This is exactly what we are talking about.
Pay attention corndog.
He gets what he wants, and pays someone what they both agree to be fair... and they are happy with the job.
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The reason employees suck and there’s a shortage of them
- Thread starter BurtG
- Start date
Pay attention corndog.
He gets what he wants, and pays someone what they both agree to be fair... and they are happy with the job.
It might be. I'm not exactly sure what he does. I've heard that if you really want to make bank as a welder, learn how to dive.
The points are that
- People who understand how to create value and deliver it get paid more
- You don't need to go to college to play in the American dream
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You're just pissed that you're not the office manager
People who are business owners are kinda giving my posts on this subject quite a few likes. I don't see them on yours..........
But another clue that you missed. Not surprised.
Pipeline is where the money is at as a welder, but you have to travel, have your own rig, and plan on working 70 plus hours a week. With rig pay, they can take home 6-8k a week. The downside is being gone year around, work shit conditions, and it's not much of a family life. There are opportunities for people that don't go to college but it's getting harder and harder to do that. Most welders in my area are making $15-24 an hour. Union welders in the factories near me make $24 an hour with a shit 401k match of 6%, not much of an American dream when McDonald's is up to $18.
Saturation diving clears about the same but with less than 12 months of work as the season is limited by weather. The job also includes at least some time ashore.
Not for the faint of heart tho.
Where I live the welders who work in the mines make about 45-50$ most of the other welding jobs are stuff like fences/gates for 20$.
Or have your own welding shop at home and do offroad rigs, fix tractors, mufflers that sort of thing. Most of those guys usually end up living underneath a giant pile of scrap metal but it's THEIR scrap lol.
The push to pay people an artificially high minimum wage cuts out a large slice of the employer's payroll pie. When that happens, skilled or valuable employees don't get paid as much as they are worth.
That's not an excuse but rather one reason skilled labor for some companies are not compensated appropriately. I know that I'm dreaming when I say this but if the minimum wage laws were abolished, the market place would level things out and we would see a reduction in illegal immigrants.
There's also the problem of wokeness. The folks that joined Anheuser-Busch 20 years ago, thought that they had a good future ahead of them. The probably don't think that now.
The possibility that your boss does something extremely stupid to ruin your livelihood is very real and very probable.
Surprisingly very little or not at all. You can still negotiate prices down on most of them.
FIL turned that into a scrap metal business/welding and fab shop/selling steel and tubing. He sold the scrap yard part a few years back and built a shop at his house to continue doing welding projects and restoring old cars.
What a welder is and what they get paid is extremely variable. The welder who came out to our drilling rig charged about $100 per hour, plus mileage and material. The welders at the belly dump trailer plant, made $8 an hour until minimum wage started to climb. I would guess they are still 1 or 2 dollars over minimum wage.
The bear pit never disappoints. Lmao! Last I checked you had one biz owner agree with you and it was BrianF who hired someone, gave them tons of money who not only scammed him but a portion of the members here. No offense, but I don’t think I’d be bragging about the fact that he liked “ahem agreed” with one of your posts. Just proof there is more than one idiot here in the pit. That’s ok tho. There is plenty of room. I like Brian, he has had some very intelligent posts here. So I’m gonna ignore the fact he is agreeing with you. Other than that, I’m looking forward to my $100 burgers.
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I would believe that if it weren't for the fact that pretty much every single large company has made record profits over the last couple years in spite of these horrible wage increases. Unemployment is also low.
What really happens is they have an employee (Bob) who shows up every day, holidays, weekends, works hard, does a good job, all for X wage. They're getting a ton of value out of him at X wage and he's not complaining. When he does complain they have a ready made flowchart of bullshit to explain to him why he won't get a raise that matches cost of living or even inflation. So Bob either sticks it out until they fire him three months before his retirement or he job hops/starts his own business.
Most of the larger companies can afford it but they will never share with the little guys that make shit happen. Seeing the turnover rate at places I've worked over the last 10 years has been comical. The current place is horrible, they've lost most of the experienced people and are putting new guys that have never ran equipment on million dollar machines with minimal training. The amount of money they spend on equipment damage and wear items failing due to no maintenance or grease is astronomical. I used to think more money would keep people around longer, but it will never happen with shit management.
