|
The Inaugural Slick Deals Career Thoughts and Compensation Thread
For the past several years, I have started a thread on the Overweight Money Holder Finance Forum where people could discuss various aspects of their careers. The threads have done pretty well over the years, so I thought that now that Slick Deals has its own finance forum, we could try it here! If the thread here is successful, I'll start a new one every year, like I do over on OMH.
I hope that this thread can serve as a useful guide for those who are making decisions about which careers to pursue, for those who wish to change careers, or for those who just want to see what various careers are like. Before we get started, we have to establish the ground rules. The OMH Finance crowd can spew some fiery venom at times, but they have been very good about following the rules for this thread. If you participate, please try to keep this a positive, informative thread, and let's not get into any arguments about how one's career/education/compensation makes him/her superior/inferior to other people. Please do not flame people because of their choice of career or because you think they are paid too much/too little for their chosen careers. Contribute as much or as little information as you're comfortable sharing, but please be honest so that this may serve as a truly informative thread for people mulling their career options. So, now that the ground rules have been set, how did your job go this year? Did things go well or not so well? How well were you compensated for 2010? Did the poor economy have a serious effect on your career? Maybe each person can give a brief description of themselves, their job, their education levels, and their salaries, present and maybe even projected salaries for the future. I'm starting the thread,so, of course, I have to bite first: Gender: Male Age: 38 Location: NJ Occupation: Urban Educator (My fancy title for a teacher in a city of low socioeconomic standing) Education: M.A., plus 33 additional credits 2010 Compensation: $90,000 (Base Pay + Retro Pay from a newly settled contract + a little extra money from some after school work and a few other extra things.) Base salary for the 2010-2011 school year, without extra money, is just about $88,000. Future Salary Projection: This is a tricky one this year. There is a strong possibility that my salary (and the salaries of many other teachers) will be frozen for at least the next year. If salaries are not frozen, my salary should be in the $95,000 ballpark for the 2011 calendar year, and in the $100,000 range for the 2011-2012 school year. (More on why our salaries may be frozen later in the thread.) Benefits: Full medical, modest dental, generous sick and personal time, a decent pension plan (for now, more on that later), tremendous job security once you achieve tenure (but virtually none before that, and even with tenure, you can still have the daylights menaced out of you. Also keep in mind that not all states offer tenure, in which case you can pretty much be fired at will no matter how much time you have in a particular district.) In almost all districts in NJ, you can accumulate sick time from year to year. This is a tremendous benefit, as I found out two years ago, and again just a few weeks ago when I suffered two major long-term illnesses. It was nice not having to worry about getting paid during my absences. What's the job like? Very difficult and getting more difficult bu the year. Tremendously long hours, almost no down time during the school day (I don't take lunch very often),lots of work at home, deplorable working conditions, with some classrooms reaching temperatures of 90+ degrees and others below freezing. Prepare to adopt some small scurrying pets who have made your classroom their home in older buildings in urban districts. You will also most likely need to spend a decent amount of money on supplies for students because your school won't provide them, even though they insist on your using them. Very little respect and support from most supervisors, parents, and students. I do it for the good kids and because I love teaching. Massive budget cuts have made the job even more difficult. Many teachers (myself included) are now finding themselves doing two jobs for the price of one due to massive retirements and staffing cuts. Would you recommend the career to others? Every year, it's become harder and harder for me to recommend teaching as a career. If you get a job in a district that treats you with some respect, is on solid financial footing (along with your corresponding state), and pays you a salary that ensures you won't be eating cans of tuna for the rest of your life, then I can recommend teaching as a career. However, things here in NJ have gotten real rough over the past year. Our governor has pretty much made it his mission to make things much rougher for teachers, and has publicly villified us on many occasions. He reduced state aid for all districts, resulting in massive layoffs. He wants to drastically alter our pension system, and there is a lot of fear that he is going to try to significantly reduce pension benefits for all public employees. This resulted in massive retirements of veteran teachers. He put tremendous pressure on teachers at the end of the last school year to accept salary freezes, even in districts that had valid contracts, and he is likely to increase the pressure this year. He wants to eliminate tenure, and while total elimination is unlikely, it's likely going to be made much tougher to get and to retain. He wants to institute merit pay, basing teacher salaries on their students' performance on standardized tests. This, of course, is infuriating many teachers, but especially those in urban districts like mine, where teachers sometimes get kids who have never attended school a day in their life show up to begin their educational careers on the day the standardized test starts. How is the kid going to pass the test if he doesn't even know his alphabet, let alone how to read? How is this kid going to compare to the kid in the affluent district who has a private tutor? Then of course, you have to deal with all of the discipline problems, especially . What do you do when a kid curses you out, flips a desk over, smacks another kid in the head without provocation, and runs out of your class? You could tell your building administrators, but chances are they will not impose serious consequences on the student. They don't want to make the school look bad or deal with angry parents. Then, if you have administrators who are unsupportive, they may ask you, “What did you do to make the kid curse you out, flip over a desk, and smack another student in the head?” Then they'll tell you to better motivate your students to learn. When you ask how, they won't tell you. (Yes, this stuff actually happens.) There are great moments, however. There are a lot of great kids in all districts who will give you their all every day. This is what keeps me going in my district. I know that I'm helping these kids to have the best future possible, even though they often face difficult circumstances. Teaching is not an easy job, especially in an urban district. If you think that you will be able to face the challenges that await you, then go for it! Just be aware that it's going to be a bumpy ride. |
Good start, but this is too much information in a single place. Each aspect of career/ life can be granulated for better understanding of all.
Financial figures should be kept out and relative figures/ %ages should be used to keep the thread on right track. Just my 2 cents. |
I don't think I've ever seen anyone write such a detailed post on their career.If we broke it up it would get lost in the pages and pages of threads here, so it's up to anyone else responding if they feel like making informative blocks of text (i appreciate it)
Also, another good place for compensation info is Glassdoor.com though the numbers are skewed it still gives you a good range, and when you are dealing with salary negotiations you should be talking in ranges anyway. |
Quote:
Let me start that I have been thinking of become a teacher and just reading your story is making me wonder if it is worth it. The pay makes me think it is but I am not sure. lol Then again, i think if i can help one kid, then its worth it. Ok, I will only share so much so... age: 30 yrs - 35 yrs gender : female pay: sucksville < not so sucksville lol ok lets say its 30k<me>35 k Benefits: so so. standard fair; nothing to write home about. Job likes/ recommendations: I love my job; actually doing what I went to school to do feels great. Great place to work and awesome folks. But like anything, boredom creeps in and you want to use your power for good. hence the thought to teach ( i want to go the certified teacher route and teach cad software to high school kids). I know its not about the money but its funny how sometimes I do hit sucksville because something will come up and i cant pay b/c i have to put money either here or there (and of course, important bills come first) I dont believe in such things as job security, etc. and I know that I could live on less if need be. But, I do enjoy where i live and having the occasional distraction such as cable, but other than that, a 90 k year job will go a long way, unless I had like supercable or something. lol I mean, I dont even have a video game system, a car, or kids, so I think I am making great sacrifices!!! ha Anyway, seriously, my goal is to buy a house but i see that may never be possible and here teachers make no where near as much as you so even if I did follow that dream, i will need to do it because its in my heart, not for the money. And as you mentioned, there are plenty of kids who need teachers like you: ones that teach because that is what they want to do. can i ask, did you always know you wanted to be a tchr? u can pm me if you don't want to OFFTOP ur thread. Anyway, if anyone wanted more details, feel free to pm and I will be happy to share what I do. Would I recommend it, in a minute. But understand that if this will be your only source of income, you may want to consider hustling. lol coolies. |
Quote:
I hope that this thread can prove useful for people like you who are thinking about changing careers. The thread over on OMH is already off to a good start. I know that this finance board is much newer and has a much less active crowd right now, but hopefully in time this can become an annual tradition like it has become over there. |
Gender: Male
Age: 26 Location: WA Occupation: Prop. Equity Trader/Pattern Day Trader, former SBO Education: B.A. x 2 2010 Compensation: $XXX,000 (low end) - no base, straight cap gains and performance-based commission. I started in late-Feb. Future Salary Projection: I'm going back to law and/or business school. My net may be negative for the next couple of years, but I'll still trade: the intent is to make money, pay my bills, and get my degrees. After that, I'd like to start my own b/d firm and manage a fund? :dontknow: Unlimited earnings potential. :nod: Benefits: N/A What's the job like? I'm not a morning person so it's difficult for me to wake up--being on the west coast and operating in east coast hours is definitely a pitfall of the work. My day-to-day (when I'm actively trading) isn't too complicated: usually do my analysis in the afternoons so I can sleep in until about 5:45 - 6:00AM. I wake up and read, read, read! See what happened in overnight trading, read up on the news in Asia and Europe, skim over any economic news that was released, etc. I'm at my trading machine from 6 AM and 1 PM, local time. I leave CNBC either on TV or I have a second machine I can stream it on thanks to thinkorswim. If I have any sizable trade(s) on the table, then those are the hours I commit to, no questions asked, until the trade(s) are off the table. During the market lunch doldrums, I'll set alerts/stops (just in case) and go have SBUX. When I "get off" at 1 PM, then I can take a lunch. My afternoons are spent reading, watching news, and doing my chart work/analysis. If you're trading, then it pays to do your homework--that will become self-evident once you become an active trader. Being a trader is flexible and convenient. You can work as little or as much as you want; you can trade on your own schedule (well, it helps if the markets are open--unless you're working with something that is trading 24/7); and you work for yourself (unless you're a broker). Right now, I'm taking a more passive, long-term trade. I haven't been "day trading" for the past two months because I've been really busy, but the one big trade I've had on since Oct. is TBT, which is now up over ten grand. :D Would you recommend the career to others? As a career, probably not--it's not for everyone. However, I recommend anyone to learn a bit about the trade so you can manage your own assets and not have to pay someone else to do it for you. It can be stressful at times. There have been plenty of nights I've lost sleep when I've had a huge trade on and hours during the day when I've sat in my chair sweating bullets, especially when I trade options. Ten contracts at even ten points is ten grand that can evaporate to zero. If you're a good poker player, then I'm sure you'd have potential to be a good trader too. No, I'm not likening trading to gambling--I'm saying that if you can detach emotion from your trades: think about them logically, be nimble about your wins, and not get your losses you away at you, then you're already a step ahead of everyone that can't do this. Have you noticed bad poker players who change their style of play to reckless once they've experienced a bad beat? You can be assured that for every poker player that plays like this: there is a trader who does the same after a trade has gotten away from them. :D |
Gender: Male Age: 29 Location: OR/WA Occupation: IT - everything (computer chip manufacturing fab) Education: books, internet, experimentation, hs diploma 2010 Compensation: $57k Future Salary Projection:$1k less per year, if history is the measuring stick. I earned $1k less per year for the first 3 years, while my skill and contribution multiplied. Benefits: Free cell phone, which allows executives and new personnel to call on holidays to solve technical problems (sometimes personal problems) Environment: No windows to the outside world, 10hr average days, micromanaged environment, some 17-18hr days, no holidays off, holidays paid at 1.5x base pay, over-stretched x3, grateful customers, 80hrs vacation regardless of seniority, 40hrs sick with unused paid straight out. Future salary projection: Help me out here. I just saw the invoice for our contract renewal. My 5 man team averages $43k/yr with no benefits. The contract renewed at $441,744 for 2011. That averages $88k/person/yr. Our average net is less than half of the contract price, and the real money is in hardware. So far nobody on my team knows the contract has been renewed. What is a standard employee pay compared to contracted pay? Comparison: I came across 1 Unix admin that has a contract outlay of $187k, and a net of $135k. My group is paid 49% of total contract price, and the Unix admin is paid 72% of contract price. Recommendation: 2 of 5 people have quit in the last 4 months. The newest hire immediately started looking for work elsewhere. Half of everyone in office has been fired or quit in the past 2 years. Nuff said. Recommendation 2: Dream. Be your own boss. Take a chance. Fail. Try again. |
Gender: Male
Age: 24 Location: MN Occupation: IT. End user support/network support Education: A.A.S. in general IT 2010 Compensation: $53k Future Salary Projection: +3-5k per year depending on performance. Benefits: Company Paid phone, 10 paid holidays +3 floating paid holidays. up to 7% bonus paid half on company performance and half on employee performace. 6% matched 401k. Paid mileage outside of normal travel. Whats the job like: Big corperation. Nothing too special. Spend most of my time where my cube is, get to travel around the state to our other sites about once a quarter. Recommendation: I was lucky at my age to get into the company and to make what I make. Most who work here are lifers because the company treats its workers pretty good. If you like working with people and doing just a little travel it is perfect. Love my job :nod: |
Gender: Male
Age: 28 Location: CA Occupation: Controller Education: B.A. Philosophy, Minor in Business, Current MBA Student 2010 Compensation: $90k Future Salary Projection: +5 -10% per year depending on performance. Benefits: Blackberry, Health, Vision, Dental, Paid Downtown Parking, Roughly 5% into a 401K no personal contribution necessary, 10 - 20% bonus. Whats the job like: Small Business roughly 90 employees. I've had the opportunity to build out the department the way I want.I enjoy working in a small business environment. |
Pirate I got some questions for you...would you mind if I sent you a pm?
