My Path to Financial Independence as a Software Engineer
software.rajivprab.com
software.rajivprab.com
This might sound reasonable from a US-centric perspective, but to me it reads like utter nonsense. The main privilege here is access to the US labor market and tax policy. There are no stories like this one where I live (in Sweden). Absolutely none.
Edit: I guess the down voters here hate facts. The US scores lower on social mobility than the majority of European countries https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Social_Mobility_Index
1. My intuition is wrong
2. There are lots of people in low income groups where there is little i regeneration along mobility for structural reasons, or maybe immigrants children who often see the biggest improvements are excluded for some reason.
3. The chart talks about reaching mean income. Particularly in the US, mean income is higher than median income so even if achieving the latter is easier, achieving the former could be harder. To some extent the metric may disadvantage countries where the highest-earning few percent of the population earn a lot more than the median person.
Let's take a typical profile that HN users would be interested in, a top10% engineer working for a big company. This person would never become rich in NL, but almost always become rich in the US.
Same in Germany why I assumed the diagram would be appropriate. But you are 100% correct and I agree with
> This person would never become rich in NL, but almost always become rich in the US.
Sure, moving from lower working class to upper middle class is probably easier in Sweden than in many other countries. But the thing is: it doesn’t make much of a difference.
I have a sneaking suspicion that the Nordic welfare state kind of games the social mobility score in this way, by having such a compressed income distribution. If you go from $20k after taxes to $35k after taxes you’ve moved through more or less the whole income distribution, but your life is pretty much the same.
100% agreed - my sibling comment about NL also implies the same.
So any country that optimizes for improving that, kind of by definition, improves the average happiness of its citizens.
> "Despite scoring high on the Work Opportunities (83.0) pillar—because of its low unemployment rate—as well as on the Technology Access pillar (90.2), it has the lowest score in the region on the Fair Wages pillar (43.8 against an average of 64.6 for the region). With an incidence of low pay (less than two-thirds of median wages) at 24.9, it has one of the shares of low-paid workers among OECD countries. The lack of effective social protection in the United States also translates into a low score on the Social Protection pillar (61.7). The minimum guaranteed income benefits for a family with two children (where one partner is out of work) is only 20% of median income. The United States could also improve on the Health pillar, where it performs quite poorly compared to peers in its region (75.8) due to a low healthy life expectancy at birth (66.6 years)."
When you average things down to a single number, you lose a lot of nuance.
For the US, the data the report collected generally supports something like 'You have the opportunity to succeed greatly, and be rewarded extremely well, but this requires financial resources at birth.' While also being true that 'If you are less successful, there are few and poor support nets for you, and serious pitfalls to avoid (f.ex. health care costs).'
[0] https://www3.weforum.org/docs/Global_Social_Mobility_Report....
This is the opposite of financial mobility.
Which wasn't what I (or the report) said: the idea is that it takes some level of financial resources as a prerequisite for a chance at top-level success.
Most of the population spend the majority of their income on rent, commuting, and essentials. Students also have lots of debt over the past decade (15k on average). Owning a car is expensive, but so is public transport (esp. for a family). Renting is expensive, but so is buying a house.
Income tax brackets range from ~40-50%, while corporate and dividend taxes are minimal - 15-20%. VAT is regressive and applies on almost all goods incl. groceries, ranging from 5-21%. There is no capital gains taxes, so this obviously benefits the economically active upper/elite classes who have assets/savings to invest - while middle class families do not own much at all.
Since the Mobility Index rankings focus on lower -> middle class mobility, it shows the Netherlands in a positive light. However, the income divide between the two classes is actually not as pronounced as the USA, while the gap between middle to upper is incredibly massive (like most of the world).
I guess what I'm trying to say is that despite the expected policy differences and rankings, NL is quite strongly divided economically. In my experience, the average Dutch don't mix with the poor, nor show off their riches, nor think too deeply about the elite classes. This mindset is essentially ignorance - neglecting poorness, brushing off government corruption, and assisting the funneling of taxes & wealth.
However, it’s equally ineffective - there are multitudes of ways to avoid paying it, as the wealthy here continuously do. Further, the percentage itself is quite small:
- 0.58% for 30k-100k
- 1.34% till ~1MM
- 1.68% afterwards.
It is hilarious to me, that 30k is considered “wealth”. This means saving for your children’s studying expenses (rent, food, etc), would require exceeding 30k and paying taxes.
The wealthy are wealthy. It doesn’t seem to affect them at all. Instead, people like you and I have to think about the arbitrary amount of money the gov wants to extricate from our small savings.
Those are amateur numbers. -USA
I think the worst part is that most of the loan is used to pay rent - so it’s essentially tax-payer funded wealth transfer to real estate.
> Income tax brackets range from ~40-50%, while corporate and dividend taxes are minimal - 15-20%. VAT is regressive and applies on almost all goods incl. groceries, ranging from 5-21%. There is no capital gains taxes, so this obviously benefits the economically active upper/elite classes who have assets/savings to invest - while middle class families do not own much at all.
I hate to tell you, but the US practically invented all those issues. Average Americans pay a far larger percentage of their income in taxes than the wealthiest Americans or corporations do. You say VAT, we say "sales tax," and, yes, it's still just as regressive. Rent, student loans, etc.... yeah, that's all bad here, too.
https://smartasset.com/data-studies/income-needed-to-pay-ren...
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/dec/09/us-student-l...
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/23/americas-richest-400-familie...
I don’t believe that the Netherlands has inherited these ideas from the USA. In fact, NL invented capitalism and stock markets.
Every Dutchie I speak to about the inequality here, loves comparing themselves to the USA memes. It’s that whataboutism and the ignorance that bothers me.
Of course, I'm aware that NL invented stock markets and pioneered a lot of ideas behind modern capitalism. That wasn't where I was going with it.
Not to turn this into some weird anti-pissing contest of "my country is worse than yours," but, if you look at the numbers, the US fares worse than NL on:
Gini coefficient [0]: US 41.4 vs NL 28.1
Global social mobility index [1]: US 70.4 vs NL 82.4
Human development index [2]: US 0.92 vs NL 0.944
Now, I don't think capitalism is the best system for maximizing any of the above, but, if you look at the tables, it's pretty clear that the Nordic model of capitalism is basically as good as capitalism gets. When you look at some of the things that go into these indices, other than stuff like "GDP per capita," it's pretty clear why: having a strong safety net and other social programs for workers makes people better off.
If nothing else, reducing the consequences of failure from "total personal and financial ruin" to something more manageable is more likely to encourage people to take chances that may or may not pay off. That's what economic freedom really is. That's also the part of capitalism the US didn't pick up, so, that's what I was getting at when I was saying that the US invented those issues. Again, not to get into an anti-pissing contest, but, that's why the US recently got compared to Jurassic Park [3] on here. I don't see anybody comparing NL to a land where dinosaurs will eat you if you're not always vigilant.
> Every Dutchie I speak to about the inequality here, loves comparing themselves to the USA memes. It’s that whataboutism and the ignorance that bothers me.
I'm not sure what you mean here, but I'd like to know. Are you just saying that people you talk to are saying what I said, but without the facts and figures?
---
[0]: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/gini-coef...
[1]: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/social-mo...
[2]: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/hdi-by-co...
Fair enough, though I wasn’t trying to imply that either.
> it's pretty clear that the Nordic model of capitalism is basically as good as capitalism gets
I can agree from the data and personal experience, that the QoL for the lower/middle classes in the EU is better than most of the world.
However, I don’t think that it’s as pronounced as the local EU politicians would have you believe, when they advocate for higher taxes every year.
That’s essentially the divide I’m talking about in my comments - the broken capitalist dystopia of it all. They set the benchmark somewhere in between the USA and the post-colonial world, and act like they’ve solved everything.
> reducing the consequences of failure from "total personal and financial ruin" to something more manageable is more likely to encourage people to take chances that may or may not pay off. That's what economic freedom really is.
Yes, I agree that this sounds intuitive. Unfortunately, the EU has one of the least risk-taking people I’ve ever seen. People don’t startup nor attempt businesses.
> Are you just saying that people you talk to are saying what I said, but without the facts and figures?
Not exactly, but rather, they are unaware of the situation outside their social bubble in NL. And see memes about the USA and think they’re doing great.
Found it really hard to explain to my wife that:
Salary will decrease, cost of living will go up, income taxes will go up, VAT will also go up, QOL will stay roughly the same.
The only thing that I think is significantly better (and cheaper!) is the education.
Edit: And the beer.
Out of curiosity, how many millions of dollars-equivalent does it cost to buy heath insurance in retirement?
Isn’t that more attractive than what you need in the states?
I can’t speak for the OP, but usually QoL refers to essential things like housing, food, education, etc. Outside of that, the average Dutchie has very little disposable income.
This means that the extra money they make in the USA, is still quite useful since you can spend it on all the other stuff that gives you joy in life.
I have friends who started out in middle-class families and sunk lower. I also have friends who started out middle-class and rose.
IMHO, the biggest factors seem to be raw intellingence, willingness to move & chase money, and some 'luck' factors. But I can't imagine a world where nobody could change fortunes given reasonably common circumstances.
https://www.dw.com/en/germanys-social-mobility-among-poorest...
>In Germany, it would take a child whose parents' earnings are in the bottom 10 percent of the population six generations or 180 years to reach the average national income.
>The average across the entire OECD, a group of 37 industrialized countries, is five generations. Children in low-income families in Denmark would need two generations, while children in the United States would need five generations.
