[HN Gopher] Is Being Salaried a Scam?
___________________________________________________________________
Is Being Salaried a Scam?
Author : jasonhansel
Score : 136 points
Date : 2021-03-14 15:01 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.askamanager.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.askamanager.org)
| duxup wrote:
| >Being salaried is often a scam.
|
| >Not always. It depends on how a company implements it. But
| often.
|
| I'd really like to see something that backs up this "often" and
| how many people really work more hours because they're 'expected
| to' or ... choose to.
|
| I'm reminded of OSHA rules that dictate workplace safety.
| Sometimes it's argued that they're there to keep employers from
| creating unsafe conditions, but when you read accident reports
| you find folks willing to take personal risks to the benefit of
| no one ... all on their own.
|
| There are employers who will pressure folks, but IMO a lot of
| folks who misinterpret / don't deal with what they think are
| pressures to work more ... and folks who just do it on their
| own...
|
| I think this is all a lot more nuanced and 'often' is presented
| here without much reason to think that's accurate.
| notaslave wrote:
| In my experience, as others pointed out, its a one way street. If
| we work 6 hours a day instead of 8, we will get fired. But if
| they make us work 15 hours a day, nothing happens to them.
|
| I am a salaried/exempt employee working for a client. My employer
| charges the client per hour, and theoretically, I am allowed to
| get paid for the extra hours I work. But my immediate manager
| won't allow it because the budget is allocated for the year, and
| if I bill extra hours, there will be a shortage of budget (or at
| least that's what he tells me). The client manager pushes so much
| work on to us, entire team is fed up. Last week, we were asked to
| work from 7 am to 11:30 pm, pretty much non stop. After lunch at
| 12:30 pm, the only time I got to eat was at 11:30 pm, nearly 11
| hours later. From 5 pm, I didn't even get a chance to get up from
| my seat. I am pretty sure slaves were given breaks to have food.
| They treat us lower than slaves. Note that this is in addition to
| the 8-10 hours I have been working for the last 2 weeks (not
| counting lunch or other breaks).
| bradleyjg wrote:
| _In my experience, as others pointed out, its a one way street.
| If we work 6 hours a day instead of 8, we will get fired. But
| if they make us work 15 hours a day, nothing happens to them._
|
| The parallel action is quitting. I can understand not wanting
| to quit without an alternative, but I assume you're looking?!?
| francis-io wrote:
| I'm sorry for the situation you are in but you allow this to
| happen. You can vote with your feet and leave. I know its
| harder for some people, but that's just life. Decisions like
| this are never easy. If you can't afford to leave then you best
| be saving all the money you can each month to support you when
| you do leave. If you can't find another job then you best be
| training and up skilling to an in demand skill. I'm sorry to be
| blunt but I hear this same thing all the time, and people just
| let this happen to them.
|
| For what it's worth, I'm a contractor in the UK. I get paid
| about twice as much a day then a salaried person. I change
| clients every 3 months to every 2 years. I have 8 months of
| living expenses in the bank. If a client wants me to do
| something then fine, but they pay me. I don't get any holiday
| or benefits, but the extra money makes up for it. Any time off
| is unpaid, which I feel is how it should be. I had 3 months off
| at the start of last year when all temp work dried up due to
| covid, but apart from that, things have been better then ever.
|
| Maybe I just have the personality type for this kind of working
| arrangement, but it seems like a no brainer to me. You come in
| on a much more equal level with any client or employer.
|
| I also think this has the added benefit of forcing interview
| practice and keeping up to date with marketable skills. I
| really think it's the anti fragile approach.
|
| Please people, take back some contol. Sell your skills at what
| they are really worth.
| Nursie wrote:
| Same picture here, I would find it very hard to go back to
| being an employee now. The money is great, but the
| comparative freedom and respect for my autonomy are better.
|
| I enjoy starting something new every so often, and have got
| good at rapid onboarding, and contributing from day 1.
| diob wrote:
| This is quite a privileged comment. Please realize that not
| everyone has the luxury to up and leave.
|
| This person might have tons of obligations, such as bills to
| pay, family to take care of, and depending on their location
| not much mobility to just "find a new job". It's weird to
| just discount an entire person's life and pretend there's
| such an easy solution they're not taking.
|
| What's more, it reeks of survivorship bias. There's likely a
| good chunk of folks who have done what you did but failed
| (either due to bad luck, or something else). What's more, the
| price of failure differs for everyone. Some have family to
| fall back on, others have friends, and others have a societal
| safety net.
|
| Empathy is hard, but please try and think about how your
| situation is likely not the norm. By all means feel free to
| give advice, but try to leave out anecdotal assumptions.
| Strive to be aware that not everyone has the same
| opportunities or outcomes, even with the same inputs. It
| sucks, but that's just life, as you said.
| francis-io wrote:
| In my first paragraph I mentioned that if it was not
| possible to make this situation happen then at least not
| work towards it. Everyone should be able to put 10% of a
| salary away into savings to work on getting the freedom to
| do this.
|
| If we assume a tech skill set, more and more jobs are
| becoming fully remote, making location not so much of an
| issue.
|
| As for survivorship bias, I feel like you are somewhat
| right. I actually got into this type of work due to getting
| fired, so I was already at a low point with not much to
| lose.
|
| As for empthay, that's exactly what I have and why I made
| this comment. I'm for the most part totally anonymous here.
| I don't have many posts or any kind of reputation. I put
| the time into making the comment because I truly belive
| that people can benefit from the change in mindset. I have
| nothing to gain, all I want to do is help people find the
| kind of freedom from oppressive working situations that I
| found.
|
| We have all had struggles in our career, and some more than
| others, but the ones that succeed over the long term
| usually have the ability to self evaluate and look
| internally, rather than give an excuse why they can't do
| something.
| diob wrote:
| I appreciate you taking the time to reply, I want you to
| know I'm not trying to attack you, just expand your
| mindset.
|
| It's very common for others to attribute their own
| failures to something outside their control, but look at
| others and attribute those people's failures to things
| inside their control. They also do the opposite for
| successes. Which I suppose in my own way, I might be
| doing to yours. But do know I think your success likely
| took both hard work and luck, and without the hard work
| it would have likely not panned out.
|
| I disagree that everyone "should be able to put 10%
| away". It's simply not possible for everyone, and even if
| they do emergencies happen (car breaks down, sickness,
| etc.). Once again, you're speaking from a realm of
| opinion and not reality.
|
| I don't think anyone would disagree that mindset is
| important, and continuing to try and persevere is
| important as well. But I do think folks disagree on it
| always panning out in the end.
|
| Even you, at one point in the future, either due to
| illness or misfortune, might end up needing more than a
| shift in mindset to survive or dig yourself out.
|
| Empathy is about more than advice or optimistic mindsets,
| it's about realizing we should help each other, because
| sometimes things really are out of our control.
|
| It's about listening to this person, really listening,
| and understanding their situation before offering
| platitudes.
| tartoran wrote:
| Not sure if the OP is in this situation but workers on work
| visas are often held captive in such situations and is nearly
| impossible for them to escape. I know a guy who had to go
| back to India, he could not take it any longer. So leaving is
| the only escape but even that is not an option sometimes as
| they get indebted to obtain such positions and need to pay
| that back before having the option to leave.
| francis-io wrote:
| I know that as a fact here in the UK with certain agencies
| that I will leave Unnamed. I've essentially been told as
| much by people I've worked with. This is obviously a
| special case that I don't really have a solution for. I
| guess this is all part of the greater brain drain from the
| world to the first movers in the tech space. This will
| constantly keep home counties from developing when all the
| skilled workers leave the country.
| underwater wrote:
| Your immediate manager is supposed to be protect your from
| that. They're the ones who are hosed when everyone burns out
| and quits.
|
| On the flip side, if people don't quit and you succeed in
| delivering the project, your client manager will claim the
| credit. And that level of output becomes the new expectation
| for your team.
| mavelikara wrote:
| > But my immediate manager won't allow it because the budget is
| allocated for the year, and if I bill extra hours, there will
| be a shortage of budget (or at least that's what he tells me).
|
| I didn't understand this. Are you talking about budget at your
| employer, or at your client?
| the_jeremy wrote:
| I don't see any new information in here.
|
| Corporations try to maximize profits, individuals try to maximize
| money and free time. Corporations have more power than an
| individual when trying to bargain. However, corporations don't
| really care about hours, they care about your performance reviews
| (though your performance reviews can be easily colored by how
| much time your reviewers believe you work). I think it would be
| interesting to see how many people here spend under 40 hr/wk on
| their full time job.
