The Ten Most Overpaid Jobs In The U.S. 1130
misbach writes "Here is what the 'compensation experts' have to say are the
ten most
overpaid jobs [original article at CBS MarketWatch]. 'Almost no one in America would admit to being
overpaid, but many of us take home bloated paychecks far beyond what's deserved.
'Fair compensation' is a relative term, yet human-resource consultants and
executive headhunters agree some jobs command excessive compensation that can't
be explained by labor supply-and-demand imbalances.'"
I don;t know about 9 (Score:3, Insightful)
I have to think about 9) Pilots for major airlines. If the plane hits inclement weather or other serious issues arise do you really care if the people behind the cockpit doors are making ~250K a year?
Oh and 2) Washed-up pro athletes in long-term contracts? Crap. All major sports athletes are overpaid primadonnas. Paying them millions because they can throw a ball only fuels consumerism. "Did you watch the game on Sunday? Wow!" mindless sheep..
I think at least part of the problem (Score:3, Insightful)
Is this because the pilots for the major airlines are better? Is it because the lives they protect are worth more? No. It's because they have a better union.
Re:I don;t know about 9 (Score:5, Insightful)
The company that owns the team makes money from that, and the athlete gets a percentage.
pretty simple actually.
Re:I don;t know about 9 (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I don;t know about 9 (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I don;t know about 9 (Score:3, Funny)
However, since this is a Canadian measure Elk should refer to the deer and not the moose.
On another note, for the purposes of accident insu
Re:I don;t know about 9 (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I don;t know about 9 (Score:5, Funny)
Zero. Elks are opaque.
Re:I don;t know about 9 (Score:5, Insightful)
It has NOTHING to do with an athletes ability to throw a ball, it has EVERYTHING to do with how good the fans think he is, therefore how much money they will spend on the team.
Its nothing but business. You can complain all day long how fat and old XXX basketplayer is, But if he fills seats and turns on TV's, then thats all that matters.
Re:I don;t know about 9 (Score:5, Insightful)
That's the big myth behind the "overpaid washed up athletes" claim. There are not plenty of guys who could score 6 points and three rebounds against NBA players. The European leagues are full of very good former college stars who couldn't do it.
Out of almost 300 Million Americans, only a couple hundred are good enough to be benchwarmers in the NBA. Fewer than ever these days, because there are so many good players from the rest of the world now entering the league. You could easilly take the worst team in the NBA (the Clippers at the moment, I suspect) and mop up the floor with any college team in the US, or have a winning record against the pros in the Italian League. They may seem to suck in contrast to the Tim Duncans and Kevin Garnetts, but don't let that fool you into thinking they are anything less than elite athletes.
Re:I don;t know about 9 (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I don;t know about 9 (Score:4, Insightful)
Because many members of society place a positive value watching him throw objects, as indicated by their willingness to pay to do so. Perhaps you don't agree with their preferences, but that doesn't mean they're not valid.
Re:I don;t know about 9 (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, this is driven by advertising.
Sports bring in viewers. Star athletes sell stuff people. Advertising corrupts anything it touches. (Just look at professional baseball or pop music for prime examples.)
Re:I don;t know about 9 (Score:5, Insightful)
I was under the impression that I enjoyed watching sports purely as a form of entertainment (and that entertainment includes discussing sports with friends). Now, through the insight of your post, I realize that I have simply been following the herd. I shall hereby resign my fan status, and retire to Slashdot, where I will post only things that will be accepted as mainstream geek.
Whew, I almost fell in with those sports fan sheep who always say things because they think that's what others want to hear. Good thing I'm away from that and safe here on Slashdot.
Re:I don;t know about 9 (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm wondering how artists can manage to make so much money and at the same time taxpayers of major cities are more than eager to fork over their own money as well as their neighbors to have an art gallery built for art that quite blunty sucks, and then still have no problem paying $10 for a post card in the gift shop once it opens.
Some athletes get millions of dollars. Some artists get millions of dollars. Probably similar percentages too. Sports stadiums, however, brin
Re:I don;t know about 9 (Score:5, Insightful)
Last thing I want is a depressed pilot worrying about bills when the left engine fails. Last thing I want to enter his mind is "fuck it" when that happens.
Re:I don;t know about 9 (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I don;t know about 9 (Score:4, Insightful)
Plus of course there are a hell of a lot more mechanics for each plane then pilots. So it would be like pay several million more on maintenance or just a million more on pilots. Simple choice really.
Re:I don;t know about 9 (Score:5, Funny)
And pretty soon, with a few more advances in AI, we'll also have computers with the attitude of "oh, fuck it" when the left engine fails.
