Are Coders Exempt From California's Overtime Laws? 693
Gizmo Kid asks: "How many of you Californian, full-time, software programmers are getting paid overtime? From what I understand, a law in California, passed within the last two years, says that software engineers who make less than $41/hour [PDF version] are required to be paid for overtime? Are your employers following the rules? I'm not sure mine is?"
I would say (Score:0, Insightful)
Move to Europe ! (Score:3, Insightful)
(Too many other reasons to mention)
overtime issues (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:overtime issues (Score:5, Insightful)
In the Current Economy... (Score:3, Insightful)
Just be happy that you have a job!
California? (Score:4, Insightful)
Go on strike! (Score:5, Insightful)
And how much paid vacation time I get per year? 6 weeks. How many weeks do you get in the states? And yes, I am only 26.
Complain, make it better, do something (and get free Coca Cola as mandatory).
(and if you happen to run a cool and nice company, with proper benefits, consider hiring me;))
Re:Go on strike! (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, be glad you have a job... then in 15 years after y'all are continually 'glad just to have a job' and being paid less and less, working longer hours, with less benefits and worse conditions... it gets closer and closer to not having a worthwhile job at all
No I'm not in the US, yes I'm employed, and I'm earning a decent amount without insane overtime expectations because my co-workers and I won't take shit from our employers. We'll accept when there are hard times or projects that need extreme amounts of dedication to finish, but as for consistent long term crap... no way.
Re:In the Current Economy... (Score:3, Insightful)
Roman to Christian, Circus Maximus, 10BC.
Re:overtime issues (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, but no. Exempt status is the new slavery. It shouldn't exist. All people should be paid hourly, period. If you work more than 40 hours a week for any reason you earn time and a half. Life in America would be a lot better for families if mom and dad weren't expected to put in 80 hours a week for their base salary with the threat of being fired looming over their head. Your number one obligation is to the people you love, your family, friends, etc. Work doesn't even place a distant second in my opinion. I'll help out if it doesn't effect my family life, but otherwise when my 8 hours are in I leave for the day and forget about work. Companies don't care about you! You're just a resource to be exploited like a machine processing materials.
Re:Mandatory overtime payment (Score:5, Insightful)
If I were a full-time programmer in CA... (Score:2, Insightful)
Not getting paid? WTH (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Move to Europe ! (Score:2, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
You're fired. (Score:1, Insightful)
If you came to me with this concern, I would find a polite way to say "You're fired". I have hundreds of resumes passing through my hands each month, and I am just appalled to hear the ungratefulness of some of the people who HAVE jobs. Try being unemployed for 6 months, as some of these folks have been. Then see if you want to bite the hand that feeds you.
Yes, I agree that employers should be held accountable by the law. But look at this... $41/hour? That's like $80K. You're telling me that if I hire a $75K programmer, I have to pay him overtime? That's an easy decision. I choose not to expand or incur the headcount of a 75K+ overtime programmer. Give me a break. That is a bonehead law which will put downward pressure on hiring. If that's the law, then I choose not to hire.
If he's on staff now, and I have to pay him overtime, he's fired. (Call it a business restructuring.) I KNOW in this economy I can do just fine with 1 less programmer (or fire the whole staff, for that matter... SO many of these people on the street will perform contract services.)
Work for hire laws permit me to let you go without cause.
Your value to the company must exceed your cumulative cost, and by a large factor. Otherwise you are expendable. Bitch, and that adds to the cumulative cost. Bitch some more and you are gone. No questions asked.
I hired a Gen-X-er who had the NERVE to bitch about his cell phone, which is purely a perq - he doesn't need it for the job. Since it wasn't perceived as a perq, and it was costing us money, I said "cancel it". Next he bitched about something else, and I recommended him for immediate termination. Who has time for whiners in this economy? We are trying to make a living - and if you aren't part of the solution, you are part of the problem.
There's a line outside of people who want your job. Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.
Re:Go on strike! (Score:3, Insightful)
"Vote with your feet"
Leave, get another job on better terms. If you can't get a job on terms you like better, tough cookies. You are not entitled to one. The idea that if everyone banded together then more money to pay workers would magically appear is rediculous.
You can complain that you get less of the company profits as an employee than the investors. Again, vote with your feet and start a company. People do it everyday. Most millionaires in the US got that way by starting their own business which is still a small business.
If you pass a law that says 6 weeks vacation for everyone you disallow people to _choose_ to take a job that offers more pay in exchange for less than six weeks of vacation.
