10 ms·

Whatever Happened to Overtime?

99 points by wallflower 12y ago

altcognito 12y ago
It would make good political sense as well, as the conservative talking point is that hard work should be rewarded.
- briandear 12y ago
  Then workers ought to demand a raise if they are feeling undercompensated. The market pays what the market allows. Any distortion of that market would have deleterious effects somewhere in the chain. Any time you artificially increase the price of something, that rational response is to seek a substitute; which might mean that more overseas offices are opened and more jobs would be offshored. Which would actually increase the desired effects -- perhaps even increasing unemployment and wages. To paraphrase Jurassic Park: markets will always find a way.
  - Hannan 12y ago
    >> Any distortion of that market would have deleterious effects somewhere in the chain. Regulation, collusion, and asymmetric information all seem to be "distortions" we're dealing with today; "The market pays what the market allows" seems to be an oversimplification as we're not operating in a free market.
Shivetya 12y ago
Go for it. As I stated before, his last two years can be used to fix a lot or cause a lot of strife. The President has shown little concern for others in his party and does love sticking it to those who don't agree with him. He really has nothing to lose, fixing the overtime rules would be a great step in restoring faith in the system; but I think 69k is aiming far too low. People should be allowed to work overtime, not be forced into it. Hence I am suggesting he aim really high, like the Roth income level cutoff. It already is a declaration of the government as the line between too well off to deserve the tax benefit.
- yardie 12y ago
  From the left, this president is considered far too accommodating the right. This is one of those issues that everyone can see needs to be fixed and would be popular enough to be incontestable. I'm sure the republicans will be against it because they did not think of it first.
  - WBrentWilliams 12y ago
    To be fair, the President only works as hard as the votes he can get for his party. That's not over. Obama's job for the next two years is to do what he can to make it a possibility that another Democrat will come after him. That means he will do a lot, but whether or not he will take this specific action is hard to ascertain.
golemotron 12y ago
The thing I always heard is that if you are any hourly worker you are paid for your time. If you are a salaried worker you are paid to get the job done regardless of how much time it takes. I think I've heard that cited in legal cases. It seems like a useful distinction. Many jobs in the modern economy are flexible. You do your work whenever. Maybe you carve out six hours a day to program but if you need to take a client call or answer an email out of hours you do it and you don't feel bad because you can goof off during the day when you like to as long as the work gets done. Tracking this would be ridiculous and most employers will actually remove that flexibility in order to make sure that they comply with the law. People who like flexibility will lose and so will the economy. We'll become much less responsive.
- myg204 12y ago
  I don't think "many" jobs are flexible the way you describe them. At least from my experience.
- Delmania 12y ago
  Yes, salaried employees are paid to get the job done regardless of how long it takes, so long as it takes no less that 40 hours. Companies will gladly let you work 50, 60, or 80 hours a week with no additional compensation (except promises of promotions or bonuses), but if you try to work less than 40, that's not allowed.
  - e40 12y ago
    but if you try to work less than 40, that's not allowed. This is completely false (in CA, at least). If I work 1 hour on Monday, say, and 12 on Tuesday, I'm paid for 8 hours for each day. In fact, my company works like this. I don't often work less than 8 hours, but it happens. Accounting knows how to handle it, and does like a pro. I've never been hassled.
    - Iftheshoefits 12y ago
      Your situation is absolutely far, far outside the norm, even (especially?) in the software industry.
nasalgoat 12y ago
IT workers are an exempt class is Canada.
- snarfy 12y ago
  In the US as well.
  - otoburb 12y ago
    In case readers don't understand what "exempt" means as applied to hourly overtime: US: http://www.dol.gov/whd/flsa/ http://www.dol.gov/whd/flsa/ Canada: http://www.labour.gov.on.ca/english/es/pubs/guide/overtime.php http://www.labour.gov.on.ca/english/es/pubs/guide/overtime.p...
    - burkemw3 12y ago
      And specifically IT guidelines for US: http://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/fairpay/fs17e_computer.htm http://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/fairpay/fs17e_compute... Not all computer and technology related jobs are exempt. As I read it, the exemption focuses on employees that are primarily creating hardware and/or software.
tokenadult 12y ago
