Companies want to do better by employees but can't in the system as it is.

We do some negotiated work that pays better but it's not enough to depend on.

Expand this. Negotiate more work. Find more negotiated work.

Fixed price contracts are symptomatic of a small consultancy with no reputation who have to take it up the ass, not an established company with a brand who can say no to work that isn't worth it. Maybe you have a marketing / branding / accounts problem. By the way it happens to the biggest... Trump brags about how he got Boeing into a fixed price contract for the Airforce One jets. Now Boeing's share price taken a dump because materials and labor cost a fortune compared to 2017 and they are on the hook for $2 billion. The solution is not to let them get you into a fixed price contract and have the client pay for any overages. They won't like it but that's where you have to sell it. It's not dishonest as long as the estimate is as accurate as you can make it with a little padding. Boeing should never have agreed to a fixed price contract with the government.

To be lucrative he'd have to start doing residential and charging homeowners

This is acceptable... look it costs the city $100,000 dollars to build a staircase down a hill meanwhile someone with the skills can build it with $1000 dollars from Home Depot doesn't mean it gets built for that much. Homeowners might even feel NOT ripped off paying more money for workers happy for their job. There's studies that prove people are happier or food is tastier when people pay more money for the same food. Charging more money means you'll have a sustainable business and maybe they will be happy to pay more money. You just have to be worth the cost somehow. Branding, superior customer service, whatever it takes.

/r/antiwork Thread Parent