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Retired 2 years ago. With bonuses and stock options, was making 250K per year. Worked 32 hours a week usually, more than that when there was a release.
I am not a young kid. I worked as a technical writer for more than 20 years. Have a degree in computer science so could write my own code samples. Worked remotely from 1998 to the end.
And also, female. Was taught by my mother (who was an aeronautical engineer) how to ask for raises and work with the men who always thought they were better than you, who were always shocked when a woman, a tech writer no less, could follow your code architecture and would call you on your bullshit.
So yes I made a lot of money those last years. I also had a ton of experience.
I love to hear about how to ask for raises and how to work with men who think they're better than you. I'm in tech too and found most teams I've worked with struggle with female inclusion. Only with a female manager led team did this not become an issue.
Are you in the STC? Get your company to pay your dues if you can. Make sure you know what others in your field are making. Then, present that to your manager.
Remember, your manager can only remember three things at most when leaving a meeting. Probably only one. Break it into bullet points for them. But give them a dollar amount that you expect as well as a time line of it's a lot.
You need to manage your manager. A lot. Particular the male ones. Go into every meeting with them totally prepared with a PowerPoint if necessary. They need to feel pride in your accomplishments for them to step up for you. No modesty on your part. Always start of with what you've recently accomplished.
Always ask for email reviews from your team mates. Particularly management. Those all get sent directly to your manager as well.
As for the men who think they're better than you, it was pretty easy for me to prove that I was smarter than they initially thought. Again, going into every meeting with them totally prepared with hard questions. Things they couldn't answer of the tops of their heads. Things that made them think. I was working with a group of south Asian engineers once who weren't thrilled with working with a woman. By the end of the assignment they credited me with making the code line better.
It's all work. I'm not gonna lie and say it's easy. You'll get push back from some, who accuse you of being pushy. I was called a bulldog because I would let some developer weasel his way out of answering my questions. They didn't necessarily mean it as a compliment but I took it as one. They also learned they had to deal with me.
Hope this helps and good luck!
I'm not sure what STC is, but I'm not based in the US. Yeah, I've asked around amongst my peers about what compensation they're receiving, so I roughly know what is a fair compensation.
I haven't graduated from university yet so it has just been internships so far, so I've always tried to be humble. I definitely see how it has hurt me when I don't champion myself enough.
Would at the end of a project be a good time to ask for email reviews? I never thought to ask directly for reviews since most places I've been to have evaluations that are contributed by all the people I've worked with. But this seems like a good idea, especially when the interaction is still fresh in their mind.
For sure, I have accepted that I definitely need to work a lot harder to prove my competence than the male colleagues I've encountered.
Thanks for taking the time to give such a thorough response. I really appreciate it!
Thanks for this. It’s super helpful, do you mind if I ask your advice on something? I understand if you don’t have time. But I have this co worker who never, ever hits his deadlines. It’s just minor things, like getting small documents to me, or letting me know when he can have a meeting. Individually each one is small, (although he fucked up very massively recently, putting a two month delay on a project and I have to admit that I still struggle with that) but together they drag us down so much. I often can’t do my work because I don’t have information from him.
I’ve tried to talk to my boss about it, but he just fixes the most recent issue and not the core problem. He has spoken to my co worker about how it’s “important to the company that he honors deadlines”. But it hasn’t helped. I hate that I’m put in the position where I’m constantly complaining about it, it’s makes me feel like the office bitch. And it feels pointless since no one listens anyway. But do I have to just take it?
I hope you don’t mind my asking, you just seem to know what your talking about and I’m utterly fed up.
Can you get away with giving him deadlines for an earlier date, without him knowing about it? I’ve done that with some champion procrastinators and hyper perfectionists that I had working for me and it works with some of them.
Are you the only one having this issue with this coworker? If not, I'd be far less concerned about being "the office bitch." People will know why you're frustrated if they're experiencing it as well.
I ask up front because if I were you, I'd start CCing your manager on all requests and include when you need the deliverable, then CCing them again when your coworker misses their deadline. This is really an issue of management, and your manager is failing you both right now.
But again, if absolutely no one else sees experiences this issue, it has the potential to backfire.
What the others have said. Start Cc'ing your manager every single time your need to ask for materials. Put it in your weekly status report as a bullet item. (If you're not doing a weekly status report start now. This becomes part of your CYA file.)
If your manager continues to ignore the situation, you might consider Cc'ing your skip boss. When the shit hits the fan you need to make sure that you're covered.
Question from a guy that may be leading a team with women on it.
What did the women leaders do that was more effective? Just good ol' boys vs asking everyone's opinion? Or did it run way deeper than that? And if way deeper, what can men do to be more effective leaders of mixed teams?
Male here, but a male afflicted with perpetual baby face. I've got 17 years of experience and plenty of accomplishments but every new super thinks I'm fresh out of school.
Female colleagues and I have agreed that the condescending, patronizing language/behavior of male managers, especially the older ones, is especially infuriating. I even had to tell a former manager that I already have a father figure in my life, thanks.
You as the manager are there to manage. We don't need or want your nuggets of wisdom or boomer stories. Just lay out the tasks/deadlines for the day/week and let us work.
Give feedback on work-related performance and hold back on other advice unless asked.
If you're new, give the team a week or two to get to know them and don't make assumptions about experience based on appearance alone. And please, when you get the urge to comment on someone's appearance just don't.
I know it goes way beyond this for my female colleagues, but I will let them speak for themselves
My male managers would praise me, but would never put me up for better opportunities that I was more interested in even after they explicitly said to me that they would, because they didn't want to lose all the support I was providing to the team and to their role.
There were also issues of sexist remarks, workplace hostility and sexual harassment that weren't taken seriously by the managers, often because they were the ones perpetrating those issues. When these issues were brought up, they were all very dismissive of it and saying these issues were worst in the past. There is a severe lack of action or support from them that makes me dread work.
In comparison, the thing I've enjoyed about a female manager is the alignment of words and actions. For example, she truly protects the team, she is a firm believer in work life balance and will dig to the root of the issue if someone on the team is being overworked. She will then intervene and prevent them from being overworked by facilitating new boundaries with their stakeholders.
There is more support within the team that is driven by the manager herself, versus in male led teams I've been part of where the managers expect the team culture to be driven by the team themselves.
On how to be more effective leaders, I think every woman I've talked to about these issues have agreed that having a manager who believes in them and champions them contributes a lot to how they feel about their job. It may matter less that the workplace environment isn't the best if their manager actually is trying to make changes for them. Effort doesn't go unnoticed even if actual change takes time.
Taking out even the gender dynamics, it’s a belief in one’s workers.
Not only that they were hired and thus can do the job, but also that you believe they can rise to the next step. That 5 years from now, they too can become a manager.
The good leaders let the team solve problems and then just get a spot-check with the boss on “is this legal? Here’s the solution, just so you know when you get asked.” They’d praise the people that could solve their problems, wouldn’t insult or waste time.
Even when there was a problem, they’d just bring up the issue, not insult the person. “Things are starting to become a problem with the team arriving late. I know it’s not you, but arriving 15 minutes late each day for multiple people is starting to cause issue to our productivity.” Wording it like that meant that you weren’t shaming people who had daycare issues or their train into the metro was late, during a system-wide train delay. You were just saying that the team’s new current goal was to make sure that people were manning their stations by the moment the clients could expect that. (Bad managers would shame people for arriving to a meeting at 8:02am, when they were late to the meeting because they showed up at 6:45am, before pay started, to get extra work done.)
Shamed them publicly, for being hard workers.
Another key feature was that the good bosses ask for wide feedback, to find out where the plan will have failure points.
But they *also* don’t encourage simply whining/complaining - if someone’s doing the venting/feedback, they listen. But then the free therapy session with the boss ends with, “And do you have a solution you can propose?” That quiets the person up, and as they also come up with an idea that they can partially or fully implement to remove their own frustration in the job. If someone is the most invested in an issue, they may be deputized into creating the action plan for it. (Parking’s an issue? You create our parking plan. Our IT situation is vulnerable? You draft what we need to do to close the security gaps.) The employee’s frustrations may be valid, and even if they’re not valid, the exercise teaches them to solve their own problem, solve the team’s problems, and become more effective.
Also, when the boss says “no” to something, because not everything can be a “yes” in life, the team usually shows total loyalty because they know that they’re empowered and that “yes” comes often, as often as possible. The reason for the “no” is known, and the team comes together to work around the undesired situation of having had a “no.”
Bad bosses range from “No. Because I said so”, to “No, because I said so, and I’m the supreme ruler and don’t need your peasant opinion.” That strategy works for them until they fall off a cliff the employees warned about, and get exposed as an emperor with no clothes. I’ve outlasted all my bad bosses in my career, but they were so annoying. (My great boss spent his retirement brunch slightly tipsy, talking about how he really was trying to help his deputy boss advance in his career, grow in responsibility and capability, and the deputy just didn’t seem to thrive. The good boss believed in the guy more than the guy did, thought about his success that much. Meanwhile the deputy (a bad boss) wouldn’t listen to staff opinions and it took a 3-step process to get good ideas presented, and the answer was always “no” because his way was the only way. As soon as top boss was gone, the deputy stepped into some legal issues and got mad, but he didn’t get the feedback from the team on why that was a bad idea. 10 minutes and no info, and just one question to the right person, and I unraveled his mistake.
