The strategic use of titles to avoid overtime payments | Hacker News Reader

The strategic use of titles to avoid overtime payments

nber.org

271 pointslxm166 comments

Note that this is not about exempt workers (which, if you are a software developer making more than $27.63 if paid on an hourly basis or $684 week on a salary basis you are exempt from the FLSA).

This is about converting non-exempt workers who would normally be getting overtime pay of 1.5x to exempt workers through titles though the duties don't change... which is still against the letter and spirit of the law ( https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/WHD/legacy/files/fs17... ) but many employees that this is targeting aren't aware of that.

    To qualify for the administrative employee exemption, all of the following tests must be met:

    The employee must be compensated on a salary or fee basis (as defined in the regulations) at a rate not less than $684* per week;

    The employee’s primary duty must be the performance of office or non-manual work directly related to the management or general business operations of the employer or the employer’s customers; and

    The employee’s primary duty includes the exercise of discretion and independent judgment with respect to matters of significance.

There are similar tests for learned professional, creative professional, and computer, and outside sales.

$27.63 is such an absurdly low amount that it wouldn't even be considered a livable wage in some major metros.

Is this a joke? $1,105 a week is $55K a year and US GDP per capita (which is basically average earnings) is $69K a year. A lot of people live on less than that. Median income in the US is less than that, $44K.

> The average personal income in the U.S. is $63,214.

> The median income in the U.S. is $44,225.

> The average American annual real wage was $67,521 in 2020.

> The average U.S. household income is $87,864.

> The median U.S. household income is $61,937

https://www.zippia.com/advice/average-american-income/

In NYC with any size family you’d likely qualify for public housing.

It’s not a joke because they mentioned major metros whereas you’re looking at averages. Both can be true at once.

The problem is that the amount is not relative to CoL but a flat amount.

> It’s not a joke because they mentioned major metros whereas you’re looking at averages.

Not all major metros make building housing illegal. San Francisco and New York are not the only major metros in the US. You can build in Seattle and Houston at least.

that’s a complete non-sequitur.

Seattle has a much higher median cost of living than your comment.

Also the entire Bay Area has high cost of living, even when you can build in other areas other than SF.

Even just looking at the mean personal income in metropolitan areas, it's not much higher than that–it was 56k in 2019 and is now 64k, according to the BEA Metropolitan Area table: https://www.bea.gov/data/income-saving/personal-income-count...

It doesn't include mean data but the mean personal income in cities may very well be below the 55k/year cutoff.

Sure or it may be much higher depending on the specific metro.

This is why you can’t take nationwide averages because the USA is a giant country , and the cutoff might be fine for one region but not another.

> $1,105 a week

The weekly salary cutoff is $684/wk. If a firm is employing software workers and using hourly-wage exemption at $27.63, they are probably not getting 40 hrs/week regularly.

> US GDP per capita (which is basically average earnings) is $69K a year.

GDP per capita could be considered a very loose estimate of average income including capital accumulation, but...that's not super relevant to a claim about major metro living wages or appropriateness as an FLSA exemption point.

I will note that I have been paid less than $27.63 per hour as a software developer ($27.50 to be precise) to make it so that I was a non-exempt worker.

On one side it meant that my employer would be very unhappy if I worked less 40 hours punched in. On the other hand, when punched in for 50 hours I had a nice bit more on the paycheck (the 40h one was $1100 before taxes; the 50h one was $1500 before taxes).

I'll also note that the median per capita income was about $25k/year and I was able to buy a house on a double lot (large fenced yard) for $60k.

"Absurdly low" is extremely strong language for 27$ an hour. Privileged be the developer, I guess.

That's an uncharitable interpretation of the GP, I think.

"Absurdly low to be considered exempt"? That's not "privilege of the developer", that's "we shouldn't screw over employees who aren't getting adequately compensated.

One of the other things to consider on this... that $27.63 isn't a minimum wage but rather a "if you are paid less than this, you get time and a half overtime for hours worked beyond 40 in a work week."

This is one of those things that hasn't been updated in a long time. The original law was https://www.congress.gov/101/statute/STATUTE-104/STATUTE-104... from 1990:

> Not later than 90 days after the date of enactment of this Act, the Secretary of Labor shall promulgate regulations that permit computer systems analysts, computer programmers, software engineers, and other similarly skilled professional workers as defined in such regulations to qualify as exempt executive, administrative, or professional employees under section 13(a)(1) of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (29 U.S.C. 213(a)(1)). Such regulations shall provide that if such employees are paid on an hourly basis they shall be exempt only if their hourly rate of pay is at least 6 1/2 times greater than the applicable minimum wage rate under section 6 of such Act (29 U.S.C. 206).

(note, there may be transcription errors above)

The federal minimum wage in 1990 was $3.80. In 1996, this value was frozen at $27.63 which was 6.5x the federal minimum wage of $4.25 at that time.

If it was not frozen, that value would be $47.13 today.

We are talking about the threshold for being exempt from one of the major victories of the workers rights movement. Thrme bar for such an exemptions should be high.

$27/hour comes to about $56,160 a year

According to HUD [0], that qualifies and individual as "very low income" in San Francisco, CA (threshhold $65,250)

For California overall, you would merely be "low income" (threshhold $56,450)

In Houston Texas, that would be "low income" for a family of 2. (Threshhold 56,700)

[0] https://www.huduser.gov/portal/datasets/il.html

It's pretty hard to claim that a number represents "low income" when it's above the national median income.

It might not be fun to live on, granted, but if more than 50% of the data points are lower, it's probably not reasonably described as "low".

lol? I find it fascinating you went out of your way to use median. Gotta practice those gymnastics.

What's wrong with using Median? More than 50% of the population makes less than that.

