"I’ve Been Making Over Six Figures For The Past Eight Years": Women With Low-Stress, Well-Paying Jobs Are Revealing Their Career "Secrets," And I Didn't Realize Half These Jobs Existed
Let's be honest: Life has been even more stressful as of late.
NBC / Via giphy.com
But if you also currently have a taxing job or are possibly unemployed, you may be in the market for finding a new position or switching careers entirely, especially if you're burnt out.
So when I saw Reddit user u/Sparkle356 ask the r/AskWomen community: "Women with low stress and good paying jobs, what is it that you do?" I wanted to share their answers just in case you or a loved one is currently looking for a new job/career.
And even though the term "well-paying" is subjective by state, hopefully, their answers will provide some insight on a potential path you may want to explore.
And not only did these women share what kind of job they have and what it entails, but also some of them revealed how they got their careers started. Check out their responses below.
1."I'm a court reporter."
"I work in California court for mostly calendar proceedings, so rarely do I have any take home work. It’s 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. work days, and it’s paid holidays, sick days, all the benefits, and vacation time a year.
"Depending on what state you live in, you could make a lot of money as a court reporter. An in-court court reporter makes like 109k a year your first year. But as a freelancer, you could make easily 150k and more depending on what you provide, and you don’t have to work five days a week. The minimum per job nowadays seems to be $575 per job, NOT per day.
"Also, some agencies offer bonus money for you to take the job or drive to it. Bonus money isn’t anything less than $300. So basically, depending on what agency you work for as a deposition reporter, you could make $800 a day per job.
"So if you get a morning job, and they need you in the afternoon, that’s another $800, plus however many pages you’re going to transcribe that day and other charges."
2."I'm a web developer, and I don't open my e-mails on my free time."
"Same here. I work 40 hours a week, mostly tune out over the weekend, and while there are occasional moments of stress when something in production doesn't work, for the most part, it's not very taxing."
"Hey, I'm kinda interested in having a tech career, but I'm still in high school. Can you tell me about how you got into the field, if you don't mind?"
"I studied computer science combined with UX/UI design."
3."I'm a librarian at a university."
"I help folks to find materials and hear all about cool research pursuits. I also spend lots of time maintaining the collection and cataloging old theses. The best part is connecting students with services to help them and making sure the library is accessible. It's a huge library, and if I need a break from my desk, I just wander around the shelves for a while."
4."Technical writer."
"It requires qualifications, such as special training, but well worth it. And it's one of the roles in IT — which is such a male-dominated field — that being in a location in IT means the women's restroom at work never has a line or is out of soap, etc."
"What sort of special training did you do?"
"I have a degree in technical communication, and it required an internship. I also submitted content to the STC (Society for Technical Communication) annual competition and was later asked to judge entries. The STC has several publications that discuss many different aspects of tech writing.
"The college courses were instrumental in understanding the field, and some were taught by tech writers. I still use some of the basics I learned at the internship. For example, understanding how to use formatting styles and templates in whatever authoring tool is being used, even as basic as MS Word.
"I once took a job, only to find that some coworkers were creating manual tables of contents (TOC), which required hours to update every time there was a change to the content — in Word. For anyone reading this and who isn't aware, Word has a built-in function for TOCs that takes seconds to create and update if you know how to use the style feature."
5."Hair dresser. I’ve been making over six figures for the past eight years."
"I work four days, 10 hours a day, with an assistant. It took me four years to break into six figures. It’s doable; just be good at what you do. Be humble, and honestly, don’t get caught up in salon culture of gossip and partying; that shit is cancer."
"What does it take to get to this point in your career? I’m an academic thinking of leaving for hair school."
"It’s different for everyone, but cosmetology school is just a piece of paper, which is obviously very necessary, but you also need to find a high-end salon in your area that has a solid assisting program with continuing education. After going to school, I assisted for three years working 60 hours a week. You really have to love what you're doing because it’s physically demanding and you're working with the general public, which can be challenging at times.
