Our culture is so screwed up about discussing money… I don’t know why I have anything to hide though. I’ve discussed enough my life on here that anyone could come up with a good estimate after ~15 minutes googling of publicly available info.
So to save you the trouble, I made $36k last year. That’s a grad student stipend for most of the year, plus a few months of postdoc salary at the NIH scale. This year I’ll make at least $48k (standard postdoc salary – that’s what a PhD is worth, kids!), but if I manage to [del]sell out[/del] get a real job in biotech/pharma it’ll be substantially higher.
People in the combined forums here will freely reveal deeply personal aspects concerning their sex lives, their health, their religion, their (often troubled) psyches… Yet freak and become silent when asked how much they earn.
Why the OP (or any one else) gives a hoot is beyond me, but I’ll give it a shot.
Yet many do talk about the city they live in, the type of work they do, and the car they drive. That information, plus an assortment of other personal details like age or education, is enough to uniquely identify a lot of people.
Income isn’t nearly as personally identifying (at least in broad terms, don’t give out your exact AGI from previous tax returns). It’s really just a cultural taboo that keeps people from talking about it.
I don’t think anyone could identify me based on my income, but I do think people here might treat me differently
As you state, I have posted the county I live in, my occupation, the car I drive, the number of times I’ve been married, and a few things about my kids. Someone who knows me could easily identify me. Some who doesn’t could probably figure it out if they tried hard enough. I assume no one cares nearly enough to put any effort into it.
I made under $1000 for 6+ months volunteer work on a Civil Grand Jury (something specific to California, I think). My other income consists of pensions, social security, and investments.