Actually less than 50% of population makes less than that if you consider that some people earn exactly the median.

Median is the generally accepted approach to determining the average value in a large data set of income figures, as it takes into account both the distribution of values as well as the gross income number. The mean is merely a restatement of gross income.

According to the us census bureau the median household income in 2021 was 71k.

Well that's household income. Many households have more than 1 earner...

How do all these comments ignore the fact that employers get 24/7/365 access to an employees life for the low cost of 684/week?

Factor that by ten and I’ll consider taking salary. My personal time is nearly priceless and anyone giving theirs away for 684/wk needs to learn about our forefathers that died to earn us overtime.

quite a stretch to say anyone that is salaried has to give "24/7/365 access" to an employer

Not really the way I’ve some employers treating my friends with “manager” job titles.

Have you heard why rail workers were threatening to strike recently?

They want 7 days of sick time per year. Sure, they get decent overtime, but if they get sick and miss a few shifts, or can’t get to their site within an hour of their call in 24/7/365, or have literally any life events then that money dries up real quick.

We shouldn’t have to demand reasonable working conditions but here we are. A proletarian being mocked by an anonymous green named capitalist belittling the severity of abuse salaried workers endure.

Slap a managerial title on someone, pay them a pittance and keep them around just as long as they’re profitable. Once they’re not toss them and laugh while they try to collect the absolutely gutted social services.

In 2016 there was an update by the outgoing administration to raise the floor to $913 a week, but it got rescinded and instead set to the current $684 a week rate.

I don’t disagree with you, but I know plenty of folks with Masters making less than that, albeit outside of tech.

I’m not sure you deserve the downvotes, I think the way you phrased it might make people think you’re out of touch.

Indeed, I did have a bit of a flippant tone. This was not intentional.

I help support my spouse and without my major contribution (almost 4x theirs) to our income pool (where they can only find part-time work), we'd be much worse off. So in some regards I am earning close to this rate as I help pay not for just myself, but my partner too (I have multiple pets but no kids, thank god). If that give you some idea of how much I make and they make.

To be clear, I am still paid hourly. I am not a developer either, so that kinda goes to my point (but I do work in IT). My company doesn't want us to go over 40 hours though, so if I reach it mid-day Friday, I leave early.

If it wasn't for paying _well below the average_ in the area we live at for rent, we'd have some struggle as we have high utility rates, car payments, insurance, 401k, medical bills, entertainment/social lives, etc, etc that everyone needs to balance and still avoid major anxiety over something ruining the routine financially. Inflation is the dark cloud over every horizon at the moment. I can't finance a home like I wanted to. I'll have to hold off a little longer.

The idea is that it's absurd that the Govt. has not increased this scale with CoL/inflation. To categorize someone exempt at such a low rate is a bit of a slap in the face.

EDIT: As for people much more educated, that's a similar but tangential argument. People who put in their time and money to be educated and become experts/pioneers in their field should be compensated appropriately. This is another societal failure that needs attention.

> $27.63 is such an absurdly low amount that it wouldn't even be considered a livable wage in some major metros

The exemption thresholds for computer workers in California are $53.80/hr or $9,338/mo on a salary basis, instead of the federal $27.63/hr or $684/wk on a salary basis.

Outside of the context of avoiding overtime payments, job title inflation is definitely used to help attract and retain employees. A few decades ago, a director level position was a manager of managers, and usually one of the key decision makers at a firm. Nowadays, you have many people with "director" in their job title who are team leads or senior individual contributors. It's not even really a problem. In fact, it's great to have a nice title and makes people feel important. It's more about adjusting your expectations of what someone's job title is vs what they actually do day to day.

inflate all the things! on a related note: to some people a phd has become a sign that that person has something to compensate for. a lot of equally or better skilled/knowledgable people do not have one

I thought it was a sign that a candidate has poor cost-benefit analytical skills.

Only half joking

Hah. The same joke persists in MBA circles, where, as the joke goes, during your time here you learn how to evaluate why MBA degree was not a good idea.

My MBA was free , got me a better job and I still think it was a waste of time.

I want to say that a good chunk of it was a waste for me as well. The network effect, as far as I can tell, was minimal. That said, two classes did make a difference ( fraud in accounting and analytics with R ). Even taking those into account though, I honestly can't say my degree was as valuable as it is sometimes portrayed ( definitely not the asking price ). I sometimes wonder whether it is possible I could have stumbled onto R on my own ( I was already playing with Python at the time ) and would I have the patience to go through sample exercises on my own. It is hard to tell. I can't honestly say it was a complete waste of time.

One of my professors said that half the lack of women in STEM professorships could be explained by female students who are smart enough to earn a PhD instead also being smart enough to earn an MD or DVM instead.

This seems a bit of a broad brush. You can hardly fault someone for getting a PhD because of something like graduating into a recession, because they actually wanted to into academia but changed their mind, or so that they could immigrate.

A lot like how everyone is an Engineer these days.

Software Engineers that just write CRUD apps, Software Architects who just read docs, Systems Engineers who just follow guides, Support Engineers who just answer phone calls and tickets, etc.

Title inflation has been creeping up for many years. It's everywhere.

What is a software engineer?

Software engineers design and develop computer programs and applications.

I thought that’s a software developer?

So a programmer

I'd say a programmer is to a software engineer as a handyman is to an architect. Can a handyman do the "dirty work" of most projects? Sure. Can they design a skyscraper to spec, tell you exactly what to expect in terms of resources and timeline, and roll with the punches of logistics and competing priorities? Probably not, unless they were already an architect just doing the job of a handyman.

That being said, as someone with a software engineering degree, I can safely say that most companies don't need engineers and can get by just fine with programmers. Anyway, in this industry there are many architects working as handymen and vice versa.

