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Should IT Professionals Be Exempt From Overtime Regulations?
Paul Fernhout writes: Nick Hanauer is a billionaire who made his fortune as one of the original investors in Amazon. He suggests President Obama should restore U.S. overtime regulations to how they worked in the 1970s to boost the economy. Quoted by PBS NewsHour: "In 1975, more than 65 percent of salaried American workers earned time-and-a-half pay for every hour worked over 40 hours a week. Not because capitalists back then were more generous, but because it was the law. It still is the law, except that the value of the threshold for overtime pay — the salary level at which employers are required to pay overtime — has been allowed to erode to less than the poverty line for a family of four today. Only workers earning an annual income of under $23,660 qualify for mandatory overtime.
Many millions of Americans are currently exempt from the overtime rules — teachers, federal employees, doctors, computer professionals, etc. — and corporate leaders are lobbying hard to expand "computer professional" to mean just about anybody who uses a computer. Which is almost everybody. But were the Labor Department instead to narrow these exemptions, millions more Americans would receive the overtime pay they deserve. ... The twisted irony is, when you work more hours for less pay, you hurt not only yourself, you hurt the real economy by depressing wages, increasing unemployment and reducing demand and innovation. Ironically, when you earn less, and unemployment is high, it even hurts capitalists like me." If overtime pay is generally good for the economy, should most IT professionals really be exempt from overtime regulations?
Many millions of Americans are currently exempt from the overtime rules — teachers, federal employees, doctors, computer professionals, etc. — and corporate leaders are lobbying hard to expand "computer professional" to mean just about anybody who uses a computer. Which is almost everybody. But were the Labor Department instead to narrow these exemptions, millions more Americans would receive the overtime pay they deserve. ... The twisted irony is, when you work more hours for less pay, you hurt not only yourself, you hurt the real economy by depressing wages, increasing unemployment and reducing demand and innovation. Ironically, when you earn less, and unemployment is high, it even hurts capitalists like me." If overtime pay is generally good for the economy, should most IT professionals really be exempt from overtime regulations?
As a manager and an employee, I vote No for overtime regulation exemptions. If a business is dependent upon their employees working for free after 40 hours, then their business model is flawed and it is better for everyone if they go under.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Project managers should be held accountable for their dubious scheduling practices and failures to estimate and manage project schedules effectively. Greater reward for IT professionals working overtime would hopefully translate into more regular work schedules, rather than being coerced into taking time away from families and loved ones in order to cover a PM's butt.
Why are we just discussing IT professionals?
Why not have everyone who works overtime (defined as work done after 40 hours for a given week) be paid time and a half, regardless of their profession/job?
And while we're on it, why not have a normal work week go back to 35 hours instead of 40?
Old-style "salaried" meant that you didn't have to worry about your hours, and neither did your managers - you'd get you work done, and could take off, say, for a federal holiday. Now - I'd put down a $10 that 99% of you who are in IT work, or have worked, over 40 hours, had vacation time or holidays that you couldn't take, or, like I do, have to "make up" the hours if the federal gov't shuts down or has a holiday, and we *don't*.
By definition, it means what you're really just fairly well-paid hourly employees. *Hourly* employees get time and a half overtime, and double time for working on, say, holdiays. But you're all making *so* much money that you don't care (nor do you have a life outside of work), right?
mark "would be seriously tempted to strangle a manager who said, 'whatever it takes'"
I'm an IT Manager. I weekly am required to make my dudes work 45-50 hours. Two or three times a year, they put in 65 - 70 hour weeks. They get nothing for the OT except MAYBE comp-time. I don't even get the comp-time.
I am in favor of this. If the IT dudes were treated the same as everyone else, they wouldn't be required to work themselves half to death and get a reputation for being sullen.
Hoist Number One and Number Six.
I have worked at a very few places where it was cool hip and fun. Working late into the night was a joy and basically hanging out with like minded people. But the vast majority of programmers are wage slaves working in cubeville. Terrible management often results in death marches where programmers are basically expected to work 24 hours a day and sleeping is barely tolerated. These death marches are basically the norm at most companies seeing that most managers/marketing people over promise, under manage, and under pay their staff.
These programmers desperately need protection. The few places where happy people love their jobs do not justify allowing companies (especially game companies) to exploit their workers to the point where their wives start an organization to protest the horrible working conditions (literally).
