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Recent Graduates Are Most Likely to Work in Sales, Making around $40K
- seibelj 9y agoGood salesmen in high-commission industries like software, pharma, high-end real estate, etc. will make much more than a good engineer will over their career. I had a buddy in sales who closed an enterprise software deal and made $80k from that alone. He had a lot of deals cooking.
- willvarfar 9y agoI thought that the kind of "retail sales" the article is referring to is what us Brits call "shop assistant"?
- shubb 9y agoHackernews - it's another world
- walshemj 9y agoAnecdotally when Oracle signed a deal with BT for oracle anywhere the salesman "retired" on the proceeds.
- nunez 9y agosounds about right at the right company with the right compensation structure, a handful of $100M+ deals can set you up for a LONG time
- kcorbitt 9y agoI'm curious about this. What does it take to make a "good" salesperson by this definition? Just grit and experience, or some innate and uncommon skill? I know there are people who make millions working in sales, but I guess I'm just wondering how common that actually is. Should a reasonably motivated and intelligent salesperson early in their career expect to be making $200k+ a few years in, or does that take a very unusual level of luck/skill/dedication to turn it into a lucrative career?
- brandonmenc 9y agoEvery great salesperson I know is fearless in any social situation. They can strike up a conversation with anyone, anywhere, anytime - effortlessly. You can't teach that. There are a host of other qualities, but this strikes me the most "inborn" one.
- richardbatty 9y agoYou can teach that, or at least learn it, with cognitive behavioural therapy for social anxiety and practice in progressively more difficult situations.
- maxxxxx 9y agoI think there are limits. I compare it to athletics. With hard work I can double my bench press but there are people who can bench even more without ever training. If these people work hard in addition they can perform on a level that's not achievable for most of us. I think it's the same for sales or a lot of other professions. People with talent can go much further.
- dismantlethesun 9y agoI think this is true too, just that with sales unlike athletics, the field is more inclusive (e.g. specialized knowledge in the product field may be more important than absolute speech skills), and also higher populated leading to there being more positions for people who are merely above average, rather than superhuman.
- seppin 9y agosure you can be fearless, but not in a way that is productive. you just become more annoying
- nunez 9y agoehhhhh sort of it is very hard to replicate the behavior of someone that just loves being around people. i can usually tell who is a "natural" and who isn't (i.e. those that went through therapy, coaching and the like) learning how to be around people can't really be done in a safe space since the world at large in unsafe. people will say dumb shit at you. people will cut you off. people will do unexpectedly nice (or mean) things. everyone is different. the only way to truly learn these skills is to get out there and be vulnerable. i can see how classes and sessions can get you to a point at which one is comfortable enough to even BEGIN doing this (I went to a few social anxiety meetups with friends), but that alone isn't enough. getting to the root of that anxiety with a psychologist is more effective, in my (limited) opinion, but that can be expensive for many you CAN get pretty far on the basics though. most people like being around someone that is humorous and makes them feel good about themselves. you can go REALLY far by finding what someone really likes to talk about and letting them talk (while asking questions throughout) podcasts with interviews from journalists or news companies helped me with this a lot
- encoderer 9y agoI think in any job where you can get a piece of the gross proceeds you can make more money than in a job where you make salary plus profit sharing or equity. That would include talent agents, advertising, etc. (You could argue these are all just salesmen)
- fnbr 9y agoIt's crazy how accurate that is. I'm lucky enough to be working as a data scientist, but almost all of my friends are either working in sales or in grad school.
- merpnderp 9y agoWhat is your degree in and what are their degrees in?
- atom-morgan 9y agoThat's how I feel as a dev at startups. Most people in the company are my age but only a few are making my salary. The rest are in sales or support.
- runako 9y agoInteresting anecdote, but it's obviously skewed. For example: attorneys, nurses, physicians, and accountants are all missing from the graph. From that I intuit that either a) the data intentionally captures people in only their first job or b) the data is just wildly incomplete. Conservatively assuming this is intended to be a snapshot of first job salaries, it's interesting to note that a $40k salary is in the top 50% of jobs in the US [1]. And again, we expect most of these people to earn increasingly more as they hit their earning stride (which will be after grad school for many). 1- https://www.fool.com/retirement/2016/10/30/heres-the-average-american-household-income-how-do.aspx https://www.fool.com/retirement/2016/10/30/heres-the-average...
- simonsarris 9y agoI'm not sure we should expect anything differently, if recent graduates are less intelligent (as a cohort) than ever. [Difficult degree] enrollment is relatively flat because aptitude is flat, and grad jobs will reflect this. I wrote a little about this framing it as a CS degree problem, but it seems true for a lot more than just CS. > Can we prove aptitude is flat? Kinda. In 1970s 1-in-2 college grads aced Wordsum test. Today 1-in-6 do.[2] Using that as a proxy for IQ of the median college grad, in the 70’s it was ~112, now its ~100. > In other words we have more people going to college than ever, but the “average grad” is less intelligent than ever. Degrees are increasingly diluted yet expensive. You can pay more money than ever to show that you are of average intelligence. From: https://medium.com/@simon.sarris/why-is-computer-science-enrollment-so-low-dea064c2f7f0 https://medium.com/@simon.sarris/why-is-computer-science-enr...
