The Brass Ring is always Greener...
Love it or loathe it, a huge factor in how you are seen (judged) in our culture is how much moolah you pull down.
Tik Tok is chock-a-block with delusional doe-eyed pre-princesses calling out the six-figure salary requirements for the man audacious enough to seek a "relationship" with them. In the land of the avariciously blind, the fat wallet influencer is king.
Eighty years later, I tip my imaginary top hat to Kander and Ebb. Money really does make the world go 'round.
Every year I perform a masochistic ritual and download Aquent's Salary Guide. Like the Opus Dei albino from The DaVinci Code whipping himself with a knotted rope, it's not that I want to. I...must.
And every year, I confirm what I already knew: my salary is bottom-tier.
Aquent breaks the U.S. into regions kinda like a certain British pop group breaks into Spices: Posh ($$$), Sporty ($$), and Baby ($)*, with each region's salaries further segmented from low, to medium, to high.
Guess who's always at the bottom of the Baby pool? Me. The lowest of the low. A one on a scale of one-to-nine.
Despite my experience > 5 yrs.
Despite having an MFA in Design (read as student loan debt, daddy).
Despite my sparkling personality and sunny disposition (as evidenced by this upbeat blog).
I'm willing to take some of the blame. I'm not what you'd call an A-type grinder. I tend to get restless and hop jobs every few years, never digging in long enough to get a key to the bigger restroom, let alone a significant pay raise.
But, still... My salary has basically been stuck in amber for the past decade. Apart from the occasional cost-of-living bump, I've been hovering at the same spot. And at my age, it feels like there's no more attic space left.
Don't get me wrong — I'm grateful, truly. I'm not crashing on anybody's couch, or peeing in a bucket in the corner of a converted shed. By most metrics, I'm doing okay.
But it's never a good idea to peek over the fence at what folks are pulling down in the Sporty and Posh zones. Like an old-school Grimm's fairy tale, that story never ends well. I don't need to spy on the Squire and his coffers of booty when I'm the humble woodsman living in a cabin down by the river.
And do yourself a favor, don't even venture into the Emerging Roles section of the Aquent report! Unless you actually are a Machine Learning Engineer, in which case, congrats on living your best Rumpelstiltskin life, spinning code into gold.
If there's no real road upward left for me (and I'm not exactly a Polka Dot Jersey contender in the Tour de UX, anyway) then what's keeping me here?
Nada, neighbor.
This is where I pedal into the roadside tent, crack open a beer, and watch the sweaty, straining peloton push ever onward without me.
Yours in beleaguered burnout,
the letter B.
*If I had to fulfill this metaphor, Scary would be unemployment, and Ginger would be...working part-time as a barista? Hey, they can't all be gems, folks.
