My friend works in operations for a large web hosting provider in Herndon, VA. He seems to like the company even though they work all of the people there late and on weekends with regular software installs and upgrades during off hours. Now he is worried that he wont get any more free time now that they are moving their servers to another location and will require their operations people to work their day schedules and do their regular work as well as off hours to move the computers. The move will take months.

All salaried employees are considered exempt in the company. The people in operations are mainly system administrators and their primary jobs include:
Maintenance of the systems, on-call 24X7 support, replacing broken systems, troubleshooting hardware/software problems, installing software, maintaing the applications, replacing servers, and putting new servers up . Occasionally they get honored with an invitation to participate in design reviews and architecture stuff.

My friend doesnt code, he doesnt QA software unless its to figure out what broke, he doesnt participate in design reviews, and doesnt have a graduate degree.

515.5 section b states: The exemption provided in subdivision (a) does not apply to an employee if any of the following apply:
......
(3) The employee is engaged in the operation of computers or in
the manufacture, repair, or maintenance of computer hardware and
related equipment.

Does this mean that he and many of his co-workers are not exempt from overtime?

Oh, they all make more than $455 a week. Does the government really consider a person making $455/week * 52 weeks in the year or a total of $23660/year highly compensated???

Thanks
Joe

Does the government really consider a person making $455/week * 52 weeks in the year or a total of $23660/year highly compensated???

No. From the Department of Labor website.

Highly-Compensated Workers

The regulations contain a special rule for “highly-compensated” workers who are paid total annual compensation of $100,000 or more.

My apologies. I have seen numbers ranging from $21/hour, $41/hour, $455 a week I didnt get far enough down the page to get to the $100k part.

I dont think anyone in that department makes that but what if they did?

Job description stays the same as before but the income may or may not be high. Are they still considered exempt.

Mind you, I am only doing this because my friend says that if the company says he is exempt than he must be. If it turns out there may be a chance they can get compensated for the extensive work they have to do then he would be willing to contact the DOL.

Does this mean that he and many of his co-workers are not exempt from overtime?

Correct.

Given what you posted about the duties, your friend is non-exempt and should be getting paid overtime for working more than 40 hours in a work week.