That is a really good one. I’m sorry it didn’t think of that. Also, not all of them do use it as a stepping stone. A few do it forever because it fights their life well. Also, you say that it is something on par with a college degree. That is true but I would bet that most have a college degree in addition to all of the flight training. Both of my flight instructors have been engineers trying to make a career change. Do you need a college degree for most airline flying jobs or do they just look at flight training and experience?
Scruloose writes:
> Also, senior officers and flag officers, who oversee thousands of people and are
> responsible for untold millions or even billions of $$$ in assets, are paid only a
> fraction of what a civilian counterpart would be paid. ( A CEO, for example)
If you’re going to count them, you should also count civilian federal government executives who have the same responsibilities and the same pay. (And before someone claims that military people have more dangerous jobs, no, they don’t. We’re talking about flag officers, who aren’t in combat.) For both flag officers (i.e., generals and admirals) and the civilians at the same level in the federal government (those with Senior Executive Service jobs), the pay is about $100,000 to $140,000 per year. A lot of money by most standards, but we’re comparing them to the equivalent jobs in private companies. They are people at the end of their careers, with a lot of responsibilities, who came into the job with at least a B.A. and usually a graduate or a professional degree. The equivalent people in private companies make about twice as much. So now you know why so many flag officers and federal government executives quit at 55 and take a job working for a private company for the last 10 years of their career.
It is probably different around the country, but in the town I work in the average teacher’s salary is $70,000. No one is getting rich but that is not a bad salary and a damn sight better than most on this board make. Of course the starting salary stinks, that’s the same in just about every starting job. That’s a pretty good reason why you shouldn’t have a family of four at 21. The salary does go up pretty rapidly. That is not the case in most jobs you get right out of college.
I’ll second social worker. I don’t know if they’ve really got it the worst, but it’s an incredibly stressful and demanding job that does not pay well.
The worst temp assignment I ever had was doing secretarial/accounting work for a bunch of social workers at a government-funded agency. It was bad enough for me, but much worse for them. No lunch breaks, people call you up constantly to complain, huge amounts of paperwork…and the social workers also had to know about the relevant laws and travel around checking up on clients. These are people who devote their careers to helping people others would gladly ignore, and they’re rewarded with lousy pay, lousy working conditions, and constant abuse from both outsiders and the people they’re trying to help.
Social workers at privately-funded charities have it rather better, but it’s still a difficult, stressful, and demanding job with a relatively low salary.
No disrespect to those professions mentioned, I’d like you to consider firefighters.
Excepting those young metropolitan areas, the folks in older cities-NYC, Boston, Phila, Baltimore, head into buildings that are over a century old, have been subject to numerous renovations, many without benefit of municipal inspection.
Your gear alone adds 15 pounds. Your self-contained breathing apparatus is another 30. Grab the thermal imaging camera (so you can see shapes in the smoke), a radio, flashlight, halligan & flathead (forcible entry tools-sometimes forcible exit), and finally a hoseline. Force the front door, crouch down and head inside. Keep in mind-your SCBA has a one-hour bottle at most fitted. You’ll suck it down in 35-45 minutes, depending on your physical condition and work accomplished. Crawl the first floor in a right hand search pattern, feeling under furnishings, into closets, you don’t want to miss the little child who has hidden there, creating a mental map for exit if things go really bad really quick. Once you’re back at the front door-check your air gauge. First floor clear-let’s head up the stairs.
Hopefully by now the truckies have laddered and opened the second floor and/or roof to ventilate-that will help keep ceiling temperature down. If it isn’t ventilated, and hasn’t flashed, it will-sometime soon. Floor temperature is notably hotter at the top of the stairs. You search again in a right-hand pattern, checking the doors carefully before opening them. A fire inside a room with a closed door will greet you if it has banked down. At the room of origin, you open the nozzle on fog pattern, and direct it at the ceiling where the temperature is easily 1000°F. As the liquid water flashes to steam, it expands 1700x it’s original volume. Some of that pressure wave comes back at you. A minute or so more-it’s knocked down-the low air alarm is whistling on your pack, so you’ve got 5 minutes to get out. Drop the line, retrace it back to the front door, step outside.
What I’ve described is a ‘good’ call. Head into a crack house where the stairs were torn out and burned for heat, an abandoned property where an unresolved roof leak has weakened flooring, or a place where the owner was storing excess pesticides from his exterminating business. These scenarios and a dozen more unpredictable hazards are waiting.
Depending on your municipality, you may be expected to have cross-training as an EMT or higher, perform hose testing, SCBA repairs, and be a general station handyman. As construction methods and materials evolve, you must be aware of how they affect fire behavior. When it comes to budget time, the fire budget is scrutinized-can we get it done with less people, fewer stations, fewer trucks?
Heart attack kills more firefighters every year than any other cause-add in other causes and close to a hundred are remembered each year at the Fallen Firefighter Memorial in Emmitsburg, MD. Darn near every career person I know has a second job, just to make ends meet.
Oddly enough-we still think it’s the best job in the world, even the dumbass volunteers like me.
