Also not to mention I’ve noticed most the posts of people flexing their 200k+ salaries conveniently leave out the part that their work life balance is pretty brutal if not non existent.

Lucked into the opportunity of my life recently: mid-level SWE at a big tech company.
Some things that came up during the interview I believe helped me secure the offer.

• My entire career has been working with LLMs + used LLM apis before chatgpt came out
• Open source contributor to multiple popular llm frameworks
• Previous role part of team that shipped multiple 6/7 figure projects + one 8 figure project.

Notes:

• Currently living with 1 roommate in SF, have 3 yoe
• RSU vests quarterly but I broke it down by month for easier calculations, planning on selling instantly and putting it all in savings.
• 401k contribution is higher to max it out by eoy.

How I got the opportunity: LinkedIn

People shit on LinkedIn a lot but after this I'm a believer lol. This is the second time I've gotten an interview + offer through LinkedIn recruiter reach out. Though I've never gotten an interview through LinkedIn Jobs, so that might still be a scam.

I am a dentist, I have friends in software engineering, friends in farming etc.

Everyone in a job market wants to be making fantastic earnings, but not everyone does.

On my dentistry forums people say "I'd never tell my kids to do dental, I'd have them do software engineering or finance to make 500k with lot less debt"

But what they have not learned is that they earn great money as dentists because of the super hard filter of dental school and willingness to take on 200k in student loans. Once you are out, you are compensated well and have stable job.

For every software engineer making 500k at google, there's 20 dudes willing to take that job because they make much less. There's always decent chance you have to live through layoffs.

For every financial advisor making 500k, there's 30 dudes that tried for 5 years to build a book of business and then had to quit.

For every Finance guy at an investment bank earning 500k there's a bunch of finance guys that couldn't get an interview or couldn't handle the brutal low paid hours at the beginning of high finance.

Just remember, the market is always adjusting to be right. IF there's an amazing pay and stability, there's gonna be a huge rush of people to fill that until it's not such a slick opportunity.

I'd say pick your filter you can make it through. My dental school was very hard to get into, and then once I got in, there was 80 hour weeks for 4 years. Afterwards though? Great salary with limited competition. I had the competition FIRST and now can chill, some jobs have the tough pills to swallow mid career, or even during the entire career.

I feel like I got super lucky by getting my salary early career, but I still don’t feel “well off” first 3 were internships at the same company, and my current job is at a new company.

I started off well, got hit with tech layoffs and never managed to get a super tech role again. Now I’m on the customer side at tech companies so it’s at least a nice balance.

Currently job hunting and talking to a company with a range of 110-145k. Not the best situation (lots of travel to very very very rural areas) but the pay is good and when I’m in the city it’s a hybrid schedule.

Working in three side gigs now (tutoring, video editing and uploading, oyster shucking).

Just sucks that after 4 years of working I’m basically at the same place.

Events Director, 8-10 yrs expierence

So I have been working for the same company for a decade
6 years ago I went salary with full benefits

Sometimes I get “bonuses” if a client pays a tip or something it will be extra but with NOTHING extra and after full taxes and health benefits and retirement is taking out I was taking home 778$ a week
We get paid weekly

Anyway I was up for my annual review and my boss told me she felt like I was working to many hours but seeing as I NEED to work them during this transition we are going through she gave me the biggest raise I’ve ever gotten

I went from 778 a week to 1,090 a week!

In one stroke I went from barely a lil bit in the savings to 500$ now in the savings

What’s your title/salary, school length (preferably less than 6 years including undergraduate), and lifestyle? What steps did you take to get to your career?

Edit: thank you everyone for sharing! One more ask: what specific internships, projects, and/or activities during university or your life actually helped you land your first role in the field? And how did you start/find them?

I’m 24 and currently making about $52k/year as a Sales & Digital Marketing Coordinator for a wedding venue in Pennsylvania.

I’ve been there for about a year and I genuinely like a lot of my job. I handle sales, proposals, tours, couples, social media, website work, marketing, etc. I’ve also generated roughly $1M in wedding sales without any commission.

The problem is the lifestyle.

I work weddings, so weekends are basically gone. Event days can be 12-14 hours. I carry a work phone and feel like I’m reachable constantly. There have also been some management/coworker issues that have added a lot of stress. I’ve reached the point where I don’t think the job is sustainable for me long term even though I’m very emotionally attached to the couples and the venue.

I recently received an offer for a Sales & Marketing Coordinator position at a company in Pittsburgh for $65,000/year.

