I need some expert advice, first a little background, I am managing a web development firm in Massachusetts, recently a couple of my developers put in a couple 70 hour weeks. They are salary and when overtime came up after these weeks I was told not to give it to them becasue they are salary. The owner had her lawyer send me some info stating that one of the OT examption laws in MA is geared towards anyone who develops software. Now these guys are making websites, corporate sites and social networks, the question is......is software and websites the same thing? I am someone that always fights for my guys but I need to get some advice from people in this area before I go fight this against a lawyer that knows nothing about technology. Thanks

See DOJ web site and your states online laws. Get a lawyer that claims to know how to handle wages. As my lawyer father-in-law states, every case is different. Most of the rules revolve around exempt and non-exempt status for FLSA. From a web site that offers legal help for employees. flsa.com " There are, in addition, some special rules which apply to employees who work with computers and permit them to be classified as exempt even if they don't meet the usual requirements for exempt executives or administrators. However, there are special provisions which exempt some computer employees who might not otherwise qualify as "professionally" exempt. These include systems analysts, programmers (who "write code"), or software engineers. More specifically, the special computer employee exemption applies to workers who apply systems analysis techniques and procedures to determine hardware, software, or system functional specifications, or who design, develop, test or modify computer systems or programs based on user or design specifications." I suspect they are in fact exempt from flsa rules in the federal laws. Most IT jobs are exempt from the rules. Your company ought to inform the employees of their classification at the employment date. This shouldn't be a surprise. "Best Practices", Event viewer, host file, perfmon, antivirus, anti-spyware, Live CD's, backups, are in my top 10