Ask Lemmy

I push buttons in my basement in my underwear.

Pay is pretty good because I know what buttons to push in what order.

Air trafic controller (Europe, not FAA…)

It’s honestly a kind of dream job as I work around 2 weeks a month, have 7 weeks of paid vacation + I can call in "unfit to work" anytime with no question asked. We often work 2 to 4 hours less than the official time we are paid for. We get paid health cure and the job is not that hard or stressful when you are good at it (I’ve done it for 15 years, it’s like a second nature now).

The pay is very good, around 100k (€/$/chf, it’s basically the same) at entry level and around 220k after 20 years of experience. I’m at 150k for a 80% part time contract.

The only downsides are the working hours, 24h a day 7 days a week which gets tiring as you age. And that much money for not much work makes me lazy, not being at risk means I’m not making efforts to gets better. I dream of being an independent worker, working from home or anywhere in the world on my framework 13 by making creative work, but I’m not pushing hard for that dream as everything is ok with my life and job.

I know, that’s totally a "1st world problem" and I’m not complaining at all. It’s just that being too comfortable in something does not push you forward.

That's, what, $107k/y? That's a good, solid middle-class income in the US, unless you live in an expensive area. E.g., it's a great salary if you live in Manhattan, Kansas; it's not a lot if you live in Manhattan, New York. What's the cost of living where you live?

I'd go by the price of eggs, but they're outrageously expensive under our current regime.

I am a stay at home Dad. The pay is terrible and my boss is extremely immature. Best job I've ever had.

Used to make $80k a year (before taxes) as Co-Lead of a Data Analytics department.

Managed databases, did analytics (regular, structured and custom one off SQL queries), reporting, general software development (basically my team and IT, 2 or 3 people, were the only people in the whole org more computer literate than 'can respond to an email, maybe'), API construction/management, process documentation, coordinated with every other team.

I enjoyed the work, loved my team, though the technical and general incompetence of many other employees was challenging to deal with.

As an example:

In doing process documentation with one team, I interviewed 5 different people on that other team, including their lead, and all of them described completely different processes with maybe 20% agreement...

But, then I got assaulted, crippled, lost my job, got evicted, car got stolen, eventually got SSDI payments to kick in after spending a year homeless (my family are abusive and dysfunctional, my 'friends' didn't care) and now live off of about $22k a year, still recovering, still doing PT.

If Elon and Trump gut Social Security, I'll die homeless and starving.

The place I used to work at was a non profit housing and aiding the homeless, by the way.

Go Team America.

I'm a waitress, I make about 60K USD give or take 5K. It varies significantly throughout the year, though. In Chicago, that's enough to support a family of five.

Electronics Engineer, UK (in the North), £39,000 after 5 and a half years of experience.

My field pays about the middling amount for the engineering profession. If I were to move overseas I could expect a 50% to 100% increase in pay.

Though my current company is great because they treat me very well. Hybrid work on offer with a minimum of 2 days in the office but since my job requires being in the office I don't use that except for Fridays or when I'm not feeling great but still able to work, flexible working hours as long as I'm available during core hours of 10am to 4pm and Fridays are usually a half-day unless I'm very busy. There's a pay-adjusted profit share bonus (the lower your salary is, the more you get from the bonus) and they try to match inflation with automatic pay rises.

Much better than my previous place which gave me suicidal depression, anxiety, and workplace-stress-induced PTSD where raised voices and slamming doors trigger an anxiety attack.

Pharmaceuticals in the US. Fairly early in my career, get paid just short of $100k/year. All it took was getting a doctorate and selling a little bit of my soul.

Sometimes I miss academic research. But at the end of the day I'm getting paid about 4x as much while working 1/2 the hours, by my estimate I'm 8x as happy now. Plus, there's something to be said for working on projects that actually affect people's lives instead of overstating the impacts of my research to compete for a dwindling pool of federal grants. Seeing the policy changes in the US this year, I'm very glad I left academia but I'm not convinced I'm 100% safe from changes made at the FDA.

OP won the thread before the first response arrived.

Apartment superintendent. $62k plus free rent and utilities.

Digital forensics in a European country. My monthly salary is enough to buy 15000 eggs, or live comfortably within the urban area of a large city and buy a reasonable amount of eggs.

IT help desk (combined L1/L2 ish) in education. Pull in a smidge under $70k plus bennies/pension/etc. Live comfortably enough and have some leftover to treat myself reasonably.

Bit concerned what happens with the US DoE though...