"Social media has changed the game for hairdressers everywhere. It’s the number one way I have marketed myself, and it’s free. Don’t filter your work or over-edit it because it will only set you up for failure.
"Stay on top of your numbers, and know where your money is coming from and how. Like, what you charge, and how that breaks down with your service times commission, and hourly rate. Just know your worth, and never stop perfecting your craft."
6."Self-employed rehabbing old houses."
"No stress as we pick the house. I design and help with general labor if needed, and my partner takes the lead in coordinating the trades. Otherwise, I'm working from home 99% of the time writing checks and balancing the books."
"What age were you and your husband when you started doing this?"
"42 and 57 respectively. It's never too late to pivot careers."
7."Freelance graphic artist and interface design."
"I make $50/hr, flexible hours, I make my own schedule, I’m also a mom and regularly take as much sick/caregiver time off as I want with no repercussions. I live in Canada. I have a husband who also works (more hours than I do, he is the primary breadwinner as I’ve worked part-time since having kiddo — we have a two-acre hobby farm that takes up the rest of my/our time). My retired mom watches our kiddo when I’m working if she’s not in school or with her dad."
"This life sounds like heaven. How did you get started?"
"I’m 38. When I was 23-ish, I graduated from university with a BFA in creative writing, but I was working as a bartender to put myself through school. Shortly after I graduated, I had some health problems that meant I needed to take some time off, so I went to stay with my aunt in Florida. My hobby was painting watercolors at that time, so I brought some supplies down with me. Her husband, a tech executive, liked my artwork and hired me to do some illustrations and animation for a children’s alphabet and phonics project. That was my first job — I had to teach myself how to use the Adobe Suite and a drawing tablet on the job in real-time, basically.
"I worked that job for two years and then picked up another in a different arm of the same company. At some point, I started putting myself out there in other areas — either by getting my foot in the door by volunteering to do a small sample job or by word of mouth from previous clients.
"My father died in my 20s and left me some money around year two, so I had a cushion for a few years during the times I wasn’t able to find much work. I’m not going to say I didn’t have help from family at the beginning, which I did, both in the form of that first job opportunity and the inheritance which helped me during those early years when I was struggling to build a client list.
"Years later, now I turn more work down than I accept. I wouldn’t say my uni education was directly relevant, but writers' workshops are all about gracefully receiving criticism and making edits and changes to work, and those skills served me super well in my illustration career."
8."Adult content creator."
"I had a 'respectable' job before, and I can't believe how much better my life is now. I'm my own boss, work my own hours, don't deal with people I don't want to, and pull six figures.
"The only downside is the stigma that comes with working in the sex industry. Most people have a lot of misconceptions, and I, myself, was one of them before I got into it."
9."I'm a quality designer at a video game studio that is anti-crunch."
"Oh man, I started going for game design in college but switched because I hated the crunch mindset of the industry. Now I'm in UX design, love it. Super low stress and well paid, too."
"I’ve always wanted to get into this. What’s your background educationally and experience? How much experience do you have, and do all your colleagues also have college UX training?"
"College degree in visual arts with a focus in interactive media, but I really think there are a lot of pathways to UX design.
"Now I have about eight years of experience, but I started out doing marketing videos."
10."Airline pilot."
"My job can definitely be stressful, like a few hours of no stress at all, and then one little thing gets messed up and you're scrambling. For the most part, it's fairly relaxed, but it has its moments. But my low stress comes from my schedule.
"We're supposed to work about 80 hours a month, and those hours are doors closed to doors open, so basically our 'work' hours are just the time spent moving passengers, not the hour and a half at least that it takes to get through security, get to the gate, wait for the plane, and do the whole preflight routine, or the time spent after you land.
"But all that being said, if you're just working shifts where you do two four-hour legs in a day, then you're working 10 days a month. I'm in the middle of two weeks off right now, not vacation time, just two weeks off because I got all my credit hours at the start and the end of the month. So yeah, life's pretty relaxed. I get paid well, I have a mostly fun job, and I get plenty of downtime.
