On 11Jun2020 0926, xxxxxx@gmail.com wrote:
> My reserve experience was the interesting payscale the Cdn forces > used for infantry reservists in 1987: Half day: $21 Full day: $42 >
Now: Half-day is not 4 hours, it is 6 or less hours. Full-day is not > 8
hours, it is anything more than 6 hours up to 24 hours.
Interesting - NZ's territorial forces were paid somewhat less than that
at about that time, but our half/full days were "three or more hours",
and "six or more hours".
Geez, our minimum wage at that time was something like 4.15 or 4.25 CAD per hour, so the military pay could be a bit better or a bit worse depending on the way the clock worked out on a given day. Nobody gets rich at that pay grade.
> My mom worked as a university trained nurse in jobs like shift > supervisor, director of nursing, stand in for CEO and CFO in a 200 >
bed hospital, etc. and my paycheck two years out of college with >
software skills was more than she ever made in any of those jobs > (plus
better benefits except pension). The civilian world is very > different
and it is driven by business logic.
Note business logic as a theoretical thing is impacted by corruption, nepotism, favouritism, laziness, magical thinking, alliances/enemies, power struggles, siloing and quite a few other factors.
Sort of - high status workers and jobs can get paid more than they are
actually worth to the business.
That seems inherently problematic to say. If they are worth enough to give them that money, somebody thinks they are worth it.
Technology (in my experienced view) and programming/software design is 20% re-invent the blasted wheel again, 65% just plain work, 10% interesting work with some novel challenges and that can produce some interesting solutions, and 5% aneurysm territory (the real hard problems).
Gurus/Prima Donnas/Star Programmers can be egotistical, self-centered, incapable of effective team work, and so on, but they can also do magnificent work on obscure but very hard problems. Just god forbid if a normal human has to touch the work afterwords for maintenance.
I personally prefer to work with a cloud of rather competent and above average folks, but without any 'genius' aboard. Teams can get a lot done with a bunch of cooperative, moderately smart people with collaborative mindsets and social skills.
I have seen places where people were paid more than I thought they were worth, but by definition, if someone is paying them a whack of money, they must believe them to be worth it and they are the ones charged with those decisions.
I find those who are ambitious and hard working can make progress, but in some organization, you only advance if you have a patron. If you have that, you can move up fast, if you do not, you can languish. I've seen some major companies $500M-$6B that exhibit that new feudalism model of management. It usually seems to work about as badly as you think for employee morale generally.
Businesses typically manage to pay women
less for their work than they pay men, yet for many roles they don't
recruit women much (and logically they should, because they could then
pay less for the same output).
My first business area manager (a step above project manager, reporting to the head of a business director for a specific sector) said to me one time:
"I like my programmers young, single, and male."
I came to understand that as: Young males have to prove their chops to their seniors. They work long hours, work weekends, accept unpaid or partially paid overtime, and so on. Single ones can do that. Married ones tend to have a spouse that wants them home sometimes. And the smart women in tech I've met were much better than the gents at setting work boundaries and expectations that allowed them to take vacations, to work less long hours, and to not work weekends while the guys were in trying to prove an imaginary thing to their superiors. The women were smarter and understood work life balance more.
Me, I'd hire most of the women I've worked with as programmers or QC folks as a preference. They tend to be more collaborative, they can be just as technically savvy and are most of the time, and they don't (IME) bring the ego issues that many of the hotshot guys do.
Businesses pay people what they think they need to - in some cases that is paying a lot to someone with high expectations that they believe is important and in some cases less to those who will bust their butt for a near zero reward. That's what business logic really is - get the most for the least.
--
Rupert Boleyn <xxxxxx@gmail.com>
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