[HN Gopher] The strategic use of titles to avoid overtime payments
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The strategic use of titles to avoid overtime payments
Author : lxm
Score : 170 points
Date : 2023-02-03 20:33 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nber.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nber.org)
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| Title inflation is so absurd that now when I ask a company I just
| ignore the title and look at comp.
|
| Comp tells me how much value you think I can deliver in your org.
|
| If you wanna call me Senior while compensating me like someone
| who has cross team impact across 500 engineers, so be it, as long
| at the TC is there.
|
| If you wanna call me Staff but only rate me on how many API
| endpoints I can craft in a sprint, I doubt you'll be able to
| compensate me enough to care about your JD.
| elric wrote:
| Title inflation for the sake of egos is bad. But sometimes
| title inflation is a consequence of ridiculous compensation
| rules. Where I work, it's basically impossible to get a raise
| without a bump in title. Which basically means that if you did
| a good job negotiating your starting salary, you'll be stuck
| with your job title for a long time. But if you were too cheap
| at first, you'll move up in the ranks every year.
| jdlyga wrote:
| Outside of the context of avoiding overtime payments, job title
| inflation is definitely used to help attract and retain
| employees. A few decades ago, a director level position was a
| manager of managers, and usually one of the key decision makers
| at a firm. Nowadays, you have many people with "director" in
| their job title who are team leads or senior individual
| contributors. It's not even really a problem. In fact, it's great
| to have a nice title and makes people feel important. It's more
| about adjusting your expectations of what someone's job title is
| vs what they actually do day to day.
| taskforcegemini wrote:
| inflate all the things! on a related note: to some people a phd
| has become a sign that that person has something to compensate
| for. a lot of equally or better skilled/knowledgable people do
| not have one
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| I thought it was a sign that a candidate has poor cost-
| benefit analytical skills.
|
| Only half joking
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| Hah. The same joke persists in MBA circles, where, as the
| joke goes, during your time here you learn how to evaluate
| why MBA degree was not a good idea.
| notesinthefield wrote:
| My MBA was free , got me a better job and I still think
| it was a waste of time.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| I want to say that a good chunk of it was a waste for me
| as well. The network effect, as far as I can tell, was
| minimal. That said, two classes did make a difference (
| fraud in accounting and analytics with R ). Even taking
| those into account though, I honestly can't say my degree
| was as valuable as it is sometimes portrayed ( definitely
| not the asking price ). I sometimes wonder whether it is
| possible I could have stumbled onto R on my own ( I was
| already playing with Python at the time ) and would I
| have the patience to go through sample exercises on my
| own. It is hard to tell. I can't honestly say it was a
| complete waste of time.
| opportune wrote:
| This seems a bit of a broad brush. You can hardly fault
| someone for getting a PhD because of something like
| graduating into a recession, because they actually wanted to
| into academia but changed their mind, or so that they could
| immigrate.
| [deleted]
| Alupis wrote:
| A lot like how everyone is an Engineer these days.
|
| Software Engineers that just write CRUD apps, Software
| Architects who just read docs, Systems Engineers who just
| follow guides, Support Engineers who just answer phone calls
| and tickets, etc.
|
| Title inflation has been creeping up for many years. It's
| everywhere.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > A lot like how everyone is an Engineer these days.
|
| But did they graduate from Engineering school?
| notyourwork wrote:
| What is a software engineer?
| [deleted]
| brian_herman wrote:
| Software engineers design and develop computer programs and
| applications.
| gongle wrote:
| So a programmer
| rhtgrg wrote:
| I'd say a programmer is to a software engineer as a
| handyman is to an architect. Can a handyman do the "dirty
| work" of most projects? Sure. Can they design a
| skyscraper to spec, tell you exactly what to expect in
| terms of resources and timeline, and roll with the
| punches of logistics and competing priorities? Probably
| not, unless they were already an architect just doing the
| job of a handyman.
|
| That being said, as someone with a software engineering
| degree, I can safely say that _most_ companies don 't
| need _engineers_ and can get by just fine with
| programmers. Anyway, in this industry there are many
| architects working as handymen and vice versa.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Can an architect actually put the pieces together? Do
| they know where to source materials? Do they understand
| how to order and schedule the construction of a design?
| Do they "just get" why a particular combination of
| materials at a specific point in a structure is going to
| cause problems, because they've seen it over and over?
| Can they even operate all the tools?
|
| Probably not, unless they used to actually do
| construction before becoming an architect.
| LarryMullins wrote:
| I'd rather be called a handyman than a "Generalist Labor
| Engineer"
| ebjaas_2022 wrote:
| It's a person who applies engineering principles to the
| design and implementation of software. It's about the
| "rigidity" of the methods that are used to construct the
| software. If the software is just cobbled together, it's
| not "engineered".
