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>> They said "no thanks, but we'll leave the $20 open should you
>> change your mind". I told them they'll get what they pay for.
>> I think we both hung up at that point.
>There is a company who has used an agency to contact me 4 times over
>a 6 month period. Each time, they want to pay $30 per hour. I counter
>with $55. The reason they've contacted me 4 different times? They
>keep hiring people at $30 but they don't work out.
The first company that hired me as a technical writer picked me (I grow more
and more certain as the years go by and I realise how little I knew back
then) because I was willing to work for about ?7 an hour. (Rather less than
$12 an hour, given what UK/US exchange rates were back then.) I have a
strong feeling they'd have done much better with someone like me five years
on, charging about 3 times that rate per hour, but they got what they paid
for... and I learned a lot. <g>
Unless I had some other strong reason to work there (a charity, a cause,
free air travel to anywhere in the world, to keep from starving...) I
wouldn't take a rate like that *now*, because I'd know that the reason they
were offering that rate is because they have no respect for what a skilled
technical writer can offer: they think the job they need done can get done
by a newbie graduate who can write. <g> If they're right, I don't want the
job: if they're wrong, I don't want to work for them.
Jane Carnall
Technical Writer, Digital Bridges, Scotland
Unless stated otherwise, these opinions are mine, and mine alone.
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