<p>Busdriver:
Sort of off topic but I fear once again I have jumped to a sexist conclusion assuming you were a gentleman since you were a pilot. I fly a good deal on SW and can’t say I’ve ever noticed how many pilots were female. Would you say it’s common? This assumes I’m not jumping to another conclusion after reading you have a husband ;)</p>
<p>^ I did this once too with Busdriver. Shame on me.</p>
<p>That cracks me up, but yes I am a woman. I even look like one and sometimes think like one (not to be sexist, but you know we are so much more compassionate than the guys). And my husband is a man :), who is a pilot too. Women, depending upon the airline, probably make up about 2-5% of the crew force. When I was in the military, it was about 1.5% female pilots. There is no discrimination, women just aren’t interested.</p>
<p>One key difference in some occupations is the difference between the haves and have-nots. Nurses, for example, may fall into a fairly narrow range (with a few outliers). In contrast, some lawyers earn seven figures while others barely make a living or can’t find a job at all. I suspect that architecture is the same way - a top architect at a top firm works on exciting projects and earns a great living, while many others scrape by. Musicians and actors are perhaps the most extreme example of a star system, where a few make phenomenal amounts of money, a few more do well, and everyone else starves.</p>
<p>As others have noted, love for a particular career can go a long way in making financial adversity palatable. I’ve known plenty of musicians who have to continually look for gigs and teaching opportunities and who know they’ll never get rich, but wouldn’t trade their career for any other.</p>
<p>If surveys like this are useful for anything, it’s for introducing a little bit of reality to those students who assume that with a degree they’ll automatically get a reasonable job in their chosen profession.</p>
<p>ARCHITECT. Spoken from experience, and spoken from consultation with many architect friends. Profession requires significant higher education, apprenticeship, licensing, years of slow-slog career advancement, and relatively low income earning potential when compared with other professions requiring 5, 6, or 7 years of university education, 3 years apprenticeship, and numerous years of continuing ed fees. Not unusual to have an Ivy league grad degree and earn $35,000 starting salary (outside NYC). Work conditions can be difficult - long hours, relative inability to control one’s personal schedule and overtime requriements, expectations of near “all-nighters” even in your 40s and 50s, significant salary cuts, layoffs, and soured expectations during recessions (including 2008 - 2011), and an oversupply of architects resulting from architecture schools pumping out more graduates than market can support.</p>
<p>Plus “great salary” in architecture can be defined to be as low as $100,000, and an average “partner” in a large office (not star architect of firm) may be compensated in $150,000 to $200,000 range depending on region - clearly not same salary range as vested lawyers at large law firms or physicians particiating in big city practices, etc. Architects generally cluster in large cities, smaller cities (and far-out suburban and rural areas) offer compartively little employment opportunities for architects, so face higher household living expense burden too.</p>
<p>Nice summary, higgins2013. That shouldn’t dissuade someone who REALLY wants to be an architect, but paints a realistic picture of the range of outcomes.</p>
<p>Articles like this one truly annoy me. That article really says nothing. Of course, jobs/professions aren’t always what they’re cracked up to be. Not everyone who is a doctor, lawyer, or Indian chief earns huge bucks and not everyone who is a CEO slaves away for hours and hours. Duh . . . Every profession has a downside and if one thought about it for a few minutes, he/she would realize that. I suppose kids might be blindsided by some fairy tale view of what it’s like to be X, Y, or Z–but even kids have moments of clarity. Personally, I think if you do what you love or what excites you or what you’re good at doing–you’ll be fine. My father was an immigrant who worked at all kinds of jobs, even those that were mind-numbing. He did it because he had no choice. I think if one puts himself/herself in the position of having some choice with respect to jobs–that’s the best of all worlds.</p>
<p>The psychiatrist job doesn’t seem overrated to me…</p>
