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Jane Carnall wrote:
>When I get a contract (or a permanent job) through
>an agency, I talk money with the *agency*, not with
>my future employer: what the company's willing to
>pay, what my acceptable salary range is, what the
>current acceptable salary range for technical
>writers in this area of the company is. The agency
>gets paid at a rate based on what I'm getting,
>but it doesn't come out of what I'm getting.
I talk money with the agency too, actually. I should have been clearer in
my comment about an agency taking a large cut--my assumption, possibly
incorrect, is that the agency in question is charging the client $X/hour
(whatever the market will bear) and paying the contractor $Y/hour (as
little as possible) without the client knowing what Y is, and without the
contractor knowing what X is. The way Jane describes it, the agency would
actually tell the client that the price is $y/hour plus z%.
I hope US agencies work that way; do they? I guess since the rates charged
to the client are shrouded in mystery (in my experience), I've assumed that
the client companies are equally in-the-dark about the rates paid to
contractors. I've signed contracts where I was expressly forbidden from
talking rates with anybody at the client company.
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