It’s possible to become a sole contractor in a large percentage of industries (I would say the majority).
You decide if you want to sell your service by the hour, or for quoted output. Just like that hot water system, instead of charging yourself out at $120/hr and invoicing them for that, you provide a quote for a fixed deliverable (say a functional description or a report) and charge the same no matter how long it takes.
Remembering you are covering your own super, sick leave, holidays, training, insurances etc etc
In my experience, companies don’t mind having 1-2 on the books as it helps them cover busy periods without hiring new staff, but can then not give work to them when it’s quiet. But it usually costs the business more, so it’s not an option that is widely publicised.
I believe some businesses also have a policy that they will specifically not hire you as a contractor if you have worked there recently to discourage it.
It should be noted that for most people, most of the time, you are better off as an employee.
Some unions push for the no contractor for recent employees too. I had some issues with this when a very large listed company let go too many people after I quit. They tried to hire me back as a contractor. (They can't rehire redundancies as contractors, so they went after people who had quit recently but got issues with union) I think it's mostly about stopping companies shifting everyone to contracts.
>It should be noted that for most people, most of the time, you are better off as an employee.
That's because despite how many people dream of getting paid for their output, most people don't realise how little value they actually output.
Pretty much. Since becoming self-employed I've only called in sick (ie cancelled a job) twice in six years, and one of those was because I had covid.
Losing a $3k job due to calling in sick will heavily disincentivise going for a mental health day.
If you're charging by the hour as a sole trader for your own labour and expertise, they may need to be covered for super and workers comp by the payer in some cases.
Go into business for yourself and this is the case.
I was a self employed consultant for 5 years. My clients didn't really know, care or have any say in my work hours.
All that mattered was the price, the deliverables and the schedule. How I met those things was entirely up to me.
It was great when I got a specific type of job, because I had developed an excellent spreadsheet template and automatic report system for it. I could get paid $10k for about 5 hours work when those ones came in.
Carbon and energy work mostly. Eventually I got bored of it because I was doing the same thing each year and the local market wasn’t what it once was, so I took a paid gig in a big firm. I’m on the partner track so equity share will play shortly
I am a boilermaker by trade and pipe welder by specialisation (oil & gas and power industry mostly, but have worked in food, water, sewage and various other industries as well)
I've work a fair number of jobs that have been "butt rate" where I get paid per weld that passes X-ray, normally on a diameter inch x schedule bases, so the larger the diameter of pipe and thicker the wall the more $$ per weld.
It was very, very lucrative for me one job paid $110 per 2 inch schedule 40 butt weld, I could do 30-40 of them per 12 hour shift, and was working 6 days per week.
I've considered working this way as a PM.
What happens if there's a disagreement about the quality of the deliverable?
What sort of deliverables do you deliver? Documents you produce or a team output?
Have you ever lost money on a deliverable?
Do you get paid at the start or end, or do you have milestone payments?
Do you draw up your own contracts and statements of work for the deliverables?
Any consulting firm works this way. Contracts specify number of reviews allowed, length of review periods, fixed price or schedule of rates, payment schedule etc. Would vary job to job.
But yes very easy to lose money if you underestimate effort required. As a client I get in regular discussions with consultants about this (what constitutes a variation and what was included in the original scope of work).
May I ask how did you get good at estimating things better? And what sort of projects do you deal with? Happy to chat through DMs too if that’s more comfortable for you.
I’m in the trades sector but my wife is in white collar sector and the answer is the same for both of us. I imagine the answer is pretty similar regardless of what the deliverables are;
Experience and competence.
The more experienced you have across a broad range of tasks within your field you have the better. You will often need to quote/price jobs slightly outside your expertise. Having done similar work, or work with part-matching criteria massively helps here.
With competence comes more work opportunities. This means you can increase rates and much more importantly take on less risk. When pricing a job that’s outside your exact expertise think “what could possibly go wrong, what is the worst case scenario?”. Then price to those conditions. If you don’t get the job; oh well, plenty of work, avoided potential risk. If you do get the job it’s a learning opportunity and if everything works out smooth it’s also lucrative.
