I have a couple of engineering degrees (chemical + nuclear) and about 3-4 years of miscellaneous job experience. Given how salaries above $100k are thrown around on this forum like they're not even worth commenting on, and it seems like everyone else in the 20s-STEM demographic is rolling in cash, maybe my current $55k a year is weaksauce.
The thing is, apparently I just have no idea how to get a job despite trying to learn how, since this $55k is a personal record. Even that came after 7 months of unemployed searching post-Masters degree, which itself I only decided to get after 1 year of searching post-Bachelors...and this is while every economist is screaming at the top of their lungs about a labor shortage. Or perhaps my understanding is just flawed, and the archetype about well-paid recent STEM grads doesn't reflect reality very well. Mustachians with 'tech salaries' somewhere around this demographic, how did you pull it off? What strategies work and which ones are wastes of time?
Even though this question is about making more money, I'm also asking because the difficulty of getting a job has a huge impact on confidence and inner peace--e.g. at the moment, I would not feel secure having FU money until it became FI money, because losing a job means losing another 1.5+ years of income before being able to find another.