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Please state your career field and the grade you would give it. Your grade would be based on your overall satisfaction. Things like salary, security/stability, and work environment should factor into the grade as well.
Career: Information Technology
Overall satisfaction: B+
Salary: A
Security/stability: B
Work Environment: A
Future outlook for students looking to get into the field: D
There's a LOT of low paying contract work in my field now, unless you get specialized training and experience it's difficult to get a job in a good company. I personally know people in IT who haven't had stable employment for several years.
@kayanne, like I said, I like working nights :S it isn't a draw back for me, I work a set schedule monday through thursday nights, no weekends and 1-2 holidays if they fall during the days I would have worked anyways (if I didn't already take off for family time). Some holidays I don't mind picking up for 2x base pay + holiday pay. I don't have to deal with doctors/nurses yelling at me. If they call for a stat, I tell them what's going on, why it's late and tell them how much longer it'll take and they are happy (or at least don't push it since them yelling isn't going to get the result faster and they know it). I don't have issues of no lunch/breaks/restroom either, if I need to go, I'll go. Any result can wait the few minutes for me to use restroom, I'm much faster when I'm not uncomfortable and management respects that I'll do the work as quick as I can while doing the best allowed so they let me do my job without supervision.
Plus how are you tied to the analyzer? I just load about 100-200 samples each hour onto a track system and it goes to analyzer, pretty much walk away unless something breaks on it. All I pretty much have to do is watch results in LIS screen and watch QC results and I can "batch" them into about 30s since they come off at about the same time due to how quickly they are sampled/ran (can't control this part so might as well learn to time it out like this). Giving me about 15-25 minutes each hour of "down" time where I'm doing manual testing or loading more onto track or maintenance. I have a lab aid to help me load samples/reagents, find samples, call criticals/answer phone calls as well so I mainly just focus on the testing process/results. Lab aids are being used more in the KC area, many labs have time now. I don't know if this drives down the salary but the lab aids I work with are being paid $12/hour and $16/hour (more experienced) which I asked before so I can give you the dollar amount (forget exact amount with the cents though), so they aren't "cheap" as in minimum wage
Yes, we are short staffed sometimes, if it is extended, management hires a temp for a few months to get someone hired/trained. So it isn't really ever a long stretch of time. They ask us to work overtime and some like it and some don't. I generally don't work overtime since I value my time off more than the extra money.
I saw you were in lousiana, did you work in the south too? I generally hear that the pay is lower there. I work with a few that moved because they were being paid $15/hour down there but then moved here and got about $10 more.
I'm sad to see people don't like the field, I mean sure it isn't high paying, but I never thought it was high stress either.
@MSchemist, I'm not sure where you are looking online, I mean yes on indeed's med tech forum, people complain about it but people that like the job aren't posting why they like it as often either. So you see a lot of people not liking the field because they are the one's posting it? http://www.careercast.com/career-new...ory-technician (not MT but MLT is similar) lists the job as not very stress full. You can find other articles as well. The unemployment rate is 1.4% from this article http://www.cbsnews.com/news/25-colle...loyment-rates/. It's old but I can't imagine it being much higher if any since then.
$40-50k for your entire career after a BSc and some post-graduate training and license isn't a lot of money and won't draw in too many takers from the crowd inteligent enough for a science degree. That isn't much better than being a social worker and significantly less than teacher and teachers don't work grave-yard and holidays.
It just seems that most of the sciences are a recipe for extreme underachieving financially.
I suspect though that the job may be less stressful now as automation equipment like sample preping autosamplers have and are contining to advance at a furious rate cutting down the time needed for sample preparation.
$40-50k for your entire career after a BSc and some post-graduate training and license isn't a lot of money and won't draw in too many takers from the crowd inteligent enough for a science degree. That isn't much better than being a social worker and significantly less than teacher and teachers don't work grave-yard and holidays.
It just seems that most of the sciences are a recipe for extreme underachieving financially.
I suspect though that the job may be less stressful now as automation equipment like sample preping autosamplers have and are contining to advance at a furious rate cutting down the time needed for sample preparation.
In my experience, science and engineering do not pay that much more in the private sector except for certain subsets such as computers/tech/pharmacy.
Things like Earth Science, laboratory work, civil and mechanical engineering, biologists etc don't pay much more than jobs you can get with liberal arts degrees. That's a long standing myth.
However, it does increase your odds to get a job I believe. There's more competition for those 'whatever degree you got' jobs.
