Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am a bit surprised at these gloom and doom stories. I know several mid thirties folk who are at GA 15 level, work from home all the time, have side jobs. Not sure how they pull it off.

GS15 = doesn't do examining.... there is a layer of non-production GS-15 types at the PTO that don't do anything but go to meetings and make presentations and things of that nature. The is a slice at the top that live very nicely doing nothing much. Those jobs are hard to come by.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am a bit surprised at these gloom and doom stories. I know several mid thirties folk who are at GA 15 level, work from home all the time, have side jobs. Not sure how they pull it off.

GS15 = doesn't do examining.... there is a layer of non-production GS-15 types at the PTO that don't do anything but go to meetings and make presentations and things of that nature. The is a slice at the top that live very nicely doing nothing much. Those jobs are hard to come by.

Anonymous wrote:I am a bit surprised at these gloom and doom stories. I know several mid thirties folk who are at GA 15 level, work from home all the time, have side jobs. Not sure how they pull it off.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think you're not as talented as you think you are, OP. I know a number of people who started working there right out of law school All are still there, and all are enjoying the perks now that they are several years in (remote work, etc).

Heck, I used to hang out and play video games until like 2-3am with the guys I know who work there. Then again, they are exceptionally smart and talented people. So again, maybe you aren't as hot as you think you are.

No, as you know, it varies by unit, it varies by group. Lots of managers are bad, some are good. Lots of art units have absurd quota systems, some have very generous ones. And you can't pick which one you get, it's just luck.

I know this sounds bad but can't you just turn in mediocre work to meet the quota?

Also, I heard somewhere that you can get overtime pay at the USPTO. Any truth to that?[/quote]


Here is how pay at the USPTO works....

We collect "points" during the bi-week and essentially trade them in at the end of the bi-week for our pay.
Here is how the scam works.....


We have a list of assigned activities. Each activity is work a certain number of "points" (most activities are worth only some fraction of a point or no points at all). The activities are timed and have a hard deadline. Each GS level has a progressively higher number of points they must collect each bi-week. For example.... an appeal = .25 points. An equivalence can be drawn between the points assigned to a task and the number of hours they expect you to work in order to finish the task... for example appeal = .25 points = less than .5 work days (less than 4 hours). What this means is that we are compensated for less than 4 hours of work even if the task takes us 8 hours. This can easily happen when doing examining because the lawyers will reply with pages (think 30, 40, 50 pages) of arguments and we are required to respond in detail to each argument. Plus do the search and re-write the Office action.

So... is there overtime?? YES.... but it is conditional.

If an Examiner can collect the required number of points during the bi-week AND he/she spends extra time at the Office collecting points above and beyond those which are required then he can in theory ask to be compensated for the extra points he/she has collected.

This is very much just like working in a textile mill 150 years ago and being paid a penny for each shirt or shoe or sock you sew.

The problem is that the work of examining is a not akin to a wrote task such a sewing a shirt. Examining is a combination of legal, scientific, and political (yes... cause you got to work with reviewers). Each case requires a unique evaluation and each Office action is different (even though they all have to address the same body of law). This means that everything takes a different amount of time to complete.... UNLESS you really do crap work.


Because of how the system is structured I believe that promotes wage theft. They have a point floor below which we are told will result in our being fired for not meeting and then they compensate us for only a fraction of the amount of time it takes to do the work.

From what I've seen in my AU examiners take vacation and work those days off in order to meet their quota. Not always but often. I've seen senior examiners do the following... 1. request to go part time in order just to keep up with their production (this gets their quota dropped.... but they still are working 40+ hours even though the Office is only paying them for 32)... 2. trading vacation time. 3. I've seen one senior examiner frequently trade sick leave just to lower his quote requirement.