| donbrae wrote:
| I work 31 hours over four days, which I guess is somewhere
| between part time and full time. For comparison, the standard,
| full-time working week here (Scotland) for private- and public-
| sector office-based jobs is 35 or 37.5 hours. (I choose to work
| less so I can spend more time on side-projects that make no
| money.)
| bigmattystyles wrote:
| The 40 hour part can be. It's conveniently ignored by management
| and many workers have convinced themselves that it's noble to do
| more than you're paid for. Combine that with peer pressure and
| you get what we have. Personally, I've found that in the vast
| majority of cases, any more than 35-40 hours per week
| consistently yields diminishing returns, even with busy work.
| I've been fortunate in my life with great management, where I'm
| on average 40 hours a week, and if I do pull a few 50-60 hours
| per week, there's an unspoken agreement that I'll do a couple 30
| hour weeks. But you shouldn't have to luck out with good
| management.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I'm pretty convinced that if I could have my engineers work 4-5
| times 4-5 hours blocks of deep, focused work per week - meaning
| work that is at the very limit of their cognitive and
| programming abilities, and do another 8-10 hours of the
| necessary corporate overhead, that we'd collectively get at
| least twice as much done per year.
|
| One difficulty is that a lot of the work that needs doing isn't
| anywhere near anyone's cognitive limit, but even with that set
| aside, it seems impossible to pivot to such a world with teams
| beyond a very small total company size.
| b3kart wrote:
| > a lot of the work that needs doing isn't anywhere near
| anyone's cognitive limit
|
| Is this sort of work potentially automate-able?
| bigmattystyles wrote:
| Most of them are not even worthy of automation. We waste
| time doing processes that are orthogonal or were shoehorned
| in because they worked for another team or division. But I
| get it, we somehow have to communicate with the remainder
| of an organization. I guess it's the least bad of all the
| alternatives, especially if the system is open to change
| through reflection.
| CuriousNinja wrote:
| This is because the US labor laws are messed up. In other
| countries, you get paid overtime even if you are salaried.
| Gatsky wrote:
| Can verify. In Australia being salaried is definitely superior.
| LilBytes wrote:
| Anecdote: I'm in Australia, salaried. And I'm getting fucked.
| 200+ hours over time over the course of last year. 0% pay
| rise. But we got $1000 stocks pre-tax which equated to a
| little over 0.6% pay rise. Yay /s
|
| I'm voting with my feet though. Should be getting a job offer
| (hopefully!) in the next few days.
| walshemj wrote:
| Not in the UK and other countries.
| rleigh wrote:
| Depends on the company. Some certainly do.
| [deleted]
| matz1 wrote:
| In a way Yes, my actual work hour is way less than half of
| fulltime but yet get paid fulltime salary.
| DigitallyFidget wrote:
| It depends on the industry and the job or company. Period.
| There's no universal answer to this except "it depends".
|
| At my company, you absolutely work more and get less if you're
| salary than hourly. Overtime is both common and expected. Hourly
| will make more than their managers if a year is busy, by a hefty
| amount sometimes, but they both will work the same amount of
| hours.
| dan-robertson wrote:
| So I feel like this is basically irrelevant to most people. Maybe
| having hourly pay and overtime is better but it's generally not a
| simple choice between exempt or non-exempt employment because the
| exempt positions tend to be more highly paid and therefore more
| desirable. Moreover, if you're an efficient worker, you may feel
| there are better incentives for you to be paid for that
| efficiency if you're salaried.
|
| It also feels irrelevant for me (and most people on HN?) because
| the sort of work I do (computer programming) tends to be
| salaried. There are self-employed contractors but I feel like
| they don't count as they're also exempt (I think) and they get to
| choose their rates. When I saw the title I thought it would be
| comparing employment to contracting or entrepreneurialism. I feel
| like the things that will have a big impact for compensation are
| more long-term, discretionary, or growth related (if you're going
| to get an x% pay rise every year then your starting pay makes a
| big difference to the total over all the years), eg
| promotions/equity/bonuses/switching employers.
| maxharris wrote:
| I saved a significant amount of the money I made as a salaried
| employee, about $110k in total, over a five-year period. What did
| I do with it? I bought Tesla stock right after the crash last
| March, and now I'm retired at age 40. I recently moved out of
| California into in a luxury apartment in Tennessee, where prices
| and taxes are low. I am completely free to do as I please.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22970810
| notsuoh wrote:
| Based on your other comments you're attributing your stock pick
| to an ability on your part and not blind luck like it is.
|
| Socrates said that he's better off because he knows nothing and
| knows he knows nothing, whereas others know nothing but think
| they know something. Paraphrasing, but this seems applicable to
| your situation.
| nojito wrote:
| So you gambled and got lucky.
|
| You really shouldn't assume that your story is the norm.
| maxharris wrote:
| "Luck" is a way of coping with the fact that someone else did
| the work required to choose wisely and you didn't. It is
| especially insidious because it ensures poverty in direct
| proportion to the extent you rely upon it to guide your
| actions.
| DC1350 wrote:
| The luck part is that you could have made the same
| prediction about lots of different companies that didn't
| increase as much as Tesla. I think it's reasonable to take
| credit for predicting the direction of the stock, but
| 10xing your money in a single year is lucky.
| hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
| What advice do you have for somebody who is yet to retire?
| Buy a stock which is about to boom?
| maxharris wrote:
| If you don't have a lot of money to invest, it's far
| better to put that cash into developing yourself. That
| can be as simple as reading books such as _The Innovator
| 's Dilemma_ by Clayton Christensen or _The Virtue of
| Selfishness_ by Ayn Rand, or following an interest you
| already have (mine are things like machining, chemistry,
| structural engineering, neon art).
|
| If you have a business idea, one of the best books I've
| read is _The Right It: Why So Many Ideas Fail and How to
| Make Sure Yours Succeed_ by Alberto Savoia. Making stuff
| is a lot easier than learning whether or not you 're on
| the right track without spending everything you have.
|
| The last thing I'd suggest is to be concerned with
| history and America's oncoming fascist trainwreck.
| Peikoff wrote _The Ominous Parallels_ forty years ago,
| and his words are every bit as chilling as they are
| prescient.
| hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
| How does any of that relate to investing in Tesla?
| dataangel wrote:
| > The Virtue of Selfishness by Ayn Rand
|
| Oh yeah, buying into a cult whose entire appeal is
| convincing selfish people they can stop feeling bad about
| it, you're very very developed.
|
| Also hysterical that this nose-to-the-grindstone approach
| is what you're advocating when you retired over a one
| time return from a super volatile stock.
| eulers_secret wrote:
| Agreed, putting all your eggs in one basket like this is just
| gambling. This person got lucky, but make no mistake anyone
| else reading this: IT IS STUPID AND YOU WILL PROBABLY LOSE.
| MOST DO.
|
| If you want to do something with your $100K, use it as a
| house down-payment or consider mutual funds. Or just yeet it
| into GME, I'm not a financial advisor.
| WWWWH wrote:
| More realistically, he was just speaking casually. It's
| highly unlikely anyone would be stupid enough to put
| everything into one stock.
| maxharris wrote:
| If you don't know what Williams %R is, can't fathom the
| concept of normalized average true range, have never
| studied corporate history in the automotive and computer
| industries, and have no idea of the effects of monetary
| policy, you might just be gambling. Fortune really does
| favor the curious :)
| syspec wrote:
| Weird flex, but okay
| maxharris wrote:
| My linked post is timestamped and proved to be quite correct.
| I actually think it's quite helpful, especially to people
| that are actually capable of learning from others.
| morpheos137 wrote:
| I don't see how it is a scam. You just divide your weekly salary
| by average number of hours you work per week to get your
| effective hourly wage. The only scammy thing about it is if the
| company leads you to believe you will be working 40 hours a week
| on average and you actually end up working 60. Long work hours is
| not a good thing regardless if you are salary or hourly. Salary
| workers typically have greater self direction in how they
| accomplish their work assignments. In a well functioning
| workplace NOT having over time compensation as is the case for
| salary workers can incentivise productivity.
| lrvick wrote:
| This is why I switched to being a consultant.
|
| I have several clients willing to pay my full rate for as many
| hours as I want to work but they pay me every month on retainer
| for a small minimum I know pays the bills, and to make sure they
| have access to my experience when they really need it even if the
| minimum hours are not always used every month.
|
| If I choose to work a 30 hour week I am paid for 30 hours.
| Likewise for a 60 hour week.
|
| Lawyers figured out this structure ages ago and I feel like more
| engineers would benefit from doing the same.
| dd_roger wrote:
| The premise of the article is incorrect to begin with:
|
| > The way it's supposed to work is if you're salaried/exempt,
| you're getting paid to do a job, not for a specific number of
| hours.
