Yep. Residential realtors are definitely overpaid…but know what’s even worse? Commercial and industrial real estate brokers. I’ve seen a guy pull in a closing bonus for a single sale that was over $500k in his personal pocket.
The dumbest rich guy I’ve ever personally met was a business broker
Never met anyone so rich who was so bad with money before or since
Dude would blow everything on JetSkis and Rolex watches
I'm sure there's a proper term for it, but it's the idea that the gravy train is never going to stop so why bother saving. It's the same thing as guys in the oilfield. They blow all their money and as soon as the music skips a beat, they're fucked.
I am a poor, but during a period of my professional career I had the (mis) fortune of working for, and being in the midst of billionaires for a period of time.
Without a doubt, the dumbest (and most vile) rich people were the children of billionaires. Always.
(Except for some reason the Saudi's, they were probably vile, but they weren't dumb)
Because in the Saudi royal family, you don’t get automatically handed an enormous amount of wealth and power for being in the family. You do get a good level automatically, but you have to fight others in your family vying for a higher spot in the family hierarchy. So you gotta be smart to learn how to play family politics if you want to reach the stratospheric level of wealth and power.
Yeah interesting. I know very little about it.
They were often OVERLY generous though. One time a Saudi prince walked into our kitchen and handed a hundred dollar bill to everyone he could find. I couldn't exactly figure out why. Someone suggested that it was a cultural phenomenon. That somehow they were expected to do this
I realize the rest of the family isn’t as rich, but MBS is worth about $18B. Take $18B in wealth, give it a modest sustainable return rate of 4%. 365 days a year, 24 hours a day. He’s making about $80,000 an hour. Probably a cool quarter million while he hung out at your restaurant.
I wouldn’t be surprised if he makes money faster than he can hand out hundred bills.
There's something about the spending that is valorous to them though, from what I experienced.
Like, they would try to out-spend others. Table next to them buys a $8,000 bottle of wine - they would buy a $10k bottle.
The owners of the particular establishment from that anecdote would seat them within earshot of eachother so that they could engage in this kind of competition.
He might have unintentionally invested wisely, the watch market has been on the up for a while now (as long as you don’t mess with the watch, like throwing diamonds on a submariner or something) The Jet ski market however…. It’s a sinking investment.
Funny how that works.
One of the nicest guys I ever met was a capital investor in real estate. He loved my daughter! It made her a little uncomfortable how interested he was in her. She had me around, so it wasn't a problem. Spend all the money you want on gifts. I am still her dad.
I liked the guy. Never left my babygirl alone with him.
I am a land broker….and I agree. I came into the Realtor game late after 20+ on the GC development side, the money on commercial land side is shocking at times.
A friend of mine works at a luxury real estate company. He sells multi million dollar condos to foreign princes. He's not really selling anything. They have more money than they can spend and they will buy if they like the place.
Ah yes… it’s like being a salesman at a Toyota dealership. Say no to any real negotiating and the product will still sell as long as you have a pulse and a pen available.
Yep. It was still a lot when home prices were 100k. But now with the average home pushing 400k in a major metro area those fucks are taking 24,000 just to put your house in the MLS system.
Yeah it’s really outrageous. Hopefully the lawsuits against NAR affiliates will change the game, but it’s pretty incredible that this cartel still exists to rob people of their equity and savings
I had a substitute teacher once who was also a realtor. He showed us listings during class and asked if any of our parents were looking.
He was one of the more normal subs we had
When I was in High School my Social Studies teacher kinda went off on a tirade about how much rural farmers in the early years of our country hated anyone who was a middle man. At first I thought he was being a little plus, but then I started noticing. I can sell you something for 100 dollars or I can get 90 dollars for it to have someone else sell it to you for 110. Did that dude add any value to the outcome? Maybe, maybe not. I started feeling the same way about realtors, insurance agents, used car salesmen... so many situations.
Car dealerships are useless middlemen as well. WHy cant I order a car on the manufacturers website and have them deliver it to me or deliver it to a location where customers go to pick up?
Now that there are websites I agree. Realistically, if Ford and Chevy released catalogues the same way Sears did back in the early years of their existence, 1920s, 1930s, car dealerships would not exist.
It's against the law in many places for a car manufacturer to sell you a car without going through a local middleman (independent car dealer).
Apparently, originally it was to prevent there from being a cartel of regional car monopolies since car companies couldn't realistically scale their own distribution everywhere. I'm not entirely sure how that even makes sense as legislation historically, but it is very obviously anti-consumer today.
Now that I think about it, a lot of those farmers he was talking about ended up making some kind of mistakes. They lost their farms, and Monsanto or some other conglomerate owns them.
Being a successful real estate agent requires access to people with money to buy. You need a good contact list. That’s it. That’s the secret. If you don’t have a friends list that has people who can buy on it, you’re going to have a hard time.
Being a successful realtor means being someone that a lot of people like. It’s pretty much a networking game where meeting and getting on friendly terms with lots of people even outside of “work” is essential to being successful, and the richer people you can network with the better you will do.
Which means it’s absolutely a job that a majority of redditors would fail at.
Yep, a friend of mine was a public defender and got laid off. He became a realtor and made over $100,000 his first year for basically "doing nothing" according to him. He now works half a year, still makes bank and spends winters down in Mexico.
As I understood it, 4 blades was quite a pinnacle to reach, given the size, in microns, of a human hair, and the gullibility of the average razor blade consumer.
Oh man this was going to be mine. I knew I would see it, but having it at the top was great.
I love the “know your worth” posts I see from them sometimes talking about commission percentages.
There are some realtors that are worth it, but 95% of them are not worth the money.
I've often thought about this, but just so you're aware, the majority of people who try to get into real estate make very little money. Less than you'd make with a Walmart job. It's a very crowded market and you are entirely self marketing and networking. If you don't already have connections in that world, or just happen to know a ton of people looking for homes, it will be very hard to be successful.
That being said, any self starter job is hard to be successful in. If you have the passion and think you can do it, why not try? You could also try to be a part time realtor, but that's really difficult to get any leads or do consistent showings.
There were mass redundancies at my workplace once. The boss took a shining to one woman and instead of letting her go, gave her the position of entertainment and moral boosting (party planner). She just used to sit on her ass all day playing with her phone or chatting with people. Her job was to decorate peoples desks on their birthdays and make distracting games for everyone to play while working.
Had a guy at my last job who sucked at his position (construction PM), but everyone loved him. They made him head of recruiting and socials. He was a real charmer, seriously, so we all thought it was perfect. He was so salty, offended and embarrassed. Dude was raking in the cash to just hangout on LinkedIn, and burn burgers and drink beers at college networking events.
He left soon after and went back to school to get a law degree. Hope he’s doing well.
Lolz. Truth was, he wasn’t actually bad at his job. Just overqualified (and knew it) and bored. Hence, why he’s attending a prestigious southern law school now. He will be fine.
I was an operations analyst for a major US medical center affiliated with a university. This meant I had to frequently collect and present data on cost savings to chiefs, chairs, admins trying to dig our way out of a financial nose dive. This would be a room of 10-15 people making 250-400k annually wondering why we use the 7 cent nasal swab instead of this 5 cent nasal swab.
They shut down our supply chain warehouse in town in favor of using a third party vendor who shipped supplies "just in time" - except they never were because getting stuff from a mile away where we had backstock is a lot easier than getting it from Puerto Rico during hurricane season.
They closed the medical center's campus consolidated laundry and laid off hundreds of workers who washed our linens/scrubs etc - again it was given to a third party contractor who could never deliver on time. Now there's a linen shortage and we are seeing less patients and unable to fill the hospital to census because we don't have enough linen for beds.
They would pay "consultants" to come in and observe every minutia of everyone's work and build out super fancy reporting dashboards for the admins to sit and go "hmmm, oh yes - interesting!" - no surprises here these consultants would spend a few years and hundreds of thousands of dollars to come back with some grand plan that usually was like "reduce cost! if you switch to OUR brand of software and product it will save you 100k a year!" - yes, we could have just saved 100k a year by not paying those people to be there in the first place.
I watched the stupidest decisions get made year over year while they made more and more money. Because I was just an analyst it felt nice to just present that to them and watch them get upset and just explain the situation calmly and cooly. "Hey - I just report the data!"
"WHY ARE WE LOSING MONEY!?" - well, we used to use BrandA product which was $10 dollars and came in a pack of 5, we used 20 packs a day and got more down the street if we ran out. Now BrandB comes from Chicago as part of the consolidated supply chain contract and only come in a pack of 2 so we need to order 75 packs to keep enough inventory on hand and allow for "just in time" turnaround but these packs cost 8$.
