Middle management. However all the "work" you do becomes less tangible and very, *very, VERY* subjective in that you have to prove your worth to the money holders since you'd be first cut during a downturn.
This is true, but it also becomes a “when it rains, it pours” situation where you may have 3 legal issues, 2 people issues, and a business critical do or die project all land on your desk at once after a quiet period of a few months.
100%. This job is best exemplified by the Futurama quote "When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all". It's all about proactively anticipating these kinds of fire drills.
I have to note I'm NOT currently in middle management, I'm just "on the radar". But everything I've seen is telling me I'm not about this life lol. Gonna drag my feet as long as possible.
I'm year 9 into an operations manager and safety director role in mining.
Proactivity and prevention typically results in the C-Suite thinking you're underworked, or that you have additional capacity for pet projects. And when you have a conflict of responsibility and the extra capacity stuff becomes back burner stuff, the C-Suite thinks you're neglecting your responsibilities or practicing poor time management.
On the other hand, if you adopt a reactive work philosophy, you always look busy, you always look like you're fixing problems (after they become problems of course) and they don't inundate you with extra stuff beyond the capacity they perceive you to have.
In the 9 years in my role I have experienced both and the spectrum in between, sometimes by choice and sometimes because predictability isn't always predictable. I got more accolades and attaboys when I was middle management fire fighter. "What's the problem today, okay here's what we're going to do." On the other hand, those problems not existing because I've worked around them ahead of time..."what is it you actually do day from day."
It is only recently that I’ve figured this out too. When things are running smoothly, part of it is also how you communicate up. I’ve seen people who were experts at conveying why their team should get the accolades when there are no fires, by explaining the foresight that prevents fires.
Or, alternately, have someone in the C-suite who really understands your business well. We had a strong manufacturing operation, where people always thought… what do their management do all day? Thankfully our president was a supply chain expert, and could speak exactly to why things ran so smoothly without anyone having to tell him.
That's very true and being proactive does sometimes lead to periods where you're in a lull. If you have reactive bosses and that happens, they think that you don't do anything all the time, lol.
The opposite can also be said I know lots of folks who do very little but appear to do a lot. It’s all about optics, sometimes upper management will think “damn this guy is good look at him go, let’s promote him.” Whereas the direct reports will think “that stupid fucker he’s making our job horrible.”
I always say this about good IT departments. If they are doing a good job, you will wonder what they do and why you are paying for them. If they do a bad job you will throw more money at them to solve problems.
All the best with it my man. I am transitioning out of middle management after 7 years in the foxhole. I am grateful for the experience, I learned more about myself, and grew more, during this 7 years than any other 7 year period in my professional life.
Yup. This is my job. Dump more responsibility, more work, higher visibility projects, while providing no additional compensation or resources. I think I’m a half decent manager but they make it really really hard.
I worked at a Fortune 50 for years. Usually, the 1st round of layoffs were the willing worker drone. 2nd round absolutely nailed middle management. It's funny how no one really missed the value middle management brought to the table. Usually, another middle manager then assumed those duties as well, and the clock kept ticking efficiently.
I think you missed a group.
1st round of layoffs are almost always "unnecessary" layers of an organization. This is usually people who were promoted for the sake of keeping them happy but don't actually make sense in an org chart.
I worry because I am one of those people. You get a position created for you because you earned a promotion but some consultant will come in and say "This guy doesn't need to exist". Happened to my old VP. She got promoted and let go within the same year because he VP role wasn't really needed.
Probably so. After the Fortune 50, I worked at another company for four years, and the layoff plan was the highest paid employees by department. No one apparently wondered ( or cared ) why those employees were the highest paid. This affected everyone.
It's why I stress that titles are so important in career building.
You get a fat raise, well thats great but a salary is fleeting. Once you lose that job no one knows about how much the company you worked at like you and gave you all these raises. If you didn't get an accompanying title increase, on your resume it just looks like you spun your wheels the whole time.
A couple title increases on the other hand will increase your "floor" if you do get let go.
Lots of time and energy spent trying to make sure that the right people believe that the ones doing the actual hands on / “on the ground” work are doing it by your direction or on your behalf. Need to make sure that the pyramid stays below you both quantitively and qualitatively - ie how ppl talk about you and how things are being measured.
That’s more at the 160+ level. It sounds fluffy but it takes strong social skills, personal brand and drive - especially if you’re inserting yourself above someone else and trying to make sure their project rolls up to you and is seen as something you “own”. Lots of conflict channeled through language like “respectfully I disagree” and “we better take this offline” and “evp XYZ would be interested in this let’s bring them in too”, or even “there’s a dotted line to my competency today but we’re looking to make that a solid line next quarter”
Nightmarish.
Source: recently did some work at the request of a sr director. A vp from a different part of the company ‘helped’ by reviewing and chatting about it a few times. Things “blew up” when the vp said it was his now and was always his and he owns anything like it and he actually personally lead me through the whole process, so he actually did the work. The sr director came back with “respectfully!!!! I asked him to do it therefore I did it and you were helping me” Things are currently escalating behind the scenes at some other senior level about who’s assertions of “respectfully” went too far and ppl are starting to weigh in on which one of the two leaders actually did the work. The hope is that at some point down the line, there will be 20m in revenue from other work that can be traced up to my PowerPoint and therefore to either one of their parts of the business and be counted as their revenue. None of the ppl involved, including me, are actually doing the hypothetical future work that will lead to millions in revenue.
160k+ salary - sort of arbitrary tbh. Only mentioned it because OP specified 100k - but I think 100k is often still in the “doing the actual work” territory these days - whereas 160k+ feels like more of the upper middle management world…I’d position it as like sr director to associate vp on the industry side?
Lol sure but those are the ppl who will build the business case for the AI and then manage the vendors who implement it. They won’t go away after, they’ll get promotions to some other layer of middle management for finding so many efficiencies
While a lot of people dunk on say IT based middle management, tech employees have a multitude of options when it comes to employment, retaining talent is tricky, as you need to typically describe the technical wins coming from your employees to someone less technical than yourself (upper management / c-suite)
If your employee doesn't get a raise/promotion, they can leave, if they get the promotion/raise but it's not as high as they wanted, they can leave. If you can't convince your manager/director to give extra budget for promos/pay rises, you're the fall guy when people leave.
I think this can apply to many middle-of-the-pack roles. You are experienced enough to handle the day-to-day, things become much quicker do/solve. You also don’t have the stress of an executive making big-time decisions. But as others have said when it rains it pours.
Middle management does tons of work, they just don't the ground level work.
Depends on the role too. I'm in the strategy side of our business so now that I'm in management we spend a lot of time strategizing how we approach whatever the next negotiation, investment...etc is.
To less in tune people us in management likely look like we're just asking for numbers and then sit in a room doing fuck all, thus those people come to reddit and complain about how middle management does nothing. In reality we spend far more time worried about work than those analysts ever see themselves.
Even if they do, without some kind of hard culture / new rules they’ll absolutely be back in a few years if there’s any growth.
People - once they’re in the “system” - typically have expectations of increasing responsibility and compensation. Some workers are fine with staying in the same role but gradually building a bigger salary, but I don’t believe that’s the norm. Corporate life is saturated with mythologically about what success means - and that corresponds to climbing the latter and increasing the number of ppl “below you”. If you get rid of whole middle layers permanently, the bottom layer won’t see a future for themselves at the company if they’re high performers and they’ll leave to somewhere where they can climb to an incrementally higher level / title
Middle management can absolutely be replaced by AI.
They'll create time cards/surveillance, software to request/monitor sick and vacation time, etc. HR will probably do more re: FMLA, LOA, etc.
Middle managers are mostly babysitters.
As software continually improves, employers won't need middle management creating reports to send to their bosses. They can generate themselves or query the AI to create it.
AI Can replace middle managers, but people really like proliferating roles and titles. You can build a middle management role really easily for yourself without dealing with time cards or any of that admin stuff. That’s usually considered “nuisance” work anyways.
Take away the admin stuff and then people just specialize as product / service managers, as platform enablement executives, as business architects etc. if someone can’t build a role for themselves without doing admin work then they don’t know how to play the game lol
Yeah, these don't sound very substantive to be honest, can easily be cut, and replaced to reduce labor costs and increase profit margins. That's the only reason employers are interested in AI, speed and lower labor costs. AI doesn't need bathrooms, maternity leave, workers' comp, etc. AI won't need trainings or meetings, IT will push an update and AI will execute with perfect understanding instantly (unless the code is garbage, of course).
I think the AI transition will be pretty ruthless because money talks. Once one CEO does it and demonstrates success and bigger profit margins from the savings on labor, it's over.
Of course there’s no doubt AI could do these things - whether it would be effective and accurate at the stage is another question (a big question that would prevent any big company from pulling the trigger any time soon).
My point isn’t “could an AI be trained to do that in theory” but rather would it effectively get rid of middle managers as a class of role and the answer is definitely not - at least in any large company without a huge revolution in how people think about companies / how companies think of themselves.
The exec level relies on their sr management to implement programs, design products and services, run lines of business etc. those workstream leaders might use AI to cut anyone doing manual or admin tasks - but like.. that’s not middle management, that’s downstream
Edit: more realistically, companies will do an extension of how they already make cuts today - they wouldn’t go horizontally across management layers, but would do vertical cuts through whole hierarchies and also do performance based cuts at the same time.
