# Waddaya do and waddya earn for it? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [January 19, 2001, 4:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/waddaya-do-and-waddya-earn-for-it/50809 "2001-01-19T04:19:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![Dawg144](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ecccb3/32.png) [@Dawg144](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dawg144)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2001, 10:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/waddaya-do-and-waddya-earn-for-it/50809/121 "2001-01-22T22:48:20Z")
Made 91k as a Program Manager at a very Large Software company in the Seattle area, Stocks, 401k, Employee Stock Purchase, Bonuses, and 100% coverage on all Benes make the number much larger than that. Not bad for a guy who never finished college… ---
**Author:** ![SuaSponte](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/67e7ee/32.png) [@SuaSponte](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SuaSponte)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2001, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/waddaya-do-and-waddya-earn-for-it/50809/122 "2001-01-22T23:02:54Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Athena \* > Unlike you though, Sua, this money is no reflection on my education, intelligence, or work ethic. I got lucky. They didn’t know those options were gonna be so valuable when they gave 'em to us peons. I’ll acknowledge education as a factor. The other two, HAH!! BTW, just got word of a pay raise. Now, I’m at $175k-219k, depending on bonuses. My firm reacted to a wave of pay raises sweeping through the industry. The pay raises in the industry over the past three years have been, IMHO, utterly ludicrous. My starting salary in September 1997 was $82k, and the pay scale in place at that time would have me making $115k-135k, depending on bonuses. The big cause of the jump has been dotcom firms paying big money to junior attorneys to go in-house. I’m quite frankly scared about this latest raise. I see, if not a recession, at least a slowdown coming, and the higher my salary, the more my firm would save by letting me go. I’m not too worried about myself - as a litigator with a secondary practice in bankruptcy law, I’m relatively recession-proof, but a lot of friends work in areas that would be directly impacted by a recession. Sua ---
**Author:** ![Athena](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/35a633/32.png) [@Athena](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Athena)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2001, 11:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/waddaya-do-and-waddya-earn-for-it/50809/123 "2001-01-22T23:13:21Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by SuaSponte \* > \*\* > I’m quite frankly scared about this latest raise. I see, if not a recession, at least a slowdown coming, and the higher my salary, the more my firm would save by letting me go. I’m not too worried about myself - as a litigator with a secondary practice in bankruptcy law, I’m relatively recession-proof, but a lot of friends work in areas that would be directly impacted by a recession. > > Sua \*\* Yeah, same here. As an engineer, my salary has definitely gone up as the dotcoms slurp up every available engineer right out of school. I don’t work for a dotcom - my company is big and fairly stable - but if all the dotcoms go away and there’s a wash of cheap engineers out there the salaries/options will definitely go down. ---
**Author:** ![Falcon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/49beb7/32.png) [@Falcon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Falcon)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2001, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/waddaya-do-and-waddya-earn-for-it/50809/124 "2001-01-22T23:29:35Z")
Hold up. Sua, you make THAT much, and I’m buying YOU a drink when you move down here? Damn. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![yabob](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yabob/32/2821_2.png) [@yabob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yabob)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2001, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/waddaya-do-and-waddya-earn-for-it/50809/125 "2001-01-22T23:38:45Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Athena \* > \*\* > > > [@](#): > > > > \*Originally posted by SuaSponte \* > > \*\* > > I’m quite frankly scared about this latest raise. I see, if not a recession, at least a slowdown coming, and the higher my salary, the more my firm would save by letting me go. I’m not too worried about myself - as a litigator with a secondary practice in bankruptcy law, I’m relatively recession-proof, but a lot of friends work in areas that would be directly impacted by a recession. > > > > Sua \*\* > > Yeah, same here. As an engineer, my salary has definitely gone up as the dotcoms slurp up every available engineer right out of school. I don’t work for a dotcom - my company is big and fairly stable - but if all the dotcoms go away and there’s a wash of cheap engineers out there the salaries/options will definitely go down. \*\* It depends on exactly what you do. From where I’m sitting, the dotcoms seem to be providing us with a lot of people who know how to design webpages and do scripting. Those are valuable skills, but if what you want are people who really understand how to do server end java / c++, understand multithreading, understand database, understand scalability issues, I don’t see a lot of people flooding the market. ---
**Author:** ![SuaSponte](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/67e7ee/32.png) [@SuaSponte](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SuaSponte)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2001, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/waddaya-do-and-waddya-earn-for-it/50809/126 "2001-01-23T00:27:18Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Falcon \* > \*\*Hold up. Sua, you make THAT much, and I’m buying YOU a drink when you move down here? Damn. 😉 \*\* Darlin’, when I get down there, I’ll be a penniless student. [sub]1[/sub] 😃 Sua [sub]1. Suckers.[/sub] ---
**Author:** ![rjung](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/45deac/32.png) [@rjung](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rjung)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2001, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/waddaya-do-and-waddya-earn-for-it/50809/127 "2001-01-23T00:34:26Z")
Geez, I’m **scared** to post what I make up here – after reading all of the messages, there’s only four or five folks who are making more than I do (and here I am grousing about my income!)… For the record, I do work at one of those new-fangled dot-com companies, but not as a “web designer”. I’m a fully skilled and certified programmer, completely saavy in Java, C, C++, PHP, and all those other funky acronyms. ---