I’m sure one of our pilot members will be along shortly, but from what I’ve heard, their salaries are tremendously variable, depending on the hours they get and the planes they fly. A pilot who flies a Canadair (small commuter jet) may not make a comically low salary, but it’s bound to be waaaaaayyy less than what the pilot of a 747 gets. Yet the responsibility and skill set is much the same for both pilots.
I said something of this already but I would like to clarify. I do not think that teachers or firefighters belong in this category. You may argue that they deserve to be paid more due to the importance of their work. If you think that $60,000 to $80,000 is poor pay then I guess you would put them in this category. I don’t. For someone who works for a municipality they get paid pretty good. You are not going to get rich but you know that before you make the career choice. I have heard this varies greatly from state to state but in my area this is what they are getting paid.
Agreed. Mrs. Chatelaine is a LCSW for a local crisis center and they work her ass off. Weekends, on-call, double shifts, double groups, 202As, transfers, you name it. Long hours, lots of education [she has a MSW], constant CEU requirements, supervision for her LISW, unstable clients, horrible stories, the endless red tape and bueracracy, low funding and basically being hated by the people above you and below. “Why didn’t you take those kids away/commit that person/call the police?” versus “How dare you take those kids away/commit that person/call the police?”
I don’t know how she manages, but Og love her, she does and does it with a smile on her face. I’d frankly hate the entire world if I had that job. Not that I’m far from that some days, anyway, TBH.
All I have to say is damn, where can I signup to be a teacher or firefighter where you live?
I have two siblings who are teachers, their starting salaries were below 30k a year. My sister, who has been teaching for about 8 years, I think (I’m not sure) is in the mid 30k a year, but this is only after essentially being forced to get her Master’s degree, on her own time. Yes, the state helped her pay, but some of it she still had to apy herself, while still paying back her undergrad student loans.
As for firefighters? 60-80k a year? Well, 'round here, the pay is…let me think…oh yeah, nothing. Only places with a large enough population can support paid firefighters, most of the firefighters in the US are volunteer, I’m pretty sure. I have several family members (including my father and brother…yes, same brother) who are firemen. They get woken up at midnight to haul some jerkwad’s ass out of his house because he was an idiot and smoked in bed, or used a cheap electric space heater, or what have you, only to get back at 6 AM, take a quick shower (if they’re lucky) and then go to work, because they still need a paying job to put food on the table.
The people working in the public domain of your municipality are very lucky to be making such high salaries, but please don’t assume that’s the norm, cause it’s very much the exception.
Oh, and all of that for $29,000 a year.
Oh, and I also wanted to mention my job. Granted, it’s not always a lot of work, and it’s decent pay, but it (at times) can be stressful, and in a way, people’s lives are in my hands. I’m certainly not saying it’s the most demnading job (skill and/or work wise) for the least amount of pay, but it’s certainly moreso than a typical office job, or retail.
I’m a biomedical technician. I am the sole technician for a hospital of ~100 beds. Almost every piece of equipment in that hospital that plugs into a wall (and some that doesn’t) I have to manage. I test it (either once, twice, or four times a year), fix it, sometimes clean it, and all in all make sure they all work the way they need to. Due to the fact that I also work for a third party provider, not the hospital, I have to deal with two sets of administration yelling at me, in addition to the doctors and nurses yelling at me when something doesn’t work exactly right.
“It doesn’t turn on when not plugged in? Hmmm…try plugging it in…does it turn on now? OK, good. Keep it that way, because that thing doesn’t have a battery.”
I wish all of the problems were that easy, though. Most of the time, I don’t know what is wrong with something, it just has a note that says ‘broken.’ No name of who used it last, or who noticed it was broken, no description of what is broken, or what didn’t work right. Yeesh. It’s nerveracking to get an infusion pump or defib that says broken, yet not problem can be found, so I send it back out to be used. What if it was broken and doesn’t work next time it needs to? It might result in the death or injury of a patient, and it would be my fault! :eek:
Not to mention the fact that we are expected to know everything about the field. Given that most people in the field have just an associate’s degree in bimedical technology, that’s pretty hard to do. Hell, I don’t even have that! I have a BS in biomedical engineering, which, though it sounds similar, actually doesn’t prepare me for this type of job very well. So please, cut me some slack! And I have a fuck ton of student loans to pay off as well.
Again, certainly not the most demanding job out there, but I think it might be worth mentioning.
You can’t put volunteer firefighters in the same category. By definition they aren’t in it for the money and its not their job. It’s more of a hobby. A very important hobby but not a career. The volunteers I know do it for the sense of accomplishment, the camraderie and to get away from the wife, not to support their family. My town has only volunteer firefighters also. I am talking about the few surrounding large communities that have paid firefighters. I know a few of them. They are constantly flaunting(in a friendly manner) their salary and work schedule. It is a potentially dangerous job but there is decent compensation. You also can’t just quote starting salaries. Of course they are crappy. That’s why they are starting salaries. I get my information on teacher’s salary out of the newspaper. Every year they print the salary of teachers from every township in the state. There is a big difference from town to town. Small towns and the inner city don’t pay as well. Most suburban townships are in the $60-80,000 range. 80 is rare but we are talking average salary not top salary. FTR I am talking about New Jersey. The annual list of salaries appears in the Newark Star Ledger. I don’t think you can access the list on the web without paying. I work for a municipality, I am a cop. I am very aware of teacher’s salaries in my town. They average around $70,000. I think it takes them about 10 years to get to that level.
