Is your job divisible?

[Birdjaguar]

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."



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

Nice link; thanks.

 

[Mise]

The US appears peculiar in this regard. The situation in Canada seems to be the same as in the UK. "Salary" vs "hourly" pay is merely a contractual difference, not a statutory distinction.

 

[Grisu]

I must admit, from my various times abroard, other countries do not understand how hard Americans work. The idea that many people work 60 hours a week meets with disbelief.

It's more that we just don't understand the why

Personally, I work around 45h a week...That's enough for me There are some parts that others could do just as well, so at least parts of it certainly are divisible.

The US appears peculiar in this regard. The situation in Canada seems to be the same as in the UK. "Salary" vs "hourly" pay is merely a contractual difference, not a statutory distinction.

same here. Actually, very few get paid hourly. Usually only On-Demand jobs such as housecleaning and such. Most full time employees are salaried and have no clue what their hourly pay is (myself included). I know my monthly and my yearly wage and that's that.

 

[warpus]

It's more that we just don't understand the why

I call it the "Let's try to grab the American dream by the balls" strategy. I think it involves pulling yourself up by your bootstraps and working super hard so that you can afford a house with a white picket fence, 7 cars, and a watch that's more expensive than what your friends have.

 

[Zelig]

I call it the "Let's try to grab the American dream by the balls" strategy. I think it involves pulling yourself up by your bootstraps and working super hard so that you can afford a house with a white picket fence, 7 cars, and a watch that's more expensive than what your friends have.

"Work more hours" instead of "demand more money" is analogous to "sell your belongings if you need money". You can only do it once, and then you're just left with fewer belongings.

 

[warpus]

"Work more hours" instead of "demand more money" is analogous to "sell your belongings if you need money". You can only do it once, and then you're just left with fewer belongings.

It also sets a precedent - working extra hours for free once will signal to your boss that it's okay for such a thing to happen again. There is a person in our office who (against union regulations) does such things. She comes in early and leaves late. The precedent was set and now she has to deal with it. That and she's horribly inefficient at what she does from what I've seen and heard - but the thing that matters most is the precedent she set when she did it the first time. Now it's a part of her routine.

 

[Mise]

"Work more hours" instead of "demand more money" is analogous to "sell your belongings if you need money". You can only do it once, and then you're just left with fewer belongings.

That's a really good way of looking at it. It's especially forceful to consider time as a belonging.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

Being able to work from home should help. Or not.

It's freezing and snowy. It's a million degrees and humid. Your kids are sick. The repairman is coming. You have a doctor's appointment.

Whatever the reason, many workers are lucky enough to be able to take advantage of workplaces that offer a bit of flexibility as to when and where they work.

But such affordances come with strings attached: Employees with this perk often wind up working extra hours at nights or on weekends. Why? Not to make up for lost productivity (studies show that workers are just as diligent if not more so when working from home) but in an effort to demonstrate their commitment to and passion for their jobs.

Researchers call the phenomenon "the flexibility stigma."

"In high-level, professional jobs, [the stigma] stems from what one sociologist called 'the norm of work devotion,' where you have to prove yourself worthy of your job by making it the central focus of your life—the uncontested central focus of your life," says Joan C. Williams, director of the Center for WorkLife Law at the University of California Hastings College of the Law. For employees who occasionally would like to work from home, that means working ever harder and ever crazier hours, lest anyone think their jobs were anything but their top priority.

Women with children may be the most likely to take advantage of an employer's flexibility, and thus may experience the stigma most often, but Williams says that it hurts everybody—"everybody who is not a breadwinner married to a homemaker," because those lucky few are the only people who can realistically comply with "the norm of work devotion." Men, women, those with kids, those without—everyone who deviates from the "ideal-worker norm" will need to demonstrate their devotion in other ways. "It's equal-opportunity misery," says Williams.

Over the past two decades, increasingly sophisticated technology has meant that fewer and fewer people need to be in the office to get their work done. Between 1997 and 2010, the number of Americans who work from home at least one day per week rose by 4.2 million. As a percent of the total workforce, this is a jump of a bit more than two percentage points, from 7 to 9.4 percent.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Mostly when I worked I was either a salesman (if you don't feel like working don't ruin potential buyers, just stay home and let someone else work them) or had my own business (as long as you don't mind risking a client you can just reschedule them for...later...sometime...errrr...if you do this too much you go out of business because ideally you don't have that open future time without clients already, but once in a while).

 

[Zelig]

Yeah, I don't do any extra hours nights or weekends. I don't need to do that to demonstrate my commitment or passion for my job; I have neither, I let my high quality results speak for themselves.

I'm fortunate that the top producers in my field are literally orders of magnitude more productive than bottom producers. If you're an average producer, there's really no point in doubling your work hours, you still won't be nearly as productive as someone smarter who works half the time.