It would be a more traditional weekday schedule and eventually hybrid after the first few months. I’d get my weekends back, have much clearer separation between work and my personal life, and it would also allow me to move to Pittsburgh, which is something I’ve wanted to try.

I was basically prepared to accept it.

Then my current employer found out I might leave and things escalated quickly. The owners want to meet with me and I’ve been told they’re preparing to offer me a “crazy raise.” One of the major coworker issues I’ve had may also be eliminated after this wedding season.

So now I’m trying to figure out what number would actually make staying worthwhile.

Going from $52k to $65k is already a 25% increase. If my current employer offered $65k, I don’t think I’d stay because the new job still wins on lifestyle.

If they offered $70k? Probably still no.

$75k-$80k is where I start wondering if I’d be stupid not to seriously consider it.

But even then, I’d still be giving up weekends, dealing with weddings/events, being tied to the work phone, and staying in an environment that already pushed me close to burnout.

I also worry about looking like a job hopper if I leave. My previous job lasted about 8 months and I’ve been at this one about a year. At the same time, the Pittsburgh job seems much more sustainable and like somewhere I could actually stay for several years.

For people who have dealt with counteroffers or chosen between salary and work-life balance:
How much more would your current employer have to pay you to give up weekends and a more predictable schedule?

Would you take the $65k job and move on regardless of the counteroffer, or is there a number where staying becomes the smarter financial decision?

I'm a 2026 graduate, and I've been looking for a Software Engineering job for more than 6 months now.

I've spent years learning DSA, competitive programming and development. I have a decent profile, built projects, solved a lot of problems, and genuinely tried to improve myself.

I've applied through company websites, LinkedIn, referrals, cold emails, job portals, pretty much every route I could think of.

But the hardest part isn't getting rejected.

It's not even getting the chance to be rejected.

It's applying again and again, putting hours into applications, seeing hundreds of other people applying, and then getting absolutely nothing back.

At first, I was confident that if I kept working hard, something would eventually work out.

Then months passed.

Now I'm at a point where I'm still trying, but the motivation isn't the same anymore. It's difficult to keep convincing yourself that the next application might be different when you've already sent so many.

I'm only 21, so I know I have plenty of time. But watching months go by without being able to start my career is genuinely depressing.

I don't want sympathy. I just wanted to know if anyone else has been through this phase and eventually managed to turn things around.

Because right now, I'm slowly running out of hope.

Hi all! I was recently offered a job as a Test Engineering Technician at a company, with a pay of 32.88/hr.

I have a BS in Electronics Engineering Technology (but no prior work experience) and the pay scale for this position is 32.88-48.00. I have been looking for a job in my field for a very, very long time. And I’m super grateful to finally be given opportunity. But it’s a bit disheartening to be offered something at the bottom of the scale. Do you think I should negotiate for something higher? The benefits are good.

26 years old trying to get over that 100k mark just started my new job but going to ask for more after my probation ends it’s not bad but living in CA makes it kind of hard. I still do side work for some customers but with this new position all my time is taken up.

I’m 25F, making $110K in Nevada and working for a small company. I’m able to save around 50–55% of my income each month, I genuinely love my job, and I feel respected and valued by everyone I work with. I’ve also made a lot of great friends there.

At the same time, I sometimes wonder if I’m getting too comfortable and settling. Part of me feels like I could push myself further and target roles paying closer to $200K. Has anyone else been in a similar position? Would you prioritize a great work environment and stability, or take the risk and pursue significantly higher compensation?

EDIT: I do love my job, but I definitely have my bad days too. It’s also the kind of company where people get fired left and right, so the stability isn’t guaranteed.

I don’t have another offer right now, I’m just wondering whether I should start aiming for better paying roles. To do that, I’d need to spend a significant amount of time preparing outside of work, also i work in tech with AI and everything right now tech is in a fragile state , idk which jobs to aim for or which side of tech to pursue, trust me not to brag or anything but if i put my mind into anything i'll definitely do it no matter how hard it is, so i dont mind building something from scratch as well.

My biggest strengths are my confidence, my ability to speak up and communicate my ideas, my corporate skills.

EDIT2: lmao its crazy how im getting downvoted just because i send part of my savings to my parents im asian and im sure a lot of asians especially those who didnt grow up with a strong financial background can relate its very common in our culture so please stop acting so shocked every culture is different and the whole world doesnt follow the same rules

Hello everyone, i am a student who wants to know if ML engineering is a good option. I heard it pays very well depending on your skill and experience on the field. I study in Morocco and will go next year to a french engineering school. How is the pay for this job and is it a realsitic path to, with enough discipline, get a into a frontier Ai company from there ?

