29 ms·

Companies save billions of dollars by giving employees fake “manager” titles

• ElfinTrousers 4y ago
  I guess this is news if you study at Harvard Business School, not so much if you've had a job in industry anytime in the past 30 years.
  • sigzero 4y ago
    This is even a trope on sitcoms and has been forever. lol
    • lotsofpulp 4y ago
      Every teenager who has ever had a job at a convenient store/fast food/restaurant/hotel/etc knows this. Enough of the population simply likes it because it keeps prices low for them, and maybe some of them justify it themselves by having been already subjected to it.
      • ElfinTrousers 4y ago
        Not to mention that calling a 19-year-old "manager" and maybe giving them a different color uniform shirt is a good way to get that 19-year-old more engaged in the job, that doesn't involve any extra expense on the employer's part.
• neverartful 4y ago
  Banks have been doing this for decades. If you're not a VP within 3 months some may wonder if something is wrong with you.
  • m348e912 4y ago
    My coworkers and I used to joke that at banks, even cleaning staff get VP titles.
    • bombcar 4y ago
      Banks hand out VP titles like candy so that the customers think they're hot stuff and being treated well.
      • nowherebeen 4y ago
        People outside the finance industry really buy it too. I think it's because in most companies, VPs are above director. Only in finance, is it below.
        • Hermitian909 4y ago
          > I think it's because in most companies, VPs are above director. Every now and again someone whose spent a career exclusively in finance gets bitten by this when transitioning into the business world. A friend once told me a story about a deal with Amazon nearly getting tanked when I coworker chewed out an Amazon VP, saying they wanted to "talk to someone who could make decisions". Took a lot of massaging to salvage that deal.
          • throwanem 4y ago
            That must've been a fun wall to be a fly on.
          • watwut 4y ago
            Enjoyable to imagine this. The ex finance people I work with are quite toxic towards those lower on hierarchy. Cool to hear about someone being bitten by it for once.
      • A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
        Ahh, but those are not real VPs. Those are likely all AVPs ( less power, less money ) and not VPs or SVPs. Naturally, all the customer sees is a vice-president, but for HR purposes they are 'only' AVPs. I kinda hate it, because I have ridiculous title for HR purposes now myself and I am 'just' IC in real life. edit: added quotation marks to just. I like being an IC.
  • yttribium 4y ago
    "VP" title is a regulatory requirement because only "bank officers" have legal authority to do certain actions.
  • chollida1 4y ago
    Banks doing this is for a completely different reason. Banks aren't trying to stiff their traders out of overtime. They do it because a VP has certain signing power as an executive that regular employees don't. have been through this many times and very HR department on the sell and buy side says the same thing.
  • AlbertCory 4y ago
    Some of the answers excuse this as "only a VP has signing authority." That probably accounts for some of the VP titles. I kinda doubt that all the VPs in your average BofA office are always signing things, and couldn't possibly just go to their boss for a signature, like normal people do.
    • ceejayoz 4y ago
      I was under the impression it was partially a client relations thing; "Oh, I'm talking to a vice president of the bank! I must be important!"
      • AlbertCory 4y ago
        Right. Part of the ego boost of the title.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • lifefeed 4y ago
    My time working at Bank of America was strange because of this. Everyone's title was either Analyst or VP.
  • geraldwhen 4y ago
    It’s just pay bands and it’s different per company. At some financial institutions, everyone is a VP, except maybe the call center and retail associates.
• rahimnathwani 4y ago
  The article isn't mainly about manager titles. The manager titles are just part of the way companies justify paying people a fixed salary (with no paid overtime) vs. paying people for the hours they work. They found that the incidence of fake-sounding manager titles spiked at the legal threshold of $455 a week — exactly the cutoff at which a company would be allowed to put workers on salary and sidestep OT payment laws.
