Those participation trophies you drag me so hard over, Karen? Well who was organizing that kindergarten soccer tournament? I sure as hell wasn’t organizing anything at age 5.

I do.

So why are you saying that a tech worker shouldn’t get paid like a skilled tradesperson?

Again. This is a doable job for you because you know and can do it without needing to live off this skill.

The moment you start trying to survive off things like this, overheads spike quite a bit, and that that’s not just a ‘tech worker’ thing.

Plus you need to account for federal, state, and local taxes, plus you need to account for cost of living (coasts are 2x what the Midwest is).
Was it just a straight up drive copy/clone, or was that a file recovery price? Was this a chain store or an independent one?

Plus state and local taxes, plus business overhead. Plus all the other miscellaneous costs.

I bet if you honestly accounted for your time, you’d be a lot closer to that quote than you initially realized.

And again.

You are paying for someone who has the knowledge to set it up in the first place.
Either you spend your time learning how to do these things, or you pay money for the tech guys time that they already spent learning it.

Knowledge workers are entitled to the same pay as physical labor.

Even at a base level, try running fast copy (which is admittedly free) vs the default windows algorithm.

Other software makes it much easier/cleaner to grab only what you need. Case in point, if I am doing file recovery, I don’t want to grab appdata and by extension the web browser cache.

And we need to normalize paying tech professionals like we do paying for plumbers, electricians, and other skilled trades.

The point is that _you_ already have some of this knowledge. But for the people who don’t, or who don’t have the time/mental bandwidth to learn (you think a single parent of 3 or someone working 2 jobs is going to have the time to learn this?) they are going to pay a professional.

Purpose written drive copy software is WAY BETTER than the default windows copy algorithm.

And sure it takes you or I 5-10 minutes to set up, but you don’t pay the plumber because they can walk into your house turn one valve and stop the leak. You pay them because they know which valve already.

A lot of it is charging off for equipment/software they already have.

And then another part of it is charging for time.
People don’t think twice about paying a plumber 50/hr, but balk at paying anywhere near that for any sort of skilled tech labor.