And people in the middle are squeezed from the both sides.
I feel guilty for neither, and acknowledging that particular privilege takes nothing away from how hard I worked anyway. The son of two very poor Russian Jewish immigrants, I worked extremely hard to get to where I am. I also feel privileged for growing up in a loving and non-abusive family.
Lots of people don’t have those things, and I’m thankful I did. That’s not guilt.
This is one of those fundamental misunderstandings I see when discussing things with folks of a particular political persuasion. It's the same folks that belueve we shouldn't consider outcomes when evaluating processes. There's just something different about the way they think, I guess.
When someone says "check your privilege", they're saying that you've done something wrong and should feel guilty.
It has nothing at all to do with guilt.
It is rare, extremely rare, to meet someone with absolutely no privilege, and that isn’t a place to aspire to.
Yes, they are. "Check your privilege" is often used to say "you didn't do that."
Even if you assume that "privilege" is a big reason why you had an opportunity, there are almost always many people with the same "privilege" who didn't do said thing.
Moreover, it's almost always some skin color argument. There are many "don't look white" people who had privileges that I didn't have but I'm supposed to "check my privilege."
The trope of “he’s black and rich, and I’m white and poor” is irrelevant, as there are different kinds of privilege. In rural Alabama, being white and poor is going to lend you a much closer set of relationships than being black and rich. In SF, it may be the other way around - the point is everyone should simply be aware of how various privilege has helped them.
And again: this takes nothing away from hard work. It simply acknowledges that another person who worked just as hard but had a different set of lived experiences and privileges may not have the same result. That’s not bad; just fact.
And again: it has nothing to do with guilt. You shouldn’t feel guilty about it; ~everyone has some kind of privilege. But ignoring it or pretending it doesn’t exist is the exact opposite of the point, which is, at the end of the day, an exercise in empathy.
It's telling that you really want to say that no black person has privilege. You'd certainly never tell one to "check your privilege."
How much time have you actually spent in rural Alabama?
I say that because the most racist places in the US are urban, the NE and the coasts, not the south. Yes, there are racists everywhere, but the only places where blacks and whites interact productively at scale are in the south.
Firstly, I never implied or said that no black person has privilege.
Second, my entire point that you seem to be missing is that everyone should recognize what privilege they do have and have benefited from.
I’ve spent plenty of time in the South; I am not implying there is no way for a black person to interact productively with white people in the South. I am suggesting that, generally, in a lot of rural areas of the South, being white lends you more “immediate credit” than being black.
And, to your point, that was but one example. I could have said “inner cities,” and made the same point. That does not, in any way, change the point; it only serves to reinforce it.
And, you've yet to explain what good comes from said "recognition". What, exactly, do you want me to do differently because I benefitted from succeeding in a situation that actually was available to many? (I'm pretty sure that you won't be satisfied with me just saying "hey, I built on stuff that had happened before.")
Yes, there are lots of places where being white lends you more credit than being black. Similarly, there are lots of places where being black lends you more credit. So what?
My point is that the south tends has more successful interaction than the north. That's actually more true in the rural areas.
But, for what it’s worth, I’m certainly not trying to be any kind of “knight.” I’m just trying to have a calm and open discussion.
You've repeatedly said that "check your privilege" is used in ways that it isn't used and denied that it is used the way it is used. My "ground" is reality.
> The good that comes from recognition is being able to place yourself in someone else’s shoes and empathize better with their lived experiences, thus enabling you to better understand their situation.
That's all well and good. The reality is that it has nothing to do with how "check your privilege" actually works.
I note that you didn't both to come up with anything other than your opinion to support your interpretation. Meanwhile, I've provided cites showing that you're wrong, by proponents of "check your privilege".
There's also the Atlantic article.
Can you point to ANYONE who interprets "check your privilege" the way that you do? (In fact, even you don't, as your refusal to use it with POC demonstrates.)
Guilt is too strong of term. But it is very much used as a kind of penalty box, or way of distancing the receiver from the speaker. And as far as enlightening those who supposedly need uplifting to the higher, more evolved plane that the speaker inhabits -- it just doesn't do much.
But it’s misuse shouldn’t change the meaning of its intent. At least I hope it doesn’t, because I believe there is still value in empathy.
The use is the intent. And it's used as a weapon.
Notice when it's used, and when it isn't. (You'd never say it to a black or brown person. Did I have "privilege" when I lived in a labor camp?)
> At least I hope it doesn’t, because I believe there is still value in empathy.
There is value in empathy, but "check your privilege" isn't empathy.
You know nothing about my "privilege". You have no basis for telling me to "check my privilege" and saying that only proves that you not only have no empathy for me, you have no interest in me except to accomplish your political goals.
I didn’t say anything about your privilege. Were I to, I would be asking. There is nothing here to be defensive about.
I have no political goals here. We’re having a non-political discussion.
"This is not a political discussion" when in fact it's about one of the most hot-button political topics ever devised?
I'm lost.
Use whatever phrasing you want, and it doesn’t have to be politicized. But when describing an experience, and particularly when trying to provide advice to others to do similarly, or when trying to glean information from your experiences that might be applicable to others… yes, check your privilege to see how said privilege may not apply to others’ lives.
That is all. What we’re discussing isn’t, at its core, a “hot-button political topic.” You are making it that.
The phrase was invented as a political tool. Disagree? Provide cites.
I'll start - https://checkyourprivilege.co/ , https://www.amazon.com/Check-Your-Privilege-Live-into/dp/099... , and https://www.amazon.com/Check-Your-Privilege-Lean-discomfort/... .
I teach people how to do things and "privilege" doesn't come into it. It is neither necessary nor sufficient.
There are always lots of folks with "privilege" yet the only thing that actually matters is whether you can do the work and actually do.
Actually we were specifically discussing the "check your ..." phrase in current usage, expressed as an imperative. Not privilege as a general concept.
And yes, the "phrasing of phrase" is the whole point of the phrase. Along with of course, who is saying it and to whom. Especially when the recipient most likely wasn't asking you to "provide advice" to them in the first place, now were they.
BTW here's what seems to be the definitive article on its origin:
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/05/what-th...
You are making it that.
It wouldn't hurt you to check the button-pushy, "you're the problem" vibe on that statement. If you don't mind a bit of advice.
This shouldn't be downvoted. It's become a socially acceptable insult, in some circles (which basically means the receiver is less empathic / socially aware than thou) -- or at the very least, a thought-terminating cliché.
I know there's a bunch of nice and wholesome stuff it's supposed to mean (like the sibling commenter points out); but the way it's typically bandied about in modern discourse (as an STFU signal, more or less) -- it isn't what it really means.
See also:
The immediate leap to discredit the success of others through assertion of privilege seems like it would discourage doing well.
A better solution imho would be to celebrate success but to also encourage the successful to share their insights with others so as to spread the fortune - much as the author of this post has done.
You even see in this thread how people within tech but unable to pull FAANG salaries see this story as impossible. It's one viewpoint to think that it's possible for everyone to become skilled enough to work at a FAANG-like job (including passing the interview); probably correct so some degree. It's another (less rational) to think that every software engineer can work at FAANG-like jobs simultaneously; there just aren't enough positions.
This gets even more dire outside of tech. What job are you going to switch to every 3 years that nets you a 30% salary increase? If that kind of opportunity was wide-spread, there would be a lot less income inequality (or at least more social mobility).
Ideally yes. Though IME often the advice isn't applicable, so beyond a few fundamentals they break down. For example I cannot un-have kids, and getting a master's or doing a startup on the side would basically require neglecting them for too long. (Or quiting my day job and burning through our savings.) Lifestyle advice like modest living or moving far away also requires buy in from an SO or a painful break up/divorce. It's also a risk since they may change their mind early in the plan. Or they may decide the outcome wasn't worth the sacrifice and want to (or you to) return to the grind.
laughing my ass off ... I expect the successful first and formost to share their success through actually paying taxes - then we can talk about their advice which won't be useful for the majority anyway b/c success in monetary terms is always defined by being focused on a minority.
Also LOL @ "insights"
"Good" education alone is not a meaningful predictor of anything, in Europe at least.
So the guilt is about receiving the correct credentials to be granted further access to jobs and opportunities. It seems in UK/USA, "good education" is used as a euphemism for "received privilege".
It's the pretense of the credentialing organizations to have a monopoly on education.
The only difference between myself and my other friends (who also have advanced degrees from top universities in the bay area) is that I abandoned my field of study and jumped into tech.
After 10 years, we have vastly different financial outcomes now.
A lot of hard working, well educated, dedicated people struggle financially around here, because they happened to not choose tech.
Add in the teachers and other under-appreciated careers, I do feel guilty that I should have so much, and they so little.
It took me a long time to accept this as I was wedded to the idea that hard work and skill alone should be well compensated. But that hard work and skill needs to be pointed in a good direction in the first place.
If you had an advanced degree in math or physics, hedge funds in NYC was always an option to maximize your talent in exchange for money. But one also had an option to choose something different and still make an upper middle class living.
It seems these days, only the finance/tech offer such living. NOT choosing tech is choosing barely middle class living, and everyone else is delegated to hand-to-mouth living.
Besides Fed Gov, Tech/finance are the probably the only sectors left with large work forces, great margins, a culture of rewarding talent (vs health care for example), AND rooted in the USA (vs manufacturing and heavy industry). These factors combine to create a super class of tech/finance labor.
The job market is not an efficient market. It doesn’t respond to offer and demand signals.
