Yeah like that's easy
Differences in Pay
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Yeah like that's easy
I can see how it could happen in some businesses. In some cases, the receptionist is the first major impression of the business for a significant number of customers. A business could attach quite a lot of value to that. A receptionist might also be doing some work that makes the business run more smoothly, particularly in regards to a customer's interaction with the business. Customer wants something, receptionist knows who deals with that, who is available to deal with it now and where they are. It's the sort of work that can easily pass unnoticed if it's done right but would be very noticeable if it isn't. Much like IT in that respect.
Generally a job that makes lots of money isn't easy either...
If you can't be bothered to push yourself then don't complain when you are on a minimum wage job...
A large proportion of the richest people on the planet are that rich because they took chances, pushed themselves and gave up on the standard 9-5. Go research people like Richard Branson and Alan Sugar...
For doing the same job.
In fact, a person doing IT in some law firm above a fish and chips shop could be seen as being more important to the business than someone doing IT in a billion pound law firm. If the business has 1 IT person and that person leaves/dies/is off sick/whatever then that's a serious problem for the business. If the business has 500 IT people and one of them leaves/dies/is off sick/whatever then some of the other 499 can cover well enough until a replacement can be hired - it's not a serious problem for the business.
I think you have some points, but the idea that pay for the same job should scale with company turnover just doesn't make sense.
I get paid £14K a year. My work is crucial to a massive business...but I'm one of about 20,000 people and it wouldn't matter in the slightest to the business if I dropped dead. I am as replaceable as a light bulb.
Does the ludicrous disparity in pay strike me as excessive? Yes.
Am I in the slightest bit surprised? No. The lord of the manor is far richer than the peasants and the baron is far richer than the lord of the manor. Nothing new there.
Does it really bother me? No.
Can I do anything about it anyway? No.
Maybe my interest in history gives me perspective. My standard of living is bloody marvellous from a historical perspective. I'm a peasant, but a peasant today lives better in many ways than a wealthy baron in the past.
Soldato
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No and that's why most people don't do it.
Generally a job that makes lots of money isn't easy either...
If you can't be bothered to push yourself then don't complain when you are on a minimum wage job...
Agreed, as the whining I hear it all the time "It's not fair that Mr or Mrs X earns all that" well they have done so because they pushed themselves.
I want to work for myself to work less hours not earn more money.
The people who make the things or do the work aren't the wealth creators, they are a cost center.
You say 'what the company sells' but it isn't the mythical company which sells things, it's the sales people, the marketing department and the 'networkers' who do deals. Without them your 'product' would just pile up in a warehouse and your services would go un-used.
Management gets paid more too, could be for responsibility, stress or because they have a bigger effect than any individual - or maybe they're just lucky.
And without an actual product or service to sell, Sales are going to have a boring day, or lie a lot. Yes, I had been meaning to add Sales to the list of people who could be defined as bringing money in, but not managers. And even then it depends on your definition of producing - if your product is good enough you don't need Sales either. The only people you absolutely cannot do without are the people producing what you are selling. Who, as I said, tend to be at the lower end of the payscale. Managers may be important (although many are not) but they are still overheads, as are IT support, HR etc etc. Even Finance are technically an overhead. Some overheads are of course completely necessary, but overheads they remain.
M
Everyone is an overhead. Even the production staff.
Soldato
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That is because people are willing to pay them £800 per hour.
I suggest you go and find someone willing to pay you that hourly rate.
salary being based on how much people are willing to accept is stupid at the least.
for example:
with the current crisis of Greece, people leave to go to other countries to work. A factory of Carlsberg near my house in Cyprus was looking for a mechanical engineer, with experience. Let's say you have 2 years of experience. Let's say you are 25. What kind of salary would you expect? You need to save for a house (which in Cyprus is close to 200.000pounds for a basic house for a family) and start planning for a family. Carlsberg started asking at interviews (because they know the situtation with Greeks being desperate) how much would they expect to get paid. Everyone said something along the lines of 1200-1500pounds a month. Greek guy says 600 pounds. Taken.
What people don't realise is that the greek guy's expectation is to just live. He might be staying in a rubbish place with another 3 people he doesn't know, so he can survive, and send money back home. In your logic, this is OK because someone will work for 600pounds, so all salaries should be that for that kind of work. But no, you cannot force someone who has been to university for 3-5 years to get a degree, to work for minimum wage, just because people who are desperate to live do so. You cannot expect someone who has to get married, to say "Hell, I'll live in the streets with my wife, at least I won't die", just because someone else says so because he is in dire need. That is unacceptable. Salaries should follow what you need to live, to survive a comfortable life, unless it's a rubbish job with no requirements. Back home they want a master's degrees, work experience and good high school grades, and offer 800pounds a month as an engineer. Companies offering such low salaries, I do not want to work for, and will not and people saying that if someone accepts that salary then that's what the salary should be, clearly have not experienced life yet, or are ruthless people.
for example:
with the current crisis of Greece, people leave to go to other countries to work. A factory of Carlsberg near my house in Cyprus was looking for a mechanical engineer, with experience. Let's say you have 2 years of experience. Let's say you are 25. What kind of salary would you expect? You need to save for a house (which in Cyprus is close to 200.000pounds for a basic house for a family) and start planning for a family. Carlsberg started asking at interviews (because they know the situtation with Greeks being desperate) how much would they expect to get paid. Everyone said something along the lines of 1200-1500pounds a month. Greek guy says 600 pounds. Taken.
