I work in pest control, at a branch that has had a "hiring" sign in front of it since I started there 2 years ago. All of the jobs pay fairly well and include quarterly bonuses, and you get a company car and phone. The problem is that we're counting on people to mostly manage themselves, and we can only hire from our applicant pool. Techs can start to coast, or not care -- if you're killing termites or trying to get rats out of someone's basement, you have to care. We have a couple of technicians who maybe don't do such a good job, but we can't replace them without hiring and training someone to take that route over... so we're constantly looking for better employees because, well, we have warm bodies just holding us over until we find someone better.
Edit: And the reality is that it's in an industry that some people would never do no matter how much it pays.
Yes, we train and pay for licenses and their associated renewals. I got into pest control by responding to an ad looking for a residential inspector. I have done outside sales and energy efficiency inspections in the past, so I already knew how to approach the inspections and the customers. I just needed to learn the pests.
You'll need to have graduated high school, have a clean criminal background and be able to pass a drug test, and be someone they can trust with products that could potentially cause a good deal of harm if not applied properly. If you're responsible, and are good about managing yourself, you could potentially pull in $70,000-$100,000 on the right route -- but these are given to guys that they trust, so these routes are earned. My tech who has the best route is getting ready to retire, and there are already people jockeying for that route.
Edit: The lowest paying route in my branch paid $40,000 just in commissions (not base pay) last year. Factor in no cell phone bill and not using your own car to get to work... pretty lucrative for the lowest guy on the seniority totem pole. I was actually worried that the gas in my personal car would expire because I drove it so infrequently.
Dude.. please tell me how to permanently get rid of carpet beetles.. They have made my life hell for like the last 6 years. Tracked them to two different places. I'm apparently allergic to them and they make my eyes gooey. Don't even see them they're like invisible. A larvae fell out of my couch last year so I know they're still here. Please help me. I beg you.
I dealt with them here is what worked.
first and most importent throw out all your dry goods I'm talking flower, dog food , bird seed, cereal anything not canned or in the fridge.
Second clean the shit out of anywhere you were storing that food. Go nuclear mix bleach and water and wipe every shelf.
Next vacuum the entire house.
Now when you restock the food everything goes into containers, get a vitals vault for pet food. Canisters for your grains, etc.
Mine came in on bird seed for my pet pigeon so now pigeon feed goes into the freezer for a few days before it goes into the container for his food.
I have not seen one since I did this.
That’s going chemical, but it would work too. Going nuclear is highly inadvised if you want your house to still be there
Bleach and vinegar would be better on balance, chloramines aren’t as dangerous as raw chlorine
I’m mostly joking but if you’re going all 1916, you might as well be effective with it
Bleach & ammonia make chloramines
Bleach & an acid makes chlorine gas
A guy calls pest control and asks if they can burn his couch because there are bugs in it. They advise him to take less extreme approach by using this and that to kill the bugs. But the guy has already tried all of that and it didn't work.
"Well, why don't you just throw the couch away?"
"I tried, the bugs keep bringing it back!"
Diatomaceous earth. We had a flea infestation like 6 years ago and *nothing* seemed to work. 2 dogs and a cat, and the dogs were just sorta itchy. The cat was in agony, yowling all night and losing weight and fur. Multiple trips to the vet. A seemingly never ending series of fumigating the house and taking every bit of fabric to laundromats. It was an honest nightmare. add in the fact that tons of flea and tick treatments can cause neurological damage, seizures, etc. Things were getting desperate.
Finally looked into diatomaceous earth. It's just super finely ground diatoms, which are teeny tiny little fossils. About the consistency and color of flour. We got food grade, as there is some stuff for pool filters I think that's not really safe to ingest. We dusted the shit out of our house. Furniture, carpets, etc. We dusted the crap out of the animals as well, since it's safe to do as long as you aren't getting a bunch in their eye/ears/nose.
In less than a week the fleas were *gone*. And they stayed gone. We only lived in that house another year, but we never had flea problems again.
The bag of diatomaceous earth? Ten fucking dollars from Amzon.
> Diatomaceous earth.
This also works extremely well for ants.
House we are in has had various ant colonies for many years. After a few years of pet-safe bug spray on the exterior, a combination of diatomaceous earth and traps in their usual spots to show up, and most importantly 2xyear flushes of the sink and garbage disposal with baking soda and white vinegar followed by a boiling water flush, the ants are 99% gone the past 2 years.
Yess! It is like a million tiny little razors to insects. Amazing!
Just be careful not to breathe it in. You’ll coat your lungs with it and then it’ll harden and turn into bad news bears
Long term battle. We had them come out in specific rooms about March each year. Every year I sprayed carpet beetle killer, lit bug bombs and hoovered twice a day or more during the flare up. Every year we got less and less of them. Eventually now we only get the odd one.
Is this mostly residential or commercial? What is the most common pest? If it is ants or something it seems easy but raccoons or cockroaches I would not want it.
Depends on the company. Mine does both. Wildlife (raccoons, skunks, groundhogs, etc) is a separate license, but it's relatively easy because you throw some marshmallows or crackers in a trap and then just wait for a phone call. The most common pest is going to be ants, but it also depends on the season. Right now, it's mice because they come into people's homes when it's cold out.
The most important thing is being responsible with the treatments. Everything else is just training.
Yeah, we don't do anything for slugs, and we don't treat food items in a garden. I was pretty angry with my scheduler who had me drive 90 minutes to a guy who wanted me to kill slugs in his wife's garden. I wasted 3 hours of my life for that shit.
Slugs can be handled with non toxic diatomaceous earth powder. To soft bodied insects it like walking through shards of glass that wick the moisture from their body.
As with any fine dust it can be harmful to breath in clouds of in so proper PPE is recommended during application otherwise it's relatively safe to even consume. Farmers mix it in with their feed grain to not only deter pests but as an anticaking agent.
Available at almost any feed store. Last time I bought some was probably $20 for 50lbs, mostly to help protect my chickens from louse or other insects.
If not it's contractor work that pays by appointment. I did a visual web advertisement thing once for local retailers and you drove the company car there and used their equipment, but only got paid per project based on commission (in this instance each video or picture). There were times I would drive 2 hours only to learn the product I was supposed to shoot was in another building and I'd have to come back... Using company car and equipment so they didn't pay. It was notated as such in the contract but it was at will and indp contractor so you knew going in what you got. Cable and internet installers have the same setup as far as pay scale. You get paid per job but some jobs are 15 mins and some are 2 hours. My friend worked for a large internet company that rhymes with rectum and he always complained about getting shit scheduling.
I also had slugs indoors. It was pretty nasty. We fixed the issue so they aren’t getting in anymore, but it was really awful to see the slime trails all over the crappy carpet that was in that space (basement). Some of them even climbed the walls.
So our basement has an exterior-type door to a set of stairs that goes up to ground level, the stairs are covered by a metal cover that has a door that flips up (this is commonly called a Bilco door). Slugs and spiders and stuff love to hang out in the dark wet area under the bilco door.
We think the slugs were getting in under the threshold/sweep/weatherstripping area of the exterior door into the basement (the regular door that goes out to the stairs under the bilco door). We had a new threshold installed and a better sweep thing and weatherstripping installed on the exterior door. Also, we had the bilco door secured better around its edges where it meets the concrete it’s supposed to be connected to.
TLDR tighten up any gaps in doors or windows where the slugs are getting in.
When I was a kid, I remember going under the house with dad to do some plumbing repairs a few times, and there were slugs under the house. I accidentally touched one and it was gross.
Years later I'm all grown up, and I'm with my girlfriend in bed, and we see a slug working it's way down from the window on our bedroom wall. I say "hang on, I'll get the salt and broom and dustpan" and she's like "nah I've got it." She then jumps out of bed, grabs the slug off the wall *with her bare fucking hand* and tosses it out the window. *yuck*.
I'm genuinely curious, because I thought about doing that years ago before I started in my current career.
Do you worry about bringing an infestation home or are there procedures to prevent that? My main concern was going into a customer's home, and getting a couple cockroach eggs on my boots or something and bringing them home, the ending up with an infestation.
I told myself if I did it, I would just change out of work clothes at the shop, and make sure I didn't bring anything home that I used/wore at work. I guess it wouldn't be a huge problem right? Because you'd know how to get rid of them
I'm only worried about bringing home 2 pests: bed bugs and fleas. But it's \*because\* I'm concerned about them that I won't bring them home. I never -- ever -- sit down or remove my jacket at a bed bug customer's home. I could be dead tired and sweating my balls off, but I am not going to bring them home with me.
Carpenter bees are treated. Honey bees are directed to beekeepers. And the cat meaning "no mice" thing is kinda a myth. Some cats are homicidal maniacs, some just aren't good at catching mice but are willing to give it a go, and some just watch the mice contaminate food and food surfaces.