Re:I don;t know about 9 (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I don;t know about 9 (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, there is additional training required to go from flying an F-14 to a 747, but some of these pilots have been flying modified 737's (Air Force) all their careers anyway. And it's not like becoming a doctor-which IS a much bigger investment in time and money tha
Re:I don;t know about 9 (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I don;t know about 9 (Score:4, Interesting)
That may be the case, but from what I understand it's rather difficult to become a pilot in the military. For one thing, your uncorrected vision has to be 20/20 or better, which eliminates a whole bunch of people. By the way, as I understand it, "uncorrected" means just that: no corrective surgery, no glasses, no contacts.
If you want to become a pilot through civilian channels, you do indeed have to make large sacrifices. The training is quite expensive and quite extensive. You have to train for your private pilot's license, your commercial license, your twin engine rating, your flight instructor's license, and then you have to work as an instructor to build enough flight time (at least a thousand hours or so) before anyone (even cargo haulers) will consider you. And when you are finally hired, you won't be hired by the majors -- you'll be hired by the regionals at best. And those guys start off at about $30K per year. Captains in the regionals make around $70K per year. That's for putting in 12-16 hour days, with a "home base" that may change on a yearly basis and which may be quite far from home.
It's ironic, really, because the kind of flying the regional guys do is harder than the flying done by the majors. The regionals typically operate turboprop equipment that flies in the 15,000 to 25,000 foot altitude range, where weather is much more of a factor than the 30,000 to 40,000 foot range the majors fly in. The regionals tend to fly into smaller airports that have fewer or older navigational aids and which also tend to be in areas of more dangerous terrain. And their equipment isn't as good as the equipment the majors fly, so icing (for example) is more of a problem.
If it were up to me, the guys in the regional airlines would be making more than the guys in the majors, simply because their job is harder.
Re:I don;t know about 9 (Score:3, Interesting)
I, for one, would MUCH rather have it go to the players, the gu
Re:I don;t know about 9 (Score:4, Insightful)
Great Idea! Only, we're not communist (Score:4, Informative)
Just because you don't see the value of entertainment sports provide doesn't mean the rest of us should be punished by having less motivated less qualified athletes.
Re:I don;t know about 9 (Score:3, Insightful)
#2: There is a shortage of teachers AND cops. The reason pro athletes can get cut is that they and their jobs are entirely superfluous to begin with. Firing a teacher, even one who appears incompetent, has a real effect (as ooposed to just causing 40-year-old babies watching TV to cry in their pretz
Re:I don;t know about 9 (Score:3, Insightful)
That's fine, but how much is it worth to you? What would you say the average ticket costs?
he feats of athleticism and dedication required to play at the level of NFL players is just amazing.
You'd get more enjoyment out of going outside and doing it yourself, trust me on this one.
So, I'm willing to pay money to watch their games. I'm willing to sit through commercials, and the advertising are more than willing to pay to for my at
Wow (Score:4, Insightful)
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. I know you "mean well" and all with your utopian plans of providing for the homeless and eduction but unfortunately due to the fact that we're HUMANS that means we need to arrainge our economies in a capitalist fashion.
We could try socialism but obvious examples have already demonstrated the sheer humanitarian horror that that produced.
And where do you get off telling someone that going outside and pretending to be as good at sports as a pro is would be enjoyable? Why put your body at risk of injury when you can watch others play a game better than you'd ever be able to? Don't you think thats a bit condescending?
Re:I don;t know about 9 (Score:5, Insightful)
What staggered me about the list was that CEO's as a body weren't included. Yes, the CEO's of underperforming companies are horribly overpaid, but you can't tell me that Michael Eisner actually did work equal in value to $700 *million*. Honestly, I rather doubt that its possible for anyone to do work worth 700 million... Eisner is on the high side, but all corporate executives tend to earn well beyond what they are worth.
You want to know why were in a recession? Its simple, really. The people earning that money don't spend it. Not because they're malicious, but because you *can't* spend $700M, not unless you're buying solid gold toilets every day, or something equally silly. Since the money doesn't get spent, it simply vanishes from the economy. The truth is that trickle down would work, if the upper 1% spent all (or even most) of their money. Since they can't, trickle down is doomed to fail, as is the economy unless money starts flowing *out* of Eisner et al, and into the general economy...
Re:I don;t know about 9 (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I don;t know about 9 (Score:4, Interesting)
Sure, but having a supply of capital for investments makes sense only if the investments that it can be used for make sense, and the investments make sense only if at the end of the chain, there are enough people who will actually consume the produced goods.
A healthy economy needs consumers just as much as it needs investors.
Re:I don;t know about 9 (Score:3, Insightful)
Saving can be as effective multiplier as spending it. If they invest in a company, then that company has the money to acquire capital (new machines, new computers) which creates manufacturing jobs, as well as creating jobs from the increased efficency.
If they put it in the bank, the bank now has the additional money to loan to consumers, reducing interest rates.