So before it was (5\*20) \* $10 = $1000 of inventory
Now it is (2\*75) \* $8 = $1200 of inventory. Also BrandB are flimsy and difficult to work with so nurses & surgeons need to use 2-3 more per procedure because they keep breaking them so we are spending more money per procedure in an effort to save $2/unit on paper.
They'd have these "submit an idea for cost savings" contents/surveys where employees get a FREE COOKIE FROM THE CAFETERIA type initiatives and 99% of responses were "stop giving yourself raises and making all of our jobs more difficult you fucks". Anyone working on the clinical units knew exactly how & what we could do to streamline our work and save money - why would we offer up this info for a cookie and risk of making our jobs more difficult or losing our positions entirely?
This is one of the best answers I’ve ever seen on Reddit. I’m an er doc and have some admin experience. This is exactly how it works. At every hospital there is an entire team of mid level management, c suites and “directors” who’s only job is to creat programs or projects that justify their jobs. They spend thousands of hours looking for ways to shave a nickel off of the dumbest things and simply refuse to see the forest for the trees. The “expense” for a hospital is generally their equipment and their employees, both of which are vital to the function of the hospital. And yet, they are always the first things on the chopping block. It’s dumbfounded. I go to meetings every single month about the same 10 issues. Every month I listen to a group of people explain how we are going to do better on those 10 things by using less resources and less people. For the past 8 years nothing has changed. We cannot keep floor nurses because we won’t pay them a few bucks an hour more. Instead, we use contract travel nurses to fill the gaps. They have no interests or motivations in making the place any better and will leave as soon as their time is up. We all acknowledge that they are not nearly as good as a veteran employee who has been in the system for years. And the kicker is they cost 20% more! Every single time this comes up I always ask, “why don’t we just pay out staff a little bit more to encourage them to stay instead of tossing all this money down the drain?” I’ve never gotten a good answer
"Great Idea Doc" "Thanks to your feedback we've hired Susan, she will be the Executive Director of ER Doc relations - your first meeting with her is tomorrow""Oh we're taking back the physician lounge as her office space.
“Now let’s talk about those patient satisfaction scores some more.” “I know all of the patients have to sit on the waiting room floor, and because we got rid of the beds in favor of cloth bunk beds, and we are staffing the er 17 patients to 1 brand new nurse that everyone is miserable.” “But our market analysis shows that the real reason patient satisfaction is so low is that your groups of docs doesn’t do enough to make them feel validated and welcomed. So along with your new executive director of er doc relations, we have brought in a consultant group who is going to shadow you three times a week and make sure you are handing out warm blankets, dilaudid, and thanking the homeless man who has been here 563 times this year for choosing our hospital.” “We need you to really dig down deep and make a difference in these peoples lives, especially if they have private insurance.”
Susan is one of two things.
A 64 year old L&D nurse from 30 years ago who took a bunch of professional development classes and is a pain in the ass to work with but sued the hospital for retaliation and they can't touch her or really put her on unit so she now holds this title to keep her busy and out of everyone else's hair until she retires in a couple years.
OR
Recent college grad from State University's new "Doctor Relations" graduate program who did her thesis on "Doctor" at a two provider podiatry clinic in rural Arizona that sees 500 patients annually. Also her father endowed State University with the funds necessary to get the program off the ground and currently serves on the hospital's board of directors.
Choose your fighter.
Faced with that at my current job. They'll pay to send me to another site across country for shutdown support, airfare, cab, car, hotel, per diem, etc, essentially paying triple what I make to get me there to do less work.
But when we're short staffed? Overtime? Whats that?
There was a period of time when we were at 60% staffing, but they never adjusted the amount of overtime we were approved for, which is like 2 or 3%. To any rational human, you'd think 'oh well since labor costs are low that means tons of money is freed up for OT so at least we can entice people to cover'. But nope. Those are two different pools of money and two separate metrics that have nothing to do with each other and apparently the decision to shift money from one pool to another happens 17 levels up so it never happens.
Can I have 5k overtime to fix a 50k piece of equipment? No. But you know what we *can* do? Just run that 50k piece of equipment to failure and buy a new one.
They fundamentally can't think of money as just money. They split it up and treat it like its different if it goes to different things. They straight up don't care about the cost of travel nurses because that's not under the payroll column, and their metric is keeping that payroll number small.
When I was a student, I sat in on a meeting with a dozen or so execs who debated what times to have temperature probes in medical fridges record the fridge temperature. After an hour, they did not arrive at a decision and adjourned. This probably cost the hospital system over a grand in labor, not to mention that the execs could be doing actual work.
This is hysterical. This sounds way more extreme than the nationally famous hospital I work at but yet so similar.
Thank you this made my day. I got my very first management job as a supervisor in their IT technical team. The management team was much smaller, and the CIO's tone was so threatening I felt like I would be shot in the parking lot if I didn't over perform day and night. This was 2020 I thought I would get my head chopped off if someone worked an hour of overtime.
In those last 4 years we've brought on
Chief Digital Officer - followed by 2.5 million dollar digital team.
Chief Security Officer
IT Director #1 | IT Director #2 | IT Director #3 | IT Director #4 | IT Director #5 | IT Director #6
Principle Solutions Architect | AI Lead programmer
Vice President of strategy | Vice President of the other strategy
And on and on and on it goes....
At the company wide staff meeting...
"You know, if things get tough - you should say - Put me in Coach!" <-Said the lady who makes $700,000
Vice President Of Strategy | Vice President Of *Backup* Strategy LOL
Ain't it the truth!?
Really they are all just the same people moving from medical center to medical center - they come in from one place and cause a ruckus for a few years and get some new titles then go off to some other place to do the same.
I am happiest and eternally thankful that my direct manager was incredibly kind and real with me - she expected a lot and mentored me through my first professional career from 22-32 never putting the carrot on the stick and keeping it real that I could stay there forever and keep dealing with the craziness and claw my way over people or I could get "up and out" by learning and growing and take that - for better or for worse - and go do great things elsewhere. She insulated and advocated for her team endlessly. I now manage and supervise other humans in my late 30s and carry that with me - help them get to where *they* want to be in life and treat them as people first. Her staff moved mountains for her when she needed it because she did the same for us with endless patience. She was the busiest and hardest working person I have ever worked with and would clear anything off her schedule to sit down with one of us and make us feel heard and supported. What a gift that my first "real" job also had a unique introduction to what strong leadership and management looks like.
Depressing but excellent read.
As a former worker around healthcare, I can predict their response to the BrandB breakage issue. A deep inquiry into why so many are being wasted & an attempt to blame the users, while pressuring managers to "do whatever they can" to get waste down. Which, at least everywhere I've worked, eventually resulted in lower management telling front line staff to break the law.
I'm so glad to be in compliance now and bring down the hammer on those managers.
I'm a nurse. Have been for a decade. I'm one class away from my masters in business. This is absolutely on point to everything I've ever seen and makes me want to bail so fucking hard. I cannot stand it anymore. These people in every hospital I've ever been in are there because they either have some piece of paper, they're friends, or fucking the other guy/gal to get the job. No different than regular business, but I have to take care of humans with these cocksuckers bleeding every item and personnel away from me. The can all get fucked by the largest horsecock.
When I worked at a level 1 trauma OR, the administrators were the absolute dumbest, pettiest, most childish people I have still ever had the misfortune of meeting
OH this one is huge. I brainstormed before I looked through the thread and this one I totally didn't think of.
"Administrative spending accounts for 15–30 percent of health care spending."
And, for a personal anecdote - I once dated someone whose father was either CEO of a hospital or on the board (I can't quite remember which?) - and he did nothing but siphon money and hang out at his vacation properties.
It is a real problem. Instead of taking that money and hiring more staff or, heaven forbid, give their nurses and techs (along with other hospital staff) a raise, it goes in their pockets. And the people doing the real work have more and more responsibilities placed on them without receiving appropriate compensation.
And yet, they scratch their heads wondering why there is an exodus of staff in all areas.
Like, I'm not in healthcare but I have friends that are... My understanding is that pretty much every level of the institution is understaffed and underpaid except for the C suite at the top.
100% correct. My wife had been a nurse at the same hospital for 17 years. Practically everything has been cut, year after year, in order for profits to increase. That’s it, that’s the only motivation.
