Welcome to day 4 of the book launch event for Confessions of a Female Safety Engineer. Today is about the excerpts. Here’s one. Go to the Facebook event for more!

…from Confessions of a Female Safety Engineer:

What was funny was I had a better grip on what my time was worth to my employer than some of my male co-workers had about their value. I’d run a business, and I knew that as a rough gauge you paid employees half of what they cost you. So if a worker cost you $50 an hour he or she got $25 an hour before taxes. This covered everything from taxes employees never see, insurance, and equipment like cell phones or computers. But we were consultants; we were the product our boss was selling. A product is sold for twice what it costs a business: to cover cost of goods, overhead, and profit. So when my company charged $125/hr for a consultant, and that person costs them $66/hr, he should be bringing home about $33 an hour. I actually met a male coworker who was let go because he was constantly badmouthing the boss as a crook; he’d seen that the boss was charging the client four times what he made per hour, and he thought he was being ripped off.

But my employer was charging our customers over five times what I made per hour.