Many California IT professionals and/or computer programmers are misclassified as exempt, e.g., they don't manage anyone. If an IT professional, computer professional or programmer spends most of their time doing any combination of the following, they are entitled to overtime:
- Analyzing, troubleshooting, and resolving complex problems with business applications, networking, and hardware.
- Installing, configuring, or testing new computers, applications, networks or hardware based on user-defined requirements.
- Creating or troubleshooting network accounts (logins) and other business application user accounts.
It is not uncommon for IT employees to work long hours driven by project deadlines or company policy requiring standards 60-70 hour work weeks. Yet employers at large corporations based in California such as Hewlett-Packard Company, Intel Corporation, Electronic Arts and IBM, just to name a few, have allegedly denied overtime wages to IT and computer professionals based on misclassification: these individuals are often considered exempt from the overtime requirements.
Recent class-action lawsuits against companies such as the above have been settled on behalf of high-tech employees and computer professionals in software and hardware industries who are entitled to overtime. Still, many employers are currently facing additional overtime lawsuits when they do not pay overtime to their IT employees as required by law.
It would be wise for employers to pay overtime: under the California labor laws pertaining to IT professionals (both in software and hardware industries), employees who work more than 40 hours per week without additional compensation, may receive overtime back pay (up to 4 years) and other related statutory amounts.
California State Labor Law for Computer Professionals: Rate of Pay
California State Labor Laws protect computer employees from unpaid overtime. California Labor Code 515.5 or SB 88 states that employees in the computer software field may be exempt from overtime pay if they meet several requirements. One exempt-status requirement involves pay rate: "The employee's hourly rate of pay is not less than forty-seven dollars and eighty-one cents ($47.81), or the annualized full-time salary equivalent of that rate."
If a California computer software employee earns less than $47.81 per hour or the annual salary equivalent of approximately $99,445, they may qualify for overtime pay.
In order to be exempt in California, effective as of January 1, 2008, a full-time employee must be salaried and earn at least $640 per week, or $33,280. The hourly minimum decreased to $36. Other states have similar laws for computer professionals, though the exempt-requirements and pay rates may differ.
San Jose, CA : According to the California Labor Law, most IT workers are entitled to California overtime for computer professionals. Job duties trump job descriptions and many employees are not performing managerial tasks, thus making them misclassified as exempt. The California labor code states that tasks performed determine whether or not IT professionals are entitled to overtime pay. [ 
Sherman Oaks: As most everyone working in IT knows, California IT overtime is just 'part of the job'. But where do you draw the line—50 hours? Sixty hours? Ariel works 60-plus hours if he adds up work performed at home (which should be included). "I just want to know where I stand regarding overtime compensation," says Ariel, who intends to seek legal help. [ 
San Francisco, CA: Alan works for a goliath IT company and he is often required to do 24/7 "on-call" shifts, but the company says they are not required to pay California IT Overtime. This similar rationale applies to just about any position related to information technology. However, Alan believes he is justifiably owed , overtime. " For the past two years, I am owed upwards of $200,000 in overtime compensation and that doesn't even include this year," says Alan. [ 
