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Don't kid yourself. You were called into those meetings because, like at many companies, there was a promise of time in return for extra time put in but, like at many companies, that promise was never intended to go both ways.

The first meeting was because you dared to utilize their promise and get some time in return.

The second meeting was because their usual course of action in such first meetings backfired on them and you were in the room to get brought back into line (specifically, back onto salary.)

You didn't mention quitting in response or forcing them to give you a raise in acknowledgment of your efforts. Did you?

Thanks for paraphrasing, but all that was implied in what I wrote. It was company policy to promote the illusion of paid undertime at the expense of no paid overtime. The only problem was that they'd written the policy in a way that it could be exploited.

Ok, that answers my joke below :) Darn, I'd had not even negotiated the first time - nice hack, with 5 months some "real" payment :)

I figured that either the original situation went over your head or that your post went over mine, so at least now I know which. That and that I should have gotten more sleep last night. :)

At least you were able to work the system there for a good six months. The vast majority of people finding themselves in that kind of work situation don't tend to fare nearly as well as you did.

What about benefits? Did you still have them? Billing hourly doesn't usually include benefits like healthcare and thus isn't as profitable as it may appear.

Btw I learned from a high-up exec at a consulting firm that they make a good chunk of their money from the hours you work above 40. In his words: "that is pure profit"...because like you said, you only get paid for 40 as full-time employee. The consulting firm, though, bills by the hour.

When I was a summer intern at Sun Microsystems in '87, working in building 1 in Mountain View, I turned in a time sheet with more than 8 hours on several days.

HR took me aside and insisted I put down any hours of any day that I worked more than 8 hours as overtime -- at time and a half -- even if other days were less than 8. Yes, insisted!

Well that got me off to a good start, and ruined me for life! Not only did I not have to work 8 hours every day as long as the total was 40 hours per week, the more irregular my hours were, the more money I made! Now I just can't break that habit.

I doubt Oracle treats their summer interns so well.

I'm in college now, and had an internship with a company in California last summer where HR did the exact same thing.

Apparently, it's California law that hourly employees can only work 8 hours per day, and anything over 8 hours in a 24 hours period is "overtime."

I'm now at an internship with a software company in New York, where the rules are what I consider "normal": Anything over 40 hours in a week is considered overtime, no matter when it was worked. However, the company has a strict no-overtime policy without (hard-to-get) prior approval.

For me, this meant I spent more of my time working in CA, because I was rewarded, while in NY, I work 9 hour days four days a week, then take off after lunch on Friday for a 2.5 day weekend.

Wasn't it obvious to them before the meeting why you hadn't filled it in?

They wouldn't be looking at it from that angle.

Probationary statuses are generally considered a bad thing in big companies, and are often used as a first step in building a case for termination. As a cog who's hoping to make a career in one of those big companies, you're expected to want to get off that bad status and back into "good worker" mode as quickly as possible. It had never occurred to anybody that they might have an employee who didn't care about internal promotion or their "career" at the company.

So no, the only reason they pushed it was that it was looking bad for them to have employees on the "underperforming" list. The fact that the penalty for underperformance was essentially a raise was something they had never even considered.

> Probationary statuses are generally considered a bad thing

As someone who was almost put on a performance plan for coming to work late, you don't ever want to be put on a PP. Basically, my PP would have been documenting my arrival times for 30 days and if a fair number were out of a 5 minute tolerance range, the PP would be used as a next step for being fired. Basically, a PP is something you sign that is a contract on your job. It provides legal immunity to HR to fire you. Fortunately, my boss and his boss convinced me to shape up and realize what a sword of Damacles a PP is. I started arriving early and realized how laughably bad it looked when I arrived at my whatever times. Not only do you stick out but you make your bosses look bad. In the land of corporate conformity, not following the rules leads to bad things.

wow! what a fuss over nothing (arriving late). I hope I never work at such company (if it's in IT).

Not knowing what the job was, how do you know it was unimportant? I mean, it's easy to dismiss corporate policies as unnecessary, or even overbearing, but if he were working a job that was time-sensitive, I would certainly expect people to show up on time.

Having worked help desk jobs, usually as the 'overnight' guy, I was personally the person that was screwed over when people showed up late, as I couldn't leave the desk unmanned.

Regardless, showing up late, when you've agreed to show up at a certain time, is rude, at the very best. Not every employer care, or will even tie you to a schedule, but if you're on one, disregarding it as nonsense doesn't sound like the best way to stay employed.

Heck, working in monitoring I know that there are jobs where punctuality is very important. Although I don't usually do shifts myself I've done few when there's noone else available, and it was very embarrasing when I forgot and showed up late one morning to replace a sleepy night shift guy.

But that's something we try to avoid as a team, not some corporate policy managers can hide behind to screw you over and/or cover their asses.

I was put on probationary status at a company I worked at ostensibly for showing up late, quit the day after.

I am a developer and coming in late made little difference as I worked as many, or more, hours as everyone else. At the same time I was probably twice as productive as most of my peers. The CTO felt threatened by how easily I did my job so he wanted to bully me a bit so I wouldn't get a big head or something. He didn't expect me to suicide bomb him over it, but from my perspective I couldn't have that thing hanging over me so I handed in notice after giving it a night's sleep.

They were in a bit of trouble over it since I was a key team member and it was a big embarassment for the CTO, I even felt a little bad for him, hopefully it taught him a thing or two.

"The fact that the penalty for underperformance was essentially a raise was something they had never even considered."

Just .... wow...

Given how often the bigger companies are so focused on 'bottom line numbers', it's really a bit surprising that no one ever looked at that.

"you're expected to want to get off that bad status and back into "good worker" mode as quickly as possible".

THAT I can totally understand.

So I hope you didn't sign, no matter the consequences! :P