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Do anesthesiologists really earn high salaries?
I've been looking online for well-paying jobs, and anesthesiologists often come up as a popular option. Do they truly earn high salaries? I'm just a teenager trying to decide on a future career. Could you suggest some other jobs that also offer very high incomes? I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Jobadvisor
Yes, anesthesiologists genuinely earn some of the highest salaries of any profession. Here's a breakdown:
Anesthesiologist Salaries
As of May 2026, the average annual salary for anesthesiologists in the United States is around $563,470, with most earning between $500,000 and $625,000. On top of their base pay, about 57% of anesthesiologists also receive bonuses, averaging around $35,000.
The pay varies quite a bit depending on where you work and what you specialize in. Cardiac anesthesiologists and regional/acute pain anesthesiologists tend to be among the highest earners within the field.
The catch: it takes a long time to get there
The salary is real, but so is the path. Becoming an anesthesiologist typically requires:
- 4 years of undergraduate college
- 4 years of medical school
- 4 years of residency (during which a resident earns around $68,000 in their first year)
- Often an additional fellowship for subspecialties
So you're looking at 12+ years of training after high school before you're fully practicing.
Other very high-paying careers to consider
Since you're still a teenager, it's great to explore broadly. Here are some fields that consistently rank among the highest-paying:
- Surgeons & other medical specialists — surgeons and specialists can earn $239,200+ annually, with many earning far more in private practice.
- Psychiatrist — average salary around $353,522 per year, and demand is growing strongly due to the mental health care shortage.
- AI/Machine Learning Engineer — AI-related roles like ML engineers, NLP specialists, and LLM developers have become top earners, often with six-figure starting salaries and far shorter training paths than medicine.
- Corporate Lawyer — high earnings, especially in finance or tech law, typically requiring 7 years of education.
- Petroleum/Software Engineer — strong salaries with more accessible education timelines (4-year degrees).
The bigger picture for you as a teenager
The highest-paying careers share a common thread: they reward skill scarcity, high responsibility, strong market demand, and advanced education or licensing. That said, salary alone isn't a great compass — the best careers tend to combine decent pay with genuine interest and fit for your personality. Someone who loves people and biology might thrive as an anesthesiologist; someone who loves logic and building things might be happier (and equally well-paid) in software or engineering.
You have plenty of time to explore — don't rush the decision!
What will “stable careers” even look like in 15 years?
It feels like every generation had a clearer idea of what “stable work” looked like. Now technology is changing so fast that a lot of people genuinely don’t know what careers will still feel secure 10-15 years from now. Are we heading toward a future where stable careers become much rarer?.
Jobadvisor
This is one of the more genuinely open questions of our time, and I think it deserves an honest answer rather than reassuring platitudes.
The honest picture: stability is shifting form, not disappearing
Previous generations had institutional stability — you attached yourself to an organization and rode it. That model has been eroding since the 80s and AI is accelerating it. But stability itself doesn't vanish; it just migrates to different things.
What's likely to remain durable
- Physical-world skilled trades — electricians, plumbers, HVAC, dental hygienists. Hard to offshore, hard to fully automate, structurally undervalued right now (which means opportunity).
- High-trust human roles — therapists, certain kinds of nurses and care workers, judges, clergy. People don't want these delivered by a machine even when a machine could technically do them.
- Complex judgment under uncertainty — surgeons, civil engineers, architects. AI assists but legal/ethical liability keeps humans central.
- Infrastructure and logistics — the physical movement of things needs coordination that's messier than it looks.
What's genuinely threatened
Mid-tier knowledge work is the real casualty zone: paralegals, junior analysts, certain accounting roles, entry-level programming, radiologists reading routine scans. These aren't gone, but the headcount shrinks and the entry ramp gets steeper.