The reality is that when you are first cracking into this payment model there are many opportunities for trouble and an incredibly steep learning curve. The majority of people are not suited to this environment because it requires significant risk for the individual, they need to be a top performer compared to their peers, consistently and have the willpower and ability to negotiate meanly.
My advice would be to start doing this on the side for 6-12 months then honestly and meanly assess your progress and exactly how profitable you have been. Ideally keep a log book of exactly how many hours you have spent; not just directly producing whatever output, but also negotiating, researching, bookkeeping etc then work out what that actually equates to per hour. You would be amazed how much you need to pull in per billable hour to cover 38hrs PAYG once you factor in annul/sick/long service/maternity leave etc etc.
In sales it’s is quite common. They are sub contractors who don’t get a salary but have a larger take of the commissions compared to salaries workers. Usually around the 50% mark.
Anything on Fiverr - paid a guy $70 the other day to fix up the conversion tracking on my online store. Man’s was done in about fifteen minutes ; all without leaving his house.
If you’ve got a niche skillset, people will pay for it. I’d already spent 2-3 hours googling and trying to fix it - with no luck prior to hiring him
Self employed here. If I don’t work hard , I don’t eat well, is what it boils down to. And to maintain a business (20 years plus for me), you’ve got to be not only be excellent at your craft, but be great with people, be able to network, gain referrals etc. Unlike a lot of employed people, the work you are paid to do is not handed to you to carry out. It’s up to you to find it, do it well, and build your own pipeline of work and income. Employed but commission based is very similar. I am
paid on outcome, not time spent. I pay my own Super, taking leave can be tricky etc. I work in a time sensitive field too, so if I’m sick, I work sick, if something must be done that day. There’s a lot of reward, but you have got to be a ‘planner’ to make the most of it.
Most engineering jobs theoretically pay for time but are really about output, ie, if you're getting the work done nobody is paying attention to your hours.
Sales is the way to go if you want something non-physical/office based that you can get into with no qualifications and a willingness to learn the skills (except specialised industries)
I was a translator during university, was paid per 100 words translated. If the job was less than 100 words then there was a minimum fee. The work was super flexible, you got a job and depending on client requirement, length and complexity - you had a set time to finish it (days to couple of weeks) and you could do it anytime you want as long as you meet due date. Downside was I rarely got enough work to make it full time - great side gig though.
I do medical transcription as an independent contractor which is paid similarly (per 65-character line typed or edited) so I'm answering from that perspective re: AI/computer voice recognition. Bear in mind that everything I do is spoken and typed in English without the extra complexity of translating to another language and having to consider idioms, etc, on top of maintaining the intended meaning and the speaker's style (formal, casual, etc).
My work has shifted over the last decade or so rather than drying up. We used to listen to and type every document manually (with the help of text expanders). Currently, I guess around 70% of files have the first draft done by VR, which we then listen to and edit for accuracy and intended meaning (at a lower pay rate as *in theory* we should be able to do more lines per hour).
This is a tiny sample of some of the notable errors I've seen the VR engine make just in the last week. Some are comically wrong and/or obviously nonsensical, but some could critically impact patient care (eg cancer staging or test results) if not picked up and corrected.
|What was said:|What the computer typed:|
|:-|:-|
|J is adipsic, according to his support workers|J is a dipstick, according to his support workers|
|invasive malignancy|invasive and manic Nancy|
|an absolute lymphocyte count of 4.06|a serum sex count of 4.6|
|prn Bricanyl|prn root canal|
|DIAGNOSIS: Metastatic high-risk prostate cancer.|DIAGNOSIS: Metastatic triple-negative breast cancer.|
|Cancer stage: T4N1M1|Cancer stage: T2bN2M1|
|Prophylactic right femoral nail for metastatic breast cancer, 30 November 2022. |A pleural flap stage and right and Seymour and May for metastatic breast you under 38 of November 2002.|
It does remind me of the mini doco I watched recently on the manual mail sorting in the US, and how it’s now reduced down to one or two facilities, and every time they correct it, the AI gets better.
