Am I Being Underpaid? :O

[ReturningRyoga]

Hiyo, this is RR here! Well, my first few months working on the grad school website have been.... interesting to say the least! My work has come along really nicely, all my work orders have been filled out to a T... Earl Gray perhaps? :D I haven't been able to upgrade the site as much as I'd hoped, unfortunately I need to keep the code Dreamweaver friendly for my coworkers :P. But that's okay, because I'm learning a lot anyways! :cool:

I was just wondering, though... For all the work that I do, am I being underpaid? I make about [rate removed - Stephen Philbin] an hour. Although my title is "graduate assistant" I don't assist anyone, I work on my own, and most of that consists primarily of being a content manager. I get asked to do development for the site as well (modifying navigation menu systems, database structures, visual appearance, etc.). I thought my pay was okay at first, but my father told me the other day that there are non-technical occupations that earn far more money, and I felt stumped. I've been doing research on this, but the answers seem conflicting. Is this what I can expect if I decide to become a web developer? :confused: I was real excited at first, but I'm feeling a little iffy on it now...Bwah! Maybe I just don't have the right skills at the right position. What do you all think? How do you make a living from this work? Ha ha ha, hopefully I'll incite some insight! Ha ha, puntastic! :D

[Jeff Mott]

Most people would like to think the pay they get will be directly related to the number of years they spend in school, but it's not. It's at the mercy of capitalism. If there is a large supply (lots of Web developers), then your pay will suck.

Of course, Web development also has another severe flaw: Bad developers can't recognize bad work. If employers considered hiring only good developers, then the supply to choose from would be much smaller. But most employers can't tell the difference; they think every developer is just as good as the next. It may not matter if you are one of the few who is good at what you do.

So now you have two choices: You can do what you love to do because you love doing it, regardless of the pay, or you can start doing something new that pays lots of money.

If you're looking for something new and lucrative, I'd recommend SAP R/3. It's the largest business application in the world, and it's used by at least all the fortune 100 companies. But most importantly, very few in the general public have heard about it. The supply of good SAP people is low, and demand is therefore incredibly high. Salaries generally range from 75k to over 100k.

(Note: If you do decide to learn something new, I recommend the public library method over grad school. You will learn twice as much in half the time, and you will pay far less to do it.)



edit by peofeo: Sorry, hit edit instead of quote, content not changed.

[Stephen Philbin]

Please be careful to avoid quoting specific rates and prices. See my signature for details.

[NogDog]

As a graduate assistant, are you also getting some or all of your tuition paid? If so, you need to factor that into defining how much you are getting "paid".

[PeOfEo]

<snip>
If you're looking for something new and lucrative, I'd recommend SAP R/3. It's the largest business application in the world, and it's used by at least all the fortune 100 companies. But most importantly, very few in the general public have heard about it. The supply of good SAP people is low, and demand is therefore incredibly high. Salaries generally range from 75k to over 100k.
</snip>
Tellin' them you are good with Vi is ususally enough :p