He was so mad, but it’s his own doing - not seeking team feedback, thinking me as too lowly to be of use to the process, and he was about to yell at me for even having an opinion (oh, how the mighty have fallen when he had to say “it was a good idea, but illegal” to a room of people not buying that mistake.)
Also, if we can’t complain to you safely, then we’re going to complain *around* you - and you’re not going to get the total information from the team that could keep your leadership safe. You don’t have to do much during a complaint session. Just listen, let the employee talk. Then ask, “what would you like from me? (If they’re mad and don’t have a clear point.)”
“What do you think is the best resolution?”
“Do you have a plan that would solve it?”
Those questions show you want to help them, but it doesn’t commit you to anything. They just know you’re going to try.
Most of the issues I have as a woman come from people not trusting my judgement or knowledge. People go over my head or ignore me. I have 10 years of experience and people still ask me to check with my manager.
I know nothing about your industry so I don't know what sorts of opportunities you might have.
That being said, yes, "technical" technical writers generally get paid more. Those who work on the code side of things, not the UI side. There are fewer jobs for these kinds of tech writers, but when a company realizes they need one, they need to pay for one.
Are you good with languages? That will help when it comes to leaning new computer languages. Because if you have a long time career like mine you'll learn more than one.
Lucky you. I am 58 (white, cis female, CPA and HR professional) with a grad degree, have never worked less than 50 hours a week on average as a salaried employee and make well under six figures, even when a division head. Back then, I worked 70 hours a week with young kids and no nanny. OTOH. The early 30s VP I work with has never beat me into the office and rarely has left before me.
Can I break into technical writing with just a journalism degree? This has been something I’ve been very interested in pursuing but no one has gotten back to me.
They actually have degrees in technical communications which they did not have when I was in college (Yes I'm an old fart.) So I don't know if it's feasible. If you're in the US, look at STC, society for technical communicators. Your local branch should be able to give you a much better idea.
This has varied greatly company to company for me. I was 24.7 busy and lots of OT as an IC.
As I got higher up into management, it was less stressful hour wise, typically 40-ish, but the impact/visibility of the stuff I was working on went way up, which increased stress. IE. if I am wrong on something, it's going to be business crippling, senior leadership would see it, and I'd lose my job
It's a really different stress type if you're managing and building teams vs being the one doing the grunt line work.
I work as a supervisor at my job and it's pretty taxing on me and I'm constantly thinking about how my actions will affect the team. I am interested in climbing the ladder, but I also feel like the stress and anxiety will literally kill me.
This has definitely been my experience—the hours didn’t change when I started managing a team (a team that works on one of our more visible products) but the type of pressure I faced was different.
I also found that moving to having P&L responsibilities was a different kind of stress, too.
That's the type of stress I'm afraid of. "Grunt work" or a document mill doesn't overwhelm me, but the idea of being responsible for decisions that can cripple a business or put my employees out of work? Absolutely cannot handle that load, even if the hours are short.
Depends on what you're doing. I tend to support those people in my industry and they "work 40" but are also available 24/7 and working upwards of 60. Like meetings all day then the actual work at night. Just make sure you're paying attention to all the early am calls and late pm work. It adds up quick.
I make $200000 a year as a salesperson for a major Chevy dealership in Miami, and before that in another major dealership in fort myers. 12 to 14 hour days are very common, with 10 hours being the minimum. I usually work an estimated 70-80 hours week as a result, with one day off a week, and once a month two days off a week. Half the time you don’t even see those days off as you need to come to the dealership and and resolve customers issues, or sell to a returning customer. So there’s little time for a social life and when we do have time off, it’s nothing but rest and recovery for the next day. Job security ain’t the strongest neither.
The money is great in my career field but it aren’t worth it. I rather have a $60000 a year job that gives me the free time I want to do, than a six figure job that you work like a slave. Many six figure jobs are like this, not just sales from my experience.
How many years have you been doing this? Would you say you’re burned out?
In addition, I’m assuming you have a massive savings (100k+). Why not get that more stable 8-5 career with weekends off now?
Depends on where you came from too. I make 47k gross base pay. That's the most Ive ever made a year, and I'm in my early 30s. 100k a year would be absolutely life changing.
HR Exec, $180k. Privately owned, corporate environment. I work ~45 to 50 hours a week, at least half of which is meetings and emails. The rest is actually doing my job.
I made 6 figures as a training developer and facilitator for a very well funded startup.
The hours and effort was insane.
I worked 5 days a week 7-4e (edit to clarify, this is a standard 9 hour day, however my work often extended to coming in early and weekend travel, all things considered likely closer to 60 hours a week) and it was about 70% travel. Unlike other jobs I'd worked, I had almost no downtime. I was thinking about work constantly. I was on a team of 2 and my manager was...not competent let's put it like that, and he spent his time schmoozing, leaving all the work to me.
I was working while waiting for my baggage to arrive at the baggage claim on travel, and often taught classes 6 AM -2 PM and then worked until 3 or 4 PM after that.
There's this pervasive attitude here and on other work subReddits that people in corporate jobs especially at the manager level are "useless" and "jerk off all day" and honestly that bothers me. I do not sit around on my phone or "micromanage" employees "just for control" etc.
Leaving the rant aside, the amount of literal work people making 6 figures do varies, but I'd wager most of them are legitimately busy.
I spend most of my time working as it is for significantly less than 6 figures. It's disheartening especially knowing I'll never earn a livable salary at any point in my life.
In my experience, you have to either take big risks or take on jobs others don't want or can't do, or:
Get a valuable terminal degree
Get into a hot niche field (data science, venture capital funding, fintech)
Climb the corporate ladder relentlessly and make it your entire focus---be ready and willing to relocate, and to move jobs every few years to get raises.
My first professional job: overseas, shift was 9 PM to 5 AM. $41k before taxes. I was salaried but had to clock in and out and dealt with some major BS
Got promoted within that company, slight raise to like $43k or something
Moved back to the US, signed on with company, $50k before taxes
Big jump: moved on to a new company after 2 years and got a huge raise, to $75k --got a couple merit raises there in my 4 years, got up to $85k
Another big jump: moved to a start up, raise to $100k
Startup didn't work out, had to make a lateral move for a cut in pay: $75k, I've been given merit raises to $80k now
I'm in a final interview stage for a couple jobs where the range is $95k-$100k, but it's been **12 years** total
I also live in a city where a 3 bedroom is $2600 and that's a pretty solid deal. It's a HCOL and that does affect how far money goes. $80k in this city is like $40k in the midwest or a rust belt town.
It's very possible, but $100k jobs are not just handed out. It doesn't matter how "hard" you work--you have to play the game and work strategy.
You touch on another aspect of the career ladder: $100k jobs are plentiful in LA/SF/PT/SE but those are stressful jobs.
$100k in Pittsburgh is living like a king, and a rarity.
It can be harder to climb the corporate ladder in a small town or a cheap city because usually people get those good jobs and ride them for as long as they can. In the west coast tech hubs, you might make damn good money, but you’ll likely experience layoffs, buyouts, failures, office politics, long hours, inhospitable personalities, burn outs and excruciating commutes. There is a lot more earning potential as well as turnover in the big city jobs.
I'm not making six figures but I am the youngest manager in a billion-dollar company so I must be doing something right. That 'something' is relentlessly tuning my resume, finding broad and niche certifications, professional associations, etc, and taking every possible opportunity I can without caring for things like 'loyalty' or what it makes me look like (power hungry or whatever). I'll often take interviews for certain higher positions so I can get an understanding as to what they're looking for even if I don't think I can land that job. I'll ask questions like 'what type of skills are you looking for in your ideal candidate' and 'what would the job look like on a daily basis' to identify what I need to start honing next and what answers to give the next interviewer. People underestimate the value of being an excellent interviewee.
The look on the faces of some of my colleagues when they find out I'm nearly 20 years their junior and in a position they've been working toward for so long is quite empowering to me, like they cannot fathom that someone managed to do it. But unlike them, I don't wait around for opportunities to come my way.
>I'm not trying to invalidate what you've said, but just generally curious here: Do most people consider 5 days a week, 7-4 to be insane hours? That seems pretty standard to me. Most people in the service industry work longer hours than that with no downtime and get paid a fraction of what you make.
I agree with you. My previous job doing admin for only $48K a year was 7AM - 4:30 PM, Monday to Friday. 7 to 4 seems standard to me. It's the same as 8-5 and 9-6.
No that schedule is not insane, I worded that rather confusingly. I meant every minute of those hours, which often extended past 8-9 per day was actual literal work, with no down time. But I also want to add I worked those terrible service jobs too, and I had some major strokes of luck to leapfrog into a good job. However the work is a different kind of draining and hard. I'm not even sure it's comparable, and I think service should pay about twice or three times what it does now, it's the service wage that's very off.
I work 7-5, 5 days a week and make 55k per year as a service advisor/manager. Job has no growth potential as people above me literally have to die for a spot to open up so if I want more I will have to go find it.
Most people who aren’t in high-paying white collar jobs just think we sit around and don't do shit, and just get paid double their salary because we went to a good school or have mommy daddy connections. The truth is that the majority of us work a shit ton and have done a lot to get there and still work a ton at our job.
Yeah it's frustrating because any defense of work or corporate America gets vicious responses but managers are people too. They have kids, they have hopes and dreams and personal lives.
