All I can say is: I have been in the TV industry 24 years in one way shape form or fasion. From CATV installs, splicing, underground construction, sales (inhouse @Cox) MDU, C-band, VSAT DBS, Res and Com, and On and On! After the hurricanes here in Florida I found myself between businesses and not sure what i was going to do with my self! Local CATV contractor was looking for "Techs" Went down and talked with them and come to find out it was a company I use to be a manager for years before. At first I don;t think the current superviser wanted to hire me because I felt he was in fear of his job. because I knew the owner of the company, trained the owners son years ago who was now in charge of the company's day to day operations at the home office. But I told him I was not interested and was only interested in making some $$$, getting some exersice and get my mind right! So with a little sales on my part I left there back in the CATV biz as an installer (Which I have always loved doing) Off to the house to build a cable spooling ladder rack, file the rust off the hooks, make a lay-up stick and some other time saving tools. I spend 1 day in the office taking sexual harrassment and defencive driving tests. Then 1 day in the field training basicly learning the "specs". I was sent out with their "Super Installer" It did not take long to figure out I knew WAY more then this guy and his work quility was sub-standard, But, this was their most exp'ed tech, been doing it a whole year, made Pizza's before that! Day 3 I find myself with a lite route, which was fine because I had to get myself back up to speed. After a few days I was up to a full route (in this systems was anywhere from 15-35 stops, reco's, disco's, HSD, digi ups, etc.) After about a week my superviser comes to me and starts asking me questions about what i do in the field i.e. running wires, hanging drops, neatness of my work, I tell him and then ask why, The Cox inhouse QC guy had come to him to make a big point that all the work should look like mine and I could work in his system anytime. I have always felt it does not take anymore time to make it look pretty then it does to just slap it up there! So feeling good knowing I still got it, I start figuring out how much I am making! That is where it really gets depressing, after expenses it was working out $7~8 and hour for 12 hour days, over 100 miles a day! I thought this can not be right, so gave it somemore time and started tracking every job, some jobs you can make good money on, but then that average goes to **** when it takes a hour to drive to a $2 disconnect! or spending an hour trying getting a digi converter to auth, or doing a connect on an addressable tap, the tagging, traps, jumpers take 8 minutes and pays only $6, but, takes an hour to get the tap to hit, or it never does and you still have to jumper it off of another port! Then to top it off once they figured out I really knew what I was doing and hate to use this phrase could "Git-R-Done" I started getting the jobs everyone was blowing off and billing trip charges for. Every day I could count on 1-4 jobs that I was the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and in some case 5th Tech there to solve a customers problem (nice way to treat customers) and in every case the previous tech did not want to do their job, did not know how to do their job or did not want to do there job because it did not pay enough! i.e. tech blew job off and said was ingress, did not have time to do, 2nd tech would go out and say wallfish, did not have time, then I would go out, fix problem because I looked for the Radio Shack 400mhz 8 way splitter the was at the attic hatch way, replace it with the two way they needed, and WOW, no ingress, plenty of signal, happy customer! Makes me feel good, customer feels good because their HSD or Digital porn works, but when I figure out how much I made on this job, it gets depressing. 20 minutes driving to the job, 20 minutes listening to the customer about the 3 previous techs and trying to find out WHAT THEIR problem is because we all know sometimes custs have a hard time sticking to the facts of what you need to know, 5-10 minutes taking Tap, GB and inside signal,10 miutes back to truck to get ladder to go in attic finding hidden spliter, replacing f-connector and splitter, 5 minutes taking reading at TV hooking all back up making it do D2 (God forbid if you need a rehit), 10 minutes getting paper work signed answering cust questions trying to get the hell out the door and them to shut up! I now have an hour into this job to get to the fun part billing,, I could lie and call the job a wallfish and make $12 whole dollars, Nextel to the stubitviser and see if I can get a tech call for the job pays $10 or bill it as add AO it pays $8. This is juut one situation that came to mind, countless others. But it boils down to this! Cox and this contractor CCE will never keep any tech that are with a **** because of the pay. may be the pizza boys are happy bring home $500 a week, and the Systems and contractors get what they pay for, because it is cheaper for them to send someone to a customers house 4 times then it is to pay better techs more money, because maybe one of the four tech know a little about db loss and can figure out the wire in the house is NOT bad and that it really is there is only -5 db at the tap feeding an 8 way splitter in the attic! Needless to say I made it about 2 months back in the CATV industry, it is pretty sad when a good CATV tech can make more money working at a conveniance store where the only skill he really needs is how to count $$ and run the lotto machine. Not to bring up the good ol'e days, but the rate of pay for CATV work looks about the same as it was 20 years ago, but, now you are dealing with SOOOOO MUCH MORE! Hummm Rates keep going up, gas, keeps going up, cable profits keep going up, but the poor sucker who brings it from the tap to the TV pay check is staying the same for doing more work!
Thought this was the New Friendly Cable TV Hummm,, All I can say it they better watch out!! DSL is getting faster and cheaper, Satellite has locals and no equipment to buy deals. Why be Wired!!!
Good Luck to all you who have been in the biz for a long time and to the Cable Puppys, I hand you my SLM (Signal Level Meter for the puppys), I don;t need it anymore, it only goes to a gig and satellite starts there!
ok, some of you managers out there keep telling us that the only reason we
installers aren't making enough money is because:
We haven't been doing
it long enough, we don't know the "tricks"
We don't work hard enough.
We
don't work smart enough.
We don't get higher prices because our work
sucks.
We don't get there early enough.
We don't work late enough.
We
don't work enough days.
We just plain suck.
Then you tell us if we
complain, You'll get someone else. (that's a lie cause let's face it: if you
could hire him you'd already have done it.)
Even if the new tech sucks
worse than we did, the meathead will still clear the work order and so we get
paid so you still sucks hahaha we did it without you. Looking for work? We need
techs....
So what's it take to "make it"?
Well, except for the
Bush administration, the rest of the American workforce has accepted 40 hours as
the standard work week.
In this little kernel is the golden reason why
installation is built (at least in my area) around piecework.
get to the
shop at 6 am
Done your last job at 4-6 pm.
work six days. That totals
60-72 hours for a six day week.
I have worked some weeks well into 100
hours. Try it- you will halucinate.
Ok, so take out all of those things
that management says you have no right to do on "company" time.
lunch,
breaks, waiting for work, driving to the next job, customer no-shows, wrong
address, salesperson screwups, and bathroom breaks.
Subtract 10 hours a
week for time not spent working? thats a lot of pissing. But we all eat to and
from the next job. And I can tie my shoes while waiting at the doorbell. so I'll
give you a few hours of goofing off a week.
so a good week is 60 hours,
a bad week is 70.
$1000 check
-$60 for gas (mine's closer to $100)
-$57
for insurance required by comcast
-$50 for WHITE truck payment (fair
deprieciation of 30-50k miles)
-$20 for tools and equipment not
reibursed.
-7% fica tax (a real job pays this for you)
=$743 dollars
before taxes.
So if you tell me if I bust my ass for 1000 bucks, you've
really only paid me (the contractor) $743. So if you figure that to an hourly
wage it comes to:
60 hr week is $9.28 an hour. For a tech with 14yrs
experience
70 hr week is $7.43 an hour. for a tech with 14yrs
experience
Even if there's an installer out there ( I haven't met him,
and I I do get there at 6 am), $1600 a week that's still 13-16 an hour. That's a
mid to entry level tech in any other trade.
