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Comment by astuyvenberg | Hacker News Reader

This post also resonated with me, especially the quote from /r/cscareerquestions

> Got an awesome internship at an interesting company? Well, it wasn’t FAANG, so who cares? Got a FAANG internship? Well it wasn’t one of the good FAANGs, so if you really think about it, you really didn’t accomplish anything. Got into a “Good FAANG”? Well, the other intern works on his own startup idea when he goes home. Why aren’t you working on your startup idea? Do you even have a startup idea? Are you even trying?

It's absolutely not limited to new engineers. Take a look at the replies to the "Levels.fyi Annual Report" here on HN.

> You can't move to the US/SF/NYC? Good luck eeking out a living. You didn't get an offer from a FAANG? Well, you don't really belong in the bay area then. You got a FAANG offer but you didn't negotiate 400k+ total comp? Good luck ever getting a raise. You made it to the top of your salary band? Well, they'll never move you up, better plan your exit now.

The tech rat race mentality is very real and very pervasive.

View on HN

I've noticed something about subreddits that focus on lifestyle design and center around advice: they all start to converge on fairly narrow groupthink. /r/personalfinance is all about super frugal living and passive investing. In /r/backpacking, the general advice is to go as light as possible and spend money reducing weight. /r/cscareerquestions is about the leetcode grind and getting into FAANG. /r/malefashionadvice only really recommends a narrow range of personal styles and is not helpful if you don't want to look like that.

Now, the advice is often pretty decent in those subs, but it's not helpful if you don't want exactly what they recommend. And they put way too much emphasis on the narrow range of things they think are worthwhile.

Anyway, back to commenting on the article:

> So why are we all doing this? Why do so many smart people fall victim to this trap of chasing success and prestige purely for the sake of it?

Survivorship bias. There are a lot of smart people everywhere living quiet, normal lives. They don't necessarily seem that different unless you know them well, because they're not trying to rock the world with their brilliance.

In fact, what we think of as "smart" does not correspond to "has high natural ability." "Smart people" are people who have decided to make their identities center around being smart. They've worked hard at it.

My brother and I were from a normal middle class background but both went to fancy private schools. My uncles apparently all got tested high IQs and they have thick Texan accents, they like handball and guitar and fishing. They're normal people. Their Facebook comments aren't even all that articulate. But you can tell they're intelligent because they seem to "get" things and they don't say dumb stuff.

>In fact, what we think of as "smart" does not correspond to "has high natural ability." "Smart people" are people who have decided to make their identities center around being smart. They've worked hard at it.

I would also argue it's the combination of smart and naturally outgoing or extroversion. Being extroverted seems to be naturally correlated to being successful or being a successful leader for most people. It doesn't make sense to me, other than I guess if you're your own cheerleader you're more likely to find opportunities.

Not sure about that, at least in my workplace some of the people considered the smartest and best engineers are very quite, almost shy.

I have the opposite experience. I work in higher education, at an institution full of very smart, very talented people. There's a mix of both extroverted and introverted. The extroverts are all moving up the chain, while the (generally more talented) introverts stagnate earlier in their careers.

I'm sure there's something there to study, but I'm also sure I don't know what it is.

Keep in mind "extroverted" does not mean socially skilled.

My fiancee is a social ace. She knows how to make everyone feel good and always has a big smile. She connects deeply with people.

But when she's done she has to spent the next three days binge watching The Wire to recover.

A lot of introverts are very socially skilled, they just require time to get their energy back.

So maybe the Gervais Principle applies beyond just corporations:

https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...

Depends on how you classify "smartest" and "best".

At some point, the top-tier IC positions are going to require the type of skills that are commonly associated with extroverts.

https://keavy.com/work/thriving-on-the-technical-leadership-...

>I’ve chosen to cultivate a path for myself that enables me to dig into complex technical and product problem spaces and help lead technical and strategic direction for my organization, as an engineer but not a manager.

Like it or not, if you ever want to escape the delivery trap, you're going to have to be able to effect change that cuts across multiple organizational entities in your workplace, and that's going to require selling yourself and your ideas.

