Here Are The 25 Highest-Paying Jobs In America

While being  a "Scrum Master" doesn"t sound all that glamorous, according to a new study from Glassdoor it"s in high demand and pays really well.  So what exactly does a Scrum Master do, you may ask?  Well, we actually had no idea either so we tracked down the following very helpful description from Scrum Hub:

We know the Scrum Master is a crucial player on new Scrum teams, but what exactly does he or she do all day?

For starters, we know the Scrum Master doesn’t plan the release, because that’s done by the product owner and the team. We know he doesn’t manage the developers because the Scrum team is self-organizing; and we know he’s not even the guy who’s accountable if the end result sucks (that’s the product owner too).

So basically, a Scrum Master has the same job as Tom from Office Space...which is a pretty sweet gig.

Meanwhile, in addition to the highly sought after Scrum Master seat, the tech industry held 10 of the other 25 highest paying jobs appearing on Glassdoor"s third annual salary study. 

Yet while jobs from the tech industry dominated the list, not one tech job ended up in the top five which was instead dominated by healthcare positions.

For the third year in a row, "physician" took the top slot, with a median base salary of $187,876. Pharmacy managers ($149,064) and pharmacists ($125,847) popped up at No. 2 and No. 5. "Medical science
liaisons" ($132,842) - specialists who work for pharmaceutical or biotech companies to establish relationships with medical experts - came in at No. 4. Patent attorneys rounded out the top five, at No. 3.

Other health-care jobs that were new to the list this year include nurse practitioner (No. 14, $104,144) and physician assistant (No. 7, $112,529, which also showed up in 2015).

"High pay continues to be tied to demand skills, higher education and working in jobs that are protected from competition or automation," Glassdoor chief economist Andrew Chamberlain said in an emailed statement. "That is why we see several jobs within the technology and health-care industries."

And while "Nuclear Engineers" may applaud themselves on all that schooling, they may want to review some basic ROIC calcs because we"re not sure they"re earning an adequate return on all that education.  That said, Silicon Valley is totally feening for Scrum Masters which require absolutely no skills at all.

Goldman "Concerned" As Risk Appetite Index Hits Record High

Speaking at a conference in London, Goldman MD Christian Mueller-Glissmann warned investors, "valuations are at very high levels. And that concerns us when it comes to making progress in stocks, unless you maintain a very high level of optimism." The firm"s aggregate risk appetite index reached record highs in December - the same peak reached in 1999/2000 and 2007... and we know what happened next.

"This is a chart which a lot of people have in the back of their mind right now. It"s our risk appetite indicator. That essentially shows you across asset classes what the risk appetite is. And it has equity risk premium in there it, it has VIX, it has everything that reflects how bullish markets are and it"s real time."

Mueller-Glissman goes on...

"And guess what, in the middle of December, that indicator had the highest level in the history of the indicator. We are not at the beginning of this optimism trade, we"re really in the middle of that optimism trade."

Roughly translated, like small business optimism, this is as good as it gets for markets.

Here"s two examples of that "risk appetite"...