Glassdoor.com, a new online startup, is trying to become the newest pimp for all your voyeuristic salary snooping desires. Now you can find out how much your loser brother-in-law is making over at his big accounting firm job.

Will this lead to anyone with an internet connection being well informed enough to know to hit you up for money? Some are calling it the next best thing for job hunters, while others pass it off as useless 'salary porn'. Which begs the question, are porn salaries a part of this site too? Sadly, the answer is no, but it's a useful site anyway.

The site is currently in a free trial stage and is allowing all visitors to view salary info for employees at Microsoft and Google free of charge. You may have seen this earlier when we linked some info this morning in the 'Funny and Money Thursday Daily Links' post.

According to Julia Bornstein of CNBC, there is one big catch that will deter the salary peeper inside all of us:

As much as I'd love to voyeuristically read all about the employment landscape, I can't say I'd feel comfortable about offering my own info. I'm sure [my employer-] NBC Universal wouldn't want to encourage such behavior, to say the least. Glassdoor checks your e-mail address and its staffers contact you if there are any questions of authenticity. If you don't mind sharing, you can peruse all sorts of data, and when it comes to salary info, you can graph and sort by employee function.

Although Julia seems to have used the word 'peruse' incorrectly in that quote (Sorry, a pet peeve of mine. It's the most misused word in the English language. Really means to study in great detail, not skim through casually), she does raise an interesting point.

Glassdoor works on the 'I'll show you mine if you show me yours' concept and requires all would-be salary peekers to first give in-depth information about their own job's salary. Of course this wouldn't be an issue for an unhappy employee already looking for another job, but it does hinder the ideal of having all salary information out in the open with Wikipedia-like access.

What if some jobless deadbeat guy wants to start looking up salaries? He wouldn't be able to use Glassdoor due to his lack of experience in the working world. I suppose jobless deadbeats aren't really the revenue driving target audience that Glassdoor is afraid to miss out on.

I am contemplating making up some 'authentic salary information' so that I can check out a few of these entries though. How much does a Starbucks manager make?!

Feel free to post your own salary info in the comments section!

CNBC: New Web Startup Makes Salaries Transparent, June 12, 2008

We are big believers in the perpetual pursuit of your perfect dream job.

And although superhero and astronaut might be out of your league, there are plenty of cool jobs out there you may be uniquely qualified for.

CareerBuilder first assembled the big list of interesting jobs and interviewed these fine gentlemen, but now after careful analysis and prolonged meditation we present to you the 6 coolest dream jobs:

1. Brew Master - Salary: $30,000-$60,000 per year

Jonathan Cutler creates recipes and brews the restaurant’s beer selection at Piece Pizza, a Chicago-based pizzeria. He is the resident brewmaster.

Cutler started home brewing back in college, and completed a brewer training program after graduation. He refined his skills by going to as many beer tastings as he could. It’s not all drinking delicious beers and getting drunk though.

"Right now I'm drenched in sweat, I've got malt all over me and I'm wearing coveralls -- and the brewery is about 100 degrees," Cutler said.

Every guy has his own favorite beer and the world can never have too much of God’s nectar, so why not start on your path to becoming a legendary brew-Master of the Universe?

2. Casino Host - Salary: $15 per hour and up

The casino host is one of the few guys you actually like at a casino. He’s there to make the guest feel comfortable and will ‘comp’ a few drinks and maybe a few rooms. He’ll book your hotel reservations and probably collect some big tips.

At Connecticut's Mohegan Sun casino, there is a casino host on duty 24 hours per day. Eleftherios "Lefty" Mastorakis, executive host at Mohegan Sun, comes in at noon each day and spends the next eight hours or so checking messages from patrons and monitoring the gambling floor to deal with any requests that come up.

Mastorakis entered the casino business after high school and has held a variety of roles over the last 10 years. Lefty smartly does not himself indulge in gambling.