"If you can get through a couple of years of training and then all the time building hours working shitty jobs for low pay (I did four years of flying cargo in shitty turboprops, and I definitely had an easier go of things than most of the people I went through training with), life really is great once you get to the airlines."
11."I’m a freelance writer specializing in an area I find interesting."
"I have a chronic illness where one of the symptoms is chronic fatigue, so I can’t work as much as some other freelancers can, but I make enough money to live on comfortably."
12."I'm a medical sales rep."
"I basically sell surgical devices to hospitals, and I love my job even more because, since the pandemic, my company gave its employees the choice between working in the office or at home. Guess which one I chose."
"How did you get into medical sales?"
"I started out in the pharmaceutical industry so making the switch wasn't that hard."
"Can you explain more about your job?"
"My job details me contacting potential clients by explaining the various features and benefits of the devices. Then, I answer any questions they may have; then, we negotiate a fair price."
13."Higher education administration, specifically in a non-student facing area."
"It has its moments, but generally, I never receive an email after business hours or on weekends, and we’re all pretty chill and just nerdy people who want to be left alone. I also get sooooo much time off each year."
"I have always been interested in working in higher education but on the admin side. Do you mind if I ask what you do? I am also nerdy and want to be left alone."
"Institutional research, accreditation management, IRB stuff, strategic planning, survey research. Our department has super techy programmers who never emerge from their offices, outgoing grants managers, and everyone in between."
14."I work in a warehouse that sells commercial kitchen supplies."
"My manager is also a burnt-out neurodivergent millennial; he takes mental health and having a healthy work environment seriously. This is the least stressed I've been in nine years."
15."I’m an accountant at a biotech startup."
"I have a lot of responsibility, but I know I’m capable, so it doesn’t particularly stress me out. I have a master's degree and about four years experience now, making $116k USD."
"What’s your educational path to get this job? Bachelor's and master's? How long did it take for you to train?"
"Yes, I got a bachelor's in business administration, majoring in accounting. Then got my master of science in accounting. I did my master's full-time in a 4+1 program.
"You can do accounting without a master's degree; however, you do need 150 college credits to get your CPA license. (Typical bachelor is about 124-130). Personally, I don’t wish to pursue my CPA license at this time — but if I do decide to, I won’t have to go back to school in order to do so.
"I did an internship for two years while in school (paid) and made $80k at my first full-time job after finishing grad school."
16."Business intelligence analyst."
"I really only work about 10 hours a week. The other 30 I spend scrolling Reddit waiting for a ticket to come in."
"What does this entail? I was a military intelligence analyst, 24 years ago, in the military. I'm sure it's probably not the same."
"It's a stupid name for a job where you build charts and graphs. I mostly code in SQL and develop in Tableau."
17."I pet sit."
"I make my own schedule, I don't have many face-to-face interactions with clients (I do an initial consultation to get familiar with their house and routine, and everything else is text), I get to chill with animals, and I don't have to market myself very much once I onboard enough clients. I don't have too much travel time between jobs because I limit my service area a ton (this took a long time to figure out exactly which neighborhoods took forever to get to even though they were 'close').
"Over the years, I've built up clients that are loyal and like me, so when I have to say no because I am traveling, I'm usually able to do it and be comfortable that they'll call back next time.
"I make $20 a visit for most of my clients, visits being approximately 30 minutes. I managed to make a nice client list for myself locally with hobby farms and exotic animals since I have experience with them. The upside to hobby farms is I often get to keep eggs/produce that I pick up during my visit. Right now I'm comfortable, but I also know that with a little effort, I can be much busier and make more money. Even during my busy season, I'm 'working' about 4-6 hours a day.
"It doesn't feel like work most days. I enjoy my animals; I like most of my clients, I like getting to work outdoors, and I love the money and the tips. The bad part is that I cannot ever travel for the holidays. From October 31 to mid-January, I am locked into being at home and pretty much work the whole season straight."
"What qualifications did you get for this? Like, pet CPR? Anything to make yourself more marketable?"
