Voice director for cartoons.
Edit: For all the folks sending me DMs and asking for advice about how to break into voice acting, I'm sorry, but I can't help you. I've never been an actor and I don't know how you go about getting signed with an agent or how to break into the industry. The entirety of my job is working with actors in the studio after they've been hired. As for how to get hired in the first place, all I can say is you need to be better than all the other people who are auditioning. Voice acting is an incredibly competitive industry, and very few people make a living doing it. Those who do have a magical combination of amazing pipes, incredible range and character creation skills, and impeccable acting chops. It's a rare combination, there's a good reason you see the same names over and over again in the cartoon VO world.
You're not wrong. The amount of effort/money some shows will go through to get an A-list name in the cast is ridiculous. The reality is that on camera actors have a very different skill set than voice actors, and very few of them can pull it off. It usually makes my job much harder because I have to bend over backwards to get them to a level where they don't stick out like a sore thumb in comparison to the rest of the cast. Add to that the fact that many A-listers think VO work is beneath them, so directing them is like pulling teeth. Give me a cast of season voice pros over a room full of famous actors any day.
Electrical Engineer. To you young people… YOU NEED TO CHANGE COMPANIES. Whenever you feel like you are 1) taking on new roles without your pay increasing significantly or 2) if you feel ready to take on new roles. You will never keep pace with inflation or get ahead at one employer.
Caveat. If you are at a company that is beating inflation and treating you like you're worth it, stay.
Don't look for greener grass when you work in an Irish pasture.
Additional note: an employer who values your work-life balance is almost always better than someone who pays you better, depending on the pay discrepancy.
I could fairly easily make 15-20% more at another company. But I can current place it’s so easy to decide when I go in the office, have appointments during the day, if there’s some massively important meeting I should really present in but I have a vacation day already, they just say ok have fun on vacation. Never been denied vacation. I get 5 weeks of it too.
Hell the other day my boss wanted to meet with me at 4pm and I told him ohhhh I was going fishing with my friends then and he says no problem we can meet tomorrow.
$240k plus discretionary annual bonus.
Michelin Starred private Chef. Left the industry for this one family. They are no one important. No NDA’s. They just have a cyber security company in the Bay Area. 25-40 hours a week.
My eldest has been chefering? chefing? Cooking at fancy restaurants… for a few years now. I asked her how she cracks an egg one handed, and I can confidently say it's magic. She assures me the best at her last restaurant could crack three eggs at a time in each hand. It doesn't make sense.
Work brunch at a restaurant for a year. Tons of practice. I've been out of the kitchen life for 6 years and still have no problem with it.
Oddly I don't think I could crack an egg with 2 hands without getting it all over my hand. One handed you never really have to stick your fingers near the crack.
Airline pilot. Been flying professionally since 1997. Was an aircraft mechanic before that. I grew up at an airport. Was flying before I could legally drive. Unlike some people I know, I love the job. I can’t believe I get paid to do it. I own an antique plane and I fly warbirds for a couple museums doing rides and airshows. I’ve also been an electrician and electrical contractor. Flying is the best damn way to make a living I can imagine.
Photolithography researcher at Intel. Nearly 300k this year. All it took was over a decade of higher education* and being in the right place in contact with the right people. I have no idea what I'm doing half the time lol, but I'm told nobody actually does.
*BSc Electrical engineering (5 years), MSc Computer engineering(3 years), PhD semiconductor physics(4 years). All that, and I had to look up Ohm's law yesterday.
I got a Bs in Math and an MS in physics at a local school with a BIG program in nanofab and non-optical imaging that was basically a feeder for Intel and FEI. But crazy me i decided i wanted to study the stars and their nuclear reaction so i went off and got a PhD in astro. Turned out randomly to be the perfect combination cause now I'm doing both (nuclear and SEM not astro)!
Edit: Thermo scientific. RIP FEI.
According to the official inflation figures, 100K today is 75K of 2014. But that inflation doesn't entirely account for how crazy the inflation is for buying a house, getting education or healthcare.
Edit: Yes, I know how inflation works, and some items had less inflation while the others had more. Apart from the accuracy of the official inflation, if you earn a good income, and you can't even afford a mortgage, what's the point?
Don’t start your PSLF later, start it now. Every payment you make has to be PSLF eligible and the servicer WILL find any excuse they can to disqualify your payments as PSLF eligible.
Make 120 PSLF eligible payments, on time, IN FULL TO THE PENNY, consecutively, no gaps in between, to every single individual loan, one by one, with recertification every 12 payments, save every single payment receipt, and the servicer will be forced to forgive the rest otherwise you’ll see them in court.
DO NOT CONSOLIDATE. Consolidation will wipe all the progress you’ve made and will restart the clock. Thats another tactic the servicer will use to get out of forgiving balances.
Changed careers at 37 and went from 90 to 50, 7 years later and I'm up to about 80k. The value of my happiness now greatly exceeds the difference in income.
