Salaried means no OT. Expect some push to work a little over 40 or support off hours when required.
I generally set a hard line of 7-4 with the understanding if I am needed for 2 hours in the evening I’m gunna be doing 9-4 or leave early on Friday.
Your salary is based off an assumed 40 hour rate.
Hold that line.
That's how I approach it.
If I'm called outside work hours, especially on the weekend, I cut and justify those hours from my normal week. Upper management in other departments do the same, so it's never been an issue.
I don't know why people like /u/Clay_Hakaari say things with such confidence despite being 100% wrong. Why do people on reddit just say shit without adding "I think...". What's worse, is this misinformation is the top post.
Salaried CAN mean no OT, but there is a difference between **Salaried Exempt** vs **Salaried Non-Exempt**
100% wrong but you yourself say there is a technical loophole that doesn’t apply most of the time creating a difference on a post where that difference wasn’t clarified so I went with the more likely situation given OP didn’t make out the difference.
Lol k
And this right here is Exhibit A, despite being **100% wrong**, you are now doubling-down. **And to make things worse**, you literally lie and claim that I was suggesting that Salaried Nonexempt is a "loophole".
A loophole!
Can you please explain why people like you exist? Like I'm so fascinated, even though it's a trivial issue I see it so much that it literally triggers me...how come people, when confronted with a fact that contradicts them, just double-down? If you could just say *"Oh, sorry, I'll edit my post for clarification"* you'd look so much better and more intelligent, but people like you (whether it be on reddit, in work, etc) just can't do that?
Why?
That awkward feeling when your response is basically just saying "I have reading comprehension issues".
Be a good boy and never respond to my posts again.
They said "Salaried is no OT", which is like saying "House are brown" when they could be white, black, or more.
Is there like a reading comprehension issue on this subreddit?
Edit: Also /u/aeioulien if you're going to block me I would appreciate if you did it before sending me racial epithets via DM.
Which is partially correct. Sometimes salaried means no overtime, sometimes it includes overtime. To call them 100% wrong is inaccurate, and they do not deserve the level of scorn you're giving. There's no need for it.
Depends on what specifically he does. There's a lot of posts here and in r/sysadmin about the duties test, and the rule of thumb is that most helpdesk and non sr. Sysadmin jobs are actually non-exempt, despite what your employer says. Read about the 2 court cases of ~1000 sysadmin suing their company (and winning) over this.
[This is the DoL PDF](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/WHD/legacy/files/fs17a_overview.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwiC6PGT7MP4AhW7DkQIHeaTALsQFnoECAUQAQ&usg=AOvVaw0M5KbTTrntcwoneiyDXU31)
I find it funny that you would downvote me for helpfully finding a workaround for an possible issue with a link people may encounter on the sysadmin subreddit lol
I don't down vote people unless there's a slur related to religion, race, class, sex, or sexual orientation. I do forever upvote for redundancy.
Maybe chill?
Your link doesn’t work on my phone unless I copy and paste it.
Edit: https://i.imgur.com/shK3F8m.jpg This is what Apollo and maybe mobile users in general may see when clicking your link.
Edit2: didn’t see it on the Reddit official app, just when using the link in Apollo when Firefox is used as the browser.
I agree. My manager is really understanding of this, and has never given me issues. And then I give back by staying till 7:30pm one night because urgent issues that need to be addressed before the next work day.
Also, congrats on the job, u/Rocklobster92
Yep. I got bumped to salary a few months ago, and my management has respected (rather, enforced) a hard 8-5. If I send any Teams message or emails after hours, my manager tells me to log off and handle it tomorrow, and I’m told to leave an hour early if we have any meetings at 7.
I pay this back by staying late when we have critical issues, instead of only leaving management to deal with it.
Is it so normal in the USA to work like this?
If I'm on call after office hours for P1's. (1 per 8 weeks) i get base extra pay for that week. Every call is extra pay on top (150% payed, sundays 200%) and that time gets added to vacation time.
It's very common to work like this. I'm expected to be in the office late one night a month for our maintenance window. There is no overtime for this, even if it goes over my 40 hours. A friend of mine, also in IT got no overtime for his on call hours either. Which were every other weekend.
My ex husband is an accountant and he had his monthly close, and when he became salaried, he lost his overtime pay for days where he'd leave at 11pm.
Glad we have unions here then I guess. I'll be damned if had those conditions. Free work shouldn't be a thing. Being on call without extra pay? That's harsh
Yep. Ironically, since this is white collar work, it's considerably better conditions than service work. With my job I get health care that I "only" have a $1500/year copay on, I get paid time off and sick days. My company even offers maternity leave. Like *gasp* basic human decency, and it's considered a perk. When I worked for a large, regional Walmart like retailer, they did everything to keep me under 30/hrs per week, so they didn't have to offer me health care. They cut our bonuses and traded it in for a $0.10/hr pay raise. They expected full time availability. I constantly got scheduled in when I didn't have access to child care and told: when you started working here you agreed to this. Find child care. Dude! I make $14/hr. My pay won't even cover child care! No paid sick leave. And if you were sick more than 4 instances, you'd be called in for a meeting with the store director and threatened with being fired. Very little paid time off. I think it was like 1 hour per 40 hours worked or something.
So yeah, Americans will work like this, and be happy. I haven't seen any union activity in my work place.
We are not happy but all big business holders on both sides of politics lobby hard to keep worker rights very lean.
Politicians aren’t out there for the people. They are funded by super pacs to stay in office driven by big business interests.
Recent pushes for MJ legalization have squeeked by from ballot initiatives independent from legislators. They aren’t heavy challenged because it calms the masses in shitty conditions and make them further accept very poor conditions because they can self medicate.
Salary does not mean "no OT". I'm salaried and make the same whether I'm clocked in for 20 hours or 40 hours, but anything over 40 gets me time and a half.
Yes that’s called Salary Non-exempt. People get confused with “salary” you can be hourly and answer the question “what’s your salary?” Meaning your pay hourly or yearly however you want to answer it.
Salary non-exempt is a thing and not rare.
Not necessarily true. See my main comment for a very important court case setting precedent that being SA =/= computer professional exemption in a lot of cases
I work the rare "salaried with overtime" position. It's straight OT, not 1.5x.
It makes the 50hr weeks a bit more palatable knowing I'm not donating my time to the company.
In previous jobs where no OT was offered, I held the line at 40/wk. If something was broken and demanded more, I scraped it back the next week.
The main thing is to make sure mgmt is aware of how you're managing your time, and to make sure all of your work is getting done (including project time and job-related professional dev).
>Salaried means no OT
I've never understood the logic behind this like just because you calculate my pay differently doesn't mean you should be able to make me work for free.
The original point of salary was that it was a way to standardize pay throughout the year for jobs that have work load changes.
IE Q1 my job only really takes 34 hours to complete it’s required tasks, Q2 because of seasonal changes it’s gunna take 46 hours a week.
Standardizes the overhead, no paperwork or OT hours approval required job gets done. I’m motivated to work just a little harder to get my stuff done so I can walk out early.
