Income Level Poll

My understanding is that fixed income so bond trader has better market understanding and use fundamental analysis. Or at least used to. Does not mean they don’t use technical analysis too. But they are the ones that understand better where the market is heading. They made lot of money back in the days, possible less than equity over the last bull run. Sorry off topic

I can only echo @nabalzbhf and @SteveDB mentioned it highly depends on the education, position and industry. What I can add from my personal experience is that foreign companies pay better bonuses than Swiss companies and smaller companies pay better than large companies. However, of course that is only my very limited sample size. But just to give you an example: a college which works for Roche can buy Roche shares with a discount (I think it was about 20%) where I get annually 60‘000$ worth of shares as equity bonus. So even if we would have the same base salary there would be still a 60‘000$ gap.
Of course the volatility of my shares is way higher than Roche but still it’s a considerable amount

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overall i think this poll is nonsensical, as it does not correct for any factors

  • education
  • experience / seniority
  • work%
  • job type
  • sector
  • etc…

i think the only reliable way to get info on the topic is find your best matching peers within and outside of your company and straight out ask them. I don’t say this is easy :smiley:

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Why? The poll is about the Swiss mustachianpost users, not about your peers.

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This poll is what it is and it doesn’t need any corrections.

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because there is not much sense in comparing incomes of people in arbitrary life setting and occupation.
I like the other thread on income progression much more, it contains much more relevant information

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I would just specify a bit more details on how to calculate this number, eg. yearly, gross, base + all bonuses, with or without stock grants etc. I’m not sure if everyone voting had the same rules in mind and would be better to specify it a bit more, to compare apples to apples.

I agree and we kind of discussed it, but I leave it to the topic starter to specify.

Yeah, I had in mind yearly, gross, base + all bonuses, with stock grants - so total renumeration package.

I wouldn’t use this thread as a means of comparison, the “Share your salary” one that you have linked would be the one I’d use to ponder my own salary progression, what to aim and negociate for and if a career change would seem warranted.

This poll just gives me a datapoint to understand that when I read that an 8K bed or 40K+ car are considered normal purchases, one can’t hope to live in Switzerland on 40K of income and marginal tax rates should be expected to be 35% at a minimum, we are really speaking of the situation of high income earners mainly in the Zürich area and that doesn’t necessarily apply to my own situation.

There are many paths to FIRE but frugality is at the core of mustachianism. Many topics here are more about high income earners interested in [passive] investing than people trying to optimize their consumption and grow the badassity muscle by relying more on muscle power than machinery or hired help. That’s an important lense to know to have when reading things on a forum called “Mustachian Post”.

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When you look at the poll you see that about 1/4 of this community earns less than 100k and 1/4 more than 175k, the other 50% are somewhere between. The mean salary of this community should be somewhere around 130-140k I guess.

I guess you could compare this community more to Bogleheads. High earners with a tendency to save a lot more than the average Joe.

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Director position in a large company (but small presence in Switzerland) recently offering 200k + bonus, which I assume it’s another 20k.
But it’s a long grind to get there, and once you’re there I am quite sure it’s an even worse type of grind.

Unfortunately you can throw these assumptions out the window for higher level positions, the lifestyle requirements do not pair well with frugality (e.g. needs of representation, networking, travel, no time available for “cheaper” alternatives to things, etc.) you’ll have more than enough to compensate for your lack of frugality but your mindset will change.

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w.r.t salaries in your peer group

The few times I managed to overcome my shyness on this topic resulted in pretty cool conversations. I had only good experience so far (not that many, though)

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don’t tell me ahahaha a x3 could help; now moving to Austria a x6 ahahahahah

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it was quite similar

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Not pleasant but you can act on it, maybe your performance is lacking, maybe you haven’t negociated enough, maybe it’s time to move to another company or even start your own…

Though I do understand that at some income levels, the compensation comes with some expectation of restraint in regards to communicating your work conditions, in which case, that expected restraint should be priced in the compensation.

Depends on the company. I’ve worked (not long) for terrible employers with a culture of “everybody is equal at an equally low pay”. Good performance wouldn’t net you a better salary in such an environment (and you would likely leave, but this is the reality for some people).

Also in the public sector, while there is some leeway for performance oriented compensation, most of it is set by the position, age and experience.

“Reality” depends on your environment and the tradeoffs you are making/willing to accept.

Sales, my friend - switch to sales and in the good years, when you hit your plan and the bonus moltiplicator kicks in, you get the big paycheck. Not unheard of that some salesman (no manager) end up making more than top executive. In the same company.

But it is an hard job. You gets lots of “no”. Your manager is going to put pressure for the big deal etc.

(I’m sales engineer - no commission for me, I’m just scoping out technical requirements, but I do work very tightly with salesmen in my company)

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While I agree that talking about salaries can be detrimental to the amount of positive emotions felt at work, some knowledge of where you stand among your peers can be good to have, especially if you realise you are on the lower end and therefore can more confidently ask for a raise.

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it depends if you work for a big or small company and the age.
When you are young, you get experience maybe changing every 2-3 years so your salary will increase, then find a medium-large company where you feel happy and grow there…not easy, but possible :slight_smile:

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