I'd rather be called a handyman than a "Generalist Labor Engineer"

Can an architect actually put the pieces together? Do they know where to source materials? Do they understand how to order and schedule the construction of a design? Do they "just get" why a particular combination of materials at a specific point in a structure is going to cause problems, because they've seen it over and over? Can they even operate all the tools?

Probably not, unless they used to actually do construction before becoming an architect.

The answer to most of your questions is yes, although obviously most architects are not proficient in operating most tools used in construction because that's not their job.

> Can an architect actually put the pieces together?

Unclear what this means, but architects have plenty of training in doing "manual work". Building models requires a lot more precision than most things in construction.

> Do they know where to source materials?

That's part of their job description.

> Do they understand how to order and schedule the construction of a design?

Definitely part of their job description.

The real truth of the matter is "it depends".

I have about a half-dozen friends as architects in the US, and only 1 of them could do any of the things I mentioned. All have been practising residential and commercial and government architects for > 30 years.

It's a person who applies engineering principles to the design and implementation of software. It's about the "rigidity" of the methods that are used to construct the software. If the software is just cobbled together, it's not "engineered".

There is no such thing as a "software engineer", period.

An "engineer" is someone who works in a technical profession with a governing body. Either the State, or an entity that might as well be the State.

An engineer is certified by that governing body, and given a license to practice the profession. An engineer can have their license suspended or rescinded, in the event of professional misconduct or malpractice.

Whether through law, or de facto through insurance company practices, employers face liability if they employ non-licensed engineers. So an engineer is someone who has the leverage to push back against employer pressure to commit malpractice.

Computer programmers / software developers have none of these things. Certifications are a joke, and meaningless beyond the entry level. We are pressured by employers to commit malpractice on a near-daily basis, and call it "tech debt" (management at my current company is pushing the even more euphemistic term "tech improvement opportunities").

Without a governing body and licensing, it is impossible for us to be "engineers" in any real sense of the professional term. With respect to Margaret Hamilton, we can only try to emulate an engineering profession as best we can, by evangelizing professional standards and pushing back on malpractice pressure where we can.

> There is no such thing as a "software engineer", period.

That's a bold statement.

Would you argue, for instance, that someone graduating from MIT EECS[0] or Stanford Engineering[1] isn't qualified to use the tittle of Engineer?

> An engineer is certified by that governing body, and given a license to practice the profession. An engineer can have their license suspended or rescinded, in the event of professional misconduct or malpractice.

I think you are confused with the PE regulations. [2]

[0] https://www.eecs.mit.edu/

[1] https://engineering.stanford.edu/students-academics/academic...

[2] https://ncees.org/about/

Has a governing body issued you a license, without which one cannot practice your profession? No? Then indeed, you are not an "engineer" in the sense of a profession, as with doctors and lawyers and CPA's, etc. This is wholly orthogonal to the prestige of whichever college you graduated.

Note that even on your own Stanford and MIT links above, they reserve the term "engineering" for programs OTHER THAN "Computer Science" (e.g. "Chemical Engineering", "Electrical Engineering", etc). Show me a "Software Engineering" program at any accredited university.

There's no confusion, I am 100% talking about PE regulations. One requires a license to practice chemical engineering, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, all but the most entry-level roles in aerospace engineering, etc. Employers effectively cannot hire non-licensed workers for those positions.

If that does not apply to your job, then you are an "engineer" only in the sense of LinkedIn puffery.

Mind you, this applies to all us (myself included) in the software development field. I'm not trying to be a gatekeeper. Rather, the complete absence of gatekeeping is the entire point here.

I'm pretty sure ASU [0] is accredited.

0: https://asuonline.asu.edu/online-degree-programs/undergradua...

https://catalog.iastate.edu/collegeofengineering/softwareeng...

https://drexel.edu/academics/grad-professional-programs/cci/...

This is flat out wrong. Many engineering positions do not require a PE certification or state licensure. For example, consumer products are mostly regulated by liability and testing regimes like UL/FCC as opposed to stamping a design to assert that it meets the requirements. Engineers designing consumer products are still engineers.

I agree that the profession of "software engineering" could stand to have much more of the rigor of engineering. For example, it's painfully missing a sense of ethics about large scale surveillance systems. But your argument is biting off way too much.

The ship has sailed, and you're fighting with an intense zeal that doesn't match the problem. Why die on this hill - are you reserving the "engineer" title for some purpose in the software field?

Interesting perspective, agreed on some of the points.

I'd like to hear some opinions from people who have worked as both "an engineer" and "a software engineer" (maybe OP is such a person, idk) -- what kind of corner-cutting is there in (non-software) engineering fields? Is it at all comparable to tech debt? What kind of compromises in quality/design are made in the service of profit or career advancement? etc.

I think a lot of people end up with an impression that in e.g. civil engineering, everything is perfect and precise and elegant because it has to be (otherwise crumbling infrastructure, accidents, etc.). But understanding that humans in general are always looking to cut corners and be lazy, I wonder how realistic that impression really is... Wouldn't be surprised to hear about comical inefficiencies and poor practices that have become normalized over decades of designing/building physical stuff.

I have been both. While it may seem weird, my response to “is this software person an engineer?” might be “did they take an engineering economics class?”

I did, as well as other courses on non-obvious adjacent topics. Not everyone knows the breadth of concerns that engineering brings to solving problems. It’s not as simple as a technical design.

Now, I see plenty of software people who use the same broad set of skills in problem solving, but it’s rare. It’s rare to see software people care about economics. Social impact is also a rare concern. As is governability. As is systemic thinking.

But, there are absolutely software engineers, just not as many as there are people with the title IMHO.

You don't happen to work for the Oregon Board of Examiners for Engineering and Land Surveying, do you? :)

https://ij.org/press-release/oregon-engineer-wins-traffic-li...

