tell us about your job

[ScottieK]

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How much do you make? $48K/yr, plus bonuses, 401k matching and benefits.


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You have an MBA and you took a job makeing 48k, I have to ask why.

natedogg

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#1 - I got fired from my previous job and took what I could get.

Sure, I could be making more if I lived somewhere else or maybe even in another field.....but I love Albuquerque, and this job is pretty stress-free, no overtime, rare business travel, lots of perks in the office. We get invited to a lot of events and fundraisers, like golf outings during the work week, business lunches and business conferences. Pretty relaxed environment. On the downside, banks typically pay cheap.

ScottieK

[jaydub]

What do you do? Technology VP

Do you like it? Yes.

What makes you in particular well-suited or poorly-suited for your work? Ability to relate to both the technology (former Software Engineer) and the business.

What kind of people do best in your work? Technically minded individuals who can make key business tradeoffs.

What qualifications are necessary for people considering work in the same field as you? Bachelor's and experience.

What is a typical day like? First deal with any crisis through a combination of direct involvement and delegation. Depending on the resolutions, potentially begin work on whichever projects are critical. Lots of time spent answering questions regarding how to do X, Y, or Z. Fair bit of research into emerging technologies and how we can use them. A [censored] ton of interviewing.

What kind of problems do you encounter? Anything from online products being down to client communication breakdown to employee performance. Lots of security related items.

What are the biggest (most common) sources of frustration and elation? Impossible demands of CXOs and people making terrible mistakes due to not asking how to do X (or even can I do X). Elation due to new revenue coming in.

How much do you make? Depends on bonuses and stock but about 200K +/- 30K. I'm fairly young and underpaid by competitive standards.

How much can one expect to make in your position? At least 100K and up to 400K is certainly possible. It will vary greatly depending on company size and structure.

J

[ChromePony]

What do you do? Technology Analyst With a Big 5 Consulting Firm

Do you like it? Not particularly, but I get by

What makes you in particular well-suited or poorly-suited for your work? I graduated from a relatively well known school with a degree in physics. I had very few skills that related to this line of work but that apparently did not concern my company when they hired me.

What kind of people do best in your work? People who are really into and motivated by IT stuff like information management, data warehousing and other non descript business speak phrases like that. Good people skills are also important as is the ability to navigate a lovely web of office politics. Must enjoy travling, living out of hotels and working non standard hours from time to time.

What qualifications are necessary for people considering work in the same field as you? I would recommend some background in CS or IT related fields. In reality you mostly need a tech/engineering/science degree from a top school to get an interview and then you prove yourself from there.

What is a typical day like? Get in around 9:30 email, google reader, 2+2. Meeting with my team, talk about stuff, write some test scripts, execute some test scripts check status of defects for the application we are developing and maybe test some of those to confirm they have been fixed. Lunch was in there somewhere, more meetings, chat with my entry level co-workers, watch some Daily Show clips online, chat with friends, another test script or two. Go home 6:30. (This is a standard day recently, sometimes I'm actually really busy all day and don't leave until 9+) (I also seem to have a relatively relaxed gig compared to a lot of my friends on other projects)

What kind of problems do you encounter? I
Dealing with miles of bureaucracy and sometimes mind boggling inefficiencies in the work place to actually get some work done from time to time. Managing client expectations and demands when it is of course clear to us that we know exactly what is best for them.

What are the biggest (most common) sources of frustration and elation? Dealing with boring work that I really have no motivation to do. The more I test, the more problems I find that I have to retest later etc. Annoying people towards the top of the chain that can be condescending and like to talk about 'building my network' and 'growing my career'. Having to sit around to look good for the clients when there's really no work for me to do at the moment. Being forced to travel to a out of town project every week when I could do most of my work from home. (Although I do like the travel...see below)

On the plus side of travel I get firm subsidized (up the the approx cost of my fight home) weekend flights to locations of my choosing...this is probably the main reason I am still here. I also have practically no living expenses, other than rent for an apartment I hardly see, because everything is taken care of when I'm on the road.

How much do you make? 57k + all the various perks and rewards (airline mileage, hotel points, per diem, weekend flights) that are hardly insignificant.

How much can one expect to make in your position? This is a pretty standard salary in this field, for a new hire it is essentially non negociable out of school cause there are like 12 million of us starting at the same time. Other firms pay from 50-65k, as you move up you can expect yearly raises of 6-15% based on performance until you hit management positions in 7-8 years where there's probably some kind jump.

[Sluss]

What do you do?I talk on the radio. My main job is a traffic reporter where I am also the ADO of the office. I also do part time weekends, voice over work for commercials and some sports play-by-play.

Do you like it? I love it.

What makes you in particular well-suited or poorly-suited for your work? I'm a loud obnoxious jack-ass

What kind of people do best in your work? People who are entertaining and sound good.

What is a typical day like? I'm up at 5 a.m. everyday. I get to work at 5:20 and start talking at 5:30. I go home at 9:30 a.m. and then go back at 2pm in the afternoon until 6pm.

