u/TheHandThatFingers

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.

The Warning

Let's talk about Retail Data Systems (RDS) out of Davenport. They love to advertise themselves as a "50-year-old company," but if you look past the shiny self-promotion on their website, the math doesn't add up. You won't find much of a footprint outside of a dismal 1-star Glassdoor rating and a 2.7-star Indeed rating. After dealing with them firsthand, I can confirm they have earned every single one of those terrible reviews.

The "Circus Zoo" Bridge Call

I took one job with these jokers to test the waters, and their support bridge was an absolute circus zoo. There were way too many people on the line at once, all talking over each other, actively working on entirely different projects simultaneously.

There was zero survey and zero forethought. The bridge had absolutely no conceptual grasp of the site. I had to physically walk them through the environment and explain the site to them as if I was conducting a remote survey myself. I had to reverse-engineer their network based purely on what could be seen from a known device list, pulling each device off the switch one by one just to map it out for their support team. By no means did they have any idea what the f*** was going on. They expect the tech on site to have the gray beard experience necessary to magically pull a solution out of thin air, compensating for their complete lack of preparation.

The Race to the Bottom

RDS is out here offering w2 $21/hr for POS installation. Let that sink in. Twenty-one dollars an hour to handle enterprise hardware. And they aren't the only ones. I'm seeing 30-camera McDonald's installations being farmed out for pennies on the dollar—around $1,300-2000 flat rate total for a massive, multi-day deployment. These buyers are absolute crooks, and they are cannibalizing the market.

The Outsourcing Paradox

Here is the real punchline, and it represents the other side of our declining industry. You have these supposedly "legitimate" companies running around with virtually zero W-2 employees of their own. Why? Because they cap their pay at $20 to $21 an hour.

Let's apply some basic logic here. If a company cannot hire, train, and retain its own local employees at $20/hr, how in the hell do they think they are going to outsource that same work to independent contractors—who carry their own insurance, drive their own vehicles, and buy their own tools—at that exact same garbage rate? They can't keep employees in-house, so they dump their poorly planned, un-surveyed messes onto platforms like Field Nation, hoping someone will subsidize their failing business model. I honestly don't see how buyers like RDS make it a year operating like this.

You've been warned. Hold the line on your rates, demand proper scopes of work, and let these bottom-feeders sink.