is the people that look down on others that have chosen a different line of work.
Much of my work is out in the elements. I have to stand a watch because crews are smaller these days. This is fine and dandy by me because I like the work. I'm generally clad in the full dress uniform of a merchant seaman which is to say I'm clad in rags.
Again, that's fine. Rags is the uniform that pays the bills. The price is right, too.
There's another guy down the street that works in construction as some kind of hands on engineer that is generally seen leaving the house in work clothes because his job takes him into the mud of construction projects.
I think he busts six figures. He's got to be worth it or they wouldn't pay him that much. Whatever. I suppose if I wanted to I could easily bust six figures but I prefer to stay where I am and not work any overtime. I like the people I work with.
I have a neighbor that is an RN that has gone into the management end of things and dresses well for work. She's in an office and I suppose is expected to dress well. I alway see her leaving for work in a suit.
All of these people have one thing in common. They get paid pretty much what they are worth.
A while ago I was listening to someone gripe about having to have a master's to keep his job and how it doesn't pay very much. For once I kept my mouth shut and listened.
The person in question works behind a desk doing some kind of human relations work and was griping that a lot of employees at his workplace make more than he does and many of them haven't finished high school.
He also grumbled that guys working in the oil patch were making one hell of a lot more than he was. He didn't think it was fair.
That's when I asked him why he wasn't working in the oil patch. He didn't like that question and his look told me he thought it was beneath his dignity to be a roughneck or drive a truck.
Besides, he didn't want to go away from home. Everyone seems to have excuses.
It reminds me of being a sailor. We have all sorts out here working on various vessels and the truth is we get paid to perform. There are King's Point graduates as captains and mates and guys that didn't finish high school as captains and mates.
The average is somewhere in between the two.
I looked at the man and wondered. He must have been in a flooded market to need a master's to keep his job. My line of work is generally crying for competent people. If he is such a sharp guy he could come out here and in a few years be making a lot more than he does now. Possibly he'd start out at what he's making now.
While the engineer's job requires a degree he doesn't sit in an office too much. He's always in the mud somewhere and likely part of his pay is for being uncomfortable on job sites and slogging through the mud. I would imagine most engineers prefer to work in a comfortable office.
My job requires little formal education but it does require hands on skills. It also takes me away from home for periods of time. I suppose that besides being paid for my skills I am paid for being inconvenienced. For example, I have spent 17 or 18 of the last 23 Christmases at sea. I suppose that's worth something.
As a rule of thumb companies pay what they have to to get capable people. They have to. Without capable people they can't get the job done. Capable people are almost always in demand is many fields.
Of course, if the market gets flooded, the laws of supply and demand engage and wages in a particular field drop. The man with the master's in the human relations business appears to be in a somewhat flooded market. I suppose maybe he ought to consider a career move if he wants to make more money.
Of course, the human services guy seems to have an attitude toward guys that get dirty but he really ought to stop and think for a second. A lot of them make better money than he does and to tell the truth often have more interesting jobs.
To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this:
http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY
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Human relations, one of those nondescript jobs where people actually go to work but nobody really knows what they're doing there and why.
ReplyDeleteI remember in my last job in private industry we had a "human resources" department full of folks with bachelors in psychology and communication and stuff like that. They didn't make a lot of money either.
In contrast, in the IT department where I was working, even a beginner made more than these guys and when I was IT chief I made sure I consulted the "human resources" folks only to tell them when we had a job opening. Job interviews I did myself without them.
These folks always got weird ideas of asking weird questions like "Where do you see yourself in five years?" whereas I only cared about a few things. Did I have a good initial impression of the man or woman (there were a few)? Did he or she know his stuff? Could he or she be trusted with an electric drill? Was he or she willing to leave the office and do some hardware installations in the building as well? Practical stuff like that.
The human resources folks also did "assessment centers" with applicants for other positions, predominantly the call center. These lasted 2 days in which they did weird role playing sessions (not the D&D kind of stuff) and team building games and stuff like that. Which, of course cost a lot of money because the company had to rent some space in a hotel or convention center.
They once tried to get my department do some team building games like in kindergarten, which didn't work as planned.
You've probably seen this stuff. One "task" we had was to cross a river with only two planks. I was listening to this HR guy with his psychology degree ramble on about something nobody cared about and then decided to ruin it for them.
What the guy forgot was that he was dealing with nerds. So I asked him to confirm that the floor in that specific area was water and then I said "I'm a Death Knight", from World of Warcraft and claimed that I was casting Path of Frost which allows me and my party to cross water.
My gang jumped eagerly onto it and we were very quickly a band of adventurers from different game systems. We almost made the guy cry.
The rest of my team never had to go through this farce afterwards and I got cited into the office of our CEO after the HR guy complained to his department chief, because me and my gang weren't taking this proven psychological whatever nonsense seriously enough.
And after a really half-assed "reprimand" by our CEO and some other member of the board, which seemed to appease the HR chief, I spent the evening with the CEO and the board member and whiskey and cigars.