InsideTech

Great note.

What is the standard pay for help desk in Portland area?

On CBSalary.com I got average of $39,208 per year - yours was on the lower end of the pay scale at $27,040 (figured at $13.00 per hr straight) - note this is for basic Tech.

as for Unix, and Microhell, they usually require more experience then I have, and at least one programming language...

VERY briefly I worked as a tech support agent in a call center for $11.55/hr. When they issued an edict requiring us to login in, log out AND read all work-related email and handouts on our personal time, sans compensation, I couldn't get away fast enough. I was one of 2 women in a building full of grown men who were happily reliving puberty, and though I was able to ignore most of the abuse, it was not a comfortable environment.

I feel I am overpaid for what I do, but underpaid for my skills, if that makes any sense.

Underpaid.. its hard to even find a real job now a days which offers health and dental insurance in my state the unemployment rate is about 14%, I could probuly flip burgers or something but i know I am much more capable and dont want to go from 17/hr to 10/hr. I know what my talents are worth , theres just no jobs or they are too far to drive too everyday from my location. I keep getting contract offers but need something perm or a chance to go temp to perm and proove myself in the company. Right now I deserve 16-17/hr with benefits.

I think I am under paid at the moment. Cost's more and more to live every day

With this bad economy I am really under paid. I have a BS in CS and I work in Kmart. They want you to do more than your supposed to for minimum wage. On top of that I voulenteer to fix simple bugs with the computers for experience, but I was told flat out no.

Last job I got was way under my skills, I can clearly say 5 to 10% of my skills were in use. The hour rate wasn't low maybe overpaid at that time, but taking all conciderations it wasn't enough, really underpaid.

I wrapped a 3 months project in 6 weeks straight. It could have been done faster also, if the employer would have been more organized. And it could have been done in a week if we had a team. Considering the speed of this project, I could have be paid double of what I was getting. So basically the job was stricly doing what was asked, if the clock was still running and nothing was coming up, it wasn't up to me. I disliked it also.

This kind of contracts are too short basically to justify a low rate per hour. The workload is too huge, and the turnover is also huge. I kept up for 6 weeks, the last person before me only stayed few days. It wasn't clearly a contract-to-hire job, so GIGO was in used, and seriously, for a GIGO job, I was totally underpaid. I also have to consider this is dead weight in my job search now... And I totally don't want to do anything really because of this, knowing it is a dead-end path.

Edit : Let me reformulate! My hard work is dead-weight on my resume! Aaarrgh!

I modified Chekel's post to more closely match both REALITY and my own personal circumstances:

What if you have student loans? A house? Gas bill (heating not car)?

Also, bear in mind that the per hour calculation figured at the end is based upon an average of 173.33 hours worked per month (Chekel apparently used only around 130 hours per month) AND more importantly this is BEFORE Uncle Same takes out taxes!

i work in a call center for comcast home networking and we get about 9 dollars an hour up in missouri. i think thats a lil unpderpaid for the type of job we do and skills we have to do plus dealing with customer service. if it was more around 11 or 12 i think it would be fine. this job is like basic networking but could get a lil much more since we are required to make sales also.

While it's definitely important to figure out your cost of living and since it wouldn't be rational to accept a job that either pays less than this or accept it only if it allows you to do other things to close the gap between your income and expenses, it has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not you're over or under paid. Whether or not your expenses are higher or lower than the average cost of living in your area doesn't mean that your job is worth any more or any less to your employer.  It does determine the minimum wage that you should be willing to accept.

That depends on two things.  The first is how much value does your job give to your employer?  I.e., if your job were unfilled, what would it cost the employer either in unrealized cost savings or lost revenue.  From that, you need to subtract the employer's cost of employing you other than the cost of your compensation.  The difference is the maximum that a rational employer would be willing to pay and, if they're paying more, that means that your job would be in jeopardy.