The full court opinion (https://ij.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Jarlstorm-opinion....) is a pretty good read if you're bored sometime.

I'm a cloud architect thank you very much - I take ephemeral balls of vaporware designed by software architects, created by software engineers, documented for software architects to build structure for support engineers who can help bring on clients for my contract holders latest ephemeral ball of vaporware.

It's the "just" part that gets me. These jobs are not trivial regardless of the silly titles.

You don't get to call yourself an Engineer because you copy/paste CRUD apps together... or at least you used to not be able to. The engineering has already been done long ago by someone much more talented and knowledgeable.

That is what a programmer or developer does. Engineering implies a lot more than just cobbling together code blocks and libraries. Yet, that's what 99% of Software Engineers spend their days doing.

It would be akin to going out to a construction site and finding people doing rough-ins and roofing with Engineering titles. That is where the software world is currently - "Engineers" in the field doing rough-ins and roofing.

You do get to call yourself that, though. This is a bit like saying "irregardless is not a word" when it's in the dictionary now. Calling yourself a "programmer" will be detrimental to your career, so why do it?

> Calling yourself a "programmer" will be detrimental to your career,

Ah, yes. There is the crux of the issue, isn't it?

People called themselves Engineers to advance their careers artificially (sounds really nice and impressive, etc).

Now, everyone is an Engineer, making the Engineer word have significantly less meaning. Today, a Software Engineer is largely a Software Developer of 10 years ago.

Just like economic inflation - title inflation devalues titles, which causes people to inflate their own titles further to stand out once again - which becomes a negative feedback loop.

People call themselves Engineers because thats their title. Do you expect such people to make up a different one?

Ironically some of the most influential and recognized names have been calling themselves programmers rather than engineers or computer scientists.

No it wouldn't be. It would only be detrimental to your career if you only applied to "programmer"jobs

Just because they’re doing CRUD app puzzles doesn’t mean they’re not engineers. There’s simply much more of that work than actual engineering. And part of engineering is knowing when you do not have to reinvent the wheel.

I really appreciated Hillel Wayne's series on this topic [0].

He actually interviewed a number of people who transitioned from a licensed engineering discipline to software, and asked them how they felt about software as an engineering discipline. His insights are a lot more useful than the arguments between only-ever-software people on HN who have inflated perceptions of what "real" engineers do.

The whole series is worth a read, but here's the short version:

> Instead of asking how they felt about certain engineering topics, I just asked them point blank. “Do you consider software engineering actually engineering?”

> Of the 17 crossovers I talked to, 15 said yes.

> That’s not the answer I expected going in. I assumed we weren’t engineers, that we’re actually very far from being engineers. But then again, I was never a “real” engineer. I don’t know what it’s like to be a “real” engineer, and so can’t compare software engineering to other forms. I don’t have the experience. These people did, and they considered software engineering real engineering.

[0] https://www.hillelwayne.com/post/are-we-really-engineers/

Thank you for sharing this. I’m still reading, but the section about math resonated so much with me.

Just today we looked at a performance problem. CPU/memory usage, DB queries, indexes and joins, size of data, frequency of requests, redundant work, caching, different parts slowing down others...

These things are so ingrained that I don’t think of then as applying math. In my inner eye I see pictures moving around. It’s all familiar and obvious. But thinking about it, there’s always math behind it all in some way. We don’t express it as such but it’s still there.

I’d like to push back on this a bit. I’m a programmer, but I don’t cobble things together. I talk to customers and collaborators, make plans, find solutions and write code.

It’s not engineering but it’s engaging, good work.

I get what you’re trying to say. But it feels wrong to me personally to describe this work as you did.

Grumpy engineers always grouse about this.

I was a consultant at a big engineering organization. They used to huff and puff about the integrity of engineering process etc. but all of the work was done by “engineering technicians“ for 40% of the pay.

Engineering is definitely not a tribe since that would be a contradiction of values. Anyway we all cobble parts together just at different conceptual levels.

I don't understand your rant, but I do agree that the job titles are probably inappropriate. I've had all kinds of titles to describe what I do and don't really care as long as I get paid to enjoy solving problems.

I also think it's absurd to believe only engineers can understand their own work... wouldn't that just be bad engineering?

You underestimate just how mundane and unchallenging a lot of non software professional engineering is. Depending on circumstances, a professional engineer could just be checking and signing off on endless similar drafting details or technicians calcs. A lot of it is also just looking up numbers in tables too.

I was a software developer at Bank of America for eight years. I had two titles: "Assistant Vice President" and "Systems Engineer". I preferred to use "Systems Engineer" because if I said I was an "Assistant Vice President" at a bank, people would think I one of the people approving loans.

> A lot like how everyone is an Engineer these days.

But did they graduate from Engineering school?

In Canada and parts of the US, Engineer is a protected title.

https://engineerscanada.ca/news-and-events/news/who-can-use-...

In the US, certain fields are protected via licensing boards and required degrees. One cannot just become a Civil Engineer, for example, simply by adding that title to their Email Signature.

I’m pretty sure Woz would have an official looking ID proclaiming him to be “Civilian Enginer”

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34566738

They need the respect to make up for the lower pay and even less affordable housing.

what parts of the US?

I was going to say Oregon. But apparently a judge ruled it unconstitutional. https://www.theregister.com/2019/01/02/oregon_engineer_licen....

Why do you think "engineer" should be a special title?

I come from an engineering family, and "engineers" here are one big legally recognized tribe, or pretty much a social class. In reality that just means that they've finished a specific college where they get "engineer with diploma" title. Same with doctors or lawyers. Everyone else is ona a lower wrung of the ladder and there is nothing they can do about it later.

