Anyone can tell you that Finance, Management, and Marketing are among the most popular career paths for MBA graduates around the world.

But can we ever know what awaits at the end of the road?

Yes, we can. Thanks to PayScale.com, we can now discuss things like median salary, lifetime earnings, and stress (which, of course, is the only metric guaranteed to show enviable levels of growth).

The most popular MBA career path is Finance. As unsurprising as that is, it must be said that Finance far outperforms the other three contenders in terms of broad appeal. At a coefficient of 4.73x (the amount of people employed in the sector compared to all other sectors), the financial industry is by far the MBA graduate's most common home. Next are Marketing (2.9x) , Human Resources (2.52x), and Technology Management (1.52x).

But this is when things start to get interesting. Despite the limited amount of MBAs employed in the Tech industry, it is ranked as the most pleasant and the most stress-free sector to work in, with 76% of MBA-educated professionals saying they are satisfied and 42% reporting low levels of stress.

On the other side of the spectrum is Marketing with levels of satisfaction at 69% and acceptable stress levels indicated by as little as 34% of the respondents.

Our guess is that it's all due to the fact that Marketing professionals are reported to be some of the heaviest coffee drinkers out there.

Moral of the story: manage your caffeine levels before caffeine will start managing you.

Look no further than earning, however, and suddenly Marketing doesn't seem all that bad. PayScale ranks it as the second most profitable lifetime profession with an estimated USD 3,060,000 earned over a period of 30 years. This puts it right behind Finance (USD 3,2 million) and well above Tech (USD 2.68 million).

And before we turn this into a heated reddit discussion on the merits of pursuing one career path over another, we'll leave you to check the rest of the information for yourself.

Hint: The last section is the best.

If working for someone else is not your cup of tea, you could always try to launch your own business. And if you're in need of motivation to get you started, we've got you covered. Read: Top 5 Entrepreneurs with MBA Degrees and get that startup going!