It's easier to hit the ceiling of how successful you're going to be when you're working on your own. If you're someone other people want to work with/for, there are a lot more opportunities that can be taken advantage of.

Until recently, I agreed with you, but I just read a book called Quiet (by Susan Cain) [1] about introversion, and in the book they give evidence that shows that many of corporate history's most successful leaders were introverts.

I highly recommend the book to anyone who thinks they're an introvert, manages introverts, or has introverted family members -- it helped me understand/be happy with many of my own personality traits that I'd overlooked or misunderstood. (And, after reading the book, I realize I'm an ambivert, not an introvert.)

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Quiet-Power-Introverts-World-Talking/...

>My brother and I were from a normal middle class background but both went to fancy private schools.

I find that people tend to either over or underestimate the "middle class"iness of their upbringing.

Seriously, these two things do not go in hand in my mind.

Scholarships are a thing?

Nah, I didn't even need scholarships. The financial aid was really good for Stanford undergrad.

My brother went to a state school undergrad, then got grad degrees from Harvard and Georgetown. He's almost done paying off an assload of debt, but it's meant he's had to work as a consultant these last ten years.

I think everybody thought you were talking about "fancy private" elementary/high schools, which is definitely not a middle class thing. Private college/university is a totally different matter.

They have scholarships for private k-12 too. I went to one 6-12 and my family was at no point ever more than lower-middle class. I got what amounted to a full ride almost my entire time there. And even as the family made more still didn't pay much.

My dad worked for city government as a planner for a small suburban town and my mom worked part time as a bookkeeper. My childhood home's estimated value is like $185k.

My parents were smart and had a little extra cultural capital but yeah, we were pretty middle class. Maybe lower-upper-middle class.

>Dad was in a managerial, if not directorial, position not threatened by industry collapse, and made enough so that his wife only had to work part time.

I mean, that would do it. I suppose it depends on when and where you grew up. Suffice it to say that this kind of upbringing sounds unusually high-end compared to the actual American middle class for the past 30-odd years (where you would likely find both parents working, home ownership a tenuous proposition, and private schools out of the question).

I point this out mostly because we're sorely in need of a reexamination of what's "normal" and what should be normal in this country.

>I've noticed something about subreddits that focus on lifestyle design and center around advice: they all start to converge on fairly narrow groupthink.

To me, this is a novel insight, thanks :) I have been wondering what has been causing my frustration towards these kind of subreddits. But this makes it clear that the problem is a lack of actual discussion and no challenges made against the assumptions of the in-group.

I have noticed this is a broad trend on a lot of the internet; the internet has a lot of data, but most of that data is repeated a lot. If you want new and interesting information you often have to look elsewhere (e.g. books).

A particularly annoying example to me is the ausfinance subreddit which is obsessed with a housing market crash that they seem to think will definitely happen tomorrow. Anything pointing in that direction immediately gets extrapolated as the horseman of the Australian housing market apocalypse, nevermind the fact it was trending the opposite direction yesterday.

There are challenges to the groupthink. They are downvoted into oblivion.

For particular groups, where it is a place to discuss things amongst themselves, that's defensible, but in r/news, r/politics? Today, in r/technology of all places, there were some utterly disgusting hate being spewed because Ivanka Trump is going to CES for some reason.

Oh, the default subs are absolute trash. Don't expect anything worthwhile from them.

And some non-defaults are pretty toxic, like /r/mfa or /r/bodybuilding. They'll straight up mock you there for legitimate questions.

However, the great thing about reddit is it's highly subreddit dependent, and you can always find a new, better community.

I find myself looking things up on the internet a lot, and it occurs to me as a surprise to realize a lot of articles on "how to X" or "what causes Y" contain no real content at all.

Why? Because all of those articles are written by people paid a small amount of money to do quick research and write something in less than half a day. Most of them probably even haven't even read a single book on the subject.

It's so much better to read about something and get that broadband information, to encounter an obscure fact that sheds new light on something or makes the whole thing click.

The most important thing I've done for myself recently is to start breaking away from the social streams by doing my own aggregation with Fraidycat. Besides letting me assemble a lot of sources, it dampens the noise because it doesn't let a single feed drown out the rest: that Twitter account that can't stop shitposting every two seconds in between the real insights is thus tamed.