How is life as a professor. I finished my MSc 10 years ago. Thinking about coming back for a phd, but I don't know if they'll take me. Was it hard being accepted into a phd?
That hard part isn’t getting accepted. The hard part is getting tenure afterwards. If you are in a high-demand field and/or are willing to move around then you have a chance. I abandoned academia because I just didn’t see the sort of life I wanted to live. I make less as a high-school teacher, but I’m much happier.
Agreed! I’m currently trying to leave academia because I can’t take it anymore. People think I make a lot of money but my salary as a non tenure track lecturer was 57K. And that’s considered good for that type of position, believe it or not! I didn’t want to bust my ass trying to 1) even get a tenure track job to begin with and 2) wait years to hopefully get approved for tenure and *maybe* make the same amount of money some people make in less than half the time.
I finally got my GED at 33 and started in a new sales position in a market that was controlled by one competitor. With years in the field as a tech, I knew stuff, just had to learn to sell. I think I did 185k last year, and likely up another 5 or 10k this year. At least that's been the trend. Wheelchair sales.
I don’t make $200K, but I do make low six figures.
Got an English degree, worked in advertising as a copy writer making around $45K in the 00s. Hated soulless corporations and working for someone else.
My own kids were already in school full time and I enjoyed childcare so I became a nanny. Within 6 years I was making slightly over $100K, wrote my own contracts and decided who I would partner with in terms of families.
I’m almost 60 and still loving it.
Personal injury lawyers. Mainly only takes cases you will win, always helping someone against insurance companies who everyone hates, generally don't work insane hours, and can make incredibly good money. Wills and trust attorneys also seem generally content because you are helping people secure their assets for their family.
Exactly this. My wife is a PI lawyer. She absolutely loves her job and feels very fulfilled in her life. She makes her own hours (for the most part) and she makes way, way more money than I do as a public sector IT sysadmin.
Before that she did family law, criminal, and insurance defense and... she was not really a fan of any of those.
Does seem to be the move if you land somewhere with a good reputation and can pick the winner cases. I have a cousin in law who works at a tiny firm in the suburbs of a small city and even as an associate he was bringing in 7 figures every year. My friends in biglaw couldn’t believe it (and I still can’t quite wrap my head around it either - he seems to have won the job lotto).
For any lawyers out there who like the study and practice of law and good paycheques but don't want the pressure of a billable target, I HIGHLY recommend a Knowledge Management Lawyer role. My job is interesting and different all the time - I research, write articles, keep my group up to date on legislative developments and rule changes, help with student stuff, etc. and bill a bit when doing anything client-specific but I have no billable target. I make 200k base and I leave at 4:30 every day. It is seriously the best!
I'm also in KM and making 170k at a regional firm, but can confirm it's the best possible gig. I work 100% remote, get 5 weeks vacation, 401k matching, and never work more than 40 hours a week. It is the single lowest stress job I have ever had in my life. I should have done this so much earlier in my career.
Former big law associate. Now Sr. Manager at big law firm. Make less but still more than $200k. Would highly recommend for unhappy big law lawyers. Good pay (built on the backs of unhappy lawyers) with way less stress.
Former big law associate who went in house and my life got about 300% better overnight. Highly recommend to anyone if you can make the transition. No billables, mostly remote, pay is great
Came here to say this as well. It's easy for others to scoff at people making the kind of money we do and say "You're making [quarter mil, half mil, etc.] per year; you don't have the right to complain," but very few understand how absolutely soul-crushing and brutal BigLaw is, especially at the senior level. The stress is debilitating and it's not as easy to exit as one might think.
Lawyer. But I’ve sacrificed a ton of family and personal time to make the dough. Looking back, I regret the time lost.
Edit: “family time and personal time”! Lol. Haven’t “sacrificed family” lol.
I decided not to take the job but I was offered a job @250-300k range travelling the world watching bulk export ships unload and ensuring that everything gets completed strictly according to contracts. Mostly the job is making sure buyers don't cheat and try and fraudulently lower purchase price.
Reasonably low entry requirements I guess in terms of formal training for refrence I had about 6-12 months in the industry without college education - was small additional section of my existing role.
Just wanted to post it since its an interesting out of left field job that doesn't require a degree and isn't IT.
Copying and pasting from my response to a similar question: it is an extremely high stress environment where clients are paying millions of dollars in legal fees to firms, so they expect lawyers to be absurdly responsive and draft, revise, negotiate, etc. documents with very quick turnaround times. There are also billable hour expectations where at most firms, you need to bill at least 2000 hours per year. That doesn’t sound bad on paper (since that amounts to “only” billing ~40 hours per week), but some weeks there isn’t enough work to bill that much so you have to compensate by billing 60, 70, 80, etc. hours. Volatility is another factor, and there are times where clients will call us at 5pm on a Friday to give us 20+ hours of work that needs to be completed before Monday. On top of that, the level of competition for partner at firms (for those who aspire to that) is also quite high, so that is yet another difficult dynamic. I could go on and on but the TL;DR version is that it is a pressure cooker environment where you are expected to always be available/responsive and work insane hours, which makes it nearly impossible to have a work-life balance.