  • ineptech 4y ago
    This is not quite true. To be exempt from overtime, the position has to pay that much and meet a set of requirements[0]. The inflated "manager" titles are not just to dupe the employee, they're an attempt to skirt Federal labor laws, which is why the article mentions companies losing lawsuits over this practice. 0: https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/17a-overtime https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/17a-overtime "However, Section 13(a)(1) of the FLSA provides an exemption from both minimum wage and overtime pay for employees employed as bona fide executive, administrative, professional and outside sales employees... Job titles do not determine exempt status. In order for an exemption to apply, an employee’s specific job duties and salary must meet all the requirements of the Department’s regulations."
  • SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
    I'll never understand how $11.38 an hour is manager money in any line of work.
    • alar44 4y ago
      It's not and doesn't meet the minimum requirement for a salaried worker. I believe you need to make $48,500, or roughly $24ish/hr.
      • SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
        Hmm, you're right that's not the requirement now, but based upon the documents provided by ineptech, it looks like: "To qualify for exemption, employees generally must meet certain tests regarding their job duties and be paid on a salary basis at not less than $684* per week." as of January 1, 2020. It was at the previously mentioned value before that. So that's $17.10/hr to be a manager, or about $35k / year.
• swader999 4y ago
  Unlimited time off is another gem they use.
  • m348e912 4y ago
    Unlimited time off would be a better idea if the company could define a reasonable minimum amount of time you must take off during the year. Then there is no guilt or coercion involved.
  • gitfan86 4y ago
    Unlimited is such an absurd word. It should be "Flexible". It should be we will NOT fire you if you take 23.5 days instead of the ideal number of 22. Also, if you take 18 that is not a problem either.
    • ajmurmann 4y ago
      It's not "flexible" either. It's "non-accrued". The only reason it's non-accrued is so that the company doesn't have to pay you left over PTO when you leave the company and gets it off their books. Everything else is a euphemism to make employees feel good about getting fewer benefits. You could have this flexibility with accrued PTO. I've previously given employees additional, off-the-books time off because they needed and deserved it and when we all got laid off they still got the remaining PTO paid out. Edit: add section on flexible alternative
      • ska 4y ago
        One hint is that you only see this in jurisdictions without strong labor laws around PTO. Some places, you have to give at least X weeks accrued a year for all full time employees (might be laddered by tenure) and you have to allow them at least Y continuous days/weeks per year; they may also have to to spend all of their accrued time within a short-ish window (limited rollover). In this sort of environment, I've never seen a company claim "unlimited".
        • disgruntledphd2 4y ago
• willcipriano 4y ago
  I worked for a restaurant that did this to me. To make sure I hit the "minimum hours" (when you start talking about hours vs tasks or responsibilities you probably aren't getting into a legitimate salary arrangement) they would have me clock in and out, and I'd get pay stubs with 40 hours (less if I worked less) and the overtime hours paid at $0. They withheld my last paycheck when I quit and stopped responding to my calls so I had to file with the PA labor board, I sent in those paystubs and answered questions about the role and what I did there. Couple weeks later they send me a check for 20 grand out of the blue, the business had to pay back overtime becuase I was misclassifed. I was just looking for the $300 or so they owed me, was really surprised with the outcome.
  • pxue 4y ago
    As a small government advocate, i have no issue with labor boards. the alternative is violence or unionization, neither of which are optimal in resolving disputes like these in a civilized and efficient manner.
    • hourago 4y ago
      > the alternative is violence or unionization, neither of which are optimal in resolving disputes like these in a civilized and efficient manner. Unionization is a great way of solving disputes. Many big corporations need to be counter-weight with some other big organization. To put violence and unions at the same level seems uncalled for.
      • Idk__Throwaway 4y ago
        > Many big corporations need to be counter-weight with some other big organization. Such as labor boards, or rather the government that gives them power.
      • bmitc 4y ago
        A lot of unions directly block solving disputes, choosing instead to deny all disputes. I know one union that was perfectly happy letting government workers make sox figures while "working" from home, while they produced objectively zero work over a period of months. These were the type of workers that would keep government equipment after retiring, quitting, or rarely being fired, requiring the government to send officers to collect. Any movement towards trying to get the workers to do literally anything or simply rating them low was met with vehement pushback. Like a union representative storming into you're office and yelling. In this case, the union was a giant ball of mud whose only existence was to hold the government hostage. As much as I dislike Thune power corporations can hold, unions are not a fix all and can become the same overlords.
