u/OkCarrot6914

Hi everyone,

I'm from Portugal and this is a question that's been on my mind for a while. Here, someone earning more than $120k a year (around €105,000) is considered very rare, even for people with strong experience or specialized skills. I've always seen that salary as something you only see in upper management, tech, finance, or in a very specific niche.

But then I find a lot of posts here where people in America talk about salaries above $120k as if they're not that unusual, or even as if they're the natural goal in certain fields. I'm not saying I don't believe it - I'm just trying to understand the realistic picture: how common is it really?

I've spent time in the USA before, so I know Reddit can be a mix of real numbers, flexing, and maybe job ads that make everything look better than reality. But honestly, I'd like to hear people's opinions. In Portugal, if you have a degree from a strong university, a master's, and a good additional profile, that might get you something like $38,000 a year at a Big Four firm.

What percentage of workers in America earn more than $120k a year?

Thanks a lot!

A lot of times when someone says, "I make $120k from this job!" and you look at the details, you find they're usually in the top 2% of that field, sacrificing their nights/weekends/life for work, and they still needed the right timing or connections to get there.

I don't want to spend 5 years training for something, only to find out in the end that the average person in that career is very far from that income.

What careers are out there that can relatively consistently get someone to $120k, if you're good and stick with it for a while? I'm open to pretty much anything right now: trades, energy work, tech, healthcare, finance, whatever.

I felt like it was a big red flag when it happened the first time. That place sent me an offer in the end, but I turned it down because there were a lot of other weird things happening too.

Then in an interview a few days ago, the hiring manager asked me if I still live with my parents. After that, she asked me if I was interviewing at other places, and if I had turned down any offers. I told her yes. She asked me why. I tried to keep my answer general and not too specific, but she kept pressing me on it.

Are they allowed to ask things like this?? It makes me feel uncomfortable every time, but I'm a new grad and this is my first serious job search, so I don't really know what's normal and what isn't.

I feel terribly embarrassed, terrified, and honestly, I feel like I've been broken right now. I'm still sitting in my car in front of the office because I don't know how to go home and look my family in the face.

I'm trying to calm myself down enough to go home and pretend everything is fine tonight, but I have no idea what I'm supposed to do next. My mind is completely scrambled.

If you've been through something like this, please share what you did and how you dealt with it.

When I accepted this job a little over two and a half years ago, it was advertised as a hybrid position: 3 days a week working from home. And honestly, that was one of the main reasons I accepted.

After about 14 months, my manager started making comments that she "wished" she hadn't agreed to my role being hybrid, because I was the only person on the team with that arrangement. She said I should be in the office more for the "team dynamic," and that it was making managing everyone else awkward because they were all asking why they couldn't work from home too.

I continued working from home 3 times a week because, tbh, I didn't see that as my problem to solve.

Shortly after that, my manager told everyone she was moving somewhere about an hour and a half away, but would be staying in the same role. She said she would work from home 5 days a week and only come into the office when needed, and that everyone on the team would get two work-from-home days each week.

My coworkers were happy, of course, because they got remote days they hadn't had before. I was the only one who lost a day. She announced it in a team meeting, so I felt like I was put in an awkward position and didn't say anything. She also didn't speak to me privately beforehand or acknowledge that this was changing the agreement I was hired under, so it felt like it came out of nowhere with no warning.

I've been working and going into the office 3 days a week for a few months now, but I have a performance review coming up and I want to bring it up. I want to get my third WFH day back.

Am I overstepping? How would you bring it up without seeming petty? And is the review the right time for me to talk about this? I know I probably should have said something when it happened, but I'm a people pleaser and honestly froze because I wasn't expecting it.

Is this all there is? Wake up, work, get worn down, and repeat. Ever since I got into this new line of work 3 years ago, I feel like my real life ended and I'm just maintaining a functioning body. No time, no space, no energy, no excitement, and no real feeling that I'm alive. Forcing myself to show up and keep going again and again has pushed me into a level of depression I didn't even know existed. I feel like I'm standing on the edge, waiting for anything to shove me so I fall.

The messed-up part is that almost everyone around me keeps telling me to keep going and endure it. That this is called stability. And that this misery is what maturity and responsibility look like. Maybe misery isn't just a side effect of the whole thing. Maybe it's an essential part of it.

I guess I'm asking how people deal with the empty, repetitive grind of work without completely falling apart. Or maybe I just needed to say this somewhere. I don't know anymore. I feel like this office has emptied me out from the inside.