r/financialindependence 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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650

u/danxthexman 32M / 68% SR Aug 13 '21

Accounting

6

u/mxo130330 Aug 13 '21

I used to do pub accounting. I am still a CPA. I switched over to IT sec about 6 yrs ago. Best decision I ever made.

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u/[deleted] Aug 13 '21 edited 24d ago

[deleted]

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u/mxo130330 Aug 13 '21

I do IT security work now. I did computer forensics, Malware analysis, and Incident response for about 5 yrs. Now I focus on AWS security. The only time I was able to marry the two disciplines was when I did IT audit work of financial systems. Now I never use my accounting background.

Our entry level SOC analyst start at about $90k. A senior level Analyst can make around $200k.

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u/[deleted] Aug 13 '21 edited 23d ago

[deleted]

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u/tommyboy6787 29d ago

Where are you that an senior analyst doing SOC reports is making $200k? I'm a senior associate at a public accounting firm, with 3.5 years of SOC experience and am at $81k. Are you all hiring?

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u/mxo130330 29d ago

Sorry senior incident responder/ cloud security pays $200k. You gotta combine multiple disciplines to get to the upper income levels. The entry level positions are the SOC analysts.

I work for a large finance company. The salary is standard at the large banks and tech companies.

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u/HerschelRoy 29d ago

I may have missed this - how are your hours now? I'm in a corporate finance role, & interested in an IT switch later for reduced hours (either business analytics or security - leaning towards security even though I have an idea of what I'm doing on analytics).

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u/mxo130330 29d ago

The hours are reasonable. Most weeks I work 40 hours. If there is a large incident I could work a 60 hour week, but then get credit for time off later. This varies by company. It is def important to ask during the interview process what kind of hours the team is working.

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u/HerschelRoy 29d ago

Got it, thanks. Most likely less hours, but ultimately depends on the company (which can be said for a lot of roles!)

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u/Free_Joty Aug 13 '21

Not op, but it audit is a non glamorous option

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u/[deleted] Aug 13 '21 edited 24d ago

[deleted]

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u/Free_Joty Aug 13 '21

pretty much

data integrity, feed testing, etc. from what I know, they will also take a look at code to see if it does what they expect it to do