When I was younger, I was very excited about the idea of going from being an hourly employee to being a salaried employee. Getting a salary instead of wages meant you were Getting Up There!

Nope.

Getting a salary instead of wages means you get a constant amount no matter how many hours you put in, so your corporate overlords can feel comfortable asking you to overwork yourself for no additional compensation.

@noelle Your work contract doesn't set a fixed number of weekly hours? Over here (Belgium) the de facto standard for salaried employees is to work 38h per week; overtime is either paid separately or converted to paid days off, or both.

@jkb There's no legal standard in the US and companies will routinely exploit this. It's especially true in the software-development industry, where 7-day, 100-hour "crunch weeks" aren't uncommon but don't draw any extra pay.

@noelle And to think that many european CS/IT students and professionals dream of going to the US and work there. We seem to have it way better at home, between legal protections and market asymetry.