|
Quote:
|
Gender: Male
Age: Late 20's Location: Louisiana Occupation: Urban Charter School Teacher Education: MA 2010 Compensation: Mid 40's (2-3 years experience) Future Salary Projection: about 3% per year, possible future bonuses based on student performance. Benefits: Company Paid phone, laptop, average medical/dental/vision benefits, 403B with matching up to 5% (no pension) 6 weeks off during summer/2 weeks Christmas/and about 18 other days throughout the year) Whats the job like: I work for a national charter school organization that tends to supply there teachers with the supplies and training needed. Students, while over 95% are below the poverity line, they still can and will learn with college as there only way out of their situation. It is an extended school day 7:30-5 and students can call at night for help with homework. Tutoring is available to the kids free of charge and Saturday school a few times a year is manditory. The hours are long with planning, tutoring, parent communication, etc but it is very rewarding. The amount of days off during the year makes up for the long days that I experience. One down side is charter schools in Louisiana are employment at will so there is no chance of tenure. |
Quote:
Thanks for the rply. I think I will research further to see if cad courses (or technology like courses) are in demand for my area. And ups on this thread. Unfortunately, it has made me realize that I'm probably not earning my full potential. I mean, dude above is trading at home making 6 figs Not fair. lol Oh, and I forgot some things: Education: B. A General Studies with concentrations in construction management, art history, and architectural history. 2010 Compensation: See above. Future Salary Projection: depends if I stay where I am. :) If I do, there will be none. I have been told that I already make the cap for my position and the next move is really a lateral one and not necessarily more challenging. If I go the teacher route, i may be able to make 45K base, and if I become bilingual, I'll get a nice bonus on top of that. I would like to also research becoming a property claims rep for an insurance company but it seems that getting into that field without claims experience is difficult. |
Gender: Female
Age: 27 Location: MI Occupation: Research Assistant Education: B.A in Anthropology 2010 Compensation: $17,000 Future Salary Projection: Most likely no increase in pay, I have worked here for less than a year and several long-term co-workers have informed me that they have yet to see an increase in pay. Would love for another opportunity to open up but well paying jobs are scarce and I seem to not be qualified for a large majority. Benefits: Medical insurance, Dental and Vision which costs me about 20% of my monthly income. What's the job like? Being a research assistant with this particular physician is interesting in subject matter but I took the job knowing the pay was very low over a slightly higher paying position as a administrative assistant hoping that the skills I would learn in the research field would aid in my future. However our coordinator does not communicate very well and merely tosses out menial work to me and doesn't share or discuss with me the world of clinical research. So unfortunately I feel that I have made a poor choice. Would you recommend the career to others? While I feel that the field feels like it would be both mentally stimulating and has the potential to be what I always considered to be "meaningful work", the pay is just so poor that I find it very difficult to pay for necessities. I was naive in my time through college and never participated in research projects with professors etc, I just focused on working and trying to make money than making my primary focus my education. I don't see another option other than returning back to school and making the most of my time there. I guess I just thought more doors would be open for me but the only person I can blame is myself. Sorry this turned into a sob story, but I do enjoy this thread topic, it is interesting to hear from people from so many different fields. Hope you all have a wonderful new year! |
Gender: Male
Age: 20 Location: Nebraska Occupation: Info Tech Intern Education: High School, currently in pursuit of a Quadruple major in Business/Finance at a local university 2010 Compensation: $20-35k - based on hourly so it all depends on how much I work ($16 an hour) Future Salary Projection: $50k plus corporate benefits (health/2 weeks of paid vacation/paid personal holidays/paid sick days/etc) upon graduation with 3-5% increases thereafter. Benefits: 2-4 paid holidays a year, corporate discounts on cell phone/local businesses, free concerts from time to time (Aerosmith :D ), have small group sessions with executives in the company (CEO/CFO/etc), freebie events over the summer. What's the job like? They rotate us between jobs every 6 months so you are introduced to very different parts of IT (project mgmt, break/fix, business support, programming, etc etc) and get a wide view of the company. During the summer months, they get us in to meet with the execs of the company which is Fortune 150. Introduced to a wide variety of people who will help in my pursuit in moving up in the company. A wonderful experience and at the very least a very very good resume builder. Would you recommend the career to others? As an intern? Yes. I don't have enough professional experience with it yet to say for sure if I would recommend it for full-time employment. They work longer hours, have more strict restrictions to their work/movement, have to be bugged outside of work hours, etc so it is a total different beast. Ask me again in a couple years :) |
Is there such a thing as a standard percentage of pay on a staffing contract? I mean, do staffing companies usually stick to say a 50-70% payout in salary/benefits compared to the total contract price?
Quote:
Quote:
|
Gender: Male
Age: 30 Location: FL Occupation: Dentist (county health dept.) Education: Univ. of Florida Finance/Insurance Undergrad, Dentistry Grad 2010 Compensation: $170k "soft" dollars: 120K salary + 12K in 401k + full medical/dental/vision + 32K/yr lean repayment (NHSC) Future Salary Projection: ? Whats the job like: Work on child medicaid patients. See 15-25 pt /day. Make my own tx plans. Administrators are non-dentist, strict but reasonable. |
Gender: Male
Age: 27 Location: NYC suburbs Occupation: Embedded software engineer Education: MS in EE, BS in CompE 2010 Compensation: low 6 figures + maybe a bonus (finger crossed). Also want to mention that my salary may seem high, but where I live the cost of living is very high, so I don't make THAT much. For example, my brother makes maybe a third of what I make and he had two houses before I had 1 because he lives in a different state with lower cost of living. Future Salary Projection: 3-5% a year and 10-15% on promotions. Probably max out at the $200k range at around age 50 or so from what I can tell from colleagues. I'll also retire with about 1-2 million in my 401k (again based on colleagues). Environment: typical engineering environment. Everyone is smart and does their job, so there is no one hovering over you. I don't clock in or out. Lunches/breaks at my discretion. I work from home whenever I don't feel like coming in. Only negative aspect comes into play at the end of a project. Engineers love to perfect things, so they spend too much of their time doing more than they are tasked with, so at the end of the project, its always a time crunch to get everything else done on time. Would I recommend this career to others? I would if you like good pay and calm work environment. I also think this career is pretty recession proof, but I could be wrong. My only complaint is that the work can be boring at times. I don't like doing tedious tasks like documentation and I don't like doing the same thing over and over again. Luckily I have worked in a lot of different projects, but I do have colleagues who have worked on the same project for 30+ years. Another bad thing is that you can get too comfortable in this type of work. I'm a career/goal oriented person, but I find myself lagging a bit. For instance, I always planned on getting a phd growing up and now I see no point to it. Also, I've been meaning to develop a website/cell phone app to make me filthy rich and I can't make myself put the time into it. If not this, then what? Good question! Probably an accountant or day trader. Maybe start my own business? Something with a lot of math would come easy. A college professor also seems plausible. |
Quote:
|
Quote:
and we have a relatively low cost of living here as well. Where are you located? and how big is your company? Both play big roles. |
Quote:
I think I might be better stimulated with a different type of software development, like internet or game development. But there are fewer of those jobs here in the east coast, they pay less and are probably more stressful. |
Gender: Male
Age: 32 Location: Utah Occupation: CFO of a technology company Education: BS Financial Economics; MS Accounting 2010 Compensation: mid 6 figures + a bonus + equity. Future Salary Projection: 10-15% a year and equity. Probably will settle at about $200k until we sell the company and I cash out my equity. Environment: Technology start-up. Lots of cool people, cool technology, very relaxed (jeans to work. etc.). 45 hours/week. Would I recommend this career to others? Yes, but getting to where I am at is very difficult and usually requires some long hours at consulting firms prior to getting to this point. If not this, then what? Ski Patrol or National Park Ranger (maybe after I cash out) |
Quote:
|
Quote:
Why I would never say it isn't possible, being in public accounting or in an accounting job does not typically qualify one for a CFO role as the breadth of experience and thought processes are not expansive enough (which is why most accountants become controllers at the top of their corporate careers and not CFOs). I would say your path is even more difficult since you do not have public accounting experience, which gives you a very different experience than an inhouse corporate accounting job. You probably need to make a major change somewhere in your career path either through leaving for additional schooling (MAcc or MBA) at the best school you can and then reentering the work force in a different position. I hope this post does not sound harsh, but most of my accounting friends will never be in a CFO role even though most target that position. |
Quote:
I graduated December of 2009, and did not received an offer to work at big 4 accounting firms. The only offer I received was from a management firm as an A/R accountant. I will definitely look into going back to school this year and look to jump in to public accounting. Would you recommend going into public accounting or going back to school for MBA? And should I aim for big 4 firms or large regional accounting firms will look just as good on my resume? Hopefully I will be able to move up the ladder like you did :worship: Thanks again for answering! Repped you! :) |
Gender: Male
Age: 28 Location: FL Occupation: Jail Guard Education: B.S. Public Safety Administration 2010 Compensation: Wage is approximately $20/hr, but that doesn't take into account shift differential, overtime and other extra pay (I nearly cleared 50k in 2010). Our benefits are incredibly generous. We have outstanding medical and dental insurance of which I pay a modest premium. Our retirement truly shines; we are on the Florida Retirement System which is fully employer funded. We can choose between a pension with a 3% yearly multiplier of our highest five grossing years or an investment plan (18% into a 401k without any employee contribution). Other fringe benefits include free access to several gyms and tuition re-reimbursement up $1500/yr. Future Salary Projection: That depends on if I am able to move up the ranks. Provided I am able to earn a promotion to a supervisory role I will see a dramatic increase in pay. Without such a promotion the future looks much bleaker. Our wages have been frozen for the last three years and we do not have a step plan in place. Environment: The environment is not nearly as bad as movies and television programs portray. That being said it is a far cry from regular office work and you never know exactly what to expect on a daily basis, but sure as hell better be ready for it. Working in a jail we deal predominately with inmates awaiting trial or those convicted of misdemeanors. This environment differs from prisons which are much more ripe for violence and attacks against staff. I worked a lot of shitty dead end jobs (Target, Hollywood Video, Winn Dixie, etc.) prior to this job and I can say without hesitation this is the easiest and least labor intensive job I've ever held. Obviously there are downsides to this line of work as you are dealing with the dregs of society (for the most part) and it is often difficult to find anything remotely rewarding about this type of work. It can be outright depressing when you consider your duty is to make sure the alleged child rapist has sufficient toilet paper. Working the night shift there are hours and hours of downtime. When I started this job I only possessed a HS Diploma, but I managed to obtain my BS while limiting myself to studying only at work. We are on 12 hour shifts with rotating days off. I absolutely love this schedule and cherish all the free time it provides me. You can't beat coming into work only fifteen days a month! Would I recommend this career to others? Only if you lacked the education to do something else. The pay and benefits are phenomenal for the job requirements. If I am unable to promote I see myself leaving this line of work as there are so few redeeming qualities outside of the steady paycheck and benefits. If not this, then what? No idea! I fell into this line of work because of my general apathy and laziness. Looking to the future I think I would try the medical field if I end up starting over. Nursing looks like a brighter and brighter option, especially now that Scott is the Gov and eager to gut FRS |
Apparently no one told my company that the job market is bad. 20% pay raises for all interns. :eek:
|
Quote:
job market isn't bad for EVERYONE, my company is hiring. Its just a little weak and in certain segments its VERY weak -- I've definitely seen and heard from others that there is a turnaround this year in terms of hiring but it seems to apply mostly to skilled and experienced workers. People without degrees and without any particular job skills (like basic office workers and construction contractors) are still struggling. |
Gender: Male
Age: 23 Location: Washington DC Occupation: IT Consultant at a gov't contractor Education: BBA - Computer Information Systems 2010 Compensation: $75,000 Base Pay Future Salary Projection: I'm not entirely sure on this one, I've only been in the job market for two years and after 1 year at my first job, I left to take this one and got a 25% raise. I can't expect a 25% raise every year, but I would expect 5-6% a year until my next promotion. Benefits: Full medical, dental and vision. 401k entry once a year as a part of profit sharing. Fully paying for my Top Secret clearance. 18 days paid time off a year. What's the job like? IT Consultant is an extremely broad term, so I'll break it down to what I do. I was hired as a Web Services developer with experience in Service Oriented Architecture. As I await my clearance I am on a temporary project as an Extract, Transform and Load Developer. Day to day at both jobs, I am attending status meetings with my company, meeting with client for requirements, making presentations to the client with prototypes and writing documentation discussing and explaining what I am doing. That is about 60% of my time. The other 40% is what I like doing. Writing and troubleshooting code, testing my processes and trying to fit them together. Taking a legacy application and creating a service to let it talk to another legacy app within the organization that could be written in an entirely different language. Would you recommend the career to others? I have a few recomendations; 1) The IT World: It is not for everyone. You have to enjoy logical problem solving and you absolutely can not be a person who gets easily frustrated. A lot of trial and error goes in to what I do, and also a lot of research. It is impossible to know everything, and a lot of the time, more work is being thrown on to you, while you are still trying to understand the original scope. Also you have to be ok with some monotany. After I've done all the interesting and new part of a project, I then have to go back and put in the mindless error protections. 2) The Consulting World: I was not a consultant until I took this job and it has been a fairly large culture shift. You always have to remember what your contract says. I'm constantly being asked to look into this, or try to develop this; which normally would be fine. But since my contract calls for me to develop one thing, is this specific way, with these specific deliverables; that is what I must do. Anything else is a contact ammendment. Also little things like time and expense reporting become a much bigger deal or even what to do when the client has off, but you don't. As a whole, I can't complain. I didn't think I'd be making 75k/yr 18 months out of college. Now if I could only save some of that... |
Great topic!!!
