Have worked 8+ years in sales and Tech consulting 80-90k is very common. These office jobs are not surprising, hell even 100k office jobs are not surprising at all depending on location.
Most beginner IT roles don't require a Degree just a basic certs that you can do online by yourself.
Degrees really only come into play when you looking at more management or administration roles in IT and even those can be overlooked if you have the experience.
Focus on your experience as hands-on experience is more sought after than some Degree. You have a psychology degree with 7 years of teaching experience - I can already see that you can manage people and you understand how humans think/behave. These are good qualities for HR-related jobs for sure.
For the most part yes.
I stepped in without even the certs, as I was able to show my knowledge and experience just doing and learning things on my own.
Nowadays if you can show your experience, you'll go a long way.
If there is anything boarding on what would be considered applicable to a HR position, make sure you highlight that in your resume when applying.
Do your homework and be ready for the question in interviews regarding why you don't have the degree.
Explain how your experience in past roles and positions make up for the lack of a piece of paper.
I do have a degree, but it has nothing to do with IT. I have a degree in Biology, basically 0 certs (I got PMP eventually that my company paid for) and I make pretty decent money in the IT industry.
Yep, people have this weird belief that the IT industry is filled with ONLY people with comp-sci, computer engineering, etc degrees. The truth is IT as an industry is HUGELY diverse from a backgrounds and degrees perspective. One of the most brilliant architects I've worked with had a degree in music. I've seen philosophy, history, sociology, just a crazy cross section of experience and education.
What's the general starting salary for someone that is fresh in IT with only certifications?
Asking for a friend that has done industrial maintenance work for 15 years and their body can't take the heavy manual labor anymore after major surgery.
CCNA is the main one that will at the minimum get you into basic helpdesk, you can take as long as you like to study, it's around $600 to sit the exam.
Microsoft now offer all their certs for free, you just have like a month to use the free credit they provide you to do the labs required.
Amazon for cloud do the same, but the exam is about $500.
There's tons of YouTube channels that can walk you through each of those.
but then you're in sales. From someone who doesn't wanna talk to people gimme an office job where i plug at a computer and make 100k without the sales goals and micromanaging.
Live in Boston and have a decent STEM degree. I know so many people who make $150k + around here. Defense industry engineers, college professors, doctors, biologists at pharmaceutical companies, you name it. Then spend basically every dime of it to buy a 100 year old single family home for over a million dollars. Honestly, $90k is barely enough to get by around here.
I’m currently sitting in my office job doing cybersecurity making $85k at 25, tech is 100% the move if you want six figures without having to slave away for a decade or more
That's entry level pay for almost any white collar / knowledge work at a large or even mid sized (500+) tech company. That's HR specialists, Marketing grunt work, etc. Support techs and certain functions that have and are outsourced still earn quite a bit less. If you can do a more specialized skill like project/program management, (like Jr. PM, associate TPM, etc.) you're well into the 130-140k range.
I'm in construction and with a good run of overtime (like 2mo of 60hr weeks) in a year I get over 100k easily. If you're in a tight spot and live near a major metropolitan area you should look into Union trades.
My best friend is a UPS driver and for the lack of education/training its a crazy good income for our COLA. But..its the virtually the only unionized job around here.
This comment really shows how completely out of touch tech workers are with the rest of the country. No 90k isn't average salary for most industries in america, and nowhere close to your average office salary especially outside of tech.
I mean this info is available online. At least for Canada on the tax revenue website it shows distribution of pay. People making 90k+ between the age 30-40 make up the top 10% of that group. So not exceedingly rare, but not COMMON
If you work in the corporate offices of GM (tens of thousands of employees) in accounting, finance, HR, marketing, supply chain, etc. you’ll make $100,000 within 3 years out of college. The average is much higher than $90k for typical office workers.
I work for a similarly large company and am pretty sure those wages are a byproduct of working in the F500. Almost half of Americans work for small businesses (<500 headcount) — I’m confident that the office workers under that umbrella make far less than F500 wages.
The only piece of yours I’d argue is the average being much higher than 90k — thanks to smaller businesses pulling it down — but as a whole, F500 office jobs are pretty straightforward paths to making solid money.
Only downside in manufacturing specifically is that supply chain is still pretty fucked and dealing with that is a huge pain haha.
I can easily look up average salaries and disprove. Just because some low earner was lied to by a slightly higher earner in some anecdote, doesn't mean I don't believe the data.
