Is your job divisible?

[Zelig]

Being salaried is not all that bad. I get a full day's pay if I put in at least two hours of my time and can take long or short lunches and do errands during the day if I need to. I just need to get my work done. I generally put in 45+ hours "at work" each week. I am also eligible for bonuses and incentive pay. There are very few $50K salary folks putting in 50+ hour weeks unless they are on some form of commission. The attorneys, tech folks, and investment bankers who pull very long weeks are are very well paid and usually have big bonus opportunities.

That's all fine, except for the working 45+ hours per week part. I'm well paid, can flex my time however I want, have bonus opportunities, etc... but it's for a 37.5 hour standard work week.

Presumably there's some number of normal weekly work requirement where you wouldn't want to do your job anymore (140/week?). For me, that number's lower - somewhere under 40 hours.

 

[Traitorfish]

Almost infinitely divisible. Cashier at a low-end supermarket, y'see: I am basically a component in a machine, as evidenced by the fact that I am gradually being supplanted by an equivalent system using touch-screens instead of meat.

 

[Hygro]

Begs the question, as someone who can do higher order work for The System, and Keynesian logic aside, aren't you effectively pushing out unskilled workers who don't have your upward prospects?


;D

 

[Birdjaguar]

That's all fine, except for the working 45+ hours per week part. I'm well paid, can flex my time however I want, have bonus opportunities, etc... but it's for a 37.5 hour standard work week.

Presumably there's some number of normal weekly work requirement where you wouldn't want to do your job anymore (140/week?). For me, that number's lower - somewhere under 40 hours.

My job is interesting, challenging for me and productive for those who pay me. I work with people I like and have an opportunity to positively influence their future. A fifty hour work week wouldn't scare me off. If my work load went to sixty on a regular basis, I'd hire more staff to bring it back down.

I have an accountant who is hourly and is always looking for more pay and fewer hours. She works about 34 hours a week. I know I frustrate her when I tell her that if she wants to make more money all she has to do is work more hours. I gave her a $2.00 an hour raise this year anyway.

 

[Traitorfish]

Begs the question, as someone who can do higher order work for The System, and Keynesian logic aside, aren't you effectively pushing out unskilled workers who don't have your upward prospects?


;D

I'd quibble the assertion that a history major has upward prospects.

 

[Zelig]

I have an accountant who is hourly and is always looking for more pay and fewer hours. She works about 34 hours a week. I know I frustrate her when I tell her that if she wants to make more money all she has to do is work more hours. I gave her a $2.00 an hour raise this year anyway.

That would frustrate me too - of course I can work more hours, but if I want that, I'll do more consulting on the side - that pays significantly better on an hourly rate, and my benefits don't get any better at my day job if I work more hours there. Hence why they need to pay me overtime rate if I'm working past my standard set of hours - or they'd need to figure out some way of scaling my benefits to be worth more if I work more hours.

 

[Arwon]

I work in statistics, we're pretty interchangeable apart from specific subject matter knowledge. We have flexibile hours.

 

[Birdjaguar]

That would frustrate me too - of course I can work more hours, but if I want that, I'll do more consulting on the side - that pays significantly better on an hourly rate, and my benefits don't get any better at my day job if I work more hours there. Hence why they need to pay me overtime rate if I'm working past my standard set of hours - or they'd need to figure out some way of scaling my benefits to be worth more if I work more hours.

If you work in the US overtime is automatically paid for all hours over 40/week. Do you want that adjusted for your situation to something lower?

With my accountant, if she worked 40 hours, not only would she get paid for 6 more hours every week (about $140/wk or $7000 over 50 weeks) she would also earn 4 more hours of PTO (paid time off) per pay period (26 per year). PTO can be accumulated and carried over up to 200 hours and either used for paid days off or cashed out at her hourly rate. Four hours over 26 pay periods is 104 hours (13 days or $2400). So she could get a $9400 raise by working 6 more hours a week. I am not sympathetic to her frustration. She wanted a four day work week (Thursdays off).

