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Some excerpts that help explain it: The FLSA requires that covered, nonexempt employees be paid at least the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour for all hou

Some excerpts that help explain it: The FLSA requires that covered, nonexempt employees be paid at least the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour for all hours worked, plus time and one-half their regular hourly rates for hours worked beyond 40 per week. With few exceptions, to be exempt an employee must (a) be paid at least $23,600 per year ($455 per week), and (b) be paid on a salary basis, and also (c) perform exempt job duties. These requirements are outlined in the FLSA Regulations (promulgated by the U.S. Department of Labor). Most employees must meet all three "tests" to be exempt. An employee who meets the salary level tests and also the salary basis tests is exempt only if s/he also performs exempt job duties. These FLSA exemptions are limited to employees who perform relatively high-level work. Whether the duties of a particular job qualify as exempt depends on what they are. Job titles or position descriptions are of limited usefulness in this determination. (A secretary is still a secretary even if s/he is called an "administrative assistant," and the chief executive officer is still the CEO even if s/he is called a janitor.) It is the actual job tasks that must be evaluated, along with how the particular job tasks "fit" into the employer's overall operations. http://www.flsa.com/coverage.html http://www.flsa.com/coverage.html Generally managers, engineers, and most salaried office jobs are "exempt". Lately more focus has gone towards defining who exactly is an exempt vs non-exempt salaried employee in white collar office jobs.

jahewson 12y ago
Yep, most HN readers are probably exempt due to the "computer employee" exemption: > Computer Employees: Those who work in computer-related occupations, for example computer systems analysts, computer programmers and computer software engineers, are exempt as long as their work involves a combination of primary duties that include applying systems analysis techniques and procedures, consulting with users to determine specifications, and designing, developing, analyzing, creating, testing and modifying computer systems and programs. Edit: State laws sometimes offer more protection, e.g. California, for non-high salary professionals.
- gnarbarian 12y ago
  I wonder what (if there is one) the logical reason behind this exemption is.
  - dpritchett 12y ago
    Reading the DoL's advisory on this [1] suggests that it all hinges on the concept of blue-collar vs. white-collar or production vs. staff employees. I can only imagine that the 'production' employees are seen as more interchangeable and largely incapable of having multiplicative effects on the company's business model. A programmer or accountant who's getting a raw deal can find a better job (where better means pay commensurate with contributions), but a tier 1 help desk tech or factory worker will likely have a lower ceiling on possible pay to begin with, and (more) trouble finding a way to secure compensation that scales with corporate success. It is surprisingly hard to find explanations for this - the web is choked with articles explaining who's exempt and who's not, but not so many with justifications or reasoning or historical context. [1]: http://www.dol.gov/whd/overtime/preamble_final.htm http://www.dol.gov/whd/overtime/preamble_final.htm
  - walterbell 12y ago
    One reason is lack of organized lobbying by IT/engineers: http://andreas.com/faq-overtime.html http://andreas.com/faq-overtime.html Another round of policy discussion is underway: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/12/us/politics/obama-will-seek-broad-expansion-of-overtime-pay.html http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/12/us/politics/obama-will-see...
    - logicallee 12y ago
      (Edited to be less sure.) A third reason might be the argument from market power stemming from the fact that if you can personally create $10 million of cold hard cash value using nothing but a bit of time in front of a computer, and with no long-term detrimental effects on you of any kind, then the fact that you are minting money creates a seller's market (just as there will always be a seller's market for legal currency), and it [might be an argument for] allowing you to work whatever hours you wanted - or sleep in the office, be offered legal drugs, whatever. if you didn't like it you could go somewhere else. it's very different if you were cleaning staff at any of the same companies. they "need" more protection than you do! Edit: from your responses it is clear that many people it applies to should also be owed overtime. I was just throwing out one "logical reason". In addition I've thought of the crazy hours residents and doctors put in - so that high earnings / value add might not guarantee that much market power, if the conditions are the same at all hospitals. on the other hand much of computer labor is absolutely in a seller's market (from the point of view of the employee) and clearly does not need the same level of protection. there is a lot in many workplaces that a "computer professional" wouldn't put up with for a second.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- warfangle 12y ago
