California IT Professionals: Fighting for Proper Overtime Pay

San Diego, CAIf you are a California software developer or are a computer professional, you may not be receiving the full pay you are entitled to. That is because many employers in California are misclassifying their computer professionals so they do not have to pay those employees for the overtime hours they work. Such misclassifications are a violation of California IT overtime law.

Years ago, computer programming and other technology related careers appeared to be the stuff of dreams—high pay, fun jobs and flexible hours all attracted thousands of computer-literate students into careers working with computers. But over time, the image of the computer professional has changed. The fun jobs turned into heavily deadline-driven tasks, resulting in employees giving up their flexible hours for long days. Computer professionals started working long nights and weekends to ensure that their tasks were done on time.

It probably started out innocently enough: employees thought that it was worth it to work 1 weekend to get their job done on deadline, only to find out that 1 weekend quickly turned into 2 and 3 weekends and suddenly, their nights and weekends were taken up with work. But that was okay with the computer professionals, because at least they still received decent pay for the jobs they did.

But then, the unthinkable happened. The rules were changed and all of a sudden, computer professionals who relied on their overtime pay to help make ends meet—and who used the overtime pay as a rationale for the long hours they put in—no longer made nearly as much money. The number of people who were considered exempt from overtime grew. Again and again the rules regarding overtime have changed, and every time those changes have resulted in less pay for many computer programmers.

So now, the field of computer programming is nowhere near as appealing as it once was. The image of a group of laid-back employees having fun at work, testing a variety of computer programs while being paid good money has been replaced by the image of a tired, overworked employee who is once again just trying to make ends meet.

However, not all computer employees should be in this position. In fact, some have been misclassified as exempt from overtime pay, meaning that they are not being paid nearly as much as they should be. They are working many extra hours to get their tasks done on deadline but not being paid properly for those hours.

Regardless of whether a worker is a retail employee, a customer service employee or a computer programmer, when that person is entitled to overtime pay, he or she should be given overtime pay. It should not matter whether the employee makes minimum wage or well above minimum wage—overtime is overtime and California law ensures that certain computer professionals are eligible to receive overtime pay.

Even though it may seem that computer employees make a lot of money without their overtime pay, consider that some work 80 hours a week, without being paid extra for those hours. A person's pay, when spread out over 80 hours, diminishes considerably on an hourly basis.

If you believe you have been misclassified as exempt from overtime pay and are a computer professional, it is important to take action so that you can be properly paid for the hours you work.