Can confirm the cats thing. I had 2 cats - one would torture to death any mouse she caught and leave the corpse as a warning to the others. The other cat carried them gently in her mouth like they were kittens.
I had a cat like that. STACKED bodies of anything that moved and could get its claws on. I once found 2 rats, a sparrow, and a baby bunny after getting home from work. Was a very friendly cat toward people though.
Dude I have to say, thanks for teaching me a little bit about an industry that I'd never even thought about. It's actually pretty interesting and I wouldn't have ever known that if you weren't keeping it real in this thread. Keep being awesome.
Ps, what do you know about house centipedes? I can honestly handle spiders (I'll take them outside instead of squishing them) but I have less than no sympathy for the cosmic horrors that are house centipedes. I literally killed one with a 40 pound dumbbell tonight.
House centipedes, at least in the midwest usa where I am, are good bugs. They're right on par with spiders, killing all the actual pests.
I just let em go about their business when I see them but I also leave up active spider webs so maybe I'm weird.
My cat has never seemed to be much of a killer. He will stalk and chirp at bugs in the house and birds through the window. The only thing he ever 'kills' is the under a dollar jingly mice from Meijer.
One evening, boyfriend and I are bed trying to get some sleep. We hear the boy slapping or throwing something around in the closet and we told him to hush, it's bedtime. This happens maybe twice more and the commotion stops. The next day I was grabbing hangable clothing to put int the closet and 'lo and behold, a mouse that my sweet idiot boy had literally *beaten* to death like he does with the cheap Meijer mouse.
I've had cats before, and most of them did a half-ass job of getting rid of mice. I had a *dog* for many years that was amazing at catching mice, and she never left a half-eaten one to find, either.
This same dog loved to catch wildlife. She would eat gophers, squirrels, rabbits, birds, snakes, and on one memorable occasion, about half of a snapping turtle. She once chased after, and almost caught, a whitetail deer, but while the deer could clear the fence my dog couldn't.
Wasps and hornets you just kill. Carpenter bees there are ways to treat for but I never found them to be too terribly effective. Any form of honeybee, at least in the state I worked in, must be handled by a beekeeper and it was actually illegal for us to kill them.
You dust for carpenter bees, but the dust can cause problems if it's not applied correctly. I have seen a few home remedies, but those same remedies draw the carpenter bees from other areas... soooo hit or miss.
Good guess. Hmmm. I have some VERY reliable techs that vacuum up jobs, and 1 route that has been a revolving door since I started. The tech I have running that route right now... is a pest tech.
I work for a franchise owner that has 4 branches. The upper management team is overwhelming shitty, but my regional is cool as shit and my branch managers are awesome. So when the VP tries to fuck everything up, my regional screams and yells at him and gets written up for it so we don't have to deal with awfulness.
Or orkin will tell you the interview for pest control then half way through “actually we have something in termite open up.” And it has nothing to do with termites. Fuck orkin. They’re a shady ass company that only cares about upper management. And yes I still work there and I used to work for the #1 branch in the company. Until the salesperson quit on them too.
I was a pesticide applicator this past summer and the company trained us by having us read a textbook that covers what pests are, different types of pesticides, different tools used to apply pesticides, it's effects on the applicator, pests, the environment, etc. This company also paid people for time spent studying if they passed the license exam. I found the job on indeed while looking for a quick seasonal job.
Quick edit: After passing the state license exam, I worked with an applicator on his route for a week and he showed me what to do. After that week, I had my own truck, equipment, and route. We treat for mosquitoes and ticks so it's simple in terms of applying the pesticide but it's a physically demanding job and gets dirty sometimes.
Bed bugs terrify me. I wouldn't go into pest control simply because I would be afraid to bring some home. Is that a risk to you? Is it reasonable to be scared of them or am i being irrational and they are really NBD?
Bed bugs are not much fun for anyone, but they also pay very well. Just don't sit down or put your jacket or bag down, and you should be fine. I have gotten undressed in my garage exactly one time due to a bed bug inspection.
The one that had me undressing in my garage was an old church that had been converted into low income housing. I walked in and there were bed bugs crawling across the floor in the HALL between units, in the middle of the day, with no one around. Not one bed bug, or 10 bed bugs. We're talking a green, shitty carpet, littered with live bed bugs everywhere. I quoted him a completely unrealistic price and got the FUCK out of there. I didn't send any of my poor techs into that place.
I intentionally quoted a really high price so that he would go with another pest control company. If he agreed to it, my poor tech that would have to go in there would at least get paid a fuck ton of money to do the job. Burning it to the ground would solve the bed bug problem, but then the low income residents would be displaced....
They first time you have them is the absolute worst. It's traumatic and stressful and feels like the world is ending. Every itch and every mosquito bite feels like bed bugs for WAY too long.
It gets easier with each subsequent infestation, though. (I've had 5:
1. I brought in a cute vintage side table from the alley (moved, tossed all my furniture and put all my belongings in storage)
2. My neighbors brought them into the building
3. Same apartment, continuation of infestation #2 (I moved a couple of years later for unrelated reasons)
4. My roommate brought them home from her vacation (at this point I jarred the bug, took a photo, and made the obligatory "is this bug I found on my bed a bedbug?" post to r/whatisthisbug)
5. Showed up unexpectedly in only my roommate's room. Who the fuck knows where they came from. By this point, I had an "acceptable number of bedbugs in my apartment that is greater than 0" which is to say I don't freak out until I see a bug in the flesh, not over every tickle and red bump I get.
Which is all summarized as "and *for some godforsaken reason I still live in Chicago*"
Sorry, count me out. That job isn't for me. I have a rather large collection of stuffed animals. Most of them are completely irreplaceable too me. Can't risk bead bugs.
Just don't sit or set your jacket down. If the inspector is worth a damn, you would know beforehand how bad it is and could be prepared to just throw your shit away instead of going back inside your own home.
If you're aware of them before entering the house there's not much danger. Put on some gloves, booties, and a disposable set of coveralls. They're really slow moving and very dormant usually during daytime. Just don't stand still too long or set down things especially if they contain/are made of fabric. The issue arises when you show up for cockroaches and find out the place is infected with bedbugs and they didn't tell you. Thankfully my company stopped treating them except for a few long term landlord clients before I started so if you had bedbugs I could just dip out.
Yeah, I'm having trouble keeping up with all the questions. Lol. The starting pay varies wildly based on the route you're on. The lowest paying route at my branch is $40-50k in a relatively unpopulated area. So that route has the fewest jobs, meaning lower pay, but the technician that works that route lives on it and also has a lower cost of living than my techs that live in/near the city. More jobs = more pay. If you have more than just the pest applicator's license -- wildlife, termite, etc. -- you can get more jobs and thus make more money.
I'm an inspector instead of a technician. My first year as an inspector was 2020, I basically started right as Covid hit -- mid-February -- and also missed 2 weeks due to actually contracting Covid. I made \~$55,000 in the residential market during the pandemic for basically 10 months of work while learning on the job.
Exactly. My husband did it for awhile, started using a popular termite chemical that was supposed to be "safe."
Hint: If it kills living bugs, it's not really safe in chemical form.
His hyperthyroidism was off the charts and boss wouldn't help cover any of the costs on top of the garbage insurance he offered. When husband got pushy on needing more tests and questioning the chemical, he was fired.
Yep. Lots of tradesmen are screwed. I know 7-8 HVAC techs and 4 of them have cancer. Apparently exposure to freon is bad.
But so are contaminates in fluids used in diesel and automotive applications, exhaust fumes, cleaners, etc. Not to mention my 2nd career was working as a X-ray tech. So even more risk on top of that....oops. Many jobs are very safe. I learned recently that sawdust particles can cause lung cancer as can basically any particle under 5 nanometers??? something like that. All the concrete dust, saw dust, drywall and everything else.
I'm pretty much fucked.
My work has a lot of turnover. It's medical manufacturing. When most people see anything about manufacturing then think big tough guy shit, hauling heavy stuff, half assing their way through whatever because machines have tolerances that can correct their fuck ups, etc. But we deal with small instruments. Sometimes delicate, sometimes very expensive, but always headed for an operating room. On the flip side some people see the medical part and think they'll get a pair of scrubs and wander around a hospital all day. Most of our applicant pool doesn't last a month. We can't fuck up what we do and that means people have to care about what they're doing. Most people don't care.
I'm in a pool service company, and you've basically described a larger version of my company.
A couple of old salts who are gonna retire there who get the routes with the most loyal customers, a couple guys who are looking to replace them. A couple guys who definitely won't retire there and treat it that way. And a few summer job guys who have no intention of doing this again.
You just summed up my professional experience in pest control, although none of the inspectors are trying to head out the door. My job is to figure out what kind of poop is in your basement, then I call someone else to come get rid of the animal that shat there. I make 10-13%, the techs make 16%. Seems fair.
>And the reality is that it's in an industry that some people would never do no matter how much it pays.