Now, it can be argued that trickle down doesn't work, but
trickle-down vs. flow-out (Score:5, Interesting)
This is why estate taxes originally came about. The government was extremely worried that a de-facto aristocracy would form out of the money that Industrialists were accumulating. So in order to prevent assets from endlessly collecting interest, they decreed that a large percentage of an individual's wealth would return to society upon death. This would also ensure that, at some point, SOMEone would have to work to bring more money in. Not exactly what one would call a fair system, but since Rockefellers and Kennedys do not own GE and Microsoft today, I would have to call it a partial success.
Now just recently estate taxes were repealed by the fiscal conservatives. Will this finally tip the scale to the point where wealth can endlessly create more wealth, so meritous, hard-working individuals like Ally Hilfiger [realitytvworld.com] can entertain us with their priviledge? Our children will find out!
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Re:I don;t know about 9 (Score:3, Insightful)
I won't argue that some pro athletes in the top sports are overpaid, so lets not get into that discussion, but...
You're calling me a mindless sheep, mearly because I enjoy sports, and dare to discuss a good game with a friend? Who's the primadonna now? Involvement in sport is a fantastic way to improve your overall physical and mental health, and build valuable social skills. Having athletes to mentor, whether it's a pro or the kid up the street,
Re:I don;t know about 9 (Score:5, Insightful)
Too bad the 250K a year is a myth, only the most senior pilots at the major airlines make that much money. The average co-pilot for the majors makes about $30k, while an average line pilot makes $45-55K.
The commuters such as ASA, and Comair start their co-pilots at $18.5K, and their average pilost make about $30-40K, with the most senior making close the 6 figure.
Note that this is after a pilot invests nearly $50K geting a Bachlors degree, and another $50-60K in flight training. Also the pilots generally spend 2-3 years making just better than McJob wages, doing flight training themselves or other jobs.
Corporate pilots don't get as high pay wise, but they can move up more quickily to their highest pay scale if they are good.
Pilot belongs with other *under*paid positions (Score:5, Informative)
Somewhere there ought to be a comparable list: jobs you assume are worked by well-heeled professionals, but that are actually basically full of blue collar people who're doing it for other reasons. Pilots are there because they like the work. It sure as heck isn't the money. Paramedics -- you think they're in it for the money? They get hardly anything for the job they do, those people are in it for something else.
(I'd rather read my imaginary article, frankly. This one's just a bitchy, demeaning piece of pop tabloid crap.)
Re:I don;t know about 9 (Score:3, Interesting)
It's massive multi-billionaires (like pre-AOL Ted Turner, and Rupert Murdoch, and Walmart's Carl Pohlad) setting prices based on what the market can bear. That's 90%+ of what determines ticket price - salary concerns are a red herring.
And most of the owners are making large, large amounts of money - much more than even the highest paid players. The accounting practices are such that
Re:I don;t know about 9 (Score:3, Insightful)
pilots for major airlines (Score:3, Interesting)
Lots of kids come in going for a commerical aviation degree dreaming of making a quarter mil a year. The reality? For the ones lucky enough to get a job out of college it's flying some puddle jumping prop for less than $20,000 a year. The guys making the huge money are flying the big jets, and they only get to do that because they have an insane amount of flight hours. K
Re:I don;t know about 9 (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I don;t know about 9 (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a helluva lot of training and responsibility to running the aircraft, to be there, and do whatever has to be done in the event of ANY malfunction, no matter what. Sure, I can see its all automated. I'll betcha they could take a whole planeload of passengers from one airport to another by remote control without a pilot at all in the plane.
Now, try it if the plane has major malfunctions midflight.. say part of the fuselage gets caught up in the slipstream, the hydraulics jam, some kook gets onboard and causes sabotage. Now, without a knowledgeable individual onboard who knows how to handle any emergency, what's the chance of getting back to earth alive?
On top of that, I consider these guys face a major health problem, by the nature of their job which requires MUCH sitting. Sitting through training. Sitting in the cockpit. All this sitting... guess what happens to the old cardiovascular system? The blood will start pooling in the legs. The heart is not a suction pump. It won't pull the blood up. You HAVE to walk around in order to get the blood back up, by way of contractions of the calf and thigh muscles, to squeeze the blood back up. The eventual end to this is a condition like phlebitis, where blood pools in the legs, forms clots, which eventually break loose, shooting up the leg venuous system, up to the heart, over to the lung, where they become trapped forming a pulmonary embolism. Not a fun thing.
I am not an airline pilot, nor are any of my family or friends... but I did consider it as a possible career option and when I realized I would have to spend a large portion of my live confined to a cubbyhole that would make a restroom stall large by comparison, I reconsidered. I feel these guys earn their pay, not only for their skills, but as compensation for the wear and tear it puts on them.
