r/FinalRoundAI

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!

Honestly, it was a joke. There were tables everywhere, probably around 18 to 25 organizations, and I don't think a single one of them was hiring.

Most of them were promoting job-search programs, unpaid volunteer stuff, and a few certification classes. I found one booth for a tech support company, so I gave them my resume. They took it and set it aside without even looking at it. I asked them if they had any openings, and they said they weren't hiring right now.

I asked the person who told me about the career fair how many people had shown up, and they said around 1,800 throughout the day.

A completely pointless waste of time, and my afternoon was wasted for nothing!

I started noticing the warning signs around March - a small hiring freeze, travel approvals becoming weird, my manager dodging questions about the date of the next review, and things like that. People kept telling me I was making too big a deal out of it. Maybe I was, but I told myself that if I turned out to be right, I didn't want to be building the parachute after I'd already been pushed out.

So for 4 months, my side project was basically looking for a job: I updated my resume for the first time in 7 years. I rewrote my LinkedIn so it wouldn't look abandoned. I started reconnecting with old colleagues before I needed a favor from them, mostly just commenting on their posts or congratulating them on new roles. I started taking casual calls in July, and I managed to save up nearly 5 months' worth of basic expenses.

This morning: "your position has been affected."

And honestly, the strangest part was how calm I felt. I read it once, read it again, closed the laptop, and made coffee, because I already have three interviews in advanced stages lined up over the next few days, and another recruiter waiting for a few time slots from me.

I'm not sharing this as some kind of flex. More as a reminder that work can disappear almost without any warning. If you start noticing the small signs, don't wait for the official email before you start moving.

Take care of yourselves.

This is a good reminder that preparation makes a difference. Interviews are the same idea, you need to be ready before the opportunity appears, not keep trying to catch up afterward. I recently saw a post with the most asked interview questions, and I thought it might benefit some of you too.

My lead won't stop micromanaging at all, and after 6 meetings with the director and the VP where I told them they needed to get her to back off a bit, literally nothing has improved. I hit my limit a few weeks ago and gave notice. My last day will be January 12. They asked me what would make me stay. I told them, again, to get the lead to stop hovering over me, and they basically said they tried but she doesn't listen.

And they really did try. I was on calls where they directly told her to stop breathing down everyone's neck. She just... Kept going like normal. No write-up, no consequences, no change whatsoever.

Now they want me to train 4 people on different parts of my job. Normally I'm the person who leaves notes, does walkthroughs, helps in any way I can, all of that. But I wasn't even trained properly myself. I'm still figuring out parts of this role, so I don't know how I'm supposed to teach someone else the "right" way to do things when half the work was thrown at me as I was on my way out.

And this is exactly why people say nobody wants to work. You've got this woman in her early 60s micromanaging the entire department, refusing to change anything, but because she's been there 24 years and is friends with upper management, everyone acts like their hands are tied. Complete nonsense. And on top of that, she messes things up all the time. Like, almost every shift there has to be something she messed up or entered incorrectly, and somehow it becomes my problem to clean up after her. I'm checked out at this point and I don't care anymore.

What would you do? I still have 96 hours of PTO left. Part of me wants to just take them and be done, but that would leave them in a mess as they head into the first part of next month, and I'm not sure I'd feel good about that afterward. WWYD?

My lead won't stop micromanaging at all, and after 6 meetings with the director and the VP where I told them they needed to get her to back off a bit, literally nothing has improved. I hit my limit a few weeks ago and gave notice. My last day will be January 12. They asked me what would make me stay. I told them, again, to get the lead to stop hovering over me, and they basically said they tried but she doesn't listen.

And they really did try. I was on calls where they directly told her to stop breathing down everyone's neck. She just... Kept going like normal. No write-up, no consequences, no change whatsoever.

Now they want me to train 4 people on different parts of my job. Normally I'm the person who leaves notes, does walkthroughs, helps in any way I can, all of that. But I wasn't even trained properly myself. I'm still figuring out parts of this role, so I don't know how I'm supposed to teach someone else the "right" way to do things when half the work was thrown at me as I was on my way out.

And this is exactly why people say nobody wants to work. You've got this woman in her early 60s micromanaging the entire department, refusing to change anything, but because she's been there 24 years and is friends with upper management, everyone acts like their hands are tied. Complete nonsense. And on top of that, she messes things up all the time. Like, almost every shift there has to be something she messed up or entered incorrectly, and somehow it becomes my problem to clean up after her. I'm checked out at this point and I don't care anymore.

What would you do? I still have 96 hours of PTO left. Part of me wants to just take them and be done, but that would leave them in a mess as they head into the first part of next month, and I'm not sure I'd feel good about that afterward. WWYD?