What people don't realise is that the greek guy's expectation is to just live. He might be staying in a rubbish place with another 3 people he doesn't know, so he can survive, and send money back home. In your logic, this is OK because someone will work for 600pounds, so all salaries should be that for that kind of work. But no, you cannot force someone who has been to university for 3-5 years to get a degree, to work for minimum wage, just because people who are desperate to live do so. You cannot expect someone who has to get married, to say "Hell, I'll live in the streets with my wife, at least I won't die", just because someone else says so because he is in dire need. That is unacceptable. Salaries should follow what you need to live, to survive a comfortable life, unless it's a rubbish job with no requirements. Back home they want a master's degrees, work experience and good high school grades, and offer 800pounds a month as an engineer. Companies offering such low salaries, I do not want to work for, and will not and people saying that if someone accepts that salary then that's what the salary should be, clearly have not experienced life yet, or are ruthless people.
If you can't afford to buy a house or have a larger family... then don't? They're not something you're entitled to. Rent a 1 bedroom flat with your other half until you can afford something suitable to grow your family.
to rent an apartment as a student you need at least 200-300 pounds a month(accounting for 2 paying for it). Lets say I get paid 600 pounds a month, and my other half the same... half our pay goes into the house, and that is without any power/water/groceries? So I am force to work just to survive? thanks but no thanks, I can't fault people taking their lives, if others think like this.
That's generally how it works, yes. You get paid the going rate for your skills and have to live within that. If that means 50% of your income goes on your rent, then so be it.
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The company I'm working at used to have an in-house IT team so they got personal attention and all their IT requirements sorted out within hours by someone who gave a toss. Now they save money by outsourcing all the IT to the company I sub-contract with. So now they have to log tickets with a helpdesk in India and wait two days to get a simple change made in AD. And we on site do the absolute minimum we can get away with under the contract as there is now only one full-time support guy for a 1500 user site. The users winge about calling India / the procedures they have to go through to get stuff done / how much time everything takes "compared to how it used to be", but it's tough - they get what they pay for. I get a couple of quid above minimum wage so I do what I have to do and no more.
50% on rent 50% on food, then what? What hopes would someone who gets paid like this could have for life? Work for survival, definition of slave if you ask me.
I'm not saying I am paid that, but I see people do, and ask myself, how the hell did we reach a point, where all hope for future is lost, money keeps climbing up, people getting poorer and not doing anything about it, until they reach a state where they cannot even survive.
I read a story last week about a 77 year old who committed suicide in the middle of the Sintagma Square in Greece, leaving back a note that the new generation should do to their politicians what Italians did to Musolini. Then 2 days later another man 55something commits suicide because he cannot support his children, he cannot send them to school, asks them to forgive him but committing suicide was the best way to supply for them. I am usually very aggressive on such things(committing suicide that is), but you know what made me think about this last's man's suicide? That he was right. This way his children can now have extra benefits, instead of having a jobless father, this way his children would eat, instead of starve.
You might say "this is nothing like us, it is an extreme case", but it isn't, open your eyes, stop taking these things from everyone. We are everyone, one by one, reaching that state. And if you think you aren't think again, the system we live in, needs each other to work, if a couple of countries go bankrupt, that means less business for everyone, not just them, it means more taxes on everyone.
Anyway, large subject here, with lots to write about, I'm just hoping that our generation and the next will not have to starve, or be slaves to survive.
sorry if I'm taking this thread off track, just my thoughts in general on the subject of salaries/jobs
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Every successive generation has had it better than the last. There are inequalities of course though.
The problem is governance, corporations and corruption.
The laws of economics are such that the large corporations should suffer from such dis-economies of scale that they cannot compete with medium sized companies, however they manage to game the system in their favour. It's not the corporations at fault though, they're simply neutral entities who will do whatever is in their best interests. It's governance and corruption that's the problem.
In the US and UK there are massive tax loopholes intentionally written into legislation. In the US and UK we have ministers giving access to lobbies, and being rewarded after their ministerial career with a nice fat directorship.
The 1% really are the issue - but we let them be the issue. We don't vote them out. We vote like sheep for the same political parties who will by and large maintain the status quo. We vote for individuals who are career politicians, and a career politician by default will be the wrong choice for politics.
We need to start voting for people who have a career outside politics behind them, who never intended to be a politician. We need to gut the political parties by cutting away their funding and having them funded by the state.
Then we'll see a better level of governance and less corruption.
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There it is!
I'm a contractor and I see the same thing all the time as well.
So many times I have been soooo close to telling them, "Well if you were any use at your job, I would probably not be here!"
Contracting is great, I wont get out of bed for anything less than £250 a day and some other guys I know think that is pittance!!!