Re:I don;t know about 9 (Score:5, Interesting)
A friend of mine's Dad is a flight instructor, and tells about how there are a lot of things a pilot had to do to get a license that they don't now. They figured out, that by forcing unexperienced pilots to go into spins kills more people, then the number of people who are on a plane that go into spins.
A modern airplane can be built so it's nearly impossible to stall. So it doesn't have nearly so many of the problems it used to have, and thus pilots really to know as much or be as technically skilled as they used to due to modern Engineering.
All that said, I'm still aware of several scenerios where a pilot saved people by doing something deemed "impossible", by everyone I know who knows anything about planes. I think the FAA has new training due to a plane crash that happened near Siox City, Iowa. A guy was steering a plane using the flaps in a way that wasn't supposed to work. It was supposed to tear the plane apart. However, that was the only control left on the plane that worked. I think 90 people lived (of the 170). I saw film of it, it was terrifing.
Finally, pilots don't get enough time off. They should get paid that much for how much time they spend away from their families, and the hours they put in.
Kirby
Re:I don;t know about 9 (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I don;t know about 9 (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I don;t know about 9 (Score:5, Interesting)
First, the fact that most accidents can be attributed, at least in part, to pilot error is no surprise. The word "most" implies a ratio. As the systems on airplanes become more reliable, and procedures more conservative, that leaves pilots who are getting both better and worse to make up the rest of the percentages.
Pilots are much more educated these days in subjects as diverse as aerodynamics, systems, physiology and crew resource management, etc.
At the same time, some of the skills previously taught are not now mandatory. The spins you mentioned, for instance. It used to be mandatory that you gave students spin training, and that CFIs (Certificated Flight Instructors) had to demonstrate spins to get their licenses. As your buddy's dad noted, however, there were more people being killed by the training than by accidents. I had a student inadvertantly enter a spin during slow flight who froze on the controls for roughly two turns until I was able to get him to let go. So I easily understand the now lesser requirements. Having said that, I and many others still give spin training. Most students stare agog at the rotating earth on their first spin rather than do anything constructive, so I think it's unfair not to get them through that initial "shock and awe" before sending them out into the world where, as shown above, they might enter that situation inadvertantly.
So we're growing them smarter; but at the same time, we may not be arming them with everything we used to. Having said that, spin training isn't necessarily useful to a DC-10 driver.
As for aircraft design... you can build airplanes that are very stable, very smart, very fault tolerant and forgiving, etc.; but every piece of that perfect airplane adds complexity and problems of its own. For instance, the Airbus that crashed at the Paris airshow because the computer entered "land" mode and wouldn't allow the pilot to exceed certain parameters in his go-around attempt. In 1994(?) there was a Fed-Ex DC-10 crew that was attacked by a disgruntled employee who struck all 3 crewmembers with a framing hammer. They disabled him by initially performing a split-S maneuver that no computer would have allowed. The attacker wanted to fly the airplane into the Fed-Ex hub in Memphis and would likely have succeeded if the pilot had been unable to fly the airplane beyond its operational parameters. History has many more such stories of times when doing something the airplane wasn't supposed to do saved the day. You don't want a computer to control everything. There needs to be context for actions; and currently, only humans can really analyze that.
Also plan on getting rid of anything smaller than a passenger jet, if you're going to require the same systems that those high-end airplanes carry. They're simply not feasible in terms of weight and price for smaller airplanes, though that is slowly changing.
In the Sioux City crash, the pilot was using differential thrust from the engines to control the airplane. If you increase thrust on the right wing, it travels a bit faster and produces more lift, which causes it to raise a bit and the airplane to turn. The sweepback angle on the wing enhances this also, as the forward wing (the one on the outside of the turn) is effectively longer than the other wing. (That's a lot easier to illustrate visually.) Anyhow, the Sioux City incident is a perfect example of how necessary the pilots are.
Finally, I know of jobs that pay a lot less and are more demanding on average. For instance, the dishwasher at your local restaurant works a lot harder day in and day out than the airline pilot who flew you to Cleveland last week. The reason we don't pay the dishwasher 100K per year (aside from the now exorbitant $1000 price for chicken-fried steak) is that there won't ever be a dishwashing emergency that will cost the lives of hundreds of people if not dealt with in the next 20 seconds.
Get Real! (Score:5, Insightful)
@subscribers (Score:3, Funny)
Re:@subscribers (Score:5, Funny)
slashdotted (Score:5, Funny)
Re:slashdotted (Score:5, Funny)
What do you mean? (Score:3, Funny)
They missed one. (Score:5, Funny)
Slashdotted already? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Slashdotted already? (Score:5, Funny)
Not me. I'm unemployed.
What about HR people? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What about HR people? - What about them? (Score:4, Insightful)
I think that's the problem with just about all the jobs listed in this article, and all the bitching in these comments on
I'm a wedding photographer (#10 on the list), and a lot of people on
Seems to me people should walk a mile in your shoes before they judge. Might as well ask some programmer, "Well, what does it really cost you to work for your company? I mean, gas mileage to and fro, right? So how can you possibly defend the fact that you charge your employer $50,000 a year for your services?!? It's not like it costs you anything! You're just stealing from your poor employer!"
