I appraise myself - have I learned new marketable skills? If so? I jump to another job that will pay the equivalent of 3 or 4 years of raises.
Now, I just decide if I'm happy making what I'm making. If I'm ever not, I'll change jobs.
I get benefits through my wife's job so what's the point?
Why shouldn't I get paid for every hour I work?
So why should you get paid for hours that deliver no value? Or to make it a spectrum, why should you get paid a fixed rate for hours where you deliver less than the fixed rate of value?
Propose a good way to measure that. I tend to agree with you, but in so many companies, what you deliver often gets impacted by so many other decisions that the final 'value' of a project is minimal, but it's because of decisions outside your control.
If people only paid me based on the value they got out of what I delivered, many would find a way to weight the measuring to leave me short. "Hollywood accounting" springs to mind - blockbuster movies somehow lose money.
to your apple analogy... you might pay $1 whether you eat it or not, but if you had no intention of eating it you wouldn't buy it in the first place. You had some expectation of doing something with it - eating it, cooking it for yourself, cooking it in some other dish to sell to others, etc.
The few stints of contracting I have had, I knew close to 100% of the technologies I am working in. If not, I wouldn't bill for learning time.
And I'm saying this as someone who has had very good performance reviews in the past.
Probably within the next two years, I'm going to max out what I can make by job hopping - I'm okay with that- I'm actually okay with what I make now.
Then it's going to be about what looks interesting, a decent rate, commute, etc.
Well the ACA is still a thing now, but I don't think I could charge enough to make the difference in the amount of pay be worth the benefit cost. Maybe if I were single?
As a W2 contractor (meaning you work for the contracting company that pays the employeers share of employment taxes), I'm seeing rates up to $90 an hour.
If you assume 2080 hours a year - 80 hours holidays - 120 hours PTO - 120 hours between gigs, you are at $158,000 a year.
But the few times I have contracted, I have always gotten more than 40 hours a week. I'm just now at the point in my career that I could get top dollar contractor rates when I start back looking.
Let me clarify that those numbers are for W2 contractors. You're basically still working for another company. I'm not referring to 1099 contracting where you have to pay an additional 6.2% in SS up to $127K and 2.8% in Medicare.
The other path to higher salaries is specializing in a particular technology that enterprise companies pay handsomely for. Salesforce is one of those, as is Sharepoint.
I highly doubt you or your friend make that salary without some special niche knowledge. Even a PHD, perhaps.
I know people in tech who have been making that for years with just a bachelors... and not even in CS. My stepdad, my girlfriend’s father...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/cameronkeng/2014/06/22/employee...
Much of the data could be because people who are significantly underpaid can and do switch jobs and get a big salary bump to market rate. But once someone is at market rate, it is difficult to find a job that pays super market rates, so they stay put.
The authors don't provide any longitudinal data to show that serial job hoppers get paid more over the long run. They provide anecdotal hearsay, and a questionable extrapolation from statistical data.
Not to mention more than likely that person who stays put in technology is more likely to see their skills get stale and be less employable.