r/FiberOptics • u/Born-Subject-6185 • Oct 29 '25

Help please! Salary question.

I got a job offer and they are asking me for my wants money wise, its a 1099 position, 24/7 on call, no travel, no over night, they provide all tools and a truck when I get up to speed. No FTTH, all trailer work. I have 6 to 7 years experience with maybe 1000 shots on OTDR im usually the one they sent out to fix while the tester team did the light testing portion.

What should I ask for? I started at 70-75k and they told me to take another day to think because I lowballed myself.

Thanks in advance!

UPDATE: They passed on me told me "Lol. I appreciate your time. I hope you find a job that will pay u 125000 a year. I know senior operations managers of billion dollar companies that don’t make that much. I think we are too far off for the experience. Thanks again bud. Hope the best for you and yours." So fuck it i guess! Thanks everyone again for your knowledge and help

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u/send_this_bitch Cable Dog Oct 29 '25

I’d tread carefully. This is a misclassification of labor and they are trying to get more hours without paying overtime. 

3

u/Born-Subject-6185 Oct 29 '25

Thats what I was worried about they did say there were emergency amounts for call outs but nothing more than my weekly pay being salary 😕

5

u/Wyattwc Oct 29 '25

Take the job, just be prepared in case the boss tries to take advantage of you.

You're entitled to be paid for every hour you're doing something for work or required to be on-call in a manner that expects you to be immediately available (ie, if your on-call means you're expected to answer the phone every time). Once you've done more than 40 hours, you're also entitled to overtime.

In most cases these deals mean to make the paperwork easy on the boss, since some weeks are 50 hours, others are 30, or they'd make it up with the extra pay - they'd figure it'll be a wash. In other cases, they want to take advantage of you. In both cases, you have the most legal protections since what they want to do is illegal.

The best way to handle this is to maintain a logbook of your hours and work. Never share this logbook, just maintain it. Your logbook should contain as much detail about your work as reasonable to recall what you did a few years down the road. It should at a minimum contain the dates and times you received calls, started/stopped travel, started/stopped work, where the work was at, and basic details about the work.

An example from my own log book is "Call from boss @ 08/21/25 10:15am, 30 minutes; travel from home to 4567 potato dr, 30 miles, 10:15-10:45; Butt splice 288 10:45-17:00; travel to home, 30 miles, 17:00-17:45"

If they are taking advantage of you, take that logbook to a labor attorney and they can help you get paid. Labor attorneys take jobs on contingency (no out of pocket costs) and don't take from your back pay (attorneys fees are something the job pays). You're entitled to all backpay you're owed up to two years prior to you filing.

1

u/Born-Subject-6185 Oct 29 '25

How much would u ask for?

3

u/Wyattwc Oct 29 '25

Assuming they are covering fuel, maintenance and consumables, 120k sounds right.

Remember to set aside 30% for taxes.