What's your line of work and how's the pay like?
I’m a Thai actor. I can’t speak for all actors, but I get paid ~250k baht per episode for a lakorn (TV drama). A typical lakorn has ~15 episodes. I usually do 1 per year. Add to that the salary I get from the TV network to stay with them.
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.
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.
So, roughly 7500 dollars from each episode. That's 10x more than what I make working 20h/week as system analyst for the Brazilian govt - 4500 reais, or roughly 780 dollars per month.
Boiler Technician 40 hours a week. Union backed 80k a year.
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
How much you wanna bet that consultant was paid more than the postdocs. :(
Oh screw me they are definitely paid way more than the postdocs. I'm fairly certain that for biomedical scientists with PhDs, postdocs are the lowest paid profession with this level of qualification...
Like seriously. I think the number that was thrown around for post-PhD scientists in pharma was like $100-150k/yr to begin with. Granted those jobs have their own shortcomings, but still...
I'd definitely have to make a burner account before answering this honestly.
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'm sorry for your forthcoming shit wages.
Ugh. I hope not. But nothing to be done except save what we can.
I am a Routing Analyst for a communication platform. We do SMS, MMS and voice traffic. I make $80k working from home.
What does a routing analyst do? 😶🌫️
I make sure messages and calls get to end user devices by using the most cost effective and dependable routes. It's a niche job, I work for an international brand and I am the first "Routing" position that I am aware of stateside. I didn't graduate highschool or go to college, it really just requires some industry specific knowledge and willingness and ability to learn.
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.
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.
Yup, this is so good to find. The company I work for is so flexible with time. First job I've ever had where I'm not micro managed to death on projects and time.
To contrast my last company, they gave me a laptop that was absolute shit and would give me the blue screen on death a few times a day. I asked for a better one and they said no so I asked if I could just use my person laptop and they said sure. Then I started getting messages and calls constantly from someone I didn't know asking why I wasn't working (according to the tracking software on my company toaster).
They then wanted to install their software on my personal laptop, it told them they could try. Watching this lady try to open an exe file on my Debian system for an hour was classic. I tried explaining it to her from the beginning but to her I was a lazy ungrateful kid who was taking advantage of the company. She called IT in to help her who I was good friends with and he told here was already tracking software on there and opened up the syslog file and pointed out the timestamps. So I had to send her a file with timestamps at the end of each day, which I just wrote a script to generate instead of sending her my actual syslog.
In the end they made me go back to the shitty windows laptop and I kept getting calls about not working during the periods the laptop was crashing and taking 30 minutes to reboot. I also started getting calls from my boss about why projects weren't being finished.
Sorry for the long reply, I can never be quick when I talk about that place. I still get skeeved out.
One drama or one episode?
One drama.
Damn dude
That's a lot of money, kudos for landing that job
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 am a stay at home Dad. The pay is terrible and my boss is extremely immature. Best job I've ever had.
Depending on your boss, you get all the plastic food you could need though!
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.
Ped psych rn, getting my bachelor's. $86k for 36hrs a week at a low acuity pediatric suds facility in the Midwest. It's a therapy led facility, and the therapists got pissed when they realized I make more than them, so they had a riot and now I'm forced to lead therapeutic groups because their caseload of 3.5 kids is "unmanageable" 🙄
Air trafic controller (Europe, not FAA…)
It’s honestly a kind of dream job as I work around 2 weeks a month, have 7 weeks of paid vacation + I can call in "unfit to work" anytime with no question asked. We often work 2 to 4 hours less than the official time we are paid for. We get paid health cure and the job is not that hard or stressful when you are good at it (I’ve done it for 15 years, it’s like a second nature now).
The pay is very good, around 100k (€/$/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.
Wait, you're expected to be working for 168 hours straight?
I wanted to get into the Tower so bad when I was younger. I perform great under stress and I love that kind of job. But FAA regulations ban me outright because of a heart problem I have and now I'm too old. Haha.
Glad you enjoy it! It sounds like a really cool job
Yeah, work-life balance is very important. I love that in acting we shoot for a few months then have the rest of the year off during which you do various gigs and ventures and relax.
what's your porn name?
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.
That first half sounded cool. Then I reached the latter half... Really hope you the best in your recovery.
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.
https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/in/Bangkok Here’s a general overview.
regime
It's still a government, give it a couple of years.
Good point.
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.
What are your tasks that bore you?
Pretty much all of them.
Most tech issues can be easily reduced to rote actions as long as you have a little bit of knowledge about the environment in which they are being executed.
