Careers
Wattsmith Performance Pay
Our compensation system for production electricians: an hourly base that is always there, plus tiered commission on what your jobs collect. Here is exactly how it works, with the math in the open.
The structure
Base plus tiered commission, stated exactly
If you have only ever been paid hourly, read this twice, because the shape matters more than any single number. You keep an hourly wage. On top of it, the revenue your jobs collect each day earns commission through marginal tiers: 12% up to $600, 16% $600 to $900, 20% $900 to $1,200, 24% above $1,200 of daily collected revenue.
- Base wage
- $16 per hour for journeyman electricians, W-2, nonexempt. It is there every hour you work, on the slow days too.
- Commission
- A tiered commission on the daily collected revenue from your jobs. The tiers are marginal, like tax brackets: each rate applies only to the dollars inside its band, so crossing a threshold never costs you money.
- Overtime
- You are a nonexempt hourly employee. Overtime is paid on the commission-inclusive regular rate, the way the law requires, not on the bare base.
- Reviews
- A per-review bonus every time a five-star review names you. The customer saying your name is part of your pay.
- Callbacks
- A callback on your work is reworked at base rate. The base still shows up; the commission does not.
- Advancement
- Commission tiers rise as you advance through the career ladder. The same day of work pays more at every rung.
- Apprentices
- $17 per hour flat while learning. Earn your journeyman license and you move onto Performance Pay.
Straight talk
What a skeptical electrician should ask about this
You have probably seen a commission plan before, and it probably came with a sales quota wearing a tool belt. Fair. Here is how this one actually treats you, objection by objection.
You are not a salesman here, and you never will be
Every commission plan you have heard of turns the electrician into a closer. This one does not, and the reason is structural: the flat-rate book and the three-option presentation do the selling. The price is the price before you arrive, and the customer chooses their own scope from honest options.
Your job is expert diagnosis, honest presentation, and excellent work. Find the real fault, show the customer what you found, present the options straight, and do the work clean. That is the entire job description, and it is the same one you would write for yourself.
Production is mostly competence and speed
Collected revenue sounds like a sales number. On a flat-rate book it is mostly a competence number. The electrician who diagnoses right the first time, runs the job clean, and moves to the next call collects more in a day than the one who talks well and works slow.
The fast, clean electrician out-earns the talker here. If you have spent years watching the loudest guy in the shop take home the most, this structure is built to reverse that.
Happy customers are literally part of your pay
When a five-star review names you, you get paid for it. Not a plaque, not a shout-out at the Monday meeting. Money.
That is deliberate. The work that earns a review with your name in it, the clean site, the straight explanation, the job done right, is exactly the work we want paid for.
Shortcuts cost you money, by design
A callback on your work gets reworked at base rate: the wage is there, the commission is not. Pressure a customer or rush a job, and the rework eats the hours you would have spent collecting on new work.
Put those last two together and the system pays you to be exactly the electrician you already are: careful, honest, and good. There is no version of gaming it that beats simply doing the work well.
Your best days pay your highest rates
The tiers are marginal, so a big day never penalizes you; the dollars above each threshold just earn a higher rate. Stack a strong week and the top of it is paying you the top bracket.
A wage cannot do that. On a wage, your best day and your worst day pay the same, and there is a ceiling built into the number. Here the floor is a fair day, and the ceiling is yours.
The thirty-dollar question, answered straight
At $30 an hour anywhere else, your ceiling is your wage: multiply it out and that is the most the year can pay you, no matter how good you get. Here the base is $16, and everything above it is production you control.
Look at the worked examples below and run the calculator yourself. The bracket math is in the open at every step, because a pay structure you cannot check is a pay structure you should not trust.
The math, worked
Five days, worked through the brackets
Each column is one illustrative day at a stated production level, worked through the bracket math line by line. Base is 8 hours at $16. Weekly and annualized figures assume 5 days a week for 50 weeks. Every figure below is computed from the pay structure, and none of it is a promise.
| Illustrative day | $600 collected | $833 collected | $1,100 collected | $1,400 collected | $1,800 collected |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 12% on up to $600 | $7212% of $600 | $7212% of $600 | $7212% of $600 | $7212% of $600 | $7212% of $600 |
| 16% on $600 to $900 | — | $37.2816% of $233 | $4816% of $300 | $4816% of $300 | $4816% of $300 |
| 20% on $900 to $1,200 | — | — | $4020% of $200 | $6020% of $300 | $6020% of $300 |
| 24% on above $1,200 | — | — | — | $4824% of $200 | $14424% of $600 |
| Commission total | $72 | $109.28 | $160 | $228 | $324 |
| Base (8 hours at $16) | $128 | $128 | $128 | $128 | $128 |
| Day total | $200 | $237.28 | $288 | $356 | $452 |
| Hourly equivalent | $25 | $29.66 | $36 | $44.50 | $56.50 |
| Weekly, 5 days | $1,000 | $1,186.40 | $1,440 | $1,780 | $2,260 |
| Annualized, 5 days x 50 weeks | $50,000 | $59,320 | $72,000 | $89,000 | $113,000 |
Illustrative examples computed from the pay structure at the stated production levels. Not guaranteed, promised, or historical earnings.
Questions about how any of this works in practice? Call (210) 446-5446 and ask. You will get the same straight answer this page gives, from a person.
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