whether that compensation is fair for what effort you're expending.
Absent that, a typical American workweek is considered to be 40 hours. That allows you to compare your salary and your work, and to compare across jobs. As an example, let's assume that one job offers $60,000 and one job offers $70,000. The benefits are identical, just to eliminate too much complication. The second job certainly seems more fruitful. If everybody was up-front that "this is a 40 hour per week job" versus "this is a 50 hour per week job," you'd be able to deduce roughly what you make: Fifty weeks a year, your pay is $30/hr for the first job and $28/hr for the second. Suddenly that higher number in the second job is looking less attractive.
The problem is most people aren't up-front and you can't make those comparisons. As you pointed out, "well then leave your job" isn't always even a viable choice, much less a wise one. Even if you did that every time it turns out your employer was deceptive about their expectations, future employers are going to be wary of hiring somebody who consistently leaves his job after short periods of time. If you're lucky, you get a chance to explain what happened and maybe get a shot. If not, they just toss your resume off the heap and nobody even evaluates whether what you did is reasonable.
The reality is, most people aren't complaining about this over occasional overtime. Most of the people aren't going "I have to work 42 hours a week three times a year, you owe me!!" The issue is more like my example: Systematic, consistent abuse of "overtime" such that it's not really overtime, it's a longer-time job. If that's what they're offering, great. But if they don't that abundantly clear at the time they hire you, that for whatever reason you're likely to be consistently working far more than 40 hours a week, then they should pay for that.
Secondly (and yes, believe it or not, that was all one point!) it evens the power between employer and employee. The employers almost always have the power, especially in bad economic times and in anything other than extremely specialized, highly-technical fields. If they're free to abuse their employees in that way, most will. But if there's an economic consequence to it--ie, if they need to pay for it--then they're much more likely to actually fix the problems that are forcing this sort of thing.
I work as a freelancer in web development. In my experience, the vast majority of the time that overtime is truly needed it's because somebody up the (project) management chain didn't have the nuts to keep things on schedule--and I don't mean development, it's always on the creative side or the client side--or negotiate a reasonable enough project duration from the get-go. The development teams continue to pull miracles out of their ass because they haven't yet mis-managed away ALL of their development talent (just 70% or so, with more leaving soon). Rather than fixing the problems that makes that necessary week in and week out, they simply come to rely on it. Oh, there's much hand-wringing out "ZOMG CAN WE DO IT AGAIN!" and a LOT of bitching about freelancer hours lately, as if that's the problem, but they make no effort to fix the issue. Most of their employees are salaried. It seems to me if they had to pay time-and-a-half until they got their heads out of their asses, every single person at that company would be better off in six months. Or the company would fold, but I'm being redundant.
At first, I was outraged to see IT workers getting the shaft. On second thought, I am less upset than before. The industry has become seriously dumbed-down over the past decade or so. A lot of those all-nighters and weekends are caused by crappy products (yes, Microsoft, I am talking about you). In earlier times, I was a sysadmin on mainframes. A truly skilled sysadmin could keep the mainframe running for months, 24x7. These days, the average server is up for maybe a week before the next patch/reboot festival. Even Unix/Linux boxes are getting complicaed to the point where uptime is a struggle.
And then there is the salary issue. At the right price, the salary really DOES include overtime. For $200k/yr, I have no problem. At $30k, forget it.
Notice how companies have even less incentive than before to look for low maintenance systems. They are willing to throw cheap labor at the problems.
Until people are willing to quit, the free market indicates we don't deserve a better deal.
Meanwhile, I am getting so burned out from the stupidity of modern IT, it's time to look for a new career. Thank you, California legislature, for helping me see the handwriring on the wall.
I work in the IT department for a large manufacturing company. I also have managers above me that believe that good performance leads to rewards. I can see where working for an IT company or a consulting company where you provide a solution for a customer could lead to significant overtime.