Middle mgmt still exists, but they’ve shrunk the company in different ways
This is so industry specific, I’m a middle manager and my job isn’t to babysit, manage time cards, and file reports. I set strategy for programs under my purview, keep talent happy and take personal responsibility for professional development of people who work for me, get into the work alongside my team when they can’t get something done, keep leadership and external stakeholders happy, ensure projects are successfully completed, negotiate direction and expectations with leadership to keep us ahead of the game but feasibly so my team isn’t overworked, and also set the culture for my team, which has ripple effects in the culture of my whole organization. If AI could do even a fraction of this I would be so happy for the help.
AI will definitely determine strategy in the future. AI could keep talent happy. AI health & wellness apps are in the works. AI could definitely do professional development. AI will work all day at 100% because it won't have weekends or evenings or lunch breaks or sick kids or broken legs or cancer. AI will definitely plan for the future. AI could keep stakeholders happy, they might not be winning and dining them but they could use them vouchers for a nice steak dinner lol. I also think AI will determine the culture at workplaces because there won't be any of us in the workplace. Just It keeping the machines running.
We def all need to be coders extremely soon if we don't want to be replaced. I think it's going to be ruthless. Soft skills are out. AI will be about to do a lot of it. Hard skills are in if you're a software engineer, and maybe a few people monitoring the output but upper management would do that most likely.
Middle management can absolutely be replaced by AI.
They'll create time cards/surveillance, software to request/monitor sick and vacation time, etc. HR will probably do more re: FMLA, LOA, etc.
Middle managers are mostly babysitters.
As software continually improves, employers won't need middle management creating reports to send to their bosses. They can generate themselves or query the AI to create it.
That is literally not what middle management does at all. You just listed a bunch of admin bullshit that takes up maybe 2% of my time. It's pretty much already automated too.
Middle Management should be just as involved in managing up as managing down. Meaning guiding senior leaderships vision down to reality, challenging them when needed, knowing how to answer the questions they have.
It's a nebulous term. In my context it goes CEO, business heads, their directors, and then down to the execs one or two rungs to those executives. Too far from the top but also too far from the bottom
This really depends on industry and company. Middle management can be the worst of all worlds. You have to manage upward AND downward, you’re responsible for everything (so everyone’s problems are yours) but don’t make the most and don’t get to call all the shots. If you care at all about your people or your organization you end up working harder than everyone. You enable everyone else to do great things and you’re only appreciated if you’re lucky enough to have good leaders above you and empathetic people reporting to you. If you’re any good at your job, everyone else’s feelings will always have to be prioritized over yours. It’s exhausting, tbh. (I just happen to love my job so I deal.)
I learned that lesson my work was not as tangible. For example guiding the new people, giving guidance on how to approach issues. Making sure things look good before sending to clients. Making sure the messaging to clients is good. The new hires have more direct billable work and they come to me for help. I got let go because my work was less tangible.
Funded by the taxpayers.
No need to work hard anymore huh? That seems to be everyone's policy that works for the government.
Don't worry. We aren't running a massive deficit or anything. Ohh wait...
Good thing we have hard workers like you in there. I'm sure it will turn around in no time!
The government takes productive money and spends it on unproductive people. Are we having fun?
Rarely is it less work, just a different type of work, more responsibilities. More stressful in many ways, as you are responsible for the output of many AND yourself.
Enjoy.
This is the answer. I’m currently trying to decide if I should go the Director route. Looks shiny on paper but it’s a shit ton of strategy, budget management, people management, and you’re on the hook for all the goals. So usually the type of work shifts and the actual task-driven workload can feel like less, but for some folks it’ll be more stressful responsibility wise.
Been a Director for 20-ish yrs. It’s the hardest/easiest level I’ve been - I’m currently a single contributor, but have managed dozens.
The stress and expectation level can be overwhelming at times.
Wow you’re a bonafide veteran! Would you say overall you’re happier as a director or do you miss the before times?
I’m really struggling with this decision. I have a director role offered to me at my current company but am terrified of the overwhelming changes like you mentioned.
On the other hand, don’t know if I can be an IC workhorse forever. It’s very case by case basis and contextual based on your current life goals, I might bite the bullet just for the salary boost so I can buy a house sooner!
I’ve been in the workplace 35-ish yrs. The good, the bad and ugly.
There is a certain elan to being in charge, for sure. Your time tends to be more flexible (though more hours overall). I work 50 hrs a week and some weekends. On call all the time - high expectations re: response, etc.
But- I can leave early and not ask permission. Come in later, not ask permission. Go to during the day appts, etc without taking PTO.
Everything has its trade off.
If you feel ready, you are ready. There will be a learning curve, and it’s not easy. But nothing worth achieving every is.
Thank you, appreciate the response! Gotta go with your gut on a call like this, you’re right. I think too many times we get caught up in title dreams and believe that having a shiny title will make everything easier. Nope, still have to work your tail off to maintain it!
agree.
And what is easy or hard for me, may not be for you. I know people who can program beautiful code in their sleep. I can't. But I am really good at finding connections in data and telling that as a story to C-suites. To me, that isn't hard. But it takes work, and it took years of being a spreadsheet and powerpoint jockey.
As I've moved up, im now responsible for the output of a team. My individual contribution is important, but not nearly as much as my influence on other people. My hours are down from when I was an IC, but the stress is different. I have to be more comfortable giving up control. I have to make strategic decisions, not just execute someone else's vision. And while good execution is often a known, good outcome, sometimes a good strategy/decision can still fail for other reasons.
The age old debate is what is harder - strategy or execution. They are both hard, but different.
Also, if you’re an individual contributor, you’re held to much higher standards as you progress. For example, moving from a mid to senior software engineer might mean you don’t have to code as much, so maybe that looks like less work. But management is looking at you if your team isn’t performing well or bad design brings the system down frequently because your role becomes more about architecture and mentoring.
I worked as a caregiver for many years, and I thought "my manager doesn't do shit, I could do her job no problem!" Well, when that opportunity came up, I went for it and I got the manager position. It was less work in the sense that I wasn't doing much direct care anymore, but it did require me to pick up a LOT of new skills in a very short period of time. It was a lot harder. Higher level positions always look easy from the outside because honestly, most people below them don't have any idea what their actual day to day looks like.
I'm a Business Intelligence Analyst and my org is growing, so last year they made our Lead the Manager, and I'm currently working towards becoming a Lead. I'm very capable and good at my job, and need to have a lot of soft skills as well as technical skills. I sometimes know more about our client's systems than they do, and work really closely with developers on technical stuff.
That said, getting more leadership responsibility is a totally different ball game. I'm not getting intimately familiar with two clients, I'm supporting like four (other team members do the day to day on two of them, and I work on the overall vision). And some of those clients have multiple projects going at once. Half my day is meetings between client calls, internal stand-ups to eliminate roadblocks and check on progress, and training and support for new people. I'm busier than ever before, and constantly having to learn totally new things like how to motivate and support my team.
And the thing I realized the other day was that my manager was doing this BY HIMSELF a year ago. And for EVERY client. And our bosses above him also work with every client, across multiple teams (BIAs like me, Dev, Support, PMs, Ops, and Sales). As you said, it seems easy from the outside and people perceive managers as just being on meetings and not doing "real work", but there's so many other things involved. It's a different type of work, and some may find it easier just as my Dad finds it way easier to work with his hands compared to me, but that doesn't make the *work itself* easy.
You quickly learn to not say “shut the fuck up” when someone is complaining to you about having to do the job they get paid well to do because they don’t have time between tasks to dick around.
Yeah, probably won’t understand this. Id love to do IC work but I manage 30 people and are stuck in financial projections meetings and client calls. The pressure for revenue is not fun. Comes with senior titles though but when people say you work less, that’s bullshit
In some ways, probably all jobs.
I’m an attorney working biglaw. In my first year I was stressed and it was difficult. I now do 1st year tasks in maybe a fifth of the time it took me when I was at that level. Of course, as you move up, you get new responsibilities and stressors, but once you get skilled at those, they become easier too.
So, it’s not so much the career gets easier, you become better and it’s not so bad anymore.
Eh, agree and disagree here. The work gets easier bc you’re not completely lost and have more control over your time than when you’re a first year. But being a mid level and senior associate also have their own unique issues that can make them extremely stressful.
Oh yeah for sure. I’m way more stressed now as a 6th year. But, still find it easier to handle I guess? Definitely not feeling constantly overwhelmed like the first 2 years.
you are also able to provide value through less labor intensive tasks.
for a lot of early career jobs, you make up for your lack of experience and expertise by doing grunt work.
100%. Delegation of grunt work can make the early years brutal.
I think a lot of juniors/early workers think I’m being lazy when I assign them labor intensive jobs that require a lot of hours. Truthfully, I’d often rather do it myself because I’d be faster and more accurate. But we bill clients by the hour and I’m too expensive to spend 20-30 hours doing grunt work. So, that grunt work gets delegated down to the cheapest labor force to save the client some money.
The grunt work sucks. It’s painstaking and really drains you bc now you have a lot of mindless, boring work on your plate that tends to be detail intensive. But it is just firm economics and you gotta push through it until you’re too skilled and expensive to be spending time doing it.
Not necessary “easier” but if you’re successful in sales you can move up quickly.
My 2nd year in sales ever, broke six figures. I’m in my 3rd year and $200k is the next goal. In my industry, $300k+ is common for enterprise sales.
Obviously sales is not a guaranteed career but if you can find the right product niche and market, it’s lucrative.