I read through the article, and I read through the comments here, and I did some online searching for other writings by the same author as the opinion essay kindly submitted here. The author describes himself as an "entrepreneur," but I haven't yet found some detailed sources about how his business ventures were formed or funded. I have found some strong criticism of his basic understanding of economics. As for the law on the topic, the author may be correct that the President acting alone can use executive authority under established law to let the income threshold for mandatory overtime pay rise. I haven't checked whether or not that is entirely in the hands of the President under current United States law. If so, then the only politics around the issue would be the politics of what an incumbent President already in the second half of his second term (a "lame duck" President) thinks is an appropriate response to this issue among all the other issues he is dealing with. What I don't know here for sure is how much any of this would matter economically to most people. Neither my wife nor I are employees of anyone (we both work as sole-proprietor business owners). We can work as many hours as we can stay awake without gaining overtime pay. What I hear about more often in the United States economy than employed wage-earners not being paid overtime is employed wage-earners not being offered even full-time hours, because shorter hours remove a requirement to provide employee health insurance benefits for many employers. I'm not at all sure what the author advocates here would have a big beneficial effect for the economy in general or for workers now working overtime in particular. Demand for labor working under any particular schedule is elastic, and maybe the proposal here will just result in fewer working hours being offered per employee.
- sergiosgc 12y ago
  > I'm not at all sure what the author advocates here would have a big beneficial effect for the economy in general or for workers now working overtime in particular. The author does a poor job explaining the macro-economic effects. You get a glimpse of the reasoning in the last few lines, where he states that the ratio of corporate profits over GDP doubled, from 6% to 12% of GDP from pre-80s to nowadays. We[1] have a problem with wealth distribution. I don't draw this problem in terms of fairness, because the concept of fairness is different from an individual to the next. We have a problem of income distribution that goes beyond the notion of fairness, becoming serious enough to be a menace to the stability of capitalism. A balanced economy has a thriving consumption component, which creates demand, and a thriving investment component, which drives supply. These go hand in hand. If there is too much demand, and investment falters, you get high inflation economies. However, if you get too much investment and demand falters, you suddenly have no investment opportunities and you get a slew of ill effects as capital is trying to find out where it can get returns. The most visible such effect is the appearance of investment bubbles and the crashes when these burst. People easily recognize the problems of investment-starved economies. The common citizen does not recognize the problems of demand-starved economies, because these are new. Here, we can witness first hand how young economic science is. Inflationary effects on supply starved economies were the norm in the XX century, so these are very well studied. Demand starved economies? Not so much. The US and the EU are the first ones (possibly, in a slightly different fashion, preceded by Japan). The causes for this do not lay squarely on politicians. It's easy to take a passionate view and find a target to blame. That is not the case, however. The current demand starved economy is caused by a big mix of factors. I've never ran the numbers, so take my opinion with a grain of salt: I'd wager the two biggest factors are: 1. Technological evolution, which increases demand while causing a deflation of costs (and consequently, on the circulation speed of money) 2. Globalization. We have moved a great deal of added value to developing countries, namely in the East. If Japan can be used as an example of what to expect, it will take two generations for demand to occur there. The globalization question is specially problematic. Not because there aren't enough resources for everyone. It is problematic because China is huge. The delay in consumption increase, coupled with huge inertia, can destroy western economies. The technological question is important, but it has been with us ever since the industrial revolution. We have been able to cope with it, and the same methods should apply. [1] I'm European. We are, however, in the same boat as North Americans in this problem, with slightly worse politicians. Europe is politically led by Germany. Historically, Germany is prone to fear investment starved economies so they are profoundly erring on identifying the issues and correctly acting).
briandear 12y ago
Are the workers powerless in this? I am not debating the premise, but it's a fair question. Wages are generally driven by market conditions (except in Union jobs, but that's another discussion..) so I wonder if the similar competition for wages ought not include hours worked. A 40 hour job paying 50k would be preferable to a 60 hour job paying 60k, yet most job seekers simply look at the salary and not the cost. It would seem that wage competition should naturally extend to hours competition. I see this in some startups.. They might offer you $125k yet imply an 80 hour week is expected. So that salary is dramatically lower than a 100k position at 40 hours. Yet that differential is rarely discussed. I think a mandatory, government imposed rule ultimately distorts the market. What if someone is willing to work extra hours as a part of their salary? I'm not sure the government 'protecting' us can actually be