US legislation would eliminate overtime for CS professionals | Hacker News Reader

US legislation would eliminate overtime for CS professionals

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22 pointsJoshTriplett34 comments

So? Most IT staff (certainly programmers, etc) are classified as EXEMPT and don't qualify for overtime anyway.

Every full time position I've had has been exempt... I've never gotten overtime.

No, most IT staff work for companies that are flagrantly violating employment law and have been for years. There have been lawsuits, they have been won (or settled favorably to the employees).

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=9051

I don't understand the legislation's effects. Would this eliminate paid overtime? Unpaid overtime? How would this affect salarymen?

Since I started working as game developer, crunch has been always around. I won't comment on whether it's good or bad, whether it should be paid or not. Just this:

If you have worked more than 12 hours, and sometimes 20 - how the fuck one drives 20 miles back home? I have a friend (also game developer) who rides from Santa Monica down to Carlsbad every day - ~100miles each direction. And they had to crunch a lot.

Hopefully for me, and everyone around I'm just a mile away from work...

Yeah, I have concerns about this also. At work we're crunching towards a release for the past few days. Last night I stumbled home on the train at 11pm, my brain was completely shattered. I couldn't even parse sentences from the book I carry around for the commute.

How people are able to drive themselves home safely in this condition is beyond me.

Hopefully it will simply result in fewer crunches. When forced to choose between pushing a deadline, or paying overtime to programmers, I imagine most employers will lean towards pushing.

I think it will have the most impact on startups where perpetual crunch is closer to the cultural norm, instead of the outlier. Any thoughts on this?

Maybe I misread the bill, but isn't the bill saying no overtime payment for anyone getting 27.63/hr? That used to be $41.00/hr for California in 2001 (probably was $47/hr last year).

It's so bad in Hollywood someone made a documentary about it: http://whoneedssleep.weebly.com/index.html

US business practice eliminated overtime for CS professionals decades ago. What is the point of this proposed legislation?

Hours mean nothing; complex problem solving happens on a background thread anyway. A well-managed CS organization demands overtime rarely or never.

The last part of (a)(17) was changed from:

who, in the case of an employee who is compensated on an hourly basis, is compensated at a rate of not less than $27.63 an hour.

to:

who is compensated at an hourly rate of not less than $27.63 an hour or who is paid on a salary basis at a salary level as set forth by the Department of Labor in part 541 of title 29, Code of Federal Regulations. An employee described in this paragraph shall be considered an employee in a professional capacity pursuant to paragraph (1).

The law as currently stated implies that a non-hourly worker (i.e. salary) is also considered exempt regardless of their efective hourly pay rate.

The proposed change just makes this explicit and clarifies that to be considered as a salaried employee, the person must be paid a minimum of $455 a week (see TITLE 29 541.600(a)).

This change effectively reduces the effective hourly rate from $27.63 to $11.38 ($455 * 52 / 2080).

"hourly rate of not less than $27.63". Why hasn't the gov't figured out inflation adjustment yet? Laws are supposed to make sense indefinitely. In 30 years, that may be less than the minimum wage.

Fun fact: it used to be codified as 6.5 times minimum wage, but was changed in 1996 to be fixed at 6.5x the current minimum wage of $4.25, which is why it is such a random seeming number. If the law had not been changed in 1996, the current value would be $47.12 per hour, which would exclude many more hourly workers.

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c101:S.2930.ENR:/

Question... why are such exemptions legal? I understand that it is codified in law, and hence "legal" but why is the underlying law not considered discriminatory to deny someone overtime based on their existing salary and or job classification?

I think the original idea of exempt employees was that you were paid for your work, not your hours. There was a trade-off; you couldn't be required to work a certain shift, but neither would you be paid for being present for longer than your shift.

In reality, of course, this often leads to the expectation of longer hours, because why not.

Discrimination is not illegal. Discrimination based on certain classifications, some Constitution- or court-defined, some legislature-defined, can be illegal, but isn't always.

These are called suspect classifications[1], and whether any particular discriminatory law or action is illegal depends on the level of scrutiny attached to the classification, the nature of the law or act, and whether there's any actual harm.

