Salary Expectations......

This is a great thread. This is a long post, sorry (summary at the bottom).

I graduated from college last year with an engineeringdegree. I was offered a job starting at $55Kwith full benefits, lots of travel, etc. But the job was located in Ohio and the areas I would travel to were notideal along with the nature of the work. Instead I took a job at a National Lab for far less money but betterlocation (still not the best but I can ski). I enjoy my work, it’s an excellent work environment, still have greatbenefits, and have flex time which is incredible. Pretty much I can work whenever I want aslong as I am within standard 40 hours weeks by the end of the fiscal year = mid-weekpowder days with no consequences/3-day weekends. My cost of living is also extremely low sinceI got lucky and found great people to live with on craigslist.

I have worked since I was 14 and thought I knew the value ofa dollar but when I first got those monthly pay checks I was like, “WTF, thisis crazy”. Needless to say, I have notbeen saving my money as much I would have liked (I’m pretty frugal) but I nowhave some things I have wanted for a while (new ski equipment, road bike, computer…). Plus I have traveled a lot this last yearwhich is something I absolutely love. Andyes, I have student loans, car insurance, cell phone bill, gas for car (but tryto bike to work) etc. but they are manageable and I have already paid off my car.

So to get back to the thread topic, I would like to make atleast 90K/year…eventually living some place with easy access to the mountains…butwho freckin knows what I will think 5 years down the line? Currently, I am at a cross-roads since I wantto attend graduate school but the locations of the schools I want to attend arenot ideal. I’m lucky and still have adesire to learn and go back to school even though making money now is quitenice. I’m also deciding betweenM.S./M.B.A. or PhD…or to continue working.

I don’t want to change the subject of this thread but Iwould like to give my perspective on the love vs. money argument (ski related). In March, I spent all of my current savingsand went to Retallack (claim, but seriously I’m thinking about making a threadabout it…it surpasses the hype I would do it again in a heartbeat). The only way I did it was because I have ajob where I made enough money to pursue a passion. My roommate was a Dr. from Toronto. He works 8.5 months of the years then movesto Nelson, and skis the entire winter. He skied 28 days at Retallack this year which was the guest record (andWhitewater, Red, Revelestoke…). Plus hiswife and kids are into it. That is apretty damn amazing life style if you ask me. There were also other guys there (oil and gas, entertainment, realestate, doctors), who for them, money is not really an issue. Then on the other side of the spectrum were ‘lessmoney-wealthy’ people. There were lotsof ski industry guys who probably don’t make that much money but their company,Armada for example, hooks them up with a trip to Retallack for photo shoots,ski testing, etc. So both groups ski thesame terrain, stay in the same lodge, eat the same food but they got there indifferent ways. Do the industry guysappreciate it more than the rich guys? Maybe. Do the ski industry guysenjoy their work more than the doctors? Can’t really say. And then thereis yet another category, ski guides, bartenders, cooks, cat drivers that workat the lodge. They may not be making themost money but their perks (skiing, atmosphere of the lodge) are amazing, butit’s a seasonal job…

So I can’t really say. I think I would like to completely immerse myself in a ski lifestyle andnot make a lot of money when I’m still relatively young. Who knows, maybe I will do it for the rest of my life. However, I also know my body (knees inparticular) is definitely not as strong as they use to be. But I also think I can/will love anengineering job. SoI don’t know. I’m interested in manythings. I think it’s OK to have manypassions.

To summarize: Benefits (MEDICAL, dental, 401K, vacation time, etc.), in my opinion,are equally important as salary. You canmake a lot of money and be TOTALLY MISERABLE ($ has little to do with quality of life). Your location and salary must be considered at the same time in order tomake comparisons. Read the post ‘Tasche’and ‘Rachy’ made and especially read what ‘H8CH’ has been saying.

Great post - and I think you hit the nail on the head.

For me - I like having a great job - that i love doing.... I do crazy shit every day and feel lucky to be able to be part of a team that does what we do.

Then there is the money aspect to it - for me, you work to live, not the other way round - so fuck yeah i want to be paid as much as possible with the best benefits etc possible.  I too get a long weekend every 2 weeks - so during the winter - I fuck off up to Breck and stay with my buddies, or go to Utah, or Alaska or Canada...

For everyone who say's there happy just earning a pittance and just skiing everyday - that's great.... and i hope that you stay that enthusiastic all the way until you are 60-70 - but I can gaurantee a day will come that you wished you had more, or had done more.

