What's your job title and how much do you earn?

[friedmmj]

ICE KING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!   100k a year side hussle selling ice and water.. .Ya, you heard it right.... ICE KING lol

FIRED but have a few of them der fancy ice vending machines that i do nothing with buy pay the bills... .takes me umm, 1 hour a month lol

LOL do you need a partner?

[duellingbanjos]

Title: Corporate counsel
Age: early 40s
Salary: 190k inclusive of annual bonus + ~20k RSU
Experience: ~10years
Time commitment: 60-70 hours a week.

Reading the thread, I should have gone into data analytics instead ;)

[effigy98]

This is pretty accurate
https://levels.fyi/

However, one extra perk is for the last 3 years, many keep getting these 100k "retention bonuses" in stock each year. They must be having a hard time keeping engineers around.

[luchorpan]

Title: Middle school instructor/cool program coordinator/department chair (private school)
Years experience: 5 years teaching, 4 years research (relevant to the cool program)
Necessary education: bachelor’s a must, master’s very common, PhDs a minority
Pay: $47k + free tuition for my kids (husband is similar role at a different school, better at negotiating, pay is $55k)
Time/wk: 40-50 hours school year (10 months), <10 hrs summer (2 months)

[DrinkCoffeeStackMoney]

I'll play...


Title: Director of Operations (Food distribution, currently)
Years experience: 20 years in management with four different companies, and in three different industries. (Food distribution, Automotive, Plastics)
Age: Mid-40's.
Education: High school diploma with shit grades. (School isn't for me)
Pay: $103k last year with bonuses. Probably the same this year if I stay at my current employer as they just restructured the bonus program in their favor.
Time: 45'ish hours a week when fully staffed. We've been short handed for the last 8 months so I'm probably doing 60-65 hours a week currently.

[Abe]

I’ve been upgraded in the last year:

Previous: Surgery Fellow (trainee after completing training in General Surgery) - $70k

Now: Assistant Professor - $450k (salary + deferred compensation + 401k match)

It’s only 3x more stressful, so overall improvement!

[iwasjustwondering]

I think I posted to this thread years ago. I stopped coming here, but now that I'm around 3 years from FIRE, I'm back (I'll be 54, so not exactly E, but good enough!).

I actually make a shit ton of money, but I started earning and saving late. So I have been making up ground.

Director of Communications
$215K base
$53K bonus potential
$50K stock grant (I will vest in this in three years)

So the total I could earn in a year is $318K. This is the first year I'll be earning over $260, so I just recently made a fairly big leap. I'm working for three more years to vest in my stock grants.

[bbqbonelesswing]

Title: Senior Customer Success Manager at a tech company
Years experience: Graduated college in 2014, but just 3.5 years in Customer Success
Necessary education: Bachelor's in Finance (totally unrelated; switched careers)
Pay: about $104k all-in (base, bonus, etc.)
Time/wk: 40-50 hours on average

[Simpli-Fi]

Job Title: Network Implementation Engineer
Salary: $72500 + bonus 5-7k; 401k match of 4%
Years’ experience: 0 in industry

I took an entry level engineering job as a coast gig for the benefits.

Time/Work: no commute or bike 20min: 15-20 hours/wk of my attention.

[rimshotsnap]

Title: Some version of Director of Strategy/Operations. I oversee clinical programs in a large health system.
Years experience: 13 years post grad. Age: 36
Necessary education: Master's in Healthcare Administration
Pay: $180k, 5-10% bonus, great benefits including 401 and DB pension. VHCOL Area

Full time+ job. Great pay and benefits but very taxing especially during COVID.

[Visitation]

Title:  Director, Software Engineering
Salary:  $200K
Experience:  31 years
Education:  BS Computer Science

Sent from my SM-A505U using Tapatalk

[Maverick1]

Age 36
Corporate controller for a group of automotive dealerships
Base salary $162k Canadian dollars. Bonus is a % of profit, for 2021 it’s on pace to be a similar number
Education - business degree and CPA

[LearningMustachian72]

Title: Technology Risk Manager
Age: 32
Salary: $146k + 20% bonus
Education: Majors in Computer Info Systems and Accounting
Experience: 10 years
I spent 6 years in big 4 public accounting, see below for rough salaries by year.

Rough salaries+bonuses by year:

Big 4 year 1: $52,000
Year 2: 56,000
Year 3: 61,000
Year 4: 80,000 (promotion)
Year 5: 85,000
Year 6: 90,000
Year 7: 115,000 (move from public acct)
Year 8: 120,000
Year 9: 155,000 (another organization change)
Year 10: 175,000

Glad someone started this, was always curious about paths leaving public accounting.  Is also interesting to see types of roles this community has.

[L2]

Job Title: Tax Manager - Regional Public Accounting
Age: 26
Experience: ~ 4 years
Salary: 78k, expecting an annual raise to ~82k in November.
Other: 3% 401k match, profit-sharing, but I just started here a few months ago so I have no idea what to expect.

I'm located in Ohio and started out my career at a much larger firm. Took a promotion and 22% raise to come to the new place. A ton more flexibility is also a plus. Its sort of unfortunate, but it seems the only way to really get market rate is to jump ship, at least in accounting.