Gender: Male Age: 27 Location: IL Occupation: Quality Associate (Health care Industry) Education: B.S. Biology 2010 Compensation: 55k Future Salary Projection: +3-5%, promotions could range from 60k-80k a year depending where I would advance to. Benefits: Full Medical/Dental, 401k match of 4% + 4% of annual salary bonus, 80 hours Vaca, 2 personal days, 8 sick days. What's the job like? I work in a quality department for a big health care corporation that deals with a variety of medical products and drugs in use on the market. We interface with customers (home patients, hospitals, doctors, sales reps) on one end, and with regulatory bodies on the other end. Main responsibilities include documenting quality related issues with our products. Its a desk/cube job, 40-50 hours a week. Would you recommend the career to others? It is a wonderful stepping stone for someone who wants an "in" to big pharma/health care. This is my second out of college job, both with fortune 200 companies (first was a lab position) so it lends great insight into corporate environment. Career paths (without further school) could go several routes: quality engineering, product support, management/supervisory roles, pharmacovigilance, CAPA, regulatory affairs, FCA/Recall...A pretty diverse set of options. I would like to go back to school, either nursing or perhaps law school, however I see these desires sliding to the wayside as each year passes. |
Gender: Male
Age: 24 Location: MN Occupation: Software Engineer Education: BS Com Sci 2010 Compensation: $95,000 (Base + stock + bonus) 2010 Business income: $30,000 Future Salary Projection: Up by 3-5 this year, and up by 10-15 at next promotion. Future Business income: Kids on the way, so less time to work on my hobby. Unless I can find a company that will hire me todo my hobby.. Benefits: Full medical, dental, vision, 401k match, some other stuff. What's the job like? Boring. Challenging at some times. My business allows me to pursue my real interests, and oddly enough my day job strengthens the skills I need for my business. Business: Sell 0-day vulnerabilities to companies like ZDI(http://www.zerodayinitiative.com/). Usually sell each one in the 4k range, but had a big one go for 8k last year. Its fun work and consumes many evenings and weekends. Worst part is when you go through a dry spell, installing software and poking around but not finding any good attack vectors. Some enterprise software can take a couple days just to get running, and its a big disappointment when they have a secure design that minimizes what areas you have to look for vulnerabilities. One big annoyance is when I see people presenting at conferences like Defcon and Blackhat who tote themselves as awesome hackers, but in reality they find 1/3 to 1/2 as many vulnerabilities as I do. So much of this is about selling yourself as awesome and not actually being awesome, drives me nuts. Would you recommend the career to others? Software engineering is stable and will probably be my day job for several years to come. It seems difficult to find jobs doing vulnerability hunting, so it will take a while before I can do that. |
Quote:
I'm in the process of "re-staging" my life/career and am finishing up a B.S. in Business, Managment, and Economics. I'm not working, going to college full-time. Have many years of bookkeeping and accounting experience. |
Quote:
I actually started part time as just a accounting clerk (I don't have a degree in accounting but all the accounting classes I took I aced). The person that was heading the department had left and I assumed the role a few months later (was actually performing the role while I was completing my last semester of undergrad). So just happened to be in the right place at the right time. |
Quote:
|
Gender: Male
Age: 30 Location: Northeast, USA Occupation: Financial specialist Education: Undergrad in business 2010 Compensation: $60k Future Salary Projection: $60k Benefits: Health, 401(k) What's the job like? Challenging and rewarding. I work for the feds doing budget work which requires me to be very detail oriented. In addition to having a good understanding of our organization's operations, I need to be familiar with fiscal law and how government budget process works. The position demands good communication skills because I interface with many people (especially those that don't understand the importance of fianance and budget) and need to be able to explain to them why some things are required and how they affect operations. Must be able to finish work on time as there are deadlines for budget and financial documents submissions. Would you recommend the career to others? I can recommend this career. However, be aware that you're probably not going to become a millionaire from working for the government. Pay is regulated and is not easy to negotiate. Plus side is that your income is relatively stable. |
Quote:
I'll be finishing my B.S. in Business, Management, and Economics in August, and have many, many years of bookkeeping and accounting experience, but not in the budgeting area. |
Quote:
|
i guess i'll play...
Gender: Male Age: 28 Location: CA Occupation: Intern Pharmacist (graduate next year) Education: BS. Business Admin, currently in Doctor of Pharmacy program (4yr program) 2010 Compensation: $24/hr as an intern at a hospital Future Salary Projection: Next year as a pharmacist, range in CA goes from $55-65/hr. Can go up to $70/hr if you're doing contracting work. Depends where I end up working ... large retail chain like Walgreens, CVS, or small independent, or small/large hospital. During 2009, many articles were stating that pharmacists was on the top 10 list of recession proof jobs. Most pharmacists in CA will make ~110-120k/yr, and I've seen up to 150-185k/yr with a lot of overtime. That's one great thing... we're paid hourly so if you work more, you make more. Unfortunately though, raises are very small so there's not a lot of growth potential, unless you venture off into more non-traditional roles (big pharma, managed care, pharmacy ownership, Director, etc). Benefits: Health, Vision, Dental, 401k, standard Whats the job like: many different settings to go into, but most will end up in retail chains like CVS, Walgreens, Rite-Aid, etc. Customers can be very rude and annoying, but patient education and helping someone out with their drug therapy is always rewarding. I currently work in a large hospital, so my interactions are more with nurses and physicians. They can be just as bad as the general customers. I plan to work in an outpatient setting for a few years, then open my own business. It'll be a combination of specialty practices such as MTM (medication therapy management), home medical equipment and home infusion. Would you recommend the career to others? One big downfall is student loans. I'm sure you guys have heard of physicians owing 300-500k in school loans, wasting years of potential income, opportunity cost, etc. Well I'll be about a quarter mill in the hole, so there's a big financial burden that comes with it. But in the end I'd recommend it due to flexibility, many areas to practice in, great job outlook, rewarding career, prestige factor and income (once loans are paid off). |
I'm sitting at work doing nothing, so here we go...
Gender: Male Age: 25 Location: CA Occupation: tax accountant (corporate taxes at a middle sized public accounting firm, used to work at a big4) Education: BA. Economics, CPA 2010 Compensation: $65K, $6.5K bonus (10%) Future Salary Projection: I'm actually getting a raise on March 1st but my boss hasn't told me what it is yet. I'm guessing at least 10% since I didn't get a raise when I was promoted from staff to senior 6 months ago. I expect around 5% a year in raises annually and probably 10% during promotional years. I probably won't make partner since I'm somewhat of an introvert but I still expect to at least make director or go work in industry which should get me around $200k a year eventually. Benefits: Health, Vision, Dental, 401k, standard Whats the job like: I work in "cycles." During some parts of the year I'll work 12-13 hour days for weeks (including weekends) and then once all that work is done, I'll sit at my desk for a couple of days with nothing to do but browse slickdeals. I am a corporate accountant at a public accounting firm which means I do tax returns and tax provisions for Company's that range from small start ups to large companies that everyone's heard of. The work itself can be quite boring and sometimes I actually hate it, but there are other times when its actually intellectually stimulating. Would you recommend the career to others?: I think its a good career but it certainly isn't for everyone. Most people outside the accounting world don't know it but the hours can be crazy, when I was at a Big4 I once worked 6 weeks straight without a day off and also once worked 22 hours straight. I'm not saying I'm the hardest working person in the world but I know the demands are a turn off for a lot of people. Other than the hours, I would say its a solid (but sometimes boring) way to earn a living. I'm not really sure how I got in to this profession, it's not something that I wanted to do but kind of "fell in to" during college. I took a couple of accounting classes then got sold on the whole Big4 sell the firms do on campus. |
I'm surprised you're sitting around doing nothing since it is busy season for tax accountants everywhere....
Quote:
|
Quote:
|
I was just offered a 10% raise by the neighboring health department!
Quote:
|
Quote:
|
Quote:
|
Quote:
|
Quote:
it's realistic...he lives in california. the cost of living there is alot higher so in turn the salaries are higher also.. |
Quote:
|
Quote:
|
Quote:
|
Quote:
|
Quote:
I know I can go elsewhere and be compensated for already having a clearance (in addition to another raise for my extra experience). But within my company, it seems to be a mixed bag. I won't be compensated right away, but from what I've heard, the next time I get a raise (we get them once a year) it will be a bit bigger then normal to show I am now cleared. Hope that helps. |
Gender: Male
Age: 22 Location: Maryland Occupation: Student/Classroom Technician/Computer Engineering Intern Education : Senior In BS Computer Engineering 2010 Compensation: 27k Future Salary Projection: Hopefully 70k+ after graduation Benefits: Free coffee at internship. What's the job like? On campus jobs are amazing. Barely over minimum wage but I basically get paid to do homework. Internships are fun, the employers are trying to make you think that their company is the best. I am learning a lot about interesting topics. Would you recommend the career to others? On-Campus job: Every college student should look for one. There is barely any actual work. I basically get paid minimum wage to do homework. CE Intern: Internships make it easier to get jobs after college and add to the starting salary from what I have heard. |
Quote:
|
Construction Scheduler
Gender: Male
Age: 38 Location: NYC Occupation: Civil Engineer - Construction (CPM Schedule Review) Education: B.S. in Civil Engineering 2011 Compensation: $93,600 (Base Pay) Future Salary Projection: +3% per year. Actual Salary will depend on how much OT I have to put in. Benefits: Medical, Dental, 5 weeks of PTO (Paid Time Off) - after working at company for 5 years, 401(k) match on 3% and discounted stock purchase plan What's the job like? Typically review monthly schedule submittals on multiple construction projects, write up report and chair a meeting with client and contractor for discussion. It gets boring if everything goes according to plan but is more challenging during start-up (trying to get a handle on the what the project entails) and when things head south (claims analysis). Would you recommend the career to others? Good schedulers with a background in construction are somewhat hard to find, so it seems to be pretty stable employment wise and the salary isn't horrible. With public budgets getting squeezed there are not as many construction contracts coming out now. |
Quote:
Getting my clearance was annoying and long... I feel your pain. |
Gender: Male
Age: 26 Location: FL Occupation: Financial Analyst Education : BS in Accounting (1 test left to get my CPA) 2010 Compensation: 45K Future Salary Projection: Hopefully at least 50-55K with CPA, might need to move companies Benefits: Dental/Medical/Vision 401K match .5% till 6%. 25 days of PTO What's the job like? Very boring doing the same work every month, basic and easy accounting work. I am not micromanaged letting me come in late/leave early as long as work is complete and I work ~40 hrs a week. Would you recommend the career to others? Yes, I got it as I was intering and when I just graduated so I haven't had to actually have a real interview or make a real resume yet. I would really like to get into something else as my GPA was to low to go into a Big4. Was wondering what others have done after getting their CPA's with no big4 experience to move on up the salary ladder fast. Might go back and get my MBA soon or just get into a whole other profession. |
Gender: Male
Age: 28 Location: WI Occupation: Environmental Engineer Education: B.S., M.S., PE (just a few months ago) 2010 Compensation: $87k (salary + straight time OT, project bonuses not included) Future Salary Projection: +6-8% this year (nothing announced yet) Benefits: 22 days PTO + 2 floating holidays. Better than average medical/dental/vision (if I judge it right). 5.5% 401k match. Allowed to keep airline miles, hotel club points, etc. Flextime and the ability to work from home about as often as I care to. Whats the job like: I work in a smaller office for one of the largest companies in our industry. At times there's quite a bit of travel and long hours (~2,000 billable hours target/yr, I usually hit around 2,500) but my immediate team is a solid group of good people who do whatever it takes and work hard to get the job done. Our work can be dangerous (Hazmat and emergency response are parts of the job), but rewarding despite the long hours. Project sites vary from crumbling factories to new construction and brownfields. Recommendation: The economy of the last couple of years hit our industry pretty hard for a while, but we're swinging back up right now. In my particular role you need to be willing to accept long hours and extended travel across the country, but I think we're pretty well compensated for that. In my experience environmental companies can be hit and miss, with quite a bit of variation even in large firms). |
Quote:
132K salary + 12K annual retirement + state benefits + 40K (tax free) annual loan repayment |
Quote:
|
Quote:
Gender: Male. Age: 26. Location: TX. Occupation: Associate dentist. Education: D.D.S. 2010 Compensation: $180,000. Future Salary Projection: Negotiated a 8.5% salary increase for the 2011 year -- ~$195,300 for this coming year. Benefits: Continuing education courses are paid for by my employer. They amount to ~$1,000 a year or so. What's the job like? I fix teeth. :) What more is there? The majority of my patients are fee-for-service (pay for their own dental care) or have dental insurance. Medicaid patients amount to less than 15-20% of my patient pool. Hours are usually 8:00am-6:00pm daily with extended hours on Thursday evenings until 9:30pm or so. Would you recommend the career to others? Most definitely -- except if you live in California or New York. Great career, multiple opportunities for advancement if you're not afraid of assuming the role of owner of a dental office. Very little, if any, overtime depending on what you want out of life. I'm working as hard as I can now to build up liquid assets in order to acquire some rental property and to plan for the future. In a few years, I imagine I'll scale back my hours once I'm able to buy a dental practice for myself. |
ziptree:
can i ask a ? actually I would prefer to pm u, if that is ok. Thanks! Quote:
|
Quote:
|
Quote:
Although I haven't lived in New York, I've heard similar stories, but only in the larger cities in the state. Maybe I was making an unfair blanket statement since I haven't had any personal or even anecdotal evidence about other cities there. At the very least, I'll confine the statement to New York City instead. :) |
ok, i'm kinda late to the party, but will try
Gender: Male. Age: late 20s Location: TX. Occupation: Test Engineer Education: MS EE 2010 Compensation: avg 70 (pay increase in H2 2010). Future Salary Projection: upper 70s for this year, no more increases after that except 7-10% year-end bonus Benefits: Kick-ass medical (rare), avg dental, vision, 6% company match, 3-wk vacation What's the job like? Supposed to work 40-hr wk but end up working 50-60hr wk in regular weeks and 70-80hr wk in busy weeks (which is more often that not) Like the job but don't like the sweat shop Would you recommend the career to others? yes, rewarding, but pay with a MS EE can be as low as $50k and as high as close to $100k within the first 5 years...requires 4-7 years of school :yuk: |
Thanks and question for you: 1099 or W2?
Quote:
|
I'm an employee and receive a W2.
|
Gender: Male.
Age: 25. Location: CA. Occupation: Facilities Operator Oil/Gas Industry Education: None 2010 Compensation: $103,000. Future Salary Projection: +3% Benefits: 75% Education paid for. Company contributed 80,000 for 2010 in "benefits" (health, 401k etc..) What's the job like? Awesome. It's not a dirty job like most people seem to think of the entire oil/gas industry. Mentally challenging at times. Our moto is "90% of the time you are waiting for stuff to happen but the 10% time something 'wrong' happens that is why they pay so well" Would you recommend the career to others? If you are in a oil/gas producing part of the world I would highly suggest any move into this industry. It's fun, fast paced at times and provides great financial stability along with job security if you get locked in with a big oil company. |
Quote:
I'm 30 with a Masters degree and am a "tech guy" at a school. I'm thinking I need to find a place to make more $$$ |
Quote:
|
Yeah, no doubt. I'm just tired of hearing "well someday all your schooling will pay off" and there are more than a few ppl in this thread who are younger and making a LOT more than I am.. and I'm in a wealthy area where cost of living blows!
|
Quote:
|
Technology ;)
|
Hey, I'll bite. Mine is a bit weird, though.