|
| No, I'm paid to work 40 hours per week regardless of the
| workload, as per my employment contract. If I ever have to work
| over time, then I get one hour of PTO for each hour of OT.
|
| I don't know if it's an American thing to assume that all
| companies must be predatory toward their employees or if it's
| just the internet populist bubble that favors such content, but
| neither I nor anyone I know can relate to these kinds of
| articles.
| walshemj wrote:
| Your not salaried then ie no fixed hours
| plorkyeran wrote:
| The work arrangement you are describing is not that of an
| exempt salaried employee.
| cwhiz wrote:
| > No, I'm paid to work 40 hours per week regardless of the
| workload, as per my employment contract.
|
| That's not salaried exempt. What you're describing is closer to
| hourly pay. However, it's not a perfect fit because hourly pay
| is 1.5x after 40.
| dd_roger wrote:
| My bad, I wasn't familiar with this working arrangement and
| the vocabulary around it. What I'm describing is simply known
| as being salaried in my country (not hourly paid as OT is
| compensated with PTO rather than financial compensation), the
| vast majority of white collars have such contracts here.
| motohagiography wrote:
| I avoid salaried roles when I can because the IP ownership rules
| are way too onerous. They own your brain, all of it, and if you
| have any creative habits at all, your employer has an option on
| the output. Fuck that. It's an indenture. The trade-off of
| salaried roles is the promise of stability and status, and in
| this day and age, these are both bold lies.
|
| You'd think this is the luck of being in a high demand field -
| except that low-demand and even competitive fields like
| construction, teaching, and pretty much everything outside white
| collar corporate work does not have this brain ownership clause.
| It seems like anything with "status," trades your brain, which is
| hilarious, because you essentially become corporate property in
| exchange for some flattery.
|
| If you need a job, take one, take the money, and use it to get
| into a financial position where you have bargaining leverage to
| own your brain and the freedom to use your own hours.
| bfung wrote:
| Don't try doing a startup with contractors - you'll have to pay
| someone salary and equity.
| omosubi wrote:
| "The three most harmful addictions are heroin, carbohydrates and
| a monthly salary." - Nassim Taleb
| didibus wrote:
| Yes it is, but also not really. Basically, you get what you can
| with the leverage you have. Tech jobs seem to have gotten
| themselves in a salaried position, and I think that's just the
| compromise that tech workers were able to negotiate with
| companies.
|
| It be really nice to just clock in and clock out. Not care about
| how much work is remaining, and operate like a barista, I just
| show up, serve up some lines of code, a few code reviews, hand
| out a few estimates and suggest a technical approach to business
| and then on the dot clock out.
|
| If the company feels things aren't going fast enough, they'd need
| to work harder to not waste my precious clock-in time, keep me
| busy on the most important things always, or pay me double for
| extra time.
|
| But instead they started to approach employees with the salaried
| proposition, and some people said yes. So here we are.
|
| Now it's not that bad, you need to learn to manage your own time,
| your own work/life balance. It does mean you can decide what hour
| to show up to work and when to leave (to some extent). It means
| your launch break can be twice as long if you want it to be
| sometimes.
|
| It also means that if things aren't going as fast as they need
| too, it's your responsability to manage your time and commitments
| better. It's up to you now to make sure you are focused and kept
| working on the most important thing, that you say no to
| distractions and make sure the processes favor productivity
| instead of churn and endless debates. It's up to you to make sure
| you don't take on work that won't deliver on expectations, and
| thus up to you to manage those expectations, etc.
|
| But it means sometimes you can take more vacation than you
| technically have to take as long as your manager and team can
| work them in, etc.
|
| The biggest downside to me is that it makes the environment more
| competitive. Basically how much your coworkers will choose to
| work will set the standards, and it'll be hard for you to do
| less. If people start responding to emails at night and on
| weekends, if people make late fridays the norm, or extra Sunday
| "catch up on todos" a norm, you kind of have too as well now. So
| when you have a family and outside commitments I think it gets
| harder to manage, because you can't easily plan around variable
| hours, you have a more unpredictable schedule, you don't really
| know if next month will be extra busy and you'll need to push in
| to the evenings or if it'll be the opposite, etc.
| walshemj wrote:
| "gotten themselves"???? professional jobs have been salaried
| since for ever.
| twirlock wrote:
| It is when they turn around and try to pretend you're not, i.e.
| when they try to take away all the consideration for exempt
| status and treat you like an hourly worker while still milking
| extra time out of you.
| whateveracct wrote:
| i'm sure many newly-remote workers are learning that when they
| aren't forced to have butts in seats in the office 40hrs/week,
| there's opportunity to work 20-30hrs/week without consequences -
| thus hugely increasing their effective hourly wage.
|
| so it cuts both ways.
| samsonradu wrote:
| Actually 20-30hrs/week might be an overshoot. I'm surprised to
| see that for a lot of my friends teleworking means about 1h of
| work per day and an occasional meeting.
| matwood wrote:
| Now the question is what is 'work', and what is the company
| paying for? Knowledge work is tricky because it straddles the
| line between hours worked and knowledge applied.
|
| A junior employee might work 10h/day to figure out a
| problem/get something working/etc... whereas a senior person
| may solve the same thing in 1h. This isn't the mythical 10x
| programmer, it's just experience and knowledge coming out
| when needed. The one with more knowledge also tends to
| accelerate their acquisition. One, because they can get the
| work done so quickly, they have time to keep expanding their
| knowledge. Two, they have all this groundwork knowledge which
| makes it easier to expand on.
|
| So while it may look like your friend only 'works' for
| 1h/day, you could be missing all the time spent so that your
| friend could finish the work in only 1h.
| samsonradu wrote:
| I follow your point, though knowing more about them I
| actually incline for a different conclusion.
|
| There is a lot of slack in the corporate economy which
| became more transparent under wfh.
| matwood wrote:
| > There is a lot of slack in the corporate economy which
| became more transparent under wfh.
|
| Sure, but that's nothing new. When I was younger I worked
| in a big corp type job. After a few weeks I noticed this
| older guy would go play tennis at lunch a few times/week,
| and then take a nap under his desk afterwards. Normally,
| he would then leave around 3pm. One day after this
| happened, I ask someone what's this guys deal. Turns out,
| he's the only one who knew how to work on system XYZ.
| Others had some vague idea in case this guy was hit by a
| bus, but he did 99.9% of the work on this system. Also
| turns out, it didn't need a lot of work done.
| devadvance wrote:
| This could be helpful to some folks. I appreciate the clear
| distinction between "salaried" and "exempt", as that's something
| I've seen many folks misunderstand.
|
| It's worth noting that, if you're in the United States, minimum
| salary for exemption also varies by state [0]. For example, as of
| 2021 in California, for many professions it is now 58k USD.
|
| [0] https://sbshrs.adpinfo.com/blog/exempt-employees-minimum-
| sal...
| [deleted]
| mkl95 wrote:
| Are mandatory, unpaid lunch breaks a scam? 1-2 hour mandatory,
| unpaid breaks are the norm in my country (Spain). This means even
| if you WFH (no commute), you will actually spend somewhere
| between 9 and 10 hours at work every day.
|
| Another custom here is doing a few minutes of unpaid overtime
| every day. If you add both things, a full time employee who works
| from home spends somewhere between 45 and 55 hours at work every
| week.
|
| Is wage theft still wage theft if it's part of a place's culture?
| My "hot take" is that it 100% is.
| tkiolp4 wrote:
| > Are mandatory, unpaid lunch breaks a scam?
|
| IMHO, yes.
| ignoramous wrote:
| One of the most striking contrast between salaried professionals
| and founders I know is that of Andy Jassy (CEO at AWS) and Jeff
| Lawson (once a Product Manager at AWS and now CEO and co-founder
| at Twilio):
|
| AWS is probably worth $500B today. Twilio is around 10x less at
| $60B.
|
| Lawson's estimated net-worth is ~$2.5B whilst Jassy's 5x less at
| ~$450M; and both have been leading their respective businesses
| since the beginning.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Presumably, there was a lower (perceived) probability of
| achieving the $2.5B than the $450M. The same as deciding to
| work for a start up than FAANG.
| ghaff wrote:
| Furthermore, at that level of wealth, it's pretty much just
| keeping score. I'm not going to feel sorry for someone with
| $450M even if, as in Jassy's case, he thoroughly deserves it
| and more.
| beforeolives wrote:
| > For most salaried people at my company who I've spoken to, it
| sounds like the norm is minimum 45-hour weeks, with bad weeks
| being as much as 60 hours. Getting breaks or lunches seems rare,
| if it happens at all, and work can bleed into other areas of your
| life.