Age: 27
Experience: ~ 5 years
Salary: $83,352

Age: 30
Experience: 8 years
Salary: 150k + somewhere between 5 and 10k annual bonus.

Prior salary (raises after previous update) was $94k. Made a lateral move in terms of title to a new firm. It would appear to be an employee's market.

[magus]

Current
Vice President FP&A (also ran another finance function while public before July that no longer exists as private firm)
Base: ~$250k
Bonus target: ~$75k
Stock target: Was ~$90k while public, now $1.2m target after 5.5 years (could be way less or somewhat more, if I leave or get laid off before event, I get none, so somewhat hard to compare)
Company match: 6% of base (3% in 401k, 3% in NQDC)
10 years in finance jobs, 10 years in Ops jobs. MBA from T15 program, BS in Econ undergrad

I have payroll files from current & prior company for every corp employee (plus summaries by position for field) so I have a great idea of salaries in the SE if anyone is interested for a medium size company (300 HQ, ~6k total employees)

[doneby35]

Title: Senior Systems Engineer
Age: 35
Experience: 15 years
Education: barely finished high school
Salary: $150k, incoming 15% raise
Time: ~10 hrs/week for the past 4 years or so. Really starting to get good at not doing much without getting in trouble. This is probably not the case for 99% of the people in the industry as they usually work a good 50-60 hrs/week.

[2Birds1Stone]

Title: Senior Systems Engineer
Age: 35
Experience: 15 years
Education: barely finished high school
Salary: $150k, incoming 15% raise
Time: ~10 hrs/week for the past 4 years or so. Really starting to get good at not doing much without getting in trouble. This is probably not the case for 99% of the people in the industry as they usually work a good 50-60 hrs/week.

$300/hr? Marvelous!

[mizzourah2006]

@mizzourah2006 I would consider interviewing for some of the FAANGs just to see what you'd get.

The comp numbers would likely blow you away as I'd guess they are close to 2x your current compensation or higher for someone with that much experience in ML.

Check out https://levels.fyi/ as you can get a good feel for what you might expect, though I'd expect ML would be higher than the average software engineer that reports salaries there.

Thats good to hear. I'm not getting interviewed for straight ML roles. One is a Lead Data Scientist in product, which is a relatively new role within the company and the other is a quantitative UX research scientist. So, while I'd bet that a true machine learning engineer role at a FAANG would blow my current comp away, these are more data scientist type roles. I've found similar roles and info on levels.fyi and the variance is so large it's hard to tell, lol. Some are about at my comp and some are way higher.

But I do appreciate your thoughts as my professional contacts are more in the traditional I/O psychology space, so I don't have a lot of insights into the non-HR side of FAANGs and what I could expect.

Update on this.

Just turned down an offer from FB last week. It was for a remote work IC6 role:
Base: $165k
Target Bonus: $33k
$200k equity vesting quarterly over 4 years, so $50k/yr.

So ~ $248k total compensation. I did tell the recruiter that it was way low on base and would be about a $25k/yr pay cut. She suggested it might be possible to get that up to $180k, which would have brought the target bonus up by $3k, so potentially $266k.

After private equity and bonus I'm currently at around $235k/yr and I really only work 25-35 hours/week on an east coast time schedule. The hours would have been mostly west coast, which would have impacted things like me coaching my daughter's soccer, taking the kids to swim classes, picking my daughter up from the school bus, etc. I decided the additional work, impact it would likely have on my family life, and that it would take me away from my professional affiliations/conferences for my specific sub-field, which I've kind of made a name for myself in (get invited to be a guest editor at a top academic journal, get invited to be symposium discussants at national conferences, get invited to do paid seminars at national conferences, etc.) made the extra $30k seem not worth it at all.

It was a pretty stressful and long experience to get offered on a team I was not really interested in working with and for not much of a pay raise, but hey, now I can say I got an offer from a FAANG :)

[Anon-E-Mouze]

I think people might find the details for my prior role more interesting than my current one:

Title: Senior Vice President, Government Affairs (reporting to Global Head of this function) for an S&P 500 company
Age:  52 (in 2016)
Experience: 25 years
Salary: US $300K base, plus typically a cash bonus of $50-80K and restricted stock (vesting 25% per year) of $50-80K
Education: undergrad + JD + specialized Master of Laws
Experience: 8 years at top-tier law firms (including several years as a non-equity partner); 6 years at financial sector regulatory agencies in several countries; 2 years at an international organization; 9 years at the company (helping see it through the global financial crisis); conversant (for work purposes) in two languages (plus English of course); no direct reports (but previously I'd managed a small, global team before transitioning to a specialist role)

This was a position that was not in the legal department, but it was "adjacent" to Legal and to Compliance, so compensation was influenced by the quasi-legal / quasi-compliance nature of the role (e.g. higher base, lower variable comp, variable comp tied to overall company success)

I make quite a bit less now but I'm having a lot of fun :)

[Hall11235]

I second the others in that this thread is both enlightening and sort of depressing.

