My Retired Dad Was Offered $900 an Hour at Age 70. He Can Make More in a Day Than I Make in a Month

My Retired Dad Was Offered $900 an Hour at Age 70. He Can Make More in a Day Than I Make in a Month

Adrian Volenik

Wed, September 16, 2026 at 5:00 PM GMT+3 8 min read

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A healthcare worker with 15 years of experience is struggling to understand how their retired, 70-year-old father landed an offer paying $900 an hour. At that rate, an eight-hour day would bring in $7,200 – more than the poster says they make in an entire month.

The father isn't a surgeon or some newly recruited executive. He teaches people how to sell chemicals, and the enormous difference in compensation left his child questioning how the labor market decides what different jobs are worth.

"I know healthcare pay is a joke and it will never be more than a living wage," they wrote in a recent Reddit post, "but how does a 70 [year old] man get a job offer for $900/hr?"

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Why Does Sales Pay So Much More?

They contrasted their father's offer with their own healthcare job, where coming in on weekends to make sure patients and doctors receive results as soon as possible earns them a $50 bonus.

"It's just salesmanship," they wrote. "How does that contribute to society?"

Training colleagues doesn't come with extra compensation at all.

Commenters argued that the difference comes down largely to economics.

Compensation often reflects how much money a worker can generate or save for an employer, along with how difficult their expertise is to replace. That can create enormous pay gaps between jobs even when the lower-paid work has an obvious and immediate impact on people's lives.

That may explain the father's extraordinary rate. With about 50 years of experience, he could have industry knowledge and relationships that are difficult to find. Others added that chemical sales can involve far more than being persuasive. Depending on the role, it can require detailed knowledge about products, regulations, handling, storage and how chemicals behave in different applications.

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Several people also suspected $900 an hour was a consulting or training rate instead of a conventional full-time salary. A company might happily spend several thousand dollars on a specialist for a short engagement if that training could result in much larger sales or prevent expensive mistakes.

When Experience Suddenly Becomes Scarce

Another explanation came up repeatedly: Companies haven't always done enough to train the workers who will replace retiring employees.

One person said they've watched companies bring retired workers back at unusually high rates because younger employees simply don't have the specialized knowledge yet.

Another shared the story of a retired uncle who was asked to teach a company how to use obscure software. He didn't want the job, so he quoted what he considered an outrageous price – roughly an entire year's salary for two weeks of work.

The company agreed.

The poster's frustration ultimately wasn't really about their father's age or even his paycheck. It was about the enormous differences in what different kinds of work command in the market.

They had previously considered healthcare sales themselves and said they could have started at six figures before commission. But the idea of making commission connected to individual patients made them uncomfortable.

"I guess this post is just a way to start a conversation about the inequality of compensation across fields," they wrote, including the financial "worth" society places on different positions.

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Of course, a paycheck isn't the only way to try to become financially successful in your own right. Many investors look to emerging technologies and try to get in early on companies that could benefit from major shifts in the economy.

While headlines tend to focus on AI companies themselves, investors have also been looking at the businesses supplying the infrastructure AI needs. SK Hynix Inc. (NASDAQ:SKHY), the South Korean memory chipmaker that recently made its U.S. stock market debut, is one example. It's a version of the old "picks and shovels" approach: investing in companies supplying an expanding industry.

A similar opportunity could emerge around renewable energy. As more electricity comes from intermittent sources such as wind and solar, storing that energy for when it's needed becomes increasingly important.

Qnetic, a U.S. startup accepting new investors, says it has developed an energy storage system that uses kinetic energy to store electricity and release it when needed. The company says its technology uses no chemicals and promises a lifespan of more than 30 years, compared with up to about 10 years for lithium batteries.

If you're interested in investing in emerging technology and a company that says it has developed a solution for 24/7 energy demand, you can learn more about Qnetic and its investment offering.

Image: Shutterstock

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