We often talk about jobs that don’t pay enough. Service industry employees are typically a top-of-mind mention, where people do the grunt work, yet they may need to take another job just to get by.
We don’t often discuss professions that pay way too much for the required work. Give yourself a few seconds to think, and it would likely take you a short while to make a list of five.
If you’re still racking your brain, here are some responses to a Reddit thread from a while back. While many on this list are reasonably expected, some may surprise you.
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Influencers, this includes celebrity and actors. In this world only one thing is worse than elite rich scum, those who pretend to be.
CEO, no one is performing that job deserves hundreds of millions of dollars. Most of the time performance is due to the size of the company and actions taken by lower level leaders.
Life coaches
When my family moved cities when I was 5 our new neighbours had kids the same age as my sister and I so my dad wanted to meet them (he did not want his girls around weirdos). When he met the mother she asked what he does and vice versa. She told him she’s a life coach. His response was “what the hell is that?”. She stopped letting her kids play with us.
Hedge fund managers. Once the fund is up and running, they don't do much outside of hyper-expensive lunches and dinners, all paid by the fund. They make many millions, but the grunts are the ones that actually pull the sled...
Government funded coaches (in several states the highest paid public employee is a coach for a sports team).
Health Care “administrators” . They administer none of the health care and typically represent a parasitic growth within the hospital.
I’m surprised no one has said consultants. Especially management consultants. Here’s a PowerPoint saying you should fire 100 people and get more market share, now please give me $500,000.
I would say ceos but generally I even just upper management at all is making exponentially more than the actual laborers.
Edu-celebrities.
They are the people who spent two years in the classroom, couldn't handle it, then started some online blog/following with some appealing catchphrase. They get paid $3000+ per speaking gig that districts fork up and force teachers to listen to.
I work in digital marketing as an account manager. All I do is respond to emails and Skype people all day. I make over $100k a year just relaying stuff in emails and Skypes. We generate leads off co-registration sites like the c**p where you can win a gift card if you spin the wheel then answer a million questions and your data is sold 10 times. It's all b******t and I have no idea why it pays so much.
Lots of stuff in Banking. There is no way the wages and bonuses justify what they do. It’s just semi informed gambling.
Recruiters. My DevOps jobs pay around 200k - 250k a year, they get 10%-20% of that for making some calls and setting up meetings with hiring managers. Come to think about it, I am also overpaid for my job.
Token white person at a Chinese company. When I used to live in China you could get a job at Chinese companies to make it look like they had foreign collaborations. You had to dress well and sit at a desk. Pretend to work only when tours went through. Otherwise game, study, whatever. A lot of sitting on a chair on a stage with a bunch of Chinese executives during awards/presentations.
Realtors
Me: I need to pay off a bond for 20-30 years with blood sweat and tears.
realtor: ‘sells’ house in couple of weeks by sending couple of emails, gives tour of house. “yeah, like I’m gonna need like 5-10% commission of that 30 years.
I worked for a business that had a full-time office space designer.
The job of this person was to plot out cubicles for the company's employees in a CAD program.
Me. I make $100k to manage a small team. They do all the work and I just sign off on some decisions every couple weeks. Everyone loves me because all the work they do and I watch YouTube/Reddit all day.
People always jump on footballers when talking about stuff like this, yet never mention actors, when people like Will Smith and Tom Cruise are getting £20M per movie.
My last job in college, before starting my career. I was an overnight shelter staff for transitional housing. Since these clients were basically back up on their feet by the time they arrived, they were pretty self-sufficient. I was paid about 25% higher than other night-shift jobs I could get at the time, and on most nights all I had to do was make one pot of coffee. The rest of the time I could watch TV, play video games, do personal chores, etc… The one job that I know was better was their overnight sleeper, since we had to have two staff at all times. As implied, this dude made a well-above minimum wage rate to just sleep there on the weekends.
My mom once got a job as a civilian contractor working for the federal government. She was an accountant, and they put her in the department that managed a certain kind of ICBM... that had just been slated for destruction as part of one of the big arms-reduction treaties in the mid-80s. She had a computer at her desk but didn't have login info to use it, so she spent her days doing crosswords. Whatever that job paid, it was definitely overpaid.
Advertising. My brother used to work in it and earned double what I ever could. He was working from home before the WFH movement and set himself up the living room so I couldn't watch my cartoons. He spent 5 hours a day easily just scrolling through Facebook. 'Market research' he called it.
Most people on local school boards. Check their salaries...they should be public. It's sad.
This might be a hot take but my cousin works in coding and tech and one time told me his job is "100% overpaid." What he does really isn't difficult coding it's just in high demand, but he told me that what he does for the time and energy is probably overpaid.
I got paid $46 an hour once to juggle in parades for Vail resorts. Honestly, it was way too much but I couldn't turn it down because I was making $10 an hour as a ski/snowboard instructor.
One night I babysat three kids for about 2 hours or so. The kids went to bed when I got there, and the parents had left dinner out for me, so all I did was eat their food and watch their TV and pet their dogs.
When they got home the mom paid me $100. I told her that was way too much. She slurred "Don't worry about it, I'm drunk." And then I noticed her fly was down.
So that was the most over paid job ever lol.
Mother. F*****g. Contractors.
$200-$400/hr and I still have to check all your f*****g work and herd the group of you like a bunch of g*****n cats? And cater your f*****g lunch? And nothing is going to be on time for my f*****g client because your documentation is all a*s backwards?
In other news, I'm in the middle of a very stressful construction project at work.
I'll be honest. Mine. I'm a busboy in NYC and I make $20-$30 an hour and just take shots with my coworkers all the time.
edit: Your downvotes look much nicer on my brand new 27" retina imac. ahhhhhh the color fidelity.
With many of these examples, you have to keep in mind that they aren’t being paid for the number of minutes it takes to accomplish a task. They are being paid for the years of experience and knowledge gained, the network of contacts they have and their core ability to get the job done. I’m sure thousands of dollars for a surgeon to perform a 30 minute procedure might sound outrageous. However, they went through many years of medical school, residency and internship to gain the experience to perform that procedure.
No, if you keep all of that in mind, you can't enjoy complaining about people who make more money than you do 🤣
Load More Replies...With many of these examples, you have to keep in mind that they aren’t being paid for the number of minutes it takes to accomplish a task. They are being paid for the years of experience and knowledge gained, the network of contacts they have and their core ability to get the job done. I’m sure thousands of dollars for a surgeon to perform a 30 minute procedure might sound outrageous. However, they went through many years of medical school, residency and internship to gain the experience to perform that procedure.
No, if you keep all of that in mind, you can't enjoy complaining about people who make more money than you do 🤣
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