Re: Amazed at offered salaries; need input!

[Lori Lathrop <76620 -dot- 456 -at- COMPUSERVE -dot- COM>]

In response to Kat Nosbisch (bjg -at- nexagen -dot- com):

Kat -- Glad to hear you're getting a lot of interviews.  You should be
encouraged by that.  And, with your skills and experience, you're
absolutely right to turn down jobs that offer only $25-$30K.  However, I'm
*not* surprised by the low offers because I encountered the same thing
when I moved to Colorado two years ago.  I also had LOTS of interviews,
but the offers that resulted were much lower than what I was willing to
accept.  What annoyed me the most was the employers' attitudes;  they
figured that they didn't have to offer more than that because "this is
Colorado ... a great place to live" ... as if that's compensation enough!

So, what did I do?  I took an out-of-state assignment for a few months
(but, even tho' I enjoyed the assignment, I wouldn't want to do that
again); it paid $28/hr. + a per diem for my living expenses.  Of course,
the agency that gave me the assignment was making almost twice that much
for my services ... and having a long-distance marriage was the pits, so
I was grateful to get an assignment (through an out-of-state agency) as a
one-person documentation dept. when I got back to Colorado.  I knew that
this agency also took a huge cut for my services; however, I figure that
everything in life is a trade-off ... so I was willing to take the
assignment (and learn my way around the Internet at their expense) while
I grew my own business.

Now I'm doing so much work in my home office that I've had to hire
subcontractors to help me out from time to time.  The work I do from my
home office (where I never get bored with the view of the mountain behind
our house) includes writing indexes and editing for various corporations
and publishing houses, developing and teaching my Indexing Skills
Workshop for Technical Communicators throughout the U.S., writing
abstracts for technical journal articles, ghostwriting articles for trade
journals, writing technical documentation for some local clients, writing
my new book (_An Indexer's Guide to the Internet_, recently published by
the American Society of Indexers, P.O. Box 386, Port Aransas, TX 78373 /
512-749-4052) and (in my *spare* time :->) working on another book.

So ... have you ever thought of going into business for yourself???  It's
possible to make much more $$ than the salaries companies here in
Colorado are willing to offer; however, it does take awhile to get a new
business off the ground and, of course, you'd probably find yourself
working at least a half a day (just 12 hours!) every day.

Lori Lathrop
Lathrop Media Services
P.O. Box 808
Georgetown, CO  80444

P.S.  One of my clients in Denver may be looking for a tech writer; I'll
see what I can find out and will let you know ... unless you drop me a
note to say you're not interested in commuting to Denver.