**Author:** ![delphica](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e9a140/32.png) [@delphica](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/delphica)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2001, 1:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/waddaya-do-and-waddya-earn-for-it/50809/128 "2001-01-23T01:11:28Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Falcon \* > \*\*Hold up. Sua, you make THAT much, and I’m buying YOU a drink when you move down here? Damn. 😉 \*\* He’s already getting into practice by stealing alcohol from innocent people who just happened to have the misfortunate of sitting near the SDMBers at a recent DopeFest. Snort. Ok, that was mean, but I only said it because **Sua** has such a great sense of humor, **and** more than demonstrated his generosity when he provided a round of tequila shots and an eloquent toast. **AuntiePam** , I was also a little surprised that people were being so free with this information when I first opened the post, but I was so impressed when I saw that not one person responded with a tone that said “Ha, look how much I make!” or “Poor me, look how much I don’t make.” So far it’s been a very interesting look at what different careers, at various levels, in diverse parts of the world make. A great demonstration of how the people who participate in this message board are amazingly fantastic in all ways! ---
**Author:** ![Dragon\_Ash](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b3f665/32.png) [@Dragon\_Ash](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dragon_Ash)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2001, 3:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/waddaya-do-and-waddya-earn-for-it/50809/129 "2001-01-23T03:50:39Z")
Equities research/investment banking. $400K plus bonus, which ranges from zero (a couple of years back) to 100% of the basic salary (last year 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![beckwall](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/b487fb/32.png) [@beckwall](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beckwall)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2001, 4:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/waddaya-do-and-waddya-earn-for-it/50809/130 "2001-01-23T04:16:34Z")
underwear model, 10K per day ---
**Author:** ![blur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/dbc845/32.png) [@blur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blur)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2001, 4:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/waddaya-do-and-waddya-earn-for-it/50809/131 "2001-01-23T04:56:48Z")
I’m a computer operator, and I’ll make about $45-48,000 this year. I’m way overpaid for my experience, so I would never tell the people I work with. ---
**Author:** ![Athena](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/35a633/32.png) [@Athena](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Athena)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2001, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/waddaya-do-and-waddya-earn-for-it/50809/132 "2001-01-23T15:47:39Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by yabob \* > \*\*It depends on exactly what you do. From where I’m sitting, the dotcoms seem to be providing us with a lot of people who know how to design webpages and do scripting. Those are valuable skills, but if what you want are people who really understand how to do server end java / c++, understand multithreading, understand database, understand scalability issues, I don’t see a lot of people flooding the market. > > \*\* Speaking as a person who writes client-server, C++ database interfaces that have to scale well and incorporate multithreading, I hope you’re right! ---
**Author:** ![blanx](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/f04885/32.png) [@blanx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blanx)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2001, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/waddaya-do-and-waddya-earn-for-it/50809/133 "2001-01-23T19:39:22Z")
I’m a public defender in rural New Hampshire- 36,000 ish. gotta love law school loans of 80,000 or so! yippee! ---
**Author:** ![Rich\_G7subs](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/85e7bf/32.png) [@Rich\_G7subs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rich_G7subs)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2001, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/waddaya-do-and-waddya-earn-for-it/50809/134 "2001-01-23T22:06:47Z")
Operating engineer here Base wages of 25$ an hour, 10% shift differential, 2$/hour annuity. Last 3 years I’ve averaged in the mid 70k’s with overtime included.You gotta love overtime! 8 years ago I dropped out of College (Mechanical engineering major).My brother in law is a Mech Eng and actually made 5K less than me last year including his bonus (he also averaged a 55 hour work week).Some incentive to go back and finish my degree,huh? ---
**Author:** ![New\_Improved\_Scott](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/f17d59/32.png) [@New\_Improved\_Scott](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/New_Improved_Scott)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2001, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/waddaya-do-and-waddya-earn-for-it/50809/135 "2001-01-23T22:39:44Z")
I’m an office monkey, they call it Representative, for a small computer sales and installation company. I do a variety of work though, so It’s pretty interesting. I make about 19K canadian. ---
**Author:** ![JavaMaven1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/cab0a1/32.png) [@JavaMaven1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JavaMaven1)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2001, 12:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/waddaya-do-and-waddya-earn-for-it/50809/136 "2001-01-24T00:28:47Z")
I’m another one of 'dem broke students. I start externship in about 6 weeks, making minimum wage. Yay! :rolleyes: But, I do believe it will start to pay off in, oh, around 5 years. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/waddaya-do-and-waddya-earn-for-it/50809.md?page=6)