Philosopher
“Look at this asshole, learning how the world works. MAKE HIM SERVE COFFEE WITH THE REST OF THEM”
But why?
Postdoc
Did you mean a slave who has recently graduated to indentured servant status?
Being an officer in some places.
I’m guessing that you are not from America. I’m fairly certain that you can fail out of being a police officer because you’re too intelligent.
I’ve heard zoo keeper can be insanely competitive just to get a $0 internship or even pay money to work there and then the real jobs are also poverty level to work with animals.
Teachers and social workers
Social work. It’s criminal.
As an ex social worker in Sweden (both as a case officer and treatment assistant), I can attest to the low pay, garbage benefits (if any) and extremely stressful work.
And the horrifying things you have to see, especially child protection.
Not the lowest, for sure, but I’m going to put my hat in for auto technicians. Master techs can make over $100K in southern New England but the cost of tools can easily rival college tuition by the time you’re a master tech. Everything except proprietary equipment and the car lift needs to be bought by the technician, which can cost thousands of dollars. Health insurance is prohibitively expensive, the flat rate pay system means you only get paid when you complete jobs, and it’s an ergonomic nightmare because you’re picking up heavy objects and working in cramped areas all day.
As someone who whose fiance was a mechanic until last year, I think it’s really disingenuous to hear so many people say that the trades are your fast track to making money. Very little of that $150/ hr that you pay goes to the person working on your car. For every lift the shop has they’re taking 80% or more off the top of that $150/ hr, and if the job takes longer than expected the mechanic doesn’t make any more money. In fact they’re losing money because they’re stuck figuring out a solution instead of moving on to the next car.
And don’t even get me started on tool loans. It’s straight up worse than student loans because they’re classified as personal loans. My student loans all hover around 5% interest, but right now personal loans go up to 18% depending on the term. The only saving grace I can think of is that they’re usually dischargeable in bankruptcy.
I really could go on all day about how broken it all is because I’ve lived it secondhand for a while now, and now that I’m trying to gain more of these skills for my classic motorcycle hobby it’s all so obvious. Not sure if the other trades like plumbing and welding have the same “take out loans to pay for tools to make money to pay for the loans, then learn more skills within the trade to make more money, and then take out more loans for tools to do the more advanced work” cycle but no one ever mentions this when they talk about how this kind of work is so lucrative.
Don’t get me wrong, college is really badly overpriced in the US, but the trades absolutely can be just as expensive once you’ve made it your career. And I don’t want to dissuade people from considering it as a career, either, but it’s a monetary risk that you need to really sit down and calculate before you take the plunge, just like college.
In the US, most professors are part time adjunct and get no health benefits. Probably make 30-50k.
Tenured faculty at major universities make 70-90k.
Considering these jobs requires at least 9 years of uni (in the US), the lifetime income of professors is still very low.
RE TAs: I US stem fields TAs work 20h and make 15-30k. That usually includes free tuition, but not in all states (e.g. in Texas, you sometimes pay tuition out of your TA pay, which is crazy)
When I left academia to go to the private sector, I got a 40% bump in pay, and worked at least 30% less. And I didn’t have to write grants to support my program. When I was an academic, I thought people never came back to academia from the private sector because they couldn’t. I quickly found out that it was because they’d have to be crazy to come back. I wouldn’t have returned to the university for anything less than an endowed chair. And that was NOT going to happen.
TAs work 20h and make 15-30k.
That’s time spent teaching. They are also expected to do research with the rest of their time, which is more work.
Librarians from what I’ve heard. They usually require a masters degree but the pay usually doesn’t reflect that.
Which is crazy, because it widely depends on the district.
You could be in rurals-ville, FlyoverState, USA and make a pittance. (Oh plus BTW, the excitement of torches and pitchforks coming for you, your staff, and your collection. Politicians also attempting to undermine the entire institution of libraries for strategic mob-outrage points. Ah, perks!)
Or in some urban areas that are well-funded, librarians and especially branch managers are paid stupidly well. Their jobs mostly being general management duties, listening to the complaints of the insane and unreasonable, tresspassing the insane and unreasonable, and answering “Do you work here? Where’s the bathroom?” Of course, that’s when they’re not stuck in pointless meetings.
Lots of stress sometimes. But BMs make low six-figures. I imagine there’s worse jobs.
But it’s one of those things where a spot usually opens up only if someone moves, retires, or expires.
Teaching, 100%. Incredibly important, some of the most dedicated people in any field, and they’re paid peanuts. Oh yeah, and they work like 12 hours a day. The way we treat them is a disgrace.
Hurr durr they get off two months, they’re fine
To the gulag with you
In North Carolina, most teachers have been required to have their Masters degree and additional training, but average less than 30k in my area. Some only make 17k a year.
Veterinarians
Not the expert in Cat Nephrology that I have to take my cat every other month. Always fully booked and it costs more than my doctor just for her to look at blood tests. srsly 5min. The tests itself are not included
There’s no way it costs more than your doctor. You are either glossing over what your insurance is paying for you, or your doctor is seeing you in a back alley somewhere.
Also, you’re not paying for the vet’s time spent looking at bloodwork, which I actually do believe is 5 minutes. You’re paying for the 4 years of undergrad, 4 years of medical school, (and if they’re truly a specialist) several years of residency and being boarded, plus many hours of specialized continuing education per year.
