[thelist] Financial Situation

Ken Schaefer Ken at adOpenStatic.com
Mon Dec 15 04:39:58 CST 2008


I'm not suggesting changing careers. I'm talking about offering skills/services that are worth what you want to charge, and that the market will pay.

No one can make $44/hour coding simple HTML anymore. Or writing simple web applications. Or anything that was worth $44/hour 10 years ago. Common work is becoming industrialised and commoditised. To keep earning what you want, you need to acquire new skills and apply learned experience. For some that will mean moving into business with others - to offer more complete solutions since a "jack of all trades" is pretty much a master of none now. And they aren't really worth much. 

Cheers
Ken

-----Original Message-----
From: thelist-bounces at lists.evolt.org [mailto:thelist-bounces at lists.evolt.org] On Behalf Of Erika
Sent: Monday, 15 December 2008 4:48 PM
To: thelist at lists.evolt.org
Subject: Re: [thelist] Financial Situation

Ken Schaefer wrote:
>you might want to produce something that people value at $44/hour. 

There is, btw, a lot of wiggle room between $11/hr (not really a living 
wage in my town, if you have a family to support) and $44/hr (more than 
enough, unless you have a lot of debt).

Other factors, like, can you keep a roof over your head, can you put 
food on the table, can you pay your medical bills, strongly influence 
ability to ride out a recession.

It's not easy to change careers, or necessarily well-advised.  I have a 
  friend who was laid off from a high-paying job in the dot com crash. 
She went back to school (acquiring debt) to gain skills in a new "more 
valued" field... only to find that in *this* recession, her *new* field 
is getting hit first.

I say, do what you love to do and put money second.

Erika
 



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