<p>Overrated jobs are, I guess, jobs that sound glamorous (and probably once were glamorous) but have been caught in the downdrafts caused by globalization, technology, and recessions. Some primary care physicians love their jobs, but most seem to be dissatisfied as the pressure of weakened economics means they have to see patients in 15 minute slots. One told me “I have to spend most of my time with my back to the patient typing the answers to questions into the computer.” Income has declined and the work has gotten worse. I think the same is true for many lawyers, but not all. I’m working on a deal where one of the lawyers involved, a star in his field, has apparently bought himself a private island somewhere near Hawaii. And, some, like missypie, like it. Though when we ShawSon said, based upon his Moot Court and debate team experience, that he might become a lawyer, our lawyer friends tried to dissuade him. And, they are now outsourcing grunt legal work to India.</p>
<p>This is a pretty simplistic article, but I think identifying jobs where competition has increased or will increase, rewards have declined or will do so, and working conditions have declined or will despite a potentially glamorous reputation could be a service.</p>
<p>I can understand the article, if you look at it as perception versus reality, then yes, these could be considered some of the jobs with the highest perception of how well you do versus reality (though to be honest, I don’t recall many people thinking an architect was a high profile job per se, with the exception of the IM Pei’s, Frank Gehrys and so forth, for the most part it is just another upper middle income job…think of Mike Brady more then Frank Gehry)</p>
<p>I also question some of the salary figures. For example, with high level corporate executives what are they including in the mix…does that represent small businesses and large ones? Does it reflect base pay or does it reflect total compensation? If they are talking large corporations, I question those figures. For one thing, CEO’s, CFO’s and the like get most of their compensation from non salary compensation, these days it is mostly stock grants and options (upper level executives don’t get large cash bonuses these days). The median pay of a CEO these days based on total compensation is not a couple of hundred thousand a year, it is in the 8 million dollar range and likewise top level compensation for executives is up there if you are talking mid to large size companies. I wonder if that also includes, for example, CEO’s of non profits and the like, or startups where salaries are low, even for the CEO. The other thing the article leaves out is in this recession, the people who are at the senior executive level are the only ones showing increases in compensation, and it is in the double digits a year…As far as the stress of being a CEO and the long hours, I find that kind of funny, for the very reason that people way away from the CEO level are working long, long hours and stress levels are through the roof because of doing more with less and fears of being laid off, and yet their compensation is declining (ordinary workers), I know more then a few CEO’s, and they generally aren’t putting that much more time in then most workers are in skilled jobs yet their compensation has soared…</p>
<p>As far as pilots go, it is a job that isn’t what it used to be from everything I can tell. It used to be considered something of a glamour job,mostly ex military pilots, and they were well compensated. In the past 40 years or so it has changed, and not for the better. If you are talking regional feeder flights, like the one that crashed near Buffalo, NY not that long ago, they were talking about pilots who had gone to some commercial flight school and were working for like 20k a year, and flying ridiculous hours and so forth, and even in the big leagues compensation has declined and the conditions not so great, basically the airlines are trying to turn the pilots position IMO into the equivalent of a highly skilled bus driver, so I can understand it being treated as “not as it is cracked up to be”. </p>
<p>I also think there are very few jobs these days whose image matches the reality. Some glamorize high tech jobs and talk about Apple Computer and Google as proof of the shining hill of technology jobs (and start ups), but the reality of most start ups is that they fail before ‘cashing in’, and before that, it usually means long hours with pretty low pay. Likewise, tech, in part thanks to the influx of workers from India and other places in China, which means a difficult path for kids lookng for entry level positions and also has meant that other then the top tier of jobs in places like finance and securities, it has become the kind of job the article talks about, relatively high stress, declining compensation and long hours. </p>
