Best way to make 100K+ per year in the mainstream?

[Radio_Shack]

I know we have been having fun with this thread, but I'd like to make a serious comment.
Is the money and figure that important? or is having fun at what you do and enjoying your career and day to day much more important, I will choose having fun and enjoyment any day over the money,
sorry but making an extra 30 - 50 k a year and being miserable is just not a life where you can say you like quality of it.
life moves so fast, the money is nice to buy some things, but it just can't be the most important thing,
I know it's cliche, truth is that it never does make life sweet, look around at people you know, are the ones who have a million any happier than you?
probably more miserable inside but putting on a pretense of how sweet it is.

I feel Im blessed to be able to to the things I want to do, and have enough to enjoy life without any debts right now, yes no debts. I once had a shit load of money in the bank for a time, when I bought and sold cottages up in Haliburton, almost 100K put away, it didnt make me happy or content. 'In fact it was a liability, a weight on my shoulders.
too many people think life would be so great if they only had a pile of money.

make your life a priority, the quality, not the numbers in your salary. Who cares what others think of your net worth.
my 2 cents

Sure it's important to be happy and money does not buy happiness to a certain extent. What money does do is provide you the ability to do things like travel, see the world, pay your debts without losing sleep, help your friends or family who may not be as fortunate as you.

You can also buy cool electronics and see very cool SPs for some T&A.

If you stuck making 30K per year then likely you won't be able to retire early and take it easy. That would suck. You will find that it is not that hard to make bigger bucks.

 

[Gilbey]

Yah, possibly, but its not how much money you make, it's how well you manage what you have, if you need to buy the latest SUV every 2 years , you will need
a second job just to pay the vehicle and insurance,
some can buy a $1,500. car and make it go for 6 years with hardly any insurance cost. some make 150,000. a year and are constantly in debt to eyeballs and drowning. Some make much less, maybe 40,000 and seem to have more and more peace of mind.
again its not the amount of dollars, but how you manage them. I know people who have a small house, and a cottage and enjoy lots of vacation and weekends and make about 35,000 year.
if you spend too much, it doesn't matter what you make, you'll always be broke. even at a million a year, you could be in rough shape.

now let me take my $1,500. car and go to the store

 

[wikiwild]

Yah, possibly, but its not how much money you make, it's how well you manage what you have, if you need to buy the latest SUV every 2 years , you will need
a second job just to pay the vehicle and insurance,
some can buy a $1,500. car and make it go for 6 years with hardly any insurance cost. some make 150,000. a year and are constantly in debt to eyeballs and drowning. Some make much less, maybe 40,000 and seem to have more and more peace of mind.
again its not the amount of dollars, but how you manage them. I know people who have a small house, and a cottage and enjoy lots of vacation and weekends and make about 35,000 year.
if you spend too much, it doesn't matter what you make, you'll always be broke. even at a million a year, you could be in rough shape.

now let me take my $1,500. car and go to the store

Right, but if you make 100k+ a year and manage it well, it's better than making 35k a year and managing it well.

 

[Joey Jeremiah]

Here is my take on the IT sector. You know what? Sometimes I wish I went back to the cool startup making 85k CAN, where the work is actually interesting.

I moved to the US to work for a big software company on one of those coveted H1B visas. I make about 100k + 50k USD in stock every year. The work generally sucks and I feel very upset most of the time. I feel that I am prostituting myself every day. Sure, the money is better and I pay less taxes, but I am hardly happier. I tell myself every day that I will do this for at most 2 more years, strictly for the money.

Time will tell if I have any regrets.

 

[RogerRabbit]

"Not life, but good life, is to be chiefly valued." Socrates

100K+ is not much anymore IMAO. Even a lot of Fulltime jobs you can make that but the government takes half.

To fast track you can upgrade your computer skills and be a Contract system admin(unix/windows) or middleware support. 100K is $50/hr @ 40hr/week which is very easy to make.

Top notch computer people make $80-100/hr which is $160K to $200K/year in Contract roles.

Good example, thank you, I just wanted to set the bar at a reasonable level and look for ideas, inspiration, etc.

I just need a career change, I have owned a house since the early 90's, lived the Canadian dream, et cetera. I know a few people who have advised me that headhunting would suit me and I would like to help people make more money, even if it is just to make more charitable contributions. I am doing volunteer work for a non profit and it has really opened my eyes to a whole new world about balance. I don't think it is about how much I make, as much as how happy I am doing what I do and am I really making a difference...

Are there other stories people would like to share about 100k+ careers. Are there any sucess stories of how to make this online, with an small E-business?

 

[C Dick]

The general rule of thumb that I have heard is that self-employed, work-out-of-your-house type IT consultants can frequently get to be billing $10K per month, but that it is hard to get much beyond that without some luck, or hiring some staff and having a company. I know a guy who has been making $200/hour doing IT for the same company for many years, but he sort of lucked into it, all the other guys who could do the project went away, so he had lots of negotiating leverage.

If you can sell, selling is the quickest way to make lots of money, say over $500K per year. There are not too many other ways to get there, it is a lot harder to get to the top of a top 500 company, or be a rock star. The other way is to start a company and grow it, but that is a lot like sales usually. If you can't sell, then it will be hard for you to get there.

 

[infernis]

But how hard is it to break in? It seems most of the job postings require several years experience.

Yes, but if you have any industry experience, translate it into SAP. For example, if you are a Finance Analyst, who makes 50K - 75K max in Toronto, and you have 5 years experience,

In SAP World, you learn SEM, Strategic Enterprise Management, You have the EXACT responsibilities of a Analyst, such as

"Determine cost of business activities"
"Analyzes complex financial data"
"Determining past financial performance"
"Performs complex statistical, cost, and financial analysis "

Only the system you use is changed... It becomes SAP BI 7.0

SEM consultant in canada makes $170,000+ I know Daily Rates paid by Pfizer in Ottawa exceeds $1250...

