I recently graduated and now work as a SWE for SF making just under 100K TC. My gf is about to finish her last semester of her degree in early childhood education. She’s doing her mandatory student teaching in order to get certified to teach in Texas. Now that she’s actually working as a teacher, she realized how much work she really had and how little pay she gets relative to her work. Allow me to explain. First of all, she has to do mandatory full time studemt teaching for a semester. M-F 7-4. Doesn’t sound so bad, but in Texas, it’s unpaid. On top of that, she has actual coursework to do at night so she can’t hold a job through the semester to pay her bills. On top of THAT, our university doesn’t qualify the student teaching semester as full time and doesn’t let you take additional classes to push over the full time credit hour requirement, so she lost her scholarship and loans for the semester. I offered to pay her tuition out of my pocket, which she eventually accepted. They work more than you realize. They easily put in 60+ hour weeks including work done at home writing lesson plans, grading assignments, and writing extremely detailed reports on each child individually. I didn’t even know these reports were a thing until she told me. They get super granular with these kids. It’s good for the kid, but bad for the teacher because it’s very time consuming. Like the title states, the pay is shit. I’m in the dfw area, where teacher pay is actually pretty high relative to the cost of living. New grad elementary school teacher pay falls just under 59K in our district. However, it doesn’t go up much from there. My gf’s mother is a career teacher and has taught for 22 years, and makes 67K. Same grade and same location. Different districts, but they pay the same. That’s it. 22 years of experience difference, and the pay difference is less than $8K. I’m not even going to get into actually dealing with kids and parents. But you can assume how hard it is, and it’s harder than that. I feel terrible for my gf, and I know it bothers her that I make such good money working from home full time in my boxers. My time in college was definitely much harder than here, but when she gets her own classroom, she will work much harder than I ever will and all for less than what I made as an intern in college. I understand *why* we make so much. The value we bring to companies cannot be understated. I’m not saying that we should make less. I’m saying that teachers should make more. Teachers don’t bring an inherent monetary value to their “organization” (the state/city) the way we do, teacher pay is more of a necessary expense. A VERY necessary and important expense. They should get paid more. Much more. It can be very easy to fall into a pretentious echo chamber in tech, but we have to remember that there are other people who work much harder than us and will never see the kind of money we see, even as new grads. Count your blessings, smell the roses.
Private School or public? Given how much private schools charge, I sure hope they are paying the teachers better. Public school teachers should also be paid more but that's a much harder conversation in the US for stupid reasons.
They pay less usually
Aha you got it backwards my friend. Public schools pay better than private schools. Private school teachers make 🥜
You have a valuable skill, teaching can be hard work but not as complex as a SWE. Who works harder, a teacher or construction worker?
Construction workers make more than teachers. Some of my buddies who work construction or some other trade make more than me lol
Strong disagree. Teaching multiple people is harder than teaching a person is harder than teaching a machine.
It's tough starting out but they can eventually reuse lesson plans as they become less junior and will get paid more once they hit tenure. I hear some teachers make six figures in the Bay when they hit that stage and some people really enjoy it as a second career
Good teachers build a good society and good citizens. Unfortunately, the govt does not pay
Ok. Date a girl who works less than you and makes more than you.. may be a manager in your company.. you can date her and if you are successful then come back and post that swes should get paid more 😀
Of you were laid in tech given the current job market your TC will be 0 for a long long time.
It is not too late for her to get another degree. Teachers have the summer vacation, job security that you never have. I still think teachers have to be paid more because the quality of their job. Teachers are honest and always go beyond
Agreed. She just doesn’t really see herself doing anything else and isn’t sure what she’d do if she left teaching
It’s good that she enjoys her job and you make good money too so I think she can progress in the teaching profession and you can progress in tech happily. But agree that teachers should be paid so much more for the importance they have on society and the shit they have to deal with on a daily basis
Teachers union is strong and their pension is good. In the long run it works out good
Just give her your salary, problem solved.
Teachers have pension plans btw
They’re not nearly as good as people think they are nowadays. It’s also more like a glorified 401k to some extent and often times the plans get screwed over by fund managers
Still isn’t that much and you only qualify for it after x amount of years. A lot of teachers won’t get it because they stopped teaching before they qualified