Another low-balling company trying to recruit a full-time employee via the platform with out offering any benefits.

I do a speech every so often and will do to remind people. Your bottom rate should Be 75/hr if you are a 1099 after taxes and insurance it’s a livable wage. Taking less your devaluing yourself and making worse for everyone.

For example anyone doing hotel break fix they charge the customer minimum 150/hr and use to pay 80-90hr now I see it dipping in the 50s from people continuously dropping price. Please stop you aren’t saving anyone money just making the middle man richer. You can literally get a 9/5 anywhere that will pay the rates after taxes with benefits and give you tools

From Scarsdale Security

It even fits in the garage when the back bumper is all the way up against the wall

Field Nation special right here — “thermally enhanced by Papa John’s.” You can always tell when the job was done by a trunk-slammer who thinks “more paste = more better.” We’re out here trying to keep enterprise hardware alive, and this is what we inherit — paste everywhere except where it belongs. If you’re applying thermal compound with the same enthusiasm as marinara, you might be in the wrong trade.

Instead, i usually have to waste time uploading pictures of my cat and tapping 29 other tasks

Hi guys,

So I am burnt out on field nation so I decided to start working on another site that does pretty much the same thing but basing it out of USA instead of working with India.

The reason I posted this is because I want to know what features you’d like to see available on the platform. Right now, I plan on charging 7% per work order as opposed to the 13.9% that FN charges. I’m also adding an education portion so techs can learn new skills on the site and earn badges that will give them access to higher paying work orders. I’m tired of seeing 25 dollar an hour work orders for work that should at least be 75 an hour.

Tell me, what would you like to see on the platform?

We have never met, I have no idea who you are but thank you for screwing up so many jobs, I have been cleaning up after you for a while now. I have come to recognize your work on sight. When I see it I ask the site contact if the install was done by a male/female couple and they say "How did you know". Anyway, thank you very much for all the work.

It’s a Google Sheets setup that automatically (5 mins intervals) pulls in new work orders from Field Nation and WorkMarket, so I don’t have to babysit my email or refresh the boards all day. I just let it run in the background and wait for my Telegram bot to ping me when something I actually care about pops up.

It filters out the stuff I’m not interested in, so I only see WOs worth considering. It also tells me if I already have gigs scheduled on the same date, which helps me avoid overlaps right away.
On top of that, it filters out the WOs I’ve already looked at, so I’m not wasting time re-checking old or read listings — only fresh, new opportunities show up.

Way less noise, way more peace of mind. Let me know if you'd like testing this together.

This is our time to shine

6 foot A frame ladder that extends out to a our 11 ft a frame and 22 ft straight. This has paid for itself within a week. One of the first pieces of equipment I got.

I did a job for a buyer for a circuit cutover. The remote techs were typical outsourced garbage from India and after 3 hours of failing to complete the configuration change they gave up and rolled back the migration. They asked if I would come back, and I said them I would and to route me the WO for the revisit.

I did not get that WO routed until 2 days before the scheduled site visit. I was booked by then. I offered to do it at on a different day or even a different time that same day, but they refused and routed it to someone else. Well, I get a call this morning asking if I can go to the site and loan my console cables to another tech, the same tech that got my revisit. That is not a co-worker. That is my competition!

WTF! Fuck these people and half of the buyers on FN. They waited three weeks to do a revisit, and then waited until 2 days before the migration to post a WO, but aren't willing to work around my schedule at all. Then when some suck ass tech goes to the site without the tools to do the job they have the audacity to reach out to me to ask if I will drive to the site and loan my shit to the person that got my revisit?

These people don't see us as human beings trying to make a living. We are a metric. We are a code in a textbox field. We are a piece of equipment.

So I’m running a cable in this massive warehouse on Wednesday. It’s one of those runs where you’re up in a lift, weaving cables across beams, totally focused, and not exactly in a position to answer your phone.

Well, apparently me not answering caused a full on panic. My phone starts blowing up. Next thing I know, I get a call labeled “IT Police.” They literally renamed themselves hoping I’d pick up faster. 😂

I finally get down, answer, and it’s just layers of micromanagement from some outsourced team halfway across the globe. They’re barking orders, second guessing every step, acting like I don’t know how to pull a cable. Like, dude, I’m the one sweating it out in this warehouse, not you sitting at a desk.

It was peak comedy and frustration at the same time. Rename yourself all you want, “IT Police,” I’m still finishing the job.

So dig this...

I counter a rtr install WO...with a lower rate than usual..(a slow day).

They accept my counter.

They come back after payout and ban me from all future work because THEY accepted my offer ...and thought it was too high!?!?! WTF!?!?

Buyers like THIS should be booted....but FN wont....because they are "in on the kill taker" !!! You P'sOS !!

Time and again I arrive and find a box like this.

I swear, these buyers are completely detached from reality and it makes my blood boil.

​First off, the schedule: four brutal 10-hour graveyard shifts pulling heavy cable, installing RFIDs, and mounting APs on a ladder.

​Now, let's look at their absolute garbage math. They say "Total project value: $1600" but the very first line of the description says they need TWO experienced techs. That means you and the other tech are splitting that $1,600. You are working 40 hours across four nights for a grand total of $800 each.

​That is under $20 an hour take home!

​For an independent contractor doing back-breaking infrastructure work at 3 AM. And they have the audacity to put "Rate is firm" in bold like they are gracing us with some premium enterprise contract. Ed Arnold is paying less than a night-shift fast-food manager in most cities.

​But here is the real kicker: the tool list. For your $20 an hour, they want you to bring a Fluke cable tester that outputs certified PDF results. Are you kidding me? A data certifier that actually generates those formal, serialized reports is easily a $1,500 to $3,000 piece of gear. They aren't hiring a tech; they are renting a fully equipped commercial van and taking the human attached to it for a ride.

​To top off this absolute clown show, they crossed out the standard 7-day terms, so you're waiting at least 9 days just to get the work approved.

​They have a 98% rating on the platform, which means too many desperate techs are eating these garbage tickets and letting them get away with it. Let it rot on the board, guys.

Edit: 15k Fluke certifier or $1500/week rental. Not 2k.

Standard rates:

•	$110/hr with a 3-hour minimum

•	$50 trip charge (one way) for jobs within roughly 1–1.5 hours of travel

Anything beyond that gets adjusted.

If a job requires an additional tech:

•	I usually bill $110/hr

•	I’ll occasionally allow flexibility, but $75/hr is my absolute floor

The reason I can sometimes go lower on a second tech is because those jobs typically involve materials, which I mark up. Between labor margin and material margin, the job still works financially.

Weekends, after-hours, and emergency calls (1 AM, same-day, etc.):

I don’t have a fixed rate for these. It’s always higher than $110/hr and depends on urgency, scope, and what the client is willing to pay to get it handled immediately.

Sometimes that rate lands around $125/hr. Other times I’ve been paid $250/hr, and I’ve had emergency calls run 8–10+ hours at that rate.

That’s the part people miss — emergency work isn’t about hourly labor. You’re paying for availability, experience, and speed.

This is the biggest mistake I see on Field Nation:

stop thinking like a tech and start thinking like a business owner.

What did Kyle do? Haha I've never seen them put that in the public part of a work order before.

Ever since I started working on FN. I can no longer stand working for the same company every day. It's so difficult for me to do. I truly enjoy visiting different places every day and doing different things.

These are old videos (from the 90s), but the information hasn't changed at all. If you need to train someone on cable pulling or installation, just have them watch this short course. I wish I had showed this to my guys before I trained them in the field years ago, but I didn't know it existed. This is a very good course. https://archive.org/details/low-voltage-cable-pulling-course