UNFORTUNATELY, you are absolutely correct.
This is why we used to make doctor appointments with MD's. Now we are normally forced to make such appointments with an assortment of initials, none of which are trained anywhere near the level as an MD.
Twenty years ago I had a deep cleaning procedure performed on my teeth and gums by a licensed periodontist. The insurance company refused to pay for such service. The maximum they would pay was based on some local standard charge rate for a dental hygienist. Needless to say, we cancelled our dental insurance immediately. Crooks!
No full-time job should pay minimum wage, ever. I don't care if they're licking stamps, it's insulting. People seeking full-time are often trying to settle down and maybe raise a family, so respect that.
If a business owner wants to pay the new guy less so he can pay himself more, that's fine, but just say so. Trying to mask it as some sort of "stepping stone" or "learning fee" or other nonsense is insulting.
Some of the facts are right, but the conclusions are wrong. MDs and dentists, on the whole, are not suffering because of the increase of PAs, nurse practitioners, periodontists, etc. On the contrary, the time of well-trained MDs and dentists is so valuable because of the high demand for their expertise. The market solution of lower-level professionals being permitted to perform less-skilled tasks should be perfectly acceptable to fully-licensed surveyors.
In other words, the solution the medical profession used to combat shortage was not to flood the market with more MDs. We should take note and not seek to flood the market with PLSs. Instead, let our wages rise significantly, and if we have to give up paraprofessional work to "certified technicians" along the way, so much the better. Now is no time to loosen the reigns on PLS education, experience, and testing requirements.
Perhaps the good doctor can explain that to those who are cancelling or postponing projects because they can't get the surveying done.
I do not believe that for one bloody second.
I do however believe that developers are having a slightly more difficult time finding a survey company to work for the peanuts they are willing to pay, that I do believe, but again only slightly, but if the developers are willing to place as few as a dozen phone calls to surrounding survey companies I have no doubt they can find someone willing to prostitute themselves at a low enough number to please the developers.?ÿ
Developers value nearly everything more than surveyors because most surveyors do not value the service they provide.
I wouldn??t hire anyone willing to work for minimum wage.
Minimum wage is your employers way of saying "If I paid you what I actually value you at, the government would fine me."
Even better...I think I would do just fine in an era of deregulation. Right now substandard (but licensed) purveyors of poor work are able to compete with me simply because they have a license. If the only way to know if you had a good surveyor was through reputation and experience my firm could charge double the going rate...we have a good reputation. It is easier to get a license than a good reputation.
And if licensure isn't needed, then it should go away. We are not entitled to limited entry.
You are 100% correct. I would love to give up all the mundane tasks and do what I am qualified for at this point.
As a highly trained and experienced licensed professional I want my services to be provided by other highly trained and experienced professionals in their respective fields. I do not accept second-class providers. Period.
The self correcting market is often thwarted by those residing in the State House. The developers will complain and the resolution will be the increase in the powers and duties of the engineers. Problem 'solved'.
I'd like to have some techs. There are slim pickings in this neck.
Perhaps some resident of the State House will be convinced that the GIS community can deal with Property Line. (Play ominous music here.)
The solution is here:
Maybe it time to become a robot repair tech.
?ÿ
Be careful what you wish for! A substandard surveyor who can be called to account by a professional body is still better than a substandard (..insert architect/engineer/whatever) who might have a good reputation in their own field but no expertise as a surveyor.
In non-regulated countries they still get far too much of the survey work and can cover the deficiency up at a later stage when the poor survey is subsumed into their own sphere of influence. All too often the groundworks contractor carries the can.
Interesting statistics. But I'd like to see more about the number of people working as techs before I draw any conclusions. It could be that the raising of qualifications for licensure has resulted in more techs working under the supervision of fewer licensees. Overall that might be a good thing for the profession, if frustrating for some upper level techs.?ÿ
I can speak to the frustration of upper-level techs, as a tech-turned-licensed-surveyor.
My experience (across four states and seven firms) is that most organizations maintained a significant pay disparity between techs and licenses, and as techs gained experience and competence there was a pay limit that was quickly approached regardless of the amount of experience gained, in order to maintain a gap between "technicians" and "professionals".
By the time I gained licensure, there was literally no other task left for me in the project workflow but to stamp and sign the work I did. I had been up against the pay barrier for several years, and jumping from organization to organization to gain more skills and a geomatics B.S. gained me very little in terms of pay. I took financial hits from moving around and of course paying for school out of pocket while working; good luck finding a company that will pay a "non-professional" for relocation, let alone for tuition assistance.
Then came licensure and a small pay bump that put me about 20-40K below others with the same number of years' experience, yet significantly smaller skill sets, but who gained their license years before me and then sat in an office doing largely the same thing every day.
Obviously it is up to employers to decide what an employee's value is, and it is far easier to assign value based upon whether someone has a license or not. If I had a dollar for every PLS that management hired who was incapable of performing basic technical tasks (i.e. they literally did not have the skills listed on their resume), I would be a rich man. So I can see why licensure is promoted as the holy grail of surveying.
I hear what you are saying. My own path was getting licensed at the earliest opportunity I had. I realized that there was a glass ceiling that I was quickly approaching, and that to break through it I needed that certificate. I didn't get a big bump in pay when I got licensed, but at least my march up the ladder did not get stalled.
In an environment where very few got licensed I think that that while that glass ceiling would not go away, it would be much higher.
What is stopping you? Are you retirement age? If you can retire find some young go getter and strike a deal.
I've got one foot out the door. The market is too good to stop now. I'm dropping out when the next recession hits.
I'm not at retirement age but I have other revenue sources.
The Airlines complain of pilot shortages. The pilots say you don't have a pilot shortage, you have a shortage of pilots willing to work cheap. It costs a lot of money to get the necessary training and none of it is at a paid job like Land Surveying.