And so there's a distinct "lack of addictive qualities" when I open it, followed by some very rewarding content. It does take a little time to put together but it helps that we have social streams now to sample from, since so many of them ultimately link to a slower-moving source of real content like a personal blog.

Wow fraidycat is fantastic. I couldn't get it working on firefox but it does run on chrome well.

I find the Hacker News comments section depicts similar traits to the subreddits.

Reminds me of this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHt01D6rOLI&feature=emb_titl...

Though a parody, it's close enough to reality that it's hard to tell. Which means it's a fairly good parody.

Wanting to be engineer #5549383 at a big company is a fools errand if you want recognition and reknowned. It's like trying to get famous working as the guy who bolts the doors onto the frame at the Belvedere assembly plant.

The lion doesn't concern himself with the opinions of the mouse.

All of the people cited in the article (Gates, Musk, Jobs) eschewed "prestige institutions" and worked on what they wanted to work on.

They're incidentally famous because of their success in other areas.

The Kardashians are famous for being famous.

Which do you really want?

Of course the risk is that working on what you want to may not ever put bread on the table. There's heavy confirmation bios in play here as you only hear about the Gates', Musk's and Jobs'.

The optimal approach for most is probably to do their level best at their day job and work on what they want to in their spare time. And perhaps, with luck and time, the knowledge and skills developed in the spare time can be leveraged to put bread on the table.

Gates Musk and Jobs all came from rich families and were able to work on what they wanted to work on.

The people going for prestigious institutions may actually need a job and and are optimizing for the best possible outcome.

Also, I think Jobs is the only one who could really be said to eschew prestige institutuons. Gates went to Harvard and Musk went to Wharton (and Queen's, which is the Canadian equivalent of ivy-league).

Queen’s is far from the Canadian equivalent of “Ivy League.” You must be from Queen’s.

Ha, far from it, I went to Waterloo. Not that I bought into rivalries, but if we had one it was Queen's

The comparison in this context was that Queen's has a reputation for attracting status-seeking people banking on a management consulting career path.

I didn't mention their schooling. I only care about where they didn't work.

Gates did. Not sure either Musk or Jobs had rich families. You may want to check that.

Musk's family owned an emerald mine in south africa

Nope, that business insider article had no sources, and according to Musk is false

>Not sure either Musk or Jobs had rich families. You may want to check that.

Doesn't that mean you should be the one checking?

Musk 100% comes from wealth [1].

In America, there's the whole mythos of the rags-to-riches American dream. Some people whose story is really riches-to-more-riches present their success as the former.

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musks-dad-tells-bi-abou...

Elon recently confirmed that this store is not true on twitter. It's inside a reply thread so can't find the source at the moment.

Doing your homework for you: Jobs had an unusually international background; was born to highly-educated parents who made sure he went to a suitable family when they put him up for adoption; grew up in a relatively wealthy, highly-educated community that was the hotbed of a nascent industry; and was able to do drugs, an experience here considered life-altering, without being arrested or sent to jail.

I know the word "privilege" is anathema here, but it applies, even if neither his biological nor adoptive parents were necessarily rolling in dough.

Yes, doing drugs in the 60s was a real privilege. He almost didn’t get adopted because his adoptive parents weren’t well educated enough. And he dropped out of college because he was burning his parents life savings.

He had a wonder years middle class life.

He was born in 55, so I imagine we're talking more about the 70s. And yeah, not being arrested for doing illegal drugs is a privilege. And according to his wiki article, he ended up with the parents he did because they promised to send him to college; education was at the heart of the decision-making there.

>He had a wonder years middle class life.

In the middle of the tech revolution's ground zero. In fact, being on a lower rung of the upper-middle class ladder might have been protective, in that he had access, but not too much access. In other words, enough resources (that most Americans of the time did not have) to get off the ground, without being tracked into less risky, more conventional, still lucrative work.

Neither, thanks.

>The lion doesn't concern himself with the opinions of the mouse.