Title: Installation and Technical Support Manager
Age: 28
Experience: 6 years
Salary: 81k +4% 401k match + $.56 per mile driven
Education: History and Education (what a tragic waste of 4 years of my life)

Basically, my job is to install equipment that Sales sells. This work is very feast or famine, so, some weeks are 55ish hours while others are a soft 20. I get paid salary, not hourly, so it works out. Thought, at this point, I would sell my soul to not interface with customers.

[MaybeBabyMustache]

@mizzourah2006 I would consider interviewing for some of the FAANGs just to see what you'd get.

The comp numbers would likely blow you away as I'd guess they are close to 2x your current compensation or higher for someone with that much experience in ML.

Check out https://levels.fyi/ as you can get a good feel for what you might expect, though I'd expect ML would be higher than the average software engineer that reports salaries there.

Thats good to hear. I'm not getting interviewed for straight ML roles. One is a Lead Data Scientist in product, which is a relatively new role within the company and the other is a quantitative UX research scientist. So, while I'd bet that a true machine learning engineer role at a FAANG would blow my current comp away, these are more data scientist type roles. I've found similar roles and info on levels.fyi and the variance is so large it's hard to tell, lol. Some are about at my comp and some are way higher.

But I do appreciate your thoughts as my professional contacts are more in the traditional I/O psychology space, so I don't have a lot of insights into the non-HR side of FAANGs and what I could expect.

Update on this.

Just turned down an offer from FB last week. It was for a remote work IC6 role:
Base: $165k
Target Bonus: $33k
$200k equity vesting quarterly over 4 years, so $50k/yr.

So ~ $248k total compensation. I did tell the recruiter that it was way low on base and would be about a $25k/yr pay cut. She suggested it might be possible to get that up to $180k, which would have brought the target bonus up by $3k, so potentially $266k.

After private equity and bonus I'm currently at around $235k/yr and I really only work 25-35 hours/week on an east coast time schedule. The hours would have been mostly west coast, which would have impacted things like me coaching my daughter's soccer, taking the kids to swim classes, picking my daughter up from the school bus, etc. I decided the additional work, impact it would likely have on my family life, and that it would take me away from my professional affiliations/conferences for my specific sub-field, which I've kind of made a name for myself in (get invited to be a guest editor at a top academic journal, get invited to be symposium discussants at national conferences, get invited to do paid seminars at national conferences, etc.) made the extra $30k seem not worth it at all.

It was a pretty stressful and long experience to get offered on a team I was not really interested in working with and for not much of a pay raise, but hey, now I can say I got an offer from a FAANG :)

@mizzourah2006 - I'm a little surprised to see it this low for an L6 role. And, sounds like you definitely made the right choice, given flexibility!

[mizzourah2006]

@mizzourah2006 I would consider interviewing for some of the FAANGs just to see what you'd get.

The comp numbers would likely blow you away as I'd guess they are close to 2x your current compensation or higher for someone with that much experience in ML.

Check out https://levels.fyi/ as you can get a good feel for what you might expect, though I'd expect ML would be higher than the average software engineer that reports salaries there.

Thats good to hear. I'm not getting interviewed for straight ML roles. One is a Lead Data Scientist in product, which is a relatively new role within the company and the other is a quantitative UX research scientist. So, while I'd bet that a true machine learning engineer role at a FAANG would blow my current comp away, these are more data scientist type roles. I've found similar roles and info on levels.fyi and the variance is so large it's hard to tell, lol. Some are about at my comp and some are way higher.

But I do appreciate your thoughts as my professional contacts are more in the traditional I/O psychology space, so I don't have a lot of insights into the non-HR side of FAANGs and what I could expect.

Update on this.

Just turned down an offer from FB last week. It was for a remote work IC6 role:
Base: $165k
Target Bonus: $33k
$200k equity vesting quarterly over 4 years, so $50k/yr.

So ~ $248k total compensation. I did tell the recruiter that it was way low on base and would be about a $25k/yr pay cut. She suggested it might be possible to get that up to $180k, which would have brought the target bonus up by $3k, so potentially $266k.

After private equity and bonus I'm currently at around $235k/yr and I really only work 25-35 hours/week on an east coast time schedule. The hours would have been mostly west coast, which would have impacted things like me coaching my daughter's soccer, taking the kids to swim classes, picking my daughter up from the school bus, etc. I decided the additional work, impact it would likely have on my family life, and that it would take me away from my professional affiliations/conferences for my specific sub-field, which I've kind of made a name for myself in (get invited to be a guest editor at a top academic journal, get invited to be symposium discussants at national conferences, get invited to do paid seminars at national conferences, etc.) made the extra $30k seem not worth it at all.

It was a pretty stressful and long experience to get offered on a team I was not really interested in working with and for not much of a pay raise, but hey, now I can say I got an offer from a FAANG :)

@mizzourah2006 - I'm a little surprised to see it this low for an L6 role. And, sounds like you definitely made the right choice, given flexibility!

Almost certainly the fact that I was remote. They asked for my address quite a few times. I think they have a COL calculator they use for adjustments and I live in a pretty inexpensive area of the country.

[doneby35]

@mizzourah2006 I would consider interviewing for some of the FAANGs just to see what you'd get.