The second, and most important factor is what the employer's competition might be willing to pay for similar work in your area and area includes both geography and industry.  This largely depends on the average cost of living and the compensation policies in a particular industry.  It cots more to live in some areas than others and some industries pay more than others.  Employers naturally aren't going to pay you more than the market price unless you can show them that you bring them some added value, i.e. something that you excel at that will add additional money to their bottom line.  Likewise, as recruiting and training new people causes employers to incur additional expenses, they're not likely to pay you much below what the competition is paying unless they either give you other intangible benefits or there's something about your background that would indicate to them that your productivity might be less than what they'd expect from other employees doing similar tasks.

So, how do you determine what value you bring to an employer and how do you communicate that to an employer when the type of work you're doing doesn't contribute directly to the product or service that the company provides.  It's not like a sales person where their performance can be measured by their sales or a production employee whose production can be measure by the amount they produce.  The only way to really measure it is to try to make a reasonable estimate on what it might cost the employer if there were nobody doing your job.  This is likely to be a guess and it needs to be a reasonable guess.  However, it's important to do it if you want to convince your employer that your compensation is less than it should be.  However, remember that the amount the employer will pay is always going to be less than the value that you provide.  Otherwise, the employer would have no reason to retain you.  The other thing you need to know is what the competition is paying.  If you're being paid more than the market, then don't even bring that up though it's likely that the employer will.  On the other hand, if it's significantly below the market, it's up to you to point that out to the employer.  If they know that you're aware of it, they might increase your compensation because they know that, if you left, they'd probably have to pay someone else at or near the market price and the fact that the competition is paying more means that it would be easy for you and you might be motivated to leave.

If I had to guess, most people don't even begin to do the above type of analysis.  Because of that, and unless they're extremely skilled at negotiation, when it comes to the initial job offer, employers can get away with offering them a lot less than if they had done this analysis.  While the amount that I'm paid is about right compared to what I could get elsewhere, that market price would likely be higher if most people did this type of analysis before interviewing for a job or asking for a raise.  Therefore, it's highly likely that we're all a biit underpaid and we have nobody to blame but ourselves.

I'm in New York.  Try surviving making 16.00/hr here.  Unless your teamed up with a wife, it's not happening.  Sure you'll have pocket money, but if you have to pay rent, light, gas, cable, internet bill, phone bill, plus 4.00 for carfare everyday you can forget about washing your clothes or going out to eat!

 I notice that most here are underemployed at best.  I am guessing that people in full time and good positions don't have the time to post let alone read so the replies will be generally underpaid.  I look back and remember only a very few that were paid well and that was maybe one or two  in a company of hundreds to a couple of thousand. Programmers are the bottom of the pay scale.  Contractors get more but chasing the work tends to balance out.  (a fair amount of down time.)  I wonder where they get the average numbers because the only time I was asked was on the census and frankly, I lied because I was paid so little that year.

One needs to be a bit of a 'jack of all trades' in this business.  If you specialize too much then you will be out of a job when that specialty is replaced by new tech as is often the case.  That happened to me in a way.  Now I learn what I need, when I need to.  I learn new stuff fairly quickly so I can get the job done but when it comes to impressing someone on a resume, forget it.  I look like an idiot on paper or at least like all the others whom haven't a clue.  I gave up after awhile.  It just isn't worth it to kill oneself for a job that a high school kid can replace (and so often does.)   Management, the ones hiring, usually have no clue as to what the person they want should be able to do or to discern which one can.  I have fought with bone headed managers on technical stuff so much I can't related.  Even when the evidence is irrefutable they often 'don't believe' what is before their eyes.  This from someone paid twice what I am because of 'responsibility' and such words.  Info tech is just not a good career path except as a stepping stone to something better.  Get a management degree, classes on looking good, if you want to do well.  Computer science is worthless unless one wants to be a slave.

I actually work with AButtrey here and I must say that we have to be on the bottom of the totem pole.  When you think about the usual day being around 15 hours a day plus the occassional weekend and still making less than the manager of the local Burger King, I would have to say "Under paid" is an "understatement".