Private equity firms have been buying veterinary offices at an increased rate since 2020 and jacking up rates, especially in high COL areas so I’m not surprised. My dog needed a tooth extracted at the end of last year and the cost was just under $1000. I understand there are highly trained individuals working there that need to be paid appropriately but I wonder what the cost for me to have one tooth extracted would be?
Agreed on the private equity firms shit, I’ve worked at 2 such hospitals and they’ve been hell. They’re most assuredly not passing those increased prices along to the employees in form of wage increases, I’ll tell you that.
Also, that tooth extraction is a choice to use as a comparison. I’ve never had to be anesthetized for my extractions, but good luck doing that on an awake dog, so of course costs are going to be high. Anesthestizing you for your dentistry would cost way way more than it does now, and certainly more tgan your dog’s.
Teaching.
College degree mandatory, graduate degree preferred.
Yearly continuing education costs.
Out of pocket expenses for classroom materials.
Sometimes providing food for kids who don’t have it.
Famously low salaries and very long hours.
Luckily, underfunding the education of the next generation won’t have any long lasting effects on society, right?
It creates:
- Statistically, a constantly desperate hand-to-mouth workforce that must depend on employers to sustain their existence.
- Armed forces signup incentives.
- Easily-swayed consumers of products and services. (Run by those with access to nepotism and/or education, naturally.)
- And easily manipulated voters.
Underfunding education and having people basically born into debt isn’t a neglectful oversight, it’s a deliberate strategy.
You maybe missed the sarcasm mark, but I admire your optimism that we’d all get the joke.
Teachers are horrendously underpaid, but they need to stop complaining about the “hours”. It rings disingenuous to most who know the job.
Unless they are taking afterschool roles they work generally 8-3:00 with a potentially a few hours of work after for grading and lesson planning. This is along with numerous holidays / admin days during the school year.
I say this knowing personally a few teachers who complain about hours, and it seems to be a cultural thing not based in their reported real experiences.
The salary is shit, at least for non-senior roles in my state, but that is not a lot of hours relative to the average wage earner.
You couldn’t be more wrong.
All my teacher friends wind up working 10 hour days on average.
They work during breaks.
They work during summer.
Good teachers don’t just show up for classroom time then disappear.
Then factor in the hours you have to spend at a second job because your main job doesn’t pay a living wage.
I know two teachers personally. This is not the case in my discussions with them and others. Maybe you can enlighten me on what does take 10 hours of time daily?
From speaking them they are absolutely not working from 8:0am - 6:00pm on every day.
Lesson plans are inherited from prior teachers and … yes continuously updated during the year but not at a major time cost every day. Grading takes a few hours for one day either on the weekend or in the evening.
And yes they complain about it constantly… it seems more a cultural thing. They also complain about other teachers complaining 🤣
I’m not touching the issue of summers off because yes that is a different thing, and yes it’s quite hard for them to get real employment.
Again salaries should be higher and support teachers not assuming they can work in the summer… but why conflate this with the daily hours ( which are frankly good as stated by those who I know in the profession as a reason they like and took the job)
Perhaps you misunderstand.
The hours are very high and the classroom time is only a small part of it.
The billed hours are extraordinarily low. :D
Warm and fuzzy feelings of inspiring the next generation are supposed to stand-in for actual wages in the USA.
Also better have plans to fill in that summer gap. I’m sure it’s not fun vaycay time for teachers like it is for a lot of the students.
Ah yes, the “second paycheck”.
Where I live, teachers are required to have Masters degrees and the starting wage for teachers is around $45k.
Ruling class is creating a disincentive for teachers
I am sure they think ai can do the job better.
They’ve been paying teachers shit for way longer than AI has been around. AI can’t do much of anything better than people though.
I am sure they think ai can do the job better.
No, they are convinced that the church will do the job better. (Better defined as producing a more compliant and conservative work force.)
Oh longer than that. Look at what party leads in wanting to defund education but fund private paid education. The same party who is voted in by the uneducated, who famously are lacking in critical thinking and reasoning skills.
It’s in their best interest to keep a low educated population who happily go to work and believe what they’re told.
Social worker?
Highly dependent on the job. I’m a SW who hires SWs. New grad LMSWs can start at $60K in hospitals or some government jobs, or $40K in schools or some nonprofits. 5-10 years of experience and a clinical license and you’ll easily pull $75-80K, or $90K+ in management.
Then there’s private psychotherapy practice, which I know some people who charge $200/hour out of pocket and are scheduled out for months.
All this to say getting a master’s in social work was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made, and I have no regrets financially.
Teachers in the US. Hands down.
I call your “teacher” and raise it to “social worker”.
College professors. Most are part time adjunct, most make garbage pay, work their asses off, while university executives make bank.
Where I live college professors are extremely well paid. Well, at least in private colleges.
TAs earn nearly nothing though.
You can earn money as a TA???
Yeah, sell drugs to students.
Ahhh, that explains my TAs
TAs can earn money?
-Former TA
It’s very important to be precise. Depending what country you’re in, there could be full professors, assistant professors, associate professors, instructors, and other positions. Some of those positions might be well paid, but it’s a safe bet that some of the others are not. So if you’re looking at one full professor’s salary and thinking that most other people with the word professor in their name make the same salary, depending what country you live in, you would be mistaken.
Actually wait a second, that’s true in every country.
Where do you live? I don’t believe you.
