According to some of the top-voted answers from Reddit users, these are careers where you can potentially make over $200k a year:
1. Airline Pilot
"I've been flying professionally since 1997. I can’t believe I get paid to do it. Now I own an antique plane and I fly warbirds for a couple museums doing rides and airshows. I’ve also been an electrician and electrical contractor. Flying is the best damn way to make a living I can imagine."
2. Corporate Lawyer
"I make substantially more than $200k but it is a miserable, miserable gig."
3. Divorce Lawyer
"The lockdown caused a lot of people to realize that they in fact did not want to be married to their spouse after all. Everyday is another soap opera."
4. Tech Sales (for a Fortune 500 company)
"I’m in a sales manager position and all of my eight account executives earn more than $200k."
5. Crane Operator
"Not consistent, but I make between $180k and $220k, depending on the year."
6. IT Infrastructure Manager
"I do not (far from it), but last year when our company posted the job opening for our IT Infrastructure Manager the salary was posted as $350k. I found myself wishing I'd started my career about 10 years earlier."
8. Michelin Starred Private Chef
"$240k plus discretionary annual bonus. Left the industry for this one family. They are no one important. No NDAs. 25-40 hours a week."
9. Software Engineer (at a FAANG company)
"I don't really feel qualified but I don’t plan on leaving until they fire me."
10. Electrical Engineer
"To young people… YOU NEED TO CHANGE COMPANIES. Whenever you feel like you are 1) taking on new roles without your pay increasing significantly or 2) if you feel ready to take on new roles. You will never keep pace with inflation or get ahead at one employer."
11. Senior Level Construction Manager
"I might clear $200k this year depending on my bonus..."
12. Photolithography Researcher
"All it took was over a decade of higher education* and being in the right place in contact with the right people.
*BSc Electrical engineering (5 years), MSc Computer engineering (3 years), PhD semiconductor physics (4 years)."
13. Registered Nurse (in a Low Cost of Living state)
"I work at a hospital with unlimited OT. Will gross $225K+ this year."
14. Ship Surveyor
"You watch bulk export ships unload and ensure that everything gets completed strictly according to contracts. Mostly the job is making sure buyers don't cheat and try and fraudulently lower purchase price. Reasonably low entry requirements in terms of formal training. Just wanted to post it since it's an interesting out-of-left-field job that doesn't require a degree and isn't IT."
15. Emergency Room Physician
"It's great money, but like most emergency room docs, my wife was burned out by 35 and then had to deal with Covid and all its insanity. We're saving as much money as possible to retire early and travel around the country in an RV."
16. UX Content Strategy
"Somehow I make more than $200k doing UX content strategy. I don't understand how it happened, really, and I'm very lucky. Biggest advantage was learning how to future pace in interviews/sales conversations by focusing on the problem the company is hiring to solve, then doing some quick mental math about how much money that would be worth to them."
Have any more high-earning job suggestions? LMK in the comments below!
Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.