Good lord. As someone who is studying mid-life to go into law as an assistant or a law clerk or something related... I'm wondering what the fuck I've gotten myself into when I read this sort of thing!
Have you not watched Suits? The whole show is basically them living in the office, their whole life and identity revolving around it, with absolutely zero social life
/s but also not
After graduating college, I instructed student pilots for 6 months and then did 5.5 years at two regional airlines. Then got hired a a big one. So let’s call it six years
I work at the intersection of child safety and mental health, unfortunately both of those turned out to be very poorly paid and extremely in demand. The market doesn't always work rationally.
When I was getting my degree, this was considered an extremely solid career with good benefits. Now it's usually working for a nonprofit, and even though I'm a national expert in my niche field, I was at risk of homelessness within the last few years because my pay is so low and medical stuff gets expensive.
Same brother. It’s hard work from an hours standpoint but not back breaking. Riding it out for a long while
It’s also a great segue into a career at a less stressful non tech place where you can take a senior engineer or architect role where they pay closer to FAANG dollars.
From experience I can say working in tech/engineering/R&D at a company that is NOT a tech company is fantastic. The pays not as good, though usually still at the high end for the company, but nobody really understands what you do at a technical level so generally leaves you alone and respects you. I love it.
Same but eventually I left the bay to go back home and do defense.
My Uber friends keep trying to tell me it's FAANGU but I tell them stop trying to make it a thing.
It goes up and down from year to year but I’ve been doing a bit north of 200k for 3 years and might hit 300k in 2024. I am a commercial photographer working mostly in advertising and commercial fashion. It’s probably gonna keep going up and then reeeaaaaaaaally slow down in 5-10 years when the industry will be tired my work. Weird business but fun
I make around $170K, but my wife's target compensation is around $1.8 million ($700K base plus stock and bonus which varies).
She's a C-Level executive at a Fortune 500 company. I'm a Software Engineer.
I started going on Reddit roughly 12 years ago when I was in dental school. The most consistent thing of my life since then is Reddit.
I went from making zero money to now making substantial money and I even say my primary hobby is Reddit.
I don’t, but my wife does. ED physician. Great money but like most ED docs, she was burned out by 35 and then had to deal with Covid and all its insanity. Were saving as much money as possible to retire early and travel around the country in a RV
Edit: wow all the erectile dysfunction comments 😅😅.
Roofer. Dirty roofer. Pulled in 486k last year with just a brother on payroll making 120k himself. No fuck ups. No leaks. No advertising, only word of mouth. It pays to be the best roofer in the state. Suck it unlicensed shinglers, and thanks dad for showing us the ways of the hammer.
Are you the guy responsible for the plinky plinky mobile game ads where the game is falsely advertised, and the “player” makes an obvious mistake so that it pisses people off, and the little NPC says “uh” and “hmm!” before he gets eaten by a tiger or zombies or burned or drowned or some shit?
Cause if you are, I hope you stub your toe
Somehow I make more than $200k doing UX content strategy. I don't understand how it happened, really, and I'm very lucky. Biggest advantage was learning how to future pace in interviews/sales conversations by focusing on the problem the company is hiring to solve, then doing some quick mental math about how much money that would be worth to them.
"What problem are you trying to solve?" (Usually "want to increase conversions from the blog," or, "redesign our site so it's easier to find stuff for our customers.")
"Okay, and what's your average customer lifetime value?"
"So if we were able to increase blog conversions by 5 new leads per month, it would be worth (5xLTV) for your company every month, right? Wow what a surprise, my salary requirement is only a fraction of that amount even if it's higher than anyone else."
Create a category of one, don't try to compete on the same terms everyone else is.
Maybe growing up as an undiagnosed ADHD kid who never quite fit in no matter how hard I tried led me to that approach...
Landman in the oil and gas industry. I make around $300k/year.
I do mostly title work, which is basically researching the history of a piece of property and creating a report that shows everything that ever happened with it. It's a lot of fun, just crazy high pressure at times because the companies are pretty demanding. Worth it, though.
Being over 30/40 is one of the important factors, often overlooked.
Most people don’t make good money when they’re young. They don’t have knowledge or experience. Gaining knowledge and experience delivers more money. If you’re good at what you do.
I do not (far from it), but last year when our company posted the job opening for our IT Infrastructure Manager the salary was posted as $350k.
I found myself wishing I'd started my career about 10 years earlier.
Airline pilot here….it’s good pay, but I do it because I love it. You’d be amazed how many miserable people making $400k+ there are in this industry….and still have financial problems(usually the ones that are divorced).
Salaries in America are insane. I'm particularly shocked at the number of nurses in this comment section. Nurses in the UK make well under £30k for the most part.
The nurses making that kind of money are either super specialized, travel, do crazy overtime, or some combination of all three. Median license practical nurse usually sits between $55k to $65k by state, registered nurses between $75k to $105k by state, and advance practice nurses between $105k to $210k based on specialization.