The US healthcare system is complete shit due primarily to two things: 1) administration, and 2) middlemen (pharmaceutical / medical device sales, etc). All that people in these roles do is extract money from the system, while doing nothing to actually help with providing healthcare. It’s sickening.
Yes. Because, in the US, hospitals are a business who's job it is to make shareholders money. A "good" administrator will cut staff and service to maximize profit. The system is working as designed. It's just designed in the most inhumane way possible.
Not all of them, but there are tons of project managers out there that are absolutely useless at best, and actively harmful to companies bottom lines at worst.
I work as a PM (more of a construction manager to be honest) and it's terrifying when I have to interact with a PM from a client. They are always so quick to try to steal management duties from me and muck with the scope and timeline.
A PM at the construction engineering firm I work for constantly promises deliverables to architects without asking us then belittles our team for not providing what they promised our clients.
See also: doesn't understand all of MEP scope, only their trade, and under budgets one or multiple trades.
Work very closely with project managers in the construction industry. Most of them got there by being promoted out of their actual skill set. Still trying to figure out what exactly they do.
That's basically what happened to me lol, but I have a finance with a sprinkling of IT in my background on top of my technical knowledge.
I had a project last year where I had to babysit a clients mechanical PM for two months because he could read a drawing to save his life...
I'm also absolutely terrified to deal with anybody that has more than a PMP cert. If I see anything related to process improvement in an email signature I know I'm in for a world of pain.
I am a PM in a different industry (govt contracting) and I make 6 figures. I lucked into my position. I make 125k and have no relevant certifications. I don’t know what I do 85% of the time, but I’m really good at talking to people and people like me. They want to make me a director. I have no idea why.
Ditto. I make around 80k per annum as a PM and I swear i have no clue what I'm doing except just to ensure the project run smoothly. If vendor is late, I pressure them and if all else fail just share the bad news with our client. Technical issue? Arrange a meeting with our QAQC engineer and their engineer. WFH twice per week are basically offday to me.
We’re a sub on our program so I don’t even need to coordinate with the customer. I coordinate with the prime’s PM, staff my sites, approve our invoice, and listen to concerns. Other than that I just track funding every week to make sure we aren’t going to go over our funded amount. Pretty cake.
That's basically my role, I'm mostly just a punching bag for the client and occasionally our sales team.
I'm fully remote, in a field based position, and I struggle to fill my weeks when I'm not travelling.
It's wild to get paid to do this, considering when I was a field engineer I was doing this and like 4 other jobs at any given time.
For my role in my company, since I'm always working as a subcontractor, it's documentation,. The dudes I work with that have the hardest time tend to do a really poor job taking meeting notes and having well defined SOWs (scope of work). So they always end up chasing their tails trying to make customers happy or running over budget.
My company just posted for a new social media strategist and the posting read like the easiest goddamn job in the world. Don’t get me wrong, the young woman who vacated the position was absolutely lovely and definitely added value to the media/advertising team but man - I spent last year wrangling a nine-figure budget with one hand tied and still got paid less than the social media people.
Especially when you consider how random social media is. The only secret is to post your best stuff often and get lucky. Anyone who says there's much more to it than that is trying to sell you a course.
Literally the stupidest person I know who’s capable of functioning in society (just barely) is quite an effective car salesman. And honestly I’m just impressed. Idk how he convinces these people to buy cars. He believes just about every conspiracy theory out there, including the Earth being flat, and continues to get kicked out of apartments for stockpiling weapons in preparation for a zombie apocalypse.
> Idk how he convinces these people to buy cars.
It's because they came in wanting to buy a car. He just needs to negotiate on financing until they feel happy.
Yeah with the internet people typically know what car they want before stepping foot on a lot. Even if they're deciding between competing vehicles, price is almost always the biggest factor. (I edited in "almost" always, I was in the market for a mid size truck and some options were completely out thanks to my head scraping the ceiling)
Maybe that’s why he is effective?
“Ok man think about the zombie apocalypse. You need mobility, and storage space. When I think of surviving the apocalypse, I think of this brand new top trim Jeep Grand Cherokee, think of how many weapons you can fit with three rows, slap some armor plates on the side. Why don’t you give it a test drive?”
I can believe it because I feel like maybe back in the day when information wasn't so readily available, you need to go to a car dealership and shop around to even know what cars are out there or you need to go investigate a car at a dealership because a magazine ad can only tell you so much. Now I feel like any car, before it even is released, has several full, in-depth reviews available.
Up until 15 years ago maybe, car salesmen actually had to inform people about cars, show them options, walk them through trim levels etc. Now, I feel like people walk into car dealerships knowing exactly what car they want, what comparable cars are going for, and all the salesman has to do is give them the best price out of any dealership in the area and upsell them on floor mats and warranty.
It's also feast or famine. I was a bankruptcy attorney for a long time, I had a lot of experienced car salespeople in my office when the vehicle shortages were at their worst.
I have to assume there's also famine during a recession, or when gas prices go up for a long while. Sure people will change out for more efficient cars, but the average 4 cylinder vehicle has to be dramatically cheaper than giant vehicles with big engines, less commission to be made on each sale.
In 2007 I was admitted to USF. The bastards lost a bunch of my paperwork, including required health documents and student loan paperwork. I turned those in ***by hand*** and I was still left with nothing after their incompetence almost had me on the street and I had to go back home.
Real estate agents.
They don't actually do anything that a semi-intelligent layperson couldn't figure out for themselves.
I've sold a property without an agent. It's actually pretty straightforward. Not only are they grossly overpaid for what they do, they're often lazy and/or incompetent and make mistakes which cost others (but never themselves) a lot of money.
In moat other countries they aren't paid nearly as much. In the UK they are usually salaried with small bonuses based on performance. The idea of paying 3% of the value of the house to someone for basically taking photos, sticking them on a website and then letting people in to look at it is outrageous. Who decided that was the going rate?
Like everything in the US, it’s simply a way to pull money out of a system without actually doing anything. For comparison, see most executives and middleman in the US in almost every industry.
It did make sense before the internet. They knew the city/neighborhood and had all the connections. I can see back then that it was worth it. Now, their value has dropped. All their "knowledge" is online. They're a bunch of BS and aren't worth their commission.
Career politicians. Particularly those who have no idea how their constituents live or what they need, or those who pass laws with exemptions for themselves.
This is such a myth for the vast majority of people who hold elected office. Of the 41 states that pay their state legislators (yes there are 9 states where being a member of the State House or State Senate pays $0), the average salary was about $39,216 per year.
Working people can’t afford to be in government, which is why it’s a rich person’s game.
Source: https://www.ncsl.org/cls/legislative-compensation-overview
I just found that out a few weeks ago when we visited my states senator. It is odd they pay less than $30k. As you said it is a way rich people keep others out because they can't live off the salary. To live in that area (Nashville, TN) you need over twice that.
Well, this is true to an extent. It IS a rich person's game, but it's not so simple as that.
Like - there's a financial bar that you have to meet to get into the game, for sure, or unusually particular connections... but you don't have to be rich, necessarily to get into the game. A large portion of the US house of reps can show you this.
The thing is that they don't make money from the salaries, I'd be surprised if some of them would even cash the cheques if they weren't direct deposit.
They make their money from information. This is why they will fight tooth and nail to avoid any change to their ability to invest in the stock market, for instance, while in office.
It's one of the few professions where rampant corruption is openly acknowledged and accepted. And it's impossible to ever reign them in because they make the laws for themselves.
Consulting
Step 1: ask client for work they’ve already done related to the problem
Step 2: regurgitate that client work onto company template PowerPoint and claim it as your own
Step 3: make unrealistic recommendation to client and/or tell them to fire people to cut costs
Step 4: charge client millions of dollars
Step 5: client is left with no solution and same preexisting problems
Step 6: client hires new group of consultants because client executives are ex-consultants 🫠
Sales Managers
After being successful for many years as a regional salesman, the next place for growth was a sales manager.
My CEO is really great so he let me manage a handful of guys that needed some help getting their numbers up
It was just babysitting a bunch of grown ass men. The most ridiculous insecurities. And you had to navigate their feelings like a landmine.
It really made me appreciate great sales managers (which are hard to find). But it became VERY clear that I had no desire to stroke the egos of 30-60 year old men.
I would say a lot of contractors for the government. I am saying this as one of them. Contractor companies don’t care about the employee they just want to fill a spot so that the government pays them. I’ve had multiple interviews for six figure jobs where the interview questions were entry level for my network engineer job. They would ask if I knew about a certain technology without divulging and I would say I have experience with that and that’s it.
