quote:
Originally posted by NiteMare
-Wage($**.**/Hr)
-Salery($**,***/Yr)
-Commision(**% of each sale you make/close)
still being new to the job world, i'd like to know your opinion on each type, and which you prefer
They each have a place.
Hourly wages are usually paid to consultants, part time employees anywhere and full time employees of most "blue collar" and service jobs. The benefit for the employee is that if they work more, they get paid more; if it turns into overtime (usually defined as time in excess of 40 hours per week), they are often paid at a higher rate for the overtime hours.
The downside for the employee is punching the clock, which some would find degrading. The idea is to focus on work while on the job regardless how you are paid, but the hourly model particularly encourages fascist policies. Since you are paid based on time, any personal or non-productive use of it, however brief, is often equated to stealing in the mind of your average supervisor or middle manager. These are the jobs where they might start noticing how long you were in the bathroom.
Annual salary is usually found with higher skilled, higher responsibility full time jobs. The downside of this model is that you may sometimes have to work late and don't get paid any extra for it.
On the upside, however, your performance is judged more by results and less by nitpicking what you do while getting the work done or when you come and go. This doesn't mean you will be able to get away with disappearing for hours and days, but since you are not paid on time, it is not likely anyone will follow you throughout the day with a stopwatch and notepad in hand. This is what most people prefer.
Commission-only jobs are always big ticket sales, where each deal amounts to at least hundreds, often thousands of dollars in margins. Typical examples would include selling cars, real estate, mortgage loans. Often, the job involves going out and finding customers of your own, however you choose to do it -- including spending your own money on promotion.
For those people good at that sort of thing, who can generate a large volume, commissioned sales of certain products can be the highest paid job they could ever have -- at least without investing in an advanced degree and taking a lot of time to get to the top. There is virtually no limit to what you can make; some of the top real estate agents have annual incomes comparable to Fortune 500 CEO salaries and we don't even know whether they have a highschool diploma.
However, that kind of sales success is rare and newcomers often work their posteriors off for months before they make anything, followed by barely averaging the minimum wage for a long time. It is definitely not a good idea for a temporary/summer job, nor is it something to get into when you are already financially pressed.
Sometimes you may encounter combinations of the above. For example, a sales job with an hourly or annual base salary might come with a commission bonus, or an annual salary job might come with a provision for hourly overtime pay.
