money vs responsibility vs carefactor

[koopkooper]

Been reading of Lizzies and others interview horror stories and I was wondering how you folks feel about payrates.
It's an interesting thing, sometime you can work for practically nothing and people expect the world and other times you might get a job that pays great and no expectations.

Is there a general bench mark of pay = care and dedication?

 

[LizzieMaine]

It's hard to say, really. The hardest job I ever had -- working on a production line in a novelty T-shirt factory -- paid me less than $150 a week, compulsory overtime included. When I was a news director for a 50-kilowatt FM radio station, I took home exactly $162.48 a week. And for the last nine years, writing PR material you can find on the websites of a number of Fortune 500 companies, I earned $13.72 an hour.

I dunno. In all of those jobs I gave the full level of value -- so is it my fault for not being pushy and aggressive enough to demand more money? Or is it the market's fault when the response to a request for more money (in the radio days, anyway) was always something like "You know, I could give your job to a kid just out of college for a lot less than I'm paying you."

In either case, I think there's very little correlation in the real world between how much you earn and how hard you work. At least that's never been the case for me.

 

[Elaina]

Dunno, I work from home for on an average of $7 an hour, sometimes more, sometimes less. If I include the fact I can work 2 hours, none at all, or 24 is I wanted to, no commute time, no clothes, makeup, money for lunch, I make about $12 an hour.

I also work my tookus off for my paltry checks.

I think it depends on where you are, what you do, and who you work for.

 

[Harp]

I left a Chicago commodity futures brokerage after a promotion
fell through because others with more tenure at the firm were passed
over and complained; which relegated me to the bottom of the totem
pole without salary raise prospects. I considered going to New York
for a shot with Merrill Lynch or another Manhattan 'bucket shop' but
instead left the biz entirely for not so greener pastures. And since 9/11,
I've always counted myself a bit more carefree about salary issues.

 

[Flying Scotsman]

There's also the fun factor...in grad school I made a whopping $9K for the academic year (upped to $12K when I entered the doctoral program...woohooo!), and spent many long hard hours in the lab, but man oh man, was college fun! I'm sure it worked out to some pittance like $4 an hour or something ridiculously low, but there are times now when I miss all that!

In all seriousness...companies that are overpaying employees (where do I find those companies, anyway? ha ha!) are just as mismanaged as the ones that underpay them. They're wasting the rawest form of capital, hard money, not to mention the labor. Gotta wonder how long they're going to be in business.

And companies that work their employees to death by underpaying/overworking them are, in my opinion, dishonest, unethical, and amoral. They have an obligation to pay you honestly for your work, and you have an obligation to give them a day's work for a day's pay. Attitudes like these companies have have certainly become pervasive in recent decades, but it's to the detriment of our health, our home lives, etc. People take work on vacation, on weekends, etc....bleah...

 

[carebear]

In either case, I think there's very little correlation in the real world between how much you earn and how hard you work. At least that's never been the case for me.

You only really see that kind of correlation when you work for yourself, straight commission, business owner, that sort of thing.

Wages are always inefficient.

 

[Flying Scotsman]

You only really see that kind of correlation when you work for yourself, straight commission, business owner, that sort of thing.

Wages are always inefficient.

You mean like market inefficient? How so?

I don't know diddly about economics beyond Econ 101...just curious what this means. I understood efficiency as a measure of prices being a fair reflection of actual value and being a function of the amount of information available.

 

[Lady Day]

The most I ever made was $16.80 working retail at the Palo Alto Apple Store. Now this was when they first opened, and all the folks who worked there had degrees and such. In that area that still isnt a living wadge, but I managed, barely.

Now its not the case, and I walked away from that job because I got tired of being yelled at by customers and management telling me I had to take it. Daily Id have some randon person snap at me because I couldnt give them a discount. The job and the vicious proprietors made me physically ill. As in needed meds to function.

Now I make a little over half that at a job that is boring. I didnt mind the work at the Apple Store, it was the negative people that got me. But if I could so something fufilling and what my degree is in, Id do it for min wadge just to feel useful.