If you are producing at maximum value to the company at 37 hours per week, then working you more hours would be a waste. If I was your boss, I would leave you right where you are until either you showed that more time created more value for the company or if what you did changed sufficiently to add value, then you'd get a raise.

 

[Zelig]

If you work in the US overtime is automatically paid for all hours over 40/week. Do you want that adjusted for your situation to something lower?

I'm salaried and I already get overtime pay past 37.5 hours, so I'm not sure what you mean. I was explaining that overtime past 37.5 (or 40, or whatever your regular week is) is still necessary for salaried workers even if you assume their marginal cost of personal time never goes up with less availability of personal time, because benefits don't scale with overtime hours.

If you are producing at maximum value to the company at 37 hours per week, then working you more hours would be a waste. If I was your boss, I would leave you right where you are until either you showed that more time created more value for the company or if what you did changed sufficiently to add value, then you'd get a raise.

Nah, I'm like warpus, there's arbitrarily more work I could be doing. In any case, I'm not saying I'm underpaid, I'm saying North Americans work* too much, and that in general people who want more money should absolutely focus on raises, and not on working more. A four day work week seems completely reasonable to me. My boss dropped to alternating 3/4 day work weeks for about six months to work on some of his more demanding side projects on the other days, and I hardly noticed any difference in his total productivity.

*Particularly in the sense of a) doing jobs that should be automated away and b) spending too much time at work just to fit company culture when they could finish their actual work in a fraction of the time, like Mise.

A thing Mise linked on Facebook a while ago: The Economist on Bullpoop jobs

 

[Birdjaguar]

I'm salaried and I already get overtime pay past 37.5 hours, so I'm not sure what you mean. I was explaining that overtime past 37.5 (or 40, or whatever your regular week is) is still necessary for salaried workers even if you assume their marginal cost of personal time never goes up with less availability of personal time, because benefits don't scale with overtime hours.



Nah, I'm like warpus, there's arbitrarily more work I could be doing. In any case, I'm not saying I'm underpaid, I'm saying North Americans work* too much, and that in general people who want more money should absolutely focus on raises, and not on working more. A four day work week seems completely reasonable to me. My boss dropped to alternating 3/4 day work weeks for about six months to work on some of his more demanding side projects on the other days, and I hardly noticed any difference in his total productivity.

*Particularly in the sense of a) doing jobs that should be automated away and b) spending too much time at work just to fit company culture when they could finish their actual work in a fraction of the time, like Mise.

A thing Mise linked on Facebook a while ago: The Economist on Bullpoop jobs

Canadian law pays OT to salaried workers? Why, then aren't all Canadians either salaried or hourly? Why the distinction?

Whether or not Americans work too much is an interesting question on its own. The traditional work ethic in the US encourages and rewards more work in order to succeed. Unless you can get rich quick through enterprise or trickery.

 

[azzaman333]

Divide by zero error.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Being salaried is not all that bad. I get a full day's pay if I put in at least two hours of my time and can take long or short lunches and do errands during the day if I need to.

I don't know of anyone else that this applies to. I'm sure there are of course, but I don't think your example is any more illustrative than my (non) examples.

From what I hear*, the opposite to what you are saying tends to be true -
Salaried people work more than 40 hrs/wk and don't get the supposed flexibility that comes with being on salary.

My last job certainly didn't allow people to put in less than 40 hours in a given week no matter how productive they are. I knew of guys who did it more than once and got talked to by management for not putting in a full 40 despite having their work done and despite being salaried. They were expected to just hang around and make/find work for themselves.

*and again I admit this is all completely anecdotal from my end

 

[Zelig]

Canadian law pays OT to salaried workers? Why, then aren't all Canadians either salaried or hourly? Why the distinction?

I don't really understand the question. Salaried vs. hourly is an administrative/clerical payroll distinction - salaried is either for longer-term staff who are working the same number of hours each week, hourly for people who work a varying number of hours or temporary positions.