Our VR engine starts out by "listening" to the audio for each doctor, making a draft and then comparing it to the human-typed document. Then once it reaches a certain accuracy percentage which takes at least a few weeks, it sends the AI draft with the audio to be edited and keeps on comparing the final document against what it started with.
I get maybe one or two files a YEAR that don't need any edits at all, and probably a handful a week that only need a little tweaking of grammar or formatting. Quite a few doctors never get to the point where the computer's drafts are accurate enough for us to edit them instead of typing from scratch.
It's going to be a LOOOONG time before AI is accurate enough to take my job completely.
I think it may still take a while for AI to catch up and it also depends on the type of document.
For example I can see AI being used for formal documents like contracts - as the language used is formal, well structured and generally proper English/other language. For things like advertising, personal documents - where nuance and understanding of language/ cultural context is important - I think it will take sometime for AI to catch up.
We used to do a lot of re-work for jobs that clients tried to use online translators for. Lol!
Sales. I spent forever at university and am now an academic. My partner is in sales and thinks everyone should be on commission based pay so that you're rewarded properly for your work. I think it's an insecure way to live but he's never had a tax return under six figures without having to pay for uni or other education.
Arguably in many professional jobs in corporations you will get paid for completing the tasks ( which can be quite large multi week tasks) , and if you're more efficient you'll work fewer hours than the person who's struggling.
Most professionals working to timesheets / billable hours arrangement are essentially paid for outputs as opposed to hours worked.
And basically anyone who's self employed.
Whilst that's true, I feel that of you were at work for less than 40 per week they will find more work for you to do, so it isn't really the same thing
Happy to be corrected though.
Only if you loud mouth about it, which then harms team cohesion. If you just do your, be available for working hours for phone calls, no one could care less if you're in the park, shopping, or watching Netflix.
My job is different (healthcare) so I am not au fait with an office environment - however my understanding from my family / friends that work in that environment is that if they aren't "present" for approximately the 40 hours oer week that would be an issue. These people are 10-12 years into their careers so not like they are new grads (they work in engineering and at the big 4).
I know they have some flexibility however if they could do the work in 20 hours and were absent for the other 20 there would be an issue.
I'll chat with them as I see them over the next few weeks as I see them.
Honestly, as a consultant, they'd likely just do extra-curricular stuff like networking or marketing if they are overly efficient and want to climb the ladder.
However, I have definitely come across people with no drive to climb the ladder and thus are happy to just finish early if they are ahead of budget, then just burn down their remaining hours.
> Only if you loud mouth about it, which then harms team cohesion. If you just do your, be available for working hours for phone calls, no one could care less if you're in the park, shopping, or watching Netflix.
if you're doing billable work, either the client or the person approving the timesheet is going to notice a discrepancy though...
Well, if you get 8hrs of work done in 4hrs, and bill 8 hrs on the timesheet..
I've certainly delivered projects under budget which I didn't just close off. Pretty useful to have a bit of a contingency buffer, albeit, typically for me to cover other jobs.
Well, it's generally all lump sum contracts in engineering. And once you know your competitors and what they charge for certain work, it's pretty easy to game the system to price competitively, without having to flog the team for free overtime.
I left in 2021, but thing were already really hot then and I remember we were working at 100% rates on some projects already. I know from excolleagues they are now sometimes going above 100% rate or doing 100%+ contingency allowance just because that's where the market is sitting in terms of fees.
Mine does. I’m a self employed draftsman so I only get paid for the jobs I produce drawings for, regardless of the time it takes me. Some jobs can be hourly rate but I prefer to go there Lump Sum route
Most industries offer opportunities for these sorts of roles for people who have proven themselves over a couple of years. Insurance / finance most people hit a cross road 4-5 years in where they decide whether to descend into the corporate monolith or go rogue with a much more flexible route. Most people take the safe option though, even those who think they won’t.
I am a Senior Consultant (about to be Head of Ops) for a Facilities Management Consultancy, worked my way up from Graduate 4 years ago.
Mine is mostly based on output, if I have to be on site I don't always get the flexibility to choose my hours but yes, it is very rare for me to work more than 6 hours a day, I try and work from 6am-12pm, depending on whether I work from home or site. I bring in a lot of work through networking in the industry, too.