3. Ice Cream Creator - Salary: Food scientists average $56,600 a year

Derek Spors is one of those noble men who laid down his tastebuds to bring you the finest of Ben and Jerry’s. He refers to himself as an "ice cream scientologist" and senior product developer for Ben and Jerry's, where he is responsible for creating (and tasting) new flavors.

To be honest, he should probably drop that scientologist thing to avoid any confusion.

Spors will go around sampling ice cream flavors at many local restaurants and combines them in the lab.

And don’t worry about turning into a huge fat-ass on the job too. You only really have to taste a spoonful. It’s way better than being involved in those dreaded ice cream truck wars.

4. Toy Creator - Salary: Commercial and industrial designers earn an average salary of about $57,000 a year

Toy designers, also known as industrial designers, are the only single guys who can have a roomful of kid’s toys in their bedroom without being considered a pedophile.

This job entails combining your artistic talent with research to create the most appealing, fun and functional toys possible.

Fraser Campbell designs Hot Wheels toy cars. Sometimes he's creating control drawings or designing the vehicles, and other times involve administrative work like e-mails, commenting on designs and scheduling meetings.

Campbell said he always knew he wanted to be a car designer, and he planned his educational path accordingly -- attending an art foundation, getting a bachelor's degree in product design and earning a master's degree in industrial design.

Imagine getting paid to build sick car ramps and see how well they can hold up to an impromptu ‘Godzilla’ attack.

5. Video Game Designer - Salary: Starts around $25,000 with high growth potential

Jon Paquette is in the business of video games: He's the design director and writer for the Medal of Honor Airborne game for EA Los Angeles.

Paquette works with the company's development team, overseeing all design ideas and implementation. Sometimes this means days of meetings. Other days, he'll be at a desk reviewing level designs.

Seems like there is bureaucracy at every job. How bad could it be if you’re wearing one of those motion-capture suits and diving onto a stunt mat?

If you watch a lot of day-time or late-night TV you know that every DeVry or ITT Tech ad is trying to get you to enroll in one of their video game design programs. And although you probably won’t do much designing without a 4-year degree, it’ll still be cool to be so close to ‘the magic’.

6. Comic Book Guru – Salary: Entry-level pay starts around $20,000

Not all adult comic book gurus are as pretentious and overweight as the Simpson’s ‘Comic Book Guy’.

Josh Blaylock, for example, seems like a totally decent guy. He is the founder and president of comics publisher Devil's Due Publishing. He was always a big comic book fan and decided as a teenager to go to art school to pursue that dream.

After working as a comic book writer and artist, Blaylock started Devil's Due Publishing in 1999 and put the company on the map two years later when he resurrected the GI Joe comic series. Now he spends his days managing the day-to-day operations of his company, traveling to acquire new licenses, and reading plenty of comics.

Obviously with such mega-blockbusters as Spiderman, Ironman, and the much anticipated Dark Knight, the world of comic books is proving to be more profitable than ever. And, to be honest, we need more decent superhero characters to capture our imaginations. The days of weird anime and creepy Manga cartoons have gone on long enough.

So if these dream jobs seem like your cup of tea, then go for it. You’ll only have yourself to blame when 10 years from now your neighbor’s name is plastered all over Grand Theft Auto 9.

From Laura Morsch, CareerBuilder writer Dream Jobs, February 2008

The Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) continues to expand and so do their payroll numbers.

Our friends over at CagePotato explain the numbers for this weekend's UFC 84 and point out some major wage discrepancies.

To read about it, go here.

We reported on Tuesday that most of Bear Stearns' employees were just lounging around at the office all day, basically getting paid to go to the gym and relax at the spa. That is, until JP Morgan completes its takeover of the deflated investment bank next month. But what else are those crazy kids up to?