|
| This is very specific to the employer and doesn't have much to do
| with salaries vs hourly. To jump from there to "salaried is a
| scam" is a bit too far.
| [deleted]
| jonplackett wrote:
| I'm curious, in the US, is there a link between being salaried
| and having health insurance? I'm in the UK and our company gives
| full time employees health insurance but freelancers (the hourly
| paid workers) not. Is that the not the same in the US? Because
| that would seem like a big deal.
| stonesweep wrote:
| It's based on number of hours worked, rather than hourly vs.
| salary. The Affordable Healthcare Act defines the number at 30
| hours a week for more than 120 days a year where an employer
| must offer insurance.
| jonplackett wrote:
| That's interesting. Thanks. In that case hourly work really
| does seem better, if you can get it reliably anyway.
| walshemj wrote:
| Normally beyond a certain seniority point you become
| salaried in the uk almost all Managerial or Professional
| jobs are salaried.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| It's not all employers though, only those with 50 or more
| employees.
| benlivengood wrote:
| What does supplemental health insurance look like in the UK
| when the NHS is supposed to cover most things? Is it just the
| ability to go to private clinics or does it cover elective
| surgeries at a high percentage or provide international
| coverage?
| jonplackett wrote:
| It depends a bit on the cover you have. 'Full' cover means
| diagnostics + treatment so you won't need to make an
| appointment with your NHS GP at all, you see a private doctor
| and then a specialist and if needed get treatment.
|
| Other cheaper insurance just covers treatment once you've
| been diagnosed by the NHS.
|
| Private insurance isn't required by any means, but it
| generally means skipping waiting lists, which can be long for
| some things - usually the annoying / potentially painful but
| ultimately not life-threatening things.
|
| If you have cancer or something like that, generally the NHS
| is amazing. If you have something less serious it could take
| them a while to get around to you - and having spent the last
| year dealing with Covid I would expect that to be
| exacerbated.
| duxup wrote:
| Very generally, salaried jobs tend to pay better, and include
| better benefits, flexibility, paid time off, etc.
|
| It's not a direct connection that salaried must be better pay
| and benefits, but it is how it works out most of the time.
|
| Also I really question the premise of this article so this
| 'scam' thing should be taken with a grain of salt, a lot of
| them.
| ricardobayes wrote:
| Is this some sort of a reverse psychology scheme to make being an
| employee uncool? In an ideal vulture capitalist world everyone is
| a contractor and is one bad performance report away from being
| fired instantly without severance.
| david-cako wrote:
| Salaries are an information game (that employees aren't winning),
| so it's limited, the extent that I'm willing to bottleneck my
| income at whatever Glassdoor/Linkedin horseshit a company is
| working off of. You can easily quadruple your income doing smart
| contract work, especially if you can reuse code across projects,
| whereas for salaried roles, you are mostly going to get
| incremental raises over your past salaried jobs.
|
| There are different ebbs and flows to each type of work, so it's
| worth trying both for folks to see what they like. Job hopping
| for raises works for some people, but it also seems to lead to a
| lot of churn and lower expectations of trust and loyalty for
| salaried employees in the tech industry. Not my style. A business
| cutting edge-to-edge with another business is a more reciprocal
| arrangement, but there are some downsides and more stress.
| kradroy wrote:
| As someone who lived on contract work for 5 years the
| "quadrupling of income" isn't a reasonable metric. Invariably
| your wage gets diluted. At salaried positions you don't have to
| deal with:
|
| - Clients who pay late
|
| - Clients who don't want to pay
|
| - Clients who disappear with a large, unpaid bill
|
| - Finding clients (ideally ones who don't need cajoling to pay
| on time)
|
| - Self-employment taxes and managing expenses for deductions
|
| - Providing your own health coverage and managing the benefits
| one would get at a full-time position
|
| - Being your own safety net during periods of no work
|
| - Legal exposure
| vmception wrote:
| > To be exempt, you must earn a salary of at least $35,568 and
| perform relatively high-level work as your primary duties.
|
| Just to clarify, this means this is an article about someone
| making less than $35,568/yr plus overtime that doesn't know how
| to get an exempt salary that is like 2 - 8 times greater than
| that?
|
| I don't think this debate really applies to any of the American
| residents, or anybody working for the American companies on this
| forum. The inflection points where it makes a difference is so
| low.
| cgrealy wrote:
| Don't work overtime for free. It's that simple.
|
| Sure, the occasional late night or weekend is sometimes an
| unfortunate necessity, but even then your manager should
| recognise that and let you take some time in lieu.
|
| If you are regularly working 45+ hours a week, your position is
| under-resourced for what is expected. Talk to your manager.
| Either the work load needs to reduce, or you need additional
| people and/or skills/training to get the job done in a reasonable
| amount of time.
|
| If nothing is done, leave.
| ImaCake wrote:
| I refused to work free overtime for a shitty quality control
| job and they fired me.
|
| Best thing they could've done, now I have a great job with no
| expectation of overtime! I do much more effective work too.
| kxrm wrote:
| >If nothing is done, leave.
|
| Left a low paying "VP" job because of this. If leadership just
| wants to squeeze people and work them to death, that's not good
| leadership.
| madamelic wrote:
| That's just fine for (software) engineers, but I can't imagine
| this going well for an employee in a employer's market.
| yetihehe wrote:
| It depends on where you work. In most of europe, overtime is
| paid more than normal salary, even 1.5x. If your employer is
| forcing you to have unpayed overtime, he will have big
| problems.
| iso1210 wrote:
| If I get called at a weekend for say an hour or so, I get a
| choice - either 6 hours salary or a day off in lieu.
|
| If it's a 5 minute call I don't bother with anything
| official, just have a couple of hours off during the week.
| oehtXRwMkIs wrote:
| If you read the article it talks about exempt vs non-exempt
| and how salaried workers that make over $35,568 and do
| "higher-level work" are exempt from overtime. Those that
| are not exempt get 1.5x pay for overtime and 2x for double
| overtime (e.g. overtime on holiday). So in the US overtime
| is always 1.5x but many salaried workers simply don't get
| overtime.
| burntoutfire wrote:
| That's some XIX-century level exploitation right there...
| As if the workers rights movements never happened in the
| US (or they did, but for some reason only for manual
| workers and not white collar).
| [deleted]
| ma2rten wrote:
| Right. It's the same in the US, but if you make over
| $35,568 your position can be exempt from this. OP is asking
| if being exempt is a scam.
| agumonkey wrote:
| There should be a couple of classes about that in HS. Just 4
| classes over a month to discuss and enact situations before you
| go into the real world.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Right...I've been in a salaried position at various jobs for
| 15+ years and have never once worked more than 45 hours/week or
| so. Meanwhile coworkers who are getting paid exactly the same
| as me work 60+ hours/week for some reason. I have to assume
| anyone working 60+ hours a week either is avoiding their home
| life(or inner life), or is so unsure about their position in
| the company that they think they need to work 1.5x just to not
| get fired.
| [deleted]
| comprev wrote:
| You're assuming your line manager has the power and/or budget
| to hire more staff. This is likely not the case for the vast
| majority of salaried employees.
| faichai wrote:
| Then it's the managers job to manage expectations in terms of
| what her team can produce. The occasional push should be
| acceptable, but sustained expectation of unrewarded overtime
| with implications for burnout shouldn't be acceptable.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Another point, we all get things are limited, but when the
| hierarchy/management simply orders shit to be done from
| afar, without respect, understanding, proper knowledge
| about the situation, suddenly everybody is underperforming.
| Take the same group with a good leader then they will do
| twice more twice fast twice happy.
| ajb92 wrote:
| > You're assuming your line manager has the power and/or
| budget to hire more staff
|
| Welll, they did say:
|
| > If nothing is done, leave.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| That's not my problem? I'm not going to give away my valuable
| time for free because other people cannot run a company.
| snug wrote:
| What?! Of course nobody thinks that, but they have the power
| to influence the people that do have the power to get more
| budget, that is part or their job!
| supernova87a wrote:
| FFS. Which do you want?
|
| You want the $ figure and job security of the salaried employee,
| but not the duties. You don't want to be classified like a
| contract worker, subject to termination at any time, but you want
| the flexibility to work when and as you please. You want the
| freedom to not have your hours monitored, your steps and
| productivity measured, but not the responsibilities that come
| with such autonomy.
|
| Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could create some parallel
| lalaland universe where normal constraints no longer worked as
| they do. While we're at it, I want an airplane that's cheap,
| fast, doesn't use liquid fuel, and doesn't hurt the environment.
| I think we can all be billionaires.
| maxrev17 wrote:
| I think being salaried is a scam, so I run my own business. It
| really is that simple. The choice is there if people are upset
| about being salaried. Those who are salaried and work 60 hour
| weeks + commute need to wake up and smell the coffee - if they
| are moderately good they would make bank self employed.
| virgilp wrote:
| It's really not that simple. I made a small fortune being
| salaried. Would I have made the same money self-employed?
| Maybe, but I'm not sure - the risks are a lot higher (the
| rewards too, but like I said, far less certain).