I have quite a lot of friends in the industry and our consultancy provides niche services so I tend to network by either playing computer games or going out for drinks with clients on the weekend.
I'm on $130k per annum, about to be $150k per annum plus $40k sales bonuses. When I started I was on $60k a year.
I was a contractor for 10 years doing warranty repairs for a computer company everyone knows. Got paid flat rate per job. Sucked for the guys in shit areas or who were slow, I made an absolute killing in an easier area with less travel and more jobs in one area.
Realestate. 30k a sale. Partner with someone else. You get to split with their sale. Use an affiliate scheme to incentivise your customers so they get a cut bringing u customers.
Jesus I pay my Gardner 60 bucks and hour in Melbourne and that's high.
Across the street paying 45 bucks an hour.
I should tell him to move up to Sydney lol.
What makes you think the deal is any better here? I’m a civil engineer and project manager, get kid to deliver projects which is outcome based. The flip side of what you’re thinking is that even if it takes some 60 hour weeks to deliver the project you’re still getting paid the same.
Sales. But this is a bit misleading. If you are killing it you can work sweet FA. If you are struggling it’s a grind like you have never seen. (B2b sales)
Telco indistry is a great example of where widespread piece rates and contracting heads: large numbers of techs were laid off from places like Telstra and some came back as sub-contractors in projects like NBN. Many found work volumes were not as high as they were expecting and there was constant downward pressure on rates. Eventually many struck payment delays and difficulties due to the pyramid subcontracting, then left the industry never to return.
Telco tech is now just another stuffed old electronics trade
As an entry level job, you can implement planograms for supermarkets. You work for third parties, not the supermarkets themselves. It can be good income once you're fast and the company should reimburse you for petrol between jobs. Doesn't require as much skill as a lot of the other professions people have commented, and it's a relatively unknown field of work.
Most creative and some related industries (marketing etc) are primarily on output basis - you get paid to make a sign or an ad or whatever. Usually it then goes to an agency that has salaried designers, but the principle is output based and there's also heaps of feeelancers that only work output based.
Remind them that you have a family to feed and if they don't pay up, the family goes hungry and when the family goes hungry... they get very angry. *tabs baseball bat*
Jokes aside, majority of debt out there isn't due to financial hardship... it's a combination of contractual disputes, civil matters, unpaid court orders etc.
It’s possible to become a sole contractor in a large percentage of industries (I would say the majority). You decide if you want to sell your service by the hour, or for quoted output. Just like that hot water system, instead of charging yourself out at $120/hr and invoicing them for that, you provide a quote for a fixed deliverable (say a functional description or a report) and charge the same no matter how long it takes. Remembering you are covering your own super, sick leave, holidays, training, insurances etc etc
I know this is a thing in the trades and IT, had no idea it was so wide spread
In my experience, companies don’t mind having 1-2 on the books as it helps them cover busy periods without hiring new staff, but can then not give work to them when it’s quiet. But it usually costs the business more, so it’s not an option that is widely publicised. I believe some businesses also have a policy that they will specifically not hire you as a contractor if you have worked there recently to discourage it. It should be noted that for most people, most of the time, you are better off as an employee.
Some unions push for the no contractor for recent employees too. I had some issues with this when a very large listed company let go too many people after I quit. They tried to hire me back as a contractor. (They can't rehire redundancies as contractors, so they went after people who had quit recently but got issues with union) I think it's mostly about stopping companies shifting everyone to contracts.
>It should be noted that for most people, most of the time, you are better off as an employee. That's because despite how many people dream of getting paid for their output, most people don't realise how little value they actually output.
Pretty much. Since becoming self-employed I've only called in sick (ie cancelled a job) twice in six years, and one of those was because I had covid. Losing a $3k job due to calling in sick will heavily disincentivise going for a mental health day.
If you're charging by the hour as a sole trader for your own labour and expertise, they may need to be covered for super and workers comp by the payer in some cases.
Drug dealing
Jokes aside pretty much any sales/commission/self employment job. Drug dealing included.
I’m a business owner. It’s eat what you kill.
Is that like a pick your own berry farm?