The bigger shift nobody says plainly
The concept of a career — one domain, deepening expertise, 30 years — may itself be the thing that's unstable. What's emerging looks more like:
- A portfolio of skills that gets refreshed every 5–7 years
- Domain expertise + AI fluency as the durable combination (knowing what to ask and whether the answer is right)
- Stability coming from reputation and relationships rather than from a credential or an employer
The uncomfortable truth
No one actually knows with confidence what 2040 looks like. Anyone who tells you with certainty is selling something. The honest frame is: adaptability is the new stability — which is less comforting but more accurate. The people who weather this best will probably be those who treat their skills as a living portfolio rather than a fixed credential, stay close to physical reality or high-trust human need, and don't mistake a quiet period in their industry for permanent safety.
What field are you thinking about, specifically? The answer gets more useful when it's concrete.
Wish I knew how to spot toxic workplace signs earlier. Sharing what I've learned in my late 30s for anyone newer to work life. Have you experienced this ?
In college I genuinely thought everyone was just... nice. Professors were kind, classmates were collaborative, group projects had drama but it was small. Then I started working and realized most of what actually matters at a job no one taught me. Office politics, reading people, knowing when something is off vs when you're just tired. Nobody handed me a manual for any of it.
I'm 37 now and I've worked at 4 different companies. Two were genuinely good. One was bad. One almost broke me before I figured out it wasn't me, it was the place. Took me way too long to clock it. Writing this for anyone in their first few years of working life because I wish someone had told me earlier.
The subtle signs I missed for too long
The loud stuff is easy to spot. Screaming bosses, obvious bullying, blatant favoritism. The quiet stuff is what gets you, and most toxic workplaces are quiet.
Some of what I now watch for:
You constantly feel like you're walking on eggshells but can't explain why
Feedback is vague, contradictory, or always sugar-coated criticism with no real path to improve
You're given responsibility but no actual authority to make decisions
People leave in waves. New hires don't last past 3 months
Vacation and sick days are technically allowed but quietly discouraged
Your boss bad mouths other coworkers to you (they're doing the same about you)
You're left out of decisions that directly affect your work, then blamed for not being proactive
Goalposts keep moving. What was good last month is somehow not good enough now
You start dreading Sundays for no specific reason
The biggest tell honestly: you start wondering if you're the problem. That self doubt is the symptom, not the diagnosis. Healthy workplaces don't make you question your competence on a daily basis.
What I do now
Document everything in writing. If something important gets decided verbally, send a follow up email "just confirming what we discussed." Save copies of your work outside the company drive. CC your boss when someone is dragging their feet on something your job depends on. Sounds paranoid until you need it.
Also, I stopped trying to win against toxic people. You can't. They've been doing this longer than you. The only winning move is to read the room, protect yourself, and have an exit plan.
Books and resources that helped me actually learn this stuff
I read a lot to figure this out because nobody around me was teaching it. Some of what stuck:
The No Asshole Rule by Robert Sutton: the original framework that made me realize toxic isn't just a vibe, it's a measurable pattern with real costs
Crucial Conversations — how to actually push back without blowing up your career
Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss: negotiation tactics that translate weirdly well to dealing with difficult bosses
Communication Strategies for Managers by Kim Nicol on Maven: live cohort course taught by an exec coach. Heavy on tough conversations, feedback, and being direct without being a jerk. It's $875 so definitely a budget commitment, but if you're dealing with a real situation right now and books aren't enough, having a live instructor and a peer cohort to practice with is different from any video course
BeFreed: audio learning app I use on commutes. You answer a few questions about your goals and current situation, and it builds a personalized learning plan from books, expert talks, and research. I had it build me one on workplace psychology and reading people. Episodes are short by default but you can deep dive into specific topics if something hits. The coaching part gives feedback when I try to apply something to a real situation at work, which is what made it actually stick vs just consuming more content.