Deadlines can be tight and lead to overtime. The person scoping out the project should be providing ample time so the tasks are completed within the scoped amount of time. If he/she isn't doing that on the front end, that can lead to overtime on your end. No one wants to work overtime when they have a family they want to see. EA had that problem. Their workers walked out.
But the US is not even top 5 in real per capita income.
Notice us is 15th in per capita income when measured in it's own currency!
It fares better in international dollars, but it's still below singapore, norway, etc.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Unions wouldn't put up with this crap and individuals like yourself can easily be replaced with a fresh face willing to work for a lower wage. Union people fought and suffered and died so you can enjoy the freedom you have in your workplace today.
What a crock!, most billionaires are not self-made.
They were born into privileged families with heavy political and business connections.
This is a myth propagated by the likes of oreilly
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
I'd like to point out to you that corporate charters are also a distortion of the capitalist system.
They are a government created point about which to centralize power with absolutely no personal liability for those who engage in socially irresponsible (and at times criminal) actions in the course of business.
If you are fine with the government providing legal protection for the centralization of capital and market power without any liability, then you should also be fine with the government protecting the labor pool by giving equal strength to unions or unilaterally enacting laws to protect labor from abusive policies.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
I am not rich, but if push came to shove I could probably retire. I'd have to move from my overpriced abode in sunny california (compared to what I paid for it) to someplace in "red state America" (where the cost of living is less).
I am 50 years old. I have saved money all of my life.
I work in high tech, work on cool projects and make decent money. All of my stock options have bombed out, from several attempts. Everything I have has been earned, slowly.
I am not broke. I do not have the latest iPod, the swiftest laptop, that jazziest car or the biggest house my income would qualify me for. I do not have "premium" cable channels, nor do I buy ringtones or other overpriced ephemeral crap like that.
Save for a rainy day. It works in more ways than one.
Maybe I have worked for too many companies. I can't conceive of putting in more than 40 hours without overtime pay. The guys I work for now pay overtime but they don't want us doing it because they don't want to pay overtime. That works fine. If for some reason I have to do something over my 40 hours I just don't come to work for 1.5 times that later when it's convenient. I can't say I work my *** off, and I couldn't care less if someone more ambitious, desperate, or hungry comes along and wants my job. They are welcome to it. I'll never get rich, but I wouldn't get rich anyway because I have no ideas. I suspect someone is making a big deal about this for the purpose of gaining political advantage. I know people who beat their brains in and get paid well, I know other people who do almost nothing and get paid well, I know people who beat their brains in and get chicken feed. I suspect those guys who stand at the freeway entrance are probably smarter than me because they do almost nothing and get paid better. But I don't mind. I really couldn't care less if the companies I work for go down the drain tomorrow (some have). What I don't like is being constrained by bonehead labor legislation that ends up fossilizing the worst situations for the political advantage of some schoolyard bullies.
Your job sounds cool, except for the $70k pay cut. No I am not exaggerating or joking. Senior multi-role developers can typically expect $125-150k. Most senior devs make roughly double your salary. Which has always been my experience regarding government jobs.
And this, my dear people, is why we need unions. So that when need be, we have the muscle to tell these the companies to fuck off.
Overtime means you get compensated. Either in pay or free time, with or without multipliers (if you work on Sundays for example).
If you allow your exploitation you only have yourself to blame.
Work the 8 h, then just close your phone or your pager. If you get fired because of that, it means they have replacements for you, which means you were expendable from the very beginning and there never was help for you anyways - the purpose of the company was to just grind you down and then throw you away.
Word of wisdom: no-one will replace a machine they can't find replacement for.