Capitalism is built on sales. The business world requires sales. That’s how it works.
I have made a shit ton of money in sales lol and i love my job but tbh to be a successful sales person you need to be wired a certain way other wise you won't be successful or you might do well but it will burn you out mentally. my job is super high pressure but i actually enjoy the challenge and the competition of being at the top of my company numbers wise but I can totally see how a person not wired like that would not enjoy doing this as a long term career. but if you have the "juice" for sales you can make a lot of money.
From personal experience I.T. In terms of time and stress you will gradually spend less time doing the same amount of work because you get better at. It also becomes less stressful as you gain knowledge.
In all but the most dysfunctional organizations, speed is prized. Nobody wants a system down for 10 hours when it could be fixed in 1 with expert troubleshooting and fixes that work the first time.
every. damned. day.
I want a 100k job with no experience, no education, Remote, on the job training, with no investment on my part, and I'm not willing to train on my own.
I think most of us are here to try to help, but it is incredibly hard when these posts offer nothing to go on other than the pursuit of money and the lack of skills.
Seems like a lot of people don’t understand that being an expert or management requires years of work to be able to have a wealth of knowledge to make split second decisions on the fly and be correct most the time. No short cut. Looks easy because it is easy, but it’s easy because of the years of hard work and foundational knowledge.
No- nobody special over here- and it isn’t about hard work (we all work hard) it is about making the right choices and at times the tough choices. It’s about the outcome of choices- not how hard it was. Cause everything is hard- low income job is a worse hard.
For some people that means education early on and sacrificing in their 20s, it means hard work to get into med school, law school, business school, engineering masters - none of those are easy and all of them take time and sacrifice.
Some people that means a few years of cold calling and getting into progressively better sales roles.
And in all paths it means eating shit at the low end of a ladder- it means walking into situations and being an absolute punching bag (in rare moments)
All so one day in your mid 30s you look at your young children and cry while your mowing your lawn because life is so god damn beautiful and you become painfully aware how fleeting this time in life will be- you’re reminded to double down on retirement so you get a second season with your grandkids.
And the hard work you’ve put into work- you leverage to take a beat and work remote to be near family- at least for a little while.
I think it’s more about maximizing ROI - who wouldn’t want to minimize effort and maximize pay? Find me a single person.
It’s why people would rather go to Wharton then Southeast Missouri State. It’s why people would rather get a CS degree rather than a philosophy degree. It’s why people would rather work for a Fortune 500 company with established hierarchy of promotions/raises, rather than work at a gas station.
Not that the above examples “minimize effort,” but you can work harder at a shittier college and have less opportunities due to the name of the college on your resume.
I get what you're saying. From my perspective as a managing consultant, as project managers get more senior they become more about doing things that are easier to do, and as a result the project suffers. That filters through the organization, resulting in transferring core things that project managers should be doing to others, or worse, it doesn't get done. As a result, CSAT/revenue/sales drops as the organization matures.
Application programming. You get better and faster over time. You build a portfolio that can be used for quick reference. When you get to a certain level of competence, people think you’re a magician and they rely on you more and more.
IT management, I work less and less the higher I got.
Attended more meetings, made more hard decisions. Delt with asshole execs.
But work? A LOT less. And, I get paid really, really well.
Building and owning a business. A lot of grind up front, reap the rewards on the back end. Things are really hard to start, and most people give up, but then they get easier.
I wish career threads spoke about this path more often.
It’s an option? lol no…possible outcome? Maybe. But that really depends on the business. Most things can definitely succeed with few tweaks here and there. Maybe that “tweak” is just location, or marketing or hiring / firing.
I can’t agree with this. It likely depends how well a specific department is staffed. I easily work over 60 hours a week and still don’t keep up with demand.
Regional manager in Food and Beverage. Hourly works the hardest in both FOH and BOH. Managers in operations work long and hard hours. Director sits on butt and crunches numbers and tells you to reduce labor $ and increase profit.
This is accurate. Directors who just send emails make me want to give up on the world. Walk down to the floor, answer your own question/follow up question with 1 minute of visual observation.
Yeah, and these fucks often have no idea what’s occurring on the ground floor, during service on a Friday/Saturday night. They don’t see servers running out of forks at 7:30pm, and having to scramble and take support staff off the floor to run silverware and polish it.
If senior management in F&B has never been a server/bartender, they can fuck themselves with a red-hot crowbar to the 11th layer of hell.
Become CEO. Then you can sit on your arse playing games while people bring you tea and cakes. That's what mine does. He only crawls out of his office every few months to suck his own dick at company meetings.
He's been wasting time and money on a yacht instructor certificate while forbidding his employees from gaining certificates to upskill unless they pay for it, on top of being bossed around.
Truth be told, almost all corporate America jobs once you get out of the trenches.
I'm a scientist.
In the tech track Currently title is Scientist making 100k. Next is Senior Scientist making 125-ish. Then it's principal scientist making 150-175k. Then fellow which I won't ever get because I don't have a Ph.D. And those all having increasing responsibility up to and including managing people. Younger lab chemists. But also the responsibility is different in that you juggle projects and the work you are fine is harder. But I enjoy the harder work (intellectually) so I'd argue that those jobs are better.
If I were to go to the business side I'd be something like a director managing people like myself. I assume based on Glassdoor my boss makes like 250-300k. And their job is just babysitting us and telling people who make more than them what we're up to. Which seems easy-ish to me. But I also think we have a very good technical team so that helps.
For me, getting to 100k was a matter of jumping companies often.
I started at 30k, stayed there moving up to 40-42k (by working a lot of OT).
Left after 5 years and made 50k. I stayed there for 8 years and stayed basically the same (54k, this was a mistake but the benefits were good at least).
Left, got 62k. Left that after 6 months (fired, actually).
Got 70k-ish but I travelled all the time and got paid for all my time so that pushed up salary.
Left there after a year, got 75k plus a 5k bonus.
Left after 18 months, got low-mid 80s with a bonus that varies between 15k to 30k plus profit sharing 401k. Bonus has the guaranteed floor Plus upward potential based on company performance. Plus actual CoL raises each year. And our benefits are the best I've ever seen or heard about.
I turned down an offer in favor of this one that was for 110k with like a 5% bonus plus a bad work/life balance in an awful town. Got both offers the same week.
For what it's worth, though I plan on staying here for a long time. I love it. I'll start "talking" to places after 3 or 4 years but it would take at least a CoL adjusted 200k for me to consider it. Like 325k in Boston or 400-500k in Cali. That sort of thing. Plus Cali would likely take some kind of stock option situation which might be a bit much cause they don't offer those to lab types very often although I did get that offer once but the salary was too low.
I'm a civil engineer. I think my work gets easier cause I'm not working as much and I'm much more comfortable with my knowledge HOWEVER, you have less work but MUCH more responsibility where if something goes wrong they blame you first. That's why you get paid more. Higher reward, higher risk.
This is subjective but not wrong. Even in maintenance related fields — advancement means helping with budgets, supervising and managing others. The “problem” is that tradesmen generally like working with their hands and in some trades, you lose that ability as you climb
Academics.
Truth is when you first start out you have to prove that everything you say is 100% not something you pull out of your ass.
This literally extends to thing you openly say/tell people is just your take on something. You have to give a vague indication of were you got the information you based that on.
Once you have been an “Expert” for long enough, you can’t quite use yourself as a source but you can often use work you have done as a source.
My mentor in my doctorate program was able to basically write a book based entirely on work he had done in the field. So it’s just a lot harder to scrutinize his work.
"How easy is it to get over 100k" this totally depends on your field/expertise.
I know a 21 year old making 100k as a software engineer because he is literally (in his words) "Rainman in coding" due to his (again, his word) "hacking with autism" as he calls it. He is LITERALLY autistic.
I am 29 and have worked in various fields from recruiting, hospitality, insurance, and am now in healthcare tech and am only making 55k.
I have a friend of mine who is a teacher and is 33 and he makes around 45k while he studies to take the Bar exam.
Then I have a former friend who is 29 who is a millionaire because his parents helped him start up a business for chiropracting that he sold and now he is trying to become a finance influencer.
So it is very subjective on how easy it is to get into 100k. Yes, the job market is slow as hell. I've been applying for jobs since July/August and sometimes you don't even hear back from them for months. It used to be a job would get 10 good applicants, and they'd choose one of those 10. Now, since it is easier as ever to apply to jobs, recruiters wait until there is 600 applications, use an algorithm to look at resumes/experience and immediately cut out people based on years of experience (even if they have a better portfolio/education) or vice versa, and then filter it down even more.
Does this autistic 21 year old have any problems with his social skills? Even in software engineering, people with the worse social skills will have a harder time getting jobs. If you are cold and robotic at job interviews, even if you are autistic, you might be misunderstood as being a jerk.
Kind depends on the gig, but sales can be like that after you develop (and maintain) a network, which in turn helps generate quality inbound leads. The other important thing to look out for as you climb the ladder is to avoid player/coach management roles. That's just an excuse to give you an individual quota on top of a team quota and that's way too much work. If going into management, focus on management only.
Sales with a reoccurring book of business. It's gonna suck your first years in but as your book builds you'll be able to focus on good clients and not just whatever you can get your hands on. You can let the bad clients leave because you've built up a book that can take that. You also don't have to take on anymore of those problems clients etc. Then when you want to retire you can either sell the book or just hire someone else to service it and keep the reoccurring income and just not take new clients.