Oh yeah, there's that whole "sucking away my life" thing.
Another Article @ CBS (Score:4, Informative)
Also, check a search on Google News [google.com]
Public Program Managment. (Score:5, Insightful)
I work for an architecture firm that handles airport noise mitigation projects. and I'ved worked with several municipalities with regards to differnt programs accross the country. The majority of these programs are federally funded. I recently saw a job opening for a program director assistant type position paying over 80k a year. For someone not knowing the real requirments of the Job it may sound intence but the job is so easy and so useless. It blows my mind to see how over paid public servants are in the US it is crazy. Not only that but how many uneccessary jobs are created in adminitrative positions. Another area is State education systems and the amount of money paid to administrative professionals when teachers are in short supply and classrooms are under equipped.
Article Mirrored (Score:5, Funny)
#1 - Professional Athletes
#2 - CEO
#3 - CTO
#4 - CIO
#5 - Chairman of the board
#6 - Generic Executives
#7 - CEO
#8 - CEO
#9 - Guys at think tanks that produce articles like this
#10 - CEO
Talk about the pot and the freakin' kettle (Score:5, Funny)
You gotta be fscking kidding. Did the HR consultants and executive headhunters point out that their own astronomical salaries can't be explained by anyone? Anyone that is, except for other HR consultants and executive headhunters...
Ironic (Score:4, Funny)
Google Cache of the Story (Score:5, Informative)
PO'ed photographers speak out. (Score:3, Insightful)
Quote
End quote
Interesting that he doesn't even consider that SOME (not all) photographers just MIGHT actually be over paid.
pay reflects risk analysis (Score:4, Insightful)
The bit about the wedding photographer sounds like he had some grudge against his (or his daughter's) photographer. Whine whine whine.
If you hire a bargain-basement photographer's assistant, you might get stunning Annie-Liebowicz-level artwork. But the chances are that you'll get fifty images that are ill-timed, ill-posed, ill-conceived, ill-focused or ill-processed. You pay the money to someone who will get the best possible angle on the critical moments that the wedding couple will want to remember for the rest of their lives. Sometimes that requires a nudge to move Aunt Marge out of the way. It's not an occasion you're going to want to repeat if the photographer got it all wrong.
The same goes for an airline pilot... think about all the training you're depending on. Sure, it's "routine" to fly from coast to coast, but emergencies happen and it's the pilot's experience and training that you're paying for. It's a little late to complain that you didn't get your money's worth, once you've landed safe and sound after a boring flight.
Jeez... (Score:5, Insightful)
OK, I get harshing on most of the others, but c'mon, skycaps? Let's smack down a bunch of guys who make $30k a year standing in the exhaust-drenched air at airport dropoff points, dealing with irate travellers, lugging overpacked suitcases around to the cries of 'Be careful with that!'...so they make tips, too--you think the surly, don't-give-a-damn ones are the ones raking in $300/day in tips? Right.
Saying it takes less brains than stuffing fast food in a bag is rather insulting to skycaps, too--does this guy honestly think that a skycap can just kinda traipse around with a cart full of luggage, darned if he cares what happens to it? (This even without taking the crazy new security measures into account--I'm sure that makes their jobs oh-so-easy these days...)
Pro atheletes? Sure. High-end real estate agents? Yep. Skycaps? That's...kinda reaching for a top ten list...
#10 (Score:4, Interesting)
Photographers typically charge $2,000 to $5,000 to shoot a wedding
I went to a wedding over the weekend. The cheapest price they could find for a wedding photographer was $1200 in the Houston area. They didn't want to pay that so they got the UH school paper photographer to come and do it for $200!
Re:#10 (Score:3, Insightful)
and having to shoot ugly people too and try to make them look good
Re:#10 (Score:3, Informative)
Re:#10 (Score:5, Insightful)
You know what though, SHE was the one ruining her business, not the digital camers. You have to adapt with the times, and you have to adapt to the situation, and being a horrid cold bitch is not the way to sell yourself to potential future customers. You can't be complacent, no matter who you are or what job you do, times change.
You want to take good wedding pictures? Hire a local college student who is going to school for Photography. You'll get a great price, great pictures, and the student will get some extra money for beer and some pictures for their art classes. I can tell you my college friends who were photography majors sure would've appreciated the work!!
Bryan
Glaring Omission (Score:3, Funny)
ignore user requests
play games all day
don't 'edit' anything
don't read submissions
don't read their own site
don't properly test proposed site changes
offend and namecall users
No specific sites in mind
(goodbye karma...)
