5 ms·

I mean, salaried jobs do pay you for 24 hours a day.

by smabie 6y ago

arthurcolle 6y ago
Not typically. Imagine if you make 130k a year but then your boss adds a mandatory meeting at 1:30am your relative time to triage support issues. That might be OK within the parameters of their delusional mindset, but it's still fucked up and should not be allowed.
- thatguy0900 6y ago
  I have a feeling you would be shocked at the percentage of people in wealthy country's who would wake up at 1:30am every day for a meeting for 130k. Fucked up is very strong language.
  - arthurcolle 6y ago
    I'd prefer a 1:30am meeting compared to a 9:30am meeting lol, I was just trying to appeal to what is most preferred, i.e. normal 9am to 6pm "working hours" I was gearing my response in terms of what seems reasonable to expect... but yeah I'm sure everyone would try to stretch themselves to absorb more capital.
- walrus01 6y ago
  Working in backbone operations for a mid sized ISP, we sure don't have 1:30 meetings, but we do have scheduled 1:30 maintenance events (planned several weeks in advance), and people on the on-call list are expected to be available for middle of the night emergencies. Catastrophic fiber cuts and equipment failures like a roof failing and pouring water onto a DWDM chassis have the tendency to occur at fun times like 0330 in the morning on a holiday. It is expected and known that if you do something like respond to a 0130 in the morning emergency and work the issue until 0430, then go to sleep, that you're going to sleep until whenever you wake up in the mid afternoon and probably not be useful for any other tasks that day. I should point out that the salaried employees expected to respond to such things are compensated appropriately, and the general practice is to have a group of people so that each person is only on-call for some portion of each month. The rank and file NOC employees and fiber splicers, field crews, field technicians are hourly employees and get overtime for incidents as described above. Depending on the state and labor laws they're also paid an hourly rate simply for being on-call, even if nothing happens, for the duration of their on-call rotation week(s).
  - arthurcolle 6y ago
    Everything you said sounds reasonable. Tasks and hours are related to the specific work at hand, and mitigations are then given, as temporary allowances, to employees if extra work is demanded that are outside of "core hours" I was just trying to highlight that I personally hate "core hours" and that if I'm on a marathon coding session from 9pm to 4am, and I'm intermittently unavailable from some arbitrary time (say 11:15am to 11:50am) and then I get a bunch of messages from bosses saying "where were you??" and I then explain that I was actually writing code, point to some commits and say "see? I did all this stuff" and they say "you are expected to work from 9am to 6pm" it feels like a slap in the face. I think good management should accept that people aren't robots (unless there is an outage, fair enough) and consider people's working preferences in their decisions. Anyways, I'm sure you have some awesome war stories with deployments/maintenance events. You should share them sometime :D
    - murph-almighty 6y ago
      There are definitely good reasons to, at minimum, have you _available_ from 9-6; say, for a meeting or to bring a coworker up to speed on what you're working on, but at the same time you don't necessarily need to be pinned to your desktop for the entire period of time to do that. Since remote working started I've taken advantage of that big time by just running errands during the work day but keeping my phone close by in case I get a ping on Slack.
X-Cubed 6y ago
No, they pay you a salary based on agreed working hours, usually a 40 hour working week. If that wasn't the case, they'd be firing you for going home at the end of the day.
- geofft 6y ago
  No, they pay you to go home at the end of the day. That's part of your contract. If you instead go to another job at the end of your eight hours, they'll fire you. If you even go to your secret other home you haven't told them about in another state (or worse, another country), and that creates tax withholding obligations in that state, they may not fire you, but they will be very displeased.
  - fiddlerwoaroof 6y ago
    Not to mention if you don’t answer a pager at 3AM when you’re on call
    - dheera 6y ago
      On call should be optional and paid accordingly. It should not be a part of the job, because not everyone is fit to do it (physically, mentally, family-wise, or otherwise). Incentivize people to take on-call time and those who are fit will take it.
      - fiddlerwoaroof 6y ago
        I don’t think this is right: people who can’t do it shouldn’t be expected to, but software developers should support their application in production so that, if it’s hard to manage, they have an incentive to fix that problems: throwing code over the wall for an operations team to deal with is a clear case of externalizing negatives.
        dheera 6y ago
        To some extent a good faith effort is in order, but someone who is perfectly capable of doing 99% of the job shouldn't be expected to respond to things at 3am unless they willingly do so for extra pay. I for one am perfectly capable of advanced software engineering work but I am NOT capable of compromising my sleep without causing serious heart arrythmias. Some other person might have to deal with a baby. Some other person might sleep early and do meditation at that hour because it helps prevent panic attacks during the day. Everyone is different, and personal time and rest time should be respected. There is so much behind the curtain of off-work time that employers don't see, and don't need to see, they just need to respect that time.
saagarjha 6y ago
No, they don’t. Otherwise you’d be making under minimum wage if you were salaried and making less than $90k.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > Otherwise you’d be making under minimum wage if you were salaried and making less than $90k. No, because if you have a $90k salary and job duties that qualify for wage and hour exemption under FLSA and any applicable state labor law at that salary, then, there is no minimum hourly wage. That’s what it means to be exempt from wage and hour rules. For FLSA, “computer related” work is exempt at a salary of just over $35k.
  - saagarjha 6y ago
    TIL!
avipars 6y ago
True in one sense... MY current job has me on "salary" but they require me to work 40 hours a week... and have a time clocking program. They aren't willing to pay me overtime even when I am contacted (with urgency) on the weekends and after hours...