As if the outsourcing weren't enough of a kick in the pants, this is just one more reason to feel bad about my choice of a lifelong occupation. Considering that many IT tasks need to be performed after hours because server maintenance often needs to be done when staff aren't expecting the servers to be available, this just adds insult to injury. At first you might think, "Just come in late so you can work the same number of hours, but some of them occur after prime time", but excuses regarding having to be available to support the staff during their normal hours, meetings, and normal employee rules about being there during the day tend to make you work the normal shift, then extend your day to perform the server maintenance also. We all know that backing up the servers (with huge hard drives) takes extensive amounts of time. Verifying that backups are viable takes even more time, and the initial installation and configuration of operating systems and application programs have a way of keeping you there until the wee hours getting every last property set just so. If you care at all about the quality of your work, there is no way around it, you are going to have to burn the midnight oil if you want staff and management to experience the "perfect" operation and reliability you want to provide. Also, when machines get infected or crash, it is always super high priority that they be returned to perfect working order by the start of business the next working day, which means tonight or over the weekend, you will be explaining to your girlfriend or wife of significant other why you can't come home as expected. In my case, I was always self employed, and my work just never seemed to end. All of this is just one more reason why my choice of occupation was a poor idea in the long run. A form of slavery where expectation exceed those of other occupations by orders of magnitude.
You must not know any "sanitation engineers" from the bigger cities. Or any assembly line workers for Ford or GM. Or UPS truck loaders. (note, I have been all these)
A union is able to take a meager skill and demand more than premium price for it. Not knowing how much you make, I will still wager a union could make you more. When embedded, they become too strong to say "No" to. ;) (disclaimer, I am against unions)
On Saturdays, the above schedule doubles.
On Sundays, the above schedule triples.
On Vacation days, the above schedule triples.
On Scheduled Time Off, the above schedule triples.
Just because a job is salaried doesn't preclude overtime. Federal guidelines (although apparently unenforceable, Labor ALJ's don't have contempt powers) mandate FT to be 32hrs/wk, anything over 48hrs/wk or 12hrs/day to be time and a half, anything over 60hrs/wk or 16hrs/day or Sundays or Holidays as doubletime... Salaried or not, these are the guidelines. That being said, management & PHB's are exempt from overtime, and lawyers never get overtime (boo hoo). $75K/yr is a lot of money... cost of living is only insane in NoCal., so they will feel this (& I do feel for them because when everything is relative, the actual numbers don't matter). But cost of living in SoCal is really not that much higher than elsewhere, though salaries are still higher (they can deal). Government, IMHO should only interfere to protect labor, to regulate big business, not to protect big business and give them breaks.
The Admin and the Engineer
See here: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/895421/posts
Part of the hardcore faithful who believed in Apple long before it was cool again to do so
The parent to my post implied a strawman. It would have been a textbook strawman argument had he not chosen to use a condescending tone.
Now, head on over to wikipedia and look up the definition of a strawman argument... Nevermind, I'll just paste for you and save you the time.
A straw man argument is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position.
That is neither a logical fallacy, or a misrepresentation of my opponents position. In fact it neither is nor was is intended to be a "representation of my opponents position" at all. It's an accurate representation of my position from the post my "opponent" in that scenario was responding to. I merely re-stated the part he missed.
Sure, if you want to pay IT support and computer programmers only base salary, that is fine. Just don't expect them to show up in the middle of the night or on Saturday when your severs crash. We will get to that bright and early at 9am next business day just like any other person who works 9-5. If you don't like it, well, that is too bad.
That's the thing about IT though. There are more than enough people out there who are willing to come in 2am Saturday.
I'm not sure what sets IT apart. Maybe because it's a sense of ownership or pride in "their" servers, maybe because they like being the hero, whatever.
Yes, they might bitch and moan, but odds are, they'll be there. Smart managers know this and they'll take advantage of it.
In my last job, a bunch of people quit in a short time period (fire, pay issues, work environment went to shit.)
Someone asked one guy "hey, so now that w, x, y and z are gone, I guess you'll be putting in overtime to help out?"
The guy looked up, nonchalantly said "nope" and walked away. We all laughed and joked about that for a while.
It took some time, but I finally realized that we though the joke was funny because we had all been willing to put in the extra overtime - we had all been so conditioned that answering "nope" wasn't even part of the decision making process.
The story is a lot less funny now.
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
Studies by researchers from RAND Corporation, Stanford, Urban Institute, Harvard, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Georgetown, Rochester Institute of Technology, UC Davis, and Duke have reported that we have continually been producing far more STEM (science, tech, engineering, math) workers than we've been employing in these fields.