Sure, it's fun rolling out youth systems and dealing with integration issues and things like that, but after the high watermark fun things, there are large gaps of where you're just doing maintenance, and maintenance is no fun.
Apartment superintendent. $62k plus free rent and utilities.
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.
You know, I’m kind of in a similar spot. I get a steady, constant, stable stream of work. I’m not a great groundbreaking actor but always show up on time, am pleasant with the team, try my best for the best outcome, etc. which has led to me having the reputation of being a dependable, disciplined, easy-to-work-with, consistent actor/public figure (which is why I always get gigs). I get told I “settle” a bit too much, for example I had offers from China with lots of money but for personal reasons choose to pass up on them. I’m just comfortable and satisfied with my work as it is and don’t feel the need to reach “higher”.
Yes! All of it, yes! It took me a long time to stop internalizing the "you're not reaching your potential" message. Being happy where I am is not a bad thing! I'm glad you're happy too, especially in such a demanding industry. Follow your happiness! 🫡✨
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.
What exactly is that? Microsoft 365 is Word, PowerPoint, etc., no? I didn't know there was anything to administrate.
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.
As an American, I'm pretty shocked at your salary. Is that comfortable for you?
https://plannit.ai/ppp-calculator/united-kingdom
It translates to around 53k US. Could be comfortable, depending on where they live.
Eh it's the best I've had and honestly, it's about average for a mid-level Electronics Engineer without becoming Senior Designer / Team Lead or Manager.
Thing is that there's not much of an industry here in the UK compared with the States. Also it's not a direct one-to-one as if I were to move to the states they'd probably pay me about $80k because they'd want some value (saving on wage) for going through the extra effort of a H1B visa. On top of that there's also whatever I'd be expected to pay for health insurance.
The average salary in most US states is only a little more than this, and this is for Northern England where you can expect to earn 50-100% less than London depending on field
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.
I am amazed that you can support a family of 5 with 60k!
That said, i am also amazed that you can make 60k being a waitress! Is that after paying taxes?
before taxes
the secret is simple: no car. It's a huge expense and in a city like Chicago, completely unnecessary. I never would've been able to buy a home with that millstone around my financial neck
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.
How many eggs is a reasonable amount? Asking for a friend.
About 350
Software engineer. £75k a year, plus bonuses - last year got £13k (pre-tax) which was nice. Based in the north of England.
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.
Career advice:
Don’t wait a year or two to apply to other places if you know that you could get payed better in the future. Also, impostor syndrome is a real thing and employers know about it and use it agains you.
Money is not everything, but until you are done worrying about rent, car payment (required in most North American cities), student loan or whatever, don’t settle. No one on your company needs to know that you applied elsewhere. The people that matter will still keep in contact after you leave as they know it is for your benefit.
I took an early job or two where I was paid shit, but learning a ton. I told myself I would make up for it later by building up marketable skills.
Today, I'm paid quite nicely because I built up lots of marketable skills. 10/10. I would do it that way again.
That said, obviously I didn't stay at those (shitty paying) jobs long term.
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...
a smidge under $70k
nice
I've always wanted to do that but isn't the pay usually like half of what you put? Do you usually help students or staff or both? Is it in the public school system or private?
OP won the thread before the first response arrived.
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.
I've been in engineering leadership in early and mid stage start ups in San Francisco for a number of years. Comp varies a bit (the earlier stage the company the more ISO equity I get - for anybody not familiar these are options that are basically worth nothing but in the event of an exit opportunity might be worth tremendously more - vs working for a public company you'd often get RSUs that you could immediately sell or divest) but base in the low 300s. This is in the bay area, so actual purchasing power when compared to cost of living is more like mid 100s elsewhere in the US.
IT, vulnerability management, just under $80K USD. Judging by other comments im solidifying my opinion that im underpaid, although ive heard thats pretty common for gov IT work.
Fair salary if under 2 years experience. If you're over 2 years of experience, you are substantially underpaid even as a gov IT worker.
5 years IT overall, mostly mid/upper level support.
Even if I have nearing two years of VM, its not particularly useful experience as my coworkers automated the fuck out of everything before i even knew wtf was going on, and don't like sharing workload. I regret volunteering to join this team, and my old position no longer exists to go back to 🫤
I'm mostly still here due to apathy and health insurance.
Regional Head, working on collaborating Technical operations with work systems (no software), make about 85k EUR +18% bonus a year currently in fmcg industry.
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.
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.
