
Your Lifetime Earnings Are Decided in the First 10 Years of Your Career? - wallflower
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-02-09/your-lifetime-earnings-are-decided-in-the-first-10-years-of-your-career
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adoming3
I think the focus here should be that the escalator to steady job promotions
and raises are over. There are too many who can't retire and those that are
highly educated and underemployed. We should all be open to an entrepreneurial
mindset as this data and others show that this is death of traditional career
paths. I myself am drawn to the infinite upside and downside of
entrepreneurship over the limited earning decided in the first 10 years of my
career.

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mathgeek
I like how in four days we went from "probably determined" ...

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9031814](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9031814)

to "are decided."

~~~
NPMaxwell
Yes. This headline is sad. To show that my lifetime earnings are "decided" in
the first 10 years of my career, you would have to show a predictive model
with an R-squared value of 1. That is not the case. If R-squared were very
close to 1, you might say, that lifetime earnings are "highly influenced by"
the first 10 years. The article does not even seem to indicate that. Instead,
lifetime earnings appear to be "related to" income in the first 10 years. What
is sad is that the mistake in the headline is off topic. Determination doesn't
appear to be the point of the article. The point of the article appears to be
that advantages that are visible in higher incomes at 25 play out, on average,
as even larger income differences at 55. The point appears to be not that the
system is determined, but that there are unequal advantages, one of which may
be more disposable income.

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nwenzel
I'm fascinated with the concept of moving up the corporate ladder. I went from
a dotcom high growth company in 1999-2001 where the avg age was roughly 25 to
a post dotcom company where the avg tenure was close to 25. I always wondered,
why are some people CXOs by 45 while others are still "Lead X" or "Senior X"
(aside from personal preference)?

I've observed a couple factors that seem to be important. Warning... some of
the following my sound like the crap that frustrates you the most at your job.

Smarts really doesn't have anything to do with it. Sorry straight A students.
Reality check time. Classes were basically useless for ascending the corporate
ladder. You were duped. (For the record, my undergrad GPA was something like
3.7 so I was duped too).

High performers in the career ladder game are ruthless with their time.
Sometimes it makes them seem like an ass but they're just focused on their end
goal.

The high performers seem to be closer to the revenue. They're not always in
sales, but they've been in roles that involve big picture deliverables. Or
they were in sales.

They're picky about what they do. They don't say no, but they know how to
distance themselves from petty, small, or insignificant busy work. They take
care to manage their image as someone who works on a grander scale.

They plan their career path. It's not enough to simply work hard and hope it
happens for them. They know how to create strategic projects and get
themselves into a position to lead those initiatives.

Hard work is not enough. The high performers aren't just the hardest workers.
Though they do tend to work very hard. Their hard work isn't always in the
"doing" of the work at hand. Tbat type of hard work just gets you more work
and maybe some corporate reward of $50 in perk buying gift cards. High
performers see that and figure out what needs to be done to get to the nests
level of management. Spoiler alert: it's. It the stuff in the job description.

Balance is not really an option. If you're not doing extra, someone else is.
IF you're playing by the rules, someone else is figuring out the unwritten
rules.

The rules to follow aren't the rules that are written down. If there's
anything that's the most frustrating to those who try to advance but haven't
cracked the code, this is it. The job description, the company policies,
anything anyone tells you is a big deal... is only important to doing your
job. It's not important to your career path. If you want your job to be doing
your job, great. But if you want your job to be getting to the c-suite, figure
out the rules of that game. Following the written job rules only gets you
praise and silly perks.

It is a competition. If the ratio of employee-manager is 10:1, you have to
beat out 9 others to be a manager. 50:1 for employee:director. 200:1 for
employee to VP. 1000:1 for employee:CXO. You have to beat out 1000 others. I'm
not saying all high performers are vicious, back stabbing sociopaths. But some
are. Know how to deal with that. Be ruthless with your own time. Be supportive
of others. Know which projects have visibility. Become someone who sends out
the "we couldn't have done it without these people" email at the end of a big
project.

If this all sounds like corporate, political bullshit to you, that's fine. It
did to me too. But I watched people who were no smarter than me get promoted
and I decided to figure out why. It turns out CXOs are hackers too. They
hacked the career ladder. Good for them. I hacked my way to th CEOs chair too.
I left my job and started a company.

