You make great points and I'll edit now to make it more clear that the goal of the ground rules is to be communicating, and the goal of the writeup is to show a bunch of examples gathered from many teams in many industries.
Can you refresh the repo page now and see if it is more helpful and clear? Thank you!
For example, the item about 9-5 core hours actually comes from a bank that has tellers, call center operators, and an IT staff that needs to be onsite and available for helping with physical hardware. Again, the point of the ground rules isn't the hours per se; the point is that the team writes its expectations so everyone has a good understanding.
9-5 core hours is bullshit. The whole point of core hours is to be a window of time where you can guarantee a meeting can be scheduled with people across time zones. This doesn't mean you have 8 hours of core hours. That's literally insane.
Not to mention you can’t adjust your hours at all to avoid rush hour or cooperate with a spouse in day care management. 9-5 is necessary for banks, but not for software developers. Having a few core hours is necessary, but if it’s 8, you can no longer call them “core”.
You are lucky if you think 10-12 hour work days don't exist in software development. You might also be forgetting about flex schedules, core hours may include the entire working day and may be a signal that substituting 9-10am for 5-6pm is not acceptable because you were hired to do a job that depends on your presence when others are also there. There are multiple legitimate reasons that core hours exist in 8 hour blocks in some places.
And that's all moot since the specific hours in this discussion are unrelated to the point @jph was making, which he already stated kindly and clearly.
No, they really can't do that, at least they can't document it, unless the employees are non-exempt or they wish for the employees to be paid overtime. Even having core time at all sounds like a non-exempt requirement, let alone the whole day.
Many managers are completely oblivious to federal labor laws, unfortunately.
It would help to have more specifics about who & what you're talking about, I'm not sure what you mean when you say they can't do that.
But, I worked in a very well known Hollywood film studio that had mandatory 10 hour work days with an 8 hour core window, not including crunch times. They factored overtime pay into the schedule. This meant that all employees were being paid some 1.5 time, that double-time would hit sooner than you'd think, but also be a lower rate than what you might expect. It was all documented and reported on my tax forms, and within the bounds of California law AFAIK.
You weren’t exempt since you were getting paid overtime.
Exempt and non exempt status are very clearly defined. One gets paid hourly, the other a salary. If you are on any kind of schedule, you are usually non exempt unless really a manager.
Yes, that's correct. Where are you going with this? Both exempt and non-exempt employees there, including all the software devs, had an 8 hour core window that was called "core hours", and everyone worked at least 10 hour days.
In order to be exempt, your hours can’t be fixed. You can go over or under them as part of your duties, but as soon as the boss says you will work XXX hours, then your exempt status disappears
That this law is broken often is in no doubt, but all it takes is one complaint to the DOL to set things straight quickly. At the very least, if the core hours are documented, it should be fairly easy to make a case for whatever overtime was worked.
> In order to be exempt, your hours can’t be fixed.
I don't think this is true. And it's irrelevant to my point that there are legit reasons for 8 hour "core hours" windows. That discussion was already irrelevant to the point @jph was making: that communicating team expectations by writing them down, making them explicit, and communicating them is a good idea.
Anyway, I just looked up exemption status, and here's what some lawyers have to say about it. I'm certain that the studio I was working for was not breaking any laws by having 10 hour work days with core hours. The way they accounted for it was a tad surprising / misleading to me, but it was in no way illegal.
'An exempt employee has virtually "no rights at all" under the FLSA overtime rules. About all an exempt employee is entitled to under the FLSA is to receive the full amount of the base salary in any work period during which s/he performs any work (less any permissible deductions). Nothing in the FLSA prohibits an employer from requiring exempt employees to "punch a clock," or work a particular schedule, or "make up" time lost due to absences. Nor does the FLSA limit the amount of work time an employer may require or expect from any employee, on any schedule. ("Mandatory overtime" is not restricted by the FLSA.)'
Exempt means not paid hourly. I think you are confusing Exempt with Independent Contractor or something else. An exempt employee can certainly be required to show up for work when needed, be they an oncaller, or a hospital resident, or an attorney litigating in court.
> The job duties of the traditional "learned professions" are exempt.
> Professionally exempt work means work which is predominantly intellectual, requires specialized education, and involves the exercise of discretion and judgment.
I work from Poland. In my previous job I participated in a number of projects. I would typically do some hours within my "normal" working hours but then have those strange meetings. For example, one regular meeting was at 1AM my time which was when the project team would meet -- half of it was US, half of it was China.
Generally meeting anybody from West Coast meant I had to stay late, for some reason I was never able to organize meeting that would have more than one US West Coast person come early to work
This is why I'm a contractor. You want me to work 12 hour days? Ok, I'm capped at 40 hours a week? Well, I guess I'll just work 3 days a week then! Or you can approve me for overtime. But either way I'm getting paid for every hour
I got paid for every hour, and it was my choice to take a job that had 10+ hour days. I was paid overtime when I stayed late or worked weekends. For the most part I liked working in film despite the long hours.
Either way, your incredulity is perhaps misplaced. You always have the power to choose the job & hours you want. It might affect how much money you make, what you do, or how other people perceive you, but it's not hard to guarantee you get paid for 40 hours and never work more than 40 hours.
Personally, I don't love working at places where people are obsessively concerned with getting paid for every minute worked and with clocking out at 5pm sharp. By all means, we should have lives outside of work, but I'd rather be working on something fun where the people around me are engaged and are so involved we sometimes don't even notice it's 5:45 than a place where people count down the minutes until they can leave. That's just how I feel now, and I might change my mind. It's a certainly balance, it can go wrong in both directions.
Back to the real topic of this thread: explicit communication of expectations at work is better than not communicating, or unspoken desires or vague rules, right?
seanmcdirmid, what country are you in? In the USA there are very few jobs that are strictly 40 hours. Part-time jobs are less than that, whereas full-time jobs are typically more than that.
It feels like you didn't even read the comment you replied to. FWIW, I've worked in a company where the whole point of core hours was to have a working set of people in the building at the same time, and wasn't related to time zones or even meetings.
Can you refresh the repo page now and see if it is more helpful and clear? Thank you!
For example, the item about 9-5 core hours actually comes from a bank that has tellers, call center operators, and an IT staff that needs to be onsite and available for helping with physical hardware. Again, the point of the ground rules isn't the hours per se; the point is that the team writes its expectations so everyone has a good understanding.