5 ms·

> compensation that you get twice a month. I dug into this and was surprised to learn that salaries are paid every fortnight in USA. I wonder why. Does anybod

by 2143 5y ago

> compensation that you get twice a month. I dug into this and was surprised to learn that salaries are paid every fortnight in USA. I wonder why. Does anybody know if this is the case even in FAANG companies? Where I'm from it's paid monthly. I think I prefer that.

willcipriano 5y ago
Why do you prefer to wait longer to be paid?
- LeonidasXIV 5y ago
  Because other payments are monthly (rent, ISP, mobile phone contract, subscriptions - at least in Europe), so having a constant money in <-> money out equilibrium makes sense. Unless these things are also charged every 2 weeks in the US.
  - checker 5y ago
    Plenty of US places pay twice a month, so you get the monthly budget consistency and get your money sooner.
  - beeboop 5y ago
    I think the idea in the US is that if you're having to wait an extra two weeks to get paid, you're essentially having to "float" half your monthly income all the time. This impacts people who are on the poorer end of the scale, and there's a very high percentage of Americans that don't have more than a few hundred dollars to their name.
- 2143 5y ago
  I think it's more of a psychological thing for me. If I were to get my income every day, that would be very boring. On the other hand if I were to get my income once in 6 months, that would be horrifying. But 1 month seems to be a sweet spot. Double the amount half as often. Other utility bills come in monthly in my country (which is in Asia by the way), so that's a factor as well. But yeah, I can now kind of see the appeal of getting paid every 2 weeks.
saagarjha 5y ago
Can’t speak for all the FAANGs but I believe it is true for several.
mra0 5y ago
From my experiences, twice monthly payments are nearly universal. From what I gathered, the reason is that for a lot of employees, some states require payments to happen twice a month. For example, this is the respective CA state law: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=LAB&sectionNum=204 https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio... Now, this CA law actually does not apply to most tech-employees (which will be consider "exempt employees" - which also means that they do not have to be paid overtime). But in my experiences, employers don't want to run separate payment processes for exempt/non-exempt employees - so everyone gets paid twice a month.
- 2143 5y ago
  > some states require payments to happen twice a month I get that employers are following rules. But I wonder why there is such a rule in place.
dhosek 5y ago
I don't know that I've ever had monthly. Most of the time my pay has been twice a month or every two weeks (the latter ends up with some weird scenarios at some companies where there's no benefits deduction in a 3-paycheck month). I've had a handful of jobs that paid weekly. The worst was contracting somewhere where I did weekly timesheets but was paid bimonthly. It was just after another contract agency had shortchanged me on my pay so I had to keep a manual log to make sure that all the hours I worked were paid.

by 2143 5y ago

willcipriano 5y ago

Why do you prefer to wait longer to be paid?

LeonidasXIV 5y ago
Because other payments are monthly (rent, ISP, mobile phone contract, subscriptions - at least in Europe), so having a constant money in <-> money out equilibrium makes sense. Unless these things are also charged every 2 weeks in the US.
- checker 5y ago
  Plenty of US places pay twice a month, so you get the monthly budget consistency and get your money sooner.
- beeboop 5y ago
  I think the idea in the US is that if you're having to wait an extra two weeks to get paid, you're essentially having to "float" half your monthly income all the time. This impacts people who are on the poorer end of the scale, and there's a very high percentage of Americans that don't have more than a few hundred dollars to their name.
2143 5y ago
I think it's more of a psychological thing for me. If I were to get my income every day, that would be very boring. On the other hand if I were to get my income once in 6 months, that would be horrifying. But 1 month seems to be a sweet spot. Double the amount half as often. Other utility bills come in monthly in my country (which is in Asia by the way), so that's a factor as well. But yeah, I can now kind of see the appeal of getting paid every 2 weeks.

saagarjha 5y ago

Can’t speak for all the FAANGs but I believe it is true for several.

mra0 5y ago

From my experiences, twice monthly payments are nearly universal. From what I gathered, the reason is that for a lot of employees, some states require payments to happen twice a month. For example, this is the respective CA state law: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=LAB&sectionNum=204 https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio... Now, this CA law actually does not apply to most tech-employees (which will be consider "exempt employees" - which also means that they do not have to be paid overtime). But in my experiences, employers don't want to run separate payment processes for exempt/non-exempt employees - so everyone gets paid twice a month.

2143 5y ago
> some states require payments to happen twice a month I get that employers are following rules. But I wonder why there is such a rule in place.

dhosek 5y ago

I don't know that I've ever had monthly. Most of the time my pay has been twice a month or every two weeks (the latter ends up with some weird scenarios at some companies where there's no benefits deduction in a 3-paycheck month). I've had a handful of jobs that paid weekly. The worst was contracting somewhere where I did weekly timesheets but was paid bimonthly. It was just after another contract agency had shortchanged me on my pay so I had to keep a manual log to make sure that all the hours I worked were paid.