quantified so clearly. If an average position pays $55k and requires 55 hours, then with new overtime rules, there's nothing preventing that salary to become $40k. My point is that business will always optimize -- a business will never pay more than the value of the input. What would likely happen is either increased hiring of no benefits part timers or an increase in the product price which would then drive inflation. There's some serious unintended consequences that the original author seems to gloss over. I am not sure who this guy is but unless he's paying his workers overtime, then I don't much care what he has to say. If he's a "wealthy" entrepreneur who doesn't like the rules, he's free to pay his workers more. He's also making the suggestion that "corporate" profits have grown-- which corporations? All of them? The majority of businesses are small businesses -- what effect would these rules have on them? I am not dismissing the premise, just suggesting that there is far more complexity and shades of gray involved.
- markbnj 12y ago
  You can't really negotiate on expected working hours, because the minute that comes up you will be off the list of prospects at most places. Salary is out there in the open and can be talked about, but the idea that you might not want to work 50 hours? Not so much.
  - alkonaut 12y ago
    I'm not working in the US but I'd definitely not take a job at any salary without knowing the office culture, overtime trends etc. I'd simply be very up front with that I'm not about to work more than 40h on average, and that the compensation is exactly for that. When I recruit people, I fully expect them to have the same idea. If this makes me less eligible for the position then that's all the better: I wasn't interested anyway.
kamaal 12y ago
Indian, here. And this article is dead right! This trend is getting common even here in India. In fact its already everywhere. My father routinely points out to me how ridiculous it has gotten. Back in his day(He was a bus driver, now a cab driver), you would be called to clock overtime anytime a fellow driver was on leave, sick or just absent due to same reason. And they would get paid handsomely for it. In fact overtime pay was the whole thing behind 'Work hard, get rich'. When I started my career in Software, and I would routinely do late nighters and weekends. He used to be surprised we were ready to do so much work for free. Ideally you could argue that a bus driver and a programmer have very different kinds of jobs, but then it the same vein programmers should get paid proportional to what impact their work has, but that doesn't happen either. I think the employers are having the best time in history. Which so many people ready to so much work for free, what else could you ask for?
johansch 12y ago
Swedish software company (not new-ish): Almost all developers work their nominal work hours. A few work a little more on their own choice. There is no pressure to do so, but it's also not frowned upon (unless it's obvious that there's some cultural misunderstandings going on, e.g. in the case of someone moving in from a non-scandinavian work culture, perhaps thinking that they really, really have to prove themselves by working hard to get to stay.) At crunch time sometimes key people get asked/ordered to work paid overtime (each overtime hour ends up something like 2x a normal hour, I forgot the exact constant). Estimate max 50 overtime hours/person/year, and not every year. There is some sort of social pressure that makes you feel bad when ordering this overtime.... Senior managers tend to work more hours, but they are also better compensated.
- jahaja 12y ago
  It's pretty common to have unpaid overtime (including crunch periods) in Sweden as well. Actually, I've not heard anyone having overtime pay while working in IT. The lack of overtime pay is usually "compensated" through an additional week of vacation or similar.
  - mgbmtl 12y ago
    If you are getting paid vacation, it has the double benefit that 1- you are getting paid, 2- you are forced to take time off to compensate and avoid burn out. Most companies I have dealt with in the past (in Quebec/Canada) usually compensated with 1.5h of vacation time for each hour of overtime. A normal work week is 37.5h, and overtime starts at 40h, so you have a bit of leg room. It's a good way to avoid systemic overtime and bad management.
  - johansch 12y ago
    In the first company I worked for for, that was the case (a sixth vacation week, compensating for overtime). I think it's a bad idea for both the employer and the (ambitious) employee though.
  - alkonaut 12y ago
    "Unpaid overtime" in this context usually means no extra compensation, other than the 1-1 compensation if working less next week or next month. That is, a 50h week followed by a 30h week. Ordered overtime still has to be paid, but just at the normal rate. Having this in your contract isn't very good, and you should have at least 10-20% extra compensation. An extra week vacation isn't a good compensation for this, but it's common, sadly.
dsr_ 12y ago
