I suspect overworking is more prevelant than you’re acknowledging for salaried workers. For instance, I’m a high school teacher. I and many of my colleagues are routinely working 50-60 hrs/wk. If you’re not being billed for hours, why wouldn’t you keep expanding your workers’ obligations until the cracks appear?
"If you’re not being billed for hours, why wouldn’t you keep expanding your workers’ obligations until the cracks appear?"
I'm amazed by the sibling comments "benefit of the doubt" view even with the hindsight of the game industry, among others, that uses this fact systematically. There's obviously skewed incentives to over-scope when the crunches are culturally normalized together with costs offloaded to the employees since there's no OT pay. The incentives to the individual manager is obvious too. No costs to report for their own incompetence, instead their feature list is completed - and maybe their bonus or promotion goal reached.
Where I live this no overtime pay scheme is usually compensated by an extra vacation week per year. Like clockwork however - every single year - this credit is collected through overtime multiple times over.
This will be repeated as long as they can get away with it because there's simply so much money to make from it.
As long as work is required to survive, employers will be calling the shots. They don’t have to employ you but you have to work. So they will do whatever they can legally get away with to exploit this and keep as much as they can for themselves.
In my specific situation, greed isn’t exactly at play.
My boss doesn’t have any direct financial stake in the outcome of our/my work. And yet - my workload and occupational expectations are such that I’m routinely in a position requiring significant overtime. I’m also aware that this is often true in other public school districts, less true in private schools, and even worse in many charter school networks.
Teaching is an emotionally exhausting job; however, it’s the combination of intensity + working hours + low compensation that pushes me toward industry (anyone looking for a UX Research Assistant in the Minneapolis area?)
You misread my comments. These are not my ethics, nor am I in any sort of leadership position.
I am merely pointing out that unpaid overtime/wage theft/whatever is probably more common than the OP acknowledges. This is obviously unfortunate and a likely a work culture problem in the US.
