Pretty standard for exempt employees in the US. At least as a part owner you might see a little profit for your hard work.

Yup. This year has been good. I'm getting a 32% return on my stock buy in. I own about 1% ish of the company and have gotten dividend payments the the mid four figures.

same set up for me. small firm rules, i guess.

fwiw, the only job I had with compensation for overtime was in Japan. In UK didnt have that but the boss did not normally allow overtime. Cant recall what the deal was in Canada. Weird thing about the job in Japan was that EVERYONE worked in sane long hours. 7 days a week, half days on Sunday, 09:00 to 23:00 on a regular day, a few hours longer when busy. That was during a recession. Cant imagine how it was during the boom years. Bigger bonuses I guess. Anyway, if you do that for long enough it becomes really hard to stop cuz half of your income is based on overtime and over-overtime wages. At the end of 5 years I was burned right out and started going home early, and just took the pay cut. Cannot imagine working that hard for a flat salary, unless the owner.

To clarify the first point, say a regular staff is 50k/yr, they have a $/hr of $25.64 (50k/1950hrs). Our employment contract uses this figure for all hours worked, including hours in excess of the required 37.5/week.

I'd love to get paid even regular time for my OT hours. I make a pretty serious point these days of not working more than a few hours of OT because I get nothing for it.

A few times I've actually offered to help on unrelated projects for which I was not assigned and where they didn't have the staff to do it... With the requirement being them giving me a  "spot bonus"... actually worked twice... 

This is exactly my firm's arrangement. Non-shareholders are hourly & get paid 1.5x overtime. Shareholders are salaried, with no overtime, but bigger bonuses. About 75% of the firm are shareholders.

We’re 7 out of 22 (I think) with profit shares. 4 of those 7 have a say in business decisions.

Are you a full time or contract employee?

Are you licensed? 

Full Time and No, not licensed.

Are you in a state that views interns as non professionals? IE you get OT for anything beyond 40 hours a week?

NYC. Everyone here get OT unless they are a P. (Firm of over 3,000+ globally). Not all offices get OT however.

Sounds like it's a firm policy because of the international work and labor laws that go along with it. Very nice!

I did once work in a small firm whose policy was that only Principals were on salary, everyone else was hourly whether or not legally required to be. They also gave me a nice bonus at the end of the year even though I had just started there in mid-October. They were just exceptionally generous.

The first firm I worked for was like that. Everyone other than the partners had to get approval to do overtime.

In my experience, it NEVER balances out to 40 hours average - they always expect 40 hours minimum.

Yup! And one time I worked late until about 2:30 or 3 am and then got reprimanded for not coming right back at 8:30a the next morning!

Yeah, I know that can be the norm a lot of places. We really are typically a 40 hr a week office though. Sure, stuff happens occasionally. But the general thought is if you can't do it in 40 ish hours on a consistent basis something is wrong. We're pretty civil when it comes to expectations of having your butt in the chair, which is why most of our employees have been here for over a decade. Like every office we have our gripes, but in general you're left alone to do your work on a day to day basis.

Interesting. 

Your case may be because of a unique state labor law. In general though, employee handbooks that detail overtime compensation that differs from state and federal law is NOT legally binding or considered a contract.

Nope, not a California labor law. I believe it has to do with our major Federal contracts - I think the Fed contracts have clauses that they have to give us something similar to what Federal Government civilian employees get. We also get ALL Fed holidays even though other divisions of the company doing non-Fed work don't. (Now, if they'd just give us the same number of leave days...)

Ah! I forgot about the rules for Federal work!

I imagine at BB's firm there is a countdown clock that reaches zero at 5pm. All the computers and phones shut off automatically at 5:01pm.

Our people stop at 4:55 in order to be lined up at the exit door by 5pm.

Before going into architecture I once worked for a Japanese bank. If we stayed late we got nothing, but if we weren't at our desks, logged in and working at the stroke of 8:00 we could get written up. The day I got "downsized" from that place with 5 weeks severance pay remains one of the happiest days of my working life.

The last employee to quit on us was in 2018. I had dinner with her tonight, and she asked for her old job back. Apparently people appreciate having normal work hours. Who knew?

It is incredible how easy it is to retain employees when you maintain professional hours.

thisisnotmyname, need a 10-minute long - 4:20 pm break period and remaining time is wrap up for closing up for the day and go home at 5pm.

Very nice!  If I every turned to the 'dark side'  er 'dark north' and became Canadian I'd want to work for your firm.  

There is a reason I have been here 15 years. We are like family. A small company of less than 20 peeps.

You have more than 15 days PTO now however, right? 15 years at a firm and still 15 days PTO is worrisome. Paying for uni...now that is nice.

Canadian university is cheap tho, esp compared to U$A. Besides that, 3 week vacation is typical for us too for anyone 5+ year in form. 4 and 5 weeks for management and ownership. I’d be more worried about no sick leave. Does Alberta not mandate a minimum amount of sick time?

Dang, are you in CA? We started 15 days here from Day 1 and caps at 250 hours by year 5....really solid. Although to be fair I have never used all of my PTO before, I have work to do.

