[BC] Making engineering pay

[Dana Puopolo]

I left Boston for L.A. in 1999. At the time, rates were $40.00 - 50.00 per
hour for contract work. Very few had retainers; you got paid for the gours you
worked. 

It's now mid 2006, more then 7 years later. Guess what rates are here now? 
$40.00 - $50.00 per hour!!

Why?

Undercutting, that's why. There are simply too many contractors here! 
Many of them work full time, and have a station or two (or five!) on the side.
As a result, rates have been depressed for over a decade. I'll bet this
happens lots of other places too. Consolidation has hurt too. Generally
speaking, none of the clusters use contractors whatsoever.

I simply can not make a living here in Boston doing contracting full time. I
have to leave. It's difficult to compete against someone who doesn't need the
money to live on, who uses his employer's tools, test equipment and office
supplies, and who has group health insurance for his family provided by his
employer. 

Someone (I believe it was Mike Mc) was lamenting that there were no full time
engineering contracting firms in his market to help with vacation coverage and
major projects that happen from time to time. Problem is, as a contractor, I
can't wait around waiting for a few bones to be thrown my way! It's the day to
day stuff that keeps local engineering contractors solvent. I have a mortgage
to pay too! Mike also remarked that most every full time engineer in his
market did a station or two on the side. If y'all WANT someone to be available
to back you up in the middle of the night, then YOU have to make sure there's
enough work for them to survive BETWEEN times!  And yes, that might actually
involve YOU giving up a few gravy bucks from your pocket. See, YOUR gravy $$
is a contractor's bread, butter and meat!

Give me a chance to earn a living and I'll be there. Take it all for
yourselves and I won't!

It's that simple.

-D


------ Original Message ------
Received: Sun, 23 Jul 2006 01:41:32 PM EDT
From: Robert Meuser <Robertm at broadcast.net>
To: "Broadcasters' Mailing List" <broadcast at radiolists.net>
Subject: Re: [BC] Making engineering pay

Radio as a hobby can be fun. It removes one from day to day stress and permits

doing only the projects that please them.  That being said, if the person
doing 
this is doing it at depressed rates, he is driving the overall market down. If

the person is doing this part time work as a few hours for a decent wage, then

that is a whole different discussion. For contract part time work you should
be 
asking at the very least $40 per hour and more like $50-70 or a set number of

hours for a monthly fee. If one is setting the floor for the market, it is a 
disservice to all.

R

Wade Giddens wrote:
>
> I've known of at least on radio station engineer who did it as a second 
> job.  He made his living at his main job and did broadcast engineering 
> on the side.  He was good at diagnosing and fixing equipment problems.  
> I know of several people who worked in radio (not engineering) full-time 
> in the past, who now work another main job and work in radio on the side.
>
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