Nurses have been in short supply in most of the developed world for the past three decades yet are still paid peanuts. It’s all about your proximity to the handling of money and historical trend. That’s why even people doing menial jobs in banking are well compensated while people working in heavy industries are paid relatively little compared to the complexity of their jobs.
I got a fantastic education at two of the best public universities in the US, mostly funded by public money. Do I feel guilty about it? No. But I acknowledge that it was only possible because of policy choices made by Americans who came before me.
This is what happens when there is a lack of religion and belief in God. In Islam, we know we're going to be asked about the blessings that were bestowed on us, no matter how small, so it's always in the back of our mind that we should be grateful to God, and to use those blessings in the ways of good, not evil.
* https://quran.com/102/8 (the worldly pleasures include: health, wealth, free time, food and drink, safety, housing, etc.)
I bring this up because I don't think taxation has much to do with this. In NYC I was paying around 50% of my income towards taxes (federal, state, and local); when you factor in what I was paying towards things that the Swedish social system provides, I'm sure it amounted to very close to 60% (maybe even more!). But NYC is full of plenty of engineers or similarly well-paid professionals who've achieved financial independence. And, well, at least per Glassdoor (caveat emptor), the average software engineer gets paid literally twice as much in NYC than in Stockholm. IMO that probably has more to do with it.
What is important to the remember which most Swedes tend to forget is the payroll tax at 31.42% on the employer side.
To see how it evolves across incomes see this page (in Swedish)
https://www.ekonomifakta.se/fakta/skatter/skatt-pa-arbete/ma...
I live in Belgium with similar high income tax rates to Sweden, but I know quite a few people that I grew up with who have done very well. Better than his story. All mid 30s and all came from nothing. Even as an employee. No excuses, man.
These stories might not be listed in the newspapers, but that does not mean there are none.
In Sweden you can incorporate and work as a consultant. That lets you accumulate capital on the corporate side of the tax barrier so to speak. But the tax authorities can show up at any time, claim that your one man company is “overcapitalized” and force you to pay income taxes on your earnings.
That said, I know self employed developers making 150-200k (EUR) gross per year as contractors. But I also know employees that get allocated a few 100k/year in stock options as part of their compensation.
Yes, you do need to be exceptional. And you need to be smart in the choices you make. I thought that was a given, since millions of dollars don't just come falling from the sky.
There’s nothing unusual about that. I was making that kind of money 15 years ago.
But one problem is, that’s about what I can make today as well. There is no upward mobility in pay. And it has nothing to do with ability. It’s a cultural thing.
(Also, the deal is typically that you sell your social career progression. So you’ll be doing the same kind of job endlessly.)
> You can't just work your way to wealth. You need to reinvest what you make into other assets and let them compound...
This however is where the real problem starts: there is no way to accumulate and reinvest capital (legally), without paying massive (70-80%) taxes.
I agree income taxes are high throughout most of Western Europe, but the way to grow wealth is by acquiring assets that can grow without having to sell them and pay taxes.
An investment fund (or a property) can often grow for a long time and throw off cashflows that are taxed more efficiently. So can a business where you build up value in the equity. Cashflow keeps the lights on, but equity (even in a small business) builds wealth.
No, there are special tax rules for small companies (the so-called 3:12 rules). You can pay yourself a small dividend ($15k or so), but above that you’re taxed as if it was regular income.
> Income taxes are higher but still not 70-80%?
Payroll tax is 31% and then you pay around 55% marginal tax on what’s left.
It’s debatable how you should count VAT in this context. Your consultant invoices will have 25% VAT on them that you have to pay the government. Your customers can get that back from the government, but will have to pay VAT on any value your services create. Since the name of the tax is value added tax I think it’s fair to say you are adding the value with your labor and are in fact the one paying the tax, but others may disagree.
If you are talented and enjoy slacking off then you can have a pretty nice lifestyle in Sweden. Most of the exceptionally talented engineers I know work part time as consultants.
Several of them ended up going to Canada because it was significantly easier and had a reasonable tech scene in the Toronto area
Of course you could also come as a student and finish your education within EU. In some countries you can even do it for free.
>In a similar vein as above, I hear that it is almost impossible for talented software developers to earn similar amounts in any country besides USA. If early financial independence is a priority for you, strongly consider moving here. The easiest way to do this is probably to take a 1-year hiatus from work, and enroll in a Master’s degree in USA. Though I have also met others who moved here on a work-visa
Swedish tax rates on income makes this two to three times as difficult (approaches 60% plus 30% social paid by the employer this includes RSUs as well, plus 25% VAT) but it’s nonsense to claim this doesn’t happen. I am Swedish and have made significantly more in tech than the author. So has many of my friends.
With that said, the only reason I’m still in Sweden is family. The public sentiment about the future is uncomfortably racist and increasingly hostile about fortune making. If you have the mobility my advice is to move. Good luck.
I’m not saying there is no path to financial independence in Sweden, I’m just saying that the path the author has taken / is advocating is not one.
I too know people who’ve made significantly more than the author. I’ve come close myself. But that generally involves starting a company and having other people work for you.
If you're comfortable with sharing, was it through a company exit or IPO?
I don’t know what your seniority is and what you’ve seen but I can assure you it exists, and it’s not unique exceptions. Maybe a good opportunity to interview if you’re feels it’s unattainable where you are now. Plenty of US companies hiring remotely too…
You pay hella more tax on them though, but I mean the reason I left the US was also like.. related to all this. I want the things those taxes pay for, it feels incredible to be back somewhere with functioning healthcare, functioning child care systems.
You state further down that you made this money from RSUs.
I’m not sure which bubble you/friends live in, but the absolute majority of tech workers do NOT get RSUs, even less often in the EU.
Roughly speaking, for similarly qualified folks applying in the EB2 category in 2021, Indian immigrants (worst case), approval can take 15+ years, while immigrants from Sweden will take 2-3 years at most (was less than a year pre-COVID).
That said it sucks to work in Sweden because it's all about making money through inheritance, housing, stocks or contacts. But I guess that is how it is in many places these days.
However, a world-class DJ and the fact that some people are richer than others doesn't really contradict the claim that Sweden is much more egalitarian, and my previous points need to be examined within the broader culture of Sweden and Scandinavia in general. (Many Swedes commute daily into Denmark.) Having a car is convenient, but thanks to a world-class public transportation network in Stockholm, rather unnecessary. Car ownership is thus less of a deal compared to much of the US. While the privileged in Silicon Valley are trying to get "fuck you" money (more eloquently expressed as Financial Indpendence / Retiring Early - FIRE), the older Swedes I met still work, and are most proud of the days or week off their job affords and middle-class people are able to travel more than I see Americans (though a lot of that is cultural, but time off work and plane tickets+hotel is expensive).
The USA really makes it easy for people to win. It can be hard to notice it if you've been there all life(or at least most of it), but people like me who have spent our whole lives outside USA(Indian Citizen) and then stayed in the USA for a couple of years(for work) and returned to our home countries can absolutely relate to this.
The difference is like night and day, and it's not even like remotely comparable, being born in the USA even in under privileged conditions gives you lots of edge compared to your peer group.
It's all very equal, just don't look behind the curtain. We all earn our 50000SEK here.
The CEO? Oh, just ignore him
I am frequently in awe when reading technical articles on HN, with people advancing the state of the art in some technology. Those people also are incredibly lucky, because they were born with massive talents that, through sacrifices and education, they transformed into life achievements.
As an average software engineer I was not lucky enough to be born with cognitive skills that will ever allow me to reach those technical highs, but that is not a reason to crap on it saying “Just luck! Just genetic/environmental luck!”.
Similarly, I don’t typically read from others: “It’s easy for you to rewrite the Linux kernel in JavaScript over a weekend, your work is just luck because you were born a genius in a developed country so all your achievements need to be discounted and you have no merits!”.
I suspect when it comes to compensation talk people tend on average to get more bitter than they should otherwise be.
Maybe I take this to heart because I made significant sacrifices to immigrate to the US and, while I was immensely lucky to succeed in the endeavor, most people I know would have never taken those uncomfortable steps (leaving family behind in a different country, sacrifice personal space by frugal living in a HCOL area as opposed to a LCOL area with a house and backyard for the kids, …), yet they will happily “complain” that my compensation is much higher than theirs, and that there is no merit to it, rather than simply admitting that they willingly chose a different path in life, but they could have chased my same opportunities with largely the same financial outcome.
If I was reading this article and I was not a tech worker in the US but interested in getting those compensations, my first reaction would be “damn, let me research what are the options for legal immigration to the US and let me start down a path that has good odds of me landing a tech job over there within 5-10 years”. It would not be “let me complain on HN how the country I am a forever-prisoner in has a 90% effective tax rate so that I feel good about my situation”.
Let’s suppose everyone did this, how do you see it turning out?
Who will do all of the other things?
I do not concern myself with non-practical (in my opinion) matters because I know that the vast majority of people will not take that path, so it’s likely not an issue.
You said:
> rather than simply admitting that they willingly chose a different path in life, but they could have chased my same opportunities with largely the same financial outcome.
But then you also say
> I do not concern myself with non-practical (in my opinion) matters
The "concern" is your own advice.
In my opinion, a practical matter is a single person (specifically, one of my peers in my home country complaining about my compensation without taking any action) deciding to make sacrifices to immigrate to the US.
A non-practical matter is worrying about everyone in my home country deciding to do the same.
Do you believe someone who were to try to take the same path as you could have the same financial outcome today?
