http://blogs.wsj.com/atwork/2014/08/13/the-10-best-paying-jobs-of-2014/
“Finance: make more than a surgeon quickly with none of that pesky student loan debt or wasted years in school…”
You couldn’t pay me enough to go law school or medical school these days.
Law school is likely to NPV negative for most law school grads, unless you go to a non-hacksaw school and get a job with a non-hacksaw firm.
If I could go back to freshman year, I’d try to hack a business major along with a science, either engineering or geology.
I know that air traffic controller is an important job with safety and whatnot but I didn’t know that it was six figure salary.
also supposedly the highest suicide rate
Where is plumber? 
5 years from now there will be 3 new-grad petroleum engineers for every petroleum engineer job.
I think many dentists make more than that, in fact all of the numbers look pretty low. A good friend became a dentist and bought a practice right out of school – he now makes $300K a year, albeit with a multi-million dollar debt load. Still not as good as finance but that’s not bad.
^ I look at the prices my dentist and oral surgeon charge and I’m like WTF. I had my wisdom teeth out early last year and the bill for the ~90 minute outpatient procedure was like $1300. Thanks to dental insurance I only had to pay 20% but still. Jeez. I could get used to that kind of income.
I wouldn’t be a dentist for $300k. Its like being a gyno, most of the time people have really f’ed up issues and that’s why they are there. Spending 8 hours a day poking stinky mouths and cleaning out teeth rot is not my cup of tea. Yup, I can honestly say if you offered me $300k tomorrow and instant knowledge of all dentistry I’m exchange for being a full time dentist, I would decline.
I think there is a range of dentists. What you say is true, but you can also basically just have a teeth cleaning business twice a year and collect $250 per patient annually for basically doing nothing. Every time I go to the dentist there is some cute young woman who probably makes $50-60K a year max who uses the scrapy metal thing (nobody likes that), flosses my teeth, etc. and then the dentist comes over and is like “Yep, you’re good to go.”
It’s an annuity business that is way over priced for what it is. I understand people should get paid for specialized skills but there is nothing specialized about the majority of income dentists make. It’s a commodity service. Most doctors also fall into this category.
Agreed; I wish I was in on that racket. Especially since the oral surgeon only actually worked on me for about 10 of those 90 minutes.
(http://blogs.wsj.com/atwork/2014/08/13/the-10-best-paying-jobs-of-2014/[/quote)]
This study is incomplete, It does not take into account the tradeoff between jobs in many aspects.
For example, surgeons have their own clinics and so they pay rent, buy very expensive machinery, staff cost, electricty/water/municiplity charges, and other misc costs. Also, surgoen do not get bonuses, have to pay their own child education, have to pay their own insurance premuims, add ot that the difference between what a young surgeon and a seasoned one gets.
Most investment jobs at managerial levels will cover the cost of kids education, medical insurance, there’s no rent or expensive machinery cost and/or other miscelanoius expenses involved, plus there’s a good bonus at year end.
I have a couple that I specifically request that are hot and nice after I got one that was just awful. It’s an unpleasant enough experience, at least let me chat with a hot chick.
Living in Texas I’ve heard that if you cross the border into Mexico, there are many US style dentists that do a good job and charge reasonable cash prices, like $40 for a filling or something. Not a bad deal if you live close and don’t have insurance.
For most countries, being a dentist is not a prestigious or well paying job at all, similar to what you are describing in Mexico.
This list doesnt make much sense to me. Just looking at my own firm, I would estimate at least a third of the employees here make multiples more than the top paying job on the list. And that incorporates a broad range of job functions here, including PMs/analysts, attorneys, CFO/CCO/CAO etc.
The one thing I noticed is that those bars correspond to average annual salary. So let’s say that your average sell-side or buy-side employee annual salary is between $100-150K. Naturally they would be on the lower end of that chart, but if you include total comp (cash and non-cash bonuses) then the all-in could be a lot more. I think studies like the one above don’t consider this stuff.
After air traffic controllers, dentists also have one of the highest suicide rates of varied professions. I believe some people think it might have to do with all that exposure to mercury vapors when putting in silver fillings.
I don’t think there has been mercury in fillings for decades.
Over here they are the new ting. I am glad I dont have to save monies for a gold tooth