Monday, March 17, 2014
A Fair and Personal Assesment
I'm a dementia care coordinator and rec director at a long-term nursing facility. It's an OK job and I make a fairly good living. But even where I work, the OTs and PTs make twice as much, the director of nursing and nurse practitioner make three times as much, the administrator makes four times as much, and the psychiatrist makes five times as much. It's a little something called, REAL LIFE, people...............................................................................Now, is it necessarily fair, this whole pecking order? I don't know! I mean, yeah, on the one hand, I do a lot of the same things that the therapists do AND I do them with groups of people while they tend to do them one on one. But, on the other hand, I also realize that this is a) a supply and demand thing, b) a specialization and licensing thing, and c) a billing/funding thing (they get to bill Medicare and I don't) and that there really isn't all that much as I as an individual can do about it (especially this close to retirement). And, like I alluded to before, this whole philosophizing via envy, second thoughts, etc. really doesn't get you all that far and, even if it did, you still gotta live with damned yourself, for Christ.
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3 comments:
IMO, most places have their compensation structure; many have little leeway within categories.
I was aware early on in my career that actual people in a job often
over-perform & underperform at the same pay scale. That determines who gets promoted most times. In my career, I was as interested in benefits as much as pay, a concept which seems to be
dwindling because of employer cost. After the kids have grown,
it makes a lot of sense to bulk
up the 401K (my place had matching), and even more important to reduce personal debt, pay off mortgage, cars, etc. I turned down some promotions in light of the 'Peter Principle' and the stress of doing something I didn't like and the best boss I ever had turned me loose to choose my projects,
backed me up and approached the
complexities of corporate life
pragmatically. When he died, I
took his place. Kudos for working
with Alzheimers patients..that has to be wearing, and it certainly is a growing problem.
How long until you retire?
Is there anything at all in this where outside forces are setting wages/values etc arbitrarily without any concern for real value. Or is this really pretty much a sharp difference that has arrived from the free market of labor?
One of the idiosyncracies in academic hiring, is the ability
to bring funding with you:
"Institute offers its research scientists complete access to state of the art equipment that includes a FACS cell sorter, confocal microscopy, flow cytometry, protein crystallography robotics and defraction system, nano-HPLC-AB SCIEX triple TOF 5600 mass spectrometry, and a Blue Gene/L and 3 racks of Linux GPU supercomputers for computational biology. In conjunction with the building expansion will be the addition of three (3) new faculty positions. We are seeking applications for faculty appointments at the levels of Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, Professor, and/or Endowed Professor.
Qualifications: Candidates must demonstrate the ability to establish an independent, extramurally funded program of cancer-related research that will complement ongoing programs. Preference will be given to applicants with a strong background in areas to include molecular/cell biology, protein crystallography, biological computation/informatics, stem cell, or cancer biology and a successful research record in one of the following areas: signal transduction, gene expression, functional genomics, molecular carcinogenesis, chemoprevention or other areas of cancer research. A Ph.D. (or equivalent) degree and 2 to 3 years of postdoctoral experience are required for Assistant Professor, and external funding is preferred. The ability to acquire extramural funding is required for Associate Professor and/or Professor appointments. For endowed professorships, the applicant should be an internationally renowned researcher with substantial external funding."
These folks would probably make
40-75K a year and bring in several
times that in grant money. They are considerably more educated than a physician, and one ponders that they make less than 50% than a family physician. So, we conclude these types do it because they love it and gain
great satisfaction, recognition by their peers and a reasonable
living. Makes you wonder about
setting wages and salaries: perhaps respecting and supporting
a person in their job is as important as money? Many studies suggest just that, and some consultants advise such as well.
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