<p>Another one that is way, way overrated IMO is investment banking, people see this as the holy grail of jobs, they see the ones who have made a lot of money, they see all the articles about well off bankers, of the kids from Ivies recruited at 150k a year and so forth, and while those have traditionally been true, it is another job that is heading for a reality check. First of all, the burnout rate among starting bankers is quite high, the hours are quite long and the pressure to succeed is equally high, and it burns them out. One of the tricks in banking to survive seems to be either making a fortune young and getting out of it, or if you want to be in it for the long term, move up into ‘management’ which isn’t quite as crazy. The other thing that is happening is banks are being squeezed, M and A activity is sluggish, and in things like proprietary trading that made them fortunes, the banks are feeling the whammy of volatile markets, risky investments coming back to bite them, and more importantly facing strict regulations limiting or shutting down proprietary trading, and all of that is going to make investment banking a lot less sure bet to riches, not only because the number of banking positions will decline, but the business itself is going to face threats as companies find other ways to handle activities and keep the bankers out of it (my opinion, anyway)</p>
<p>I tend to agree with what others have said, in terms of looking for a field of course you want to try and find something that you enjoy doing and hopefully has realistic chances of making a decent living, and these days with any profession the real answer is going to be distinguishing yourself, not being one of the pack, because the ‘pack’ jobs, the middle of the bell curve, is where the real decline is happening. </p>
<p>With music that is especially true, I hear people talking about how expensive it is to go to med school, the debt, etc, and that is very true…but music students often face similar costs in their training, between music schools that are in the 50k a year range, plus grad school, and competition that can’t even be called fierce (too light a term), and the rarity of 6 figure salaries, and I would argue doctors have relatively little, in one sense, to complain about, because most doctors when the graduate can find a job, one that may not make them rich but will pay the bills, which with music far from being guaranteed anything, other then struggling (and this isn’t a slap at doctors, I use that only for comparison reasons). </p>
<p>Selecting a job path for its compensation potential alone is fraught with difficulty, because to achieve high levels of compensation requires someone who is good at it, dedicated, etc, and someone doing it for the money alone often doesn’t do that well because the oomph isn’t there. Even with corporate management, the butt of jokes and protestors, the old boy network that used to pull Georgie Dingbat III into a high paying job someplace is no longer there, and it takes people with a lot more then a good golf game to get ahead these days, and I suspect going down the road that is going to be true, too, so you better like what you are doing.</p>
<p>I think this is fairly obvious to all, but those average salaries in law and medicine are heavily skewed by the high end medical specialists and the old school “big law” power lawyers - jobs that are pretty hard to come by for the new grads. New lawyers, even from good schools, are luckily to find jobs at all these days, much less elite-level jobs, and doctors who aren’t in one of the high-end specialties don’t make nearly as much as most people think. Let me put it this way - if you’re giving someone a shot in an exam room, like in the picture, you’re not making a 6 figure salary in most cases. That’s why jobs like public defender, family medicine physician, heck, even teacher, are becoming less desirable. Tuition continues to rise and requirements become steeper (jobs that used to just require a BA/BS now require a masters degree, jobs that used to require a masters degree now require a PhD, etc.) but salaries remain flat, so who can afford to take on the school debt? You can’t expect people to be happy with a 50k a year job upon graduation if they had to rack up 120k+ in debt to get it.</p>
<p>It doesn’t seem like the person who wrote the article did very much research and simply quoted thing they found on job websites. Classifying jobs as ‘overrated’ for vague reasons like “have to work long hours” or “job is stressful” isn’t really meaningful.</p>
<p>“I have a fabulous job. Being a transactional lawyer suits me very well. I get to work indoors in a lovely office, with other smart people, and make enough money to put me maybe in the “three percent.” I can’t sing or dance. It’s a good job for a detailed oriented smart person.”</p>
<p>you had better watch what u say. you’re so close to the 1% i might get the occupy wallstreet ppl to occupy college confidential and stalk you.</p>