How would it change if they couldn't get to the USA?
Yes, I do believe that, the odds of legally entering the US with a CS degree are still largely the same of when I entered a few years ago and are reasonably attainable with enough perseverance over a few years, there are different academic and worker visas that can all be used to get a foot in the door. Also, the job demand is significantly higher today than it used to be a few years ago. New grads can make $200k+ compensation, my comp as a new grad was like $35k and I still did fine.
Naturally going down this path will require significant sacrifices, as per my original comment. You need to be willing to be very frugal and likely move away from parents, friends and family, and not knowing for many years what your final immigration status will be (as you move from temporary visas to permanent visas to green card etc.). In my case, it also means no kids, no car, etc. (similar life as the author, I assume).
My whole point, let’s please not forget, is that on average people are not willing to make the above sacrifices but they still like to loudly complain when folks share articles like this one.
> How would it change if they couldn't get to the USA?
The odds are good they will, in my opinion. If they won’t, there are other options. Sampling my friends:
- if you are slightly more entrepreneurial, move to another tax-favorable country like Malta (similar tax rates as US) and contract with American companies, with financial outcomes largely similar to mine.
- if you just want a typical employee experience, Canada is also a really good option that many of my European friends who didn’t want to go through the US immigration gauntlet chose, and they are doing very well.
Once again, all these decisions take sacrifices but they are relatively attainable.
Vanguard index funds are basically meme stock status in large part because of articles like this. So arguably it's already happening and distorting prices.
People are already doing all this. Probably about as many that ever could. It’s why the interview process is so ridiculous and keeps getting more difficult.
I'm a typical average joe, but I love reading these because I'm learning from them what to do when I have such resource.
Yeah, there're people luckier than me, but I'm increasing my odds in a variety of endeavors and improving my skills. I'm far from my goal yet, but results are very encouraging so far.
I judge my own progress by where I was 10 years ago, not where some random internet author is today.
Things like be born smart enough to land 6 figure job (or high 5 figures 20yo), be born into the middle/upper class, don't have extended family dependencies, don't have kids, don't have an SO or find one willing accept all the constraints, accept living in modest accomodations for the duration, or that now is roughly the same as when they started.
Have no children?
Not only because they eat money, but your priorities will do a complete 180.
Buying and selling homes is extremely expensive - it doesnt make sense for someone who wants to have the ability to move with little friction. Its also putting a lot of one's financial resources into a single asset. A housing market downturn could be financially ruinous, a series of expensive repairs could easily cost far more than an entire year's of rent. Property tax, maintenance, and potential HOA fees mean that even after paying off your mortgage, you're never actually free of ongoing housing expenses.
However, if you have kids or other ties to an area, owning housing can help make your expenses both lower and more predictable than renting. Over long enough periods of time, the housing market also tends to go up, which means it can be a good investment.
Thanks for the second laugh when I thought, “What a fun dad joke” and saw your username. :)
It’s a joke I heard about keeping horses
For example he talks about interviewing every 3 years, and keeping your interview skills sharp. Specifically he says Practicing your interview skills is the best financial investment you can make
This IMO is the best way to grow your compensation, the way companies structure their compensation is often at odds with inflation and market conditions. If you're not regularly checking your market value via interviews, you will become underpaid.
Again I didn't learn anything I didn't know already, but I think this does a good job of giving tactical advice to someone unfamiliar with the concept of a achieving financial independence via high tech.
Most companies will flag you eventually if all you've done in your career is write a 100 line bash script and leave every six months, in fact if they are a serious shop they'll likely not want to touch you with a 10 foot pole.
The next problem of course is ageism, you are likely to enter that issue as soon as you are in your late 30s. Of course starting a family in your late 30s, or buying a home, getting fit just keep harder and harder with age. And being known and being used to being a drifter wont help much as you get older.
Let's be honest this kind of a lifestyle demands making some lifestyle priority choices and getting very lucky early life, but even that has a cost as you age and its not exactly good.
something about it just doesn't click in the minds of some people. I have a buddy that's been poor (like, rice and beans and still missing rent) his whole life. yet somehow whenever he receives some sort of windfall, he spends thousands of dollars faster than I do on a >$150k salary. he finally got a good job making ~$80k and his first thought was "I'm gonna get a nice 3BR apartment". he lives by himself with no children or pets! maybe if enough articles like this popped up in his feed, he would understand the issue with his approach.
I’m not sure what people are expecting. Eating rice and beans on $100k is still less than $100k savings.
Because the article pisses me off. This is not something helpful to us average peasants. No shit you can become a multimillionaire if you're pulling in over half a million per year. Maybe some of the advice I'd good, but it would be worth more coming from someone who actually is average so we can see it as evidence. Otherwise it's some rich person telling us what works based on their theory and an experience that's nothing like our's.
I think the cynical perspective is entirely exaggerated in the software industry. It's also an awful way to look at things, almost guaranteeing a self-fulfilling prophecy.
This simply isn't true. Most people cannot retire after 12 years of working, even in tech. The median software dev salary in the US is about $105k. You cannot reasonably earn $2.4M when you make about half of that during those 12 years.
In any case, 105k median income just goes to tell how big the opportunity is.
The statistics paint a different picture - there are only so many jobs above the median.
"In any case, 105k median income just goes to tell how big the opportunity is."
You mean limited? Clearly this is multiples lower than the author.
"The mean salary is useless in quantifying wether you, as an individual, have any agency in influencing your outcome."
No, not really. It allows you to set realistic expectations and understand the job market.
It's not actually obvious which category this is in.
I think many pessimistic people don't start or give up earlier and this leads to the self fulfilling prophecy.
Could be wrong, objective data would be needed for sure.
It seems we should need objective data to filter through the bias.
I can collect enough pennies to have a million dollars too. What do you trade for that and how likely is it that you will have the resources to live it out? His living expenses are put at 0 with a network of whatever his salary was. No rent, no car, default employer health insurance, 600/mo to eat ramen and cover utils, no kids, etc.
> There's research supporting the optimist strategy
The statistical evidence supports the pessimist strategy. In theory, theory and practice they are the same...
These blogposts feel like clickbait to troll. It inevitably leads to people arguing past each other with the predictable outcome of neither being wholly right, but the optimists blowing sunshine like it's a useful fairy dust and the premise remains laughably unrealistic, regardless. I know plenty of dirt poor optimists.
I'm bullish because I have evidence to support that possibility. Most people have zero evidence that they would ever make >$500k, let alone having a "high probability of success".
Also while 500k/y is a stretch and usually occurs due to stock appreciation (not salary), you can reasonably assume that landing a job at big tech will lead you to a 300k total comp within 12y. If you care enough to play the career game.
But in any case...
> I'm sure you would agree it's doable
It's literally not doable.
https://www.investor.gov/financial-tools-calculators/calcula...
Plug in:
- Initial Investment: $0
- Monthly Contribution: $4200 ($50400 annualized)
- Length of Time in Years: 12 years
- Estimated Interest Rate: 8%
- Interest rate variance range: 0
- Compound Frequency: Monthly
The output is $1,010,135.22
This is with a generous rate of return compounding monthly, very high savings rate and not taking income tax into account.
> you can reasonably assume that landing a job at big tech will lead you to a 300k total comp
Joining Big Tech is already an unreasonable assumption for the vast majority of developers: https://twitter.com/GergelyOrosz/status/1400506450124935171.
Someone's propensity to play the career game doesn't magically increase their capability to do so.
None of the numbers strike me as particularly unusual for the author’s circumstances, so if they strike you as unusual (and you are able to work in the US), then it might be worth considering trying to get yourself into similar employment, if that’s what you’d want. If you can’t work in the US, things are different and potentially a lot worse, but the other thing the OP states is that a professional on a more modest income ought to be able to do well making sensible investments[1] and cutting costs. I think that’s true in basically any developed country.
You claim that the author’s route was not average, but I think it probably was reasonably average for a software engineer working at large US tech companies in NYC/SF/Silicon Valley. The less average thing is perhaps saving lots of money, making reasonable investments, and not having a load of expensive kids.
[1] e.g. 60% of the increase in net worth between 2020 and 2021 comes from investments rather than the ‘earning half a million dollars a year’ and those investments came from earning less than that (obviously such incomes still generally aren’t available to people who aren’t software engineers at big US tech companies, and it may be reasonable to complain that a path that >100k people follow is unreasonable but within this path I think it’s pretty reasonable).
Then why doe the article mention average as part of the target audience?
"The implication of the article, that such compensation is reasonably possible to a moderately competent software developer working for big companies in the United States, seems pretty reasonable to me."
I'm moderately compentent and work for a large company. Why do I make under $100k? It seems your perspective might be skewed as it is not common, as evidenced by the median dev salary of about $105k.
"None of the numbers strike me as particularly unusual for the author’s circumstances, so if they strike you as unusual (and you are able to work in the US), then it might be worth considering trying to get yourself into similar employment, if that’s what you’d want."
Again, I think there's a drastic perception issue here. These number are by definition unusual or rare given the median. It's simply not possible for an average person like me to make that kind of money.
"60% of the increase in net worth between 2020 and 2021 comes from investments rather than the ‘earning half a million dollars a year’ and those investments came from earning less than that (obviously such incomes still generally aren’t available to people who aren’t software engineers at big US tech companies, and it may be reasonable to complain that a path that >100k people follow is unreasonable but within this path I think it’s pretty reasonable)."
And again, the majority of the US devs fall at or below the median, putting them right around or under that $100k number.