Corey Lorinsky from ClusterStock interviewed a young Bear Stearns employee who described his short lifespan at the failed company in a little more detail:

Summer Training:

From the day I got there, I knew things weren't right. When we were doing Thompson training, the lady teaching the class was using Bear Stearns as an example stock. Every time she came back to the main research page, after she showed us some software feature, Bear's stock was down another $5.

On The Job:

When I got there, the job didn't seem like the horror stories I had heard. Most of the first-years weren't very busy. We would routinely congregate around each other's desks and have hour-long discussions about how crappy the market was doing.

The Crash:

The daily anti-Fed-bailout protests in our lobby were the worst. Didn't these people know they were at the wrong place? Didn't they know the people at JP Morgan still have jobs?

On Jimmy Cayne (former Bear Stearns CEO) smoking pot:

The senior level bankers pretended not to let it bother them. They printed out the pictures and pasted them all over the walls. But in reality, you could tell they were really nervous about Bear's future. They probably should have been smoking pot, too.

Now:

I'm still going into the office and being worked hard. My boss pretends that if I do quality work, I'll get an offer from JP. I wouldn't bet on it. A lot of other people just come into the office when they have to print something. Like their resumes.

There was another interesting story from the New York Times last month about a whole bunch of young college graduates whining that they were screwed out of their jobs at Bear Stearns after the company's collapse.

I understand it's a real pain to be stuck without a job but when you look into these kids' backgrounds you see they come from very wealthy families with expensive degrees from top colleges. They are the cream of the crop and this bump in the road is merely just a small setback in their otherwise very well-endowed lives. A lot of them even have other offers to 'fall-back on', as if a $70k entry-level-job with a big Wall Street bank can really be considered a 'safety option'.

And plus, since there is no way an entry level analyst could be held accountable for the Bear debacle, it will make for a great story on future job interviews -
"I see you were at Bear Stearns in March of 08?! Wowzers, tell me all about that one! Oh wait, better yet... you're just hired. You can tell me all about it on your first day, Mr. New Vice President."

Know anyone involved in all these Bear shenanigans? Shout it out in the comments.

ClusterStock: My Life At Bear Stearns: Not Just Sitting Around Waiting To Get Fired!, May 14, 2008

The Bear Stearns gang are just hangin' out at 383 and collecting those pay checks because, until the JP Morgan takeover is finalized, they can't be fired.

It was easy to fall into the trap of pitying all those unknowing Bear Stearns employees when their employer went belly-up in March. They had given years of loyal service to their company, and because of sub-prime mortgages and poor management decisions, they were all going to be living on the street.

It's hard to picture them on the street corner wearing nothing but a barrel and suspenders when New York Magazine is printing quotes from guys like this:

“I’d say 50 percent of my department comes in at some point on a given day, and the trading floor is empty. I take one call a week, maybe,” says the Bear employee. “Sometimes I have to, like, print something.”

JP Morgan is notifying thousands of former Bear bankers a week that they will be receiving the ax shortly. However, until all the paperwork is signed next month, they are free to hang out and check their direct deposit balances.

On top of that, laid-off bankers will be receiving at least three weeks of severance for every year served, plus a bonus for sticking around till the sale closes.

The article also refers to the former Bears in hibernation as becoming "spa swans and gym rats." I'm not sure if that refers to women and men respectively, or just a large collective group of metrosexual, roid-raging dudes.

Some people are not very happy about this, as noted by one commenter on the article, named Arcataberry:

"While these leeches are at the spa, I'm sweating my mortgage and the price of gas. Wall Street joins Washington at the top of the list of places Americans mistrust deeply. Gone is the cachet of brokers making sexy deals in high rises. They all look like rats to the rest of us."

I disagree. There are still plenty of sexy deals going on in high rises, those just aren't the ones getting reported in New York Magazine.

New York Mag: Bear Bankers Hibernate With Pay, May 11, 2008

Fox Business delves deep into the seedy world of start-up dumpling restaurants with this dark portrayal of dump-lord Kenny Lao.