So "of course" a software engineer is a contradiction is terms (as an electrical engineer said here). How can one be a engineer if you didn't go to an engineering college? It doesn't matter if a engineer's career consisted of selling ice creams, that person is a poor engineer and thats that.

I actually met a "engineer" friend of my parents who designed the major parts of a traffic roundabout near my home. It is the worst designed roundabout I've seen and there is at least one car crash per day there. Every now and then people end up in ER. We chatted for a short bit, and touched on those crash reports. He just said dismissively: "people should just drive better". So that's engineering for you.

Yes, like drugs, inflations everything can be great just as long as you can “adjust” your expectations.

I think next step is to adjust time for some people so they think you have lived 100 years while they actually just lived 30.

I hit “staff engineer” about four years into my career, and kept it when switching jobs. Kinda ridiculous. I was even offered a director level job months later.

I’m good but I’m nowhere near that good. Title inflation is silly and ten years in, I’m done paying attention to them at all. They tell me nothing.

It's still happening today. I just discussed a role with a recruiter hiring for the same kind of thing: https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/3443314062/?refId=xpvVYRn...

(Staff) titling with a 4+ years of experience ask is incredibly confusing to me.

Its even weirder on the interview side. We had someone apply as a Principle who I could only describe as "solidly mid level"

I wasn't a jerk about it in the interview, but I said something to the effect of "I know titles are different at all other companies, but here the expectations for PEs is that they're tasked on the most critical technical initiatives and are held to high standards for execution. You're also going to be expected to mentor not just Junior technical staff, but also mid and senior level engineers. Does this sound like a role you're interested in? It's fairly demanding."

Guy didn't flinch and said "Yeah, that's exactly what I'm looking for!" :|

(We did not hire)

Why did you even bother asking a question like that instead of telling the candidate directly that the role you're hiring for is beyond their level/expertise/experience/etc?

From the candidate side, the only way to differentiate between "senior" "staff" "principle" "lead" or whatever between companies is the required years of experience on the job listing. Which is a terrible metric, but it's more informative than the title or job duties.

The way our interview guidelines work the interviewer is not permitted say such things to a candidate.I was also trying to stress, at our org at least, this wasn't a titled based on seniority but by responsibility. I had no say in setting the interview guidelines or defining the job role, I was simply the messenger.

Was he "solidly mid level" in terms of years-of-experience or ability? I find myself conflating the 2 frequently, and have to remind myself not to. I like to periodically remind myself that Zuckerbeg as a 22-year old was a successful founder-CEO for a business over a hundred employees and a $1B acquisition offer.

Sure, he is not the norm. But I'm sure there are plenty of people equally as talented as him who didn't take the entrepreneurship route and are now languishing in the corporate ladder. Any company can achieve wild success if they are able to identify such talents and place them immediately in high-impact roles.

As a candidate, I’d be curious about why I was being lectured about why I didn’t meet the “high standards of execution” of some dude who can’t spell “principal”.

It would be a matter of principle to point that out.

FWIW, at my non-tech company, our compensation is far far below tech compensation. HR is extremely resistant to increasing salaries for SWEs. It’s comparatively easy to argue that, if an individual has a competing offer for 300k they’re clearly very valuable and we should give them a title that fits that.

Essentially, it’s easier to make tons of exceptions than to fix the root cause.

You should have taken the director job, you probably would have handled it as well as anyone else. I was a "Director" of Test at one company. I didn't even have a budget. Even in interviews I'll tell folks that I was a test manager with a glorified title (though with no budget, was I even a "test manager"?).

I’ve learned after a number of years that I don’t want any job where there’s an expectation that I’m reachable after 5pm. That was definitely one of them.

I expect that, if given the title Director, the candidate has a P&L and makes a significant part of her income through making the P&L. Director should be "Manager of Managers" -- close to "Vice President"

I would say your expectations are reasonable. The anecdote was more to point out the some of the ridiculousness of title inflation (and now that I reread, I did a poor job of getting that point across). I was no where near director-level in job responsibility, nor did I really want an actual director job to begin with.

But now imagine I'm full of myself with my new "Director" title, and go out to interview for real director-level jobs. Man, the previous company would have done me no favors as I go out there and get absolutely slaughtered in interviews.

And I hit "Senior" 4 years into my career, and have struggled to get a "Staff" title for the last 18 years. I would love some of this title inflation, but haven't been blessed by it. I think there's some amount of luck involved just choosing the correct jobs.

Most people who are capable of doing so have hit the skill cap for programming after 6-8 years. The biggest part of being a Staff engineer is correctly identifying and gravitating to the projects that are going to be important and successful.

My last "staff+" job involved way too many meetings for my taste. If I wanted to be a professional meeting attender, I'd have chosen another line of work.

Where I see this mostly is in non-tech companies that don't have IC tracks. Often these companies have pay-bands that necessitate this.

If you have a SWE that you're worried about losing you can't just keep them in the same job title and give them a big raise. You have to give them a manager, senior manager, or director title in order to get them into the pay-band you need them to be in. So it really isn't about making the employee feel good about the title they have. It's about getting them into the right pay band.

Been my opinion for a while now that any company that doesn't directly grant stocks to employees should be forbidden from using exempt status for those employees. Want them to work more? Pay them.

On the flipside, I have a buddy who is one of the best Java devs in the DFW area who refused to become a manager and threatened to take his talent elsewhere. They carved out entire new levels for his software engineer job just to keep him happy. Before this, they had up to SDE IV. He was SDE VI when he left to join a consultancy when his salary became a concern. The consultancy ended up placing him back at the place he had already been working for because the company suddenly had a huge knowledge vacuum, and they eventually offered him a new position at SDE VII to get him back on the team.