For me right now -i have worked my ass off to get to where i am now.... the last 31 yrs pretty much.  But now - Skiing is all mine, i keep it for me.... I don;t need it to earn a living, and i don't rely on it....   and i can go anywhere, anytime and do anything with it.

To me - Dropping $4-5 grand on a heli ski trip to Alaska is no big deal.... but obviously fucking epic and something every skiier dreams of....   so to summarize - you hold the key's to your future - nobody is going to do it for you.  It's important to find a balance of things you love and can get paid for.  If you hate your job - you will NEVER be successful in it.  If you love it - the sky's the limit.

From reading this thread, a lot of you have a fuck load of potential.... more earning potential then pretty much every pro-skiier out there over your life times. More earning potential then even most of you realize.

Having been there and done that - i will give you this piece of encouragement - stay at School, tough it out - just get through it, get your degree(s)....  once you've done with that, you're set.  In engineeringfor example - that will be the hardest part fo your career - from then on it's all about learning the practical side of it, the business side of it and of course, earning the $$. It's also much more rewarding then university - you actually deliver real projects.

Okay this statement is pretty ridiculous or you're just being irresponsible. If you mean you can afford it without sweating it too much, that's one thing, but no one should be making a 5k outlay without planning around it. Unless you actually DO make 200k+ / year.

JD - you know what's up in this thread....   ;-)

as you said before you gotta have fun.  And yes- to me, having worked hard for the last 10 years post uni to build a strong career foundation, then yeah it's no biggy - economies of scale etc. I've worked all over the world, gained a lot of experience in as short a time as possible.... all to maximise my worth.

I put money into my properties too (in London)....   but i do get paid a lot yes....   you were correct in your estimations - market rates currently are north of $1k/day. I also own my own company now and work as an indepandant consultant directly at a supermajor.  As such - i feel im kinda qualified to see what kid's thoughts about their futures are on here having been there myself - and seen how it can pan out with some hard work etc... and most importantly, to explain it is NOT a choice between "skiing life and grown up life" ... not at all - fuck that. Life is what you make it.

I remember not long after graduating - being on a typical grad salary in London - I was complaining to my boss one day about how i still felt like i had no cash etc after paying taxes and london living expenses.....   he went on to explain that it takes a bit of time, but eventually you'll be earning more money then you know what to do with if you are smart, network and drive your own value up.  That is starting to come true...   but I still have to work very hard....   but i enjoy what i do, and doing rad trips like i mentioned above makes it all worthwhile. The market conditions determine what i get paid - not me....  i do it because i love the challenges - I also knew their was a global shortage of experitse in my field when I got in to it - so was hoping that those "market conditions" i speak of would pay off - and they did.

Thanks - and that's the point of this.

I'm kind of sick of seeing kids go on about how much pro-skiiers earn etc etc... when in reality, 90% of the kids in this thread will earn more in their lifetime then pretty much any pro-skiier right now.

They are talented - they are marketable - but then so are all of you. Plus - if you turn something that is your one escape from the world into a career....  it CAN ruin it for you. I was thinking about becoming a UIAGM Mountain Guide back in the day when i was in my teens and someone gave me this advice then - looking back... it was a pretty sound piece of advice...  you keep that one thing just for you....

When I went to university - I had no idea what i wanted to do - it took a good few years and then I just followed a path of things i enjoyed academically and this gave me academic confidence - one day i thought - "shit - i can do this.... "  - i then pursued my masters due to some good scholarships etc and I had older friends who climbed, surfed, skiied etc - all of whom were smart as fuck, engineers etc... but all lived bad ass lifestyles in oil and gas travelling the world etc - worked 4 weeks in West Africa, then had 4 weeks off to surf, ski, climb etc etc... and all earnt pop star wages....    that was what inspired me... I have a buddy (who's on here too) who works 4 weeks on, then lives in Breck....   it's fucking badass....   plus he doesn't have to live like a student his whole life....   

It's taken time, but now I'm in the position those friends of mine were in back then - and a lot of you guys are probably in the same place I was in, looking for some inspiration..... well - let this be it. 

You obviously can't tell where people are in life based on their screen name. If you went to grad school and subsequently worked ten years in a lucrative industry, your perspective is not going to mirror where most people on this site are, nor where most of them are going. You are an anomaly, in terms not only of who you are but the breaks life has given you... and while it's great to have something to strive for I really think that a lot of young people just have unrealistic expectations and fuzzy notions about reality when it comes to income vs. lifestyle. Much of this thread is evidence of that. Hell, I made significantly more money in my first year out than my dad ever made in his entire life and he did pretty damned well - I still have to budget reasonably, even if you're an idiot spending-wise. You can get into a lot of trouble otherwise. Ask my brother about his Visa balance.