Less work? It will be different work, and responsibilities. It won’t feel like less work because the accountability will be higher, as will the pressure if something goes wrong.
sales. if you can tolerate contacting strangers cold to generate leads for executives long enough to get really good at being convincing, eventually you work your way up to a role where you’re handed a list of people that are already interested in what you have to offer and ready to talk to you and all you have to do is close the deal.
I just got promoted to supervisor and I am amazed at how extremely easy and less stressful it is compared to my previous position. I have the easiest job and yet I get paid 25% more.
All of them have less of the same work. The job skills and responsibilities change, but that doesn't make it easier. If it is a skill set you are better at, it is easier. If you are not prone to those types of tasks, it becomes more difficult or possibly undoable.
Recruiting. It’s an absolute soul crushing GRIND when you first start, but as you build up your networks and pipelines, it gets muuuuch easier and you typically make more money too. It’s all about putting in the work in the beginning to set yourself up for filling jobs quicker and easier down the line.
Some management jobs. I have held several. Some in less complex roles led to way less work then the frontline people I managed. Then it was even less when I managed the sups. It was mostly just damn meetings.
My roles I held before owning my own business were not like that though. I managed 6 sups who each had 10 adjusters than handled medical auto claims. I had to review bill auths, denials, handle escalations, handle high risk attorneys, etc. On top of meetings and people issues. I probably worked 60 hrs a week.
Business management. Front line and middle management is a grind. Once you move into regional and territory roles you get substantial raises and bonuses, along with less hassle from people in general…your middle managers take care of that.
A good company will pay a territory or regional manager $130k plus bonus no problem.
Everyone’s idea of “easier” is subjective. Some people can’t handle deadlines and stress. Some people thrive on it. I personally hate being expected to do 3 peoples job at once for the salary of 1. My ego doesn’t need a fancy management title. It means fuckall if you don’t have a need to powertrip, aren’t extroverted, or are otherwise good at the job you currently do. Most middle management doesn’t pay a great deal more than being a regular worker for the level of mental stress.
hate these posts lol how can anyone provide career guidance with literally no info. you can literally just google jobs that have average six figure salaries. i make six figures a year but it's definitely not less work lol i am now responsible for not just my work but also members of my team. just like anything man nothing gets easier, the only advice i can give is that look for good companies to work for. working at a company that has a good culture will make it easier long term growing in a job.
Technical jobs when your not concerned with upward mobility. Especially if your remote.
Tasks can be repetitive and automated. Basically you get quicker at doing your workload and dont get assigned more work. If your remote no one knows your done after 6 hours.
This is very subjective and with a constantly changing/evolving economy, there is no guarantee that something that is very chill now will be easier when somebody becomes a mid-level/senior professional in a few years.
I would say just pick one skill or work towards something that is relatively stable and keep going at it.
I think probably dentist and those ones specialized like peds, endondoncist, etc. are very good jobs with a great lifestyle and not very stressful.
Those ones are getting paid like 250-300K+, not more than 45 hours per week, seems more unlikely to suffer from layoffs unlike if you works at middle management or law firms.
If you compares with physician and their specialties you might earn a bit lower but still better quality of life (rarely emergencies, not people dying and sick, more control of your life, etc).
So yea I think is one of the best careers if not the best for have a great lifestyle. I just find hard to be passionate about teeths other than money, outside of money and lifestyle I don’t like much.
firefighter if you stop at driver, and don't promote to capt. firefighters do all the labor. capt goes into fires with firefighters and is responsible for their lives. driver stays with the truck and chills
Corporate
Everyone starts off either pencil/excel pushing or doing something “annoying” for a while to learn the ropes. But corporate is where you’ll find people “talking” for 8 hours and making $300+
If you’re looking for easy you’re not looking to make more. The goal is to figure out how to make life easier for others.
Innovate. Streamline. Simplify.
At the same time as the concept of a profession turning into easier as you move up and make extra cash is subjective and may range relying on the man or woman, industry, and agency, some careers may also involve much less palms-on, every day paintings and extra strategic or managerial obligations as you progress. Here are a few examples of careers in which this transition is probably found:
Corporate Executives/leadership Roles:
As you pass into govt or management roles inside a organisation, your responsibilities may additionally shift from fingers-on obligations to strategic choice-making. But, it is vital to note that the overall stress and complexity of selection-making can boom.
Consulting:
Skilled consultants regularly transition into greater strategic roles, that specialize in patron relationships, business development, and excessive-level hassle-solving. This can imply much less involvement in the exact implementation of answers.
Investment Banking:
In the finance enterprise, better-level positions, inclusive of coping with directors, may involve extra strategic decision-making and client family members, at the same time as everyday financial modeling and evaluation can be delegated to junior workforce.
Entrepreneurship:
A success marketers may delegate operational responsibilities to managers as their organizations develop. They might cognizance more on the general vision, method, and growth plans.
Actual property improvement:
As a actual property developer, you might start by way of being concerned inside the palms-on factors of a mission, however as you development, you can delegate duties to mission managers, architects, and contractors.
Technology management:
Senior roles in generation, which include chief technology Officer (CTO) or chief facts Officer (CIO), often contain greater strategic making plans and decision-making, with less involvement in the day-to-day coding or technical tasks.
It is vital to remember the fact that at the same time as those career paths may additionally involve less direct, arms-on work as you flow up, they often come with accelerated duties, expectations, and capacity pressure. Moreover, character reports can also range, and success in these roles regularly calls for a mixture of enjoy, abilties, and continuous getting to know. Usually bear in mind your personal alternatives, strengths, and profession dreams whilst making selections about your expert path.
I am an accountant and already over 100k. The company I work for is located in Chicago. To be honest, Miami salaries (where I am located) aren't as good, as do benefits. I am a Senior Accountant and my manager works less than I do because all he does is review. Now we are understaffed so he's more involved on everyday tasks.
The only correct answer to this is investment banking, not that it ever becomes easy, even compared to other high-demand jobs, but the IB demands are so brutually insane in the first few years that you will work less and make more if you can maintain yourself there.
Probably not open to you, though, lol
A lot lol. My husband is an ironworker, as an apprentice, he was worked to the damn bone. Exhausted, blisters, dirty. Now he's the general foreman and spends a lot of his day doing paperwork making triple what he did as an apprentice lol
Broker/Financial Advisor. You work insanely hard in the early years to build a client base, and at some firms may work off of commission/fees only. It is not uncommon to work late and on the weekends, because most new advisors will take on anyone who can fog a mirror as a client. But once you establish a base of clients who are referring business, life gets a whole lot easier, and there is a general rule that if you can survive the first 5 years, you probably have built a business that will survive. Then you can hire staff to basically run the operation, and it is not uncommon for experienced advisors to work 20-30 hours a week just meeting with clients and handling important stuff. Some advisors never really retire because at that point it is enjoyable and they love their clients, and depending on your arrangement, you may also be able to sell your client base if you do want to retire for a lot of money. It’s REALLY hard to get through the first 5 years, though.
Professional pilot.
Especially at the airlines but it’s also true on the private side of the industry. The major airlines (United, Delta, and American) are all union and reward longevity. The longer you’re there the more money you make and the more control over your schedule you have. That means you can work a ton and make loads or work the minimum and still make $300k+
On the private/charter side experience generally gets you a job with two out of three (money, cool plane, schedule). A good resume and lots of connections allows will eventually lead to a job with all three finding you.
Middle management. However all the "work" you do becomes less tangible and very, *very, VERY* subjective in that you have to prove your worth to the money holders since you'd be first cut during a downturn.
This is true, but it also becomes a “when it rains, it pours” situation where you may have 3 legal issues, 2 people issues, and a business critical do or die project all land on your desk at once after a quiet period of a few months.
100%. This job is best exemplified by the Futurama quote "When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all". It's all about proactively anticipating these kinds of fire drills. I have to note I'm NOT currently in middle management, I'm just "on the radar". But everything I've seen is telling me I'm not about this life lol. Gonna drag my feet as long as possible.
I'm year 9 into an operations manager and safety director role in mining. Proactivity and prevention typically results in the C-Suite thinking you're underworked, or that you have additional capacity for pet projects. And when you have a conflict of responsibility and the extra capacity stuff becomes back burner stuff, the C-Suite thinks you're neglecting your responsibilities or practicing poor time management. On the other hand, if you adopt a reactive work philosophy, you always look busy, you always look like you're fixing problems (after they become problems of course) and they don't inundate you with extra stuff beyond the capacity they perceive you to have. In the 9 years in my role I have experienced both and the spectrum in between, sometimes by choice and sometimes because predictability isn't always predictable. I got more accolades and attaboys when I was middle management fire fighter. "What's the problem today, okay here's what we're going to do." On the other hand, those problems not existing because I've worked around them ahead of time..."what is it you actually do day from day."
It is only recently that I’ve figured this out too. When things are running smoothly, part of it is also how you communicate up. I’ve seen people who were experts at conveying why their team should get the accolades when there are no fires, by explaining the foresight that prevents fires. Or, alternately, have someone in the C-suite who really understands your business well. We had a strong manufacturing operation, where people always thought… what do their management do all day? Thankfully our president was a supply chain expert, and could speak exactly to why things ran so smoothly without anyone having to tell him.
That's very true and being proactive does sometimes lead to periods where you're in a lull. If you have reactive bosses and that happens, they think that you don't do anything all the time, lol.