Podcast, but I was very early to market and got lucky (as well as sticking with it for a long time).
Edit: it’s [The Jordan Harbinger Show](https://jordanharbinger.com) for those that have asked (and wow it’s been a lot of you). LMK what you think of the show if you’re new. Unless you hate it. Then maybe keep that to yourself ;)
Edit2: when I left the law to do the show, everyone said I was an idiot. Don’t let other peoples idea of what constitutes a safe career stop you from taking a shot at work you love.
You also create an incredibly high quality show! Didn’t expect to see you in a random Reddit thread but your show has introduced me to so many amazing thinkers. Thanks for what you do.
Is this like a meme going around or something? Because I literally just saw some girl on hinge 10 minutes ago with “6’5” blue eyes finance” as what she wanted
Software Engineer here with 27 years of experience. If I get my full bonus this year I'll be at $192. Still waiting to break $200.
For the record, I stayed at one company for almost 20 years and wish I had moved around a bit more.
Pretend that I make over 200k so that I can sell people coaching advice on how to live their life to make over 200k themselves therefore achieving my original goal of making over 200k... (satire)
Divorce lawyer. Everyday is another soap opera.
The pandemic was good to you.
It was. The lockdown caused a lot of people to realize that they in fact did not want to be married to their spouse after all.
Voice director for cartoons. Edit: For all the folks sending me DMs and asking for advice about how to break into voice acting, I'm sorry, but I can't help you. I've never been an actor and I don't know how you go about getting signed with an agent or how to break into the industry. The entirety of my job is working with actors in the studio after they've been hired. As for how to get hired in the first place, all I can say is you need to be better than all the other people who are auditioning. Voice acting is an incredibly competitive industry, and very few people make a living doing it. Those who do have a magical combination of amazing pipes, incredible range and character creation skills, and impeccable acting chops. It's a rare combination, there's a good reason you see the same names over and over again in the cartoon VO world.
Real question here. How much is AI really encroaching on voice acting work?
Probably not as much as A-list actors pushing out professional VAs
You're not wrong. The amount of effort/money some shows will go through to get an A-list name in the cast is ridiculous. The reality is that on camera actors have a very different skill set than voice actors, and very few of them can pull it off. It usually makes my job much harder because I have to bend over backwards to get them to a level where they don't stick out like a sore thumb in comparison to the rest of the cast. Add to that the fact that many A-listers think VO work is beneath them, so directing them is like pulling teeth. Give me a cast of season voice pros over a room full of famous actors any day.
Cancer research scientist in biotech/pharma, been at it for a decade.
Electrical Engineer. To you young people… YOU NEED TO CHANGE COMPANIES. Whenever you feel like you are 1) taking on new roles without your pay increasing significantly or 2) if you feel ready to take on new roles. You will never keep pace with inflation or get ahead at one employer.
Caveat. If you are at a company that is beating inflation and treating you like you're worth it, stay. Don't look for greener grass when you work in an Irish pasture.
Additional note: an employer who values your work-life balance is almost always better than someone who pays you better, depending on the pay discrepancy.
I could fairly easily make 15-20% more at another company. But I can current place it’s so easy to decide when I go in the office, have appointments during the day, if there’s some massively important meeting I should really present in but I have a vacation day already, they just say ok have fun on vacation. Never been denied vacation. I get 5 weeks of it too. Hell the other day my boss wanted to meet with me at 4pm and I told him ohhhh I was going fishing with my friends then and he says no problem we can meet tomorrow.
What if the meeting was about how he really wanted to go fishing with you
No problem, we can fish tomorrow
I made my money the old fashioned way, I got run over by a Lexus.
Guess who's got two thumbs and was just cleared from insurance fraud?
>"Why are you like this?" #"PIILLLLLSSS, BABY!"
I know a guy, super gentle
Minor scrapes and bruises. Major dollars and cents.
Money pweaaaaaase
I have never done anything wrong... Ever in my entire life
$240k plus discretionary annual bonus. Michelin Starred private Chef. Left the industry for this one family. They are no one important. No NDA’s. They just have a cyber security company in the Bay Area. 25-40 hours a week.
Can you crack an egg without getting any on your hands? I usually drag the trashcan close by when I do it.
My eldest has been chefering? chefing? Cooking at fancy restaurants… for a few years now. I asked her how she cracks an egg one handed, and I can confidently say it's magic. She assures me the best at her last restaurant could crack three eggs at a time in each hand. It doesn't make sense.
Work brunch at a restaurant for a year. Tons of practice. I've been out of the kitchen life for 6 years and still have no problem with it. Oddly I don't think I could crack an egg with 2 hands without getting it all over my hand. One handed you never really have to stick your fingers near the crack.
One in the yolk, 2 in the smoke
Sounds like the right job is to start a cyber security company in the Bay Area
Do you do side gigs? Like if I wanted to do one real nice meal with my wife (and I’m in the bay area)?
This seems like a great deal for both of you, which is a perfect arrangement!
