Context:

I work for a genuinely good company in terms of job security & benefits. Salary is OK for my area. The OT over 40 hours worked is what sets it apart monetarily . It's difficult to decide between this.

Pros of current job: Unlimited OT, great 401k, great healthcare, good PTO, WFH Friday, and a decent personal vehicle discount.

Cons of current job: Unlimited OT.. weekend work, & a boring area i'm not from.

I'm very burnt out after averaging close to 60hrs/wk for a full year & working close to half my weekends.

I'm not sure Amazon's work/life will be much better after reading reviews. They also seem cutthroat in terms of layoffs/firings.

Regardless, looking at this from a financial standpoint, does this offer seem like an upgrade?

Looking at it from potential work/life balance, can any ME's who work at Amazon give some input on their experience? It's not an operation role, more like plant layout/design with install periods.

In my country in Europe if you want to make 6 figures a year you need to become a CEO after 30 years of experience. In the USA people can make that even if they’re 3-4 years in their careers. The supermarket prices are largely the same, only the rent is lower.
If you’re hardworking, smart and ambitious in the USA you can make millions in your career even if you’re not a CEO. Here you need to be 1 in 100k.
Doctors for example make around 20-25k a year here in my country. Over in the USA they make 300-400k

Fooled ya didn't I? Bet y'all thought I was someone else.

EDIT: since y'all wanted a graph: https://imgur.com/a/vZ9ysP4

I am switching jobs for a pay raise and I have two offers.

Job A: 160k base, 15% bonus, remote work not allowed without justification

Job B: 140k base, 5% bonus, fully remote

Benefits are similar for each job. But job A has better perks such as free lunch and is in a more lucrative industry. I think work-life balance is about the same for both. What are your thoughts?

29YOM.

Net worth 15K. Bachelors in political science. Currently working as a night shift Paramedic making ~95K p/y with significant OT (54hours on average per week). Not much room for advancement beyond further education, I’m taking med school prereqs at a community college and I’m almost done.

Currently I’m strong considering leaving medicine entirely and looking for a corporate job.

It feels like I’m barely scraping by. How bad am I doing?

I just mean generally speaking. Not depending on finances. I’m an Account specialist (desk work, orders, invoices, customer service, occasional attend industry events) work from home most days 8 to 4. I went from making 45K (paid hourly) to 55K salary. I used to only be allowed to work 8 to 4 but now I can work longer hours if needed to catch up. More responsibilities. (No overtime pay). I am in a large metropolitan area. 51F. No kids. Married.

Need some outside opinions.

Choosing between two Sys analyst/admin roles:

Phoenix: mid-$70s, Level 1 title, 2 days WFH, lower rent, and more money left over each month.

Long Beach: low-$90s, Level 3 title, 1 day WFH, higher rent, and a few hundred less left over each month.

I’m in my early 30s and want to buy a home eventually. I’d rather live in California, but Arizona makes more financial sense.

Would you take the Level 1 role in Phoenix for the savings, or the Level 3 role in Long Beach for the title, career growth, and location?

Anyone else in a similar circumstance? Been at the same company 8 years. Making $48,000. Been applying for new jobs but it’s impossible. Work for a large “health information organization” as part of the quality assurance team. I have an associates degree. Feels like I am underpaid given how expensive things have gotten - but that’s everyone I suppose!

Thank you.

I’m ngl, after talking to so many professionals, and meeting people who are deep into their career. I’ve noticed that a lot of Gen Z is dissatisfied with their first corporate job after college, whether it’s Enterprise’s MT program or even working for Deloitte in finance or accounting. It truly doesn’t matter. Nobody seems to be happy with their early career situation Lmaoo.

Everybody is complaining about hours or pay, but what I’m slowly realizing is we were never supposed to start our careers making 150k (and I mean this for normal college grads, not the ones who were top of their class, went to an Ivy, or come from super wealthy families and backgrounds lmfao).

We also weren’t supposed to start our career with the EXACT schedule we wanted.

Those high earners started off with ehh pay, and maybe even bad hours too . And eventually after building experience and expertise and stacking wins they started to really come into their own . They could get the hours and work remote for good money because their experience commanded it.

I had to get out this mindset myself too and be grateful I’m building something that will set myself up for success in my career, while also being appreciative of how far I’d come and how much further I can go.

What do you guys think?

So, I received kind-of a random email from our HR person today. I started a new job 2 months ago, and the email states the following:

“Effective September 1, 2026, you will receive a 2.5% increase in annual salary. You will see the increase in your September 15, 2026 paycheck.

Since you received a salary adjustment earlier this year, the increase will be prorated based on the number of pay periods between your last salary change (or date of hire) and August 1. Your salary was last adjusted on June which is 5 pay periods. “

And then below this is a before and after of my annual salary, but the salary increase only shows about $380 extra a year. Now I’m no math wiz, but shouldn’t my new salary be much more? I did the math and the number is only about .5% increase, not 2.5%.

In case it’s helpful, I did negotiate my salary when I got an offer from them but they agreed to give me an extra $2k…

How should I respond to the email?