Union electrician in a strong Union city in the north east part of the USA. Make 100k a year just working 40hrs a week, but work has been slow the past few years so I've made under that the last 2 years. The money is good for sure, but the retirement and health coverage for my whole family is the real reason for the career
I'm a production artist working for a small production studio. I work from home and my hours are super flexible. So long as I get my work done they don't care how long and when I start work. The pay kinda sucks since it's about $30k a year but I'm a recent graduate so I understand.
IT Networking in Healthcare. Used to be administration side but recently moved to networking a year ago. Had the same job now for 19 years and it was my first job out of tech school where I worked help desk for the first 5 years. Used to do a lot on the telecom side but now it's mostly setup firewalls, program switches, and know cloud services to setup virtual networks. I know I am underpaid at 87k, I am being promised a raise soon with hopes of getting to 95-100k but even that is below what I should be around. I may have a new opportunity later this year which looks to be around 110-120k if I can pull it off. I want to move on not only because the pay but also because going 19 years at a place that's 24/7 with bare minimum holidays takes its toll on you since your basically on call all the time. Outside that the job it's self is fine and challenging at times.
Marketing Director for a company that hosts in person conferences. $105 base with around 15k in bonus per year. I work remote from home. I enjoy the flexibility it gives me. Health insurance for me and my wife is like 14k a year though, so don't like that.
$60k USD as a "supervisor" of sorts in a factory, more hands on work than hands on coffee type of supervisor.
Very high cost of living where I am so that salary has me renting someones garage "apartment" to live in just so I can have some sort of a savings otherwise I'd be living paycheck to paycheck.
I'm a Scrum Master working in Financial Technology. I made $145k last year although that was because I worked a ton of overtime. My base is closer to $130k. Although I do have to provide all my own benefits
I'm a part-time janitor. The pay sucks.
I do physical therapy with school kids with disabilities. Almost $60k but only paid for 190 work days. People think we get paid for all those holidays and breaks, but we don't - only paid for the days that we work plus five sick and vacation days. My husband makes a few times what I make as an engineer and my kids are grown (but not entirely off the payroll), so I feel pretty lucky to have the life that we do.
I help people do science and math with their computers. I make around 100k, double the median income in my area. My commute is an hour and a half each way, at least, and sometimes I only have around 3 hours to myself after I get back from work before I need to go to bed. Still, I have it better than most (although, with the current attack on science in the US, uncertainty about clients is rising...)
I‘m a Junior Software dev in eastern Germany. I earn around 50k€
Nice nick ;-)
I work in sales in the field of factory automation and robotics in the Detroit area. I make $65k a year plus some other benefits. One is that they pay for good health insurance for the whole family. I will likely not have a job soon due to tariffs and get back into teaching.
Why did you quit teaching?
It's hard. It's draining. The pay is poor. I had an opportunity to make more and do less. I miss the positive aspects though. I miss feeling like I'm an integral part of a community and not just making rich people richer. I was offered a position last year, but it would have been about a $30k pay cut with the insurance and benefits. They offered $42k a year.
I own a small business consulting firm that the serves tech and energy industries. Generally, pay is good in consulting. Owning a company can be risky financially - we've had good years and bad years.
I do GIS, which is basically computer mapping, for an energy company. Because we work in the energy sector, we're unionized with the electricians and with that we have a fantastic pay scale and benefits. USD I make ~$70k/yr
I'm in technical presales. I go with salespeople and explain the IT infra, services and cybersecurity we sell. Should be $190k+ this year.
Sheeeeeeesh
Nice try fbi
First year post-grad! Pay is 1500 USD/month but it's nice getting paid to study, I suppose. Also doing TA too.
Do you think a post-grad will realistically help your employment opportunities?
Kinda, but I'm in for research rather than for job opportunities.
I tend to watch some Thai series (mostly on Netflix), so I find these numbers interesting.
I think that this salary is considered to be quite high for Thai standards, but knowing the prices, does not allow for lavish luxuries like expensive sports cars.
How long do those 15 episodes take to film generally?
6 months is a good average. The rate I get per episode is considered top level in the industry. Unfortunately the majority of Thai actors don’t get paid much and have to hustle on the side. Either way the real money is made through other things such as endorsements, ads, attending events, releasing your own stuff / business, etc. For example you can get paid 500k baht just to attend an event. Acting itself is more like the avenue to keep your notoriety high for these other activities.
Khob khun krap for the detailed answer.
To answer the original question in this post:
I work in finance in the space industry and make less in 12 months than you do in 6. Around 80-90k /year.