So yeah, use "normal" people get a little pissed off with people telling us that it's not unusual to be making multiple times our salaries and we could easily achieve this too if only we were "moderately competent".
Putting these sort of limitations on yourself, from my experience, will dampen the effort that you put in to achieve new levels, if you even try at all. That reduced effort will result in exactly what you predicted for yourself.
So, begs the question, what sort of effort have you put in to increase your pay past the median dev salary.
The number of opportunities to make significantly more money are exceedingly rare. Especially with family constraints like not being allowed to move or no longer able to work extensive unplanned extra hours due to childcare responsibilities.
Have you worked on your social/emotional intelligence/interviewing skills?
There aren't a lot of opportunities in my area (Philly region). Even many remote jobs are not worth applying to (only going to switch if it pays at least $100k).
A median being much lower than the numbers reported by the article could be explained by a few things:
1. That compensation is bimodal
2. That there are more people at more junior levels than at senior levels (either more people coming into the field or older people leaving or more experienced people changing roles to e.g. management at some companies and no longer counting towards the ‘software engineer’ category)
I think it’s a bit of both, but good data is hard to come by.
I don’t know about your circumstances. I don’t know what your constraints are. If you are in the United States, I would encourage you to suppose that a path like the one described in the article is reasonably achievable for a software engineer in the United States[1]. If you think it is true and that you are therefore unfairly treated, then maybe you would re-evaluate your opportunities and consider interviewing (yes this process sucks…) to try to find out whether or not it really is true, as you’d have a lot to gain and not much to lose. If you think it’s true and that you are in an acceptable position then you can avoid having an emotional reaction to threads where people state that the thing you think is true is true. If you think it’s false and it turns out that you were wrong, you may regret not acting sooner. If you can’t participate in the US labour market, that’s quite different. For example many experienced software engineers in the U.K. will earn less than $70k though I don’t have statistics to hand. Larger companies offer higher pay now but the market seems quite different from the one in the US.
I hope you don’t think I’m attacking you. I’d like you to feel like you’re able to make deliberate, informed decisions rather than that it is all luck.
[1] If you believe it is achievable for someone working at these big tech companies, consider that there aren’t that many software engineers in the United States and that a rough low lower bound for the number of engineers employed by companies meeting the above description would be 100k (I think the real number is >3x higher, but this 100k number could be found by looking at a small number of companies) so in percentage terms, it can’t be too uncommon to work at such places.
A second thing to say is that high compensation in the US does not require you to live in Silicon Valley or New York. Many well-paying large tech companies have satellite offices in smaller metros offering only slightly lower pay, or offer remote work with either no cost of living adjustments, or an adjustment that still allows for high compensation.
A third thing is that opportunities aren’t equal, for example hardware engineers, game developers, and possibly people in the embedded space tend to be paid (potentially much) more poorly than more general software engineers.
Finally, maybe everything will change. I don’t have a great reason for software engineers to be so highly paid and there might be some big crash or other correction that stops that being the case.
https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/software-developer-salary-SRCH_KO0,18.htmThe author made $625k in compensation this year. Even for large US tech companies, that's far above the "moderately competent" level. According to levels.fyi, this is approximately what a Principal SWE makes at Amazon, the third highest compensation level listed.
The majority of his NW comes from investment and savings, not income.
The point of the article is that cutting expenses, saving, investing wisely, and aggressively pursuing pay raises can yield a few million well before retirement age.
These sort of casual dismissals negate the educational value of the post.
Most people will have nowhere near the same results as the author by implementing these things.
The biggest factors here are:
1) Earn a lot of money
2) Don't spend it all
I don't think this post has much educational value at all because I think most people already understand those points, they just can't execute on them in a meaningful way.
Living expenses tend to grow slower than incomes, as incomes go up.
You don't pay 200% rent for 2 people, but for sure you can earn 200% with 2 people.
I would say $475k is close enough, in all honesty.
> The majority of his NW comes from investment and savings, not income.
Sum of (earnings - spent) over the career is $2,611,000. Net worth by the end is $2,400,000. In order for investment returns to be above savings on income, taxes would have to be 42.3% of lifetime earnings, which would be a bit surprising.
You should also hire a CPA or at least spend some time reading about strategies to minimize taxes if you are paying close to an effective 50% income tax on $500k of income.
You will not get as low as someone with their own business or S corp, but the tax advantaged savings account should help.
If you earn more than $523,600 and are single, then your tax rate is not 50% but 37%, which is still meaningful amount that is often not considered when looking at those big numbers. https://www.manafld.com/blog/2021/2/26/rsus-no-sell-tax
If you are in California, then your employer will not give you all your RSU but sell 40% and give you 60%. So you don’t have a big scary surprise when it’s tax season. https://blog.myrawealth.com/insights/rsu-tax-rate
The federal income tax rate only for income above $523k is 37%. Only for income above $523k.
> If you are in California, then your employer will not give you all your RSU but sell 40% and give you 60%. So you don’t have a big scary surprise when it’s tax season.
Withholding amounts seem irrelevant when discussing effective tax rates.
https://smartasset.com/taxes/income-taxes#gJwOxy2ei7
But that is without 401k/HSA/etc.
I calculated 42% effective on lifetime income, and I suppose the writer was not taxed at 42% on their 100k income from the first years, so the tax rate for later years must have been higher.
That is entirely irrelevant. You will get taxed the same no matter what they sell and give you. If your tax rate should be less than 40% (true for me, and probably most people here), you'll get the money back as a refund.
You do miss out on any appreciation, but if you know your marginal tax rate is < 40% (just look at your previous tax returns to figure it out), you can simply spend the delta to buy the stocks you should have gotten and you'll still get the appreciation (and the cash in the tax refund to compensate you for doing this).
475k == 500k for all practical purposes. The guy averaged 525k for 3 solid years (not "one year") -- which makes the parent comment rather less flip.
These sort of casual dismissals negate the educational value of the post.
The bottom line is that while saving and investing is certainly smart -- you better damn sure be earning 98 percentile income as well if you want to get as far ahead of the game as this guy has.
$100K first job which is around £74K in the UK… you aren’t likely to get anywhere near that as a grad masters or not here but after taxes and student loan payments (which are deducted from your income in the UK) and all other deductions you’ll end up with £42,908.26 per year, that’s $56K.
And this is where this breaks down for people in tech outside of the US at least.
In the UK the path was at least until IR35 kicked in was to slave for about 10 years and become a contractor at which point you’ll charge per day nearly as much as you used to get per week if not per month…
I started out 6-7 years ago at £30k and am now at £100k + options (worthless). Have only ever worked at startups. You can 1.5x that easily at a big tech (some FAANG jobs exist in London).
You are probably better off making £80K in Manchester as a senior dev than £100-110K in London. Newcastle has also a decent tech ecosystem tho it is very much focused around Sage.
(Not denying it, genuinely curious which sector/companies etc)
Also, my experience with London companies + recruiters in the last 3 months has been that permanant remote roles have been cropping up. I would say its about 50/50 of whether a job requires any on prem time, and about 90/10 that the job requires 1-2 days a week on prem.
The 2 bed flat I’m renting got recently evaluated at 1.7M it’s very nice and very large (for London)but the lease remaining on it is 68 years and the Victorian building it sits in would need a lot of work very very soon so the buyers are looking at 350-400K bill within a few years of buying the flat (leasehold renewal and building repairs) on top of that which also is why the current landlord is looking to sell.
As it stands now if you want to buy a property for £600K you are looking at £60K deposit, £20K stamp duty and probably another £20K for misc costs.
£600K is a below what an average new build in a Zone 3 would cost you these days outside of the few units they reserve for HTB. If you can save £3K a month you’re looking at 3 years of saving. Since most people / couples would struggle to save even £1K a month especially in their early careers they are probably looking at a decade of saving for a property or even more if the house prices keep on rising as fast as they are now.
Edit: Reader, he looked at the prices
Found almost identical flat at 499,999K, so coming in at less than Millbank flats were going for in 2016. Those flats are only £25K more now. This seems perfectly doable for software engineers who have a good permanent job or are contracting.
The only flats in my area around 600K all have a huge asterisk the leasehold on them is about to expire so you can only buy them in cash.
Five years later I think it's more feasible to stay in Zone 1 or 2 with kids as the air becomes cleaner and you should have saved up enough to find a bigger place. A friend travels from Zone 1 to 4 every on the train for the school run, so it's perfectly doable given flexible working.
The $$$ is the problem. 3 bedroom in Zone 1 is 1.5-2m
Whilst it’s true that I probably won’t find a pay like this outside of London it’s also quite hard to get it within London if I lose my job it’s more likely that I’ll have to take a pay cut than not.
In fact once you get to 6 figures in the UK outside of contracting it’s not uncommon to essentially bounce up and down by as much as 30% between jobs.
Looking at the more median salaries especially post COVID the pay gap has shrunk considerably.
Finance/Fintech is still very much London centric and those places pay the most in uk tech outside some senior FAANG roles but not everyone is lucky enough to land those.
It’s even not about being good or asking for more it’s really about just landing a job with an employer that is able and willing to pay that much and being able to justify that to them and it’s not as easy as it seems to be in SV.
In fact just before the pandemic I was looking to make a move and I went to a few recruiters and their honest advice was pretty much stay where I was (less than what I get now but 20% (5/15 split) pension and very very good benefits).
I did managed to move in early 2020 to my current role but that was through my network.
Overall considering it the loss of pension I probably came out even it was more of wanting to do something new in a different setting than the pay.
