I work in tech and have since my teens. I’ve done contracting for web dev, I worked for a systems integrator, and I’ve been a sysadmin in my current position for six years. In the past six years, I’ve dodged several (at least three) layoffs, losing coworkers and getting more overworked each time. There are rumors of another round of layoffs happening in the next couple of months, and I can’t help but feel like my luck will have finally run out.
It’s something that I constantly think about at this point… it’s always in the back of my mind. To add to the stress, I’m the only earner in my relationship. My partner is more than willing (and would try) to get a job if something happens, but the current thing we’ve got going works very well. They take care of the house, do a large part of the household chores, and take care of our pet family. I am able to focus on work, and in the end we both have free time and are able to spend that time together.
Anyway, that’s not to say that it isn’t stressful to have everything financially on me, especially given the current tech job market. I’m worried that I’ll lose my job, not be able to find a new one by the time unemployment expires, and then starve or lose our home.
When I was younger, I was very interested in being a national forest employee. Of course, they also haven’t been paid and have been getting canned just the same, but I can’t help but feel that I would’ve been more fulfilled doing that work. I’m still relatively young and probably would be able to switch to a different industry if it came to it, but I’m also not in the same physical health as I was before working in tech. I broke my leg three years ago and lost most of my leg strength, so I think working for state parks would be out.
Being honest, I don’t know what to do. I’m so tired of possibly getting laid off. It’s ruined most of my passion for tech. But I have no other marketable skills. I feel trapped
Hey there, I’ve been living abroad for over a decade, owned a couple English schools and English is an extremely marketable skill; there are over 1.5 billion English students worldwide, and the number goes up every year.
Not saying you have to immediately switch careers, but English is a highly valued, valuable skill you have in case you ever need cash/employment.
If you want to start teaching English on or offline, the demand for teachers is enormous and the jobs are waiting right now for native/fluent English speakers.
You don’t need any certifications or qualifications to teach English, but a TEFL(Teaching English as a Foreign Language) cert will instantly max out your pay/opportunities, TEFL certs cost $40 and are self directed pdf tests that take a week or two to complete.
If you(or anybody reading this) have any questions, let me know, and best of luck with your work.
I know it’s probably highly dependent on several factors, but what would be the pay range for a career like that?
tldr: online $10-30 an hour, offline(25 hrs a week) $2500-$10,000 USD a month.
Platform, country, experience, certification, fluency can all make a difference, but there are thousands of positions available right now to choose from and generally the pay range is:
Online - low: $10 an hour, mid-$15-20 an hour, high $30 an hour, here’s a good chart of a dozen online platforms(there are hundreds) and their requirements.
note that a couple of the $10 an hour platforms do not require a degree or certification.
Offline is highly dependent on the country, and these numbers are for 25 teaching hours per week, ignoring signup bonuses, airfare, meals, housing stipends or other benefits:
low; $1200 USD(in countries like Cambodia where the cost-of-living is so low you can save $1000 of that paycheck per month), average $2500 a month, and current high is about $10,000 USD a month:
This is a screenshot from a post 3 weeks ago about the current TEFL job listings in China, advertising ~$35-60 USD per hour with as much tutoring work available as you want.
$60x40 hrs a week, $2400 a week, $9600 a motnth. I used to tutor for $70 an hour almost 10 years ago, so $60 an hour today is not at all crazy.
here’s a posting from today from the same classifieds website paying $2800-4900 USD per monh for 10-30 hrs 1-1 English tutoring per week, although this one prefers degree/cert.
And remember that if you are outside of the US teaching 330+days a year, you don’t have to pay any income tax on those paychecks.
I think I talked to you before! Im recently TEFL certified and when I was exploring my options I never saw a country making more than $3000 a month also most countries will require a bachelors degree for you to have the work permit to teach iirc? I would be careful getting jobs that advertise a lot of income as there have been human trafficking instances using job postings to lure people in.
Cool, welcome back, I’m glad to share the current pay scale with you!
TEFL pay varies by country more than any other factor, and China pays the most on average per hour that I’ve experienced.
At that site above, the most popular classifieds section from the biggest magazine in China, you’ll see that all the current jobs are offering well above $3000 a month for 25-30 hours a week, especially for TEFL certified teachers.
I made much more than that per hour in China ten years ago, and there is a higher demand for TEFL teachers now than when I was there, so that pay range is normal. When I visited last year, I was offered closer to $5,000 a month more than once to start teaching again(TEFL cert plus native English speaker plus experience plus already in Beijing).
