Hacker News Reader

Comment by ctvo | Hacker News Reader

> Then, they can do the job themselves after my 40 hours.

Are you in the US? Do you work for hourly wages?

I've always been confused why salaried workers think they only need to work 40 hours a week. There's an employment agreement between you and your employer with expectations on what tasks you'll perform. Rarely (never in my experience) does the agreement include you only work 40 hours a week.

I don't have an issue with your overall sentiment. I'm mostly confused about conflating things like overtime and a 40 hour work week when most folks in tech in the US are salaried workers.

View on HN

> I've always been confused why salaried workers think they only need to work 40 hours a week.

Employment contracts in most developed countries will specify a) hours of business/office hours and b) an expected number of hours that the employee is to work. In many countries (including the UK for example [1]), there are even laws restricting the number of working hours by default.

[1]: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1998/1833/contents/made

> I've always been confused why salaried workers think they only need to work 40 hours a week

Self-respect/their own lines in the sand?

I don’t think anyone is under the illusion they can’t be fired for holding this position given that you can be fired in the US for ~anything. Doesn’t mean it’s a nonsense position to hold.

> Doesn’t mean it’s a nonsense position to hold.

I'm not sure on that. It's backed by very little legally or culturally.

Lawyers, doctors, finance professionals, and other high paying, salaried professions include the expectation of more working hours, many times unexpectedly, to get the work done.

Wanting the higher wages associated with a salaried position but the stability of hourly work seems like it's backed by little but personal entitlement.

Yes and if you can do that without getting fired (or without struggling to find a better job) then that entitlement is obviously justified.

Having negotiating power gives you all sorts of “entitlements” that aren’t written down anywhere, that’s the point of having negotiating power.

The silly thing would be to earn all this negotiating power and then choosing to be miserable anyway because other people might call you entitled pejoratively.

It might not be backed by much legally (and even then, that depends on your specific contract and the law where you’re at) but it most certainly has massive backing culturally.

“9-5” is a very well known cultural concept. Around the world. The 40 hour work week is a well known cultural concept. Around the world. To say it’s not is literally ignoring decades worth of media making it known.

Sure there’s nothing legally known as overtime when you’re salaried, but theres most certainly an implied cultural construct of a 40 hour work week and WLB around that number. While you may not be legally performing overtime, you most certainly are culturally if you work above 40 hours.

There are occasional things that might cause us to work an evening or weekend here or there or spend a week or two working more like 50-60 hours a week to meet a deadline. As long as it's rare, that's probably not unreasonable to most salaried employees. What is unreasonable is working non-stop such that you're literally sleeping on the floor. You can call it entitlement if you want, but I'm happy to be entitled and give a big middle finger to anybody that ever asks me to do that. I could easily find another job within weeks. Why put up with that kind of nonsense if you have the ability not to?

> It's backed by very little legally or culturally.

Isn't it? I thought this was exactly what people fought for 100 years ago: to limit the standard work week to 40 hours. The US played a leading role in that fight, and it's incredibly sad to see how Americans have forgotten their history.

> Lawyers, doctors, finance professionals, and other high paying, salaried professions include the expectation of more working hours, many times unexpectedly, to get the work done.

If you've got a job that depends on unexpected events, then of course there's going to be some irregularity. For most software engineers, that's not really an issue because their work can be planned and won't kill someone if it's not done by tomorrow. System administrators may be an exception in that they have to fix a server right now when there's an issue. But that's a different issue than making overtime standard, and I would expect those admins to be well compensated for their work during off-hours.

Just reasonable expectations, that's all. My contract doesn't state "your manager won't scream in your face" but if he does I'm going to quit all the same.

At-will employment is definitely a double edged sword but it does give employees the power to tell their employer to get lost if they're being unreasonable, even if it isn't written in something legally binding.

> I've always been confused why salaried workers think they only need to work 40 hours a week.

It's cultural. Living in Europe, I've always been confused how salaried workers would not have set hours per week in the US.

I'm literally selling my working hours to a company. Of course the contract is going to have to include exactly how many hours I'm selling and how much money I'm getting in return.

It is an employment contract. I'm not selling the completion of a specific task or a project (that would be a different type of contract and I would price it very differently), I'm selling specific hours my time.

In the US there isn't the same concept of an employment contract as there is in most of Europe

If you are working more than 40 hours a week on average for a salaried job then the job is either mis-specified, or the person in the job isn't qualified for the job.

CEO currently working minimum 60 hour weeks.

Which of the two is it?

I don’t understand your question

> If you are working more than 40 hours a week on average for a salaried job then the job is either mis-specified, or the person in the job isn't qualified for the job.

This is the comment you replied to. It gave two possibilities if you were working a salaried job over 40 hours a week.

I am salaried. I am in the US.

I am paid for completing work, I don't get paid hourly.

My employer understands I work about 40 hours a week give or take here and there.