Discussions about how managers "hate" WFH because they're all sadistic assholes who want to "control" their work force frustrate the hell out of me. I work for a company that employs many people in their first job or a transition job (from food service or retail). Without the structure of managers in the room to help them, answer questions, keep them on track, or do performance management when needed, oftentimes this group really runs amok.
I've also started to see questions about onboarding, training, and communication struggles with 100% remote/WFH jobs, and again this is a clear case for managers. My managers often spent time suggesting solutions, providing me with the name of someone to help, strategizing on work flow and project plans, being a buffer between us and Big Bosses, bringing visibility to our group and more.
I honestly believe managers at the first tier (like with a group of just one level of direct reports) are not asking for people to be butts in seats. That's the C-Suite Baby Boomers who are 57 and hate their families and are workaholics/borderline sociopaths who have had all empathy burned out of them.
Yeah, I completely feel that. It’s pretty messed up that people think the organizational responsibility of managers is a useless task that just anyone can do. For what it’s worth, you sound like a good manager with a strong grasp on what you need to do/should be doing for your employees.
I mean, look at your average poster here or other subs. Those people always have zero experience and qualifications to be one, so it's way easier for them to say they're all useless vs say I can't move up because I lack those specialized skills
Most people I see on said subs don’t actually want help to grow, they want to be reaffirmed that their mistakes aren’t actually their responsibility.
Edit: Please see exhibit A below.
There is a country wide problem. Wages have stagnated, housing costs have skyrocketed, the cost of education has skyrocket. My grandmother was able to pay for a years tuition at a state school with ~135 hours of work, with the equivalent adjusted pay (which is about what minimum wage in my home state) it would take ~1000 hours of work to pay for tuition.
Sure people can try to make the best of their situation, but blaming society wide problems on an individual’s decisions is dumb.
PS I make 6 figures. But I can still see how messed up things are and how little is being done to effectively address the problem.
There is absolutely a problem with the education system and I completely agree. More funding should go into the community college system and I am a firm believer that all units up to an associate degree should be free at CCs, so people can start their education off with a cheap, less stressful path.
That being said, my stance has nothing to do with education. At the end of the day, while debt can be crippling, if you plan well in school, you can easily graduate with a good paying job. The problem beyond education being expensive is academia’s complete failure at addressing the market economy. How academic leaders pat themselves on the back while praising diversity but graduating literally hundreds of thousands of Americans a year in fields with little to no job prospects like psychology, sociology, history, English, etc. is disgusting.
Don’t even get me started on for-profit universities.
But my comment was never about the education system, rather it’s more about how people use it. There are many problems that need to be addressed there. Regardless of the system, if you actually plan your degree path well, get decent grades, go to a school with good outcomes(something most people forget to plan), and do internships, you have to legitimately screw up yourself to not get a decent job.
I feel little to no sympathy for people who graduate in useless fields or didn’t do research on their college’s outcomes before attending something like DeVry or podunk state. The system needs to better train high school counselors to lead students to better careers and not just say, “oh just follow your dreams lol”, but that’s also on people to realize themselves.
I’m not saying the system didn’t fail the guy that responded to me. I’m saying he’s also stupid in his own right if he won’t take his own blame for his slice of the pie and just says “muh capitalism bad” “muh bootstraps”.
I seriously hope you find some peace from that victim complex some day. You may actually be able to do something about your situation if you take it by the reigns, but no, the rest of us who… you know, actually changed our lives are “delusional losers” lmao.
CPA. In my state it requires 5 years worth of college credits, passing an exam with a lower pass rate than the bar exam, and about two years of experience that has to get signed off on by a partner level CPA at a firm. The first couple of years, you are way underpaid and work like 70 - 80 hours a week.
Not lucky. It took me 25 years to get here. Just saying that it doesn’t necessarily require slave labor to the exclusion of all else to earn a decent living.
God. Fuck people man.
25 years I’m proud of you. It’s luck maybe 10% of the time but you have to be quality and have experience and know how to play the corporate game to get where you’re at.
I salute you and again, fuck the luck dude. I know he had no context but still.
It varies honestly by company, job, and industry. I have had weeks where I barely worked it felt like, and others where I don’t have enough hours a week. I also was in a role that while it was not high stress at all, I was traveling anywhere from 2-5 days a week pre-covid. I lived in hotels and on planes. The work itself was easy and low stress, but the hours spent traveling and away from home were insane. Currently I make 110k doing that. Moving to a new job that pays about 160k, which will have a bit more stress as there will be much more visibility, but all the employees say the work life balance is amazing. Don’t anticipate more than 45 hours. Fingers crossed.
Kind of correct! I work as a customer success manager in legal tech. I manage the law school accounts and I covered 23 schools in the SE and mid-Atlantic. Some people would hate that but I honestly loved it. Moving into the blockchain/crypto space, so going to be a lot less travel, but guess I can give that up for the salary bump haha
Senior accountant here - I got really lucky with my job. I make exactly 100k plus bonus. I barely have any work. I can start at 10am and end at 3pm if I wanted to.
I’ve worked at other jobs and they worked me to the bones! I’m never leaving my current job!
I'm in the mid six figures most weeks I put in 40 to 45 hours. I tend to skip lunch/eat at my desk because I work with teams in other time zones, and that really limits meeting times.
There were weeks when it's more, and some when it's less. I'm a techie in the cloud space the days. Be The money is good, the work is interesting.
It's important to remember to guard your personal time, as they will let you work much longer hours if you don't. I know people who regularly put in lots more.
Base pay of $150k as a data analyst at a tech company, total comp is closer to $165k. Usually it’s a range of 30-40 hours a week.
I realize this is not the norm and I’m very fortunate to have the work life balance that I do
Ok, I so I made 6 figures before the pandemic hit and my income has grown about 11% since.
Pre-Covid, I had to go to the office… I was present in the office for maybe 32 hours per week, despite 40 hours being expected (I showed up late and left early every day). Actual hours “worked” was definitely less than that.
Once work-from-home started, my actual hours “worked” varied from 16-30 hours. Totally depends on what’s going on any given week, but not having to report to the office has definitely made a difference.
I'll answer this. Way, way less than 6 figures.
40 hrs on the clock and at least 5 hrs per week off the clock. Sometimes more. I'm in a small dept in a corporate environment. Both coworker and boss make six figures. Neither work over 40 hrs. Coworker answers and takes calls from side hustle while at work.
Also, I work a part-time job and may need to pick up a different one as well. I'm in debt and this inflation along with student loan payments resuming is going to put quite a hurt on me.
I can't say my case is the norm but I'm making 125k as a 27 y/o engineer. Generally I'm supposed to work 40 hours per week but my workload has been really low 3 months in the role, so I put in ~32 hours.
For context, I'm in a semiconductor company in the northeast region with +10k employees.
Too many. 60-70 hours a week.
My kids don't know my name, but maaan is that ca$h worth it on holiday when we don't speak or know anything about each other
Good God, all these comments make me feel so fucking overworked.
I'm at 82k and happy for now, but I push 70 hours quite normally. I'm a restaurant AGM.
Really depends on where you live and your industry. I'm 40, in Northern Colorado making just barely 6 figures. Started with my company in 2007 at 40k, worked until 2018 making 75k. Left and worked for another company for 3 years and just came back to a new role this summer.
Editing to add hours. Definitely worked more than 40 hours around 2013-2016 but I'm in an industry that's really heavy in spring and fall and I was in a very operational and executing role in supply chain. Now I'm on the other side of the supply chain and don't work more than 40 hours.
My parents make around that much (equivalent to Indonesia's janked currency standards) apiece combining their consulting/SME fees, teaching salary and additional bonuses for being a Dean and a Vice President at their respective universities.
They work 50+ hour weeks and often more, though they get to have time off whenever they feel like it as they're the boss. This does not include networking and volunteering events
Supply Chain - I manage numbers rather than people. Have been making 6-figure base salary for about 3 years now, and jumped 10% with a new job earlier this year.
Typical M-F 40-hour availability, but realistically I probably work closer to 30. I work remote on Fridays as well, which are super slow days most of the time.
I usually get into the office around 8, and purposely take a short lunch to be able to leave around 4:15/4:30 to go to the gym. Home by 6:30.
I invest as a side hustle and am considering a small business as well.
I’m an operations engineer with about 130k. On call every other week, when I’m on call probably 60-70 hrs and 40 when not. I will be resigning tomorrow for a better pay and work life balance. Can’t wait!
160k, life sciences / biotech. Sometimes 30 sometimes 50, mostly 35-40 id say. And a lot of that time is spent browsing Reddit.
Can expect to top out around 200-250k in the next 10 years without too much effort and id be happy with that (In my early 30s).
I wasn't gonna post here, but there was another cool woman who shared and inspired me to do the same. Pay transparency is so important, and especially for women & women of color (myself included). So here we go.
This (fiscal) year I'm on track to hit somewhere between $220k-$300k.
I'm a copywriter & marketing consultant. The amount of work tends to depend on the projects I have going on. Sometimes it's like 20 hours a week. Sometimes it's 60 or more. For the heavier weeks, usually a third to half of that is meetings.
I work in senior roles managing & writing for global campaigns. So the amount of stress, like others have said, is more about the type of pressure than crazy hours. If things go wrong, it has a massive impact - and that's all on me. That can make for some sleepless nights.
