I made the mistake of becoming a manager about 4 years ago. This is one of the most frustrating parts of the job. If you have a good relationship with your team they’ll usually tell you something like “I’ve been getting contacted about other offers, here’s what they’re offering.”
It’s usually about a 20% bump. I’ve not once been able to convince the company I’m at to match it. Usually the best I’m allowed to do is something like a 5-6% raise in the next salary increase cycle.
I’ll usually know for 2-3 months a team member is leaving before it actually happens because of this. Of course, if I’m allowed to hire a replacement they’ll let me pay market value.
Job hopping is definitely the best way to get a pay increase.
I just dont understand that logic
“Oh god, this guy wants a raise? Fuck him, he wont get anything… but when he quits, hire his replacement at what he was asking for, or higher”
and they wonder why loyalty isnt a thing anymore
And even if that guy they hire is really good, there is still a large period of time where that person has to learn the ropes and is most likely less useful than the person who already knew the ins and outs. Also, most of the time, they are never as good…
Penny wise and pound foolish. They can’t resist the opportunity to exploit, even if it costs the company in the long run.
Everyday the idea of an AI CEO sounds less like a joke and more like a great fucking idea.
At this point it would be most likely to be an LLM which just emulates what it has seen CEOs do in its training data and would do the same sort of thing.
And more like a nightmare for the rest of us.
Hard to see how it could perform any worse, and the wage savings could be allocated to the people actually doing the work.
Yeah sure… The savings would go to buybacks or dividends, of course.
And that’s still a better use of funds than wasting them on an overcompensated CEO.
Well the goal of an ideal CEO is to pull more money into the company and give as little out as possible. If we saw more AI CEOs we would just have further wealth disparity in our society and workers at those companies would be paid less as the AI would optimize their pay for maximum company profits. It would be everything we hate about capitalism but amplified, and the person who owned the AI would get paid even more for doing even less.
Not just less useful. They have negative productivity starting out because training them takes away productive time from the more experienced staff.
We cope by saying they hire a replacement who asked for more. The reality is they generally don’t. They either offload the work to the rest of the dept and go “oh look at that we didn’t need them!” as the group drowns OR they find a wide eyed, younger professional who will take a crap - or at least lower - salary.
This varies from industry to industry but it’s very common.
We cope by saying they hire a replacement who asked for more. The reality is they generally don’t. They either offload the work to the rest of the dept and go “oh look at that we didn’t need them!” as the group drowns OR they find a wide eyed, younger professional who will take a crap - or at least lower - salary.
Which doesnt seem to be common, seeing how you have shit like the report that OP posted that job hopping massively increases income.
Do you think OP is representative of the broader workforce?
Loyalty is a two-way street.
Remember that Star Trek where they go to the evil mirror universe and the baddies come to the Enterprise? The bad versions get caught because it’s hard for someone with no empathy to fake it.
Classic trek.
The saddest part is that I really thought we had the potential to become the federation. It turns out, we were always just the farengi.
I heard somewhere that’s what they were trying to say when they made at first. The episode just didn’t work. DS9 redeemed them.
The Ferengi never had a world war
They’re probably hoping to not hire a replacement at all
I keep waiting for someone to lay it out and explain how the companies are actually benefiting in some subtle way from this arrangement. As far as I can tell, no, this is just what they decided to do.
Maybe an advantage of this setup is that you ensure that your bus factor is high and you’re constantly testing it to make sure it stays high? Kind of like how Netflix uses ChaosMonkey.
It all makes “business” sense for those who see employees as “commodities”, i.e. all kinda equivalent and hence easilly replaceable with nothing lost when they’re switched.
It’s basically the MBA thinking of employees as just another “raw material” or “supplier”.
The reality, more so in complex domains, is that employees have an adaptation and learning period when they arrive (unlike engineered devices, companies aren’t standardized machines using standardized parts, so you a new “part” won’t just seamlessly fit and start delivering full performance) and often never written institutional knowledge that goes with them when they leave.
However as those things are not easilly quantified and measurable, MBA types - being unable to add it to their spreadsheets - will simply ignore them rather than trying to balance such costs against salary costs: giving a decent salary increase (a guaranteed cost) will always look like a worse option in an accounting spreadsheet if its only counter is a sub-100% possibility that they might lose that employee (and, remember, since they don’t count adaption and loss of institutional knowledge costs, that’s listed there as costing nothing) and replace it with somebody else who might even be possible to get with a less “decent” salary (so, more than the current employees but less that a fair salary for the current employee).