One place I worked wanted turnover so they could pay new hires $12 an hour versus $22 an hour for the same job even if the quality sucked. They said they were money ahead sending out a shit product and dealing with the possibility of warranty claims versus letting someone experienced take a little more time to do the job right. I questioned them losing customers doing that and they didn't care because of the backlog they had.
Ask the Teamsters that watched Yellow Freight, Roadway, and USF Holland go broke about stupid management, on the other hand, don't........
If being a prick had value, you would be a rich motherfucker! Now tell me about your business you own!
Don’t have my glasses on so if there is weird wording read between the lines lol
All joking aside, do you know how someone can afford to lose a pile of money on a side project…knowing how to run a business
We/my brothers and I have made tons of mistakes over the years and learned from most and repeated some many too many times.
But over the last 15 years or so the employee management dynamic has changed drastically.
It used to be if your a good employee and “knew what time it was”.
you’d steal a smoke break or cut out a few minutes early to catch a kids soccer game, but would stay a few minutes when needed with out being asked. One hand washed the other with out it being said. And truthfully management got the short end of the stick if you break it down to pure numbers which is all business is.
Now the same “person” walks in when the bell rings, sits in the bathroom on their phone and is first in line punching out.
Just last week..last Monday
We recruited and hired a laboratory manager for about 200k a year. That department never had good management..lab people are just strange like IT people, different species I guess lol
The whole department knew what the plan was before she walked in. Current lab manager was being pushed to do more RD (not real pharma stuff but to make current testing methods more efficient and broad, just common process improvement). He was never a real team guy so in reality this fit his skill set better.
Of course he didn’t love it as can be imagined but he was t really cutting the mustard as manager for a couple of years., and he knew it.
So it was a compromise that management made. Keep a 10 year employee which is always a good thing and upgrade in the department. And truthfully if he didn’t want to do it we’d prob let him go because RD position doesn’t pay his salary, it prob pays 20% less on the market.
He knows that as well because we hear from recruiters about everyone in the area my business/competitors are always kicking the tires about job searching. Recruiters are like washer women with gossip, anytime someone is looking even testing the waters they call the entire industry lol.
So the woman shows up Monday, current manager “Tom” is supposed to let her shadow for a week or so and then everyone moves on.
Tuesday afternoon my brother who was in Bangkok on business gets a phone call at 2 in the morning that the lady is calling it a “hostile work environment”..one only uses those words when they have a plan as it’s a HR buzzword.
I get a phone call, so I start sniffing around. He’s not being a dick just a little passive aggressive and he’s a shitty communicator to begin with. So , I sit the important people down immediately and we cut the shadowing immediately band move Tom to the other building where he will be anyway.
So currently ownership had to get involved because the operations guy and head of QCU didn’t monitor the handoff well enough and now we have a possible 200k improvement getting screwed up.
now I’m handholding the lady and explsining how this is not what we stand for etc. additionally I’m now training with her on laboratory management so I can really see what’s going on.
As can be imagined this was fucking drama that all happened in about 3-4 hours on her second day.
Now, I’m working hand and hand with her t,w,th,fri and she’s giving suggestions on where we lack and I’m getting her data set up a certain way to fit her skills etc.
Friday comes I leave at 430 to pick up my daughter at school and I get a text from one of the people on the office…the lady just quit at 5:00 shook hands with 2 people and a said good bye.
Fast forward we find out that even before we moved the world on Tuesday she made her decision the leave. So she came to work, didn’t say “thanks guys but it’s not a good fit, but I’ll stay the week if you’d like”. Nope just walked. And this is after she came to morning meetings, walked around daily introducing herself to other departments etc
If anyone knows anything about being a professional that is just not what happens.
So, I’m m now managing the laboratory 80-20 with someone else because one legacy employee couldn’t do the job and was pissy like a teenager. And the other highly regarded professional making 4k a week got but hurt or got a better job / call back while she was in my place.
Add to it I’m actually at a demand planning position because some numbers went off the norm a bit. As I’m looking into it the planner (who asked for help because one guy was on maternity leave for 2 months …yes), so I filled in with some clicking on a computer etc.
As I’m clocking around I see that a penn state MBA graduate who’s been here for 3 years has been covering mistakes, hasn’t really cost money but wasn’t planning as out process dictates…for some reason.
As I’m peeling back the layers of the onion, figuring there is bad data or something while all the time he’s saying thanks for jumping in…he comes out and says he just got a new job for more money close to his house…and I wasn’t even looking.