This is from game of thrones. Also, former FL Sheriff Scott Israel used that quote in a courtroom after a judge had called him negligent.

No, the game of thrones variant was the opinions of sheep. Which is foolish because the lion should care about his food.

It's also not originally from thrones. It goes back to Aesop. Thanks for playing though.

Fortunately, there are still some places to work without such drawbacks but shhhh - they're a secret.

Can you tell me? Asking for a friend

My friend would also like to know

Can forward your PM to my friend(s).

Awesome internships wont be paying well and wont be at a FAANG hey will be places like tier one rnd, like NASSA JPL CERN etc.

And in no tech careers probably because daddy or mommy put in a god word

To be fair my calculation is if you’re not at near peak TC band when you enter top tech companies it’s hard to impossible to catch up, so the anxiety is warranted.

That's precisely my point regarding the rat race - what is one trying to catch up to? Is there economic or social anxiety at 350k/yr which evaporates at 400k/yr?

Absolutely. Purchasing real estate (or even a Tesla, etc) is out of reach for people like me, and likely will be for 10+ years from now.

Say someone makes 150% or more of what I make (ergo are valued 150% superior in a fair labor market) and they can save far more and build a their net worth significantly faster even with a more luxurious lifestyle.

That person thinks the same way about someone who earns 150% more than them... this cycle never stops

If anything it seems to get worse the further up the pyramid you are....

I probably make < 10%, I'm just fine here. My mind is my own.

>Nobody cares if you can make pasta from scratch and it’s not going to make any money

I don't live up to other peoples expectations, their expectations are irrelevant to me. I have my own expectations.

I did learn to make the macaroni and perfect it. Since perfection is personal preference it's better than the fancy restaurant.

The horse is behind the cart. We make the money to buy the macaroni. I go straight for the macaroni. There is no money in learning to tie your own shoes or make your own bed? ha-ha

But the person earning 150% more than _them_ isn't purchasing a Tesla. It's a Lamborghini or a Bugatti. It's not a 3br home in SF - it's a summer home in Napa, or a chalet in Tahoe.

The person earning 150% more than _them_ is coveting the latest Bell Jetranger, or Gulfstream G700.

The obsession for more is the same at all levels.

Ooo I hadn't seen that they'd announced the 700. Been holding off on the 650 waiting for a refresh.

Strictly in my case, even 4 or 5 levels of these jumps is still FAANG total compensation, so no Lamborghinis or Summer homes.

Ultimately the super-rich that can afford those things are still orders of magnitude richer than people that just save/conservatively invest.

A huracan seems like an achievable car after a number of years at a job like that. A Bugatti does not.

Depends on where the home is. With admonishments from every corner for my not squirreling away $100/month out of my ~$1800 take-home pay, someone making $250k a year should be able to easily put away the linear equivalent of $10k a year. 5 years of that is a down payment on something decent, somewhere decent.

Of course, my bread costs about as much as their bread, so they could probably getaway with a bit more. It's all about making good financial decisions, right?

Just to toss out another example. I make about $150k. I'm a single father. I put the legal maximum into my retirement account every year, which I think is $19k this year. I have 6 months of expenses saved up in my emergency fund. We take a nice vacation every year and have luxuries like season passes to Broadway. Yes, I think it's all about making good financial decisions.

*after you're paid enough to make financial decisions of any sort.

When I was making $35k/yr I was putting 10% in my retirement plan. I just had cheaper vacations, older cars, and fewer luxuries. People don't like to hear it but most financial problems are a character problem more than they are an income problem. The good news is that character flaws are not permanent. We all have them and if we can be self aware enough to acknowledge them, we can address them.

Let me get out the list...

>Before or after taxes?

>What year?

>Where did you live?

>What was your monthly rent?

>Did you rely on your family/friends for ANYTHING (including something as innocuous as "storing your childhood possessions")?

>Did you have any chronic or acute health issues?

>How far did you have to drive for work?

>Did you have friends or family you were obliged to support, even occasionally?

>Did you have a side hustle?

And so on.

