For those who may not know, companies do this so they can classify as many workers as possible as "exempt employees" meaning they are exempt from overtime pay and other worker protections.
"In general, to be considered an “exempt” employee, you must be paid a salary (not hourly) and must perform executive, administrative or professional duties."
To be honest, I'm a little surprised that these employees couldn't be considered administrative or professional without a managerial title.
Edit: reading further, this clarifies a bit: "These categories are purposefully broad to encompass many types of jobs. However, it is the tasks performed on the job, not the job title alone, which determine exempt vs. non-exempt employment status." Essentially, it's not entirely a cop-out by companies to avoid worker protections.
This is emphatically the case. The administrative and IT exemptions are rankly abused. It's not only big / tech companies that engage in this practice, either -- so many folks work for middling-or-less salary and expected to put in uncompensated overtime. Companies craft HR policy to shoehorn practically every full-time position into an exempt class.
https://www.thebalancecareers.com/exempt-and-a-non-exempt-em...
To be honest, I'm a little surprised that these employees couldn't be considered administrative or professional without a managerial title.
Edit: reading further, this clarifies a bit: "These categories are purposefully broad to encompass many types of jobs. However, it is the tasks performed on the job, not the job title alone, which determine exempt vs. non-exempt employment status." Essentially, it's not entirely a cop-out by companies to avoid worker protections.