Airline pilots (Score:5, Informative)
The pay is definitely broken, but it isn't really apparent how to fix it. If they were paid on timely arrivals or lack of crashes, then there would be an incentive to buck the system to improve those in dangerous ways. They can hardly be blamed for maintenance, weather, in flight emergencies with passengers or any other "performance related" means. So seniority/length of service it remains.
So why do pilots fight so hard for their pay. Simple. When you have been making $13,000 a year and growing slowly until you eventually hit bigger numbers many decades later, you feel like you have earned it. And all the pilots who have put in a decade at low pay don't want the future rewards they have sacrificed for taken away. You should also be aware that very few pilots earn those big bucks.
Check out the series of articles "Ask the Pilot" on Salon which goes into way more detail. Quite frankly you would be insane to become a pilot for the money.
Malarkey (Score:5, Insightful)
"Overpaid" is an opinion. This article acts as if "overpaid" can be objectively defined. You may not think sports stars are worth it (hey, I sure don't), but apparently everyone else does and is voting with their dollars. If you want these people's salaries to be "corrected," you're going to have to sway public opinion.
Honestly, I'm so tired of reading articles by people who never understood the intersection of a supply curve and a demand curve.
Great reading [gmu.edu] on the subject from Walter Williams [google.com].
I don't think the sports stars should make that much money. Sometimes I even resent them. But for me to decree that they're "overpaid" means I think I have the right to prohibit thousands of people from purchasing sports tickets. I don't have the right to that kind of control over people's lives any more than I have the right to choose their religion.
Re:Malarkey (Score:5, Insightful)
"9) Pilots for major airlines" and "8) West Coast longshoremen" are both claimed to be overpaid because of powerful unions controlling all the labor supply and acting as a monopolist.
"4) Orthodontists" argues that the supply of orthodontists is kept artificially low by "U.S. Dental Schools". I don't necessarily agree with the whole of the argument here, but it's not based on misunderstanding of the funamentals of supply and demand.
"1) Mutual Fund managers" is claiming the whole profession is guilty of fraud, may be an overreaction because of current events, but fraud is certainly a way to be paid more than your fair market value.
Some of the examples cited are bad, but in situations of monopoly, artificial scarcity of supply, or fraud it does happen that people are paid more than their fair market value. (I do agree that most professional athletes are not overpaid... but the article doesn't cite the general case, rather "2) Washed-up pro athletes in long-term contracts", which is more arguable.)
they are wrong about wedding photographers (Score:5, Insightful)
It takes more than just snapping photos to be a wedding photographer. It's like being a drummer: Do your job well and no one will notice, but mess up and you'll catch hell. I guarantee you can tell the difference between a professional wedding photographer's photographs and some doofus with a disposable. Wedding Photographers are also not only working against the clock, but they only get one day.
Articles like these with the lack of repsect for profession's intricacies as are borderline offensive. Just because the author doesn't see what the big deal is is no reason to bash it.
Re:they are wrong about wedding photographers (Score:4, Informative)
Many are overpaid, even more then become underpaid (Score:5, Insightful)
Airline pilots? (Score:4, Insightful)
Consider the fact that their 'off' hours are usually away from home. There is a LOT of work that they do outside of flying. This doesn't count in their per-hour charge.
They spend a lot of time gaining hours in small aircraft and as co-pilots of large aircraft. And they get dirt-pay for that.
They can't drink 12 hours before going on the job.
They work odd hours.
They are controlling a big gas tank with an aluminum shell and 300 people inside, all while moving 600+ mph in weather conditions that prevent you from seeing out side.
Yea, I want a good incentive for the pilot up front in my aircraft. I want to get to my destination!
Ha! My job made the list (Score:3, Insightful)
They're right and they're wrong. First, you can spend as little or as much on a wedding photographer as you want. I know people who will show up for $300, shoot a few dozen rolls of film and hand them to the bride and groom on the way out the door. Will there be some good photos? Maybe, but you can expect an awful lot of crap.
On the other hand, when my wife and I shoot a wedding, we make every photo a work of art: color correct, crop, edit, retouch, black and white, sepia, hand tinting, etc etc etc. Then we design a one of a kind album. This is not a "weekend" job. We spend probably about 3 hours before the wedding going over details and meeting with the couple, an entire day at the wedding (getting ready through the reception), and then about 40 to 50 hours the next week processing all the photos. Oh, and we also have to pay for our $40,000 of photo equipment, lights, computers, etc etc, not to mention all the rest of the stuff that goes along with running a business. Advertising, office space and supplies, promotional materials, phone line, fax line, internet, website, etc. Then, since we're working for ourselves, we have to provide our own benefits, so we're paying our own health insurance, and providing for our own retirement. Oh, and there ain't no two week's paid vacation, either.
With the advent of digital imaging, the technical aspects of photography have increased many times over. I've actually got a Master's degree in electrical and computer engineering. These days, you have to be an artist, an engineer, and oh, yeah a businessman, too. Good luck finding somebody to do all that for $300.