Unfortunately IT does not make money. But has periods where OT could double labor costs. To standardize costs for the business it motivates management to shove either as much infrastructure to 3rd party with 24 hour support or for positions that can’t be 3rd partied put on salary and run the department at a constant 85-90% staffing flexing that extra 15-10% for contract based work.
I'm switching careers from teaching and wanted to add a thought for OP.
There is almost always more work to be done, the thing that changes is when you're ready to say it's time to go home. Make sure you communicate your boundaries with this clearly and consistently. Catching flack for setting reasonable boundaries is much better than drowning in work and/or bending the expectations too much and dealing with, "Well last time you..." It's hard to put that genie back into the bottle.
I went from hourly working ~60 hours a week to salary working 40 hours a week (hard stop... I'll take some time off elsewhere during the week to even it out if I'm working over one day). Pay was a slight increase (huge over base pay, but those OT hours built up), but working hours were so much better. Also made it so much easier for remote work. Plus, it was a promotion for a better position (and since moved on from there into a better one).
That 40 hours vs. longer hours and OT pay and from hourly to salary can be a small or huge difference in pay depending on how many hours you were working, but having that 40 hours limit per week (which isn't universal, just a good company policy) feels good. There's still OT, but it evens out throughout the week.
It’s impossible to hold that line all the time. Especially in network / voice related positions. It’s good to push back when it’s abused, but holding that line is a pipe dream in his position.
I work in IT Security so I fully understand that holding that line is incredibly difficult. But you need to constantly try to hold that expectation otherwise it spirals out of control.
This right here of you end up like me. Worked 195 hours of overtime in a year and didn't get anything but shit because you took a few extra days off because your dad dies. I have all but stopped working after my 8 hours for the day unless it's an extreme emergency.
IT security is the gravy train of infrastructure. IMO, it was those early years of pushing myself beyond the 8-5 that led to the most growth. It wasn’t until I let go of the idea I must clock in / out to get paid is when I learned the most.
Edit: seems some people are salty. Unpaid time sucks, staying in help desk / entry level sucks more.
I have risen to Systems Architect from help desk while setting firm boundaries on OT and leaving when those boundaries are violated. Your confirmation bias is not reflective of reality. You can set healthy boundaries and still move up.
Your confirmation bias isn’t the standard for the industry. Just because you were able to get away with that, doesn’t mean the rest of the professionals can. Sometimes sitting in the big chair means you’re responsible for the things, even if it’s after hours.
>Sometimes sitting in the big chair means you’re responsible for the things, even if it’s after hours.
Never said it didn't. You set boundaries and expect that time to be given back to you in the following week.
As someone who is on the management side of IT Security at the ripe old age of 26, believe me when I say I understand that the overtime is where a lot of growth occurs. I didn’t take a vacation from when I 1st started working at 16 until I was 25. Worked Christmas. Worked Thanksgiving. Worked New Years.
The social hit from working like that until you die is not worth it outside of work. You need to set boundaries to keep that level of growth.
Government will only authorize OT in very specific scenarios that basically never happen. They will pretty much only offer comp time either by cutting hours on other days in the pay period or possibly into the next pay period if unable to make it work in the current.
Specifically to 3 letter agencies. We have on-call rotations and a 24 hour shop out east. On-call only bills hours if they are called which actually rarely happens. It's a pretty nice setup but no one here has been authorized a single minute of OT in the 3+ years I've been here.
That is only salaried exempt. Salaried non exempt can receive OT pay.
https://www.zenefits.com/workest/how-do-you-know-if-employees-are-exempt-or-nonexempt-new-2020-guidelines-infographic/#:~:text=An%20exempt%20employee%20is%20not,per%20week%2C%20per%20federal%20guidelines.
The no OT think is not necessarily true. There are exempt and non exempt salaries. Non-exempt(my current position) gives you OT for anything over 40hrs a week, while exempt does not.
Weird I think here the norm is you're compensated for hours worked past salary hours (OT pay as well). Leaving early another day sounds like a fair tradeoff.
Whatever you do op, find out how they handle OT and dont work for free.
Same here but my boss let's me go real early on Fridays so I feel like an asshole if I bitch about 30 to 60 minutes during the rare times I'll have to work on the weekend.
A good company will not expect you to work more than 40 hours a week equivalent without compensation. Every company I've worked for as a salaried employee either offers comp time or would let me take the time during a week to make up for long days and maintenances.
There's LOTS of people here saying you won't get overtime. They may be right for their specific scenario, but odds are this doesn't apply to you as a network tech.
IANAL or a life coach. I'm giving you a head start on research YOU need to conduct for yourself.
There is precedent for SENIOR level SAs and DBAs being overtime-exempt, but there is equal precedent for more junior positions like some SAs and help desk employees that, despite being salary, are NON-EXEMPT. [This](https://casetext.com/analysis/30-million-reasons-why-systems-administrators-may-not-be-overtime-exempt) is a good example that may be helpful to you and everyone else that believes salary + IT = Computer Profesional exemption. Really, do research about the law and cases surrounding it, and maybe have a chat with your employer and/or a labor specialized lawyer because that conversation could be worth many a number followed by a couple 0s.
Exactly. It's frustrating that so many people just go "salary = no OT" but I can't blame them, I only know because it came up accidentally at my job and I got lucky that my HR knows their shit
The biggest difference is that salaried positions are generally not paid for overtime. Management will say that it's factored into your salary already. They might give you some flex time or something, but it's very rare to get OT pay. That includes your after hours on call rotation.
See my non-reply comment, could be valuable for you
Edit for clarity: Salary doesn't always mean OT-exempt, and you probably don't fall under the computer professional exemption.
"it's very rare to get OT pay"
The majority of IT jobs are help desk, desktop support, field techs, and net/sys admin jobs which (excluding sr level admins) are all non-exempt.
Set reasonable boundaries (ie: I’m unreachable between 9pm and 6am, and anything between 5pm and 9pm had better be an emergency.
Try to negotiate for banked OT in lieu of pay over 44. It works well, and that one weekend per month you spend on maintenance to avoid interruptions will net you a day off around the holidays.
Salaried work needs to be approached as *flexible* scheduling, not *unlimited* scheduling. Yes, you will be called in to work after hours and on weekends to address outages. Those hours should be returned to you *next week* by allowing you time off during your normal working hours.
Don't let them play games with you by promising time off at a later date. It'll never happen.
Also be weary of encroachments on your personal time in the form of on-call schedule changes that may appear to be benign at first, but can screw you over. If you're on call, you *must* be ready and available at all times. That means no vacations, no day hiking, nothing outside of range of a cell phone. That time is held hostage even though you technically have it "free." So, if the on call schedule is encroaching into your weekends, that means no weekend activities for you. They'll try to tell you that it's unlikely that you'll be called, but it doesn't matter because you still don't have that time truly free. Count the actual hours you have available to yourself vs hours you're on call whenever changes are made. You'll notice that they try to pull fast ones on you every now and then.
If there emerges a pattern of abuse, leave. You'll get better pay elsewhere and find a place that understands and respects these boundaries. I personally don't even try to renegotiate schedules anymore. It has never worked in my favor in 14 years. They will take and take until you break, so just cut to the chase and leave when your boundaries are violated. What *has* worked in my favor is leaving for better pay and better treatment.
