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Comment by shepardrtc | Hacker News Reader

I worked at a university in Florida that did this to me. I was being made to work overtime on a few software projects and making a nice little amount of extra money. Then one day I found out that I was being "promoted" to a manager title. No raise or any extra benefits, but I was no longer allowed to get overtime. It was part of a campus-wide initiative to cut costs. And now that I was a manager I was expected to work even more than before.

Year later, the day before I gave my two weeks, my boss told me I was becoming known as an 8 to 5 guy... I wasn't working enough extra hours. After I told him that he wasn't paying me enough to waste my life away at the job, he wasn't too surprised when I gave my notice the next day.

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An 8 to 5 guy is a 6 to 10 guy at home, and that's already pretty weak on the work-life balance scale!

> I worked at a university in Florida that did this to me.

Florida academia and pay fuckery, name a more iconic duo. FIU Alumni and Ex-Employee Here.

I had something similar. I was contracting for a company as a solution architect. Got paid OT for any hours I worked over 45. I was working 75-90 hours a week. Not because I wanted to, that was just the workload. They offered to bring me on full time with benefits. Salary was 40k less and no OT. I declined. Then they said ok but they have to cut my OT. I said fine and never worked a minute over 40 hours a week for the next 6 months before quitting.

I'm old enough to recall the subtle bait and switch we've done. 8 to 5 phrase used to be 9-5.

The fact is the majority of the work day is wasted, just like I waste ghz all the time because it's cheap, why wouldn't employers waste your time if it's free?

Just curious: are you able to refuse a promotion. Especially this kind of “promotion”? What happens then? Do you get fired because… reasons or do you just keep your current job title etc?

If you're employed "at will" (and almost everyone in the US is) you can't refuse "promotions." From the company's perspective they are deciding to no longer employ you for position a, but they are simultaneously offering to employ you for position b. You can take it or leave it.

Employment "at will" means either the employer or employee can end the relationship at any time for any reason or no reason at all.

> If you're employed "at will" (and almost everyone in the US is) you can't refuse "promotions." From the company's perspective they are deciding to no longer employ you for position a, but they are simultaneously offering to employ you for position b. You can take it or leave it.

That's not correct. Being employed at will means that you _can_ be let go for refusing a promotion (or just about any other reason) but it doesn't mean that automatically happens. There are plenty of companies that understand that some people reach a point where they don't care about climbing the ladder anymore and don't want to take on more responsibility.

And failing to take a promotion probably isn't a "for cause" reason to deny unemployment insurance payments/claims.

No. My boss rewrote my job description to fit the new type of position and then my position was changed. He convinced me it was my path to promotion. I suppose that was true - I was promoted again. This time I was given a 1k raise, but I was taking on the additional duties of a manager that quit. So double the work for another 1k a year.

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