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| I'm not sure the risks are that high. I mean in a downturn
| you might see revenue halve, if you work for someone else
| you might be the unlucky one whose salary drops to zero.
| matwood wrote:
| > Those who are salaried and work 60 hour weeks + commute
| need to wake up and smell the coffee
|
| Despite the horror stories, particular those in the game
| industry, most are not working 60 hours/week. The most
| surefire way to make good money and become wealthy is by
| working at one of the FAANGs and investing. I know the
| startup founder is romanticized here and in the media, and in
| the rare cases when it works, it can be great. But, if you
| look at the risk adjusted value, startups are not very good.
|
| With that said, I prefer small companies/startups because I
| like the freedom and control that comes along. I know I'm
| leaving money on the table, but I'm getting things I value
| over money.
| c1ccccc1 wrote:
| I'm not sure what your point is. As the situation of the person
| asking the original question demonstrates, sometimes a salaried
| position will both pay less and take up more of one's time than
| an hourly one. So of course people will prefer the hourly
| position in those cases, that's basic economics. The point of
| the article is that one shouldn't accept a salaried position
| just because it's nominally a promotion.
| k__ wrote:
| _" job security of the salaried employee"_
|
| No such thing as job security.
|
| If you're good, they won't throw you out even if you're a
| freelancer. If you're bad they will throw you out even if
| you're an employee.
|
| I did both and the only difference I saw was the type of work
| you do. As a freelancer I have less hand-holding than an
| employee, but also more freedom.
| walshemj wrote:
| Hourly workers are not freelancers
| atleta wrote:
| Probabilities. If you are a contractor you'll be let go much
| easier than if you are an employee. I used to work at a big
| corp (pretty nice one, BTW) and we've always had a few
| contractors to smooth out the fluctuations in the work
| demand/projects.
|
| Hiring, getting a headcount was hard. Exactly because
| employees were harder to let go and a bigger investment. We
| were 5-6 on our team over 6 years and had 4 contractors on
| and off on the side during that time. And it was as simple
| as: sorry guys, we won't need your service for the next 6
| months, because this and that. (Our work was always planned
| ahead for 6 months, decision made 2x a year.)
| mberning wrote:
| You said it. I get so tired of talking to people, especially
| young people early in their career, with this attitude. They
| want raises, promotions, and bonuses at every turn, but never
| show in crunch time. They think showing up for 9 months with a
| completely perfunctory attitude towards work is enough to
| justify their upward mobility in the company. It is not. I have
| had interns come and absolutely ball out the whole time they
| are with us. Sometimes I am sure they go back to their dorm
| room or apartment and put in a couple extra hours on their
| project. It shows. I have no problem getting them hired with
| good salaries and quick promotions. Then you have the guy that
| has bounced around from team to team for 5 years, never gets
| anything done right, and wants a big raise.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| It goes both ways. With companies increasingly willing to lay
| off or fire employees at the drop of a dime while investing
| little in developing internal talent why should I be invested
| in the success of my employer? They will not have my back
| if/when shit hits the fan, so why should I have theirs?
|
| Let's not pretend that employees woke up one day and decided
| to be more self-interested. Employers have been working on
| eroding job security and employee rights for years.
| dubcanada wrote:
| What? Who said any of that? The person was asking a serious
| question and got a legit answer.
|
| As a salaried worker you are expected to do a job, if that job
| takes you 20 hours this week and 45 next week that's fine as
| long as the job is done.
|
| What is currently happening is most of the time people work
| 50-60 hours and get paid at basically a 40 hour a week version
| of their job. So they end up giving the company 10-20 hours
| free (as it's not every now and then but basically every single
| week).
|
| There are other motivations that can be added, say if you get a
| percentage of the company then you working 10-20 hours extra is
| accounted for by some other benefit.
|
| But as it stands (say you work as a manager at random fastfood)
| there is no benefit to you working 60 hour weeks. You don't get
| extra money, you don't get benefits (some long time employees
| may get stock options but most don't). What's excepted of you
| does not correlate to the amount you are paid (which for random
| fastfood is usually what an hourly rate at 40 hours a week
| would be plus a little extra). If you did the same job as
| hourly (only difference being termination is easier for hourly
| than salaried) you would get paid more.
|
| It's a perfectly valid question and one most should be asking.
| b3kart wrote:
| > As a salaried worker you are expected to do a job, if that
| job takes you 20 hours this week and 45 next week that's fine
| as long as the job is done.
|
| I suspect the problem is with measuring what "job is done"
| means exactly when it comes to intellectual work in a team,
| so companies use a simplistic "X hours worked" as a proxy.
| paulcole wrote:
| > As a salaried worker you are expected to do a job, if that
| job takes you 20 hours this week and 45 next week that's fine
| as long as the job is done.
|
| The whole article says that this is a fantasy.
|
| Get your job done in 20 hours a week and say I'm out and see
| what happens at the vast majority of companies.
|
| The employer gets the free extra 5 hours in a 45 hour week
| but the employee gets judged (at best) for working 20 hours
| the next week.
| whatatita wrote:
| > FFS. Which do you want?
|
| > You want the $ figure and job security of the salaried
| employee Yes. I don't see why I should have to live without job
| security because I am paid hourly.
|
| > but not the duties. Nope. I want a healthy work-life balance
| and I don't think that has to mean not meating my duties.
|
| > You don't want to be classified like a contract worker,
| subject to termination at any time Again, yes. I want to be
| respected and live without the looming terror of joblessness.
|
| > you want the flexibility to work when and as you please. You
| want the freedom to not have your hours monitored, your steps
| and productivity measured Yes. I think I aught to be respected
| enough to not need micro-managing at every turn.
|
| > but not the responsibilities that come with such autonomy.
| Again, nope.
|
| > Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could create some parallel
| lalaland universe... It's not so far fetched. There are plenty
| of places the world over that already treat their employees
| like valuable, respected, worthy people.
| twirlock wrote:
| Yep. Some people don't value programmers and will try to take
| away all the perks of being salaried because privately they
| don't think programmers should be salaried. We know.
| statstutor wrote:
| > some parallel lalaland universe
|
| Countries with better rights for employees exist in this
| universe, on this planet.
| supernova87a wrote:
| You will generally not find the same environment in terms of
| job creation and growth though. Part of what the US's low job
| security enables are the forces of creative destruction that
| have made new businesses and ideas possible here.
|
| You might have more job security in other countries, but your
| job might be theoretical.
|
| You can't have it all.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| This sounds like "the rock that repels tigers" type
| thinking.
|
| > The US has high innovation.
|
| > US employees have poor job security.
|
| > Therefore high innovation must be caused by poor job
| security.
|
| There are many historic and contemporary causes for the
| US's economic success. Arguably, the US was even _more_
| innovative in the 50s and 60s when job security was much
| better and unions were more powerful.
| supernova87a wrote:
| Seems like you should have a read about labor issues in
| France, for example?
| Lukas_Skywalker wrote:
| 10 or 15 years ago, many of my peers were dreaming of
| migrating to the US some day to work in a hot new startup.
| These days? Pretty much everyone changed their mind,
| because everyone realized that being protected as an
| employee, having financial safety in case of an emergency
| and the health care system in Europe are more desirable
| than being part of the next new business or idea, however
| "creative" they might be labelled. Especially if it's just
| the next Uber for X treating employees as independent
| contractors.
| qntty wrote:
| This was the most interesting part to me:
|
| _The way it's supposed to work is if you're salaried /exempt,
| you're getting paid to do a job, not for a specific number of
| hours. So if you work 45 hours one week and 36 hours the next,
| that's supposed to be okay.
|
| And some places work like that, and when they do it's mostly
| fine. When you have that kind of trade-off, that flexibility is a
| benefit.
|
| But at a lot of places, that flexibility is much more one-way.
| You're expected to work the company's standard business hours at
| a minimum, plus any additional time it takes to get your job
| done. If you have to work 45 hours one week, that's just what's
| expected of salaried workers. But if you work 36 hours the next
| week, you're going to be charged four hours of PTO (or you're
| going to get weird looks and questions about why you left at 1 pm
| on Friday)._
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| If someone's backlog goes to zero, their manager can't find
| more work that needs to be done, and there is no reason that
| person needs to be available during core working hours,
| requiring them to sit in the office and kill time is
| ridiculous.