Nobody in my company is average. None of my friends are average. The odds are very good that, if you are reading HN, you are not an average person either. Please take that into consideration when discussing economic measures meant to improve the lives of the middle class. You are probably better educated, earn more, work in a less physically strenuous job, have better employment prospects, are more likely to start a company, have more respect from your management, and are more likely to leave a job in order to be happier. Now put yourself in the position of most people, which are all the opposites of the above: if you have a job, you are desperate not to lose it, because you are less likely to get another one. You don't have the financial resources to give up paychecks for a couple of months while you look for another job. Your company considers you an interchangeable, entirely replaceable cog. Have some empathy, people.
- falcolas 12y ago
  To be fair, even as an above average person, were still in the middle class, even if the upper portion of that class. Few of us in the software industry are rich, just very comfortable. But that comfort could fade very quickly, given a few scant months of unemployment.
  - callahad 12y ago
    In 2011, a $100,000 salary gave you a higher individual income than 93.4% of all working-age Americans [0]. Around that same time, the nationwide median salary for a software developer was $93,350 [1]. Thus, today the majority of developers are easily within the top 7% of compensation in the United States. If that's the middle class, then what does that make the other 93%, who are worse off? [0]: http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/cpstables/032011/perinc/new01_001.htm http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/cpstables/032011/perinc/new01... [1]: http://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/software-developers.htm http://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/s...
    - chrisseaton 12y ago
      I don't think class is defined solely in terms of income is it? Isn't class more about background, education, politics, lifestyle, tastes and culture? You can be poor but upper class, and you can be a millionaire but working class.
skylan_q 12y ago
Workers can't dictate working conditions in general until unemployment is close to or effectively 0. As long as there are unemployed, there people to hire at bottom dollar.
- skylan_q 12y ago
  Downvotes, but no rebuttal. Thanks for sharing your enlightenment.
mpat 12y ago
The narrative is that overtime hours represent hard-work and dedication towards the employer and its mission. As the average worker is looking for an opportunity to advance their position, they accept overtime as a necessity, and sometimes as a badge of honor. However, from a management perspective, unpaid overtime is great. It lets you be lazy in your management. You have no incentive to help an employee finish their tasks in 40 hours when you know they are going to stay 55 hours to complete it by brute force. If you assign a cost to those overtime hours, the manager now has an incentive to actively participate in your workstream by coaching or seeking efficiences to get you home in 40 hours. And you have the incentive to do likewise since your overtime hours now represent an additional cost to your employer. It will transform overtime from a badge of honor into a topic to be avoided unless truly necessary. It will no longer be the norm. We can discuss the virtues and detriments of labor unions at length, but they seemed to at least serve as a mechanism of protecting the worker from themselves (i.e. by placing a cap on hours worked, you could not stand out by putting in more time than everyone else). We as a society need to decide if we want to prioritize time incurred in the workplace, or if we want to judge worker quality off of other behaviors. If we want to de-emphasize time incurred, adding incremental cost to overtime hours would be a useful tool.
- harryh 12y ago
  However, from an employee perspective, paid overtime is great. It lets you be lazy in your work. You have no incentive to help the company finish it's tasks in 40 hours when you know they are going to pay you to stay 55 hours to complete it by brute force. I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm just saying that there are two sides to incentives and it's not obvious that one side is more important than the other.
  - intended 12y ago
    At which point you get fired. If you consistently can't meet deadlines and your boss isn't helping then people lose jobs. There's - always - some variant of these laws, and all states have people who can abuse it. For many jobs though, over time should be there, because many jobs have only a finite amount of output achievable by a human being.
greenyoda 12y ago
"The president could, on his own, restore federal overtime standards to where they were at their 1975 peak, covering the same 65 percent of salaried workers who were covered 40 years ago. If he did that, about 10.4 million Americans would suddenly be earning a lot more than they are now." But the president doesn't have control over the budget - Congress does. Raising pay without having the money to write the checks isn't really an option. And unless Congress wants to cut other government services, that extra money needs to come from somewhere, so this would just be a transfer of wealth from non-federal workers (whose taxes would be raised) to federal workers. Taxing the rich corporations to pay for this isn't easy either - they can afford armies of lobbyists to fight against higher taxes (and they'll be the ones making the big campaign contributions in the upcoming elections).
- eli_gottlieb 12y ago
  TFA isn't talking about Obama raising pay for federal workers, but instead about changing labor regulations that cover all workers, including the private sector.