Absent procedural errors, the only way to get a federal law tossed is for it to be declared unconstitutional. The US Constitution does not protect people based on their pay or the nature of their job.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspect_classification

99% of the time if you work almost anywhere in the core business of software in Calfornia or the US you will never see a dime in overtime pay. I don't think too many folks consider overtime pay but when/if you have friends or family who are lucky enough to be in a profession where overtime is granted you'll realize that we are missing out a bit in our profession on this one. (Granted there are many other exempt professions as well.) After getting run through a few death marches over the years, I now work 9-5, politely decline pressure to stay late, and go home being that I'm not paid overtime to stay. (Note that I don't work for a startup and am trying to moonlight so those free hours matter a lot to me) Ive also learned that pressure to stay all the time is usually an indicator that something is going wrong in the business.

I don't understand this. Which part of the linked page outlaws paid over time? As a college student I don't have a lot of experience a) reading legalese and b) with getting paid.

Also, what are the benefits of laws that outlaw overtime? Is it a form of income redistribution? Why computer professionals specifically? Is it because the jobs are not physical and overtime is thus supposedly less taxing?

Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 established the over-time compensation requirement and this bill would exempt those professions from that requirement. This would NOT mean that you don't get over-time pay. It would mean that your boss isn't legally obligated to give you over-time pay. Two very different things.

If your boss isn't compensating you properly for your work, give him the finger and find a new job. The government has no business dictating who gets paid what and when. If only they got rid of the entire damn thing.

The change doesn't outlaw paid overtime. The law, as written, exempts an employer from paying overtime if the employee is an executive, administrative or professional employee.

If an employee cannot be considered exempt (under the law) then it is illegal for an employer to NOT pay overtime.

The change (as proposed in the link) would appear to make it so that an employer could include more of their IT staff in the EXEMPT category.

In BC Canada this happened in about 2001 as a parting "gift" from of all parties, our departing left pro union and worker New Democrat Party.

But in Canada software engineers aren't professionals - because they aren't engineers!

That's why in spite of my Oxbridge PhD I'm not an exempt employee, have to belong to the union (teamsters) and can't supervise anybody. While a 21year old 'environmental-engineering' grad is exempt

It's illegal to refer to yourself as an engineer in Canada unless you have an Engineering degree/are certified by the appropriate professional organization.

I don't mind that - I object to that it's ONLY engineers that are 'professional', science PhD = janitor.

In fact I don't think engineers should be allowed to use any of mechanics, statics, thermodynamics, solid state electronics, etc without getting a professional physicist to approve it.

Uh... I'm having trouble grasping what you're getting at.

The only limitation to having an engineering degree vs. not is whether or not you can legally call yourself an "engineer". It makes no difference in any other respect - there are *plenty of software engineers in Canada who do the exact same job without the title.

There is no legal prohibition against you performing engineering work - anyone is allowed to engineer (the verb), but not everyone is an engineer (the noun).

There's also no classification difference merely based on what degree you have. The word "professional" AFAIK has no legal meaning, in Canada, in the context you're talking about.

Engineering is considered a professional degree - but that has no bearing on whether or not you're allowed to be hired into an engineering position, or have to join a union, etc etc.

Many companies and ALL government jobs segregate on professional or union. Since the only profession they admit is engineer - anyone technical, however well qualified, who is not an engineer is treated the same as the janitor.

How does this impact California? I understand that they have their own law related to IT staff.

If we had a union for software engineers they'd be lobbying against this.

never been a better time to move to australia :)

I don't get paid overtime in Australia, but I did (sometimes) in San Francisco.

I second this sentiment but perhaps for not the same reasons.

I work as a programming contractor on short term (3-6 month) jobs and right now the job market in Australia (Melbourne specifically) for coders with a demonstrable track record is fantastic.

as a local melbourne programmer (american expat), I'm curious how you land your contracts. I currently work for a small interactive media company, who sub contract to me. Im happy with our relationship but id like to find a second source of projects when they don't fill my time. Also, do you mind sharing what you think a fair rate is these days? (100/hr)? id love to pm you but hn seems to lack that feature.

So far they've all been through job postings on local user groups or contacts. I've poked around Seek a bit but not had to apply for any there as yet.

The rate all depends on what you are doing and what your experience is.

The bill doesn't appear to "eliminate overtime" but "eliminate the requirement to pay overtime rates for overtime work." In which case there is no change since pretty much everybody already earned too much to qualify for overtime pay anyway.

As if the US govt would pass a law protecting workers. It is to laugh.

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