  But debugging and support is nonexempt - I wonder where, say, "production operations" falls in this, if you're on-call 24/7, and primarily put out fires caused by developer stupidity?
johnward 12y ago
There is some debate about what exactly an exempt position is too. Companies seem to abuse what they consider to be an exempt position to the point that eventually employees fight back. I believe this happened a few years ago a RIM or AT&T. For example if you are working a support job that regularly requires you to work 50+ hour weeks you should probably be getting overtime pay.
- shepardrtc 12y ago
  I worked for a University that classified some maintenance workers (among others) as exempt using the excuse that they had "supervisory" duties. The reality was that these people were on-call 24/7 and would have to come in whenever there was a problem, in addition to working a 40 hour week. Overtime was becoming expensive, so upper management decided that their duties weren't really fixing things, but rather supervising fixing things. Problem solved. They're now exempt and have to come in whenever their phone rings or they're fired.
  - endeavor 12y ago
    IIRC in California you need to have at least 2 direct reports to be considered a supervisor vis-a-vis exempt status.
    - johnward 12y ago
      California seems to be the state that has the most employee favorable employment laws. Other states should following things like the CA stance on non-competes.
    - shepardrtc 12y ago
      This isn't in California, but to get around that idea, they made other workers "report" to them. So technically they are the supervisor. But they have no authority other than to enter in time tickets.
  - johnward 12y ago
    I was in a similar position working support for a large international shipping company. I would work my 40 hours (day/afternoon/midnight) and then be required to take calls off hours. For example if I worked 6pm to 6am I would be required to wake up at 10am (mid sleep cycle) and join a BS staff meeting. Also if a major issue started during your shift you were expected to stay and handle it when you could turn it over to the next shift. Many times my colleagues would be on the 14 hours of their day while I sat there with nothing to do because they were handling it.
jboggan 12y ago
California law makes it a lot harder to exempt programmers via this route - roughly speaking if you're a salaried programmer in CA making less than $85k a year you are actually NOT exempt from overtime. I know of a lot of startups that run afoul of this but thankfully for them their employees are unaware. Edit - IANAL of course, but all research I've been able to find on the subject indicates this is likely true. The statute of limitations is 4 years I think, so there's a lot of back-pay that can accumulate in this sort of situation. Keep in mind that in CA overtime is defined as 1.5x for hours that exceed 40 in a week or 8 in a day, and 2x for hours that exceed 12 in day. Even if you only work 40 hours a week if you occasionally pull a long day or all-nighter you are supposed to be receiving overtime.
- rahimnathwani 12y ago
  Someone should make a tool to calculate working hours from a git commit history and/or bash history.
  - jboggan 12y ago
    Well, we do a lot of work outside of what our commits show, but that sort of thing would be useful to at least form an estimate. But if you are in the position of the employee claiming that you worked say 50 hours a week for two years, it is the company's responsibility to have your hours accounted for over that whole period. Practically they cannot produce that kind of information and your assertion will probably stand.
  - groovylick 12y ago
    The amount of time it takes to complete work for a commit is highly variable. I've had commits take a few minutes up to a day's worth of work when debugging something complex. A simple mean time per commit seems like a poor metric.
    - jpatokal 12y ago
      Sure, but you're obviously working at the point you commit. For example, if my first commit of a day is at 9:15 AM and the last one is at 7 PM, odds are pretty high I've exceeded the 'allowed' 9-to-5 hours.