By the way, if you'd like to see our work (or need a photographer!) you can check out our website [korphoto.com].
Number 10 is (Score:5, Funny)
Wedding photographer.
Surely the most overpaid job in the world is supermodel photographer.
I would gladly do the job for ten grand, so long as I can pay in instalments...
6) Real estate agents selling high-end homes (Score:3, Interesting)
... While most agents hustle tail to earn $60,000 a year, those in affluent areas can pull down $200,000-plus for half the effort....
... if you wouldn't trust a decorator who didn't have the taste of your class, why would you trust a real estate agent? A realtor who acts like a used-car salesperson is not going to make it at the high end; having the same taste as the people you're helping find a home is essential to guiding them well.
Luxury home agents live off the economy's fat, yet many put on airs as if they're members of the class whose homes they're selling, and eye underdressed open-house visitors as if they're casing the joint.
Hello? Luxury home agents are members of the class whose homes they're selling, or within a step or two of it. And that class as a whole lives off the economy's fat. For the most part, people want to hire professionals who are of their class or better. That especially applies where fashion and taste are concerned. Decorators, landscape designers, architects
I don't much like realtors, and don't much hold by class, but I'm sure willing to see the realtor get a fee in proportion to the home I'm buying to avoid be steered towards the sort of place that would most appeal to trailor trash with the sales tactics appropriate thereto.
Ultimate in being overpaid (Score:3, Funny)
Low-cost (& better) alternative to wedding pho (Score:4, Informative)
Negotiate to get the negatives and contact sheets at the end of the gig, and go make your own prints.
We ended up with a wedding album that's the envy of every couple that sees it, and we spent around $500 total. Oh, and having the negs makes it easier to archive the negs and slides on a CD-ROM.
Re:#1 Most Overpaid Jobs (Score:4, Funny)
Meant to say, I think I know the #1 most overpaid Jobs... [usatoday.com]
Re:#1 Most Overpaid Jobs (Score:4, Informative)
"It's better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubt."-Abraham Lincoln
The attribution is incorrect. This saying came from Proverbs 17:28.
Re:And rounding out the bottom 10: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Where is Gates on this list? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Where is Gates on this list? (Score:5, Insightful)
A CEO that manages to put 50 billion dollars away for emergences is a damn good CEO.
Now their product may suck, but the product is not the issue here.
Re:Where is Gates on this list? (Score:4, Funny)
So taking a company from two employees with their only product being a BASIC interpreter for a home-built computer (the Altair) to an industry dominating software company that provides software for 95% of all PCs in the world is "underperforming" by your standard?
I guess to get "average" he would have to enslave all of humanity and force them to build his pyramid for him. (And, of course, some of the more rabidly vapid
Re:Where is Gates on this list? (Score:5, Insightful)
The Red Cross needs good management and a good CEO. Take a look at the amount of money the company handles, and the stuff they do around the world. They are equal to a multinational corporation. Now, they need people with the ability to lead a company that size. In order to attract these people, they have to offer a salary. Now in order to get the people needed into these positions, they need to pay a competitive salary. Some guy off the street being the CEO of the Red Cross for 50K a year might look good, but unless he's independently wealthy and doing it as a humanitarian effort, he's not going to do the job well.
CEOs actually do alot for companies, it may look like a cushy job, but there is alot of work going on there.
I mean, compare it with software development. If you have a project going on, you want a good software dev team to work on it. Sure, you are going to "piss away cash" to pay their salaries, but you could always just farm out the job overseas. Anyone here will tell you, the farmed out code is going to be subpar. If you farm out the CEO of the Red Cross, the result is going to be subpar.
It is the samething with teachers. Everyone will complain that teachers are underpaid. Yet, I don't see anyone ponying up more tax dollars to pay for them.
Re:The article (Thanks /.!) (Score:5, Informative)
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS.MW) -- Almost no one in America would admit to being overpaid, but many of us take home bloated paychecks far beyond what's deserved.
Fair compensation is a relative term, yet human-resource consultants and executive headhunters agree some jobs command excessive compensation that can't be explained by labor supply-and-demand imbalances.
And while it's easy to argue that chief executives, lawyers and movie stars are overpaid, reality is not that cut and dry.
Corporate attorneys earning $500 an hour and plaintiffs lawyers pocketing a third of a class-action or personal-injury settlement certainly don't go hungry. Yet many local prosecutors and public defenders are hard-pressed to pay off law-school loans.
Hollywood stars, making $20 million a movie or $10 million per TV-season, qualify for many people's overpaid list. But for every one of those actors and actresses, there are a thousand waiting tables and taking bit movie parts or regional theater roles awaiting a big break that never comes.