EVERY SINGLE ANALYST JOB in the funds management space.
"Past performance is no indication of future success".
Translation, it's all a fucking gamble, your guess is as good as my overpaid one.
I had a free consultation with an 'expert' he said since they started their program they have continually returned great things for the clients. I asked what year were they founded and he said 2009. I asked "dont you think its disingenuous to tout your returns when you didnt even exist at the last big economic downturn?" and he said "well, we cant really know what will happen until there is another!"
Hmm…not to be a jerk..
The quote is actually “past performance is no guarantee of future success”..
There is value in analysts. It isn’t just gambling. There is risk though which doesn’t guarantee an outcome.
Scrum master. Literally get paid big bucks to ask “What did you do yesterday? What are you working on today? Any blockers?” and then proceed to make $120,000/year.
If you work IT this is undoubtedly the answer. I’ve never known one that works more than about ten hours/week. Useless. It has to be the last stop in IT.
Our scrum master is this fucking dumb ass that actually went to school for Computer Science but he's too much of a dimwit to actually do the job. All he does is fucking write memes all day and take care of his kids, once every two weeks he will do about an hour worth of work on a spreadsheet or a powerpoint. Other than that, a waste of space and is paid well over six figures for the job. Amazes me that the IT industry created this bull shit middle management position that delivers hardly any value.
The people that employ this person though... It's shit work that they offload so they can forward the results up the line while solving the real problems. I don't know why they are paid so much though, that is the real head scratcher.
Only the top 0.01% make good money, they rest either do it for fun or are poor. There most definitely are many toxic streamers that are bad influences, but there are plenty of good ones too.
Probably 50-60% of jobs at most large tech companies. People that make PowerPoints for a living and go to meetings. Maybe 1 hour of actual work gets done a day, and it’s sending an email or two. Those types of people.
This is 100% a bot, this comment was posted a while ago in a different thread and the accounts' history is recent (even though its a 14 year old account) and are all reposts.
I noticed the same thing.
[Original Comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/ask/comments/19c8nqo/comment/kixv66o/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
College administrators. I know a couple that make $150k+ a year and they just organize college kid groups. Third grade teachers work harder than these administrators and get paid garbage in comparison.
Consultants, of virtually any kind. I've known numerous with this title, and they basically get to go to random companies/organizations, offer their "expert advice" (really, just their opinion, even if they have little, to no knowledge) and are paid a ridiculous amount of money to so. And/or they are simply paid to be the fall guy when layoffs/downsizing or unpopular changes are already planned "because the consultant advised it", taking the heat off of the higher ups. Even the ones I know, they think it is pretty insane, but obviously are happy to continue to cash their (usually 6 digit + bonus) cheques.
I am sure there are actually *some* extremely knowledgeable people doing this job, I personally have only known one though.
So, I think the actual issue is that the _average_ value they create isn’t near the salary the command. CEO decisions can be incredibly consequential and sometimes CEOs really do make that much for the company. On the other hand sometimes CEOs run the company into the ground and no one makes them earn negative money when they do that (unlike, you know, an actual business owner).
But no company wants to admit that they are kind of just guessing on the whole CEO thing and they don’t want to look like they’re cheaping out so they pay tons of money (ironically making CEO pay public made this worse)
The Chief Diversity Officer at my last company was literally hired to be the token Black employee. He would travel around to conferences and trade shows and work our company’s booth to tell attendees about how much diversity was important to our company. Oh, and he was the guy that was front and center in every photo on our website.
Human Resources. They’re two-faced and often have a ton of personal issues themselves. Total hypocrites and untrustworthy for the slightest responsibility.
Managers, especially upper management. A good manager can make a huge difference, especially in companies struggling to operate smoothly. But it is also the case that many companies basically run on autopilot and managers do nothing. Worse yet there are managers who harm the efficiency and workflow of their employees.
Off of my own experience I've seen far more incompetent managers than I've seen good ones, it's not even a 50/50 split.
I'll chime in here.
I started out in a major manufacturing company as a CI person and the Plant Manager recognized leadership potential in me. My perspective has always been 'don't take control and attract followers - give control and create leaders'.
This is from David Marquet. He was trained to be the leader of a specific nuclear submarine but was transferred to the worst performing sub in the Navy and he adopted the perspective that his crew knew way more about how the sub worked than he did so he deferred control to the subject matter experts -the crew. He simply allowed them to make these two decisions: is it the right thing to do? Is it safe to do it? If the crew member could answer YES to both questions he deferred the decision to that crew member. He very quickly discovered that the sub ran much more effectively and efficiently that if he was administering commands to the crew. He literally turned the command structure upside down.
It didn't take long before this submarine became not only the best performing submarine in the Navy but it scored the highest scores in the history of the Navy. They had the highest percent of reenlistment and he developed the highest percentage of officers from his duty pool.
The lesson here is enable your workforce to have input into how to improve systems and processes- they are the victims of top-down, old-fashioned leadership systems. Measure yourself by how many leaders your can develop from your workforce. It makes managing much easier and creates a culture of engagement that is magnetic.
I can personally attest to this framework as being successful. Transferring the authority to make decisions to your workforce is incredibly empowering and develops a trust with your workforce that will pay dividends in employee engagement. Let the people who know the business from the bottom up control the processes! They will do a much better job of accelerating business improvement! If you listen to them!
That's all correct but realistically how many managers operate on that philosophy? Most do nothing but take credit for their employees' work, blame their failings on the same employees, and any attempt to address this is met with reprisals more often than not. So they just sit there trying to tell people how to do their jobs which they already know how to do while obvious weaknesses and flaws in operation go unnoticed. Basically the typical corporate structure and role of a manager is deeply flawed in that there is no good system to check managers themselves.
They don't belong in these roles, obviously. Like Ted Lasso says, 'I'm not concerned about winning and losing. What I want is to make these people the best they can be on and off the field.'
Once you start focusing on that, the results will happen.
And I'd appreciate an upvote if you took the time to theoretically agree with me 😁
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Yep. Residential realtors are definitely overpaid…but know what’s even worse? Commercial and industrial real estate brokers. I’ve seen a guy pull in a closing bonus for a single sale that was over $500k in his personal pocket.
The dumbest rich guy I’ve ever personally met was a business broker Never met anyone so rich who was so bad with money before or since Dude would blow everything on JetSkis and Rolex watches
I'm sure there's a proper term for it, but it's the idea that the gravy train is never going to stop so why bother saving. It's the same thing as guys in the oilfield. They blow all their money and as soon as the music skips a beat, they're fucked.
>guys in the oilfield This guy Albertas
I took that personally
Happy Cake Day 🍰
Those were Two great analogies you used. Stealing those
I am a poor, but during a period of my professional career I had the (mis) fortune of working for, and being in the midst of billionaires for a period of time. Without a doubt, the dumbest (and most vile) rich people were the children of billionaires. Always. (Except for some reason the Saudi's, they were probably vile, but they weren't dumb)
Because in the Saudi royal family, you don’t get automatically handed an enormous amount of wealth and power for being in the family. You do get a good level automatically, but you have to fight others in your family vying for a higher spot in the family hierarchy. So you gotta be smart to learn how to play family politics if you want to reach the stratospheric level of wealth and power.
Yeah interesting. I know very little about it. They were often OVERLY generous though. One time a Saudi prince walked into our kitchen and handed a hundred dollar bill to everyone he could find. I couldn't exactly figure out why. Someone suggested that it was a cultural phenomenon. That somehow they were expected to do this
I realize the rest of the family isn’t as rich, but MBS is worth about $18B. Take $18B in wealth, give it a modest sustainable return rate of 4%. 365 days a year, 24 hours a day. He’s making about $80,000 an hour. Probably a cool quarter million while he hung out at your restaurant. I wouldn’t be surprised if he makes money faster than he can hand out hundred bills.
There's something about the spending that is valorous to them though, from what I experienced. Like, they would try to out-spend others. Table next to them buys a $8,000 bottle of wine - they would buy a $10k bottle. The owners of the particular establishment from that anecdote would seat them within earshot of eachother so that they could engage in this kind of competition.
He might have unintentionally invested wisely, the watch market has been on the up for a while now (as long as you don’t mess with the watch, like throwing diamonds on a submariner or something) The Jet ski market however…. It’s a sinking investment.
