$10/Hour To $80,000/Year In Five Years? (employee, degrees, average, interview)

[VictoryIsMine1]

If someone told you they went from $10 a hour to $80,000 a year within five years would you believe them?

Job 1: $10/hour, part-time, no benefits
Job 2: $14/hour, full-time, no benefits
Job 3: $17/hour, full-time, no benefits
Job 4: $50,000/year salary, full-time, full benefits
Job 5: $80,000/year, full-time, full benefits

The person already had a bachelor's degree when starting job one. The individual started a masters program while doing job 4, but hasn't completed the requirements of the degree yet. All this happen in about 5 years time.

What did the person do to achieve this?

[Jeo123]

Originally Posted by VictoryIsMine1

If someone told you they went from $10 a hour to $80,000 a year within five years would you believe them?

Job 1: $10/hour, part-time, no benefits
Job 2: $14/hour, full-time, no benefits
Job 3: $17/hour, full-time, no benefits
Job 4: $50,000/year salary, full-time, full benefits
Job 5: $80,000/year, full-time, full benefits

The person already had a bachelor's degree when starting job one. The individual started a masters program while doing job 4, but hasn't completed the requirements of the degree yet. All this happen in about 5 years time.

What did the person do to achieve this?

It's not impossible, though I'd be more surprised by the fact that they never stuck around at a job for more than a year. It sounds like the salary path of someone who got a degree in an IT or other specialty field that had high demand and he was good at it.

Personally, making that leap happened over the course of 2005-2011, but I wasn't changing jobs and it was really more about getting substantial raises because I went from McDonald's to an Internship to a well paying field, and in 2011 finally changed companies.

Could someone have done it faster than me? I don't doubt that. But as for whether I would trust a particular individual making that claim, it would depend on the individual.

[MLSFan]

sounds reasonable to me :S I got $50k in first job out of college, I haven't worked for 5 years yet so...

there's a lot left unknown in your example... main question is why do you care what someone else makes? Do you plan to do the same thing?

[cruisereg]

Originally Posted by VictoryIsMine1

If someone told you they went from $10 a hour to $80,000 a year within five years would you believe them?

Job 1: $10/hour, part-time, no benefits

Graduate from college without a job, they take whatever they can get to eat. It's a crap job, so you're hunting for something else the entire time. You're there at most 3-6 months.

Job 2: $14/hour, full-time, no benefits

Finally find a job that's at least full time, woot! The pay still sucks, but it's better than the part-time gig. You're still actively looking for your first *real* job.

Job 3: $17/hour, full-time, no benefits

Maybe you're at the same company and they realize that you're actually kind of intelligent and give you a better job with a $3/hr raise. This still sucks, so you continue to look. At this point, you could easily be at less than 1 year to 18 months from the start of the part-time Job #1.

Job 4: $50,000/year salary, full-time, full benefits

Oh happy day, you're continued tenacity pays off, you land your first good job. You're super happy and you bust your tail doing a good job for 2-3 years. You're diligent keeping your LinkedIn profile up to date and making good contacts. A recruiter from another company calls with a job they think you'd be great at.

Job 5: $80,000/year, full-time, full benefits

Welcome to today. New job, big raise and even more motivation to finish the master's degree for even better opportunities.

The above is 100% doable with the right skills and personality.

[mrskay662000]

Yes. I went from $8.75/hr to over $80k/yr in 5.5 years.

How it happened was that I had a few lower degrees and an advanced degree in an economically depressed area. I had to take a low wage job with an insane turnover rate because my degrees rendered me unemployable to everyone else. I did that for about 5 months while I applied for more jobs and then got into a field that was more related to my degrees, but still low income. After about year and a half, I relocated to where the growth potential in the field was exponential. I was still considered low pay for the new location but I busted it to ensure I'd get the next available promotions as they came up.

It's not likely my income will continue to leap at those rates, but I think it will continue to significantly rise over the next few years before I top out.

Everyone I know who has engaged in the career rocket did the same thing. Lots of preparation, eating the worst poop, eating more bad poop, eating poop and finally... embracing the poop. Every huge leap in our respective careers has come at a high personal price. Anyone who tells you that it was all sunshine and roses on the way up is lying.

[mash123]

I have started with an internship for 10$, then moved to 20$ at the same place, raised to 25$, got an offer for 35$, another offer for 45$, now I'm on low six figures full time+benefits team lead.
All in 5 years.

[Genghis]

Really this isn't that surprising. To me this means he had a major/background where it's hard to get a good job in his field, so he had to take a few (say the first three) jobs which were lower paying than the one he should have gotten. Then he landed job 4 which was the type of job he was aiming for to begin with, then managed to score job 5 afterwards, possibly at the same organization as job 4 as a reward for doing well.