Broadly-speaking, making $35k before taxes in 2020 in any major metropolitan area is a tightrope walk at best. The best way to encourage saving is to pay people enough money that they feel comfortable charting out a plan to save. That's a sliding scale, but I would say you hit 80% around the median wage, which is not $35k/yr.

IME the people giving this advice have a critical misunderstanding of either costs or the value of cash relative to when they started out.

>Before or after taxes?

Before, median household income for my city at that time was mid-50ks. Of course median household income is with 1.5-2 workers. I wasn't married, but I did split rent on a house with friends... so adjust accordingly I guess.

>What year?

circa 2005

>Where did you live?

A 2nd tier major metro. Not NY/SF/LA, but a city you've definitely heard of.

>What was your monthly rent?

I don't remember

>Did you rely on your family/friends for ANYTHING (including something as innocuous as "storing your childhood possessions")?

No. My parents did have my childhood possessions but I grew up in an abusive household and never went back to retrieve those items.

>Did you have any chronic or acute health issues?

>How far did you have to drive for work?

30 mins

>Did you have friends or family you were obliged to support, even occasionally?

Yes, I helped friends pay rent a few times if that counts.

>Did you have a side hustle?

IME people will look for any excuse not to face their own personal failings. These are all the wrong kinds of questions. Instead of seeking an excuse for bad behavior, the right kinds of questions are about strategies for achieving better outcomes.

No, I think you've proven my point. $35k in 2005 is roughly $43k in 2016, which I'll use as a point of comparison because it was when I was myself making roughly $32k before taxes.

I'll just stop now to point out that this would be enough alone to allow you to drop 10% - and then some - into retirement savings, without living any more or less comfortably than I did. As I said before, the best way to encourage saving is to increase pay.

I assume you were paying less than my $900/month in rent (a studio price in a similar market to the one you describe), between your having the privilege of being able to split rent, and dealing with rents that were ~5% lower on average. This, again, would allow for a hefty savings rate compared to my baseline of losing roughly $100/month on necessities, even without the higher pay rate.

Considering all of this, I have to conclude that you were actually a poorer financial steward of your income than I was - again, even though I was losing money every month. Living under circumstances similar to yours (higher pay, lower rent), I could easily have put away 20%+ of "my" earnings - you only managed 10%. However, the truth is that we lived under different circumstances, yours much more forgiving of carelessness or mistakes.

You know I hear this argument a lot and I don't buy it because it ignores a baseline at the lower end.

I think there are a lot of people that are not concerned with the luxuries you reference but are deeply concerned with their base needs and random setbacks life throws at them. They basically want to save for a rainy day so as avoid stress when they encounter bumps in the road.

It's like asking someone who works for minimum wage why their worried about moving up to a salaried position because compared to the people in Sudan, they have a life of luxury.

I think the point is about working out when you have enough.

No matter how much you have, there is always the opportunity to be envious of others who have more. Acquiring more will not stop the envy or satiate that need.

But you can decide that you have enough right now. Or you can set a goal and say "that is enough for me". That goal might be really high, or it might be really simple, that doesn't matter. The part that matters is deciding that you have enough at some point.

I've been homeless, and having a warm safe place to sleep was enough. Now my sights are somewhat higher, but comparing myself to a friend who exited a few years ago is a constant source of misery. I have to keep reminding myself that I have enough at the moment, and to be grateful and enjoy what I have.

I think 350k is a safe "lower end" baseline from which to build a rainy day fund, though.

Is this a joke? $350k annual income puts you in the top 1% of earners in the US. Surely you don't believe less than 1% of people in the US can live comfortably and have a safety net, do you?

It's helpful to remember that the Bay Area is extremely expensive, and even more helpful to remember that some people have large families.

I could pretty comfortably raise a family of 6 on $100K in a midwestern city, or a family of 6 on $80K in the rural midwest/south. Without sufficient retirement savings, mind you, and my safety net would be non-exisent. I'd need at least another $30K-$50K on those numbers to build a strong safety net (remember, it's a safety net for 2 parents + 4 kids, not for one person...).

Doing the same in SFBA would probably require at least $250K. Maybe more.

> Surely you don't believe less than 1% of people in the US can live comfortably and have a safety net, do you?

