Ask Lemmy

I push buttons in my basement in my underwear.

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

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

Air trafic controller (Europe, not FAA…)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Nice try IRS, but you already know what I do: Unemployed, I only deliver newspapers to keep a day rhythm.

Per month 450€ for paper delivery, 600€ from the state (mostly rent assistance).

Lived half a year from my savings without any assistance and learned to cut back at everything unnecessary. Now I get more money and don't need to pay into healthcare. Feels weird to be able to splurge again. Nothing contributes to my pension fund at the moment, but nobody believes in pensions here anyway.

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

Unionized IT for the primary job. Contract for the second.

My primary spot alone is about 10% high for this region, job, and experience level. And it's union. And 100%wfh is in the contract. And my boss is awesome. Sometimes the work is dumb, but that's fine. People retire on half pay.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

OP won the thread before the first response arrived.

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.

I work on cars.

My dad did too, starting in 74. They paid for his ASE certifications and he raised a family on his income. With commission I make around 17 an hour and working on cars now is a fucking nightmare. Dont.

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

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

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

If you guys have any career advice lmk.

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

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

Boiler Technician 40 hours a week. Union backed 80k a year.

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.

Biomedical postdoc in the US. Pay is exactly $61,008/yr. Postdoc means a PhD is required, and I work in Chicago, mind you

There's actually a bit of a fun fact in this... Postdocs have historically been chronically underpaid. The NIH actually worked with a consultant a year or so back, who suggested NIH to gradually increase postdoc pay to $70k/yr (80k in urban areas). NIH didn't agree to that, but chose to gradually increase salary over several years

NIH has a recommended minimum salary (https://www.niaid.nih.gov/grants-contracts/salary-cap-stipends) based on years of experience. In theory institutions can pay more... In practice, a lot of them just stick to the bare minimum, some places even low-ball. This is why my salary is exactly $61,008. Last year it would have been $56.5k so... At least it is an improvement