Such approach works well if all companies are doing it and the probability that people will leave if they don’t get a decent salary is low enough (which it probably is, since the majority of human beings favour stability over change).
It’s a bit messy for the employer. You can’t just hand out 20% raises every time someone threatens to leave. Then everyone would be threatening to leave. And that’s a hefty cost to add to what’s likely your largest operating expense. Also, that’s not just 20% in the employee’s pocket, there are additional costs like unemployment insurance and the like.
OTOH, unless your employee plain sucks or the job is simple, it’s almost always better to keep them than train a replacement. Tribal knowledge is valuable knowledge.
And no, only very small-time employers expect loyalty. They understand the game, and we should as well.
Funny that lemmy whines and moans about capitalism all day, without realizing they can play as well. Jumping jobs over the last 11 years got me $14 > $22 > $39. Been at this place 5-years, thinking about jumping ship again. Probably put me over $100K with a little luck. Oh, and I’ve never had such fat benefits or worked less. From home to boot.
Related: When we first moved here, a friend started at an oil change place, well below his skill set and previous pay. Kept job hopping and stacking his resume, now he’s the top service manager at the largest auto dealer group. He quit moving, guess he’s fat and happy. Sure drags in the $.
You can’t just hand out 20% raises every time someone threatens to leave.
if you have multiple employees getting job offers that are 20% higher then you’re not paying your employees enough 🤷♂️
Fine. They all claim to have offers. It’s not like employers don’t track turnover and market rates. Some of them just decide it’s cheaper to allow high turnover. Not like they can’t work an Excel sheet.
Having said that, I’ve found many employers wholly ignorant of metrics that aren’t easily tracked. For example, 2 jobs ago I was a key player at my shitty little shop. Kept the customers rolling in, despite their aggravations with the company. You can’t put a solid number on that. (And many told me they left for the competition when I quit.)
Last job, I quit for an offer doubling my pay and benefits. They loved me, wouldn’t go for it. The next year they paid far more in IT costs than it would have cost to keep me.
Back to my point, work hard, achieve something to be proud of on your resume, jump ship. The game is only rigged for the employer is you’re in a shit job that requires almost no skills. As to that, see the example I talked about with my oil change buddy.
How is it messy for the employer to keep wages at market prices?
You don’t have to match anything or contend with mass quitting if you just pay the going rate to start with.
Do you think employers are stone ignorant of market rates? Who said anything about mass quitting? The people not moving on are the people who can’t. Hell, that’s where I’m at. Pretty sure I’ve attained the Peter Principle for now.
Clickbait.
Article is nearly 10 years old.
Article contains no studies or surveys showing this result.
The 50% figure is calculated by assuming a paltry annual raise and consistent large pay bumps by switching companies.
That being said, word is that in the tech industry at least, hiring budgets are clearly higher than promotion budgets and that moving every 2 years or so is clearly the best strategy for career advancement.
Just one industry, of course, but the pattern certainly seems to have settled in there, and it may not be a stretch to speculate it will spread to other industries perhaps under the shitty influence of AI.
Backing up “word is” by an article that says “word is” is kinda meager though. There are many things widely believed to be true that are not, or only mildly so our in specific circumstances.
Backing up “word is” by an article that says “word is” is kinda meager though.
Well I’m relaying what is basically common knowledge in the industry shared by people in the industry. The thing about promotion/hiring budgets is something I know directly or through people at their companies.
Sure, it may not be industry wide, of course, but I’ve not seen any hint of a countervailing trend or pattern. What’s more, in the tech industry, it makes sense. There’s a fair amount of pivoting which is often deemed to be done best by hiring (at least some) new staff with the required expertise/experience. And maintaining existing/legacy systems is often de-prioritised such that those who’ve been at the company for a while who understand the existing systems well are not as valued as those who may help the company “grow”. Which is why I bring up the possibility that these patterns may spread to other industries.
The countervailing trend in the tech industry is layoffs.
I’m not sure what you’re saying. The size of the labour force and the way salary “growth” relates to employer movement rate seem to me relatively independent dynamics. Moreover, I’d imagine increased layoffs positively correlate with the advantage that regularly moving employers can provide.