A decade ago, the average starting pay in China for TEFL was closer to $2000, five years later in 2020 starting pay was about $2500 in 2019, and now, another five years later, it’s $3000 per month.
Be careful in any situation, but English has almost 2,000,000,000 students globally and a maximum of only 250,000 english teachers worldwide right now. The demand for English teachers is real.
Relevant here, China does not require a degree for a work visa.
native/fluent English speakers
So many people are dunning-kruger about their fluency. They should not be teaching others to pluralize ‘e-mail’ and joinwords randomly and comma-splice everything. Instruction from the competent, please.
With 1.5 billion students and 250k willing teachers, there are currently about 6,000 English students per teacher.
With students, parents, and governments clamoring for such a relatively small pool of willing teachers, plus the vastly increased opportunities for non-English speakers to develop any level of English at all, no employer can be particularly discriminating with their hires.
The demand for English teachers is incomparable to any other professional field I’m aware of. Even doctors, there are about 15 million in the world, so even if ever person on the planet wants a doctor, that’s only 500 people per doctor, less than 8% the number of English students per available teacher, and we aren’t even factoring in the countless other healthcare workers.
It’s sort of like you grew up doodling in the margins of your notebook, and when you start looking for a job, nearly every country in the world is offering you much more than the average national salary, airfare, housing, working and resident visas to just please, please, live in their country and teach them how to doodle in the margins.
The scale and scope of the English-teaching field is mind-boggling.
felt exactly the same as you did and made a huge mistake trying to switch to something more palatable because nothing is palatable in late stage capitalism.
it is at least paying slightly more than average, while working slightly less. at least in my area.
This put the fear of god in me, I can’t stand my fucking job anymore and I hate the people I have to interact with, but it’s comfy as fuck full WFH decent-ish pay and I often don’t do any work for entire days at a time, I’ve been trying to find something else because I feel like the fun ride is coming to an end.
don’t mention it. i’m on a similar situation overall and i simply have NO IDEA what to do now. i hate the reactionary grindset office culture type people too, and that’s sadly in every office now. WFH is tolerable but they are simply not having it anymore.
- mainstream
- union
- WFH
No niches. No rockstars. No startups. No dot-com wildfire layoffs. Go in, do the shit shit with the shit, go home, live the work-life balance. You’re not here to starve for a cause; you’re here to feed your family and take courses and make things and ride bikes on trails and paint fucking warhammer and self-host cool stuff. That’s it. At 65, your Union pension will kick in and you do the things slower all day and coast until your brain goes to mush.
Dude, don’t.
You’re gonna get fired at some point. Just go with it.
I mean, from the tone of the post I’m assuming you’re in the US, which sucks because… yeah, having labor protections really takes the edge off that reality. I genuinely don’t know what it takes to privately give yourself a cushion of a couple of years, the way most other developed countries do.
But getting laid off in tech? Yeah, it will happen. And then you’ll get rehired somewhere else. Or do contract work. Or start something else on your own with some former co-workers. Working in tech is stressful but doable. Working in tech with the assumption and absolute necessity to keep your current job indefinitely is untenable.
I’m lucky to have… you know, a social safety net that gives me the ability to operate in that environment without having to organize it through my own financials, but if you don’t… well, I’d suggest figuring out what it’d take to do it yourself, setting it up and then stop worrying and love the bomb.
I can feel you, similar situations and thoughts, but we will survive, majority of us does. Share your thoughts with partner, good of your chest should happen with them.
And this is very important for them to find a job. If you have a family and losing one’s job means losing home - your partner should already be employed, it is important for your survival. Unless you have savings for at least a year to find a job which will cover current expenses until they will be covered by salaries again.
Similar situation, but, I gotta warn you, here in the US at least, the national forestry service is IMPOSSIBLE to get into, afaik. Friend of mine did “volunteer work” (read: worked for less than minimum wage) doing hard, back breaking work felling trees and removing hazardous weeds, almost got hit by one of those trees and could have died, trying to get such a gig and, after a couple years of that WITH a relevant degree, gave up and works in finance now.
for me it’s my health, my body is not really built to do much well, so i do what i can to have insurance on myself
At a savings rate of 50%, it takes (1-0.5)/0.5 = 1 year of work to save for 1 year of living expenses.
At a savings rate of 75%, it takes (1-0.75)/0.75 = 1/3 year = 4 months of work to save for 1 year of living expenses.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIRE_movement
once i’ve got house paid off in next in few years i should be up near a 60% savings rate, i’ve already got 3 years in offset account so if something happens i’ve at least got time