Re:What are you going to do though. (Score:4, Insightful)
Having job protection makes the worker feel better, but it hurts the economy (Sometimes employers just have to cut 5000 jobs to stay afloat - is it better for the company to go out of business because it's paying a bunch of dead weights?) and it eliminates healthy competition.
Re:overtime issues (Score:4, Insightful)
Sorry, it can't work this way. For example, one guy is lazy and stupid, and it takes him 3 days to code "Hello World" in Perl. And another guy is -normal- (not even genius), and it takes him 3 hours to do a similar job.
Now tell me how can I pay them hourly if the lazy guy just relaxes, while the other one works?
One fair way is to pay per work performed. You estimate some reasonable time needed, you give the assignment, and whenever they finish is up to them. If the lazy guy has to come on weekends, it's his problem.
The only alternative is to fire the lazy guy. But I fail to see how it helps; and as an employer I really don't mind using lazy guy's help even it comes slower than usual. People are different, and something that is obvious to one may require extensive reading to another.
Re:overtime issues (Score:4, Insightful)
If somehow you didn't know 80 hours was expected, or if you were lied to in the job interview then quit.
You say as much, you have a family and value the time you spend with them so you have a job that doesn't require more than 40 hours a week. That is a mature decision, you made a choice between available alternatives.
Declaring that there should be justice and plenty for all and the man is trying to keep us down is just plain childish. Ditto for the vague idea that everyone is entitled to their dream job. It doesn't exist, you pick between what is available.
Re:Go on strike! (Score:2, Insightful)
So companies without the money to pay workers should be able to do what they've done to the submitter of the article - just have them work overtime without being paid for it?
The idea that if a company decides that despite there being no money that workers should still give them more time is even more ridiculous. Banding together takes the control from being 100% in the employers favour to a more balanced level where both sides get a say
Most of the time it works well. Sometimes weak unions will let a company gradually eat away at worker entitlements, sometimes strong arrogant unions will be a pain in the arse for the employer. That's far better than having only employer control over everything with no worker say
Re:What are you going to do though. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I would say (Score:4, Insightful)
Riiight. This has worked so well in Europe. In many countries (Denmark and France, IIRC) they have rules like this and their unemployment is skyrocketing.
Between this and California's new "download tax" I guess they want to be sure no tech development EVER happens there again.
Re:What are you going to do though. (Score:2, Insightful)
If the company goes out of business then everyone who worked there is out of a job. And regardless of how evil corporations may be at times, we still need them to provide jobs and put money into the economy.
"Be glad you have a job" (Score:4, Insightful)
The tech sector has a glut of qualified people; it's the law of supply and demand. Bad news for me, as I'm about to graduate with a degree in CS.
I'm glad you're employed, and I'm glad you won't take any crap from your employers. But you can afford to feel that way. I bet if you did get fired, you'd be able to find another job pretty quickly.
Re:Go on strike! (Score:2, Insightful)
That's wrong. Vote with your feet. If you are being bullied by the management, quit the job! Bad managers don't deserve good employees. Get a clue. Work places full of weak willed low performers go into a death spiral of overwork and tighter deadlines. Tell the business managers to heed your technical advice or THEY can suffer the consequences. Write a memo of record and send it to the CTO, CFO and CEO. When the project is overdue and they are yelling at you hand them a copy of the memo. If they keep whining, quit! Go start your own company.
Unions in the US are a vehicle for the "labor movement" to force you to pay dues and contribute to involuntary "retirement plans" where the organizers then abscond with the money before you are fully vested.
Re:overtime issues (Score:3, Insightful)
Each person needs to evaluate job offers they receive....
What job offers? Try job offer. Singular. And if it comes down to a crappy job or no job, I'm going to take the option where I can still eat and pay rent.
If employees believe that they are not being treated fairly then they should resign and move to another employer.
That's nice, if you've got somewhere else to move to. I've been searching for a job for months (I'm finishing school in May), and I've yet to have even a second interview with any company, much less a job offer. What more can I do?
Re:Overtime pay for programmers? (Score:3, Insightful)
If you really think that then you are in for a rude awakening.
Re:You're fired. (Score:2, Insightful)
"Your value to the company must exceed your cumulative cost, and by a large factor. Otherwise you are expendable. Bitch, and that adds to the cumulative cost. Bitch some more and you are gone. No questions asked."
If you want slaves instead of employees, leave the country, now, please. We don't want you here.