"Mostly experience. I volunteered and worked anywhere that had animals. An exotic bird sanctuary, dog kennels, rescues, shoveling shit at some rando's farm.
"I quit for a while and became an animal control officer, and when I went back to pet sitting, the certs I'd gotten in animal first aid and handling was a selling point, but it did not drastically increase what I could charge. I'm still at about the same rate as people with similar experience. I make slightly more mostly because of my experience and willingness to take care of exotics and farm animals.
"You'd be surprised how many people refuse to petsit for bunnies, chickens, goats, guinea pigs, birds, lizards, snakes, etc."
18."I was a tech on a psychiatric ward."
"I get paid pretty decent for the little work that I actually do."
"What tasks are a health tech responsible for, and what kind of degree or cert do you need?"
"It's basically a certified nursing assistant, but on psych, there isn't a lot of personal care that needs to be done because the patients are pretty self-sufficient, so I'm mostly responsible for checking on everyone every 15 minutes, keeping the place tidy, checking to make sure doors are locked, passing meal trays, safety checks, taking them to appointments within the hospital.
"You don't need any degrees or certification to work psych, but it helps. I have my bachelor's in criminal justice with a minor in psych. I took this job to get my foot in the door and work my way into a different position with the organization."
19."Chiropractors assistant/receptionist."
"It pays 'good' for my area. To put it in perspective, I'll be moving into a one bedroom, one bath soon on my own just by working max part-time. It's an entry-level job, it's easy to understand, I love my coworkers, and the doctors are nice! I essentially work a simple day job to fund a lifestyle of a homebody artist who goes out once a month or so.
"The thing for me is that I live in a state where about 50% of jobs still just pay federal minimum wage — which is $7.25 an hour, or a little more around there at least. Our average rent is super cheap compared to the rest of the country (ex: My new apartment is a nice one bedroom, one bath for $550 a month). I make $11.50 working for two chiropractors in a privately owned facility. Sometimes, the days are crazy, but it's the best job I've ever had!
I'd recommend doing some wage comparisons in your area for that position, and looking into seeing if there's room for you to ask for a raise! If not, maybe see if your skills would be transferable to another place that would pay more!"
20."I'm a mental health therapist."
"It pays well, I get to have meaningful conversations with people all day, and I get to choose my own hours. I gross around $80,000, I work around 20-25 hours a week, and I live in the western US!"
"I've been given a chance to go back to school. This is a field that has always been called to me. What would be a good place to start? I still need to get a BA before anything else."
"So what I did was I got both my bachelor's and master's in Social Work. I did this because there are a ton of directions you can go with a social work degree, so if I ever get tired of therapy, I can move to a different path for a while if I want.
"Also, if you get your BSW, there are many programs out there where you can get your master's in social work in nine months-one year, which is what I did. The program I did was nine months. It was intensive, but it was worth it!"
21."Data scientist with (and this is key for no stress) a stay-at-home husband who handles ALL household chores and responsibilities."
22."I'm a narrative designer in video games, though there are a few caveats."
1. "The stress is low because I work for a company that does not believe in crunch, which is still relatively rare in the industry. Being a woman also adds a certain stress that can be better or worse depending on the company and team you work with. It’s always sort of a cloud above your head, so to speak, but I’ve got a pretty good team, so I’m one of the lucky ones in this case!
2. I only get paid decently because I job-hopped a little bit and upped my salary each time before settling in where I am now — it is generally considered the only way to increase your salary in this industry at the moment. The upside is it is sort of expected of people to bounce around companies a little bit, so it isn’t necessarily considered a black mark on your CV or anything."
"How did you get into narrative design? Did you go to school for this directly? I’m in game production right now but looking for something different in the game industry."
"I actually got involved through a game writing course from a local nonprofit organization. The org focuses on getting more women into the game industry. Through that course, I developed a portfolio, applied to a few jobs, and well, that’s that!
If you’re interested, check out Pixelles. Due to COVID, the game writing course hasn’t happened in a few years, but I think they might have tried a virtual one, which theoretically would open it up internationally? Worth following them to see if they decide to do that again!"
