After many careers and much money earned and spent, I now try to go by „ikigai“. Its a japanese theory and teaches you to be aware of what it is that you want, what makes you money, what the world needs and what you‘re good at, basically. This is how I went from a very well paid but soul sucking job to a lesser paid but much more fulfilling work.

For me it was building computers and the stuff around it. Its fun and it makes decent money if done right.

Good luck!

What are your x and y axes here?

You’re out of touch with reality with this idealist conception of wages as a result of knowledge. The value of labor is the cost of its reproduction. Capitalists pay workers exactly as much as they need to for them to turn up again the next morning. Knowledge does not directly factor into their calculation. Don’t expect to be rewarded for the work you put into your education - the system isn’t fair and doesn’t work like that.

Instead, wages are the result of a collective power struggle between labor and capital. High wages occur either when labor is strong and capital weak or when you betray other workers and aid capital in their exploitation.

Now expert knowledge is one of many things that might help by increasing bargaining power in the struggle with capital, but it’s neither necessary nor sufficient. For example an automotive engineer might have just as much knowledge as a chemical engineer, but where I live, chemistry earns you about 50% more, because the chemistry union is stronger.

So union power, strikes and social movements are a big factor. Others are location, the average rent, international competition, the reserve army of labor. At any specific time, the boom and bust cycle of periodic crisis strongly effects wages.

The organic composition of capital plays an indirect role: If the degree of automation suddenly rises, this will lower workers bargaining power short term and lower profits long term which increases pressure on wages.

So if you want a career with stable, high wages but don’t want to help exploit others, look for sectors with a long-term chance of a strong bargaining position for labor.

Salary really depends on value provided or enabled. That’s why more knowledge stops mattering at a certain point, someone with a month of experience driving a forklift is less valuable than someone with 3 years, but 6 years of experience isn’t significantly different.

There’s also benefits to being closer to money to show value. This is why sales jobs tend to pay better, as showing direct responsibility for 1 million in sales vs keeping the machines running that made the product.

Play around with this for a bit: https://networthify.com/calculator/earlyretirement?income=50000&initialBalance=0&expenses=20000&annualPct=5&withdrawalRate=4

Consider spending 30k yearly when you’re earning 50k. You can retire in about 20 years if you keep to that. You really gotta keep to it though, spending 40k means you’d have to work almost 40 years instead.

Now compare that to spending 30k when making 100k. Now you can retire in 9 years. Even if you have to spend literally twice as much time+effort doing so, you end up with more of your life leftover.

This is not to say that you should take a job you hate, but rather to say that making more money does make your life better, but only up to a point. If you find a job that you genuinely enjoy, great do that. If you’re picking between different things you dislike, translate it back into years instead of trying to understand it in made up funny money numbers. And when you get there, stop.

Generally speaking, wealth is not built by working. It’s built by investing. It’s possible to have a relatively small salary and get relatively wealthy if you consistently live below your means and invest the surplus. Power of compounding.

I would have agreed with this chart a decade ago but not now. I recently quit being an systems engineer to being a high voltage electrician. My job stress and required knowledge went down considerably, my pay went up 2x. I would love to recommend school but cannot as I feel like it was a waste for my career path.

not really true depends on the field

OP, I gave a funny sort of answer to the question itself, but it occurs to me that I should address your text separately. If you have options, you absolutely should pursue something you feel a bit of passion for, unless your passions are all hella impractical. The sweet spot is something that allows you to not worry about money, and that you don’t completely hate or even low-key enjoy. Hell jobs that earn a bit extra and being a starving artist that will break in any time now, I swear both get shit reviews (unless done on cocaine).

At 20, something I didn’t realise is that you’re not supposed to “get rich”. I feel like culture sells the idea that we’re all supposed to be Steve Jobs or Elon Musk or something. That’s bullshit, even those guys aren’t what they claim to be, and the messaging about striving for it is basically propaganda to make people like them feel better. I don’t care how smart and amazing you are; real adult life, at it’s best, is about earning x dollars, and spending exactly x dollars on a mix of things today and on investments so you can retire down the road.

Also, you said big jobs “only” make 3x a normal job amount, but where I am in life just an extra 10% a month is basically the difference between two very different situations. 3x someone else’s salary would make the world your oyster. (Although, most people with money get caught in lifestyle creep and never consider what they actually want)

Another thing my teachers explained to me, but not very well, is that it’s hard to know what you enjoy doing up front. Expect to change courses, not because it’s helpful (it’s rarely so), but because you basically have to as you gradually get the hang of things.

Are there alternative career paths to good pay than being really good at something really specific?

Hazardous jobs, shift work, really unpleasant (even evil) jobs. Education still blows them out of the water, though. IIRC most degree holders eventually earn more than an underwater welder or ice road trucker. Other than that, there is no free lunch. The only way to make money for nothing involves having a much larger sum of money to put in up front.

Edit: Oh, I should also mention the college brochures are full of lies. Most people probably know that, but I was dumb enough to take them sort of seriously. A thousand words of that stuff is worth a couple of sentences water cooler talk on a website like this.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb talks about this when he explains his own career. He realized the amount of effort he had in him was never going to change, so he wanted a field where earnings weren’t limited by his own effort - the dream of passive income. He became an expert on risk and a well known writer. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nassim_Nicholas_Taleb

I would certainly recommend picking a field of study and work for more reasons than just the money. As a counter point to your plot, I have seen small career moves result in huge pay increases.

You don’t promote good workers, the job description changes with promotion so the previously good worker might not be (as) good anymore.

Good workers with lots of expertise and know-how get more work.

Become self-employed, don’t charge by time but delivered projects/products.

How do you measure expert knowledge on the same graph as salary? Do you measure it in dollars?

deleted by creator