I'm going to combine these two blogs into one, because I
don't feel like write two blog entries.
Anyway....
---
Not paid enough to
care.
I know that the minimum wage debate brings up a lot of
heat. There are people who are opposed
to it, and others who think it should be raised to something "livable."
I can see both sides of the argument, but let's face it:
It's not minimum wage that is the issue. The suits at a company's corporate offices
are the issue. It's the corporate suits
who, in an effort to make as much profit as possible for their shareholders,
pay the frontline employees absolute shit for a salary.
You know the complaints of fast food workers getting
people's orders wrong, or the salesperson at a local electronics store knowing
less than the customers, or the CSR at the other end of the phone who appears
to be just reading off a script and just wants to get the caller off the line
as soon as possible?
They share one common thing: They are not paid enough to
care. When you're slaving for 40+ hours
at a place for peanuts when you know the suits at the corporate offices are
making serious coin, you're just going to do whatever gets you through the day.
So how do you make them actually, well, care?
I am with the minimum wage opponents that raising the
minimum wage will not do a thing to make employees "care." After all, let's say your city decides to
make the minimum wage $12 per hour.
Employees will know that because it's the minimum wage, they can just go
somewhere else in the city and make the same money. There is no incentive for them to truly excel
at their job.
It all comes down to corporations....
What corporations need to do, is pay employees an amount per
hour that gives them this mentality:
"Man I better be
on my best behavior and do the best I can, after what they are paying me I
would be a FOOL to lose this job or go
somewhere else!"
You know what happens when they have that mentality? Everything
improves, because they know that another job, or any other job in the local
area, may not pay as well. So they will
do whatever it takes to keep being employed at that company. The company will have better employees, morale
will increase, and the end result will be a better interaction with clients who
will thus want to come back, instead of running away to the competition.
Sometimes, corporations have it right, then get it all
wrong. One of the biggest examples is
Circuit City. When their salespeople
were commission-based they were indeed very knowledgeable and because they made
serious coin, made sure that they didn't do something to screw it up. Then the company had the *brilliant* idea to
lay off their top performing salespeople and replace them with lower-paid
hourly workers because they thought that non-commissioned salespeople "put
customers more at ease." In
reality, it did the opposite. The new
salespeople knew less than the customers did, people left in droves, and
eventually the company as we know it went belly up.
Almost all the time, it depends on the field of work that
the company is in that should determine what they should pay employees enough
to make someone want to work for them, and do a good job once they actually do
get hired.
I'll give you a recent example as it happened to me....
A company offered me a job about a year ago to do on-site
computer installs, repairs, software work (mainly virus removal), and basic
networking installs (And no, it wasn't the geek squad). I asked how much their starting salary was,
and when they told me I was insulted! It
was less than what I am making now, let's put it that way. I told them "no thanks, I'm happy where
I am." What I really wanted to say
was this:
"Are you
kidding? For the simple fact that
walking into a customer's home represents a certain danger - what if he's a
nutcase? - you need to start me off at 20 an hour!"
Is that a bit too high an expectation? Maybe.
But for on-site tech work, where there is a certain danger that the
customer you're going to help is, as said above, a nutcase, it makes sense that
you want to pay potential techs accordingly.
Oh, and the Geek Squad?
I was reading somewhere that before they were taken over by Best Buy
that the "double agents" (The ones that drive around in the VW Bugs)
made close to 18 an hour starting,
and were in general really talented.
Then they were bought by Best Buy and they reduced the starting pay to
12 an hour, the 18 dollar an hour agents left, and they were forced to hire
people that weren't as good. Then the
customer service rankings started to, as you may have guessed, tanked.
---
College degree does
not = smart.
When I told someone I know about what I was thinking about
saying to that computer company that wanted to pay me piss for a salary, this
is what he said to me:
"Firstly, you are only going to get to 20 an hour if you
freelance. Secondly, you talk big for someone who doesn't have a college
degree."
So I asked him to clarify what he meant by that, after
accusing him of basically calling my stupid, and this what he said:
"You are far from stupid, but let's face it most good
jobs in the IT field now require a degree and going into the interview
demanding 20 an hour without one will get you laughed at."
But most IT positions I looked at, or were offered don't
even need a degree to do the work needing to be performed. So why do they want to see that fancy piece
of paper?
First, let's get one thing out of the way: College does NOT
make a person smart. If it did, every
college graduate would have an Einstein level IQ, and that simply isn't the
case. Remember the viral video of
students at Texas Tech not knowing basic history questions? Yeah, that's what I am talking about.
People who know me say that I shouldn't talk being that I
never went to college. But I know people
who have, and I asked them to be honest about what a college degree actually
shows, as it clearly doesn't guarantee making a person "smarter." Nearly
all of them said the same thing: That having that degree shows, in writing,
that you are willing to put up with shit you don't really want to do in order
to obtain an ultimate goal.
Now, I can see certain fields, like a doctor, lawyer, or
engineer, something that requires specialized training, where a college degree
is essential. But for something in
IT? Shouldn't experience and core
certifications be enough?
