Salary poll

mlnjr

Conducting a little experiment here to find out how well people are getting paid.



OK, take your age. Multiply that by 1,000. How does that number compare to your current salary or past salaries? Personally, in my job history, my salaries have always been lower than (age x 1,000), and that's been frustrating for me when many of my friends, right out of college, embarked on careers where their salaries have always been greater than (age x 1,000). Not sure if that signifies anything other than poor career choices on my part, though.

rok

interesting poll. i voted for "greater than," since i finally got a great job, but it took EIGHT MONTHS of unemployment for someone to finally wake up and hire me and pay me in line with both my last job and what the field generally pays.



part of it is also what you are willing to settle for. over the past eight months, i had a bunch of people ready to hire me, begging in two cases, for half of what i am about to earn. and they were total crap jobs, too. strange how that works -- when i was in canada, it was the crap jobs that paid more to KEEP you. maybe it's a cultural thing. though i went through some pretty crap jobs.



over these past months, it hurt at the time to turn them down, because our savings were dropping so mightily so quickly, but i realized that if i took one of those jobs, my career would be shot to hell in a matter of months. i would have nothing good in my portfolio, and no time nor energy to keep job hunting.



of course, luck has a lot to do with it, too. i got this job just as we became officially "flat broke." two more weeks, and i would have taken anything.

mlnjr

I know it's a meaningless statistic, because salaries are dependent on the industry, the company's budget, the average income in a particular location, etc. I just thought it was interesting to consider. I've got friends my age who pull down 40, 50, 60,000 a year, and in my entire job history I've been lucky to scrape by on much less.

artman @_@

Less than my age multiplied by 1,000.



I REALLY hope things get better...I have been looking for a job that will at least be in between (second catagory). No luck yet, No luck since 2001.

crusader

Well I'm an intern and in High School so I hope this doesn't count for me.

zarathustra

Greater...just about.



But in US dollars.....hmmmmm

buonrotto

I like the frame of reference here. Makes me feel either young or rich or both.

ebby

Less than. Much less than. But I have had trouble with jobs. I only like temporary ones.

dmband0026

Well...considering that I'm 18 years old and I don't have a job that pays on salary, this poll doesn't really apply to me. haha. However, my last job paid MUCH less than it should have, and my next job should be a lot better. When I'm 21 I'm going to get a job on a fire department and at that point should be making much more than my age x 1,000.

soulcrusher

I am a college student. I don't work.

daver

I'm in university, and I only work during the summer months. Mark me down for far less.

thuh freak

i make just almost exactly my age x 1000, before taxes. i consider it a terrible amount, cuz i can't afford to move into a nice apartment and get the nicer things in life, blah blah. but compared to my friends my age, i do pretty well. i was kind of surprised by when i got the tax forms back a few weeks ago and it had the totals and such. its a perhaps reasonable amount, considering i'm young, but not a happy amount nontheless.

kingofsomewherehot

I graduated from college in the "less than my age" category, and it took many years to get to the "greater" category ... that's just the way it works for most people.

Anyone who graduates college EXPECTING to immediately land a $100000/year job is simply not being realistic ... it happens, but very rarely.



Learn how to live on what you DO make ... then when you make more, life just gets better. God knows there are plenty of folks out there making 100000/year that SPEND 120000/year ... they are much worse off than the person making 20000/year that spends 15000/year.

scott

I read/heard somewhere that a good benchmark is twice you age in k per year.

mlnjr

Yikes. That sounds like a pipe dream, except for people in some industries/geographical areas I guess. Talk about raising the bar...

scott

Yea you figure someone right out of school is about 22 so that's 44k a year. But you have your life to catch up. By 30 can you be making 60k?

mlnjr

Currently unemployed (interviews, interviews!) and turning 30 in May (out of college since 1998.) So, no. Unless the standard salary ranges for people with my kind of job experience skyrockets.

kingofsomewherehot

Quote:

Originally posted by Scott

I read/heard somewhere that a good benchmark is twice you age in k per year.

or...

your own age + your wife's age + the ages of all your children.



... works out to 86 for me and increases by 6 every year ! scary.