Overtime hours / All-in Contract for Engineers in USA

[DanFis]

Dear All,

are the engineering jobs in U.S. normally paid with overtime pay (more than 40 hours) as per FSLA (Fair Labor Standard Act) or are they contracted as an All-In Contract (all overtime hours are paid with the agreed monthly salary)?

Are All-In Contracts legit in the U.S.?

Thank you in advance,

Daniel

 

[Orchid PE]

Beats me. In my past 4 engineering roles I've been salary. No overtime pay for me.

 

[ChebyshevII PE PMP]

I work at a job where I get paid my hourly wage for every hour I work; so if I work 60 hours in a week, I get paid my hourly wage x 60 hours. Occasionally I get premium pay as well, if I end up working on holidays (which I often do).

I’m an anomaly, though. Unless the engineers are unionized (which is rare), they are most likely working salaried.

 

[DoctorWho-PE]

Where I work engineers are salaried at 40 hours, then paid straight time overtime.  Non salaried employees are time and a half, these are like techs and admin usually.  If you become a shareholder, you no longer earn overtime.

 

[JayKay PE]

I've had a mix.  First job was salaried, same pay no matter how many hours.  Following job paid straight time if I worked more than 40-billable hours.  Another was straight time after 40-hours in a week (billable or non-billable).  Current job is time and a half for anything over 40 + a multiplier if it's during afterhours/overnight.

 

[bwin12]

To those of you that get paid for over 40 hours, how often does that happen? Do your companies really try to use the over 40 hours for emergencies only? 

For every job I have had I have been paid a salary. I am primarily in construction though. The construction jobs were basically work as many hours as needed (60ish) to get the job done/be there when the crew was plus bookends, etc. In my jobs that were in an engineering office (Project Controls/Estimating) I was expected to be in the seat 40 hours per week- no more, no less. 

 

[Road Guy]

*Most but not all Salaried job are exempt from the FSLA OT Rules - They are really set up for actual hourly paid workers and not salaried.

In my younger engineering days straight time OT was the norm for salaried engineers, where CAD / Tech staff were paid time and a half.

My experience is that if you can bill the OT hours then they are welcome but if its a LS job and not an hourly contract (with the client) then on LS job the OT charging is generally frowned upon.

 

[ChebyshevII PE PMP]

To those of you that get paid for over 40 hours, how often does that happen? Do your companies really try to use the over 40 hours for emergencies only?

My work is of the philosophy that you do what you need to in order to get the work done right and on time.

I actually average around 50 hours a week for an entire year, as do many of my peers. 60- and 70-hour weeks are not uncommon, especially if we're working on the final phases of a project (I actually worked 100 hours a week for 2 weeks on a recent project).

Of course, this is pre-pandemic. It will likely get busy again soon, but for the last couple of months we've not needed to work more than 40 hours per week due to workload.

 

[Road Guy]

I always got annoyed with people who would nickle and dime my project 1-2 hours a week or something.  I mean no one is 100% efficient in your average day, so unless you have not fucked off ever in your work life don't bill me for the few times you had to stay till 6:00 to get something done.

In  transportation type work the margins are so small it can really kill your budget.

 

[mudpuppy]

I work for a utility in an overhead org, so paid overtime is pretty much nonexistent.  The only time we're paid overtime is a true emergency, e.g. storm work or if a VP approves it (almost never.)

That said, if we're consistently working more than 50 hours per week we might be able to justify help through contract resources.

 

[jeb6294]

I was working a contract position through an agency with Cinergy (now Duke Energy) for about 9 months. One of the Cinergy Engineers told me they were expected to work at least 45 hours per week because “their salaries were higher”...but, yeah, they weren’t really much higher. They mentioned this when they saw me doing my regular 40 hours. Told them I didn’t work for them and, if they wanted to hire me, then we could talk about my hours. Didn’t really leave there on the best terms, but sometimes I wonder how bad those guys got screwed when Duke took over since they were HQ’ed somewhere else, i.e. get outright fired or tell them they could resign if they don’t relocate.

Now Gov’t so the second that clock hits 8 hours, you best get the hell out of the way or you’re liable to get run over. 

 

[Tiger15]

Just to clarify for the OP.