• langitbiru 4y ago
  It's correct. Some people choose status over money. https://robkhenderson.substack.com/p/status-over-money-money-over-status https://robkhenderson.substack.com/p/status-over-money-money... "The solution, then, is to pay the low-status workers a bit more than they are worth to get them to stay. The high-status workers, in contrast, accept lower pay for the benefit of their lofty positions." The consequence of this is job title inflation. https://www.economist.com/business/2022/12/08/the-scourge-of-job-title-inflation https://www.economist.com/business/2022/12/08/the-scourge-of...
  • tyre 4y ago
    That’s not what this article is about.
• WestCoastJustin 4y ago
  You also need to factor in the size of the company. A VP is a very different thing at a Startup vs Amazon.
• qualudeheart 4y ago
  Inflation for everything.
  • jcadam 4y ago
    I've been a "Senior Engineer" for over 10 years now.
    • lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 4y ago
      I work on internal web applications at a company who sells a physical product (read: not a tech company). I started the job when I was in my late 20s and my title was "Senior Something-or-other". Around the time I started, I told that to someone who works outside IT and their immediate response was, "You don't look very senior." Yeah, tell me about it.
      • deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      • qualudeheart 4y ago
        What do those apps do?
        • lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 4y ago
          Nothing special; they’re just interfaces for managing internal data.
• jmclnx 4y ago
  If I understand the article, I have seen the opposite happen. Someone is given manager duties without a pay increase or a new title. But at my current company, they will eventually get the new title, not sure of a raise though. Maybe at that company it is kind of a trial.
• yellowpencil 4y ago
  Somewhat tangential but an acquaintance at a Fortune-500 level company mentioned to me they are converting tons of currently salaried employees to hourly. These are white collar desk jobs at corporate HQ. I have to infer theres some sort of cost-cutting (wage theft?) motive behind this. Are these types of tactics becoming more prevalent in the white collar world?
  • ceejayoz 4y ago
    My guess: so they can flexibly cut hours when they need to save a bit of costs in a way they can't with salaried employees.
    • thombat 4y ago
      Yep, how about a nice zero-hours contact coupled to a non-compete clause. Bring your own stool so you can sit in the lobby and wait to see if you'll be making any money today.
• shepardrtc 4y ago
  I worked at a university in Florida that did this to me. I was being made to work overtime on a few software projects and making a nice little amount of extra money. Then one day I found out that I was being "promoted" to a manager title. No raise or any extra benefits, but I was no longer allowed to get overtime. It was part of a campus-wide initiative to cut costs. And now that I was a manager I was expected to work even more than before. Year later, the day before I gave my two weeks, my boss told me I was becoming known as an 8 to 5 guy... I wasn't working enough extra hours. After I told him that he wasn't paying me enough to waste my life away at the job, he wasn't too surprised when I gave my notice the next day.
  • WrtCdEvrydy 4y ago
    > I worked at a university in Florida that did this to me. Florida academia and pay fuckery, name a more iconic duo. FIU Alumni and Ex-Employee Here.
  • unglaublich 4y ago
    An 8 to 5 guy is a 6 to 10 guy at home, and that's already pretty weak on the work-life balance scale!
  • ornornor 4y ago
    Just curious: are you able to refuse a promotion. Especially this kind of “promotion”? What happens then? Do you get fired because… reasons or do you just keep your current job title etc?
    • astura 4y ago
      If you're employed "at will" (and almost everyone in the US is) you can't refuse "promotions." From the company's perspective they are deciding to no longer employ you for position a, but they are simultaneously offering to employ you for position b. You can take it or leave it. Employment "at will" means either the employer or employee can end the relationship at any time for any reason or no reason at all.