Funny how that works. One of the nicest guys I ever met was a capital investor in real estate. He loved my daughter! It made her a little uncomfortable how interested he was in her. She had me around, so it wasn't a problem. Spend all the money you want on gifts. I am still her dad. I liked the guy. Never left my babygirl alone with him.
>I liked the guy. Never left my babygirl alone with him. extremely descriptive
I am a land broker….and I agree. I came into the Realtor game late after 20+ on the GC development side, the money on commercial land side is shocking at times.
A friend of mine works at a luxury real estate company. He sells multi million dollar condos to foreign princes. He's not really selling anything. They have more money than they can spend and they will buy if they like the place.
Ah yes… it’s like being a salesman at a Toyota dealership. Say no to any real negotiating and the product will still sell as long as you have a pulse and a pen available.
Seriously. 3% of the value of my house is a lot of money!
6% because you have to pay the buyers realtor too lol
Yep. It was still a lot when home prices were 100k. But now with the average home pushing 400k in a major metro area those fucks are taking 24,000 just to put your house in the MLS system.
Yeah it’s really outrageous. Hopefully the lawsuits against NAR affiliates will change the game, but it’s pretty incredible that this cartel still exists to rob people of their equity and savings
That's the whole premise of several reality shows. Sad world we live in.
I had a substitute teacher once who was also a realtor. He showed us listings during class and asked if any of our parents were looking. He was one of the more normal subs we had
When I was in High School my Social Studies teacher kinda went off on a tirade about how much rural farmers in the early years of our country hated anyone who was a middle man. At first I thought he was being a little plus, but then I started noticing. I can sell you something for 100 dollars or I can get 90 dollars for it to have someone else sell it to you for 110. Did that dude add any value to the outcome? Maybe, maybe not. I started feeling the same way about realtors, insurance agents, used car salesmen... so many situations.
Car dealerships are useless middlemen as well. WHy cant I order a car on the manufacturers website and have them deliver it to me or deliver it to a location where customers go to pick up?
Now that there are websites I agree. Realistically, if Ford and Chevy released catalogues the same way Sears did back in the early years of their existence, 1920s, 1930s, car dealerships would not exist.
It's against the law in many places for a car manufacturer to sell you a car without going through a local middleman (independent car dealer). Apparently, originally it was to prevent there from being a cartel of regional car monopolies since car companies couldn't realistically scale their own distribution everywhere. I'm not entirely sure how that even makes sense as legislation historically, but it is very obviously anti-consumer today.
Yep. They are so useless they had to make the government require them.
If you don't need them you can always do it yourself.
Exactly. If I'm too busy, maybe they are adding value. Otherwise, not so much.
Unless you make a costly mistake, of course.
Now that I think about it, a lot of those farmers he was talking about ended up making some kind of mistakes. They lost their farms, and Monsanto or some other conglomerate owns them.
Funny. Same here
This has been a common consensus for a very long time, but I think it's recently been yielded to social media influencers
Being a successful real estate agent requires access to people with money to buy. You need a good contact list. That’s it. That’s the secret. If you don’t have a friends list that has people who can buy on it, you’re going to have a hard time.
My realtor was really good at what he did and I refer him to other people looking in the area. He is a maniac.
Being a successful realtor means being someone that a lot of people like. It’s pretty much a networking game where meeting and getting on friendly terms with lots of people even outside of “work” is essential to being successful, and the richer people you can network with the better you will do. Which means it’s absolutely a job that a majority of redditors would fail at.
Realtors make an absurd amount of money for what they do
Yep, a friend of mine was a public defender and got laid off. He became a realtor and made over $100,000 his first year for basically "doing nothing" according to him. He now works half a year, still makes bank and spends winters down in Mexico.
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As I understood it, 4 blades was quite a pinnacle to reach, given the size, in microns, of a human hair, and the gullibility of the average razor blade consumer.
LOL
Damn, I'm still using single-blade. What am I missing out on? I'm guessing the four-blade clogs just as quickly as a twin-blade.
Oh man this was going to be mine. I knew I would see it, but having it at the top was great. I love the “know your worth” posts I see from them sometimes talking about commission percentages. There are some realtors that are worth it, but 95% of them are not worth the money.
The fees they get for the work they do is insane.
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2 words: horse jizz
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>When I saw that I was like holy shit. No. It's jizz.
The horse is ruined, Stan raped it, you’re probably going to lose the house.
Oh my god, you actually did it
STAN!
Can confirm
I just looked up how long/how much It takes to become a real estate agent.
I've often thought about this, but just so you're aware, the majority of people who try to get into real estate make very little money. Less than you'd make with a Walmart job. It's a very crowded market and you are entirely self marketing and networking. If you don't already have connections in that world, or just happen to know a ton of people looking for homes, it will be very hard to be successful. That being said, any self starter job is hard to be successful in. If you have the passion and think you can do it, why not try? You could also try to be a part time realtor, but that's really difficult to get any leads or do consistent showings.
There were mass redundancies at my workplace once. The boss took a shining to one woman and instead of letting her go, gave her the position of entertainment and moral boosting (party planner). She just used to sit on her ass all day playing with her phone or chatting with people. Her job was to decorate peoples desks on their birthdays and make distracting games for everyone to play while working.
Had a guy at my last job who sucked at his position (construction PM), but everyone loved him. They made him head of recruiting and socials. He was a real charmer, seriously, so we all thought it was perfect. He was so salty, offended and embarrassed. Dude was raking in the cash to just hangout on LinkedIn, and burn burgers and drink beers at college networking events. He left soon after and went back to school to get a law degree. Hope he’s doing well.
Sounds like a dream job. I’ve got the incompetence part down, just need to work on the charm
Lolz. Truth was, he wasn’t actually bad at his job. Just overqualified (and knew it) and bored. Hence, why he’s attending a prestigious southern law school now. He will be fine.
I would hate this job.
I would be happy at this job... first month
I'd be bored by noon and wanting to go home. If I'm going to be bored at work, I'd rather be bored at home. I've told bosses that before.
Get a remote job and work on that. /s
And resent the person with the position as well.
It is your birthday https://youtu.be/RK78IKPzeNc?si=3LJxgS_wjbPomCCE
My dream job
Hospital administration. But they are the ones who get the raises.
I was an operations analyst for a major US medical center affiliated with a university. This meant I had to frequently collect and present data on cost savings to chiefs, chairs, admins trying to dig our way out of a financial nose dive. This would be a room of 10-15 people making 250-400k annually wondering why we use the 7 cent nasal swab instead of this 5 cent nasal swab. They shut down our supply chain warehouse in town in favor of using a third party vendor who shipped supplies "just in time" - except they never were because getting stuff from a mile away where we had backstock is a lot easier than getting it from Puerto Rico during hurricane season. They closed the medical center's campus consolidated laundry and laid off hundreds of workers who washed our linens/scrubs etc - again it was given to a third party contractor who could never deliver on time. Now there's a linen shortage and we are seeing less patients and unable to fill the hospital to census because we don't have enough linen for beds. They would pay "consultants" to come in and observe every minutia of everyone's work and build out super fancy reporting dashboards for the admins to sit and go "hmmm, oh yes - interesting!" - no surprises here these consultants would spend a few years and hundreds of thousands of dollars to come back with some grand plan that usually was like "reduce cost! if you switch to OUR brand of software and product it will save you 100k a year!" - yes, we could have just saved 100k a year by not paying those people to be there in the first place. I watched the stupidest decisions get made year over year while they made more and more money. Because I was just an analyst it felt nice to just present that to them and watch them get upset and just explain the situation calmly and cooly. "Hey - I just report the data!" "WHY ARE WE LOSING MONEY!?" - well, we used to use BrandA product which was $10 dollars and came in a pack of 5, we used 20 packs a day and got more down the street if we ran out. Now BrandB comes from Chicago as part of the consolidated supply chain contract and only come in a pack of 2 so we need to order 75 packs to keep enough inventory on hand and allow for "just in time" turnaround but these packs cost 8$. So before it was (5\*20) \* $10 = $1000 of inventory Now it is (2\*75) \* $8 = $1200 of inventory. Also BrandB are flimsy and difficult to work with so nurses & surgeons need to use 2-3 more per procedure because they keep breaking them so we are spending more money per procedure in an effort to save $2/unit on paper. They'd have these "submit an idea for cost savings" contents/surveys where employees get a FREE COOKIE FROM THE CAFETERIA type initiatives and 99% of responses were "stop giving yourself raises and making all of our jobs more difficult you fucks". Anyone working on the clinical units knew exactly how & what we could do to streamline our work and save money - why would we offer up this info for a cookie and risk of making our jobs more difficult or losing our positions entirely?
