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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

#151

Post by BillyMaize »

georgemcbay wrote: post #30
Semaphor wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, if you work overtime in the U.S. you do not get compensated for it?

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…

>so we often work up to 1.5 to 2 times (60-80 hours is very common) over our official salaried hours for free.

Take this with a grain of salt, it really depends on where you live. I live in the Ohio area and of everyone I went to college with and everyone I have ever worked with I have never met someone that has worked more than 45 hours a week.

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

#152

Post by Alex3917 »

greggman wrote: post #150
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…

I'm not apologizing for LinkedIn, with 5400 employees you'd expect them to have people that know the laws. But, ... Most small businesses don't know the laws. I worked at a company that threatened to doc pay if people didn't show up for "core hours". My understanding though IANAL is that if they did that we'd instantly become non-exempt because docking pay by hours makes us not salaried. They can fire you if you're n…

With 5400 people you'd also expect them to have people who don't know the laws, and people who don't care about following them.

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

#153

Post by kmfrk »

tinco wrote: post #19
Smudge wrote: post #2

> This company has shown a great deal of integrity by fully cooperating with investigators and stepping up to the plate without hesitation to help make workers whole ... We are particularly pleased that LinkedIn also has committed to take positive and practical steps towards securing future compliance. I'm surprised they're getting praised so much for complying. It's not like they had a choice. Instead of commending…

This looks to me like a cultural problem, not only in the IT sector but in all sectors where high performance is a measurably inductor to profit. I hope this case sets a precedent and will lead to employees whistle-blowing organisations where overtime goes untracked and unpaid. It's ridiculous that employees would work their guts out for companies that they don't hold significant shares in without receiving even norm…

There's a fundamental misconception about things like labour violations and general mistreatment: workplaces only do it knowingly.

Corporations liked LinkedIn ought know better, but smaller companies don't get the 101 on things like this.

This is one of many opportunities for companies like YC to lay out some of these 101s and work to make them industry standards.

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

#154

Post by talmand »

Alex3917 wrote: post #152
greggman wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not apologizing for LinkedIn, with 5400 employees you'd expect them to have people that know the laws. But, ... Most small businesses don't know the laws. I worked at a company that threatened to doc pay if people didn't show up for "core hours". My understanding though IANAL is that if they did that we'd instantly become non-exempt because docking pay by hours makes us not salaried. They can fire you if you're n…

With 5400 people you'd also expect them to have people who don't know the laws, and people who don't care about following them.

I'm also going with the thought that it's possible they did attempt to responsibly follow the law; but like many laws it's a complicated mess that almost everyone is in non-compliance without realizing it.

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

#155

Post by johnward »

cpwright wrote: post #118
johnward wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are free to go find another position that also will not pay you for overtime.

Or if you think that getting paid overtime is important, you are free to work in a field that pays overtime. I am fairly certain that even if you include work outside of the 40 hours, my hourly rate is better than I would do otherwise. On top of that, I can probably continue at this career for the next 35 years without a significant physical toll on my body. If I thought otherwise, I would probably want to be an elec…

The physical toll is there for many in this career but it's damage from a lack of physicality vs the damage from being over physical such as construction. Almost all of my family are pipefitters and I often envy them for doing something physical but it has also taken a toll on my father. They also get paid time and 1/2 and double time as required. They make about what I make in this industry but tend to work more paid hours to do it.

I understand you are taking the "free market" side of the argument but at a certain point employers hold too much power and employees start fight back. Things like that are why unions exist which are also a part of the free market.

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

#156

Post by talmand »

jpatokal wrote: post #140
groovylick wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The amount of time it takes to complete work for a commit is highly variable. I've had commits take a few minutes up to a day's worth of work when debugging something complex. A simple mean time per commit seems like a poor metric.

Sure, but you're obviously working at the point you commit. For example, if my first commit of a day is at 9:15 AM and the last one is at 7 PM, odds are pretty high I've exceeded the 'allowed' 9-to-5 hours.

1. Commit something at 9:15 AM

2. Go out and enjoy life

3. Commit something at 7 PM

4. Profit!

I'm in.

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

#157

Post by johnward »

shepardrtc wrote: post #93
johnward wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is some debate about what exactly an exempt position is too. Companies seem to abuse what they consider to be an exempt position to the point that eventually employees fight back. I believe this happened a few years ago a RIM or AT&T. For example if you are working a support job that regularly requires you to work 50+ hour weeks you should probably be getting overtime pay.

I worked for a University that classified some maintenance workers (among others) as exempt using the excuse that they had "supervisory" duties. The reality was that these people were on-call 24/7 and would have to come in whenever there was a problem, in addition to working a 40 hour week. Overtime was becoming expensive, so upper management decided that their duties weren't really fixing things, but rather supervis…

I was in a similar position working support for a large international shipping company. I would work my 40 hours (day/afternoon/midnight) and then be required to take calls off hours. For example if I worked 6pm to 6am I would be required to wake up at 10am (mid sleep cycle) and join a BS staff meeting. Also if a major issue started during your shift you were expected to stay and handle it when you could turn it over to the next shift. Many times my colleagues would be on the 14 hours of their day while I sat there with nothing to do because they were handling it.

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

#158

Post by johnward »

endeavor wrote: post #131
shepardrtc wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked for a University that classified some maintenance workers (among others) as exempt using the excuse that they had "supervisory" duties. The reality was that these people were on-call 24/7 and would have to come in whenever there was a problem, in addition to working a 40 hour week. Overtime was becoming expensive, so upper management decided that their duties weren't really fixing things, but rather supervis…

IIRC in California you need to have at least 2 direct reports to be considered a supervisor vis-a-vis exempt status.

California seems to be the state that has the most employee favorable employment laws. Other states should following things like the CA stance on non-competes.

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

#159

Post by talmand »

ceallen wrote: post #112
hueving wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Doctors and lawyers regulate who can enter their field. Doctors even control how many students med schools can accept each year. They seem to still be 'prestigious' professions. They were just smart enough to avoid the word 'union', since it's been tarnished by 50 years of political attacks. I'd also trade in a lot of prestige for the guarantee of employers not having overtime as a free resource that employees are ex…

Just because a group of people got together to agree on something work-related doesn't necessarily make them like a union.

But I agree on the prestige thing, I'm a non-union web developer and I don't feel much prestige in my position.

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

#160

Post by viggity »

greggman wrote: post #150
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…

I'm not apologizing for LinkedIn, with 5400 employees you'd expect them to have people that know the laws. But, ... Most small businesses don't know the laws. I worked at a company that threatened to doc pay if people didn't show up for "core hours". My understanding though IANAL is that if they did that we'd instantly become non-exempt because docking pay by hours makes us not salaried. They can fire you if you're n…

"ignorance of the law is no excuse for breaking it" is fine an dandy when laws amounted to "don't physically hurt people and don't steal their stuff".

There are so many laws on the books (statutory and administrative) that is is not remotely possible to follow them all. FFS, there are 40,000 words regulating the sale of cheese. Nobody knows how many laws there even are ESTIMATES range up to 300,000 different laws. But nobody knows for sure http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230431980...

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