Gender: Female Age: 27 Location: Japan (until July) normally SoCal Occupation: Assistant English Teacher Education: B.A in Anthropology, Minor in Creative Writing / A.A. / A.S. 2010 Compensation: Approximately $45,000 after the yen strengthened. Future Salary Projection: Contract ends in July, income will drop to $0 immediately. Salary for my program is fixed, with extra money/reimbursement only given for business travel. Benefits: Job security during contract period, medical insurance through National Health Insurance, international experience, lots of vacation time, not required to pay either Japanese or US taxes. What's the job like? I travel between 3 high schools, teaching 3 classes a day on average at each one. I teach with a Japanese teacher, and the experience with each class can vary widely because of both teacher and students. I have an incredible amount of downtime, and during school breaks, I still have to go to work (unless vacation days are used) and basically sit at my desk for 8 hours playing on the computer/reading my Kindle. It all depends on placement, though, I know some in the same program that are running their tails off from the minute they get there to whenever they actually get to leave. YMMV is definitely how it goes here. Would you recommend the career to others? If you have a Bachelors (or higher) and are completely stumped for a job or wish to live in Japan for a year+, this might be what you are looking for. Most people that aren't me (too much internet shopping) manage to travel or save large amounts of money while on the program, and many like the job security. The program I'm on is ostensibly referred to as a "youth exchange," and thusly, required that you be under the age of 40 when you enter the program. I would not recommend it with children unless you are prepared to uproot them; I know there is a few who enter with kids every year, but they've done their research. Be aware that if you are married and your spouse isn't in the program with you, more than likely they will be unable to work in Japan due to strict visa laws. I know several housewives and househusbands here among the foreigners. I've enjoyed my time here, but I'm returning to CA this summer, and my crazy credit card and student loan payments will push me into finding a job almost immediately (I have about a month's worth of bill money in an ING account) and honestly, I have no idea what I want to do. An office job would be preferable, but if I have to go sell HV sewing machines again or go sub teach for a bit until that happens, I guess that's what I'll have to do. I've considered returning to school, but I simply don't have the money, and I honestly don't know what I would want to study. I'm hoping a lightning bolt of motivation hits me soon! :) |
Gender: Male.
Age: 25. Location: NJ. Occupation: Healthcare Consulting Education: B.S. Bus. Admin w/ Concentration in Finance 2010 Compensation: $75,000 Future Salary Projection: ~90,000 Benefits: Medical, dental What's the job like? Significant amount of travel, learn all about the hospital sector. I like not being in the same office every day. A lot of data mining, research and negotiations. Small business, owner micromanages. Often told something (re: travel reimbursement, incentives, etc) and it never happens. If you ask about it, you're in the cellar for weeks on end. Not that lenient with time off - an hour doctors appointment in the morning means you have to take the entire day off. Not a lot of training or education. Would you recommend the career to others? Yes, but obviously at the right company. I just got engaged so I'm trying to maintain local clients, as opposed to others who are constantly out of state. Great field to be in if you like to switch it up every day, meet new people, and are good at learning on your own. |
Gender: Male
Age: 26 Location: FL Occupation: Internal Auditor Education: BSBA Accounting Benefits: Fortune 100 company..... What's the job like? Interesting in that I get to do operational audits not just financial audits. Financial audits make me want to drive the car in to a river. I like meeting new people every week, seeing new places and sharing experience of one person on one side of the country to another on the other side.. Would you recommend the career to others? Absolutely not. Money is good, the job is awful. Seriously though, if you're considering it, I'll be more than happy to talk to you about it. |
An odd personal question but based on your experiences would you recommend doing what you love to do or doing what you can do if it gets you the best life and/or income.
|
Quote:
I think you have to strike a balance |
Job: retail assistant manager at major cellphone company
Age: 26 Pay: 42000 base with 17000 target commission if goals are hit. Also a 3 percent bonus based on target plus base. Raise is performance based and ranges from 3 to 6 percent of base. Benefits: full medical, dental, vision, 401k match up to 6%, tuition reimbursement. I love the job because I love technology and with cellphones being in such demand the business is growing very quickly. I get to see and talk to so many different people every day so the job never gets dull. Phones and now tablets are coming out so quickly that the product I help my reps sell never becomes dull. I manage 15+ sales rep and coach them to be successful sales people and move up in the company. What I don't like is that our commission structure changes at least once a year to make it harder to exceed goals and make more money. It is being made so that going over our commission target is almost impossible. Good managers in the past made a lot more then the target commission. It seems like as time goes on they are trying to make it so everyone in the same position makes about the same amount. This makes it tough for people like me who are very motivated to make more money by doing better then my peers. What incentive do I have to do better then my peers if we will get paid about the same? Would I recommend this job/industry to others? Absolutely!! The demand for cellphones is huge and these big companies are almost always looking for people. The pay is also pretty good although I feel I need to find something to bring my money to the next level. |
Quote:
Quote:
True, but I think you have to reach a certain income level before you can make that decision. There are few things more miserable than being broke. (I was there for a long time, and my parents were there for much of their lives.) If you're working at a 20K job that's miserable, and you're considering taking a 15K job to be happy, well then you may not have a choice but to be miserable at your job, because being homeless and hungry, for most people anyway, would be even more miserable. Now, if you're deciding between say a 100K job or a 75K job, you have more options. You may not be able to afford quite as many luxuries on the 75K salary, but you could still live a decent life in most places, and be in a better position to trade a better paying miserable job for a lesser paying job that would make you happy. |
Quote:
|
Quote:
|
Quote:
|
Quote:
Occupation: Compliance Analyst Benefits: State gov't What's the job like? Haven't started yet |
Quote:
With my company if I hit 200 percent to my target I would get 80k like in your example. But hitting 200 percent would be impossible. This part of my commission has stayed the same except quotas go up each month and year. My problem is the company taking away extra incentives that were once there and basing everything off of something that is easily controlled by the company. In the past there were different categories that you could exceed and hit 200 percent. They took all those targets away and based everything all off new lines. Our new line quota is given to us by our company and is very hard to exceed. Past categories had potential to be exceeded by being a good sales person. Now that everything is based off growth there is less money because growing is tough in a saturated market. |
Quote:
I would love to know more about the hospital sector from the administration point of view. Currently an MD in training. |
Gender: Female
Age: 35 - 40 Location: FL Occupation: Medicaid Billing Clerk (for a non profit) Education: high school diploma, lots of accounting experience for small companies. 2010 Compensation: $15,000 (work part time) Hubby is a teacher and makes around $45K Future Salary Projection: Not much room for growth or advancement. We have 3 executives and 4 regular employees Benefits: 4 days sick and 4 days vacation a year. What's the job like? I love it! I'm in my office doing accounting and billing tasks all day. No one bothers me and I can work at my own pace. I scan SD several times a day :) I work 32 hours a week, am able to make my own hours. I can drop off and pick up the kids from school every day or work 9+ hours a day. Would you recommend the career to others? Maybe if you worked at a bigger firm or in the medical field you could make more money, but this position is perfectly suited to me for now. |
Gender: Male.
Age: 25. Location: FL Occupation: Pharmacy Manager Education: Pharm.D. 2010 Compensation: $148k, not including bonus Future Salary Projection: Almost none if I stay at where I am, but I plan on going back to school for IT Pharmacy which would bring me to the 180 range if I stick with my current company, possibly more if I do my own consulting work. Benefits: depends on company, I get med, dental, 10 vacation days after 1 year + 6 sick days. being manager is nice so I can make my own schedule and I only work 8 days out of a 14 day schedule MOST of the time. Overnight pharmacists work 7/7 What's the job like? Pharmacy is really varied, as a manager you deal with everything from laws and regulations, MONEY, and of course customer service and staffing. This is all ontop of your base pharmacist needs of checking medications, going over interactions and optimizing therapy. Lately, theres been a push to do more management of my patients drug regimens to reduce costs for them (and thereby increase our profits). However, I'm already bored of retail, and I have always wanted to do IT pharmacy. Would you recommend the career to others? You have a great lucrative salary and the field is very expansive. If you want to be a 9-5er to and raise kids you can, and there are countless specialties. Oh, and school loans suck!!:vomit: |
Gender: Male.
Age: 21. Location: CA Occupation: Product manager at a technology company Education: BS 2010 Compensation: $1XX,000, not including bonuses or equity Future Salary Projection: ~15-25% increase in a few years along with equity refreshers, but will most likely leave before then to start my own business and hope for a nice fast exit :nod: or get my MBA/+JD. Benefits: 50% full match, medical, dental, life, 15 vacation days, food, gym, cell phone, laptop, $X,000 in education costs What's the job like? No mandated hours, but nevertheless very long hours every day and sometimes weekends. As with many jobs, it's primarily meetings and email. Definitely fun getting to set product directions but also stressful to bear full responsibility for products and innovation. Lots of off-work time spent keeping up to date with technology. Great opportunities to meet intelligent minds in the field. Would you recommend the career to others? You get an extremely lucrative salary and huge potential for future growth, all with just a BS. I don't expect the current salary rates to hold steady for many more years but even so the ROI is excellent. Personally, no question of job security for the next few years, but can definitely see similar positions at other companies being cut if tech takes a downturn. With all the technical training needed to qualify for this track, it won't be a problem to secure an excellent engineering job either. The downside is the complete lack of work-life balance. This is something I'm willing to sacrifice in these very early years, but can see it becoming a problem later on. Based on colleagues' experiences, this also requires an impeccable records through college and work coupled with both technical and business aptitude. Almost all are former engineers. Good career path for people more interested in both the 'what' and not just the 'how', but it's life-consuming from the very start. Been following the thread but always hesitant to attach this to my account so finally just made an alt - up to the mods if there's any value in the post. Happy to answer questions; will occasionally check on PMs. |
sheesshhhh. I dont know how ya'll all land such high paying job.
I just graduated last december and having quite the difficulty just landing an interview. needless to say, male 26 NorthEast BSBA with a dual concentration in Finance and management UNEMPLOYED and sad but gotta keep on applying i guess. |
Gender: Male
Age: 34 Location: FL Occupation: Corporate Fitness Manager Education: Graduate Certificate in Physical Ed, Health Ed, & Coaching (16 grad credits) B.S. Exercise Physiology 2010 Compensation: In the $40s Future Salary Projection: +1-3% per year Benefits: 401k (no matching) $800 per year for continuing education (not much at all). On wife's medical/dental plan as it is better and cheaper. What's the job like? Most corporate fitness programs are being taking over by contracting companies with maybe 3-4 main players in the US market. Lack of options and increase competition (lower bidding) keeps pay fairly limited. On the plus side, you do have a chance to positively affect many people without the sales pressure of the commerical side of the fitness industry but at the end of the day your success is measured the same, by program metrics. I love what I do, but have realized to increase my paycheck other options need to be thought out. I can totally unplug once I leave work. Oh, no cubical is very nice and my work attire is extremely comfortable (sneakers!) Would you recommend the career to others?Only if you have an absolute passion for fitness and exercise. The higher paying positions in corporate fitness are the non-fitness related/more business related jobs such as corporate sales, marketing etc. Any of these take you out of the gym and out of the personal contact that you get from working directly with people. To me, these positions are just another "business" job, marketing and selling a product or service and can be swapped with almost anything (sell fitness, sell cars, sell shoes etc). More lucrative options that would still give you that 1 on 1 personal contact are Physical, Recreational or Occupational Therapy. |
Gender: Male
Age: 31 Location: Many places so far; currently Mosul, Iraq Occupation: Professional Soldier / Blackhawk Helicopter Pilot / Commissioned Officer Education: BA in History; minored in Military Science (ROTC) and German Military Education: Basic Training, Advanced Individual Training, Parachutist School, Flight School, Survival, Resistance & Escape School, MS OBC, AV OBC. 2010 Compensation: 70-80,000 Future Salary Projection: I'm in the National Guard, so when I get home and demobilize I don't have a job. If I was to stay in the Army and do this, 80-100k within 1-2 yrs Benefits: Full Medical/Dental, 30 paid vacation days/yr, untaxed housing allowance, untaxed subsistence allowance, and since I'm deployed right now, I'm actually not taxed on anything. Actually you are, and then they refund it. Retirement possible at 20 years at 50% of your base pay. What's the job like? Well, it's a war zone, people. So it can be stressful. The job, flying helicopters, is pretty much the coolest thing I can imagine. Sometimes it's so fun I don't have the words to describe the joy. Other times it can actually get monotonous and boring. It's very hard on my family to be away: my wife AND my dog are both on anti-anxiety medication. I also had a daughter right before I left; she's 8 months now and in total I've been home for two of them and I don't get home for good until November. I love the Army and the different challenges it's put me through (SERE, HOST, Jump School, Flight School, Basic, AIT) have been great for me. I could totally do it for the rest of my career but I think I'm going to give it up for my family. Would you recommend the career to others? Absolutely, but it's not a career, it's a lifestyle. But if you join, you'll figure that one out on your own. |
Quote:
|
Is it hard to get become a helicopter pilot, not to pass but to get the opportunity? thinking about the service and that is exactly what I want to do.
|
Gender: Male.
