Re: Today (Feb 26) IBM announcements

On Fri, 29 Feb 2008 08:48:37 -0700, Howard Brazee <howard@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
wrote:

>On Thu, 28 Feb 2008 18:34:31 -0600, Robert <no@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>
>
>>If the company really regarded you as a Salaried Professional, it would
ask you to record
>>days rather than hours. I've worked on a number of payroll systems where
salaried
>>employees did NOT submit a time sheet. The input contained number of
days by category:
>>worked, sick, vacation or holiday.
>
>I was on salary - my work was on contract to our customer who wanted
>an hour-by-hour accounting.    That changes the legalities somewhat.

I'll bet the customer was billed for hours. Your contracting company was
the buffer
absorbing the slippage or spillage. 

In the 1990s, most contractors were salaried. They were in a pool of
workers that was
moved from one client to the next. They were on a team.

That's all gone now. Contractors are hired for one project. When the
project is done,
they're on their own, looking for another employer. I've worked 15
projects in the last 10
years and never worked for the same contracting company on consecutive
projects. I have
worked for the same company twice, but not consecutively. Pointing out
that you used to be
a team member carries no cachet whatever.

Contracting companies often offer you a choice between hourly and
salaried. Salaried gets
20% less in base rate in exchange for paid holidays (worth 5%), better
benefits (no longer
true) and the empty promise of being paid for bench time. If you're in a
low demand
specialty like Cobol, you'll be fired the day the project ends. Salaried
is an obsolete
holdover from the Good Old Days of the 1990s. Anyone who signs up for it
is a fool.