The comp numbers would likely blow you away as I'd guess they are close to 2x your current compensation or higher for someone with that much experience in ML.

Check out https://levels.fyi/ as you can get a good feel for what you might expect, though I'd expect ML would be higher than the average software engineer that reports salaries there.

Thats good to hear. I'm not getting interviewed for straight ML roles. One is a Lead Data Scientist in product, which is a relatively new role within the company and the other is a quantitative UX research scientist. So, while I'd bet that a true machine learning engineer role at a FAANG would blow my current comp away, these are more data scientist type roles. I've found similar roles and info on levels.fyi and the variance is so large it's hard to tell, lol. Some are about at my comp and some are way higher.

But I do appreciate your thoughts as my professional contacts are more in the traditional I/O psychology space, so I don't have a lot of insights into the non-HR side of FAANGs and what I could expect.

Update on this.

Just turned down an offer from FB last week. It was for a remote work IC6 role:
Base: $165k
Target Bonus: $33k
$200k equity vesting quarterly over 4 years, so $50k/yr.

So ~ $248k total compensation. I did tell the recruiter that it was way low on base and would be about a $25k/yr pay cut. She suggested it might be possible to get that up to $180k, which would have brought the target bonus up by $3k, so potentially $266k.

After private equity and bonus I'm currently at around $235k/yr and I really only work 25-35 hours/week on an east coast time schedule. The hours would have been mostly west coast, which would have impacted things like me coaching my daughter's soccer, taking the kids to swim classes, picking my daughter up from the school bus, etc. I decided the additional work, impact it would likely have on my family life, and that it would take me away from my professional affiliations/conferences for my specific sub-field, which I've kind of made a name for myself in (get invited to be a guest editor at a top academic journal, get invited to be symposium discussants at national conferences, get invited to do paid seminars at national conferences, etc.) made the extra $30k seem not worth it at all.

It was a pretty stressful and long experience to get offered on a team I was not really interested in working with and for not much of a pay raise, but hey, now I can say I got an offer from a FAANG :)

@mizzourah2006 - I'm a little surprised to see it this low for an L6 role. And, sounds like you definitely made the right choice, given flexibility!

Almost certainly the fact that I was remote. They asked for my address quite a few times. I think they have a COL calculator they use for adjustments and I live in a pretty inexpensive area of the country.

Ex facebook employee here. Not the greatest place. You made the right choice.

[Johnny]

Age: 40
Location: VHCOL
Corporate Job: Strategy Leader for Fortune 500 company
Corporate Salary: $200k
Side Hustle: Video Editor for several famous YouTubers
Side Hustle Salary: $350k

I've optimized my corporate job enough that I'm usually working less than 30 hours a week. I do video editing for YouTubers weeknights after dinner or sometimes on the weekend.

Money has been great, but it's a lot of work juggling two full-time equivalent jobs.

[Alchemisst]

Age: 40
Location: VHCOL
Corporate Job: Strategy Leader for Fortune 500 company
Corporate Salary: $200k
Side Hustle: Video Editor for several famous YouTubers
Side Hustle Salary: $350k

I've optimized my corporate job enough that I'm usually working less than 30 hours a week. I do video editing for YouTubers weeknights after dinner or sometimes on the weekend.

Money has been great, but it's a lot of work juggling two full-time equivalent jobs.

Wow, how many hours does the side hustle take up?

[havregryn]

Age: 40
Location: VHCOL
Corporate Job: Strategy Leader for Fortune 500 company
Corporate Salary: $200k
Side Hustle: Video Editor for several famous YouTubers
Side Hustle Salary: $350k

I've optimized my corporate job enough that I'm usually working less than 30 hours a week. I do video editing for YouTubers weeknights after dinner or sometimes on the weekend.

Money has been great, but it's a lot of work juggling two full-time equivalent jobs.

Wow, how many hours does the side hustle take up?

And where and how did you gain the skills required? I am not even asking because I want a second job, I'm asking because my son wants me to edit his YouTube videos and I keep rolling my eyes but if there are six digit careers to be had out of that maybe I go and try to learn something, lol

[magus]

New job that I accepted, starting shortly, same city
VP in finance

Base: $275k
Annual LTI: $100k (vests over 4 years)
Annual Bonus: $85k
Initial grants: $600k (vests over 4 to 5 years)
PTO: 5 weeks annually
401k: 4% match

[valsecito]

Sector: Education
Base: 43k€ (net: 30k€)
Annual Bonus: 3k€
Age: mid-40's
Experience: 20 years
PTO: 15 weeks/year
Time: ~15 hours/week (2 day/wk)

[rocketpj]

2 jobs - one is employment, one is business ownership.  All in Canada.

Job 1. 
Sector - housing services (i.e. homeless shelters etc).
Title - Facility Operations Coordinator. 
Wage (not salaried) - ~$30/hr
Age - late 40s
Experience - too complex to describe.
PTO - 4 weeks/yr
Time commitment: 22.5 hrs/week (3x7.5 hr days).  Additional shifts available constantly, sometimes I take them (particularly OT shifts)
Non-monetary benefits - health care, extended health & dental, excellent pension etc.  Doing work that is very worth doing - important to me.  Steady wage that pays the mortgage when business income is tied up.