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| I thought that's a software developer?
| StevePerkins wrote:
| There is no such thing as a "software engineer", period.
|
| An "engineer" is someone who works in a technical
| profession with a governing body. Either the State, or an
| entity that might as well be the State.
|
| An engineer is certified by that governing body, and given
| a license to practice the profession. An engineer can have
| their license suspended or rescinded, in the event of
| professional misconduct or malpractice.
|
| Whether through law, or de facto through insurance company
| practices, employers face liability if they employ non-
| licensed engineers. So an engineer is someone who has the
| leverage to push back against employer pressure to commit
| malpractice.
|
| Computer programmers / software developers have none of
| these things. Certifications are a joke, and meaningless
| beyond the entry level. We are pressured by employers to
| commit malpractice on a near-daily basis, and call it "tech
| debt" (management at my current company is pushing the even
| more euphemistic term "tech improvement opportunities").
|
| Without a governing body and licensing, it is impossible
| for us to be "engineers" in any real sense of the
| professional term. With respect to Margaret Hamilton, we
| can only try to _emulate_ an engineering profession as best
| we can, by evangelizing professional standards and pushing
| back on malpractice pressure where we can.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > There is no such thing as a "software engineer",
| period.
|
| That's a bold statement.
|
| Would you argue, for instance, that someone graduating
| from MIT EECS[0] or Stanford Engineering[1] isn't
| qualified to use the tittle of Engineer?
|
| > An engineer is certified by that governing body, and
| given a license to practice the profession. An engineer
| can have their license suspended or rescinded, in the
| event of professional misconduct or malpractice.
|
| I think you are confused with the PE regulations. [2]
|
| [0] https://www.eecs.mit.edu/
|
| [1] https://engineering.stanford.edu/students-
| academics/academic...
|
| [2] https://ncees.org/about/
| glomgril wrote:
| Interesting perspective, agreed on some of the points.
|
| I'd like to hear some opinions from people who have
| worked as both "an engineer" and "a software engineer"
| (maybe OP is such a person, idk) -- what kind of corner-
| cutting is there in (non-software) engineering fields? Is
| it at all comparable to tech debt? What kind of
| compromises in quality/design are made in the service of
| profit or career advancement? etc.
|
| I think a lot of people end up with an impression that in
| e.g. civil engineering, everything is perfect and precise
| and elegant because it has to be (otherwise crumbling
| infrastructure, accidents, etc.). But understanding that
| humans in general are always looking to cut corners and
| be lazy, I wonder how realistic that impression really
| is... Wouldn't be surprised to hear about comical
| inefficiencies and poor practices that have become
| normalized over decades of designing/building physical
| stuff.
| EFreethought wrote:
| I was a software developer at Bank of America for eight
| years. I had two titles: "Assistant Vice President" and
| "Systems Engineer". I preferred to use "Systems Engineer"
| because if I said I was an "Assistant Vice President" at a
| bank, people would think I one of the people approving loans.
| ortusdux wrote:
| In Canada and parts of the US, Engineer is a protected title.
|
| https://engineerscanada.ca/news-and-events/news/who-can-
| use-...
| astrange wrote:
| They need the respect to make up for the lower pay and even
| less affordable housing.
| Alupis wrote:
| In the US, certain fields are protected via licensing
| boards and required degrees. One cannot just become a Civil
| Engineer, for example, simply by adding that title to their
| Email Signature.
| abofh wrote:
| I'm a cloud architect thank you very much - I take ephemeral
| balls of vaporware designed by software architects, created
| by software engineers, documented for software architects to
| build structure for support engineers who can help bring on
| clients for my contract holders latest ephemeral ball of
| vaporware.