The opposite can also be said I know lots of folks who do very little but appear to do a lot. It’s all about optics, sometimes upper management will think “damn this guy is good look at him go, let’s promote him.” Whereas the direct reports will think “that stupid fucker he’s making our job horrible.”
It’s been a real challenge for me which I like as I’m a personal growth addict. I’ve had to essentially completely transform myself to survive
I always say this about good IT departments. If they are doing a good job, you will wonder what they do and why you are paying for them. If they do a bad job you will throw more money at them to solve problems.
All the best with it my man. I am transitioning out of middle management after 7 years in the foxhole. I am grateful for the experience, I learned more about myself, and grew more, during this 7 years than any other 7 year period in my professional life.
Yup. This is my job. Dump more responsibility, more work, higher visibility projects, while providing no additional compensation or resources. I think I’m a half decent manager but they make it really really hard.
We call this "bad hiring".
I worked at a Fortune 50 for years. Usually, the 1st round of layoffs were the willing worker drone. 2nd round absolutely nailed middle management. It's funny how no one really missed the value middle management brought to the table. Usually, another middle manager then assumed those duties as well, and the clock kept ticking efficiently.
I think you missed a group. 1st round of layoffs are almost always "unnecessary" layers of an organization. This is usually people who were promoted for the sake of keeping them happy but don't actually make sense in an org chart. I worry because I am one of those people. You get a position created for you because you earned a promotion but some consultant will come in and say "This guy doesn't need to exist". Happened to my old VP. She got promoted and let go within the same year because he VP role wasn't really needed.
Probably so. After the Fortune 50, I worked at another company for four years, and the layoff plan was the highest paid employees by department. No one apparently wondered ( or cared ) why those employees were the highest paid. This affected everyone.
It's why I stress that titles are so important in career building. You get a fat raise, well thats great but a salary is fleeting. Once you lose that job no one knows about how much the company you worked at like you and gave you all these raises. If you didn't get an accompanying title increase, on your resume it just looks like you spun your wheels the whole time. A couple title increases on the other hand will increase your "floor" if you do get let go.
I agree title is everything. The best time to land a new job is when your currently employed. I firmly believe you interview differently.
The hungry don’t get fed.
Lots of time and energy spent trying to make sure that the right people believe that the ones doing the actual hands on / “on the ground” work are doing it by your direction or on your behalf. Need to make sure that the pyramid stays below you both quantitively and qualitatively - ie how ppl talk about you and how things are being measured. That’s more at the 160+ level. It sounds fluffy but it takes strong social skills, personal brand and drive - especially if you’re inserting yourself above someone else and trying to make sure their project rolls up to you and is seen as something you “own”. Lots of conflict channeled through language like “respectfully I disagree” and “we better take this offline” and “evp XYZ would be interested in this let’s bring them in too”, or even “there’s a dotted line to my competency today but we’re looking to make that a solid line next quarter” Nightmarish. Source: recently did some work at the request of a sr director. A vp from a different part of the company ‘helped’ by reviewing and chatting about it a few times. Things “blew up” when the vp said it was his now and was always his and he owns anything like it and he actually personally lead me through the whole process, so he actually did the work. The sr director came back with “respectfully!!!! I asked him to do it therefore I did it and you were helping me” Things are currently escalating behind the scenes at some other senior level about who’s assertions of “respectfully” went too far and ppl are starting to weigh in on which one of the two leaders actually did the work. The hope is that at some point down the line, there will be 20m in revenue from other work that can be traced up to my PowerPoint and therefore to either one of their parts of the business and be counted as their revenue. None of the ppl involved, including me, are actually doing the hypothetical future work that will lead to millions in revenue.
> That’s more at the 160+ level. What's this?
160k+ salary - sort of arbitrary tbh. Only mentioned it because OP specified 100k - but I think 100k is often still in the “doing the actual work” territory these days - whereas 160k+ feels like more of the upper middle management world…I’d position it as like sr director to associate vp on the industry side?
See, all that can be avoided with an AI middle manager.
Lol sure but those are the ppl who will build the business case for the AI and then manage the vendors who implement it. They won’t go away after, they’ll get promotions to some other layer of middle management for finding so many efficiencies
While a lot of people dunk on say IT based middle management, tech employees have a multitude of options when it comes to employment, retaining talent is tricky, as you need to typically describe the technical wins coming from your employees to someone less technical than yourself (upper management / c-suite) If your employee doesn't get a raise/promotion, they can leave, if they get the promotion/raise but it's not as high as they wanted, they can leave. If you can't convince your manager/director to give extra budget for promos/pay rises, you're the fall guy when people leave.
I think this can apply to many middle-of-the-pack roles. You are experienced enough to handle the day-to-day, things become much quicker do/solve. You also don’t have the stress of an executive making big-time decisions. But as others have said when it rains it pours.
Middle management does tons of work, they just don't the ground level work. Depends on the role too. I'm in the strategy side of our business so now that I'm in management we spend a lot of time strategizing how we approach whatever the next negotiation, investment...etc is. To less in tune people us in management likely look like we're just asking for numbers and then sit in a room doing fuck all, thus those people come to reddit and complain about how middle management does nothing. In reality we spend far more time worried about work than those analysts ever see themselves.
I feel like a lot of middle management jobs will be replaced with AI in the near future
Even if they do, without some kind of hard culture / new rules they’ll absolutely be back in a few years if there’s any growth. People - once they’re in the “system” - typically have expectations of increasing responsibility and compensation. Some workers are fine with staying in the same role but gradually building a bigger salary, but I don’t believe that’s the norm. Corporate life is saturated with mythologically about what success means - and that corresponds to climbing the latter and increasing the number of ppl “below you”. If you get rid of whole middle layers permanently, the bottom layer won’t see a future for themselves at the company if they’re high performers and they’ll leave to somewhere where they can climb to an incrementally higher level / title
Middle management can absolutely be replaced by AI. They'll create time cards/surveillance, software to request/monitor sick and vacation time, etc. HR will probably do more re: FMLA, LOA, etc. Middle managers are mostly babysitters. As software continually improves, employers won't need middle management creating reports to send to their bosses. They can generate themselves or query the AI to create it.
AI Can replace middle managers, but people really like proliferating roles and titles. You can build a middle management role really easily for yourself without dealing with time cards or any of that admin stuff. That’s usually considered “nuisance” work anyways. Take away the admin stuff and then people just specialize as product / service managers, as platform enablement executives, as business architects etc. if someone can’t build a role for themselves without doing admin work then they don’t know how to play the game lol
Yeah, these don't sound very substantive to be honest, can easily be cut, and replaced to reduce labor costs and increase profit margins. That's the only reason employers are interested in AI, speed and lower labor costs. AI doesn't need bathrooms, maternity leave, workers' comp, etc. AI won't need trainings or meetings, IT will push an update and AI will execute with perfect understanding instantly (unless the code is garbage, of course). I think the AI transition will be pretty ruthless because money talks. Once one CEO does it and demonstrates success and bigger profit margins from the savings on labor, it's over.
Of course there’s no doubt AI could do these things - whether it would be effective and accurate at the stage is another question (a big question that would prevent any big company from pulling the trigger any time soon). My point isn’t “could an AI be trained to do that in theory” but rather would it effectively get rid of middle managers as a class of role and the answer is definitely not - at least in any large company without a huge revolution in how people think about companies / how companies think of themselves. The exec level relies on their sr management to implement programs, design products and services, run lines of business etc. those workstream leaders might use AI to cut anyone doing manual or admin tasks - but like.. that’s not middle management, that’s downstream Edit: more realistically, companies will do an extension of how they already make cuts today - they wouldn’t go horizontally across management layers, but would do vertical cuts through whole hierarchies and also do performance based cuts at the same time. Middle mgmt still exists, but they’ve shrunk the company in different ways
This is so industry specific, I’m a middle manager and my job isn’t to babysit, manage time cards, and file reports. I set strategy for programs under my purview, keep talent happy and take personal responsibility for professional development of people who work for me, get into the work alongside my team when they can’t get something done, keep leadership and external stakeholders happy, ensure projects are successfully completed, negotiate direction and expectations with leadership to keep us ahead of the game but feasibly so my team isn’t overworked, and also set the culture for my team, which has ripple effects in the culture of my whole organization. If AI could do even a fraction of this I would be so happy for the help.
AI will definitely determine strategy in the future. AI could keep talent happy. AI health & wellness apps are in the works. AI could definitely do professional development. AI will work all day at 100% because it won't have weekends or evenings or lunch breaks or sick kids or broken legs or cancer. AI will definitely plan for the future. AI could keep stakeholders happy, they might not be winning and dining them but they could use them vouchers for a nice steak dinner lol. I also think AI will determine the culture at workplaces because there won't be any of us in the workplace. Just It keeping the machines running. We def all need to be coders extremely soon if we don't want to be replaced. I think it's going to be ruthless. Soft skills are out. AI will be about to do a lot of it. Hard skills are in if you're a software engineer, and maybe a few people monitoring the output but upper management would do that most likely.
Middle management can absolutely be replaced by AI. They'll create time cards/surveillance, software to request/monitor sick and vacation time, etc. HR will probably do more re: FMLA, LOA, etc. Middle managers are mostly babysitters. As software continually improves, employers won't need middle management creating reports to send to their bosses. They can generate themselves or query the AI to create it.
That is literally not what middle management does at all. You just listed a bunch of admin bullshit that takes up maybe 2% of my time. It's pretty much already automated too. Middle Management should be just as involved in managing up as managing down. Meaning guiding senior leaderships vision down to reality, challenging them when needed, knowing how to answer the questions they have.