Nah just kidding, it's not like that at all. Instead, this dude Kenny is waaay too excited about dumplings and Fox Biz's Christina 'Kind-of-Hottie' Scotti isn't afraid to ask the tough questions:

A couple of great lines here:

Scotti: "Kenny Lao has dumplings in his DNA!"

Lao: "I've never seen so many dumplings in my life!"

Scotti: "What did your parents think?! [about starting a successful dumpling restaurant]"

Scotti: "Are you trying to make this the McDonald's of dumplings?"

(in the accompanying interview) What's an important life lesson you learned from this? Lao: "Nap whenever you can nap."

One of the most interesting strategies that Kenny discusses is calling a famous New York restaurateur's mother at home to pitch his idea. Really, how did that follow-up conversation go, "Sorry I was harassing your mother late at night at home, but I have a dumpling franchise idea you NEED to hear about."

All kidding aside, I'm happy for this guy. It's always good to see some young guys taking risks with new businesses and succeeding. And Kenny's chain, Rickshaw Dumpling Bar, which currently has 2 New York locations (soon to be 4), is pulling in over $2.8 million in revenue. As you may have noticed, I'm still bitter about the huge financial and health-code failure my dumpling-themed restaurant, 'Taking A Dump', was.

FoxBusiness: Young Guns: Behind the Scenes with Rickshaw Dumpling Bar, May 6, 2008

Are you sick of working minimum wage at fast food places, or stocking shelves for measly pennies? Does Zoo Curator, Animator, or Loan Officer sound like a better career move? Yes it does, especially if the pay is good.

59% of employees in the United States are paid by an hourly rate. Think of how far you could make a pre-tax $800-a-week salary go from working 40 hours.

Check out this list compiled by CNN of jobs, where you don't have to take your clothes off, and can get paid more than $20 an hour:

1. Subway and streetcar operators - Annual = $46,180. Hourly = $22.20. I'm not sure where these 'streetcars' are located outside of San Francisco, but subway operator sounds doable. Press a few buttons, babble incoherently over a loud speaker, yell at people for holding the doors open. Don't forget about the intense responsibility of operating a high speed transport vehicle... and the cool hat. (not pictured)

2. Gaming Supervisors - Annual= $42,390. Hourly = $20.38. These are guys sometimes known as the pit bosses at casinos. The guy brooding and pacing around the casino floor making sure none of the dealers are losing too much. This sounds like a sweet job too. How much education and training do you really need to shake down and break the legs of a card-counting cheat in the back room?

3. Multimedia artists and animators - Annual = $58,030. Hourly = $27.90. Toy Story, Shrek, Bee Movie and Finding Nemo were all great movies that took years of painstaking digital animation and countless artists to create. Everyone's seen the 'making of' for these movies, and you know they need a guy to run around in a weird black suit with motion capture sensors. That could be you! Besides, wouldn't it be fun to start sneaking hidden sex messages into Disney movies again?

4. Respiratory therapists - Annual = $46,610. Hourly = $23.37. Teaching people how to breathe?! You're kidding me. These guys bring home this salary for helping doctors treat patients with breathing disorders. Squeeze a plastic bag here, blow a few rescue breaths there and then call it a day. Done and done, pay me.

5. Curators - Annual = $49,980. Hourly = $24.03. Everyone loves museums. According to the writeup on this, these salaries also include zoos, aquariums, nature centers and botanical gardens. These are places you would love to spend your free time. Imagine having a career hanging out at the zoo all day? And don't tell me it would smell bad, because you know training monkeys to give high-fives and explaining to little kids why two peacocks are climbing on each other are priceless opportunities that lend themselves to great personal amusement.

6. Health educators - Annual = $43,370. Hourly = $21.81. Remember Mr. Smithsburg, the health class teacher in high school? He passed around that prosthetic phallus with the silicone testicles showing everyone how to give themselves a testicular cancer self-exam? Well you could do what that guy does and earn a decent salary! Come on, who doesn't want to be an old creepy guy talking about STDs and prostate exams with young, impressionable, and mortified high school students?

