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Comment by fatnoah | Hacker News Reader

Oh, man, don't get me started. Two short ones: I did a stint in professional services and billed for 2600 hours @ $250/hr for a total of $650k. Essentially worked 12+ hour days for a year, and got a bonus of $1000 before taxes. I quit within a month.

Next up was an appreciation gesture where we were thanked for all of our extra hard work with a pack of "Extra" gum and a delivery of baked potatoes (with all the fixings, at least). Unfortunately, the potatoes didn't arrive until about 2pm and no announcement was made. There was just a couple tins in the corner of the kitchen.

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Most of the developers at my company (www.facetdev.com) are contract, but for the few full-timers we still have, we used to ask the team to work long hours out of the goodness of their hearts if a project needed it.

That seemed wrong, so I implemented a bonus plan where you get paid 60% of everything you bill over your weekly goals and made working extra hours optional. I love writing those bonus checks!

Wait, so you pay overtime, except you pay 40% less? I must be misunderstanding.

Also please tell me you aren't proud of paying for overtime and I'm misunderstanding that too. That should be the minimum expectation.

Not the original poster, but any kind of overtime is rare for salaried work? At least in the US.

I'd take 60% per hour for overtime in a heartbeat as long as it was optional, since I've always ended up doing that kind of work for client/manager goodwill (or the pleasure of not being fired).

Some states (Washington, IIRC?) require overtime hours be tracked even for salaried positions, and those hours should be 1.5x regular rate.

(This is off the top of my head based on an internship 6 years ago)

I think this may be true beneath a certain salary amount, but it's relatively low for software.

For California it depends on both type of work and compensation. You can still be required to pay overtime to a salaried employee if they don't meet certain criterion such as being in a managerial position.

In California, the level for computer professionals is nearly double the main (professional/management/admin) amount ($88K+ vs $45-50K depending on employer size.)

60% of what was billed to the client; so probably the equivalent of 3x or 4x their normal salary rate.

Correct

I understand that you get 60% of what's billed to your client, which probably is several times your salary rate per hour, and not 60% of your regular rate per hour. Maybe?

So you ask people to work overtime at a discount to their normal rate?

No, when full-time employees are billed out to clients it is usually at 2-3x their effective hourly pay rate. 60% of their bill rate is more than 1.5x their typical pay rate.

Ah, gotcha. That's pretty cool.

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." - The oft-ignored HN comment guidelines

I couldn't understand what he meant at all, that's why I asked.

So much of these reminds me of the Discount Speakers Bureau in Dilbert:

https://dilbert.com/strip/1995-05-12

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