Re: Ada Skill Assessments

[Joe Wisniewski <wisniew@acm.org>]

In article <7lgh40$n8l$1@nnrp1.deja.com>,
  Ted Dennison <dennison@telepath.com> wrote:
> In article <7lgdbn$lnn$1@nnrp1.deja.com>,
>   Joe Wisniewski <wisniew@acm.org> wrote:
> >    I see a lot of frustration among the higher talented Ada people
out
> >    there that the spread of salary/rates is NOT commensurate with
the
> >    "spread" of capabilities.
>
> I agree about that part personally. But from my experience as
> an interviewee there are 2 main reasons for that attitude on the part
of
> employers:
>
>   1)  Unless they know you already, they have no good way of
> really figuring out how good (or bad) you are just from an interview.
> They tend to just rely on their impression of your personality during
> the interview. If you don't interview well, your offer will suffer.
> Charasimatic boat-anchors who do interview well often get great
offers.
>
> That is something your proposal could go some of the way toward
fixing.
>
>   2)  Companies have a fixed salary structure that they must squeeze
you
> into. This structure is typically based on years of experience, not
> "quality of skills". If you try to ask for more than they typically
give
> an engineer with your years of experience, they act like you'll start
an
> insurrection.
>
> I don't see how you can do anything about that.
>
> The only real solution I see to this for a truly frustrated engineer
is
> to go into the contracting market, where hourly rates supposedly do
tend
> to be  based on the quality of the work you can perform.
>

   Risking taking this discussion down a non-Ada path:

   Assuming
   we are talking about "contracting" instead of "consulting", it
   seems more and more clients pay at a fixed rate for ALL bodies
   that a shop places. Even the lesser-skilled individuals are in
   a position to demand and their rates are pushed higher, faster.

   But even in the cases where clients discriminate, they are not
   discriminating that much.

   I've been in situation(s) recently where contractors have gotten
   tired of surfing the web, while I'm doing a 20K line port in a
   month with OT. Difference in rate: $8-$10 hour.

   I am seeing very few clients with "rate sheets" with 5-7
   classifications of staff as in days gone past.

Joe

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> T.E.D.
>
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