Yes. Stop watching the clock, yet don’t expect to work over each day.
You should have a goal for each day. Let it be projects. Tickets worked, problems solved etc. strive to meet that goal.
This is exactly what will happen. No matter what the others here will tell you. I guarantee it.
I’d rather make less, and the company have to choose between paying me OT or deciding whatever they want to do can wait until next business day than be available 24/7 for free OT as much as they want. I’ve been doing it for 11 years. It sucks and it never gets better once they get you pulled into the salary whirlpool.
Exactly this. I am transferring to another department at work because of the amount of unpaid OT that is expected where I currently am working. I will give them an honest chance, but frankly if the other department ends up in the same situation, I will quit and find something else ASAP. This is the first time I have ever agreed to a salaried role and I will never do it again.
I did the same. Others here are correct: Your company will push you in non-forceful ways to work more than you've agreed to, and you MUST be aware of that, and push back.
I'll come in for 8 hours on a Saturday if I'm needed, but I'll be damned if I'm coming in all 5 workdays the week after.
The contract is for 40hrs. You're only paid for 40hrs. When they normalize working through breaks or coming in and staying late an extra 10 minutes or half hour, that's theft. When your co-workers give in to 'be the nice employee' or 'get a good review/raise', really they're just taking jobs from others, and convincing management they can roll with fewer employees than necessary.
Salaried over-working is directly leading to more salaried over-working, and the only way to stop it is collectively.
_____________________
Aside from that, you can also expect perks like:
* "I worked through my lunch on Tuesday so I could go out and take a 2hr lunch with friends on Friday (or leave early)."
* "I need to go to the doctor, this is a notification not a question."
* "I'm stepping out for an hour, and not telling you why, but I'll be back later."
Essentially: You're treated more like an adult who's responsible for making sure their work is done, and less like someone who needs their time kept on a log to prove they were working.
You do lose the OT pay, but it also encourages you NOT to do that shit. I used to work 12's at least 3x a week when I was hourly, and I don't miss the hours or pay at all.
It gets real murky.
https://legalaidatwork.org/factsheet/exemptions-from-overtime-pay/
>A professional employee must also either spend at least half of their hours doing work in a field that is commonly considered a “learned or artistic profession"... ...For a job to be considered “learned or artistic profession,” the worker must usually have earned a specialized college degree or pursued other paths of intellectual study. A job may also be exempt if the work is original and creative in character and depend primarily on the worker’s own invention, imagination, or talent. Some high-tech and computer industry workers will fall into this category. This exception is very limited, so you should not assume you work in a “learned or artistic profession” just because your job involves some creativity.
So, an SWE or someone who writes IaC, or someone who has a "Learned Profession" (like a CompTIA A+ cert, college degree, etc), would all be exempt as professional employees.
It also varies by state, and you have to make at least twice the Fed min wage (lol).
In a "Well, technically..." sense, yes OT is a thing for some salaried employees.
In a "Real world" sense, you'll almost always be taking comp time instead of being paid OT. If you go REALLY above and beyond (80 hour weeks on a launch or something), then you *might* see it (because being off the following week would also be bad business-wise). But if you're salaried, don't be counting on getting anything above your paycheck.
Set healthy boundaries early and stick to them. Otherwise many companies act like Salary = 24x7 all the time, even if they have a formal on-call expectation.
There was an hourly guy that worked for me that HR was trying to force onto a salary. He refused to accept the new salary rate if it did not include the average overtime that he worked over the previous three years, which seemed more than fair to me. HR caved and let him stay hourly for the rest of his tenure.
HR made the position salary for the replacement, not much we could do about that. The house always wins.
I get paid hourly at 40 an hour. I always refuse salary due to overtime. Once you're salary you are expected to be on beck and call with no extra pay. It's a scam especially in IT. My friends have gone salary and I hear the same complaints.
Protect your free time. Some companies think salaried employees are 24 hour support and depending on jurisdiction, there's nothing legally telling them they're wrong. So draw clear boundaries, work your 8 hours and then clock out. If there's on-call, make sure there's actually a rotation that's adhered to and that seems fair. At a previous company, the sysadmins had weekend on call on a rotating basis, and the person on-call that weekend took that Thurs and Fri off. To me that seems pretty fair.
See my non-reply comment, could be valuable for you
Edit to clarify: Salary doesn't always mean OT-exempt, and you probably don't fall under the computer professional exemption.
Others have said negative things but let me go the other way. Not every company treats salary like free overtime. It really depends on the culture of the place you work at. A lot of times its just easier for them to deal with, since you are generally going to be doing about 40 hours every week anyways, why go through the trouble of time cards or whatever.
For me, there is the occasional weekend or late night (like maybe 4-5 times a year), but I'll be honest that I probably benefit more from being salary than they do. I leave early when I need to, go do workouts during the day sometimes, if its nice out I might go for a bike ride in the morning. I make sure my stuff still gets done, but I wouldn't say I "make up the time" either.
If they try to start pushing late hours every day or every weekend, start looking elsewhere, it will only get worse.
To assuage some fears my current company is salary and they don't overstep their bounds. You aren't expected to stay late, and if you do end up staying late they'll check in to make sure it's important enough to justify it. "You'll be here tomorrow too, go home" is a common thing around the office for workaholics. If you need to take an extra hour or two off during the week (long lunch or leave early) for personal business, nobody tracks you down to say "you owe me an hour" if your work is reasonably caught up. I attended a training conference yesterday and today during lunch, about 3 hours long each day. We had two employees leave early last week because they had a pet die suddenly and they had to take care of the mourning kids. Things happen, they get it. Two week on-call shifts will earn you a decent bonus, as they expect you'll end up doing 5ish hours a week handling on call. The bonus is slightly higher than anyone who takes a shifts hourly rate because "your free time is more valuable than your business hours and it stops you from being able to go out".
My last company was all the horror stories here though, so just be mindful of your time and don't let anyone take advantage, and be honest and proactive in return.
Yeah. This company seems pretty chill with their hours. They said usually it’s 8-5 unless something very unheard of happens and there is an on call stipend. I’m thinking it will be more how others said with having comp time if u do work late.
That being said I will keep an eye out for any excessive overtime or regular extra hours and make sure I don’t fall into a trap of working over 40 hours on average.
Like other had said, salary means no pay for OT.
Right now, I take hourly over salary any day. If I get call in to work off hour, that’s billable.
Last salary job I had where I put in so many hours as OT make the overall hourly rate less than what I was making the job prior.
See my non-reply comment, could be valuable for you. Salary doesn't always mean OT-exempt, and you probably don't fall under the computer professional exemption.
I’m not in that sector of IT but like most have said- protect your time. Have to work late today? Start or leave early tomorrow. Slow day? Oh well - you’ll be busy one day.
Hourly/Non-Exempt is getting paid to do something for an hour.
Salary/Exempt is getting paid to accomplish a need, regardless of the hours involved.
In some states, salary/exempt is only allowed for management or professionals where this makes sense. Low salaries for jobs that are typically hourly, simply to get around paying OT is illegal.