What kind of problems do you encounter? Making it sound like something is going on when nothing is going on.

What are the biggest (most common) sources of frustration and elation? On bad traffic days or big snow storms I'm going crazy for 12-13 hours straight trying to figure out what is going on and then letting everybody know about it. My biggest elation is that my job is basically sitting on my ass and flapping my mouth all day.

How much do you make? About 28k when you add everything up

How much can one expect to make in your position? It all depends on where you work and when you work. I'm at about the top of where I can make a normal salary. However the more voice and play-by-play work I do the more money I can make.

I would be looking for a new job if my wife wasn't making good money. Radio is not for people looking to get rich.

[Wack Jade]

What do you do?

Mathematics and Statistics Instructor at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Arizona.

Do you like it?

Sure, although it gets a little boring / depressing every now and then.

What makes you in particular well-suited or poorly-suited for your work?

I'm a fairly patient teacher, I'm younger than most other instructors so I think some of the students relate to me a little better, and I try to avoid 'fancy' mathematical explanations. And I use a lot of poker and baseball examples.

What kind of people do best in your work?

Teachers with experience who find a good balance between being everyone's best friend / actually being a good teacher.

What qualifications are necessary for people considering work in the same field as you?

An undergraduate degree in mathematics and some teaching experience.

What is a typical day like?

Wake up early (I teach an 8:00am Calculus I class), teach a few classes, office hours, exercise (usually ultimate frisbee in the afternoon), get home around 6:00pm, read / play video games / play poker until bed.

What kind of problems do you encounter?

Students who hate math. Students who are terrified of math. Students who hate me (luckily not too many). Other teachers complaining about everything.

Sorry, that's actually all I have time for at the moment. Oh yeah, and I get summers off. Sweet.

[offTopic]

What do you do?
Current title is some type of senior engineer. I'm doing a consulting gig right now, so it doesn't really matter.

Do you like it?
Not particularly...it's a project with a big scope, and there are too many different project managers, and too much email flying around. For example, there were a bunch of people in a meeting yesterday evening, and this morning, I got three different updates of the same meeting, two of which weren't even in the meeting (they got reports from others). I was thinking, "This is like Rashomon."

What makes you in particular well-suited or poorly-suited for your work?
+: It's semiconductor, and I have a lot of experience with these types of software systems. I'm a pretty good problem-solver in general, and having worked in development in the past, I can usually identify specific application bugs from the end user side.

-: I always have to rein in my inherent cynicism because nobody really wants to know that I think there's no way some group or group of groups won't make a deadline, or some module is a piece of [censored] or whatever. I'm not cartoon birds and sunshine, either, but I sometimes have to temper what I say because being extraordinarily negative doesn't usually help anyone.

What kind of people do best in your work?
Being detail-oriented definitely helps. Being able to think beyond what is written in documentation helps (especially when the documentation is incomplete, or even worse, misleading.)

What qualifications are necessary for people considering work in the same field as you?
Some type of experience in production and software is helpful, but probably not necessary as long as you can think about things clearly, and have an understanding about how various software systems work.

What is a typical day like?
I typically roll in around 9 +/-20 mins, get coffee, catch up on email, take care of any immediate problems, and read some random crap on the internet. Pretty busy right now, with a new client deployment with testing through the day, and a couple of late-afternoon-early-evening conference calls with Asia. Most days I can leave by 6:00, but the last couple of days, I've stayed after 7, and will again tonight.

What kind of problems do you encounter?
In this role, I'm the customer, so I don't really have to deal with customers, so that's OK. Project delays, clueless PMs, bizarre software behavior...pretty standard stuff.

What are the biggest (most common) sources of frustration and elation?
Without providing too much detail, I found out today, quite by accident, that the reason we couldn't get a client to work was because I had added an environment variable that was spelled correctly. When I misspelled it, it worked. That was big, but certainly not common. Stuff that's undocumented, though, that happens all the time.

How much do you make?
Meh. 85K. I suck at negotiating salary.

How much can one expect to make in your position?
I started in a more junior position with a different company 10 years ago for $48K. I'd imagine that's much higher now. I'm sure plain ol' software engineers can make north of $125K-150K, but you have to get a different title (tech lead, architect, etc) to make more than that, I think. One of these captains of industry will correct me if I'm wrong. [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

[jba]

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What do you do? Software Engineer


Do you like it? About 20% of the time it's the best work that I can imagine doing. The rest of the time it's a drag, but mostly because they expect me to show up.


What makes you in particular well-suited or poorly-suited for your work? great at logic type puzzles, solving problems, design principles. I'm particularly good at reading and understanding code written by other people. I'm poorly suited because I have a hard time concentrating sometimes on redundant or simple tasks.


What kind of people do best in your work? People with the same set of skills. You can usually tell in one or two conversations the kind of guys that know syntax and some principles but don't really have the problem solving skills.


