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What? Who said any of that? The person was asking a serious question and got a legit answer. As a salaried worker you are expected to do a job, if that job tak

What? Who said any of that? The person was asking a serious question and got a legit answer. As a salaried worker you are expected to do a job, if that job takes you 20 hours this week and 45 next week that's fine as long as the job is done. What is currently happening is most of the time people work 50-60 hours and get paid at basically a 40 hour a week version of their job. So they end up giving the company 10-20 hours free (as it's not every now and then but basically every single week). There are other motivations that can be added, say if you get a percentage of the company then you working 10-20 hours extra is accounted for by some other benefit. But as it stands (say you work as a manager at random fastfood) there is no benefit to you working 60 hour weeks. You don't get extra money, you don't get benefits (some long time employees may get stock options but most don't). What's excepted of you does not correlate to the amount you are paid (which for random fastfood is usually what an hourly rate at 40 hours a week would be plus a little extra). If you did the same job as hourly (only difference being termination is easier for hourly than salaried) you would get paid more. It's a perfectly valid question and one most should be asking.

b3kart 6y ago
> As a salaried worker you are expected to do a job, if that job takes you 20 hours this week and 45 next week that's fine as long as the job is done. I suspect the problem is with measuring what "job is done" means exactly when it comes to intellectual work in a team, so companies use a simplistic "X hours worked" as a proxy.
paulcole 6y ago
> As a salaried worker you are expected to do a job, if that job takes you 20 hours this week and 45 next week that's fine as long as the job is done. The whole article says that this is a fantasy. Get your job done in 20 hours a week and say I’m out and see what happens at the vast majority of companies. The employer gets the free extra 5 hours in a 45 hour week but the employee gets judged (at best) for working 20 hours the next week.
- dubcanada 6y ago
  There are degrees and differences in jobs that need to be taken into account. Obviously a store owner or manager probably need to be there and you can't manage in half the time. But some roles (such as say programming) if you have X tasks a week and you get them all done in half the time and piece out in my mind that should be acceptable. It shouldn't be acceptable that if you get all your tasks done in half the time they just give you a bunch of other tasks until you work exactly 40 hours. And there are others that take 2x to do all their tasks so you end up getting half of their tasks. Being good at your job should be rewarded and encouraged and if that means saying "get all these done and if you get them done earlier and just as good you get Friday off" is a perfect motivator. I think the problem is people grew up expecting to work 40 hours and if you don't work 40 hours you're a slacker. And that can be true, but it can also be completely wrong.
  - paulcole 6y ago
    > if you have X tasks a week and you get them all done in half the time and piece out in my mind that should be acceptable. Great! Start a company and make this acceptable. Because the whole point of the article is that in practice this is almost never acceptable in the real world, regardless of what the definition of “exempt” is.

b3kart 6y ago

> As a salaried worker you are expected to do a job, if that job takes you 20 hours this week and 45 next week that's fine as long as the job is done. I suspect the problem is with measuring what "job is done" means exactly when it comes to intellectual work in a team, so companies use a simplistic "X hours worked" as a proxy.

paulcole 6y ago

> As a salaried worker you are expected to do a job, if that job takes you 20 hours this week and 45 next week that's fine as long as the job is done. The whole article says that this is a fantasy. Get your job done in 20 hours a week and say I’m out and see what happens at the vast majority of companies. The employer gets the free extra 5 hours in a 45 hour week but the employee gets judged (at best) for working 20 hours the next week.

dubcanada 6y ago
There are degrees and differences in jobs that need to be taken into account. Obviously a store owner or manager probably need to be there and you can't manage in half the time. But some roles (such as say programming) if you have X tasks a week and you get them all done in half the time and piece out in my mind that should be acceptable. It shouldn't be acceptable that if you get all your tasks done in half the time they just give you a bunch of other tasks until you work exactly 40 hours. And there are others that take 2x to do all their tasks so you end up getting half of their tasks. Being good at your job should be rewarded and encouraged and if that means saying "get all these done and if you get them done earlier and just as good you get Friday off" is a perfect motivator. I think the problem is people grew up expecting to work 40 hours and if you don't work 40 hours you're a slacker. And that can be true, but it can also be completely wrong.
- paulcole 6y ago
  > if you have X tasks a week and you get them all done in half the time and piece out in my mind that should be acceptable. Great! Start a company and make this acceptable. Because the whole point of the article is that in practice this is almost never acceptable in the real world, regardless of what the definition of “exempt” is.