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Trouble finding help…appropriate salary range/expectations
Mark Mayer replied 3 years, 2 months ago 30 Members · 77 Replies
Through the years I have had a ton of specialty magazines contact me and offer a free subscription to their product if I would just answer a few questions. My answers were always outstanding. Generally a pack of lies but it made the magazine people happy as it upped their circulation and thus their advertising rates. Everything from dairy farming to medical supplies. Plumbing and road and bridge plus industrial kitchen equipment. BTW, my mail carrier hates me.
thanks, and I suspect you are doing very well also! ????
I think the main reason why you can’t find survey staff is that most of them are running their own surveying firms.
@flga-2
24.7k in 72 was outstanding! You could have bought a hemicuda with cash and a house, even with the kids and hers indoors! Nicely Done!
- Posted by: @flga-2
Different generation – different mindset - aka ??where has all the motivation gone??
I was lucky … This was 1972 and I was salaried at 24.7k/yr.
Wow. I think the top starting salary of anyone I knew in my engineering class of 1972 was around $14 K at Boeing. I started at $10.4 K to stay in the midwest where living was cheaper and I was closer to family
. SWMBO corrected that as well. It was actually the most I made there in one year during the six I was there. The move to West Palm Beach was such a ??trauma? because it involved a ??sink or swim? opportunity as well as an unheard of compensation. The startup firm I joined had more business than it could handle and my earnings were directly related to the yearly performance of the business. Fortunately and after many ??normal? 80 hour weeks the firm became successful and was purchased by an International Engineering firm (Stanley Corporation) in 86??-87??. I was a principal then and shared in the results of the purchase. I was 27 at the time.
After the sale and the ??non compete? clause was satisfied the original owners son, an Engineer, started a new firm that has become a National Engineering firm named the Wantman Group.From the time I started my own business until now was a 32 year blurr of controlled chaos. ????
Bill is right on track. Top starting salaries for freshly graduated engineers in 1975 was around $16-17 K at an oil company. That was nearly double the salary of many university professors. I had a close friend who happened to fit the EXXON definition of “minority” and she started at $16.5 K in Baytown, TX. Spent the first 12 months not really doing a job but attending what they referred to as “EXXON College” with everyone else hired at the same time. Taught them everything they needed to know about how the petroleum business really works, not stuff contained in the standard text books. At the time the industry was hiring anyone with some sort of degree in engineering and converting them into the specialists they would need them to be.
Definitely not all. There are ample opportunities to make a good living in boundary. I think energy and construction often offer higher salaries for those just starting out, but boundary surveyors can catch up. This makes sense, because most four year degrees provide a higher percentage of what you need to know to succeed in the corporate energy/construction part of our profession than the boundary/legal side.
@larry-best
Maybe it is because the poll asked for “salaries”. I would guess that almost all licensed surveyors making less than $50,000 are in business for themselves, and thus their income is considered “profit”, not “salary”.
- Posted by: @flga-2
controlled chaos
The title of your memoirs.
@larry-best
I agree. I expect there are some licensed folks making less than $50K/yr.
If i were to guess a profile, I would expect that would generally be the licensee who earned a professional license, but is very content to serve a roll of a very knowledgeable crew chief with no desire to manage multiple jobs or personnel beyond one crew. Nothing wrong with that, but probably could have accomplished the same pay without the license (the license was just something they wanted).
An alternate profile might be the licensee who is starting his/her own business and hasn’t really figured out everything that needs to be removed from that billed out number in order to know what they are really making. I know someone who has been in business for at least a decade and he shares more than I am interested in knowing about his business. He tells me gross billing numbers often and I’m proud of him for the work he is doing, BUT he has often been waiting on a client to pay before being able to pay to register for conference. I’m not sure if he hasn’t understood that gross billing is only a small part of the picture or if he tells gross billing to keep up appearances.
There is no justification for not seeing most of us hiiting the largest number in that list. The root cause is however very well known. A significant percentage of us suck at business.