The company I recently told to get bent used to respect their employees. They switched to an attitude like yours, and they've been losing clients ever since.
OT hours supposedly factored into salary (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Mandatory overtime payment (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sorry, but this is laughable on one hand. In my fields, medicine and science, folks with earned doctorates (Ph.D.'s & M.D.'s) routinely get paid a pittance (~$30k) while piling on more hours than most folks can imagine (100-120 hrs/week). Granted, everyone wants to make more money, and there should be limits placed upon the amount of time one should have to work, but when I hear dudes making $75-80k/year bitching because they are not getting paid time and a half for the "extra" 5 hours a week they are working, I just have to shake my head and wonder what I have gotten myself into.
Re:overtime issues (Score:3, Insightful)
Do what i do. In MN, i got fed up with finding a computer job, so i filed for an S-Corp, and opened up a consulting shop for on-site computer/network repairs and installs. It may not be computer programming, but i charge clients around $100 (less for residential, more for businesses) per hour, minimum 1 hour. you would be surprised how fast throwing up an ad in the newspaper will get the ball rolling.
i probably wouldnt be doing this if times weren't tough, but this pays my bills and leaves me with some spending money at the end of the day. ive been doing this for almost 2 years now, and if i found a job not working for myself, i would probably continue to do this on the side.
Re:Move to Europe ! (Score:1, Insightful)
Maybe Europe should repay the United States for all of that. Then the Europeans would realize much more quickly what all of that socialism is doing to their economies...
Reality check! (Score:3, Insightful)
The plight of the poor, put-upon IT worker making five times minimum wage with benefits, with his fat ass in a safe office chair instead of a coal mine? Nope, doesn't resonate.
I've always been anti-union. But that was before the dot-com bubble burst. I was working at an ISP a few months ago. I had a guy with a Masters' degree and two certifications walk in our door looking for a job.
And how the *fuck* is unionizing going to keep your dot-com parent company going to keep from going under? The problem today is not companies making shitloads of profit and exploiting their workers more (a la coal magnates). The problem is that the *companies* are doing badly. You can't just squeeze the company and get more money from it, and make everything fine. The people at dot-coms, American Airlines, Enron, WorldCom, AOL, etc, are just going to have a rough time of it. There isn't a nice way to say it.
In Europe, almost all jobs are protected by government regulations or unions. You -can- fire someone for poor job performance, but it requires a review process.
Nothing like red tape to solve problems! Look and see how many people in Sweden would like to live in the US versus how many people in the US would like to live in Sweden.
Not the whim of an asshole manager playing office politics.
Politics will *never* leave the workplace. Even by adding red tape.
Collective bargaining gives employees power.
Unions also tend (unless you have a single-company union, formed of the employees at a single company) to be designed purely to put money in the pocket of *another* large, self-interested organization with a deep love for taking money from those who need it -- AFL/CIO.
Because hospitals are mistreating nurses. Underpaid, overworked, and being replaced by cheaper H1-B labor.
You want to *unionize* to keep companies from replacing workers with foreign workers and moving jobs overseas?
Re:Move to Europe ! (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, because after all, we don't have terrorists killing thousands of people here, because we have this great army, and they're helpless against that...
Oh, wait, bad example.
French and German citizens are not threatened by terrorists because the US Army protects them from them...
No, still bad example; we don't do anything about that at all.
Hm, now, how is it exactly that we are protecting France, Germany, and the rest of Europe? And, er, does it count if we're doing it against their will (see EU opposition to military action against Iraq)? And can we parse out what attacks are *based on* their alliance with us and our bullying tactics, vs. what they'd incur of their own accord if we weren't helping?
Re:overtime issues (Score:4, Insightful)
Wrong. You are a resource offering your service in exchange for compensation. Employment is a form of trade. By engaging a work contract, you are engaging in trade. It is up to you to determine whether or not your trade is worthwhile. If you don't have enough information to do that, it is up to you to seek employment elsewhere. If you don't have the ability to determine if your trade is worthwhile, then you shouldn't have engaged work contract in the first place. Why exactly should I be punished (via taxes) because you can't make a good decision?
Smart employers will always care about you, because they care about their investment. To propose that employers don't care about you is to propose that they don't care about their business, which is illogical.