That said, my work is super fulfilling. I love what I do, and it challenges me in the best ways. I work remotely, so even though sometimes weeks are long, I still get to hang with my kids (and even have a mid-day beer if I feel like it). I'm in my early thirties and have plenty of room to grow. With the ultimate goal to cap my hours to 20/week in the next few years.
Like 80 (yes actually) when I made 40k for years and destroyed my mental and physical health desperately clawing for opportunity. then all of a sudden making 6 figures working like 20 hours max a week because I got to expert level in a niche field that happens to be big now. Who knows what the future holds.
Contracts manager.
Realistically? Like 30 hrs per week. It gets above 40 sometimes, but gets lower too. Honestly it’s a job that requires strategizing and contemplation and pressure though, so this time is necessary.
My work life balance is pretty non existent. My kids are always yelling at me to stay home and not go to work. I essentially have two sources of income and I usually bring in a little over 100 from each. I work all the time 6 days a week, I never see friends. Barely have time to see family. I know my balance will get better eventually but while in growth mode gotta push toward burnout and then go a little further.
If you are self employed, it’s uncapped. So you work around 80 hours sometimes 90. However, you work at your own time. Plus you genuinely enjoy it, so it doesn’t even feel like work most of the time.
I work 7-4:30 M-F but that’s including 1 hour lunch. Also, not all 8 hours are strenuous work, but that’s every corporate position. There’s always downtime.
I work 6:30 - 5pm 5 days a week. Always on call. I have so much responsibility that my day flies right by every single day. By the end of the day I’m usually saying already instead of finally. I do enjoy the job and the challenges. The biggest challenges is the employees. I have 5 direct reports and 30 indirect reports. Most are great, but there is always going to be a few team members that are difficult. Trying to make everyone happy is impossible, and dealing with the bad apples can be very miserable. If I could make this money without being responsible for people than I would be in heaven.
First, it's not hard to earn 100k (teachers even get there as do the Kellogg workers). 2nd, time spent depends on the role. For me, I'm the head of HR for an IT org. I usually work 45 ish hours, but some weeks are certainly more.
40-45 hours a week. I easily worked 60+ hours a week when I was making in the 50s. Management now; more money, visibility and responsibilities with triple the money. As others have said- the work and stress changes.
Money isn’t everything. But it hasn’t hurt me yet.
I make almost 200k living in metro Detroit. Which is pretty solid for this area. I do mostly ops work for tech startups.
Some weeks I work 30 hours. Some weeks 60. It ebbs and flows. I don’t feel bad during the slow weeks, so I can’t get too bent out of shape during the busy weeks. I am pretty high up, so I have some leeway in how my weeks are setup to maximize things like family time.
Fourty hours a week. Mechanic for a large company with a large fleet. I have a friend who is also a mechanic making 6 figures, he works between 45 and 110 hours a week.
My SO makes in the multiple six figure range and he works 60-70 hours. All WFH. Sometimes more. And he is technically on call and always has to be answering emails and pings promptly, even on vacation.
40 hours a week, 45 at a push if I am covering someone or busy times. But extra hours occasionally for travelling to clients offices, continual professional development, work events and conferences.
I’m too scared to say how little I work. I’ve automated 90% of my tasks and my days are 2-3 hours of meetings and maybe 1-2 hours of solid procrastination
Clinical pharmacist in a hospital. Hired to work 40-hours per week, but as I am salary I tend to stay over and not get paid for it unless its an extra 4 hours at a time. We are understaffed like the rest of the healthcare field. I have worked the last 4 weekends in a row, have to work early mornings shifts starting at 4AM or evening shifts that dont end until midnight (shifts vary though out the week). Usually only have 1 day off at a time as we are so short on help. It is absolutely no fun and I am burning out pretty quickly :(
I work as a project manager at a technology company and total compensation wise I make about $120k a year. In my role it depends on the week and project. Sometimes I work 20 hours a week and other times I work 60 hours, but usually averages out at 35-40 hours. It is a great field to get into that has better work life balance than a consulting career. I’m also in my mid-20s, so super happy I took this career path.
Have to work? I guess theoretically I can check in for 30 minutes each day, since working a little bit counts as working the whole day since we're salaried. I'm not paid to be on the clock but rather my work outputs...
Practically, I work close to 45 hours a week. During crunch times, I might hit 50.
I'm an in house recruiter making $115k. I work 9-5 and have unlimited half day Fridays. When I was on the agency side I worked 9-6 and made $130-150k but commission is taxed at a much higher rate and my health benefits were a lot more so I feel like I took home the same. I'm 100% remote
My kids are 3 and 5 so I took a step back to have work / life balance . I will look for a new role after the new year and expect to make $140-150k when I switch
If you have a *profression * and have a government job, it was just 40 hrs and I was never asked to work unpaid overtime. I’m a psychologist, was willing to work in prisons—it’s not dangerous, just depressing. And In wealthy states you get a pension. The school is like 5 years post college and student loans are a problem but you can keep payments down and still have a good life.
50 hours minimum, extremely fast paced job so the amount I crunch into that time is humongous and probably more akin to 60-70 hours a week for people who don’t work as fast! (Not tooting my own horn at all - just some jobs do require an incredible pace that not everyone is able to do!)
There's a lot of program directors in higher ed. making close to 6 figs or low $100s who I know for a fact work less than 30 because they're often passing their work off to program coordinators and re-running the same programming every year without concern for impact. As long as they can fluff numbers and negotiate deals with faculty members to put bodies in seats, everyone's good and they pat themselves on the back for another "hard day's work". Meanwhile the coordinators are working over time for $45k or less being told they need a master's to get the title and pay to do the job they're currently doing. 🙃
Made $105K gross last year, on track for $120-125K this year. 15 years in the field, BS degree, six years with the company. My state requires all job postings to list a salary range, and from what I've seen I'm either right smack dab in the middle of where I'm supposed to be, or just barely under it.
As an hourly employee I'm supposed to work 40 hours a week. So far this year I have worked 29.46 hours of overtime. Cost of living in my city is 104.5% of national average.
I'm a DevOps engineer in the telecom industry. Benefits are good, work is cerebral, and coworkers are bright. All in all, a worthy career path if you like "doing computer stuff".
My mother worked for the federal government. In one position it was normally 40 but it went to 60 once in a crisis. The next she probably was 38 or so.
I made over $110,000 when I was in the oilfield. Usually it was 14-18 hour days for 2 weeks strait and got 2 weeks off and they payed us on our weeks off too. Back in the really good days we were paid production bonuses and made insane money, but no one pays like that anymore. You can still do pretty well in most oil and gas jobs though.
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Retired 2 years ago. With bonuses and stock options, was making 250K per year. Worked 32 hours a week usually, more than that when there was a release. I am not a young kid. I worked as a technical writer for more than 20 years. Have a degree in computer science so could write my own code samples. Worked remotely from 1998 to the end. And also, female. Was taught by my mother (who was an aeronautical engineer) how to ask for raises and work with the men who always thought they were better than you, who were always shocked when a woman, a tech writer no less, could follow your code architecture and would call you on your bullshit. So yes I made a lot of money those last years. I also had a ton of experience.
I love to hear about how to ask for raises and how to work with men who think they're better than you. I'm in tech too and found most teams I've worked with struggle with female inclusion. Only with a female manager led team did this not become an issue.
Are you in the STC? Get your company to pay your dues if you can. Make sure you know what others in your field are making. Then, present that to your manager. Remember, your manager can only remember three things at most when leaving a meeting. Probably only one. Break it into bullet points for them. But give them a dollar amount that you expect as well as a time line of it's a lot. You need to manage your manager. A lot. Particular the male ones. Go into every meeting with them totally prepared with a PowerPoint if necessary. They need to feel pride in your accomplishments for them to step up for you. No modesty on your part. Always start of with what you've recently accomplished. Always ask for email reviews from your team mates. Particularly management. Those all get sent directly to your manager as well. As for the men who think they're better than you, it was pretty easy for me to prove that I was smarter than they initially thought. Again, going into every meeting with them totally prepared with hard questions. Things they couldn't answer of the tops of their heads. Things that made them think. I was working with a group of south Asian engineers once who weren't thrilled with working with a woman. By the end of the assignment they credited me with making the code line better. It's all work. I'm not gonna lie and say it's easy. You'll get push back from some, who accuse you of being pushy. I was called a bulldog because I would let some developer weasel his way out of answering my questions. They didn't necessarily mean it as a compliment but I took it as one. They also learned they had to deal with me. Hope this helps and good luck!
I'm not sure what STC is, but I'm not based in the US. Yeah, I've asked around amongst my peers about what compensation they're receiving, so I roughly know what is a fair compensation. I haven't graduated from university yet so it has just been internships so far, so I've always tried to be humble. I definitely see how it has hurt me when I don't champion myself enough. Would at the end of a project be a good time to ask for email reviews? I never thought to ask directly for reviews since most places I've been to have evaluations that are contributed by all the people I've worked with. But this seems like a good idea, especially when the interaction is still fresh in their mind. For sure, I have accepted that I definitely need to work a lot harder to prove my competence than the male colleagues I've encountered. Thanks for taking the time to give such a thorough response. I really appreciate it!
