r/financialindependence • u/fidgit86 • Aug 13 '21

What do you do that you earn six figures?

It seems like a lot of people make a lot of money and it seems like I’m missing out on something. So those of you that do, whats your occupation that pays so well?

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266

u/jetf [30% to 5MM] 30yo Aug 13 '21

some of us are product managers, ok

194

u/pn_dubya Aug 13 '21

Hey PM don’t you have 200 emails to answer? Get off Reddit sheesh

137

u/machonm Aug 13 '21

PM here also but I've been on vacation for the last two weeks. Your comment made me curious about my unread email count. I am anal about a clean inbox so when I left, there were only three unread emails I left as a reminder for something I wanted to take care of. As of now I am sitting at 2,347 unread mails. Figure I'll be around 2,600-2,700 by the time I decide to do actual work on Monday which is of course the obligatory 6-10hrs of meetings.

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u/GhettoGopher Aug 13 '21

Turn off your JIRA email notifications. Godspeed.

14

u/Powerlevel-9000 Aug 13 '21

We use Jira and confluence which both send emails. The first thing I did was send all confluence emails to junk mail and all JIRA emails to a JIRA folder where I can quickly see if I need to follow up on anything.

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u/machonm Aug 13 '21

Well said friend, well said

8

u/allybearound Aug 13 '21

I sort them into a special folder called “trash”

2

u/buzzsawddog Aug 13 '21

But I need to know when someone rejects works for me...

2

u/IanCal Aug 13 '21

If you ignore enough of them gmail starts counting them as spam.

2

u/NotChristina 32F | 6k total NW with debt and a dream Aug 13 '21

I turned off my Jira emails ages ago but I also rarely check it so I just message our PMs asking the status of various tickets. 😂

2

u/AssaultLemming Aug 13 '21

I have a folder and an Outlook rule for jira and I never, ever, look in it.

1

u/mikasjoman Aug 13 '21

Jira? He's using excel for EVERYTHING -, such a power tool! No, the emails are requests to change password and join meetings about prepping for other meetings.

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u/dabbadabbadone Aug 13 '21

Ha! My company makes me update JIRA and Excel for everything just because. Definitely not confusing maintaining backlogs on different programs.

1

u/burnfaith 29d ago

Lmao. Truth.

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u/Andy802 Aug 13 '21

I used to have that problem, but then I discovered that outlook has this "decline" button for meetings. I've been getting so much shit done at work ever since. Got even better when I found out you don't have to replay to every message my inbox either. If it's important, they follow up!

3

u/Xanian123 Aug 13 '21

Pepe Silvia energy

2

u/machonm Aug 13 '21

LOL, yup. I love me some decline button action. I'm just in a weird spot at work right now where I've got some very large projects but also an impending long OOF due to surgery so my timelines have gotten super compressed. You're dead on though, the ability to decline or not attend useless meetings allows so much more to get done in a day.

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u/unique-name-9035768 Aug 13 '21

As of now I am sitting at 2,347 unread mails.

I wonder how many of those start off with:

RE: RE: RE: RE: FWD: RE: RE: FWD: FWD: OUT OF OFFICE REPLY FWD: OUT OF OFFICE REPLY RE: Printer is out of toner

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u/machonm Aug 13 '21

Lol, likely more than 50% I’m guessing

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u/PweatySenis Aug 13 '21

It’s so baffling how NO ONE will remove that fluff in the title

3

u/alphaorionis Aug 13 '21

Yikes, good luck. I’m early in my PM career still, so I’m appreciating my time being relatively unimportant without those 2600+ emails… I know it won’t last long!

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u/machonm 29d ago

LOL, yeah the email chains definitely grow exponentially as you progress in career. I just had my 23rd anniversary. I'm a senior level PM so mid-level but you end up with a good mix of impactful projects across varied tech (at least I have that in my job). The more projects, the more emails :)

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u/alphaorionis 29d ago

Nice, congrats on the anniversary, and good luck getting back into the email slog after your vacation!

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u/machonm 28d ago

Thanks! Good luck as you progress through your career.

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u/zgoku 20d ago

God that makes me want to puke from anxiety. And regardless, I still am wanting to get into PM. I have a BS in software development and am finishing my MBA soon, but don’t have experience in dev (was temporarily pigeonholed in current career path) or PM (obviously). What do you recommend for someone coming from a non traditional background to do when looking for an entry role?

