I used to work at a retirement community doing HVAC, I made $31.50/hour. It was a good place to work and I learned a lot, but left after a year to move into commercial HVAC to continue earning and learning. They were willing to give me a substantial raise but not enough to pause my career growth.
They’re offering $33.50/hour for my old position, it’s been almost 4 months since I left and they still can’t find anyone! I don’t think that’s unreasonable – I’m surprised they haven’t found anyone – but given how much they’re paying HVAC contractors, it makes SO much financial sense to just offer $38-40/hour.
After leaving, I created an LLC and got some business insurance so now they’re contracting some of their HVAC work out to me! I just have to beat their main HVAC contractor who charges $90/hour, so I charge $75/hour (I know most companies don’t openly charge hourly, but this is a close friend of the community). I do about 10-15 hours of work here a week, so if you do the math, they’re now paying me about the same as my old 40 hour work week for 15 hours of work! And I can’t even keep up with all of their HVAC work since I can only work on weekends and week nights after my traditional job, so they also pay their other HVAC contractor to help keep up.
With summer just around the corner, they really need to up their pay so they can find someone even though my wallet really likes the current situation lol but even once they do find someone, unless they’re willing to work significant overtime, I will still have work ready for me here
Why do they do this to themselves?