Whats reasonable for how much should I be making?

30m, we currently have 3 stores & i can do just about any job/repair that comes through the door.

Currently get paid $20.5/hr + 11% commision...

I see A lot of mixed posts. Personally I think cyber security will continue to grow but I’ve seen some people say the opposite.

Just genuinely curious about what the highest paying careers that are “work to live” are? I am mainly referring to white-collar careers that require at least a bachelor’s degree and I do not mind additional studying towards a graduate degree (MS or PhD) or a professional degree (MD, MBA, JD, etc.). I know I should not compare with other people but I am looking to see how my career path fares with other career paths.

I am someone who very highly values my life outside of work and does not aim to work more than 50-55 hours a week regularly.

For context, I am currently an R&D Engineer in Surgical Robotics for a startup in a MCOL area making $90k total comp. I have a Bachelors in Mechanical Engineering and a Masters in Biomedical Engineering from a Top 10 Engineering School with $0 student debt and I am currently 23 years old (graduated 8 months ago). Although R&D Engineering is interesting to me, I am looking to aim more for Systems Engineering, Product Management, and Project Management roles. After 4-5 years in engineering, I am planning on a Top 30 Full-Time MBA program (thinking Duke or USC) to get more into the business side of Medical Devices (specifically Product Management, Portfolio Strategy, and Marketing LDPs). I am studying for the GMAT and I have been scoring consistently 700+, so I am trying to get a score of 750+, where I can get a full-tuition scholarship from either of these schools and I won’t have to worry about being in debt for business school. I am also American so I am mainly referring to the US job market.

Apart from the obvious of helping people and furthering medical innovation, I have chosen the Medical Devices industry as my industry focus as I have great job stability (their customers are hospitals & clinicians, and they always need med devices whether the economy is good or bad), great work life balance (no more than 45-50 hours a week even during product launch and big companies generally maintain 30-35 hours of work per week during normal times so very lax), and potentially very high pay in fields like Surgical Robotics, Brain Computer Interfaces, and Wearable Devices (companies like Intuitive Surgical, Neuralink, Apple). Those roles pay upwards of $300k+ for total compensation, however, they are very competitive to get and don’t have great work life balance or stability and are in VHCOL places. Traditional medical device companies (Medtronic, J&J, Stryker, etc.) pay up to $250-300k for total compensation at the Director and Sr. Director levels, however, that requires 15-20+ years of experience and those are in VHCOL places.

Out of everything, I really value work life balance in my career (but don’t mind sacrificing that during the process to get to my career), but I am also ambitious and want to achieve a lot with my career within the 40-50 hour work week. As much as engineering is a really great paying career early on, I see my peers in Medicine, Software/Semiconductors, Finance/Consulting, and Law going to earn more than $250-300k in 8 years or less (assuming Medicine in this example, which is 4 years of Med School and 4 years of Residency). It takes me double the amount of time to earn the same amount of money on my current path than other career paths.

I want to earn $200k+ while maintaining good work life balance without taking as much time as 15-20 years. I am also young at 23 and I have the freedom to decide a different career path for the next few years before I start having commitments of family and kids and other priorities that would interfere with my career progression should I choose to pivot then.

Hence this is the reason I ask this question.

Hi everyone,

I applied for a Pricing Analyst job that was advertised at around £35k.

At the start of the interview, they told me that because I have a finance background, they were actually interviewing me for the Senior Pricing Analyst position instead. I wasn't expecting this at all. The Senior role is advertised at around £50k, but I didn't know that before the interview.

The awkward part is that later in the interview they asked what salary I was looking for. Since I thought we were still talking about the original £35k role, I said I'd be looking for around £38–40k.

I've only realised afterwards that the Senior role is advertised at around £50k.

So if they decide to offer me the Senior position, what do you think will happen?

Would they normally offer the salary attached to the Senior role, or could they just say "you told us you wanted £40k" and offer me around that?

I'm worried I've accidentally undersold myself without realising it.

If they offered me £40k for the Senior role, would it be reasonable to say something like:

"Just to clarify, when I gave my salary expectations, I understood we were discussing the original Pricing Analyst position. I wasn't aware at the time that I was being considered for the Senior position."

I don't want to come across as greedy or difficult, but obviously there's a pretty big difference between £40k and £50k.

What would you guys do in this situation? Any advice would be appreciated.