Currently an intern in IT getting paid 17/hr. Pretty much everybody is telling me I'm getting paid shit. However, I'm very inexperienced, even though I'm taking comp sci classes, I don't feel nearly knowledgeable enough or productive enough to justify getting paid more.

Eventually I hope to be some server admin or some kind of security analyst. Maybe I'll jump ship after a year or two but so far, any experience is good experience for me.

If you guys have any career advice lmk.

IT Networking in Healthcare. Used to be administration side but recently moved to networking a year ago. Had the same job now for 19 years and it was my first job out of tech school where I worked help desk for the first 5 years. Used to do a lot on the telecom side but now it's mostly setup firewalls, program switches, and know cloud services to setup virtual networks. I know I am underpaid at 87k, I am being promised a raise soon with hopes of getting to 95-100k but even that is below what I should be around. I may have a new opportunity later this year which looks to be around 110-120k if I can pull it off. I want to move on not only because the pay but also because going 19 years at a place that's 24/7 with bare minimum holidays takes its toll on you since your basically on call all the time. Outside that the job it's self is fine and challenging at times.

I'm a Scrum Master working in Financial Technology. I made $145k last year although that was because I worked a ton of overtime. My base is closer to $130k. Although I do have to provide all my own benefits

Software dev for a shipping logistics company. I make $80k with 100% paid decent enough health insurance for me and my family.

I could get paid a lot more, but this week I took a 4 hour lunch to go to the park and play soccer with my kid. I let my boss and coworker know and they both just said to have fun and say hi to the family for them. I do something like that at least 2 times and week and it's not a problem.

Last week I went to the aquarium on a whim and my coworker decided that sounded fun and brought his kid too. You would have to pay me a lot more money than I'm worth to give up this kind of freedom.

I help people do science and math with their computers. I make around 100k, double the median income in my area. My commute is an hour and a half each way, at least, and sometimes I only have around 3 hours to myself after I get back from work before I need to go to bed. Still, I have it better than most (although, with the current attack on science in the US, uncertainty about clients is rising...)

I've been in engineering leadership in early and mid stage start ups in San Francisco for a number of years. Comp varies a bit (the earlier stage the company the more ISO equity I get - for anybody not familiar these are options that are basically worth nothing but in the event of an exit opportunity might be worth tremendously more - vs working for a public company you'd often get RSUs that you could immediately sell or divest) but base in the low 300s. This is in the bay area, so actual purchasing power when compared to cost of living is more like mid 100s elsewhere in the US.

I do physical therapy with school kids with disabilities. Almost $60k but only paid for 190 work days. People think we get paid for all those holidays and breaks, but we don't - only paid for the days that we work plus five sick and vacation days. My husband makes a few times what I make as an engineer and my kids are grown (but not entirely off the payroll), so I feel pretty lucky to have the life that we do.

$60k USD as a "supervisor" of sorts in a factory, more hands on work than hands on coffee type of supervisor.

Very high cost of living where I am so that salary has me renting someones garage "apartment" to live in just so I can have some sort of a savings otherwise I'd be living paycheck to paycheck.

IT, vulnerability management, just under $80K USD. Judging by other comments im solidifying my opinion that im underpaid, although ive heard thats pretty common for gov IT work.

I'd definitely have to make a burner account before answering this honestly.

I own a small business consulting firm that the serves tech and energy industries. Generally, pay is good in consulting. Owning a company can be risky financially - we've had good years and bad years.

I do tech work for law firms, hospitals, and schools. I make about $150k/yr, but I'm bored out of my skull. I'd like more of a challenge but I'd have to give up my cush to get it.

I‘m a Junior Software dev in eastern Germany. I earn around 50k€

Disabled, unable to work. I get paid around 8k (USD equivalent) a year to survive. I’m barely alive and in poverty.

Union electrician in a strong Union city in the north east part of the USA. Make 100k a year just working 40hrs a week, but work has been slow the past few years so I've made under that the last 2 years. The money is good for sure, but the retirement and health coverage for my whole family is the real reason for the career

Nice try fbi

I'm in technical presales. I go with salespeople and explain the IT infra, services and cybersecurity we sell. Should be $190k+ this year.

I work in sales in the field of factory automation and robotics in the Detroit area. I make $65k a year plus some other benefits. One is that they pay for good health insurance for the whole family. I will likely not have a job soon due to tariffs and get back into teaching.

Network engineer working the night shift. I’m at around $165k. Would do the job for 95k if I could do it from home.