Teen Nearly Killed us All

[kandrathe]

And, for the record, sales people have HORRIBLE "salaries". In fact, "sales" and "salary" don't even go together. It's an oxymoron. If you're in Sales, you're not on salary. If you're on salary, and in the Sales world, you're a manager. And often you make less as a manager than as a salesman! Go figure! (Commission-based sales only, mind you, unless you count over-time, which managers don't get.)

I guess my experience has been more with large companies. Some examples, a manufacturing company where I worked in the mid 80's had 200 sales people. Their base salary was 60K, and they were each given a proven one million dollar territory based on prior years sales. Their base commision (on the million) would bring their compensation up to $100K, but then they had escalating rates after that. The top sales people earned between $250K and $300K (more than the CEO). For a large consulting firm I worked at, the sales people earned a base salary of 40K, and then 13% of any placement (e.g. one project I led had 15 consultants for 9 months with an average billing rate of $75/hour - The salesperson earned $5860/week, or ~$211K for that one placement.) Retail is another kettle of squid, though.

For the most part, Engineers and Sales People's salaries aren't payed by our taxes. Teachers' salaries are.

Maybe the teachers salaries should be paid from a separate source. Or, citizens should be more involved in taking control of their local governments, to insure that the compensation of a teacher is higher than the city garbage collector (not that garbage collectors are unimportant).