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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

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 5y 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 5y ago
  Not to mention if you don’t answer a pager at 3AM when you’re on call
  - dheera 5y 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 5y 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 5y 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.
      - jonwithoutanh 5y ago
        In my experience this isn't a very good take, I've been woke up 50+ times in a 7 night span of on call, that fucking incentivized me to fix the issues. But that doesn't FUCK ALL to the product/sales people that actually direct where resources are spent. If the on call people ACTUALLY get to work on the on call issues, I think on call can work. But in my experience, every single place I've worked, has had insane on call hours. And you were ALWAYS expected to do your normal work on top of the on call hours and you were NEVER given time to fix the issue that woke you up in the middle of the night. Until the actually engineers/developers are in charge of their own schedules on call shifts will be fucking bullshit.
    - google234123 5y ago
      On call could be part of the job. If someone isn't fit to do it then they should take some other job.
      - dheera 5y ago
        I think for some jobs it makes sense to have on-call as part of the job description, but it's heavily overused. If there isn't imminent danger I don't think it should be ever required to force someone to compromise rest. If it's just a question of product uptime then you should have enough people and pay people extra to be on-call. And don't deploy things at 5pm on a Friday.
- cyphar 5y ago
  > No, they pay you to go home at the end of the day. That's part of your contract. Does your contract actually say this explicitly? Mine doesn't and I'm not sure it'd even be enforceable if it did. > If you instead go to another job at the end of your eight hours, they'll fire you. You are aware that there is a fairly large number of people who work multiple jobs, right? And that they usually don't ask permission to do so? Now, it is true that this isn't common in software development jobs, but employment contracts for software development jobs aren't magic -- they're pretty much the same as any other employment contract. (It's also probably not legal to fire someone for working a second job, at least here in Australia.) I am also floored that someone actually thinks that their job is something they're paid to do 24/7.
  - p_l 5y ago
    I think it's the inherent weirdness of what USA considers "salaried" job - it seems to me that you essentially don't have set hours, your pay isn't related to the hours you put in, and any overtime gets waived in programming by the overtime exempt rule. If this sounds to you like shit sandwich, that's because it is one, even if some people manage to make it work with less hours than norm.
  - joshuamorton 5y ago
    > Does your contract actually say this explicitly? Mine doesn't and I'm not sure it'd even be enforceable if it did. moonlighting clauses are fairly standard and I'd be surprised if your contract doesn't include one. > You are aware that there is a fairly large number of people who work multiple jobs, right? And that they usually don't ask permission to do so? Yes, people violate their employment contracts. > (It's also probably not legal to fire someone for working a second job, at least here in Australia.) The enforceability of moonlight contracts may vary. For example working at a software company and moonlighting as a barista is less likely to be enforceable than working at a software company and moonlighting at another (or moonlighting as a freelance developer), at least in the US, the second is probably a violation. Not that this matters in the US since you're usually at will anyway.
  - geofft 5y ago
    I am prohibited by my employment contract from working a second job without approval. It doesn't say, of course, that I'm supposed to go home. I can go to the bar, the library, the bowling alley, whatever. But it does say that I can't hold a second paid job (and it does demand that I truthfully tell them where I live). I am very much being paid not to work a second job. Maybe you aren't! But I am, this is fairly normal for salaried positions in America, it's almost certainly enforceable, and it's something I willingly signed and accepted when I took this job. I am aware there are a large number of people working non-salaried jobs who work multiple jobs. This thread is specifically about salaried jobs. More relevantly to the thread, my contract also says that any work I do which is related to my employer's actual business is owned by my employer, whether or not I do it on work time or at work. I paid actual lawyers to review that portion of the contract before I signed it, and they told me it is absolutely enforceable. In this case, the question is whether an IBM employee can hack on an IBM-authored, IBM-maintained driver for IBM computers, contributing to which used to be part of their job on the side. It would be absolutely defensible for IBM to say they own this work regardless of when it happens, and it would be frankly surprising if the employment contract did not say that.
- anonytrary 5y ago
  I get your point, but it seems pedantic. They still pay you for 40 hours a week. You are typically able to start a profitable side project in your own time.
NikolaNovak 5y 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." Hmm, do they? It's not in my contract, and (unfortunately) the labour law in Ontario for my profession doesn't support it either. We are expected to be "deliverable based" I think, rather than effort/work based. IANAL etc, but my observation is that Hourly employees are compensated for their hours; but it's less straightforward for salaried workers.
- slantyyz 5y ago
  What profession are you in? I'm in IT, and IIRC IT is one of the professions where salaried FTEs are not entitled to overtime in Ontario, but all of the salaried FTE contracts I've ever signed since the mid 90s had a specified number (usually 40) of working hours.
  - NikolaNovak 5y ago
    Same - I'm in IT, and like our nobble compatriots mushroom & shrubery growers [1], I'm not entitled to Overtime in Ontario :) 1: https://www.ontario.ca/laws/regulation/010285#BK20 https://www.ontario.ca/laws/regulation/010285#BK20
umanwizard 5y ago
This isn't true in my experience (USA). No salaried job I've worked at has contractually stated working hours. All mainstream tech jobs. People go home at reasonable times due to social norms, not because it's in a contract.