Am I missing something?
Some of the companies that pay the most are the same ones doing the layoffs, like Google.
Trading up for money could add extra risk exposure to layoffs.
But if every job change is seen as a pay raise opportunity, I guess layoffs are speeding the process along for you.
AFAICT, lay-offs are pretty widespread. Sometimes the bigger employers just give the smaller ones “permission” first.
Every single time I see this type of conversation come up it’s always about the more privileged higher paying white collar work.
In my shit experience, blue collar work is “get shit raises or take massive pay cuts.” There is no “change job and also make more.” I’ve been stuck in the same cycle for 15 years now… Every time I leave a job I get knocked back to the wage I made when I first started the job I left regardless of the new position.
But that’s because only white collar workers are seen as people. Us blue collar workers are just meat machines that never deserve more than we were “bought” for and any new employee is automatically assumed to be as intelligent and skilled as a dead cockroach.
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Oh I hear you. I’m in no way celebrating any of these dynamics or the white collar focus of “how to run your career advice”.
How does this work out with all in value when it comes to stock options or other vesting based non salary compensation? Aren’t you leaving a lot on the table if you switch every 2 years? Does salary alone make up for that?
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My company gives up to an extra 2 weeks of PTO based on years of service. Stock Options/RSU have like a 3 to 5 year pay out vesting timeline with a % of it vesting every year. but you get new grants every year. So after you’ve been working for 3 or more years, you basically have a “full” grant value vesting every year. throw in 6 percent 401k match at 100 percent match my on paper below market value salary actually returns a pretty good total comp package. I’m not sure if switching every 2 or 3 years would provide me any significant benefit because of how my long term tenure at the company has paid off with these incentives for staying. I imagine there’s a probably something about jumping around early vs mid vs late career that factors into this equation too.
Don’t know! AFAIK, some stock options do partially vest before two years. But this isn’t just salary, it’s career advancement, which means seniority and arguably experience, all of which tend to stay locked in for the rest of your career and lead to more stock options should you arrive somewhere you’re willing to stay longer at.
Idk about it being locked in. I have seen people with Sr and Lead titles interviewing for a lower position these days. Those things don’t always stay with you the rest of your life. But titles are cheap. Salary, bonuses, and stock are money.
For me, I had considered job offers with higher salary. But then when I looked at the salary and reduced PTO I realized my hourly wage didn’t change that much. When I factored in the stock package and downgrade in 401k match these 10%+ percent salary increases put me behind near term (near term being about 3 years until the new company started to vest and become regular earnings).
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I’ve averaged about a 4 year tenure at my previous employers – some a bit more, some a bit less – but usually with a competing offer or two in that time period that I’ve used as a lever for a pay raise. Nobody’s complained about me being a job-hopper or short-timer.
I have noticed that my two last employers, both large national firms, have moved towards a model of career-tracking with a defined pay structure, similar to government work where different positions and experience levels have a pay range attached to them and you’re not able to negotiate out of that range. This has been framed as a protective move against wage inequality suits, but I suspect it’s more about preventing employees from negotiating especially high compensation packages. I haven’t had it cut against me yet – in both cases I got a very minor pay bump when my employers actually went out and compared their pay scales to what the market was demanding – but if enough employers start benchmarking against each other and using that to cap pay, it will functionally become like a wage-fixing cartel similar to what’s happened to rent in the last 5-10 years.
Well, it does match my own experience and observations (in Software Development in a couple of countries in Europe) going back to the 90s.
The shift to “no loyalty to employees and hence for employees being loyal is a net negative” was around the point when companies started refering to employees as “human resources” and IMHO, resulted from the increased use of MBAs in Management, which in Tech happenned aound the early to mid-90s (though it dependend on country and the actual Industry making heavy use of IT).
Mind you, at least in IT and even all the way back then, it was already a good idea to move places at least once in one’s career because people who worked all their life in one place don’t really know any other way of working than the one of their place, which is limiting for one’s professional growth (though plenty of people did manage to just keep ticking up on salary purelly on age-seniority even well after they stopped improving as professionals) because no one company has “the right processes” for everything.
Personally I actually think it’s healthy to move companies at least a few times in one’s career, but my point here is more about one’s career and income growth stalling (and pretty early on, too) if you don’t move companies.
