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Comment by antonioneffy | Hacker News Reader

I'm just wondering why a lot of these people with tons of experience are settling for sub-$70k jobs. Is there a reason for this?

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I was hired for $65k or so after a 6-month job search left me financially drained. There was the promise that typical raises could go into the 10% or more per year region, with a possible promotion to a Senior Software Engineer position, but after a sister company had a poor year of growth and a lawsuit hit my company this past year, I'm at-or-under $70k. It's awful, especially when given that I work 44-48 hours per week and given that my domain knowledge is incredibly broad and I know my specialities inside-and-out, and have a Master's. I was really expecting an appropriate pay raise recently because my work helped my company sign a new client who's something like 100x their size, their "chump change" is, like, double everything the startup makes.

Part of the reason that I'm staying is because I'm in a tremendous amount of debt and therefore I've become extremely paranoid and risk-averse. Part of the reason is that said debt has me working a second job and I am in a largely-dysfunctional relationship besides, so I have very little energy outside of this job. Part of the reason is that I have gained 80 pounds and no longer fit into any nice clothes for a job interview, with very little chance of me getting anything nice any time soon.

Man, that paragraph makes me sound like such a downer. I promise that I'm really happy and easygoing most of the time! That's just the more-sober reality of why I find it a huge struggle to jump onto some new thing.

May I suggest sending out your resume to companies that would pay better? You're going to be taken advantage of as long as you let them.

That was a sad paragraph. :( If you want to lose the 80 lbs without too much difficulty, there's always https://www.reddit.com/r/keto

It's a big country, the salaries are distorted by SF/SV, NYC and select other large employers.

Where I live in a rural small town, I make top 5% tech salary (~80k$ canadian pesos). The same salary in Montreal is probably 25-30 percentile of tech salary? In Vancouver it probably would be 45th percentile of tech salaries. That said a the price of a Vancouver condo buys a Montreal Duplex and buys a whole New Brunswick suburban sub-division... Or a mansion with a few acres on the sea front and 5 bedrooms / 7 baths...

I'm wondering the opposite what does one even do with more than $70K?

I'm doing an apprenticeship starting when I was 17 year old and I only earn $11K (I don't pay income tax because it's so low) and yet I managed to save up 8k because I live with my parents right now and except maybe buying a car I don't even know what to spend it on.

For context rent is here at about $400/month for a single bedroom apartment. Another $300/month is enough to cover food and utilities for at least two people.

Unless you want to retire in san francisco or some big city there is no real advantage to buying a home there. So are you buying a new tesla every two years? Are you buying a macbook/iphone/high-end gaming pc every month? I honestly have no clue.

EDIT: Maybe I should also mention that the company will pay me at least $30k/y after the apprenticeship.

Here's some general idea about how people spend their money, not that you couldn't figure this out on your own.

Houses: 100k-1mm

Cars: 15-80k (each)

Vacations/Travel: 2-10k/year

Expensive Clothing: $3-5k/year

Jewelry: $0-5k/year

Hobbies: $1-20k/year

Entertainment/Dining/Drinks: $1-20k/year

Retirement & Other Investments: $0 - 50k/year

Repeat some of that stuff for their children, add college expenses, maybe private school.

Those are just some examples that I largely based off of my sister. She is constantly expanding/improving her home (bathroom remodel and new pool in the past 18 months), she loves big expensive jewelry, she has designer purses and clothing, they have 4 cars which all have TVs and other fancy options in them, they have a class A RV, her husband builds cars & races at the track, they have young boys and everyone has a dirtbike, boys have modern toys/video games/etc.

You might think "wow, that's ridiculous," but really they're just spending to their level of income. It's pretty common.

You, on the other hand, seem to be more like me. Of my salary I'm required to spend 8.2% on my mortgage, so I don't default. I've started a homestead that I've been buying a lot of tools and equipment for. My utilities come out to another ~1.5% of my salary. Everything else is savings, and/or thrown on to the mortgage. I'm going to pay my mortgage off fully in ~18-24 months (total time). I have no other debts and after that I can save 100% of my salary. I'd like to maybe build a new home on this homestead someday, but I'm not going to go into debt to build it. In the meantime, the salary affords me the luxury of no financial concerns and the ability to help others when they need it.

If I had no debts or ambitions to own property, and I didn't mind living in a small single bedroom apartment like your example, I would spend the $700/month on my living expenses and save the rest. I'd probably dip into savings to visit another country each year. I'd retire early.

In the end, that's your real answer. Savings & retirement funds. You just haven't thought that far ahead because you're very young.

I guess a great question is... are they happy with it? I like my current employer, they're the kind of company I want to work for. I actually stated the salary I wanted upfront, and they gave it to me. It isn't particularly high, but it covers my needs and then some. It was a bit more than my salary at my last job, which was fine with me.

I have a Toyota. I don't need a Tesla.

I am a (relatively) happy person.

What more could I want?

I'm still in college, so I wouldn't have any idea. But my guess is they don't want to move to a higher COL and are settled or they just don't know how much they are worth on the open market.

One thing that I have noticed at my own school is that many of my peers undersell themselves and don't even apply to the highest paying companies despite being very qualified.

It's simple. Nobody hires in the cities I want to live in, or if they do, it's mostly defense related work I won't touch.

Well there's some in SF making under $70k and there's plenty of interesting jobs there. That's borderline poverty, isn't it?

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