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u/machonm 20d ago

I'm probably not the best person to ask since I didnt get to PM via a traditional route. For context, I've been with my company for over 23yrs now. I actually started as an admin assistant (as in, someone's secretary) and then progressed through support and into product teams. I've been a technical PM now for a little over 10yrs of that total time and worked on everything from small projects to projects which impact millions of people every day. I dropped out of college, so no degree on my end, I just learn quickly and got lucky at the time I joined that tech smarts was all that was needed. I've had teams in the past actually remove educational requirements so they could hire me onto their team, so apparently that isnt super important if you can prove you can do the job.

The main thing with PM is that it's a very loaded title based on company. There's an excellent book called Cracking the PM interview which can give you some scope for the role at some of the larger software companies. I happen to work for one of these companies and can confirm that most of what the author says about our interview style for PM candidates is accurate. Some things have changed over time but the foundation is covered there. Once you know the differences, you can then seek out what type of opportunity you'd like to have.

If I saw a resume with BS in software development but then an MBA, my assumption would be that you dont want to be a technical program manager but more of a business program manager who eventually wants to do lead work. May not be what you're looking for, just giving you some snap feedback on how I'd review such a resume.

So my main advice is to figure out what type of PM you want to be and for whom you'd like to work. Review a copy of the book I linked above and see what skills you have that are either missing, or weak and lock those down and then apply away.

Hope that helps in some way. If you have other questions, just let me know.

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u/zgoku 19d ago edited 19d ago

Thank you for the advice! I actually have a copy of the book, I just need to “crack” it open (groan sorry it was right there) and go through it. I’ve been putting it off to focus on my last few classes and capstone. I may reach out with a few questions in the near future if you don’t mind.

1

u/machonm 19d ago

I dont mind at all. Good luck with your remaining classes and in starting your career!

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u/jetf [30% to 5MM] 30yo Aug 13 '21

While you were pair programming, I was mastering the art of touching base. While you were designing an api, I was knee deep in user feedback. We are not the same

10

u/b1ack1323 Aug 13 '21

My PM is a little YouTube watching procrastinator who asks for help in Visual Studio every 2 days because he demand he must be able to compile code all the time. On top of that when the build break on Jenkins he immediately downloads the code and proceeds to ask why it doesn’t build on his machine sending screenshots of the build errors that were previous reported on Jenkins.

He has a psychology degree and no development experience. Biggest PITA.

Don’t be like him.

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u/danielleiellle Aug 13 '21

wtf

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u/b1ack1323 Aug 13 '21

He’s the only thing that sucks about this company

3

u/jelly-sandwich Aug 13 '21

What a nightmare of a guy

2

u/ninja4151 Aug 13 '21

Jesus man how did he get hired? I just broke into product management after years of trying and years of experience as a developer. No one would give me the time of day. I had to spend time in a quasi sales client-facing role before people started to look at me for a pm. I was even a lawyer before this so I thought they give me credit on the client facing already you know? That's insane

1

u/b1ack1323 Aug 13 '21

He was tester and hardware assembler and no one else wanted the job…

He works with customers all day.

1

u/FatFiredProgrammer Aug 13 '21

Pair programming is evil. My $.02

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u/MainCelery Aug 13 '21 edited Aug 13 '21

Gotta love those 6PM emails with an 8AM follow up the next day

5

u/wlphoenix Aug 13 '21

"You need an RFP response when? By 8AM UK? So in.... 7 hours?"

4

u/CrankyStinkman Aug 13 '21

Jeez this hits too close to home.

1

u/Amazing-Finger Aug 13 '21

More than that.

5

u/FM13x Aug 13 '21

And some of us are product designers.

3

u/skcali Aug 13 '21

Literally 2 of us

2

u/Dreamland-Nomad Aug 13 '21

There are dozens of us!

2

u/aazav Aug 13 '21

Of software teams?

2

u/pregater82 Aug 13 '21

Or Implementation Managers...

2

u/Reyali Aug 13 '21

This! Although my salary just barely doesn’t qualify to answer this question (with my bonus I can, though!).

2

u/Eurotrashie Aug 13 '21

Risk Management checking in….

1

u/Nosa2k Aug 13 '21

I always dislike PMs with no technical skills esp in the IT Industry. What are you a Paper Pusher or a secretary?

5

u/Al3k5an9ar Aug 13 '21

Technical skills as in coding? I've got none, can't code even though I can read it and understand the logic easily. I do sales, presentations, managing timelines on delivery, projected costs, people management, writing down requirements, tickets creation, jira management and occasional QA to make sure that everything is working as intended, don't think I need coding skills for all these...

NOTE: Its a small company with small to medium projects having maximum of 15 people per project and usually about 5 to 6.

1

u/Merrimon Aug 13 '21

I've emailed you 3 times and still haven't had the issue fixed.

1

u/trailing_comma Aug 13 '21

Your sacrifice is appreciated, my wonderful human shield.