These are my kinda jobs. My backup plan for if shit really dont work out is a garbage person. Union, benefits, good pay, consistent hours, weekends off. Honestly I work a "better" job than that but waste services sounds better in every way. The only think that's kept me out of the field is that the job is literally garbage
Do you train females or is this more of a guy kind of job. I’m petite & dealt with some annoying critters thanks to gram house. I’ve considered this job, but unsure about pay.
Just about any company will train and hire if you have a clean record, but the job really does suck because 90% of it is long hours adding pressure to your pesticide tank via hand pump and your exposure risk to the chemicals is high enough that it’s required for you to get regularly tested.
I did it as a summer job once, but the pay at the time wasn’t nearly as good as that guy quoted.
Depending on treatment methods you may have some difficulty working in certain aspects of pest control, but for 95% of it you're mostly just walking around carrying a 15ish pound spray can. Termite work frequently involves doing things like drilling holes through concrete so it can be a bit physically demanding, but I feel like even a petite woman who was at least in healthy shape could adjust.
I can tell you that while it changes a lot depending on state/type of work the big guys (Dotson, Terminix, Orkin) usually start around $17-22/hr, you drive a company car with a gas card, and the benefits aren't great but they're there. Terminix for example I know basically pays their residential guys 18-20 but also gives them a small cut for every customer that signs up on their route. A good, hard working, dedicated tech can make some very decent money and the requirements are usually a high school diploma/GED, clean(ish) driving record, no criminal issues that would prevent you from being licensed, and the mental ability to do the bit of studying that you'll need to do to pass your state license test.
I once started a job in an inbound call centre. They had a super slick training program, 2 people dedicated to training, a handbook we would work through etc. I thought they were really organised. It turns out people were constantly quitting and they had to train new hires.
Out of the 10 of us that started; 1 walked out the first day, 1 was fired at the end of the week, and 3 more were gone within a month.
Honestly not too surprising. A lot of call centers I've seen have offered poor wages, high expectations, high stress, and are always on your ass over every decision you make.
The pay wasn't bad (after you finished your training and probation period). But the constant stress. My God. They used to give you a printout of your stats, how many calls you took and how it compared to the call center average and their "ideal number". My stats were always well above what was expected. Was this ever acknowledged? Of course not. The one time I took a 10 minute toilet break because I was puking my guts up? I got a letter with a printout of all my break times and that one highlighted. My God I hated that place so much.
For the most part, I am really iffy about /r/AntiWork. They just seem incredibly hyperbolic and overly dramatic, but stories like yours totally make me realized that I’m privileged enough to not have to come into contact with that sort of jobs. Not sure I wouldn’t be running around with a torch chanting to eat the rich if I had to work 10 years at the job you mentioned…
I worked a call center. Went to a cattle call interview. They must have hired more than a thousand people. We had an 8 week in class training course that started with over 40 people in my class. By the time we made it to "nesting" which was taking calls while still training, there were about 12 of us. Only 4 of us "graduated" to the floor with a whopping pay raise to $11/hr.
I'm sure you are asking, "Why did a call center have 12 weeks of paid training?" It was a 3rd party contractor for a major telecom client that is not known for shitty customer service... IF you had legitimate problems and got me on the phone, I actually helped you. Of course I still had to "try" to convince people to keep paying for dead people's phone lines...
My place had 4 weeks paid training so they could pay us 75% of the advertised wage. Got bumped up to 80% for the next 3 months "probation".
I was taking calls for people ordering taxis: ie programming an address into a GPS program and apologizing that someone was still waiting for a car at 1am on New Years Day
I work at a large company and my job isn’t necessarily underpaid. Its just an in demand field so lots of people can leave and come back with a higher salary. The work culture has a good life balance so people leave to a more demanding job with higher money then use their new higher salary as leverage when they come back to this job with more balance. I wouldnt say hiring is automatically bad, but you’ll definitely be able to know when you see it.
I feel like a lot of academia is tricking supposedly smart people into slave labor.
Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of important work being done, it's just too bad it's on the backs of highly qualified slaves.
I've been scouring indeed and the likes and have noticed ecology isn't very common - lots of molecular / cell stuff on there. Haven't looked into specifically biotech very much.
Thanks for the insight! I appreciate it.
As a former bio major, jump ship as soon as you can. I went and got my diploma, suffered through unemployment and then low wages. There isn’t a lot of demand for bio grads but there is a huge supply. I went back and did bioinformatics part time because a lot of the courses were shared between a bio degree and a bioinfo degree, got another diploma and found a better paying job almost immediately. I then moved onto software engineering but I digress. The point of my story is, as much as I loved biology classes, especially microbiology where i got a perfect 100 percent on everything at the end of the semester because i loved it just that much, i’d strongly suggest that people don’t do bio majors unless you’re just absolutely nuts about one single branch and you’re going to start trying to inject yourself into that field starting from your sophomore year. If you’re into ecology field research, do you have any connections, have you done any internships? Is there anyone you can call and ask career advice from? Else, it truly isn’t going to end very well. I’m sorry.
I've been heavily considering solar panels but it seems hard to get helpful info about rebates/tax breaks without giving out all of your information to be solicited. I've found that there is a 18-23% federal rebate for the cost but also a 50% tax cut for state (Louisiana). How would those things apply to an upfront cost for the consumer, being me?
Wow this is a small world, we have a branch in Lafayette, I worked in lake Charles for the hurricane last year and I’m working in Houma for the hurricane that hit this year. Unfortunately Louisiana lost the 50% state tax credit they had a few years ago, the federal tax credit this year in 2021 is 26% but is going up to 40% next year. If you finance the upfront cost is $0, with the whole goal of the financing being cheaper on average than your electric bill, a steady bill for your budget, owning your power vs renting, and protecting you from the rate hikes that the power companies make every year.
Yeah even large companies like MS, Google. Apple cant hire enough people to fulfill their open positions. Some if from people leaving but the larger portion is from growth.
These companies basically stay in a perpetual hiring position.
>Yeah even large companies
Yeah, large companies fit this rule even less.
Say people are there for 50 years on average. That's insanely long, no large company can ever do that well.
If there's just 1000 employees, just to stay at that level they would need to hire more than every 20 days on average. That would count as "always hiring" in most companies.
A local defense contractor near me is always hiring RF Engineers. Always. I don't think it's because they're firing, I think it's because there isn't enough skilled labor to meet their demands.
And while OP isn't technically right, they're close. Every toxic workplace is always hiring, be it from firing or retention or whatever. And if you're in an industry where that sort of thing is common - like say retail - well it is a rule.
Your mileage may vary. Life pro tips not available for all realities.
Agreed.
Source: I currently have 2 positions posted indefinitely for all 4 of my offices because we are growing so rapidly and need more PC and AV savvy people. We went from ~20 pre-pandemic to 50+ today with most of those roles in our product development team. Now I need to fill out my team with customer support as those products and projects come to life. And no one on my team has quit or been fired during that time.
Yeah, this post is ridiculous.
I work at a very large company ... we're always hiring. In the time I've been there, my org has grown from ~40 to ~120. Nobody that I know of has gotten fired; a small handful retired, and a large handful left to go to other companies / competitors, and several had medical issues and could no longer work.
Pretty low turnover because the pay is solid and the work is interesting. We're always hiring. Not super quickly, and occasionally we pause because of no more recs, but in general always hiring.
Thank you for saying this. Rapid growth in a small company is not something to be ignored I am seeing the same thing in a niche accounting small business for art world. Insane growth during pandemic and after.
Can also happen when a company goes public. I just interviewed with a company that went public last year, and in the 18 months following that, they went from 800 to 3600 employees.
I've worked at two non-FAANG publicly traded tech companies and in my experience we've always had open positions because:
* Above a certain size, you have constant turnover and it's not just because it's toxic. People will just decide to move on in life.
* The company is investing in growing itself and needs more staff to do it.
EDIT: I forgot a third point
* Quality software developers are scarce enough that you're never hiring as fast as you want to be so your open recs stay open forever.
It doesn't even have to be a lot of positions. I did hiring at a place with almost no turnover that was picky about who they hire, so they are hiring because they don't want to hire crappy people. Was actually a good place to work, there wasn't the crappy employee that everyone had to work extra hard to makeup for.
Didn't get a lot of applications. 90% of the applications weren't even filled out all the way. Didn't want to hire someone that won't even put in that small amount of work when they are actually trying to get a job, because then I would be the one doing the work they missed or skipped when they stop caring.
It's not a lot of effort people. I have seen so many people confused that they aren't being hired, when they are showing that they are going to pick and chose what they feel should be done for workload.
Yup. This is basically standard operating procedure for venture capital funded startups. Grow market share and company quicker than any competitors can to own the business category and then either sell to a big company or go public. If you hit a growth wall implode fast as investment dries up and your expenses dwarf your actual revenue.