In a free market, incidentally, employers who don't care about their employees would quickly disappear. Logically, employees will reward the employers who care and punish the ones who don't, through the process of market competition. But we don't operate in a free market. Government is very deeply entangled in the economic system.
overtime is already factored in (Score:2, Insightful)
Let's say you make $40/hour. Thats $80k/year with a 40 hour work week. Instead, let's say you average 50 hours a week. That's $32/hour. So - really you are making $32/hour with a guaranteed 10 hours a week in overtime.
If that doesn't seem like a sweet deal to you, I'm sure the guys working for a lot less than that aren't exactly shedding tears for us.
Re:Public Companies part of the problem? (Score:4, Insightful)
When the rich invest in the stock market, it's never a gamble.
Re:overtime issues (Score:1, Insightful)
Managers love them because they eliminate the risk involved on their end. Of course, you will then have to do 10x the normal amount of spec work, start issuing Change Order Requests and so on, but it's quite possible to make 100% profit on a job that was estimated correctly.
The fact is that the entire contract market is set up to be 'hourly' because most of the time the PHBs want full control, want 'the right' to change the specs midstream, want huge QA cycles, and so on.
Work what you are paid for. (Score:2, Insightful)
If I set a deadline then I will try to meet it by working some extra during the week (never on weekends though) because I feel that since I set the timeline (and unlike upper management am qualified to estimate programming timelines) I am somewhat obligated to meet it. If the schedule is held up by external factors though (usually the case) then the deadline gets pushed back appropriatly.
I always let management know the progress of the project.
Now, this isn't to say I won't work a 10 or 12 hour day. I may indeed do that for various reasons, usually because I am "in the zone" coding wise. But, I always try to make up for it by leaving early or coming in late other days of the week. Sometimes a very long lunch will easily make up for it.
Lastly, I try to keep my time sheets consistant. Always right around 40 hours and always around 8 hours a day. Even if I do put in a 10 hour day one day and a 6 the next I just even it out to 8 and 8.
Re:Not getting paid? WTH (Score:1, Insightful)
To do my "sweatshop" job here in the US (which I am free to leave if I dislike the working conditions), I get paid about $32 an hour, if you divide my paycheck by the number of hours I work in a normal day.
No complaints here, thank you very much.
Re:Time to unionize. (Score:1, Insightful)
The
Not a one of them believes it will happen to them. Until it already has happened to them. So talking to them is a waste of time.
Re:Mandatory overtime payment (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:overtime issues (Score:3, Insightful)
Remember that voluntary association is the key to free market economics. In a socity based on voluntary association, individuals would be 100% responsible for their choices of employment. Free competition would ensure that only the smartest businesses survive. Why would employees willingly endorse a business that treats them any less than they want to be treated? In a free market society, this would not happen, because employees would not be able to ignore the need to make good choices.
Again, the free market system does not guarantee that "bad" employers do not exist. It only guarantees competition, and employees are a fundamental part of what makes competition work. Government's only role in the free market system would be to protect the individual from the initiation of force. If an employer breaks the employment contract, or otherwise initiates force or fraud against the employee, the employee will either take legal action or simply "vote" for another employer.
Now, I'm not about to read that entire book so if you could briefly summarize what happened I would appreciate it.
What about employer references? (Score:2, Insightful)
Maybe I'm naive, but I always thought that prior employee references is critical factor in getting a new job, especially for less experienced developers with less than a handful of work history entries. If I buck the system, I won't be able to get a good reference, right? Won't that hurt my ability to get a new job?
Can less experienced developers afford to fight back against exploitation, or are we just stuck?
Re:I would say (Score:4, Insightful)
There is a balance somewhere. In the U.S. there have been MANY instances where employers have screwed their employees, and that has lead to child labor laws and unions. Unfortunately quite a few lazy people seem to want to take advantage of companies. The real problem is greed.
I kinda laugh at some of the companies around here that talk about "retirement" benifits. Yeah RIGHT!
I saw many times Dow Chemical move "older" employees around the country when they started to get close to retirement. They tried hard to get them to quit... I could go on.... Like how the automotive industry actually killed people who wanted to start up a union... But on the other hand I see union auto workers today that make a slug look like the greatest worker in the world...
Re:overtime issues (Score:3, Insightful)
What does this example have to do with anything? In all of your examples overtime is simply a method where the slow, unproductive, and troubled get paid extra to do the same amount of work (as long as they stick around the office while they are being slow, unproductive, and troubled).