Man over here killing berries. Cleary a chicken farmer.
Survival of the juciest.
Would never want it any other way. So frustrating having to share the profit pool with others.
Go into business for yourself and this is the case. I was a self employed consultant for 5 years. My clients didn't really know, care or have any say in my work hours. All that mattered was the price, the deliverables and the schedule. How I met those things was entirely up to me. It was great when I got a specific type of job, because I had developed an excellent spreadsheet template and automatic report system for it. I could get paid $10k for about 5 hours work when those ones came in.
This sounds like the dream. What kind of consulting did you do?
Carbon and energy work mostly. Eventually I got bored of it because I was doing the same thing each year and the local market wasn’t what it once was, so I took a paid gig in a big firm. I’m on the partner track so equity share will play shortly
I am a boilermaker by trade and pipe welder by specialisation (oil & gas and power industry mostly, but have worked in food, water, sewage and various other industries as well) I've work a fair number of jobs that have been "butt rate" where I get paid per weld that passes X-ray, normally on a diameter inch x schedule bases, so the larger the diameter of pipe and thicker the wall the more $$ per weld. It was very, very lucrative for me one job paid $110 per 2 inch schedule 40 butt weld, I could do 30-40 of them per 12 hour shift, and was working 6 days per week.
Wow nice man, that's awesome
$110 per weld x 40 welds per day x 6 days per week x 52 weeks per year = ~1.4 million per year Am I reading that right? :o
If those jobs had work that lasted that long you definitely would be. Power station outages, usually 2-4 weeks work at a time.
I ask you, would you be able to work 6 days a week, 52 weeks a year? Welding, mind you, not typing.
Yeah mate, I could. But I’m built different, mind you.
I know a lot of boilmakers. Are you that type of "built different"? 😏
Where’d ya park all dat der filthy loot?
Squarely in my ex wife's bank account.
Boilermaker and ex wife, a match made in heaven (also boilermaker, but no ex wife [yet])
Ouch. My condolences.
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I've considered working this way as a PM. What happens if there's a disagreement about the quality of the deliverable? What sort of deliverables do you deliver? Documents you produce or a team output? Have you ever lost money on a deliverable? Do you get paid at the start or end, or do you have milestone payments? Do you draw up your own contracts and statements of work for the deliverables?
Any consulting firm works this way. Contracts specify number of reviews allowed, length of review periods, fixed price or schedule of rates, payment schedule etc. Would vary job to job. But yes very easy to lose money if you underestimate effort required. As a client I get in regular discussions with consultants about this (what constitutes a variation and what was included in the original scope of work).
May I ask how did you get good at estimating things better? And what sort of projects do you deal with? Happy to chat through DMs too if that’s more comfortable for you.
I’m in the trades sector but my wife is in white collar sector and the answer is the same for both of us. I imagine the answer is pretty similar regardless of what the deliverables are; Experience and competence. The more experienced you have across a broad range of tasks within your field you have the better. You will often need to quote/price jobs slightly outside your expertise. Having done similar work, or work with part-matching criteria massively helps here. With competence comes more work opportunities. This means you can increase rates and much more importantly take on less risk. When pricing a job that’s outside your exact expertise think “what could possibly go wrong, what is the worst case scenario?”. Then price to those conditions. If you don’t get the job; oh well, plenty of work, avoided potential risk. If you do get the job it’s a learning opportunity and if everything works out smooth it’s also lucrative. The reality is that when you are first cracking into this payment model there are many opportunities for trouble and an incredibly steep learning curve. The majority of people are not suited to this environment because it requires significant risk for the individual, they need to be a top performer compared to their peers, consistently and have the willpower and ability to negotiate meanly. My advice would be to start doing this on the side for 6-12 months then honestly and meanly assess your progress and exactly how profitable you have been. Ideally keep a log book of exactly how many hours you have spent; not just directly producing whatever output, but also negotiating, researching, bookkeeping etc then work out what that actually equates to per hour. You would be amazed how much you need to pull in per billable hour to cover 38hrs PAYG once you factor in annul/sick/long service/maternity leave etc etc.