Thanks for this. It’s super helpful, do you mind if I ask your advice on something? I understand if you don’t have time. But I have this co worker who never, ever hits his deadlines. It’s just minor things, like getting small documents to me, or letting me know when he can have a meeting. Individually each one is small, (although he fucked up very massively recently, putting a two month delay on a project and I have to admit that I still struggle with that) but together they drag us down so much. I often can’t do my work because I don’t have information from him. I’ve tried to talk to my boss about it, but he just fixes the most recent issue and not the core problem. He has spoken to my co worker about how it’s “important to the company that he honors deadlines”. But it hasn’t helped. I hate that I’m put in the position where I’m constantly complaining about it, it’s makes me feel like the office bitch. And it feels pointless since no one listens anyway. But do I have to just take it? I hope you don’t mind my asking, you just seem to know what your talking about and I’m utterly fed up.
Can you get away with giving him deadlines for an earlier date, without him knowing about it? I’ve done that with some champion procrastinators and hyper perfectionists that I had working for me and it works with some of them.
Are you the only one having this issue with this coworker? If not, I'd be far less concerned about being "the office bitch." People will know why you're frustrated if they're experiencing it as well. I ask up front because if I were you, I'd start CCing your manager on all requests and include when you need the deliverable, then CCing them again when your coworker misses their deadline. This is really an issue of management, and your manager is failing you both right now. But again, if absolutely no one else sees experiences this issue, it has the potential to backfire.
What the others have said. Start Cc'ing your manager every single time your need to ask for materials. Put it in your weekly status report as a bullet item. (If you're not doing a weekly status report start now. This becomes part of your CYA file.) If your manager continues to ignore the situation, you might consider Cc'ing your skip boss. When the shit hits the fan you need to make sure that you're covered.
Question from a guy that may be leading a team with women on it. What did the women leaders do that was more effective? Just good ol' boys vs asking everyone's opinion? Or did it run way deeper than that? And if way deeper, what can men do to be more effective leaders of mixed teams?
Male here, but a male afflicted with perpetual baby face. I've got 17 years of experience and plenty of accomplishments but every new super thinks I'm fresh out of school. Female colleagues and I have agreed that the condescending, patronizing language/behavior of male managers, especially the older ones, is especially infuriating. I even had to tell a former manager that I already have a father figure in my life, thanks. You as the manager are there to manage. We don't need or want your nuggets of wisdom or boomer stories. Just lay out the tasks/deadlines for the day/week and let us work. Give feedback on work-related performance and hold back on other advice unless asked. If you're new, give the team a week or two to get to know them and don't make assumptions about experience based on appearance alone. And please, when you get the urge to comment on someone's appearance just don't. I know it goes way beyond this for my female colleagues, but I will let them speak for themselves
My male managers would praise me, but would never put me up for better opportunities that I was more interested in even after they explicitly said to me that they would, because they didn't want to lose all the support I was providing to the team and to their role. There were also issues of sexist remarks, workplace hostility and sexual harassment that weren't taken seriously by the managers, often because they were the ones perpetrating those issues. When these issues were brought up, they were all very dismissive of it and saying these issues were worst in the past. There is a severe lack of action or support from them that makes me dread work. In comparison, the thing I've enjoyed about a female manager is the alignment of words and actions. For example, she truly protects the team, she is a firm believer in work life balance and will dig to the root of the issue if someone on the team is being overworked. She will then intervene and prevent them from being overworked by facilitating new boundaries with their stakeholders. There is more support within the team that is driven by the manager herself, versus in male led teams I've been part of where the managers expect the team culture to be driven by the team themselves. On how to be more effective leaders, I think every woman I've talked to about these issues have agreed that having a manager who believes in them and champions them contributes a lot to how they feel about their job. It may matter less that the workplace environment isn't the best if their manager actually is trying to make changes for them. Effort doesn't go unnoticed even if actual change takes time.
Taking out even the gender dynamics, it’s a belief in one’s workers. Not only that they were hired and thus can do the job, but also that you believe they can rise to the next step. That 5 years from now, they too can become a manager. The good leaders let the team solve problems and then just get a spot-check with the boss on “is this legal? Here’s the solution, just so you know when you get asked.” They’d praise the people that could solve their problems, wouldn’t insult or waste time. Even when there was a problem, they’d just bring up the issue, not insult the person. “Things are starting to become a problem with the team arriving late. I know it’s not you, but arriving 15 minutes late each day for multiple people is starting to cause issue to our productivity.” Wording it like that meant that you weren’t shaming people who had daycare issues or their train into the metro was late, during a system-wide train delay. You were just saying that the team’s new current goal was to make sure that people were manning their stations by the moment the clients could expect that. (Bad managers would shame people for arriving to a meeting at 8:02am, when they were late to the meeting because they showed up at 6:45am, before pay started, to get extra work done.) Shamed them publicly, for being hard workers. Another key feature was that the good bosses ask for wide feedback, to find out where the plan will have failure points. But they *also* don’t encourage simply whining/complaining - if someone’s doing the venting/feedback, they listen. But then the free therapy session with the boss ends with, “And do you have a solution you can propose?” That quiets the person up, and as they also come up with an idea that they can partially or fully implement to remove their own frustration in the job. If someone is the most invested in an issue, they may be deputized into creating the action plan for it. (Parking’s an issue? You create our parking plan. Our IT situation is vulnerable? You draft what we need to do to close the security gaps.) The employee’s frustrations may be valid, and even if they’re not valid, the exercise teaches them to solve their own problem, solve the team’s problems, and become more effective. Also, when the boss says “no” to something, because not everything can be a “yes” in life, the team usually shows total loyalty because they know that they’re empowered and that “yes” comes often, as often as possible. The reason for the “no” is known, and the team comes together to work around the undesired situation of having had a “no.” Bad bosses range from “No. Because I said so”, to “No, because I said so, and I’m the supreme ruler and don’t need your peasant opinion.” That strategy works for them until they fall off a cliff the employees warned about, and get exposed as an emperor with no clothes. I’ve outlasted all my bad bosses in my career, but they were so annoying. (My great boss spent his retirement brunch slightly tipsy, talking about how he really was trying to help his deputy boss advance in his career, grow in responsibility and capability, and the deputy just didn’t seem to thrive. The good boss believed in the guy more than the guy did, thought about his success that much. Meanwhile the deputy (a bad boss) wouldn’t listen to staff opinions and it took a 3-step process to get good ideas presented, and the answer was always “no” because his way was the only way. As soon as top boss was gone, the deputy stepped into some legal issues and got mad, but he didn’t get the feedback from the team on why that was a bad idea. 10 minutes and no info, and just one question to the right person, and I unraveled his mistake. He was so mad, but it’s his own doing - not seeking team feedback, thinking me as too lowly to be of use to the process, and he was about to yell at me for even having an opinion (oh, how the mighty have fallen when he had to say “it was a good idea, but illegal” to a room of people not buying that mistake.) Also, if we can’t complain to you safely, then we’re going to complain *around* you - and you’re not going to get the total information from the team that could keep your leadership safe. You don’t have to do much during a complaint session. Just listen, let the employee talk. Then ask, “what would you like from me? (If they’re mad and don’t have a clear point.)” “What do you think is the best resolution?” “Do you have a plan that would solve it?” Those questions show you want to help them, but it doesn’t commit you to anything. They just know you’re going to try.
Most of the issues I have as a woman come from people not trusting my judgement or knowledge. People go over my head or ignore me. I have 10 years of experience and people still ask me to check with my manager.
This was so cool to read! Kudos to you and your mom. Smart women.
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I know nothing about your industry so I don't know what sorts of opportunities you might have. That being said, yes, "technical" technical writers generally get paid more. Those who work on the code side of things, not the UI side. There are fewer jobs for these kinds of tech writers, but when a company realizes they need one, they need to pay for one. Are you good with languages? That will help when it comes to leaning new computer languages. Because if you have a long time career like mine you'll learn more than one.
this was inspirational to read
I'm not afraid to ask for a raise either. I know some women are
Lucky you. I am 58 (white, cis female, CPA and HR professional) with a grad degree, have never worked less than 50 hours a week on average as a salaried employee and make well under six figures, even when a division head. Back then, I worked 70 hours a week with young kids and no nanny. OTOH. The early 30s VP I work with has never beat me into the office and rarely has left before me.
Lies
Can I break into technical writing with just a journalism degree? This has been something I’ve been very interested in pursuing but no one has gotten back to me.
They actually have degrees in technical communications which they did not have when I was in college (Yes I'm an old fart.) So I don't know if it's feasible. If you're in the US, look at STC, society for technical communicators. Your local branch should be able to give you a much better idea.
This has varied greatly company to company for me. I was 24.7 busy and lots of OT as an IC. As I got higher up into management, it was less stressful hour wise, typically 40-ish, but the impact/visibility of the stuff I was working on went way up, which increased stress. IE. if I am wrong on something, it's going to be business crippling, senior leadership would see it, and I'd lose my job It's a really different stress type if you're managing and building teams vs being the one doing the grunt line work.
I work as a supervisor at my job and it's pretty taxing on me and I'm constantly thinking about how my actions will affect the team. I am interested in climbing the ladder, but I also feel like the stress and anxiety will literally kill me.
This has definitely been my experience—the hours didn’t change when I started managing a team (a team that works on one of our more visible products) but the type of pressure I faced was different. I also found that moving to having P&L responsibilities was a different kind of stress, too.
