Re: Where does Art get his numbers?



On Thu, 18 May 2006, Threeducks wrote:

Straydog wrote:


On Wed, 17 May 2006, Threeducks wrote:

Straydog wrote:


You all might want to re read the folowing which I did not write....

There are pet-sitters that earn 6 figures.

There are engineer contractors who earn twice as much as salaried
contractors.

Numbers quoted and published may reflect an average. I can believe that
there are truck drivers who can earn $80K a year. They may not be the
norm, but they may not be in the minority either.



Yeah, and I've gone over all this many many times in the last 5-6 years.

The electrician that wired my retirement home works out of his house (no overhead, no boss "cut," no other costs except his truck) and he charges $60-65 an hour. I talked with other guys who hired work, knew the guy worked out of his house, and how much was the job and how many hours did the guy work on the job. Its simple arithmetic.

I gave the figure for doing a siding job on my house, the skylight job, etc. All real figures. Do the arithmetic. $50-100/hour minus the costs of the truck and if the guy wants to pay his insurances out of that $50-100, its his choice or put the money in the bank.

Anyone who works for a company, with an office, support staff, boss, manager, owner, etc.,...all taking their "cut" is going to make 1/3 or less of what "the company" charges.

We've got solo lawyers here in my town who work out of their houses and charge full list rates against lawyers working for bigger firms with branch offices in every local town (3-4 lawyers per office, 2-3 paralegals) who charge the same full list rates ($175/hour) and probably get $50-60/hour on a salary. The guys who work out of their houses are making out like bandits.

Fine, I don't measure people's lives by the money they make. There is a fun side, a professional satisfaction side. But, you also can't throw out the practical and dark sides of careers. So, when a guy asks what can be a better BS degree than ChE with a starting salary of $60,000, I'm going to make my comparison with much broader job ranges that more people can get into and make as much or more.


Can, but on average do they?


"Can...on average...they" get a ChE? Throw some calculus equations at the average HS grad and tell the guy "Hey, get this great ChE job, pays 60,000, but you have to work with this stuff [point to equations, need to get an A average in math]"? How many kids can do those guyrations?


I've had "professional" tree trimmers come out twice now. Cut a tree down (65 feet high), and just cut it into pieces. Number of guys on the job: three. Time on job: one hour. Cost: $375. Do the arithmetic. Cost of doing the business: one truck, wear and tear on chain saws, plus a bucks worth of gas. You can can rent a truck for $50/hour.


So if these jobs are so great, why do we have "working poor",


1. They don't know any better.
2. They can't do anything except work behind a cash register at a convenience store.
3. They don't try
4. If they did, the supply of services would be swamped and the tree guys would be charging $10/hour instead of $50.

people flocking

to work for 1st world sweatshops like Wal-Mart, millions on welfare, etc. If it's really so easy to get and keep these great jobs, what's to problem?


See above. Is a ChE easy?

What kind of house do these guys live in, what kind of car do they drive? What kind of medical and/or retirement plan do they have?


I had a long conversation with the guy, and his assistant who was my mover. You know, truck, and move furniture. Load the truck at location A, drive, unload at location B. He gave me his home address. His house was in a MORE expensive neigborhood and bigger than mine. Same numbers. I know what I paid him for him and his assistant (something like $1100) for seven hours of work. He worked out of his house, said he owned the truck and cost him like $2000 in repairs per year. And, he's booked up solid 5+ days per week. You do the numbers.

Nice. You sent up a great smokescreen, but failed to answer my question.

All you other guys out there that have been reading this, can you figure out if I "...failed to answer..." 3D's question (was it about what kind of car? what kind of medical? what kind of retirement?), then is that MY problem if the example I gave showed that the guy owned a more expensive house in a more expensive neighborhood than I had and in my neighborhood, and you can do the numbers and see that a lot of these guys are making as much or more gross than BS and even a lot of PhD ChEs, then they can take their gross and either sock it into their own investments, own health plans or just put the money in the bank and pay for their own medical bills, and if they are saving whatever fraction they want, then they have their own resources for retirement, already.

So, does that satisfy you or are all these examples "inferior" because these guys are not affiliated with some big prestigeous name institution that gives them an ego boost?


I want to know where these guys get off on the theme that since BLS and surveys show all the crapworks pay $12-15/hour, therefore that is where people should look ONLY for the crapwork jobs. And, then they brag about their $90,000 faculty jobs.


You've lost me here. Maybe that is how you take it when someone doesn't bitch about failing at something, but stating that I have a certain job and a certain salary isn't bragging in my mind.


Well, you were the one who was puffing up how your students were gettingjob offers of $60K, and your own, what was it, $90K, as if the only way to get this is follow in footsteps like your own?

Stating that one succeeded at something is not "puffing". I certainly didn't say anyone should follow in my footsteps, either. The problem is you are so biased in your own little world that you immediately jump on anything that isn't "square" with your universe. Try reading the words, for what they are instead of what you think they are.

And, you take the "what 4 year BS program does as well as ChE" question (to which I named several with credibly "comparable" remuneration) as if eveyone or anyone who goes in the front door is going to "walk in the park" to that $60K job? And, you and maybe others, snub your nose at that dirty-boring-lonely truck driver job though not everyone going in the front door might like it for many years later? Lets go ask some truck drivers who are reliable, accept the work, do a decent job and have been in it for say 2-3 years and ask them "Say, Mr. truck driver, how would you like to pound those math books, grind for four years in classes, plunk
out $100K in costs or get into debt so you could get a nice, clean, desk job? And, don't ask me 'If I don't get the best grades, do I still get the job?'" and you think a lot of these guys are going to say "Gee, I
didn't know that it was that easy and guaranteed like falling off a log, where do I sign up?"


I'm waiting for you to explain what happens to the majority of guys, not you with your tenure-guarantee, don't-have-to-worry-about-grants, and not a chance for department politics problems, and they-will-never-offshore my teaching job to India, but what is across a broader swath of PhD jobs that are not even tenure track. Go look up the adjunct situations, too.

Like I said before, I was responding specifically to a question about ChE. I'll stick with the field where I have first-hand knowledge.

Yeah, I was thinking about just this about an hour ago. And, one thing that came to my mind was a slick PR magazine I read from one of the major oil companies that was laying around in a waiting room for some reason. Once of those PR touchy-feelie things lots of outfits send out to shareholders once or twice every year and it profiled 4-5 BS ChEs over about 6 pages. How interesting. One woman and the rest were men. Photographs of them (all pretty young), and gave a few paragraphs of what they did. What were they doing? Writing patents! Each one had gotten, the previous year, anywhere from 7-9 patents (didn't say whether their name went on as inventor, but I'm sure the patents were "assigned" to the oil company). That's all they did. Little minutiaizing over details of chemical processes for all manner of petrochemical products, refining, altering, whatever. Not much details, but lots of variation (you know what patent flooding is, don't you?). Year after year after year after year.....nothing but patents. Full time. Maybe they are happy and I'm sure, well paid, and with non-compete clauses and anti-competitive clauses and anti-trade secret clauses in their contracts if they ever think about quiting.

But, it is credible to me that you are happy with your job, well paid, and that you are confident that no stumbling blocks will impede you from continuing in your career and nothing else on the planet matters.
.

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