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$80,000 average Salary.
What!!!
Either my Boss has been lying to me & I'm grossly underpaid or there's some weird long tail thing going on here where Bill Gates' salary pushes the average up. Or maybe American Programmers get paid more.
seanyboy, I also found the average salary to be suspect. My explanation is that they define "software engineer" differently from "programmer". We have many staff programmers where I work, and they are all in the $40-60K range, which I think is pretty typical. I believe, though the article doesn't specifically state it, that they define "software engineer" to mean more of an architect/consultant type; the guy who does all the design, probably implements the framework code, provides mentoring and directs the staff programmers to implement the business code.
Also, I would like my job a lot more if I wasn't on a military contract. The politics and red tape are often insurmountable. Further, I bitch a lot, but goddamn if I am not lucky to be where I am. I'd do well not to forget that.
'Library assistant, clerical' is a better job than 'librarian'? Amazing--how many jobs are there where the managees have it better than the manager? And why the fuck am I wasting my time writing a masters thesis?
College professor isn't stressful? Huh. Maybe if you're an Eng. Lit. professor (not that I would know). All I know is that all my biology professors were seriously overworked and stressed. But yet, that's what I'm working towards. Hrrmmm.
I'm #2, but I try harder. Gaspode, there are plenty of stresses and pressures but these are offset by the considerable freedoms you enjoy. Also, don't rank on the humanities profs too hard. Can you imagine reading ream after ream of freshman / sophomore lit. essays? And yet the suicide rate is still negligible - these people are tough.
Being a pharmacist seems miserable to me. I worked as a tech at an Osco Drug one summer during college - I quit after two weeks because it was so unbearable.
They do get paid a lot to start, but there doesn't seem to be much upside.
Oh yeah, wolfdog, I know about the freedoms and all that. It was one of the big reasons I chose academia as a path, instead of becoming a drug company scientist or whatever. I've been a post-doc for 4 years now, but it's been in medical schools, rather than traditional undergrad campuses (which are actually more my scene.) Thus, all my mentors have been heavily research/admin, with very little teaching (I love teaching!) And with the 0% increase in funding from NIH, primary research funding source, it's looking a bit grim for people like me who are just starting to interview for professorial positions in biological sciences.
heh: rant. But anyway. The good parts are very good. The bad parts suck donkeys balls. Much like most careers, really.
College professor at #2? HAHAAHHAHAAHAHAH! I'll have to go tell my girlfriend that. And "near-total flexibility" is a joke. She has a near-total lack of control of her schedule. There's always a meeting or students or a job talk or a dinner or class prep or whatever. I guess you can call that flexible: she has more things to do than there are hours in the day, but she can organize those things in whatever order works for the dozens of other people who seem to fix her schedule. They obviously didn't talk to many tenure-track professors in the humanities.
#2. Sheesh, the 95th percentile salary is $567,753. Holy shit. Who are those people? Noy my colleagues.
There is a lot of flexibility, goatdog. Your g/f should put all her meetings with students on one day, clear off at least one no-meetings-at-all day, and take real control of her schedule. Limit students to 15 minutes unless they are interesting. Make a point of leaving meetings early citing "another meeting". 90% of university meetings are just paperpushing. She's a busy professional. There is no reason people shouldn't wait a while to see her.
ha, I have the best job too. although I dont technically have that title right now, I have in the past and I still do basically the same shit.
lately I have seriously considered giving it up to deliver pizzas. Not kidding. If the money was the same, I would take driving around all day playing the radio in a second.
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