Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 08:39:48 -0700 From: Blaine Minazzi <bminazzi@denverweb.net> To: rewt@i-Plus.net Cc: isp@freebsd.org, raw.value.of.a.sysadmin@Radford.i-Plus.net Subject: Re: What am I worth? Message-ID: <33048743.453CBA79@denverweb.net> References: <199702140854.DAA01755@Radford.i-Plus.net>
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Troy Settle wrote: > > Can someone help me with a personal problem? > > What I need to know, is what am I worth? I feel that I'm worth a > hell of a lot more than I'm making right now, even with out a college > degree. I'm sinking the better part of my availiable time into this, > and am seeing very little gratification and compensation. Am I worth > $20k? $30k? more? Good question... Here is an opine and short sermon: :-) If you are satisfied with being an employee, you job is whatever someone offers you, and you accept. no more. After you have demontrated an ability to perform, and have enough of a track record, get out there and find out what others are willing to offer you. If you get genuine offers, that is what your skills are worth. Now, your current employer has a couple choices. pay you more, possibly a matching wage, or you move on to bigger and better things. He will have to take the risk of finding someone who can replace you with what HE thinks the job is worth. As an employer, it is in my best interest to pay someone commensurate with with the value they add to the company. When their skill sets improve, or they are asked to perform new duties, then the negotiation for an increased wage should be based on the new role, and the cost of replacing them with someone of equivilent skills and experiance. As a business owner, it is _MY_ ass out on a limb, _MY_ money, _MY_ tax liabilities, _MY_ failure if things go wrong. I am taking all the risk. An employee takes very little risk. They do a job, they get paid. End of obligation. The business owner / employer is always indebted to the employee for; wages earned until paid, for paying Unemployment taxes, FICA taxes, Workers comp taxes, ( yeah, yeah, they CALL it insurance... anything mandatory is a f^%king tax. ) and for all the other expenses associated with hiring an employee. The employee has _ZERO_ obligation. they can walk off the job tommorow, change jobs, etc. When the employee decides to call it quits, the are releived of all obligations, unless there is a formal contract. I know you probibly want some numbers... that varies widely on the geographic location, current market, etc. Look in the paper for similar listings. My best guess would be mid to upper 20's for a newbie, with limited formal training and no "job" experiance in the area. In some places that would be lower 20's, in other areas, lower 30's. With more experiance, and more training comes more $$. Want even more? Then take the risk yourself. Get thee thy own servers, routers, T-1, etc.Then your job is whatever is left over at the end of the month. ( that will be a negative balance for a while in most cases. ) _IF_ you have the expertise, technical ability, business savvy, and 80+ hours per week of time, you just might make a go of it, or you may fail and lose everything. But, that will take some dough to get started. So, save it up... Do without the nights out, the movies, the social life. Get a cheaper apartment, drive a clunker, or ride a bike to work. Apply for a loan, find investors, whatever it takes to raise the capital. Ask around, and you will find most of us made some sacrifices, and worked our ass off to make the business go. we put the buiness ahead of almost everything. some have lost their families trying to be sucsessful, others even their life cut short with heart attacks from the stress. Risk and Reward go hand in hand. Very few people ever got rich working for someone else. I hope you can appreciate BOTH sides of the equation, and best of luck to you.
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