They are both in Canada. They have a lot more holidays than the US. Not to mention required paid leave for things like having a child.

Also helps that we really only need to worry about paying parking when having a child. 8-)

That's it, I'm moving to Canada!

Does Canadian firms offer pretty good paternity leave? I got one week for my kid and can't apply for the California Family Rights Act as I do not have 12 months of service at my current place. There is paid family leave by EDD, but this one does not offer job protection, so my employer can get rid of me if I choose to take this route.

Parental leave is mandated by government. 12 or 18 months leave at 2/3rd salary or so. Your job is also protected and that leave can be split between parents. Some places will top up the last 1/3rd of salary and some, esp gov departments with unlimited budgets, will allow both parents to take 12months each paid leave.

If Trump is reelected or worse (if possible), moving up north of the border (Canada) sounds very appealing. British Columbia, Canada is a fine place.

I'd totally take that offer at 60% of the pay... Nothing beats quality time with your baby. 1 week is a joke... My wife has 4 months but getting these government beauricracy to takes amazing pain in the butt..

I meant getting government support is pain in the butt..

This may come off as cold hearted but I mean it as a legitimate question because I'm curious. Do most people actually take 12-18 months off when having a kid? I feel like as a business owner you'd have to pay someone 60% & hire someone new to fulfill that work load. Then if they come back a year and a half later you've got two employees when you may only need one.

As for me, I'd appreciate at least 2 months. 12-18 seems pretty nice for bonding time, but I understand the business owner's perspective here too. Even though they won't cover the 100% of the 60% pay (probably split between employer, EDD or equivalent in Canada, State government, company insurance, etc), it seems difficult for companies to hire someone to fill 12-18 months gap.. I've seen tech companies here in the US offer up to 4 months (what my wife gets), but I have not seen any arch firms sponsor maternity/paternity leave for 4 months.. Firm sponsored paternity leave seems almost non-existent in the US firms.. Perhaps states outside of CA may offer better benefits? I'm curious..

Here in Colorado: CO FAMLI provides up to 12 weeks of paid leave for family, medical, and safe leave. Eligible employees who experience pregnancy or childbirth complications can receive an additional 4 weeks of paid leave, for a total of 16 weeks of leave.

Postings to fill those kind of positions generally include an explainer/title as Maternity Cover or similar... its usually very up front

I'm guessing you're not in the US.

10 days sick days is pretty good. I had to burn lot of sick days this time of the year for my newborn and from COVID... I get 20 PTOs but my shitty company kept asking me to use every time I fall below 80% billable hours.. This could be a separate topic in itself. Can a company semi-force (coerce) you to take PTO without finding you projects to charge? At my company, they wouldn't just approve the timesheet unless I charge my hours to PTO. It's like we are paying for upper-management's poor use of resources.

Companies cannot do that. If you're in the office then you're working. Simple as that. Contact your states department of labor and report your firm.

yea it seemed really shady. they use words like we encourage you to take some time off, but I am able to work and don't really want to take unnecessary PTOs here and there. My company's not American (based in Ireland) but they still need to adhere to the local labor laws.

All I can say is what you've described is illegal as *@$k in the US.

May I ask how long you've been at this firm and how long this PTO nonsense has been going on?  

I've been working here for 8 months and was asked couple times to use PTO when the work is light... It wasn't just me. The upper management casually brought this up during the discipline leads meetings that they encourage the leads and people under them to take PTOs when they are low in billable hours....

I did a quick research (need to look into this further), but CA has Forced Vacation Time that says it is legal for employers to control when workers take their vacation time..  This can also allow them to force their employees to take paid vacation leave at certain times...  

strange land California is...

I believe that law is for dictating when you can take vacation into pre-scheduled days. AKA : all vacation must be taken between certain dates. I don't think the law allows owners to say "we're slow, use five hours of your PTO this week."

I could be incorrect though.  

Stasis, I agree that there are good reasons for some types of work where employers should be allowed to control paid time off like when certain times of the year, where you don't want staff to take vacations. This is a problem at USPS every single year from Thanksgiving to New Years where postal workers takes their year's worth of vacation time causing understaffing and mail deliveries way into the night because the workers don't want to do the work of delivering all those holiday packages. If USPS could exercise some degree of control over when workers are not allowed to take vacation time off... you can see packages being delivered more steadily and not so late at night in winter because they would have a fuller work crew. Now, I don't know if this granting of control to employers in every kind of job. I think it depends a bit on the situation. Not sure California law would apply to USPS workers but may apply to workers of other mail & parcel delivery services.

there isn't a law in the US to my knowledge to stop firm management from asking you to use some of your PTO and/or encouraging you to not use it in other times, even flat out denying PTO. I try to take all of december off every year. Different companies react to this in different ways, but almost always there is shock, even when I bring it up often verbally and in writing during and after my interview process, including showing them past examples of how profitable I can be pre-thanksgiving. My newest gig is VERY shocked, and struggling with our prearranged emails about the matter since a job that was supposed to kick of 1st of oct drug its feet and is now only starting the Monday after thanksgiving....