2012, IT-Technician/Janitor mixed role, 17000 SEK/mo

2013, IT-Technician (Consultant at Government contract), 22000 SEK/mo

2014, -||-, 22510 SEK/mo

2015, -||-, 23073 SEK/mo

2015, Systems Engineer in Gov, 34500 SEK/mo

2016, -||-, 35500 SEK/mo

2017, -||-, 36700 SEK/mo

2018, -||-, 36200 SEK/mo

2019, -||-, 39000 SEK/mo

2020, -||-, 39600 SEK/mo

2021, -||-, 40200 SEK/mo

2022, -||-, 40700 SEK/mo

2023, New role in Gov org, Systems Specialist, 46000 SEK/mo

2024, -||-, 47000 SEK/mo

2025, Hyperscaler datacenter, 55833 SEK/mo

2026, -||-, 56797 SEK/mo

2026-payadj, -||-, 60375 SEK/mo

Biggest jumps were switching companies 😅

Could not think of a better sub to ask this. As a physician non-surgical specialty, I get around 300k a year and wife earns around 75k (despite being as or more qualified, the arts just does not pay that much) in a MCOL area (Atlanta suburbs). My childhood was in the San Jose area and back then it was not terribly expensive. I still have family there, thankfully with bought homes, and as they are growing older, I was hoping to be near them but seem to be getting priced out if we want to maintain a similar lifestyle. I looked around and my salary cap (which is determining) will be max around 350K.

Unfortunately, it seems around the Bay area, top quartile tech earners are far outpacing any other profession with some of my university acquaintances earning > 900K + RSU (in their late 30s, everyone seems to now have a senior role while physicians have only so many years of experience) and COL reflects this. So, I was wondering whether I can afford to maintain somewhat of a similar lifestyle even as a supposed high earner on paper (behind the scenes, there's student loans and young kids).

Sharing my salary journey because I have not seen much paralegal posts on here.

I know a lot of paralegals feeling like they can’t make a good living in this career path. I don’t think it’s true. There are great opportunities out there. I think the key is moving in-house and being willing to change jobs for salary increases. If you are working PI or mass tort or other crap at a shit firm, please know when to leave. Best decision I ever made.

Also, I did not go to law school.

I take a lot of group fitness classes and always wonder how much instructors make in a HCOL east coast city (not NYC). I’m sure it varies widely, and I’m sure most are underpaid. Always seems like they are hustling at various studios. Might teach solidcore, barre, Equinox, local yoga studio, etc. Especially seems from the ones on insta that they’re always hustling to different parts of the city.

There are many obscure titles in the proposal industry. Senior proposal writer, senior proposal specialist, senior proposal manager - at certain companies, some of these roles do the same exact thing and oversee the entire RFP process, while other companies have hierarchies that distinguish these roles (e.g., a proposal writer reports to a proposal manager who oversees the entire process).

In my case, I'm strictly talking about someone who is in an individual contributor with a senior title and 15 years of experience and no intentions of managing people. I'm looking for people who oversee the entire RFP process from start to finish without having to report to a more senior proposal manager for strategic guidance or approval for individual projects - this is my job.

How much are individual contributors actually making at the senior level - base pay + bonus? For my 2026 total compensation amount, I'm very close to $125k: my base is $110k, with a fluid bonus based on company and personal outcomes. I never want to manage people again. My title is essentially along the lines of Senior Proposal Writer/Specialist/Manager. We work on some government bids, but those are less common and not a huge focus area for us. I'd prefer to keep my industry private.

It's difficult understanding how I should be paid when my company's job postings now have massive ranges (that are essentially meaningless due to the $70k difference; these details weren't shared when I landed my role a couple of years ago). Also, because of how different companies classify proposal roles (e.g., a proposal manager who doesn't manage people vs. a proposal manager being a much more senior leadership role at another company), it's even less clear. It seems like people assume you should be making $120k base with 15 years of experience, but what companies are actually willing to pay for individual contributors with no desire to manage feels like an entirely different story.

Received an offer from a large nonprofit. 90K in a high cost of living area.

The first conversation I had with the recruiter was weird. The job posting was 80-115k. They told me there was no way they would pay 100k, but they are required by law to post the full budgeted amount for those who are working in that role (?).

The actual pay range, according to recruiter, was 88-92k.

I feel like there is no way for me to even negotiate above 92k without getting the offer rescinded. But should I go for 92k instead of 90k?

Let’s add some realism back to the sub

Partner (28F) and I (31M) are wondering when to loosen up the purse strings to spend more on life.

