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Comment by chrisseaton | Hacker News Reader

No I think a salaried employee is a professional and supposed to put in the hours required to get the job done, within reason. For example if a client has come to see you and your boss wants to take everyone for a work dinner you wouldn't say 'sorry it's after hours' - you're paid full time and you're supposed to be there as required, and you don't quibble about the hours, within reason. Where as an hourly employee would say 'sorry I'm off the clock'.

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"is a professional and supposed to put in the hours required to get the job done, within reason"

Funny how it only goes one way. Not many employers are OK with someone taking Friday off because they got their work done early. Lots of employers will see nothing wrong with asking people to come in on the weekend. I think people forget that the employer/employee relationship is a value for value business relationship. As a professional I'm flexible but I'm not exploitable.

Well flexibility is what I mean. Being a salaried employee means not clocking in-and-out, not quibbling about hours worked either way, and working with your employer rather than against them in some kind of by-the-hour adversarial relationship.

Taking a salary means you are being responsible for what you achieve, not just mindlessly churning out the required number of hours.

Well, flexibility is what I mean. Being an employer of a salaried employee means signing more than just one fixed paycheck per 2 weeks, not questioning when someone requests to be paid more and working with your employees rather than against them in some kind of exact-amount-of-dollars adversarial relationship.

Taking a salaried work means you are being responsible for the well-being of your employees, not just mindlessly handing out fixed amounts of money.

Not many employers are OK with someone taking Friday off

But for some reason rush hour starts just after noon on Fridays (at least in the bay area). So many employers seem to have some flexibility.

Which is what My Boss at BT said as he had worked in the Valley and in the UK he got no more work out his SV teams than he did in the UK -and in the UK this was an ex civil service unionized with 5 weeks Al plus privilege days

> For example if a client has come to see you and your boss wants to take everyone for a work dinner you wouldn't say 'sorry it's after hours' - you're paid full time and you're supposed to be there as required, and you don't quibble about the hours, within reason.

I'm paid a certain amount to do a job, with technically unspecified hours, although with the cultural expectation that it'll be 40 hours per week. If I'm going to spend a few hours with a customer (presumably part of my job, in this hypothetical situation), I'll expect some flexibility next time I've got a couple hours of errands to run during the week.

I'm not so worried about one-off occurrences, but I'll take exception if I start to see a pattern of my hours inching up. 42 hours a week? Doesn't sound like much (24 minutes a day). What do you think would happen if I asked for a 5% raise for 5% more work? Right now, my manager would tell me that we don't have the budget, and his manager would start probing around to see how to spread out my current workload to other employees.

Lawyers would like to have a word with you.

They charge an hourly rate to clients. They aren't salaried to clients.

Outside counsel lawyers, perhaps.

Staff attorneys / in-house counsel are generally salaried and work as described above.

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