For the young starting out, I would recommend picking up a copy of "I will teach you to be rich" by a guy named Ramit Sethi - really stupid title for a book that is essentially an awesome primer on budgeting, taxes, and investment for people in their 20's who have no particularly strong background in finance.

I agree with you 100%.

This thread was simply to gauge what the college and pre-college population currently deem the job market etc to be - in terms of expectations. It has gone a little off topic and become diluted. Your post is a cold splash of reality however.

Most of the replies to this thread are, as you pointed out, way off in term's of income vs salary - agains something I set out to investigate - but in reality - so they should be - as I hadn't got that figured out until I was mid-late 20's, when I had bought my first property and literally was living like a student again just paying for it - however, i knew at the time it was better then throwing money away with rent.  

I think it's pretty fair to say that everybody, wants to be somebody or something. I honestly had no idea until I was in my early 20's... and I had to work it out, then work at it - hard.  Nobody gets anything for nothing here, I certainly was never afforded any special privelage - I chose to do something that i thought was pretty cool, and that's fine for me. But JD - you have a point about money management - but that is a cultural issue within America....  too many credit card millionaires.

I have a debit card. If it's in my bank account, I can spend it - if it isn't - then i can't.  I'm literally blown away by the irresponsible nature of americans and credit cards - which is driven by the absolute necessity in this country to have a credit rating.  In America- without Debt, you are nothing. I hear of folks with $20million in the bank, but whom have always used cash their whole lives and cannot get a credit card. it's ridiculous - and the source of much that is wrong with America and it's financial culture.

Finally - about me being an anomaly. No i'm not - if so - I know a hell of a lot of anomalies in my peer group. I was in exactly the same position as most kids on here, and I only really started to make any money when I turned 30, and when i started working for myself (as was stated by someone above). I'm not a movie star or anything - i'm not a banker getting 7 figure bonuses....   I get paid well for my age, but nothing outrageous.  Living in the states now, I also find i pay a lot less tax, and have more disposable income due to lower living costs then europe.  When i moved, I negiotiated based on the exchange rate of $2 to the pound... which it was at the time...  however, $1 here still goes further then 1 pound does in the UK, so again - by being smart - I improved my quality of life - or well disposable income by moving.  Moving jobs every few years is also critical to bumping up salaries quickly - you will always get the biggest raises by moving. never stay at one company longer then 2-4 years in your early career - it's looks better on your resume in term's of experience, and you'll get a much bigger raise to move. remember - it's not show-friends, it's show-business...... 

2 points here: first, I am the same way but have tried to get off the debit card thing. After X many purchases per month they start to ding you per transaction. Not a great option. Because I do the same thing, my earning potential is apparently immaterial to the level of CC limit I can get, which is sort of good because if you have a low limit you can't get too stupid with it. You don't want to carry a balance on your credit card, so that's not a good option either. Finally, you could carry around cash, but for me, if I have cash on me, I will find a way to spend it, so that's even worse. For now I debit but I haven't quite found the magical solution to that one yet - maybe I need to get a good CC with a sensible limit and just set up my bank acct to pay off the balance every month.

Now, re: anomaly, if you make 1k per day at market rates that's over $350k per year which is like top 3% (conservative estimate) of all income earners. That's a shit ton of money compared to most people, and similarly, 90% of people in this thread (even adjusting for the fact that NS kids are probably from reasonably well-off or upper middle class families by and large) will never see anywhere near that kind of lucre in their lives. For most people, 80k is a damn good living. Life planning for huge sums of cash is not a helpful perspective, because you need a lot more than just optimism to pull that off. Luck, for one thing.

... well, I'm adjusting for inflation there. By the time a lot of these people hit their earning potential 100k will be the new 80k, I'm sure.

ahhhh  you miss a crucial point here... and this goes back to my orginal point in that whole work life balance thing.

First off - i'm paid an hrly rate as a consultant, but working the norm 80 hrs a week (split into a 44 and 36 with every second friday off.... good deal.... especially for getting out of the city and going skiing every second weekend....). What that means is yes day rates of over $1k, but based on 5 day's a week. So even if you decided to work every single business day of the year, that's still in the region of 250.  Now if I go offshore for an extended period - and work 7 days a week, for 12 hrs a day - well it's a healthy boost to the company finances.....  

