So I’m 20 and I’ve started looking at the salaries of jobs/careers, and this is the impression I’ve gotten. Like that you could spend years cramming a ton of knowledge about a very niche field, and still only get 2-3x what a run-of-the-mill job makes. Is this true? If yes then I guess this route to wealth would only make sense (due to the diminishing returns) if the topic truly spoke to you, right? Are there alternative career paths to good pay than being really good at something really specific?
Is there a field where that red curve is flipped so that each extra aquired unit of expertise earns you exponentially more money?
Continuing to work for the same company will only provide +2% to +4% per year regardless of knowledge gained. You aren’t paid for how much you know.
To get the large gains in income, you have to re-set your salary by changing jobs, at which point you get one big bump, then go back to +2% to +4% per year.
Or instead, form a union and demand better pay and retention incentives.
Not true for everyone. My pay rises over the past 5 years were around 35% on top of my starting wage, specifically linked to how much knowledge or experience I have gained in the role.
In curious where you are in the career curve?
When I started I had similar experience where I was rapidly getting promoted and raises. Eventually that slowed down.
I’m 42 and have been working in the same industry for 20 years. This is just a good company to work for.
I think I’m very much a generalist, but the areas in deep on I’m much deeper than others.
But that means as companies get bigger they want more specialists and i end up less valuable as I’m just filling in gaps.
Makes finding those good companies harder, but I’m more valuable to small companies than hiring 3-4 people, so I can command good pay.
Well, that’s great for you! Definitely not the norm though!
It’s hard to overstate how much money “2-3x what a run of the mill job makes” is over the course of a lifetime. I guess to you right now it doesn’t seem like much, but someone who makes three times more money than someone else is significantly more well off. There aren’t any wage jobs that are going to net you exponential salary growth. Your only hope there is to strike gold and found PayPal or Microsoft or something.
To build on your comment: cost of living has a surprisingly fixed price. Different qualities of living don’t cost massively different. If the average person has to spend their whole earnings on living an “average life”, if you make 2x and want to live twice as nice of a life, it likely only cost 1.5x the “average life”. Earning 2-3x opens up a lot of luxury even though it may not seem like it.
This is very true
Some people fall into the lifestyle creep trap and get accustomed to spending what they make. If you make 2x average and live relatively normally you’ll find your savings grow quick.
Even if you do make good money, it’s best not to let that go to your head.
Manipulativeness
Sales. No joke — the knowledge you need has a hard cap (the product line) but sales is commonly the highest-paid entry level employee (as long as you hit commission).
Now add a line in here for “effort” flattening out over time and that’s what I wanna see.
Con man? CEO? Hedge fund manager?
But seriously, generally anything having an exponential return in this world is pretty unusual and generally not guaranteed if it’s a desirable outcome.
Particularly in a capitalist economy, the business only has to pay you just enough to not leave for a competitor, they don’t need to pay you the true value of your ability unless you’re basically the only person on the planet with the necessary skills.
On the flip side, in booming industries that require specific skills such as tech, you can generally get a pretty linear progression for a while before it plateaus in a good number of organisations.
Trades. If you are a plumber or an auto mechanic you can make a killing. Doubly so if you own the business. If I had it to do over again I would get a business degree and then become an electrician.
When Epic started hiring every software engineer in video games they flipped that red curve, at least to the right of that blue line.
Corrupt politician.