An actual therapist AND career coach: putting this here because self-help has a ceiling. My rule of thumb: if you've been trying the books, apps, and reflection stuff for about a month and your mental health still isn't improving, or things are actively getting worse, stop trying to DIY it. Yes, sessions are expensive. But a few hours with someone trained to help you process this stuff is genuinely worth the investment when you're in the thick of it. A good therapist helps you stop spiraling. A good career coach helps you figure out whether to fight, fix, or leave. Both give you coping tools you'll use for the rest of your career
The thing nobody tells you in school: knowledge is genuinely the best weapon here. Toxic people rely on you not knowing what's normal. Once you've read enough about how healthy teams operate, how good managers communicate, what gaslighting actually looks like, you start spotting the patterns way earlier. It's lowkey a superpower.
What signs did you wish you'd caught earlier? Curious what people in different industries have learned the hard way.
Jobadvisor
This is a well-written, relatable post — clearly personal and genuinely useful. A few things worth flagging:
What works well
- The "subtle signs" list is the strongest part. Specific, recognizable, and avoids the vague "bad vibes" language most posts like this fall into.
- The framing that self-doubt is a symptom of the environment rather than a personal failing is a real insight, not a platitude.
- The documentation advice is practical and concrete.
Where it reads as promotional The resources section is where it shifts. Most of it reads naturally — the books are classics, the therapist/coach rec is balanced — but the BeFreed paragraph stands out. It's noticeably longer and more detailed than the others, reads like ad copy ("episodes are short by default but you can deep dive"), and the specificity ("it builds a personalized learning plan from books, expert talks, and research") feels like a feature list rather than a personal endorsement. If this is a genuine rec, trimming it to 2 sentences would make it feel more credible. If someone asked you to include it, that's worth reflecting on — it slightly undermines the authenticity of the whole post.
The Maven course disclosure at $875 is actually handled well — naming the price upfront reads as honest, not salesy.
Minor things
- "Lowkey a superpower" is a tonal shift at the end — feels younger than the rest of the voice.
- The closing question is good and will drive comments.
Overall: strong post that would land better with the BeFreed section cut in half.
Should I take a 25% pay cut to escape a legacy tech stack before I become professionally obsolete?
I am currently trapped in a golden cage and it is honestly starting to feel like a slow career suicide. I make a ridiculous amount of money for my age but I spend forty hours a week babysitting a proprietary system that was built before I even had a drivers license. It is all spaghetti code and ancient frameworks that literally no other company in the world uses anymore. I am basically a glorified janitor for a database that should have been decommissioned a decade ago. I havent touched a modern stack in years and every day I feel a part of my brain just turning to mush because I am not solving any real problems .
I recently went on a few interviews just to see what the market looks like and the reality check was brutal. I got a solid offer from a startup doing actualy cool stuff with cloud architecture and scaling but the salary is a massive step down. They are offering me a lead role but the budget is what a junior dev makes at my current firm. When I told my manager I was considering leaving she didnt even blink and offered me another retention bonus and a twenty percent raise on the spot. She knows I am the only one who understands the logic behind our billing engine and she is terrified of me quitting.
It feels like a bribe to keep me from ever being relevant again. If I stay here another three years I will be in my mid-thirties and my resume will look like a museum exhibit. I am terrified of becoming the woman who can only find work at one specific company because my skills have zero portability. My family thinks I am an absolute idiot for even thinking about a pay cut in this economy but they are not the ones staring at a terminal that still runs on hardware from the nineties. I am essentially being paid to let my career rot in a basement while the rest of the world moves on to things I barely understand .
The startup wants an answer by Friday and I am just sitting here looking at a legacy error log that has been blinking since 2014. I feel like a mechanic who is paid six figures to only fix horse carriages while everyone else is learning how to build electric cars. If I leave now I might struggle to pay for my apartment for a while but if I stay I am pretty sure I am just delaying the inevitable collapse of my value as an engineer. I think I am going to sign the offer and just deal with the ramen for a year. I am just done being a safety net for a dying system .
Jobadvisor
That "horse carriage vs. electric car" analogy is spot on, and it perfectly captures the anxiety of watching the industry sprint ahead while you’re stuck maintaining a digital museum.
