Category Archives: the work

As |bteyt|referrer|nidbk
I stated in What do you cost?, many of those in salaried positions do not take the time to sit down and figure out what their rate per hour is. But, what I did not mention is that a salary is only part of an employee’s cost to a business. In fact, from an employers perspective, full-time employees may, in fact, be a liability. Let me explain.

Salary alone is only part of what many employers call your total compensation package. This includes things like retirement matching, paid vacation time, company stock, and healthcare apportionment. Added all up, your salary may only be 50% (or less, or more) of what that employer feels they are actually paying you. But we are not done yet.

You see, there are human resources costs associated with employing you. You, being a human, use up commodities like they are going out of style — like paper, pens, toilet tissue, etc. You use up utilities like water and electricity. Plus, you are often times inefficient and unproductive. They can’t even get rid of you without cost. They might have to pay unemployment insurance, severance, perhaps still contribute to a pension, etc.

The fact is, to many companies, employees are simply automation — costly automation at that. You hire people to either do the tasks that you can’t do alone or the tasks you don’t want to do yourself. Therefore, more often than not, employers are always looking to streamline the cost, management, and efficiency of such automation. No wonder they would love to replace you with a robot (and often treat you as one). No wonder, as well, that as their profits and stocks continue to rise, they are in no rush to hire people back.

Now, I am generalizing here but I am also using some hard truths that can’t be denied. My goal here is to try to provide you with some understanding of how you might be perceived from an employer’s standpoint. Especially in a large corporation where the person making the choice of laying off a few thousand people next week likely only sees you as a number on the spreadsheet. It will do you well to understand what that number is and why it is likely far larger than you think.

I’m a writer. Writing is how I make this world better, friendlier, stronger place. If these words improved your day, please let me know by contributing here.

Once |etkty|referrer|kaiba
we enter the working world, we all put a price on our time. The American Dream, we quickly learn, is largely predicated on steadily increasing that price until we reach a point where we are “comfortable”. Of course, everyone has their own opinion of exactly what comfortable means. For some it simply means not having to worry about having enough. For others, it means having so much more than enough that they never have to be in a situation where they have to put a price on their time again.

Many of us start out as teenagers doing odd jobs for cash. We mow lawns. We babysit. We shovel sidewalks. We may be too young for a “real” job yet we are old enough to learn the lesson that time and labor is worth cash. Then, we get out first job. Many of us for minimum wage, which in the US is currently $7.25 an hour. As we work more and move up, this price per hour steadily increases. Our first raise, even a fifty-cent one, gives us a tangible idea how much impact such an increase can have when compounded. And, if asked to work overtime, many jobs offer to give you even more — 1 1/2 times our regular rate perhaps. All the same, we have a very direct idea of what every hour of our time is worth. The math is easy.

But then, as we enter the world of salaried work, something strange happens. That cost becomes obscure. Because until then your brain has been conditioned to think of your cost reduced to an hourly rate, when someone offers you a job for, say, $35,000 per year, it sounds surreal. The number is almost too big to comprehend. Especially, if all you’ve been thinking about until then is that $10.50 or $11.25 or $12.70 or… is the most you’ve ever costed. Now you cost as much as a low end BMW. You must be valuable. Why stop to do the math?

And, that is where they have you. You never stop to figure out that your time is worth, at that salary, $16.80 cents at a normal 40 hour work week. But, when you have a salary these days, many work more hours than 40. In fact, more is becoming increasingly common. We never stop to do the math that more hours means, in fact, we are costing less per hour worked to the employer.

But, you keep moving up and they (the collective “they” of employers everywhere) keep throwing bigger numbers at you. They sound so big and nice…

$50,000 ($24.00 per hour at 40 hours)
$70,000 ($33.00 per hour at 40 hours)
$100,000 ($48.00 per hour at 40 hours)

And, quite honestly, if you are making $100,000 per year in this country right now you probably have it pretty good. You don’t have to do the math. And I would argue that’s exactly what the people paying you are hoping for. They are hoping to entice you by the big number and promise of comfort, in return for your forgetting the fact they have you working 60 hour work weeks for $32.00 an hour.

I lay all of this out here as an idea for us all to start doing the math. To start figuring out exactly how much we cost. Because, I believe, once we do so it will give us a much clearer picture of what “being comfortable” really means and what it will take to get there.

I’m a writer. Writing is how I make this world better, friendlier, stronger place. If these words improved your day, please let me know by contributing here.

There is safety in silence. There is no risk in being quiet and doing nothing. Ignoring problems may not make them go away but, at least, you are less likely to take the blame.

In fact, if they try, you can say you didn’t know about the problem and blame someone else instead. You were silent so how could they know the truth. Responsibility means action and that takes risk and, well, you don’t want that.

And, if you are called upon, just be quiet and stay still. Wait for someone else to raise their hand. It is far less likely you’ll be asked to do anything. Someone else will do all the work.

Oh, also, wait. Wait for someone else to tell you what to do. Then, only do that. Don’t do any more than asked. In fact, if you can get away with it, do less. Because, if you do more than that you might stand out. Others will think you are a troublemaker or brown-noser or that you are setting the bar too high. So, whatever you do, do it with the least amount of effort you can.

But, not a single one of these things will make your life better, let alone anyone else’s. Nor will any of these get you any further on any aspect of your life than you are right now. If you want anything to change, you have to speak up, take risks, be courageous, assume responsibility, take action, do more, and don’t wait.

Especially if you want to change the world. ¹

I’m a writer. Writing is how I make this world better, friendlier, stronger place. If these words improved your day, please let me know by contributing here.