Do you mind me asking what industry you're in?
Not to mention the salary ceiling is so huge in London it's easy to be saving more than someone else is earning in another city.
A friend of mine has a son that just got a job offer right out of a medium tier computer science school with total compensations more than $200k per year.
In fact, if you earn 50k as a single without dependants (or if you are a couple with 2x50k income) you're definitely richer than the majority of folks.
Also, the UK tax system is incredibly generous to high income folks: 40k+ tax exempt pension contributions, 20k ISA allowance, 12k cgt allowance. It means that you can accumulate a good chunk of capital before you'll even have to start paying taxes
Childcare is expensive as fuck and you lose your childcare allowance at £50K in fact if you share a household with anyone who claims it and you earn more than £50K they’ll deduct that from you…
Living on wealth in the UK is as easy as in the US I would agree to that perhaps even easier since there are no property taxes and probably even more tax schemes to leverage than in the US but getting to that point under PAYE even whilst earning well above the median wage isn’t easy especially if you want to have children and have to live in London for that pay.
The main issue is just how depressed many of the wages in the UK are and thus just how narrow the tax base is.
I should have specified that the problem is the taxation of work-related income (the main source of income of the poor) compared to the taxation of wealth. On this respect I find particularly egregious the NI hike (an increase of the income tax or the introduction of a property tax would have been more appropriate).
I think a lot of Americans envision finding a European style social safety net by only taxing billionaires.
All this while everybody with a professional job faces a 40% marginal tax rate (plus NI).
this is a huge factor that influences almost every other decision he listed there: - living with roommates or renting a cheap apartment - not wanting to buy an apartment - having the time to do side hustles - even changing career paths is challenging when you have a family to take care of - saving the majority of his annual compensation
I don’t want to say his advices are bad, just keep in mind that it’s not applicable to everyone
I’ll all for saving and do broadly follow a similar approach. With kids I won’t be retiring in my 30s or 40s but I’m investing in life now so that when I do retire it’s a much more well rounded and wholesome experience.
To each their own, but most of the “I’m not gonna have kids and just save all my money” types I know say later they made a poor life choice that’s hard to fix once that realization is made.
The main advice I do agree with is just because you start earning more doesn’t mean you should start spending more. Living comfortably below one’s means is a good way to build wealth over time. I just don’t recommend the “extreme” version of this.
You can make the same sweeping generalization with parents who raise kids that are ungrateful and/or complete disappointments.
I know plenty of parents that feel abandoned by their children, who only get a courtesy call once or twice a year. Or worst, children who are continuing to be a financial burden in their 20s/30s/etc.
Very few parents will admit to the fact they regret having children. But the regret is there.
By all accounts - if you are certain that you don’t want kids, you’re not going to be a decent parent, or you have some severe issues then yeah maybe don’t do kids. But often what I see is a deeper issue of cheapness/scarcity/whatever that could be addressed with therapy and then happy children with happy parents could emerge from that.
Truth is - if you’re in SV and under 35 - you’ve likely had incredible parents. The overwhelming majority of my younger colleagues in SV love their family and were raised somewhat decently. They’re not the meth heads you’ll find scattered throughout rural America.
I don’t disagree that for middle income earners kids are a huge expense, but when you’re making $350,000+ each year, $30,000 for childcare isn’t a dramatic expense. Same with all the incidentals.
Columbia is more expensive.
And if one of them wants to become a doctor or lawyer, now you need to pay for grad school too.
[1] https://sfs.mit.edu/billing-repayment/undergraduate-tuition-...
My kid can take out loans and sure I’ll help, but hell no I’m not bank rolling multiple kids at full private school tuition.
At least where I grew up a solid public school college was not an impediment to a good career.
I’ve notice Americans tend to hyper-optimize - I love it when parents tell me they bought in Palo Alto because the public school was rated a 9.3/10 versus San Mateo at 9.1/10.
There are a class of parents who obsess about “the best”. Best schools, best tutors, best nutrition, best ‘experiences’, best neighborhood. It’s a hedonistic treadmill in the making.
If I don't have to relocate for job opportunities (currently in Atlanta), I plan to stay here and encourage any future children to stay in-state. That's of course assuming that the state doesn't kill off HOPE by then.
And regarding the authors' experience: Yeah, if you happen to be employed in the area that ranks in the top 0.05 % quantile for engineering salaries worldwide you will easily become wealthy, especially if you're lucky enough to be paid in company stock during a stock market bubble.
Poor people tend to hide or downplay their poverty online in an environment like this one.
Maybe HN is more likely to be in that quantile than the general population of developers; “more likely than not” implies that most people on HN are in that quantile which I kind of doubt but I don’t have data to support either way.
Basically road to financial independence seems to be get paid half a million a year and live in a country with relatively low tax rate…
So I think getting a house gifted by your parents is also a requirement for their path.
My personal expenses are a tad lower than theirs, and I rent an apartment in San Francisco that I live in alone.
I think you are over-estimating the impact of a "top 5" master's program vs an average master's program. I had a very similar trajectory to you and went to an average master's program.
The major difference between you and me is that I never wanted to work for a Google, Amazon, or Hedge Fund and wanted to work at smaller companies. Salary suffered because of my reluctance to even compete for those jobs.
> The biggest boost in my career earnings came when I transitioned from a Computer Hardware engineer to a Software Engineer
I also disagree with this. The biggest boost in your career earnings came from working at (1) financial companies and (2) working at FAANG. I don't think you have enough data to say that your area of focus is what to lead to this, and I personally think it is wrong. Maybe it opened doors for you however
The article talks about how to gain Financial Independence as a software engineer. Choosing to not work at FANG or unicorn co's, will severely limit your ability to achieve FI. Whether you like it or not, people do make judgements off of where you went to school.
I've had several managers at FANG talk about how they have a bias towards top 10 schools, one even admitted that the candidates don't seem that different but he still has this bias.
The biggest boost in your career earnings came from working at (1) financial companies and (2) working at FAANG. I don't think you have enough data to say that your area of focus is what to lead to this, and I personally think it is wrong.
You're welcome to look at the data on levels.fyi
It's pretty clear that at this point SWE's on average far-out earn HWE's. Not to mention the fact that there are a lot more open headcount for SWE's than for HWE's at the top-paying companies.
Thank you for mentioning this. So many people don’t realize that masters programs can be fairly worthless even from elite schools.
Unavoidably: US based, 6 figures right from the start. You're pretty much half way there already.
Just happen to live in the US, work and don't be stupid financially. I guess it also helps not having a big "student debt" (that's also not US exclusive but US typical, since in many other countries education is cheaper - subsidized and you don't gradutate with a debt. ATL not a personal debt). But since there's so much tech demand in the US irrespective of education, you can often skip college and follow a different path. But not if you have to immigrate with a student visa to go the H1B way, haha!
The casualness with which you can earn those amounts of money and then lecture (not this particular post, more like the trend) on "retire at 40" or "financial independence in 10 yrs" is a bit tiring (from an outside perspective, and in a harmless-envious way) but all the best to those that are in a position to make it. Yes, casualness in a relative sense, not implying you don't have to work or anything like that.
Congrats to OP.
Sorry, but that's just false. This article contained specific points of advice, a lot of which is parroted by most financially competent people, but not all. Here's a few takeaways I noticed:
> avoid accelerating your hedonic treadmill, and save that money instead
> Invest your money. Do not let it sit idle in a bank.
> My own investment portfolio has consisted entirely of US equity (VTI), Developed Countries (VEA) and Emerging Markets (VWO). In recent years, I’ve also added real-estate (REET) to the mix. My exact allocations have varied, but I’ve generally invested an equal amount in each of the above. If you’re more risk averse, add a bond fund (BND) to your portfolio
> Do not try to time the market or pick winners and losers. On average, these are both losing strategies.
> You should strongly consider interviewing elsewhere every ~3 years... Practicing your interview skills is the best financial investment you can make.
> I’ve heard many people say you should ignore equity and only look at base salary in a job offer. This is poor advice – always look at the total compensation, not any one piece of it.
> Tell recruiters what compensation you’re expecting, not what you’re currently making. As a rule of thumb, whenever I switch jobs, I expect a 30% compensation increase. Anything less than 20%, I would recommend waiting for something better to come along.
99% of the people can't do anything with this advice because they don't have any savings to begin with.
I wonder if the author even understands how lucky he is.
Congrats to OP for having a lot of money in the bank, but there is nothing special or unique about their advice. It's the usual invest your money, don't spend too much, try to get into a top company, etc.
Even for someone in a similar situation, there is very little here that I haven't seen repeated elsewhere countless times.
Remove a zero from his salaries, and the response would have been very different.
Also you really don't know what you're actually applying for when you're a graduate. You think you know but only those who are fortunate are able to get it right. Plenty of people get a job thinking it leads somewhere. For instance, I've interviewed a lot of financial ops people who think they're on the ladder to becoming a trader. It does happen, but not that often.
But good on him, it still takes work and dedication to do something like this.
I think it is definitely possible to know. My college friends with parents in tech certainly knew.
When I was in college, I looked over H1B data to get a sense of what was really going on. The conclusion: finance, consulting, law, all vastly overrated in compensation unless you are doing quantitative finance or have a very rare job.
Medicine and tech, appropriately rated for comp.
I’ve been trying for years to jump to a FAANG and correct my initial career mistake, but it’s extremely difficult and I’ve only seen the top 10% of my company, in the right positions (not QA), do it. I need to do two jumps: QA to design, then tier 2 to tier 1. As a result, I’ve actually decided to throw in the towel and “reroll” as a software dev.