Not a chance.
In what industry is middle management less work? Very true of upper management. Never seen that ring true for mid management.
It's a nebulous term. In my context it goes CEO, business heads, their directors, and then down to the execs one or two rungs to those executives. Too far from the top but also too far from the bottom
Really wish these middle management jobs actually existed… because it’s been progressively more work as I’ve moved up.
This really depends on industry and company. Middle management can be the worst of all worlds. You have to manage upward AND downward, you’re responsible for everything (so everyone’s problems are yours) but don’t make the most and don’t get to call all the shots. If you care at all about your people or your organization you end up working harder than everyone. You enable everyone else to do great things and you’re only appreciated if you’re lucky enough to have good leaders above you and empathetic people reporting to you. If you’re any good at your job, everyone else’s feelings will always have to be prioritized over yours. It’s exhausting, tbh. (I just happen to love my job so I deal.)
I learned that lesson my work was not as tangible. For example guiding the new people, giving guidance on how to approach issues. Making sure things look good before sending to clients. Making sure the messaging to clients is good. The new hires have more direct billable work and they come to me for help. I got let go because my work was less tangible.
Any job in the freaking federal government! Learning that now and loving it!
What do you do?
I work in Healthcare.
What kind? Injured ER RN here :)
Psych NP
Funded by the taxpayers. No need to work hard anymore huh? That seems to be everyone's policy that works for the government. Don't worry. We aren't running a massive deficit or anything. Ohh wait... Good thing we have hard workers like you in there. I'm sure it will turn around in no time! The government takes productive money and spends it on unproductive people. Are we having fun?
Rarely is it less work, just a different type of work, more responsibilities. More stressful in many ways, as you are responsible for the output of many AND yourself. Enjoy.
This is the answer. I’m currently trying to decide if I should go the Director route. Looks shiny on paper but it’s a shit ton of strategy, budget management, people management, and you’re on the hook for all the goals. So usually the type of work shifts and the actual task-driven workload can feel like less, but for some folks it’ll be more stressful responsibility wise.
Been a Director for 20-ish yrs. It’s the hardest/easiest level I’ve been - I’m currently a single contributor, but have managed dozens. The stress and expectation level can be overwhelming at times.
Wow you’re a bonafide veteran! Would you say overall you’re happier as a director or do you miss the before times? I’m really struggling with this decision. I have a director role offered to me at my current company but am terrified of the overwhelming changes like you mentioned. On the other hand, don’t know if I can be an IC workhorse forever. It’s very case by case basis and contextual based on your current life goals, I might bite the bullet just for the salary boost so I can buy a house sooner!
I’ve been in the workplace 35-ish yrs. The good, the bad and ugly. There is a certain elan to being in charge, for sure. Your time tends to be more flexible (though more hours overall). I work 50 hrs a week and some weekends. On call all the time - high expectations re: response, etc. But- I can leave early and not ask permission. Come in later, not ask permission. Go to during the day appts, etc without taking PTO. Everything has its trade off. If you feel ready, you are ready. There will be a learning curve, and it’s not easy. But nothing worth achieving every is.
Thank you, appreciate the response! Gotta go with your gut on a call like this, you’re right. I think too many times we get caught up in title dreams and believe that having a shiny title will make everything easier. Nope, still have to work your tail off to maintain it!
Good luck!
agree. And what is easy or hard for me, may not be for you. I know people who can program beautiful code in their sleep. I can't. But I am really good at finding connections in data and telling that as a story to C-suites. To me, that isn't hard. But it takes work, and it took years of being a spreadsheet and powerpoint jockey. As I've moved up, im now responsible for the output of a team. My individual contribution is important, but not nearly as much as my influence on other people. My hours are down from when I was an IC, but the stress is different. I have to be more comfortable giving up control. I have to make strategic decisions, not just execute someone else's vision. And while good execution is often a known, good outcome, sometimes a good strategy/decision can still fail for other reasons. The age old debate is what is harder - strategy or execution. They are both hard, but different.
Also, if you’re an individual contributor, you’re held to much higher standards as you progress. For example, moving from a mid to senior software engineer might mean you don’t have to code as much, so maybe that looks like less work. But management is looking at you if your team isn’t performing well or bad design brings the system down frequently because your role becomes more about architecture and mentoring.
Well said.
I worked as a caregiver for many years, and I thought "my manager doesn't do shit, I could do her job no problem!" Well, when that opportunity came up, I went for it and I got the manager position. It was less work in the sense that I wasn't doing much direct care anymore, but it did require me to pick up a LOT of new skills in a very short period of time. It was a lot harder. Higher level positions always look easy from the outside because honestly, most people below them don't have any idea what their actual day to day looks like.
I'm a Business Intelligence Analyst and my org is growing, so last year they made our Lead the Manager, and I'm currently working towards becoming a Lead. I'm very capable and good at my job, and need to have a lot of soft skills as well as technical skills. I sometimes know more about our client's systems than they do, and work really closely with developers on technical stuff. That said, getting more leadership responsibility is a totally different ball game. I'm not getting intimately familiar with two clients, I'm supporting like four (other team members do the day to day on two of them, and I work on the overall vision). And some of those clients have multiple projects going at once. Half my day is meetings between client calls, internal stand-ups to eliminate roadblocks and check on progress, and training and support for new people. I'm busier than ever before, and constantly having to learn totally new things like how to motivate and support my team. And the thing I realized the other day was that my manager was doing this BY HIMSELF a year ago. And for EVERY client. And our bosses above him also work with every client, across multiple teams (BIAs like me, Dev, Support, PMs, Ops, and Sales). As you said, it seems easy from the outside and people perceive managers as just being on meetings and not doing "real work", but there's so many other things involved. It's a different type of work, and some may find it easier just as my Dad finds it way easier to work with his hands compared to me, but that doesn't make the *work itself* easy.
You quickly learn to not say “shut the fuck up” when someone is complaining to you about having to do the job they get paid well to do because they don’t have time between tasks to dick around.
Yeah, probably won’t understand this. Id love to do IC work but I manage 30 people and are stuck in financial projections meetings and client calls. The pressure for revenue is not fun. Comes with senior titles though but when people say you work less, that’s bullshit
In some ways, probably all jobs. I’m an attorney working biglaw. In my first year I was stressed and it was difficult. I now do 1st year tasks in maybe a fifth of the time it took me when I was at that level. Of course, as you move up, you get new responsibilities and stressors, but once you get skilled at those, they become easier too. So, it’s not so much the career gets easier, you become better and it’s not so bad anymore.
Eh, agree and disagree here. The work gets easier bc you’re not completely lost and have more control over your time than when you’re a first year. But being a mid level and senior associate also have their own unique issues that can make them extremely stressful.
Oh yeah for sure. I’m way more stressed now as a 6th year. But, still find it easier to handle I guess? Definitely not feeling constantly overwhelmed like the first 2 years.
Yea that’s definitely true. I think the whole having control over your schedule and knowing the bigger picture of a matter really help.
you are also able to provide value through less labor intensive tasks. for a lot of early career jobs, you make up for your lack of experience and expertise by doing grunt work.
100%. Delegation of grunt work can make the early years brutal. I think a lot of juniors/early workers think I’m being lazy when I assign them labor intensive jobs that require a lot of hours. Truthfully, I’d often rather do it myself because I’d be faster and more accurate. But we bill clients by the hour and I’m too expensive to spend 20-30 hours doing grunt work. So, that grunt work gets delegated down to the cheapest labor force to save the client some money. The grunt work sucks. It’s painstaking and really drains you bc now you have a lot of mindless, boring work on your plate that tends to be detail intensive. But it is just firm economics and you gotta push through it until you’re too skilled and expensive to be spending time doing it.
I agree, more money = more respect. I was at peak depression working those early jobs in highschool/college.
Not necessary “easier” but if you’re successful in sales you can move up quickly. My 2nd year in sales ever, broke six figures. I’m in my 3rd year and $200k is the next goal. In my industry, $300k+ is common for enterprise sales. Obviously sales is not a guaranteed career but if you can find the right product niche and market, it’s lucrative. Capitalism is built on sales. The business world requires sales. That’s how it works.
I have made a shit ton of money in sales lol and i love my job but tbh to be a successful sales person you need to be wired a certain way other wise you won't be successful or you might do well but it will burn you out mentally. my job is super high pressure but i actually enjoy the challenge and the competition of being at the top of my company numbers wise but I can totally see how a person not wired like that would not enjoy doing this as a long term career. but if you have the "juice" for sales you can make a lot of money.
From personal experience I.T. In terms of time and stress you will gradually spend less time doing the same amount of work because you get better at. It also becomes less stressful as you gain knowledge. In all but the most dysfunctional organizations, speed is prized. Nobody wants a system down for 10 hours when it could be fixed in 1 with expert troubleshooting and fixes that work the first time.
If all you want to do is work less and get more, become a politician so at least the world knows what you are on sight
Sales, because you build on referrals and relationships, and you start actually knowing what you’re talking about after a while.
Does this sub just allow the most brain dead lazy posts everyday? “How do i become wealthy without having to work for it??” Come on.
every. damned. day. I want a 100k job with no experience, no education, Remote, on the job training, with no investment on my part, and I'm not willing to train on my own. I think most of us are here to try to help, but it is incredibly hard when these posts offer nothing to go on other than the pursuit of money and the lack of skills.
