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Comment by nlawalker | Hacker News Reader

Salaried employees aren't paid for their time, they're paid for a combination of their output and their availability. Availability used to be strongly coupled with time but technology has introduced some flexibility there.

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Correction: Their PERCEIVED output, not their output. Output can usually not be objectively measured in IT.

Storypoints? Overestimate wildly. Stories done? Split stories like atoms! Impact of work done? Present your button color change stories as company saving divine intervention!

I think it depends. Plenty of salaried workers are truly only on the clock when on-site from 9-5

Can you give some examples of jobs that are usually done by salaried employees and are paid by output? All the examples I can think of, are usually done by independent contractors.

Not by output, for output - as in, not paid per unit of output, but paid for achieving a sufficient level of it, the definition of which frequently changes. That's baked into the definition of salaried.

Anything commissions based might fit the bill?

Commission is not salary.

i think we could say with a high level of certainty that someone with a subpar output will typically be punished in some way.

it feels very disingenuous to pretend there aren’t expectations of a certain level of output.

For sure, but incentives are different when your pay is perfectly proportional to output rather than having a salary.

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