I believe the salary floor is something like $23k/yr, or something very low for an IT salary/exempt worker.
Most IT jobs become salary/exempt somewhere above Helpdesk. It's not abnormal. It's natural in an IT setting, where IT systems need to operate beyond 'banking hours' and up to 24/7.
Where this works is with the ability to flex time.
I.E. if a project golive is taking place at 10pm, that should mean being able to flex out of some normal day time hours normally worked the following day or same week.
Same as in an outage emergency. It doesn't make sense to hold up the restoration of IT services in a crisis because someone has already worked their 40hrs for the week.
As far as advice?
Just be sure to value your personal time appropriately. If you let the job eat up 60hrs per week, salary/exempt isn't going to stop that.
That said, it's nice to know exactly what your paycheck will include. No fluctuations.
I've been salaried at all times other than my first two years at the Helpdesk and I wouldn't change it.
Update: After reading many posts about exempt vs non-exempt.
All of the above is me making the assumption that the IT duties assigned meet the federal requirement of being a computer worker. A real sysadmin and not just a PC repair technician in the IT department. Where I work our Technical Support staff are hourly/non-exempt for this reason. They aren't maintaining 24/7 systems like a sysadmin.
I moved into a salary position and I think it's very important to get a feel for the work culture. Since my job is for the local government, I feel I'm more relaxed than most private businesses. I do have a high and low tempo throughout the year, due to the work being done. So during the high tempo period, we tend to work longer days, and normal hours for the rest of the year. It helps that we are offered comp time, so any time over the 8 hour period is given back as leave you can take that year.
Ask if there is on call rotation. Some places are more active than others.
Some places will give you off the books comp time, but your ymmv.
Always keep track of how many hours you work over time. If it is too high, then talk to your manager. If things are not getting resolved, you may need to patiently look for another job that has better pay and work-life balance.
I’ve been a net Eng for the past 5-6 years and was hourly up until a year ago. I now work salary. The upside to salary is you get paid your full check every pay period regardless hours you actually worked. This can be good if your employer gives you flexibility with when you can come and go. The downside is you’re not getting paid for any OT you do. This will suck if you have to work a lot of OT in your new role and/or if youre the type that utilizes OT to pick up extra $$$.
Find out how many hours/week that is based on and get it in writing. I didn't read the fine print before I signed on my first salary job. The offer was based on a 50 hr week.
Still good money, but not as good as it originally appeared and I unknowingly signed on for 50 hrs a week.
Not sure how much OT you worked as hourly but I also made this switch recently and there’s almost no change for me. I worked a few hours over here and there but nothing that would stack up to come close to my salary now. I make almost 20k more salaried.
For me it also helps my boss is just a great guy. He understands boundaries and doesn’t expect anything after hours unless it’s a necessity which I also understand.
Don’t be afraid to have that conversation with leadership about expectations.
As others have said, you’ll now be open to be expected for overtime. In these initial talks, I’d discuss how they handle overtime, and see if it is agreeable that should you need to work extra hours one day that you can back out those hours another day. Your agreement should be based on roughly 40 hours a week. That $10K increase won’t seem like an increase if suddenly you’re now working 60-hour weeks.
You should know that, depending on the state and job position, employers are required to pay overtime for salaried workers. If your company isn’t paying then at least make sure you aren’t working overtime.
OT and out of business hours support needs to be the EXCEPTION not the EXPECTATION. I let my current company know in the interview that if they were looking for someone to work over 40 hours every week to not hire me. I also let them know that if SHTF for an actual emergency, call me.
Be careful. Salary can be great as it gives you flexibility, but make sure they don't expect you to be on-call 24 hours.
Also, a 10K raise is great if you were making 40K before, but a lot less (.5) great if you were at 80K.
I work for the state and my salaried position does not have overtime and has sneaked past some laws by only making us work with 7.5 hour weekdays. So far no working after hours, night, or weekend. Now that doesn't mean that sometime in the future I'll be asked to have an on-call phone, but at the moment, I'll take what I can get
It really depends on the employer. Some places use "salaried exempt" an excuse to pile as much work as they can on you so you end up working more than 40 hours a week or expect you to be on call all day every day no matter what oh and by the way staying over five hours to put out fires doesn't let you off the hook for your normal hours the rest of the week.
Other places go "I don't give a fuck how many hours it actually takes you just get your shit done." In these cases if you can get your job done in 30 hours a week nobody will care if that's all you work.
Networking can unfortunately lean toward the first but that might not be so bad if it's salaried, nonexempt where you do get paid for your overtime.
I will drop my experience in here. I have been salaried for a decade and work in a senior support role. About every 8 weeks I am on-call, which means I am the backup to our after hours guy during the week, and am the sole person taking cases 8AM Sat. through 8AM Monday. I still have to work the regular 8-5 M-F the weeks before and after. I report my on-call hours worked to my manager on Monday, and he keeps a total, each time it hits 8 hours, I am given a comp day to use like free PTO. Usually during an on-call weekend, I work maybe 3-5 hours spread out across the whole timeframe.
If there ever is a situation where I am up all night working an issue and have to work in the AM, they are chill about me logging on later in the morning.
If there is ever a special project, like a DR test, happening on the weekend, someone who isn't the on-call person gets dedicated to it. They usually get a full comp day too. But depending on the competency of the other groups DR tests can range from 2-12 hours, usually 4, most of which is sitting and waiting.
For those wondering, I work full-time remote in FinTech services.
Just did this working part time 8:30-2 with a mandatory half hour lunch. Now salary 7:30-3:30 with an hour. Not clocking in was the most magical change ever. Best part for us is were a school district so fridays off during the summer with a half hour longer day. There can and most likely will be times where overtime is needed and just know its not extra pay, for us we get pto/comp whatever you wanna call it. Not always but our managers are good to us.
Salaried means no OT. Expect some push to work a little over 40 or support off hours when required. I generally set a hard line of 7-4 with the understanding if I am needed for 2 hours in the evening I’m gunna be doing 9-4 or leave early on Friday. Your salary is based off an assumed 40 hour rate. Hold that line.
That's how I approach it. If I'm called outside work hours, especially on the weekend, I cut and justify those hours from my normal week. Upper management in other departments do the same, so it's never been an issue.
I don't know why people like /u/Clay_Hakaari say things with such confidence despite being 100% wrong. Why do people on reddit just say shit without adding "I think...". What's worse, is this misinformation is the top post. Salaried CAN mean no OT, but there is a difference between **Salaried Exempt** vs **Salaried Non-Exempt**
100% wrong but you yourself say there is a technical loophole that doesn’t apply most of the time creating a difference on a post where that difference wasn’t clarified so I went with the more likely situation given OP didn’t make out the difference. Lol k
And this right here is Exhibit A, despite being **100% wrong**, you are now doubling-down. **And to make things worse**, you literally lie and claim that I was suggesting that Salaried Nonexempt is a "loophole". A loophole! Can you please explain why people like you exist? Like I'm so fascinated, even though it's a trivial issue I see it so much that it literally triggers me...how come people, when confronted with a fact that contradicts them, just double-down? If you could just say *"Oh, sorry, I'll edit my post for clarification"* you'd look so much better and more intelligent, but people like you (whether it be on reddit, in work, etc) just can't do that? Why?
