[kcplate]

Yes, I attribute my belief that it’s important for the company helping me via my compensation to feed, cloth, and shelter my family to be successful to my upbringing. I mean I don’t recall my parents ever saying “When you start working, do as little as possible because screw them they dont deserve your best effort.”

Are you implying that contributing to your company’s success isn’t important? I mean I have helped multiple companies to be successful and by many measures this has provided me success as well. I am pretty sure there is a correlation there.

[Imnimo]

I'm implying that the success of your company does not automatically transfer to you by osmosis. These employees are not going to see any additional payoff for staying to 1AM. Even if this exercise did somehow improve Twitter's profits, that money is going to Musk, not to them. If they are paid the same salary, work 80 hours a week instead of 40, and Twitter does well as a result, what have they gotten? A 50% hourly paycut.

[kcplate]

So, some week down the line they may only work 20 hours and as salaried employees will likely still get the same paycheck that they did for doing 80 hours. By your logic I guess they wouldn’t deserve that 50% extra comp they received for the hours they didn’t work, correct? I’d say it’s a safe bet that almost all have happily cashed that paycheck for likely years and I’d wager at least 50% didn’t work 2080 hours in the last 12 months.

Exempt employees drawing a salary are pretty much paid on an expect end result more than some arbitrary # of hours the employee works. Hours are meaningless.

[sys_64738]

> Exempt employees drawing a salary are pretty much paid on an expect end result more than some arbitrary # of hours the employee works. Hours are meaningless.

"Exempt" is company-speak to make you think your hours worked are not tied to compensation. Try tell a lawyer or structural engineer the same and they'd laugh at you.

[kcplate]

> "Exempt" is company-speak to make you think your hours worked are not tied to compensation. Try tell a lawyer or structural engineer the same and they'd laugh at you.

Uh, no. “Exempt” is a legal definition created by a bunch of politicians to exempt people from the FSLA. Basically it means that certain roles can be tied to an expected outcome and not a specific hourly pay guideline. And specifically in the state of California, SWEs can be classified as exempt allowing their employer to require them to work whatever number of hours that are necessary to achieve an outcome.

Since California is also an “at will” state, the employee is free to leave the arrangement.

[koonsolo]

In my experience, the most chaotic companies that were fire fighting all the time tried to pull this "there is this deadline and it has to be finished by X or else we die".

The successful companies on the other hand, are planning ahead and taking setbacks into account. Work was done properly so no crazy firefighting. They also don't burn out their employees.

Just my experience of a 43 yo developer.

[kcplate]

Sure, but in this specific case you kind of have to assume that Twitter wasn’t on fire already and was well planned and addressing setbacks. I think a fair metaphor could be that there was a bunch of folks enjoying the warmth the flames on the tree in front of them, but ignoring the blazing forest around them.

I think in that case creating a deadline of “we need to put this fire out before it consumes the entire forest” and motivating a bunch of smokejumpers hop in and bust their ass to save the forest isn’t a bad thing.