jahewson 12y ago

Yep, most HN readers are probably exempt due to the "computer employee" exemption: > Computer Employees: Those who work in computer-related occupations, for example computer systems analysts, computer programmers and computer software engineers, are exempt as long as their work involves a combination of primary duties that include applying systems analysis techniques and procedures, consulting with users to determine specifications, and designing, developing, analyzing, creating, testing and modifying computer systems and programs. Edit: State laws sometimes offer more protection, e.g. California, for non-high salary professionals.

gnarbarian 12y ago
I wonder what (if there is one) the logical reason behind this exemption is.
- dpritchett 12y ago
  Reading the DoL's advisory on this [1] suggests that it all hinges on the concept of blue-collar vs. white-collar or production vs. staff employees. I can only imagine that the 'production' employees are seen as more interchangeable and largely incapable of having multiplicative effects on the company's business model. A programmer or accountant who's getting a raw deal can find a better job (where better means pay commensurate with contributions), but a tier 1 help desk tech or factory worker will likely have a lower ceiling on possible pay to begin with, and (more) trouble finding a way to secure compensation that scales with corporate success. It is surprisingly hard to find explanations for this - the web is choked with articles explaining who's exempt and who's not, but not so many with justifications or reasoning or historical context. [1]: http://www.dol.gov/whd/overtime/preamble_final.htm http://www.dol.gov/whd/overtime/preamble_final.htm
- walterbell 12y ago
  One reason is lack of organized lobbying by IT/engineers: http://andreas.com/faq-overtime.html http://andreas.com/faq-overtime.html Another round of policy discussion is underway: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/12/us/politics/obama-will-seek-broad-expansion-of-overtime-pay.html http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/12/us/politics/obama-will-see...
  - logicallee 12y ago
    (Edited to be less sure.) A third reason might be the argument from market power stemming from the fact that if you can personally create $10 million of cold hard cash value using nothing but a bit of time in front of a computer, and with no long-term detrimental effects on you of any kind, then the fact that you are minting money creates a seller's market (just as there will always be a seller's market for legal currency), and it [might be an argument for] allowing you to work whatever hours you wanted - or sleep in the office, be offered legal drugs, whatever. if you didn't like it you could go somewhere else. it's very different if you were cleaning staff at any of the same companies. they "need" more protection than you do! Edit: from your responses it is clear that many people it applies to should also be owed overtime. I was just throwing out one "logical reason". In addition I've thought of the crazy hours residents and doctors put in - so that high earnings / value add might not guarantee that much market power, if the conditions are the same at all hospitals. on the other hand much of computer labor is absolutely in a seller's market (from the point of view of the employee) and clearly does not need the same level of protection. there is a lot in many workplaces that a "computer professional" wouldn't put up with for a second.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
warfangle 12y ago
But debugging and support is nonexempt - I wonder where, say, "production operations" falls in this, if you're on-call 24/7, and primarily put out fires caused by developer stupidity?

johnward 12y ago

There is some debate about what exactly an exempt position is too. Companies seem to abuse what they consider to be an exempt position to the point that eventually employees fight back. I believe this happened a few years ago a RIM or AT&T. For example if you are working a support job that regularly requires you to work 50+ hour weeks you should probably be getting overtime pay.

shepardrtc 12y ago
I worked for a University that classified some maintenance workers (among others) as exempt using the excuse that they had "supervisory" duties. The reality was that these people were on-call 24/7 and would have to come in whenever there was a problem, in addition to working a 40 hour week. Overtime was becoming expensive, so upper management decided that their duties weren't really fixing things, but rather supervising fixing things. Problem solved. They're now exempt and have to come in whenever their phone rings or they're fired.
- endeavor 12y ago
  IIRC in California you need to have at least 2 direct reports to be considered a supervisor vis-a-vis exempt status.
  - johnward 12y ago
    California seems to be the state that has the most employee favorable employment laws. Other states should following things like the CA stance on non-competes.
  - shepardrtc 12y ago
    This isn't in California, but to get around that idea, they made other workers "report" to them. So technically they are the supervisor. But they have no authority other than to enter in time tickets.
- johnward 12y ago
  I was in a similar position working support for a large international shipping company. I would work my 40 hours (day/afternoon/midnight) and then be required to take calls off hours. For example if I worked 6pm to 6am I would be required to wake up at 10am (mid sleep cycle) and join a BS staff meeting. Also if a major issue started during your shift you were expected to stay and handle it when you could turn it over to the next shift. Many times my colleagues would be on the 14 hours of their day while I sat there with nothing to do because they were handling it.

jboggan 12y ago

California law makes it a lot harder to exempt programmers via this route - roughly speaking if you're a salaried programmer in CA making less than $85k a year you are actually NOT exempt from overtime. I know of a lot of startups that run afoul of this but thankfully for them their employees are unaware. Edit - IANAL of course, but all research I've been able to find on the subject indicates this is likely true. The statute of limitations is 4 years I think, so there's a lot of back-pay that can accumulate in this sort of situation. Keep in mind that in CA overtime is defined as 1.5x for hours that exceed 40 in a week or 8 in a day, and 2x for hours that exceed 12 in day. Even if you only work 40 hours a week if you occasionally pull a long day or all-nighter you are supposed to be receiving overtime.

rahimnathwani 12y ago
Someone should make a tool to calculate working hours from a git commit history and/or bash history.
- jboggan 12y ago
  Well, we do a lot of work outside of what our commits show, but that sort of thing would be useful to at least form an estimate. But if you are in the position of the employee claiming that you worked say 50 hours a week for two years, it is the company's responsibility to have your hours accounted for over that whole period. Practically they cannot produce that kind of information and your assertion will probably stand.
- groovylick 12y ago
  The amount of time it takes to complete work for a commit is highly variable. I've had commits take a few minutes up to a day's worth of work when debugging something complex. A simple mean time per commit seems like a poor metric.
  - jpatokal 12y ago
    Sure, but you're obviously working at the point you commit. For example, if my first commit of a day is at 9:15 AM and the last one is at 7 PM, odds are pretty high I've exceeded the 'allowed' 9-to-5 hours.