Chapter 2 established that salary basis and salary level are separate hurdles an employee must clear before duties even matter, and that hourly pay ordinarily defeats an exemption outright. The computer employee exemption is the one place the regulation builds around that rule instead of through it. A computer systems analyst, computer programmer, software engineer, or other similarly skilled worker in the computer field can qualify under section 13(a)(1) of the Act at a rate of not less than $684 per week, exclusive of board, lodging, or other facilities — the same salary-basis floor required of an exempt executive, administrative, or professional employee. Administrative and professional employees may also clear that floor on a fee basis rather than salary, and the computer employee exemption shares that fee-basis alternative (fee basis: an agreed sum paid for a single, unique job regardless of the time it takes, not a recurring hourly or salaried payment); the executive exemption does not, since an executive qualifies on salary basis alone. But the same computer worker can instead qualify under the separate section 13(a)(17) exemption by being paid on an hourly basis at a rate of not less than $27.63 an hour. No other exemption in this book sets a specific hourly-rate floor as an alternative qualifying route — though the outside sales exemption, covered later in this chapter, has no salary-basis requirement at all under § 541.500(c), since subpart G’s salary requirements are stated not to apply to it.

The two routes are alternatives, not a menu an employer can mix and match mid-pay-period. An employer pays one way or the other for a given employee, and whichever basis is actually used has to clear its own floor. A salaried computer employee paid $650 a week does not become exempt by pointing to the $27.63 hourly figure — that floor only applies to employees actually compensated on an hourly basis. Likewise, an hourly computer employee paid $25.00 an hour does not become exempt by pointing to the weekly salary figure. As with every exemption covered so far, job title carries no weight here: because titles in the computer field vary widely and change quickly, the regulation is explicit that title does not determine whether the exemption applies.

Clearing one of these pay floors is necessary but not sufficient. Under either section 13(a)(1) or section 13(a)(17), the exemption also depends on the employee’s primary duty consisting of the kind of systems analysis, programming, or software engineering work the regulation describes — or a combination of that work requiring the same level of skill. Miss the pay test and the duties never get evaluated; miss the duties test and the pay never matters. Both must hold at once.