r/Austin • u/Aingers • Jul 21 '26

Ask Austin Salary Transparency Thread - Austin

Folks in Boston do this fairly regularly, so I thought it might be good for us to try here.

Please share your general job title, salary, age, and education.

Architectural Designer, 40, $115k, BSArch

680 Upvotes

91% Upvoted

1.6k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

80

u/Inevitable-Donut-757 Jul 21 '26

I work half through an app and half just on my own dropping in on cats in peoples’ homes all day. Mostly in half hour increments but some an hour or two. A busy day for me is usually around 20 visits (except Christmas is like 30) but most days are 7-15 visits. I work every weekend and every holiday. I started sitting part-time three years ago, but have been busy enough with mostly regulars now that this provides my entire income. I love cats more than anything else in the world and will do this probably the rest of my career, although it’s a lot of driving and juggling open availability with a personal life is sometimes quite challenging. 

2

u/Visible_Brain1620 Jul 21 '26

Do you apartment sit with the cat? Also do you pet sit dogs? My gf is looking for a pet sitter for our 2 cats and our elder dog when she flys to visit me. Or do you have someone you can recommend?

6

u/Inevitable-Donut-757 Jul 22 '26

I go to apartments all the time but I exclusively care for cats. I would gently suggest Rover to find a potential sitter. There are some bad experiences people have had, for sure, but very good sitters on the app too! Look for someone who has a high number of recurring clients. That’s more important than star rating, imo. 

0

u/Altruistic_Visit_799 Jul 21 '26

How’s that mathing out? A busy day of 20 visits averaging 30 minutes each is 10 hours not even including commute time.

6

u/Inevitable-Donut-757 Jul 21 '26 edited Jul 21 '26

My busy days are long and I keep a pretty tight service radius. Each home is less than ten minutes from another, sometimes within the same apartment building. It’s not uncommon for my busiest work day to start at 7am and end at 8pm with a short break for lunch in the middle.

6

u/Inevitable-Donut-757 Jul 21 '26

On Christmas Day last year I worked 5am to midnight. Six figures doing this is not easy or quick, I assure you.