[jotucker1983]

I'm sure OP got "the talk".

- For one, he posted internal confidential company information on a public board, without being any type of senior official of the company.

- The information he posted was inaccurate in terms of the total "take home"

Total embarrassment. I think the "moral" of this thread should be focus on your own individual objectives/goals/plans.

No two offices are a like in this business.

* Some are 1 man show operations who have an extremely low overhead, living in average or lower cost of living areas. Which means this guy goes out and makes $100k a year from this space and he is solid.

* Some shops have hundreds of employees and are spending $200,000 to $300,000 a month in marketing costs alone to generate a bulk of the volume that they generate. So those shops are going to have to be funding (as a collective total) millions a month in funding in order to stay afloat.

So there's no universal definition nor measurement of a "top guy". In my opinion, if you survive in this industry for at least 2 years and make (at least for your area), what would be considered mid-to-upper middle class level of income, then you are doing well. You can continue to operate in this space or take the professional experience gained and leverage it for other opportunities outside of it.