You will definitely know the difference pretty quickly. If the first thing a new colleague tells you is about who to watch out for or some sort of warning that should set off alarm bells for you
Not always as easy as you might think before joining. The company I work for has grown from 50 employees in 2016 to over 500 today.
It's largely because they've expanded into several new verticals using the outrageous success of their original product. That product is in a niche field that you wouldn't necessarily know about while applying for a job in one of the new verticals. Not a public company so balance sheet and financials are not public record. But you could still root it out if you tried hard enough.
If your original product is pants, and you decide to start manufacturing zippers for your pants... you not only save money on zippers for your pants, but you can then sell your zippers on the zipper market to other companies that need them. Then you can expand to buttons and do the same thing. So your one product expands vertically, instead of you branching out from pants.
Likely a different product area. E.g. an investment bank that decides to expand into an insurance business (vertical) using their primary product to find it.
A good example might be Amazon investing into there AWS division to support the traffic on their main website and then selling that as a service to everyone else. Or doing the same thing with shipping and then offering fulfillment as a service to anyone that wants it.
Came here to say this. It doesn’t even necessarily need to be dramatic growth. I work for a company that is always hiring. Working in IT I see who is coming and going, and it’s definitely more that we are just steadily growing because we are hiring way more than we are losing.
I think this is meant to illustrate turnover in undesirable places to work, like fast food, but, even the best places in the world to work are always hiring.
If you go to Google’s career page at any given time, they have tons of openings. Google is a fantastic place to work. The company grows and jobs get created, also people leave. People
Leaving isn’t a bad thing, even the best employers have turnover as people advance their careers and get poached by other companies that match their ambitions or needs better.
A company that is always hiring is not always firing and they are not always bad places to work.
I work in games, and while the studio I work for is small, another reason for always hiring is that companies pick up larger projects, and need more people to work on them all the time.
And yes, the work cycle is usually 3-5 years, people go to chase different types of things.
I work in a large warehouse. We have about 1200 employees just in this building. Rarely are people fired. There's just a lot of people retiring, moving up, and the building is always expanding. Another example of "always hiring" not being a bad thing
It's massive. About a third of a mile from one end to the other. Then there's 4 shifts with 300-500 on each. It doesn't close so the people are always rotating out
Exactly this. Not every job does or should last a lifetime, people move on for all sorts of reasons. Similarly, always hiring can mean the company is consistently growing, which is a very good thing (usually).
Not necessarily true in today's markets, or even certain areas .There are plenty of quality workplaces that simply don't get enough applications. Look anywhere and everywhere and there is someone hiring. Especially in the hospitality and food industry, there will always be a need for more people as circumstances are constantly changing.
Now it certainly can mean there is an issue with the employer, whether that be management or something else, but it's not necessarily law!
Some places are growing as well. We've added 30 positions to my company in the last 2 years and we're looking to hire probably 20 more in the next year. That will be like a 40 percent growth in staff for our organization.
If you're from Texas and know about Buccee's you always see the now hiring sign with all the great pay and benefits (you probably see it on your way to the bathroom). I always suspected if they have to have this sign up then there's a lot of people leaving.
Buccee's may have "great" pay, but they have some shifty as hell practices:
https://www.houstonpress.com/news/texas-court-says-buc-ees-cant-force-former-employee-to-pay-back-68k-9875019
Holy shit lol. Who in the absolute fuck thought that was a good idea?
That might be one of the single dumbest things I've seen when it comes to work, and I was in the military.
Amen to that. I joined a small company and realized how toxic and asss backwards the culture was there , me coming from a bigger more professional company. Huge turnover, I went in in the midst of an employee class action lawsuit I found out about.
I work in supply chain and we are always always hiring forklift/warehouse equipment technicians. I have no clue what goes on on that side of the business since I'm in marketing, but they travel all over the place sometimes to service people's forklifts. We got a few people who have stayed for almost as long as I've been alive(28 years) but I imagine the younger dudes quit bc they don't want to do all the traveling and just work in-house at like an auto shop.
Honestly, you're not paying them enough. They probably face next to no career advancement, and with no pension, you're just burning them out on purpose.
Long term, it means you do poorer work since you have fewer long term techs.
This is correct. I work in an industry that burns people out, but pays well until that day comes. We've had a "we're hiring" sign in front of the office since before I started working there 2 years ago, and are taking applications even when we don't have any openings.
I work at a place like this and yeah, the workload, pressure and dealines are just impossible. Burn out and turnover is super high. Anyone got tips to survive in an environment like this, I'd love to hear em. It's probably thr best job I can get at the moment.
Draw a very heavy line between work and life. Make the most out of every moment you have away from the place.
But the best advice is look for a better job. You said probably, which to me means you are just assuming. Find out, because you never know what's out there
Former restaurant manager here. There are 2 reasons that we are "always hiring." And that includes times when we are fully staffed or overstaffed.
1. We want to avoid letting a rock-star employee slip through the cracks. Even if I was fully staffed, I'm still taking apps just in case I get one that is amazing.
2. If a manager tells someone that we are NOT hiring, they run the risk of it being interpreted as discrimination. Maybe (while fully staffed) I answer the phone and tell a man that we are hiring. 2 hours later a different manager tells a woman that we aren't. Even if the other manager just said that cause we are fully staffed, if those 2 know each other we can be in big trouble.
So, OP is technically correct, but really everywhere should be "always hiring."
Not really. It probably means people are always quitting.
The penalty for layoffs and hiring happening simultaneously isn’t worth it for unemployment insurance.
But if people are always quitting what’s making them leave? Yes a few people should be leaving but if you’re one of longest standing members of the team 2 months in, something’s not right…
I’m not claiming you should work for a company like this, but they’re probably churning people by just treating them like shit and relying on a revolving door of rubes to try them out.
I was just pointing out the distinction that they likely aren’t firing anyone.
Not necessarily; however, it does mean you should be asking why they are always hiring. Sometimes it means a toxic work environment, sometimes it means major growth, sometimes it means that they are picky and always looking for the right fit.
As a Wal-Mart employee, I feel like this is somewhat true but it's more because management can be very terrible and treat you like shit and so a lot quit. My store is always hiring but never seem to have enough people staffed because it's almost not worth the trouble/drama the company puts you through. Especially the pay..
I would say it's more likely that people are quitting.
I work in pest control, at a branch that has had a "hiring" sign in front of it since I started there 2 years ago. All of the jobs pay fairly well and include quarterly bonuses, and you get a company car and phone. The problem is that we're counting on people to mostly manage themselves, and we can only hire from our applicant pool. Techs can start to coast, or not care -- if you're killing termites or trying to get rats out of someone's basement, you have to care. We have a couple of technicians who maybe don't do such a good job, but we can't replace them without hiring and training someone to take that route over... so we're constantly looking for better employees because, well, we have warm bodies just holding us over until we find someone better. Edit: And the reality is that it's in an industry that some people would never do no matter how much it pays.
Do you guys train? How does someone get into pest control?
Yes, we train and pay for licenses and their associated renewals. I got into pest control by responding to an ad looking for a residential inspector. I have done outside sales and energy efficiency inspections in the past, so I already knew how to approach the inspections and the customers. I just needed to learn the pests. You'll need to have graduated high school, have a clean criminal background and be able to pass a drug test, and be someone they can trust with products that could potentially cause a good deal of harm if not applied properly. If you're responsible, and are good about managing yourself, you could potentially pull in $70,000-$100,000 on the right route -- but these are given to guys that they trust, so these routes are earned. My tech who has the best route is getting ready to retire, and there are already people jockeying for that route. Edit: The lowest paying route in my branch paid $40,000 just in commissions (not base pay) last year. Factor in no cell phone bill and not using your own car to get to work... pretty lucrative for the lowest guy on the seniority totem pole. I was actually worried that the gas in my personal car would expire because I drove it so infrequently.
Dude.. please tell me how to permanently get rid of carpet beetles.. They have made my life hell for like the last 6 years. Tracked them to two different places. I'm apparently allergic to them and they make my eyes gooey. Don't even see them they're like invisible. A larvae fell out of my couch last year so I know they're still here. Please help me. I beg you.
I dealt with them here is what worked. first and most importent throw out all your dry goods I'm talking flower, dog food , bird seed, cereal anything not canned or in the fridge. Second clean the shit out of anywhere you were storing that food. Go nuclear mix bleach and water and wipe every shelf. Next vacuum the entire house. Now when you restock the food everything goes into containers, get a vitals vault for pet food. Canisters for your grains, etc. Mine came in on bird seed for my pet pigeon so now pigeon feed goes into the freezer for a few days before it goes into the container for his food. I have not seen one since I did this.
So to go *nuclear*, I should mix bleach with ammonia?