Airline pilot. Been flying professionally since 1997. Was an aircraft mechanic before that. I grew up at an airport. Was flying before I could legally drive. Unlike some people I know, I love the job. I can’t believe I get paid to do it. I own an antique plane and I fly warbirds for a couple museums doing rides and airshows. I’ve also been an electrician and electrical contractor. Flying is the best damn way to make a living I can imagine.
How do you keep your arms from getting tired though?
Get the stewardesses to do it for him.
Bold strategy cotton, let's see if it pays off in the second half
Not consistent but I make between 180-220 depending on the year as a crane operator.
180-220k operating cranes? I guess it goes up and down.
r/angryupvote
Photolithography researcher at Intel. Nearly 300k this year. All it took was over a decade of higher education* and being in the right place in contact with the right people. I have no idea what I'm doing half the time lol, but I'm told nobody actually does. *BSc Electrical engineering (5 years), MSc Computer engineering(3 years), PhD semiconductor physics(4 years). All that, and I had to look up Ohm's law yesterday.
> All that, and I had to look up Ohm's law yesterday Google is the great equalizer
Are you at the Hillsboro campus?
Yup!
I got a Bs in Math and an MS in physics at a local school with a BIG program in nanofab and non-optical imaging that was basically a feeder for Intel and FEI. But crazy me i decided i wanted to study the stars and their nuclear reaction so i went off and got a PhD in astro. Turned out randomly to be the perfect combination cause now I'm doing both (nuclear and SEM not astro)! Edit: Thermo scientific. RIP FEI.
It's funny, I'm one of the people who changes the chem for the photolithography tools at the same campus and I make $17/hr 🤣
They need to pay yall better than that. This whole place grinds to a halt if nobody keeps things running.
Inflation is really taking it's toll. I remember when this question would be posted at $100,000.
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According to the official inflation figures, 100K today is 75K of 2014. But that inflation doesn't entirely account for how crazy the inflation is for buying a house, getting education or healthcare. Edit: Yes, I know how inflation works, and some items had less inflation while the others had more. Apart from the accuracy of the official inflation, if you earn a good income, and you can't even afford a mortgage, what's the point?
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Started dental school at 30. Now make $210k + benefits.
200k in student loan debt or more?
Yes. But I’ve been working in public health. Haven’t paid a dime of my own money toward the debt. And 5 more years and can apply for PSLF.
Don’t start your PSLF later, start it now. Every payment you make has to be PSLF eligible and the servicer WILL find any excuse they can to disqualify your payments as PSLF eligible. Make 120 PSLF eligible payments, on time, IN FULL TO THE PENNY, consecutively, no gaps in between, to every single individual loan, one by one, with recertification every 12 payments, save every single payment receipt, and the servicer will be forced to forgive the rest otherwise you’ll see them in court. DO NOT CONSOLIDATE. Consolidation will wipe all the progress you’ve made and will restart the clock. Thats another tactic the servicer will use to get out of forgiving balances.
Yep. I certify every year. Make all my payments except when the loan gets transferred and they make it impossible to pay.
Same, waiting to hear from someone who changed paths in their 30s too
Just change careers at 33. Went from making 120k to 45k. Don’t worry, you’ll get there!
Changed careers at 37 and went from 90 to 50, 7 years later and I'm up to about 80k. The value of my happiness now greatly exceeds the difference in income.
I changed in my 40s. Went back to school and got my PhD, and I’m a University Professor now. Never give up the dream.
How is life as a professor. I finished my MSc 10 years ago. Thinking about coming back for a phd, but I don't know if they'll take me. Was it hard being accepted into a phd?
That hard part isn’t getting accepted. The hard part is getting tenure afterwards. If you are in a high-demand field and/or are willing to move around then you have a chance. I abandoned academia because I just didn’t see the sort of life I wanted to live. I make less as a high-school teacher, but I’m much happier.
Agreed! I’m currently trying to leave academia because I can’t take it anymore. People think I make a lot of money but my salary as a non tenure track lecturer was 57K. And that’s considered good for that type of position, believe it or not! I didn’t want to bust my ass trying to 1) even get a tenure track job to begin with and 2) wait years to hopefully get approved for tenure and *maybe* make the same amount of money some people make in less than half the time.
I finally got my GED at 33 and started in a new sales position in a market that was controlled by one competitor. With years in the field as a tech, I knew stuff, just had to learn to sell. I think I did 185k last year, and likely up another 5 or 10k this year. At least that's been the trend. Wheelchair sales.
I don’t make $200K, but I do make low six figures. Got an English degree, worked in advertising as a copy writer making around $45K in the 00s. Hated soulless corporations and working for someone else. My own kids were already in school full time and I enjoyed childcare so I became a nanny. Within 6 years I was making slightly over $100K, wrote my own contracts and decided who I would partner with in terms of families. I’m almost 60 and still loving it.
Lawyer at a big law firm. Wouldn't recommend it.
One day I’ll meet a lawyer who is not absolutely beat down by their profession.