Age: 26. Location: CA. Occupation: Financial Analyst Education: B.S. Bus. Admin w/ Concentration in IT – Minor in Accounting 2010 Compensation: $72,000+ $6,000 (vehicle allowance) + $3,500 (bonus) Future Salary Projection: 2-3%/year (2.85% this year :) ) Benefits: Medical, dental, company car, tuition reimbursement, What's the job like? I’m an internal financial analyst for an automotive manufacturer. The job is fairly interesting at times, but can be frustrating as well. I moved here from public accounting as I just got married and more recently had a son. I was travelling for work 75% of the time and was tired of it, so I found a more local and accommodating place. It’s a better fit for me right now as the workload is easier (35-40 hrs vs 70+) and its friendly towards people with families (not the public accounting world). I do a lot of analysis on whether or not we should do projects or ventures. Also a lot of typical day to day paper pushing and working with accounting; basically to support the sales operations. Not a lot of upward movement yet, but probably be a low level manager in a couple years. Would you recommend the career to others? Yes. The work can be interesting and rewarding, if mundane at other times. I like the stress free work-life and low hours, but dread the boredom and the sometimes mind numbing work. |
Gender: M
Age: Late 30's Location: Texas Occupation: Food Process Technician (I flip burgers at Mcdonalds) Education: Dropped out of high school 2010 Compensation: $8/hr plus tips(ie you need a haircut, you should put some deoderant on) Future Salary Projection: If I work hard enough I'll get to was the lettuce and make $8.50/hr Benefits: 10% discount, free meal when on the clock, all the chicken mcnuggets you can eat (as long as they don't catch you), sleeping in the back of the store (as long as they don't catch you), and this hot cashier slips me a few quarters sometimes so I can play Galaga while on break. Whats the job like: Its aight Recommendation: Stay away from the mens bathroom on Mondays around 1pm, the same old man comes in there and takes the nastiest stinkiest dump ever, and he doesn't flush. |
Might as well throw my name in.
PhayenK touched on a few points of working in a mfg setting. You have to push to make the job interesting by involving yourself in things. If you stick to doing the bare min, you will be very bored at work. Quote:
|
Gender: Male
Age: 38 Location: AZ Occupation: Data Architect / Software Engineer Education: M.S. in information systems (realistically, a Master's degree is kind of useless in the computer science field, but mine was fairly cheap, and I did it because my employer was going to pay for it, even though I ended up leaving that job, and did it myself) 2010 Compensation: $110,000 (this includes about $22,000 worth of work I did on the side for a client that I have in another city). Future Salary Projection: Close to $90k. My on-the-side client work has finished, so I'm looking at mostly just my base pay this year. Benefits: Medical, dental, vision, two weeks of vacation. We are switching to PTO time next year which will be nicer. I work for a private college, so I have the option (once my children are older) to send them there free. Or, my wife and I could attend should we desire to. What's the job like? Fairly nice. I have a long commute, so my boss lets me work from home a few days a week. This wasn't my fault - they moved our office 13 additional miles farther from my house, so he agreed to let me telecommute. I already carpool, so between that, I actually drive in to work one day a week. As for the job itself, it's fairly chaotic, but I work with some pretty decent people, and the work tends to be fairly interesting for the most part. It's always changing, so there is always a bit of politics to fight, or clients who don't know what they want to deal with. But most of that stuff is fairly manageable. Would you recommend the career to others? IT comes and goes. It used to be a great profession, but it's harder and harder to "break into" this field now. If you have experience with a specific tool, you can be in high demand, and make lots of money. But if you have no experience, you're almost guaranteed to have a crappy job for low pay. It wasn't always like that, but with so much work being shipped overseas, the unskilled labor has all but been removed from the equation. It's also not for everyone. You have to love tinkering around with computers, and have an aptitude for programming. If you are energetic, and love to work with people, and love to be social and action-oriented, IT is probably not for you. Programming involves sitting at a desk for 8 hours a day writing code. If that doesn't sound like fun to you, consider an alternative career choice. If you do get into IT work, the best advice I can give is to specialize. Best bet is to start out working for a large company,and find an area that interests you. There are lots of options within IT that don't involve programming. You could go into project management, or data modeling, or database engineering, or you could get more into the hardware side of things, or even networking. So, there are a number of options. Find one that interests you most, and work to move into that area. |
Gender: Male
Age: 25 Location: NV Occupation: Warehouse drone for a Fortune 100 company Education: BA in Political Science from a state school 2010 Compensation: $50k ($33k base + overtime and stock options) Future Salary Projection: the same, unless The Powers That Be smile upon us and give us another 25 cent raise, aka $500 per year. FML Benefits: Health, Vision, Dental, 2% 401k match, employee discount Whats the job like: Depending on your point of view, it can be either hell or the tofurkey of job market - bland, tasteless, but it's something to do with your time and it keeps you from starving to death. There's more politics at work than you'd imagine, the HR weasels have supreme power (and are corrupted accordingly), and it's damn near impossible to get promoted without kissing copious amounts of ass. On the other hand, if you train your body to repeat the same meaningless task over and over fast enough, you can meditate while working and practice other forms of escapism. Don't be in the end of the pack when it comes to productivity numbers, keep your head down, don't make too much noise and you'll be able to cruise under the radar just fine. The only real perk of the job is its 3-day weekends. There are four 10.5-hour-long shifts, and then you get a choice between working the fifth shift and getting the overtime pay, or flipping them off and getting 3 days to yourself. The last two months of every year are our "peak season," with mandatory overtime and 63-hour workweeks. I am young and strong and can handle it (though most of our workers are in their 40s and 50s, so it's more about mental stamina than physical endurance), and even though my self-esteem has all but disappeared, at least I have a job - unlike most of my college buddies.... :sadwalk: |
Quote:
|
Quote:
|
I can give this a go...
Gender: Male Age: 28 Location: MN Occupation: Calibration Technician (manufacturing) Education: B.S. Physics, Engineering emphasis 2010 Compensation: High $40's [B]Future Salary Projection: Roughly $2k more. Scheduled 31 cent raises twice a year plus maybe 2% base increase, peaks at mid $50's with only 2% per year after that. Benefits: I do have very good medical/dental, but recently we are jumping through hoops to change the amount we pay for it (fill out a survey, watch a health related film, etc.)... Garbage really. 3% 401K (no retirement) plus 3% matching. Life insurance, disability pay, pretty much everything else. $5k a year in tuition reimbursement. The company is good to it's people. What's the job like? Very boring. The same repetative tasks every day. It's much like assembly. This one passes, this one does not, this one does, etc. Would you recommend the career to others? If you need something to do then by all means, go for it. I do more calibration than my two co-workers combined, and still have free time to burn (and still maintain higher quality than either of them). I have been filling my unused time by writing software for the company. I have saved them over $24k this year with automation software I have written, but our IT department thinks I don't have the experience to join their team (I'm self taught). But I did pick a good company to work for. As a side note, if anyone knows of any openings for entry level software developers please let me know. I have found that in order to get any experience in that field you need to be experienced in that field... |
Quote:
Thanks! |
Quote:
|
Gender:M
Location:GA Age:37 |
Gender: Male
Age:32 Location: FL Occupation: Nuclear Pharmacist Education: B.S. Biology, PharmD, Authorized Nuclear Pharmacist training. 2010 Compensation: (this is my first full year out of school, so extrapolating 2011 numbers) ~$118,000, counting $5500 in performance bonuses and ~$5000 in on-call pay. Future Salary Projection: ~3% yearly increase. (I got about 2.9% this year and last) Benefits: Medical, dental, vision, 4 weeks PTO (which is unheard of in pharmacy nowadays). 3% company match to 401K, as well as company performance-based addition to the 401K pot. (I got an additional 2% of base salary addition both this year and last year) Another nice bonus to the PTO thing: I can actually TAKE the PTO. I work closely with 3 other pharmacists that can easily cover for a missing pharmacist. (I went to Hawaii twice in the past 6 months, and it was wonderful) What's the job like? Overall, I love my job. It has it's issues like any other field. I personally think it's the best field of pharmacy you can be in nowadays. We compound and distribute a variety of specialty nuclear drugs to surrounding hospitals and clinics. These drugs aren't something hospitals can 'stock' as they are constantly decaying (half-life tends to be around 6.02 hrs for most of our agents, with a max of 24 hrs expiration time for our longest lived agents), therefore they "need" nuclear pharmacies. What's more is that unlike retail operations, this is not a field that can be automated. PLUS, we do not deal with irate patients with insurance issues--we deal directly with the professionals that run the departments/clinics. Caveats to the job? The 2 biggies are the hours and the fact you're screwing around with radiation. For the production side of nuclear pharmacy, our hours on night shift are about 2-3am to 9-10am. (Though we do have a 'bankers hour' time slot of 8am - 4pm.) And we ARE dealing with ionizing radiation, though the agents we use are very low energy. But it freaks people out. Would you recommend the career to others? YES. With reservations. I am a huge science nerd and I love my job! If you want warm fuzzies that comes with patient interaction? Go elsewhere. If you are afraid of radiation? Go elsewhere. If you're not willing to look hard for those rare positions in nuclear pharmacy? Go elsewhere. If you're not willing to get a little extra training to become a nuclear pharmacist? That's right, go elsewhere. Positions in nuclear pharmacy do not open very often, since we all know how much retail can suck. ;-) You have to be willing to follow the opportunity, rather than wait for the perfect opportunity to come to you. Also, unless you graduated from a program that had an authorized nuclear pharmacist training program, you will need to be trained by your future employer. (This is an outlay of like $60K+ for the employer, so they are going to be pretty damn picky, so don't be insulted if you're not a shoe-in for the job. That represents 6-9 months of full-pharmacist pay while working as a glorified tech + about $14K in actual training... so I may be low-balling the estimate) BUT, if you're looking for a relatively future-proof niche in pharmacy, this may be the one for you. |
OK here goes.
I'm a full service restaurant managing partner. I did not have to put up any money to get the title. It is more of a tenure based/results oriented thing. Anyway, salary is $72/yr. Usually earn about $4500/qtr in bonus. And about another $15k a year in an annual bonus plan. So all total about $105,000. I have a high school diploma, but no college. Benefits include some 401(k) matching, medical insurance which costs me $80 bi-weekly for the family coverage, dental and vision, stock grants-they give us about 125 shares of the company stock (restricted for 3 years). The company is also testing a 3 year bonus program. The cycle will end in June 2012. I'm currently tracking about $20K for that. In July 2012 the quarterly will pay, and the annual, and the 3 year. It could be a good month to take a vacation. The job: I usually have 3-4 salaried managers that work under me. And about 70 hourly employees. Most of them are age 19-24. The work pace is very hectic. You have a lot to do, and the company is always looking for better results than last quarter or last year. And dealing with the general public can be trying at times. I put in about 45 - 50 hours a week, working 5 days a week. I get 4 weeks of vacation and 4 holidays off. Being a restaurant manager is certainly not for everyone. You need to have good math skills, people skills and have good common sense. Everyday I deal with budgeting, inventory, ordering, hiring/firing, coaching, customer relations, HR issues, equipment repair, dealing with government agencies, like the health dept, the fire dept, the alcohol board, etc. For someone like me that never went to college, it has been very rewarding financially. I never had any student loans to pay back, but it also took a while to get promoted from manager to general manager to managing partner. I also run a home based business for computer repair. I do service calls in my time off from the restaurant. It helps raise 4 kids. |
Quote:
Just to update, left for another big federal contractor for now 85k. Pretty much everything I said still applies, now been in the work world ~28 months and make 85k, much more then I expected. |
Quote:
Also and update. Was just offered and accepted $95/hr part time (8hr/wk) on a short term basis. Should be good for a few months at least. This is in addition to my current 40hr/wk job. Good thing I'm young and have energy (sometimes). |
Gender: Male
Age: 24 Location: Boston, MA Occupation: corporate development (M&A) analyst, software company Education: BSBA - Finance 2010 Compensation: $75,000 Base Pay Future Salary Projection: expect ~3-5% increase on an annual basis Benefits: Full medical, dental and vision. 401k 1/2 match (up to 8%) What's the job like? 50% of the job is modeling, valuation, and due diligence. We are constantly reevaluating businesses to potentially acquire, meaning endless presentations, sensitivity analyses, case scenarios, etc. You will most likely have an anal-retentive manager who freaks out about minor grammatical errors, but it's a high-risk high-reward type of job Would you recommend the career to others? Absolutely, I get to work for a company that actually produces something (as opposed to a banker) and I still get to have a dynamic career. I'm blessed in the sense that I get to have conversations with the CEO and CFO about what makes a business attractive, what ROIC makes a business worthwhile to shareholders, etc. For the record, I have had experiences in sales operations, FP&A, and A/R. All are rewarding in different senses but this is where I'm sticking. A few downsides - 1) you're always on call during certain parts of a deal, 2) it can be stressful at times, business leader's jobs and reputation are at stake so you have to have impeccable attention to detail and you can't be afraid to 'play the game' (it can get political) |
Quote:
|
Quote:
|
Not a bad time for me to post since I flow quite well into the previous posts...
Gender: Male Age: 23 Location: Boston, MA Occupation: Commercial Junior Credit Analyst Education: BSBA - Finance 2011 Compensation: $45-50k base pay; haven't seen a bonus yet, but I heard it's only like $250... Bummer Future Salary Projection: I'm hoping for a decent pay bump when I get a title promotion. But who knows. Likely a 3-4% increase annually. If I become a lender in 5-7 years, I'm probably looking at $110k annually. Benefits: Full medical, dental and vision. 401k 1/2 match (up to 6%). I actually don't participate in the health benefits because I'm still young enough to be on my parent's plan. We also have an employee stock purchase plan that gets us the stock at a 15% discount, which is pretty nice What's the job like? A lot of analyzing numbers and companies. You're always dealing with different types of companies so its fun to learn new things. And you're always dealing with different types of commercial properties. There are days when things are very interesting and fun, and slow days when you're struggling through more process-oriented things. Would you recommend the career to others? It's stable and it pays the bills. Am I thrilled to go to work everyday? No, but I also don't dread it. It's a strange career for someone my age as typically commercial bankers are in the 40s-50s. One thing you sort of hear about all the time is that there's this talent gap.. A lot of people between the ages 28-38 didn't get involved in banking, so in the next decade there may be some serious space to move up in the industry. At least this is what I'm hoping (assuming I stick with it). There are days that I wish I had a career related to the stock market, but then there are days when the market is down 4% and I thank myself for not being in that career. I feel like my job security is pretty solid, though people say at least once in your career your bank will be purchased by someone else, so I'm probably being naive. |
It's interesting to see everyones pay, but what I'm curious is how that stacks up to the cost of living. 100k is a lot in some places, but considered nothing somewhere else.
|
Quote:
But since my salary is significantly higher than it would be in many other parts of the country (in some cases I make double or even triple what I'd make in other parts of the country), I still come out ahead in my expensive state. Aside from housing, property taxes, insurance, and a few other items, what I pay for items in NJ is the same as I'd pay in Louisiana, California, or Kansas. When I buy something from Amazon (and I buy a whole lot from Amazon), I pay the same amount that people in other parts of the country pay. Food and gas are actually CHEAPER in NJ than they are in most other parts of the country, believe it or not. BTW, I'll be posting my 2011 information in a few days here and in the Overweight Money Holder Finance Forum. I hope we can keep this thread going! |
Did you just make up the Overweight Money Holder Finance Forum? As this thread is the first result on google for it.