23."Programmer."
"Just learning that being overlooked lightens my workload substantially, and I still get paid. So fuck it, I’m done fighting the ambitious fight, and I’ll just take the paycheck and enjoy life. Hope my male coworkers enjoy their burnout."
"Would you recommend going to school for it, or is learning online sufficient? Also, what language would recommend a newbie start with?"
"I would say that you could get away with self-learning, but I went to school to get more guidance with it. I started at 28, and so I was a bit behind and didn’t know what to start with. Honestly, though, code academy and starting with Python were what really helped me learn the major concepts. Plus, Python is really fun; you can do a lot with it. I have used it for building an instant messenger, like, the entire thing, like, building the interface, the client, and the server. That I did with a group in my computer networking class. You can also use it for generating stats and a lot of other things, so it’s very useful in the field.
"I’d say most places want you to know at least Java as well, but it all depends on what you want to work in. Once you get the basic concepts down, you can pretty much code in any language; you just need to know how to look up the syntax, and that is all available online. Also, to have the patience to set up your coding environment, like what program to code, and run your programs, and then finally implementation.
"It’s a good gig, people are usually pretty cool where I work, just a few bad apples here and there, but I have a feeling that’s everywhere. There are always going to be people who like to flex and one-up you to make you feel like you don’t belong. You just have to learn to let it roll off you."
24."I work as a case manager for a healthcare company."
"I work remotely and get paid MUCH more than I did in my high-stress healthcare social work position."
25."I work from home as a technical service representative for a cryptocurrency trading exchange."
"It’s all email-based, work at your own pace, and my coworkers are awesome. I’ve worked there for almost two years, and I never wanna work anywhere else! It pays decent! I do live in Oregon, so everything is expensive here, so the pay reflects that."
26."I work in content marketing. I’m basically an overpaid blogger."
"I worked in marketing and PR in some very stressful companies. I just kept focusing on improving my writing chops until I could get a job where literally all I have to do is write."
27."Corporate trainer."
"All the joys of teaching with none of the discipline or grading I'd have to do if I taught in a school. I just give my class. If you don't pay attention or do the homework, you just won't be able to do your job, and that's not my problem. I also write a lot of technical documentation to go along with my classes, and that's pretty stress-free."
"Is your degree in HR/Learning and Development? I’d like to make this jump but am worried that my degree will never translate. Though some of my work experience would.
"I have a master’s in Library and Information Science and my bachelor’s is in English."
"My degree is in communication and multimedia. I started working at this company as a web designer, and they needed someone to teach our in-house tools and procedures to new hires and contractors, and eventually, it became a full-time job."
28."Senior cyber security engineer."
"I can work remotely from anywhere in the world since my team is fully remote and we have folks from all over. Most of what I do is code review, which means staying up to date with happenings in the field, and answering questions, all of which I can mostly do from my phone.
"I also have very low oversight and near complete freedom on what I choose to work on. I also make money in the lower six figures. Sure, there's always gonna be someone to say that I could make more in the field, but it almost certainly wouldn't come with all of the same perks and an entirely stress-free way of life.
"On top of that, the tech jobs that pay more are pretty much exclusively in areas with extremely high cost of living. I currently have no such burden. This is basically my dream job."
29."Journalist. Writing brings me peace and joy."
"How did you get into journalism? I studied the English language in college and always wanted to do something in writing for a job, but I've never really figured out what."
"A friend hooked me up tbh. It’s all about networking."
30."Scriptwriter for video games."
"I graduated from film school specializing in script writing. I worked in television and mobile games right after school (assistant and script coordinator roles). I built a writing portfolio and sent it to video game studios. I got an offer for a script writing position at a game studio!
"I’d like to go back to television at some point, but right now, video games have been very fun. It’s super chill and interesting, and day-to-day is a mix of creative jam sessions with different departments/writer’s rooms, and then writing scenes for video games/dialogue for characters."
