© 2025 Seyfarth Shaw LLP Massachusetts Wage & Hour Peculiarities, 2025 ed. | 85 To qualify for the computer professional exemption, an employee must meet the following requirements: 1. If the employer is relying on one of the general white-collar exemptions for executive, administrative, or professional employees, then effective January 1, 2020, the employee must be compensated either on a salary or fee basis at a rate not less than $684.00 per week. The 2024 DOL Rule proposed to increase this threshold to $844 per week as of July 1, 2024 and to $1,128 per week as of January 1, 2025, but the rule is enjoined as of the date of publication. If the employer is relying on the FLSA’s specific exemption for computer systems analysts, computer programmers, software engineers, or other similarly skilled workers, the employee must be compensated at a rate not less than $27.63 an hour. 2. Under either the general white-collar exemptions or the specific computer professional exemption, the employee’s primary duty must consist of: The application of systems analysis techniques and procedures, including consulting with users, to determine hardware, software, or system functional specifications Design, development, documentation, analysis, creation, testing, or modification of computer systems or programs, including prototypes, based on and related to user or system design specifications The design, documentation, testing, creation, or modification of the computer programs related to machine operating systems A combination of the aforementioned duties, the performance of which requires the same level of skills474 Job titles vary widely in the computer industry and thus are not determinative of whether an employee’s job duties qualify him or her as an exempt computer professional.475 Instead, courts look to whether the employee’s primary job duty falls within the criteria specified by the regulation.476 The computer professional exemption does not include employees whose primary duty is the manufacture or repair of computer hardware and related equipment.477 In addition, employees whose work is highly dependent upon, or facilitated by, the use of computers and computer software programs (such as engineers, drafters, and other employees skilled in computer-aided design software), but who are not primarily engaged in computer systems analysis and 474 29 C.F.R. § 541.400. 475 Id. 476 DOL Wage & Hour Opinion Letter FLSA2006-42 (Oct. 26, 2006). 477 29 C.F.R. § 541.401.
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