This is a terrible article. In this case, "lifeguard" is anyone in the 1000 employee lifeguard unit. The $392k is attributed to Fernando Boiteux who is an Assistant Chief in the LA Fire Department. Do you know a lot of people with 1000 people reporting to them who make less than 400k?
Lifeguards are first responders and medical professionals in a specialized field.<p>Boiteux is also a firefighter managing 900 personnel.<p>So yeah, I'm ok with him having a salary equivalent to a Staff Software Engineer.
I really hate this trend of including benefits in someone's earnings. Yes, it makes sense logically, but 90% of people are going to assume it means salary, especially since a lot of the time they don't even know the monetary value of their own benefits.
I wouldn't assume beach lifeguarding to be an easy job, and I would expect a job that puts my life at risk to compensate me fairly for that risk. The overtime numbers are concerning, however, since the last thing I would want is to have exhausted lifeguards on duty.
It would be good to know the median compensation for the lifeguards instead of just some outliers. Focusing on the highest paid earners gives readers a false sense of the distribution. Imagine a similar article that listed the top incomes of FAANG employees!
I think it's great that lifeguards are paid well but close to $400k a year? I know Cost of living in LA is outrageous but WOW.<p>Teachers even in LA aren't making 1/4 of that even at the top of their pay charts they'd be lucky to just touch $100k a year.<p>We need good lifeguards, sure, but we don't need to pay them $300-400k a year...
"The 2020 Medal of Valor winner, Edward “Nick” Macko, an ocean lifeguard specialist, earned “only” $134,144 in compensation. His compensation ranked 167th out of the 1,001 employees in the L.A. lifeguard corps."<p>Salary data is from 2019 and "Nick" won the Medal of Valor in 2020.
It's a lot of money but it's also a weird job. Lifeguarding at the ocean isn't like sitting beside the neighborhood pool. It's a pretty niche skill and seasonal on top of that. It sucks that we have to spend so much but given that, it seems inevitable that you either have a well paid staff or a less qualified one. A friend of mine was recently rescued from a tricky situation after getting pulled offshore in a rip current and I definitely know which side I'd come down on.
As interesting as this article is, the related article is even more interesting: <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2020/05/19/why-california-is-in-trouble--340000-public-employees-with-100000-paychecks-cost-taxpayers-45-billion/" rel="nofollow">https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2020/05/19/why...</a><p>Primarily because 1. California has over $1,000,000,000,000 in unfunded pension benefits promised and 2. It only takes one year of employment to reap these lifetime pension and healthcare benefits.<p>I wonder what will happen in the long run, especially if high-earning tech companies continue to allow remote workers and the California exodus continues.
Overtime abuse seems to be a thing. I bet if people were looking into these, they probably aren't working all the hours they claim. Same thing with the BART janitor they found sleeping in a closet who was racking up massive overtime.
I guess the article is asking for LA to lower the pay. And maybe that's correct. However some of the people in these jobs have saved lives. So maybe they are overpaying by $8M per year... but if they cut that back, should the talent saving maybe 10 or 15 people decide to quit... would that be worth it?<p>Each person that is saved is arguably worth millions to their family (we're just talking money here not love etc...) and millions to the GDP over their lost lifetime (we're talking about people that can afford to live in LA).
It seems very misleading to include "perks" - undefined in this article - and benefits as earnings. Obviously they have an impact on comp & what taxpayers spend, but you wouldn't include it if somebody asked how much you make.
Public sector employee interest groups have an outsized influence on every city government in CA, as well as in Sacramento.<p>Its another reason why CA government is dysfunctional.<p>CA tax revenues are so high, citizens don't know, for the most part, how much they're being ripped off.