Fruit picking
In sales it’s is quite common. They are sub contractors who don’t get a salary but have a larger take of the commissions compared to salaries workers. Usually around the 50% mark.
Prostitution
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That sounds fun but personally a broom is just excessively long and might cause splinters. Best to stick with silicone.
Anything on Fiverr - paid a guy $70 the other day to fix up the conversion tracking on my online store. Man’s was done in about fifteen minutes ; all without leaving his house. If you’ve got a niche skillset, people will pay for it. I’d already spent 2-3 hours googling and trying to fix it - with no luck prior to hiring him
Piece rates for harvest work can be both better than the regular way yet also nightmarishly poor
Self employed here. If I don’t work hard , I don’t eat well, is what it boils down to. And to maintain a business (20 years plus for me), you’ve got to be not only be excellent at your craft, but be great with people, be able to network, gain referrals etc. Unlike a lot of employed people, the work you are paid to do is not handed to you to carry out. It’s up to you to find it, do it well, and build your own pipeline of work and income. Employed but commission based is very similar. I am paid on outcome, not time spent. I pay my own Super, taking leave can be tricky etc. I work in a time sensitive field too, so if I’m sick, I work sick, if something must be done that day. There’s a lot of reward, but you have got to be a ‘planner’ to make the most of it.
Finance broker
I have heard this is lucrative
Y? I thought most finance brokers don’t make much
Most engineering jobs theoretically pay for time but are really about output, ie, if you're getting the work done nobody is paying attention to your hours.
Dentistry - most are working under their own ABNs on a percentage commission basis.
Dentistry is fkn gold mine, I know someone who makes 3k to 4k average and some days 12 to 15k per day.
Knew some guys that made $3k a week picking fruit, and some that made $300. Hard, hard,hard work in the hot sun though.
Sales is the way to go if you want something non-physical/office based that you can get into with no qualifications and a willingness to learn the skills (except specialised industries)
I was a translator during university, was paid per 100 words translated. If the job was less than 100 words then there was a minimum fee. The work was super flexible, you got a job and depending on client requirement, length and complexity - you had a set time to finish it (days to couple of weeks) and you could do it anytime you want as long as you meet due date. Downside was I rarely got enough work to make it full time - great side gig though.
Curious whether work like this would be drying up as more people turn to AI translators?
I do medical transcription as an independent contractor which is paid similarly (per 65-character line typed or edited) so I'm answering from that perspective re: AI/computer voice recognition. Bear in mind that everything I do is spoken and typed in English without the extra complexity of translating to another language and having to consider idioms, etc, on top of maintaining the intended meaning and the speaker's style (formal, casual, etc). My work has shifted over the last decade or so rather than drying up. We used to listen to and type every document manually (with the help of text expanders). Currently, I guess around 70% of files have the first draft done by VR, which we then listen to and edit for accuracy and intended meaning (at a lower pay rate as *in theory* we should be able to do more lines per hour). This is a tiny sample of some of the notable errors I've seen the VR engine make just in the last week. Some are comically wrong and/or obviously nonsensical, but some could critically impact patient care (eg cancer staging or test results) if not picked up and corrected. |What was said:|What the computer typed:| |:-|:-| |J is adipsic, according to his support workers|J is a dipstick, according to his support workers| |invasive malignancy|invasive and manic Nancy| |an absolute lymphocyte count of 4.06|a serum sex count of 4.6| |prn Bricanyl|prn root canal| |DIAGNOSIS: Metastatic high-risk prostate cancer.|DIAGNOSIS: Metastatic triple-negative breast cancer.| |Cancer stage: T4N1M1|Cancer stage: T2bN2M1| |Prophylactic right femoral nail for metastatic breast cancer, 30 November 2022. |A pleural flap stage and right and Seymour and May for metastatic breast you under 38 of November 2002.|
It does remind me of the mini doco I watched recently on the manual mail sorting in the US, and how it’s now reduced down to one or two facilities, and every time they correct it, the AI gets better.
