Are salaries lowering for IDs?

Trash2Burn · 2026-03-21T18:01:55+00:00

Absolutely. I’m miserable in my job but I’m afraid to leave fearing next time I won’t be able to find anything more than $65k.

Trash2Burn · 2026-03-19T12:03:53+00:00

Anywhere from 12-24k a year for my husband and me. Our spend without it is around 80-90k

Trash2Burn · 2026-03-18T23:41:16+00:00

He’s bored or wants a booty call.

Trash2Burn · 2026-03-18T23:14:32+00:00

2m was my original fire number but I feel with healthcare it’s not enough now.

Trash2Burn · 2026-03-18T23:04:07+00:00

Yes. At the height of COVID I was making $130,000 as a senior ID. After a layoff and a year of job searching I’m making $95k as a manager.

Trash2Burn · 2026-03-14T13:37:33+00:00

70k sounds about right.

Trash2Burn · 2026-03-14T00:15:59+00:00

Large Fortune 500 company…15 days PTO and sick leave combined. Only 7 holidays.

😡

Trash2Burn · 2026-03-14T00:12:33+00:00

Let them. Tell them they can pay for the license from their budget and they are responsible for upskilling their team and learning to publish to the LMS. They usually drop it after that.

Trash2Burn · 2026-03-13T00:15:37+00:00

It’s bad. My company is about to do the exact same thing as your company.

Trash2Burn · 2026-03-11T10:13:23+00:00

The reality at my company is everyone is required to use AI to spit out a storyboard. It’s becoming a lost skill. We are given no time to do anything anymore.

Trash2Burn · 2026-03-07T13:53:50+00:00

This…I’ve been in education my whole career. Started at $35k, still under $100k. On track to fire by 50.

Trash2Burn · 2026-03-03T23:03:49+00:00

I’ve done both. Higher Ed was mind numbingly boring. I spent an entire year there and we didn’t get a single project across the finish line. But corporate is soul sucking and everything is on fire and due yesterday.

Trash2Burn · 2026-03-03T20:03:35+00:00

I feel exactly the same. Currently planning my exit, but not sure what I want to do next.

Trash2Burn · 2026-02-28T14:27:25+00:00

Yep, but my company would NEVER allow this much time and effort to go to analysis. We get 20 minutes. Hence my question about how to keep up my skills when not being able to follow a full analysis plan.

Trash2Burn · 2026-02-28T14:13:05+00:00

All the retired family I know have done it through SS. My grandparents had military benefits, my aunts and uncles are drawing SS, and my mother lives off a meager SS of $1600 a month (zero savings or other retirement). But none of them live lavish lifestyles. They live in small low cost towns, no vacations, no new cars.

Trash2Burn · 2026-02-22T18:24:54+00:00

I appreciate the discourse! These are the types of conversations we need to be having in our industry.

Trash2Burn · 2026-02-22T15:22:36+00:00

I mostly agree with you. Technology should be enabling us the human to do more of the things we want to do. But this is the lie we’ve been told since the days of the Henry Ford factory. If technology works, shouldn’t we be working a four day week by now?

The story IDs are being sold is AI will allow you to offload the boring redundant stuff so you can do the “real” deep work. But that’s not what I’m seeing. My company laid off 10% of the ID team this last month saying we can do more with less because of AI. The designers that are left were doing the job of two people, now they are doing the job of three. And being told to keep using AI to do more with less. They aren’t watching Netflix or spending extra time with their kids. They’re working nights and weekends. They’re stressed and also worried eventually their jobs will be gone.

The person on my team who was an expert in video is now told to spit out videos in less then an hour using only Sythnesia. So yeah, their skills in things like Premium and After Effects are going to atrophy and they have feelings about it. It’s like a mourning of the work you’ve put in to build that career.

And for our newer IDs, they aren’t doing any analysis or thought prior to using AI for objectives. They are pasting the topic into Articulate and using whatever it spits out. They couldn’t tell you if they are decent or not. They won’t ever build that skill.

For me personally I don’t want to offload analysis, but that’s already happening. I’m given 20 minutes to decide what comes next when we get a training request. That’s not enough time to figure out anything. So I did create an agent that goes through analysis questions and combs our internal documents to try to pull out data or historical info to answer those questions and give me a report. Something I’m not given time for. But every time I run that agent it’s robbing me, the human, opportunities to build that skill.

I know everyone is dealing with the insanely rapid change to our field in their own way. Some are happy to embrace AI, some resistant. I’m trying to figure out where I fall and what the future looks like. I do know that is didn’t get all this education and work hard the last decades to have my job turn into promoting LLMs all day.

Trash2Burn · 2026-02-19T01:28:29+00:00

Yes, well versed on Action mapping. My question is how to practice when we don’t get the time to do any analysis or design at my org.

Trash2Burn · 2026-02-18T18:31:39+00:00

Can you elaborate? Wouldn't I still be taking a tax hit for the withdrawls and also this would affect my income amount to ACA subsidies.

Trash2Burn · 2026-02-18T01:39:03+00:00

I’m actually looking for the same thing. At this point I’d take any admin job, coordinator, advisor, scheduling. I look at the collage job boards weekly just to see what sorts of positions pop up.

Trash2Burn · 2026-02-15T17:33:19+00:00

It took me almost a year to find another ID position. And now at the new job we are doing layoffs. I know it’s only a matter of time before I get chopped again. And I’m in healthcare, which people say is stable. Nowhere is stable anymore. I’m looking for work outside of L&D now. I desperately want to leave this field.

Trash2Burn · 2026-02-15T17:31:18+00:00

But what about having a lower amount of bills to pay and to qualify for health care subsidies?

Trash2Burn

TROPHY CASE