| sublinear wrote:
| It's the "just" part that gets me. These jobs are not trivial
| regardless of the silly titles.
| Alupis wrote:
| You don't get to call yourself an Engineer because you
| copy/paste CRUD apps together... or at least you used to
| not be able to. The engineering has already been done long
| ago by someone much more talented and knowledgeable.
|
| That is what a programmer or developer does. Engineering
| implies a lot more than just cobbling together code blocks
| and libraries. Yet, that's what 99% of Software Engineers
| spend their days doing.
|
| It would be akin to going out to a construction site and
| finding people doing rough-ins and roofing with Engineering
| titles. That is where the software world is currently -
| "Engineers" in the field doing rough-ins and roofing.
| nsxwolf wrote:
| You do get to call yourself that, though. This is a bit
| like saying "irregardless is not a word" when it's in the
| dictionary now. Calling yourself a "programmer" will be
| detrimental to your career, so why do it?
| Aeolun wrote:
| Just because they're doing CRUD app puzzles doesn't mean
| they're not engineers. There's simply much more of that
| work than actual engineering. And part of engineering is
| knowing when you do _not_ have to reinvent the wheel.
| lolinder wrote:
| I really appreciated Hillel Wayne's series on this topic
| [0].
|
| He actually interviewed a number of people who
| transitioned from a licensed engineering discipline to
| software, and asked them how they felt about software as
| an engineering discipline. His insights are a lot more
| useful than the arguments between only-ever-software
| people on HN who have inflated perceptions of what "real"
| engineers do.
|
| The whole series is worth a read, but here's the short
| version:
|
| > Instead of asking how they felt about certain
| engineering topics, I just asked them point blank. "Do
| you consider software engineering actually engineering?"
|
| > Of the 17 crossovers I talked to, 15 said yes.
|
| > That's not the answer I expected going in. I assumed we
| weren't engineers, that we're actually very far from
| being engineers. But then again, I was never a "real"
| engineer. I don't know what it's like to be a "real"
| engineer, and so can't compare software engineering to
| other forms. I don't have the experience. These people
| did, and they considered software engineering real
| engineering.
|
| [0] https://www.hillelwayne.com/post/are-we-really-
| engineers/
| dgb23 wrote:
| I'd like to push back on this a bit. I'm a programmer,
| but I don't cobble things together. I talk to customers
| and collaborators, make plans, find solutions and write
| code.
|
| It's not engineering but it's engaging, good work.
|
| I get what you're trying to say. But it feels wrong to me
| personally to describe this work as you did.
| up2isomorphism wrote:
| Yes, like drugs, inflations everything can be great just as
| long as you can "adjust" your expectations.
|
| I think next step is to adjust time for some people so they
| think you have lived 100 years while they actually just lived
| 30.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I hit "staff engineer" about four years into my career, and
| kept it when switching jobs. Kinda ridiculous. I was even
| offered a director level job months later.
|
| I'm good but I'm nowhere near that good. Title inflation is
| silly and ten years in, I'm done paying attention to them at
| all. They tell me nothing.
| danking00 wrote:
| FWIW, at my non-tech company, our compensation is far far
| below tech compensation. HR is extremely resistant to
| increasing salaries for SWEs. It's comparatively easy to
| argue that, if an individual has a competing offer for 300k
| they're clearly very valuable and we should give them a title
| that fits that.
|
| Essentially, it's easier to make tons of exceptions than to
| fix the root cause.
| mikestew wrote:
| You should have taken the director job, you probably would
| have handled it as well as anyone else. I was a "Director" of
| Test at one company. I didn't even have a budget. Even in
| interviews I'll tell folks that I was a test manager with a
| glorified title (though with no budget, was I even a "test
| manager"?).