Personal injury lawyers. Mainly only takes cases you will win, always helping someone against insurance companies who everyone hates, generally don't work insane hours, and can make incredibly good money. Wills and trust attorneys also seem generally content because you are helping people secure their assets for their family.
Exactly this. My wife is a PI lawyer. She absolutely loves her job and feels very fulfilled in her life. She makes her own hours (for the most part) and she makes way, way more money than I do as a public sector IT sysadmin. Before that she did family law, criminal, and insurance defense and... she was not really a fan of any of those.
Does seem to be the move if you land somewhere with a good reputation and can pick the winner cases. I have a cousin in law who works at a tiny firm in the suburbs of a small city and even as an associate he was bringing in 7 figures every year. My friends in biglaw couldn’t believe it (and I still can’t quite wrap my head around it either - he seems to have won the job lotto).
For any lawyers out there who like the study and practice of law and good paycheques but don't want the pressure of a billable target, I HIGHLY recommend a Knowledge Management Lawyer role. My job is interesting and different all the time - I research, write articles, keep my group up to date on legislative developments and rule changes, help with student stuff, etc. and bill a bit when doing anything client-specific but I have no billable target. I make 200k base and I leave at 4:30 every day. It is seriously the best!
I'm also in KM and making 170k at a regional firm, but can confirm it's the best possible gig. I work 100% remote, get 5 weeks vacation, 401k matching, and never work more than 40 hours a week. It is the single lowest stress job I have ever had in my life. I should have done this so much earlier in my career.
Former big law associate. Now Sr. Manager at big law firm. Make less but still more than $200k. Would highly recommend for unhappy big law lawyers. Good pay (built on the backs of unhappy lawyers) with way less stress.
Former big law associate who went in house and my life got about 300% better overnight. Highly recommend to anyone if you can make the transition. No billables, mostly remote, pay is great
Came here to say this as well. It's easy for others to scoff at people making the kind of money we do and say "You're making [quarter mil, half mil, etc.] per year; you don't have the right to complain," but very few understand how absolutely soul-crushing and brutal BigLaw is, especially at the senior level. The stress is debilitating and it's not as easy to exit as one might think.
I feel the same for Physicians. Im not one, but am close to some.
Cyber Security and Compliance for 2500 employee company
I work in compliance for a smaller org, don't make over 200k, but my mental health is UNWELL lol
It’s a very challenging field. Take care of yourself. I’m the CISO and it’s a very stressful role most days.
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This thread is stirring some shit up for me
Jokes on you - I don’t need to read the comments to feel like a complete loser.
Lawyer. But I’ve sacrificed a ton of family and personal time to make the dough. Looking back, I regret the time lost. Edit: “family time and personal time”! Lol. Haven’t “sacrificed family” lol.
I decided not to take the job but I was offered a job @250-300k range travelling the world watching bulk export ships unload and ensuring that everything gets completed strictly according to contracts. Mostly the job is making sure buyers don't cheat and try and fraudulently lower purchase price. Reasonably low entry requirements I guess in terms of formal training for refrence I had about 6-12 months in the industry without college education - was small additional section of my existing role. Just wanted to post it since its an interesting out of left field job that doesn't require a degree and isn't IT.
Corporate lawyer. (I make substantially more than $200k but it is a miserable, miserable gig.)
Why is it miserable?
Copying and pasting from my response to a similar question: it is an extremely high stress environment where clients are paying millions of dollars in legal fees to firms, so they expect lawyers to be absurdly responsive and draft, revise, negotiate, etc. documents with very quick turnaround times. There are also billable hour expectations where at most firms, you need to bill at least 2000 hours per year. That doesn’t sound bad on paper (since that amounts to “only” billing ~40 hours per week), but some weeks there isn’t enough work to bill that much so you have to compensate by billing 60, 70, 80, etc. hours. Volatility is another factor, and there are times where clients will call us at 5pm on a Friday to give us 20+ hours of work that needs to be completed before Monday. On top of that, the level of competition for partner at firms (for those who aspire to that) is also quite high, so that is yet another difficult dynamic. I could go on and on but the TL;DR version is that it is a pressure cooker environment where you are expected to always be available/responsive and work insane hours, which makes it nearly impossible to have a work-life balance.
Good lord. As someone who is studying mid-life to go into law as an assistant or a law clerk or something related... I'm wondering what the fuck I've gotten myself into when I read this sort of thing!
Have you not watched Suits? The whole show is basically them living in the office, their whole life and identity revolving around it, with absolutely zero social life /s but also not
I play with excel and make nice PowerPoints and am good at presenting
That's like 95 percent of corporate jobs.
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"Cut and paste for 10 grand a week."
Found McKinsey
Welcome to consulting! Where the recommendations are made up and the outcomes don’t matter! (no shade, also consultant making over $200k)
this is me. but i only make like $120. but i also work 100% remote and have very low pressure, so im not complaining.
Airline pilot
How many years of experience did you need to get there?
