[CAUT] Position Opening at the University of South Carolina

[Jeff Tanner]

Dear CAUTers,
Yes.  After 9 1/2 years, I've left my position at the University of South Carolina.  The responsibilities and difficulties of the situation were growing too fast for one person to have any chance of keeping up and the salary was never going to support living in the local community - not for raising a family at least.  The time requirements were getting unpredictable and increasing moonlighting requirements were making it more and more difficult to be committed to the unrealistic requirements of the staff position.  I'm planning to compose an email to the list for anyone interested in applying for the position to know what to expect. In fact, I already have, but it was too long and involved to send. In the meantime, if anyone has questions about the situation, feel free to email me privately at this address.

Important things one needs to know about this particular situation:  The benefits are not free on top of the salary. Employee contributions to benefits are a significant deduction from the paycheck.  At $52K, my daily take home pay was just shy of $134, or just under $2900/month. The 2008-09 SC budget only provides for a 1% COL increase for state employees. Just three years ago, we had come through a 2 year period of salary freezes and I look for that to happen again next year. There is no tuition assistance for families. Children of employees do not go to college free or reduced, and USC has a relatively high tuition for state flagship schools in the region.  The employee can take up to 3 hours per semester if class space is available. Building outside private business in the local sector is very slow and often requires traveling well outside the local area. While some university techs regularly get calls because of their position, I averaged perhaps 2 calls a year, one of which was asking about the value of their piano for sale. Do not assume you won't have to moonlight. Unless you are financially independent, the advertised salary will not support a home, car payment, utilities, food and clothing in the local area. Do not expect to come in for a lower salary and get it adjusted upward later. The system doesn't allow for that type of employee rewarding.  You must negotiate the salary you expect at hire. The system limits performance increases to 10%, but don't expect to ever see a 10% performance increase. You can only qualify for a pay for performance increase once annually.  With the price of gas and food going up daily, that is a very long wait between salary increases.

One technician who called me about the position opening expected that taking a university job would be an easier life. I've found it to be an extremely difficult and stressful means of earning an income.  I was working 70 plus hours a week and still living paycheck to paycheck.  If you're young and planning a family, I definitely cannot recommend it.

Probably the biggest reason I left was that the performance expectations don't allow for much of a family life.  I wasn't raised that way and I couldn't continue to subject my family to that kind of home life. If your idea of family life is the only time you see your wife and children is when you kiss them goodnight (and often not then) and put them on the school bus the next morning, then you may be ok with this work.  And yes, you get vacation leave, but you don't make enough money to be able to take your family on vacation.  We ran up a substantial amount of debt trying to wait for the salary to get to a level we could just pay monthly bills.  It was time to stop going backwards.

Jeff Tanner
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: https://www.moypiano.com/ptg/caut.php/attachments/20080612/0d3bbcc5/attachment.html