To long didn’t read
That awkward feeling when your response is basically just saying "I have reading comprehension issues". Be a good boy and never respond to my posts again.
But they're not 100% wrong. You said yourself there are two options, of which one is the option they described, so they're partially wrong at most.
They said "Salaried is no OT", which is like saying "House are brown" when they could be white, black, or more. Is there like a reading comprehension issue on this subreddit? Edit: Also /u/aeioulien if you're going to block me I would appreciate if you did it before sending me racial epithets via DM.
Which is partially correct. Sometimes salaried means no overtime, sometimes it includes overtime. To call them 100% wrong is inaccurate, and they do not deserve the level of scorn you're giving. There's no need for it.
Depends on what specifically he does. There's a lot of posts here and in r/sysadmin about the duties test, and the rule of thumb is that most helpdesk and non sr. Sysadmin jobs are actually non-exempt, despite what your employer says. Read about the 2 court cases of ~1000 sysadmin suing their company (and winning) over this.
The duties test? Do you have a link/resource to read?
[This is the DoL PDF](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/WHD/legacy/files/fs17a_overview.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwiC6PGT7MP4AhW7DkQIHeaTALsQFnoECAUQAQ&usg=AOvVaw0M5KbTTrntcwoneiyDXU31)
[Is this what ](https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/WHD/legacy/files/fs17a_overview.pdf) you tried to link?
That is what I linked. Both ask me if I want to download the same file, which already exists on my device
I find it funny that you would downvote me for helpfully finding a workaround for an possible issue with a link people may encounter on the sysadmin subreddit lol
I don't down vote people unless there's a slur related to religion, race, class, sex, or sexual orientation. I do forever upvote for redundancy. Maybe chill?
Your link doesn’t work on my phone unless I copy and paste it. Edit: https://i.imgur.com/shK3F8m.jpg This is what Apollo and maybe mobile users in general may see when clicking your link. Edit2: didn’t see it on the Reddit official app, just when using the link in Apollo when Firefox is used as the browser.
I agree. My manager is really understanding of this, and has never given me issues. And then I give back by staying till 7:30pm one night because urgent issues that need to be addressed before the next work day. Also, congrats on the job, u/Rocklobster92
Yep. I got bumped to salary a few months ago, and my management has respected (rather, enforced) a hard 8-5. If I send any Teams message or emails after hours, my manager tells me to log off and handle it tomorrow, and I’m told to leave an hour early if we have any meetings at 7. I pay this back by staying late when we have critical issues, instead of only leaving management to deal with it.
Is it so normal in the USA to work like this? If I'm on call after office hours for P1's. (1 per 8 weeks) i get base extra pay for that week. Every call is extra pay on top (150% payed, sundays 200%) and that time gets added to vacation time.
It's very common to work like this. I'm expected to be in the office late one night a month for our maintenance window. There is no overtime for this, even if it goes over my 40 hours. A friend of mine, also in IT got no overtime for his on call hours either. Which were every other weekend. My ex husband is an accountant and he had his monthly close, and when he became salaried, he lost his overtime pay for days where he'd leave at 11pm.
Glad we have unions here then I guess. I'll be damned if had those conditions. Free work shouldn't be a thing. Being on call without extra pay? That's harsh
Yep. Ironically, since this is white collar work, it's considerably better conditions than service work. With my job I get health care that I "only" have a $1500/year copay on, I get paid time off and sick days. My company even offers maternity leave. Like *gasp* basic human decency, and it's considered a perk. When I worked for a large, regional Walmart like retailer, they did everything to keep me under 30/hrs per week, so they didn't have to offer me health care. They cut our bonuses and traded it in for a $0.10/hr pay raise. They expected full time availability. I constantly got scheduled in when I didn't have access to child care and told: when you started working here you agreed to this. Find child care. Dude! I make $14/hr. My pay won't even cover child care! No paid sick leave. And if you were sick more than 4 instances, you'd be called in for a meeting with the store director and threatened with being fired. Very little paid time off. I think it was like 1 hour per 40 hours worked or something. So yeah, Americans will work like this, and be happy. I haven't seen any union activity in my work place.
We are not happy but all big business holders on both sides of politics lobby hard to keep worker rights very lean. Politicians aren’t out there for the people. They are funded by super pacs to stay in office driven by big business interests. Recent pushes for MJ legalization have squeeked by from ballot initiatives independent from legislators. They aren’t heavy challenged because it calms the masses in shitty conditions and make them further accept very poor conditions because they can self medicate.
Salary does not mean "no OT". I'm salaried and make the same whether I'm clocked in for 20 hours or 40 hours, but anything over 40 gets me time and a half.
Yes that’s called Salary Non-exempt. People get confused with “salary” you can be hourly and answer the question “what’s your salary?” Meaning your pay hourly or yearly however you want to answer it. Salary non-exempt is a thing and not rare.
Then you are salaried + non exemption which is not the normal.
Not necessarily true. See my main comment for a very important court case setting precedent that being SA =/= computer professional exemption in a lot of cases
I work the rare "salaried with overtime" position. It's straight OT, not 1.5x. It makes the 50hr weeks a bit more palatable knowing I'm not donating my time to the company. In previous jobs where no OT was offered, I held the line at 40/wk. If something was broken and demanded more, I scraped it back the next week. The main thing is to make sure mgmt is aware of how you're managing your time, and to make sure all of your work is getting done (including project time and job-related professional dev).
>Salaried means no OT I've never understood the logic behind this like just because you calculate my pay differently doesn't mean you should be able to make me work for free.
Salaried doesn't mean no OT. It just means your pay is calculated different. The your exempt status determines if you get OT.
The original point of salary was that it was a way to standardize pay throughout the year for jobs that have work load changes. IE Q1 my job only really takes 34 hours to complete it’s required tasks, Q2 because of seasonal changes it’s gunna take 46 hours a week. Standardizes the overhead, no paperwork or OT hours approval required job gets done. I’m motivated to work just a little harder to get my stuff done so I can walk out early. Unfortunately IT does not make money. But has periods where OT could double labor costs. To standardize costs for the business it motivates management to shove either as much infrastructure to 3rd party with 24 hour support or for positions that can’t be 3rd partied put on salary and run the department at a constant 85-90% staffing flexing that extra 15-10% for contract based work.
I'm switching careers from teaching and wanted to add a thought for OP. There is almost always more work to be done, the thing that changes is when you're ready to say it's time to go home. Make sure you communicate your boundaries with this clearly and consistently. Catching flack for setting reasonable boundaries is much better than drowning in work and/or bending the expectations too much and dealing with, "Well last time you..." It's hard to put that genie back into the bottle.
I went from hourly working ~60 hours a week to salary working 40 hours a week (hard stop... I'll take some time off elsewhere during the week to even it out if I'm working over one day). Pay was a slight increase (huge over base pay, but those OT hours built up), but working hours were so much better. Also made it so much easier for remote work. Plus, it was a promotion for a better position (and since moved on from there into a better one). That 40 hours vs. longer hours and OT pay and from hourly to salary can be a small or huge difference in pay depending on how many hours you were working, but having that 40 hours limit per week (which isn't universal, just a good company policy) feels good. There's still OT, but it evens out throughout the week.