I hope this helps someone here grab this opportunity. The role is a travel "specialist" at Velocity Black. Capital One acquired the company in 2024. Your best chance is probably to apply directly through Velocity Black's site, although I'm pretty sure the job is also listed on Capital One's careers page and possibly LinkedIn too.

The base salary is $76k USD, but after 4 years I had reached $94k. With bonuses, I made $112k last year. The benefits were also very good. They covered $610 a month of my health insurance, and I paid $30 a month out of pocket, including dental and vision.

The company has about 145 people, and there are 9 people on the travel team. The culture was honestly one of the best parts of the job. No work after hours, people are professional but also friendly, and meetings only happen when they're necessary, usually 1 or 2 per week. The manager of the 9-person travel team is excellent and didn't constantly monitor people.

I learned the whole job while working there without any travel background, but since I started there, the bar has gotten higher, and now you'll probably need some experience in travel, hospitality, concierge, or luxury customer service. The clients are wealthy to ultra-wealthy, and there are also a few well-known names in there. In general, you're part researcher and part customer service rep. Clients send messages asking for travel-related recommendations like hotels, restaurants, flights, villas, private transfers, yachts, and so on. Then you do research, compare options, and send them a polished message with details/photos/availability and anything else that helps. After you've been doing it for a while, you won't be starting from scratch every time because you'll remember the good properties and vendors in different cities.

They usually give you 3-5 hours per task, so there can be a lot of downtime. In the quiet months, I might have around 1-3 hours of actual work during a 9-hour shift. In the busy season, which is about 5 months split between summer and winter, I was usually working the full shift and sometimes dealing with stressful situations. The reason they give that much time is that the recommendations have to be genuinely good for the type of clientele they serve.

The only things you need are the MacBook and iPhone they send you. On the phone, I usually made 1-6 calls a day, most of them around 2-25 minutes per call. Not usually with clients, more with hotels, tour operators, restaurants, transportation companies, and similar vendors.

Unfortunately, they only hire people based in the US, and you can't relocate outside the US while working there. Your chances will probably be better if you're on the West Coast, in Alaska, or in Hawaii because that's the shift/time zone they're replacing. They want someone quickly because the upcoming rush is close.

I genuinely loved my team, and I hope this helps them find someone good. It's a solid job; I'm just moving on to another opportunity.

Until a few days ago, I (32f) was working as a marketing coordinator for a real estate agent. I'll call him Mark (41m). He's fairly successful at his job, and recently he hired a business coach who sends him goals every two weeks. Some things are normal, like: "Read this report about seasonal shifts in housing demand," but then he'll come out with nonsense like: "Coach says I have to take Monday off because burnout starts in the chair." Annoying, but mostly harmless.

Then the latest assignment Mark got threw me off. A few weeks ago, he said the coach wanted him to "build management instincts." I asked him what that meant in practical terms, so he gave me a new task: post fake job ads. Basically one ad for every role in the office. Mark said he wanted 40+ applications every day, and he would interview "people who looked promising."

To be clear: we don't have any open roles. Not one. Mark's coach is somehow convinced that interviewing actual people for jobs that don't exist will make Mark better at running a team. If anyone understands that logic, please explain it to me, because I still don't get it.

I asked Mark if he was joking or what, and told him that people are struggling to find work right now. His response was basically: Coach says strong leaders are always looking for talent. First reason I might be in the wrong: I felt like I couldn't refuse a direct order without getting fired, so I made the listings, but I removed the salary details in the hope that applicants would notice something was off.

The applications started flooding in, and Mark did interviews with a lot of people. I could hear parts of the calls and meetings, and they were being treated like normal interviews. Not once did he say we weren't hiring. One of the applicants was a woman around my age who spoke to me while she was waiting. She told me she had worked an extra rideshare shift the night before and paid a neighbor to watch her son so she could make the appointment. Meaning this fake "opportunity" literally cost her money. Another applicant was an older man, and when I walked him out, he quietly asked me: "Do you think someone my age still has a chance here?" I was about to cry, but I was also so angry. I told him: "There is no job. I'm sorry they weren't honest with you. They have no problem wasting people's time." He looked at me for a second and left.

Apparently someone heard me, because I got pulled into Mark's office and he started yelling. He was completely fine with lying to applicants, but lost it because I told one of them the truth. He said he could fire me for that, so I told him: "Do it, because I'm not going to help you give people false hope." Mark kept insisting that the roles could exist someday, and that the interviews were helping him become a better manager, so it wasn't wrong.

Second reason I might be in the wrong: I quit on the spot, without giving notice. I have another job, so I won't be totally screwed, but Mark told me not to expect a reference from him. I've always given notice before leaving a job, so I feel guilty in that sense. But I know that if I had stayed, he would have made me keep bringing him resumes until my very last hour there.