A lot of people are overpaid because there are certain things consumers just don't want screwed up, said Bill Coleman, senior vice president of compensation for Salary.com. You wouldn't want to board a plane flown by a second-rate pilot or hire a cheap wedding photographer to record an event you hope happens once in your lifetime.
With pro athletes, one owner is willing to pay big money for a star player and then all the other players want to keep up with the Joneses, Coleman said. The art with CEO pay is making sure your CEO is above the median -- and you see where that goes.
What follows is a list of the 10 most overpaid jobs in the U.S., in reverse order, drafted with input from compensation experts:
10) Wedding photographers
Photographers typically charge $2,000 to $5,000 to shoot a wedding, for what amounts to a one-day assignment plus processing time. Some get $15,000 or more. Yet many mope through the job, bumping guests in their way without apology, with the attitude: I'm just doing this for the money until Time or National Geographic calls.
They must cover equipment and film-development costs. Still, many in major metropolitan areas who shoot two weddings each weekend in the May-to-October marrying season pull in $100,000 for six months' work.
Yet let's face it; much of their work is mediocre. Have you ever really been wowed flipping the pages of a wedding album handed you by recent newlyweds? Annie Leibovitz and Richard Avedon they're not, but some charge fees as if they're in the same league.
9) Pilots for major airlines
Captains with 12 years of experience earn up to $265 an hour at Delta, United, American and Northwest, which translates to $250,000 a year and more for a job that technology is making almost fully automated.
By comparison, senior pilots at low-fare carriers like Southwest and Jet Blue make about 40 percent less. That helps explain why their employers are profitable while several of the majors are teetering on the brink of bankruptcy.
The pilot's union is the most powerful in the industry. It commands premium wages as if still in the glory days of long-gone Pan Am and TWA, rather than the cutthroat, deregulated market of under-$200 coast-to-coast roundtrips. Because we entrust our lives to them, consumers accept the excessive sums paid them, when it's airplane mechanics who really hold our fate in their hands.
8) West Coast longshoremen
In early 2002, West Coast ports shut down as the longshoremen's union fought to preserve generous health-care benefits that would make most Americans drool. The union didn't demand much in wage hikes for good reason: Its members already were making a boatload of money.
Next year, West Coast dockworkers will earn an average of $112,000 for handling cargo, according to the Pacific Maritime Association, their employer. Office clerks who log shipping records into comput
Re:The article (Thanks /.!) (Score:5, Informative)
And what do you get for that price? That's right. NOTHING. They show up and shoot. But they make you pay for the prints. >$10 a pop. And if you want an album? Well...thats gonna cost extra.
Re:The article (Thanks /.!) (Score:3, Insightful)
You could get a very nice downpayment on a house for that money
( or one really, really giant diamond on that ring, if the spouse-to-be is so inclined %) )
That said, even the $2k photographers often have an insiduous clause in their contract - I swear it was up on
The clause is that the photos they made belong to them.
- You want re-prints ? you have to pay, because You're not getting the
And lay off the damn longshoremen (Score:5, Informative)
In early 2002, West Coast ports shut down as the longshoremen's union fought to preserve generous health-care benefits that would make most Americans drool. The union didn't demand much in wage hikes for good reason: Its members already were making a boatload of money.
Maybe they make too much money. But ports shut down because of a lock-out, not a strike. Everyone that writes about this and wants to paint them in a bad light casually fails to mention that. If the Pacific Maritime Association feels that the Longshoremen's Union has too much of a stranglehold on the ports, perhaps they should consider that the PMA has too much of a stranglehold on the ports. Monopolies suck. Amen. One monopoly has managed to take money from the other monopoly. You think consumer prices would fall if the PMA managed to break the union?
Re:And lay off the damn longshoremen (Score:4, Insightful)
It's great that their union is so powerful that it can disrupt commerce worldwide. That just means that, like the Mob, they've become experts in extortion.
Don't try and point the finger somewhere else - those guys are way overpaid, and it's no good to say "hey, they're overpaid because the other guys is a monopoly too."
Re:The article (Thanks /.!) (Score:3, Insightful)
The only other job that not deserving to be on the list is Pilots. The only way most anyone has to log enough flight hours is to be a Military Pilot, often for 15 years.
The real problem is not that a few jobs manage to command "over" high salaries
Re:Most overpaid job? (Score:3, Funny)
First poster!
Huh? First Poster is the most overpaid job? That's news to me, I thought the pay was pretty lousy. Which is a pity, since /. would clearly disintegrate without the terrific work of those unsung heroes, the First Post ACs.
Re:Most overpaid job? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:law of supply and demand. (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless the guy making the decision and the guy parting with the money are not the same guy. If the board of directors of a company is deciding how to pay the CEO more (because the CEO is on THEIR board of directors) this isn't supply and demand - it's called "milking the system".
Re:First-worlders (Score:3, Insightful)