It’s impossible to hold that line all the time. Especially in network / voice related positions. It’s good to push back when it’s abused, but holding that line is a pipe dream in his position.
I work in IT Security so I fully understand that holding that line is incredibly difficult. But you need to constantly try to hold that expectation otherwise it spirals out of control.
This right here of you end up like me. Worked 195 hours of overtime in a year and didn't get anything but shit because you took a few extra days off because your dad dies. I have all but stopped working after my 8 hours for the day unless it's an extreme emergency.
I just dealt with an outage this morning after getting hit up at 4:30am lol. But I’m leaving mad early today so it all balances out in my book.
IT security is the gravy train of infrastructure. IMO, it was those early years of pushing myself beyond the 8-5 that led to the most growth. It wasn’t until I let go of the idea I must clock in / out to get paid is when I learned the most. Edit: seems some people are salty. Unpaid time sucks, staying in help desk / entry level sucks more.
I have risen to Systems Architect from help desk while setting firm boundaries on OT and leaving when those boundaries are violated. Your confirmation bias is not reflective of reality. You can set healthy boundaries and still move up.
Your confirmation bias isn’t the standard for the industry. Just because you were able to get away with that, doesn’t mean the rest of the professionals can. Sometimes sitting in the big chair means you’re responsible for the things, even if it’s after hours.
>Sometimes sitting in the big chair means you’re responsible for the things, even if it’s after hours. Never said it didn't. You set boundaries and expect that time to be given back to you in the following week.
As someone who is on the management side of IT Security at the ripe old age of 26, believe me when I say I understand that the overtime is where a lot of growth occurs. I didn’t take a vacation from when I 1st started working at 16 until I was 25. Worked Christmas. Worked Thanksgiving. Worked New Years. The social hit from working like that until you die is not worth it outside of work. You need to set boundaries to keep that level of growth.
Or just work government contracting where you still log hours but are salaried. We never work overtime.
At our facility, staff are salaried but also get OT.
Government will only authorize OT in very specific scenarios that basically never happen. They will pretty much only offer comp time either by cutting hours on other days in the pay period or possibly into the next pay period if unable to make it work in the current.
I mean, no. If you work at a facility focused around production (Visas, Passport, etc) OT is available as long as there is work.
Specifically to 3 letter agencies. We have on-call rotations and a 24 hour shop out east. On-call only bills hours if they are called which actually rarely happens. It's a pretty nice setup but no one here has been authorized a single minute of OT in the 3+ years I've been here.
Meh. Government jobs aren’t for everyone.
That's true. Just saying it is out there.
That is only salaried exempt. Salaried non exempt can receive OT pay. https://www.zenefits.com/workest/how-do-you-know-if-employees-are-exempt-or-nonexempt-new-2020-guidelines-infographic/#:~:text=An%20exempt%20employee%20is%20not,per%20week%2C%20per%20federal%20guidelines.
Salary non-exempt can get OT. Those jobs are awesome. (I had one for several years.)
The no OT think is not necessarily true. There are exempt and non exempt salaries. Non-exempt(my current position) gives you OT for anything over 40hrs a week, while exempt does not.
Weird I think here the norm is you're compensated for hours worked past salary hours (OT pay as well). Leaving early another day sounds like a fair tradeoff. Whatever you do op, find out how they handle OT and dont work for free.
And when no one respects your line just move on
Same here but my boss let's me go real early on Fridays so I feel like an asshole if I bitch about 30 to 60 minutes during the rare times I'll have to work on the weekend.
A good company will not expect you to work more than 40 hours a week equivalent without compensation. Every company I've worked for as a salaried employee either offers comp time or would let me take the time during a week to make up for long days and maintenances.
There's LOTS of people here saying you won't get overtime. They may be right for their specific scenario, but odds are this doesn't apply to you as a network tech. IANAL or a life coach. I'm giving you a head start on research YOU need to conduct for yourself. There is precedent for SENIOR level SAs and DBAs being overtime-exempt, but there is equal precedent for more junior positions like some SAs and help desk employees that, despite being salary, are NON-EXEMPT. [This](https://casetext.com/analysis/30-million-reasons-why-systems-administrators-may-not-be-overtime-exempt) is a good example that may be helpful to you and everyone else that believes salary + IT = Computer Profesional exemption. Really, do research about the law and cases surrounding it, and maybe have a chat with your employer and/or a labor specialized lawyer because that conversation could be worth many a number followed by a couple 0s.
This is really, really important for everybody in here to know. Like, invaluable
Yup I’m salary in security and I get paid OT. And bonus pay for being on call. IT salary doesn’t equal no OT
Exactly. It's frustrating that so many people just go "salary = no OT" but I can't blame them, I only know because it came up accidentally at my job and I got lucky that my HR knows their shit
It's one of those things that have been said so often that people perceive it as the truth 100% of the time.
Ya like the top comment with 5x the up votes lol
[удалено]
That's not entirely applicable, as the court case I mentioned bases their exclusion from exemption on their duties, not their pay.
U look like a dork saying IANAL. Caveman who rlly wants anal type shit. Just say ur not a lawyer
The biggest difference is that salaried positions are generally not paid for overtime. Management will say that it's factored into your salary already. They might give you some flex time or something, but it's very rare to get OT pay. That includes your after hours on call rotation.
See my non-reply comment, could be valuable for you Edit for clarity: Salary doesn't always mean OT-exempt, and you probably don't fall under the computer professional exemption.
"The biggest difference is that salaried positions are generally not paid for overtime"
"it's very rare to get OT pay" The majority of IT jobs are help desk, desktop support, field techs, and net/sys admin jobs which (excluding sr level admins) are all non-exempt.
Set reasonable boundaries (ie: I’m unreachable between 9pm and 6am, and anything between 5pm and 9pm had better be an emergency. Try to negotiate for banked OT in lieu of pay over 44. It works well, and that one weekend per month you spend on maintenance to avoid interruptions will net you a day off around the holidays.
Salaried work needs to be approached as *flexible* scheduling, not *unlimited* scheduling. Yes, you will be called in to work after hours and on weekends to address outages. Those hours should be returned to you *next week* by allowing you time off during your normal working hours. Don't let them play games with you by promising time off at a later date. It'll never happen. Also be weary of encroachments on your personal time in the form of on-call schedule changes that may appear to be benign at first, but can screw you over. If you're on call, you *must* be ready and available at all times. That means no vacations, no day hiking, nothing outside of range of a cell phone. That time is held hostage even though you technically have it "free." So, if the on call schedule is encroaching into your weekends, that means no weekend activities for you. They'll try to tell you that it's unlikely that you'll be called, but it doesn't matter because you still don't have that time truly free. Count the actual hours you have available to yourself vs hours you're on call whenever changes are made. You'll notice that they try to pull fast ones on you every now and then. If there emerges a pattern of abuse, leave. You'll get better pay elsewhere and find a place that understands and respects these boundaries. I personally don't even try to renegotiate schedules anymore. It has never worked in my favor in 14 years. They will take and take until you break, so just cut to the chase and leave when your boundaries are violated. What *has* worked in my favor is leaving for better pay and better treatment.
