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LinkedIn to pay nearly $6M in unpaid overtime wages and damages to 359 employees

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Re: LinkedIn to pay nearly $6M in unpaid overtime wages and damages to 359 employees

#101

Post by hueving »

yulaow wrote: post #98
jessriedel wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Th original link is to a US company operating in the US being investigated for breaking US laws by the US government. This forum is hosted by a US company on US soil and the large majority of readers and commenters work in the US. It's safe to assume that allsystemsgo is talking about US law unless otherwise stated.

I am sorry, but what I meant was "I thought that in any developed country the overtime work was obviously paid" not that "oh I think you were in EU zone". Basically for me is very hard to understand why I should work for free ( I could want to work overtime for free, but if I am imposed to work overtime I must be paid)

>Basically for me is very hard to understand why I should work for free ( I could want to work overtime for free, but if I am imposed to work overtime I must be paid)

If you are in software engineering, the answer is that the US pays the best salaries in the world. You are not working for free if you are salaried. You sign a contract to fulfill certain duties regardless of the amount of time it takes.

Re: LinkedIn to pay nearly $6M in unpaid overtime wages and damages to 359 employees

#102

Post by Flow »

mreiland wrote: post #92
conistonwater wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a cynical and pessimistic interpretation (just an idle thought; I know nothing at all): the investigators are stretched thin, so instead of investigating anything themselves, they instead ask LinkedIn to investigate itself. LinkedIn slaps itself a little bit, writes a report, agrees to a settlement, maybe manages to soften some language or push its own interpretation of events, "we did this, this and this, b…

does it really matter when they did the thing in the first place? It's like congratulating a car thief for being an upstanding citizen because they admitted to the thievery and promised never to do it again after paying a fine.

If that actually worked, it would be ideal :)

Re: LinkedIn to pay nearly $6M in unpaid overtime wages and damages to 359 employees

#103

Post by hueving »

throwawayh3d8 wrote: post #37
georgemcbay wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on your job and other factors, but sometimes the answer is, sadly, yes. My mom is a soon-to-retire nurse and she was a salaried employee who, if she worked overtime, made either time-and-a-half (1.5x) or double-time (2x) pay depending upon the situation. But software developers, for all of the talk of ninjas and rockstars and whatnot, are a socially low and easily exploited class that make decisions agains…

Sounds bitter. Software developers are certainly not regarded as socially lower than a nurse, quite the opposite (at least in Europe). But I _do_ agree that, compared to many other professions prestiges is low. I also agree that it's time for unions, although simply owing the company collectively may work better. More importantly, people should not allow themselves to be exploited and realise that doing so is just as…

>I also agree that it's time for unions

That will definitely not help bring prestige to the field. Professions that require unions are seen as being so easy to enter that they need to form unions to avoid the effects of the free market.

Re: LinkedIn to pay nearly $6M in unpaid overtime wages and damages to 359 employees

#104

Post by crdblb »

The reach of these kinds of lawsuits (see also the Yahoo one from a few years ago) goes far beyond the affected employees. For example, I'm a dev but I've never worked in ops or any other role where I was considered "on call", so I have never had the opportunity for being in the plaintiff class of any of these kinds of suits. But just reading about them makes me reconsider a lot of things. Despite not being "on call", I have still put in tons of unpaid overtime over the years, which is unfortunately considered typical for a software dev these days. Reading about lawsuits like this has essentially motivated me to stop doing that. If others are getting paid for overtime (even if it's through lawsuits) but I'm not, then I won't put in those extra hours. It's changed my life for the better, despite not being directly affected.

Re: LinkedIn to pay nearly $6M in unpaid overtime wages and damages to 359 employees

#105

Post by marvin »

jessriedel wrote: post #90
yulaow wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a EU citizen I hoped to see a /s under your post. I do not want to be rude but here it is obvious that if you work overtime you must be compensated and also very well (usually 1,5-2 times more than regular hours). And not only it, in some states, like mine, you can work only a limited amount of hours (6 or 8, I don't remember well) overtime per week, otherwise it is illegal.

Th original link is to a US company operating in the US being investigated for breaking US laws by the US government. This forum is hosted by a US company on US soil and the large majority of readers and commenters work in the US. It's safe to assume that allsystemsgo is talking about US law unless otherwise stated.

