Re: More Low Paying Jobs

["William Sherman" <bsherman77 -at- embarqmail -dot- com>]

My feeling is knowledge is power.  It never hurts to know what is being paid 
and how everyone feels about it.

1.  I worked a place once that I drastically underbid my rate. It seemed ok 
at the time, but I found that everyone was much higher than me, by a 
significant amount.  If I had known they were getting more, I'd have had 
mine higher going in, too.  And as it ended up, a few of them higher than me 
were let go because they couldn't do the job and I ended up being the lead 
on the group.  It paid off in the long run, as I got another job with the 
same group a couple of months later, but it would have been nice to get that 
extra pay.

2.  Suppose you have been out of touch with rates, working for Big Technical 
Company and suddenly find you are laid off.  You have been fat, dumb, and 
happy the last twenty years because everything was taken care of there, but 
now, you have to deal with the real world again. You jump at $13 an hour 
because it seems so high compared to the media's take that everyone is 
making $8 an hour. Of course, if you had found this type of information 
sooner, you'd have found that $13 is considered secretary pay and that 
everyone here is making $75 to $100. Now you feel really bad.  Had you known 
the going rate was $75 to $100, you could have held out for $20 at least in 
the negotiations and used that as leverage.

3.  You are sitting in a job you aren't real happy about, and considering 
jumping. But now you see all the jobs seem to pay $13 an hour and your 
crummy job that pays $30 suddenly looks a lot better.

4.  Not long ago I found information about a well-known aircraft company 
that has been paying $32 an hour for the last 4 years.  However, I found 
that some can get $34 and others $36 and that helps me negotiate.  Also, 
discovering they used 4 day work weeks helps figure out if it is a situation 
that will work or not.

5.  I'm sure there is some occasional looks at lists like these by companies 
and if they see we are well aware of their pitiful pay, and let the world 
know how bad it is, they may be forced to pay decent wages to get someone.




----- Original Message ----- 
From: "John Posada" <jposada99 -at- gmail -dot- com>
To: <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Sent: Friday, March 09, 2012 3:06 PM
Subject: Re: More Low Paying Jobs