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Comment by dopylitty | Hacker News Reader

I’ve said it before but I’ll keep pounding the drum that the FLSA needs to be completely rewritten.

Any work more than 8 hours in a day should result in overtime pay regardless of type of work or base salary.

It’s ridiculous that companies can force people to work 24/7 with no extra pay just because those people happen to work with computers or in "knowledge" work.

And even developers/IT folks are largely not making FAANG money. They're working at hospitals/insurance companies making the equivalent of what a factory worker made in the 1950s.

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> Any work more than 8 hours in a day should result in overtime pay regardless of type of work or base salary.

When I worked at a government contractor this was part of the deal. Any more than 48 hours a week and you'd get all your time over 40 paid as OT where they converted your salary to an hourly rate.

I got a job at an agency afterwards. I immediately understood why Hollywood production jobs are so serious about their time. You can make your grips work through lunch or dinner, but it's gonna cost you money. I would have loved that deal, but how are you gonna unionize an office like that? It's a lot.

It's not that simple though. I'm an IT Director. A good chunk of my time is just thinking and not doing. It's impossible to measure the amount of work I do in a day because I'm thinking about stuff when I shower, or am walking the dog etc. Do I sit at my laptop 8 hours a day? Fuck no. Do I work 8 hours a day? Probably, but it's hard to say. I can't say "I worked for 9.5 hours today" because it's impossible to measure.

I think it is pretty simple - do you have to be somewhere or be available for more than 8 hours a day? If you are 24/7 on call for issues, that deserves a huge pay bump. In other fields it's even more true - doctors for example, when oncall, have to be ready to work at a moments notice. So no drinking or other recreational drugs, or going skiing somewhere remote, or being out of cell range... If it effects you life for more than 8 hours a day, you should be payed for that.

I'm a design engineer. A lot of my time is also thinking. I can be "working" but actually just reading articles or clearing my mind. And I can be in the middle of a gaming session later that same day and suddenly come up with a solution to a problem. How many hours I work is very subjective based on your definition of "work".

But to make up for this I am also compensated several times the median household income. And the threshold for paying people like me should definitely be set to at least 2x the median household income for the region in which you work or 2x the federal average whichever is more. Currently, that'd be a minimum of $141K/yr. I feel that's a reasonable cutoff for no more overtime pay.

> It's impossible to measure the amount of work I do in a day because I'm thinking about stuff when I shower, or am walking the dog etc.

This is why work from home was such a boon. Finally i could have shower thoughts on company time. Finally I could get away from the incompetent coworkers who kept asking me to do their job for them... some days I'd literally help others till 5PM and then start my job when they went home. And then my boss would say "You missed your delivery" and Id be like yea, but the 10 people who cant function without me hit theirs... Somehow that lesson wasn't part of their MBA.

(I'm always happy to help those who are truly trying and willing to do the work!)

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