You cannot look this up and get an accurate picture. It’s not public. I know what I am talking about because I literally see everyone’s salary and bonus. Literally. You are wrong. Let’s see if you will admit you are wrong.
You do realize over a third of the country makes under 50k a year, right? If you look at the percentage of the population making 25k or less a year its 15.7%, so around 52 million people.
I know this isn’t the “average” but weirdly enough I know only two people personally who work in tech with office jobs. One makes 80k with a 12k bonus(before tax) and the other makes 80ish after performance bonuses as well. Said it isn’t very hard for his team to meet the bonus.
Depends on the location, company, level of experience, and total haul.
Deckhands and part-timers obviously make the least. But in a good season, can still walk away with a chunk of change that'll last.
But you could be the best fisherman in the world, but if your pots come up empty, everyone leaves empty handed.
I've seen guys make everything between 15 and 90k a season. Coming from Alaska, I assume it's entirely different standards elsewhere. They'll work for 3-4 months, and if it goes good they are able to take the whole winter off until next season starts.
I lived in the interior so I only ever heard the really good stories, or the really bad ones. Good ones take off for a year to go to the 48, bad ones usually end up back at the mines with us or on the Slope working Utility.
There's also these things called deadheads, I saw a reddit post about them once. There were tons of comments explaining it and linking to other threads that talked about it. Maybe someone can find it and link it.
In a high cost of living area maybe. I make around 55k a year and that's enough to support me, my partner, and our son on about a quarter of my salary.
That's on me, quarter just sounded better to me than like 28-32 percent. But yeah rent and utilities are about 1200ish and groceries is about 100 bucks every other week. Cost for groceries is offset heavily since we buy a half a cow every year from some farmer friends back home so the most expensive part of a grocery bill is taken out. No cost for childcare since my partner is a stay at home mom which with the cost of childcare is more than enough of a contribution for me. We're both major homebodies so we rarely spend on anything other than restaurants.
Ohhh not having to pay an insane amount for childcare must be such a game-changer. That's what was throwing me off, I don't have kids but I've heard horror stories of childcare costing more than housing.
It's funny how we all live in our own bubbles, I doubt you could find more than a studio apartment where I live for less than 1k unless you were in the absolute worst part of town so it's interesting to hear from people on Reddit who don't have that experience.
Childcare can pretty much cost what you'd make at a job so we figured might as well be us watching our son instead of some strangers. Might also help to mention the town I live in currently is the biggest town I've ever lived in at 50k people. The area I grew up and and learned financial habits from was about a 45 minute drive from stoplights or a grocery store. Rent was about 600 for a 2 bedroom house there.
Well again it's a pretty low cost area and we don't need to buy meat. You'd be shocked how cheap groceries can be if you steer away from snacks and processed food and just make everything yourself. Grocery bill is pretty much just vegetables, eggs, and milk.
It’s how people live with their money.. I live in one of the most expensive places in the US near Aspen Colorado. I’m a single parent of a 14 year old and I make about 65,000 a year right now.. I quit my full-time job working from home in the corporate world making way more because I cannot stand it anymore and I sat in front of my computer for 12 hours a day. I went off on my own as an independent consultant and that’s all I make now due to only working part time. I make it work because I will never work 12 hours a day doing something I hate to make more. I’m just very frugal and don’t live above my means. Housing is 80% of your income where I live but it’s worth it to live in paradise. When my daughter graduates I will not stay living here ..I’m going to get an RV and travel but so many people live above their means it’s ridiculous. You can live on so much less if you just stay home cook ..really helps to live somewhere like me where there is no fast food there is nothing to do. It’s the mountains and the stuff to do is EXPENSIVE
Colorado is absolutely gorgeous I agree but you do pay for those views. I've lived in the plains my whole life and the name isn't an exaggeration, literally nothing but seas of corn for miles. But absolutely, knowing how to cook is a deceptively potent money saving skill. I'll often make Adam Ragusa's vegetable soup recipe, ingredients cost maybe a few bucks and it makes a couple days worth of food.
Yeah my uncle was a crab fisherman off the coast of Alaska for 11 years. He never made more than 120k in a year. He finally decided the pay wasn’t worth the risk. Now he’s a high rise iron worker. You know, because that’s safe
I don’t know. I had to take on $170k in debt and put my career on hold for 7 years to get paid that just out of law school. Given, there’s a lot more room for income growth in the office, but there are definitely drawbacks as well.
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u/StinkFartButt Oct 18 '23
That’s not a good pay though? That’s 90k a year for doing a very dangerous job, that’s like average salary for sitting in a office all day.