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I've learned after a number of years that I don't want any
| job where there's an expectation that I'm reachable after
| 5pm. That was definitely one of them.
| nsxwolf wrote:
| And I hit "Senior" 4 years into my career, and have struggled
| to get a "Staff" title for the last 18 years. I would love
| some of this title inflation, but haven't been blessed by it.
| I think there's some amount of luck involved just choosing
| the correct jobs.
| neon_electro wrote:
| It's still happening today. I just discussed a role with a
| recruiter hiring for the same kind of thing: https://www.link
| edin.com/jobs/view/3443314062/?refId=xpvVYRn...
|
| (Staff) titling with a 4+ years of experience ask is
| incredibly confusing to me.
| spamizbad wrote:
| Its even weirder on the interview side. We had someone
| apply as a Principle who I could only describe as "solidly
| mid level"
|
| I wasn't a jerk about it in the interview, but I said
| something to the effect of "I know titles are different at
| all other companies, but here the expectations for PEs is
| that they're tasked on the most critical technical
| initiatives and are held to high standards for execution.
| You're also going to be expected to mentor not just Junior
| technical staff, but also mid and senior level engineers.
| Does this sound like a role you're interested in? It's
| fairly demanding."
|
| Guy didn't flinch and said "Yeah, that's exactly what I'm
| looking for!" :|
|
| (We did not hire)
| duped wrote:
| Why did you even bother asking a question like that
| instead of telling the candidate directly that the role
| you're hiring for is beyond their
| level/expertise/experience/etc?
|
| From the candidate side, the only way to differentiate
| between "senior" "staff" "principle" "lead" or whatever
| between companies is the required years of experience on
| the job listing. Which is a terrible metric, but it's
| more informative than the title or job duties.
| whack wrote:
| Was he "solidly mid level" in terms of years-of-
| experience or ability? I find myself conflating the 2
| frequently, and have to remind myself not to. I like to
| periodically remind myself that Zuckerbeg as a 22-year
| old was a successful founder-CEO for a business over a
| hundred employees and a $1B acquisition offer.
|
| Sure, he is not the norm. But I'm sure there are plenty
| of people equally as talented as him who didn't take the
| entrepreneurship route and are now languishing in the
| corporate ladder. Any company can achieve wild success if
| they are able to identify such talents and place them
| immediately in high-impact roles.
| importantbrian wrote:
| Where I see this mostly is in non-tech companies that don't
| have IC tracks. Often these companies have pay-bands that
| necessitate this.
|
| If you have a SWE that you're worried about losing you can't
| just keep them in the same job title and give them a big raise.
| You have to give them a manager, senior manager, or director
| title in order to get them into the pay-band you need them to
| be in. So it really isn't about making the employee feel good
| about the title they have. It's about getting them into the
| right pay band.
| [deleted]
| Finnucane wrote:
| I'm holding out for either "Lord Admiral" or maybe "High
| Executioner".
| rozap wrote:
| My title at my old job was was Supreme Commander, Strategic
| Synergy Group. People took titles way too seriously.
| labster wrote:
| I know, I wouldn't give up overtime pay for a Grand Provost or
| Vice Chief Twit gig either. Maybe for Serene Doge, though.
| newsclues wrote:
| My requests to be referred to as Supreme Allied Commander have
| thus far been ignored.
| kibwen wrote:
| I requested a promotion to Seven Star Engineer, but
| _apparently_ only George Washington is eligible for that
| rank.
| alexwasserman wrote:
| First Sea Lord and First Lord of the Admiralty are both
| fantastic and very real titles, with long histories, along with
| Lord High Admiral of the United Kingdom, which is a bit harder
| to get.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Lord_of_the_Admiralty
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Sea_Lord_and_Chief_of_th...
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_High_Admiral_of_the_Unite...
| LanceH wrote:
| HMFWIC
| Invictus0 wrote:
| At my company we have the opposite problem, where they doubled
| the number of titles by creating "plus" levels. So there is
| junior, junior plus, mid, mid plus, etc. So if you get a
| promotion, you don't get the full raise to the next level AND you
| look like a clown when you write about it on linkedin.
| bell-cot wrote:
| Could be worse - you could be in the US Navy. Where you're
| slowly promoted from Lieutenant (junior grade), to Lieutenant,
| to Lieutenant Commander, to Commander. Then (after "Captain")
| comes Rear Admiral (lower half), Rear Admiral, Vice Admiral,
| Admiral, and ( _in theory_ ) Fleet Admiral.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| And there's a long list of unwritten rules that, if you
| violate, you're soft-capped at LCdr.