I actually had the opposite happen a long, long time ago. Started my new job on salary. Sysadmin on a bunch of remote Unix systems (yes, "Unix"), and systems programmer as well. As one might expected, it was a demanding job. That's fine, I liked it, and the first month went fine.

Then a new manager gets the idea that we should be hourly. Why? My only reasonable guess is that he had some misguided idea that "salary" was for big-whigs like himself, and "hourly" is for the grunts under him. So now I have to punch a literal clock, like a fast-food worker or summat? Fine by me.

I made fucking bank at that job, as one might imagine. Oh, I worked my ass off, but I got paid for every minute of it (and more, with overtime). What I can't imagine is how much payroll went up, and how he got away with continuing it.

Did he ever express that he thought it was for big-whigs [sic]? Did he put in long hours alongside you?

Is there any possibility that the manager thought "we work these people like dogs, we should treat them better, the least we can do is pay them overtime"?

I used to work at a well-known (all over the world) British magazine, where employees regularly received new titles unaccompanied by corresponding pay-rises. After a while we started an ongoing office meme about being promoted to 'Grand Vizier', and other meaningless and cheap 'title rewards'.

Back in the 90s I worked in the corporate offices of a well-known fitness chain (they're open 24 hours, even though they're really not). I was approached about a promotion to a management position. I asked who I would be managing and was told, "No one. But you would manage all the servers." Huh? I already "manage all the servers"??? I was then told about the pay, and it was heavily implied that being a salaried employee was sooo great and they were doing me a huge favor. However, they must've thought I couldn't do basic math, because accepting the position would've been at least a 10% pay reduction. I rejected the offer, and they were really angry; they kept coming back to me, telling me how I was ruining my career. The director of HR even told me that IT-related jobs were hot, but would cool off soon, and I would regret not moving into management. I was young and dumb, but I wasn't that dumb. I knew what they were doing. I quit shortly after that.

At my company we have the opposite problem, where they doubled the number of titles by creating "plus" levels. So there is junior, junior plus, mid, mid plus, etc. So if you get a promotion, you don't get the full raise to the next level AND you look like a clown when you write about it on linkedin.

I'm willing to bet HR has a secret mapping to radford levels.

You can write whatever “title” you prefer on LinkedIn.

Could be worse - you could be in the US Navy. Where you're slowly promoted from Lieutenant (junior grade), to Lieutenant, to Lieutenant Commander, to Commander. Then (after "Captain") comes Rear Admiral (lower half), Rear Admiral, Vice Admiral, Admiral, and (in theory) Fleet Admiral.

And there's a long list of unwritten rules that, if you violate, you're soft-capped at LCdr.

[edit]

Also, what about Ensign?

Do people not notice when it happens to them?

I’m curious about how this works out for individuals. Do they get these titles, do the same thing as before and …just put in overtime for the same pay?

I'm sure they do. But the momentum to overcome the friction of doing something about it is too great for most people.

I would just find it kind of obvious and weird...

I don't doubt this happens in ways, but just title swapping seems like it would be kinda awkward and obvious.

Wage theft is by far the largest category of theft in the US so it’s not a surprise many get duped into these kind of schemes

There's also a trend where people leave, and they decide not to fill the positions, and instead you get no title, and no raise, and you get their work.

Lol, quiet hiring, the company version of quiet quitting

"Quiet quitting" was also a company thing that attempted to demonize workers for performing exactly their job descriptions. Hence it coming mostly out of nowhere before suddenly up and disappearing from business media rags when it didn't really work out.

I think often there is no promotion, a company will just hire a new employee to work in a warehouse or something for $40,000, call them an "Inventory Analytics Manager" or whatever, and then declare that they are exempt from overtime because they're a manager. There is no change to notice, you just start the job and never realize the company is illegally underpaying you. Your colleagues all have the same title and every other company you applied to is doing the same thing.

It happened to me a couple of times earlier in my career, and I was happy about it. I just took the opportunity to turn my fake promotion into a real promotion at another company.

Yes and no.

If everyone else in your skill band is a Directory of Dipshittery, then if you're not a Directory of Doowopness, then it's an excuse to pay you less. They make more because they're "Directors", you're just a "Managing Associate".

Like how everyone here is concerned whether they're "Junior" or "Senior".

We've essentially stripped away all meaning from titles.

>> Do people not notice when it happens to them?

Not always because pay cuts come in many ways and even senior engineers do not see it, except after the fact or in the form of diffused pain they cant put a finger on.

- Example: Company says they still match 50% on 401k, but only on the first $3000 of contribution (basically, its 0.50 * 3/21). This is a hidden paycut.

- Example: Company offers new health plans with increased deductible/premium/copay/coinsurance. This is a hidden paycut.

- Example: Company says vacation days remain the same, but now need 3wks advanced approval, and then drag their feet in giving approval. This is a hidden paycut.

- Example: Company says they still reimburse for education/books/etc per offer letter, except require ever-greater detail/receipts and reject randomly for unknown reasons. This is a hidden paycut.

- Example: Company says they still reimburse for education/books/etc per offer letter, except reject randomly and then close out potential for reimbursement after 30days, forcing employees to eat the cost. This is a hidden paycut.

- Example (Actual one from Accenture): Company says worker in Manhattan should commute down to Trenton via train and then take a bus on NJ Transit daily. They will reimburse train, but not a rental car. Workers not wanting to spend 5-6hrs a day on the train pay for rental car out of pocket. This is a hidden paycut.

Title inflation is so absurd that now when I ask a company I just ignore the title and look at comp.

Comp tells me how much value you think I can deliver in your org.

If you wanna call me Senior while compensating me like someone who has cross team impact across 500 engineers, so be it, as long at the TC is there.

If you wanna call me Staff but only rate me on how many API endpoints I can craft in a sprint, I doubt you'll be able to compensate me enough to care about your JD.

