Comped at 50%? If I'm up until 3am because of fixing a critical production bug that is causing the operation to lose money, I'm taking the entire next day off. None of this 50% nonsense -- that might be less abusive, but it's still abusive.
I have to disagree for a moment. I can understand why engineers get into a mindset that this sort of arrangement might be fair, but honestly, how is this fair at all? Most everyone is salary. Let's say, for ease of numbers, you are salaried at $104,000. This breaks down to $50 an hour if you work 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, for 52 weeks in a year. Let's also assume you have 10 PTO days. In reality you work 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, for 50 weeks a year. You take two weeks off for vacation.
Now, let's image you are actually putting in 50 hours a week (not a bad average for a startup) instead of 40. And let's say you are actually getting comped 50% of those hours as PTO. According to this plan and math by week 44.5 of the year you have accumulated enough PTO to take the rest of the year off. To put this into perspective you would be able to take off from the beginning of November all the way to the New Year, and you'd probably still have a bit of PTO roll over. I doubt that any company will go for this.
On the flip side of this equation you have worked approximately 10% more hours than you have been paid for to accumulate that PTO. This reduces your functional hourly rate by 10%. If you actually stopped working at week 44.5 and took all of your PTO that you have accumulated, you would still functionally only make $45 an hour instead of $50.
This is completely unfair.
So what is the solution? Well, my solution has always been to work hourly instead of salary. This changes the equation. If I am making $50 an hour and I work 50 or 60 hours in a week, I don't feel so bad. My employer hardly ever wants to have me work overtime. Isn't that interesting? They would rather the overtime goes to salaried employees. That says something. However, when they do need overtime, I don't feel bad, I am being paid. On the flip side, when I want to take a day off or a vacation, I don't bill hours, and I don't get paid. The employer usually thinks this is a great idea, and I just have to budget for the ebbs and flows. This is fair.
Another option is work smarter (I do this whether I am salary or hourly). Test everything so it doesn't break. Automate everything so it can be deployer, scaled, or fixed as quickly as humanly possible. I work hard to put myself out of work. Yet, I always have more work than I ever need.
I like the hourly approach or at least the effective hourly approach. I.e., track every hour you work and every quarter, 6 months, or year, show your employer what your effective rate is and why it isn't fair.
I also like the notion that this is a responsibility the employer should bear. I.e., the employer should pay the employee for every hour worked. If you're working for equity, then maybe not. But I think there should be some kind of premium or balancing for hours worked on time off.
In the end, it's good for employees and employers. Employees are happier and valued; employers get happy and productive employees.
On the flip side, no company will ever convert their salaried employees to hourly unless forced to by the government. It's an abusive relationship that they're being allowed to manipulate and it means nothing but good things for them. Companies that have 100+ developers are different than those that have teams of consultants, both in the depth and breadth of work that they're doing.
I guess we both kind of miss the entire point, though. Nothing will change in our industry without better worker organization.
The logic is true: whether or not a company will go for it does not necessarily bear on fairness.
And I think that instead of .5 PTO for weekend hours worked, maybe consider 1.5x or 2x pay hourly to cover the premium for working instead of living. It has to stop somewhere...
Part of worker organization is telling both the rational and emotional reasons why it's better to have workers who can put down their work for more important things, like family and life outside of work.
I absolutely agree with you. It's really a large abusive relationship which is sadly prevalent in this industry.
I have thought about workers organizations within our industry. I don't see why we don't have these, and yet they don't exist at all, at least not with any real power and organization. I know a few things but I can safely say I have no idea how to fix that.
One solution I've seen is comp time for exempt employees above your "normal" hours. So if you work 50 hour weeks normally, and need to for some reason work requires you to do 70 hours, you'll get 2 days of comp time. Now this brings up arguments about what are your "normal" hours and how to calculate that but it is an alternative without having to go hourly.