|
| The catch is that for most of us, those conditions are almost
| never met. When was the last time had a job where the entire
| backlog of work was cleared out and there were no tasks you
| could be helping with? Usually if that happens more than a few
| times, the team is on their way to being reassigned or even
| laid off.
|
| The 40-hour workweek target is best viewed as a feedback loop.
| If everyone is consistently working more than 40 hours per
| week, something is wrong. Team size needs to be increased,
| schedules need to be pushed out, scope needs to be reduced,
| inefficiencies (meetings!) need to be pulled out of the way.
| Something has to give.
|
| Likewise, if someone is consistently running out of work early,
| the schedule needs to be brought in, the person should help
| take pressure off of some other tasks, blockers need to be
| removed, and so on.
|
| The challenge as a manager is that estimation and work-
| assignment are a two-way process. I work with team members to
| assign backlog tasks. If someone is consistently taking 20
| hours of work for themselves and pretending its a full work
| week, someone else has to pick up the remaining work.
| busterarm wrote:
| Our team probably has a 3-5 year backlog of things that could
| be done, but largely it does not make sense to do them. I
| only tackle a little bit of it with my idle time each week.
|
| Reason being, work that gets done requires code-reviews and
| often communication and understanding within the
| organization. I personally might have the bandwidth but
| collectively as a team and an organization, we do not.
|
| And I prefer if my whole team has a little bit of breathing
| room like this. It means we're rested and prepared to tackle
| the hard problems and fires that come our way. Nobody burns
| out. Realistically I don't want anyone putting in more than
| 32-33ish hours most weeks.
| ipnon wrote:
| >The way it's supposed to work is if you're salaried/exempt,
| you're getting paid to do a job, not for a specific number of
| hours. So if you work 45 hours one week and 36 hours the next,
| that's supposed to be okay.
|
| I am satisfied with my salary because I finish my
| responsibilities in 2 to 4 hours, then spend the rest of the
| "work day" maintaining a green dot on Slack and promptly
| responding to merge requests, looking as busy as possible. My
| coworkers who feel the need to work a certain number of hours
| (40), invariably work overtime every week because their work
| expands to fit their perceived availability. They all get paid
| twice as much as me, but if I'm working half the hours is that
| equal compensation? I say no, because I still have my hair and my
| doctor says my blood pressure has improved.
| 1-more wrote:
| > promptly responding to merge requests
|
| This counts as work to me though?? Like there's something that
| feels like it's not real work because I'm not writing code, I'm
| reading it. But it's 100% real actual work; if you weren't
| doing it they'd have to hire someone else to do it.
| busterarm wrote:
| Emphatically this. This is also why I choose to work in
| automation. My work-life balance is a direct result of the
| investment I've made into doing my work well. I've engineered
| the company's systems and processes in a way that results in
| less work for people as a whole. That lets us all work more
| efficiently.
|
| For the handful of weeks I've worked every night until 2am,
| there's 20x as many where I've done a couple of hours work in
| the morning and then been a paid SME the rest of the day. And
| seemingly unlike most engineers, I think getting paid to talk
| to people is FANTASTIC.
|
| You simply cannot do this if you are hourly.
| repartix wrote:
| Why can you not do this if you are hourly?
| busterarm wrote:
| Because if your labor is being measured in windows of time,
| you are either putting yourself out of work or admitting
| that they don't need you for 40 hours.
|
| You need to shift the conversation away from hours worked
| to value of your work.
|
| If you are an hourly employee, you are being paid to be a
| cog, not to be a brain.
| codingclaws wrote:
| How do you determine how much value you're creating? And
| how do you convince clients of that value?
| [deleted]
| rubicon33 wrote:
| Where do you work where employees who work twice as much, make
| twice as much?
|
| The issue I have with salary structure is that you have no
| opportunity for going above and beyond. If I work a minimum
| hours to get my job done, I get payed the same amount than if I
| went overtime and finished my tasks sooner.
|
| It seems like software industry needs a bonus system for people
| who are eager to lean into their work, but struggle to see the
| reason to when it's just another company that will do nothing
| about it.
|
| To be clear - salary is much better than an hourly + overtime
| system. The former provides a ton of flexibility. It's just
| that it provides little to no incentive for going above and
| beyond.
| Aeolun wrote:
| > It seems like software industry needs a bonus system for
| people who are eager to lean into their work
|
| No, no we don't. I like working just as much as the next
| person, but I prefer my evaluation to be based on me and my
| peers working 40 hours, as opposed to me working 40 and them
| working 60.
| tikhonj wrote:
| Tech companies _do_ have a bonus system, not just in literal
| bonuses but also in stock grants that depend on your
| performance. Coupled with an engineering promotion ladder
| that tops out at the equivalent of a VP (or even SVP?) role,
| it seems like there _are_ financial incentives to go "above
| and beyond".
|
| Of course, this doesn't necessarily mean working longer
| hours! Out of the people I've worked with, the overlap
| between working extra hours and having outsize positive
| impact is smaller than you might expect. Incentivizing extra
| hours for their own sake would be actively counterproductive.
|
| I'd also say that people generally overestimate the effect of
| formal financial incentives and underestimate informal social
| incentives. Company and team culture can have a much larger
| effect than compensation, especially when everyone is being
| paid a lot in absolute terms.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > The issue I have with salary structure is that you have no
| opportunity for going above and beyond.
|
| Yes you do. This should be recognized via bonuses, raises,
| and/or promotions as appropriate. It's not immediate, but it
| does manifest over time. If it doesn't, use the experience
| gained to move to a company that appreciates such work and
| rewards it appropriately.
| staunch wrote:
| > "...move to a company that appreciates such work and
| rewards it appropriately."
|
| Which takes 1-2 years of very hard work to discover, by
| which time the employee has invested a huge amount of
| effort for 10-30% more salary and 1-20% more equity than a
| new hire who has contributed nothing.
|
| And this employee has to wonder why they're contributing so
| much more when other people are doing almost nothing and
| getting nearly the same reward. Which leads to the best
| people quitting and the worst people staying.
|
| Most startups treat "The Senior Leadership Team" like
| unique people who matter and have to be compensated like
| they're hard to replace. They get employment contracts,
| large bonuses of equity/cash, and special treatment.
| Everyone else gets lip service and the treatment of
| replaceable cogs in the chain.
|
| For example, the 10x programmer typically gets 10-20% of
| what an incompetent VP will earn in total comp. Because
| they're treated like two different classes of employee.
|
| And this fact hurts most companies deeply in ways they'll
| never understand. It shows up in project delays and huge
| problems, which ultimately cost far, far more than it
| would've cost to keep the best contributors.
| hshshs2 wrote:
| "work harder and hopefully someone will be nice to you"
| benhurmarcel wrote:
| Bonuses are a joke in most companies. The difference
| between a year of coasting and one of efforts is in 3
| digits.
| jonas21 wrote:
| > _It seems like software industry needs a bonus system for
| people who are eager to lean into their work, but struggle to
| see the reason to when it's just another company that will do
| nothing about it._
|
| This is essentially how the bonus system works at the big
| software companies. People with the same title might make
| roughly the same salary, but have very different stock
| compensation, which gets updated every year based on
| performance and can be much larger than the base salary. It's
| why you see such a wide range of numbers on sites like
| levels.fyi (for example $300K to $900K for a staff engineer
| at Google).
|
| https://www.levels.fyi/company/Google/salaries/Software-
| Engi...
| etothepii wrote:
| Maybe too many companies have been burned by the undocumented
| mess left by the "above and beyond" crowd who move on after
| two years?
| [deleted]
| ryanSrich wrote:
| > "I am satisfied with my salary because I finish my
| responsibilities in 2 to 4 hours, then spend the rest of the
| "work day" maintaining a green dot on Slack"
|
| This is precisely why when I started my company I committed to
| only hiring contract devs for 10-20 hours per week. No
| meetings. No bullshit. I pay you a high hourly wage, you do as
| much (often more) work than if you were a salaried 40 hour FTE,
| and you likely make more money in the process.
|
| The model of work and the 40 hour work week is so fundamentally
| broken I feel like I'm in a perpetual twilight zone state when
| I talk to people. They think it's normal and okay to have 3+
| hours of meetings per day and barely get any work done. I will
| never understand it.
|
| My first 7 years of work life outside of college consisted of
| THOUSANDS of pointless meetings and months of pretending to be
| busy. I've promised myself I will never do that shit again, and
| I will not let my business succumb to that style of work.