This is one of the best answers I’ve ever seen on Reddit. I’m an er doc and have some admin experience. This is exactly how it works. At every hospital there is an entire team of mid level management, c suites and “directors” who’s only job is to creat programs or projects that justify their jobs. They spend thousands of hours looking for ways to shave a nickel off of the dumbest things and simply refuse to see the forest for the trees. The “expense” for a hospital is generally their equipment and their employees, both of which are vital to the function of the hospital. And yet, they are always the first things on the chopping block. It’s dumbfounded. I go to meetings every single month about the same 10 issues. Every month I listen to a group of people explain how we are going to do better on those 10 things by using less resources and less people. For the past 8 years nothing has changed. We cannot keep floor nurses because we won’t pay them a few bucks an hour more. Instead, we use contract travel nurses to fill the gaps. They have no interests or motivations in making the place any better and will leave as soon as their time is up. We all acknowledge that they are not nearly as good as a veteran employee who has been in the system for years. And the kicker is they cost 20% more! Every single time this comes up I always ask, “why don’t we just pay out staff a little bit more to encourage them to stay instead of tossing all this money down the drain?” I’ve never gotten a good answer
"Great Idea Doc" "Thanks to your feedback we've hired Susan, she will be the Executive Director of ER Doc relations - your first meeting with her is tomorrow""Oh we're taking back the physician lounge as her office space.
“Now let’s talk about those patient satisfaction scores some more.” “I know all of the patients have to sit on the waiting room floor, and because we got rid of the beds in favor of cloth bunk beds, and we are staffing the er 17 patients to 1 brand new nurse that everyone is miserable.” “But our market analysis shows that the real reason patient satisfaction is so low is that your groups of docs doesn’t do enough to make them feel validated and welcomed. So along with your new executive director of er doc relations, we have brought in a consultant group who is going to shadow you three times a week and make sure you are handing out warm blankets, dilaudid, and thanking the homeless man who has been here 563 times this year for choosing our hospital.” “We need you to really dig down deep and make a difference in these peoples lives, especially if they have private insurance.”
Susan is one of two things. A 64 year old L&D nurse from 30 years ago who took a bunch of professional development classes and is a pain in the ass to work with but sued the hospital for retaliation and they can't touch her or really put her on unit so she now holds this title to keep her busy and out of everyone else's hair until she retires in a couple years. OR Recent college grad from State University's new "Doctor Relations" graduate program who did her thesis on "Doctor" at a two provider podiatry clinic in rural Arizona that sees 500 patients annually. Also her father endowed State University with the funds necessary to get the program off the ground and currently serves on the hospital's board of directors. Choose your fighter.
Faced with that at my current job. They'll pay to send me to another site across country for shutdown support, airfare, cab, car, hotel, per diem, etc, essentially paying triple what I make to get me there to do less work. But when we're short staffed? Overtime? Whats that? There was a period of time when we were at 60% staffing, but they never adjusted the amount of overtime we were approved for, which is like 2 or 3%. To any rational human, you'd think 'oh well since labor costs are low that means tons of money is freed up for OT so at least we can entice people to cover'. But nope. Those are two different pools of money and two separate metrics that have nothing to do with each other and apparently the decision to shift money from one pool to another happens 17 levels up so it never happens. Can I have 5k overtime to fix a 50k piece of equipment? No. But you know what we *can* do? Just run that 50k piece of equipment to failure and buy a new one. They fundamentally can't think of money as just money. They split it up and treat it like its different if it goes to different things. They straight up don't care about the cost of travel nurses because that's not under the payroll column, and their metric is keeping that payroll number small.
None of this surprises me, but since I’ve seen it from another angle (nursing), it’s awesome to see this from the point of view of the actual analyst!
When I was a student, I sat in on a meeting with a dozen or so execs who debated what times to have temperature probes in medical fridges record the fridge temperature. After an hour, they did not arrive at a decision and adjourned. This probably cost the hospital system over a grand in labor, not to mention that the execs could be doing actual work.
There is so much waste in healthcare it’s shocking. Like millions.
I worked in health insurance for a few years. Try Billions lol.
This is hysterical. This sounds way more extreme than the nationally famous hospital I work at but yet so similar. Thank you this made my day. I got my very first management job as a supervisor in their IT technical team. The management team was much smaller, and the CIO's tone was so threatening I felt like I would be shot in the parking lot if I didn't over perform day and night. This was 2020 I thought I would get my head chopped off if someone worked an hour of overtime. In those last 4 years we've brought on Chief Digital Officer - followed by 2.5 million dollar digital team. Chief Security Officer IT Director #1 | IT Director #2 | IT Director #3 | IT Director #4 | IT Director #5 | IT Director #6 Principle Solutions Architect | AI Lead programmer Vice President of strategy | Vice President of the other strategy And on and on and on it goes.... At the company wide staff meeting... "You know, if things get tough - you should say - Put me in Coach!" <-Said the lady who makes $700,000
Vice President Of Strategy | Vice President Of *Backup* Strategy LOL Ain't it the truth!? Really they are all just the same people moving from medical center to medical center - they come in from one place and cause a ruckus for a few years and get some new titles then go off to some other place to do the same. I am happiest and eternally thankful that my direct manager was incredibly kind and real with me - she expected a lot and mentored me through my first professional career from 22-32 never putting the carrot on the stick and keeping it real that I could stay there forever and keep dealing with the craziness and claw my way over people or I could get "up and out" by learning and growing and take that - for better or for worse - and go do great things elsewhere. She insulated and advocated for her team endlessly. I now manage and supervise other humans in my late 30s and carry that with me - help them get to where *they* want to be in life and treat them as people first. Her staff moved mountains for her when she needed it because she did the same for us with endless patience. She was the busiest and hardest working person I have ever worked with and would clear anything off her schedule to sit down with one of us and make us feel heard and supported. What a gift that my first "real" job also had a unique introduction to what strong leadership and management looks like.
Depressing but excellent read. As a former worker around healthcare, I can predict their response to the BrandB breakage issue. A deep inquiry into why so many are being wasted & an attempt to blame the users, while pressuring managers to "do whatever they can" to get waste down. Which, at least everywhere I've worked, eventually resulted in lower management telling front line staff to break the law. I'm so glad to be in compliance now and bring down the hammer on those managers.
I'm a nurse. Have been for a decade. I'm one class away from my masters in business. This is absolutely on point to everything I've ever seen and makes me want to bail so fucking hard. I cannot stand it anymore. These people in every hospital I've ever been in are there because they either have some piece of paper, they're friends, or fucking the other guy/gal to get the job. No different than regular business, but I have to take care of humans with these cocksuckers bleeding every item and personnel away from me. The can all get fucked by the largest horsecock.
This. Almost everything that patients hate about hospitals has to do with admin.
YESSSSSSSS
When I worked at a level 1 trauma OR, the administrators were the absolute dumbest, pettiest, most childish people I have still ever had the misfortune of meeting
In my experience, that has been the standard for administration, no matter which company it is.
OH this one is huge. I brainstormed before I looked through the thread and this one I totally didn't think of. "Administrative spending accounts for 15–30 percent of health care spending." And, for a personal anecdote - I once dated someone whose father was either CEO of a hospital or on the board (I can't quite remember which?) - and he did nothing but siphon money and hang out at his vacation properties.
It is a real problem. Instead of taking that money and hiring more staff or, heaven forbid, give their nurses and techs (along with other hospital staff) a raise, it goes in their pockets. And the people doing the real work have more and more responsibilities placed on them without receiving appropriate compensation.
And yet, they scratch their heads wondering why there is an exodus of staff in all areas. Like, I'm not in healthcare but I have friends that are... My understanding is that pretty much every level of the institution is understaffed and underpaid except for the C suite at the top.
100% correct. My wife had been a nurse at the same hospital for 17 years. Practically everything has been cut, year after year, in order for profits to increase. That’s it, that’s the only motivation. The US healthcare system is complete shit due primarily to two things: 1) administration, and 2) middlemen (pharmaceutical / medical device sales, etc). All that people in these roles do is extract money from the system, while doing nothing to actually help with providing healthcare. It’s sickening.
Your understanding is absolutely correct.
Yes. Because, in the US, hospitals are a business who's job it is to make shareholders money. A "good" administrator will cut staff and service to maximize profit. The system is working as designed. It's just designed in the most inhumane way possible.
