OTE appears in job advertisements, especially British ones. It stands for on-target earnings: the pay you would take home if you hit the employer’s targets — usually sales targets. The advert shows one attractive number, but that number is not a promise. You get the full amount only if you sell enough, or do as much of the work as they want. If you miss the target, you get less; the guaranteed part (the basic salary) is often much smaller. Though actually, the tidy reading “this is the salary” is how they hope your eye will land. Read it as a best-case figure, not a floor. It is advert language, not a word you need at the dinner table. You will almost never hear someone say OTE in ordinary chat.