*Edit* $&#$*! FW you mean |
OK, as promised, here's my 2011 information:
Age: 39 Location: Northern NJ Occupation: Urban Educator (My fancy title for a teacher in a city of low socioeconomic standing) Education: M.A., plus 33 additional credits 2011 Compensation: $90,000 (Base Pay + a little extra money taking on extra duties.) Base salary for the 2011-2012 school year is about $88,00 right now, but should be more, since we do not have a current contract right now. (More on that in a minute.) My compensation this year is pretty much the same as it was last year, although last year's figure was inflated a bit due to a pretty large amount of retro pay due to me. Future Salary Projection: When our contract is settled (very soon hopefully), my base pay should be in the 100K range. This is the top of the teachers' guide in our district, so future raises are going to be smaller after this, maybe 2K to 3K per year more for the foreseeable future. Benefits: Full medical, although teachers in NJ now have to pay a percentage of their salaries for their medical benefits. (It's currently 1.5% of base salary, but it's going up even more in the new year.) We get modest dental, generous sick and personal time, a decent pension plan (at least if the state doesn't default on the benefits), tremendous job security once you achieve tenure (but virtually none before that, and even with tenure, you can still have the daylights menaced out of you. Also keep in mind that not all states offer tenure, in which case you can pretty much be fired at will no matter how much time you have in a particular district.) In almost all districts in NJ, you can accumulate sick time from year to year. What's the job like? Very difficult and getting more difficult bu the year. Tremendously long hours, almost no down time during the school day (I don't take lunch very often),lots of work at home, deplorable working conditions, with some classrooms reaching temperatures of 90+ degrees and others below freezing. Prepare to adopt some small scurrying pets who have made your classroom their home in older buildings in urban districts. You will also most likely need to spend a decent amount of money on supplies for students because your school won't provide them, even though they insist on your using them. Very little respect and support from most supervisors, parents, and students. I do it for the good kids and because I love teaching. Massive budget cuts have made the job even more difficult. Many teachers (myself included) are now finding themselves doing two jobs for the price of one due to massive retirements and staffing cuts. Would you recommend the career to others? Every year, it's become harder and harder for me to recommend teaching as a career. Public employees all over the U.S. have taken a real bashing over the past couple of years, and teachers seem to be Public Enemy #1 of the group. This is not an easy job. If you're doing it correctly, it's at least a 50-60 hour a week job, and it's 50-60 hours of grueling work. Teachers in urban districts in particular have taken a real beating. They are expected to be miracle workers, solving all of our society's ills. On top of that, there seems to be a growing chorus of people calling for teacher salaries and benefits to be cut to the bone. And, unfortunately for new teachers, your benefits are going to vanish before the benefits for the veteran teachers will. Once the teacher bashing subsides, I may be able to recommend teaching again as a profession. But for right now, it might be better to see what else is out there. |
God, this is depressing...
I have been out of school for almost four years now, got a completely worthless degree and have been making a bit less than 30k for the last 2.5 years. I just got a new job as a Medicaid Service Coordinator here on Long Island, NY which pays 32k. I am trying to get into nursing school. But 32k on Long Island is laughable, and just about pays the rent + utilities and nothing else. My husband makes about $15k more than I do. |
Quote:
tennis player here, wages come to about $19K a year. only upside is i work 4 days a week. have full insurance benefits but it's a huge chunk of each paycheck. no room for promotion. |
Quote:
Did you become a clinical pharmacist? Thats what my fiance does |
Quote:
|
Lots of great information here! Hoping there will be more contributors...
Quote:
|
Quote:
|
Thanks for shearing. its very good post.
|
|
Gender: Male
Age: low 30's Location: western NY Occupation: MD Education: HS, BA, MD, residency (dual boarded) 2010 Compensation: $200k 2011: $233k Future Salary Projection: based on how much I work. Cutting back hours this year since wife is back to work and I want to spend more time at home. Benefits: Free cell phone, full medical with deductable but HSA fully paid by work, matching 401k, continuing eduation money (pays for pretty much all yearly expenses for work), full malpractice paid Environment: stressful at times but also a lot of down time. I work in a unique niche in the medical community and honestly work less for more pay than a lot of other people in the field. btw would this information not be great in wiki format? |
Quote:
|
Gender: Male
Age: 28 Location: TX Occupation: RN Education: RN 2011 Compensation: $62k Future Salary Projection: Jumping hospitals: $4000-5000. Staying 2-3% Benefits: Full medical, 401k 4% match (up to 10% at 10 years), cutting back on EIB/Short term disability. Seems like even though they made $24M we need to cut back |
Quote:
This is a skewed sample. The only people that are willing to post exactly how much they make are young people that feel they are doing very well. It is partly bragging, partly feeling good about their position (which they should). Don't let this thread discourage you. I am 31 now and my career route didn't really take shape until I backed into a job I didn't think I wanted a few years ago. Now I make enough to be completely out of CC debt, go out with friends regularly, own a condo, save a significant portion of my income and have a positive outlook on my future. REMEMBER, The average gross income for a family in America is still between 50-60k. So a 25 year old making around 100k is very much out of the ordinary (top 3% of all 25yos). You are in a perfectly average position. You just have to be creative in how you make that work for you and your family. |
Gender: Male
Age: Early 20's Location: NYC Occupation: IT Support Level 2 at Global Lawfirm Education: BS. Finance with Comp Sci minor ( A+, Network+, CCNA) 2010 Compensation: $46K Future Salary Projection: Well, no raise or bonus this year because of the "down economy" Benefits: Free cell phone, full medical with deductable but HSA fully paid by work, matching 401k, 23 paid vacation days Environment: stressful at times working for angry lawyers. Micro-managed but not that heavy of a work load. I'd like to actually be able to put my CCNA or Finance background to use! |
Quote:
hospitalist but we provide more than the usual hospitalist services. No office though :) |
Quote:
|
Not trying to be nosey randallF but did you have any med school loans? And if so what was the amount and are you still paying the loan back or is it gone? Did you use the income based repayment schedule or just the regular one?
Son is a current MS1 and he is trying to get a handle/future grasp on how long it will take to pay off the loans. I am trying to advise but am struggling with the info and process. Thank you, and again I apologize if the questions are too personal. |
Hmmm...I think that I can help you out with your question, kat.
Just to preface, long time member here at SD (since 2004), but figured that it'd be best to set-up a new profile for the finance board. My hubby is a physician, trained in family medicine, did a fellowship in Hospitalist medicine and now is working locum tenens (fancy word for physician contractor). He came out of medical school around 2006 with about $150k in loans (tuition was at a very expensive private college). We were lucky in that: 1) we had family assist with paying off at least 1/3 of the loans when he graduated med school 2) I worked throughout most of his medical school to cover day-to-day expenses. Otherwise the loans would be much higher. 3) We were lucky in that we were able to consolidate ~$80k at less than 2% interest. As a result, we are down to the last $30k, with loan payments of under $300. We used the regular repayment schedule and the loan is through Sallie Mae. I believe that there are options to request a change to a lower monthly payment on their website after you receive your loan. We always paid way more than the minimum, but did not make a big effort to pay off the loan completely as we have been saving for a house. (And while historically low, the interest on a mortgage is still twice the consolidated loan). Otherwise, the repayment term would be over 30 years. The med school loans sound daunting, but if your son chooses correctly, he will not lack for a job. (Congrats to him for getting in!) Family medicine (while relatively not paying much compared to other specialties) seems to be in huge demand. Also hospitalist medicine seems to be growing right now, plus they typically have a nifty schedule of working long hours in alternating week long shifts, so it would give him time during the weeks between to pursue other opportunities. (But in any case, he doesn't have to figure out where he wants to specialize until later, so the rotations in med school will be very important.) Best wishes to your son! |
Gender: Male
Age: 25 Location: VA Occupation: Special Education Teacher Assistant Education: BS. Biology, minor in Psychology concentration Marine Biology, in school for Masters in Sp.Ed 2010 Compensation: $19K Future Salary Projection: $41K+ Benefits: Decent medical and dental 401K 100% paid by my company and VA DOE, The usual time off for teachers, sick and personal days. Masters degree paid in full via special ed grant/company reinbursement Environment: Middle school, with the top 1% of my companies special ed population (fully verbal fully functional low behavior) It is stressful at times but my coworkers are great and the gen ed teachers are great. This is not the career I was expecting but I am set up great for the future and have a plan to work my way up through the company. (Teacher, ed specialist, principal) Teachers start off at 41K a year so it would be a very nice bump in pay from what I am getting now. Bought a house last July and just got engaged so my bills will be increasing. Having my Masters degree paid for by grants and my company is a great perk too. Good company to work for if you can manage stress well and leave certain aspects of your job at work. |
I continue to be perplexed by the fact that posters on slickdeals seem to generally be in the top few % of the American populace in earnings. I do well (make 2x what my partner does) and make more than virtually all of my friends who graduated college at the same time as me, but the self selected "winners" in this thread make me look like I'm tottering on the brink of poverty. I think this sort of thing works better with anonymous postings as people who make realistic salaries with typical jobs dont feel shame or whatever is keeping them from posting.
I won't post my current position, but I will post the stats for the last job I held; Gender: Male Age: 23 Location: VA Occupation: Financial Analyst Education: BA Acct. 2010 Compensation: 45-55k + 5-15K in "other" performance, bonus, etc Future Salary Projection: Anywhere from 85-850k depending on speed of progression Benefits: Standard health/dental/vision 75% paid by company (lowest tier plans free), 401k match to 3%, loooow pension, some earnings sharing and an employee stock purchase discount Environment: A bunch of people sitting in cubes making financial models and presenting them to executives, going to meetings, pitching new work to clients etc. It can be really interesting/fun if you like putting together modesl, designing new spreadsheets and working to put a quantitative case together for a business plan you know is effective but need backup for. Tons and tons of money in it for people who stick it out and work for the right company (hedge fund, bank, etc), but there can be an obscene amount of hours. Some of my friends do only 45-50hrs a week for ~70k 1 year out of school, one made 145k all in working 80-90hrs a week. Generally, its about 60 hours with 50-80k for junior level people outside of a bank. STRESSFULL - everyones BS requests with 0 visibility, 0 impact, and 0 relevance need to be done YESTERDAY with no information about how to complete, who to deliver to, and what to include. |
IchBinSoBose, it's most likely because people on here are lying about what they do and make. That's the internetz for ya.
|
Quote:
|
dd05, feel free. If they are not personal/identifying feel free to post here if you think they may be of value to others.
|
Gender: Male
Age: 22 Location: Upstate NY Occupation: Bank Officer (Large National Bank) + Small Business Owner Education: BS Accounting (Minors in Music Production, Music Theory, Economics, and Finance) 2011 Employment Compensation: $30k Base + $13k Commission (40hrs/wk) 2011 Business Income: $20k (10-20hrs/wk) Benefits: 10 paid Holidays, 10 vacation days, 2 personal days, 5 sick days, low cost health/dental with MRA. Future Salary Projection: If I stay in banking? 1-3% yearly base increases. Commissions will likely stay constant. If I work for myself? I'd like to think more. What's the job like? Working for a big bank is tough. You're a number and easily replaced. It is a sales job with a small amount of prestige. I am over qualified for the job, but the benefits help and I graduated with over $70k in student loan debt and $15k in credit card debit (after working full time through school and diligently paying as much as possible out of pocket before relying on CCs and Loans). Since graduation, I've managed to pay off all revolving debt, $15k in student debt, and save about $8k. My business is residential home theater / home automation and commercial audio/video/surveilance/integration systems. I've been working with a partner for four years and do very well in a small amount of time with no advertising. Would you recommend the career to others? No. I won't be happy if I am in the same role for much longer. Would love to make the leap into running my business full time. Just concerned about paying the bills. |
Age: 23
Location: Bay Area, CA Occupation: Research Assistant Education: BA Physics Compensation: ~55k Future Salary Projection: Doesn't seem to be a projection unless I go for a PhD........ Would I recommend: There's a percentage of people who are passionate about academic research. I found out that I'm not but a job is a job....... Looking for a different field to go into.... But I don't feel too hopeful about it because of background. |
Quote:
|
Great hearing from people about what they do to earn a living! Cool thread
|
Gender: Male.
Age: 25 Location: TX. Occupation: IT Auditor (Internal Audit) Education: BS Accounting & Information Management, Working on MS Accounting (Concentration in Internal Audit) 2012 Compensation: ~$50k. Future Salary Projection: Hopefully +5-10k increase/yr per rank moved up Benefits: Typical 401k, health, vision, dental, life insurance etc... Vacation Days, Company Holidays, Sick Days... What's the job like? Very different every day. Operation audit instead of financial audits. If I was doing financial audits every day, I'd probably kill myself. In Internal Audit, you get to learn new things every day about the company, meet management, and get an understanding of how different departments run and how everything pieces together. I'm personally in IT Audit, so I work more on IT related audits. Auditing the operations of systems that the company uses if they are of a financial impact. Network/Users/Accounts Security, Backups, Logging, User Management, etc Would you recommend the career to others? Internal Audit is rather odd as it is classified as "Accounting" though I do no accounting related work (Since I am an IT Auditor). I started out studying Accounting because I did pretty good in the college intro classes, to see where I’d fit in career-wise. After I started taking the intermediate classes, I soon realized how much I actually hated doing accounting / finances. But since I already sunk a ton of my time into classes and $$$ of tuition, decided to just stick it out than waste any more. Luckily when I got in to Grad school, I landed myself in the Internal Audit concentration because the course requirements for graduating had Fraud Examination. The course sounded pretty interesting so I took that route over getting a concentration in financial accounting/tax. Took Internal Audit course, which was amazing. The way the class was designed, we had a chance to interview for internships set up by the professor (which is to lead to a semester long Internal Audit project) and it was great learning / work experience. Pretty much landed me my job now. I would highly recommend anyone in accounting to try and get into Internal Audit. It offers so much more value than being a traditional accountant/external auditor. And as for me being in IT Audit, if you have interest in IT, it’s definitely a good route to take. Internal Audit is a growing profession and corporations do see value in having an internal audit team so there is that increased job stability. When shit hits the fan, management turn to us for advice instead of lay us off. ;) Also if salary is important, I believe Internal Auditors make more than regular accounting related jobs of the same level. Also with interaction with management throughout the company, there is more growth potential if you ever decide to switch to a different department, given that you are a good performer and management knows you. |
Seems everyone with a BA or BS in their early or mid twenties makes about 40-50k, this is also true of many of my friends, at least the ones with "real" jobs. I also know of a few college grads who could not find "real" jobs and are working in low paying jobs like retail clerk, teller, etc.