Teachers here start at just over $30,000 with a masters’ degree. I’m looking at the pay schedule here, and the most you can ever make is 30 years with a doctoral degree, and that’s $64,000. Not everywhere is New Jersey, man.
Where do you live? What is the cost of living? Most of the states that pay teachers well do so because it costs that much to live there.
Nevermind, just saw from your post, [b/Loach**. I think danceswithcats might take issue with your characterization of volunteer firefighting as a hobby, however important. Not getting paid for it doesn’t negate its status as a job unless you’d like to clarify your position on SAHPs (my father is definitely not a mom:D)
K-8 teachers generally do not make a hell of a lot of money unless they take on outside projects. Special ed teachers get paid more for doing more (and for dealing with more, from what I know).
I’d have to agree with Cartooniverse for EMTs & Paramedics. I’m a Paramedic in a good-sized city. I work 24-hour shifts with an EMT-B partner, and we average 11-12 calls per shift. I make $8.99/hour and my partner makes ~$7/hour.
In general, I’d agree with danceswithcats as well, however I’d be thrilled to be making as much as the firefighters we work with. Twice the money for a third the call volume…
I understand that Loach is basing his post on his area of familiarity, which tells me that the IAFF local up there has done well by their members. Local 22 in Philly is fighting to keep staffing levels from shrinking. You see, the rule is that you go in with a partner, and that there be two more people in a state of readiness to come in and get you if things get ugly. That is one NFPA standard that is often overlooked. The guys in my local town are heading out the door with driver only and are paid under $30K.
Thanks for the comment iampunha. You know how I view it, and you also know I’m a handful of fries shy of a Happy Meal™.
It doesn’t require much in the way of special training, but waiting tables is damn hard for the $2.15 + whatever your customers feel like paying you an hour you get. It’s mentally hard- from the moment you start your shift until the end, you are juggling around ten to twenty high priority tasks at a time. Your have to have perfect memory, lighting fast reflexes, excellent prioritizing skills. I felt like I was in an ultra-fast paced game of whack-a-mole mixed with memory the whole time. It’s emotionally demanding because it is impossible to please everyone given the sheer amount of work that needs to be done, and even the best waiter gets a hell of a lot of abuse from customers. Waiters are directly paid for how well they can read what a customer wants emotionally and please them no matter how you yourself are feeling…you are creating an illusion with your words and smiles…kind of like what prostitutes do. It’s hard work to cater to someone’s emotions like that. It’s physically demanding. Once a waiter gets out of view of customers, they are running, screaming, sweating, swearing, juggling, and lugging huge loads around in dangerous crowded areas. Even on easy shifts I broke a sweat. Waiters work at top speed all the time. There is no rest. No bathroom breaks. No catching your breath for a moment. Just work work work for eight hours straight. I’d drink a cup of coffee each time I went to the kitchen just to get through my shift. I really considered methamphetamines, because there was just no way to keep up with the pace of the work.
Paramedics are also a good candidate. I can’t even imagine having to do that hard of work for so little.
I feel like nobody making more than eight bucks an hour should be considered for this. No matter what your doing, there is probably someone working harder than you for minimum wage.
We’re not at the top of the list, but we’re highly educated and vastly underpaid: Librarians.
Average starting salary for an academic librarian: $30-35,000/yr.
Master’s degrees required: 2. At least one doctoral degree is often requested and does not necessarily increase the starting pay.
Working hours/stress: Variable. But standard with any librarianship job: you work at least one night per week and rotating weeks for the length of the job. In my case, I work 3 Saturdays a month. Thank heavens we’re closed Sundays or I’d be working those, too.
The skill set needed for librarianship is hugely diverse, including reference skills, web design, collection development, public service, copier and other office machine repair, writing skills, budgeting skills, management experience and skills, and more, listed in no particular order. Amazingly enough, the work can be quite physical. Several times a day I’m pushing book carts that weigh more than I do; many shifts I’m on my feet 3/4 of the time.
Currently, I am less than a month from my MLS. I already have a Master’s Degree in English and seven years’ experience as a reference librarian. I make $9.70/hour and receive no benefits of any kind.
Librarians may not have it the worst, but we’re down there.
Mrs. Furthur
I was going to say EMT also. I wasn’t one, but I worked as a temp for a major American medical response company (which shall remain unnamed) reformating their personnel files at the end of 1997. The EMT’s were making only about $7.00 per hour, the paramedics slightly more . . . and I was getting $10.00 per hour as a temp moving a bunch of paper around. I was shocked. The only people at that major American medical response company who actually were well paid were the administrators.
Abomination indeed!