I didn’t know it at the time we thought is was just “bad timing”. But no he realized that I was going to find his poor practices and jumped ship.
That’s 2 (3 employees) in 4/5 months all making over 150 that actively didn’t do what they are paid to do via job description. Making approx 10% if not more than industry/location average and all 3 scum bagged us.
Now I’m managing 2 departments and doing my actual ownership duties trying to onboard new people. And revising process for management viewing work product.
So after this happens a few times, owners get tired of dealing with petty crap and people who don’t do their job the same as yesterday. So it becomes very black and white.
That sucks. I hope your fortunes change soon.
I was in that position several years ago. My clearance had gone tits-up while working at the Sheriff's office, and I ended up having to leave due to the corruption. Long story short, after 18 months of no job I landed a position that got my clearance renewed. Since then I have moved up in the world and am earning halfway respectable money again. Add to that I am getting calls from recruiters several times a week.
Don't be afraid of applying way outside your area of expertise. I've made a number of large jumps and it has always led to something better (avionics technician, pilot, maintenance pilot, IT dweeb, satellite payload operator). You are obviously smart and trainable, couple that with so few people actually wanting to work I'm surprised you haven't been offered a position somewhere.
Have you had your resume looked at by a pro? Have you tuned the buzzwords for jobs you're looking at?
Profit is the bottom line. Not what you think you are worth. If you can not bring in profit you are not getting hired.
$20/hr costs the company an additional $15/hr plus in taxes and insurance. Then add in any retirement 401K contribution. Do the math and a $20/hr employee costs the company over $80K per year. Now look at the company overhead for building maintenance, insurance, property taxes, utilities, office staff, payroll department and a bunch more that don't produce profit but are part of being in business.
Some of you should try owning a business. It would change your outlook.
Here's a real eye opener. 5% to 7% is the average profit of a business. Why do you think that big business is going to China and Mexico? The biggest expenses for business are the employees
$20/hr costs the company an additional $15/hr plus in taxes and insurance. Then add in any retirement 401K contribution. Do the math and a $20/hr employee costs the company over $80K per year. Now look at the company overhead for building maintenance, insurance, property taxes, utilities, office staff, payroll department and a bunch more that don't produce profit but are part of being in business.
Some of you should try owning a business. It would change your outlook.
Here's a real eye opener. 5% to 7% is the average profit of a business. Why do you think that big business is going to China and Mexico? The biggest expenses for business are the employees
Well said !
We all know he lives off the system so when it comes to this subject he has no experience . Just a big mouth .
But business are RICH!
They can afford never ending more taxes and regulation costs
They can pay their workers double. Their just being cheap
Etc
Idiots
I once worked for a company that went into chapter 11 protection. During that time the employees all had to take a 40% pay cut.
We heard it from the management team, ad nauseum, that we aren't making any money. Everyone is going to have to tighten their belt and work harder to keep their jobs. We need to get Chapter 11 protection to save the company and save our jobs.
After we emerged from bankruptcy protection, the CEO got a 26 million dollar bonus.
That's all that I needed to hear to prove that the company was never hurting for money. Don't get me wrong, there are employees that aren't worth 25 cents a month to wipe their asses. There are also corporations that lie, cheat and steal all the time.
And there are some good people on both sides. And what both sides also fail to realize is that they need each other. If one side of the wage equation gets out of balance, then one side will go somewhere else to get what they need.
I'm saying that in general terms because there are corrupt union leaders just as there are corrupt CEOs.
When I see my boss get a 26 million dollar bonus after I took a 40% pay cut, while being lied to about hurting for money there are people that wonder how I can be a capitalist and pro-union at the same time.
Get rid of the minimum wage and at the same time, penalize companies that go overseas for cheap labor unless they cannot find it here. Also change the bankruptcy laws so that companies that reward CEOs after chapter 11 get penalized.
There's a few questions about this.
What was the value of the company after chapter 11?
Who was the judge that allowed that to happen?
What was the stock value before and after?
Was that CEO the same one that was in charge before the chapter 11?
I am not saying that it right. Just asking questions.
Judges are not always, ummm, not on the up and up?
That's been quite a few years ago but the only question that I can answer if #4. The same CEO that led us into Chapter 11 also got the $26M.
You are correct about corrupt Judges.