|
| [edit]
|
| Also, what about Ensign?
| willis936 wrote:
| I'm willing to bet HR has a secret mapping to radford levels.
| andsoitis wrote:
| You can write whatever "title" you prefer on LinkedIn.
| jopsen wrote:
| FTA:
|
| > listing of managerial positions such as "Directors of First
| Impression," whose jobs are otherwise equivalent to non-
| managerial employees (in this case, a front desk assistant).
|
| Wow, that's pretty brazen.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| Been my opinion for a while now that any company that doesn't
| directly grant stocks to employees should be forbidden from using
| exempt status for those employees. Want them to work more? Pay
| them.
|
| On the flipside, I have a buddy who is one of the best Java devs
| in the DFW area who refused to become a manager and threatened to
| take his talent elsewhere. They carved out entire new levels for
| his software engineer job just to keep him happy. Before this,
| they had up to SDE IV. He was SDE VI when he left to join a
| consultancy when his salary became a concern. The consultancy
| ended up placing him back at the place he had already been
| working for because the company suddenly had a huge knowledge
| vacuum, and they eventually offered him a new position at SDE VII
| to get him back on the team.
| jfk13 wrote:
| See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34641549.
| gwright wrote:
| Labor laws create all sorts of unintended consequences and
| secondary effects. In 2017 the Obama administration was getting
| ready to make a number of changes in the area of exempt vs non-
| exempt workers (i.e. overtime pay).
|
| The changes were advertised as a way to help workers get paid
| more fairly for overtime, but legislation rarely changes economic
| realities. By expanding the requirement to pay overtime they made
| it much more expensive to staff entry level management positions.
| In one non-profit that I was familiar with at the time, the rules
| would have required payroll to increase by $100,000 -
| $200,000/year (maybe more, I can't quite remember the details).
|
| As organizations do, they adapted by eliminating almost all of
| those entry level supervisory positions. People were moved down
| to hourly workers, with their hours severely constrained, moved
| up to more senior level management roles that avoided the
| overtime requirements, or the position was eliminated all
| together. I don't think anyone was happy with those changes
| within the organization but it was necessary to keep the
| organization fiscally viable given the new rules. It also made it
| much harder to move from an hourly position into management
| because the leap in capabilities and responsibilities was much
| greater.
|
| Perversely, the changes were not implemented by the Obama
| administration due to lawsuits that prevented their
| implementation at the last minute. By that time, any affected
| organization had already made the structural changes though. (I
| don't think the regulatory changes ever occurred).
|
| Anyway, this is a long way of saying the labor market always
| adjusts to regulatory constraints and TANSTAFL. The general
| economic principle that when costs increase, demand decreases
| isn't magically voided by legislation. Expensive labor leads to
| fewer jobs and makes it more difficult to absorb young people
| into the job market.
| shagie wrote:
| > Perversely, the changes were not implemented by the Obama
| administration due to lawsuits that prevented their
| implementation at the last minute. By that time, any affected
| organization had already made the structural changes though. (I
| don't think the regulatory changes ever occurred).
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2016/12/26/obamas-overtime-law-failed-b...
|
| > A new labor law rule -- kicked back by a federal judge last
| month -- that would have made almost four million Americans
| eligible for overtime pay may still have resulted in higher
| wages for the workers it was intended to help.
|
| > The new legislation would have significantly raised the
| salary cap under which employees were eligible to earn
| overtime. In response, some large companies, such as Walmart,
| gave raises to workers whose pay fell just under the new
| threshold, making them ineligible for overtime pay. Other
| companies reclassified salaried overtime-exempt workers as
| hourly employees, which would make them eligible to earn
| overtime for workweeks longer than 40 hours.
| gwright wrote:
| Thanks for digging up that news report. I wonder though if
| organizations have drifted back to the previous structures.
| In the example I was thinking of, I'm no longer directly
| involved and so I don't know how things have evolved over the
| last few years.
| shagie wrote:
| Possibly... though I suspect other factors also got in
| there with the past two years and the labor market.
|
| The article (from 2016) finishes with:
|
| > "If someone can get a $5,000 or $7,000 raise by going
| down the street, why wouldn't they?" Eisenbray said.