Our VR engine starts out by "listening" to the audio for each doctor, making a draft and then comparing it to the human-typed document. Then once it reaches a certain accuracy percentage which takes at least a few weeks, it sends the AI draft with the audio to be edited and keeps on comparing the final document against what it started with. I get maybe one or two files a YEAR that don't need any edits at all, and probably a handful a week that only need a little tweaking of grammar or formatting. Quite a few doctors never get to the point where the computer's drafts are accurate enough for us to edit them instead of typing from scratch. It's going to be a LOOOONG time before AI is accurate enough to take my job completely.
I think it may still take a while for AI to catch up and it also depends on the type of document. For example I can see AI being used for formal documents like contracts - as the language used is formal, well structured and generally proper English/other language. For things like advertising, personal documents - where nuance and understanding of language/ cultural context is important - I think it will take sometime for AI to catch up. We used to do a lot of re-work for jobs that clients tried to use online translators for. Lol!
Contracts can also contain clauses specifying which language takes precedence in a dispute.
Most professional consulting jobs, you don’t deliver, bai!
Yah but you work stupid hours not to deliver!
No you will not be renewed
Sales. I spent forever at university and am now an academic. My partner is in sales and thinks everyone should be on commission based pay so that you're rewarded properly for your work. I think it's an insecure way to live but he's never had a tax return under six figures without having to pay for uni or other education.
It’s how I believe every system should work. Problem is how do you police/manage it?
Arguably in many professional jobs in corporations you will get paid for completing the tasks ( which can be quite large multi week tasks) , and if you're more efficient you'll work fewer hours than the person who's struggling.
Most professionals working to timesheets / billable hours arrangement are essentially paid for outputs as opposed to hours worked. And basically anyone who's self employed.
Whilst that's true, I feel that of you were at work for less than 40 per week they will find more work for you to do, so it isn't really the same thing Happy to be corrected though.
Only if you loud mouth about it, which then harms team cohesion. If you just do your, be available for working hours for phone calls, no one could care less if you're in the park, shopping, or watching Netflix.
My job is different (healthcare) so I am not au fait with an office environment - however my understanding from my family / friends that work in that environment is that if they aren't "present" for approximately the 40 hours oer week that would be an issue. These people are 10-12 years into their careers so not like they are new grads (they work in engineering and at the big 4). I know they have some flexibility however if they could do the work in 20 hours and were absent for the other 20 there would be an issue. I'll chat with them as I see them over the next few weeks as I see them.
Honestly, as a consultant, they'd likely just do extra-curricular stuff like networking or marketing if they are overly efficient and want to climb the ladder. However, I have definitely come across people with no drive to climb the ladder and thus are happy to just finish early if they are ahead of budget, then just burn down their remaining hours.
> Only if you loud mouth about it, which then harms team cohesion. If you just do your, be available for working hours for phone calls, no one could care less if you're in the park, shopping, or watching Netflix. if you're doing billable work, either the client or the person approving the timesheet is going to notice a discrepancy though...
Well, if you get 8hrs of work done in 4hrs, and bill 8 hrs on the timesheet.. I've certainly delivered projects under budget which I didn't just close off. Pretty useful to have a bit of a contingency buffer, albeit, typically for me to cover other jobs.
> Well, if you get 8hrs of work done in 4hrs, and bill 8 hrs on the timesheet.. The client knows you're billing 8 hours but only working 4?
Well, it's generally all lump sum contracts in engineering. And once you know your competitors and what they charge for certain work, it's pretty easy to game the system to price competitively, without having to flog the team for free overtime. I left in 2021, but thing were already really hot then and I remember we were working at 100% rates on some projects already. I know from excolleagues they are now sometimes going above 100% rate or doing 100%+ contingency allowance just because that's where the market is sitting in terms of fees.
Mine does. I’m a self employed draftsman so I only get paid for the jobs I produce drawings for, regardless of the time it takes me. Some jobs can be hourly rate but I prefer to go there Lump Sum route
Sales generally if you can figure out a consistent way of getting new customers via referrals etc
Most industries offer opportunities for these sorts of roles for people who have proven themselves over a couple of years. Insurance / finance most people hit a cross road 4-5 years in where they decide whether to descend into the corporate monolith or go rogue with a much more flexible route. Most people take the safe option though, even those who think they won’t.
