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Subject:Re: Salary bell curve: on the downside From:Elna Tymes <etymes -at- lts -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Sun, 13 May 2001 20:01:33 -0700
Matthew Danda wrote:
> Anyone else experiencing the down-side of the salary curve?
>
> I recently found an embarrassing post on TECHWRL I made about 3.5 years ago,
> bragging about how I had been reaping massive raises by job hopping.
>
> Funny thing has happened lately, as I end my 7th year in this profession, I
> made the exact same that I made during my 2nd year. My 4th and 5th years
> were pretty good, but since then my income has been steadily dropping. A
> perfect Bell curve.
Matt -
Depends on the industry in which you're working. If you're in the computer
industry, count yourself lucky to have a job at the moment - there are lots of
unemployed technical writers in Silicon Valley at the moment, and the
contracting environment has been hit much worse than the salaried environment.
If you're in another industry, perhaps in another part of the country, you're
probably better off than the computer industry.
Then there's the money end of things. Normally, contractors make as much as or
better than salaried writers, providing you don't count stock options - which,
as the last year has demonstrated, can fluctuate wildly in their value. In
times of market demand, your salary - or your contract rate - will go up in
accord with the rate at which the market is going up. However in times of
contraction, contract rates usually have to go down, but salaries tend to stay
the same if you're not changing jobs.
Frankly, we're still far ahead of where we were two and three years ago, and we
work exclusively on contract.
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