99 points by wallflower 12y ago

altcognito 12y ago

It would make good political sense as well, as the conservative talking point is that hard work should be rewarded.

briandear 12y ago
Then workers ought to demand a raise if they are feeling undercompensated. The market pays what the market allows. Any distortion of that market would have deleterious effects somewhere in the chain. Any time you artificially increase the price of something, that rational response is to seek a substitute; which might mean that more overseas offices are opened and more jobs would be offshored. Which would actually increase the desired effects -- perhaps even increasing unemployment and wages. To paraphrase Jurassic Park: markets will always find a way.
- Hannan 12y ago
  >> Any distortion of that market would have deleterious effects somewhere in the chain. Regulation, collusion, and asymmetric information all seem to be "distortions" we're dealing with today; "The market pays what the market allows" seems to be an oversimplification as we're not operating in a free market.

Shivetya 12y ago

Go for it. As I stated before, his last two years can be used to fix a lot or cause a lot of strife. The President has shown little concern for others in his party and does love sticking it to those who don't agree with him. He really has nothing to lose, fixing the overtime rules would be a great step in restoring faith in the system; but I think 69k is aiming far too low. People should be allowed to work overtime, not be forced into it. Hence I am suggesting he aim really high, like the Roth income level cutoff. It already is a declaration of the government as the line between too well off to deserve the tax benefit.

yardie 12y ago
From the left, this president is considered far too accommodating the right. This is one of those issues that everyone can see needs to be fixed and would be popular enough to be incontestable. I'm sure the republicans will be against it because they did not think of it first.
- WBrentWilliams 12y ago
  To be fair, the President only works as hard as the votes he can get for his party. That's not over. Obama's job for the next two years is to do what he can to make it a possibility that another Democrat will come after him. That means he will do a lot, but whether or not he will take this specific action is hard to ascertain.

golemotron 12y ago

The thing I always heard is that if you are any hourly worker you are paid for your time. If you are a salaried worker you are paid to get the job done regardless of how much time it takes. I think I've heard that cited in legal cases. It seems like a useful distinction. Many jobs in the modern economy are flexible. You do your work whenever. Maybe you carve out six hours a day to program but if you need to take a client call or answer an email out of hours you do it and you don't feel bad because you can goof off during the day when you like to as long as the work gets done. Tracking this would be ridiculous and most employers will actually remove that flexibility in order to make sure that they comply with the law. People who like flexibility will lose and so will the economy. We'll become much less responsive.

myg204 12y ago
I don't think "many" jobs are flexible the way you describe them. At least from my experience.
Delmania 12y ago
Yes, salaried employees are paid to get the job done regardless of how long it takes, so long as it takes no less that 40 hours. Companies will gladly let you work 50, 60, or 80 hours a week with no additional compensation (except promises of promotions or bonuses), but if you try to work less than 40, that's not allowed.
- e40 12y ago
  but if you try to work less than 40, that's not allowed. This is completely false (in CA, at least). If I work 1 hour on Monday, say, and 12 on Tuesday, I'm paid for 8 hours for each day. In fact, my company works like this. I don't often work less than 8 hours, but it happens. Accounting knows how to handle it, and does like a pro. I've never been hassled.
  - Iftheshoefits 12y ago
    Your situation is absolutely far, far outside the norm, even (especially?) in the software industry.

nasalgoat 12y ago

IT workers are an exempt class is Canada.

snarfy 12y ago
In the US as well.
- otoburb 12y ago
  In case readers don't understand what "exempt" means as applied to hourly overtime: US: http://www.dol.gov/whd/flsa/ http://www.dol.gov/whd/flsa/ Canada: http://www.labour.gov.on.ca/english/es/pubs/guide/overtime.php http://www.labour.gov.on.ca/english/es/pubs/guide/overtime.p...
  - burkemw3 12y ago
    And specifically IT guidelines for US: http://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/fairpay/fs17e_computer.htm http://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/fairpay/fs17e_compute... Not all computer and technology related jobs are exempt. As I read it, the exemption focuses on employees that are primarily creating hardware and/or software.

