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Comment by worker_person | Hacker News Reader

Many years ago. Knew a tech worker that had worked years of unpaid overtime for IBM.

She said it was fine, because she was exempt. So I looked up the definition of exempt. She didn't meet the legal definition. Argued with her for hours over it. She refused to believe that she was being taken advantage of. In her mind all a company had to do was say you were exempt, and that was enough. Eventually I gave up.

Following year, IBM lost a big lawsuit. She got a very big check.

https://redmondmag.com/articles/2006/11/26/ibm-pays-tech-wor...

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So what is the definition of an exempt worker? How do I know if I am not exempt and being used.

Edit: the downvotes would seem to mean my "often accurate" generalization here is not accurate often enough to be worth saying, which I'm willing to believe. No level of detail in a HN comment can substitute for hours of research and talking with a lawyer, of course!

A good indicator is "do you have to fill out a timesheet". If you do, that means you're probably paid an hourly wage, and you should be paid overtime; if you don't, you're probably salaried and overtime-exempt. As usual, it's more complicated than that if you get into the weeds (e.g. in the news article linked in the comment you're replying to), and having a lawyer interpret your employment contract is probably the most authoritative way to figure that out if you feel your situation is unusual.

Exempt and non-exempt are orthogonal to salaried an hourly.

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Overtime for an hourly exempt worker is 1.0x.

Overtime for a salary exempt worker is not defined.

Overtime for an hourly non-exempt worker is 1.5x.

Overtime for a salary non-exempt worker is poorly defined.

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An hourly computer professional making over $27.63/hour is likely exempt. One working under that amount is non-exempt.

The specifics of how the FLSA applies to computer professionals is described in https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/17e-overtime-co...

Yes, that is one of the complications, some roles are "salaried nonexempt". :)

For computer professionals, that has a very low threshold of $684 (you have to make less than that per week) to be non-exempt.

https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/17g-overtime-sa...

> Exempt computer employees may be paid at least $684 on a salary basis or on an hourly basis at a rate not less than $27.63 an hour.

> Overtime for a salary non-exempt worker is poorly defined.

No it's 1.5x (minimum), just like hourly.

To find the hourly wage that the 1.5x applies to, you divide their salary for the pay period by the number of non-overtime paid hours in the pay period.

> An hourly computer professional making over $27.63/hour is likely exempt.

Under federal law, but maybe not under state law (CA, for instance, has a much higher threshold for computer software workers.)

You can be hourly and exempt. You can be paid a fixed salary and be non-exempt. There are also many salaried people who fill out timecards.

Edit to your edit:

> my "often accurate" generalization here is not accurate often enough to be worth saying, which I'm willing to believe. No level of detail in a HN comment can substitute for hours of research and talking with a lawyer

Your generalization is frequently incorrect, because billing by the hour is extremely common. The DOL has a very readable website that explains exemptions. https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/17a-overtime

I've been salaried and gotten paid overtime.

Just to be clear -- frequently incorrect even among HN readers? I would think one or more of these exemptions apply to just about everyone likely to read these comments who has a job, but perhaps I'm misunderstanding them.

Ah, I think I get what you were saying, company A is billing company B hourly so employee of company A needs to track their time even if overtime-exempt. Yeah, not necessarily "rare" in tech, mea culpa.

> There are also many salaried people who fill out timecards.

Some of them do so for accounting reasons. Not because it determines their pay.

That is what I am suggesting. Filling out a timecard has nothing to do with whether you are FLSA exempt or not.

If you are a computer professional, it is described in https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/17e-overtime-co...

This is the most common exemption: https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/17a-overtime

Employee misclassification is very common, even and especially with higher-paid salaried positions. Whether you are exempt depends on the actual work you do in the day, and in what proportions. It does not depend on your job title, official job description, salary/hourly status, or pay level.

Example: You work 60 hours a week for BigCo. You have a fancy Director of BlahBlah title. You receive a salary of $500k. You spend 49 percent of your time performing truly managerial tasks. The other 51 percent of your time, you’re pitching in to help with your subordinates’ production-level work. Guess what? You’re non-exempt 100% of the time, and your employer owes you 20 hours of overtime each week, at an approximate rate of $240 per hour. This isn’t a kooky law school hypothetical, by the way: actual employees have sued and won on similar facts.

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