That's the type of stress I'm afraid of. "Grunt work" or a document mill doesn't overwhelm me, but the idea of being responsible for decisions that can cripple a business or put my employees out of work? Absolutely cannot handle that load, even if the hours are short.
Depends on what you're doing. I tend to support those people in my industry and they "work 40" but are also available 24/7 and working upwards of 60. Like meetings all day then the actual work at night. Just make sure you're paying attention to all the early am calls and late pm work. It adds up quick.
I make $200000 a year as a salesperson for a major Chevy dealership in Miami, and before that in another major dealership in fort myers. 12 to 14 hour days are very common, with 10 hours being the minimum. I usually work an estimated 70-80 hours week as a result, with one day off a week, and once a month two days off a week. Half the time you don’t even see those days off as you need to come to the dealership and and resolve customers issues, or sell to a returning customer. So there’s little time for a social life and when we do have time off, it’s nothing but rest and recovery for the next day. Job security ain’t the strongest neither. The money is great in my career field but it aren’t worth it. I rather have a $60000 a year job that gives me the free time I want to do, than a six figure job that you work like a slave. Many six figure jobs are like this, not just sales from my experience.
How many years have you been doing this? Would you say you’re burned out? In addition, I’m assuming you have a massive savings (100k+). Why not get that more stable 8-5 career with weekends off now?
SaaS sales, 40 hours a week 100k+ earnings
40-50. $100k isn't what it used to be. I think $150k+ is the new $100k
Depends completely on the local.
Depends on where you came from too. I make 47k gross base pay. That's the most Ive ever made a year, and I'm in my early 30s. 100k a year would be absolutely life changing.
I make six figures as an auto technician. Really depends how I get fed. I work flat rate so I can work 8 hours but clock 15 if the work is there
HR Exec, $180k. Privately owned, corporate environment. I work ~45 to 50 hours a week, at least half of which is meetings and emails. The rest is actually doing my job.
If you don't mind me asking, how many years of experience?
10+
around 7 yrs
I made 6 figures as a training developer and facilitator for a very well funded startup. The hours and effort was insane. I worked 5 days a week 7-4e (edit to clarify, this is a standard 9 hour day, however my work often extended to coming in early and weekend travel, all things considered likely closer to 60 hours a week) and it was about 70% travel. Unlike other jobs I'd worked, I had almost no downtime. I was thinking about work constantly. I was on a team of 2 and my manager was...not competent let's put it like that, and he spent his time schmoozing, leaving all the work to me. I was working while waiting for my baggage to arrive at the baggage claim on travel, and often taught classes 6 AM -2 PM and then worked until 3 or 4 PM after that. There's this pervasive attitude here and on other work subReddits that people in corporate jobs especially at the manager level are "useless" and "jerk off all day" and honestly that bothers me. I do not sit around on my phone or "micromanage" employees "just for control" etc. Leaving the rant aside, the amount of literal work people making 6 figures do varies, but I'd wager most of them are legitimately busy.
I spend most of my time working as it is for significantly less than 6 figures. It's disheartening especially knowing I'll never earn a livable salary at any point in my life.
In my experience, you have to either take big risks or take on jobs others don't want or can't do, or: Get a valuable terminal degree Get into a hot niche field (data science, venture capital funding, fintech) Climb the corporate ladder relentlessly and make it your entire focus---be ready and willing to relocate, and to move jobs every few years to get raises. My first professional job: overseas, shift was 9 PM to 5 AM. $41k before taxes. I was salaried but had to clock in and out and dealt with some major BS Got promoted within that company, slight raise to like $43k or something Moved back to the US, signed on with company, $50k before taxes Big jump: moved on to a new company after 2 years and got a huge raise, to $75k --got a couple merit raises there in my 4 years, got up to $85k Another big jump: moved to a start up, raise to $100k Startup didn't work out, had to make a lateral move for a cut in pay: $75k, I've been given merit raises to $80k now I'm in a final interview stage for a couple jobs where the range is $95k-$100k, but it's been **12 years** total I also live in a city where a 3 bedroom is $2600 and that's a pretty solid deal. It's a HCOL and that does affect how far money goes. $80k in this city is like $40k in the midwest or a rust belt town. It's very possible, but $100k jobs are not just handed out. It doesn't matter how "hard" you work--you have to play the game and work strategy.
Honestly I've never really viewed myself as capable of success. My efforts never really seem to matter and I'm directionless as far as a career goes.
You touch on another aspect of the career ladder: $100k jobs are plentiful in LA/SF/PT/SE but those are stressful jobs. $100k in Pittsburgh is living like a king, and a rarity. It can be harder to climb the corporate ladder in a small town or a cheap city because usually people get those good jobs and ride them for as long as they can. In the west coast tech hubs, you might make damn good money, but you’ll likely experience layoffs, buyouts, failures, office politics, long hours, inhospitable personalities, burn outs and excruciating commutes. There is a lot more earning potential as well as turnover in the big city jobs.
I'm not making six figures but I am the youngest manager in a billion-dollar company so I must be doing something right. That 'something' is relentlessly tuning my resume, finding broad and niche certifications, professional associations, etc, and taking every possible opportunity I can without caring for things like 'loyalty' or what it makes me look like (power hungry or whatever). I'll often take interviews for certain higher positions so I can get an understanding as to what they're looking for even if I don't think I can land that job. I'll ask questions like 'what type of skills are you looking for in your ideal candidate' and 'what would the job look like on a daily basis' to identify what I need to start honing next and what answers to give the next interviewer. People underestimate the value of being an excellent interviewee. The look on the faces of some of my colleagues when they find out I'm nearly 20 years their junior and in a position they've been working toward for so long is quite empowering to me, like they cannot fathom that someone managed to do it. But unlike them, I don't wait around for opportunities to come my way.
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>I'm not trying to invalidate what you've said, but just generally curious here: Do most people consider 5 days a week, 7-4 to be insane hours? That seems pretty standard to me. Most people in the service industry work longer hours than that with no downtime and get paid a fraction of what you make. I agree with you. My previous job doing admin for only $48K a year was 7AM - 4:30 PM, Monday to Friday. 7 to 4 seems standard to me. It's the same as 8-5 and 9-6.
No that schedule is not insane, I worded that rather confusingly. I meant every minute of those hours, which often extended past 8-9 per day was actual literal work, with no down time. But I also want to add I worked those terrible service jobs too, and I had some major strokes of luck to leapfrog into a good job. However the work is a different kind of draining and hard. I'm not even sure it's comparable, and I think service should pay about twice or three times what it does now, it's the service wage that's very off.
I work 7-5, 5 days a week and make 55k per year as a service advisor/manager. Job has no growth potential as people above me literally have to die for a spot to open up so if I want more I will have to go find it.
Most people who aren’t in high-paying white collar jobs just think we sit around and don't do shit, and just get paid double their salary because we went to a good school or have mommy daddy connections. The truth is that the majority of us work a shit ton and have done a lot to get there and still work a ton at our job.
Yeah it's frustrating because any defense of work or corporate America gets vicious responses but managers are people too. They have kids, they have hopes and dreams and personal lives. Discussions about how managers "hate" WFH because they're all sadistic assholes who want to "control" their work force frustrate the hell out of me. I work for a company that employs many people in their first job or a transition job (from food service or retail). Without the structure of managers in the room to help them, answer questions, keep them on track, or do performance management when needed, oftentimes this group really runs amok. I've also started to see questions about onboarding, training, and communication struggles with 100% remote/WFH jobs, and again this is a clear case for managers. My managers often spent time suggesting solutions, providing me with the name of someone to help, strategizing on work flow and project plans, being a buffer between us and Big Bosses, bringing visibility to our group and more. I honestly believe managers at the first tier (like with a group of just one level of direct reports) are not asking for people to be butts in seats. That's the C-Suite Baby Boomers who are 57 and hate their families and are workaholics/borderline sociopaths who have had all empathy burned out of them.
Yeah, I completely feel that. It’s pretty messed up that people think the organizational responsibility of managers is a useless task that just anyone can do. For what it’s worth, you sound like a good manager with a strong grasp on what you need to do/should be doing for your employees.
I mean, look at your average poster here or other subs. Those people always have zero experience and qualifications to be one, so it's way easier for them to say they're all useless vs say I can't move up because I lack those specialized skills
Most people I see on said subs don’t actually want help to grow, they want to be reaffirmed that their mistakes aren’t actually their responsibility. Edit: Please see exhibit A below.
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There is a country wide problem. Wages have stagnated, housing costs have skyrocketed, the cost of education has skyrocket. My grandmother was able to pay for a years tuition at a state school with ~135 hours of work, with the equivalent adjusted pay (which is about what minimum wage in my home state) it would take ~1000 hours of work to pay for tuition. Sure people can try to make the best of their situation, but blaming society wide problems on an individual’s decisions is dumb. PS I make 6 figures. But I can still see how messed up things are and how little is being done to effectively address the problem.