That said, I’m talking about expert and in high demand career tracks: I don’t really know if in the kind of jobs were the bean counters basically see employees as commodities there is any significant benefit from job-hopping, unless it’s job-hopping into a different kind of job.
That said, it would interesting to see what the actual numbers are, although I’m sure it will vary a lot between industries and jobs and other factors. Anecdotally it sounds correct but that could just be true for some trait of my social circle, or some other bias about mentioning pay or something. Or just that people tend to be more likely to change jobs when they are underpaid, so the pay jumps from changing jobs seem bigger since the job they’re changing to will be closer to the market, whereas well paid employees will stick around and maybe not notice the gradual pay increases as much.
I’m glad forbes put the date in the URL otherwise I probably wouldn’t have noticed and come back to the comments.
Old article, but it’s certainly true in my industry. Having said that, I’m a bit conflicted with this at least for my own personal situation.
I’ve been with my current employer for a decade. I’m sure I can get a significant pay bump if I switch, but I’m in a comfortable position where I think the trade off is worth it. I earn enough to support myself and my wife on a single income. Work from home, unlimited PTO, and the job itself is not super stressful that I get good work/life balance. My manager and teammates are awesome. The company has great benefits and lots of perks.
I’m at a point in my life where I no longer want to be “challenged” with work. Meaning, I just want to clock in, do work, clock out. I don’t yearn for promotions, new challenges, and moving up. I just want to get paid for work I’m familiar with and good at, and focus my energy on my personal life. And my current job allows me to do that plus all the perks mentioned. So the question is, will I be willing to potentially sacrifice all the comfort I currently enjoy to get paid more? Sure, there’s a chance I could get a better paying job AND all the same perks, but that’s not a guarantee and I will never know until I’m working that new job. Also take into account all the effort required to learn everything on the new job and having to “perform” to impress as a new hire.
But who knows, it might come to a point where my current pay is no longer enough. Only time will tell.
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But how did you get there?
I think job-hopping helps people who still need to climb the ladder until they land some “senior” position into which they can settle in, safe in the knowledge that they can always find another job elsewhere with their experience.
This article is more than 9 years old.
And still nothing has changed
My wife and I skyrocketed in our careers. How? Between 1997 and 2008 we did exactly the opposite of what our parents recommended and kept hopping jobs. My longest stint at any one place was 18 months and hers was two years. When we realized that our skill sets were too expensive and rare to waste at a single project, we started our own consulting firm and continue to cycle through projects regularly.
Remember, whether you are self-employed or employed by someone else, you ultimately work for yourself. Act accordingly and guard your self-interests.
But it’s also in one’s self interest to have a stable relationship with colleagues, being used to an environment, not changing things drastically so frequently.
There is a big, non-monetary cost to job hopping. If life outside of work is not stable, than changing the one constant is suddenly not appealing, even if more money is the reward.
I found that to be the opposite. All of our clients have come to us via word of mouth and all of our initial clients were referrals from past colleagues. Because we jumped around so much we ended up with a very large network of ex colleagues that came to us for help once they knew we were available. As. those colleagues also switched jobs they knew to call us if they needed our help in their new place of employment.
They key is not to stay at one place for a long time but to make an impact during the time you spend there.
This reminds me of Joan in Mad Men where she takes her Rolodex with her when she leaves the company.
It’s your Rolodex/LinkedIn, not the company’s. Also, the relationship between company and employee doesn’t have to be adversarial. A lot of people, and companies forget that.
It doesnt have to be adversarial, but if either party decideds to make it so, it is. For larger companies in particular its pretty much institutionalised to be adverserial from day one.
I appreciate that it worked for you. I don’t want to invalidate your experience. I just want to say that there is a good reason such a large gap exists between the evidence that job hopping is beneficial, and people actually doing it.
I want to point out that a) you have a skillset and job area that is conducive to freelancing and b) that building a network requires networking, which again is something that costs energy and social and communication skills.
These are not a given and should not be treated as a no-cost activity. Especially your last sentence implies a required focus on impact- again, your reward is more money, but there is a cost to doing this at work.
Great advice.
It still applies today.