I have interviewed for some of the biggest companies in the US and the information I received was 40hrs a week, with some crunch during fires but very rare.

This is why I would never interview for company like Tesla.

>> Rarely (never in my experience) does the agreement include you only work 40 hours a week

All my full time contracts have had the amount of hours I am expected to work + how overtime work is to be handled.

Additinally, there's laws setting an upper limit on the amount of hours (at least in the few countries where I've worked)

To clarify the parent commenters statement, this is rarely, if ever, part of full time employment agreements in the US (where the worker is a W2 employee and not a 1099 employee) where the worker is above a particular level/skillset.

In fact, it's codified into law and payroll systems have clear delineations about how this works. Companies often have 2 classes of workers referred to as "exempt" (these are salaried workers) and "non-exempt" (hourly workers), where what the "exempt" refers to is whether the worker is exempt from overtime rules and other concerns.

Point being, if you are an exempt worker (which I'm guessing is like 95%+ of W2 employed programmers in the US), you won't be getting paid overtime.

> Companies often have 2 classes of workers referred to as "exempt" (these are salaried workers) and "non-exempt" (hourly workers)

That's not what “exempt” means, though its very common for those to correlate (you can be hourly exempt and salaried non-exempt.)

Sure, that's possible, although (in my experience) very uncommon.

Plus, the last half of that sentence was "where what the "exempt" refers to is whether the worker is exempt from overtime rules and other concerns", which very much is what exempt means. The US Department of Labor has more details: https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/17a-overtime

I agree. Full time employment comes with it the expectation of a higher level of job security (contractors are fired or laid off first), along with benefits (PTO, healthcare, stock options, etc).

Let’s say 100k base salary. 5% additional comp (bonuses or stock, this is conservative number). Healthcare for you, another $300/month, not even counting employers who cover dependents. Ignoring all taxes including FICA. PTO 3 weeks (120 hours).

Base salary is 48/hour, but your total comp will bring it to more like 58/hour. Which is probably more than your contractor counterparts.

You trade a little bit more of your time (responding to outages or crunching for a product launch deadline) for the security and benefits.

If one of my employees refused to respond to an outage because it’s outside 9-5 working hours, I would fire them for cause (pending approval from legal of course).

Lol - maybe setup a proper oncall system with actual compensation if you expect out of hours working time?

Yeah because total comp starting 125k total comp for lowest positions at my company, fully remote, can’t handle an outage. It’s part of the job description of a software engineer - if you don’t like that, don’t take a W2 job and just work as a contractor?

Firing an employee for not responding to an outage outside working hours is your problem, not theirs, presuming you didn't include out-of-working hours in their contract.

What’s the difference between refusing to respond to an outage and having pre-existing commitments that make you unreachable (e.g. outdoor activities outside of cell coverage) or that aren’t compatible with work (e.g. childcare)?

On-call schedule. Everyone goes on rotation, gets different days. If you miss your day, well, you knew in advance you would be on call that day.

Right, that's an appropriate way to do it. It sounded like you were expecting everyone to be on call all the time.

I wouldn't call the full-time status as "job security". It's healthier to arrange your life and finances in a way that assumes your job can end at any moment. Employers love FT because you pay a fixed salary but you can squeeze more hours out of the employees. This person is case in point. Did she get a bonus? No. She got shit-canned.

There was a study that claimed losing a job caused the same level of grief for some as losing a loved one. Don't be that person. You are just a mercenary on contract, you are not part of a mission, or saving the world or (ugh), a FAMILY.

> Rarely (never in my experience) does the agreement include you only work 40 hours a week.

"Only"? Isn't 40 hours the maximum that people once fought for? Nobody should have to work more than 40 hours per week. It's the maximum for very good reasons. If you work more, it should be compensated elsewhere.

Now if you're co-owner of the company with wide-ranging responsibilities and corresponding generous compensation and a share of the profits, I can understand that you want to put in extra work, but then you're also the person directly benefitting from that extra work. But that's a voluntary choice by someone with a direct stake in the company. It should not be abused to extort extra work beyond the 40 hour maximum from normal employees.

I'm salaried and I work 30 hours a week. That's what we negotiated for, that's what I do. I get pages outside of work hours but I make it up later in my workweek.

For my part, I am confused why anyone would work more than 40; get your work done and leave.

My employment contract in Europe includes 40 hours per week, mon-fri. Overtime is paid and limited.

> Rarely (never in my experience) does the agreement include you only work 40 hours a week.

Exactly - you can also work less if nobody notices (easy to pull off).

$400k to work 50hr/week vs $250k to work 20hr/week. What do you choose?

Given that $250k would be a $30k per year pay increase with half the hours of work, probably the latter.

Rarely these expectations are explicit anyway. So i'm not sure what you are trying to tell. Should we solve a one year project in a year? Cultural norms matter.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com