Technicians pay

[somabc]

Why are Jobs posted with such inconsistant Salaries? Seen some lately where Pay varies from £12,000 to £26,000 for basically the same Job. I have also noticed that some schools actually offer the cleaners higher pay per hour than the IT technician they are advertising for.

Rant over for the day

Stop complaining about pay! If you do not want to work for £12k then do not do so! Companies that pay peanuts will suffer for it through high turnover and/or poorly trained staff so it should even out.

[localzuk]

Stop complaining about pay! If you do not want to work for £12k then do not do so! Companies that pay peanuts will suffer for it through high turnover and/or poorly trained staff so it should even out.

Huh? You do realise that we are in a recession? And that the number of jobs going is limited? It is inexcusable for schools to try and screw their staff out of pay in the way being described!

[j17sparky]

Well, we're undergoing phase 2 at the moment and all the propaganda we've been given states that people doing the same jobs with the same responsibilities will be paid the same, although we all know that is impossible - no two jobs are ever the same, especially in IT in schools.

My concern is that it's going to be used as a cost cutting exercise.

Everyone has to match their job against a job descriptor provided by the council, and where no job descriptor exists (as is the case for most of the IT roles), then each individual has to fill in a JEQ (job evaluation questionnaire) - all nearly 30 pages of it - so that your pay can be worked out.

Well if we are anything to go by its not good news...


Advice i would give is;
Insist on every role you perfom being noted down on your questionaire. I was foolish enough to trust the HT when he said you dont put things down that arnt part of your main roles. So now im in a possition of being payed for being a toner monkey, but in reality i have implimented and was responsible for every change/stratergy/etc over the past 4 years, from taking us from Server2000 with no automation to a fully automated 2003 system, to publishing a website and maintaining digital signage systems...

The council dont decide what your wages will be, the HT does. You will be told all sorts of lies to the contary but in the end it comes down to this. If the HT wants to pay you what you are worth he can. If you dont fit nicely into an appropriate scale all he need do is "invent" a role and title for you, with responsibilities which pays that scale.

If you are a volentary aided school you may get in a funny situation where you are told you work for the school when it suits them best, but at other times be told you work for the council when it suits them better that way... I dont know the correct answer to that but i do know it can be used as a great way to screw you over so watch out.

[maniac]

One reason I came to work in an Academy, they offer a higher salery than doing the equivalent job working for a KCC school and have much more freedom to move on that. Their pay scales also differ to that of the county and are generally higher.

Mike

[somabc]

Huh? You do realise that we are in a recession? And that the number of jobs going is limited? It is inexcusable for schools to try and screw their staff out of pay in the way being described!

What do you suggest then? Strike? The school has a statutory duty to minimise its costs, this includes staffing. The no of jobs is always limited. If there were unlimited jobs your pay would be zero. Now in a market where there are jobs at £12k and jobs at £30k this strikes me as a great opportunity to increase your salary! Either you move jobs to one that is well paid or you use that as a bargaining chip to get a payrise. Would you rather have national payscales eg. Tech £18k, NM £24k and you could never ever earn more than that?

[mossj]

No, here in Warwickshire it's across the whole county so all the techs, all the senior techs, nm's, etc should get the same pay as each other. It's laughable really.

Out of interest whats your techy on? I'm in warwickshire and I think it works out at about 14.5K pro rata. I've also never heard about any standardisation/questionaires about pay...

Have been thinking about applying for a regrade of my role.... As they've given me a specialist title in some official documents yet my contract has me down as a tonermonkey.

[cookie_monster]

@ somabc - Using the recession excuse to try to cut staff salaries is universally seen as very poor practice, you can cut staff numbers to save money but to start trying to tell your staff you think they're suddenly not worth the money you pay them is poor.

[teejay]

There will still be varying rates of pay for ICT Technicians and Network Managers throughout a county and even within a school, as after review there are still different job descriptions depending on the responsibilities and size of school.

Schools have a responsibility for 'best value', which does not always mean employing the cheapest person they can get. A balance has to be met between the cost of employment and the ability to do the job, but unfortunately a lot of schools/LEA's are taking the view that in the current market they can get away with paying the lowest rate due to the current demand for IT jobs. You also have the medium term prospect of the current economic situation causing school/LEA budgets to be cut, which I'm sure most HT's are taking account of now.