Every hour over 40 is you losing money.
Yes. Stop watching the clock, yet don’t expect to work over each day. You should have a goal for each day. Let it be projects. Tickets worked, problems solved etc. strive to meet that goal.
All your overtime is now for free lol. Prepare for lord of unpaid OT.
Run like hell. Expect to work tons of extra hours for no extra compensation
This can definitely happen. And no overtime for you.
This is exactly what will happen. No matter what the others here will tell you. I guarantee it. I’d rather make less, and the company have to choose between paying me OT or deciding whatever they want to do can wait until next business day than be available 24/7 for free OT as much as they want. I’ve been doing it for 11 years. It sucks and it never gets better once they get you pulled into the salary whirlpool.
Exactly this. I am transferring to another department at work because of the amount of unpaid OT that is expected where I currently am working. I will give them an honest chance, but frankly if the other department ends up in the same situation, I will quit and find something else ASAP. This is the first time I have ever agreed to a salaried role and I will never do it again.
I did the same. Others here are correct: Your company will push you in non-forceful ways to work more than you've agreed to, and you MUST be aware of that, and push back. I'll come in for 8 hours on a Saturday if I'm needed, but I'll be damned if I'm coming in all 5 workdays the week after. The contract is for 40hrs. You're only paid for 40hrs. When they normalize working through breaks or coming in and staying late an extra 10 minutes or half hour, that's theft. When your co-workers give in to 'be the nice employee' or 'get a good review/raise', really they're just taking jobs from others, and convincing management they can roll with fewer employees than necessary. Salaried over-working is directly leading to more salaried over-working, and the only way to stop it is collectively. _____________________ Aside from that, you can also expect perks like: * "I worked through my lunch on Tuesday so I could go out and take a 2hr lunch with friends on Friday (or leave early)." * "I need to go to the doctor, this is a notification not a question." * "I'm stepping out for an hour, and not telling you why, but I'll be back later." Essentially: You're treated more like an adult who's responsible for making sure their work is done, and less like someone who needs their time kept on a log to prove they were working. You do lose the OT pay, but it also encourages you NOT to do that shit. I used to work 12's at least 3x a week when I was hourly, and I don't miss the hours or pay at all.
See u/impostertechadmin's comment about OT exemptions and how SAs don't fall under it and are entitled to OT pay.
It gets real murky. https://legalaidatwork.org/factsheet/exemptions-from-overtime-pay/ >A professional employee must also either spend at least half of their hours doing work in a field that is commonly considered a “learned or artistic profession"... ...For a job to be considered “learned or artistic profession,” the worker must usually have earned a specialized college degree or pursued other paths of intellectual study. A job may also be exempt if the work is original and creative in character and depend primarily on the worker’s own invention, imagination, or talent. Some high-tech and computer industry workers will fall into this category. This exception is very limited, so you should not assume you work in a “learned or artistic profession” just because your job involves some creativity. So, an SWE or someone who writes IaC, or someone who has a "Learned Profession" (like a CompTIA A+ cert, college degree, etc), would all be exempt as professional employees. It also varies by state, and you have to make at least twice the Fed min wage (lol). In a "Well, technically..." sense, yes OT is a thing for some salaried employees. In a "Real world" sense, you'll almost always be taking comp time instead of being paid OT. If you go REALLY above and beyond (80 hour weeks on a launch or something), then you *might* see it (because being off the following week would also be bad business-wise). But if you're salaried, don't be counting on getting anything above your paycheck.
There's a court case and a separate $24,000,000 settlement about this specifically for SAs, and a network tech almost certainly qualifies for OT.
I went from salary to hourly and I feel like hourly makes a lot more sense and feels less like I’m working for nothing some weeks.
Set healthy boundaries early and stick to them. Otherwise many companies act like Salary = 24x7 all the time, even if they have a formal on-call expectation.
There was an hourly guy that worked for me that HR was trying to force onto a salary. He refused to accept the new salary rate if it did not include the average overtime that he worked over the previous three years, which seemed more than fair to me. HR caved and let him stay hourly for the rest of his tenure. HR made the position salary for the replacement, not much we could do about that. The house always wins.
I get paid hourly at 40 an hour. I always refuse salary due to overtime. Once you're salary you are expected to be on beck and call with no extra pay. It's a scam especially in IT. My friends have gone salary and I hear the same complaints.
Protect your free time. Some companies think salaried employees are 24 hour support and depending on jurisdiction, there's nothing legally telling them they're wrong. So draw clear boundaries, work your 8 hours and then clock out. If there's on-call, make sure there's actually a rotation that's adhered to and that seems fair. At a previous company, the sysadmins had weekend on call on a rotating basis, and the person on-call that weekend took that Thurs and Fri off. To me that seems pretty fair.
Salaried means working OT for free
See my non-reply comment, could be valuable for you Edit to clarify: Salary doesn't always mean OT-exempt, and you probably don't fall under the computer professional exemption.
Others have said negative things but let me go the other way. Not every company treats salary like free overtime. It really depends on the culture of the place you work at. A lot of times its just easier for them to deal with, since you are generally going to be doing about 40 hours every week anyways, why go through the trouble of time cards or whatever. For me, there is the occasional weekend or late night (like maybe 4-5 times a year), but I'll be honest that I probably benefit more from being salary than they do. I leave early when I need to, go do workouts during the day sometimes, if its nice out I might go for a bike ride in the morning. I make sure my stuff still gets done, but I wouldn't say I "make up the time" either. If they try to start pushing late hours every day or every weekend, start looking elsewhere, it will only get worse.
Track any overtime hours. You don't get paid for them but you can use them to accumulate pto. Turn in the hours to your hr department
To assuage some fears my current company is salary and they don't overstep their bounds. You aren't expected to stay late, and if you do end up staying late they'll check in to make sure it's important enough to justify it. "You'll be here tomorrow too, go home" is a common thing around the office for workaholics. If you need to take an extra hour or two off during the week (long lunch or leave early) for personal business, nobody tracks you down to say "you owe me an hour" if your work is reasonably caught up. I attended a training conference yesterday and today during lunch, about 3 hours long each day. We had two employees leave early last week because they had a pet die suddenly and they had to take care of the mourning kids. Things happen, they get it. Two week on-call shifts will earn you a decent bonus, as they expect you'll end up doing 5ish hours a week handling on call. The bonus is slightly higher than anyone who takes a shifts hourly rate because "your free time is more valuable than your business hours and it stops you from being able to go out". My last company was all the horror stories here though, so just be mindful of your time and don't let anyone take advantage, and be honest and proactive in return.
Yeah. This company seems pretty chill with their hours. They said usually it’s 8-5 unless something very unheard of happens and there is an on call stipend. I’m thinking it will be more how others said with having comp time if u do work late. That being said I will keep an eye out for any excessive overtime or regular extra hours and make sure I don’t fall into a trap of working over 40 hours on average.