Job 2.
Sector.  Moving & Storage
Title.  Owner Operator
Wage.   Net for tax purposes very little.  Wealth increase has been ~$200-400k/yr, presumably not forever.
Experience.  Complex again
PTO.  N/A
Time.  Between 5 and 100 hours/month, varying.  In the last 3 years it has been closer to 5.

Key lesson - Find a good investment and dive in.

[JLee]

Title: Technical Manager (IT)
Salary: $97k + annual bonus
Experience: 3 years
Education: AA

Title: Director (IT)
Salary: $170k
Experience: 9 years
Education: AA

I would never have predicted this but I'll take it :)

[2Birds1Stone]

Awesome progress @JLee !!

[turketron]

Job Title: Operations Manager
Experience: 2 years in this role, 8 years total at same company
Age: 35
Salary:  $94k base, 10% bonus for 2020
Education: Bachelor's

Job Title: Senior Operations Manager
Experience: 2.5 years in this role, 8.5 years total at same company
Age: 35
Salary:  $115k base, 12% bonus for 2021
Education: Bachelor's

[Nickyd£g]

I'm a Project Co-ordinator/PA in a medium sized Scottish charity.

I make £25,150 per annum, with a 4% pension contribution from my employer, work 36.25 hours a week and get 28 days annual leave plus 4 public holidays. I like my job, love the people I work with. I'm debt and mortgage free, save and invest approximately 40% of my income and aiming to retire age 60 (currently 50).

0 side hussles. I actually feel like I have a great work/life balance, and get to do things I enjoy outside of work.

[mizzourah2006]

@mizzourah2006 I would consider interviewing for some of the FAANGs just to see what you'd get.

The comp numbers would likely blow you away as I'd guess they are close to 2x your current compensation or higher for someone with that much experience in ML.

Check out https://levels.fyi/ as you can get a good feel for what you might expect, though I'd expect ML would be higher than the average software engineer that reports salaries there.

Seconding ender's recommendation here. I'm an ML-focused data scientist who has worked at a couple of FAANG-level companies, and my comp has generally been in line with what levels.fyi reports for the software engineers at my same level.

It's definitely worth interviewing, and don't tell them your current comp or they may only offer a 15-20% raise. Look up negotiation tips, and if you feel totally backed into a corner to name a number, cite levels.fyi or other industry research that supports a very high number.

Thanks both. I actually made it to the final round for both roles. The recruiters seemed to imply it was uncommon to see that, so I guess that means my skillset is versatile :)

Now comes the hard part :) Two ~4 hour interviews, lol. It does seem like at least the product sense overlaps with both jobs. So at least part of the prep for both should be similar.

At the very least it's good practice to get back out into the competitive interviewing space. Haven't done it in a year since the Director of Data Science role I ended up turning down.

Congratulations on making it this far! And I agree with the recruiters; the vast majority of applicants get weeded out in the early phone screens; if they're spending the time of their data scientists and engineers on interviewing you then you are definitely a strong candidate. Good luck with your interviews!

I forgot about this. I ended up getting the job offer with Meta, but they had almost no flexibility in pay. They benchmarked to my zipcode. The best they said they could do was:

Base: $165k
Bonus: $33k
Equity: $200k paid out over 4 years

Total Comp: $248k.

They said if I was close to a bonus or leaving equity on the table they could also get me a one time sign on of ~$20k.

I ended up turning it down. It would have been a big base salary cut a small lift in bonus and a pretty big equity increase (although at this point it's down about ~35%). Total comp would have raised by about ~$15k. It's tough to say exactly because I have equity in my current company, but it's a small private SaaS, so I don't have great estimates on what my equity is worth.

So, the big pay seems to be specific to the VHCOL areas.

[Lunasol]

Title: Support Engineer
Salary: $72k
Experience: 12 years
Education: BS
PTO: Unlimited
Hours: 40
401K:25% match

My 72k might not seem like much but I got a huge raise cause I moved from a 3rd world country to the US.
So it's kinda hard to compare wages when you have lived in different countries. However my BIL agreed that this was a good start.
I wouldn't mind if anyone was willing to share some advice!

[OtherJen]

Title: Freelance medical/science editor and writer
Age: 40
Salary: varies, but ~$47,000 last year (up from ~$36,000 when I went full-time 5 years ago)
Experience: 5 years as a full-time freelancer, preceded by a 12-year career in biomedical research with several publications
Education: BS and PhD in different biomedical science disciplines (no debt for either; university paid me to do the PhD)
Location: LCOL in midwest USA

3.5 years later,

Title: Co-chief editor and head of team communications
Age: 43
Salary: $65-70K (depending on bonus)
Experience: 9 years as a full-time freelance, contract, and managing editor, preceded by a 12-year career in biomedical research with several publications
Education: BS and PhD in different biomedical science disciplines (no debt for either; university paid me to do the PhD)
Location: LCOL city in midwest USA, fully remote position with non-US employer
PTO: 28 days per year
Weekly hours: 37.5

I'm still a very low earner according to this thread, but the LCOL helps. My job is decent and sometimes quite fun, and my employers are very cool and fair.