7. Cartographers and photogrammetrists - Annual = $52,600. Hourly = $25.29. These guys make maps and analyze photographs. Seems simple enough, I mean come on, there isn't really any heavy duty cartography going on these days. Those days of traveling the globe on a ship to sketch landscapes are over. Most of the earth has been Google mapped to oblivion. We can even pinpoint where on a map a kid fell off his bike.

8. Arbitrators, mediators and reconcilers - Annual = $58,790. Hourly = $28.27. I think one of the best examples of this profession is from the opening scene in Wedding Crashers where Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn are mitigating a divorce settlement. If everything were just like in the movies, real life would be great. And if hearing people argue about money and squabble about child custody, isn't up your alley you could always go into buried treasure mitigation hearings. I demand 40 gold doubloons and 3 pirate skulls.

9. Urban and regional planners - Annual = $58,940. Hourly = $28.33. There are people who get their Masters and Doctorate degrees in studying this kind of stuff for city planning, but I'm gonna sum it all up for your so you can start making money in this career. Don't put the paper mill next to the tire fire yard, and keep the sex offender prison away from the elementary school. Now get planning, we need New New Jersey mapped out by Tuesday.

10. Loan officers - Annual = $61,930. Hourly = $29.77. Want to feel like you're making a difference with a career? Well jump on the bandwagon and continue to worsen the credit and housing markets by tricking people into high-interest loans they can't afford. At least you will be able to make your monthly payments, with this sweet new job.

Any other professions that do surprisingly well for themselves? Let us hear it in the comments section.

CNN: Ten jobs that pay $20 an hour, April 23, 2008

This guy must have 'je ne sais quoi' coming out his ass. He criminally loses billions of dollars for a company, then a few months later turns around and gets another sweet job all while facing prosecution. Only in France, baby.

The man behind the €4.9 billion ($7.6 billion) loss at the major French financial institution, Société Générale (SocGen) back in January, has been working as a computer expert for the consulting firm LCA in Paris for the past month.

Even though he was forbidden by a judge to set foot anywhere near a trading room, and his passport was revoked as a flight risk, he is somehow allowed to serve as a 'computer expert' at a big computing consulting firm? I guess it's similar to the idea of companies hiring computer hacker kids to work in their security departments.

Kerviel is currently facing charges for breach of trust, forgery, and 'unauthorized computer use.' Back at SocGen he was able to get away with what he did for almost 3 years before getting caught. Kerviel started out with several small trades that no one would have noticed. They eventually turned into larger ones, and by the time it was all uncovered in January, the whole mess had spawned into a $7.6 billion casualty.

His supervisors maintain that he did everything in secrecy and was able to surpass the checks and balances that would have caught all his doings. He had spent some time in the division of SocGen that handled oversight and compliance practices. Kerviel's story is that his supervisors knew what he was doing

He's been lying low lately because almost everyone in France hates him and is disgraced by what he did. There is even a large group of Frenchies who maintain he's originally from an area of the country that 'good French people' don't even consider a part of "France". Regardless, his series of 'rogue trades' cost his company the greatest sum of money due to a rogue trader in history.

The weird thing is that when all these papers and news reports describe the guy, they use that phrase 'rogue trader'. What exactly is a rogue trader? Apparently, its someone who makes a whole bunch of unauthorized trades that eventually lead to big losses. If those trades had made the company billions of dollars, 'French Daredevil Evel' Kerviel would be a company legend sitting in a nice corner office at the SocGen Eiffel Tower branch.

Should we give this guy a break and let him get his life back together, or should he be under a little more lock-and-key due to his past indiscretions? Let us know in the comments section.

The Guardian UK: Rogue trader Kerviel get new job, April 25, 2008