

Ten most overpaid jobs in the U.S.  - senthil_rajasek
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/10-most-overpaid-jobs-us/story.aspx?guid=954AA053-F953-43F3-BBC8-63D351A3BF2A

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run4yourlives
Airline pilots?

This guy doesn't have a clue. Most airline pilots put in serious hours in
butt-fuck nowhere until they reach at least 30, after which, if they're lucky,
they get picked up by an airline to get paid something like $40K for the first
5 years until they get seniority.

Just because the cream of the crop get paid well, doesn't mean the entire
industry is overpaid.

~~~
jonknee
And his point is that the longest serving for the majors are obscenely over
paid. That's why Southwest makes money and Delta loses it (not just pilots,
but that's a good place to start).

~~~
cameldrv
The reason airline pilots aren't overpaid is that the feeders to them are
underpaid. An airline pilot has to spend at least 20 years before he gets to
the 200k+ salary. A pilot usually has to pay for his own training up to
Commercial Instrument/Flight Instructor, which costs about 70k.

Then he has to instruct for several years to build up flight time. Flight
instructing usually pays about $15k a year. From there, he has to somehow get
multiengine or turbine time, maybe flying small freight, probably at night,
laying over in nowheresville, for virtually no money, maybe 15-20k. These jobs
are also very hard to get.

From there, he might be able to get a job at a marginal regional airline,
paying $20-30k as he moves up as a first officer. Hopefully after several
years at the regional, he can move up to captain on the regional, now earning
about 50k.

If the majors are hiring at that point in the economic cycle, he can now be a
FO at a major airline, making 40-60k for the first few years. After maybe 8
years of that, he may make captain, and perhaps earn 100k a year, increasing
as his seniority increases. Getting from 0 to captain at a major takes about
25-30 years.

On top of all of this, if at any time he his not able to meet the FAA's very
stringent medical requirements, basically if he has to take almost any
medication, or has any illness, he loses his medical and his career is over.
Furthermore, if he makes any significant mistake in all of those late nights
in bad weather, his career may be over or he will be unable to advance to the
next rung. Furthermore, he's moving around every time he moves up a rung, and
he can't have a normal family life when he's in some strange city half the
time.

Anyone who decides to take this path does it because they love to fly, not
because it is an easy buck. What's worse is that now the brass ring at the end
is being eroded, and so after all of that hard work to get there, he might
only end up making $100-150k at the end.

~~~
gaius
That's interesting - I always assumed that most pilots were ex-Air Force and
got their training that way. If you can fly an AWACS you can fly a 747, I
guess.

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aasarava
Wedding photographers? Huh? Most people I know paid about $2K for their
wedding photographer. Let's say a really good photographer can book both days
of the weekend for 40 weekends a year. So he or she brings in $160,000 --
before paying for all the film and processing fees?

Not sure how making somewhere in the low-to-mid $100Ks for having to work on
most weekends gets you on the same list as mutual fund managers and bad CEOs.
Sounds like the author had a recent bad experience booking a photographer if
you ask me.

~~~
lasthemy1
His point seemed to be that bad wedding photographers were grossly overpaid. I
agree not on the same level as mutual fund managers and bad CEOs, but probably
on the same level as the West Coasters he mentions.

~~~
tjr
I am a photographer myself. I don't do it professionally -- I don't try to do
it professionaly -- because I enjoy it as a hobby, and don't like the pressure
of doing photographic work for others. I did photograph a wedding for a friend
because they asked me to, and it was very very stressful and complicated.
Wedding photography is not easy.

Good wedding photography is even harder. I am getting married this fall, and
was shocked at the mediocrity of most local wedding photographers. I could
hardly believe some of them claimed to run a wedding photography business. Not
necessarily "bad" photos, but, photos lacking character and interest to the
degree that they might as well have been taken by random people at the wedding
than by a "professional" photographer.

But this is also true in other fields. There are mediocre software engineers
who hide in the bureaucracy of large companies and get the same salary, plus
or minus 5%, as really good software engineers at the company.