* For the purposes of retirement we track our net worths separately
[Edit] I also would like to mention that the article says as much
Each hop up takes a good mix of hard work and luck but it always results in a massive jump in pay
He's not earning "huge" amounts of money for jobs in that field. (Additionally, it's a field that most intelligent people can enter with 1-3 years of study.)
Not saying the author doesn't have merit, of course he has plenty. It's just a different kind.
Think about that for a second.
We are continuously flabbergasted how much we are paid, and it’s not even FAANG levels; still, it’s more than many other skilled and important roles in the workforce.
Part of me understands that there’s still a lot of money to be made and thus, salaries should continue to be high but other parts of me wonder (especially with increased ability to work anywhere) when/if we’ll see salaries normalize.
I would love for this to continue forever but can it really? For example the author (and my friends) are in similar situation where their compensation are now in the ~500k range but that number is based on the stock value at the time of offer. It is now essentially double that. So we're in a situation where your everyday senior FAANG engineers are locked in a golden handcuff unless they are offered million dollar packages to jump ship.
We're in weird times.
well, we've pretty much got the world chained down it's essentially unlimited money for us forever
if things go downhill we will still be on top anyway so who cares
Some people don’t have the strength to walk away and instead will obsess over money for anything. It’s funny how I’m sure people would require much bigger numbers if they were given an offering where they’d have to go to a terrible prison for 2-3 years in their prime years.
- The world is becoming increasingly computerized. The demand for software is skyrocketing.
- Software engineering is extremely economically efficient. You can produce infinite quantities of a piece of software with no marginal cost.
- Outside of the HN / CS bubble, most regular people still think coding is either boring, stupid, or too hard.
I really think it would be tough to do this job without some major interest in computers that most people simply don't have. And you can't really fake this. This puts a cap on the supply of engineers.
1) To stop working when you hit a certain number seems to me to be falling into the faulty logic illustrated in Freakonomics -- when a taxi driver works every day towards a certain $ figure, he suffers on crappy days (keeps on driving to little benefit) when fares are just not coming, and cuts off his earnings on great days where business is pouring in like crazy. Instead, you should call it day early when the business sucks, and ride it when times are good.
If you're good at what you do, aren't physically being exhausted by your work, and pulling in good money, why wouldn't you keep on working and make the most of your time + skills? Did you go through all your education and training just to hit a certain number and call it quits?
2) In some ways I don't get the "financially independent" life. Sure, you're no longer absolutely needing to have a job. But what do you do with the rest of your life? You're just retired at 50? With what to challenge / strive for?
Maybe I'm just fortunate in that I don't mind working / find some fulfillment from it, and don't have a burning desire to sit around with no activities for 5 days a week. Maybe if I were smarter about it, I could be some kind of board member or something? Is that what people do? What takes the place of work?
Also I want to sleep/wake whenever.
Also variations can take lean/fat fire.
I spend virtually all of my free time and energy on side projects, and my list of side projects grows faster than I can take them on. When I retire, I’ll have no shortage of things to spend my time on.
2) Why would a job be necessary to have something to challenge/strive for?
For a 21st century kick, we have superfood protein smoothies now. They're better for you, have less taste, can be consumed on the go, and are better for the environment.
(1) The number to reach is an inflection point where you can pivot and focus on things you don't like about work. For example, as much as I like architecting systems, I definitely don't like architecting through people which is what the job demands. A good question then is why do the climb at all, and there is a bit of disease of more in our culture.
(2) Whatever you want! One of the reasons I retired was so that I could better balance time with my wife and work on my open source project: http://www.adama-lang.org/blog/retirement-going-all-in
Who said anything about “no activities”? They said they wanted to retire not go to prison.
So, what do I gain when I stop working? My friends still will work, and I'm just going to have 8 hours in a day when there's no one to do fun stuff.
I also think the "financially independent" life has a pretty wide definition. I don't need a job for an alarmingly long time, but couldn't retire on what I have. It still gives me enough freedom to work where I want, when I want - which is what proponents of this life talk about.
FI has never meant "go live on the beach and sip beer", I mean it can for some but the majority of folks I talk to have interests or career aspirations that are not economically viable.
For example, volunteering full time at a non-profit, writing a book, community organizing, etc. all this takes time and can be difficult to do when you have a full-time FANG job.
“Oh, if you don’t have to bail water to keep from drowning you’ll just sit there in the ocean not doing anything.”
No. You can go where you want, without worry.
“But I like bailing water, it gives me purpose, I want to do this forever!”
That’s nice, I like fixing leaks, just in case.
What if work is like growing a garden and the more you do the more you get?
For most, work is first about survival/decent quality of life, and then life satisfaction. FI is about taking the survival element off the table, so you can pursue satisfaction at work (or elsewhere).
(Put another way, people seem to argue that they prefer to stay financially _dependent_ — stay that way if you want, and hope your preferences never change.)
Yes, I don't see what's so surprising about that. Most people do the same but instead of being an amount of money, it's an amount of years, or an amount of money that you will get more slowly.
> In some ways I don't get the "financially independent" life. Sure, you're no longer absolutely needing to have a job. But what do you do with the rest of your life? You're just retired at 50? With what to challenge / strive for?
Whatever you want, that's the point. If you want to spend all day in your bed, you can. If you want to go very deeply on one topic, you can. If you want to surf HN all day you can. If you want to give time to charities you can. You can even go back to work if you want to!
> Maybe I'm just fortunate in that I don't mind working / find some fulfillment from it, and don't have a burning desire to sit around with no activities for 5 days a week.
> What takes the place of work?
Your comment seems to asume that working is a natural state and that you need an opposite "burning desire" to not want to work. I personally don't get much fulfillment from work. It's nice and all but I'd rather not do it. In a way it's like washing the dishes: sometimes it feels a bit good to do it, and most people need to do it, but if I can get a dishwasher, I'd rather get one and use one.
Sees last salary was $625,000
Chuckles and closes the article about achieving financial independence
If anything, some of the advice doesn't make any sense. Like, saving extremely on the low income. Whatever he has saved in the first six years of his career would be offset by just working one year more.
But it does apply to many people reading HN, and it's important - especially for young people - to realize that this kind of life path is possible. I expect and hope that in the future, a lot of cultural and intellectual progress will be made by people who spent a few years in FAANG and then retired with a comfortable nest egg, to pursue less-well-compensated goals.
1) get a prenup before marriage because there's a 50/50 chance you'll lose half in divorce (at least in California.) This is not very romantic so it's not something I ever considered, but it's recommended to wealthy persons by lawyers.
2) don't become an alcoholic or drug addict. If you think you might be developing a problem, own up to it, seek help and go to rehab if necessary. This includes gambling addictions. A cocaine and gambling habit is probably the quickest way to become broke again.
Your retirement plan should work regardless of requiring you breed live-in caretakers.
https://www.merrillgardens.com/senior-living/ca/santa-cruz/s...
Some countries outright ignore them anyway -- last I've heard England and Wales (Scotland still holding them valid).
Another option for the drugs thing is to never do drugs or drink alcohol. I haven’t ever done any and I’ve managed to avoid addiction my entire life. I still have fun - I am actually considered the fun and lively person of many friend groups.
If you ignore all of California, you miss out on higher compensation and interesting work opportunities. Should you live your life such that you limit your opportunities? I don't think so.
I don't think ignoring serious relationships altogether or avoiding children because of the potential financial headache they could cause is a healthy way of thinking about your future, purpose and what you want, just my 2 cents.
I am not purposing avoiding serious relationships either. I’m proposing avoiding the legal contracts that will not do you any good.
My tax rate went up a ton after the divorce.
TIL, thanks.
My apologies, you're absolutely correct. I have no idea why I thought CA was common law. Probably after the divorce I got bombarded with information and it was all soup in my brain.
> I’m proposing avoiding the legal contracts that will not do you any good.
It's only an issue if you have kids and/or plan to immigrate to a different country. Being married helps there.
My guess is that it isa conflation of “community property” with “common law”, as both relate to marriage and are similar enough in name that it is easy to swap them in memory.
Also, community property is the one more relevant to what happens in divorce, while common law is about formation of marriage.
Whether this is true (in the absence of a prenup, etc.) depends on record keeping and where (and particularly when) your assets come from; the somewhat oversimplified version is that a ssets (and debts) acquired between the beginning of marriage and separation that are not gifts or inheritances specifically intended for one or the other of the spouses are community property by default, those acquired before marriage or after separation (even before divorce) are separate property.
The immigration part is more difficult but you can get married temporarily for the purposes of immigration unless you're specifically moving to that place to live there forever. I've known people who have done this and it is clearly very feasible. They got legally divorced after. However - I am assuming that both people in a relationship are going to be working and therefore this is a not a problem. If one is not going to be working then that adds a layer of complexity. Marriage law at that point is weird.
Personally - I'm tailoring my advice for the overwhelming majority of people - not the one-off weird scenarios that most Americans are not going to be dealing with. 60%+ of people in the USA don't even have a passport. And they definitely aren't thinking of leaving permanently - lol.
I see your overarching point though.
Similarly you would couch it to your spouse the same way. If you both treat it like the corporation paperwork it is (and if you think about how the government treats it, it's actually similar to a business partnership structure in many ways), then getting paperwork married and then paperwork divorced as planned doesn't have to be an issue.
Yes, they are.
