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Comment by heymijo | Hacker News Reader

> my goal is to make ~$250k a year as fast as possible. To do so at my current company would take at least 3 years and 2 promotions

Hi,

I don't want to dunk on you, but I would truly encourage you to gain some perspective on just how myopic a view this is.

(I couldn't reply to your comment below where you said this)

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Are you familiar with their circumstances? Maybe they have a limited window before retirement age. Maybe they have medical bills. Maybe they need to support a parent or grandparent. Maybe they need to send remittances to support a family "back home".

There's any number of reasons why that number might not be myopic.

I don't think it's myopic if everyone I follow on twitter and see on instagram is getting Hawaiian offsites and European work trips at Google and Hudson River Trading while I can't even go to Seattle for our internal ML conference because it got filled up too quickly for the last 3 years or whatever.

I enjoy what I work on..I just wish I was treated more like all of my friends and former coworkers.

Eh... If you follow YouTubers you would think all of them achieved financial freedoms, have a uber house in Bali, and do nothing all day long.

You're not myopic but you just follow a niche group of people.

There will always be people who seem to have it better than you do. Maybe really analyze what you want to get out of your time on this earth?

Honestly, interview around with no expectations if you haven't. You may be surprised at what else is going to be offered. I'm not going to tell you it's necessarily 400k or anything, but the variance is quite high if you're willing to relocate to, say, Seattle. An amazon resume is worth a certain amount of money, and there are other companies that will offer you things you enjoy working on too.

I’ve tried, but haven’t gotten interviews from the companies I’m interested in. I did get a offer from a hedge fund, but it was a severe lowball (50-70% of typical offers) probably due to my interview performance.

If it was a good hedge fund, they won't offer anyone they don't rate. If they offered you because they think you're mediocre and can get you cheap - do not work for them, they're charlatans.

It was Citadel. I think Two Sigma is considered more impressive.

Citadel are certainly not charlatans. Are you sure you're not just good at what you do but have crippling imposter syndrome?

Get off of Instagram, then. Should be healthy in other ways, too. If you're only in it for the perceived status maybe you should to change that.

Spend less time trying to mimic fake-perfect lives on social media. It’s not healthy. Instead, find out what’s important to your happiness and work on that. Money should be a means to that end, not the end in itself.

Hell, you don’t even need to be rich to go to nice places. My uncle is a great example of someone who optimises for happiness: he earns very little but does a job he loves, he brutally cuts out expenses from his life for things he doesn’t care about and loves quite cheap, but instead he spends the money he does have to go on an island holiday once a year and to visit his family (especially his grandchildren) multiple times a year. It’s all about perspective on what’s important to you. Money shouldn’t be it outside of enabling you. (Obviously you need enough to pay your bills, take care of your health etc)

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