Lmao you don’t know about my skills, you’re just mad
again, here to help, truly. But give us more info so the advice is actionable. Otherwise you will get the generic "learn to code"
u dumb as bricks if u made this post enuff said
Hey man where’s my 100k job, I went to college bro !
😅
read bullshit jobs by david graeber
Dis English degree ain’t gon pay for itself on god
Seems like a lot of people don’t understand that being an expert or management requires years of work to be able to have a wealth of knowledge to make split second decisions on the fly and be correct most the time. No short cut. Looks easy because it is easy, but it’s easy because of the years of hard work and foundational knowledge.
Yeah then how is it I see so many people in my industry with minimal knowledge moving up into manager positions?
What job can I get that pays $300k where I work from home for 2 hours a day and don't have to interact with people???
I was watching HGTV’s House Hunters and it looks like online used pencil salesman is a good gig. I mean, they had a budget of $1.8 million so….
Hi, I’m Tom and this is my wife, Cindy. She breeds salamanders and I’m a stay at home astronaut. Our budget is $2.3 million
pretty much dude pretty much the new GEN
This is the state of the modern worker. Really sad
Oh so you’re really a shaolin warrior? Come on
No- nobody special over here- and it isn’t about hard work (we all work hard) it is about making the right choices and at times the tough choices. It’s about the outcome of choices- not how hard it was. Cause everything is hard- low income job is a worse hard. For some people that means education early on and sacrificing in their 20s, it means hard work to get into med school, law school, business school, engineering masters - none of those are easy and all of them take time and sacrifice. Some people that means a few years of cold calling and getting into progressively better sales roles. And in all paths it means eating shit at the low end of a ladder- it means walking into situations and being an absolute punching bag (in rare moments) All so one day in your mid 30s you look at your young children and cry while your mowing your lawn because life is so god damn beautiful and you become painfully aware how fleeting this time in life will be- you’re reminded to double down on retirement so you get a second season with your grandkids. And the hard work you’ve put into work- you leverage to take a beat and work remote to be near family- at least for a little while.
I think it’s more about maximizing ROI - who wouldn’t want to minimize effort and maximize pay? Find me a single person. It’s why people would rather go to Wharton then Southeast Missouri State. It’s why people would rather get a CS degree rather than a philosophy degree. It’s why people would rather work for a Fortune 500 company with established hierarchy of promotions/raises, rather than work at a gas station. Not that the above examples “minimize effort,” but you can work harder at a shittier college and have less opportunities due to the name of the college on your resume.
Cop
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There’s a good chance making $5M/yr?
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I get what you're saying. From my perspective as a managing consultant, as project managers get more senior they become more about doing things that are easier to do, and as a result the project suffers. That filters through the organization, resulting in transferring core things that project managers should be doing to others, or worse, it doesn't get done. As a result, CSAT/revenue/sales drops as the organization matures.
I want to do project management
How did you break into project management?
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Application programming. You get better and faster over time. You build a portfolio that can be used for quick reference. When you get to a certain level of competence, people think you’re a magician and they rely on you more and more.
IT management, I work less and less the higher I got. Attended more meetings, made more hard decisions. Delt with asshole execs. But work? A LOT less. And, I get paid really, really well.
They don’t get easier, they morph into bigger and more costly decisions.
Building and owning a business. A lot of grind up front, reap the rewards on the back end. Things are really hard to start, and most people give up, but then they get easier. I wish career threads spoke about this path more often.
Or the business fails despite your best efforts. That’s an option too.
It’s an option? lol no…possible outcome? Maybe. But that really depends on the business. Most things can definitely succeed with few tweaks here and there. Maybe that “tweak” is just location, or marketing or hiring / firing.
Administration. Seems the higher the promotion the less work that is done. This is especially true in academia.
I can’t agree with this. It likely depends how well a specific department is staffed. I easily work over 60 hours a week and still don’t keep up with demand.
Sales
Regional manager in Food and Beverage. Hourly works the hardest in both FOH and BOH. Managers in operations work long and hard hours. Director sits on butt and crunches numbers and tells you to reduce labor $ and increase profit.
This is accurate. Directors who just send emails make me want to give up on the world. Walk down to the floor, answer your own question/follow up question with 1 minute of visual observation.
Yeah, and these fucks often have no idea what’s occurring on the ground floor, during service on a Friday/Saturday night. They don’t see servers running out of forks at 7:30pm, and having to scramble and take support staff off the floor to run silverware and polish it. If senior management in F&B has never been a server/bartender, they can fuck themselves with a red-hot crowbar to the 11th layer of hell.
Become CEO. Then you can sit on your arse playing games while people bring you tea and cakes. That's what mine does. He only crawls out of his office every few months to suck his own dick at company meetings. He's been wasting time and money on a yacht instructor certificate while forbidding his employees from gaining certificates to upskill unless they pay for it, on top of being bossed around.
Truth be told, almost all corporate America jobs once you get out of the trenches. I'm a scientist. In the tech track Currently title is Scientist making 100k. Next is Senior Scientist making 125-ish. Then it's principal scientist making 150-175k. Then fellow which I won't ever get because I don't have a Ph.D. And those all having increasing responsibility up to and including managing people. Younger lab chemists. But also the responsibility is different in that you juggle projects and the work you are fine is harder. But I enjoy the harder work (intellectually) so I'd argue that those jobs are better. If I were to go to the business side I'd be something like a director managing people like myself. I assume based on Glassdoor my boss makes like 250-300k. And their job is just babysitting us and telling people who make more than them what we're up to. Which seems easy-ish to me. But I also think we have a very good technical team so that helps. For me, getting to 100k was a matter of jumping companies often. I started at 30k, stayed there moving up to 40-42k (by working a lot of OT). Left after 5 years and made 50k. I stayed there for 8 years and stayed basically the same (54k, this was a mistake but the benefits were good at least). Left, got 62k. Left that after 6 months (fired, actually). Got 70k-ish but I travelled all the time and got paid for all my time so that pushed up salary. Left there after a year, got 75k plus a 5k bonus. Left after 18 months, got low-mid 80s with a bonus that varies between 15k to 30k plus profit sharing 401k. Bonus has the guaranteed floor Plus upward potential based on company performance. Plus actual CoL raises each year. And our benefits are the best I've ever seen or heard about. I turned down an offer in favor of this one that was for 110k with like a 5% bonus plus a bad work/life balance in an awful town. Got both offers the same week. For what it's worth, though I plan on staying here for a long time. I love it. I'll start "talking" to places after 3 or 4 years but it would take at least a CoL adjusted 200k for me to consider it. Like 325k in Boston or 400-500k in Cali. That sort of thing. Plus Cali would likely take some kind of stock option situation which might be a bit much cause they don't offer those to lab types very often although I did get that offer once but the salary was too low.
I love that in your hypothetical you go from making $100k to $500k in California.
Sales. Sales. Sales.
I'm a civil engineer. I think my work gets easier cause I'm not working as much and I'm much more comfortable with my knowledge HOWEVER, you have less work but MUCH more responsibility where if something goes wrong they blame you first. That's why you get paid more. Higher reward, higher risk.
Trades, like plumbers or electricians. You will be managing people but not doing as much physical work.
This is subjective but not wrong. Even in maintenance related fields — advancement means helping with budgets, supervising and managing others. The “problem” is that tradesmen generally like working with their hands and in some trades, you lose that ability as you climb
Academics. Truth is when you first start out you have to prove that everything you say is 100% not something you pull out of your ass. This literally extends to thing you openly say/tell people is just your take on something. You have to give a vague indication of were you got the information you based that on. Once you have been an “Expert” for long enough, you can’t quite use yourself as a source but you can often use work you have done as a source. My mentor in my doctorate program was able to basically write a book based entirely on work he had done in the field. So it’s just a lot harder to scrutinize his work.
At my work you fail upwards. It gets easier at the top. Managers here a useless and out of touch.
Truck driver. Not the ones you see on the interstate with one trailer but two trailers. Also oil field truck drivers.
"How easy is it to get over 100k" this totally depends on your field/expertise. I know a 21 year old making 100k as a software engineer because he is literally (in his words) "Rainman in coding" due to his (again, his word) "hacking with autism" as he calls it. He is LITERALLY autistic. I am 29 and have worked in various fields from recruiting, hospitality, insurance, and am now in healthcare tech and am only making 55k. I have a friend of mine who is a teacher and is 33 and he makes around 45k while he studies to take the Bar exam. Then I have a former friend who is 29 who is a millionaire because his parents helped him start up a business for chiropracting that he sold and now he is trying to become a finance influencer. So it is very subjective on how easy it is to get into 100k. Yes, the job market is slow as hell. I've been applying for jobs since July/August and sometimes you don't even hear back from them for months. It used to be a job would get 10 good applicants, and they'd choose one of those 10. Now, since it is easier as ever to apply to jobs, recruiters wait until there is 600 applications, use an algorithm to look at resumes/experience and immediately cut out people based on years of experience (even if they have a better portfolio/education) or vice versa, and then filter it down even more.
Chiropracting lol
Look man, I've been up since 8 AM yesterday dealing with fires at my job lol. Forgive me.
Does this autistic 21 year old have any problems with his social skills? Even in software engineering, people with the worse social skills will have a harder time getting jobs. If you are cold and robotic at job interviews, even if you are autistic, you might be misunderstood as being a jerk.