Title inflation for the sake of egos is bad. But sometimes title inflation is a consequence of ridiculous compensation rules. Where I work, it's basically impossible to get a raise without a bump in title. Which basically means that if you did a good job negotiating your starting salary, you'll be stuck with your job title for a long time. But if you were too cheap at first, you'll move up in the ranks every year.

It also wastes time in hiring. If I'm looking for a senior developer, I don't want someone with three years of experience who killed it at their company and got rapidly promoted (now, that doesn't mean I don't want them, but that's not a senior development role in my mind)

> It also wastes time in hiring

Sure, but on the other side, if I have someone I want to hire, and the choice is give them an extra $XX thousand or let them pick their title, I'm going to pick the title.

Or, hell, both. Both is an option too. I don't particularly care what title they want as long as they can provide the value I'm looking for.*

*Sufficiently silly titles such as Chief Brace Sculptor, or nonsensical ones such as Head Monkey Spinner may require several weeks for me to stop giggling, but I'm willing to roll with it.

I'm holding out for either "Lord Admiral" or maybe "High Executioner".

I know, I wouldn’t give up overtime pay for a Grand Provost or Vice Chief Twit gig either. Maybe for Serene Doge, though.

My requests to be referred to as Supreme Allied Commander have thus far been ignored.

I requested a promotion to Seven Star Engineer, but apparently only George Washington is eligible for that rank.

HMFWIC

First Sea Lord and First Lord of the Admiralty are both fantastic and very real titles, with long histories, along with Lord High Admiral of the United Kingdom, which is a bit harder to get.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Lord_of_the_Admiralty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Sea_Lord_and_Chief_of_th... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_High_Admiral_of_the_Unite...

My title at my old job was was Supreme Commander, Strategic Synergy Group. People took titles way too seriously.

Remember all the press about property theft, particularly on the lead up to the midterms? That timing was no accident. And then the Walgreens came out and admitted it was completely overblown?

The biggest type of theft in the United States is wage theft, which this is an example of. Ask yourself why the media so rarely covers that.

Labor laws create all sorts of unintended consequences and secondary effects. In 2017 the Obama administration was getting ready to make a number of changes in the area of exempt vs non-exempt workers (i.e. overtime pay).

The changes were advertised as a way to help workers get paid more fairly for overtime, but legislation rarely changes economic realities. By expanding the requirement to pay overtime they made it much more expensive to staff entry level management positions. In one non-profit that I was familiar with at the time, the rules would have required payroll to increase by $100,000 - $200,000/year (maybe more, I can't quite remember the details).

As organizations do, they adapted by eliminating almost all of those entry level supervisory positions. People were moved down to hourly workers, with their hours severely constrained, moved up to more senior level management roles that avoided the overtime requirements, or the position was eliminated all together. I don't think anyone was happy with those changes within the organization but it was necessary to keep the organization fiscally viable given the new rules. It also made it much harder to move from an hourly position into management because the leap in capabilities and responsibilities was much greater.

Perversely, the changes were not implemented by the Obama administration due to lawsuits that prevented their implementation at the last minute. By that time, any affected organization had already made the structural changes though. (I don't think the regulatory changes ever occurred).

Anyway, this is a long way of saying the labor market always adjusts to regulatory constraints and TANSTAFL. The general economic principle that when costs increase, demand decreases isn't magically voided by legislation. Expensive labor leads to fewer jobs and makes it more difficult to absorb young people into the job market.

TANSTAFL = There is no such thing as a free lunch

Tanstaafl -- There ain't no such thing as a free lunch

> Perversely, the changes were not implemented by the Obama administration due to lawsuits that prevented their implementation at the last minute. By that time, any affected organization had already made the structural changes though. (I don't think the regulatory changes ever occurred).

https://www.cnbc.com/2016/12/26/obamas-overtime-law-failed-b...

> A new labor law rule — kicked back by a federal judge last month — that would have made almost four million Americans eligible for overtime pay may still have resulted in higher wages for the workers it was intended to help.

> The new legislation would have significantly raised the salary cap under which employees were eligible to earn overtime. In response, some large companies, such as Walmart, gave raises to workers whose pay fell just under the new threshold, making them ineligible for overtime pay. Other companies reclassified salaried overtime-exempt workers as hourly employees, which would make them eligible to earn overtime for workweeks longer than 40 hours.

Thanks for digging up that news report. I wonder though if organizations have drifted back to the previous structures. In the example I was thinking of, I'm no longer directly involved and so I don't know how things have evolved over the last few years.

Possibly... though I suspect other factors also got in there with the past two years and the labor market.

The article (from 2016) finishes with:

> “If someone can get a $5,000 or $7,000 raise by going down the street, why wouldn’t they?” Eisenbray said.

> “For companies that aren’t paying as much as their competitors, they’re going to see their best talent move,” Kropp predicted. “In this segment of the market, people will move for 50 cents or a dollar an hour difference.”

> The general economic principle that when costs increase, demand decreases isn't magically voided by legislation. Expensive labor leads to fewer jobs and makes it more difficult to absorb young people into the job market.

"Basic supply and demand" is almost always wrong for the labor market. You're a monopsony, they're also your customers, etc. Don't assume the obvious is going to happen without actually looking.

> Basic supply and demand" is almost always wrong for the labor market.

We’ll just have to agree to differ. Although I would be curious to hear about examples of this scenario where employers hire more people when the cost of labor goes up.

Well, that's just what a monopsony is. Setting minimum wages can cause higher employment in a monopsony model and that's pretty basic theory too.

https://equitablegrowth.org/understanding-the-economics-of-m...

At my company they asked me what title I wanted, I said Senior Software Engineer. Missed opportunity...

