Cash money Pixie

So I realize that this raise thing is huger/more huge than even I thought at first. I continue to marvel at what's about to happen to my paycheck. Tax brackets and all aside, getting a 16% raise and being at salary is a huge deal.

But Pixie, I can hear some of you saying: you're going to be hourly now, which means no more overtime pay. Doesn't that bother you that you're going to be robbed of the time-and-a-half pay? It's a valid concern, but the answer is: no, not a whole lot. The reason for this is twofold. One, I'm still eligible for bonuses, which are based on performance and based on the profits made by the project. Now that I'm back working with Howie, who is very good with managing his projects' budgets (almost to a fault), I'm not worried about the bonuses.

The second part of my lack of trepidation is that I still stand to make more on salary than I did as an hourly person. In 2011, all my straight time plus overtime plus bonus was only a few hundred bucks more than my 2012 salary is about to be. Whether I work 35 hours or 45 hours or 60 hours, my take-home paychecks stand to be the equivalent of my 2011 50-hour week paychecks every week. Most of my workweeks these days are 40-45 hours a week, given my new responsibilities. And neither my bosses nor I are worried about this, because they know that I get a lot of shit done in 40-45 hours every week. This is partly due to the fact that I know what I'm doing after 11 years in da biz, and it's also partly due to the fact that I'm no longer a production person: I'm a manager. Eight hours of my time spent redlining a set of drawings keeps two people busy for 40-60 hours each. Fifteen minutes spent discussing a layout for a surgical suite with me gives an intern good direction for three or four hours of drawing in Revit. My job is more and more about directing other people's efforts on the work rather than producing the work myself. Because I'm not producing it all the time, there's no point in me showing up on Saturday and Sunday to help with the drawing and detailing of a project's DDs or CDs. And if I'm not in every Saturday and Sunday doing those drawings...there's no need for overtime.

Yes, there will be times (like right now, actually) where we have two or three deadlines in a short span, and I'm going to have to work a few nights and weekends (LOL at Scarlett's desciption of this as the "Sprint Plan: 2 cents a minute all week, nights and weekends free"--BAAHAHAA!!). But overall, the bulk of the time--the production time--on nights and weekends is spent by other people these days. Further, I'm getting to work on the things I really like doing: programming, facility planning, laying out departments (and sometimes even laying out the rooms in the departments). Doing the stuff that you really really really like to do makes a difference, regardless of what your paycheck says.

Not that I'm not going to enjoy that paycheck....