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Comment by pgsandstrom | Hacker News Reader

Is it an american thing that workers do free overtime? I live in Sweden and I know NO ONE that stays late without being compensated either with money or shorter days later in the month.

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I think that it is. I've worked for a number of companies in north america but in the US people are basically expected to work long. If your co workers are working overtime to get more done then you should work overtime to get more done.

The latest company I was employed at there had me working ridiculous hours but this is completely anecdotal, I'm glad I have my life back.

It depends on the type of work you're doing. Most jobs in the US fall under the 'Fair Labor Standards Act' and are classified as 'exempt' or 'non-exempt'. 'Exempt' jobs do not require payment for overtime work.

The classification of a job as exempt or non-exempt is not arbitrary but I don't know all the rules governing that. I would wager that the majority of people reading this page who live and work in the US would have an 'exempt' job, though.

All "Computer Professionals" are exempt, so that would cover many of the people on this site. The other exemptions are rather broad and would probably cover most of the rest.

Almost all jobs where you aren't paid hourly (so basically retail, manufacturing and construction) are exempt. I can't think of a single white-collar job that isn't exempt from the overtime requirement.

Not sure if it's Federal or CA law but you have to be making over a certain amount, though, to be exempt. In my last company that way everyone in the engeering dept. making under 70K (so, all of QA and tech support)

For the Federal law, it's $455 per week, so a vast majority of people make enough. I wouldn't be surprised if CA had a higher minimum, since their laws are tend to be more worker friendly than the rest of the US.

It could be a cultural thing. In Spain and Ireland (where I've work), if there is some extra time involved, it's not compensated, unless it is very serious and requested from management (working weekends, etc) My impression is that some people just get a higher workload and work overtime "to catch up" without telling anyone. Of course that's a bad idea, as your manager won't probably notice that you are working overtime, and will increase again the work load "as you are capable of handling it".

I'm in Spain, and this is very much the case. Overtime is basically expected, in many places there's a real culture of not leaving before the boss.

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