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Comment by rmrfrmrf | Hacker News Reader

If you're working for a new company, this might be true. However, many established companies (like the one I work for now) have fewer benefits for hourly employees, not to mention the pay ceilings are much lower than salary.

Paying hourly also has a lot of annoying caveats to it. Should I be clocked in for work-related functions? What about ones where I'm expected to be there but it's from 6pm-8pm at a restaurant (and I'm already working 40+ hours with my boss getting hounded for excessive overtime pay)? Does this party at 1pm count as my government mandated lunch break? How closely am I being watched to make sure I'm working "efficiently"?

Point being, hourlies usually end up being treated as second-class citizens one way or another, and it becomes even more apparent when hourly employees and salaried employees work together.

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Being treated with respect as a human being is a strange way to describe being treated as a second class citizen (Been there done that, on both sides of the argument BTW, and hourly was much more professional, much more humane)

The answer to your questions BTW are yes, yes, yes if optional no if not, and depends solely on how paranoid the boss is and has nothing whatsoever to do with how finance pays you. The first three questions are pretty simple to figure out on your own. Did the boss tell you to do it, and will it show up on your review if you don't complete that requirement? Then you get paid, duh.

I would agree with your last line, when I was hourly they treated salaried coworkers literally worse than slaves, not even as well as property is treated. Horrific.

It would seem that we've had different experiences.

Ya - this sort of thing only makes sense if its part of a general worker-focused culture. We're also not paying wages, but hourly credits towards profit sharing. The whole context is important.

> The answer to your questions BTW are yes, yes, yes if optional no if not

Oh come on. Did you write that comment with the intent of it being read?

There are some hourly people who make more than salaries employers ("consultants" vs. "contractors", i.e. people hired for particular skill or experience vs. to fill a role, generally). There are some places where pretty much everyone but the very top management is some kind of hourly-billed contractor or consultant, which seems weird.

In practice there are usually client and contracting firm cultural solutions to the ambiguous billing situations. Generally the thing to avoid is giving people unaccounted-for discounts; it's better to bill for more time but then give an explicit discount, or at least to make it clear you're not billing for something, vs. just silently not charging for things -- otherwise it is taken for granted and expected.

I am hourly, and I often find myself shaving my hours if I am unhappy with my output, and other times I can't help myself and I end up working for sixty hours and not put down the overtime. I don't think that this is unusual, it's how you keep a job in a down economy.

I ended up working at a call center as a temporary job, and was given a lot of responsibilities during a major transition to another location; they gave me a monthly bonus on top of the hourly pay (I'm a salaried analyst now). The company I work for would have immediately fired me for going either way with hours, and if my boss knew, they'd probably have fired him as well (huge violation of company policy. Not saying that makes you a terrible person or anything. Just relating how it can be complicated.

I also did a few business trips while I was hourly, which started out odd, but really didn't end up being that bad. I was basically filling in for my supervisor and the management structure seemed to think the return value was worth a pretty decent chunk of overtime logged.

The bonus thing was weird, because I was basically half-salaried and half hourly. Anyone else have experience with that? My income was relatively stable as long as I stayed in the 35 - 45 hour range, and even a bit outside of that, but past that I could pretty substantially alter it. I also had a really good relationship with my boss, so like any other job, if I had started working 15 hours a week they would have had a problem. My work quality and production were solid, though, and I felt secure in the position. Interesting period of time.

As a consultant, it's better to say "I worked 60h but am giving you a 50% discount", I think. Maybe it's different if you're hourly staff.

I've experienced similar, but only when working hourly from home. I guess I feel responsible for distractions in my own house, but when I'm in the office I have no second thoughts about billing for the time where I did my best in the environment provided.

That's actually the situation I am in. I also feel like any time that I spend researching a solution (reading Blogs, Articles, Building POCs) isn't something that I should bill for. If I had done the same, but I had to go to an office, I wouldn't hesitate to report those hours. I guess it's because the former doesn't "feel" like work.

I'd generally take half my normal on-site rate to work from home. Although I'd also take a discounted rate to go to interesting places (assuming travel paid, but even then, it might be a discount), or a surcharge to go somewhere uninteresting and on short notice.

I'd absolutely do IT/satellite stuff in Antarctica if I had nothing else I had to be doing, just for the experience (although I think it also pays decently, like $80k for a season with no other expenses...)

In a heartbeat! I would do it for 20, but I find the idea of living in Antarctica pretty exciting.

I'd pay 20k to do it.

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