Who deservs more credit: hard workers or top contributers? There are no right or wrong answers, just openions.

Question

People who work extremely hard on odd jobs are not paid nearly as much as a person like, say an engineer, sitting on his/her office and working on his computer. Do you think this is fair. Remember though, people like engineers did have to work hard on schools and colleges to get to their position. NOTE: the most interesting opinion will be chosen as the "Best Answer". ;)

Answer 1

Unfortuantely, the ones with the sheepskin almost always gets the biggest paycheck.

Answer 2

Here in America at least, we pay people not based on how much elbow grease they put in, but how much expertise they have.  Your engineer example is a good one:  he is paid more because he has more extensive knowledge in the building of (whatever) than the guy shoveling the dirt.  Does he work as hard?  Physically, probably not, but while there may be 2 guys that could replace the engineer should a situation demand it, there are hundreds who could do the shoveller's job.  Basic supply and demand really:  as an employee you are selling yourself, so make sure you can provide a service no one else can.

Here is a more equitable example:  Say I need my pipes repaired.  Say there are 2 plumbers I could hire.  Plumber A has 20 years experience and charges $100 an hour.  Plumber B has 2 years experience and also charges $100 an hour.  Obviously, I'll hire Plumber A.  He has much more expertise and if I'm going to pay the same amount anyway, I may as well get the best right?  Let's say Plumber B decides to charge $50 an hour instead.  Since I know he can do the job, and will charge me half as much, I'll hire him now.  Will he do as much work as Plumber A?  Sure, but he has to put in the kind of time Plumber A does if he wants to be compensated the same.

Answer 3

my husband is a top executive...and he works really really hard, doesn't get paid for overtime either, and goes into work on weekends.

Answer 4

Well both do deserve equal acclaim.. an engineer had to work his way up there and if he built a bridge lets say.  it's his brainwork plus he will be out on the site.. check everything is secure.  he won't just sit at the office.. he got to make the plans of course.. and those plans if anything goes wrong. if this bridge collapses. if people die.. he is the only one who takes the entire blame as it's his design he also needs to watch the workers.. he can't stay at the office.. he finishes his design first.. then he is out there with them.  and makes sure that all is going to plan because it will cost his neck if there is a minor fault.. so both the hard workers deserve credit but also the engineer because without his brilliant ideas cathedrals would never be built..  a lot of great buildings would not exist.. a lot of bridges and trains would not be built.. so he deserves credit just as much he works hard as well .. and he has the major responsibility..  there can be no great work without the great hard workers who are also experts and who know how to do their work and how to avoid mistakes it' s team work.. the workers and the engineer on the same level. they are important.. without either of them it would not be accomplished.. the workers cant do it without the engineer and if the enigneer didn't have hard working reliable and good workers his design would remain on paper... so both parties.. deserve equal praise they depend on each other to make this into a success...

Answer 5

Top contributors deserve the most credit.  You can work as hard as you want, but if you aren't really contributing, what use are you to the company/society?  By the way, top contributors do not necessarily have to hold the high-paying positions in society.  Why do you think we have awards for our top volunteers?

I firmly believe in the saying, "Work smarter, not harder."  Don't bust your butt if you aren't going to get anywhere.  Do it right the first time.

Answer 6

Engineers have a degree that makes them the one who gets paid more.  The ones who break their backs to make money is the one who should get paid more, because they have more medical issues later in life.... but engineers could have stress issues.  Everyone should get paid good.  But we are way over paid, because now the minimum wage went up, so now so does the things we buy... What goes around comes around.

Answer 7

i will just answer to earn 2 points. don't care about the five :D

i think it's the top contributors because they have the brain.

Answer 8

It's a system...everyone is important to make things work...it's just that some jobs don't pay as much as others.

Answer 9

Well.. I'm a Top Contributor in 3 categories, and I work darned hard at it!

As for "earning a living" work... let's see...

1. I clean houses

2. I work as a cook at a pizza place

3. I do "demos" in the supermarkets

AND I've been looking for a FULL TIME job, to boot!  Does that "qualify" as working "extremely hard"?  Let's review this last week as an example:

Mon: Drove 130 miles round trip to clean a cabin

Tues: Cleaned my mother's house

Wed: Cleaned one house in the morning, and another one in the afternoon.

Thurs: Cleaned one house in the morning, and worked the pizza place in the evening.

Fri: Took my cat to the vet (she was injured), then worked at the pizza place in the evening.

Sat: Do TWO cleanings and work at the pizza place in the evening.

Sun: Travel 130 miles (round trip) AGAIN to clean the cabin (AGAIN)

Mon: One cleaning in the morning.

Tues: One cleaning in the afternoon

Wed: One cleaning in the afternoon

Thurs: One cleaning in the afternoon, pizza place in the evening

Fri: One cleaning and pizza place.

Sat: Pizza place in the evening

Sunday... that works out to be Sunday, August 3rd... DAY OFF!!!

So, I do NOT have a day off for almost 2 weeks... and at that, only ONE day.

Frankly, m'dear, I would LOVE to be that engineer sitting at his/her office, working on the computer... a real 9-5 job, and only ONE job, that can cover the bills... and not live disconnect notice to disconnect notice, with collection agents calling me every dammned day of the week.

Have a polite day.

Answer 10

A civilized society will treat both with equal dignity and respect. Most societies (if not all), however, fall far short of this ideal.

In terms of remuneration, capitalism does not award people according to either "hard work" or "contribution". It awards people according to the logic of the capitalist world economy. So the question of who is more "deserving" is moot. People have never been, and never will be be paid according to some abstract moral determination what they "deserve"........

Answer 11

It depends entirely on what we're meaning by "top contributor"...you can contribute a lot to something, i.e. some of the "top contributors" on this website, but it doesn't necessarily mean that anything you were doing was useful. People can work hard at something, but the something they're working at does nobody any good...and then there are the people who do a lot of work, but the quality of their work is sub-par because they're focusing more on just trying to meet a bare minimum. Who deserves to be paid the most, are the people who manage to do both - a lot of work at a very high quality.

So depending on the job, it can be fair from a standpoint of the usefulness of whatever the person who was the harder worker was working to accomplish. If they were working real hard on something that wasn't important to anything, I can see why they'd be paid less.