|
| > "For companies that aren't paying as much as their
| competitors, they're going to see their best talent move,"
| Kropp predicted. "In this segment of the market, people
| will move for 50 cents or a dollar an hour difference."
| astrange wrote:
| > The general economic principle that when costs increase,
| demand decreases isn't magically voided by legislation.
| Expensive labor leads to fewer jobs and makes it more difficult
| to absorb young people into the job market.
|
| "Basic supply and demand" is almost always wrong for the labor
| market. You're a monopsony, they're also your customers, etc.
| Don't assume the obvious is going to happen without actually
| looking.
| gleenn wrote:
| TANSTAFL = There is no such thing as a free lunch
| adra wrote:
| Tanstaafl -- There ain't no such thing as a free lunch
| [deleted]
| DanielHB wrote:
| At my company they asked me what title I wanted, I said Senior
| Software Engineer. Missed opportunity...
| xwdv wrote:
| What tech worker though even works overtime? I barely work
| _time_!
| duxup wrote:
| Do people not notice when it happens to them?
|
| I'm curious about how this works out for individuals. Do they get
| these titles, do the same thing as before and ...just put in
| overtime for the same pay?
| burkaman wrote:
| I think often there is no promotion, a company will just hire a
| new employee to work in a warehouse or something for $40,000,
| call them an "Inventory Analytics Manager" or whatever, and
| then declare that they are exempt from overtime because they're
| a manager. There is no change to notice, you just start the job
| and never realize the company is illegally underpaying you.
| Your colleagues all have the same title and every other company
| you applied to is doing the same thing.
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| It happened to me a couple of times earlier in my career, and I
| was happy about it. I just took the opportunity to turn my fake
| promotion into a real promotion at another company.
| wordlemanney wrote:
| >> Do people not notice when it happens to them?
|
| Not always because pay cuts come in many ways and even senior
| engineers do not see it, except after the fact or in the form
| of diffused pain they cant put a finger on.
|
| - Example: Company says they _still_ match 50% on 401k, but
| only on the first $3000 of contribution (basically, its 0.50 *
| 3 /21). This is a hidden paycut.
|
| - Example: Company offers new health plans with increased
| deductible/premium/copay/coinsurance. This is a hidden paycut.
|
| - Example: Company says vacation days remain the same, but now
| need 3wks advanced approval, and then drag their feet in giving
| approval. This is a hidden paycut.
|
| - Example: Company says they _still_ reimburse for education
| /books/etc per offer letter, except require ever-greater
| detail/receipts and reject randomly for unknown reasons. This
| is a hidden paycut.
|
| - Example: Company says they _still_ reimburse for education
| /books/etc per offer letter, except reject randomly and then
| close out potential for reimbursement after 30days, forcing
| employees to eat the cost. This is a hidden paycut.
|
| - Example (Actual one from Accenture): Company says worker in
| Manhattan should commute down to Trenton via train and then
| take a bus on NJ Transit daily. They will reimburse train, but
| not a rental car. Workers not wanting to spend 5-6hrs a day on
| the train pay for rental car out of pocket. This is a hidden
| paycut.
| soperj wrote:
| There's also a trend where people leave, and they decide not to
| fill the positions, and instead you get no title, and no raise,
| and you get their work.
| acedTrex wrote:
| Lol, quiet hiring, the company version of quiet quitting
| sli wrote:
| "Quiet quitting" was also a company thing that attempted to
| demonize workers for performing exactly their job
| descriptions. Hence it coming mostly out of nowhere before
| suddenly up and disappearing from business media rags when
| it didn't really work out.
| [deleted]
| bena wrote:
| Yes and no.
|
| If everyone else in your skill band is a Directory of
| Dipshittery, then if you're not a Directory of Doowopness, then
| it's an excuse to pay you less. They make more because they're
| "Directors", you're just a "Managing Associate".
|
| Like how everyone here is concerned whether they're "Junior" or
| "Senior".
|
| We've essentially stripped away all meaning from titles.
| JustSomeNobody wrote:
| I'm sure they do. But the momentum to overcome the friction of
| doing something about it is too great for most people.
| duxup wrote:
| I would just find it kind of obvious and weird...