SEM is a extremely hot field.. You cannot outsource these jobs, as it requires consultants being on the SITE performing these duties and then submitting reports.

I am a consultant, and a young one.. But i know/work with 35 year old ones with 7+ years in SAP, these guys are GOLD....

SAP is not going anywhere... THere is a perception that SAP has slowdown, and PM is hotter, it is NOT.. a SAP PLM Project Manager makes 250K + bonus just for submitting reports... SAP has a much more industry offerings than in the past.. 3 -4 years ago, everything was about r/3 4.7, 4.6 series, now its NETWEAVER... and 41 other modules.. 41..

Getting hand-on training in canada is SUCKS.. 3rd party training centers like IIBS, getSAPsertified all exist to ripoff HRDC candidates... They provide no valuable training... If you are serious, and have experience in any industry, switching to the same SAP Solution will benefit you much more...

Good luck...

 

[C Dick]

SAP just announced that they are offering a low-end hosted solution called S1S or something like that. The article I read said that they were going to offer a lot of the data services that are now offered by consultants, themselves, which they will be able to conveniently do on their own servers. And they are going to do this using low-wage SAP workers in India, so they can undercut their consultants too.

 

[l69norm]

This may sound silly, but why IT? Wouldn't it be easier to do something that's really "hot" right now?

There's a guy that makes 4K$ per car importing them from the US for rich folks up here who don't have time to do it themselves. He handles all the paperwork and brings them up 3 at time, once per week on with his truck and trailer. That's 10K$ per week after expenses!

 

[Serpent]

SEM is a extremely hot field.. You cannot outsource these jobs, as it requires consultants being on the SITE performing these duties and then submitting reports.

Umm...there's a way around that.

The Indian IT firms will train people in SEM; get huge vendor resourcing contracts at Canadian firms and then bring their (less) trained SEM consultants who will perform the same job for 80k.

Or; they will implement the global delivery model with 1 onsite senior SEM consultant in Canada and 2 junior ones in India. All working at billing rate equal or less than the poor sack who got canned in favor the Indians.

 

[canucklehead]

Ask him to forget Devry and aim for Univ. of Waterloo's CS Dept.

Amazing that people want to make 100k+ and look to places like DeVry.

I had a co-op student that worked for me from Waterloo that was math student...he now works in virtualisation for MS in Redmond.... he is getting 135 a year .... 6 monthes out of Uni.

 

[canucklehead]

Whatever u do stay away from Apple products... no money there!!!!

 

[Meister]

Umm...there's a way around that.

The Indian IT firms will train people in SEM; get huge vendor resourcing contracts at Canadian firms and then bring their (less) trained SEM consultants who will perform the same job for 80k.

Or; they will implement the global delivery model with 1 onsite senior SEM consultant in Canada and 2 junior ones in India. All working at billing rate equal or less than the poor sack who got canned in favor the Indians.

In general there are not many high earning jobs left. I think the only high earning jobs with staying potential are business owner, lawyer, dentist, financial analyst, creative talents. As soon as you can automate, outsource, shift labour/production it's game over.

 

[My Johnson]

Roger...what do you like doing? You need to figure your strenghts out and play to them. When you enjoy your work you will excel at it. The cash will come later.

Good luck

MJ

 

[peeler_feeler]

This may sound silly, but why IT? Wouldn't it be easier to do something that's really "hot" right now?

There's a guy that makes 4K$ per car importing them from the US for rich folks up here who don't have time to do it themselves. He handles all the paperwork and brings them up 3 at time, once per week on with his truck and trailer. That's 10K$ per week after expenses!

That's a great idea !!!

 

[Serpent]

In general there are not many high earning jobs left. I think the only high earning jobs with staying potential are business owner, lawyer, dentist, financial analyst, creative talents. As soon as you can automate, outsource, shift labour/production it's game over.

That's true. What's happened is that businesses have found that they can lower wages in N.America using labor from Asia. If they can't give them work permits to bring them onsite; they offshore the jobs in entirety. This results in suppression of wages since N.American employees will now be willing to work for lesser, with lesser benefits or else have their jobs offshored. End beneficiaries of this are C-level execs. And shareholders.

In the US; insurance companies are encouraging people to go abroad for medical procedures to cut on costs. This isn't happening in bulk yet but remember one time (Y2K), IT jobs weren't being offshored in bulk either.

 

[RogerRabbit]

recession proof business opportunities?

In general there are not many high earning jobs left. I think the only high earning jobs with staying potential are business owner, lawyer, dentist, financial analyst, creative talents. As soon as you can automate, outsource, shift labour/production it's game over.

Agreed! Outsourcing is here to stay, where companies can and will make profit.

Which business would you start in Toronto in this current economy [high dollar/ labour+skill shortages/ high taxes/ etc.], especially with our neighbour/ the US economy slowing, et cetera:

www.cnbc.com/id/21821577

Wells Fargo: Housing Slump Worst Since Depression

Wells Fargo, which has sidestepped many of the credit and liquidity problems plaguing U.S. mortgage lenders, believes the nation's housing slump is the worst since the Great Depression and is far from over, Chief Executive John Stumpf said Thursday.

AP​

A Wells Fargo Bank in Palo Alto, Calif.

 

[Joey Jeremiah]

I had a co-op student that worked for me from Waterloo that was math student...he now works in virtualisation for MS in Redmond.... he is getting 135 a year .... 6 monthes out of Uni.

135k USD 6 months out of Waterloo seems outrageously high. New grads in Redmond typically get 70k base salary + 10k signing bonus. That amount probably includes stock (during the 90s I presume) and bonus.