Plus how are you tied to the analyzer? I just load about 100-200 samples each hour onto a track system and it goes to analyzer, pretty much walk away unless something breaks on it.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MSchemist80
I suspect though that the job may be less stressful now as automation equipment like sample preping autosamplers have and are contining to advance at a furious rate cutting down the time needed for sample preparation.
The automation has made it possible for hospital labs to greatly increase their test volume (hence revenue) by seeking "outreach" work (lab testing for doctors and clinics outside of the hospital). And just because some of the tests are automated doesn't mean that it's "walk away." In extremely high volume labs, I was constantly adding reagent packs (for some analyzers you can't even add reagents without going through shut down), adding pipette tips, emptying waste, etc. Something was always beeping. And a new reagent pack that happens to be a new lot number could mean shutting down the whole instrument for calibration. I never had a lab assistant to uncap/recap specimens, or to load/unload the instrument. Those are "factory worker" tasks that take a LOT of time if you're running thousands of specimens per day. Some labs I worked in did not have auto-verification for results, so that takes time too. On top of all that would be interruptions to run a manual blood gas for OR, or a time-consuming osmo, look for a missing specimen, try to track down a doctor to report a critical value, and the never-ending phone calls.
It was RARE that I truly felt I could, with a clear conscience, walk away from all of that, even to use the restroom. (Maybe that was the problem, that I was too conscientious. But how do you just walk away when alarms are sounding and phones are ringing?)
Labs do not tend to be run using "lean" principles, nor does lab mgmt generally have a desire to even learn about process improvement. Those were additional frustrations for me.
Well sorry OP, didn't mean to monopolize your thread with all this talk about one field.
when I started out in 1998 the pay sucked for entry-level at $12hr, and I capped out at $17hr by 2004 working as an employee. When I became self-employed in 2005 and landed my own accounts and worked from my home office my income jumped. Now when I do short-term consulting or billing for a medical practice my rate is between $25-$30 per hour and when I do long term billing as a billing company then I charge about 5% of whatever I collect for a practice. My 1st client I landed 9yrs ago was a cardiology practice and he is still my client My income fluctuates year to year depending on how much work I do for a given year but average range is between $84,000-$104,000 for the past 9yrs.
Please state your career field and the grade you would give it. Your grade would be based on your overall satisfaction. Things like salary, security/stability, and work environment should factor into the grade as well.
This would help those in school, considering various career fields.
Information Security - A
It's a field that will continue to grow. And to me, this is the best time to be in this field. The s#!t is hitting the fan with all the data breaches/mobile security issues/compliance etc. And those in it are getting some real great experience dealing/learning from all the current issues. And from all aspects - technical, policy, compliance, management, etc.
Salary is good as there are a lot of needed expertise that aren't being filled. For me, its been extremely stable and the work environments have been phenomenal. Albeit that less related to the field itself than the organization you're associated with.
The one big con: like with anything IT - the technical stuff depreciate quickly. You gotta keep up with everything. That means you will be a student for life. Which isn't' necessarily a bad thing though.
That isn't much better than being a social worker and significantly less than teacher and teachers don't work grave-yard and holidays.
You may want to check your numbers on salaries. Only some teachers make more and we do work way into the wee hours and holidays. We just don't have students who are with us during those hours.
In my experience, science and engineering do not pay that much more in the private sector except for certain subsets such as computers/tech/pharmacy.
Things like Earth Science, laboratory work, civil and mechanical engineering, biologists etc don't pay much more than jobs you can get with liberal arts degrees. That's a long standing myth.
However, it does increase your odds to get a job I believe. There's more competition for those 'whatever degree you got' jobs.
I definitely would not count Mechanical engineering in there. I am an ME and I can safely say that me and all of the guys and girls in my extended study group came out of college with degrees well above the average liberal arts entry salary. In 2007, out of the 6 guys and 2 girls we had, I think the lowest starting salary any of us took was around $55,000. Of the ones I keep in touch with, most of us have had significant bumps in pay over the past 7 years as well.
Now, of course you can still make some good money with some liberal arts degrees depending on what you do, but as a whole I cannot support the idea that it is a myth that MEs don't really pay more than liberal arts degrees. Liberal Arts is too broad too to compare to one specific type of engineering anyway.
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My income fluctuates year to year depending on how much work I do for a given year but average range is between $84,000-$104,000 for the past 9yrs.
