> We also have an “anti-overtime” rate: past twenty hours a week, people can continue to work at an hourly rate of 50 percent. This allows us to have a high hourly rate for the highest leverage work and also allows people to work more per week if they wish.
They're all contractors, not employees, so it's just a different rate depending on the number of hours you bill. Your advice is sound in general of course, I just doubt that any jurisdiction that accepts them as contractors will have a problem with that detail.
I think the trick is that contractors don't work full time at Gumroad so that they can have other projects. In Switzerland for example you are self-employed only if you have several clients and are autonomous. It seems that it is easier for Gumroad contractors to fulfill these requirements.
In the US, it makes sense for the company to be required to pay a higher overtime rate if they're requiring the employee to work more than 40 hours. If the company is saying they don't want you to work more than 40 hours, then it seems like the law is going against the spirit of its intentions.
I feel like this is only possible once the product and product-market fit have been established; the fire has started burning on its own and you can start stepping back and just stoke the fire
It is devilishly genius. You set a 20 hr/week regime and only keep the employees who work twice as hard, at 20-30 h/week you are actually extracting 80% of the worker productivity in any case at 50% of the cost.
This sounds ripe for a lawsuit or some really bad PR. Wait until the labor groups find out you punish the people desperate for more hours to make ends meet.
It’s better to implement an hour cap or require approval for any overtime.
But this is an hour cap. The employer is saying, don't work more than 20 hours, or I'll lower your rate. It's better than a strict cap, since it does offer people to work more if they want.
It would only be unfair if the employer would then instruct workers to work overtime; I assume that could be illegal (depending on where in the world this happens).
The risk is that the employer is saying “don’t declare more than 20 hours”, but everybody knows that you have to do more if you want to meet your targets / not be dropped
> We also have an “anti-overtime” rate: past twenty hours a week, people can continue to work at an hourly rate of 50 percent. This allows us to have a high hourly rate for the highest leverage work and also allows people to work more per week if they wish.