Examination of employment data and projections from BLS when compared with NCES (Dept. of Education) records of degrees earned by US citizens confirms these findings.
"As late as 1987, 60K graduates were competing for about 25K open positions, according to Janet Ruhl, author of _The Programmers Survival Guide_" --- Margie Wylie _CNET_ "The skills shortage that isn't: When the rising tide floats employees' boats, employers proclaim disaster"
http://news.com.com/2010-1077-281060.html
http://www.kermitrose.com/econ1998.html#19980204
In testimony to the House Science and Technology Committee, Harold Salzman reported that we've been producing as many as 3 times the numbers of STEM workers as we've been employing in these fields.
http://democrats.science.house.gov/Media/File/
Commdocs/hearings/2007/tech/06nov/salzman_testimony.pdf
http://www.kermitrose.com/econ200711.html#Runnerup2007
This isn't just about not paying at a higher rate for additional hours of work.
It's about not paying for the additional work at all.
I have to wonder how many software engineers from Sopchoppy and Chicago will go into California's hideous cost of living not realizing that, no matter how much they work, they won't be paid for anything past the first 40 hours.
I did belong to an IT union centered around Desktop Support specialists. Thieves. You pay $35 per month so you can have them negotiate the raises all the programmers get automatically, and you usually end up getting 2-3% instead of the 4%, and that a year after the non-unionized programmers. Then they get another across-the-board raise, and you wait for your union to negotiate that again...
Organization works when
A) It's organized
B) The employer isn't being fair
I ended up losing over $250 to the union after corruption caused all the union heads to lose their jobs. I sent in a letter asking for the money, and the immediate response from the union boss was, "We never received it." It was certified mail, says I, and I have the signature. "Oh, well, okay. Yes, we can get your money." Never.
I didn't make the statement.
I stopped reading at "DemocRat".
Jeremy
Shrug. Depends on how much you care about money, vs family and crap like that. If I offered you a 60 hour a week job that paid 1,000,000 a year and required lots of travel, would you be tempted?
It's tempting to me, and I've put my family ahead of my career for years.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
I'd be tempted only insomuch as it would allow me to retire early, and do the things I really want to do. If I had to do it for another 40 years, then no way.
V. Computer Employee Exemption
To qualify for the computer employee exemption, the following tests must be met:
â The employee must be compensated either on a salary or fee basis (as defined in the regulations) at a rate not less than $455 per week or, if compensated on an hourly basis, at a rate not less than $27.63 an hour;
â The employee must be employed as a computer systems analyst, computer programmer, software engineer or other similarly skilled worker in the computer field performing the duties described below;
â The employeeâ(TM)s primary duty must consist of:
1) The application of systems analysis techniques and procedures, including consulting with users, to determine hardware, software or system functional specifications;
2) The design, development, documentation, analysis, creation, testing or modification of computer systems or programs, including prototypes, based on and related to user or system design specifications;
3) The design, documentation, testing, creation or modification of computer programs related to machine operating systems; or
4) A combination of the aforementioned duties, the performance of which requires the same level of skills.
http://www.google.com/profiles/malachid
Agreed. I think a lot of people think that way, and then end up doing it for 40 years anyway because they ramp up their standard of living to the point where they can't "support" it without that million dollars a year.
The funny thing about being rich is that, once you have a chunk of money, you start hanging out with people who have so much more money than you that you start feeling poor again, so you try to get even more money, etc, etc, etc. Fucking rat race.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
The government does play a part in salaries too; they set a minimum wage. Really, what's your argument? That we should go back to virtual slavery and child labor, under whatever conditions business owners decide?
If you want to go that way fine... do nothing, because many of the worker's rights laws are being repealed. The middle class continues its slide into the lower class, while the upper class elevates. Just realize that if you go this route, we will end up a communist state, because that's exactly what happened in Russia.