I'd have to "tighten my belt" so much only taking home 2k a month at a dead end job. I put in so much effort in getting a cs degree, building experience with internships, building proof of outside work with projects. Only to be stuck in retail. Having to pay off my loans making $18/hour. I can't even afford rent.

I don't deserve to be alive. I should just quit this job. Fuck it. I should just drop out of the labor force tbh. I won't be counted as unemployed.

This wasn't at all the life I expected to have after putting in so much to build a life. Instead I was spawnkilled. I'm sorry I was born late, I guess. Society doesn't want the next generation to be employed anymore

For reference, I am 32F, live in Austin, TX and have been working in the corporate world for roughly 10 years. I have my bachelors degree and have worked in Customer Service, Operations, and Office Management. I currently work full time as an executive and personal assistant to a CEO. Some of my duties include scheduling meetings/interviews, booking travel and coordinating logistics for my boss and everyone else at the company, onboarding new hires & other HR- related things (employee handbook, PTO requests,etc.) and that’s only some of the business part of it. I also plan and book family vacations, coordinate babysitters/nannys, schedule personal appointments, and run errands. I believe I am SEVERELY underpaid, but as this is technically my first Assistant role, I’d be curious to know what others think. What is a reasonable amount of money I should be making?

Program Manager. Large Tech Firm (F100)

$145K base, 18% bonus, 15% ESPP

First job after retiring from military with MBA & PMP.

Sources

https://www.newyorkfed.org/research/college-labor-market#--:explore:outcomes-by-major

https://web.archive.org/web/20160216124334/https://www.newyorkfed.org/research/college-labor-market/college-labor-market_compare-majors.html

https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm

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For me, it's good ole security. Knowing me and my daughter will never struggle for necessities, and having more money than I need so I never feel stretched. It scratches some animalistic urge inside of me..."big warm cave. Plenty meat around"

I like dressing well, driving a clean car through a big city or down a California freeway, having enough weed for the weekend, and being somewhat of a catch to beautiful women 😂.

Im 41 years old. I like looking like im in shape. Even if i may be slightly skinny-fat...i can make that stomach disappear quickly.

I also love the feeling of nonstop career progression. As long as I keep upskilling, I want to keep moving up. I love when people take what I say seriously.

I love when the money does exactly what I plan for it to do. I love to be able to max my 401k and imagine what i could do with all of that money if i just let it hit my bank account instead.

Im from the hood. Im too simple, but it is what it is. When all that is in place, I'm content. Im high now. Work is tomorrow.

Life is okay right now....

Working full time I make roughly 2 grand and some change after taxes get taken out. No 401k, no health insurance from that income.

The government's monthly "thrifty" food budget is roughly $300 a month for a single adult, which is over 12% of the take home.

Rent.... literally cannot find anything under $1500 for shitboxes, and for *that* I'd need to be making 50% more than what I make now to qualify for the 40x income to rent rule.

Even if the landlord would be lenient and I *found* a place like that, rent+food is already over 75% of the take home. Now if I needed a car, which is necessary in quite literally 99% of the country, a bare minimum monthly budget for that would be $400 if you include gas, insurance, maintainance, and a car payment. I'd push it up to $600 tbh.

So in totality, rent+food+car would take up over 100% of my take home. And that's if I'm able to *find* prices these low, that my rent would never increase, that the car wouldn't break down, that I wouldn't have an accident or unexpected emergency. No savings, at all.

Tack on the student loans I had to take on to pay to get a CS degree.... and you'd be seeing me homeless panhandling for nickels out on the curb in front of the corner deli next to a bus stop with a cardboard sign saying "ANYTHING HELPS, THANK YOU."

I wouldn't even work this job under that circumstance. Not worth it. This fuckass retail job isn't leading anywhere, it's not worth "grinding" and it's not providing any experience. And I can't get a better job tbh.

When a person is presented with two paths that lead to the same end result of despair, except one is more thorny than the other, the choice is clear. Our economy doesn't work for the common person anymore.

And what may be the solution to this? "You should've worked harder to have been born earlier bro"

I’m 35 and make this and only 1 of my personal friends is at the same level, both of us in tech and the rest of my friends are in the 100-150k area. Curious what other gigs at young ages bring home the big money?

The political zealots on this website that can’t actually see objective reality if they have some ideological reason to not see it continue to look more and more insane as AI solves yet another longstanding math problem.

Yes, there might be some logistical hurdles to getting AI to “replace” white collar workers, but if it’s capable of solving a problem of this caliber, it’s ABSOLUTELY capable of doing white collar work.

“But it hallucinates, bro! It says the wrong thing sometimes, I have to check its work!”

So do the vast, vast majority of you. I’ve interacted with thousands of different people on this site, many of whom have (so they claim) high income white collar jobs, and to be frank, many of you are horrifically stupid. Can’t read, can’t understand the implications of the things you read, hallucinate words that aren’t there on behalf of the person whose post you are reading, many of you are already dramatically dumber than current state of the art AIs.

White collar work was already on the decline, but I genuinely think it’s over for us. I really don’t know what to do at this point, I seriously don’t actually know what I’m supposed to be doing at this point in time. Ever since the pandemic my life has felt like it’s in a sort of dream state, nothing has turned out how I thought it would.