[Cadre-politics] status twice in a row

[Fred G. Martin]

Dan, here's another way to think about pay.

Most institutions (including the university) charge an overhead on  
research grants.  This pays for the rent, lights, support staff, etc.

I thought about this some more with a recent NSF grant which I was  
writing with a non-univ partner.  We were writing in their time for  
various grant activities.  But when we realized the partner could  
*never get ahead* if every dollar that comes must be billed out.   
E.g., if we say a certain programming task will cost $10,000 to  
complete, and then the partner has to hire a contractor for $10,000  
to do it, it doesn't really do them much good as an organization  
then.  Yes, the work will get done, but there won't be any long term  
building of the institution.

Also it doesn't work to just bill more hours to themselves (this is a  
3-person shop).  At some point, it becomes absurd to say each of them  
can work more than "N" hours per week (choose your value of N --  
personally I believe in the Agile Manifesto notion that all  
intellectual work should be done on a sustainable basis, not in  
deadline bursty fashion).

So overhead is the way to make this work.  If you are contracted for  
$10,000 of work, you collect $15,000.  The extra $5,000 goes to other  
projects, equipment, and other ways to deepen the strength of the  
institution.

Fred

On May 2, 2007, at 6:59 AM, Dan MacNeil wrote:

> SOLD HOUSE
>
> {# main }
>
>> $50 AN HOUR NOT SO GOUGING
>
> Stephane
> FWIW... I use a one-to-four ratio in what I do, so that I can do 25%
> paid work, 50% development and 25% others (training, marketing,
> accounting, taxes, ...). That'd put your hours at $80, which is very
> fair for the kind of work you guys do.
> S.
>
> Thank you.
>
> The Phil Hall ask and another larger one is coming. The larger one  
> will
> cause you to be renamed Gregg "open hand" Croteau.
>
> Right now, I'm in my happy place. (really)
>
> However...
>
> For the past 2 weeks, since the primary died, the ldap server is  
> running
> on an single 8 year old desktop gateway with 128M of RAM.
>
> I need to do a better job of believing that people will pay for  
> what our
> work costs.
>
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