Hmm, I don't think people here are lying about their jobs or compensation, why bother? Maybe it's biased toward the high side because people who are dirt poor probably don't venture into the finance area on SD. off topic, but does anyone know how much vets make? |
Gender: Male
Age: 24 Location: Atlanta GA Occupation: Big 4 - Management Consultant Education: Finance and MIS majors, Econ minor 2011 Compensation: upper 50's Future Salary Projection: lows 70's. What's the job like? Travel. Travel travel travel travel travel. Watch House of Lies TV-show to get a basic idea. While over dramatic, the concepts are much the same. And I'm not even MBB. |
Quote:
...though if I had to perform another user appropriateness test in my life, I might need to go to an asylum. |
Quote:
Just curious, what certifications did you work on while you were at the Big4? |
Quote:
EDIT: And yes. Flying sucks. Necessary evil of the job, though. Most bitch about it. I just shrug. |
Oh I thought you were doing IT Audit. Did you not get a CIA, CISA, or CISSP?
|
Used to. I didn't stay long enough in IT Audit to need a cert for it. Now that I'm doing Operations, I'm getting my APICS CSCP.
|
Gender: Female
Age: 24 Location: MN Occupation: Project manager Education: M.A in Socilogy Future Salary Projection: +2-4k per year depending on performance. Benefits: 10 paid holidays . up to 5% bonus paid half on company performance. Paid mileage upto 100km outside of normal travel. Whats the job like: Small firm . Nothing too special. Recommendation: At my age and experience it is more than what I deserve and to make what I make. Most who work here have given their life to the company because the company treats its workers pretty good. If you like working with a small group of caring people then it is perfect. |
Quote:
|
Quote:
|
Quote:
|
Quote:
Our projects are universal and versatile, we deal in social dealings, we keep on changing our projects from time to time depending on the requirement of the people. We also help people who are in a fix. I am still part of the team as am still very young to it |
Quote:
Quote:
|
Quote:
I'm technically "dirt poor" in comparison, and yet I still venture into the finance category. I just haven't put my info up because I have to get through my boards before I get a job. I'm sure there are others who frequent this forum but don't post, are in the same category and are working towards their certifications/licenses/boards as well. |
Quote:
|
Quote:
Good luck with your education! I hope that it pays off for you in the long run. |
Gender: Male
Age: 27 Location: SanFran Occupation: Finance - Account Manager Education: BA in Econ from top 10 undergrad 2012 Salary: end at 110K + 20% bonus Future Salary Projection: probably 10-15+%/year Benefits: 3 week vaca, 4% 401k match, health Whats the job like: Small financial services company. We help mortgage banks hedge their interest rate exposure. When seasoned I will have about 10 clients, who will range from small mortgage shops to large nationally recognized banks. We trade mortgages for our clients and basically help them not blow themselves up. Very model intensive. I am constantly on the phone, there is always something to do and because the job is so market driven, something is always happening. Probably 20% of my time is spent trading, 50% is model maintenance and the rest is misc projects. I love it. Constant stimulation and pressure. Mistakes can cost serious money for your clients - little room for error. I get in at 5AM (up by 4:30AM each day) but usually leave by 3 (market hours). Recommendation: If you love fast paced work environment I recommend trying to get close to the markets. My company is small and does not suffer fools...you are expected to learn fast and with minimal supervision (be able to teach yourself and fill in the blanks). I came from a large company, and for me, the additional responsibility and ability to progress at a small company is SO much more appealing. I was never that good at corporate politics. |
Gender: Male
Age: 26 Location: NYC Occupation: Medical intern Education: Undergrad at a top Ivy, med school 2012 Salary: 60k Future Salary Projection: who the heck knows? Salary surveys give 500k on average. Benefits: 4 week vacation, 0 deductible/0 premium health insurance, free meals when on call q4 Whats the job like: Medical intern, matched for radiology a/w, and planning on a career in Interventional Rads (essentially image guided surgery). I've an analytical, aggressive personality and radiology and surgery suit me well. It's a long road though and will be 32 when I finish my fellowship. If I wasn't in medicine, I'd be on Wall Street. I had a couple of offers to work in investment banking at bulge bracket firms (well, one of which is no longer quite a BB, but that's another story). Sometimes I wonder how that would have turned out, as most of my friends who went to Wall St did so before the bust, and generally have turned out fine. Ideally I'll come up with a way to combine the two in the future. |
Gender: Male
Age: 27 Location: NYC Occupation: Finance - Compliance Officer Education: BA in Finance & Information System from top 10 undergrad business school. 2012 Salary: 95K + variable bonus Future Salary Projection: +3%/year Benefits: 4 weeks vacation, 10 paid holidays, 2 personal days, unlimited sick days, 10% 401k match, health and dental free + $500 debit card to pay co-pays and prescriptions. Whats the job like: Lots of learning about federal legislation and how it effects the banking industry. 3 major audits a year that must be coordinated and passed successfully. A small firm where I am expected to learn quickly and be proactive to keep the bank safe from fines. Regular work day is 9:00 AM - 5:30 PM. Any thoughts or reactions? How am I doing? Thanks. |
Quote:
|
Quote:
|
Quote:
|
Quote:
|
Quote:
Sometimes wish I could go the Wall Street way. Got an interview at Big 3 Consulting, so weighing out options for now. Guess I'm worried about straying too far, and not being able to return to medicine though. Anyways, good luck with rads. |
Quote:
Also, if by Big 3 you mean MBB, that would be a good opportunity if you get it. good luck |
Quote:
And yes, the interview is at MBB. I've never interviewed for anything in my life before, so I'm not really sure what I'm getting myself into... |
Quote:
For myself, done with residency and planning to go into executive medicine/ operations/ maybe CMIO since my background was in CIS/MIS. Physicians in general; good base pay - good money later in life; difficult time constraints with family at times. The writing IS on the wall though; there will be cut backs in reimbursement. Physicians WILL have to bill more/ see more patients for less pay. Very rewarding career though... and NOT all jobs need to be clinical. |
Quote:
|
Quote:
All my mentors are physician execs; Most will try to practice some clinical medicine but its unlikely to be 100% successful.. besides it wouldn't be fair to patients; especially if you came from a surgical background. The best advice I can give the young folk during med school/ residency is... if you plan to stay in clinical medicine for the next 30 yrs in the rat race/ everyday work... make sure you end up in a field you like after you get off the med school train. That means, if you don't get into the residency you want.. try again the next year. For those in residency and wanting to goto a fellow spot... DO it. Do more research and do what fits you. We need folks who are interested in specialty care if that suits you. I'm just different. I've always wanted to enter executive medicine since day 1 of med school. In 5-10 years, I hope the company that hires me wants me for my executive skills vs my clinical skills. |
Quote:
|
Sure np. Glad to help.
|
Gender: Male
Age: 23 Location: MA Occupation: Mechanical / Design Engineer Education: BSME (Mechanical Engineering) 2012 Compensation: 60k - 5% Annual bonus targeted on indiviudal and company performance. Future Salary Projection: Anywhere from 60-120k depending on business enviorment and progression. Benefits: Health/dental/vision/disability/lifeinsurance. Health Plan offerings PPO and ABHD type plans. Employee Stock Purchase at 85% market value. 3 Weeks Vacation Starting + 2 Floating Holidays Environment: Office Setting working on a computer/CAD. Calling vendors, Suppliers, etc. Working with a lot of people towards project goals. Work on everything such as designs, product changes, and engineering paperwork. Pretty normal I would say. 40 hours a week 8am - 5pm, usually actually work about 45 hours a week. Not to stressful, altough when a product cycle heats up it can be a little hetic. |
Gender: Male
Age: 28 Location: IA Occupation: Online cell phone business owner Education: BS Biology, MS Accounting half completed 2011 compensation: 130k Future salary: Up or down depending on level of motivation Benefits: n/a - Vacation is hard to take without upsetting lots of customers. Daily Life - Print and ship orders, answer stupid questions from people that don't like to read two paragraphs to find the answer, mundane work. Long lunches, short work day. Would I recommend this to someone else? I strongly recommend working for yourself, when your work directly pays you back it is a great feeling. Would I recommend doing something you don't love to do? Not at all. I planned on having employees to do the mundane work and website functioning on it's own, but automating a business is extremely difficult and probably not feasible for most businesses. |
I read this thread start-to-finish and found it interesting, most of yall are doing very well. I feel proud of my career progression thus far
Gender: Male Age: 26 Location: NYC Occupation: Investment Specialist in Private Banking (at one of top 3 largest US banks) Title: Associate (1st year) Education: BA Finance and Accounting Dual Major, Pass all 3 levels of the CFA exams (awaiting charter) Last years: 95k + 20k bonus (was analyst) Expected 2012: 135k Expected 2013 Salary: 120k Future salary: VP Salary is ~150k starting with 50k+ bonus Benefits: 4 week vacation, great pay, decent hours (vs. banking) Daily Life - I invest high net worth families ($25mm+) money into diversified portfolios (equities, bonds, hedgefunds, private equity, currencies, commodities, derivatives) and pitch ideas for client's self-directed brokerage accounts. I work with bankers on the team to help in prospecting efforts to bring in new clients but ultimately I'm on the investment side not the new-client acquisition side. I'm basically an investment sales trader. I work in a team of 10 investors / 15 bankers and we cover ~$15 billion in assets over several hundred clients. My hours are 7:30 -6:30/ 7:00pm which I think is very good considering I've been in back office roles where I worked to 10pm everynight. I worked very hard to get to this roll, I started in back office accounting, studied cumulatively 800 hrs in total to pass all three levels of the CFA exam over a 4 year pei, and worked jobs where I worked weekends and to 10pm every night. I really enjoy being in a front office role because at the end of the day its about serving your clients, making money for the desk/group. I always felt like I was just another Bob in a cube when i was in accounting not making an impact, a cost center. Now i make money. Its an awesome feeling knowing that you made 50,000 in a day in revenues thats associated with your name. I really enjoy my work because I love the market and investments. I get to negotiate trades and pricing, pull the trigger on putting money to work, my job is shaped by the market events. Would I recommend this to someone else? I strongly recommend Private Banking over Investment Banking because the hours are alot better, the money is still good, and personally I feel I have much more control over my job here than I would have in Investment Banking. Plus, you get to help people. Clients come to us with financial problems (taking out credit to buy a house, funding PE capital calls with other investments) and we solve them. Happy to answer questions. |
Quote:
|
Quote:
If you dont have that background the best way is to work in a job where you can get sponsored for your Series 7/63 and do your CFA. Or if you have the $$ & time, go do an MBA at a top 30 school. I dont know the best way to find a financial advisor who can always get good returns, our clients usually meet the market or outperform by 75-100bps depending on their risk tolerance/tilts and we have them in probably one of the most efficient, diversifed portfolios you can hold, every investable asset they have, and all the top HFs they have access too, new issue Fixed income they can get, etc....You wont get that at Fidelity but you will have access to low-fee Mutual funds where you can get diversification and at least make the market return. |
Gender: Male
Age: 21 Location: Illinois Occupation: Biomedical Engineer R & D Co-op Degree: Co-op means you rotate btwn going to school and work. I have one more year left at school for my biomedical engineering degree. Salary/Benefits: Corporate Apt, 2012 Rental car, $42k Description: Typical engineer job working on a team working towards project goals. 8-5pm in a cubicle. Some days can get long but it is what you make out of it. |
How did you get your buisness started? What got you into it?
Quote:
|
Update from about a year and a half ago
Gender: Male Age: 28 Location: TX Occupation: Nurse Education: Bachelors in Nursing 2011 Compensation: $48,000 (graduated in June so this was 1/2 year of nurse pay) 2012 Projected: $80,000 with some overtime. Future Salary Projection: Talking hourly, I went from $27 to $32. With the overall changes in healthcare, we are estimating an across the board 2% raise if all goes well. I got a good jump as we got raises that bumped us to regional across the board pay for our experience level. Benefits: Full medical, dental, 6.15hrs of PTO per paycheck, decreased EIB/short term leave, 401K up to 5%. What's the job like? You take care of sick people... I work in an ICU so the people are VERY sick. It has its ups and downs. Helping people can be rewarding. You eventually go numb to death. I take care of people that had major surgery (open heart) to people on ventilators that wont breathe to people who had CPR. Each day is different, some days I can kick up my feet and manage to watch a couple movies, some days I literally dont have 3 minutes to pee because someone is circling the drain. Would you recommend the career to others? Its a great career and pays well. I am personally going to pursue a mid level degree and get out of the direct patient care. More writing orders than doing orders. The babyboomers are getting old and there will slowly be a need for more nurses but as of now there is no shortage no matter what you read in the news. The government is slowly killing healthcare so Im not sure how it will be for nurses. |
Gender: Male
Age: 42 Location: MI (metro Detroit) Occupation: Director of IT Education: BS in MIS & MBA 2011 Compensation: $~120k base + 5-10% bonus Future Salary Projection: 1-5% increase/yr, plus random larger bonuses. Largest so far was about $40k in stock options - sadly, that was a one time thing. Benefits: Used to be a Cadliiac health plan (EVERYTHING covered for no out of pocket $$) but it's gone down in quality & up in price over the years since the recession hit. It's still not bad - I'm out of pocket about $80/mo for family medical, dental & vision coverage, plus life insurance (for me, spouse & kids), matching 401k and AD&D. Also 4 weeks of vacation, 5 days sick time & major holidays. What's the job like? Very roller coaster. Some down periods, some crazy busy periods. You have to be an excellent multi-tasker, and must be able to reprioritize on the fly. At this point it's more about the politics & budget than about technology, although you're still involved in very high level decisions. Hopefully you paid attention in the accounting & finance classes you took, since they now come into play. Would you recommend the career to others? If you have a good blend of technical AND people skills, then yes. I've been in IT for 20+ years & in leadership for about 1/2 of that. Biggest surprise for me was how much the focus shifted from technical to financial, so you must be familiar with depreciation, budgeting, forecasts, etc. For the technical side, surrounding yourself with good employees is the key to your success. |
I really enjoy this topic. I figure I'll come out of hiding and contribute.
