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Comment by kmlx | Hacker News Reader

> You can’t compensate me enough to put in more than 40-45 hours a week.

some IT companies I worked for in a past life paid for overtime. it was a lot more than what you would get regularly and lots of coworkers did it. is this not a general experience? are companies not paying for overtime?

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I get paid for overtime, yet I rather spend that time with family and friends than working to get sooner into the grave without enjoying life.

Additionally those sacrifices won't count anything when it comes to select who's going away in the next layoffs round.

The guy doing 40h is getting the same as the overworked ones doing 60h plus. Plus in Germany it is illegal to do more than 10h per day anyway.

I'd rather get paid to get in the grave sooner while having no debt on a home. I find most of existence boring, but don't enjoy the process of leaving this realm. Therefore I'd rather have a nice prison that I own as quickly as possible than to have freedom to stew in this hell hole with debt.

The first step is to avoid debt in first place.

Only buy what one can afford, subscriptions only for infrastructure, credits only those that one can afford to pay from saving and no longer than 3 years.

I have been doing this for quite a while, no need to get rich, not even money can cure everything, only make it less painful.

That’s going to be hard to buy a flat/house then, or at least inefficient. The mortgage I paid on my flat was initially higher than the rent for a comparable flat. Within a few years, it evened out, and now it’s less. Financially, this has been a good decision to take on that debt.

The important part is that the mortgage was backed by an asset - I could have decided to sell the flat and pay back the debt at any time.

Even today, your average enterprise CRUD developer with 3-5 years of experience in many major cities in the US can afford home using the standard metric of 3.5x your income.

Not everyone needs or wants to live on the west coast.

Obviously it’s great of you can save huge chunks of you income for multiple years, but even then it may be the financially better decision to buy at a good time and mortgage rather than buying when you have the money. For example, my remaining mortgage is at a lower interest rate than what I can have if I invest. So it makes sense to not exercise my early repayment option.

Debt, as long as it’s backed by a sufficiently good asset can be a good option.

You have a negative interest rate mortgage?

No, at around 1% fixed for 10 years. You can get up to 2% on very short term investments in Germany right now with interests rising.

No but we do have inflation eroding the value of savings and also the cost of fixed rate mortgage debt.

Right now you need a pretty good rate of return just to keep pace with inflation if you're saving.

Meanwhile that same inflation is reducing the value you the debt you've taken on to buy a house and you get to live in the house as it pays off.

You can get an FHA loan with 3.5% down and they are easy to qualify for.

That only works out if there is a buyer and not all countries are like US.

Why?? Dying in debt on a home == a discounted price on a home.

Always remember that the Mortgage Bankers Association defaulted on their mortgage.

I don't want them to be able to take it from me in the mean time. It's far easier to pay $1000/year in taxes than $26000/year in mortgage/taxes.

Yeah no… debt is like rent especially early in the mortgage. The above is only a good deal if the rent to own ratio is in favor of owning and that’s mostly not the case right now

They are saying that their life is more important to them than a pittance of extra money and there is no amount of overtime (within reason, assuredly: if I were willing to pay a billion dollars an hour that would likely work for at least the 46th hour ;P) that would convince them to stay and work longer than a reasonable amount of time.

Overtime is usually paid on a curve with about 20~25% per hour more for regular overtime, and 50% for sundays and special days (from memory).

That’s just not worth it for many people. I too wouldn’t give away a weekend for that money, considering I’ll be in a zombie state for the next two weeks and would probably straight get sick and waste many more days in paid leave depending on the timing. Even the money I’d spend to compensate for the stress could burn through the surplus.

It would of course be a different proposition if I was someone who could work for weeks without any impact, I know some people fit the bill, just not me.

PS: Forgot one of the most important aspect when you have family: is your overtime pay worth the time you’re not spending with them, especially on weekends ?

For "non-exempt" the general rate for overtime is "time and a half" aka 1.5 times your hourly rate. Holidays were usually double.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-and-a-half

It might be worth it to work Sundays for 50% more if you don't work Mondays.

Cashiers where I live have those terms. And young people without children benefit alot from the deal.

> are companies not paying for overtime?

ime for most white collar contracts: no

maybe because time tracking (esp. with remote work) is trust based and hence essentially just a formality where noone expects the employee to report under-time.

Perhaps I’m a bit slow.

But there seems to be a lot of “time in lieu”, work extra take the time off.

But that’s only a 1 to 1 ratio, not 1.5 or 2.0, and.

Once you have “enough” money ceases to be the motivating factor.

in salaried positions in the us, you will never get overtime pay.

This is a misunderstanding. Whether one is entitled to overtime or not depends on whether they are exempt or non exempt, not if they are hourly or salary. However, generally salaried positions won't be paid overtime because everyone thinks they [all] are exempt or should be, even though they may be incorrectly classified as such. A side note: there is one situation where you can have hourly exempt (meaning you are paid for how worked but not at 1.5 times hourly rate) which is "computer professionals" classification. Very few folks, even in HR, know this. Partly because just about 100% "computer professional" jobs are paid salary instead of hourly.

I've never been paid overtime in my entire career, and I've definitely worked overtime. Maybe if your boss is nice you get a PTO day.

I have never been paid overtime in my multi-decade career.

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