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Comment by dxbydt | Hacker News Reader

> “If you want to own a house, have paid-for cars, put your kid through school, put away savings, and otherwise be completely comfortable then you can do just fine.”

lol wut ? if you work in a typical SF startup, you can do precisely none of these things. Like, literally zero.

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SF startup cash comp for engineers is comfortably in the 150k-200k range, and often higher. This is series A, series B stage companies. If you have a few years of experience and are making less than this then I'm please to be able to inform you that you are underpaid.

If you have one of those incomes at the higher end, you can do these things in the bay area. If you have more than one then that stuff is not hard at all.

Berkeley has pleasant single family homes in a great school district around the $1MM mark. You can absolutely do that on $200k/year. IMO you should for sure be able to reach the mark where this is comfortable financially by the time you're around 30.

You mean people have quit coming in full cash 10-15% over ask for houses in the bay area ?

2 years ago people with standard financing didnt have a chance in hell of buying a house in the Bay

I know a bunch of people who have bought in this price range with standard financing, and I based the numbers on sale prices.

They'll be a lot more expensive by the time some of us turn 30.

Unless you mean both spouses should earn around 200k and thus bringing in a FAANG-equivalent income of 400k, I really don't know how you could afford what you are saying on a single 150k-200k salary (and perhaps another 50k for your spouse's salary, since not everybody works in tech).

After paying for CA taxes, fed taxes, kids' schools, rent, car expenses, 401k contributions, I really don't know how you would come up with the savings necessary for the huge down payment required for a house there.

Just last week, a friend of mine got outbid on a ~1.5M house in the East Bay Area because another buyer came in and offered a down payment of $700k (!!), whereas my friend just had a more traditional 20%.

Good luck getting to those savings on a 150k startup salary and mostly worthless options.

In my experience, and I certainly respect yours, people just need to stop working for startups and go to big corporations, period.

And I speak as someone who had a low 7 figure liquidation event from a startup, and I'm still so against startups, because that liquidation event still didn't match the compensation I could have gotten as FAANG all along.

Why would it matter 20% or 700k as a seller I get the full amount from the bank.

I believe the buyer was also slightly more aggressive, i.e. was willing to let the deal close faster than my friend, who rightfully wanted to take his time before getting into the biggest purchase of his life (inspections and such). That, paired with the massive downpayment the buyer was ready to immediately put in earnest money, was enough to convince the seller. Real estate transactions are not always that rational.

Also, many folks in the Bay Area just go all cash, and that's obviously much better for the seller since it means very fast closing.

But this if off topic, because a person on a 150k startup salary in the Bay Area won't be able to participate in any of these discussions.

Because most offers are "subject to favorable financing" and if the person doesnt get favorable financing, the offer falls thru and the seller ends up holding the housing longer w/o a seller and paying the carry. People will often sell at a lower absolute price (slightly lower) for all-cash offers without the issues of financing.

Also, financing can fall thru for silly reasons (eg the bank found some crazy lien from the 1940s) and want it cleared before they offer financing.

>>FAANG-equivalent income of 400k

LUL dude, I hear this shit being parroted ad-nauseum. The amount of FAANG people that hit this level or more is like, 5-10%. Take a look at the top 5-10% of non-FAANG companies and you'll see those employees are also hitting this mark. There's nothing special about FAANG. I understand lots of FAANG employees parrot this around to make themselves feel better about their life choices.

According to my experience (and again, that's the only thing I know), that's not even remotely true.

When I interviewed a couple years ago, I made sure to interview at FAANG (specifically Facebook, Google, Netflix) and I also interviewed at half dozen big public companies in the same couple months (among which Oracle, Salesforce, Cisco, Juniper, Palo Alto Networks). I didn't interview at any private company (Uber, AirBnB, ...), since I was coming out of the startup world and I wanted liquid compensation.

The FAANG offers that came back were all significantly higher than the other ones, and the constant was certainly me (a software engineer with 7 years of experience at the time and a BS + MS in Computer Engineering).

All the FAANG offers (luckily I got an offer from all the 3 I interviewed at) were at a total liquid compensation of $~400-450k/y (annualized cash + RSU), and I'm certainly not in the top 10% of their tech workforce, not even remotely close, I come in as a generalist with some ops experience who spent a couple months studying algorithms and data structures. I don't even have an active GitHub profile.

All the other non-FAANG tech companies (I got an offer from 4) were at a total liquid compensation of $~220k/y (annualized cash + RSU).

The only other companies who matched the FAANG offers were a couple of hedge funds on the East Coast, but I didn't want to relocate and I wanted to keep working for a tech company.

In the end, I joined Google.

So, I'm just reporting my own personal experience based on the data I directly experienced (I have PDFs of all the offers :-)). Feel free to ask any follow up question, I love educating software engineers on their real market value, since I think many sell themselves too short in this thriving market.

How has your TC changed since you’ve joined Google?

The stock value has slightly increased over the past year or so, and have received some refreshers. Very happy with the compensation part. I don't have kids and am looking for an early retirement outside the US, so I'm able to stash away significant amount of savings every month.

Sounds like you were interviewing at the ~L5 equivalent level. Any insights on getting hired (or even interviewed) at L5 vs L4?

Yes, based on my own experience and that of my peers, I think it's very plausible that you would have accumulated savings to get you 20% down on a $1MM place over the course of (say) spending the last six to eight years in San Francisco with household income in the 150 to 200k range. You might have to make a tradeoff of (eg) not maxing your 401k contributions if you're on the lower end. I mean, we're talking probably about saving $20k/yr when you factor in compounded returns from (eg) the S&P500.