The point being that I can take 10 weeks off a year if i want or more, and still make enough money to pay myself and have a company in profit to pay expenses.

It give's you that flexibility.  Working for yourself is very flexible if you have a good income stream - and a good model.  For me - it's very simple....  i'm paid to be a part of a team on a project, one year at a time. It could also all end tomorrow - so maintaining a business bank account with sufficient balances to be able to pay yourself in such an event is also crucial. My product however is me - which im obviously comfortable with.

So - it's not quite like the pop star wages you make it out to be - but I will agree - it allow's for a pretty comfortable life.  Remember too - i have no benefits, and therefore must pay for them all myself through my company - health insurance, 401k's etc etc... but - you can pay all of those pre-tax as expenses.  You can also put a lot more in to a 401k then if you were staff too.  The key though, is to get other people working through your company - and taking a small % of their rate - thus providing a passive income.....  

That said - anything north of 200 is in a very high percentile...   but remember there are bankers and traders etc on wall st who will get that as a bonus...... as well as pretty much every ER doctor in the country etc...  it's commensurate with a high level of professional qualification and expertise in a specialized field.

Apples to oranges. That starting salary only exists in NYC, and pretty much only the bigger firms in NYC at that. The cost of living is so high there that adjusted, it's more like 100k. Hell, work in Texas making 100 and your dollar probably goes significantly farther. Also the system in Canada is different, your first year out of law school you're basically an apprentice. The salary levels vary wildly - ie in Van, they're 45k at big firms, in Calgary, 65k, in Toronto, just below 80k. The biggest problem with that is that Van has the highest cost of living of the 3 of them. Your first year as an actual lawyer in Van you make 85k which is pretty good, but then your salary doesn't go up very much and bonuses are hard to come by. It's very market-specific. Plus there are a ton of intangible aspects to working from place to place, in terms of the market and the legal bar in a particular city that make your lifestyle and your job verrrrrry different.

The other thing is, in NYC the hours you work to make your 160k are insane. Just ludicrous. Your cousin's firm almost certainly has beds and showers so that people can sleep there when they're on deals working 100+ hour weeks. It's not uncommon for juniors there to bill over 3000 hours a year to clients (i.e. have no life whatsoever outside of work; you generally bill about 2/3 of your actual time worked if you're reasonably efficient - i.e. I am not billing the time I've spent typing this obviously - so that number is more like 4500 hours / year of work).

Well maybe so yes - but im sure you could one day have your own practice, and probably will.  I'm certainly a lot more comfortable with it then I thought i would be - it works out pretty well. The risk is manageable.  

It is very common in Engineering due to the simple lack of resources - i.e. the lack of good people in this industry. The oil industry is in fact a very small industry - for one that is deemed so huge from the outside world.  However - that put's a big strain on resources to man up major projects.  People are the main asset in many of these companies.  I'm not very familiar with the law game though, but the canadian system you described above sounds much like the UK system post grad.  But the thought of being under the hammer with those hrs does not inspire me....   I like what I do because I can go home at 4:30/5pm pretty much every day...  I looked at medicine when i was younger but thought fuck that for that very reason - i.e. no life.

Apart from last summer when shit hit the fan - then I was working those hrs! But thankfully that was a once in a lifetime incident to be involved in!!! Hopefully anyway!

It is - I'm in our Calgary office which is obviously devoted to oil and gas work almost exclusively. Part of the model is having connections in those companies, when someone leaves here and goes to Suncor or Conoco or Shell we know the work is going to come back from that to us. People are absolutely key. 

I will personally never have my own practice. That would make no sense. No matter how good I am, I am not going to be able to attract the kind of clients that a multinational law firm can attract. Having your own shop is very different for different industries; I imagine being an independent engineering contractor is a whole different world from consulting on energy strategy, which will be completely different from marketing, etc.

You're right - because you go and become the client. You are not doing the work yourself as an engineering house for example - you are becoming a body in their (Shell, Chevron, Bp etc ) teams...

But i agree - it's all about the people in O&G, you will always run in to those same people throughout your career - you cannot ever burn bridges.  The work always comes back.

But a good foundation in O&G law such as you're getting now will open many doors at said operators for you in the future.  That has a LOT of earning potential - combined with the normal hrs and benefits you'd expect with a major....  sounds good though... I like Calgary - I spent a winter there once and have a lot of good friends there... such a great place for winter fun and action....    uber cold mind!