Wow, how could you stand being that massively underpaid for so long? Where do you live?
A second tier city where 500 square foot apartments within an hour of work cost less than 200k. I'm not underpaid; this is the market rate for my job. Not everyone gets to be promoted to manager, and what I do every day could be taught to any smart recent graduate.
@wayfair Welcome to the world outside tech
Have you stayed at the same company? 20 yoe is a lot for that pay, my dad makes 70k in manufacturing without any degree.
Same company the whole time. For a long time I worked the graveyard shift which allowed me time to go to grad school and study more, which is why I never considered quitting. Now I'm back working normal hours with no particular benefits.
My grad degree is in linguistics whereas my job is finance back office, so there's no connection. There must be lots of people like this who are well educated but have regular-Joe jobs in unrelated fields. I had wanted to get into machine translation and natural language processing, but my programming skills are middling; certainly nothing to show a recruiter. It feels a little strange that there aren't more such people on here. We're certainly the majority in the larger world.
What city are you in? I'm in a small middle-of-nowhere Midwest city, 5 yoe. I currently make approx $90K and have been looking around, in the last 3 months I've received 3 offers for over 6 figures in my town
I think most of us blinders are in the bay area where I just read the middle class house hold income is about 200k. Think about the higher tax brackets, state income tax, higher cost of living, high cost of housing and A person who makes 120-130 k is effectively living with the standards of one who earns 40-50 k elsewhere. Also, I think the vast majority of SW engineers in here earn less than 200k
Not according to a recent poll, which showed that approximately $200k is the median for all Blinders
Totally accurate. I’m at roughly 300 k household income and sometimes feel like We’re living paycheck to paycheck. Saving and investing every month, of course, but everything else is taxes.
That is not an upper middle class salary. I live in the Midwest, Columbus Ohio, I make $103k total comp and this is still a middle class salary. 1.5 YOE
Exactly what I was thinking. Midwest is pretty cheap on avg but most of the middle class neighborhoods would not be affordable at 50K salary.
I can't even afford a house here, decent ones go for $250-300k and on my income that's a lot
Do you have a spouse and kids? What is your household income? Can you afford a family in your area with your income?
I could afford a family here... I just wish I had one.
If you are making under 50k after 20 years, what did you start at?
32k or so. Nice raises in 2005 and '07; slight decrease since the 2009 crisis.
Do you feel your value is worth more than that? I started out at $36k in Dec 2008 and have made it to $105k since. Never hurts to look around unless you live in a town with 16 people in it and no other opportunity.
I bet there are a lot of people making 60k. I have a friend making 65k at 10yoe as a business analyst in a Mid West town. Thing about yoe is, after 6-8, it's sort of rare for salary pay to grow along with your yoe. Blind happens to have a biased sample obviously.
I'm very similar to your analyst friend in all facets.
Yeah I feel you man. He's not on Blind. He does have a 3 bed house which most of Blind does not.
I want to hear from more such people. Have they all been scared away or driven off by the super-high-TC crowd?
When I was in the Bay Area all people around me used to ever talk about was going to FAANG so that they can get the insane salaries that ppl talk about here... Not everyone makes crazy salaries but if u want to live comfortably in expensive cities u need to make them. If you are happy with your salary, don’t feel like someone is underpaying u then that is all that matters.
Where is 50k considered upper middle class? I'm asking sincerely
By US and world standards. The average -household- income in the USA is about 57k so personal income has to be lower.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but earning the median household income is definitely not upper middle class. Keep in mind that the average household has less than two earners