Apparently, not so. I
came across an article in a business journal where the interviewer asked the
owner of a law firm who he would pick for an IT position: Someone with no
degree but 10-15 years of experience and 4 or more certifications, or someone
with fresh out of college with a computer science degree, little if any
experience and no certifications at all.
The owner of the law firm picked the latter, instead of the
former. When asked why, the owner said
this:
"The guy with the
degree may not be a seasoned veteran, but with that degree he has proven he can
handle pressure and challenges well. The
one without the degree shows none of that."
That coincides with the conclusion of this Cracked.com
article: http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-things-nobody-says-about-college-until-its-too-late_p2/
Namely, this line:
....you'll learn more
about deadlines and personal management in those four years than you did in the
previous 18. That is why employers
look harder at graduates' applications. That degree instantly tells them that
you can commit and follow through with important tasks without someone looking
over your shoulder.....
What the employer said, and that article stated, is what
pretty much what the answers that my friends gave me: That you go to college to
show future employment prospects that you're less likely to say "fuck this
I quit" if they hand you something that you hate doing. It has nothing to do with intelligence.
Think about it for a moment as to why colleges make you do
electives on crap that has nothing to do with your major. I can see math if you're taking some sort of
technology course, but having to study and write term papers on William
Shakespeare?! It's for the exact reason
stated above. Forget the "well
rounded education" crap you hear people spew. They make you do it to see if you're going to
say "I quit this crap" or soldier on.
But, ready for it?
Here is something that can be said about people that will blow your
mind....
SOME PEOPLE
ARE NOT TEST TAKERS.
Yes, I said it. Even
if I went to college, I may not have done well. Right out of high school I went to a tech
school that had the same name as one of our US Presidents (Hint: Emancipation Proclamation) for computer aided drafting (CAD). Besides the fact that I was lied to (They
said you would only spend a month on the paper drawing boards before heading to
computers, then on the 1st day of orientation the "instructor"
informed us the computers were only about the last half of the course), it's
like they set me up to fail.
Let me explain. I was
known as a great artist in my middle/high school years.
I loved drawing cars, trains, and various other machines. That's why someone suggested when I was in
high school, with my then growing interesting in computers, that I should take
up CAD.
But when I was at this school, no matter how hard I tried, I
always seemed to fail my drawing assignments, or I would barely pass. Finally, I asked my instructor "Why is
it that I was considered a great artist in middle/high school and here I'm being made to
look like I'm terrible?"
My instructor told me with a straight face, "I'm going
to give you a sports analogy here. Just
because you're a great high school athlete doesn't mean you have 'it' -
whatever 'it' is - that is needed to move on successfully to the next level. I hate to say it but this may not be for you."
I tried to prove him wrong, but the last straw was when he
gave me a ZERO on a drawing that I thought was perfect. I asked him why, and he told me one line in
"an important area" was too thin.
I asked him what the big deal was, and he told me "In the real
would if you submitted your plans to the construction crew the building would
fall down." I told him, "Come
on then let me do it over!" He
told me, "In the real world there are no do-overs." I had enough.
The next day, I resigned myself from the program. Maybe it would be different if I took the
automotive program that they had, but what's done is done.
Speaking of high school....
Having to write essays were the bane of my existence. I never saw the point in them, after all, the whole damn text book you're learning
from is essentially an essay on the subject!
I can't explain it, but I would clam up and it would sometimes take
me hours to just to write the very first sentence, and the rest of the way
wasn't easy on me either. However, when
we had assignments in "creative writing" class where you could write
on just about any topic you want, sure it took me a while to think of the first
sentence but after that I was off like a banshee! In fact, one time I lost a couple of points
off my creative writing assignment for being too detailed.
So what does all this mean?
I'm just not good at "testing" situations. Put me in an actual training situations for the core task at hand, and that's where I
shine. Once I learn something and I'm
shown how to do it, I generally have no issues doing the task on my own,
without having to have someone look over my shoulder (To be honest, I hate it
when people do that).
And before anyone says anything, I know how to put up with
being tasked with stuff I don't want to do.
It's called a job, and all jobs task you with stuff you don't want to
do. It's why they pay you!
Speaking of computer science, as stated in my earlier blog
"how to spot a bad IT/tech guy," I wish employers in the IT industry
would look at certifications more than that degree. The man I mentioned earlier who would rather
hire the punk fresh out of college over the guy with actual experience will
find out soon enough when the computer science major has to hire a hardware
tech to change a hard drive, or is tasked with choosing a new ISP for the
company and ends up choosing a satellite service simply because it has more advertised "mbps" than a T1 from the local phone company.
The point is, some people do not need a fancy piece of paper
to tell a prospective employer that they would be good at a job. Experience and a willingness to want to
perform the work at hand should matter more than a piece of paper that says
"I put up with having to write term papers on William Shakespeare so I can
say that I know about the science of computer software."
End of.