Yeah, I did a double-take when I got to the part about expected wage increases for 2014. I suspect it’s much worse now, and was interested to see what Forbes was printing about that as at least these days they’re notorious for posting stuff with an anti-labour focus. I can’t imagine they’d post an article like this these days.
That said, I’m sure this article is more relevant than ever now and it’s a damn travesty that this is what the labour market has come to since the 70s/80s.
I’m on the executive team for a small business that my family bought almost two years ago. Many of us had worked there for years beforehand and absolutely weren’t paid what we were worth. As soon as we took over, we started to raise wages across the board (other than sales, who are our own little 1% due to the structure we inherited). Wages are still far from where we’d like them to be, but we’re trying our best with the resources at hand while we navigate these first few years of ownership. Shit’s not easy for a lot of small businesses and I get that many small business owners are outright taking advantage of their staff. We actively try not to (granted, in the Marxist sense we inherently are) but I realize that most of our staff deserve more than we can currently afford to pay them.
This sucks for the general public. You’re always either going to be dealing with a] a disgruntled employee who knows he deserves a raise or b] an under trained new guy. You never get the one who knows the job really well.
I used to be one of the “loyal” ones but around covid time I decided to see where I could get by doing this. Since then, and three jobs later, my salary went from around 66k to now 105k. Current gig seems cool and a cake walk, so may stick around a bit.
Same! There was a shortage in IT for a little while and I took advantage of it and got a $30k increase! With same benefits and paid vacation.
Now even a 2% pay raise is significant on the salary I make. I feel like I’m finally being appreciated and paid what I’m really worth after a decade of struggling.
Yep, I jumped ship a year ago and got a $50k increase! I also get a yearly bonus up to 10% of my salary. Feels good man.
Preach. You gotta move to get paid. I have no idea why people would think their current employer would just throw them a gigantic increase.
It’s funny when I put in my notice in my last job and why, they magically had money to counter. Like where was this cash when I was closing difficult tickets and completing projects?
Negotiating with your current boss is significantly more difficult than negotiating with a future prospective firm, because your future prospective firm doesn’t have the power to fire you.
It’s 10000x better in the blue collar world because right off the bat you’re assumed to be as useless as a person can possibly be so you either do the futile argue for a raise (which never matches what you should get) or you take a huge pay cut when finding a new job…
I’ve been stuck in the same cycle for 15 years now… Get shitty raises for 5 years, get burned out and bail, take massive pay cut, prove my worth to get back to shitty wage I left for but am now burned out again, find a new job and take another massive pay cut etc etc… adjusted for inflation I make as much now as I did 10 years ago…
These articles are always about white collar work. :(
Mind me asking what you do?
My job doesn’t like to give titles so no one can determine their value, but I’m something like a supervisor/manager/QC in a factory that makes luxury products for the ultra wealthy and the military.
What kind of luxury products does the military buy?
It’s a separate part of the company. The parts are similar but not made to be luxurious and some are just completely different things that aren’t luxury at all. I wrote the initial comment without the military part added, but I edited it to add that so I guess it kinda reads a little odd now.
I don’t think there are many companies at all that do what we do so I’m being kinda vague lol
Too late for you to back out now. You are now and forever known as that one guy that makes luxury military equipment.
Probably custom metal fabrication or some nautical stuff
Unless you have a union job, then you’re making the same thing as anyone else with the same experience as you and you’ve got benefits and probably job security 👍
Yeah I love being in a union. It’s 👍
Confirmed 👍 and Im not top rate yet
Or, as my omniscient relatives and neighbors who have on countless occasions provided unsolicited commentary on my career would say, “a nice stable job, why don’t you ever stay in one place?”
This has been well documented for at least a decade.
Meanwhile, employers feign concern over turnover but know it’s a better bottom line and their bonus to let employees with standards leave than to do the right thing.
Well, it’s different if you work for good companies. I’ve stayed at my last 3 jobs for well over 2 years each and my career is going great, making twice as much money as I need. IT / technical stuff. 6 years at one, 4 years at the next, currently at 3 years with current.
I’ve never lasted that long at any former employer though. My shortest employment was half of one shift at a factory, it sucked so bad I left on my first lunch break. The moral of my story is that it’s OK to stay with a good company, if you can find a good job like that. Experience counts for a lot towards getting hired to these good jobs.