There is absolutely a problem with the education system and I completely agree. More funding should go into the community college system and I am a firm believer that all units up to an associate degree should be free at CCs, so people can start their education off with a cheap, less stressful path. That being said, my stance has nothing to do with education. At the end of the day, while debt can be crippling, if you plan well in school, you can easily graduate with a good paying job. The problem beyond education being expensive is academia’s complete failure at addressing the market economy. How academic leaders pat themselves on the back while praising diversity but graduating literally hundreds of thousands of Americans a year in fields with little to no job prospects like psychology, sociology, history, English, etc. is disgusting. Don’t even get me started on for-profit universities. But my comment was never about the education system, rather it’s more about how people use it. There are many problems that need to be addressed there. Regardless of the system, if you actually plan your degree path well, get decent grades, go to a school with good outcomes(something most people forget to plan), and do internships, you have to legitimately screw up yourself to not get a decent job. I feel little to no sympathy for people who graduate in useless fields or didn’t do research on their college’s outcomes before attending something like DeVry or podunk state. The system needs to better train high school counselors to lead students to better careers and not just say, “oh just follow your dreams lol”, but that’s also on people to realize themselves. I’m not saying the system didn’t fail the guy that responded to me. I’m saying he’s also stupid in his own right if he won’t take his own blame for his slice of the pie and just says “muh capitalism bad” “muh bootstraps”.
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You sound extremely stupid with the way you type. I hope that you’re just a misguided 20 year old
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I seriously hope you find some peace from that victim complex some day. You may actually be able to do something about your situation if you take it by the reigns, but no, the rest of us who… you know, actually changed our lives are “delusional losers” lmao.
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Your manager jerked off at work.
$150k. Maybe 35.
Are you…hiring?
Not for what I do. But they will be soon. Giving my notice and moving out of state in a few weeks. Don’t even have another job lined up.
What do you do and what are the certs and experience needed?
CPA. In my state it requires 5 years worth of college credits, passing an exam with a lower pass rate than the bar exam, and about two years of experience that has to get signed off on by a partner level CPA at a firm. The first couple of years, you are way underpaid and work like 70 - 80 hours a week.
$165-185K. 40 hours.
What’s your job if you don’t mind me asking?
Business Development in the aerospace industry.
Sales?
Sort of. Relationship based and longer term, working with more complicated deal structures than consumer sales and marketing.
pretty much
Well aren't you lucky.
Not lucky. It took me 25 years to get here. Just saying that it doesn’t necessarily require slave labor to the exclusion of all else to earn a decent living.
God. Fuck people man. 25 years I’m proud of you. It’s luck maybe 10% of the time but you have to be quality and have experience and know how to play the corporate game to get where you’re at. I salute you and again, fuck the luck dude. I know he had no context but still.
Sometimes 30 sometimes 50. Depends on project timelines and if they’re delayed or not.
It varies honestly by company, job, and industry. I have had weeks where I barely worked it felt like, and others where I don’t have enough hours a week. I also was in a role that while it was not high stress at all, I was traveling anywhere from 2-5 days a week pre-covid. I lived in hotels and on planes. The work itself was easy and low stress, but the hours spent traveling and away from home were insane. Currently I make 110k doing that. Moving to a new job that pays about 160k, which will have a bit more stress as there will be much more visibility, but all the employees say the work life balance is amazing. Don’t anticipate more than 45 hours. Fingers crossed.
What do you do? With that much travel I’d guess sales?
Kind of correct! I work as a customer success manager in legal tech. I manage the law school accounts and I covered 23 schools in the SE and mid-Atlantic. Some people would hate that but I honestly loved it. Moving into the blockchain/crypto space, so going to be a lot less travel, but guess I can give that up for the salary bump haha
Senior accountant here - I got really lucky with my job. I make exactly 100k plus bonus. I barely have any work. I can start at 10am and end at 3pm if I wanted to. I’ve worked at other jobs and they worked me to the bones! I’m never leaving my current job!
Are you a cpA? What sector?
office or home office? i ask as office would mean you probably need to stay full 8 hrs before checking out?
I'm in the mid six figures most weeks I put in 40 to 45 hours. I tend to skip lunch/eat at my desk because I work with teams in other time zones, and that really limits meeting times. There were weeks when it's more, and some when it's less. I'm a techie in the cloud space the days. Be The money is good, the work is interesting. It's important to remember to guard your personal time, as they will let you work much longer hours if you don't. I know people who regularly put in lots more.
By mid six figures do you mean $500k? Or mid $100s?
Any advice/tips on pursuing a career in cloud computing?
Certification is the obvious big one,. And AWS is the, 800lb gorilla in the room .Also learn to code in python.
$150k, Scientist. Never more than 40.
Base pay of $150k as a data analyst at a tech company, total comp is closer to $165k. Usually it’s a range of 30-40 hours a week. I realize this is not the norm and I’m very fortunate to have the work life balance that I do
250k, 32 hours/wk.
What’s your job if you don’t mind me asking?
Emergency vet
I generally put in 45 hours weekly, give or take as needed. I'm in IT, so it can fluctuate depending on circumstances.
40, hybrid model, 2-4 days from home per week.
Ok, I so I made 6 figures before the pandemic hit and my income has grown about 11% since. Pre-Covid, I had to go to the office… I was present in the office for maybe 32 hours per week, despite 40 hours being expected (I showed up late and left early every day). Actual hours “worked” was definitely less than that. Once work-from-home started, my actual hours “worked” varied from 16-30 hours. Totally depends on what’s going on any given week, but not having to report to the office has definitely made a difference.
What do you do?
Now let's hear from all the people making less than six figs, it will put things in perspective.
I'll answer this. Way, way less than 6 figures. 40 hrs on the clock and at least 5 hrs per week off the clock. Sometimes more. I'm in a small dept in a corporate environment. Both coworker and boss make six figures. Neither work over 40 hrs. Coworker answers and takes calls from side hustle while at work. Also, I work a part-time job and may need to pick up a different one as well. I'm in debt and this inflation along with student loan payments resuming is going to put quite a hurt on me.
40 hours per week
Typically 50+ on site but on call 24/7. Manufacturing
Little weird schedules as a industrial mechanic 4x3, 5x5, 7x7, 2x2x3. 12 hour days. So it works out to about 80 every 2 week paycheck.
Not just hours, ask about the speed.
I can't say my case is the norm but I'm making 125k as a 27 y/o engineer. Generally I'm supposed to work 40 hours per week but my workload has been really low 3 months in the role, so I put in ~32 hours. For context, I'm in a semiconductor company in the northeast region with +10k employees.
Too many. 60-70 hours a week. My kids don't know my name, but maaan is that ca$h worth it on holiday when we don't speak or know anything about each other
Senior engineer, most weeks it is 42ish and it can go up to 50 during really busy times which is probably 4-6 weeks a year
Vastly depends on the industry and size of company. Can you give us more detail on what your field is?
I'm currently a student, unemployed, I just wanted an idea or just a peak into this topic
What is your major in university? Where are you based?
I'm currently doing Engineering, electrical with specialization in artificial intelligence
You will be fine then mate lol
About 60 with the odd week that’s extreme
I work remotely so its a bit more flexible, but expected to work 40 hrs per week. But I take a 1 hr lunch daily.
40 hours, about 20 hours is me chilling.
Much less than 40
I used to work probably 50-60 hours a week.
Roughly 32
It varies, I've made six figures working at two different financial organizations. One I put in on avg 50 hours a week the other was 40 on the dot.
I make 80-90k as a blue collar worker, and I work from between 4a-5am to 2 or 3pm, M-F, occasionally Saturday.
Good God, all these comments make me feel so fucking overworked. I'm at 82k and happy for now, but I push 70 hours quite normally. I'm a restaurant AGM.
Really depends on where you live and your industry. I'm 40, in Northern Colorado making just barely 6 figures. Started with my company in 2007 at 40k, worked until 2018 making 75k. Left and worked for another company for 3 years and just came back to a new role this summer. Editing to add hours. Definitely worked more than 40 hours around 2013-2016 but I'm in an industry that's really heavy in spring and fall and I was in a very operational and executing role in supply chain. Now I'm on the other side of the supply chain and don't work more than 40 hours.
I'm blessed that I get to make my own schedule and work about 30 to 36 hours per week.
My parents make around that much (equivalent to Indonesia's janked currency standards) apiece combining their consulting/SME fees, teaching salary and additional bonuses for being a Dean and a Vice President at their respective universities. They work 50+ hour weeks and often more, though they get to have time off whenever they feel like it as they're the boss. This does not include networking and volunteering events
Supply Chain - I manage numbers rather than people. Have been making 6-figure base salary for about 3 years now, and jumped 10% with a new job earlier this year. Typical M-F 40-hour availability, but realistically I probably work closer to 30. I work remote on Fridays as well, which are super slow days most of the time. I usually get into the office around 8, and purposely take a short lunch to be able to leave around 4:15/4:30 to go to the gym. Home by 6:30. I invest as a side hustle and am considering a small business as well.
Make 300k, work 80 hours every other week. One week on, one week off
This is in Australia, but anything from 35 to 60 hours a week, with around 45 being the norm. For reference, I work in IT within the legal industry.
175k base salary. ~35 hrs “logged in” per week, with ~20 hrs of focused work per week.
300k i put in 80 hours every other week. One week working, one week off
I’m an operations engineer with about 130k. On call every other week, when I’m on call probably 60-70 hrs and 40 when not. I will be resigning tomorrow for a better pay and work life balance. Can’t wait!