[jps]

Title: Data Analyst
Age: 24
Salary: $56k
Experience: ~3 years
Education: B.A. in Economics

Title: Financial Reporting Analyst II
Age: 27
Salary: $68k + ~8% bonus
Experience: ~5 years
Education: B.A. in Economics. Will finish MBA (finance) in August.

Title: Financial Reporting Analyst II
Age: 27
Salary: $92k + ~9% bonus + 5% 401k
Experience: ~6 years
Education: B.A. in Economics. MBA in Finance

Got an offer at a bigger organization with worse life balance/more hours - accepted a counter offer for a 35% raise, fully remote, and every other Monday off. The other org had pension vesting after 5 years and a larger target bonus, and I had a terrible weekend trying to figure out if I wanted to take a counter offer. It came down to knowing that I have an excellent balance where I work, and lots of time off. I thought to myself, what is the entire point of FIRE and building up my investments and having a low-cost lifestyle if not to take advantage of it to do what I want? So I'll miss out on a few more $$ by accepting the counter offer, but I know that in the next 5 years this will be a healthier option.

[maisymouser]

Title: Data Analyst
Age: 24
Salary: $56k
Experience: ~3 years
Education: B.A. in Economics

Title: Financial Reporting Analyst II
Age: 27
Salary: $68k + ~8% bonus
Experience: ~5 years
Education: B.A. in Economics. Will finish MBA (finance) in August.

Title: Financial Reporting Analyst II
Age: 27
Salary: $92k + ~9% bonus + 5% 401k
Experience: ~6 years
Education: B.A. in Economics. MBA in Finance

Got an offer at a bigger organization with worse life balance/more hours - accepted a counter offer for a 35% raise, fully remote, and every other Monday off. The other org had pension vesting after 5 years and a larger target bonus, and I had a terrible weekend trying to figure out if I wanted to take a counter offer. It came down to knowing that I have an excellent balance where I work, and lots of time off. I thought to myself, what is the entire point of FIRE and building up my investments and having a low-cost lifestyle if not to take advantage of it to do what I want? So I'll miss out on a few more $$ by accepting the counter offer, but I know that in the next 5 years this will be a healthier option.

Good for you. Your salary & work life balance is plenty respectable & I hope you end up really happy with your decision.

[parkerk]

Producer for a game studio, 100k here in Canadaland

Prior to this I was doing freelance admin work and making about 35k - I was deliberately underemployed and the pay bump has been nice but kind of shocking.  Why wasn't I doing this sooner???  (I had reasons of course, but still!)

[Gronnie]

My Job Title: SSD Firmware Engineer
Experience: 1 year
Education: BS in Computer Science
Salary: 72k + ~10% bonus + $750 HSA contribution + 2.5% 401k match + whatever ESPP ends up being worth

Cost of living from this chart is 99.2/100, so very average cost of living area.

Started at 71k, got a raise a couple months in as a thanks for being awesome ;)

My manager says I will be getting a promotion in the next round (February) even though it typically takes 3-4 years. Should come with about a 10% raise.

The work environment is awesome. Really laid back and supportive. Take as much vacation as you want policy with no keeping track of work, sick, and vacation hours, etc. I would have to get a super big raise to consider working elsewhere.

DW Job Title: RN
Salary: ~70k + small pension + 2% 403b match
Experience: 5 years
Education: BS in Dietetics, BS in Nursing

She started out getting a degree in dietetics but that didn't work out due to requiring an internship to get certified and there not being enough to go around (something that if she had known me prior to starting the program she would have thoroughly looked into and chosen something different or studied harder). Went back after the Dietetics degree and did an accelerated BSN program and now is very happy.

Updating because I just got a promotion and a 15% raise!!!!

My Job Title: Senior SSD Firmware Engineer
Experience: 1.5 years
Education: BS in Computer Science
Salary: $83,000 + 10% bonus target + $750 HSA contribution + 3% 401k match + whatever ESPP ends up being worth
San Francisco Salary: $198,578 (my city is 101.4 on CoL Index)

Was a weird year. We bought out another big company, my project got cancelled and we were in flux for awhile, and then my manager quit abruptly and it took 6+ months to replace him.

Only got a 3.5% raise this year, but also was granted ~$17k in RSUs that vest over 4 years. Not sure what to think of the golden handcuffs, will have to cross that bridge if I ever think about leaving.

My Job Title: Senior SSD Firmware Engineer
Experience: 2.5 years
Education: BS in Computer Science
Salary: $~86,000 + 10% bonus target + $750 HSA contribution + 3% 401k match + ~$17k RSU + whatever ESPP ends up being worth

Just took a job with a new company (along with a nice promotion), and will be moving from a MCOL area with a COL score of 99.2 to a HCOL area with a COL score of 146.4 (MN to Orange County, scores from this chart).

I think I am doing pretty well, as the job is 3 promotions above entry level out of college position and I only have 3.5 years of experience. This job would normally take 8+ years of experience to reach. As a result I am pretty sure my salary is near the lower end of the band, so plenty of room for growth even if I don't get any further promotions for a few years.