First, let's validate your instinct: You are not crazy. Your family is looking at the numbers on a spreadsheet, but you are looking at your career's expiration date. In tech, skill stagnation is a compounding debt. The longer you stay, the harder and more painful it becomes to pivot. You have recognized the "golden cage" for what it is, and wanting out is a sign of a healthy, ambitious engineering mindset.
That said, dropping 25% (especially when your current gig is offering an additional 20% bump) is a massive financial hit that deserves a cold, calculated look before you sign by Friday.
Here is a framework to help you decide if this specific startup is the right life raft, or if you should use your leverage to find a better one.
1. The Startup Reality Check
Startups love hiring overqualified engineers into "Lead" roles because they get senior architecture brainpower at junior-dev prices. Before you accept the ramen lifestyle, ask yourself:
Is the financial strain survivable? You mentioned struggling to pay for your apartment. A 25% cut is one thing; missing rent or living in high-stress financial survival mode is another. Stress eats away at your capacity to learn.
Is the equity real? If they are underpaying you on salary, are they making up for it with a significant equity stake? If it’s just standard options in an unproven company, you are taking on 100% of the risk for 0% guaranteed reward.
Is it a learning environment or an execution environment? As a "Lead" at a startup, will you actually have time to learn the modern stack, or will you be under water trying to ship features 80 hours a week using tools you're still googling?
2. You Hold All the Cards at Your Current Job
Your manager didn't even blink before tossing a 20% raise and a retention bonus at you. That means you have immense leverage. Instead of just taking the money and letting your brain turn to mush, have you considered using that leverage as a weapon?
Before you walk, you could pitch a counter-ultimatum to your current boss:
"I want to stay and help keep the billing engine alive, but my career is stagnating. I will accept the retention bonus under one condition: 50% of my time must be allocated to modernizing this infrastructure (e.g., migrating it to AWS/GCP, containerizing components), or I need to be split-allocated to a team using a modern stack. If we don't start rebuilding this system, it will eventually collapse anyway."
If they refuse, you know for certain it's time to run. If they accept, you get the high salary and the resume-building modernization experience.
3. The "Third Option" (The Market is Bigger Than Two Companies)
You went on a few interviews and got one offer. That proves you are hirable, even with a legacy resume! It means recruiters see your core engineering logic and value it.
If the startup's salary is insultingly low, remember that this choice isn't binary. You don't have to choose between the Golden Cage and the Ramen Startup. There is a massive middle ground: established tech companies, mid-sized enterprises, and modern consulting firms that pay great mid-to-senior salaries and use modern cloud stacks.
If You Decide to Sign the Startup Offer...
If your gut tells you that you just need to rip the band-aid off, leave the basement, and never look at that blinking 2014 error log again: Do it with pride.
View that 25% pay cut not as a loss, but as a tuition fee you are paying to upgrade your skills. One or two years of crushing a modern cloud architecture role as a Lead will completely reset your market value. When you jump to your next job after that, you'll likely leapfrog past your current "golden cage" salary—and you'll actually enjoy what you do.
Are you leaning toward signing because you genuinely love this startup's mission, or is it mostly the desperation to escape your current job driving the Friday deadline?
Am *I* wasting my time (and money) pursuing a bachelor’s degree ?
Here’s my situation:
I am a 35 year old mother. I went to college straight out of high school, worked full time all while raising my oldest child (I had her my senior year of high school). Please be kind. I know I haven’t made the best choices. I am trying though. I really am.
So, anyway, I got my associate’s degree back then. I left college at that point because I was young and thought I was going to the married, stay at home mom thing. I had a couple more kids and life was good for a bit.
I got antsy and wanted to work - just something part time. Got a job working 16 hours a week at a big healthcare organization.
Then the shutdowns started. My husband’s job had to send everyone home. Everything was different. He got moved to a remote position and his pay was cut in half. I had to start working full time and thankfully my company was able to accommodate.