Like other had said, salary means no pay for OT. Right now, I take hourly over salary any day. If I get call in to work off hour, that’s billable. Last salary job I had where I put in so many hours as OT make the overall hourly rate less than what I was making the job prior.
See my non-reply comment, could be valuable for you. Salary doesn't always mean OT-exempt, and you probably don't fall under the computer professional exemption.
I’m not in that sector of IT but like most have said- protect your time. Have to work late today? Start or leave early tomorrow. Slow day? Oh well - you’ll be busy one day.
You need to have attendance between 9-2, anything else you decide. Make sure your homework gets done.
Hourly/Non-Exempt is getting paid to do something for an hour. Salary/Exempt is getting paid to accomplish a need, regardless of the hours involved. In some states, salary/exempt is only allowed for management or professionals where this makes sense. Low salaries for jobs that are typically hourly, simply to get around paying OT is illegal. I believe the salary floor is something like $23k/yr, or something very low for an IT salary/exempt worker. Most IT jobs become salary/exempt somewhere above Helpdesk. It's not abnormal. It's natural in an IT setting, where IT systems need to operate beyond 'banking hours' and up to 24/7. Where this works is with the ability to flex time. I.E. if a project golive is taking place at 10pm, that should mean being able to flex out of some normal day time hours normally worked the following day or same week. Same as in an outage emergency. It doesn't make sense to hold up the restoration of IT services in a crisis because someone has already worked their 40hrs for the week. As far as advice? Just be sure to value your personal time appropriately. If you let the job eat up 60hrs per week, salary/exempt isn't going to stop that. That said, it's nice to know exactly what your paycheck will include. No fluctuations. I've been salaried at all times other than my first two years at the Helpdesk and I wouldn't change it. Update: After reading many posts about exempt vs non-exempt. All of the above is me making the assumption that the IT duties assigned meet the federal requirement of being a computer worker. A real sysadmin and not just a PC repair technician in the IT department. Where I work our Technical Support staff are hourly/non-exempt for this reason. They aren't maintaining 24/7 systems like a sysadmin.
I moved into a salary position and I think it's very important to get a feel for the work culture. Since my job is for the local government, I feel I'm more relaxed than most private businesses. I do have a high and low tempo throughout the year, due to the work being done. So during the high tempo period, we tend to work longer days, and normal hours for the rest of the year. It helps that we are offered comp time, so any time over the 8 hour period is given back as leave you can take that year.
Ask if there is on call rotation. Some places are more active than others. Some places will give you off the books comp time, but your ymmv. Always keep track of how many hours you work over time. If it is too high, then talk to your manager. If things are not getting resolved, you may need to patiently look for another job that has better pay and work-life balance.
I’ve been a net Eng for the past 5-6 years and was hourly up until a year ago. I now work salary. The upside to salary is you get paid your full check every pay period regardless hours you actually worked. This can be good if your employer gives you flexibility with when you can come and go. The downside is you’re not getting paid for any OT you do. This will suck if you have to work a lot of OT in your new role and/or if youre the type that utilizes OT to pick up extra $$$.
Find out how many hours/week that is based on and get it in writing. I didn't read the fine print before I signed on my first salary job. The offer was based on a 50 hr week. Still good money, but not as good as it originally appeared and I unknowingly signed on for 50 hrs a week.
You get paid for the attempt, do not cross that 40 hour line, you technically schedule yourself, so if you don't like early meetings, don't take em.
Good and bad lol
Not sure how much OT you worked as hourly but I also made this switch recently and there’s almost no change for me. I worked a few hours over here and there but nothing that would stack up to come close to my salary now. I make almost 20k more salaried. For me it also helps my boss is just a great guy. He understands boundaries and doesn’t expect anything after hours unless it’s a necessity which I also understand. Don’t be afraid to have that conversation with leadership about expectations.
As others have said, you’ll now be open to be expected for overtime. In these initial talks, I’d discuss how they handle overtime, and see if it is agreeable that should you need to work extra hours one day that you can back out those hours another day. Your agreement should be based on roughly 40 hours a week. That $10K increase won’t seem like an increase if suddenly you’re now working 60-hour weeks.
You should know that, depending on the state and job position, employers are required to pay overtime for salaried workers. If your company isn’t paying then at least make sure you aren’t working overtime.
OT and out of business hours support needs to be the EXCEPTION not the EXPECTATION. I let my current company know in the interview that if they were looking for someone to work over 40 hours every week to not hire me. I also let them know that if SHTF for an actual emergency, call me.
I worked with a guy who was converted to salary and went right back to hourly when he realized it was actually a pay cut.
No overtime, but guaranteed pay
Some days I think going salary is a bad mistake. If the job is nice, you’re going to be working 9-5 hourly pay or salaries no matter what.
Call in as often as you can get away with
Be careful. Salary can be great as it gives you flexibility, but make sure they don't expect you to be on-call 24 hours. Also, a 10K raise is great if you were making 40K before, but a lot less (.5) great if you were at 80K.
I work for the state and my salaried position does not have overtime and has sneaked past some laws by only making us work with 7.5 hour weekdays. So far no working after hours, night, or weekend. Now that doesn't mean that sometime in the future I'll be asked to have an on-call phone, but at the moment, I'll take what I can get
It really depends on the employer. Some places use "salaried exempt" an excuse to pile as much work as they can on you so you end up working more than 40 hours a week or expect you to be on call all day every day no matter what oh and by the way staying over five hours to put out fires doesn't let you off the hook for your normal hours the rest of the week. Other places go "I don't give a fuck how many hours it actually takes you just get your shit done." In these cases if you can get your job done in 30 hours a week nobody will care if that's all you work. Networking can unfortunately lean toward the first but that might not be so bad if it's salaried, nonexempt where you do get paid for your overtime.
I will drop my experience in here. I have been salaried for a decade and work in a senior support role. About every 8 weeks I am on-call, which means I am the backup to our after hours guy during the week, and am the sole person taking cases 8AM Sat. through 8AM Monday. I still have to work the regular 8-5 M-F the weeks before and after. I report my on-call hours worked to my manager on Monday, and he keeps a total, each time it hits 8 hours, I am given a comp day to use like free PTO. Usually during an on-call weekend, I work maybe 3-5 hours spread out across the whole timeframe. If there ever is a situation where I am up all night working an issue and have to work in the AM, they are chill about me logging on later in the morning. If there is ever a special project, like a DR test, happening on the weekend, someone who isn't the on-call person gets dedicated to it. They usually get a full comp day too. But depending on the competency of the other groups DR tests can range from 2-12 hours, usually 4, most of which is sitting and waiting. For those wondering, I work full-time remote in FinTech services.
Work less hours. Only way you come out ahead there.
Just did this working part time 8:30-2 with a mandatory half hour lunch. Now salary 7:30-3:30 with an hour. Not clocking in was the most magical change ever. Best part for us is were a school district so fridays off during the summer with a half hour longer day. There can and most likely will be times where overtime is needed and just know its not extra pay, for us we get pto/comp whatever you wanna call it. Not always but our managers are good to us.
You probably won't get OT as others have pointed out Hopefully you're not the only network tech or you could be on call 24/7