- sonabinu 9y agoI don't know if it is intelligence alone - I would call it 'grit' as well. If you are willing to slog through a tough class and use good learning strategies, you don't have to be super intelligent to enter into a career in engineering. Are we setting a bar that is high, where college is expected to be a lot of hard work? If we do, we will see those in all careers that require a college degree brining in something new to the work place. Maybe it is my midday coffee speaking but we need to stop diluting college courses
- dismantlethesun 9y agoThe average graduate is now representative of the average member of the population because so many people are entering and completing universities. It doesn't necessarily mean that it takes any more or less effort or intelligence to finish a university degree. It also doesn't mean that average intelligence is dropping. It just indicates a stereotypical reversion to mean.
- rch 9y agoIs it true that they've made raw aptitude less of a factor in SAT scores? If so then there's a systemic problem with our training and credentialing process.
- EternalData 9y agoI feel like an apt title for a book about late-stage capitalism would be "A Society of Salespeople". With that said, I'm not exactly sure what type of career path somebody studying, say, political science could embark on -- it seems to me that there's a lot more demand for accreditation in certain fields than there is demand for actual practitioners.
- Animats 9y agoNapoleon once referred to England as an "island of shopkeepers". Computers are getting better at sales. Amazon doesn't have salespeople. Retailers barely have salespeople any more. Outside of real estate, cars, and financial products, what B2C companies do?
- seppin 9y ago> Amazon doesn't have salespeople. AWS sure as hell does
- tyingq 9y ago>Outside of real estate, cars, and financial products, what B2C companies do? Declining for sure, but high ticket B2C still has salespeople. Home improvement, cosmetic surgery, cosmetic dentistry, vocational education, timeshares, boats, recreational vehicles, insurance, furniture, solar energy, hot tubs, pool tables, pianos, etc. And a lot of stuff at the low end, home based seller angle...beauty, vacuum cleaners, organic, supplements , diets, and so forth.
- Digory 9y agoAmazon most certainly has selling Associates. But like much of the gig economy, they try to avoid employees. [0](https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/ https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/)
- cableshaft 9y agoThere's still a lot of salespeople, they're just not a lot that individual citizens have to interact with everyday, usually. Selling to businesses, for example, pretty much requires salespeople. For example, I know someone in corporate real estate, and you wouldn't believe the type of shit the salespeople get away with there or how ridiculous their compensation is (especially compared to her, who does just as much work trying to win business when putting together the proposals those salespeople present).
- josephjrobison 9y agoIs it just me or does it seem like $40k has been the default for far too long. I believe (anecdotally) that it's been the average white-collar entry-level salary since the late 90s/early 2000's. Seems that the number isn't adjusted for inflation and should be closer to $45 or $50k in 2017+
- Frondo 9y agoWages have been stagnant since the 1980s: http://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/ http://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/ Lots more to read here: https://www.google.com/#q=wages+flat+since+1980 https://www.google.com/#q=wages+flat+since+1980
- faet 9y agoYou also need to include other benefits as well. Benefits as a percent of total compensation have increased heavily over the past 20-30 years. Now they make up ~30% of an employees total compensation. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/COMPRNFB https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/COMPRNFB
- yummybits 9y ago> have increased heavily for the 1%.
- Animats 9y agoThis is why we've probably passed "peak school". For many new graduates, ROI for college is negative. About half of new college graduates end up working in a job that doesn't require a college education. (It's even worse in some third world countries on the way down. In Egypt, unemployment of college graduates is higher than for non-college graduates.)
- emmab 9y ago> In Egypt, unemployment of college graduates is higher than for non-college graduates. If pay is also higher then college could still be +EV.
- bookmarkacc 9y agoThats not how EV works. It all depends what the increase in pay and unemployment are.
- poikniok 9y agoWhich is exactly what the comment you are replying to said.
- T-hawk 9y agoThe overall aggregate ROI of college should be neutral, right? And therefore half the population will find their individual data points to be negative. If the ROI of college aggregated over all consumers is positive, then the colleges are mispricing themselves. As capitalists, they should charge more until they capture all the consumer surplus and the aggregate ROI for all consumers converges to zero. This is more or less what has happened over the past generation. (Not all colleges are strictly capitalist, of course, but in broad strokes this is what we've seen.)
- flukus 9y ago> Glassdoor sifted through the resumes for the job titles that appeared most frequently in the five years following graduation. Median pay was determined based on salary information self-reported to the site from May 2015 to this month. I'm not sure if this is a good way to quantify it. It was always common for people to get low end jobs after graduation. It's not the jobs they've done in the last 5 years that are of interest, it's the ones they hold after 5 years.