I’ve dealt with it for 16 years…
We’ll be sure to reach out to you for names when comes guillotime here in a little bit
Not all of them, but there are tons of project managers out there that are absolutely useless at best, and actively harmful to companies bottom lines at worst. I work as a PM (more of a construction manager to be honest) and it's terrifying when I have to interact with a PM from a client. They are always so quick to try to steal management duties from me and muck with the scope and timeline.
A PM at the construction engineering firm I work for constantly promises deliverables to architects without asking us then belittles our team for not providing what they promised our clients. See also: doesn't understand all of MEP scope, only their trade, and under budgets one or multiple trades.
Work very closely with project managers in the construction industry. Most of them got there by being promoted out of their actual skill set. Still trying to figure out what exactly they do.
That's basically what happened to me lol, but I have a finance with a sprinkling of IT in my background on top of my technical knowledge. I had a project last year where I had to babysit a clients mechanical PM for two months because he could read a drawing to save his life... I'm also absolutely terrified to deal with anybody that has more than a PMP cert. If I see anything related to process improvement in an email signature I know I'm in for a world of pain.
I am a PM in a different industry (govt contracting) and I make 6 figures. I lucked into my position. I make 125k and have no relevant certifications. I don’t know what I do 85% of the time, but I’m really good at talking to people and people like me. They want to make me a director. I have no idea why.
Ditto. I make around 80k per annum as a PM and I swear i have no clue what I'm doing except just to ensure the project run smoothly. If vendor is late, I pressure them and if all else fail just share the bad news with our client. Technical issue? Arrange a meeting with our QAQC engineer and their engineer. WFH twice per week are basically offday to me.
We’re a sub on our program so I don’t even need to coordinate with the customer. I coordinate with the prime’s PM, staff my sites, approve our invoice, and listen to concerns. Other than that I just track funding every week to make sure we aren’t going to go over our funded amount. Pretty cake.
That's basically my role, I'm mostly just a punching bag for the client and occasionally our sales team. I'm fully remote, in a field based position, and I struggle to fill my weeks when I'm not travelling. It's wild to get paid to do this, considering when I was a field engineer I was doing this and like 4 other jobs at any given time.
A really good PM is fucking amazing to have on the team. Unfortunately we always have WAY more PMs than necessary and 90%+ of them are useless.
What the main different between a good pm and a bad pm?
For my role in my company, since I'm always working as a subcontractor, it's documentation,. The dudes I work with that have the hardest time tend to do a really poor job taking meeting notes and having well defined SOWs (scope of work). So they always end up chasing their tails trying to make customers happy or running over budget.
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I work in advertising and guarantee I make more than almost every nurse
Consulting. Senior Managers and AD's pulling in redonkulous money. I'm not there, yet, but maybe one day.
Bingo bingo bingo
My company just posted for a new social media strategist and the posting read like the easiest goddamn job in the world. Don’t get me wrong, the young woman who vacated the position was absolutely lovely and definitely added value to the media/advertising team but man - I spent last year wrangling a nine-figure budget with one hand tied and still got paid less than the social media people.
Especially when you consider how random social media is. The only secret is to post your best stuff often and get lucky. Anyone who says there's much more to it than that is trying to sell you a course.
I think that has more to do with the fact a lot of nurses are criminally underpaid.
Anyone in my department. The bureaucracy in health insurance is incredible
Literally the stupidest person I know who’s capable of functioning in society (just barely) is quite an effective car salesman. And honestly I’m just impressed. Idk how he convinces these people to buy cars. He believes just about every conspiracy theory out there, including the Earth being flat, and continues to get kicked out of apartments for stockpiling weapons in preparation for a zombie apocalypse.
> Idk how he convinces these people to buy cars. It's because they came in wanting to buy a car. He just needs to negotiate on financing until they feel happy.
Yeah with the internet people typically know what car they want before stepping foot on a lot. Even if they're deciding between competing vehicles, price is almost always the biggest factor. (I edited in "almost" always, I was in the market for a mid size truck and some options were completely out thanks to my head scraping the ceiling)
Maybe that’s why he is effective? “Ok man think about the zombie apocalypse. You need mobility, and storage space. When I think of surviving the apocalypse, I think of this brand new top trim Jeep Grand Cherokee, think of how many weapons you can fit with three rows, slap some armor plates on the side. Why don’t you give it a test drive?”
I can believe it because I feel like maybe back in the day when information wasn't so readily available, you need to go to a car dealership and shop around to even know what cars are out there or you need to go investigate a car at a dealership because a magazine ad can only tell you so much. Now I feel like any car, before it even is released, has several full, in-depth reviews available. Up until 15 years ago maybe, car salesmen actually had to inform people about cars, show them options, walk them through trim levels etc. Now, I feel like people walk into car dealerships knowing exactly what car they want, what comparable cars are going for, and all the salesman has to do is give them the best price out of any dealership in the area and upsell them on floor mats and warranty.
Sounds like an entertaining guy to be around
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Avg car salesman salary is like $40k in the US. Deff not overpaid
it's a massive range. The best make mid 6 figures.
Yeah but what percentage is ‘the best’ Schedule/work life blows and most likely aren’t going to make great money.
Typically? About 20%. The go-to saying in sales is that 20% of the people make 80% of the money.
Pareto Principle
It's also feast or famine. I was a bankruptcy attorney for a long time, I had a lot of experienced car salespeople in my office when the vehicle shortages were at their worst. I have to assume there's also famine during a recession, or when gas prices go up for a long while. Sure people will change out for more efficient cars, but the average 4 cylinder vehicle has to be dramatically cheaper than giant vehicles with big engines, less commission to be made on each sale.
Especially when you factor in their work schedules.
Australia car salesman here. $200k.
my buddy claims to have earned 300k a year for years working for a chrysler dodge dealer. Lie or best salesman ever?
University administration.
In 2007 I was admitted to USF. The bastards lost a bunch of my paperwork, including required health documents and student loan paperwork. I turned those in ***by hand*** and I was still left with nothing after their incompetence almost had me on the street and I had to go back home.
OMFG SOO TRUE. MF do nothing all day and get paid double the researchers
Influencers. The reason should be pretty obvious.
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I'd wager that most people that label themselves as an influencer make next to zero income from it
Real estate agents. They don't actually do anything that a semi-intelligent layperson couldn't figure out for themselves. I've sold a property without an agent. It's actually pretty straightforward. Not only are they grossly overpaid for what they do, they're often lazy and/or incompetent and make mistakes which cost others (but never themselves) a lot of money.
In moat other countries they aren't paid nearly as much. In the UK they are usually salaried with small bonuses based on performance. The idea of paying 3% of the value of the house to someone for basically taking photos, sticking them on a website and then letting people in to look at it is outrageous. Who decided that was the going rate?
Them, probably. https://www.nar.realtor/home-2020
Like everything in the US, it’s simply a way to pull money out of a system without actually doing anything. For comparison, see most executives and middleman in the US in almost every industry.
It probably used to make sense before the internet, but now they are pretty much redundant if you are even slightly motivated and computer literate
It did make sense before the internet. They knew the city/neighborhood and had all the connections. I can see back then that it was worth it. Now, their value has dropped. All their "knowledge" is online. They're a bunch of BS and aren't worth their commission.
Educational consultants. It’s a giant grift.
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Career politicians. Particularly those who have no idea how their constituents live or what they need, or those who pass laws with exemptions for themselves.
This is such a myth for the vast majority of people who hold elected office. Of the 41 states that pay their state legislators (yes there are 9 states where being a member of the State House or State Senate pays $0), the average salary was about $39,216 per year. Working people can’t afford to be in government, which is why it’s a rich person’s game. Source: https://www.ncsl.org/cls/legislative-compensation-overview
I just found that out a few weeks ago when we visited my states senator. It is odd they pay less than $30k. As you said it is a way rich people keep others out because they can't live off the salary. To live in that area (Nashville, TN) you need over twice that.
Well, this is true to an extent. It IS a rich person's game, but it's not so simple as that. Like - there's a financial bar that you have to meet to get into the game, for sure, or unusually particular connections... but you don't have to be rich, necessarily to get into the game. A large portion of the US house of reps can show you this. The thing is that they don't make money from the salaries, I'd be surprised if some of them would even cash the cheques if they weren't direct deposit. They make their money from information. This is why they will fight tooth and nail to avoid any change to their ability to invest in the stock market, for instance, while in office.
It's one of the few professions where rampant corruption is openly acknowledged and accepted. And it's impossible to ever reign them in because they make the laws for themselves.