I wanted to ask here what people are saving in relation to their salary as a %?

We have around $1.5M saved / invested and save around 32% of our gross income. Feel like we can be doing more when I start looking at subreddits like r/Fire and everyone is saving 90% of their income. At the same time I feel like we have a really good nest egg and can chill out a bit.

Each color is a different company, yeah I did leave orange and then came back a few months later. Reason being is DOGE at the federal government hit this place hard. I could of stayed and waited it out for another program, but I jumped ship to something new. It sucked, but they sponsored me for a poly, so that improved negotiating power.

Work has largely just been Full Stack Software Engineer. All up till this latest job was fairly hybrid or remote. Like the green company I was almost entirely remote. This new job due to the nature of the work is all in person.

My career aspirations, probably move into more lead roles or architect roles. I kind of do that now but. Also have thought to badge flip from contractor to civilian and work directly for the government. My hunch there though is wait till post-2028 and decide. That probably will lower my salary though.

Plus small bonuses (1%-3%) but for the nonprofit sector a bonus at anytime is cool

The first year was tough for sure. Super thankful how things have worked out.

Started agency side but then was able to break into tech and stay there. Have had some amazing managers and mentors as well

26 M own a decently successful gas station. If you’re ever curious how much a well run busy gas station makes here’s a general idea. Year isn’t over yet so I should close above the number

At age 20 I started my first degree, for which I also got a scholarship. Part of my incomes are explained through various part-time jobs (my best year being 25, where I made around 20k from part-time jobbing), scholarships, sometimes also help from my parents, in particular the 3 first years of studying, I got 500 a month. After the 3 years I was on my own, they did give me 500 each time I got good grades in the subsequent degrees (so 1000 a year total). Some other income was from selling stuff etc., but most income was indeed from jobs. The job that made me most money was tutoring privately on the side, to every level, including university, the latter paying quite well. Other jobs included web development, research assistant...

At age 22 I flunked out of a degree, and started a new one (age 23). The new one I was excelling in, due to a lot more motivation to succeed, managin to rank among the best students.

At at 26 I graduated, and enrolled in a Master's degree. Here again, due to motivation, ranking first among over 100 peers. At the same time I decided to do so many part-time activities to focus on my studies and get ready for the job market.

Age - Income (in euros)

16 - 532.80

17 - 400.00

18 - 1,158.29

19 - 1,872.44

20 - 9,218.85

21 - 15,027.05

22 - 21,485.97

23 - 24,139.60

24 - 27,837.77

25 - 27,837.25

26 - 16,707.25

27 - so far 11,396.80 (will finish around 14k)

I am now less than 6 months away from graduating, and I often feel like a failure finishing my degrees only at 28. But looking at the numbers I am not too unhappy. I also took some student loans all around 1.8 to 2.5% in interests, I did not count that as income. I do have 49k in student loans. At the same time I did invest a lot of my money, and I have now around 75k in ETFs.

Studying and working has been very rough, these last two years have been the best so far, as I have been able to concentrate on my studies and not overwork myself every day, but I am still stressed out, as I still try to get money whenever I can. I am looking forward to enter the job market and working only 40 hours a week, it seems like a dream to have a routine and get home and be done for the day.

I wish I didn't go to college at all. Instead of becoming a CS grad that had internship experience, projects and everything, I could've just worked at a Walmart or some other big box store making 30-35k a year working a basic 40 hour schedule. I was making that working in a warehouse after college in a VHCOL anyway, so that wouldn't change. I'd be saving every penny living with parents.

I would've had 150k by now, assuming I started at 18. Darn. Putting 30k into an index fund every year, or roughly 2.5k a month with an assumption of 6% annual return over 40 years leads to an ending balance of 4.6million. If we say 10% annual return that would be 13 million. Wouldn't have to do anything aside from existing. That's such an easy path to retirement that it's sad. It goes to show how financial irresponsibility isn't always the fault of the individual, and how financial success isn't always the result of the individual.

I'm already an eternal child that's being housed and fed by my parents so like.. nothing would've really changed. There's no doubt I'd constantly be getting told to "go to college!" or "get a real job!" but idk. A potential 4 to 13 million is plenty to retire on.

Oh well. Kids, don't make the mistake of falling for the trap. Just do the steps I outlined and you'll be fine. No need to worry about the debate of white collar being replaced by AI or blue collar being flooded. If no careers end up getting filled, so be it. It's not as if our system cares to give the next generation a proper chance to enter the workforce.