Gender: Male Age: 22 Location: PA Occupation: Website Support Contractor Education: BS in Management of Infromation Systems 2012 Salary: $21/hr (~42k annual) Future Salary Projection: I don't know. Benefits: None. I can get them, but at prices so high I'm better off opting out. Whats the job like: I work for a contractor who delegated me to a financial company. I take calls from internal and external customers who have issues with the company website. If it's something complex, I troubleshoot. But generally it's simple stuff (password reset, wrong url, etc). It's pretty low volume (about 20 calls per day), and my work days are only 7.5 hours. Recommendation: It's a great first 'real' job, because it gets me valuable 'corporate experience' with fairly solid pay. It's routine and not very demanding - I tend to just go into autopilot. I use the ample down time to browse forums (like right now!). |
Gender: Male
Age: 22 Location: AZ Occupation: Business Analyst Education: BS in Finance 2012 Salary: 50k Future Salary Projection: I don't know. Benefits: Medical/Dental, Pension, 401k match, 2 weeks vacation, work from home one day a week, Whats the job like: I do entry level project management by building cost and schedule models for aerospace equipment. Recommendation: Can't complain for my first real job out of college. The job is very laid back and I can pick up pet projects if I'm bored. It does get a bit mundane at times because there is a lot of repetition. |
Gender: Male
Age: 24 Location: NJ Occupation: Software/Systems Architect (most people at work call me a 'systems engineer') Education: BS in Computer Information Systems, 2 years of help desk experience, 6-month co-op in IT for a large company 2011 Compensation: ~$60-70k including 10% bonus.. can be a little more or less depending on company performance. About 2 years of experience Future Salary Projection: Lots of room for advancement/promotions, depending on how hard you work and how good you are at your job. About 2.5% annual raise, promotions give around 5% (probably averaging every 3 years or so for a promotion). A lot of older employees are retiring in the next 5 or 10, so the outlook is pretty good. Benefits: Very good medical/dental, and very cheap.. deductible is kind of high, but that's better for a young, healthy person like me. 401k is matched up to about 5%, lots of time off - 18 days/year total, plus 'unlimited' sick days (although they 'target' 2 sick days per year). Working from home is generally encouraged after working for 2 years, assuming your performance is good. What's the job like? I talk to business people and read business requirement for technical features that someone wants to implement. My team does software for routers, so there's a lot of networking involved. I then design a solution to the business requirements, and write up a somewhat technical design document for the developers to use when developing the software. Our projects are very long-term - they take anywhere from 3 months to a few years, averaging about a year I think. I generally have one or two projects each quarter, depending on how complex the projects are. Would you recommend the career to others? I would definitely recommend it to others if you're good at explaining technical concepts clearly, and if you have a lot of patience. The hardest part of the job is making sure everyone else understands your designs and being able to ask the right questions to get the information you need. If you're patient with explaining concepts and listening to people explain things, then the job is pretty good. If you get frustrated easily, or you have a hard time dumbing things down for people, or if you don't like IT, software architecture is definitely not for you. It pays well though and it's pretty low stress, so if you're looking for a good IT job, software design is where it's at. |
I've barely posted on the forums at all over the last 6 years but thought I'd post on this.
Gender: Male Age: 27 Location: RI Occupation: Chemical Process Engineer Education: BS in Chemical Engineering 2011 Compensation: 63K 2012 Compensation: 76K Future Salary Projection: Staying just as a Engineer would lead to probably 120K in the foreseeable future, but can use the engineering degree and background to leap around to many different areas. Benefits: Pay is now pretty good. The company had to give me a big boost after 3 slightly more senior engineers all left within 9 months of the same time because of the low pay. 401K matches 50 cents on the dollar of the first 5% (but need to be there for 5 years to keep it). What's the job like? I like the job but it has some very very crazy hours and requires some holiday coverage, etc. Since this is a manufacturing facility it is loud, extremely hot (+100 degrees in many areas), and dirty. I do enjoy what I do though and like the people I work with, but honestly I don't see myself doing this long term. I plan on going back to school and going for business (family wants me to try for medical school). Would you recommend the career to others? Process engineering is a pretty stable career with a pretty high demand, but sometimes those jobs are not in the parts of the country you wish to be. I receive calls regularly from locations in the Midwest and down South asking if I am interested in a new opportunity (nothing wrong with those areas, but I am not looking to move there at this time). Many people think being an engineer is glamorous. I'm pretty much 50% QC, 50% production technician, and 50% maintenance. I know that is 150%, I'm just joking about how much can be expected of you. What is wrong with the equipment and when will be running, why is the product failing internal/customer spec, and how come production wasn't up to snuff last night?! |
Quote:
Other dentists can become teachers in dental or hygiene schools or can join the speaking circuit and make money by offering CE courses at dental conventions. Other can become consultants to firms that make equipment for dental offices. So to say a dentist simply 'fixes teeth' is not really accurate for someone who is looking to enter the field. Of course dentistry is different wherever one goes. Perhaps in Texas, all dentists do is fix teeth. I don't know because I've never been to Texas. I'm sure any Dentist here can also attest that if you own your own dental practice, your working hours will only increase, not decrease compared to being an 'associate dentist' where you don't have to worry about your lease, employee overhead, benefits, insurance, ordering supplies, and a host of other things. Quote:
|
Quote:
With that said, since I've posted, I've acquired two dental practices and while the stress is comparable, the actual time I spend in my practices is a fraction of what I did while I was working for somebody. With the proper systems in place and an experienced management team that I trust, I'm free to do what I want most days without a nagging feeling of something having gone terribly wrong at the office. |
Gender: Male
Age: 26 Location: DC Occupation: Consulting - Fed Education: MS Policy 2011 Compensation: 72k 2012 Compensation: 80k Future Salary Projection: Increases are minimal, given the slow economy and being stuck at a relatively low performing team. Working on capturing an independent contracting/consulting role to at least double my salary. Benefits: Pay is not too bad. It is a big name consulting, so exit opps are great. 15 PTOs, tutition reimbrusement, and you know... the standard stuff. 100% 401k vesting after 5 years is attractive. What's the job like? Stable hours vs. commercial consulting Would you recommend the career to others? Absolutely. You get to learn, learn and learn. |
Quote:
|
I've been on this forum since like forever, when I was still in school, and now been working for 4 years now. Don't post/reply much but this topic is pretty interesting so I thought I'd share some of mine.
Gender: Male Age: 29 Location: SF Bay Area Occupation: Software Engineer Education: MS & BS combo in Computer Science 2011 Compensation: 100k base 2012 Compensation: 115k base Future Salary Projection: Probably ~3-5%/year, will get a jump (10-15%) if get promoted again. Bonus is generous (projected 10-15% like any other tech company out there, maybe higher or lower depending on personal performance). Benefits: Pay is not bad (but can definitely be better). One of the big name tech so my resume also gets pimped up if I ever want to jump ship. 15 PTO days first 3 years and get 5 more days if I stay longer (4-6 years I think), tuition reimbursement on job-related fields, and all the standard insurance (vision, dental, life, etc). 50% 401k matching, vest right away. Free gym & meals, several onsite convenient services (oil change, car wash, haircut, etc). What's the job like? Flexible hours, I normally get to work later (10-11am) to escape from the traffic, there's no fix working hour (can be 5 hours, or maybe 10 hours) and no one really checks as long as I complete the assigned tasks. Would you recommend the career to others? Definitely, but only you are into the coding (programming) and stuff. Gets pretty boring if you don't like to stare at the monitor all day. |
11/2011 - 12/2012
Gender: Male Age: 25 Location: FL Occupation: Help Desk-Tech Support for Financial Advisors Education: high school diploma 2012 Compensation: $34,000 Future Salary Projection: Found out in my last week my raise was ~11% ($37,500) Benefits: 10 vacation days, 5 sick/personal days, 401k- dollar for dollar up to $500 then it's 50 cents for each dollar for the next $500 ($750 a year), Profit sharing and Stock options based on years of service. Medical/dental is $52 a month for pretty great coverage What's the job like? Took 4 weeks of training to get on the password queue then 2 weeks to get on the main queue. I really enjoyed the job because of the people I worked with and how good I was at it. Didn't want to leave but opportunity knocked. Would you recommend the career to others? Some people really wouldn't be able to handle it. It's a case by case basis. Hearing about the other call centers people have worked at I would not recommend it unless it was the company I worked in. 1/2013 Gender: Male Age: 25 (26 in summer) Location: FL (until summer a new facility is built and I move to Colorado) Occupation: Computer Operator Education: high school diploma 2013 Compensation: $42,000 (until Colorado then it's 51,000) Future Salary Projection: I'm about 1 month in and will be the second most senior person moving to Colorado. I expect that'll be worth something. Benefits: 10 vacation days, 5 sick/personal days, 401k- dollar for dollar up to $500 then it's 50 cents for each dollar for the next $500 ($750 a year), Profit sharing and Stock options based on years of service. Medical/dental is $52 a month for pretty great coverage What's the job like? Still in training but learning TACL and BMC: Control-M is going to take months from what they tell me. The hours are 6pm-6am 3 days a week one week and then 4 days a week the next. Working on holidays won't be so bad. Would you recommend the career to others? Too soon to tell. My brother did it for 3 years and left that type of work to become a Server Technician. |
OP here again. Here's my 2012 information, for those who are interested:
Gender: Male Age: 40 Location: Northern NJ Occupation: Urban Educator (My fancy title for a teacher in a city of low socioeconomic standing) Education: M.A., plus 33 additional credits 2012 Compensation: $100,600 (Base Pay, some extra pay for curriculum writing, and some retro pay due to a delayed new contract.) Base salary for the 2012-2013 school year is a whisker over $100,000. It would have been a couple grand more, but of course, since it was my year to hit the top of our guide (based on the old structure), they added steps to the new contract. Future Salary Projection: Not too much further to go from here in my current position. Salary will go up about $1500 next year and perhaps $3000 the year after that. Then, it might go up $1700 or $1800 per year. Benefits: Full medical, although teachers in NJ now have to pay a percentage of their salaries for their medical benefits. (It's currently based on a sliding scale, based on income, but no less than 1.5% of base salary.) We get modest dental, generous sick and personal time, a decent pension plan (at least if the state doesn't default on the benefits), tremendous job security once you achieve tenure (but virtually none before that, and even with tenure, you can still have the daylights menaced out of you. Also keep in mind that not all states offer tenure, in which case you can pretty much be fired at will no matter how much time you have in a particular district.) In almost all districts in NJ, you can accumulate sick time from year to year. What's the job like? Very difficult and getting more difficult by the year. Tremendously long hours, almost no down time during the school day (I don't take lunch very often), lots of work at home, deplorable working conditions, with some classrooms reaching temperatures of 90+ degrees and others below freezing. You will also most likely need to spend a decent amount of money on supplies for students because your school won't provide them, even though they insist on your using them. Very little respect and support from most supervisors, parents, and students, although I will admit that things seem to have gotten a hair better between teachers and administration in my district (overall, anyway). Would you recommend the career to others? Every year, it's become harder and harder for me to recommend teaching as a career. The public employee bashing in the U.S. is still pretty strong, with teachers still at the top of the "Bash List", although it seems to be subsiding a bit compared to what it was like the past two years. This is not an easy job. If you're doing it correctly, it's at least a 50-60 hour a week job, and it's 50-60 hours of grueling work. Teachers in urban districts in particular have taken a real beating. They are expected to be miracle workers, solving all of our society's ills. And, sadly, new workers are likely going to suffer the most. NJ has already cut pension benefits and increased retirement ages for newer workers, and, honestly, it wouldn't surprise me to see pensions eliminated for new employees as well as two or three different salary tiers for teachers based on their time of service in the near future. This is not an easy job. If you think you can handle it, go for it, but keep in mind that it's going to be a tough road ahead for teachers for the foreseeable future. |
Gender: Male
Age: 23 Location: Chicago, IL Occupation: Investment banking analyst Education: B.S. Finance Compensation: Decent base + bonus up to 110% of base Benefits: Full medical and others What's the job like? Doctors constantly complain about being on call. IB analysts are exactly the same expect they don't do anything worthwhile, such as saving lives. You may get an email at 2am to get back into the office because of some stupid formatting mistake not caught in the presentation that was already printed to be sent out the client. This (being called in at a random 2am) doesn't happen that frequently, but IB analysts very frequently work until 2am doing financial models, formatting, diligence, etc. Typical hours per week range from 80 min. to 110 max. Would you recommend the career to others? I would recommend it if you have a clear game plan after 2-3 years. Get in straight from undergrad and get out. Don't change your career midway as you will have to start over and when you get older you tire of working the hours. However, it can take you places, but these days, you can get to that same place many different ways. IB isn't as exclusive as it used to be and many of your peers have similar skills and/or have experience from better firms. It is still very competitive. Note: I posted because I didn't see anyone discuss investment banking directly. |
Quote:
|
Quote:
|
IB analyst in Chicago makes 60-70k base + 20-70k bonus. If they make less than 120k all-in, its the same as being fired from any other job.
|
| All times are GMT -7. The time now is 03:42 PM. |
1999-2009