What qualifications are necessary for people considering work in the same field as you? a bachelors and/or experience. It's pretty tough for people to get a good job (ie not a sweatshop) without doing something like QA or support first.


What is a typical day like? wake up between 730 and 9 am, roll out of bed. Read a book on the train/bus (about a 30 min commute). Depending on my timing I sometimes stop for a bagel and a coffee for 15-20 mins and read halfway through the commute (I really enjoy this part of the day). Show up to work around 830-1000 am, read some coffee, catch up on emails, then start working. Working is about half and half between writing new stuff or troubleshooting/fixing problems. have some lunch around 1230-2, head home around 6-7.


What kind of problems do you encounter? completely insane and hectic release schedules, incomplete/unclear product specifications, bugs in stuff that you depend on but don't have any control over. Also I have a lot of problems with context switching when there are a bunch of very different things that I need to work on at the same time. The very best is when there is a particular feature or problem that I'm working on that is very difficult - often times I'll be working head down on something for five hours and barely notice the time has gone by.


What are the biggest (most common) sources of frustration and elation? Hmm I guess I mostly answered this in the last one. more about elation: lots of times there will be a particularly difficult problem that a bunch of people are working on for a while - finding a solution to this type of thing is a pretty fun "hero" moment. Also, creating a particularly clever solution to a problem is pretty fun.


How much do you make? 80-90k ish.


How much can one expect to make in your position? in my area somewhere around 60-250k+ depending on a bunch of stuff, mostly experience/ability and type or richness of the company. This doesn't include any potential windfalls from buyouts/IPOs (equity grants and/or options are ubiquitous in my field). It has been estimated that the best engineer is 10x more productive than the worst in 5-10 member software teams - in my experience (three companies) this estimate is too conservative.


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[Dkay04]

What do you do?
I was a farmhand now I am probably the same but also a beginning farmer.

Do you like it?
I love it, i couldn't think of another thing i would rather do.


What makes you in particular well-suited or poorly-suited for your work?
I am Well suited because i grew up around farming, i know what needs to be done and when. I am also a decent problem solver and can usually fix things without panicking.


What kind of people do best in your work?
Most of the time you need to have grown up around it and have people willing to help you, you also need good credit.


What qualifications are necessary for people considering work in the same field as you?
You need a general knowledge in equipment operation and maintnence, a knowledge of crop production and marketing, some accounting knowledge, and a good work ethic.

What is a typical day like?
It changes around planting and harvest times and seasonally, basically in the summer I get up around 5:30 drive to town and eat breakfast and then check well motors and Sprinklers, if anything is on row water I change that. Then eat lunch, between Plowing and spraying there is always tractor work to be done so I get on a tractor from ~1-8:30 or 9 and then go eat supper and sit at the bar until 12 and go home and sleep and repeat the next day. Weekends I just check water and sleep or whatever.
In the winter I check cattle, pump water and put out hay and am usually done by noon.

What kind of problems do you encounter?
Everything changes, one day it can be a well broke down and one day it can be tractors tore up or bugs in fields, you definetly need to learn to roll with the punches.

What are the biggest (most common) sources of frustration and elation?
It is a low stress job iif you learn to take everything as it comes, the weather seems to be the biggest source of frustration.

How much do you make?
Last year I made about 45,000 after paying back some loans and including a weekly check for woking for family. I had to pay taxes on 175k.

How much can one expect to make in your position?
Anywhere from - figures to over a million depending on how good you manage things and how much land you own.

[TheWorstPlayer]

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How much do you make? $48K/yr, plus bonuses, 401k matching and benefits.


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You have an MBA and you took a job makeing 48k, I have to ask why.

natedogg

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Maybe you didn't notice that he's also making 401K in bonuses and benefits.

[TheWorstPlayer]

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people who are willing to work their ass off in order not to work (hustlers),


people who will end up dead if they dont get married.



I dont want to de-rail the thread, but your first point describes me also, something I couldnt put into words. The 2nd part limon, Ive been recently thinking about, I am pretty sure we are cut from the same cloth, have some of the same areas of business (moneylending, sports etc) and I hvae the feeling that w/o a wife to calm me down its going to rough times ahead, but I really dont want to settle down yet. Honestly enough, I feel that I teeter on the edge of complete degeneracy, and complete normalcy. at what point did you figure out when to get married, or was it not a planned thing?

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i was in a long distance relationship w/ my highschool sweetie for 11 years. it was a cream dream....for me. once she earned her PhD she gave the ultimatum and i made the wise choice to get married. it helps shes bi and the first few years were a wild party. i needed that sort of transition or i wouldnt have made it. most (maybe all) great hustlers are married the single ones end up on the rail. marriage forces you to choose only the best hustles and not chase every coin flip. also the life of a hustler is very lonely becuase few can understand or would condone most of what you do so a partner in crime who knows everything helps somehow.

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I always basically worshipped you (even when it was apparently your brother posting a long time ago?) but now I am pretty sure my life ambition is to write your biography. Will you be my hero?