I don't think anyone should work over 40 hours a week without overtime pay unless they are owners of the company or are getting 1.5 hours in comp time and overtime is voluntary.

FTA:

> listing of managerial positions such as “Directors of First Impression,” whose jobs are otherwise equivalent to non-managerial employees (in this case, a front desk assistant).

Wow, that's pretty brazen.

Lol have they ever heard the title "Post-doc"? 10 times the work output for $40k per year.

Is this not the intention of the law?

seems like they designed the law explicitly to encourage this.

No? They designed the law to require overtime wages be paid. They left a threshold in the law to permit existing conventions of non-hourly-measured "manager" positions, presumably because changing how those are administered was felt to be too disruptive.

And sure, all rules can be gamed, so right at the threshold we see nonsense like this. But to argue that this was the intent is ridiculous. The law wasn't for these employees at the threshold, it was for the folks farther down the org chart. And it quite clearly works as intended for them, since they're being paid overtime.

It is saying you can be a customer service rep, and if you work overtime you are owed overtime pay.

But they can "promote" you to customer service rep manager, raise your pay by a bit (but lower than your overtime pay would be), and have you continue to do the exact same job (maybe with some token manager duties thrown in) for the same or even more hours and not need to pay overtime.

Was that the intention of the law? Idk - given the priorities of the people who make laws maybe it is.

It's probably not the explicit intention, but I believe that an intelligent species would probably recognize that it's in their best interests to elect lawmakers who understand the concept of economic incentives and as a corollary; perverse incentives.

Most perverse incentives aren't real, they're just cynicism.

As an example every new safety technology like seat belts comes with complaints that it'll just encourage people to drive worse (fancy term "risk compensation") but in fact there's no evidence this happens.

There is at least one piece of research however, that shows wearing a bicycle helmet (or being a male) causes people in cars to pass more closely presumably with an assumption that you're less at risk.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/09/060911102200.h...

The law is pretty clear about it. There's just very little to no enforcement of it beyond private lawsuits because a significant proportion of the US population actively reject any action that would favor worker protection over corporate profit.

Something strange happened to America. They were on the exact same socialist trajectory as the rest of the world but it went all wrong. And they are using their considerable superpower resources to drag the rest of us down with them.

probably a combination of becoming the worlds industrial hegemon immediately after ww2 while the suddenly facing down communism. industrial jobs were well compensated the rest to the world was buying from us because ww2 bombing destroyed everyone else industrial base so there was money to spend, and socialism looked to much like the Soviets to the average American. then in the fallowing decades American labor unions became infiltrated and taken over by the mob (remember Jimmy Hoffa). the combine association of communism and organized crime gave it a bad smell the much of America.

I'm not sure what reading of FLSA would lead to that conclusion. The law defines the categories entirely with relation to how/how much you are paid and your job responsibilities. From the paper:

> While salary, pay frequency, and whether a position is a learned profession are typically externally verifiable, whether a position satisfies the executive or administrative duties criteria depends on the employer’s assessment of the position’s responsibilities and is difficult to verify externally. Often, the only piece of externally observable information suggestive of a position’s duties is the job’s title. Thus, employers can strategically choose job titles to imply that a position involves managerial duties, and as such exempt from mandatory overtime payments, although the actual responsibilities of the position do not satisfy the executive or administrative duties tests

Bill Belichick is the Mona Lisa Vito on this topic

Sounds pretty tactical use to me

What tech worker though even works overtime? I barely work time!

I think what drives the granting of bigger and better titles is the insatiable desire for same from young people who don't have a lot of work experience but are eager to feel like they are moving up the ladder of success quickly and their accomplishments are being recognized. (this is why a number of "famous" places use "Member Technical Staff with the single bump of Distinguished and it's also why you have the urge to roll your eyes when you encounter a teenaged C-suite looking for seed capital. not saying teens with a startup aren't worthy of respect, but you'll be apt to want to know "which one is the coder, designer, and marketer?")

>We find widespread evidence of firms appearing to avoid paying overtime wages by exploiting a federal law that allows them to do so for employees termed as “managers” and paid a salary above a pre-defined dollar threshold.

this is published by NBER, a very academic economics driven enterprise, so let me point out something they should have but didn't: TANSTAAFL. There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. And I'm not talking about the employers getting a free lunch.

if you (tech workers) think you'll be able to convert your high-hourly-equivalent-wage into a higher-hourly-equivalent-wage-with-overtime-pay, no, not going to happen, at least not in the long term, unless of course your productivity were to climb by a commensurate amount.

The market (labor supply and labor demand) sets the wages and TANSTAAFL.

You might find a work-life balance that you personally like better (for instance no overtime pay, no overtime work) but that's not better for all people and after the payment system adjusts (for instance erode workers' base pay, then entice longer hours with larger overtime payments) it will settle into a new equilibrium which does not include free lunch.

> if you (tech workers) think you'll be able to convert your high-hourly-equivalent-wage into a higher-hourly-equivalent-wage-with-overtime-pay, no, not going to happen, at least not in the long term, unless of course your productivity were to climb by a commensurate amount.

This paper isn't about tech workers. It's about workers in general, and with an empahsis on workers in low-wage and high-hour industries like fast food and discount retail.

> It's about workers in general, and with an empahsis on workers in low-wage and high-hour industries like fast food and discount retail

the same economics applies, it's sort of the whole point of economics, it's generalizable, it's not a collection of special circumstances, nor is it escapable. hiring takes place because wages for the work are worth it, and hiring will decline if not. It's not a value judgement or a moral judgment, it's the same way you spend your own money, only if it's worth it.

the audience here is tech workers so I used that to get the emotional resonance for the plight of the salaried worker.

in judo they invented belts for this.

you could make tests for it. A black belt should be able to 360 flip his desk with one hand.

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