[Corky]

Stop complaining about pay! If you do not want to work for £12k then do not do so! Companies that pay peanuts will suffer for it through high turnover and/or poorly trained staff so it should even out.

I'm not Complaining, I wouldnt work for £12,000 in IT......

[somabc]

@ somabc - Using the recession excuse to try to cut staff salaries is universally seen as very poor practice, you can cut staff numbers to save money but to start trying to tell your staff you think they're suddenly not worth the money you pay them is poor.

I never said that the recession should be used as an excuse to cut salaries, only that the government has a duty to minimise its costs to taxpayers.

I saw a good comment about working in IT here

Getting a "job", in general, means trading time for money. But it's not a lot of money; you are working to make someone else rich. For every dollar that person gives you, they lose a dollar.

So Adam Smith's invisible hand will work to compress wages unless you can do something about it.

Programmers have "done something about it", in general, by generally requiring some sort of 4-year degree to get into the business. Doctors and Lawyers, by requiring a very expensive grad degree, internship, and board exam, have done the most about it. So those fields have barriers to entry and tend to pay better - aside from the assistant prosecutor in a small county seat; but then the programming gigs there aren't great either.

So you aren't going to get rich as a programmer. In fact, if you want to be paid well, you'll move to NYC or Chicago or Palo Alto, but cost of living will getcha and you still won't get rich.

The closest thing to rich as a programmer is contracting, which involves more personal /risk/, or starting your own business.

Of course, the basic "day job" tradeoff is very little risk in trade of a stipend to live on.

Also, since there just aren't that many decisions to be made in a business, the senior management will want to make them all, so the do-er is stuck following orders.

People who are sad about the job they have aren't consciously aware of the tradeoffs they've made -

A) They didn't want risk, so they didn't start a business
B) On some level, they might have realized that management involves dealing with conflict and mis-aligned incentives (rewarded for doing things that are bad for the company, or, perhaps, immoral) - so they didn't go into management
C) So they stated technical, the path of least resistance,
D) And got a job in IT, (often) the uber-path of of least resistance,
E) And they've put no effort into getting a better gig

Now, if your wife is a stay-at-home mom and you want to work 9-to-5, be done when you get home, and not have to worry about who to lay off, maybe you can and should consciously choose to be a do-er in an IT shop.

It's when you don't consciously choose that you feel like a victim and don't know why, ya know what I mean?

[cookie_monster]

I never said that the recession should be used as an excuse to cut salaries, only that the government has a duty to minimise its costs to taxpayers.

Which they fail to do by employing underqualified people who throw money away, better to hire the right person and do the job right the first time. Typical government thinking. 12k might be ok for the most basic of desktop tecs but any higher roll should be much more, at the very least on a par with an NQT.

[Jiser]

Spoke to an old friend a TESCO trolly pusher other day who is on same sort of wage as me. As others have said though if you don't like the pay why apply and then moan about it.

In my honest opinion though all but trainee techs should be on the same as an NQT at least more so if they have a degree/experiance/professional certification. Specially when IMO techs are far more capable than the teachers actually teaching the subject!!! Also alot of the techs are key to the efficient/effective running of the school, allthough in current climate I imagine easy to replace.

I think 18 - 24 k is reasonable for techs. Managers being on between 25 - 35k depending on responsibilities and years worked. Can't moan though with a final salary pension as well to boot.

[localzuk]

Can't moan though with a final salary pension as well to boot.

Well, if the final salary is pathetic, you could still moan...

[Jiser]

Well, if the final salary is pathetic, you could still moan...

Yes true!!

[Corky]

Spoke to an old friend a TESCO trolly pusher other day who is on same sort of wage as me. As others have said though if you don't like the pay why apply and then moan about it.

Not moaning about it as I have no intention of applying. I am happy where I am. I just find it unbelievable that such varying wages exist. I spent over 17 years in commercial IT where such inconstancies did'nt occur...or at least they didn’t in SAP.