The number is larger than 1%, but probably still smaller than you think.

The average American definitely doesn't have a sufficient safety net. IME, the average American raising more than 1 or 2 kids almost certainly doesn't have a sufficient safety net.

So, no, you don't need to be in the top 1% of earners in the US to have a safety net. But if you have a large family, you probably have to be in the top 10% to live comfortably and have a safety net and retirement.

> Doing the same in SFBA would probably require at least $250K. Maybe more.

Why? Each child might consume, generously, an extra 5k of food and 2.5k of clothes and other inputs per year. This is an increment of $30k on top of housing. For housing, you could add one or at most two bedrooms for four children. This does substantially raise housing costs, but there are still places in Sunnyvale for $1M or just above that that have three bedrooms. They may not be the nicest houses, but they would do.

So, before you have kids, save your downpayment. On a 250k salary, this would take one to three years if you're thoughtful about it. Then buy the house and start popping out babies. Times will be tight if you need to pay for childcare, but that's a defined and short period of the childrens' lives. You're not going to be taking lavish vacations, but if you wanted those, you wouldn't have four kids anyway.

Cheap homes in the Bay Area have terrible schools. You’ll need to factor in private school if you go that route. That’s $25k per kid per year.

Or, be involved with your school board, and raise up the schools you can afford to send your kids to?

Ego seems to be at play here, a bit. No one wants to admit that they're in the same boat as the people sending their kids to "those schools," but they are. The numbers don't lie. Looking on the bright side: admissions look at class rank. An outstanding student at a mediocre school has better odds than a mediocre student at a "good" school.

... And your kids at those 10/10 greatschools schools will be stressed like hell and end up with crazy self worth issues.

There are plenty of houses listed near $1M on Zillow that have acceptable school districts. They aren't the best in the Bay, but I'm not a buyer on the premise that you need a 10/10 school for your child to have a good opportunity at success and happiness.

What exactly is a "terrible school"?

My elementary and middle schools were 4/10 and 5/10 on "Greatschools" in North Carolina.

In the Bay area?

Judging by this subthread, it's a school where people who 'merely' make 170k/year send their children to.

You really don't want to get your kids mixed up with that kind of hoi polloi. /snark

Sounds like the Bay Area is a horrible place to live.

Going through the realization right now that I need to go “FANG” or get out of the Bay Area right now. Just got engaged and I have been looking at costs. I thought I could make a small family work here on $170k. That’s dead wrong. I would need at least $300k to make a family of 4 comfortable here. My wife and I both want her to stay at home and focus on the kids and she makes non tech money anyway. Even at this amount we are looking at a an uninspiring life thats most about paying interest on a way too expensive house and not having enough for retirement or sending the kids to college.

Startups in tech aren’t paying close to family raising salaries in the Bay. FANG does albeit reliant on stock continuing to grow like it did last decade. I am personally studying math/algos/leetcode and getting good at interviews. Its sad because it takes up all of my free time that I could spend building. It sucks to make $170k and feel like you can’t make it somewhere.

I finally had a breakthrough with my fiance last night and we are talking about moving to Salt Lake City! My current job would allow me to go remote and there does seem to be a scene there. $170k is more than enough.

My wife and I went through the exact same thing back in 2006 and I can tell you while fear of the unknown is real, it might have been the single best decision we ever made.

Also, Phoenix is pretty reasonable cost of living wise and they have a growing number of opportunities tech wise. June 15 - Oct 15 suck but you get used to it.

Thanks, I will check out Phoenix. Assuming you are a little older since you moved in 2006, do you feel like the top end of your career has been held back at all by not being in one of the major tech hubs? What does your role look like now.

Not at all. In fact there's quite a decent tech scene being built around ASU in Tempe; Amazon among others are there.

I was surprised to see that Amazon (Twitch) is in SLC as well. What sort of paycut would I be expecting. I think my current gig would probably make me go from $170-$150k if I went remote. I assume the top end wouldn't be what it is in the Bay Area but maintaining > $150k is reasonable with 10+ years of experience?