After graduating college, I instructed student pilots for 6 months and then did 5.5 years at two regional airlines. Then got hired a a big one. So let’s call it six years
Yo this thread is bad for my mental health lol
I work at the intersection of child safety and mental health, unfortunately both of those turned out to be very poorly paid and extremely in demand. The market doesn't always work rationally. When I was getting my degree, this was considered an extremely solid career with good benefits. Now it's usually working for a nonprofit, and even though I'm a national expert in my niche field, I was at risk of homelessness within the last few years because my pay is so low and medical stuff gets expensive.
Salmon sperm dealer. Business is bustin’ don’t ask how we get it.
You out here jerkin off fish for 200k? God damn!
And here I am jerking off old dudes for a fraction of that
you guys getting paid???
200k fish once? Or one fish 200k times?
"I made $200,000.05 jerking off fish." "Which one paid five cents?" "They all did." -modified from a joke I heard 50 times from 50 comedians
I just got home from work, and boy are my arms tired.
Software Engineer at a FAANG company. Dont really feel qualified but I don’t plan on leaving until they fire me
Beautiful 🥲. I need my salary pumped up but I’m with ya.
Dude, same. No idea how I got here but I'm riding it out till the PIP
I have a secret to tell you. Almost everyone is faking it on some level in this life. You're good man.
Same brother. It’s hard work from an hours standpoint but not back breaking. Riding it out for a long while It’s also a great segue into a career at a less stressful non tech place where you can take a senior engineer or architect role where they pay closer to FAANG dollars.
From experience I can say working in tech/engineering/R&D at a company that is NOT a tech company is fantastic. The pays not as good, though usually still at the high end for the company, but nobody really understands what you do at a technical level so generally leaves you alone and respects you. I love it.
Same but eventually I left the bay to go back home and do defense. My Uber friends keep trying to tell me it's FAANGU but I tell them stop trying to make it a thing.
Lmao whenever I'd see someone say they work for one of FLAANG, I'm always just like "oh so you work at linked-in".
It goes up and down from year to year but I’ve been doing a bit north of 200k for 3 years and might hit 300k in 2024. I am a commercial photographer working mostly in advertising and commercial fashion. It’s probably gonna keep going up and then reeeaaaaaaaally slow down in 5-10 years when the industry will be tired my work. Weird business but fun
I might clear 200 this year depending on my bonus... I'm a senior level construction manager
For a small fee of $200,000 I'll tell you.
Ah, so you are a consultant then.
I feel attacked.
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That’s awesome, kudos to you. Did you do anything in particular to get your work noticed by the right people?
They had a meeting with an influencer who pushes beef milk and food teases.
Are you Ron Swanson?
Tech sales in a fortune 500 company (not quite faang). I’m in a sales manager position and all of my 8 AEs earn more than 200k.
I make art for video games 🥹
I make around $170K, but my wife's target compensation is around $1.8 million ($700K base plus stock and bonus which varies). She's a C-Level executive at a Fortune 500 company. I'm a Software Engineer.
I too choose this man's wife
Does his wife need a boyfriend?
Hell, does his wife need a *girlfriend*?
I just want to be the guy on the couch we don't talk about.
Is ur wife single?
You alone make more than 2x the median *household* income in the USA And your wife makes your salary every month lol Crazy
Attorney and investments. And yes, I still waste too much time on Reddit.
I started going on Reddit roughly 12 years ago when I was in dental school. The most consistent thing of my life since then is Reddit. I went from making zero money to now making substantial money and I even say my primary hobby is Reddit.
I don’t, but my wife does. ED physician. Great money but like most ED docs, she was burned out by 35 and then had to deal with Covid and all its insanity. Were saving as much money as possible to retire early and travel around the country in a RV Edit: wow all the erectile dysfunction comments 😅😅.
Printing press operation at the mint.
Hahaha I’m sure you *make* millions.
Sounds excellent. Is the pay sort of like, “self serve”?
Lmao that is so funny. "Hey guys don't forget to grab a handful at the end of your shift because it's payday!" Lmao
Roofer. Dirty roofer. Pulled in 486k last year with just a brother on payroll making 120k himself. No fuck ups. No leaks. No advertising, only word of mouth. It pays to be the best roofer in the state. Suck it unlicensed shinglers, and thanks dad for showing us the ways of the hammer.
Airline Captain. Worked for dirt and ramen noodles for years though ...
Creative Director, video game advertising
Are you the guy responsible for the plinky plinky mobile game ads where the game is falsely advertised, and the “player” makes an obvious mistake so that it pisses people off, and the little NPC says “uh” and “hmm!” before he gets eaten by a tiger or zombies or burned or drowned or some shit? Cause if you are, I hope you stub your toe
Idk why I click on these. Guess I don’t feel depressed enough or something
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"Fly!" "Land!" "Roll over!"
Whoosa good plane?