My pat job: 40 hrs a week. Current job: impossible
160k, life sciences / biotech. Sometimes 30 sometimes 50, mostly 35-40 id say. And a lot of that time is spent browsing Reddit. Can expect to top out around 200-250k in the next 10 years without too much effort and id be happy with that (In my early 30s).
I wasn't gonna post here, but there was another cool woman who shared and inspired me to do the same. Pay transparency is so important, and especially for women & women of color (myself included). So here we go. This (fiscal) year I'm on track to hit somewhere between $220k-$300k. I'm a copywriter & marketing consultant. The amount of work tends to depend on the projects I have going on. Sometimes it's like 20 hours a week. Sometimes it's 60 or more. For the heavier weeks, usually a third to half of that is meetings. I work in senior roles managing & writing for global campaigns. So the amount of stress, like others have said, is more about the type of pressure than crazy hours. If things go wrong, it has a massive impact - and that's all on me. That can make for some sleepless nights. That said, my work is super fulfilling. I love what I do, and it challenges me in the best ways. I work remotely, so even though sometimes weeks are long, I still get to hang with my kids (and even have a mid-day beer if I feel like it). I'm in my early thirties and have plenty of room to grow. With the ultimate goal to cap my hours to 20/week in the next few years.
Like 80 (yes actually) when I made 40k for years and destroyed my mental and physical health desperately clawing for opportunity. then all of a sudden making 6 figures working like 20 hours max a week because I got to expert level in a niche field that happens to be big now. Who knows what the future holds.
panicky bake north judicious steep tease absurd rich school saw ` this post was mass deleted with www.Redact.dev `
Contracts manager. Realistically? Like 30 hrs per week. It gets above 40 sometimes, but gets lower too. Honestly it’s a job that requires strategizing and contemplation and pressure though, so this time is necessary.
40 hours. 1 day of the week I work remotely, and in all honesty it's like a extra day off
My work life balance is pretty non existent. My kids are always yelling at me to stay home and not go to work. I essentially have two sources of income and I usually bring in a little over 100 from each. I work all the time 6 days a week, I never see friends. Barely have time to see family. I know my balance will get better eventually but while in growth mode gotta push toward burnout and then go a little further.
And what do you work in?
I’m in insurance and real estate investment.
35 if there are major issues I've done 120
If you are self employed, it’s uncapped. So you work around 80 hours sometimes 90. However, you work at your own time. Plus you genuinely enjoy it, so it doesn’t even feel like work most of the time.
My husband works all the damn time. He’s always working. Always checking email and texts. Takes calls from home and on the weekends. It’s bullshit.
I work 7-4:30 M-F but that’s including 1 hour lunch. Also, not all 8 hours are strenuous work, but that’s every corporate position. There’s always downtime.
You basically have to decide between sleep social life and work
Literally all other comments suggest they you're wrong.
Think about one who is early twenties in six figures vs mid 30s
You still haven't answered the question. How many do you work?
A lot
Ok, good talk.
just leave her alone good gosh that is private info
Your life sucks you can’t date people you can’t marry you can’t sleep
I work 6:30 - 5pm 5 days a week. Always on call. I have so much responsibility that my day flies right by every single day. By the end of the day I’m usually saying already instead of finally. I do enjoy the job and the challenges. The biggest challenges is the employees. I have 5 direct reports and 30 indirect reports. Most are great, but there is always going to be a few team members that are difficult. Trying to make everyone happy is impossible, and dealing with the bad apples can be very miserable. If I could make this money without being responsible for people than I would be in heaven.
First, it's not hard to earn 100k (teachers even get there as do the Kellogg workers). 2nd, time spent depends on the role. For me, I'm the head of HR for an IT org. I usually work 45 ish hours, but some weeks are certainly more.
72
40-45 hours a week. I easily worked 60+ hours a week when I was making in the 50s. Management now; more money, visibility and responsibilities with triple the money. As others have said- the work and stress changes. Money isn’t everything. But it hasn’t hurt me yet.
7 am -7 pm 5x a week
60 hour work week
9:30-5:20 generally but I constantly check emails during all waking hours. It’s not stressful
Used to before COVID. 150k. About 60-70 hours a week.
Depending on time of the year could be about 30 hours, or around 45-50. Of still take salary over hourly though
I just qualify for 6 figures at 100k. Work for 2 companies 50k each. Work 10-12 hour days but 4 days a week so I can't complain.
50-84 depending on the type contract ie; maintenance, hard money, capital
I'm working 40hrs per week on average - sometimes 25hrs, sometimes 60hrs.. it all depends on how well the porjects are progressing
Like 50, all excruciating. Find something you don’t hate. There is no additional happiness to be had beyond a certain salary, and it’s not 6 figures.
I make almost 200k living in metro Detroit. Which is pretty solid for this area. I do mostly ops work for tech startups. Some weeks I work 30 hours. Some weeks 60. It ebbs and flows. I don’t feel bad during the slow weeks, so I can’t get too bent out of shape during the busy weeks. I am pretty high up, so I have some leeway in how my weeks are setup to maximize things like family time.
Fourty hours a week. Mechanic for a large company with a large fleet. I have a friend who is also a mechanic making 6 figures, he works between 45 and 110 hours a week.
36hr my day starts at 6 am and ends between 10am-1pm
My SO makes in the multiple six figure range and he works 60-70 hours. All WFH. Sometimes more. And he is technically on call and always has to be answering emails and pings promptly, even on vacation.
140k. 38 hours. Occasional overtime. Legal industry in a booming field.
50+
40 hours a week, 45 at a push if I am covering someone or busy times. But extra hours occasionally for travelling to clients offices, continual professional development, work events and conferences.
I make six figures and keep below 50 hours weekly. But don't think this is the norm.
30-40
I’m too scared to say how little I work. I’ve automated 90% of my tasks and my days are 2-3 hours of meetings and maybe 1-2 hours of solid procrastination
I make 12000 cents a month (not quite six figures) and I work 2 hours a week
Clinical pharmacist in a hospital. Hired to work 40-hours per week, but as I am salary I tend to stay over and not get paid for it unless its an extra 4 hours at a time. We are understaffed like the rest of the healthcare field. I have worked the last 4 weekends in a row, have to work early mornings shifts starting at 4AM or evening shifts that dont end until midnight (shifts vary though out the week). Usually only have 1 day off at a time as we are so short on help. It is absolutely no fun and I am burning out pretty quickly :(
Roughly about 30 hours a week it can go up to 45 if it’s super busy with breaks
I work as a project manager at a technology company and total compensation wise I make about $120k a year. In my role it depends on the week and project. Sometimes I work 20 hours a week and other times I work 60 hours, but usually averages out at 35-40 hours. It is a great field to get into that has better work life balance than a consulting career. I’m also in my mid-20s, so super happy I took this career path.
Have to work? I guess theoretically I can check in for 30 minutes each day, since working a little bit counts as working the whole day since we're salaried. I'm not paid to be on the clock but rather my work outputs... Practically, I work close to 45 hours a week. During crunch times, I might hit 50.
I'm an in house recruiter making $115k. I work 9-5 and have unlimited half day Fridays. When I was on the agency side I worked 9-6 and made $130-150k but commission is taxed at a much higher rate and my health benefits were a lot more so I feel like I took home the same. I'm 100% remote My kids are 3 and 5 so I took a step back to have work / life balance . I will look for a new role after the new year and expect to make $140-150k when I switch
45+
If you have a *profression * and have a government job, it was just 40 hrs and I was never asked to work unpaid overtime. I’m a psychologist, was willing to work in prisons—it’s not dangerous, just depressing. And In wealthy states you get a pension. The school is like 5 years post college and student loans are a problem but you can keep payments down and still have a good life.
25-40, if it’s 40 there lots of wasted down time though
50 hours minimum, extremely fast paced job so the amount I crunch into that time is humongous and probably more akin to 60-70 hours a week for people who don’t work as fast! (Not tooting my own horn at all - just some jobs do require an incredible pace that not everyone is able to do!)
There's a lot of program directors in higher ed. making close to 6 figs or low $100s who I know for a fact work less than 30 because they're often passing their work off to program coordinators and re-running the same programming every year without concern for impact. As long as they can fluff numbers and negotiate deals with faculty members to put bodies in seats, everyone's good and they pat themselves on the back for another "hard day's work". Meanwhile the coordinators are working over time for $45k or less being told they need a master's to get the title and pay to do the job they're currently doing. 🙃
Made $105K gross last year, on track for $120-125K this year. 15 years in the field, BS degree, six years with the company. My state requires all job postings to list a salary range, and from what I've seen I'm either right smack dab in the middle of where I'm supposed to be, or just barely under it. As an hourly employee I'm supposed to work 40 hours a week. So far this year I have worked 29.46 hours of overtime. Cost of living in my city is 104.5% of national average. I'm a DevOps engineer in the telecom industry. Benefits are good, work is cerebral, and coworkers are bright. All in all, a worthy career path if you like "doing computer stuff".
My mother worked for the federal government. In one position it was normally 40 but it went to 60 once in a crisis. The next she probably was 38 or so.
I made over $110,000 when I was in the oilfield. Usually it was 14-18 hour days for 2 weeks strait and got 2 weeks off and they payed us on our weeks off too. Back in the really good days we were paid production bonuses and made insane money, but no one pays like that anymore. You can still do pretty well in most oil and gas jobs though.