The snark in this comment is unnecessary.

Re: LinkedIn to pay nearly $6M in unpaid overtime wages and damages to 359 employees

#106

Post by fred_durst »

walterbell wrote: post #66
logicallee wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Edited to be less sure.) A third reason might be the argument from market power stemming from the fact that if you can personally create $10 million of cold hard cash value using nothing but a bit of time in front of a computer, and with no long-term detrimental effects on you of any kind, then the fact that you are minting money creates a seller's market (just as there will always be a seller's market for legal cur…

It is the job of any lobby to carve out exceptions to rules. From the NYT article above: "...Under current rules, if an employer declares that an employee’s primary responsibility is executive, such as overseeing a cleanup crew, then that worker can be exempted from overtime. White House officials said those rules were sometimes abused by employers in an attempt to avoid paying overtime. The new rules could require t…

That is a common tactic, but many Assistant Managers in the retail are seeing success fighting it through the courts and the push back continues to mount.

http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2012/11/17/maxx-assistan...

Re: LinkedIn to pay nearly $6M in unpaid overtime wages and damages to 359 employees

#107

Post by larrys »

parfe wrote: post #91
larrys wrote: post #41

I had this happen to me at a company that I owned in the past. I got the DOL to chop the total amount due in half and then got them to allow us to pay it out over 4 or 5 years. (All without a lawyer btw...) Edit: Reason for downvotes?

>Edit: Reason for downvotes? Because you're bragging about screwing workers out of paid rest time. http://www.dol.gov/elaws/esa/flsa/hoursworked/screenEE5.asp How obscure!

Not true. I was bragging about negotiating the government down. Reason you (and others) jumped to that conclusion?

Re: LinkedIn to pay nearly $6M in unpaid overtime wages and damages to 359 employees

#108

Post by larrys »

parfe wrote: post #91
larrys wrote: post #41

I had this happen to me at a company that I owned in the past. I got the DOL to chop the total amount due in half and then got them to allow us to pay it out over 4 or 5 years. (All without a lawyer btw...) Edit: Reason for downvotes?

>Edit: Reason for downvotes? Because you're bragging about screwing workers out of paid rest time. http://www.dol.gov/elaws/esa/flsa/hoursworked/screenEE5.asp How obscure!

Noting your link, btw way this way many years before the internet when is wasn't simple for a small company to know all the potential pitfalls.

Re: LinkedIn to pay nearly $6M in unpaid overtime wages and damages to 359 employees

#109

Post by dpritchett »

roc wrote: post #97
logicallee wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes, that is my point. they're entitled to it precisely because they're not in a position to demand it. (according to this possible logic.)

I guess I didn't recognize your point, because I don't see a huge discrepancy in ability-to-demand overtime, between cleaning people and technology staff. Tech workers are more-well-paid than the cleaning staff and generally better situated to negotiate for any given job. But I don't see how that necessarily carries over to increased success in negotiating payment schemes that differ from the legal and industry stand…

I think the point was that a regulator would be more sympathetically inclined to 'protect' the cleaning workers by legally mandating overtime since they necessarily have less negotiating leverage than white-collar workers.

Re: LinkedIn to pay nearly $6M in unpaid overtime wages and damages to 359 employees

#110

Post by warfangle »

jahewson wrote: post #12
krschultz wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some excerpts that help explain it: The FLSA requires that covered, nonexempt employees be paid at least the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour for all hours worked, plus time and one-half their regular hourly rates for hours worked beyond 40 per week. With few exceptions, to be exempt an employee must (a) be paid at least $23,600 per year ($455 per week), and (b) be paid on a salary basis, and also (c) perform e…

Yep, most HN readers are probably exempt due to the "computer employee" exemption: > Computer Employees: Those who work in computer-related occupations, for example computer systems analysts, computer programmers and computer software engineers, are exempt as long as their work involves a combination of primary duties that include applying systems analysis techniques and procedures, consulting with users to determine…

But debugging and support is nonexempt - I wonder where, say, "production operations" falls in this, if you're on-call 24/7, and primarily put out fires caused by developer stupidity?
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