But I'd love to hear your actual solution to the problem, instead of nonsense I wasn't advocating. Government shouldn't interfer in the lives of people.. but corporations are legal fiction... we allow them exist to better the community. Unfortunately, we already have lots of evidence that if let to do as they please, they won't do that.. so it's perfectly fine with me to force them. Or we just go back and destory the corporate shield, and ever business becomes a sole propriatership. I have no problem with that.. if you're willing to take the risk of running that kind of business, fine with me.
By docking her pay for working less than 40 hours, they are admitting that she's not really salaried and she could sue for back pay. Well, she USED to be able to.
WHOOSH. The point was, why compete when offering crappy wages/products is more profitable in the long run. Sure, Sprint could get more customers if they offered unlimited calling, messages & data for $30 a month without contracts. But then Verizon and AT&T would just follow suit. Short term gains are outweighed by the long term benefits of nickle & dimeing customers on top of a $40 base plan ($50 with taxes & fees). Sure, EA could pay top dollar for top programmers, but then so would every other company. Why offer $90k a year to get first in class MIT graduates when you can get the work force used to slaving away on a 70 hour work week for $60k a year instead?
WHOOSH. My point was that a programmer you can get for 60k isn't going to be as good as a programmer you'd get for 90k, and that the very best programmers in the business are worth at least 4 programmers that you'd get a 60k. Cell phone customers are all pretty much created equal, and cell phone companies are pretty close to the same, with no company being many times better than another in measurable ways. Programmers are not like that, so the analogy is fundamentally flawed.
WHOOSHER. If the industry was going to start paying for top talent it would have happened a long time ago - outside of the Google/Microsoft pissing match with who has the most valedictorians with Ph.D's, there is no bidding war for IT. Even more so after the .com bust and with H1-B visas. If given a choice between paying for top talent and keeping low pay scales, management at any sizable company will opt for the later every time.
The only way to raise base salaries is either with unions or another boom. Unfortunately, we probably wont have either any time soon.
LOL, I agree with pretty much everything you said while varying in degrees - for example: 40 hours being the typical American work week. That is true and untrue at the same time. It is the traditional work week proscribed for federal workers which led, of course, to many other jobs following the same course more or less. It has never been the case in innovative, volatile, fields where sheer effort can make a difference in the market, such as IT and/or software engineering (many other disciplines can differentiate this way as well.) Now, when someone goes to work for a State government they 'should' (large grains of salt) understand that State employment is a series of trade offs since State jobs, the pay, the benefits, the expectations do not map 1:1 to the non-governmental job market. Generally you are conciously trading off pay (depending upon your level) and a more flexible environment (including time flexibility) in return for usually excellent benefits, a pension/retirement plan, stability (usually), and retaining the ability to work in a field you (hopefully) enjoy. Someone making this choice should also understand (there's that 'should' again) that the people managing you are not likely to be excellent managers in the technical sense (although they may be, and many will be excellent managers from an HR point of view), because (and this may sound elitist but I've found it to be true in general - especially in CA) people who are really into their job for the sake of the work itself tend not to work for State governments in the fields that make up IT.
Like you said, relating to your experience, project management is non-trivial, good IT project management is generally an oxymoron, and you're almost always going to be behind the 8-ball even if you have a good project manager because customer expectations are virtually guaranteed to be out of whack with the realities of any schedule... So, perhaps instead of people arguing that they should receive a salary plus hourly pay, they should be arguing to elect for one of two pay methodologies. You can either receive a salary, or you can receive hourly pay. (This could of course lead, in turn, to a predeliction for managers to use salaried people on overtime gigs, but that's avoidable through legislative efforts.)
Anyhow, a sticky wicket no matter how you look at it; however, I personally tend to believe that people should be responsible for their own actions, probably because of my bias due to being in the position I'm in - where I can make the decision to leave.
Loading...
Me knot preview gud.
Loading...
Unless businesses send unionbusting (aka "Labor Relations") firms packing, or are unable to stuff the elections with guaranteed no-voters, then it is one thing that must happen.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.