~~~
MaysonL
Hmmm - perhaps the best advice to anyone getting married might be: buy a dozen
digital camers and give them to friends and family to use at the wedding and
have a good chance of getting more good photos than the median wedding
photographer.

~~~
noonespecial
We did just this. It worked out _wonderfully_. 200 disposable cameras (hey, it
was 1999), 27 pictures each. This is a @#$%load of photos folks. 90% of them
were total crap. 7% of them were way-cool novelties, 3% of them were pure gold
that no wedding photographer could have captured. We had a traditional wedding
potog take the usual pictures that no one looks at as well.

Pictures were taken at the wedding, the reception, and the after-party. At the
end of it all, we mailed out cd-roms of the best pictures to everyone who
attended. (These cd's had, incidentally, also been the invitations. Bring your
invitation along, get photos of the event!)

I highly recommend it to one and all. Crowd-sourced photos rock.

------
yagibear
It's interesting to try to tease out what factors might contribute to these
jobs being overpaid:

1\. Fear: Wedding photographers, pilots, longshoremen & orthodontists

2\. Creaming a little from a lot: Skycaps, real estate agents, mutual-fund
managers

3\. Scarcity: lecture circuit

4\. Legacy: longshoremen, old CEOs & athletes

~~~
wallflower
Quote from George Foreman about longshoremen:

Mr. Foreman, who stared down financial collapse as an adult despite a
troubled, impoverished childhood, said he knew real wealth when he saw it. “If
you’re confident, you’re wealthy,” he says. “I’ve seen guys who work on a ship
channel and they get to a certain point and they’re confident. You can look in
their faces, they’re longshoremen, and they have this confidence about
them...I’ve seen a lot of guys with millions and they don’t have any
confidence,” he says. “So they’re not wealthy.”

------
river_styx
Somewhere there must be a top 10 list of most overused internet memes, which
unsurprisingly would include top 10 lists.

~~~
Tichy
Meanwhile, I am working on my top 10 list of top 10 lists.

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callmeed
Um, this article is from 2003. WTH?

I work with wedding photographers (providing web solutions). They are not
overpaid because they are self-employed and paid directly by their customers.
If brides are willing to pay their going rate, how is that being "overpaid"?

This article is either baloney or outdated. Or both.

~~~
byrneseyeview
_I work with wedding photographers (providing web solutions). They are not
overpaid because they are self-employed and paid directly by their customers.
If brides are willing to pay their going rate, how is that being "overpaid"?_

I think the point was that a saner price would be lower. He's not saying that
they should be regulated, just that you'd be stupid to buy from them.

~~~
modoc
As a photographer who's done a couple of weddings, you have no freaking idea
how much time goes into it. The sales cycle takes time. Dealing with Bride-
zilla and Mom-zilla is always lots of fun. Then usually you do engagement
photos, often outdoors somewhere. Figure an hour of driving, a couple hours of
shooting. Maybe 8 hours of post-processing the 500 pictures:) Maybe less if
you're conservative.

Then the wedding itself. Wake up before dawn, pack up your gear. Drive to
wherever the event is happening. Get a lay of the land, figure out where
people will standing, how the light will be at X o'clock, etc... Then you run
around all day with a heavy pack and a heavy camera shooting the bride and her
bridesmaids hanging out in her big hotel room. The makeup artist working on
each of the girls. The hair stylist doing each girl. Mom lacing up the corset.
Etc... This is 3-4 hours, maybe more. Then over to the grooms room, repeat,
only much quicker. Then slam in new batteries, new CF cards, and jog a mile to
the church. Shoot people walking in, sitting down, etc.. The whole ceremony,
which can take hours and hours. Then take the bride and groom off for their
own photos. Then reception photos. Then dinner photos. Then dancing photos.
Wrap up around 2 AM after a 20 hour day on your feet with a 20 lb bag on your
back and a 8 lb lump that you're holding up to your eye all day. Drive home.

Spend 2-3 days post-processing. Spend another day laying out books. Realize
the check they gave you isn't signed, and they're on honeymoon for three more
weeks.

Etc...

It's physically taxing, and at the end of the day your hourly rate is
hilariously low. And you only work a few weekends in the summer. It's a very
hard way to make a buck.

------
tyler
In a free market, the idea of a particular profession being "overpaid" is just
silly. People are paid exactly as much as they are worth to their employer...
If there was someone better who would do the job for less, they would be
replaced.

~~~
michaelneale
>People are paid exactly as much as they are worth to their employer.

Or is it as much as they can "charge" their employer?

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helveticaman
Most of these are overpaid because of a labor cartel that limits supply, like
in the case of orthodontists and longshoremen. They're worthy of an anti-trust
case.

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csw
God forbid that anyone should be in a union, or organize to demand decent pay
and benefits. Why, they might go on strike!

What a load of right-wing garbage.

~~~
nazgulnarsil
heaven forbid anyone get paid the fair market value of their labor. instead
lets have a bunch of thugs threaten to go on strike and prevent anyone else
from working to artificially drive up their wages.

~~~
michaelneale
(excuse my ignorance but..) did heavy unionisation happen in the US motor
industry?

~~~
run4yourlives
um, yes.

~~~
michaelneale
So it worked out just super !

~~~
run4yourlives
An anecdote is not a trend.

~~~
michaelneale
I was being sarcastic ;)

~~~
run4yourlives
Thank God, I was getting worried! :-)

