[kcplate]

If you want to get paid by the hour, choose a gig that pays you hourly. If you choose a gig that pays you a salary and is exempt (like many SWEs)…well, you are not technically working for free no matter if you are working inside or outside your regular working hours.

[piva00]

That's a very weird view of what a salaried position means. I'd even say very US-centric, since most other developed countries consider a salaried position as being paid for a certain amount of hours worked per month, there are limits on hours worked because if not there's nothing limiting the employer on requesting you to work as many hours as they please ("I pay you a salary, of course you need to work 14h/day").

In most parts of the globe, yes, you are working for free in this case, your contract does not stipulate you are available to work at all times, or more than the allocated hours per week/month of your contract. If there's a need for work outside of these hours they are considered overtime.

On top of that, on-call work disrupts your life outside of work, you can't do anything that requires complete disassociation from work life since you can be paged at any time, not paying a premium for this type of alertness and labour is pure exploitation.

[kcplate]

I am definitely speaking of US definitions of exempt and salary. Here in the US if your role is categorized that you are both exempt and salaried (most states this allows companies to categorized SWEs this way), you are not paid on the number of hours worked. So that said, if you only work 20 hours instead of 40, you are paid the same as if you work 80 instead of 40. The logic is that over the course of a year you will likely average 40.

[alex_lav]

It's very normal to have on-call and overtime stipulations in employment contracts for salaried positions.

[kcplate]

Sure, but it’s also very normal not to as well. Positions evolve.