not disagreeing with you but, in the USA the default is you're owed overtime if you work more than 40hrs. The law list exceptions to that. "Salaried" is not a valid exception. The exceptions are explicit jobs and have various requirements. Unfortunately IIRC computer professional is one of the exemptions. Should maybe ban together to remove that exemption.

Also apparently being paid > $100k a year is an exception

https://www.flsa.com/coverage.html

California in particular has stricter exception laws

https://www.worklawyers.com/exempt-vs-nonexempt-employees-ca...

Lots of companies have mis-understood this law, thought just claiming "salaried" was enough and were later found in violation.

I'm not sure how I feel about the $100k exemption. One the one hand I hate it. On the other hand I'm being paid $100k+. Seems like a trade off. Like would I rather have $99k + overtime pay or $150k. The advantage to $99 + overtime might be the company manages better since they don't want to pay overtime. On the other hand they could just budget $150k internally and still demand the overtime and maybe end up only spending $130k total or something.

Of course as a programmer I'm already exempt apparently which feels kind of BS, same with artists. But I should probably research any counter arguments.

Indeed, I’m pointing out the labor law deficiency that needs remediation. Your employer should never be able to have unconstrained demands on your time for a fixed wage.

I'm not sure I understand. You're saying that it's not possible for someone of sound mind to decide to trade a technically-unconstrained probability distribution of demands on their time (with exit rights) for a fixed wage, no matter how high? And that two parties should be prohibited by law from making this exchange?

I'm not making a general-purpose argument against regulating nominally consensual labor agreements, but this specific example is an awfully weird context to decide that people need to be protected from themselves. I've had jobs where the exact hours of oncall rotations weren't explicitly spelled out in the contract, and I made the decision that the oncall rotation was worth the fixed pay. Trading fixed amounts of money for probability distributions is all over the economy (this is what insurance is), and you're the first person I've ever heard suggest that it should be prohibited.

Would you mind elaborating on why you think this is so egregious that people need to be protecting from themselves so they don't engage in it?

We’re not talking about unique agreements. We’re talking about below or at market rate compensated roles where you’re expected to be available after hours, on top of a 40 hour work week. No, I don’t think that should be allowed unless you’re compensated specially for the time you’re on call, as well as when you need to actively engage while on call (removing exempt employee status for technology professionals). This is no different than roles like nursing, or IT in developed countries with robust labor regulations.

People don’t need to be protected from themselves. They need to be protected from employers, who have more power than labor (through at will employment and a lack of collective bargaining). Simply because some are willing to work for free does not mean that technology professionals as a whole should accept such a poor arrangement, because it’s been normalized as such by employees who accept it.

European countries are moving in this direction (prohibiting email access outside of business hours), and I hope to see more progress on this front in the US over time.

The attitude that salaried employees are expected to be available at all hours is such a US labour market thing.

So much so that a (US headquartered) multinational I worked for gave up trying to get their EU employees to do weekend on call, as the team didn't want to get treated that way.