 

[illram]

In the US, how you are paid is more determined by what you do, as opposed to whether you work varying hours. Basically, unless your job consists of a select number of duties as delineated by various federal and state regulations, you have to get paid by the hour.

A lot of employers still try to pay salaries to people who otherwise must be paid hourly, and then try to strictly regulate their hours worked so they always "earn" that salary equivalent in hours worked, but it is a risky thing to do in the US as it exposes you to potential liability for other technical wage and hour violations. This is because hourly employment also carries numerous other regulatory requirements inapplicable to "exempt" employees, such as record keeping requirements and in some states, mandatory meal and rest breaks.

 

[Zelig]

That sounds legally similar, just culturally different.

And... in terms of actual payment processing there probably isn't any real difference. If you look at my company's (international, 30k+ employees) payroll system for fulltime staff, you can enter in either in either hourly or yearly salary, and it automatically fills in the missing fields - twice-monthly pay is then calculated based on hourly wage * calculated hours in the pay period (Since with twice monthly pay your hours periods all work out differently.)

On the electronic paystub that employees see, payroll can choose to display the hours and/or hourly rate or not, but again, no real difference to the back-end system.

 

[Birdjaguar]

I don't really understand the question. Salaried vs. hourly is an administrative/clerical payroll distinction - salaried is either for longer-term staff who are working the same number of hours each week, hourly for people who work a varying number of hours or temporary positions.

In the US you are classified either as exempt (typically salaried) or non exempt (typically hourly). Exempt employees must have some decision-making/management responsibility role as defined by the US Dept of Labor. Exempt employees are not tied to the 40 hour work week rules. They may be scheduled to work 9-5, but working more or less does not affect their pay. they are paid the same no matter how many hours they work. Non exempt employees are only paid for the hours they actually work and if they work more than 40 in a week, they get time and a half for the overtime hours. Many companies limit or don't allow overtime work at all.

In the US, how you are paid is more determined by what you do, as opposed to whether you work varying hours. Basically, unless your job consists of a select number of duties as delineated by various federal and state regulations, you have to get paid by the hour.

Exempt vs non exempt

That sounds legally similar, just culturally different.

And... in terms of actual payment processing there probably isn't any real difference. If you look at my company's (international, 30k+ employees) payroll system for fulltime staff, you can enter in either in either hourly or yearly salary, and it automatically fills in the missing fields - twice-monthly pay is then calculated based on hourly wage * calculated hours in the pay period (Since with twice monthly pay your hours periods all work out differently.)

On the electronic paystub that employees see, payroll can choose to display the hours and/or hourly rate or not, but again, no real difference to the back-end system.

In our company:

bi weekly pay for non exempt = hours worked x hourly rate
bi weekly pay for exempt = annual salary/26 pay periods

When salaried employees cash out their PTO (paid time off) it is calculated like so:

annual salary/2080 hours x hours to be cashed out. There are 2080 hours in a standard work year of 40 hour weeks.

Zelig, since everyone is paid through an hourly calculation, why have "salaried" positions at all?

 

[illram]

Exempt vs non exempt

Right. But a surprisingly large number of people do not even know what those words mean. They only think in terms of salaried vs. non-salaried.

 

[Zelig]

Zelig, since everyone is paid through an hourly calculation, why have "salaried" positions at all?

Because full-time professionals negotiate their salary based on what they make annually? I've got no idea what my hourly rate is calculated to. And hourly employees have to deal with timesheets and such.

doing business in Canada: some key differences in employment and labo(u)r law in Canada and U.S.

"Significantly, the American categories of "exempt" and "non exempt" employees are not applicable in Canada. Salaried employees, as opposed to those on wages, are typically exempt from overtime pay in the U.S. There is no such distinction anywhere in Canada."

Right. But a surprisingly large number of people do not even know what those words mean. They only think in terms of salaried vs. non-salaried.

Yeah, see above, those words don't mean anything here.

 

[Traitorfish]

"Hourly wage" means you work in an inhuman, soul-crushing factory. "Salary" means that the factory has carpeting.

/annoying marxist

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

So carpet factories have salaried workers?