| news_to_me wrote:
| This is also why I started freelancing and limit myself to
| ~20hr weeks. I actually feel just as productive as I did
| working 8hr days salaried, since I have much better mental
| health with the extra free time.
|
| The only real downside is finding clients to agree to that
| limit, but so far it hasn't been too much of a problem.
| kyriakos wrote:
| This is a very valid point. In my workplace we have
| contractors and FTE engineers all paid by monthly salary. The
| contractors are by far more efficient coders. But it makes
| sense, they attend only standups and they waste no time in HR
| and corporate rituals,
| Aeolun wrote:
| Lol, yeah. You get to skip _so_ many meetings as a
| contractor.
| [deleted]
| hellisothers wrote:
| One problem with hiring only contractors is they're in it
| only for the money. "Well duh!" You say, but they're not
| incentivized to do anything beyond beyond what they're asked
| to do and will need to be highly managed. They're not going
| to improve performance, make long term tech investments, or
| (the big one) innovate. Because they have no incentive to,
| they have no skin in the game.
|
| This is obviously a generalization and of course this may
| well work great for some companies, including yours.
| Nursie wrote:
| "they're not incentivized to do anything beyond beyond what
| they're asked to do and will need to be highly managed."
|
| I actually find that quite offensive. Myself and the other
| contractors I know are professionals, winning work through
| reputation and delivering results. That's why we get paid
| well.
|
| We require less management and always try to deliver above
| expectations. We have a professional, business to business
| relationship with our clients, where many employees seem to
| consider their employer almost a surrogate parent.
|
| Employees have no more skin in the game, in fact I'd say
| less - if I don't deliver I get no more work.
| tcbawo wrote:
| In my experience, being a salaried employee doesn't
| really give you skin in the game at all. It's often
| illusory, as owning a sliver of equity or profit sharing
| translates to practically no upside or downside. Salaried
| employees and contracts are equally likely (or unlikely)
| to be invested in the success of the company. Misusing
| contractors or mismanaging salaried employees is a
| failure of management, and ultimately a failure of
| ownership. Garbage at the top, garbage at the bottom.
| hellisothers wrote:
| That is fair and I apologize for the characterization,
| it's a generalization not meant to apply to everybody. I
| have been on both "teams" as engineer and manager as well
| and either way it's something you have to take into
| account as you work on or manage the people.
| bradknowles wrote:
| You may think that's the way it's supposed to work for
| contractors, but in every single job I've ever had as a
| contractor, I always tried very hard to work as if I was a
| salaried employee -- like I had skin in the game. It's just
| part of who I am, and I can't really change that.
|
| Either way, I am trying to take home a certain amount of
| money, sure. And make enough to cover my insurance needs,
| yes.
|
| And as a contractor, I was always sensitive to those
| clients who wanted to make sure I never billed more than 40
| hours a week, regardless of how many hours of work I
| actually did.
|
| Maybe that's not how contractors are supposed to do things,
| but that's a core part of my personality, and not something
| I can change -- or would want to.
|
| Of course, I've never been an Amazon warehouse worker, or a
| driver for Uber or Lyft, so for them I might act
| differently. But as an IT consultant many times over the
| past 30+ years, this has been the way I have worked.
| ryanSrich wrote:
| > "but they're not incentivized to do anything beyond
| beyond what they're asked to do and will need to be highly
| managed"
|
| What skin in the game does an FTE have? Aside from
| maintaining benefits, which personally I think is
| preposterous to tie to full-time employment anyway. What
| else is there? Stock? Contractors are eligible for stock.
|
| Even so, I don't need anyone to do anything beyond what
| they've been hired to do. Why would I need someone to go
| above and beyond? I just need smart, competent workers.
| kjjjjjjjjjjjjjj wrote:
| I am w-2 and my salary is in the top <2% of salaries in
| America and I literally only do my job for money, and I
| only care about money.
|
| The better I do, the more money I can make.
| zemvpferreira wrote:
| I work a lot with contractors in a different industry
| (construction/real estate) and I can't say this is true.
| Even mercenaries want to take pride in a job well done, and
| if you build a long-term project with them, they'll want to
| see it succeed. Being in it for the money does not have to
| mean not caring about what you're working on.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Also, referrals are worth a lot of money in construction.
| I'll pay extra if I'm not gambling in a random
| contractor.
| lancesells wrote:
| I'm a consultant / contractor. I never think about it as
| "in it only for the money". I try to provide value as much
| as possible.
| m463 wrote:
| Having been a contractor for quite some time, I was in it
| for the work and I was happy. I usually worked in the
| middle of the bell curve part of the project and was
| exempted from all the silly meetings.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| _One problem with hiring only contractors is they're in it
| only for the money._
|
| I don't think that's totally true, it certainly wasn't in
| my case. I started contracting because I had had enough of
| the corporate grind. Quite a lot of my peers seemed to have
| the same attitude.
| Nursie wrote:
| > I had had enough of the corporate grind
|
| "Personal Business Commitments" "Performance Reviews"
| "Where do you see yourself in 5 years?" "Be sure to share
| stuff about X new project on your social media!" "Submit
| your vacation request"
|
| Yes, this. All of this.
|
| I will deliver you technical solutions to the best of my
| ability, and I will do it as well as I can, making sure
| things are documented, complete and easy to understand
| for longer term maintainers, using common tech stacks
| where possible.
|
| I will not corporate pole-climb or waste my life on
| company admin, nor pretend I believe in your mission.
| stefanfisk wrote:
| Having a customer is so much more intuitive to me
| compared to having a boss.
| indemnity wrote:
| I'm a salaried worker and this is my exit strategy. In a
| year or so, when living situation is secured (mortgage
| paid off), I'm going contracting.
|
| Played the game to put myself in position to do this, but
| absolutely weary of it.
| balfirevic wrote:
| > One problem with hiring only contractors is they're in it
| only for the money.
|
| What do you believe employees are in it for?
| 1123581321 wrote:
| The context of this conversation is full-time salaried
| employees who give more than they financially get, so
| personal satisfaction, influencing others' behavior, or
| prestige at the company are some potential answers to
| your question.
| tobasq wrote:
| A lot of (most?) tech industry workers change jobs every
| 2-3 years and develop no particular attachment to or
| long-term plans for remaining at a company.
| balfirevic wrote:
| Thanks for the answer. Having had experience with both
| employee and contractor colleagues (and having been both)
| I'd say the only one that might not apply (but also
| could, depending on circumstances) to contractors is
| prestige at the company.
| mathgladiator wrote:
| This is also a feature since contractors can be told
| upfront what to do in deliverables and the medium for
| deliverables. I plan on using contractors in the future.
|
| I look forward to not having to inspire or align people and
| just tell people "this is what I want".
|
| Their skin in the game is their reputation for repeat work.
| ryanSrich wrote:
| > "I look forward to not having to inspire or align
| people and just tell people "this is what I want"."
|
| What I like about contractors is that good ones will give
| you suggestions and recommendations for improvement, but
| they won't make it their life's eternal mission to throw
| your entire project off track by campaigning for their
| solution.
| tra3 wrote:
| How do you avoid meetings with a distributed part time team?
| Any hints or best practices?
|
| Working, part time, with a remote team and seem to have 3
| hours of meetings. How do you do it?
| withinboredom wrote:
| We're remote and have a one hour meeting every three weeks;
| because we believe it's important to have a high bandwidth
| conversation to make sure we're all on the same page.
|
| Beyond that, we communicate mostly on GitHub issues, Slack
| (for realtime issues, goofing off, etc), and P2 for
| designing things that need more threading/nuance.
|
| We're so distributed (literally around the world) that our
| one hour meeting is guaranteed to inconvenience someone.
| When it's my turn, our meeting is at 11pm local time. I
| usually join with a beer. This meeting is usually a
| retrospective and just going through what issues we're
| planning to prioritize for the next few weeks.
| tra3 wrote:
| How long has the team been assembled for and how do you
| bring new people on? Is your team mostly tech people? Are
| there any business folks involved?