      • 4y ago
• nixgeek 4y ago
  I’ve noticed that in larger technology companies there has also been a trend towards getting a “Manager” title but leading a team of 1-2 people. Maybe there will be intent to grow this to 3-4 people or more in future years, but that hinders giving others a title and their own small team (which can be considered career progression). Then you might see another leader (Manager of Managers, or “MoM”) who has 5 of these small-team managers, a different title, but a total organization size of 10-15 people. This feels like a shift from a generation ago when the bigger technology companies wanted flatter organizations and most managers would have teams of 8-12 people, the MoM roles might be 50-80 people, and beyond that executive roles with 100s of people.
  • jrockway 4y ago
    I don't really have a problem with this. The best organizations lean into the fact that an organization needs to do more than just make a product, they also need to help their employees "grow" in their career. For those interested in the management track, starting small with a small "blast radius" makes a lot of sense. The organization isn't saying that having managers for every 2 people is the best way to allocate management resources, it's saying that it's the best way to train new managers.
    • nixgeek 4y ago
      No disagreement on blast radius and the point on training new managers, instead what I find less logical is when a 50+ person organization has 25-30% of people as manager roles, meaning this isn’t an exceptional or temporary situation (i.e. training one or a small number of new managers), it’s actually a core part of organizational design.
      • dilyevsky 4y ago
        It’s done like this bc leadership at those companies want to have certain number of directors reporting to them (for resume padding purposes). The directors then need sr manager reports who in turn need multiple manager reports, etc. Pretty sure it has nothing to do with concern for low level employees’ careers as up and coming managers
• hourago 4y ago
  Miss-classifying employees, earnings or costs are great ways for companies to cheat taxes and labor laws. "Self employed" is used in the same way. Many people in the gig-economy are just employees that are not legally hired because companies want to avoid any responsibility while still profiting from employees.
• devnull3 4y ago
  Some of these companies have "code-of-ethics" document which is mandatory for every employee to read. I had to read & acknowledge as a freshman software engineer at a firm which abused visa-on-arrival for work purposes. The sheer hypocrisy is mind-blowing!
• ThinkingGuy 4y ago
  A very large company I worked for did something similar.. They ran a call center for merchant credit cards. Every associate on the floor had the title of "account manager." That way, when a customer whose request for a credit limit increase was declined or who had some other complaint asked to "speak to a manger," the low-wage associate could reply "Sir/Ma'am, I AM a manager."
• adrr 4y ago
  Start sending manager and hr to jail for wage theft. If an employee falsified timesheets they can and have been convicted of theft. Why isn’t the reverse true? Jail is a huge motivating factor and why you don’t see wide spread accounting fraud in public companies.
  • nouveaux 4y ago
    That's probably not a path you want to go down. Do we start putting employees in jail for wage theft?
    • atomicnumber3 4y ago
      Yes, at appropriate levels. I worked in several regulated financial institutions. Every year it was part of compliance training to be reminded that if you notice, for instance, money laundering or financial fraud, you can be personally liable and go to jail. This isn't a new concept at all. Professional engineers have similar levels of risk if they breach ethics, though I don't know if it's criminal or just self regulatory and civil.
      • hardolaf 4y ago
        Yup. When I worked in the defense industry, even as an unlicensed engineer, I was bound by threat of prosecution to report a wide category of violations. Per our agreement with the US DoD, even workplace injuries which could impact our readiness fell under this definition. Now that I'm over in the finance space, if I ever notice anything suggesting a financial crime, I am required by law to report it.
    • driverdan 4y ago
      Yes. Theft is a crime regardless of how it's done.
    • adrr 4y ago
      We already put people in jail for false timesheets. Wage theft is in the billions . https://www.justice.gov/usao-md/pr/nsa-contractor-pleads-guilty-submitting-false-timesheets https://www.justice.gov/usao-md/pr/nsa-contractor-pleads-gui...
