

California Overtime Law – Computer Professional Exemption (2013) - greenyoda
http://www.gotovertime.com/computer_pro.html

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iebro1234
Most people believe this law is to protect employees from being overworked and
not paid, however it worked the opposite way at my workplace.

Everyone making less then the 80k mentioned were switched from salary
employees to hourly. This would have been good if we all spent nights and
weekends crunching code. It was quiet the contrary. No one worked overtime so
now everyone's pay has been reduced.

We used to have flexible hours and still get paid our full salary. Now you
have to make sure you clock out at lunch and God forbid if you take more than
an hour.

Sometimes we are done with all our tasks but we still have to sit at our desk
to complete our 8 hours if we want to get paid our old salary pay.

This worked to the advantage of the employer, not us.

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noer
If you have to clock out for lunch and are only paid for the hours you're
working, who cares if you take more than an hour?

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backtoyoujim
Your boss who wants to have metrics/results/widgets to show her boss when she
wants them.

edit: it ain't a daycare.

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MichaelCrawford
I was hired onto my first real coding job hourly at first. I asked to go "full
time", and was hired "full time". Not long after that I asked my boss to
authorize my working more than forty hours. It was only then that he pointed
out that because I was "salaried", I was not paid any overtime, actually he
could demand I work as many hours as he pleased.

What actually happened was that I studied like a demon until I qualified to
work as a contract programmer - where I was paid hourly, and was never
particularly expected to work excessively.

Given the pay that coders typically make I don't think it's unreasonable that
we are exempt from overtime pay however that should not be regarded as carte
blanche to demand we work as many hours as the management asks us to.

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GeneralMayhem
>Given the pay that coders typically make I don't think it's unreasonable that
we are exempt from overtime pay

This is a very dangerous argument to make. It's the same sort of argument that
makes people turn a blind eye to the wage-collusion class action. Just because
we're slightly better paid than average doesn't mean labor protections don't
apply to us.

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Fr0styMatt8
It gets more complicated when you ask the question "How much money is the
software engineer making for the company vs. what the company pays them?"

For argument's sake, let's say you're paid $80K per year. On the one hand, you
may think that is high (it always depends what your frame of reference is). If
the code you produce directly makes the company millions of dollars though,
does that change your assessment of the 'reasonableness' of that salary?

This is the argument I've heard as to why sports stars get paid so much
(because you have to look at what they get paid vs the amount of money they're
making for the comapnies paying them).

It's a real can of worms.

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mariojv
I see the value in your point, and I generally agree with it. However, in this
hypothetical situation, I think you'd largely be ignoring the hypothetical
product manager, any marketing involve, servers involved, code written before
the software engineer that payed enough for the development (R&D?) time, etc.
Also, the company probably wouldn't want to pay that person unless the value
that person produces is higher than their wage. That being said, as a software
developer I wouldn't argue with a more "reasonable" wage. :o)

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Retric
Google has 1 million in revenue per employee. They could pay everyone 500,000$
/ year and still be extremely profitable.

Edit: 1,259,520$ (March 31, 2015)
[http://csimarket.com/stocks/singleEfficiencyet.php?code=GOOG](http://csimarket.com/stocks/singleEfficiencyet.php?code=GOOG)

In 2014 Apple had a pretax income of 53.48B and 92,000 employees. It could
give them all a 200,000$ / year pay bump and still make 35Billion in profits.

PS: Not that any company thinks this way, but it's not hard to argue that top
programmers are underpayed.

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jonas21
But companies have expenses other than payroll. Google has to buy machines,
run datacenters, pay partners, etc. If you look at income per employee, it
takes all of this into account. For Google, this is $270K:
[http://csimarket.com/stocks/singleEfficiencyeit.php?code=GOO...](http://csimarket.com/stocks/singleEfficiencyeit.php?code=GOOG)

So they could presumably pay everyone $250K more than they do now and still be
marginally profitable.

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lsiebert
It's 41 dollars an hour now, btw. Per the rules, that means if you make less
then $85,280 you are eligible this year.

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ghshephard
Given that's what we were paying our entry level desktop support employees in
San Mateo in 2003, kind of hard to imagine what types of computing occupation
would pay less. That might be the problem with a "California Wide" rule - I
can imagine in some rural areas, that salary (and cost of living) might be
less.

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greenyoda
I'm sure that there are plenty of IT-type jobs in non-tech companies outside
of Silicon Valley where developers make around $85K per year. If we work for
tech companies, it's hard to remember that most programming work is pretty
unglamorous stuff, like writing back-office code for a bank or supermarket
chain. And $85K may not even be such a bad salary if you're not in an area
with crazy real estate prices.

~~~
ghshephard
That's actually the point I'm trying to make. A low-end-hourly-wage-slave IT
desktop support tech, is the type of person that overtime wage laws are
supposed to protect - yet they don't in Silicon Valley. At the same time,
there are likely a lot of Professional salaried tech employees in rural areas
of California, for whom $85K is considered a good salary.

I'm just noting that creating a California wide over/under for overtime is
going to result in some discrepancies.

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wes-exp
Please don't complain about one of the most fertile job environments and wish
for it turn it into another Europe.

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bgun
Isn't that a bit like saying, "Innovation and productivity in the tech sector
are at all-time highs, why would you risk that by fiddling with patent
reform?" The environment is flourishing in spite of, not because of, these
issues.

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pkaye
So are a majority of junior computer professionals in other states paid an
hourly rate?

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rdsnsca
Here in Nova Scotia, we have the right to refuse overtime.... does that exist
in the US?

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EricSu
Are you saying the employee has the right to refuse to work overtime or the
employer has the right to refuse to pay for overtime?

As people have said, if the employer refuses to pay an hourly worker overtime
when they've worked the overtime hours then there are labor law issues (which
means that the employee must be paid overtime). But I do know employers can
ask/assert that an hourly employee is not to exceed a certain amount of hours
per week. If an employer refuses to pay a salaried employee overtime then
that's where this article comes in and what people are discussing in the other
comments.

If an employee refuses to work overtime then that mostly deals with workplace
culture, pleasing your boss/your personal decision/getting your work done.
There's a big difference between why or how an hourly employee can or would
refuse to work overtime vs a salaried employee as explained by the way they're
paid. An hourly employee mostly deals with not getting paid more money whereas
a salaried employee most likely worries about a bad relationship with the
boss/company.

I suppose everyone has the right to refuse overtime (not sure if there are
legal foundations for this) but since the US has a work-as-much-as-possible
kind of mindset it's difficult to simply refuse overtime.

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rdsnsca
The worker can refuse to work overtime.

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papercrane
That's a quick way to get fired. As of 2012, there was no right to refuse
overtime in Nova Scotia and no cap on the amount of overtime you can work. I'm
not aware of any amendments to the labour standards since then

Source: Buott, Kyle, Larry Haiven, and Judy Haiven. "Labour Standards Reform
in Nova Scotia." (2012). pp 12-13.

[http://www.policyalternatives.ca/sites/default/files/uploads...](http://www.policyalternatives.ca/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/Nova%20Scotia%20Office/2012/03/LabourStandardsReformNS.pdf)

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rdsnsca
Did it in 1214 and wasn't fired, would run a ver public labour board lawsuit
if i was too.

Companies hate the publicity.

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papercrane
That's different from having the right to refuse overtime though.

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cagey_vet
i argued against this and still won $5000 against a former employer a year
after i got WARNed out.

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cagey_vet
in short, dont let this stop you from claiming whats yours. it didnt stop me.