~~~
tresil
I've been working in my career for about 4 years at this point, but everything
you said resonates strongly with my experience so far. Thanks for sharing
this.

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forgotpasswd3x
Not entirely surprising, but disheartening news to those who didn't really get
their careers on track right away. Here's hoping I'm an outlier, I guess.

~~~
itg
Well here's one data point. I studied chemistry in undergrad and worked in
various labs for about 6 years with a salary that left much to be desired.
I've also programmed on the side for a few years during that time and
eventually was able to make a switch into software as my full time job and I'm
pretty happy with both what I do and my salary.

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petercooper
I could see this playing out for the employed, but I bet this doesn't really
work for the self-employed or anyone who switched to business ownership from a
career. I think I've made more in the past year than the first several years
of my "career" (which was a pittance, I am no Rockefeller now..) and don't
think this is unusual once you get traction based on some of the stories and
income reports I've seen on HN.

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njharman
"...that people who end up wealthy see a much steeper curve in their earnings
than the rest of us."

So, people who earn more money, faster end up wealthy? Gee, I would never had
expected that fucking obvious insight.

Also, studies show trends, averages, likely outcomes. They have little bearing
on individuals. Otoh, if your planning economic policy for a corporation or
country studies may be applicable.

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childifchaos
Not really true. It's just a pattern. If you want it to be different then make
it happen and be an outliner. The truth is these people just get stuck and
accept. If this article applies to you and depresses you, then choose to be
one of those people that is different.

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snarfy
This isn't really true of a tech worker that moves around and changes job
titles frequently. If you want the market rate you have to go to the market.
Not all careers have this luxury, but tech workers do.

~~~
vonmoltke
"Tech worker" is too broad a brush. If you aren't good at web or mobile
development, or living in a certain few hot areas, you don't really have this
luxury either. Most tech workers do not fall into this category, and have to
deal with massive corporate bureaucracies and acronym soup job reqs like
everyone else.

~~~
vinceguidry
Yeah you really do need both, the right skills and the right location, to gain
upward mobility. That's not to say tech's like every other job even if you
don't have upward mobility. You still don't have to fear getting let go, we
had a IT help desk type guy get fired, took him all of a week to find another
gig. His earning potential is capped, but it's still pretty nice compared to
non-tech jobs.

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michaelochurch
_While the 1 percent sees earnings grow nearly 1,500 percent over their
lifetime..._

This reference to "the 1 percent" is somewhat misleading. The evil of what we
call "the 1 percent" (which is actually less than 1%) has to do with social
connections and crony capitalism. They're talking about the top 1% _as ranked
by a metric they defined_ , which is income growth from age 25 to 55 (15.5x is
the cutoff). Not the same set of people. You could have someone who earns $20k
as a graduate student at 25, and $310k at 55 as a top software engineer...
someone who actually worked to get where he is, and therefore the opposite of
an asshole 1%er.

The asshole 1%-ers (the socially connected) probably don't all have 15x income
growth from 25 to 55, because they start higher. They tend to make $300-500k
around 25 and while some of them will be placed into CEO positions or PE firms
by 55, there isn't enough room at that level (not even for them) and so a
number of them will see (just like everyone else) only mediocre income growth.
Upper-class, entitled types have an easy time getting half a million (in
private equity and other nonproducing roles) by their late 20s... but many of
them never make partner, stay around that level, and end up having lackluster
careers compared to what you'd expected, had you met them in their 20s.

At any rate, this data is interesting but doesn't really establish the claim
that "Your Lifetime Earnings Are Decided in the First 10 Years of Your
Career". I happen to think that the claim is, sadly, true for many people...
but these data don't really prove it.

