I graduated college in late '89 and my first job paid $36K/year. It took about 11 years for me to double that initial salary with a dot-com job in roughly 2000.
Here I am now at roughly the top of my earning curve for my job title. I’m pretty much stuck with cost-of-living raises from here on out (a joke of a term, it’s not keeping up at all). If I were to get last year’s raise percentage (4%) and extrapolate for the next couple years, I’ll have tripled my fresh-out-of-college starting salary right around the year 2012, 12 years from my double mark.
In simple dollars, since adjusting for inflation is a real PITA, how long did it take to double your first salary? Have you tripled or quadrupled?
If we’re limiting this to increases after receiving an undergrad degree, I’m at about 1.4 times what I made when I got out of college. However, my W2s for this year compared to my last year of college show an increase of eight fold.
It took me about four years to double the salary I made at my first job right out of college, and two of those years I was out of the workforce. Yeah, pretty low paying job, but it set me on my current career path. Then it took me about another three years to double it again. I’ll probably double that within the next couple of years.
I haven’t even doubled yet. I’m 28 years old with a music degree from the University of Chicago and currently a paralegal. Wheeeeeeeeeeee directionlessness!
I’m making 40 times what I made as a grad student 30 years ago. But from when I started work it took 15 years to triple - I forget how long it took to double. With the early '80s inflation, we were getting 15% raises and just keeping up,. so when you started has a lot to do with it.
Confining it to real jobs? About a year and a half. I took a job at a local paper about a year out of college, got promoted after a year (very small raise), then moved to my current job after 18 months and 1 day, and I make about 80 percent more than my original salary. Of course, with higher taxes and bills and things, tripling it would be really nice.
The first few years out of college I was working my way through a graduate degree with an intent to go on to my PhD from my Master’s, so I didn’t really care about my salary. I earned less than $30k for the first five years, after which I earned ever so slightly more for maybe two years. Than I quit my job and became a freelancer and within two years had tripled my post-undergrad salary. That was just over two years ago.
I highly recommend contracting or freelancing to anybody.
Restricting the question to jobs related to my degree, it took me roughly 7 years to double my starting salary… tripling has not yet occurred (I’ve been here 10.5 years).
My first job after graduation was a retail job to make ends meet while I looked for a job in my field. I doubled my salary on that job the day I started the job in my degree field.
I’ve been at my current job 6 years. It was a second job out of grad school. It will probably take me about 12-13 years to double at my current rate of increases.
My first “real” job out of university in 2000 was retail manager, earning a whopping $23K. As of last year, I’m making roughly double that amount if you factor in bonuses and variable pay.
Of course, that required me getting my butt out of retail and into a call centre which also happened to be the primary hiring pool for my current employer. That alone resulted in a 20% pay raise on the spot, and another 20% raise a year later when I got promoted out of the call centre.
I figure unless something changes dramatically, I’ll probably get to triple my first salary sometime within the next 5-6 years, at which point I’ll max out my earning potential (or have to go get an MBA).
I’m over four times what I earned when I got my first job out of college. It took me 16 years to double it for good, and another 12 to double it again.
I work for the government. By the time I hit double, I’ll probably be damn near retirement age. I’ll never triple.
That having been said, my family’s medical care costs me next to nothing, and I actually get a pension that is the average of my highest three years’ salary. My hours are pretty much 9-5, and I don’t have to worry about paying for my own CLEs, malpractice insurance, or keeping track of billable hours.
It took me about 10 years to double my very first salary when I was working a corporate job. I quit last May to start my own freelance/contract business, and already I am projecting to have doubled (if not more) the salary from the job I just quit. Next year might be even better.
After graduating from college, I got a job working as an entry level Software Engineer (programming in C, C++, Ada and Visual Basic) for a small firm in the Aerospace/Defense industry.
Two years later I shifted into working in the Financial industry. I doubled my last salary working as an SE at the end of my first year working in finance in terms of total comp (in finance, even programmers and techfolk get year end bonuses that comprise a significant part of one’s total comp, even if it’s not in the six or seven-plus digit ranges that the traders and portfolio managers rake in).
Once in finance it took a while longer to double my first year comp – it happened in my fourth year, though I came pretty close at the end of my third year.
Same here and further promotion would be possible, but is just not attractive for a variety of reasons
I got my first full-time job in late 1990, so going from 1991 ( my first full year ) I had doubled by 1999. Got a promotion in late 2000 and had tripled my '91 salary by 2006.
So eight and seven years respectively. I likely will quadruple in roughly the same span - maybe six to nine years from now, depending on just how meagre those COL raises are.
After college: 4 years to double (change of career and a promotion) and another 5 to triple. and now I am back down to a little more than I made out of college, but going back to school and working part time does that!
I haven’t even doubled yet. I’m 28 years old with a music degree from the University of Chicago and currently a paralegal. Wheeeeeeeeeeee directionlessness!