$20K a Year for an Assistant CD? Unbelievable!
This is how bad things have gotten. A KC metro agency wants to pay $20K annually for a full-time assistant CD who knows every piece of graphics and video software known to human beings and is “experienced.” Must also be “energetic!” Meaning they’ll work you to death. On the positive side, they offer health insurance. You’ll need it.
Put your backs into it, slugs! The client wants delivery by noon.
Twenty grand a year? After taxes, that’s maybe $14,000.00. Or $1,167 per month. Do you know where you can live on that? In your parents’ rec room or in a two-bedroom apartment with four roommates. You’ll have fun sleeping in a bunk bed again. It’ll bring back warm childhood memories.
Recent college grads entering the flooded job market may jump at the chance to take this job. I don’t begrudge them the chance to be employed, not at all. I just hate to see people exploited economically.
‘Course, my first job in the ad biz paid only $12,000 a year to start, and I didn’t feel exploited. I was delighted to have the chance to work on new product development projects and ad campaigns for national clients. And I tripled my salary in a few years. But actually, when I started out, you could live on $12,000. True, it was in a roach- and mouse-infested apartment near the Art Institute (The awful building has now, mercifully, been demolished.), but you could eke by, if you watched your budget.
Tsk tsk.
Twenty thousand a year. Think of it. No, don’t.
This sounds more like a paid internship type thing. Here’s hoping that’s the case. You can make more at McDonald’s, but I guess there’s “room for growth” at the agency.