The bankruptcy laws need changed. Too many businesses and people use bankruptcy as a financial management tool. There are situations that people find themselves in, through no fault of their own, that end up in bankruptcy court. They can do everything right and still get there.
I do not have a problem with people and businesses using bankruptcy for legitimate reasons. However, they use bankruptcy just to get rid of debt that they took on when they knew better.
There is an old saying; "If you owe the bank $500 then you have a problem. If you owe the bank $500,000 then the bank has a problem."
The ex-wife was supposedly the smartest person in the room when it came to managing money. She got a large portion of my 401K for the divorce and complete ownership of the business we formed.
Yet, in a few short years she went bankrupt. Do you think that would teach her to watch how she spends money? Nope! Not having to pay her debts freed up more of her income to go on lots of vacations and get a 2nd car.
My worthless sister and brother-in-law went bankrupt as well. Then in a few years, they paid off their mortgage because they didn't have any other debts holding them back. I wish I could pay off my mortgage as fast as they did but don't want to go into bankruptcy to do it. My credit rating is too high for that anyway.
After my employer emerged from Chapter 11 protection, some money that was wrested from the creditors went to the CEO. You can afford to pay the guy that ran the ship aground a lot of money when you don't have to pay the salvage company to get your ship off the reef.
I took an early retirement from that company when I had the chance and am on another career.
I gotta raise my prices…
You can’t hire someone to just make it short for $30/hr?
That “high school kid”, doesn’t exist in the labor force anymore. He’s been replaced by 25-30yo do-nuffins with zero job/life skills.
Most of you folks aren’t taking into account the cost of a new mowers, insurance, fuel, trailers or burden labor rate. Or the fact that it’s a seasonal job that’s not even guaranteed in season.
You can’t hire someone to just make it short for $30/hr?
That “high school kid”, doesn’t exist in the labor force anymore. He’s been replaced by 25-30yo do-nuffins with zero job/life skills.
Most of you folks aren’t taking into account the cost of a new mowers, insurance, fuel, trailers or burden labor rate. Or the fact that it’s a seasonal job that’s not even guaranteed in season.
I’m very aware of this phenomenon, which is why I pointed out earlier in the thread that you don’t ever really know if someone is going to benefit your business or not, without actually hiring them. You have to have some initial measure to go by whether it be experience, licensed, degrees, a gut feeling, whatever but you got to have some measure of something to start with. So yes, those things matter. But at the end of the day, the only way to find out for sure whether someone is worth it or not is to hire them, unfortunately. This makes for all kinds of issues, many of which you stated. In your recent case, it sounds like she would have been a super bad fit anyways and she did you a huge favor by walking early because we all know that some people get into these positions and there is so much protection that it’s hard to get rid of them when they aren’t performing, add in companies being scared of the woke minority and you got a cluster of issues that makes running a biz hard. It was hard to begin with, all the new generational shit makes it that much harder.
And by the way, I’m glad you admitted to your failures. It’s truly the only way we learn so bravo to you for stating that you have failed and learned but even then, all the experience in the world can still lead to some bad circumstances. You will never be able to account for everything.
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This! 10000000% this. A lot of people are not familiar with all of the hidden costs to run a business. Think you pay a lot into SS? You should see what a biz pays on your behalf. I think most of us here tho are familiar with the hidden costs and I also think most of us are not arguing to get paid the moon as much as what we may deserve. If you have mad record profits for 3 years, a guy doing the work of 3 other employees and bringing in like another billion in work all on his own then I think that guy should deserve a little something. The problem is, some companies, clearly not all, are not rewarding these employees at all!
No different than politics, the people at the top steal the most & suffer the least.
That's fucking beautiful.
Thanks.
I’ve messed up enough to reminder the bad ones
It’s even worse when you make a mistake that you immediately know will cost $, and you can’t fix it.
That hits the ego pretty hard lol
I’ve found that people follow a non perfect manager more in today landscape.
Years ago it was the manager was a superhero and they looked up and we’re scared of them.
That ship has totally sailed. It’s all about creating a team, not of snow flakes but a team atmosphere …the superstars are almost the outcasts now where 20 years ago the slacker was the outcast.
I think it stems from early schooling as kids aren’t in rows of desks but at tables in groups.
But who knows
People will always have more respect for those that get down in the trenches with them, period.
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