Anonymous wrote:I haven't read all these posts, but one thing to keep in mind is some people may be quoting their salaries as an independent contractor. DH recently turned down a job that paid a lot more on paper, but going from employee to independent contractor would have meant paying all the taxes on that income and losing benefits + retirement matching. He realized he is actually better off with his current lower salary.

HHI is only part of the package, so some of these contractor salaries are not as high as they actually seem.

For two salary households, where one has access to benefits, it is actually encouraged for the second one to go the independent contractor route to get a bigger check.

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Anonymous wrote:

I can state quite definitively that Amazon is not paying its engineers nearly $300K.

That's why I quit engineering, once I hit the ceiling.

I realized this 5 years into my career as an engineer. I took a look at the older folks in the company and realized that they were my future and I did not like what I saw. I researched salaries for senior level engineers and it was just disappointing. Sure, a 100k+ salary is nothing to sneeze at but it became very demoralizing very quickly to realize that $150k or so was the ceiling unless I was a super star of some sort. I took a look at my dad who is a life long engineer, doing hard core stuff with encyclopedic knowledge base and the ability to quickly get to the bottom of a problem - it became very clear to me that doing engineering was not a way to become better than what my parents have achieved. I quit my job, got an MBA and have not looked back. I value my technical background, but only in so far as relying on it for an extra analytical edge and being numbers/evidence driven in my decisions and planning.

I haven't read all these posts, but one thing to keep in mind is some people may be quoting their salaries as an independent contractor. DH recently turned down a job that paid a lot more on paper, but going from employee to independent contractor would have meant paying all the taxes on that income and losing benefits + retirement matching. He realized he is actually better off with his current lower salary.

HHI is only part of the package, so some of these contractor salaries are not as high as they actually seem.

^
Huh? This isn't about "should", and biglaw salary levels and talent competition is utterly irrelevant to metro salalries. Plus metro is complete garbage and worth nothing but that's neither here nor there.

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Anonymous wrote:$410k, DH and I are both metro operators.

Sorry, this may sound dumb, but what do you mean by metro operators? You drive the metro train? Please excuse my ignorance.

Yes, we've both been metro operators for years. DH moved into the ROCC (control center) and is a controller now so that was a nice bump.

If this is true, we now know why Metro has fallen to pieces over the past 20 years!

Agreed.

But if this is true, there's another way to look at it. Who should be paid more? Some fourth-year big law associate who reviews documents and drafts routine motions so that corporation x can beat up on corporation y, or the guy/gal who's responsible for getting you and everyone else on your train home safely tonight?

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Anonymous wrote:I thought doctors made more?!

Two attorneys, one government and one Biglaw, 485.

really depends on the specialty. a pediatrician can make 100k. obgyn 250k. anesthesiologist may earn 300k. radiologist 400k. neurosurgeon 800k. spine surgeons can make 1+ million.

Not always. Especially if you are a staff dr at a hospital. My friend is a neurosurgeon at Children's and makes 150k. Big busck only for business owners.

I work at Children's and trust me, no neurosurgeon there is making $150k full time.

Anonymous wrote:37, Own a small commercial plumbing company. Good year is 700K, bad year is 300K.

It seems that even a shitty year can be lucrative.

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Anonymous wrote:Artificial intelligence. $600K
Spouse in more mundane job $110K

AI? Google?

Not google, but they pay quite well too.

Do you have a PhD in computer science, or something like that? I want to try and find a way to make something more lucrative to help out my family. I quote a quote for the dream and I'm doing a job my 12-year-old self would love but at the end the day there have been compromises to doing that and I'm trying to leverage up now and get the lowdown another tech I might be able to transition to. Though AI takes so much brainpower I'm probably out of my league here

(Siriism-- I was saying I had a "dream jobs" -- I work as NASA.)

I dropped out of phd to do it, but yea I was on my way.

If you work for NASA - is it in an engineering role? - why not perhaps parlay that to camera optics, drone hardware, etc?

working for Amazon for drones? Yeah that would be in my wheelhouse. Would the lay be THAT much better?!

Well no clue what you make now, but standard packages for engineers are in the $300s, more for those with relevant experience of course. Absent any real data on what you do, what level you are etc, id share that most of my friends there are in mid $500s between cash and equity.

I don't think so!

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Anonymous wrote:$410k, DH and I are both metro operators.

Sorry, this may sound dumb, but what do you mean by metro operators? You drive the metro train? Please excuse my ignorance.

No, it's a lot of metro operators who sound dumb. Give them speech lessons! Half the time their speech is so slurred it makes the late Mayor Marion Barr,y sound like Prof. Henry Higgins.

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Anonymous wrote:I thought doctors made more?!

Two attorneys, one government and one Biglaw, 485.

really depends on the specialty. a pediatrician can make 100k. obgyn 250k. anesthesiologist may earn 300k. radiologist 400k. neurosurgeon 800k. spine surgeons can make 1+ million.

Not always. Especially if you are a staff dr at a hospital. My friend is a neurosurgeon at Children's and makes 150k. Big busck only for business owners.

I find the 150k for a neurosurgeon very hard to believe. Either that person is super brand new or in a fellowship of some sort. Even the Feds pay MD specialists between 150-300k, and they often moonlight elsewhere too.

I'm a PhD in a health field and make 140k, and dh is a gs-14 in an Econ/finance role which is 116k.

Agree. No neurosurgeon is working for $150k unless that's 1 day a week. PP probably means a neurologist and even that is on the low end

2 professors, about $550. But very uneven income - one with a very high salary, one low for the qualification (science/engineering PhD!).

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I can state quite definitively that Amazon is not paying its engineers nearly $300K.

That's why I quit engineering, once I hit the ceiling.

What did you pivot into?

Anonymous wrote:To the small business owners...what kind of businesses?

Small ones.

Anonymous wrote:Two lawyer household.

I would guess that's like everyone.

Obviously not "everyone."

Anonymous wrote:

I can state quite definitively that Amazon is not paying its engineers nearly $300K.

That's why I quit engineering, once I hit the ceiling.