<p>Very funny. But of course, since the people who tend towards cc are very motivated and career oriented, I’d guess the 1%ers far outnumber the OWS people on this site.</p>
<p>Ouch. I am planning on working in advertising, possibly as an account executive at some point.</p>
<p>Most jobs svvvck, no matter what people say. If you win the lottery, would you still work at your job? If you break down the tasks that are completed day in and day out for practically any job, without regards to salary received, most people from law to medicine would quit in a second. </p>
<p>For example, if one looks at what surgeons do, they are technicians working in a production environment. Lawyers jobs are even more boring. I would fall asleep reading over documents after documents every day, watching the years go by…</p>
<p>But you throw in a high salary…and you get an instant “halo” effect.</p>
<p>It’s unfortunate that your opinion is shared by more than a few. I happen to love my job–so much that I did it for a while with no pay and may end up doing so again if and when grant funding expires. H also loves his job for the most part–there are of course parts he doesn’t like so much but he has refused to apply for promotions that would have him do things he didn’t really want to do. He and I feel sorry for folks who hate their jobs and feel very fortunate that we both have jobs and professions we enjoy and feel are contributing to a better world (seriously).</p>
<p>We know people earning a lot and some earning a little who hate their jobs. My dad loves his job so much that he’s still working, after over 50 years in his profession. Not sure if he draws much, if any, salary. He’s happy and would rather be there than having even more days on the golf course. Had a brother who hated his job & finally quit & found another. For a while, it was tough on him because the new job paid MUCH less but he’s been promoted & given more responsibility & seems to mostly like his job now.</p>
<p>Many of the docs I see do seem to love most of their job (except having to fight with insurers & HR duties). I know attorneys who love their jobs & some not so much. There is so much variability.</p>
<p>There are three components to a job - safety, fun, and compensation. You usually get to pick two of three. </p>
<p>I have an awesome job that is relatively secure (same company for 27 years), is a lot of fun (consumer electronics development) but the pay sukks. Not bad, but not good either. I guess the idea of 50+ year olds developing cool toys for the rest of humanity and rubbing elbows with Apple, Google, and Microsoft are our rewards. </p>
<p>The elements of a fun job include the people you’re with, your boss, and the future. The people are awesome, most are lifers, together in the same group for 10+ years, plus a few Ashok The Intern types. The boss has had the helm for 14 years and won’t leave for the same reason we won’t. Too much fun. There is pressure, sure, especially when we have to prepare for next year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, but we can get away with things Corporate America would usually have kittens with if they knew. The future? heck, we’re now doing stuff we thought was science fiction 6 or 7 years ago. Miracles, almost (we did Siri-like stuff when voice recognition meant you could recognize your aunt’s voice on the phone 10 years ago…)</p>
<p>The key to this all is that a job - really, a career - is all about picking your fights. You want the Google jobs or the Apple jobs, sure, but once you’re 30 or 35 good luck. Want the high pay of a Hedge Fund manager, sure, put your 80 hours a week pushing Excel numbers and you’ll get it.</p>
<p>In the 14 years I’ve worked for the same guy (3 managers in 27 years) Mrs. Turbo has changed 5-6 employers and more managers than she can ever count. She’s in IT consulting, and is the polar opposite of me. No relationships, no fun, just get the work done and off to the next crisis. She can keep it.</p>
<p>Let me clarify- There are people who love the nature of their jobs and the daily tasks that go with them. BUT I am absolutely confident in my belief that most people are NOT…and would quit if they were to win the big lottery.</p>
<p>I actually had a very fun and rewarding job working as an engineer for a game software company. It was like working in a freakin’ arcade everyday. So yes, I do believe there are really fun jobs out there.</p>
<p>Also (IMO) Ph.D level scientists who have control over their research are also sitting pretty. I can’t think of any other career where the ultimate goal of the job is learning…discovering new things. And then getting paid for it. It’s like being a student, but getting paid. It’s a great “gig” if you can get it.</p>
<p>But the learning that most other people do, is simply to get them to be more proficient in their jobs. To get them to perform a task better.</p>