I can’t tell how many owners I hear whining about software, vehicle and other equipment costs. They act surprised (and offended) when these costs come up, and act as though failing to charge fees to cover them is somebody elses fault.
We are the only profession that cuts clients a break or even works for free when we disciver a problem. Does your doc throw in free cancer treatment if he discovers it while treating your diabetes? Will the dentist give you free dentures when he finds you let the nagging pain go too long? Maybe the electrician installing a new outlet will put in a new 600 amp service box and run new copper at no charge when he discovers your creative fixes have caused a problem?
All that sounds ridiculous, but we do it EVERY DAY. Stop apologizing for making money. If you’re not making money, get some help to figure out why.
You can’t pay professional salaries while charging trade and labor rates. You can’t pay anything when you give away work.. Be the professional who prepares your clients for issues AND gets paid well for fixing them
My. 02, Tom
I know of a case from a couple of years ago where I did not offer to do a specific job when requested as I was snowed under at the time but figured out what I might have told them. Recently I learned from the firm who did the job they did it for roughly 20 percent of my number in hopes of getting substantial future work from that client, which never developed………….surprise, surprise.
If you don’t bill it out, blame yourself.
When I got offered my first Land surveying opportunity as an Instrument Person( nowadays rod man) they said they’d pay me 12.50/hour(2014) and were very interested in my GIS and Geophysics background esp because I had tons of GPS experience. I explained I wanted to get a license, that being 43, a college graduate, experienced in field operations and project management, etc, i wouldn’t consider less than 15/hr. They accepted my counter. Still grossly underpaid for the experience( outside of surveying) i hit the ground with every pin placed, control monument set, and ALTA survey performed. I wasn’t 17, and had 26 years of life lived that gave me judgement, and scope.
Cheapness is ingrained in some organizations. They deserve the people willing to lower the professional standards of pay, esp if they don’t meet the profession’s needed and required experience. I had to take the the CST2 instrument/computer operator tests to keep my current job, and i was glad to do it. Doesn’t make me survey any better, but allows the people keeping score to know I meet a minimum standard. I’ll take the FS in the next few months and start wrangling the references and the board to approve me as an LSIT, another step to being a full on and licensed surveyor, once I meet those requirements.
My goal to be licensed isn’t to be a power monger, a know it all, or to make tons of money. It’s to hold myself to a higher standard, to be held to a higher standard because not everyone wants to do this type of work, has the drive to problem solve, dig holes,breath dust, get attacked by dogs, bees, angry property owners, work in and around high speed traffic and dangerous construction sites.
I will not sell my skills short, neither should anyone else. undervaluing the profession and industry only makes it easier for other professions like Law, real estate etc to build the case for why we don’t need surveyors anymore, we have GPS, and a phone app. And the GIS is just as good and even better right??
(mic drop…)
@thebionicman I??ll buy you the first round or two!
Someone forwarded me an Indeed.com posting for a PLS. Salary was listed as $14-17/hr with benefits.
I can’t imagine going for that interview, and hoping I impress enough to get near the upper end of that salary range.
Guess I’m not moving to central Maine any time soon. But maybe they’re really really good benefits.
i know i should be used to it by now, but i’m not- it’s just staggering. guy i used to work for and still hear from every once in a while is currently looking for another license to keep up with his workload. his indeed ad indicates 50K per year with the possibility of more depending upon experience. part of me wants to go see him just to kick him in the kiester. for around here that’s less than HALF of what i’d even think about taking, even if it was a dream gig (and it’s not- he likes to take those side-of-the-interstate, chasing asphalt rigs from dusk till dawn jobs). and it’s really about a THIRD of what any decent RPLS with a few years’ experience should accept around here. (i hate the word “should” and almost never use it, but really…)
the reality is, at least in the work i’m doing, there are plenty of people making their money: buyers, sellers, agents, lenders, architects, consultants ad nauseum. i’m not gonna be the chump in the room walking away with a tote bag and the jason’s deli tray of the sandwiches nobody wanted…
I’ll give you a pair of size 13 hob nail boots for that kiester kicking….and a cellphone for instagraming it. ???? ???? ??? ??? ????
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