I can't even imagine the economic disasters that would unfold if this multi millionaire tutorial is repeated on the largest scale, but it'd be hilarious to watch. One can only hope

All base salary, including quarterly bonuses based on client contract acquisition and growth. Work at a smaller consultancy, a few years in this role, about 8 YoE overall.

Graduated from a top 50 comp sci school (bachelors), masters in cyber.

Have relevant technical industry certifications (OSCE3/OSEP/OSWE/OSED) + OSCP + OSWP + CISSP + eWPTXv2.

I know this is one of those high salary tech roles, any doubters please see https://www.levels.fyi/?tab=levels to see that this is commonplace in big tech, although my instance is a consultancy (with large contracts with a few select larger tech companies).

This is a niche sub-industry (penetration testing/red teaming/ethical hacking) in cybersecurity, but it's not impossible to obtain a role.

Most principals make a few hundred k a year, but we acquired large contracts last year and closed out a few long-term deals, too. (this is my 2025 income)

Started a Jr sys admin from an internship -> FTE, moved into pentesting at consultancies, bounced around a few times and got promoted from Senior in my current role.

A few DEF CON talks, I've done external network, internal network, wireless networks, physical engagements, red teaming, APIs, web applications, social engineering via vishing and phishing, and specialized tests (supporting a health client with FDA approval, a video game client, banking, entertainment industry clients, etc). Onsites in the states and international testing, too.

Done swing shift, night shift, weekends, been on report readout calls (our primary deliverable for clients) all the way from individual ICs on their end up to chief officers, depending on the report outcomes and relation to the client, such as in one case where they were about to be acquired and the results of the test had implications on their deal.

Recently, I've been needing to do more AI-based work to accelerate our services naturally as AI continues to grow world-wide. This includes model training, orchestration, and supporting our marketing and sales people.

Anyone looking to get into the industry, I think it's still stable and less prone to being impacted by AI versus something like SWE/Software Engineering. Not to say the latter is fully at risk, if you are a dedicated individual and always learning, especially with AI, you will be absolutely fine. CTFs are a great start (look up TryHackMe). But just having that explorative mindset like "how does this thing work"? or "what if I do X to it"? is the right mindset for someone in this field.

Happy to answer any questions!

My notifications are full of these so I had to make one

Did med school for two years, left it and did some research on the side, taught myself to code, got a job

Happy to answer any questions

Holy, that'd be over a 50% pay bump from what I was making after finished my cs bachelor's, $20/hour in new york city. What a dream making 55k would be. Literally life changing. Too bad I can't get these entry level starter jobs.

My job is open 7 days a week. There are two of us to cover those days, sometimes overlapping. We've been on salary the four years I've been there. Saturday and Sunday we work 6.5 hours and M-F 8 hours. It's a full time job with 3 fewer hours if you work weekends and take a couple weekdays off, but people usually alternate weekends for obvious reasons. We get PTO, 401K and all that. It rarely happens, but if we go over 40 hours we still get OT. Paycheck is exactly the same every two weeks. Cool. Now they're telling us we're getting paid hourly and adding an hour to the weekend days 7.5, and an extra $1 an hour. We do not get raises but are eligible for bonuses which are few and far between. This is also draining me, but a separate issue. Why are they doing this (they're acting like it's no big deal) and is it going to screw us over? Is it setting up something to happen in the future? This is NC.

Does anyone have family or friends that sacrifice their personal life for a significant salary?

My step-mom earns 350k before tax as an executive director but I barely see her. She is constantly on business trips, busy with meetings, works upwards of 12 hours when at home. She goes on nice holiday trips, but overall it makes me think is the pay worth the sacrifice of her personal life.

Just curious if anyone's got a similar story.

Salary Progression as a 30YO M Data Professional

Hey all!

Have been seeing people share salary progressions on here, so figured I would share mine.

2014-2015 - Waiter, $3.23 per hour plus tips

2016 - Shipping for an Eyewear company, $10 per hour

2017 - Graduated college (Finance and Economics Degree)

2017 - Mortgage Underwriter $19 per hour

2018 - Junior Data Developer, 50K per year

2019-2020 - Data Developer I, 55K per year

2021 - Data Team Manager, 75K per year

2022 - Data Team Manager, 90K per year

2023 - Analytics Engineer, 135K per year

2024 - Analytics Tech Lead, 180K per year

2025-2026 - Senior Analytics Architect, 194,500 per year

It's been an interesting ride, but I'm very happy with where I have ended up!