I agree that this math does _not_ work as well if you're moving to San Francisco and already have a family but no preexisting savings, so don't do that.

It's also true that if you rely on financing you will get outbid on some houses. But I know plenty of people who've successfully bought using financing.

also, self reply to observe: not saying this means you should or should not work at a startup. just that the idea that you can't live a decent lifestyle at startups is not true.

You pay for it in commute time, though. I just checked Zillow; the houses that are anywhere within walking distance of BART go for $1.7-$2.8M, with the $1M homes clustered near the freeway. Driving across the Bay Bridge into SF can easily take an hour; hell, I know people who've been stuck on the bridge for over an hour.

For precisely this reason, the most valuable real estate in Berkeley is BART parking. It's also (officially) not for sale at any price. You have to sit on the waitlist for a few years. I'm sure there's a black secondary market somewhere but I haven't found it.

BART is looking to eliminate all its parking, so this strategy won't work much longer. (They claim that the parking program doesn't bring in much revenue, but also refuse to charge a market-clearing price!)

Maybe the houses away from BART will get a little more affordable and those willing to walk 45 minutes or so will get a break. Or it'll end up like Sunnyvale where most of the "Caltrain" parking is actually provided by the City.

I started a remote job in August (8 months ago) and I've saved about 400 hours of commute time since then.

(~2.5 hours / day) x (~20 work days / month) x (8 months) = ~400 hours

I checked this before I posted to make sure things hadn't changed.

Here's an example: https://www.redfin.com/CA/Berkeley/2333-Sacramento-St-94702/...

BART is a 20 minute walk, five minute bike ride (and with the weather and topography cycling is a great option).

That's still an hour+ commute: 20 minute walk + 5 minute wait + 35 minute BART ride. Plus however long the walk/connection is on the SF side. If you're working at Embarcadero it could be a few minutes shorter; if you're where a bunch of the post-2010 tech companies are clustered at 7th street in SOMA, it's another 25 or so via bus or light rail connection.

> Berkeley has pleasant single family homes in a great school district around the $1MM mark. You can absolutely do that on $200k/year.

Let's say you make $200k/year and manage to put together a $300k down payment and get a $700k mortgage at 3.8%. Here is the breakdown of your annual spending (using 2018 numbers):

$18,500 to 401K

$35,930 in federal income tax

$10,593 in FICA (Social security and medicare)

$13,724 in California income tax

Take home after tax + retirement savings: $121,253 Also, remember that the rules have changed and only $10,000 in state, local, and property tax is deductible against federal income.

Remaining payments:

$39,140 in mortgage payments

$10,500 in property tax

$1,000 in homeowners insurance

$10,000 in car ownership costs (gas, maintenance, insurance, financing or depreciation)

$4,000 in utilities (gas, electricity, water, trash, internet)

$1,000 for phone

That leaves you with $55,613 of "real" annual take home, or $4,634 per month, without counting the cost of food, entertainment, other debt servicing, etc. Certainly not poverty wages, and many people get by with far less, but you'll also spend 2+ hours per day commuting and have a significant fraction of your net worth tied up in a house in an earthquake-prone area.

Since we've already accounted for all housing and car payments (btw, your car ownership costs are way too high as a lower bound. I would say an decent $10k car you hold on to for 5 years at a time would have total annual costs closer to $5/year) that doesn't sound bad at all

I was using the numbers here: https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/loans/total-cost-owning-car/ but you could certainly get it down a bit if you don't mind driving an older car.

15k miles a year is also a lot of miles. I probably drive less than 5k.

Well, if you're commuting two hours a day, you'll certainly be driving quite a few miles.

I drive around 40,000km (~25,000 miles) and that's around a 2 hour round trip commute.

Berkeley -> Mountain View is 50 miles one way (25,000 per year)

Berkeley -> San Mateo is 35 miles one way (17,500 per year)

Berkeley -> San Francisco is 15 miles one way - 7500 per year (at an average speed of 20 mph)

If you can use BART or CalTrain to get to work then you can get those numbers way down, but it's not an option for everyone.

2+ hours per day commuting? BART from Berkeley to Powell St station is 30 minutes. You have last mile for sure, but this totally works for most SF based startup jobs.

But either way... doesn't this prove my point? This does not sound like a difficult way to live, _and_ it factors in luxuries (I for one definitely do not spend $10k/year on car ownership).

> 2+ hours per day commuting? BART from Berkeley to Powell St station is 30 minutes.

1 hour on/waiting for BART + ~40 minutes walking between your house and BART + ~20 minutes walking between BART and your job gets pretty close to 2 hours.

Car cost is indeed high, but if you have a kid you'll probably need one and then you have to factor in the cost of childcare... $2k/month?

I generously based this on one income. If we need childcare then we presumably have a second income?

I realize that single parent households do exist, but we're not covering every case here.

You don't need to spend $10k/year to have a car. This is pretty trivially provable because there are lots of people who own cars who clearly wouldn't be able to do so if that were the case.

rent a bike locker at the station, bike to BART - 10 minutes

Buy a Brompton folding bike - not sure if the US has the same tax advantages that the UK has.

Well, it depends on the definition of "startup." If you work exclusively at seed-stage or A-round companies with like less than 15 employees, your salary will be a lot lower than if you work at lots of B and C-stage companies.

I've worked at companies that at least called themselves startups for my entire career, and I own a house in San Bruno, my wife and I each have paid-for cars, we can put our kids through school, and we put away savings.

How much more expensive would your house be today than when you bought it? How about 5-10 years from now?

I bought my (current) house eight months ago.

That's a California problem, not inherent to startups themselves.

It's a big world, and a lot of interesting startups are not in SF. A lot of interesting startups in SF hire remote, too.

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