The thing is that this is really short-sighted (I say this as a development manager). You can force people to work long hours in a horrible job market -- but 100% of your good developers are going to jump ship the moment the market turns around. The only time this strategy makes sense is when two things are both true: 1. The job market is so bad even great developers are scared to quit 2. Your company is so close to going out of business that you don't have the option to think even medium term. You only care about the next month or two of results.
but not much to do at home besides watch TV.
There are lots of interesting and/or frustrating problems to work on at home too. If TV's all you can come up with, then you aren't even trying. My work is within a fairly constrained field. I have a lot of ideas for things that I don't have the opportunity to do at work, and when one becomes sufficiently interesting, I find time to write it at home instead.
I go to work to do the things that my employer wants done. I go home and do the things that I want to do. It works out nicely.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
No, you don't "deserve" anything other than what you negotiate
Did you negotiate to have a safe work environment? How about handicap accessibility should you ever end up, even temporarily, in a wheelchair? Id you negotiate a lower salary in trade for not having to endure sexual harassment? Your statement is very naive and immature (read Ayn Rand much do we?).
There is huge value in have the playing field somewhat level for a lot of basic things. Employment is inherently a lopsided arrangement. The employer has a lot more power than you do, so it become necessary to have some bigger entity keep things fair, safe, and liveable. Unions along with state and local government end up balancing the scales.
History is littered with examples of company towns, H1B abuse, child labor, black lung, and many other dark chapters for employees who could choose between whatever the company chose or starving in the street (or worse). Arguing that most employees have almost any meaningful bargaining power is just moronic.
Nobody should be exempt from time and a half except the owners of a business. Anyone who works for pay should get paid overtime, if only to punish companies and businesses that insist on overworking their employees instead of hiring more staff to handle the load.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Medical is likely to remain that way because of how hospitals work
Hospitals don't need doctors and nurses pulling insane 24-48 hour shifts (I know they do this because a friend is a nurse), they just do it to save money and not have to hire anyone new. We should let them get overtime and force hospitals to hire more staff and make better shift schedules -- maybe that would help cut down on the crazy wait time just to see your general practitioner, as well as medical mistakes from sleepiness too.
managers pretty much have to have OT on big projects
How about managers (upper management?) learn to make realistic project schedules instead of overworking the employees while they high-five and go to the golf course to celebrate getting a job "done early". Again, let's let managers get paid overtime, and expect employers to make real schedules.. or if they need it to be faster, hire more people before the project starts!
salesmen often work in a manner that makes tracking actual hours of work impractical.
Salesmen often have to travel and I agree that makes it more difficult. However, we can treat it like we would for truck drivers, etc. -- salesmen are allotted x number of hours/days of travel (the travel itself should be considered work, meaning they work 14-16 hour days if we don't include sleep and food), and when they get back, they MUST have mandatory paid time off or they earn overtime on their regular work in the office for the rest of the month. I'm just spouting off an idea here, I'm sure it has some flaws and could be refined, but the point is there is a way to handle odd schedules and still be fair to the employee.
IT could certainly use updated laws. Too many times you have to be on-call, come in on weekends at 3am to fix a server, rush a software project out the door, etc. Same things as above hold -- companies will learn to make better schedules or hire more people if such labor laws are in place. They will bitch about it at first, but they will adapt. There is nothing sacred that makes 60+ hour weekly schedules the only way to do work in these fields.
You are playing that cardboard cutout character again. How about displaying some evidence of thinking about the issue instead of playing this silly game. All coders can set their own hours? You are not that stupid. Please stop acting that way.
So, ultimately, the whole thing is self-defeating in general. Crunch times may be one thing, but on a regular basis, productivity declines even as people look busy.
One example:
http://www.inc.com/jessica-sti...
"The most essential thing to know about the 40-hour work-week is that, while it was the unions that pushed it, business leaders ultimately went along with it because their own data convinced them this was a solid, hard-nosed business decision....
Evan Robinson, a software engineer with a long interest in programmer productivity (full disclosure: our shared last name is not a coincidence) summarized this history in a white paper he wrote for the International Game Developers' Association in 2005. The original paper contains a wealth of links to studies conducted by businesses, universities, industry associations and the military that supported early-20th-century leaders as they embraced the short week. 'Throughout the '30s, '40s and '50s, these studies were apparently conducted by the hundreds,' writes Robinson; 'and by the 1960s, the benefits of the 40-hour week were accepted almost beyond question in corporate America. In 1962, the Chamber of Commerce even published a pamphlet extolling the productivity gains of reduced hours.'
What these studies showed, over and over, was that industrial workers have eight good, reliable hours a day in them. On average, you get no more widgets out of a 10-hour day than you do out of an eight-hour day."
