I have a close friend that does a civilian job in Iraq, and I knew that he got payed some insane wage over there, but I also knew that he used to be in the army, and he's doing a specific job that only army people are commonly trained for.  The other day I found out that there are a lot more jobs over there than I thought, also paying insane amounts of money.

I know the guy that runs Technipages.com, and he's running an article about a guy that he knows going over to Iraq for an IT job.

Being in IT myself, I wanted to take a look at the numbers, and see just how ridiculous the pay was.

Ok, so base salary for the example is $22.08 per hour, already doing pretty well.  Not only that though, but they also get danger pay and hardship pay of an extra 35% EACH.. wow, that drives the basic hourly wage up to $38.64 an hour.

So now we're making almost $40 an hour, which is right at $80,371.20 a year.  Here's where it gets nuts though.

First of all, they have 60 hour work weeks, every single week.  The catch though is that they don't get the pay bonus for anything more than 40 hours per week, so for those extra 20 hours per week, they're making $33.12 per hour, so technically lower than their regular wage, which I found pretty funny.  This adds another $34,444.80 per year, so our tally as of now is exactly $114,816.00 per year. Wow, that's nuts.

Second, they get a sign on bonus, and a completion bonus, totaling $22,532.00, bringing our yearly salary to $137,348.00. Not to mention, free meals, $3,000 in travel allowance money per year, paid vacation, free housing, sick time, and paid health care.

So, the question becomes, is a hundred and forty thousand a year worth it for you to work in Iraq?  And possibly a better question, are our troops making this much on duty, getting shot at daily?  I sure hope so, but for some reason I doubt it.

I found this compay's website as well, itt.com.

So, who's coming with me?