My Job Title: Staff SSD Firmware Engineer
Experience: 3.5 years
Education: BS in Computer Science
Salary: $135000 + 10% bonus target + $4000 401k match + ~26k RSU + whatever ESPP ends up being worth (15% discount, two year lock, can put in 15% of salary) -- I would say financial compensation is ~$175,000 annually.

Just got a raise, which was nice as I was only here ~6 months when review time came and wasn't sure I would get one. Ended up getting 4% raise bringing my base salary to $140,400.

Our stock is also doing quite nicely and is up 46% since our ESPP lock so if it stays up for the next couple of years should be getting a nice return on ESPP shares.

My biggest regret about taking this job (going from flexible "unlimited" vacation policy to 3 weeks vacation policy) was also recently rectified as the new company has now also adopted flexible vacation.

A lot has happened since my last post. I moved back to MN in March of 2020 and took a job at my old employer again.

Experience: 5+ years at time of hire
Job title: Principal Engineer
Location: MCOL (Minnesota)
Comp: $115k base + 12% bonus target + 3% 401k match + RSUs.

Things in the org aren't going well and a lot of people are leaving.

I just got an offer for a full time remote position.
Experience: 6+ years at time of offer
Job title: Senior Software Engineer
Location: Remote from Minnesota
Comp: $155k base + 18% bonus target + 5% 401k match + RSUs (got $25k signing bonus + $110k initial RSU grant)

My biggest advice for a tech worker is to switch companies often. It's by far the best / fastest way to increase comp!


DW is now making $82,500/yr as an RN and working M-F day hours. She will be finishing up her Master's in Nursing in January and wants to find a job managing a nursing unit which should come with about a $20k/yr raise or so.

Just had my Annual Compensation Review (7 months at this new company)

Experience: 7 years
Job title: Senior Software Engineer
Location: Remote from Minnesota
Comp: $176k base + bonuses + Restricted Stock vests -> $255,000 comp target for this year

My wife just finished her MS in Nursing Leadership and took a job as the manager of an outpatient pediatrics unit. She's making ~$90k now.

[L2]

Job Title: Tax Manager - Regional Public Accounting
Age: 26
Experience: ~ 4 years
Salary: 78k, expecting an annual raise to ~82k in November.
Other: 3% 401k match, profit-sharing, but I just started here a few months ago so I have no idea what to expect.

I'm located in Ohio and started out my career at a much larger firm. Took a promotion and 22% raise to come to the new place. A ton more flexibility is also a plus. Its sort of unfortunate, but it seems the only way to really get market rate is to jump ship, at least in accounting.

Age: 27
Experience: ~ 5 years
Salary: $83,352

Age: 30
Experience: 8 years
Salary: 150k + somewhere between 5 and 10k annual bonus.

Prior salary (raises after previous update) was $94k. Made a lateral move in terms of title to a new firm. It would appear to be an employee's market.

Age: 30
Experience: 8 years
Salary: 200k + somewhere between 8-15k annual bonus.

Promotion as well. Just an incredible year.. Don't know how I pulled it off LOL.

[EchoStache]

Job Title: Echo tech(I do ultrasound exams of the heart); currently traveling, similar in nature to travel nurse but for my job.
Age: 50
Experience: 5 years
Salary: $130k but this varies based on contract rate and how much I want to work.  I will take 5 weeks(unpaid) vacation this year for this income.
Education: Associates degree, under $10k total cost.

Spouse: Medical Lab Technician(traveler)
Age: 48
Salary: $115,000 also varies based on contract...this will be her income this year with 36 weeks worked.
Experience: 7 years
Education: 2 year degree

We both work Monday-Friday 7:30 am-4 pm. No weekends, no holidays, ever.  No OT, no call.  40 hours/week, the end.

Important to note is that our federal tax liability on our roughly $250k gross income is under $5,000.

I think a good estimate is that our pay will likely vary between 200-$300k/year combined depending on how much we want to work and how well our contracts pay.  Until we are ready to FIRE we would like to work at least 44 weeks/year.

Annual savings rate goal is 40% of gross.  I am achieving 50-60% during months we are working but average for the year will be much lower due to unpaid time off.

[jrhampt]

Business Analytics Senior Advisor
100% remote, 15+ years experience
MS Applied Math
Base: 166k
Bonus: 18-36%
Total comp max: 225k

This is my first year at a higher bonus target so will see how much actually gets paid out.  Total comp before this year was usually just under 200k.

[fuzzy math]

Title: Surgical specialist (don't want to list my job title here due to it being a very small recognizable field)
Salary: $133k
Hours: Days plus on call
Experience: 12 years

Salary: $170k
Title: same thing
Hours: same
Experience: 18 yrs now

[yakamashii]

Title: Self-employed translator
Pay: $65-$70K after taxes and expenses
Education: BA
Age: 32
Experience: 6 years

6 years later, $80,000-$85,000 after taxes and expenses

[SpareChange]

Job Title: Echo tech(I do ultrasound exams of the heart); currently traveling, similar in nature to travel nurse but for my job.
Age: 50
Experience: 5 years
Salary: $130k but this varies based on contract rate and how much I want to work.  I will take 5 weeks(unpaid) vacation this year for this income.
Education: Associates degree, under $10k total cost.