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 5y 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 5y ago
Not to mention if you don’t answer a pager at 3AM when you’re on call
- dheera 5y 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 5y 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 5y 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.
    - jonwithoutanh 5y ago
      In my experience this isn't a very good take, I've been woke up 50+ times in a 7 night span of on call, that fucking incentivized me to fix the issues. But that doesn't FUCK ALL to the product/sales people that actually direct where resources are spent. If the on call people ACTUALLY get to work on the on call issues, I think on call can work. But in my experience, every single place I've worked, has had insane on call hours. And you were ALWAYS expected to do your normal work on top of the on call hours and you were NEVER given time to fix the issue that woke you up in the middle of the night. Until the actually engineers/developers are in charge of their own schedules on call shifts will be fucking bullshit.
  - google234123 5y ago
    On call could be part of the job. If someone isn't fit to do it then they should take some other job.
    - dheera 5y ago
      I think for some jobs it makes sense to have on-call as part of the job description, but it's heavily overused. If there isn't imminent danger I don't think it should be ever required to force someone to compromise rest. If it's just a question of product uptime then you should have enough people and pay people extra to be on-call. And don't deploy things at 5pm on a Friday.
cyphar 5y ago
> No, they pay you to go home at the end of the day. That's part of your contract. Does your contract actually say this explicitly? Mine doesn't and I'm not sure it'd even be enforceable if it did. > If you instead go to another job at the end of your eight hours, they'll fire you. You are aware that there is a fairly large number of people who work multiple jobs, right? And that they usually don't ask permission to do so? Now, it is true that this isn't common in software development jobs, but employment contracts for software development jobs aren't magic -- they're pretty much the same as any other employment contract. (It's also probably not legal to fire someone for working a second job, at least here in Australia.) I am also floored that someone actually thinks that their job is something they're paid to do 24/7.
- p_l 5y ago
  I think it's the inherent weirdness of what USA considers "salaried" job - it seems to me that you essentially don't have set hours, your pay isn't related to the hours you put in, and any overtime gets waived in programming by the overtime exempt rule. If this sounds to you like shit sandwich, that's because it is one, even if some people manage to make it work with less hours than norm.
- joshuamorton 5y ago
  > Does your contract actually say this explicitly? Mine doesn't and I'm not sure it'd even be enforceable if it did. moonlighting clauses are fairly standard and I'd be surprised if your contract doesn't include one. > You are aware that there is a fairly large number of people who work multiple jobs, right? And that they usually don't ask permission to do so? Yes, people violate their employment contracts. > (It's also probably not legal to fire someone for working a second job, at least here in Australia.) The enforceability of moonlight contracts may vary. For example working at a software company and moonlighting as a barista is less likely to be enforceable than working at a software company and moonlighting at another (or moonlighting as a freelance developer), at least in the US, the second is probably a violation. Not that this matters in the US since you're usually at will anyway.
- geofft 5y ago
  I am prohibited by my employment contract from working a second job without approval. It doesn't say, of course, that I'm supposed to go home. I can go to the bar, the library, the bowling alley, whatever. But it does say that I can't hold a second paid job (and it does demand that I truthfully tell them where I live). I am very much being paid not to work a second job. Maybe you aren't! But I am, this is fairly normal for salaried positions in America, it's almost certainly enforceable, and it's something I willingly signed and accepted when I took this job. I am aware there are a large number of people working non-salaried jobs who work multiple jobs. This thread is specifically about salaried jobs. More relevantly to the thread, my contract also says that any work I do which is related to my employer's actual business is owned by my employer, whether or not I do it on work time or at work. I paid actual lawyers to review that portion of the contract before I signed it, and they told me it is absolutely enforceable. In this case, the question is whether an IBM employee can hack on an IBM-authored, IBM-maintained driver for IBM computers, contributing to which used to be part of their job on the side. It would be absolutely defensible for IBM to say they own this work regardless of when it happens, and it would be frankly surprising if the employment contract did not say that.
anonytrary 5y ago
I get your point, but it seems pedantic. They still pay you for 40 hours a week. You are typically able to start a profitable side project in your own time.

NikolaNovak 5y 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." Hmm, do they? It's not in my contract, and (unfortunately) the labour law in Ontario for my profession doesn't support it either. We are expected to be "deliverable based" I think, rather than effort/work based. IANAL etc, but my observation is that Hourly employees are compensated for their hours; but it's less straightforward for salaried workers.

slantyyz 5y ago
What profession are you in? I'm in IT, and IIRC IT is one of the professions where salaried FTEs are not entitled to overtime in Ontario, but all of the salaried FTE contracts I've ever signed since the mid 90s had a specified number (usually 40) of working hours.
- NikolaNovak 5y ago
  Same - I'm in IT, and like our nobble compatriots mushroom & shrubery growers [1], I'm not entitled to Overtime in Ontario :) 1: https://www.ontario.ca/laws/regulation/010285#BK20 https://www.ontario.ca/laws/regulation/010285#BK20

umanwizard 5y ago

This isn't true in my experience (USA). No salaried job I've worked at has contractually stated working hours. All mainstream tech jobs. People go home at reasonable times due to social norms, not because it's in a contract.