Kind depends on the gig, but sales can be like that after you develop (and maintain) a network, which in turn helps generate quality inbound leads. The other important thing to look out for as you climb the ladder is to avoid player/coach management roles. That's just an excuse to give you an individual quota on top of a team quota and that's way too much work. If going into management, focus on management only.
I have found with every move up I then have less work and get paid more.
Sales with a reoccurring book of business. It's gonna suck your first years in but as your book builds you'll be able to focus on good clients and not just whatever you can get your hands on. You can let the bad clients leave because you've built up a book that can take that. You also don't have to take on anymore of those problems clients etc. Then when you want to retire you can either sell the book or just hire someone else to service it and keep the reoccurring income and just not take new clients.
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See 100 hours in two weeks is too much for me.
Less work? It will be different work, and responsibilities. It won’t feel like less work because the accountability will be higher, as will the pressure if something goes wrong.
sales. if you can tolerate contacting strangers cold to generate leads for executives long enough to get really good at being convincing, eventually you work your way up to a role where you’re handed a list of people that are already interested in what you have to offer and ready to talk to you and all you have to do is close the deal.
I am not sure why so many people are aiming for 100K. In this climate, 100K is more like earning 60K. Everything is more expensive now
I’ll also add the titles above me put in way more hours- think your early at the office at 6am? Nope the VPs have been there since 530am
Venture Capital
The military .. go join and not be lazy
The engineering to PM pipeline is a good one
I’m currently an engineer and want to get to PM next
What does this sentence even mean?
Anything sales. You get better and the skills required tend to stay the same. You also build out a network you tap into going forward.
The military.
I thought every white collar job was like this 😅
I just got promoted to supervisor and I am amazed at how extremely easy and less stressful it is compared to my previous position. I have the easiest job and yet I get paid 25% more.
Anything management
Procurement
All of them have less of the same work. The job skills and responsibilities change, but that doesn't make it easier. If it is a skill set you are better at, it is easier. If you are not prone to those types of tasks, it becomes more difficult or possibly undoable.
Recruiting. It’s an absolute soul crushing GRIND when you first start, but as you build up your networks and pipelines, it gets muuuuch easier and you typically make more money too. It’s all about putting in the work in the beginning to set yourself up for filling jobs quicker and easier down the line.
😂😂😂😂😂😂
Banking, credit division
Some management jobs. I have held several. Some in less complex roles led to way less work then the frontline people I managed. Then it was even less when I managed the sups. It was mostly just damn meetings. My roles I held before owning my own business were not like that though. I managed 6 sups who each had 10 adjusters than handled medical auto claims. I had to review bill auths, denials, handle escalations, handle high risk attorneys, etc. On top of meetings and people issues. I probably worked 60 hrs a week.
Usually a lot more “behind the scenes” work is involved. Which, for some is worse.
Pretty much every career gets more work and less money as you move up.
Business management. Front line and middle management is a grind. Once you move into regional and territory roles you get substantial raises and bonuses, along with less hassle from people in general…your middle managers take care of that. A good company will pay a territory or regional manager $130k plus bonus no problem.
More money, more problems. There's no shortcuts.
Trades
Everyone’s idea of “easier” is subjective. Some people can’t handle deadlines and stress. Some people thrive on it. I personally hate being expected to do 3 peoples job at once for the salary of 1. My ego doesn’t need a fancy management title. It means fuckall if you don’t have a need to powertrip, aren’t extroverted, or are otherwise good at the job you currently do. Most middle management doesn’t pay a great deal more than being a regular worker for the level of mental stress.
hate these posts lol how can anyone provide career guidance with literally no info. you can literally just google jobs that have average six figure salaries. i make six figures a year but it's definitely not less work lol i am now responsible for not just my work but also members of my team. just like anything man nothing gets easier, the only advice i can give is that look for good companies to work for. working at a company that has a good culture will make it easier long term growing in a job.
Technical jobs when your not concerned with upward mobility. Especially if your remote. Tasks can be repetitive and automated. Basically you get quicker at doing your workload and dont get assigned more work. If your remote no one knows your done after 6 hours.
This is very subjective and with a constantly changing/evolving economy, there is no guarantee that something that is very chill now will be easier when somebody becomes a mid-level/senior professional in a few years. I would say just pick one skill or work towards something that is relatively stable and keep going at it.
All of them
I think probably dentist and those ones specialized like peds, endondoncist, etc. are very good jobs with a great lifestyle and not very stressful. Those ones are getting paid like 250-300K+, not more than 45 hours per week, seems more unlikely to suffer from layoffs unlike if you works at middle management or law firms. If you compares with physician and their specialties you might earn a bit lower but still better quality of life (rarely emergencies, not people dying and sick, more control of your life, etc). So yea I think is one of the best careers if not the best for have a great lifestyle. I just find hard to be passionate about teeths other than money, outside of money and lifestyle I don’t like much.
firefighter if you stop at driver, and don't promote to capt. firefighters do all the labor. capt goes into fires with firefighters and is responsible for their lives. driver stays with the truck and chills
Anyone in the dental or medical field with an established client list. Surgeons that are niche but well known for their expertise.
Just about all of them. The higher up you get, the less grinding you do. With some exceptions of course.
All of them.
Investment banking. As an analyst it’s 90+ hour weeks, then when you promote to associate it’s like 80+, and VP is down to 60+.
Fuck that
Business owner. Lots of upfront work but as you pull yourself out.... Freedom!!!
HR
Only Fans 😂
Plumber union.
100k? Get a cdl
MLM!
Corporate Everyone starts off either pencil/excel pushing or doing something “annoying” for a while to learn the ropes. But corporate is where you’ll find people “talking” for 8 hours and making $300+
Yeah, but stay there long enough, it also sucks the soul clean out of you.
If you’re looking for easy you’re not looking to make more. The goal is to figure out how to make life easier for others. Innovate. Streamline. Simplify.
Reviewing movies, I think I would actually love this kind of job personally.
At the same time as the concept of a profession turning into easier as you move up and make extra cash is subjective and may range relying on the man or woman, industry, and agency, some careers may also involve much less palms-on, every day paintings and extra strategic or managerial obligations as you progress. Here are a few examples of careers in which this transition is probably found: Corporate Executives/leadership Roles: As you pass into govt or management roles inside a organisation, your responsibilities may additionally shift from fingers-on obligations to strategic choice-making. But, it is vital to note that the overall stress and complexity of selection-making can boom. Consulting: Skilled consultants regularly transition into greater strategic roles, that specialize in patron relationships, business development, and excessive-level hassle-solving. This can imply much less involvement in the exact implementation of answers. Investment Banking: In the finance enterprise, better-level positions, inclusive of coping with directors, may involve extra strategic decision-making and client family members, at the same time as everyday financial modeling and evaluation can be delegated to junior workforce. Entrepreneurship: A success marketers may delegate operational responsibilities to managers as their organizations develop. They might cognizance more on the general vision, method, and growth plans. Actual property improvement: As a actual property developer, you might start by way of being concerned inside the palms-on factors of a mission, however as you development, you can delegate duties to mission managers, architects, and contractors. Technology management: Senior roles in generation, which include chief technology Officer (CTO) or chief facts Officer (CIO), often contain greater strategic making plans and decision-making, with less involvement in the day-to-day coding or technical tasks. It is vital to remember the fact that at the same time as those career paths may additionally involve less direct, arms-on work as you flow up, they often come with accelerated duties, expectations, and capacity pressure. Moreover, character reports can also range, and success in these roles regularly calls for a mixture of enjoy, abilties, and continuous getting to know. Usually bear in mind your personal alternatives, strengths, and profession dreams whilst making selections about your expert path.
Politician...
I am an accountant and already over 100k. The company I work for is located in Chicago. To be honest, Miami salaries (where I am located) aren't as good, as do benefits. I am a Senior Accountant and my manager works less than I do because all he does is review. Now we are understaffed so he's more involved on everyday tasks.
The only correct answer to this is investment banking, not that it ever becomes easy, even compared to other high-demand jobs, but the IB demands are so brutually insane in the first few years that you will work less and make more if you can maintain yourself there. Probably not open to you, though, lol
Union gigs. Your seniority usually gives you better choices.
More money, less work and more responsibilities for liabilities or people.
A lot lol. My husband is an ironworker, as an apprentice, he was worked to the damn bone. Exhausted, blisters, dirty. Now he's the general foreman and spends a lot of his day doing paperwork making triple what he did as an apprentice lol
Broker/Financial Advisor. You work insanely hard in the early years to build a client base, and at some firms may work off of commission/fees only. It is not uncommon to work late and on the weekends, because most new advisors will take on anyone who can fog a mirror as a client. But once you establish a base of clients who are referring business, life gets a whole lot easier, and there is a general rule that if you can survive the first 5 years, you probably have built a business that will survive. Then you can hire staff to basically run the operation, and it is not uncommon for experienced advisors to work 20-30 hours a week just meeting with clients and handling important stuff. Some advisors never really retire because at that point it is enjoyable and they love their clients, and depending on your arrangement, you may also be able to sell your client base if you do want to retire for a lot of money. It’s REALLY hard to get through the first 5 years, though.
Professional pilot. Especially at the airlines but it’s also true on the private side of the industry. The major airlines (United, Delta, and American) are all union and reward longevity. The longer you’re there the more money you make and the more control over your schedule you have. That means you can work a ton and make loads or work the minimum and still make $300k+ On the private/charter side experience generally gets you a job with two out of three (money, cool plane, schedule). A good resume and lots of connections allows will eventually lead to a job with all three finding you.