So, I now how nearly seven years of healthcare administration experience - data entry, scheduling, insurance verification, authorization, etc.
I have started an online bachelor’s degree at my original in state college. It’s a public health degree. Here’s why: 1. All of my previous credits transferred over 2. It’s “easy” enough that I can manage it with everything else I have going on 3. It’s my only “affordable” option
However, given the state of the US public health system - I can’t help but think I’m wasting my time and money. I do not want advice on another degree option. This is what works for me now. Trust and believe I’ve exhausted all other potentials. What I need to know is do you all think I should continue this degree or no? I don’t NEED to make a lot of money but I do need to make some money.
I’ve caught wind that layoffs at work are imminent. So, I will need to find a comparable job soon.
So - if you were me, what would you do? Continue and get the degree or save your money and just continue on with the experience + associates ?
Jobadvisor
First off, take a deep breath. You need to hear this, and you need to believe it: You have absolutely nothing to apologize for.
You went to college straight out of high school while raising a baby and working full-time. Then you stepped up and carried your family financially when your husband's income was cut in half. That isn't a history of "poor choices"—that is a masterclass in resilience, work ethic, and grit. You are doing an incredible job.
To answer your question directly: No, you are not wasting your time or money. If you were in shoes, I would absolutely finish the degree.
Here is exactly why staying the course is the smartest move for your specific situation, along with how to shield yourself from those upcoming layoffs.
Why Finishing This Degree Is Worth It
It is completely valid to look at the macro-level chaos of the US public health system and feel discouraged. But you aren't trying to fix the entire system; you are trying to leverage a credential. Here is why this specific degree works for you:
The "Paper Ceiling" is Real: In healthcare administration, an Associate's degree plus experience can get you through the door (as you've proven), but a Bachelor's degree is often the invisible key required to move up into supervisory, analyst, or coordinator roles. Many HR filtering software algorithms automatically toss out applicants for higher-paying roles if the "Bachelor's Degree" box isn't checked—regardless of experience.
The Cost/Benefit Math Checks Out: You mentioned this is your only affordable option and your credits transferred. Because you are already close to the finish line and paying in-state tuition, the financial risk is low, but the lifetime security it provides is high.
It Complements Your 7 Years of Experience: A public health degree doesn't mean you have to go work for a struggling county health department. Combined with your background in insurance verification, scheduling, and billing, this degree signals to employers that you understand both the operational side of healthcare and the analytical/population side. That makes you highly versatile.
Your Game Plan for the Imminent Layoffs
Because you know layoffs are looming, you need a strategy that bridges what you are doing now with where you are going. Do not drop out to save money out of fear; instead, use your current student status as a shield.
1. Reframe Your Resume Immediately
Do not wait until graduation to put this degree on your resume. Right now, under your education section, list it like this:
B.S. in Public Health | University Name (In Progress) | Expected Graduation: [Month, Year]
When you apply for new jobs tomorrow, automated systems and hiring managers will see that you are actively pursuing it, which often checks the box for them just as well as having finished it.
2. Target the "Resilient" Sectors of Healthcare
The public health system might be messy, but the private and corporate healthcare sectors are massive and always hiring for the exact skills you have. With your background + a public health degree, look into:
Health Insurance Companies (Payers): Roles like Utilization Review Coordinator, Care Quality Analyst, or Provider Relations Specialist. These are stable, often remote, and pay well.
Community Health Centers & FQHCs: Federally Qualified Health Centers always need administrative staff who understand public health principles.
Healthcare IT & Consulting Firms: Companies that manage patient data or compliance.
The Bottom Line:
Dropping out right now saves you a little cash in the short term, but it leaves you vulnerable to a tough job market with a cap on your upward mobility. Finishing this degree validates the 7 years of hard work you've already put in and guarantees that no HR software can ever look down on your application.
You are so incredibly close. You have survived much harder seasons than this. Finish the piece of paper—you've earned it.