I mean, salaried jobs do pay you for 24 hours a day.

by smabie 6y ago

I mean, salaried jobs do pay you for 24 hours a day.

Not typically. Imagine if you make 130k a year but then your boss adds a mandatory meeting at 1:30am your relative time to triage support issues. That might be OK within the parameters of their delusional mindset, but it's still fucked up and should not be allowed.

thatguy0900 6y ago
I have a feeling you would be shocked at the percentage of people in wealthy country's who would wake up at 1:30am every day for a meeting for 130k. Fucked up is very strong language.
- arthurcolle 6y ago
  I'd prefer a 1:30am meeting compared to a 9:30am meeting lol, I was just trying to appeal to what is most preferred, i.e. normal 9am to 6pm "working hours" I was gearing my response in terms of what seems reasonable to expect... but yeah I'm sure everyone would try to stretch themselves to absorb more capital.
walrus01 6y ago
Working in backbone operations for a mid sized ISP, we sure don't have 1:30 meetings, but we do have scheduled 1:30 maintenance events (planned several weeks in advance), and people on the on-call list are expected to be available for middle of the night emergencies. Catastrophic fiber cuts and equipment failures like a roof failing and pouring water onto a DWDM chassis have the tendency to occur at fun times like 0330 in the morning on a holiday. It is expected and known that if you do something like respond to a 0130 in the morning emergency and work the issue until 0430, then go to sleep, that you're going to sleep until whenever you wake up in the mid afternoon and probably not be useful for any other tasks that day. I should point out that the salaried employees expected to respond to such things are compensated appropriately, and the general practice is to have a group of people so that each person is only on-call for some portion of each month. The rank and file NOC employees and fiber splicers, field crews, field technicians are hourly employees and get overtime for incidents as described above. Depending on the state and labor laws they're also paid an hourly rate simply for being on-call, even if nothing happens, for the duration of their on-call rotation week(s).
- arthurcolle 6y ago
  Everything you said sounds reasonable. Tasks and hours are related to the specific work at hand, and mitigations are then given, as temporary allowances, to employees if extra work is demanded that are outside of "core hours" I was just trying to highlight that I personally hate "core hours" and that if I'm on a marathon coding session from 9pm to 4am, and I'm intermittently unavailable from some arbitrary time (say 11:15am to 11:50am) and then I get a bunch of messages from bosses saying "where were you??" and I then explain that I was actually writing code, point to some commits and say "see? I did all this stuff" and they say "you are expected to work from 9am to 6pm" it feels like a slap in the face. I think good management should accept that people aren't robots (unless there is an outage, fair enough) and consider people's working preferences in their decisions. Anyways, I'm sure you have some awesome war stories with deployments/maintenance events. You should share them sometime :D
  - murph-almighty 6y ago
    There are definitely good reasons to, at minimum, have you _available_ from 9-6; say, for a meeting or to bring a coworker up to speed on what you're working on, but at the same time you don't necessarily need to be pinned to your desktop for the entire period of time to do that. Since remote working started I've taken advantage of that big time by just running errands during the work day but keeping my phone close by in case I get a ping on Slack.

X-Cubed 6y ago

No, they pay you a salary based on agreed working hours, usually a 40 hour working week. If that wasn't the case, they'd be firing you for going home at the end of the day.

geofft 6y ago
No, they pay you to go home at the end of the day. That's part of your contract. If you instead go to another job at the end of your eight hours, they'll fire you. If you even go to your secret other home you haven't told them about in another state (or worse, another country), and that creates tax withholding obligations in that state, they may not fire you, but they will be very displeased.
- fiddlerwoaroof 6y ago
  Not to mention if you don’t answer a pager at 3AM when you’re on call
  - dheera 6y ago
    On call should be optional and paid accordingly. It should not be a part of the job, because not everyone is fit to do it (physically, mentally, family-wise, or otherwise). Incentivize people to take on-call time and those who are fit will take it.
    - fiddlerwoaroof 6y ago
      I don’t think this is right: people who can’t do it shouldn’t be expected to, but software developers should support their application in production so that, if it’s hard to manage, they have an incentive to fix that problems: throwing code over the wall for an operations team to deal with is a clear case of externalizing negatives.
      - dheera 6y ago
        To some extent a good faith effort is in order, but someone who is perfectly capable of doing 99% of the job shouldn't be expected to respond to things at 3am unless they willingly do so for extra pay. I for one am perfectly capable of advanced software engineering work but I am NOT capable of compromising my sleep without causing serious heart arrythmias. Some other person might have to deal with a baby. Some other person might sleep early and do meditation at that hour because it helps prevent panic attacks during the day. Everyone is different, and personal time and rest time should be respected. There is so much behind the curtain of off-work time that employers don't see, and don't need to see, they just need to respect that time.

saagarjha 6y ago

No, they don’t. Otherwise you’d be making under minimum wage if you were salaried and making less than $90k.

dragonwriter 6y ago
> Otherwise you’d be making under minimum wage if you were salaried and making less than $90k. No, because if you have a $90k salary and job duties that qualify for wage and hour exemption under FLSA and any applicable state labor law at that salary, then, there is no minimum hourly wage. That’s what it means to be exempt from wage and hour rules. For FLSA, “computer related” work is exempt at a salary of just over $35k.
- saagarjha 6y ago
  TIL!

avipars 6y ago

True in one sense... MY current job has me on "salary" but they require me to work 40 hours a week... and have a time clocking program. They aren't willing to pay me overtime even when I am contacted (with urgency) on the weekends and after hours...