Unless all 50 hours are compensated, 10 of them at 1.5-2x base pay, the person working them is getting ripped off.

Every one of my friends in engineering (actual engineering, e.g. civil, aerospace, etc.) positions get at least 1.5x for any hour over 40 they work in a week. In fact "unpaid overtime" is something I hadn't heard of for an engineering position prior to working in software. It's almost like workers in this industry are competing to see how much they can let themselves be exploited.

I'm guessing you don't live in the US, or your friends are underpaid, or they work for a firm that chooses, but does not have to, provide overtime. Actual engineering should generally be considered exempt from overtime.

1. If nothing else, engineers are considered a learned professional.

2. They probably make over $100,000 per year.

3. They may hit the executive exemption.

https://www.dol.gov/whd/overtime/fs17a_overview.pdf

Their firms choose to provide overtime. I live in the US, and so do they. They are underpaid, but so are software engineers (even adjusting for overtime or lack thereof).

In the US, software developers are exempted from the law requiring 1.5x pay for overtime. Not sure it matters if they're salaried instead of hourly to begin with though.

This is in the US and they're all salaried. Their overtime is computed as a function of the equivalent hourly rate, biweekly pay, etc.

That is a set of regulations that vary state by state. I work in mass and I have never received a dime for overtime

It has nothing to do with regulations, actually. These companies they work at aren't normally obliged to pay overtime by any regulation or contractual obligation. The engineers there are "exempt" employees, classified identically to what a software engineer would be.

In some cases these employers' contracts require them to pay overtime to employees that work on the contract project, but generally that isn't the case. They pay overtime because of the historical evolution of the industry and the expectations and dynamics of the employer/employee relationships.

I guess you are speaking about juniors/graduates? Senior engineers in my experience in two different European countries have always contracts with unpaid overtime exactly as management contracts.

No. Three of them have very senior positions (e.g. principal or chief engineer). They've always had paid overtime at every stage of their career.

Interesting, my undergrad is actual engineer, Electrical, worked in VLSI design (GPUs) for 4 years after college, and nobody I ever heard doing EE every got paid overtime.

You have to negotiate your salary based on these assumptions. Or get paid hourly (as a consultant or contractor). I'm not currently hourly, but I am also not getting exploited, either. Most places I have worked didn't give a damn about their employees. They would just use them up and get new ones when people eventually got fed up and quit (or got sick and quit, in a few cases). When you bill hourly, projects are far more honest in terms of not shifting costs onto the staff.

Says what research?