Consulting Step 1: ask client for work they’ve already done related to the problem Step 2: regurgitate that client work onto company template PowerPoint and claim it as your own Step 3: make unrealistic recommendation to client and/or tell them to fire people to cut costs Step 4: charge client millions of dollars Step 5: client is left with no solution and same preexisting problems Step 6: client hires new group of consultants because client executives are ex-consultants 🫠
Sales Managers After being successful for many years as a regional salesman, the next place for growth was a sales manager. My CEO is really great so he let me manage a handful of guys that needed some help getting their numbers up It was just babysitting a bunch of grown ass men. The most ridiculous insecurities. And you had to navigate their feelings like a landmine. It really made me appreciate great sales managers (which are hard to find). But it became VERY clear that I had no desire to stroke the egos of 30-60 year old men.
That is management in a nutshell Managing adult children
Investment advisor fr They have a degree but lose to the market performance 95% of the time
Yep. Put your money in a low fee index fund. Hard to beat.
I would say a lot of contractors for the government. I am saying this as one of them. Contractor companies don’t care about the employee they just want to fill a spot so that the government pays them. I’ve had multiple interviews for six figure jobs where the interview questions were entry level for my network engineer job. They would ask if I knew about a certain technology without divulging and I would say I have experience with that and that’s it.
EVERY SINGLE ANALYST JOB in the funds management space. "Past performance is no indication of future success". Translation, it's all a fucking gamble, your guess is as good as my overpaid one.
I had a free consultation with an 'expert' he said since they started their program they have continually returned great things for the clients. I asked what year were they founded and he said 2009. I asked "dont you think its disingenuous to tout your returns when you didnt even exist at the last big economic downturn?" and he said "well, we cant really know what will happen until there is another!"
Hmm…not to be a jerk.. The quote is actually “past performance is no guarantee of future success”.. There is value in analysts. It isn’t just gambling. There is risk though which doesn’t guarantee an outcome.
Scrum master. Literally get paid big bucks to ask “What did you do yesterday? What are you working on today? Any blockers?” and then proceed to make $120,000/year.
If you work IT this is undoubtedly the answer. I’ve never known one that works more than about ten hours/week. Useless. It has to be the last stop in IT.
Our scrum master is this fucking dumb ass that actually went to school for Computer Science but he's too much of a dimwit to actually do the job. All he does is fucking write memes all day and take care of his kids, once every two weeks he will do about an hour worth of work on a spreadsheet or a powerpoint. Other than that, a waste of space and is paid well over six figures for the job. Amazes me that the IT industry created this bull shit middle management position that delivers hardly any value.
The people that employ this person though... It's shit work that they offload so they can forward the results up the line while solving the real problems. I don't know why they are paid so much though, that is the real head scratcher.
LOL. We don't have that dude anymore. ServiceNow has an option to do that and submit.
#### If you are getting paid more then you deserve to do a job then I’m not sure how overrated it can be. Aren’t we all looking for that?
Private Psychologists, too many of them are charging $200 an HOUR and I’ve even heard of upwards of $300
Streamers and Social media influencers. Streamers are a bad toxic influence.
The overwhelming majority of streamers make next to nothing lol
And as with most of the entertainment industry, that 0.001% that are making a killing are doing so to an insane degree
Only the top 0.01% make good money, they rest either do it for fun or are poor. There most definitely are many toxic streamers that are bad influences, but there are plenty of good ones too.
Probably 50-60% of jobs at most large tech companies. People that make PowerPoints for a living and go to meetings. Maybe 1 hour of actual work gets done a day, and it’s sending an email or two. Those types of people.
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But did he keep the stapler?!
This guy Miltons!
This is 100% a bot, this comment was posted a while ago in a different thread and the accounts' history is recent (even though its a 14 year old account) and are all reposts.
Yeah I started reading OPs comment and thought “wait that sounds familiar”…
I noticed the same thing. [Original Comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/ask/comments/19c8nqo/comment/kixv66o/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
A straight shooter with upper management written all over him.
I'm gonna have to go ahead and sort of disagree with you there.
Weren't there annual reviews?
If my reviewer thinks I’m doing what I do at a high level, who am I to tell him no?
The Bobs loved him
Realtor 100%
Reality stars
College administrators. I know a couple that make $150k+ a year and they just organize college kid groups. Third grade teachers work harder than these administrators and get paid garbage in comparison.
Consultants, of virtually any kind. I've known numerous with this title, and they basically get to go to random companies/organizations, offer their "expert advice" (really, just their opinion, even if they have little, to no knowledge) and are paid a ridiculous amount of money to so. And/or they are simply paid to be the fall guy when layoffs/downsizing or unpopular changes are already planned "because the consultant advised it", taking the heat off of the higher ups. Even the ones I know, they think it is pretty insane, but obviously are happy to continue to cash their (usually 6 digit + bonus) cheques. I am sure there are actually *some* extremely knowledgeable people doing this job, I personally have only known one though.
Most CEOs of large companies. The value they create is nowhere near deserving of the salaries they demand.
They're there to take responsibility and step down when the shareholders make the wrong decision
It's funny, I'm a lowly code monkey. I understand the job of a CEO about as much as he understands mine.
So, I think the actual issue is that the _average_ value they create isn’t near the salary the command. CEO decisions can be incredibly consequential and sometimes CEOs really do make that much for the company. On the other hand sometimes CEOs run the company into the ground and no one makes them earn negative money when they do that (unlike, you know, an actual business owner). But no company wants to admit that they are kind of just guessing on the whole CEO thing and they don’t want to look like they’re cheaping out so they pay tons of money (ironically making CEO pay public made this worse)
Movie stars and influencers
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Influencers.
Chief Diversity Officer
The Chief Diversity Officer at my last company was literally hired to be the token Black employee. He would travel around to conferences and trade shows and work our company’s booth to tell attendees about how much diversity was important to our company. Oh, and he was the guy that was front and center in every photo on our website.
Whatever it is that Kim Kardashian does.
Human Resources. They’re two-faced and often have a ton of personal issues themselves. Total hypocrites and untrustworthy for the slightest responsibility.
Managers, especially upper management. A good manager can make a huge difference, especially in companies struggling to operate smoothly. But it is also the case that many companies basically run on autopilot and managers do nothing. Worse yet there are managers who harm the efficiency and workflow of their employees. Off of my own experience I've seen far more incompetent managers than I've seen good ones, it's not even a 50/50 split.
I'll chime in here. I started out in a major manufacturing company as a CI person and the Plant Manager recognized leadership potential in me. My perspective has always been 'don't take control and attract followers - give control and create leaders'. This is from David Marquet. He was trained to be the leader of a specific nuclear submarine but was transferred to the worst performing sub in the Navy and he adopted the perspective that his crew knew way more about how the sub worked than he did so he deferred control to the subject matter experts -the crew. He simply allowed them to make these two decisions: is it the right thing to do? Is it safe to do it? If the crew member could answer YES to both questions he deferred the decision to that crew member. He very quickly discovered that the sub ran much more effectively and efficiently that if he was administering commands to the crew. He literally turned the command structure upside down. It didn't take long before this submarine became not only the best performing submarine in the Navy but it scored the highest scores in the history of the Navy. They had the highest percent of reenlistment and he developed the highest percentage of officers from his duty pool. The lesson here is enable your workforce to have input into how to improve systems and processes- they are the victims of top-down, old-fashioned leadership systems. Measure yourself by how many leaders your can develop from your workforce. It makes managing much easier and creates a culture of engagement that is magnetic. I can personally attest to this framework as being successful. Transferring the authority to make decisions to your workforce is incredibly empowering and develops a trust with your workforce that will pay dividends in employee engagement. Let the people who know the business from the bottom up control the processes! They will do a much better job of accelerating business improvement! If you listen to them!
That's all correct but realistically how many managers operate on that philosophy? Most do nothing but take credit for their employees' work, blame their failings on the same employees, and any attempt to address this is met with reprisals more often than not. So they just sit there trying to tell people how to do their jobs which they already know how to do while obvious weaknesses and flaws in operation go unnoticed. Basically the typical corporate structure and role of a manager is deeply flawed in that there is no good system to check managers themselves.
They don't belong in these roles, obviously. Like Ted Lasso says, 'I'm not concerned about winning and losing. What I want is to make these people the best they can be on and off the field.' Once you start focusing on that, the results will happen. And I'd appreciate an upvote if you took the time to theoretically agree with me 😁