• fy20 4y ago
  In my country there is a legal difference between an employee and a manager position, so just giving the title alone doesn't mean anything. There is nothing really different about it in reality, but to truly be a manager you need to have a different job contract. Additionally there is a limit on the ratio of managers to employees, if it's too high can get you in trouble with the labour board. When my company opened an office here, the first thing they did was hire the managers who then hired the team below them - but due to the limit not everyone could have the manager title at first.
  • SOLAR_FIELDS 4y ago
    My first thought as an easy fix for this was similar to what you are suggesting - I was thinking to be truly qualified as a manager you need to have at least 1 or 2 direct reports over a certain period of time or else you don’t qualify. I think in practice that is essentially almost the same as the ratio requirement you are talking about.
• dopylitty 4y ago
  I’ve said it before but I’ll keep pounding the drum that the FLSA needs to be completely rewritten. Any work more than 8 hours in a day should result in overtime pay regardless of type of work or base salary. It’s ridiculous that companies can force people to work 24/7 with no extra pay just because those people happen to work with computers or in "knowledge" work. And even developers/IT folks are largely not making FAANG money. They're working at hospitals/insurance companies making the equivalent of what a factory worker made in the 1950s.
  • alar44 4y ago
    It's not that simple though. I'm an IT Director. A good chunk of my time is just thinking and not doing. It's impossible to measure the amount of work I do in a day because I'm thinking about stuff when I shower, or am walking the dog etc. Do I sit at my laptop 8 hours a day? Fuck no. Do I work 8 hours a day? Probably, but it's hard to say. I can't say "I worked for 9.5 hours today" because it's impossible to measure.
    • buildbot 4y ago
      I think it is pretty simple - do you have to be somewhere or be available for more than 8 hours a day? If you are 24/7 on call for issues, that deserves a huge pay bump. In other fields it's even more true - doctors for example, when oncall, have to be ready to work at a moments notice. So no drinking or other recreational drugs, or going skiing somewhere remote, or being out of cell range... If it effects you life for more than 8 hours a day, you should be payed for that.
    • hardolaf 4y ago
      I'm a design engineer. A lot of my time is also thinking. I can be "working" but actually just reading articles or clearing my mind. And I can be in the middle of a gaming session later that same day and suddenly come up with a solution to a problem. How many hours I work is very subjective based on your definition of "work". But to make up for this I am also compensated several times the median household income. And the threshold for paying people like me should definitely be set to at least 2x the median household income for the region in which you work or 2x the federal average whichever is more. Currently, that'd be a minimum of $141K/yr. I feel that's a reasonable cutoff for no more overtime pay.
• grecy 4y ago
  I worked in IT for a large Telco, as an "Application Manager". I managed nobody and was responsible for a few big systems (but not accountable, an important distinction) Eventually getting to know the union rep it was widely accepted they had added "Manager" to the title of every salaried employee so they didn't have to pay overtime, could call you in after hours, etc. It made us smile when even 18 year old call centre people had "Manager" in their title on their first day at their first job.
• gumby 4y ago
  I expect the IRS will start regulating this the way they did the abuse of contractors. The result will screw some people for whom the arrangement (contractor / exempt) works will, will make the paperwork tedious, but will overall help most workers. People gaming the system just cause Bastiat loss.
• PM_me_your_math 4y ago
  The key take-away here is to know what you're doing. Schools don't teach this stuff. High school doesn't teach personal finance to a necessary degree, nor do they teach kids the realities of both the job market and the impact & traps of a college education. They've been geared themselves to feed the college industry with fresh victims and leave students with "passion" ...a passion that cannot pay the bills. We need a fundamental shift from college tracks to productivity tracks. Teach kids how to manage money, file taxes, start businesses, tinker, invent, start trade businesses, and bring back shop class. Dump the idea that you need a college degree to be successful, you don't, unless you are committed to entering a profession like medical, law, or applied sciences. The failings of today are the result of the shortcomings and bad ideas of 20 - 40 years ago. The amazing part is that this can be fixed in a single generation with the right leadership, will, and plan; which mind you has already been written and executed successfully but 70 years ago.