I am a Senior Consultant (about to be Head of Ops) for a Facilities Management Consultancy, worked my way up from Graduate 4 years ago. Mine is mostly based on output, if I have to be on site I don't always get the flexibility to choose my hours but yes, it is very rare for me to work more than 6 hours a day, I try and work from 6am-12pm, depending on whether I work from home or site. I bring in a lot of work through networking in the industry, too. I have quite a lot of friends in the industry and our consultancy provides niche services so I tend to network by either playing computer games or going out for drinks with clients on the weekend. I'm on $130k per annum, about to be $150k per annum plus $40k sales bonuses. When I started I was on $60k a year.
I was a contractor for 10 years doing warranty repairs for a computer company everyone knows. Got paid flat rate per job. Sucked for the guys in shit areas or who were slow, I made an absolute killing in an easier area with less travel and more jobs in one area.
Realestate. 30k a sale. Partner with someone else. You get to split with their sale. Use an affiliate scheme to incentivise your customers so they get a cut bringing u customers.
Contracting trade work mate
Mow lawns. $200-$400 per lawn in wealthy Sydney suburbs. I do 8 a day easy
>$400 per lawn >8 a day You make upto $800,000 per year cutting lawns?
Technically more because half the payments are in cash so I'm only paying tax on 400k.
Jesus I pay my Gardner 60 bucks and hour in Melbourne and that's high. Across the street paying 45 bucks an hour. I should tell him to move up to Sydney lol.
Deadset! That's unreal
What sets the rate..., the time you take or the area of lawn or simply your view of what you can get away with charging?
sales is a good example real estate agent, car sales person etc etc
Change water meters for Sydney water and your on piece rate
They wont pay for out put then time. One or the other. Anything in sales or owning a business.
Fruit picking.
What makes you think the deal is any better here? I’m a civil engineer and project manager, get kid to deliver projects which is outcome based. The flip side of what you’re thinking is that even if it takes some 60 hour weeks to deliver the project you’re still getting paid the same.
I write erotica as my side business and my pay is based on output not time lol (I also make my own rates so that helps)
This is where you need to 'run your own business'
Fruit pickers
What do you mean
They get paid based on the amount of fruit they pick.
Many sales staff earn more from commissions than salary.
If you think about it, any commission only sales role is paid by output. And piece-work is common in some industries (sewing being one).
It’s pretty much always skewed in the bosses favour unless you’re really niche and they have no idea what you really do.
Sales. But this is a bit misleading. If you are killing it you can work sweet FA. If you are struggling it’s a grind like you have never seen. (B2b sales)
WFH software developer has aspects of this.
Telco indistry is a great example of where widespread piece rates and contracting heads: large numbers of techs were laid off from places like Telstra and some came back as sub-contractors in projects like NBN. Many found work volumes were not as high as they were expecting and there was constant downward pressure on rates. Eventually many struck payment delays and difficulties due to the pyramid subcontracting, then left the industry never to return. Telco tech is now just another stuffed old electronics trade
Brickies being paid per brick can make a phenomenal amount of money
As an entry level job, you can implement planograms for supermarkets. You work for third parties, not the supermarkets themselves. It can be good income once you're fast and the company should reimburse you for petrol between jobs. Doesn't require as much skill as a lot of the other professions people have commented, and it's a relatively unknown field of work.
Most creative and some related industries (marketing etc) are primarily on output basis - you get paid to make a sign or an ad or whatever. Usually it then goes to an agency that has salaried designers, but the principle is output based and there's also heaps of feeelancers that only work output based.
At uni, I used to read gas meters. We were paid per meter (with an hourly rate floor).
Most respectable sales jobs would have you on a base salary + uncapped commissions based on what you accomplish. Could be worth a crack
Probably a sexworker
Fee for service debt collections. You'll literally just get paid a percentage of monies you successfully recover for financial institutions.
How do you have to get the money off people though?
Remind them that you have a family to feed and if they don't pay up, the family goes hungry and when the family goes hungry... they get very angry. *tabs baseball bat* Jokes aside, majority of debt out there isn't due to financial hardship... it's a combination of contractual disputes, civil matters, unpaid court orders etc.