US law requires that hourly workers be paid both a minimum wage and for overtime pay for work above 40 hours per week. Overtime pay must be at least time and a half (1.5x the hourly rate).

There is an exemption to this law for the following categories of workers: executive, administrative, professional, computer, outside sales, and "highly compensated" employees... basically all "white collar" jobs. Those jobs are generally paid a salary and do not have to be compensated for OT. Some companies decide to pay OT anyway, but that's at their own discretion.

If an engineer is hired as a contractor, their contract may be hourly instead of salaried, so they may get overtime.

I would say the majority of engineering jobs in the US are salaried with no OT.

My first company paid engineers OT, but only at straight time (not time and a half) and only after you exceeded 45 hours. My 2nd and 3rd companies do not pay OT.

 

[Dothracki PE]

I only got paid OT as an intern when I was paid by the hour. But I rarely did go over 8 hours. Only when it was needed by one of my supervisors. 

Now I am salaried and only get paid for 40 hours but am expected to work as long as needed to make project deadlines. I also think OT is one of the factors used at the end of the year review. Pre-covid I worked very efficiently and rarely needed to work overtime. Maybe an hour or two one day of the week. Now I feel like I am at 80% efficiency working on VPN and with only one extra monitor so I have been working a lot longer than before. Plus my company has really picked up in work lately. 

 

[Orchid PE]

I'm in a similar situation as mud puppy in that I work for a utility and we do get "overtime" when there's a storm, with VP approval. At my previous job (with another utility), once OT was approved for salaried employees during a storm it was only calculated after working 1-2 (can't remember) hours over 8 for the day. And even then the OT was paid as excess straight time, not x1.5. 

But I don't mind being salaried. I'm only expected to work 40 hours. Of course when there is something important that needs to get done I'll stay late to do it, and I don't mind because we take pride in our system so it usually makes me feel good. I'm also on call 24/7, so I'll get calls at like 1 AM or on weekends to fix stuff. 

My previous boss told me to treat it like a bank. When you work over 8 you are making "deposits" that you can later "withdraw"  I.e. when it's Friday afternoon at 2pm and there's nothing important going on, it's ok to head out the door.

I enjoy not having to keep track of how many hours I work in a week, and I like that my employers have enough confidence in me to manage my own hours. I am a professional after all (at least at work). I usually head in to work early (well, used to) to beat traffic so there's a few extra 30 minutes or so everyday. I couldn't care less about getting paid for it.

Now, when I was a co-op with a company while in school you had to clock in/out and you were expected to work at least 40 hours. If you were clocked in for less then that you had to explain yourself. You also had to clock in before 8 AM if you didn't want to explain yourself. So you always clocked in at like 7:55 AM, clocked out for lunch at 12:01 PM, back in a 12:59 PM, and clocked out no earlier than 5 PM. Was pretty stupid. Though, if I needed to leave earlier than 5 PM I just wouldn't clock out when I left. The next day HR would call and ask for a time to put in for the "missing time." You clocked in/out with your fingerprint so you couldn't get someone else to do it, or do it later.

 

[bwin12]

I worked for an engineering company that started a construction division. One year (after management changes in our group) we were told to act like the rest of the company and fill out our timecards per the hours we actually worked on the individual project, ie, like the engineers. Previously we had not done timecards or filled them out for 40 hours a week. For the 4 years I worked there we were paid salary, and we were a small group- less than 5 of us over the year. 

After that year somehow we got the data from corporate. I remember one engineer was an oddball and had like 2900 billable hours. Then the field engineer that worked for me had 2800 billable hours. I had 2700, my boss had 2600. Then everyone else in the company (below PM's/executives) had 2100 to 1900.

We were told to stop filling out timecards. 

 

[DoctorWho-PE]

To those of you that get paid for over 40 hours, how often does that happen? Do your companies really try to use the over 40 hours for emergencies only? 

For every job I have had I have been paid a salary. I am primarily in construction though. The construction jobs were basically work as many hours as needed (60ish) to get the job done/be there when the crew was plus bookends, etc. In my jobs that were in an engineering office (Project Controls/Estimating) I was expected to be in the seat 40 hours per week- no more, no less. 

September and October tend to be our busy months due to a major client FY end, and there have been years where I have worked 60+ hour weeks for the whole of the two months because they find money and need to spend it.