About
I'm Nick Peterson, a software engineer in San Diego. I'm not a lawyer and I'm not a CPA — and that's the point of this site.
Wage-and-hour compliance content is written almost entirely by law firms. It's good at telling you what the rules are and terrible at showing you what the numbers should be. Meanwhile, the errors that actually generate lawsuits — a bonus omitted from the regular rate, the wrong Alvarado divisor, a meal premium paid at base rate — are formula defects. They're found (today) by litigation economists at $500/hour, after the lawsuit is filed, using the employer's own payroll files.
I build the computation: software that reassembles legal workweeks from time-punch data, recomputes the FLSA and California regular rate for every employee and every week, and diffs it against what was actually paid. The same math, run before the demand letter instead of after.
Methodology (how you can check my work)
- Primary sources only. Every legal or tax claim on this site links to the IRS document, DOL fact sheet or opinion letter, CFR section, or court decision it comes from. If I can't cite it, I don't publish it.
- Public test cases. The calculators ship with their verification tests visible in the page source — including cases taken directly from the worked examples in 29 CFR 778.110 and DOL opinion letters. Open the browser console; the tests run on every page load.
- No legal conclusions. The software and the writing produce arithmetic — what was computed vs. what was paid. What any of it means for your situation is a question for your counsel, and audit engagements are designed to be commissioned by counsel for that reason.
- Corrections. If you find an error — in a formula, a citation, anything — email me and I'll fix it and note the change. An error in a tax explainer is a big deal; treat mine that way.
Contact
Email: [email protected] · LinkedIn: Nick Peterson
If you're an employment-defense attorney: the exposure snapshot was built to be commissioned by firms like yours, under privilege, for clients who need the math done at a price a compliance engagement can afford. I'd genuinely like your skeptical read — that's an open invitation.