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> From Tony Markos:
> Contractors make the bigger buck? Recent headline story for
> Cleveland Plain Dealer: NASA Glen to axe 500 jobs -
> averaging $75 K for Federal employees and $40 K for contractors.
>
> Also, research the on-line "Contractors Handbook".
> That site does a detailed $ comparision of contractor vs
> employee. Bottom line: It is very hard - almost impossible
> - for a contract worker to come anywhere near the
> compensation of an employee.
Sorry, I am not buying into this. Just do the math.
Most contractors I've talked to made/make between $40 and $75 per hour.
At $75 per hour, times 40 hours times 50 weeks, that's $150K (even at
$40/hr, $83K is _somewhere_ near tech writer salaries, wouldn't you
agree?). And they had more work than they could handle so they could
work 50 or 60 hours per week if they wanted.
Yes, it would be hard if not impossible to keep up that pace of 50
weeks/year, but on a GROSS income basis, I think that contractors make
more than salaried employees.
Aside: I worked for a large corporation in the 90's that used to send
out annual brochures explaining to salaried employees what we REALLY
made. It factored in the cost of health care, life insurance, gym
reimbursements, base salary, social security, and all those intangibles.
It was a little cheesey, but it drove the point home that the company
was spending quite a bit more than what we took home just to keep us on.
'Course, most of us jumped for dot-coms anyway.
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