LD

 

[Paisley]

In general, the less you make, the harder you work.

When you're offered a job, get the most money you can at the outset. All of your raises will then be worth more dollars. You're also in the best negotiating position at that time: they need you. But if you wait for them to give you more money, you're in a worse negotiating position: they've got you.

 

[Baron Kurtz]

I once worked it out that i am currently being paid about $1.50 per hour.

Dues are being royally paid, i'd say . . . considering the grad students do *all* the important work of the universities (if you see universities - as i do - as primarily research institutions with a secondary role as educators).

In answer to topic: I'd say pay rarely reflects what goes into the job.

bk

 

[Feraud]

As a side note, is a person who is constantly fooling with his BlackBerry in the company toilet fairly compensated for his time and "effort"?

 

[Baron Kurtz]

Is blackberry a new euphemism that i haven't encountered yet?

frank kurtz

 

[Feraud]

Is blackberry a new euphemism that i haven't encountered yet?

frank kurtz

Touche!lol lol
I was not referring to anything other than the handheld device... ugh, I had better leave this thread alone...:eusa_doh:

 

[Ruby Slippers]

Now its not the case, and I walked away from that job because I got tired of being yelled at by customers and management telling me I had to take it. Daily Id have some randon person snap at me because I couldnt give them a discount. The job and the vicious proprietors made me physically ill.

I had the same experience. Decent pay (though not a living wage in New York), but the people I had to talk to were a fright. Extremely rude, belligerent, and downright mean. If they weren't mean, they had horrible sad stories that actually made me cry listening to them and wishing there was something I can do. I ended up quitting on a lark because I just felt I couldn't take it anymore.

I was not meant to work in insurance.

I went back to school and am hoping for a job in the library (where people generally have to be quiet).

 

[carebear]

You mean like market inefficient? How so?

I don't know diddly about economics beyond Econ 101...just curious what this means. I understood efficiency as a measure of prices being a fair reflection of actual value and being a function of the amount of information available.

Yep.

Your employer will never have perfect information about how much effort you are putting into your production and what the resulting performance is if your wages are based on a scale. The guy with the blackberry, if he's in the same job class and experience etc. level as you, will be paid the same as long as he produces whatever management has determined the minimum level of output to be. Whereas you, the good employee, can be operating at the top of the standard and not be compensated for your extra effort. In fact, he could be sub-minimum in output and still be paid the same as you, the hard worker who's taking up the slack, if he shows up on time and is buddy-buddy with the supervisor.

Appearance trumps performance and there is no financial motivation to do more than the minimum. It actually rewards laziness and slacking. Only suckers work harder than they have to for no extra compensation.

It's only non-hourly wage scale based compensation (commission, bonuses and such), coupled with good metrics to track actual performance, that can truly drive people to work as hard as they can in order to make as much as their effort will allow.

For example, in my field, mortgage lending, if you can figure out an efficient process for handling contacts, referrers and files and make marketing an automatic part of life, you won't need to spend hours sitting at your desk and yet you can make a lot of money. Since everything you do to improve yourself and your processes is directly reflected in increased commissions, you are motivated to work exactly as hard as you want to to make exactly as much as you want.

 

[Paisley]

It's a little different where I work. A lack of urgency will eventually lead to a lack of a job. The partners here also have a good idea of who is doing what and how well. (However, I've worked at places where that wasn't the case.)

We just interviewed five people for a word processing position and I made sure that ability counted. The attractive 30-year-old who interviewed well and looked great on paper, but couldn't spell basic words, wasn't considered. In the end, it was down to two college-educated ladies of a certain age with good spelling and puctuation.

As for how hard you work, it doesn't and shouldn't have a bearing on your pay. Life doesn't give you A's for effort. Consider that the guy with the Blackberry may get his work done in half the time as the guy who is always at his desk beating his brains out. If they do the same amount and quality of work, why should they be paid differently?