Ask Lemmy

Aviation. Pretty darn good right now, but it took 20 years of near or below poverty wages to get here. One severe economic downturn and we could be right back at shit wages.

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

I am a Routing Analyst for a communication platform. We do SMS, MMS and voice traffic. I make $80k working from home.

I generally don't stick to any particular job for very long. I used to work a lot of retail when I was younger, but most of my income comes from seasonally working with the elderly. I generally work 12 or so hours a day as well as on call with facilities or I travel to clients homes. I'm not formally educated for medical practice but there is a big demand for people who can lift a 6'4' 180lbs old man from the bed to the commode to the chair multiple times per day, rotate them in bed at night to avoid sores, and clean and change depends. I'll do that for about 8 months at a time.

Aside from that, I do some artwork and I bake breads and fix appliances whenever I have time.

One drama or one episode?

Softwaere engineer in Switzerland, I work 36h a week, 5 days a week. I start at 8:30 and usually work till 16:30 which gives me plenty of time for my hobbies. Company is fully owned by its workers which is not bad eithet even though 50℅ belong to the top C-suite managers (which they bough from their bosses when they left the company, so the shares do stay with the employees). I make around 110k CHF a year (which is nice as I only pay like 6k in income tax). Pretty happy.

I'm a Substation Designer. 66k USD a year. I work alongside mechanical and electrical engineers to design the physical side of substations, including elevations, conduit and grounding. I have an Associates and I've been doing it for almost three years now. I love it.

Mental health (masters-level therapist), shit.

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

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

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

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

Microsoft 365 Administrator, $130k USD. I only have an Associate's degree but I have over a decade of experience in the field. Most of my day is spent coordinating with cybersecurity, compliance, and lawyers to ensure our data practices are sound. It's a constantly-moving target.

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

1. Grad student
2. Bad

Program coordinator with the local government (civil servant). $65k a year, which I still can't believe I got. It's 15k more than what the previous person in my position was getting. I simply asked if it was possible to go higher, and that's the offer they came back with.

Everyone tells me this means I could've asked for much more, but I feel that's about fair for what I bring to the table. I overperform in entry-level jobs, but I don't have the time management skills and emotional resilience to do well at higher levels. I'm already hitting my limit barely one year in - but this time, I've got a good team, a great manager, and will hopefully have my meds adjusted so I can keep going.

Mechanical engineering lead, and I'm at ~130k. About double the median in my area, so pretty comfy. I develop new technologies from initial concept to final products that can be brought to market.

I push buttons in my basement in my underwear.

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

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

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

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

As an example:

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

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

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

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

Go Team America.

Air trafic controller (Europe, not FAA…)

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

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

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

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

Software engineer. £75k a year, plus bonuses - last year got £13k (pre-tax) which was nice. Based in the north of England.

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

Software engineer in the UK, currently 9 months into making a big fat zero cos nobody's recruiting, and those that are have stupidly inaccessible offices in city centres.

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

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

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

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

If you guys have any career advice lmk.

Regional Head, working on collaborating Technical operations with work systems (no software), make about 85k EUR +18% bonus a year currently in fmcg industry.

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

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

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

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

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