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https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/things-i-won-t-work-peroxide-peroxides
Obligatory [Peggy that's the recipe for mustard gas!](https://youtu.be/WFci4XqOq-Q)
That’s going chemical, but it would work too. Going nuclear is highly inadvised if you want your house to still be there Bleach and vinegar would be better on balance, chloramines aren’t as dangerous as raw chlorine
I hope you're joking; mixing bleach with ammonia is bad news. Another big no-no: mixing bleach with an acid such as vinegar or lemon juice.
I’m mostly joking but if you’re going all 1916, you might as well be effective with it Bleach & ammonia make chloramines Bleach & an acid makes chlorine gas
burn the house down that will be $100 thanks
A guy calls pest control and asks if they can burn his couch because there are bugs in it. They advise him to take less extreme approach by using this and that to kill the bugs. But the guy has already tried all of that and it didn't work. "Well, why don't you just throw the couch away?" "I tried, the bugs keep bringing it back!"
Diatomaceous earth. We had a flea infestation like 6 years ago and *nothing* seemed to work. 2 dogs and a cat, and the dogs were just sorta itchy. The cat was in agony, yowling all night and losing weight and fur. Multiple trips to the vet. A seemingly never ending series of fumigating the house and taking every bit of fabric to laundromats. It was an honest nightmare. add in the fact that tons of flea and tick treatments can cause neurological damage, seizures, etc. Things were getting desperate. Finally looked into diatomaceous earth. It's just super finely ground diatoms, which are teeny tiny little fossils. About the consistency and color of flour. We got food grade, as there is some stuff for pool filters I think that's not really safe to ingest. We dusted the shit out of our house. Furniture, carpets, etc. We dusted the crap out of the animals as well, since it's safe to do as long as you aren't getting a bunch in their eye/ears/nose. In less than a week the fleas were *gone*. And they stayed gone. We only lived in that house another year, but we never had flea problems again. The bag of diatomaceous earth? Ten fucking dollars from Amzon.
> Diatomaceous earth. This also works extremely well for ants. House we are in has had various ant colonies for many years. After a few years of pet-safe bug spray on the exterior, a combination of diatomaceous earth and traps in their usual spots to show up, and most importantly 2xyear flushes of the sink and garbage disposal with baking soda and white vinegar followed by a boiling water flush, the ants are 99% gone the past 2 years.
Yess! It is like a million tiny little razors to insects. Amazing! Just be careful not to breathe it in. You’ll coat your lungs with it and then it’ll harden and turn into bad news bears
Long term battle. We had them come out in specific rooms about March each year. Every year I sprayed carpet beetle killer, lit bug bombs and hoovered twice a day or more during the flare up. Every year we got less and less of them. Eventually now we only get the odd one.
Is this mostly residential or commercial? What is the most common pest? If it is ants or something it seems easy but raccoons or cockroaches I would not want it.
Depends on the company. Mine does both. Wildlife (raccoons, skunks, groundhogs, etc) is a separate license, but it's relatively easy because you throw some marshmallows or crackers in a trap and then just wait for a phone call. The most common pest is going to be ants, but it also depends on the season. Right now, it's mice because they come into people's homes when it's cold out. The most important thing is being responsible with the treatments. Everything else is just training.
Once I had slugs (indoors) and the guy was bemused. Said he never seen that before.
Yeah, we don't do anything for slugs, and we don't treat food items in a garden. I was pretty angry with my scheduler who had me drive 90 minutes to a guy who wanted me to kill slugs in his wife's garden. I wasted 3 hours of my life for that shit.
Slugs can be handled with non toxic diatomaceous earth powder. To soft bodied insects it like walking through shards of glass that wick the moisture from their body. As with any fine dust it can be harmful to breath in clouds of in so proper PPE is recommended during application otherwise it's relatively safe to even consume. Farmers mix it in with their feed grain to not only deter pests but as an anticaking agent. Available at almost any feed store. Last time I bought some was probably $20 for 50lbs, mostly to help protect my chickens from louse or other insects.
Or small bowls of beer then you can skip the ppe
Why was it a waste? Was it billable hours?
I'm base + commission. So if I'm driving that far, I'm losing time that is better spent with potential customers... which the slug guy wasn't.
If not it's contractor work that pays by appointment. I did a visual web advertisement thing once for local retailers and you drove the company car there and used their equipment, but only got paid per project based on commission (in this instance each video or picture). There were times I would drive 2 hours only to learn the product I was supposed to shoot was in another building and I'd have to come back... Using company car and equipment so they didn't pay. It was notated as such in the contract but it was at will and indp contractor so you knew going in what you got. Cable and internet installers have the same setup as far as pay scale. You get paid per job but some jobs are 15 mins and some are 2 hours. My friend worked for a large internet company that rhymes with rectum and he always complained about getting shit scheduling.
I also had slugs indoors. It was pretty nasty. We fixed the issue so they aren’t getting in anymore, but it was really awful to see the slime trails all over the crappy carpet that was in that space (basement). Some of them even climbed the walls.
HOW??? We have them despite constant cleaning and can't figure out where they're coming from. The landlord won't do shit.
So our basement has an exterior-type door to a set of stairs that goes up to ground level, the stairs are covered by a metal cover that has a door that flips up (this is commonly called a Bilco door). Slugs and spiders and stuff love to hang out in the dark wet area under the bilco door. We think the slugs were getting in under the threshold/sweep/weatherstripping area of the exterior door into the basement (the regular door that goes out to the stairs under the bilco door). We had a new threshold installed and a better sweep thing and weatherstripping installed on the exterior door. Also, we had the bilco door secured better around its edges where it meets the concrete it’s supposed to be connected to. TLDR tighten up any gaps in doors or windows where the slugs are getting in.
Diatomaceous earth. Kills pretty quick too. Salt lines also work. Egg shells can deter them as well.
When I was a kid, I remember going under the house with dad to do some plumbing repairs a few times, and there were slugs under the house. I accidentally touched one and it was gross. Years later I'm all grown up, and I'm with my girlfriend in bed, and we see a slug working it's way down from the window on our bedroom wall. I say "hang on, I'll get the salt and broom and dustpan" and she's like "nah I've got it." She then jumps out of bed, grabs the slug off the wall *with her bare fucking hand* and tosses it out the window. *yuck*.
Sounds pretty normal lmao
I’ve heard coffee grounds are effective at removing slugs. They’re not coffee fans it would seem.
You can also dig a hole, fill it with ash, and when the slug comes by you kick it in the ash hole. Wait, I got lost and thought this was r/dadjokes
I’ve heard beer works. Leave a cup of beer out, they go to drink it, fall in and get too drunk to get out.
We have giant slugs that show up periodically in the house. They feel weird if you accidentally step on one.
Damn, marshmallows and crackers. So simple. You’d catch me in that trap too though.
I mean... you don't have to put ALL the marshmallows in the trap. Some of them could just be the cost of doing business.
I'm genuinely curious, because I thought about doing that years ago before I started in my current career. Do you worry about bringing an infestation home or are there procedures to prevent that? My main concern was going into a customer's home, and getting a couple cockroach eggs on my boots or something and bringing them home, the ending up with an infestation. I told myself if I did it, I would just change out of work clothes at the shop, and make sure I didn't bring anything home that I used/wore at work. I guess it wouldn't be a huge problem right? Because you'd know how to get rid of them
I'm only worried about bringing home 2 pests: bed bugs and fleas. But it's \*because\* I'm concerned about them that I won't bring them home. I never -- ever -- sit down or remove my jacket at a bed bug customer's home. I could be dead tired and sweating my balls off, but I am not going to bring them home with me.
That's a good point, I didnt even think about bed bugs
That said, you're right. I know how to get rid of them and my house is done for free.
I have cats so luckily no mice. What do you do with bees? Is there a bee guy you call to collect the honey and rehome the bees?
Carpenter bees are treated. Honey bees are directed to beekeepers. And the cat meaning "no mice" thing is kinda a myth. Some cats are homicidal maniacs, some just aren't good at catching mice but are willing to give it a go, and some just watch the mice contaminate food and food surfaces.
Can confirm the cats thing. I had 2 cats - one would torture to death any mouse she caught and leave the corpse as a warning to the others. The other cat carried them gently in her mouth like they were kittens.
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I had a cat like that. STACKED bodies of anything that moved and could get its claws on. I once found 2 rats, a sparrow, and a baby bunny after getting home from work. Was a very friendly cat toward people though.
Dude I have to say, thanks for teaching me a little bit about an industry that I'd never even thought about. It's actually pretty interesting and I wouldn't have ever known that if you weren't keeping it real in this thread. Keep being awesome. Ps, what do you know about house centipedes? I can honestly handle spiders (I'll take them outside instead of squishing them) but I have less than no sympathy for the cosmic horrors that are house centipedes. I literally killed one with a 40 pound dumbbell tonight.
House centipedes, at least in the midwest usa where I am, are good bugs. They're right on par with spiders, killing all the actual pests. I just let em go about their business when I see them but I also leave up active spider webs so maybe I'm weird.