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Watch out, they're going to ML models that keep track of what
| apps and websites you have open. Best to sit there and
| add/remove blank lines to a python file for the remaining 6
| hours.
| whatatita wrote:
| They can bloody well try. It's illegal in many places and I
| would refuse to work anywhere with that level of micro
| management. I know it's a privileged position to be in, but
| I'll excercise that position as long as I have the option to
| do so.
| lnsru wrote:
| It's cool, that your colleagues are paid twice. I tried working
| 3 hours a day and 9 hours a day. With 9 hours a day I made my
| manager angry showing how lazy my colleagues are. So I ended up
| with working 3 hours a day and staying green the other 5 while
| learning skills I need for my side project. That's the perfect
| working setup for me, though I would love to have a manager who
| wants me to work 9 hours a day for the company.
| nerbert wrote:
| Sounds perfect to me.
| honkycat wrote:
| I wouldn't call your colleagues lazy, i would say they have
| other responsibilities and a life. Not everyone has a SO to
| clean and cook for them and maintaining relationships takes
| work
|
| Also: you dont have 9 hours of productive work in you a day.
| Nobody does. You have 4 good hours and then a bunch of wasted
| time where you are performing being busy because you want
| everyone to know how smart you are.
| robocat wrote:
| > you dont have 9 hours of productive work in you a day.
|
| > Nobody does.
|
| You are making an overgeneralisation, or assuming a
| context. For lots of jobs productivity is fairly linear
| with time - some of those jobs work on piece rates or
| hourly wages.
|
| Some people are productive for 9 hours in professional
| jobs, and they are billed accordingly, although maybe the
| marginal productivity per hour falls.
|
| Not everyone is "wasting time, busy working, and showing
| off" to paraphrase you.
| dheera wrote:
| In the general scheme of things you're right that many
| jobs are near linear, but I think for the intended
| audience of TFA (people likely to be scammed by the
| salary system and made to work longer than 40-hour weeks
| without overtime pay) it's a valid generalization.
|
| The jobs that actually are linear actually do tend to get
| paid by the hour and often even have 1.5x pay for
| overtime, and the fact that salaried workers don't get
| that is precisely where the scam is.
| dheera wrote:
| > Not everyone has a SO to clean and cook for them
|
| I do have an SO and it's not her job to cook and clean for
| me.
|
| In any case, yeah, 9 hours a day is pushing it for actual
| productivity.
| tartoran wrote:
| > Also: you dont have 9 hours of productive work in you a
| day. Nobody does. You have 4 good hours and then a bunch of
| wasted time where you are performing being busy because you
| want everyone to know how smart you are.
|
| This is true though it may confuse some who currently do
| but don't realize it's not sustainable and leads to
| burnout. I used to have 8-9 productive hours a day until I
| realized the cost. I also have a family now and putting
| those hours would spend me completely and I'd have nothing
| left for them. Why in the world would I do that? Even if it
| was for a lot more money I'd probably do it only for a
| short period of time with a long break in mind for
| recouping and tending to what I'd have neglected.
|
| If you're young and trying to prove yourself and are
| thirsty to learn and all that sure it works but don't think
| this is in any way sustainable.
| nwienert wrote:
| It can be sustainable. Just takes a lot of setup, and
| it's not usually constant for long periods. But I
| regularly hit 9, even more and have been for many years
| now through 5 startups.
|
| Only happens when you have equity, you like the work, and
| you have a lot of it in front of you with no managers or
| meetings in the way.
|
| But I've designed my work so far to be just that. I'd
| never go back to working on a team or project that wasn't
| structured that way. I'm at my happiest when I'm in this
| zone, it's the most creative and rewarding work.
| tolbish wrote:
| It boggles the mind why half-time and three-quarter time
| employment isn't more popular. I guess UBI would allow that to
| happen instead of employers having to worry about benefits.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| I've tried hiring half-time in the past.
|
| It kind of works if the tasks can be neatly packaged and
| handed off for totally asynchronous work. It breaks down as
| soon as you need the part-time person to work with the rest
| of the team.
|
| You end up forcing the rest of the team to work around one
| person's schedule. You also end up with someone on your team
| doubling up on the part-time person's knowledge if you need
| someone available during normal hours to answer questions or
| debug something.
|
| It's not really about benefits. ACA doesn't require full
| benefits for someone working 20 hours a week.
|
| Let's be honest: Many remote work jobs are essentially
| becoming half-time jobs, with the other half of the work week
| comprised of simply being available on Slack if someone asks
| a question.
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| My remote job has been a 25% job for a decade, 75% being
| available on chat. Back when I worked in an office it was
| 25% work, 75% being available in person.
| sokoloff wrote:
| The coordination and knowledge sharing costs go up at least
| linearly with number of people. Twice as many people each
| working half-time mean a lot more of that time is chewed up
| with communication/knowledge acquisition.
| beefield wrote:
| That's the employer's problem. What I find weird is that
| more people working in high tax-progression countries do
| not realize that doubling your annual holidays[1] is
| actually dirt cheap - and require that as a perk instead of
| the slightly more expensive car or whatever they are
| spending that marginal income.
|
| [1] or 4 day work week or 6 hour work day or whatever suits
| your life at the moment
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| > That's the employer's problem.
|
| This is a lazy, cop-out answer.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| And the employer solves the problem by only hiring
| developers full time...
| sokoloff wrote:
| Employers' problems and employees' problems are probably
| closer than you might think when it comes to sustainable
| business and employment practices.
| laurent92 wrote:
| I had an employee who had a clear opinion that some stuff
| weren't his duties and that arriving sleepy at work was
| ok.
|
| So, as I said, I "had" an employee.
|
| Let's count in jobs. Basically a man fully dedicated to
| his job 37hrs/week creates about 1 new position a year,
| every year, because he makes the processes so efficient
| that we serve 2x more customers, so we can hire. That guy
| and another intern, they created -1 job in a year (his
| project brought literally no customer) and cost us 16kEUR
| + his salary + the intern (I pay my interns, I give hefty
| bonuses to everyone).
|
| I'm not complaining, it's my job to root out the weed and
| prune it, and I did a mistake, but you need to
| understand, as a nation, how many jobs don't exist
| because employees live off their colleagues (as for my
| share, I have created 6 jobs myself so I'll just collect
| the huge margins, I'm just vexated he doesn't collect his
| margins too). In sectors where everyone thinks it's not
| their jobs, people end up harassing each other for the
| remaining positions. In growing companies, it's the
| American dream with free food. The correct middle ground
| is to own your product for 37 hrs a week, and not
| delegate questions to be solved by the employer.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> Basically a man fully dedicated to his job 37hrs/week
| creates about 1 new position a year, every year, because
| he makes the processes so efficient that we serve 2x more
| customers_
|
| For how long can an employee, _ever year_ , double his
| efficiency and the amount of customers he serves? That
| just doesn't sound sustainable.
|
| _> as a nation_
|
| Which nation?
| beefield wrote:
| Let's say doubling your holidays means roughly 10%
| reduction in work time. If a fully dedicated 37.5 h
| person creates one job per year, could you estimate how
| many jobs creates a) fully dedicated 41 h person b) fully
| dedicated 34 h person?
|
| Of course, people are different and this is just an
| anecdote, but from my personal experience (a couple of
| instances) I can push myself to "fully dedicate" more
| than 4 hours a day of mentally really hard work - for
| some months. After that I tell politely that sorry, it is
| time for me to do something else for a while. More often
| than not, I have been welcomed back later. Of course,
| those have been exceptional circumstances, typically
| there is no need to fully dedicate more than 4 hours of
| mentally really hard work, but there is some less
| demanding aspects of the job taking some time off.
| tartoran wrote:
| You fired your employee for being sleepy in the morning?
| I think he's better off not working for you and I'd avoid
| such employers like you like the plague. Im productive
| after a coffee in the morning and do arive sleepy at work
| and thats not your damn business. Getting the job done is
| a better metric and if you want 100% consistency look to
| invest into robots. You can't expect people to submit
| everything to you. What do you do for them beside paying
| for their work?
| [deleted]
| dheera wrote:
| Not even that. Even 10.5/12 to 11/12 time would be great.
|
| Why is it that senior employees with a $500K package are
| expected to take zero vacation time or are subject to
| disrespect? Why do people pride themselves in taking no
| vacation, guilting their peer-level leaders in the process?
| I'd gladly take 11/12 of that pay in return for being able to
| take a full 4-6 weeks off to myself to do things I want to do
| in life.
|
| Personal travel, personal project, and family time are
| important, and that has nothing to do with how much passion I
| have for the job.
| strokirk wrote:
| I find it hard to find the right time to take vacation -
| I'm almost always doing something interesting at work, so
| it's always stimulating enough that I won't think too much
| about taking time off for extended personal projects.
| africanboy wrote:
| > The way it's supposed to work is if you're salaried/exempt,
| you're getting paid to do a job, not for a specific number of
| hours
|
| That's the opposite of how it is supposed to work when you are
| on salary.
|
| You are paid for units of work, which is hours worked.
|
| The output is not what you produced, but what the working force
| globally produced.
|
| Being salaried means being paid a flat rate (forfait) for being
| there: sometimes you produce more, sometimes less, but the pay
| stays the same.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-03-14 23:02 UTC)