On the flip side, let's say that my wife is sick and I would like to go home early to give her a hand with the kids. As a salaried worker I can leave early without losing money. As long as I get my job done to my employer's satisfaction I can be far more flexible with my time. If my employer is unhappy with my performance he can hire one of the "100 guys standing in line to get a job." Likewise, if I am unhappy with the hours that my employer is asking me work I am free to try and find another job.
Quite frankly, unless you happen to have a job as a security guard or something where the primary component of your pay is your physical presence then it simply doesn't make sense to get paid simply by the amount of hours that you spend in the office. My employer doesn't really care where I get my job done, as long as it gets done. Yes, sometimes that means that I have long days, but sometimes it means that I get to go home early.
Re:overtime issues (Score:3, Insightful)
"Power politics" is much more accurate as a descriptive term than "free market" for any period of time that I am well informed enough to have an opinion. Wealthy people buy and bought laws that favor them. This doesn't make governmental oversight any panacea. Regulatory commissions that are at all effective tend to become captive of those that they regulate, and tend to create environments where new businesses are severly penalized for attempting to enter an area. Commissioners tend to be hired by companies upon their retirement, and then used to lobby their old friends in government. etc.
Centralization of power is the chief evil that I see here. How to avoid it is much less clear. An employer rep. doesn't benefit from doing a good job, but rather from appearing to do a good job. If a manager can cause the staff to put in more hours without paying extra, it will look good on his record, regardless of what the result is in terms of project quality, correctness, or employee morale. Those are hard to measure.
You can say that a smart employer wouldn't act this way, but you are assuming that the manager is the top management. In a small enough company you may well be correct, but when you start dealing with hierarchical levels, then the social contracts stop working. The top manager gets only a very abstracted image of what is happening, and how the staff feel. He deals mainly with the managers, who deal with the supervisors, who deal with the staff. There can be more levels, but that just makes things worse. Top management can't know the details. So only the easily measured things get abstracted. No malice needs to be involved. But at each intermediate level, the managers at that level are rated by the things that are easily measured and quantified, and passed along.
The result is that, yes, you shouldn't be surprised to be exploited. It's not optimal behavior for the business, but it's optimal behavior for the managers as individuals.
I'm always surprised that labor unions are so disregarded. Yes, they are subject to the same limitations, but they did act as a countermeasure against the more extreme examples of abuse. Corrupt? Of course. Organizations that centralize authority can't avoid corruption in one form or another. And labor unions did centralize authority. And the leaders benefited from making impossible promises. But they frequently didn't themselves know that the promises were impossible. (That information was considered secret, so the companies wouldn't share it. And it still is.) My memories still rankle at the times that management has talked staff into not insisting on a pay raise because the economic conditions were too bad, and then as soon as the agreement was signed they turned around and gave themselves a larger pay raise than the staff had been requesting. One of them said "you should have hired yourselves a better negotiator", but the problem was that the necessary information to make a decision had been falsified. Don't expect anything better. I have it on good authority that our management is (or was) better than most. But don't trust them either.
Unfortunately, this doesn't give much of a clue as to what you should do. Yes, you are probably being illegally exploited. But this doesn't necessarily mean that you should complain to the laws. That might well be to your long-term disadvantage. And this would apply even after you have accepted a new job, and tendered your resignation. Remember, your new boss will be in a machine with the same basic shape, and if he should feel that you are a threat, he will probably find a reason to dispense with your services. And the note in your personnel records probably wouldn't make a good reference for a new job. (And who writes the note? Who gets to evaluate it for correctness? Centralization of authority again.)
Re:overtime issues (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah, like buy a cheaper house, or send your kids to a state college (or like my parents did, make me pay for the bulk of college). Nobody told you that you have to buy that new car, that PS2 or the big screen TV (or a TV at all). Maybe the reason that people are working 80 hour jobs is that they can't afford what they are buying in the first place (one reason we see so many cyberbegging sites online).
Re:overtime issues (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:You're fired. (Score:3, Insightful)
You sound every bit as whiny as the Generation X'ers you're complaining about. "I shouldn't have to pay people overtime, they make enough already! I shouldn't have to listen to my employee's complaints, so I'll just hire people who don't complain."
You make some great points in there. Employers and employees owe it to each other to be fair to each other. But your points are undermined by the way you try to make them. Thanks to you, a good many readers are even more inclined to think of their employers as heartless bastards who would rather fire them than give them a cent above what they absolutely must.
I like my job. I'm very happy with it. But if I asked for a raise, or for overtime, and got a speech like this in response, I would be out the door right then.