tokenadult 12y ago

I read through the article, and I read through the comments here, and I did some online searching for other writings by the same author as the opinion essay kindly submitted here. The author describes himself as an "entrepreneur," but I haven't yet found some detailed sources about how his business ventures were formed or funded. I have found some strong criticism of his basic understanding of economics. As for the law on the topic, the author may be correct that the President acting alone can use executive authority under established law to let the income threshold for mandatory overtime pay rise. I haven't checked whether or not that is entirely in the hands of the President under current United States law. If so, then the only politics around the issue would be the politics of what an incumbent President already in the second half of his second term (a "lame duck" President) thinks is an appropriate response to this issue among all the other issues he is dealing with. What I don't know here for sure is how much any of this would matter economically to most people. Neither my wife nor I are employees of anyone (we both work as sole-proprietor business owners). We can work as many hours as we can stay awake without gaining overtime pay. What I hear about more often in the United States economy than employed wage-earners not being paid overtime is employed wage-earners not being offered even full-time hours, because shorter hours remove a requirement to provide employee health insurance benefits for many employers. I'm not at all sure what the author advocates here would have a big beneficial effect for the economy in general or for workers now working overtime in particular. Demand for labor working under any particular schedule is elastic, and maybe the proposal here will just result in fewer working hours being offered per employee.

sergiosgc 12y ago
> I'm not at all sure what the author advocates here would have a big beneficial effect for the economy in general or for workers now working overtime in particular. The author does a poor job explaining the macro-economic effects. You get a glimpse of the reasoning in the last few lines, where he states that the ratio of corporate profits over GDP doubled, from 6% to 12% of GDP from pre-80s to nowadays. We[1] have a problem with wealth distribution. I don't draw this problem in terms of fairness, because the concept of fairness is different from an individual to the next. We have a problem of income distribution that goes beyond the notion of fairness, becoming serious enough to be a menace to the stability of capitalism. A balanced economy has a thriving consumption component, which creates demand, and a thriving investment component, which drives supply. These go hand in hand. If there is too much demand, and investment falters, you get high inflation economies. However, if you get too much investment and demand falters, you suddenly have no investment opportunities and you get a slew of ill effects as capital is trying to find out where it can get returns. The most visible such effect is the appearance of investment bubbles and the crashes when these burst. People easily recognize the problems of investment-starved economies. The common citizen does not recognize the problems of demand-starved economies, because these are new. Here, we can witness first hand how young economic science is. Inflationary effects on supply starved economies were the norm in the XX century, so these are very well studied. Demand starved economies? Not so much. The US and the EU are the first ones (possibly, in a slightly different fashion, preceded by Japan). The causes for this do not lay squarely on politicians. It's easy to take a passionate view and find a target to blame. That is not the case, however. The current demand starved economy is caused by a big mix of factors. I've never ran the numbers, so take my opinion with a grain of salt: I'd wager the two biggest factors are: 1. Technological evolution, which increases demand while causing a deflation of costs (and consequently, on the circulation speed of money) 2. Globalization. We have moved a great deal of added value to developing countries, namely in the East. If Japan can be used as an example of what to expect, it will take two generations for demand to occur there. The globalization question is specially problematic. Not because there aren't enough resources for everyone. It is problematic because China is huge. The delay in consumption increase, coupled with huge inertia, can destroy western economies. The technological question is important, but it has been with us ever since the industrial revolution. We have been able to cope with it, and the same methods should apply. [1] I'm European. We are, however, in the same boat as North Americans in this problem, with slightly worse politicians. Europe is politically led by Germany. Historically, Germany is prone to fear investment starved economies so they are profoundly erring on identifying the issues and correctly acting).