|
| I don't doubt this happens in ways, but just title swapping
| seems like it would be kinda awkward and obvious.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Wage theft is by far the largest category of theft in the
| US so it's not a surprise many get duped into these kind of
| schemes
| fsckboy wrote:
| I think what drives the granting of bigger and better titles is
| the insatiable desire for same from young people who don't have a
| lot of work experience but are eager to feel like they are moving
| up the ladder of success quickly and their accomplishments are
| being recognized. (this is why a number of "famous" places use
| "Member Technical Staff with the single bump of Distinguished and
| it's also why you have the urge to roll your eyes when you
| encounter a teenaged C-suite looking for seed capital. not saying
| teens with a startup aren't worthy of respect, but you'll be apt
| to want to know "which one is the coder, designer, and
| marketer?")
|
| > _We find widespread evidence of firms appearing to avoid paying
| overtime wages by exploiting a federal law that allows them to do
| so for employees termed as "managers" and paid a salary above a
| pre-defined dollar threshold._
|
| this is published by NBER, a very academic economics driven
| enterprise, so let me point out something they should have but
| didn't: TANSTAAFL. There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. And
| I'm not talking about the employers getting a free lunch.
|
| if you (tech workers) think you'll be able to convert your high-
| hourly-equivalent-wage into a higher-hourly-equivalent-wage-with-
| overtime-pay, no, not going to happen, at least not in the long
| term, unless of course your productivity were to climb by a
| commensurate amount.
|
| The market (labor supply and labor demand) sets the wages and
| TANSTAAFL.
|
| You might find a work-life balance that you personally like
| better (for instance no overtime pay, no overtime work) but
| that's not better for all people and after the payment system
| adjusts (for instance erode workers' base pay, then entice longer
| hours with larger overtime payments) it will settle into a new
| equilibrium which does not include free lunch.
| 6510 wrote:
| in judo they invented belts for this.
|
| you could make tests for it. A black belt should be able to 360
| flip his desk with one hand.
| crooked-v wrote:
| > if you (tech workers) think you'll be able to convert your
| high-hourly-equivalent-wage into a higher-hourly-equivalent-
| wage-with-overtime-pay, no, not going to happen, at least not
| in the long term, unless of course your productivity were to
| climb by a commensurate amount.
|
| This paper isn't about tech workers. It's about workers in
| general, and with an empahsis on workers in low-wage and high-
| hour industries like fast food and discount retail.
| shagie wrote:
| Note that this is _not_ about exempt workers (which, if you are a
| software developer making more than $27.63 if paid on an hourly
| basis or $684 week on a salary basis you are exempt from the
| FLSA).
|
| This is about converting non-exempt workers who would normally be
| getting overtime pay of 1.5x to exempt workers through titles
| though the duties don't change... which is still against the
| letter and spirit of the law (
| https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/WHD/legacy/files/fs17... )
| but many employees that this is targeting aren't aware of that.
| To qualify for the administrative employee exemption, all of the
| following tests must be met: The employee must be
| compensated on a salary or fee basis (as defined in the
| regulations) at a rate not less than $684* per week;
| The employee's primary duty must be the performance of office or
| non-manual work directly related to the management or general
| business operations of the employer or the employer's customers;
| and The employee's primary duty includes the
| exercise of discretion and independent judgment with respect to
| matters of significance.
|
| There are similar tests for learned professional, creative
| professional, and computer, and outside sales.
| Severian wrote:
| $27.63 is such an absurdly low amount that it wouldn't even be
| considered a livable wage in some major metros.
| jmyeet wrote:
| Remember all the press about property theft, particularly on the
| lead up to the midterms? That timing was no accident. And then
| the Walgreens came out and admitted it was completely overblown?
|
| The biggest type of theft in the United States is wage theft,
| which this is an example of. Ask yourself why the media do rarely
| covers that.
| randyrand wrote:
| Is this not the intention of the law?
|
| seems like they designed the law explicitly to encourage this.
| ajross wrote:
| No? They _designed_ the law to require overtime wages be paid.
| They left a threshold in the law to permit existing conventions
| of non-hourly-measured "manager" positions, presumably because
| changing how those are administered was felt to be too
| disruptive.
