Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with salary and employee

IT Contractor vs full-time Employee. Disadvantages to going the contractor route?

Anonymous — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 07:49:02 -0800

I'm currently employed full-time for a large consulting firm and have recently been offered an opportunity to engage on contract as an independent consultant. I'm hesitant about the loss of stability that this may imply and request the communities feedback Background: Working for several years for a "Large IT Consulting Organization", which also sub-contracts with Contractors and Professional Services organizations to supplement existing in-house skills for our clients. I have a good relationship with these folks and have recently been offered an opportunity to leave my current organization and contract for an engagement of at least 6 months to a year.

The question of compensation, tax, and benefits I think I've got a decent handle on. I'm more interested in the stability aspects to going the contractor route.

I'm an IT professional, age 25-30, recently married, no children for at least another few more years. Wife has a well paying job, current medium term savings give us roughly 6 months cushion time if I'm not drawing a paycheck.

In my current organization, it's important to keep oneself 'billable'. At the same time, I'm salaried and so have a measure of guaranteed income which I find reassuring.

Does anyone have any feedback, or lessons learned one way or another about going this route? I'd like to know more about what everyone thinks about this from a long-term career growth perspective, as well as short term gotchas and things to be on the look out for.

You can contact me directly at itcntrctr5@gmail.com

Can Nonprofit Founder Board Members Obtain Salaried Positions within Same Organization?

franklen — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 17:28:40 -0800

Board Members who founded non-profit want to obtain salaried positions within the same organization. How is this handled? A friend and myself recently started a non-profit organization. It is incorporated and has 501(c)3 status. We currently serve as two of the initial three required Board of Director members as per the application process.

The thing is that we want to be able to make a living from doing the work that we started this organization to do. We would like to have salaried positions within the organization, but we would also like to be able to have major input into the direction the organization takes as it is still young (9 months), and we are trying our hardest to get funding for salaries (among other things) within the next year.

What is the best mode of moving forward in this situation for us as individuals and for the vision of the organization that we created?

Why was I changed from exempt to non-exempt at my job?

Anonymous — Wed, 14 Dec 2005 20:42:31 -0800

Changed from an exempt to a non-exempt employee; what gives? First, background: I work in Chicago for the technology division of a large investment bank based in NY. I am within a couple days of receiving my year end bonus and raise numbers. Yesterday, my bosses' boss called me directly to inform me that I was being changed from an exempt to a non-exempt employee, effective in the new year. I was told not to expect a change in my job responsibilities or hours. With my new status, I will make my base salary based on 40 hours per week. In addition, my "overtime premium" will be one half (not time-and-a-half) of my hourly rate for all hours worked over 40 in a workweek. They claim this is not being done to reward or compensate me. Every person in my group and department is exempt AFAIK (though some may have just received the same news I have). I am being told so far that this status will not affect my eligibility for my yearly bonus and raise. I currently work on average 45-55 hours a week, make a base salary of $70,000 and a bonus of $30k-$40k.

Questions/concerns: why the hell would they do this? Knowing I already work over 40 hours a week as a rule, why would they change my status to non-exempt and be effectively paying me more money for the same work? As I said, this is not considered a comp reward. Could they be doing this in reaction to a lawsuit or settlement by a former employee who claimed a violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act? Could this sudden change to non-exempt at my salary level and amount of hours I work in any way forecast my being layed off? Finally, as I understand it, the FLSA defines overtime as being time-and-a-half; why are they defining my "overtime premium" as 50% of my normal hourly rate?

I think I ate a bad burrito.

ferociouskitty — Fri, 30 Sep 2005 04:17:35 -0800

Calling in sick: What's the right amount? I am in my second salaried position. At my previous employer, I was introduced to "sick time is available at your discretion." I subsequently never called in sick, even when I probably should have. Same deal at the new place. The last job was for a very small company that would have really really missed me if I wasn't there. At this job, assuming there aren't any pressing deadlines or presentations, my day-to-day time is pretty much my own. My usual method of using sick time was to take it take it take it - I always found that one day off when I'm starting to feel icky means a much shorter duration of ickiness. But going into autumn and winter, there's going to be a lot of ickiness going on and I don't want to abuse the relaxed atmosphere of my workplace. In addition, other people in the department seem to have a reputation for always taking off, and others drag themselves in in conditions I'd be considering the hospital, so there's no clear co-worker consensus.
A little more info - non-salaried employees receive 5 paid personal days in addition to their vacation time that's to be used for sick time and various dr. appt-y type out of office-ness.