19 "Rich People Jobs" That People Say Made Their Friends Very Wealthy
Recently, redditor u/h3llofaRide asked, "What does the wealthiest person you know do for work?" The comments were full of surprising — and not so surprising — responses that might have you brushing up your résumé.
First, here are some of the most surprising responses:
1."Pig farmer. I kid you not. He's my father's old friend. I visited him once when my father and I were passing through the state. He lives in a modest classic farmhouse with his wife, both in their 70s. I mentioned I was starting a school in West Africa as we were catching up. A few weeks later, I got a text asking how much it would cost. I told him $40k, thinking it was really nice of him if he wanted to send a few dollars..."
"I got a check for $40k.
I thought it would take me years to raise that. I'm typing this from Sierra Leone because he also paid for the house I thought would take years to raise funds for."
2."A family friend retired after being a COBOL programmer for 30 years. About two years after his retirement, a company came to him and said, 'Name your salary,' and he requested around $1.5 million/year. He was hired on the spot and still works there."
"Pick an obscure programming language, write lots of important code, and don’t comment or document anything."
—u/soedesh1
3."My friend sold RuneScape gold. He made a fortune."
4."Owns their own conveyor belt business. Makes almost two mil a year after it’s all said and done."
5."It's a guy I work with. He started with one Jimmy John's franchise and turned it into 10 franchises. Ran them for 10 years, then sold them all and dumped the money into the stock market and real estate. He did this all while working as an airline pilot, currently still working at the airline. This dude owns and flies his own private jet on top of all that."
—u/OT-35
6."The wealthiest person I know (and hang out with regularly) built a company (IT services) and then sold it for several hundred million dollars. He now runs a company that does the same kind of IT services in a different field. (He figured out a winning business formula and is just repeating it in a different market.)"
7."A self-made multimillionaire who's owned his own concrete finishing business since he was about 19."
8."My dad, he does a bunch of random things. He retired from the Navy and uses his retirement pay to invest in real estate. He became a photographer after retiring and did really well for himself. Now he has contracts with a load of schools and sells off temporary subcontracts to budding photographers for schools he doesn’t have the time to work with. He flips cars in his spare time, but right now, his day job is high school business teacher."
—u/Ligmartian
9."Worked for a tech company and got paid bonuses for years in the form of company stock. He and his wife decided that when the stock hit $60, they’d sell all his shares. It was somewhere around $5–$10 for most of the years he worked. It suddenly started rising in '98, and mid-'99 hit $60. They sold millions worth of stock. Then the company’s value burst, along with a lot of other tech companies, during the dot-com bust. If they’d waited a week, their values would have been worthless. They reinvested the money and diversified everything and have been living comfortably ever since. He still works 60–70-hour weeks because he likes working."
—u/othybear
10."Wealthiest I know is myself. Make a little over 120k being a UPS driver."
"UPS pays $44-something now an hour for driving. You get time and a half after eight [hours]. Paid holidays, double time if you work holidays. Work around 10–11 hours a day and you easily make $120k–$140k a year. If you go over the road truck driving, you can make $200k at UPS. And we get free health insurance that rivals hospital staff health insurance and a pension. It’s a dream job. One of the last jobs you can get with a high school education and still live a nice life. We just passed a new contract to get $1.50 raises every year for the next four years so we will be making $49-something in 2028."
11."I work in advertising. Most large car dealership owners are filthy rich. Doesn't matter if it's a large city dealership or in a smaller market. Many own multiple dealerships or groups. Often they are handed down. I know many second-generation dealers that basically inherited it from their dads."
—u/darkbobber
12."Truck driver. Starting his own trucking company."
"Tons of money in [the] trucking business. An owner of one in my city drives a Porsche 918."
And then, of course, there were some answers that you'd expect:
13."One of the first 100 employees of Microsoft. I was friends with a guy from a rich family; they lived on a lake with a private dock, multimillion-dollar home. Microsoft guy was their neighbor. They used to have these game nights where we'd all get together, have cocktails, and play pretty silly games — Cards Against Humanity, Pictionary, that kind of thing. I was really, really good at these games, and it impressed Microsoft guy. He wrote me a glowing letter of recommendation praising my intelligence because of this."
14."They inherited a huge corporation. They just don’t have to eff it up."
—u/dbuck1964
15."I work for a lady who inherited ~100 mil. She just buys real estate and sets them up as rentals; I do general maintenance on them (I also rent from her). She lives like she's on a pension and pays me in magic beans half the time. A true embodiment of money does not buy happiness."
16."I know the CBO of an international bank. He works a minimum of 12 hours a day, six days a week. On Sundays, he 'only' works six to eight hours. In his downtime, he's on standby for any issues that may crop up, to the point where he once responded to a client within 15 minutes. At 3:45 a.m."
"He's working when I'm sleeping. He's working when I'm at lunch. He's working while flying abroad to visit family. He's working during car rides in between meetings with said family. He's working while working (co-attending two separate meetings while replying to clients).
I have no idea how he works so hard and yet remains so calm. He's basically a Swiss Army C-suite, since he does everything from sales to tactical planning to IT support to shareholder discussions. When I talk to him about it, his response is 'I'm only 51, I'm still young.'
He also has a high-needs child, so his work hours are 6:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. so that he can fetch his child from the daycare, since his office is closer to the daycare than his wife's.
That man is borderline superhuman."
17."Neither of them do anything for work, really. Their dads started extremely successful private equity firms; their families are easily [in the] hundreds of millions level. They both randomly start vanity companies/projects while actually spending most of their time on traveling and yoga retreats. They’re both extremely smart and very kind people who care deeply about their favorite causes."
18."Exists. Parents were billionaires, parents passed away, person is now a billionaire and plays a shocking amount of video games."
19."He was an NFL quarterback, so he doesn't have to do jack these days."
—u/Fritzkreig
Comments may have been edited for length or clarity.