briandear 12y ago

Are the workers powerless in this? I am not debating the premise, but it's a fair question. Wages are generally driven by market conditions (except in Union jobs, but that's another discussion..) so I wonder if the similar competition for wages ought not include hours worked. A 40 hour job paying 50k would be preferable to a 60 hour job paying 60k, yet most job seekers simply look at the salary and not the cost. It would seem that wage competition should naturally extend to hours competition. I see this in some startups.. They might offer you $125k yet imply an 80 hour week is expected. So that salary is dramatically lower than a 100k position at 40 hours. Yet that differential is rarely discussed. I think a mandatory, government imposed rule ultimately distorts the market. What if someone is willing to work extra hours as a part of their salary? I'm not sure the government 'protecting' us can actually be quantified so clearly. If an average position pays $55k and requires 55 hours, then with new overtime rules, there's nothing preventing that salary to become $40k. My point is that business will always optimize -- a business will never pay more than the value of the input. What would likely happen is either increased hiring of no benefits part timers or an increase in the product price which would then drive inflation. There's some serious unintended consequences that the original author seems to gloss over. I am not sure who this guy is but unless he's paying his workers overtime, then I don't much care what he has to say. If he's a "wealthy" entrepreneur who doesn't like the rules, he's free to pay his workers more. He's also making the suggestion that "corporate" profits have grown-- which corporations? All of them? The majority of businesses are small businesses -- what effect would these rules have on them? I am not dismissing the premise, just suggesting that there is far more complexity and shades of gray involved.

markbnj 12y ago
You can't really negotiate on expected working hours, because the minute that comes up you will be off the list of prospects at most places. Salary is out there in the open and can be talked about, but the idea that you might not want to work 50 hours? Not so much.
- alkonaut 12y ago
  I'm not working in the US but I'd definitely not take a job at any salary without knowing the office culture, overtime trends etc. I'd simply be very up front with that I'm not about to work more than 40h on average, and that the compensation is exactly for that. When I recruit people, I fully expect them to have the same idea. If this makes me less eligible for the position then that's all the better: I wasn't interested anyway.

kamaal 12y ago

Indian, here. And this article is dead right! This trend is getting common even here in India. In fact its already everywhere. My father routinely points out to me how ridiculous it has gotten. Back in his day(He was a bus driver, now a cab driver), you would be called to clock overtime anytime a fellow driver was on leave, sick or just absent due to same reason. And they would get paid handsomely for it. In fact overtime pay was the whole thing behind 'Work hard, get rich'. When I started my career in Software, and I would routinely do late nighters and weekends. He used to be surprised we were ready to do so much work for free. Ideally you could argue that a bus driver and a programmer have very different kinds of jobs, but then it the same vein programmers should get paid proportional to what impact their work has, but that doesn't happen either. I think the employers are having the best time in history. Which so many people ready to so much work for free, what else could you ask for?

johansch 12y ago

Swedish software company (not new-ish): Almost all developers work their nominal work hours. A few work a little more on their own choice. There is no pressure to do so, but it's also not frowned upon (unless it's obvious that there's some cultural misunderstandings going on, e.g. in the case of someone moving in from a non-scandinavian work culture, perhaps thinking that they really, really have to prove themselves by working hard to get to stay.) At crunch time sometimes key people get asked/ordered to work paid overtime (each overtime hour ends up something like 2x a normal hour, I forgot the exact constant). Estimate max 50 overtime hours/person/year, and not every year. There is some sort of social pressure that makes you feel bad when ordering this overtime.... Senior managers tend to work more hours, but they are also better compensated.

jahaja 12y ago
It's pretty common to have unpaid overtime (including crunch periods) in Sweden as well. Actually, I've not heard anyone having overtime pay while working in IT. The lack of overtime pay is usually "compensated" through an additional week of vacation or similar.
- mgbmtl 12y ago
  If you are getting paid vacation, it has the double benefit that 1- you are getting paid, 2- you are forced to take time off to compensate and avoid burn out. Most companies I have dealt with in the past (in Quebec/Canada) usually compensated with 1.5h of vacation time for each hour of overtime. A normal work week is 37.5h, and overtime starts at 40h, so you have a bit of leg room. It's a good way to avoid systemic overtime and bad management.
- johansch 12y ago
  In the first company I worked for for, that was the case (a sixth vacation week, compensating for overtime). I think it's a bad idea for both the employer and the (ambitious) employee though.
- alkonaut 12y ago
  "Unpaid overtime" in this context usually means no extra compensation, other than the 1-1 compensation if working less next week or next month. That is, a 50h week followed by a 30h week. Ordered overtime still has to be paid, but just at the normal rate. Having this in your contract isn't very good, and you should have at least 10-20% extra compensation. An extra week vacation isn't a good compensation for this, but it's common, sadly.