With software, it is so easy to introduce a bug when you are tired or distracted (one reason team programming often saves money). A bug (especially a conceptual one) might be very expensive to debug down the road, especially if it makes its way to production. How many times have programmers spent days chasing a bug that was a one line fix? So, it may well be the case that longer hours mean *negative* productivity and higher costs for the extra hours worked past 40 per week even when the employee is not paid for the hours.
There is another complicating factor. Big companies in the 1970s such as HP or IBM invested in actually training employees, creating the pool of workers that Silicon Valley drew from initially. Investing in employee training is now rare, due in part due to little loyalty on either side of the employee/employer relationship in many companies. So, given that the tech industry moves so fast, where does the training time come from (including to read Slashdot :-)? Ideally, training should happen during those 40 hours. But in practice, many people working in IT have to keep current on their own time.
Yet training produces many benefits:
http://www.psychologicalscienc...
"A new study from a team of European researchers found that job training may also be a good strategy for companies looking to hire and retain top talent. When workers felt like they had received better job training options, they were also more likely to report a greater sense of commitment to their employer.
For the study, psychological scientists Rita Fontinha, Maria Jose Chambel, and Nele De Cuyper looked at IT outsourcers in Portugal-who must constantly update their skills in order to keep up with the fast pace of new technology. The researchers hypothesized that when people were happy with the training opportunities their employer provided, they would be more motivated to reciprocate with an enhanced sense of loyalty to the company.
This kind of informal balance of expectations between employees and management is known as a "psychological contract." When workers feel that their employer has fulfilled their obligations under the psychological contract, they're more motivated to uphold their
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
I have been working as a Software Engineer in Southern California for ~10 years and other than my first job when I was paid hourly, I have never averaged more than 40 hours a week. Sure, once and a while there is a production push and I have to work a 16 hour day, but I take a day off (wihtout using vacation) if that is the case. In general, I work less than 40 hours a week. Over the last year, I'd estimate I average 34 hours/week of actual work and that is split between home and in my cubical. And I'm effective, my maanger is ahppy with my performance and I get good reviews. I am also able to be responsive to my email and even VPN in at times during off hours. I also get to spend a lot of time with my family because I am empowered enough to create my own work schedule. Some of the people I work with spend 50+ hours a week in the office and will respond to emails in the middle of the night. Yet they are less effective than I am. Many of the people I work with ahve siomlar schedules to me, and they are most the upper echelon as far as talent goes. In general, I think engineers who work long hours are inept and are trying to make up for their lack of ability.
Do I think the inept people I work with should get paid more for being at their desks more? No, not really.
Gees, troll much. What are the modders asleep. I have found those that work the hardest get paid the least. Just look at all the poor schlubs on minimum wage working two jobs, IT workers get it real easy compared to them. So a mandatory minimum wage that pays for the cost of living in conjunction with full overtime awards and to cap it off and get rid of often substandard health insurance and replace it with universal healthcare.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
It was baked into the religion for the same reasons as the ten commandments - to produce a society that was more than barbarism. It's harder for the unscrupulous to work their slaves to death if they have people looking over their shoulder demanding that nobody works 7 days a week.
People who work the harder in their industry will almost always get paid more (barring other factors).
That's unfortunately nothing to do with how well they get paid.
Your pay level is largely about politics and self-promotion. (within a particular field and experience level)
I like being salaried, I get judged by results and not hours. There have been times that 20 hours worth of work has taken 30 because I was new to the technology, just getting ramped up on code base, wanted to try something new, etc. Would it be fair to get paid time and half because I was learning on the job?
I don't get hours docked if I come in late or leave early because of personal business. I have never gotten push back from a manager if I emailed them and told them I'll be leaving early but I'll make sure I stay on schedule, etc.
There have been days that I knew I wasn't as productive as I should be for a variety of reasons but I would make it up at other times.
So what happens when programmers go hourly? How will our productivity be judged? How will they know we aren't slowing down just to get overtime?
It's always been my experience once I proved myself, that I have the implicit trust of the manager. I give them an honest commitment of how long something will take in hours and they adjust the deadline accordingly. If I underestimate, it's on me to keep my end of the bargain.
If you're in your 20's having to put in 60 hours to get experience and pay your dues so be it. If you're in your 30's and 40's and still putting in 60 hours and you're not getting the pay/equity/bonus to make it worth it -- you're doing it wrong.
So they can walk out at 10am without consequence?
Of course, you seem to suggest, daddy can always find them another job.
Please be serious instead of this stupid little game where you roleplay a reactionary aristocrat.