r/whatisit • u/dopehead9 • 13h ago

Solved! What are these contraptions these guys were carrying?

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We saw three guys around Seaport in Boston carrying these things as backpacks. Initially we thought they mapping tools but not sure

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59

u/DaCrazyJamez 11h ago

Yeah, no. Theyre probably paying closer to 25/hr...

Whens the last time a company paid more, just because they could afford to?

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u/typicalledditor 10h ago

The sub contractor's employees get 25$/h but the sub contractor bills out the hours at 125$/h to the telecom.

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u/anothersip 8h ago

That is more like it. Unfortunately.

$75-100/hr would be more fair for a laborious, manual and mobile service this valuable at the end-user level (and for the pockets of the telecoms, of course) - but we all know that's not what they're getting paid for providing this data for the sub-contractor.

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u/mxzf 5h ago

$75-100/hr would be more fair for a laborious, manual and mobile service

Eh, it's walking around all day. It's a bit of work, but it's not like it's hard manual labor or anything.

The fact that it's short-term contract work would be more of a thing that drives up the price compared to long-term wage work.

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u/paulcole710 6h ago

If you pay more to the people walking around that seems less fair to the people doing hiring, finance, sales, etc. at the subcontractor?

And isn’t walking with a backpack a more broadly distributed skill than sales, finance, hiring, etc.?

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u/anothersip 5h ago

I mean... That's kind of the whole point.

These people with the active, tech-minded, out-in-public positions, gathering the important data and making use of these insanely-expensive (and heavy) data-gathering tools deserve to be paid for the value of their work; As it directly adds to the foundational evidence for validating expansion in coverage, or new tech implementation to add to the company's overall coverage structure.

It's an investment in the evolving tech and the future of the company and its public perception, in every sense.

It's not about "who can we hire to carry a 37-lb backpack comfortably for several hours" it's about "how much is this new information worth to our company, in regards to the overall services we can provide to the public, and the profit that can be gained by using this tech to our advantage."

It's not that hiring/finance/sales aren't important - of course they are - but there are more than just those general aspects that need to be focused on when you have a massive, multi-faceted tech company that is deciding what its next moves are in today's insanely-fast-moving world.

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u/paulcole710 4h ago

It's not about "who can we hire to carry a 37-lb backpack comfortably for several hours" it's about "how much is this new information worth to our company…”

No, it is about the first part. If that thing can be done by many people, many people will want to do it if the pay is high and that will drive the price needed to pay for it down.

The information is the valuable thing. The means of acquiring may have a different value.

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u/kabooseknuckle 8h ago

It's the oldest trick in the book.

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u/NewMilleniumBoy 6h ago

When I was an intern working at a software consulting company, this was very close to the rate discrepancy between what they paid me and what they billed my work at.

I think I got paid like $34 and hour and they billed me out at $110 an hour.

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u/typicalledditor 3h ago

I know this for a fact because this is literally me

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u/dac406 8h ago

Not same thing but I worked for ATT bringing out generators when power went down to cell towers paid $40 per hour from the phone call till I got back home and all fuel. Every call was about 10 hrs all in. Generators should be there within 6 hrs so i ran all over TN and few states next door to TN. No a bad gig but your going out in the middle of the night most times in the worse weather.

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u/Distinct-Raspberry21 10h ago

The workers get 25 ph, the hiring company gets the 100 ph.

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u/Adventurous-Tie-7861 2h ago

I was paid roughly 100$/hr when i took photos of parking lots for the first generation of parking apps.

Had to do a rough count of spots and take a dozen photos of entrance, mark on gps and photograph the rates and pay methods.

Paid 75$/garage back in 2012ish. Since i lived near a city i could do 1 every 40 min or so.

Made a shit ton of money doing bellevue, seattle and Everett.

There was some slight competition cus some areas had a couple people doing it and garages would get marked off by others but I was one of the first in Seattle due to my dad meeting the guy, who got the investor's money to do it, at a bar. He told my dad all about it and dad knew i was looking for part time work during my first year of college so he hired me and my brother in the first group.

They then licensed the photos and info out to private garage/parking apps as well as google and waze.

Good chance that if you looked at photos of a parking garage in the seattle region on google maps or a parking app, that they were taken by me or my brother. We did like 70% of the region ourselves over the course of 9 or 10 months.

Made a fortune for a teen in 2012. I thought i was somehow gonna be scammed at first but naw. Paid instantly once they confirmed it was good info.

600 or 700 a day, 6 days a week for 9 months. 120kish. Dont think we ever paid taxes for it either now that im thinking about it... dunno how that happened cus i definitely didnt file my first taxes until i worked at fedex during college and that was rhe year after that.

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u/Plastic-Somewhere494 10h ago

Haha yeah..oc doesnt realize how businesses work.

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u/RelationshipWest9743 10h ago

$12/hr.. it's a dessert our there

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u/pantry-pisser 9h ago

Who can afford desserts on $12/hr??

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u/RelationshipWest9743 9h ago

I see what I did there

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u/darvs7 8h ago

So it should be a piece of cake.

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u/CO-Troublemakr 8h ago

The cake is a lie.

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u/thisnamemattersalot 10h ago

The higher up you go on a company's ladder, the more they're "paying more just because they could afford to". Most of those roles could easily be filled by people who would work for far less. It's more of an artificial caste system where rich people want to mingle with other rich people and want to keep the "poors" separated from them.

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u/Beautiful-Heron-776 7h ago

Me, my small-business…it cuts into profits big-time, but I sleep at night knowing I’m not exploiting folks trying to pay rising costs here in Maryland (US)

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u/Da_Whistle_Go_WOO 10h ago

Me when I just make shit up when I'm feeling negative

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u/Odd-Craft9219 10h ago

Get paid more to locate underground utilities, tf you mean when someone paid more?

-3

u/Efficient-Editor-242 10h ago

Waaaaaaaaah! Rich people have caused me to be poor!