Welcome to the recession everyone!
Posted By: nm on 2007-11-27
In Reply to: It is contagious. My fiance just lost his job this morning - Mary Mary
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Recession proof job
In these uncertain times, just curious how everyone sees the outlook of an MT? With voice recognition, how do you see the job market in 10 years? I am an instructor at a local small community college that teaches basic transcription and this is a topic of discussion. Any help would be appreciated!
Recession proof .. ??
I think that you need to tell your students we are in a situation now that eludes all reason as tight money makes us all possible victims of this recession. If hospitals or businesses cannot borrow money in a fluid way then payrolls become a problem. Otherwise, MT is not going away, but it is changing and to stay relevant you have to change with the time and the technology, which drives the train. A dose of realism is often the best way to make a point.
As for recession proof sm
I feel pretty recession proof.
I have 2 jobs and will make more as an MT this year than I have ever have. I don't work as much or as hard as you might think. I am break taker and if I actually spent 8 hours a day physically typing I would be surprised, but I will still come up over $45K this year. It is my speed and accuracy that allows me to be the break taker I am. When I am at the keyboard, I AM ALL IN and when I break, I break.
I am also aware that MT is changing, but not going away. I don't feel taken advantage of and I don't feel I am underpaid. I don't think that corporations are squeezing me or that I have overseas competition. I feel that as MTs go, I am sitting right up there at the top of the heap. If either of my companies start reducing staffing levels, I will not be one of the ones they let go. In the one case, I know I would be the first on the list to be retained. I don't actually worry about having a job or finding a new one when needed. My problem is usually fielding offers and deciding which one to pick.
This is not most of us though and I understand that. I worry for those of you who are not at the top of this profession and will have to worry about where it is going a lot sooner than I shall.
Healthcare and recession
we have an aging population, I know I'm one of them. Many actually have health benefits and will have Medicare. Healthcare is pretty recessionproof. Some of your slowdown may be due to the economy, but there is undoubtedly some change in management reason also. If people wait to see the doctor, they will not necessarily get better. Clinic work, however, I think will stay busier than acute care until this medical neglect lands people in the hospital.
I don't think there is such a thing as a recession proof job... sm
but I sure can tell you this...I have been doing transcription for 13 years. I have done it in house and at home, at home since 1998. I have worked for so many companies I can't even remember most of them from Lanier to Medquist to Spheris to Cardioscribes to Transform. I could go on and on. My three children are young but not so young anymore that I can't leave them alone for a while during the day now. My oldest is in high school now and all I can say is that I have had enough with this transcription bullcrap business. When I tell people what these transcription companies have done to me, their eyes bug out of their heads. I had gone to work for Cardioscribes leaving a very good paying job only to have them tell me that they weren't going to pay me because, as a salaried account manager, they felt I didn't work enough the two weeks before. They decided to pay me for only five days of the pay period instead of 12, took their sweet time sending the check, and then fired me. Now I have a really pretty $400 phone bill from conference calls that I get to pay with no paycheck. I had one company tell me after working 90 hours in a 2-week period and after sending in my timesheet, Gee, quite frankly, we really just can't afford to pay you this kind of paycheck for QA so we are going to change your pay from hourly to a cents per line salary retroactive for the last two weeks. They took my paycheck from $1350 to $500 then fired me two days after I received my almost $800 short paycheck. MDI you ask??? I currently just got hired by them. My training was to start on Oct. 7 and you know what... they don't even have enough work on the account to get me through my DQA training, which lasts for two weeks where you can only type 20 minutes per day, and the liason went out of town so I was told not to bother to type until Monday!!!! However, when they hired me, they expected me to commit to so many lines per day and I had to commit to working at least 3 holidays and one day on the weekend, and this is all as an IC!!! The other company that I was just hired for took three weeks to get me hired and now has sent out 3, either broken or the wrong foot pedals. I have spent these years as an MT hanging around all day waiting for work (sometimes for weeks and months) and some, if not most days, getting no work at all. I worked for Focus Infomatics as a SWAT QA and watched them fire 50 people in a weeks time for absolutely no reason at all and most of those people were just hired within a week who left good jobs to go work for them. I had one company tell me on a constant day-to-day basis that there just wasn't any work available. This went on for three months until they finally decided to put their work into a pool. When I got access to viewing the pool, you should have seen the work available but I sat for three months with no work at all and no paycheck either. I complained to the payroll person about the lack of work and she said she didn't understand because she was processing some really great paychecks and as far as she was concerned, nothing had changed within the company so she couldn't understand why I had no work. I was an IC for that company and everyone else was an employee. The owners knew everyone because they worked with everyone while in-house at a big hospital before the MT manager decided to open up his own MT company. All of the MTs at the hospital decided to go with him so he gave all the work went to them, although I was told by them that my work was excellent. They are now being investigated for cheating the MTs on their line counts, I believe. I have had QA people send screaming e-mails regarding work that I did telling me that the dictator was a truly horrible dictator but that I did a horrible job and that they don't get paid to fill in the words or phrases that I couldn't get. Last year, a month before Christmas, I got axed by CBay as a QA as they eventually ax everybody they hire. I couldn't even buy Christmas gifts, not even one. We had to purchase one gift for each one of our children and we had to put those three gifts on a credit card. I am now extremely overweight, smoke like a chimney because of massive financial stress and the stress of having no life, have absolutely no friends and absolutely ZERO social life, and I am virtually financially ruined (credit score is less than 500). I have had it with this field. It was ok to do this when my children were very young as I had no choice because I couldn't afford daycare for three kids. My husband works very hard but there is no way we could afford $400 a week for childcare back then. The key words here are I had no choice. I do now though I am getting the hell out of this crap before anyone else has the chance to screw me over. It seems to me that the ones who are making more and more money only make it because they are putting in more hours...not because their cents per line has increased. I have read on these boards that MTing is the only job where the salary goes down after years of experience instead of increasing and that is the absolute honest truth AND THAT IS JUST WRONG!!! I have interviews set up, one with a job just about a mile down the street from where I live, and I just can't wait! I can't wait to have a normal paycheck every single week. I can't wait to not be screwed over anymore! I can't wait to make friends again! I can't wait to be out of my house every day and be social every day with human beings and be glad to come home at the end of the day! Maybe this year I can even buy my kids some Christmas gifts. Every person who asks me about MTing I tell them, don't you dare go near MT work. It will ruin your life. As far as your questino about a recession proof job, there really is no job that is recession proof, but after reading my post and hopefully realizing that this can happen to you too as it does so many of us MTing, do you think that a recession is what you really need to be worrying about? YOU NEED TO WORRY ABOUT THE DECISION YOU MADE TO GET INTO THIS FIELD!
I don't thing depression or recession has anything to do with it. sm
I think it is because all the work is going overseas and since the companies have that option, they don't care anymore. In fact it is not just our professon but all of corporate America does not care about employees and then they wonder why the employees don't do a good job for them. It is a 2-way street. Just my 2 cents!
We're in a recession. If you want jobs, you'd
nm
My take: They're using the recession as an excuse
justify sending more work out to India. Just one more reason to convince our legislators to pull the plug on offshoring without some kind of monetary consequence for those companies that do it.
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