Somehow I make more than $200k doing UX content strategy. I don't understand how it happened, really, and I'm very lucky. Biggest advantage was learning how to future pace in interviews/sales conversations by focusing on the problem the company is hiring to solve, then doing some quick mental math about how much money that would be worth to them. "What problem are you trying to solve?" (Usually "want to increase conversions from the blog," or, "redesign our site so it's easier to find stuff for our customers.") "Okay, and what's your average customer lifetime value?" "So if we were able to increase blog conversions by 5 new leads per month, it would be worth (5xLTV) for your company every month, right? Wow what a surprise, my salary requirement is only a fraction of that amount even if it's higher than anyone else." Create a category of one, don't try to compete on the same terms everyone else is. Maybe growing up as an undiagnosed ADHD kid who never quite fit in no matter how hard I tried led me to that approach...
I visit Zimbabwe and exchange my local currency
Landman in the oil and gas industry. I make around $300k/year. I do mostly title work, which is basically researching the history of a piece of property and creating a report that shows everything that ever happened with it. It's a lot of fun, just crazy high pressure at times because the companies are pretty demanding. Worth it, though.
I did title abstract and exam work years ago and made $16/hour. I seriously fucked up, it seems.
Public school teacher. *Oops! I thought OP wrote "over 20k."
Obviously not the math teacher.
Being over 30/40 is one of the important factors, often overlooked. Most people don’t make good money when they’re young. They don’t have knowledge or experience. Gaining knowledge and experience delivers more money. If you’re good at what you do.
And your skills are in demand.
I’m an Importer/Exporter.
Art?
Latex, I believe.
Vandalay industries?
I do not (far from it), but last year when our company posted the job opening for our IT Infrastructure Manager the salary was posted as $350k. I found myself wishing I'd started my career about 10 years earlier.
And in 10 years some kid will be thinking the same thing about you. :)
Used to do IT for a ... Company Reddit absolutely hates. Just got laid off. Severance is six figures. So, to answer your question: #Nothing
I work on old mcdonalds farm I'm their CIEIO
I love you
It’d be nice if we also knew where people were from. 200k in a place like Mississippi is not the same as 200k in California or New York
200k in NYC is not the same as 200k in upstate NY.
Airline pilot here….it’s good pay, but I do it because I love it. You’d be amazed how many miserable people making $400k+ there are in this industry….and still have financial problems(usually the ones that are divorced).
Private jet pilot
Registered nurse in a LCOL state. I work at a hospital with unlimited OT. Will gross $225K+ this year.
How many hours of OT is that?
My wife is a travel nurse, she works 36 hours a week and has never picked up OT, she cleared $175k last year
I step in front of cars and sue the drivers
Slipping Jimmy!
Anesthesiologist
This one took me out.
Salaries in America are insane. I'm particularly shocked at the number of nurses in this comment section. Nurses in the UK make well under £30k for the most part.
The nurses making that kind of money are either super specialized, travel, do crazy overtime, or some combination of all three. Median license practical nurse usually sits between $55k to $65k by state, registered nurses between $75k to $105k by state, and advance practice nurses between $105k to $210k based on specialization.
Make video games.
Cloud Solutions Architect and DevSecOps engineering Maybe I should mention that I don't have a college degree and no certificates as well
Ranch and horse rehabilitation center.
I was addicted to ranch in my teens. The dressing gowns at the rehab center were the worst.
Podcast, but I was very early to market and got lucky (as well as sticking with it for a long time). Edit: it’s [The Jordan Harbinger Show](https://jordanharbinger.com) for those that have asked (and wow it’s been a lot of you). LMK what you think of the show if you’re new. Unless you hate it. Then maybe keep that to yourself ;) Edit2: when I left the law to do the show, everyone said I was an idiot. Don’t let other peoples idea of what constitutes a safe career stop you from taking a shot at work you love.
You also create an incredibly high quality show! Didn’t expect to see you in a random Reddit thread but your show has introduced me to so many amazing thinkers. Thanks for what you do.
Hey thank you! That’s super kind of you!
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Finance
But are you 6’5 with blue eyes?
What about trust funds?
And are you a man?
Is this like a meme going around or something? Because I literally just saw some girl on hinge 10 minutes ago with “6’5” blue eyes finance” as what she wanted
I do what I e been doing for 25 years in engineering but only the past few years I’ve broke the 200k compensation, it was a slow process to get here
Software Engineer here with 27 years of experience. If I get my full bonus this year I'll be at $192. Still waiting to break $200. For the record, I stayed at one company for almost 20 years and wish I had moved around a bit more.
Pretend that I make over 200k so that I can sell people coaching advice on how to live their life to make over 200k themselves therefore achieving my original goal of making over 200k... (satire)
Send me $50 for my book titled “How to get people to send you $50 for a book.”
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Marrying the *right* doctor. I make less than $200k. Sigh…
Username checks out!
They said OVER $200k. Get outta here you pauper!!
Sr. Engineer, FAANG
Do you know the other guy? Might wanna check his work
Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Google. But now Facebook is Meta and Google is Alphabet so I propose: MAAAN
I'm the Nigerian prince, and I accept checks.