• zokier 4y ago
  > Generally, companies are required to pay workers one-and-a-half times their hourly rate anytime they work more than 40 hours in a week. But there's an exemption for salaried managers, who receive the same amount of pay each week, as long as they earn above a certain minimum amount. Somehow I feel the companies are not the problem here. That exemption is pretty ridiculous to have in the first place. Regardless of these "fake" managers, why don't "real" managers deserve OT pay?
• jcadam 4y ago
  Was once a senior engineer at a small-ish office of a fairly large company. We had a particularly high-strung junior engineer that was prone to throwing fits if he didn't get his way. Apparently, one day, he threatened to quit for another offer. He was placated with some trivial pay increase and promotion to lead engineer (essentially leap-frogging the other seniors in the office in title - but not in pay). Except no announcement was made; I had no idea he'd been promoted. One day he walks into my office and starts telling me I need to redesign some module using XYZ Design pattern. "Nope, don't think so - that would be a pointless and unnecessary complication and we have a release on Friday." "No, you need to do it. I already talked to the Engineering Manager." I can't remember exactly what I said next, but it wasn't very nice.* Then I'm getting called into the Engineering Manager's office: "Can you just do the thing he asked you to do, please? I know, I know... we kinda have to humor him on this." * - of course I remember what I said, and it definitely wasn't nice.
  • feteru 4y ago
    Oh boy, how did that play out? I feel as though it's a give a mouse a cookie situation with people power tripping like that, I can't imagine it resolving well until they leave...
    • jcadam 4y ago
      I left the company not long after that, so I don't really know how it ultimately played out :)
  • toomanyrichies 4y ago
    > “I know, I know... we kinda have to humor him on this." I’m sorry… what? Why did they feel the need to placate a junior at all, let alone with a leap-frog promotion? In what way was a junior engineer not replaceable? Was he someone’s cousin or something?
  • wonderwonder 4y ago
    Sounds like a manager that is afraid of confrontation.
  • 4y ago
• logicalmonster 4y ago
  As an employee, I wouldn't be too miffed about a fake "on-paper" promotion with a fancy job title. In the short run, it's not usually beneficial to anything other than your ego, but in the long-run that fancy title is your ticket to job-hopping to a better situation. From a business perspective, this seems like a sort of a penny-wise, pound-foolish decision because an employee who has a fancy "Director of X" title is probably more likely able to find employment elsewhere because of their fancy job title. In the long run, a company will probably pay more through having somebody swap jobs, having to pay extra to poach somebody, and pay for recruitment and training.
• post_break 4y ago
  What about Apple changing the title to associate for former employees. Makes me think of Jony Ive. Would have loved to see them list his title as "Associate" when he left.
• andrewflnr 4y ago
  If your categorization can be subverted by changing a title, it either needs a better definition or it needs to not exist. Otherwise you're making decisions based on daydreams that can wreck people's lives. And I'm very pessimistic about a better definition, since I think technology is going to make the line between "worker" and "manager" even blurrier over time, in practice if not in law.
  • willcipriano 4y ago
    Having direct reports would be a fairly sensible condition that would be difficult to fake, it not being in the law revels that the law is working as intended.
• reidjs 4y ago
  There's more nuance to this topic than "Company bad! They trick dumb labor into a bad deal!" Money isn't the only form of compensation a job can provide. Give a low level worker a $0.43 cent raise, and they won't give a crap, it's not enough to change anything. But give them an 'employee of the month' medal and a new title, arguably worth much less than $0.43 cents, and they may actually prefer it! It's something for their resume, something to tell their mother about, these things adds prestige and dignity to a hard job that may have none.
  • lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 4y ago
    I was once a low-level worker who got a $0.75 raise and I cared enough to find a better job. Had nothing to do with my lack of "employee of the month" medal but rather the fact that I couldn't pay rent every month without adding to my credit card debt.