If you can find stable remote work that you enjoy that's surely something to consider. If you are flexible on where you can live you can really skew the relative compensation in your favor. I think for most situations you'll find the decrease in pay is more than compensated for by the decreased cost of living compared to the left coast.

>That’s dead wrong. I would need at least $300k to make a family of 4 comfortable here.

The Bay Area has a combined population of over 7 million, with a mean household income of $137k. It sounds like you have unreasonable expectations if you need at least $300k to live comfortably.

https://sf.curbed.com/2019/2/25/18239828/report-middle-class...

https://smartasset.com/retirement/average-salary-in-san-fran...

https://www.sfgate.com/expensive-san-francisco/article/SF-ho...

A lot of these people got into the housing market before the explosion in prices over the last 15 years. Also, that stat also doesn't tell you if people on those incomes can afford their houses or how soon they can retire.

It sounds like you either don't live in the Bay Area or you make about what I make and haven't realized if you don't make $300k and your options aren't very pleasant.

I don't know if you came from an extremely privileged background, but I find it ridiculous that your minimum standard of a comfortable living starts at over double the median household income for that area.

I grew up in the Rust Belt in rural PA. Mean salary where I am from is about $22k. You either haven’t lived in the Bay Area or can’t do math if you think what I am saying is crazy. Anyway check this out https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2019/09/11/you...

> Startups in tech aren’t paying close to family raising salaries in the Bay.

They are mostly hiring fresh grads anyway, who won't be raising a family anytime soon, so it's not a huge problem for them.

I'm including series D companies under the term startup. I agree with you about early stage companies. Jobs at non FANG that don't IPO are not that sustainable imo.

San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward, CA Metro Area:

https://censusreporter.org/profiles/31000US41860-san-francis...

Median household income: $108k

Owner-occupied dwellings: 55%

Now do people 25-35 that are buying in todays market. That might take you longer than 30 seconds though.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2019/09/11/you... CNBC saying you need $350k a year for a middle class life in SF and NYC.

You're completely correct, diminishing returns of income on happiness is well established, and I would be surprised if people here were not aware.

This community skews very hard towards high earners though, so people here probably view that as something that goes without saying, but that isn't within the purview of this particular discussion about the rat race in tech.

Among this community, it's probably true that a significant raise wouldn't significantly change their day to day lives, although obviously that is less and less true as their baseline income goes down.

Diminishing returns of absolute income on happiness, or of income relative to some cohort?

No one is denying a baseline. Its just _much_ lower than most think, and certainly doesn't include anyone who is a software engineer.

I think the baseline becomes irrelevant at around 50k, maybe up to 100k-150k in some areas, but in those areas it's not hard to make 150k as a software engineer.

I make 75k and save almost half my income while having all the material items that I want. Granted I don't want a lot, but I actually believe quite strongly that not having that constant desire for more and nicer material items makes me much happier than those who are stuck in that cycle.

Not to sound douchy but I think that kind of materialism that is so extremely common across all levels of society seems to me like such an enormous and obvious problem that most people fall into for some reason regardless of how smart they are, and they would almost all be significantly happier just not caring about such sh*t. It's a crutch and prevents people from finding real meaning and happiness and for most it lasts their whole life or at least until they are too old to change.

I know this isn't a novel idea, any slightly rebellious teenager can and will point out the obvious harm of this kind of mindset, but that only makes people disregard it even more. It's such an obvious problem, and most people even agree when you point it out, but then those same people live out the rest of their lives without doing anything about it.

I blame social pressure and peoples tendency to not wander to far from the norm, combined with some conditioning and of course the addiction-mimicking dopamine effects

> valued 150% superior in a fair labor market

Dropping all this nonsense about the labour market being "fair" will help you deal with the reality of it. Interviews have a huge arbitrary element in them of personal preference, and end up selecting for "looks and sounds like the interviewer" or "went to the right school" far more often than they would like. And remember the era of noncompete agreements?

Lol that's not how getting rich actually works. People get quickly used to new income, a bit better phones, clothing, cars, vacations etc. Plus 50% increase doesn't actually translate to 50% net income, taxes % go up in most western world pretty steeply, so the jump is not that big.