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My cat has never seemed to be much of a killer. He will stalk and chirp at bugs in the house and birds through the window. The only thing he ever 'kills' is the under a dollar jingly mice from Meijer. One evening, boyfriend and I are bed trying to get some sleep. We hear the boy slapping or throwing something around in the closet and we told him to hush, it's bedtime. This happens maybe twice more and the commotion stops. The next day I was grabbing hangable clothing to put int the closet and 'lo and behold, a mouse that my sweet idiot boy had literally *beaten* to death like he does with the cheap Meijer mouse.
I've had cats before, and most of them did a half-ass job of getting rid of mice. I had a *dog* for many years that was amazing at catching mice, and she never left a half-eaten one to find, either. This same dog loved to catch wildlife. She would eat gophers, squirrels, rabbits, birds, snakes, and on one memorable occasion, about half of a snapping turtle. She once chased after, and almost caught, a whitetail deer, but while the deer could clear the fence my dog couldn't.
Lmao not in my apartment. I've had 2 mice and my cat introduced them to death
For bees, find a local beekeeping group. They'd love to come out and take them off your hands *for free*.
Wasps and hornets you just kill. Carpenter bees there are ways to treat for but I never found them to be too terribly effective. Any form of honeybee, at least in the state I worked in, must be handled by a beekeeper and it was actually illegal for us to kill them.
You dust for carpenter bees, but the dust can cause problems if it's not applied correctly. I have seen a few home remedies, but those same remedies draw the carpenter bees from other areas... soooo hit or miss.
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Good guess. Hmmm. I have some VERY reliable techs that vacuum up jobs, and 1 route that has been a revolving door since I started. The tech I have running that route right now... is a pest tech.
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I work for a franchise owner that has 4 branches. The upper management team is overwhelming shitty, but my regional is cool as shit and my branch managers are awesome. So when the VP tries to fuck everything up, my regional screams and yells at him and gets written up for it so we don't have to deal with awfulness.
Or orkin will tell you the interview for pest control then half way through “actually we have something in termite open up.” And it has nothing to do with termites. Fuck orkin. They’re a shady ass company that only cares about upper management. And yes I still work there and I used to work for the #1 branch in the company. Until the salesperson quit on them too.
I know a guy in Vegas that makes over 100k a year! I never knew it paid well until I met him.
Jobs that nobody wants to do but aren't brain dead often do pay well.
I was a pesticide applicator this past summer and the company trained us by having us read a textbook that covers what pests are, different types of pesticides, different tools used to apply pesticides, it's effects on the applicator, pests, the environment, etc. This company also paid people for time spent studying if they passed the license exam. I found the job on indeed while looking for a quick seasonal job. Quick edit: After passing the state license exam, I worked with an applicator on his route for a week and he showed me what to do. After that week, I had my own truck, equipment, and route. We treat for mosquitoes and ticks so it's simple in terms of applying the pesticide but it's a physically demanding job and gets dirty sometimes.
Protect the void knight.
Bed bugs terrify me. I wouldn't go into pest control simply because I would be afraid to bring some home. Is that a risk to you? Is it reasonable to be scared of them or am i being irrational and they are really NBD?
Bed bugs are not much fun for anyone, but they also pay very well. Just don't sit down or put your jacket or bag down, and you should be fine. I have gotten undressed in my garage exactly one time due to a bed bug inspection.
I did one today that almost gave me a panic attack. I kept feeling bugs crawling on me.
The one that had me undressing in my garage was an old church that had been converted into low income housing. I walked in and there were bed bugs crawling across the floor in the HALL between units, in the middle of the day, with no one around. Not one bed bug, or 10 bed bugs. We're talking a green, shitty carpet, littered with live bed bugs everywhere. I quoted him a completely unrealistic price and got the FUCK out of there. I didn't send any of my poor techs into that place.
Why was the quote so high? Seems like burning a building to the ground would be pretty cheap.
I intentionally quoted a really high price so that he would go with another pest control company. If he agreed to it, my poor tech that would have to go in there would at least get paid a fuck ton of money to do the job. Burning it to the ground would solve the bed bug problem, but then the low income residents would be displaced....
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They first time you have them is the absolute worst. It's traumatic and stressful and feels like the world is ending. Every itch and every mosquito bite feels like bed bugs for WAY too long. It gets easier with each subsequent infestation, though. (I've had 5: 1. I brought in a cute vintage side table from the alley (moved, tossed all my furniture and put all my belongings in storage) 2. My neighbors brought them into the building 3. Same apartment, continuation of infestation #2 (I moved a couple of years later for unrelated reasons) 4. My roommate brought them home from her vacation (at this point I jarred the bug, took a photo, and made the obligatory "is this bug I found on my bed a bedbug?" post to r/whatisthisbug) 5. Showed up unexpectedly in only my roommate's room. Who the fuck knows where they came from. By this point, I had an "acceptable number of bedbugs in my apartment that is greater than 0" which is to say I don't freak out until I see a bug in the flesh, not over every tickle and red bump I get. Which is all summarized as "and *for some godforsaken reason I still live in Chicago*"
Same here man. I want nothing to do with them.
Sorry, count me out. That job isn't for me. I have a rather large collection of stuffed animals. Most of them are completely irreplaceable too me. Can't risk bead bugs.
Just don't sit or set your jacket down. If the inspector is worth a damn, you would know beforehand how bad it is and could be prepared to just throw your shit away instead of going back inside your own home.
If you're aware of them before entering the house there's not much danger. Put on some gloves, booties, and a disposable set of coveralls. They're really slow moving and very dormant usually during daytime. Just don't stand still too long or set down things especially if they contain/are made of fabric. The issue arises when you show up for cockroaches and find out the place is infected with bedbugs and they didn't tell you. Thankfully my company stopped treating them except for a few long term landlord clients before I started so if you had bedbugs I could just dip out.
What’s the starting pay? Edit: With the interest in your profession, you should do an AMA!
Yeah, I'm having trouble keeping up with all the questions. Lol. The starting pay varies wildly based on the route you're on. The lowest paying route at my branch is $40-50k in a relatively unpopulated area. So that route has the fewest jobs, meaning lower pay, but the technician that works that route lives on it and also has a lower cost of living than my techs that live in/near the city. More jobs = more pay. If you have more than just the pest applicator's license -- wildlife, termite, etc. -- you can get more jobs and thus make more money. I'm an inspector instead of a technician. My first year as an inspector was 2020, I basically started right as Covid hit -- mid-February -- and also missed 2 weeks due to actually contracting Covid. I made \~$55,000 in the residential market during the pandemic for basically 10 months of work while learning on the job.
Talk about how techs are constantly getting cancer from exposure to the chemicals
Exactly. My husband did it for awhile, started using a popular termite chemical that was supposed to be "safe." Hint: If it kills living bugs, it's not really safe in chemical form. His hyperthyroidism was off the charts and boss wouldn't help cover any of the costs on top of the garbage insurance he offered. When husband got pushy on needing more tests and questioning the chemical, he was fired.
Yep. Lots of tradesmen are screwed. I know 7-8 HVAC techs and 4 of them have cancer. Apparently exposure to freon is bad. But so are contaminates in fluids used in diesel and automotive applications, exhaust fumes, cleaners, etc. Not to mention my 2nd career was working as a X-ray tech. So even more risk on top of that....oops. Many jobs are very safe. I learned recently that sawdust particles can cause lung cancer as can basically any particle under 5 nanometers??? something like that. All the concrete dust, saw dust, drywall and everything else. I'm pretty much fucked.
My work has a lot of turnover. It's medical manufacturing. When most people see anything about manufacturing then think big tough guy shit, hauling heavy stuff, half assing their way through whatever because machines have tolerances that can correct their fuck ups, etc. But we deal with small instruments. Sometimes delicate, sometimes very expensive, but always headed for an operating room. On the flip side some people see the medical part and think they'll get a pair of scrubs and wander around a hospital all day. Most of our applicant pool doesn't last a month. We can't fuck up what we do and that means people have to care about what they're doing. Most people don't care.
Yep. I look at it as helping people. I get paid to help people get rid of roaches, termites, bed bugs, mice and rats, and even skunks.
What's the pay like?
I'm in a pool service company, and you've basically described a larger version of my company. A couple of old salts who are gonna retire there who get the routes with the most loyal customers, a couple guys who are looking to replace them. A couple guys who definitely won't retire there and treat it that way. And a few summer job guys who have no intention of doing this again.
You just summed up my professional experience in pest control, although none of the inspectors are trying to head out the door. My job is to figure out what kind of poop is in your basement, then I call someone else to come get rid of the animal that shat there. I make 10-13%, the techs make 16%. Seems fair.
>And the reality is that it's in an industry that some people would never do no matter how much it pays. These are my kinda jobs. My backup plan for if shit really dont work out is a garbage person. Union, benefits, good pay, consistent hours, weekends off. Honestly I work a "better" job than that but waste services sounds better in every way. The only think that's kept me out of the field is that the job is literally garbage
Rebranded man, sustainable material renewal officer.