dsr_ 12y ago

Nobody in my company is average. None of my friends are average. The odds are very good that, if you are reading HN, you are not an average person either. Please take that into consideration when discussing economic measures meant to improve the lives of the middle class. You are probably better educated, earn more, work in a less physically strenuous job, have better employment prospects, are more likely to start a company, have more respect from your management, and are more likely to leave a job in order to be happier. Now put yourself in the position of most people, which are all the opposites of the above: if you have a job, you are desperate not to lose it, because you are less likely to get another one. You don't have the financial resources to give up paychecks for a couple of months while you look for another job. Your company considers you an interchangeable, entirely replaceable cog. Have some empathy, people.

falcolas 12y ago
To be fair, even as an above average person, were still in the middle class, even if the upper portion of that class. Few of us in the software industry are rich, just very comfortable. But that comfort could fade very quickly, given a few scant months of unemployment.
- callahad 12y ago
  In 2011, a $100,000 salary gave you a higher individual income than 93.4% of all working-age Americans [0]. Around that same time, the nationwide median salary for a software developer was $93,350 [1]. Thus, today the majority of developers are easily within the top 7% of compensation in the United States. If that's the middle class, then what does that make the other 93%, who are worse off? [0]: http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/cpstables/032011/perinc/new01_001.htm http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/cpstables/032011/perinc/new01... [1]: http://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/software-developers.htm http://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/s...
  - chrisseaton 12y ago
    I don't think class is defined solely in terms of income is it? Isn't class more about background, education, politics, lifestyle, tastes and culture? You can be poor but upper class, and you can be a millionaire but working class.

skylan_q 12y ago

Workers can't dictate working conditions in general until unemployment is close to or effectively 0. As long as there are unemployed, there people to hire at bottom dollar.

skylan_q 12y ago
Downvotes, but no rebuttal. Thanks for sharing your enlightenment.

mpat 12y ago

The narrative is that overtime hours represent hard-work and dedication towards the employer and its mission. As the average worker is looking for an opportunity to advance their position, they accept overtime as a necessity, and sometimes as a badge of honor. However, from a management perspective, unpaid overtime is great. It lets you be lazy in your management. You have no incentive to help an employee finish their tasks in 40 hours when you know they are going to stay 55 hours to complete it by brute force. If you assign a cost to those overtime hours, the manager now has an incentive to actively participate in your workstream by coaching or seeking efficiences to get you home in 40 hours. And you have the incentive to do likewise since your overtime hours now represent an additional cost to your employer. It will transform overtime from a badge of honor into a topic to be avoided unless truly necessary. It will no longer be the norm. We can discuss the virtues and detriments of labor unions at length, but they seemed to at least serve as a mechanism of protecting the worker from themselves (i.e. by placing a cap on hours worked, you could not stand out by putting in more time than everyone else). We as a society need to decide if we want to prioritize time incurred in the workplace, or if we want to judge worker quality off of other behaviors. If we want to de-emphasize time incurred, adding incremental cost to overtime hours would be a useful tool.

harryh 12y ago
However, from an employee perspective, paid overtime is great. It lets you be lazy in your work. You have no incentive to help the company finish it's tasks in 40 hours when you know they are going to pay you to stay 55 hours to complete it by brute force. I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm just saying that there are two sides to incentives and it's not obvious that one side is more important than the other.
- intended 12y ago
  At which point you get fired. If you consistently can't meet deadlines and your boss isn't helping then people lose jobs. There's - always - some variant of these laws, and all states have people who can abuse it. For many jobs though, over time should be there, because many jobs have only a finite amount of output achievable by a human being.

greenyoda 12y ago

"The president could, on his own, restore federal overtime standards to where they were at their 1975 peak, covering the same 65 percent of salaried workers who were covered 40 years ago. If he did that, about 10.4 million Americans would suddenly be earning a lot more than they are now." But the president doesn't have control over the budget - Congress does. Raising pay without having the money to write the checks isn't really an option. And unless Congress wants to cut other government services, that extra money needs to come from somewhere, so this would just be a transfer of wealth from non-federal workers (whose taxes would be raised) to federal workers. Taxing the rich corporations to pay for this isn't easy either - they can afford armies of lobbyists to fight against higher taxes (and they'll be the ones making the big campaign contributions in the upcoming elections).

eli_gottlieb 12y ago
TFA isn't talking about Obama raising pay for federal workers, but instead about changing labor regulations that cover all workers, including the private sector.