This isn't valid for 100% of the folks obviously, but say 95% fall into this trap one way or the other. It is paradoxically easiest for folks already burdened with ie mortgage, because usually the motivation to pay it back sooner trumps the need for some extra gadgets and to show off.

You know what's funny? Their overall long term happiness and life satisfaction doesn't improve a bit. In fact, in many cases it goes down due to ie extra worries about good investments.

Nah. That's just sour grapes. Saying that more money leads to less long term happiness and life satisfaction. It's not true. It's not hard at at all to find good investments. If you have some money, and are willing to take some risks, your investments will grow. The rich get richer. It's a law of nature.

This isn't valid for 100% of the folks obviously, but say 90% fall into this trap one way or the other. It is paradoxically easiest for folks already burdened with ie mortgage, because usually the motivation to pay it back sooner trumps the need for some extra gadgets and to show off.

You know what's funny? Their overall long term happiness and life satisfaction doesn't improve a bit. In fact, in many cases it goes down due to ie extra worries about good investments, plus you earn cash by doing extra work.

Myself I increased my net income compared to my first full time IT job more than 20x in last 15 years, and I can tell you happiness comes from different place. Money just help a tiny bit on the path to it, that's all. Some folks, especially those competitive that article talks about, will never be truly happy. Of course is you live in like US with utterly broken healthcare, in some cases money can actually mean saved/improved life, but that's a bit special use case.

Unless you're just doing the passive index fund thing, which there is obviously nothing wrong with, I don't think many understand the stress levels that come from trading. Insane highs. Insane lows. Lows you will eat at you for years.

Nothing with trading, I don't have mentality to thrive there. Still doing IT, still +- same job, just started low and gradually moved to much better place. Plus (I would like to think that) I know how to negotiate salary during hiring. Or maybe just luck, can't really say.

Not even self-employed, which is great but goes opposite to stability, and some goals I have in life are not financial.

I think there's another thing going on.

Let's say that I'm getting by, but only just. There's things I'd like to do - take a vacation, or replace the carpet, or trade up to a better car - but I don't bother thinking much about them, because there's no point. Those things I can't do bother me a bit, but I don't dwell on them very much.

Now my circumstances improve. Now I can take that vacation, or replace the carpet, or trade up to a better car. But note that I said "or", not "and". I can do one of the things I want, but only one. Now each of those things is realistically possible, and I can seriously consider doing it. But in the end, I can only do one of them.

In this way, it's possible to have more money, and therefore more options, and still feel worse about the things you can't do because you don't have enough money.

Weirdly, I've never made more than about $130k/year, didn't inherit that much, have more real estate than I strictly need, don't particularly want a Tesla (although I've been considering a 5 or 6-year old luxury car lately, as I'm old and fat and tired of crawling in and out of the 2004 Corvette) and I find the "I have to have an initial offer $400k/year or I'll never be able to afford a car or a house" completely inexplicable.

Pro tip: I am a negative example; don't do what I did. If you are success and prestige oriented, do not chase hard problems. Go after easy problems that are well compensated. Hard problems run the risk of failure, from which it is difficult to "catch up", and typically aren't all that well paid.

>To be fair my calculation is if you’re not at near peak TC band when you enter top tech companies it’s hard to impossible to catch up

I'm not sure I understand. What is the point you're making? Why is it hard to catch up? What's stopping someone in a mid or low TC band from switching to another company and increasing their TC?

Switching usually means a downlevel or a lateral level transition (extremely rare that someone uplevels from a switch) which limits the upside. You'd always be tied to your prior TC in some way and the effects compound.

So? Is the point you're making that you won't be the highest paid employee in a company?

Your TC is tied to your prior TC, which is tied to your internships and college, which is tied to your high school performance. Might as well take it down to kindergarten.

If you're not a child prodigy, then you won't be the most talented, highest-paid employee.

I'll never understand this mindset.

The rat race mentality keeps employers honest.

For every person who negotiates top-decile compensation, there are nine people who don't.

There are too many employers offering $100k for a senior dev with 10+ years of everything, leadership experience, and a winning smile.

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