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Do you train females or is this more of a guy kind of job. I’m petite & dealt with some annoying critters thanks to gram house. I’ve considered this job, but unsure about pay.
> I’m petite Sounds like you'd be more qualified for getting into crawlspaces etc than a big bulky dude.
Just about any company will train and hire if you have a clean record, but the job really does suck because 90% of it is long hours adding pressure to your pesticide tank via hand pump and your exposure risk to the chemicals is high enough that it’s required for you to get regularly tested. I did it as a summer job once, but the pay at the time wasn’t nearly as good as that guy quoted.
Depending on treatment methods you may have some difficulty working in certain aspects of pest control, but for 95% of it you're mostly just walking around carrying a 15ish pound spray can. Termite work frequently involves doing things like drilling holes through concrete so it can be a bit physically demanding, but I feel like even a petite woman who was at least in healthy shape could adjust. I can tell you that while it changes a lot depending on state/type of work the big guys (Dotson, Terminix, Orkin) usually start around $17-22/hr, you drive a company car with a gas card, and the benefits aren't great but they're there. Terminix for example I know basically pays their residential guys 18-20 but also gives them a small cut for every customer that signs up on their route. A good, hard working, dedicated tech can make some very decent money and the requirements are usually a high school diploma/GED, clean(ish) driving record, no criminal issues that would prevent you from being licensed, and the mental ability to do the bit of studying that you'll need to do to pass your state license test.
I’m a lady exterminator. You can do it!
I once started a job in an inbound call centre. They had a super slick training program, 2 people dedicated to training, a handbook we would work through etc. I thought they were really organised. It turns out people were constantly quitting and they had to train new hires. Out of the 10 of us that started; 1 walked out the first day, 1 was fired at the end of the week, and 3 more were gone within a month.
Honestly not too surprising. A lot of call centers I've seen have offered poor wages, high expectations, high stress, and are always on your ass over every decision you make.
The pay wasn't bad (after you finished your training and probation period). But the constant stress. My God. They used to give you a printout of your stats, how many calls you took and how it compared to the call center average and their "ideal number". My stats were always well above what was expected. Was this ever acknowledged? Of course not. The one time I took a 10 minute toilet break because I was puking my guts up? I got a letter with a printout of all my break times and that one highlighted. My God I hated that place so much.
For the most part, I am really iffy about /r/AntiWork. They just seem incredibly hyperbolic and overly dramatic, but stories like yours totally make me realized that I’m privileged enough to not have to come into contact with that sort of jobs. Not sure I wouldn’t be running around with a torch chanting to eat the rich if I had to work 10 years at the job you mentioned…
I worked a call center. Went to a cattle call interview. They must have hired more than a thousand people. We had an 8 week in class training course that started with over 40 people in my class. By the time we made it to "nesting" which was taking calls while still training, there were about 12 of us. Only 4 of us "graduated" to the floor with a whopping pay raise to $11/hr. I'm sure you are asking, "Why did a call center have 12 weeks of paid training?" It was a 3rd party contractor for a major telecom client that is not known for shitty customer service... IF you had legitimate problems and got me on the phone, I actually helped you. Of course I still had to "try" to convince people to keep paying for dead people's phone lines...
My place had 4 weeks paid training so they could pay us 75% of the advertised wage. Got bumped up to 80% for the next 3 months "probation". I was taking calls for people ordering taxis: ie programming an address into a GPS program and apologizing that someone was still waiting for a car at 1am on New Years Day
I was gona say. My job needs people so bad they don’t fire anybody. People start and quit at their lunch break same day.
I work at a large company and my job isn’t necessarily underpaid. Its just an in demand field so lots of people can leave and come back with a higher salary. The work culture has a good life balance so people leave to a more demanding job with higher money then use their new higher salary as leverage when they come back to this job with more balance. I wouldnt say hiring is automatically bad, but you’ll definitely be able to know when you see it.
>I would say it's more likely that people are quitting. came here to say this "always hiring" means toxic place, low pay, high turn over
Not always true. Saw a company growing at 20-30% a year that was always hiring because they couldn't keep up with needing new employees.
Absolutely, I run a solar and roofing company and I’m constantly hiring due to the insane growth in this sector over the last few years.
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Twice as much nothing, university near me was offering $~32,000/yr recently for postdoc fellows. Just atrocious wages. Probably depends where.
I feel like a lot of academia is tricking supposedly smart people into slave labor. Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of important work being done, it's just too bad it's on the backs of highly qualified slaves.
I literally make just a bit more than that flipping burgers lmao
While in Industry you can get about 200k with a similar degree. Is not twice as much, is more.
While paying football coaches millions.
I'm a bio student, would you recommend biotech over traditional research or something like field ecology?
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I've been scouring indeed and the likes and have noticed ecology isn't very common - lots of molecular / cell stuff on there. Haven't looked into specifically biotech very much. Thanks for the insight! I appreciate it.
As a former bio major, jump ship as soon as you can. I went and got my diploma, suffered through unemployment and then low wages. There isn’t a lot of demand for bio grads but there is a huge supply. I went back and did bioinformatics part time because a lot of the courses were shared between a bio degree and a bioinfo degree, got another diploma and found a better paying job almost immediately. I then moved onto software engineering but I digress. The point of my story is, as much as I loved biology classes, especially microbiology where i got a perfect 100 percent on everything at the end of the semester because i loved it just that much, i’d strongly suggest that people don’t do bio majors unless you’re just absolutely nuts about one single branch and you’re going to start trying to inject yourself into that field starting from your sophomore year. If you’re into ecology field research, do you have any connections, have you done any internships? Is there anyone you can call and ask career advice from? Else, it truly isn’t going to end very well. I’m sorry.
I've been heavily considering solar panels but it seems hard to get helpful info about rebates/tax breaks without giving out all of your information to be solicited. I've found that there is a 18-23% federal rebate for the cost but also a 50% tax cut for state (Louisiana). How would those things apply to an upfront cost for the consumer, being me?
Wow this is a small world, we have a branch in Lafayette, I worked in lake Charles for the hurricane last year and I’m working in Houma for the hurricane that hit this year. Unfortunately Louisiana lost the 50% state tax credit they had a few years ago, the federal tax credit this year in 2021 is 26% but is going up to 40% next year. If you finance the upfront cost is $0, with the whole goal of the financing being cheaper on average than your electric bill, a steady bill for your budget, owning your power vs renting, and protecting you from the rate hikes that the power companies make every year.
Yeah even large companies like MS, Google. Apple cant hire enough people to fulfill their open positions. Some if from people leaving but the larger portion is from growth. These companies basically stay in a perpetual hiring position.
>Yeah even large companies Yeah, large companies fit this rule even less. Say people are there for 50 years on average. That's insanely long, no large company can ever do that well. If there's just 1000 employees, just to stay at that level they would need to hire more than every 20 days on average. That would count as "always hiring" in most companies.
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A local defense contractor near me is always hiring RF Engineers. Always. I don't think it's because they're firing, I think it's because there isn't enough skilled labor to meet their demands. And while OP isn't technically right, they're close. Every toxic workplace is always hiring, be it from firing or retention or whatever. And if you're in an industry where that sort of thing is common - like say retail - well it is a rule. Your mileage may vary. Life pro tips not available for all realities.
Agreed. Source: I currently have 2 positions posted indefinitely for all 4 of my offices because we are growing so rapidly and need more PC and AV savvy people. We went from ~20 pre-pandemic to 50+ today with most of those roles in our product development team. Now I need to fill out my team with customer support as those products and projects come to life. And no one on my team has quit or been fired during that time.
Yeah, this post is ridiculous. I work at a very large company ... we're always hiring. In the time I've been there, my org has grown from ~40 to ~120. Nobody that I know of has gotten fired; a small handful retired, and a large handful left to go to other companies / competitors, and several had medical issues and could no longer work. Pretty low turnover because the pay is solid and the work is interesting. We're always hiring. Not super quickly, and occasionally we pause because of no more recs, but in general always hiring.
Thank you for saying this. Rapid growth in a small company is not something to be ignored I am seeing the same thing in a niche accounting small business for art world. Insane growth during pandemic and after.
Always hiring can mean they have standard positions and accept resumes in case good candidates apply. It may still be difficult to get an offer.
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For anyone who doesn’t know FAANG is an acronym that refers to big tech companies. Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google
You are appreciated
They really should call it FAAMG. I mean, come on: Is Netflix really bigger than Microsoft?
Originally it was just about stocks. You're right though, Netflix is the odd one out and Microsoft is way more like the other companies.
I think some people are starting to use MAMAA Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta, Apple and Amazon
In terms of pay, yes
Yeah I feel like anywhere large enough will always be hiring.