Article is old but I have often heard this anecdotally. I have known a number of people over the years who changed jobs every 1-2 years, because they said it’s the only way to get ahead salary-wise. I suspect it’s a lot harder to pull it off now, tough. There’s a lot of fake job postings. Not to mention running the gauntlet of submitting your resume 300 times to get auto-rejected 299 times by some dumbass AI where a clueless HR person typed in the criteria prompt. “A young person with at least 30 years of experience who knows ALL the latest technology but will work for less than a landscaper per hour thanks bye”.
P.S. I’m not shitting on landscapers. They do real work, unlike most office drones like me.
The job hunt is much less annoying when you’re already employed though. No real rush, and you can be very picky.
Before covid I switched jobs. Got about $12k more. Months go by, COVID hits and I can’t do my job (didn’t have the flexibility and daycare was shut down). So I get my old job back but said I’d do it for $X where X was another $10k above from the new job.
Switching jobs definitely works. It sucks giving up a sure thing and the comfort zone though
It sucks giving up a sure thing and the comfort zone though
Very much. It’s also kind of a privilege to be able to do that. Often this requires mobility - which you don’t have if your spouse is also working (could not find a job in the same place) or if you have kids (school, friends etc). I think in the USA it is very common to constantly move, but here people usually avoid moving too often. Taking a risk when it’s not just you on the line is also a bit harder.
Ha… This is true.
There’s only been one company that I had worked for almost 4 years. Every company I’ve ever worked for, on my second year I check the job market, if it looks good I start to submit my resume with the goal to get job offers that offer either more pay or more PTO/sick time/holidays (more time off combined). Take my job offer, present it to my employer, then just leave to the other org because more than likely I’ll have a target on my back when it comes time to cut employees / lay off.
Except I can’t switch cause the tech sector crashed and nobody hits me back.
Man I am getting hit up a lot. What do you focus on?
Better question: what do you focus on?
Data engineering, pipeline stuff, cloud dev to support the pipeline… with enough cs chops to pass software engineer interviews rust/TS/python. Obv SQL too. Docker, terraform and similar like cloud formation. Conversational enough to interface with PMs and external clients.
Enough architecture experience to build out medium scale data applications
Something like 6th year
What I should have said:
Data structures and algorithms bro
Yeah I’m just a 5 year IT guy. That’s probably why. I have taken data structures and algorithms classes in college though maybe I could look at that.
Any interest in DevOps? Might be a good extension from it
It sounds cool, tbh. I’d be willing to look a lot of places in tech for something new. My current place is just verifiably insane. They had no help desk tickets when I got here.
Yikes.
Maybe browse some AWS certifications. You could rack several up in a few weeks or months and have a few more feathers in the cap
TC or gtfo
Total comp?
Let’s just say I’m very comfortable and own a home near Denver.
hope you find something, wish you luck!
I wonder how this looks when compared to a decent union shop. In union shops you probably tend to not move jobs a lot, or like in some trades you take your union creds with you no matter where you work.
You certainly can increase pay by jumping around a lot in regular work, but union gigs tend to have set progression based on seniority.
Unions periodically renegotiate their salary and benefits through broad company-wide contracts, so its not just a single small bean asking to be paid a bit more. Its an entire department or firm demanding a bigger percentage of the gross revenue.
Seniority solves a lot of the “how much money do I even ask for?” questions when renegotiating salaries. It also establishes a clear-cut cost of living track. You know what you’ll be making in five years, so you can buy a house or get married or have kids with some underlying expectation of how much you’ll earn when your cost of living goes up.
Well, yes…I’ve been union for decades so I’m quite familiar. This comment is helpful to summarize for some people a bit of how unions do things, but when I originally commented it was more a question about how the two compared as far as earnings. Do you have to constantly jump around non-union jobs to keep up with union wages? Will the mobile employee outpace union wages? At what rate? Overall lifetime earnings? My understanding is that union gigs for comparable jobs may not offer high pay off the bat, but over a lifetime often do better than non-union with wages, benefits, and retirement. However, some normal jobs will allow you to jump right in to good pay relative to a union gig but you may not advance much in pay or have to leave to advance.
Why is a 9 year old article?
Who is a 9 year old article?
Does a 9 year old article?
When is a 9 year old article?
Where is a 9 year old article?
How is a 9 year old article?
Should a 9 year old article?
A range from 9 years ago to today.
