For example, at my old newspaper—god, it seems like forever ago—I made $36,000 a year as a thirty-two-year-old senior staff writer with a decade of experience. That number is sort of doubly embarrassing—on one hand, I cringe imagining colleagues from the journalism world reading that I was willing to do so much for so little. On the other hand, I cringe imagining coworkers from Amazon, Convergys, and McDonald’s reading that I was paid so much for such comparatively easy and rewarding work.