Spouse: Medical Lab Technician(traveler)
Age: 48
Salary: $115,000 also varies based on contract...this will be her income this year with 36 weeks worked.
Experience: 7 years
Education: 2 year degree

We both work Monday-Friday 7:30 am-4 pm. No weekends, no holidays, ever.  No OT, no call.  40 hours/week, the end.

Important to note is that our federal tax liability on our roughly $250k gross income is under $5,000.

I think a good estimate is that our pay will likely vary between 200-$300k/year combined depending on how much we want to work and how well our contracts pay.  Until we are ready to FIRE we would like to work at least 44 weeks/year.

Annual savings rate goal is 40% of gross.  I am achieving 50-60% during months we are working but average for the year will be much lower due to unpaid time off.

Man, traveling opportunities have really juiced returns on healthcare careers recently. Good on y'all for taking advantage.

[JGS1980]

Job Title: Echo tech(I do ultrasound exams of the heart); currently traveling, similar in nature to travel nurse but for my job.
Age: 50
Experience: 5 years
Salary: $130k but this varies based on contract rate and how much I want to work.  I will take 5 weeks(unpaid) vacation this year for this income.
Education: Associates degree, under $10k total cost.

Spouse: Medical Lab Technician(traveler)
Age: 48
Salary: $115,000 also varies based on contract...this will be her income this year with 36 weeks worked.
Experience: 7 years
Education: 2 year degree

We both work Monday-Friday 7:30 am-4 pm. No weekends, no holidays, ever.  No OT, no call.  40 hours/week, the end.

Important to note is that our federal tax liability on our roughly $250k gross income is under $5,000.

I think a good estimate is that our pay will likely vary between 200-$300k/year combined depending on how much we want to work and how well our contracts pay.  Until we are ready to FIRE we would like to work at least 44 weeks/year.

Annual savings rate goal is 40% of gross.  I am achieving 50-60% during months we are working but average for the year will be much lower due to unpaid time off.

I see this as astoundingly excellent gamemanship!!! Two well paying gigs with reasonable schedules and low $$$ to enter that specialty. You two are MMM superstars. Compare this to a typical pediatrician with 11 years of postsecondary training, 200K in debt, and a 175K salary.

[Thoughtful Mule]

Job Title: Principal Engineer (Electric Power Generation)
Age: 39
Experience: 16 years
Salary: $117k +20K OT +10K bonus
Education: BS Mechanical Engineering, MS Industrial Engineering

I am currently in a technical role, but have been a pseudo-manager and relocated once. I used to be on the road 50% of the time.

[Gronnie]

Job Title: Echo tech(I do ultrasound exams of the heart); currently traveling, similar in nature to travel nurse but for my job.
Age: 50
Experience: 5 years
Salary: $130k but this varies based on contract rate and how much I want to work.  I will take 5 weeks(unpaid) vacation this year for this income.
Education: Associates degree, under $10k total cost.

Spouse: Medical Lab Technician(traveler)
Age: 48
Salary: $115,000 also varies based on contract...this will be her income this year with 36 weeks worked.
Experience: 7 years
Education: 2 year degree

We both work Monday-Friday 7:30 am-4 pm. No weekends, no holidays, ever.  No OT, no call.  40 hours/week, the end.

Important to note is that our federal tax liability on our roughly $250k gross income is under $5,000.

I think a good estimate is that our pay will likely vary between 200-$300k/year combined depending on how much we want to work and how well our contracts pay.  Until we are ready to FIRE we would like to work at least 44 weeks/year.

Annual savings rate goal is 40% of gross.  I am achieving 50-60% during months we are working but average for the year will be much lower due to unpaid time off.

Why is your tax liability so low?

[EchoStache]

Job Title: Echo tech(I do ultrasound exams of the heart); currently traveling, similar in nature to travel nurse but for my job.
Age: 50
Experience: 5 years
Salary: $130k but this varies based on contract rate and how much I want to work.  I will take 5 weeks(unpaid) vacation this year for this income.
Education: Associates degree, under $10k total cost.

Spouse: Medical Lab Technician(traveler)
Age: 48
Salary: $115,000 also varies based on contract...this will be her income this year with 36 weeks worked.
Experience: 7 years
Education: 2 year degree

We both work Monday-Friday 7:30 am-4 pm. No weekends, no holidays, ever.  No OT, no call.  40 hours/week, the end.

Important to note is that our federal tax liability on our roughly $250k gross income is under $5,000.

I think a good estimate is that our pay will likely vary between 200-$300k/year combined depending on how much we want to work and how well our contracts pay.  Until we are ready to FIRE we would like to work at least 44 weeks/year.

Annual savings rate goal is 40% of gross.  I am achieving 50-60% during months we are working but average for the year will be much lower due to unpaid time off.

Why is your tax liability so low?

About $90,000 of our annual income this year will be in the form of tax free lodging and meal stipends.  Our W-2 wages are therefore much lower, along with $60k of pre-tax retirement contributions.  We bought an EV so actually switched tIRA to Roth for the rest of this year(contributing monthly) and will have to do a Roth conversion as well in order to get our tax liability up to $7500 for the tax credit.