    • reidjs 4y ago
      Fair enough I also don’t give a crap about company accolades or titles, and wish it would all just go towards increasing my compensation. Some people, however misguided they may be, don’t think like we do though
  • HWR_14 4y ago
    You have it exactly backwards. A low level person might get a 6% raise from that $0.43/hr. That's a lot! Someone making six figures on the other hand is getting a sub-1% raise. To say nothing of the use they have for those dollars. That might be the difference between fixing a car or not to a lower level person. To a higher level person it's a new console. Meanwhile, "employee of the month bagging groceries and promotion to sr. Bagger" doesn't mean much, but a higher level person is likely to value something like a title bump that they use on their resume to get the next job.
  • guywithahat 4y ago
    I agree. People like to know they're appreciated. This is a new way to let them know they're appreciated. Nothing inherently sinister about it unless you're opposed to the idea of private companies doing positive things
• nrdgrrrl 4y ago
  This happened to me at a non profit - everyone had a manger title even though very few (myself included) didn't manage any people. I found out later on that I couldn't get overtime, and this was the reason.
• throwaway181747 4y ago
  Much like how coders like to call themselves "engineers" - a term that has actual accreditation and certifications attached to it, but somehow not in the computer science space, weird.
  • ddulaney 4y ago
    Eh, it's pretty nuanced. Certification, rigor, and lots of other things that software folks associate with "real" engineering aren't actually that different between software and traditional engineering projects. I recommend checking out Hillel Wayne's series where he interviews what he calls "crossovers", people that worked both in software and in traditional engineering: https://www.hillelwayne.com/post/we-are-not-special/ https://www.hillelwayne.com/post/we-are-not-special/
    • throwaway181747 4y ago
      Thank you for the earnest reply to my snarky comment. I'll check out that series!
  • devnullbrain 4y ago
    I always call myself a software engineer, hoping to bait someone like you so I can reveal I actually do have an engineering degree.
  • insane_dreamer 4y ago
    CSE is a degree at many colleges not unlikely the other Engineering sciences (ChemE, MechE, etc.) Edit: also, there's some muddy waters where you have a degree in engineering (civil, chemical, etc.) but aren't technically an "engineer" unless you have state certification, which is a separate process; but you would nevertheless consider yourself an "engineer"
• toomanyrichies 4y ago
  Joseph Turner White: “What's an associate producer credit?” Bill Smith: “It's what you give to your secretary instead of a raise.” [1] 1. “State and Main”, by David Mamet https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jLudeYtBqFg https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jLudeYtBqFg
• phkahler 4y ago
  On the flip side I think one company game me a manager title in order to offer the pay rate I wanted. It also came with a higher annual bonus - up to 15 percent vs 5 for others. My boss was a bit of a micromanager so he mostly ran my team - the official system also gave mixed signals on who they reported to.
• dboreham 4y ago
  This is not actually how the FLSA works folks. There are tests to determine if a given employee is exempt or not and they have nothing to do with their title. So go talk to your local dept of labor and get them to take action against your employer. Also, some posters here have said that simply working in IT makes the job exempt. Not true. Source: family member formerly worked in this field.
• maerF0x0 4y ago
  I've long thought that companies should have mandatory hours reporting and limits on Salary positions. That is they must collect the actual hours worked by people of that title in their company, and report it to candidates. $250K for 35hrs a week at a casual company vs $375K at a 996 ByteDance, I know which side of that equation I'd choose.
• 8bitsrule 4y ago
  I once knew a 'shop manager' whose salary was 60% of what most of 'his' mechanics were making before they worked overtime. They usually went home at 4; he usually didn't. When a baby with birth problems arrived for poor Jerry, it cost him more than a year's salary.
• rs999gti 4y ago
  Fake titles also help with attrition. If the employee feels like they are being promoted, instead of actually getting a title change and raise, then they will likely not leave.
  • maxerickson 4y ago
    Are people really not just completely mercenary about their title? Like I can see putting up with a title change that comes with a small raise if there is new work that is more interesting and the new role opens up a better pay band, but I can't see why the title itself would motivate someone for very long at all.
• Hector99 4y ago
  [dead]