LinkedIn ordered to pay $6 million in unpaid overtime wages and damages

[Retrograde]

7. And many larger ones

The original reason was that computer programming was considered an art, like composing, that required creativity and independent thought, qualities that could not be simply turned on and off with a timeclock. Then it got expanded to be not just programmers, but people who ran tests and diagnostics, people who documented the programs, etc., just as the term "manager" grew to encompass not just people who directed other people, but project managers, program managers, product managers, sales managers and all sorts of other folk (I once observed that everyone at one particular meeting at a major company had "manager" in their title, although none of them were responsible for actual people).

It's been a long standing assumption in Silicon Valley that anyone in a position labeled exempt will work well over 40 hours a week. (Or at least be present and claiming to work that much: it was my experience as an actual manager that if the company expected those kinds of hours a lot of personal business got done on "company" time.)