[revelated]

Originally Posted by VictoryIsMine1

If someone told you they went from $10 a hour to $80,000 a year within five years would you believe them?

Job 1: $10/hour, part-time, no benefits
Job 2: $14/hour, full-time, no benefits
Job 3: $17/hour, full-time, no benefits
Job 4: $50,000/year salary, full-time, full benefits
Job 5: $80,000/year, full-time, full benefits

The person already had a bachelor's degree when starting job one. The individual started a masters program while doing job 4, but hasn't completed the requirements of the degree yet. All this happen in about 5 years time.

What did the person do to achieve this?

No Bachelor's degree. NO certifications.

2004: Customer Service. $13/hour, full time, poor benefits.
2005: Compliance. $30,000/year, full time, poor benefits.
2006: Compliance. $35,000/year, full time, poor benefits.
2008: Compliance. $60,000/year, full time, poor benefits.

None of this is counting the many bonuses I received over the tenure, which I calculate to be somewhere around $30,000.


Here's an easier example to process, likely:

1996: Data Entry/Customer Service. $8/hour, full time, no benefits.
1998: Customer Service. $ 15/hour, full time, great benefits.
2001: Customer Service/Sales. $60,000/year salary + commission, full time, average benefits.

I hit a lull between 2002 and 2003 because I didn't want to continue in Sales, so I went back to low pay and worked back up again.

Yes, it CAN be done. Taking a risk on a position where there's a need but not a demand is the door. Being willing to try something new and different that's outside of your comfort zone is the boot needed to kick the door in. But that takes pushing yourself harder than most feel comfortable doing. It's stressful and it's not fun. But it's necessary if you want that brass ring.

To the question of "why are you job hopping so much?", reality is difficult for some, I know. But here's the deal. Companies are evolving. They're changing how they provide the services they provide and the positions they offer to serve those needs. Employees have to keep up with these evolutions or they risk losing the very job they just got.

Customer Service was quite easy to get and paid decently well back in the 90's. You didn't have this mad rush to outsource customer service; companies cared more about their reputation (Cox Communications comes perfectly to mind). IVRs were slimmer, if they even existed. IN fact it was so bad (good?) that many of these companies were hosting hiring events to just hire and train mass loads of reps at one time and offer them good pay; you didn't need experience, they'd teach you everything. Benefits were awesome: free cell phones, free internet, free home phone, pensions, etc. We laughed at those Blockbuster Video managers making $8/hour when we were getting offered $15/hour. But I saw the writing on the wall when I got there. The work wasn't hard, it wasn't challenging. It was fun. That meant it was a target for cost cutting. Which later happened and continues to happen. Now, it's a stretch to get into Customer Service and if you do, they pay pathetic.

When I applied to Compliance I had no expectation they would accept me, but during the interview I made it crystal clear that were they had nothing to lose; give me a shot and let me show them I'm worth the move. She gave me the shot. It was academic from there.

During the Compliance tenure I realized that the company was in jeopardy due to government rumblings, some of which I was directly exposed to (and got chewed out for on one occasion). Again, writing on the wall. So I worked to get more technical certifications and dig deeper into the software I was supporting, then got out of there. They sliced staff down from 700 to around 70. Had I stayed it would have been a gamble. 50% chance I got laid off. 50% chance I didn't, working with people I couldn't stand, for an insolvent company, where the value of my ESOP would have been in the low millions by now. A depressed millionaire, or a content upper class worker. I chose the latter.

Which leads me to 2009-now, where I've been steadily in IT and make even more than I made back then, with no signs of slowing. I continue to develop and learn new and different things, because nothing lasts forever. If I again see the writing on the wall, I'd be ready for that change. Might still be a STEM field but different area. Robotics instead of software, or aeronautics, or something else. Point is, I keep adapting to the change I perceive.

[cowboyxjon]

I'm in IT and this kind of scenario isn't uncommon, in my opinion.
I started at a job in my field that wasn't full time and paid $13/hour. I used the skills learned at that job to get another one within a year. Stayed at the next job for almost 5 years and then was approached by a major tech company. The job I have now was a significant increase in salary for me and the amount of increase is along the lines of what your friend mentioned.

I guess it depends on which field you are in.

[s1alker]

You can do this working a cruddy job at a big box store. You could start out pushing carts and in a couple of years thru employee attrition and being somewhat competent running your own store. The trade off is working 70 hours a week for salary and working in a largely cut-throat environment.