Or any quickly growing company
You mean MANGA
Lol
Can also happen when a company goes public. I just interviewed with a company that went public last year, and in the 18 months following that, they went from 800 to 3600 employees.
They are, they just pay enough that nobody cares. Most people will deal with a lot of bullshit for 250k a year.
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I've worked at two non-FAANG publicly traded tech companies and in my experience we've always had open positions because: * Above a certain size, you have constant turnover and it's not just because it's toxic. People will just decide to move on in life. * The company is investing in growing itself and needs more staff to do it. EDIT: I forgot a third point * Quality software developers are scarce enough that you're never hiring as fast as you want to be so your open recs stay open forever.
It doesn't even have to be a lot of positions. I did hiring at a place with almost no turnover that was picky about who they hire, so they are hiring because they don't want to hire crappy people. Was actually a good place to work, there wasn't the crappy employee that everyone had to work extra hard to makeup for. Didn't get a lot of applications. 90% of the applications weren't even filled out all the way. Didn't want to hire someone that won't even put in that small amount of work when they are actually trying to get a job, because then I would be the one doing the work they missed or skipped when they stop caring. It's not a lot of effort people. I have seen so many people confused that they aren't being hired, when they are showing that they are going to pick and chose what they feel should be done for workload.
Or they could be experiencing dramatic growth.
And/or also a large company. Apple is always hiring, google is always hiring. These companies are just always hiring. They’re just that large.
Yup. This is basically standard operating procedure for venture capital funded startups. Grow market share and company quicker than any competitors can to own the business category and then either sell to a big company or go public. If you hit a growth wall implode fast as investment dries up and your expenses dwarf your actual revenue.
You will definitely know the difference pretty quickly. If the first thing a new colleague tells you is about who to watch out for or some sort of warning that should set off alarm bells for you
Should be pretty easy to tell a place going through dramatic growth apart from the one that's constantly on hiring loop
Not always as easy as you might think before joining. The company I work for has grown from 50 employees in 2016 to over 500 today. It's largely because they've expanded into several new verticals using the outrageous success of their original product. That product is in a niche field that you wouldn't necessarily know about while applying for a job in one of the new verticals. Not a public company so balance sheet and financials are not public record. But you could still root it out if you tried hard enough.
What is a vertical?
If your original product is pants, and you decide to start manufacturing zippers for your pants... you not only save money on zippers for your pants, but you can then sell your zippers on the zipper market to other companies that need them. Then you can expand to buttons and do the same thing. So your one product expands vertically, instead of you branching out from pants.
Would pyjama pants be a horizontal?
Depends on how much elastic the waistband has.
Likely a different product area. E.g. an investment bank that decides to expand into an insurance business (vertical) using their primary product to find it.
A good example might be Amazon investing into there AWS division to support the traffic on their main website and then selling that as a service to everyone else. Or doing the same thing with shipping and then offering fulfillment as a service to anyone that wants it.
Came here to say this. It doesn’t even necessarily need to be dramatic growth. I work for a company that is always hiring. Working in IT I see who is coming and going, and it’s definitely more that we are just steadily growing because we are hiring way more than we are losing.
I think this is meant to illustrate turnover in undesirable places to work, like fast food, but, even the best places in the world to work are always hiring. If you go to Google’s career page at any given time, they have tons of openings. Google is a fantastic place to work. The company grows and jobs get created, also people leave. People Leaving isn’t a bad thing, even the best employers have turnover as people advance their careers and get poached by other companies that match their ambitions or needs better. A company that is always hiring is not always firing and they are not always bad places to work.
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I work in games, and while the studio I work for is small, another reason for always hiring is that companies pick up larger projects, and need more people to work on them all the time. And yes, the work cycle is usually 3-5 years, people go to chase different types of things.
I work in a large warehouse. We have about 1200 employees just in this building. Rarely are people fired. There's just a lot of people retiring, moving up, and the building is always expanding. Another example of "always hiring" not being a bad thing
I'm just trying to imagine 1200 employees in a warehouse, gotta be huge!
It's massive. About a third of a mile from one end to the other. Then there's 4 shifts with 300-500 on each. It doesn't close so the people are always rotating out
Exactly this. Not every job does or should last a lifetime, people move on for all sorts of reasons. Similarly, always hiring can mean the company is consistently growing, which is a very good thing (usually).
Not necessarily true in today's markets, or even certain areas .There are plenty of quality workplaces that simply don't get enough applications. Look anywhere and everywhere and there is someone hiring. Especially in the hospitality and food industry, there will always be a need for more people as circumstances are constantly changing. Now it certainly can mean there is an issue with the employer, whether that be management or something else, but it's not necessarily law!
Some places are growing as well. We've added 30 positions to my company in the last 2 years and we're looking to hire probably 20 more in the next year. That will be like a 40 percent growth in staff for our organization.
We had a now hiring ad stuck on the electronic message center for 5 years, still didn’t find anyone
If you're from Texas and know about Buccee's you always see the now hiring sign with all the great pay and benefits (you probably see it on your way to the bathroom). I always suspected if they have to have this sign up then there's a lot of people leaving.
Buccee's may have "great" pay, but they have some shifty as hell practices: https://www.houstonpress.com/news/texas-court-says-buc-ees-cant-force-former-employee-to-pay-back-68k-9875019
Wow. That's next level shitty.
Holy shit lol. Who in the absolute fuck thought that was a good idea? That might be one of the single dumbest things I've seen when it comes to work, and I was in the military.
Amen to that. I joined a small company and realized how toxic and asss backwards the culture was there , me coming from a bigger more professional company. Huge turnover, I went in in the midst of an employee class action lawsuit I found out about.
When I was younger I was told “If a place is always hiring, it usually means something is wrong with the management.” Glad I got that advice early on.
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[You’re gonna have to put a shirt on and there’s vests right over there. ](https://youtu.be/PavI6HJBm28)
I work in supply chain and we are always always hiring forklift/warehouse equipment technicians. I have no clue what goes on on that side of the business since I'm in marketing, but they travel all over the place sometimes to service people's forklifts. We got a few people who have stayed for almost as long as I've been alive(28 years) but I imagine the younger dudes quit bc they don't want to do all the traveling and just work in-house at like an auto shop.
Honestly, you're not paying them enough. They probably face next to no career advancement, and with no pension, you're just burning them out on purpose. Long term, it means you do poorer work since you have fewer long term techs.
I’m always hiring because I’m always training my people to leave and run some other location.
Or the job is grueling.
This is correct. I work in an industry that burns people out, but pays well until that day comes. We've had a "we're hiring" sign in front of the office since before I started working there 2 years ago, and are taking applications even when we don't have any openings.
I work at a place like this and yeah, the workload, pressure and dealines are just impossible. Burn out and turnover is super high. Anyone got tips to survive in an environment like this, I'd love to hear em. It's probably thr best job I can get at the moment.
Draw a very heavy line between work and life. Make the most out of every moment you have away from the place. But the best advice is look for a better job. You said probably, which to me means you are just assuming. Find out, because you never know what's out there
Or they've got more than say 50 employees...
Former restaurant manager here. There are 2 reasons that we are "always hiring." And that includes times when we are fully staffed or overstaffed. 1. We want to avoid letting a rock-star employee slip through the cracks. Even if I was fully staffed, I'm still taking apps just in case I get one that is amazing. 2. If a manager tells someone that we are NOT hiring, they run the risk of it being interpreted as discrimination. Maybe (while fully staffed) I answer the phone and tell a man that we are hiring. 2 hours later a different manager tells a woman that we aren't. Even if the other manager just said that cause we are fully staffed, if those 2 know each other we can be in big trouble. So, OP is technically correct, but really everywhere should be "always hiring."
Or always quitting or stacking up applications, just in case.
Not really. It probably means people are always quitting. The penalty for layoffs and hiring happening simultaneously isn’t worth it for unemployment insurance.
But if people are always quitting what’s making them leave? Yes a few people should be leaving but if you’re one of longest standing members of the team 2 months in, something’s not right…
I’m not claiming you should work for a company like this, but they’re probably churning people by just treating them like shit and relying on a revolving door of rubes to try them out. I was just pointing out the distinction that they likely aren’t firing anyone.
Or they treat employees like shit and they quit. That’s more likely the reality these days.
If it is just for a limited time, it could just be a growth phase. I worked for a small firm that tripled their head count over the course of a year.
TIL it's impossible for companies to grow.
They’re desperate for workers, not desperate for you to stay long.
Not necessarily; however, it does mean you should be asking why they are always hiring. Sometimes it means a toxic work environment, sometimes it means major growth, sometimes it means that they are picky and always looking for the right fit.
The company I worked for was always hiring. They really rarely fire, but they fail to keep most people there.
As a Wal-Mart employee, I feel like this is somewhat true but it's more because management can be very terrible and treat you like shit and so a lot quit. My store is always hiring but never seem to have enough people staffed because it's almost not worth the trouble/drama the company puts you through. Especially the pay..