|
| And sure, all rules can be gamed, so right at the threshold we
| see nonsense like this. But to argue that this was the intent
| is ridiculous. The law wasn't for these employees at the
| threshold, it was for the folks farther down the org chart. And
| it quite clearly works as intended for them, since they're
| being paid overtime.
| jacobsenscott wrote:
| It is saying you can be a customer service rep, and if you work
| overtime you are owed overtime pay.
|
| But they can "promote" you to customer service rep manager,
| raise your pay by a bit (but lower than your overtime pay would
| be), and have you continue to do the exact same job (maybe with
| some token manager duties thrown in) for the same or even more
| hours and not need to pay overtime.
|
| Was that the intention of the law? Idk - given the priorities
| of the people who make laws maybe it is.
| crooked-v wrote:
| The law is pretty clear about it. There's just very little to
| no enforcement of it beyond private lawsuits because a
| significant proportion of the US population actively reject
| any action that would favor worker protection over corporate
| profit.
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| Something strange happened to America. They were on the
| exact same socialist trajectory as the rest of the world
| but it went all wrong. And they are using their
| considerable superpower resources to drag the rest of us
| down with them.
| rizzom5000 wrote:
| It's probably not the explicit intention, but I believe that
| an intelligent species would probably recognize that it's in
| their best interests to elect lawmakers who understand the
| concept of economic incentives and as a corollary; perverse
| incentives.
| astrange wrote:
| Most perverse incentives aren't real, they're just
| cynicism.
|
| As an example every new safety technology like seat belts
| comes with complaints that it'll just encourage people to
| drive worse (fancy term "risk compensation") but in fact
| there's no evidence this happens.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| I'm not sure what reading of FLSA would lead to that
| conclusion. The law defines the categories entirely with
| relation to how/how much you are paid and your job
| responsibilities. From the paper:
|
| > While salary, pay frequency, and whether a position is a
| learned profession are typically externally verifiable, whether
| a position satisfies the executive or administrative duties
| criteria depends on the employer's assessment of the position's
| responsibilities and is difficult to verify externally. Often,
| the only piece of externally observable information suggestive
| of a position's duties is the job's title. Thus, employers can
| strategically choose job titles to imply that a position
| involves managerial duties, and as such exempt from mandatory
| overtime payments, although the actual responsibilities of the
| position do not satisfy the executive or administrative duties
| tests
| Hard_Space wrote:
| I used to work at a well-known (all over the world) British
| magazine, where employees regularly received new titles
| unaccompanied by corresponding pay-rises. After a while we
| started an ongoing office meme about being promoted to 'Grand
| Vizier', and other meaningless and cheap 'title rewards'.
| jimt1234 wrote:
| Back in the 90s I worked in the corporate offices of a well-
| known fitness chain (they're open _24 hours_ , even though
| they're really not). I was approached about a promotion to a
| management position. I asked who I would be managing and was
| told, "No one. But you would manage all the servers." Huh? I
| already "manage all the servers"??? I was then told about the
| pay, and it was heavily implied that being a salaried employee
| was sooo great and they were doing me a huge favor. However,
| they must've thought I couldn't do basic math, because
| accepting the position would've been at least a 10% pay
| reduction. I rejected the offer, and they were really angry;
| they kept coming back to me, telling me how I was ruining my
| career. The director of HR even told me that IT-related jobs
| were hot, but would cool off soon, and I would regret not
| moving into management. I was young and dumb, but I wasn't
| _that_ dumb. I knew what they were doing. I quit shortly after
| that.
| mikestew wrote:
| I actually had the opposite happen a long, long time ago. Started
| my new job on salary. Sysadmin on a bunch of remote Unix systems
| (yes, "Unix"), and systems programmer as well. As one might
| expected, it was a demanding job. That's fine, I liked it, and
| the first month went fine.
|
| Then a new manager gets the idea that we should be hourly. Why?
| My only reasonable guess is that he had some misguided idea that
| "salary" was for big-whigs like himself, and "hourly" is for the
| grunts under him. So now I have to punch a literal clock, like a
| fast-food worker or summat? Fine by me.
|
| I made fucking _bank_ at that job, as one might imagine. What I
| can 't imagine is how much payroll went up, and how he got away
| with continuing it.
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