> Judges can throw them out and ignore them whenever they feel.
That's...not true, except to the extent the same is true of contracts generally.
I don’t consider myself in anyway special. I know many people from Europe who went down this path.
The sad reality is that in Europe software engineers don’t get paid very well relative to the value they create. It’s a lot better today in my home country Ireland than it was a decade or so ago but salaries and opportunities are still nowhere near as good as in the USA.
Unless you are very lucky, if you want to make a lot of money and work with the top people in your profession, you will have to move. This will likely involve risk and personal sacrifice. If I was to distill this guys journey into a high level formula it would be as follows:
1) Pick a fast growing industry you are interested in. 2) Move to the area which pays you the most and where the most opportunities are. 3) work with top people and adapt your career based on what you see them do. 4) live reasonably, save and invest.
I see a lot of people from Europe in the comments saying this is unrealistic or that it would be hard to replicate this success doing the same thing today. I disagree.
While the specifics of the plan might be different for todays 20 year olds. I.e specialize in cryptocurrency or machine learning or fintech. The overall approach is still valid, it just involves a lot of sacrifices and risks you may not be willing to take.
As someone who has within the last few months failed three FAANG on-sites and a Coinbase phone screen, I’d say you’re special.
I bet most engineers at these companies did not get an offer on their first 3 tries. This is not a big deal at all because they'll let you interview over and over after cool-off periods.
I guess moved there with a F-1 visa, then F1 OPT and then H1-B?
The "best" flow at the moment from what I have seen seems to be working for FAANG in Europe and then moving with a L1 visa, though that depends of course on the company.
Agreed, re FAANG or other companies that have a USA presence.
So the "path" to financial independance mainly involves getting a 100k/year from day one.
I hope it will inspire and convince all these people who earn below the US median salary range of 47k/year. (and they range in all age categories, not 20 years old engineers).
That guy is seriously delusional.
Just imagine how it's impossible for someone with 47k/year!
And that's the MEDIAN salary range in the US!
But apparently that thought escaped him, whatever.
With a starting salary that high I think you're very likely to easily achieve financial independence, barring a catastrophic fuck up.
Most of what he said doesn't apply outside of that specific bubble
It goes up quickly!
Solution: don’t have kids.
The financial, emotional, and time costs of kids are well-known beforehand.
This is just my personal opinion, but this is an ass backwards way of doing things and it gets me frothing at the mouth.
If it's your life purpose, DO it already. Live lean if you have to, become a cockroach if you must, but let that purpose ROAR out of you. Don't sit around accruing meaningless tokens, becoming an old fuck with all of the juice of life wrung out of you like some decrepit mop.
Sincerely, a decrepit mop.
Conversely, I've seen those that "pursue their passion" end up being bitter and cynical when they don't make it. They end up working one dead-end job after another, hoping to one day become a famous writer/actor/singer/etc.
Eventually they realize they don't have what it takes and are now stuck working into their 50s/60s.
Sure some small pct end up being successful but the majority end up being in the same corporate trap that they originally eschewed, albeit with more debt and a more precarious financial situation.
Yet this is not what the article is about! $300k+ is not something an average engineer makes. No shit you can become a multimillionaire if you're pulling in half a million every year.
The author earned the majority of their net worth in only a few years (five or six) via a high salary and stock options. There’s nothing wrong with that, but for most anyone—American or not—it’s an unrealistic, semi-mythical story that says more about a lopsided economic system than life.
And so, the main lesson of such stories (for me) is always “extraordinarily high incomes without significant life encumbrances make it easy to quickly hoard money and compound it”.
Earn over $1/2 million a year.
Work for 2+ years.
The only lesson seems to be don't spend your money.
Of course, without networking with other millionaires, becoming a millionaire is a bit harder...
On yet another hand, a millionaire living in the well-to-do coastal communities of California might actually still be financially insecure, while a not-yet-quite millionaire living in rural Montana may be secure for life.
I am instinctively drawn towards the rural Montana thing, but mainly because I am introverted anyway.
With my five figure salary in France the max I can invest is 1k/month, so with a 10% RoI I can expect around 200k by the time I’m 30. That’s nowhere near a million and doesn’t take the flat tax in consideration. Maybe 10% is considered low or not risky enough?
> first salary in the low six-figure
Yeah, that’s not gonna happen in Europe.
I love my five weeks of paid holiday, 14 weeks of paid paternity leave, and free healthcare. but I would still prefer early retirement instead of working till 65.
Basically, build a network of tech monopolies which engage in unethical, if not criminal practices, then build a VC ecosystem that is ready to spend king's ransoms to get startups to join that club. Wait as these companies compete to buy your soul.
Kill particular countries languages, cultures and laws to create real single market. At least US Congress has sole authority to regulate interstate commerce, compared to EU.
So it’s painful thinking that you were very much in the right place at the right time, but were just a step or two away from the stratosphere… however, it’s all relative I guess, those with 2 mil envy those with 5 mil
FIREPorn?
SecurityPorn?
All these dreams of safety make me feel sorry for people. To need so much money just not to be afraid.
$100k should be enough to live comfortably off of in the Midwest.
The Trinity study that the 4% rule comes from is based on having some assets left after 30 years, not the original principle being intact.
Trinity study: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_study
The most expensive early retirement tax in the us is health insurance.
Similarly saving 15% for retirement is critical, but saving enough to cover inflation is just as important with an early retirement.
For example, finding roommates is a good way to save money, but you have to be careful about who you room with. Roommates can both increase social opportunities for a busy software developer, but can also damage career opportunities. I had a roommate that got a homeless boyfriend. I was apprehensive about it but supportive at first. My employment depends on me having minimal interactions with police and when I found out he was bringing drugs into the apartment, I had to end the lease and got my own living space. I now live alone and I lost a friend. This is more expensive but less risky. It will slow my financial independence, but less so than job loss.
Renting a cheap apartment sounds good on face value, but the problem with it is that the quality of people you’re around is lower. When you get dragged down, you enter a world where there is no respect or affirmation for your time or goals, everything is an emergency demanding your immediate and full attention, this is cancer for your attention. If you want to develop your skills as an engineer or learn a new technology on your own time, guess what you’re not going to do in that situation? One example, when my car was broken into at my cheap apartment, police assume that since you’re a victim of crime, you’ve got nothing better to do and you have plenty of time. Guess what I didn’t do that day? I didn’t go to work. I would say living in a more expensive area ultimately saves you time and lets you grow because it takes away a lot of the barriers living around poverty introduces.
What many critics will not fully get is how hard it is to not spend the wealth. I know too many people making mid six figures and they spend everything. The paradox is that this adds enough stress to their lives that they can't focus on the next level of income.
Find the gratitude for the opportunity, but please take pride in the discipline of keeping it.
I'm living without a car in a shitty apartment, no family, I even rarely vacation, but I didn't save half as much as you did.
I don't like this article at all, since it does not talk about the average software engineer. The author's current salary is 625k USD which would already make one financially independent regardless of any of the other decisions that they took in their life (eg. living with roommates to be frugal like they suggest)
Many junior developer roles in London will pay 50k. Some finance ones will pay 75k or more.
600k USD / 450k GBP is also definitely reachable for a senior developer at team leader level or comparable.
Also at this level you enter into a negotiation with the business stakeholders, compensation package is tailored to each profile and opportunity.
Let’s forget that salaries in Europe are ridiculously low to focus on the handful of people who might get an extraordinary position - still paid less than an equivalent one in North America nevertheless - and pretends its doable and everything is fine.
And that's not even the top salaries, there are also jobs that pay in millions.
You'll also find similar salaries in Amsterdam, Paris, Zurich...
I'm just stating that jobs that pay the same as in the article do exist in Europe, and I don't believe they're as exceptional as you suggest.
There just is a large spectrum of salaries for software engineering, and as we all know, 90% of everything is crud, so of course the median will be much lower.
Back to tech though, there are probably 100 100k roles for every 400k role. So if you start out making 100k in tech, you have to be 1 in 100 to move up to a 400k role.
2009 was also a recession year where it was difficult to find an entry level job at all, at any salary. I went without (software) work for half a year when I was laid off at the end of 2008 and ended up having to relocate for employment.
I'm in my late 30s now and I'm well off by almost every measure (I max out all retirement accounts, I have a six figure brokerage account) - but I'm nowhere near a millionaire or financially independent. I'll need to work another decade best case scenario.
The biggest boost to my savings rate/financial position came from getting married and sharing income/bills with my husband.
If I did it over again I'd pay off my loans slower and put more in my retirement accounts earlier.
Not to disrespect the effort that went into this, but let's make this very clear: this type of trajectory is only possible for a very limited few, in a particular moment in history.
Everything seems to indicate that, save for a few samurai, the tech overlords are a powerful force driving inequality today.
For example, it's hard to argue that software made journalism better. Sure, there is some efficiency in using a phone to record interviews and sending the results of your work on seconds on the other side of the world - as opposed to things like notepads and telexes.
On the other hand, Google and Facebook almost completely eviscerated the revenue streams that fed traditional journalists, without putting anything in it's place.
Instead of a large number of local papers and ad agencies earning local revenue and funding journalists, you have a massive revenue stream going into Google's offshore tax shells, of which a part is used to fund their software mercenary army, and the bulk is reimvested into further tech monopolies.
The corrupt and the despots surely welcome the tech overlords.
They're vampires centralizing local revenues worldwide and for what?!? That money gets reinvested or offshored so that about 100 billionaires live like kings with about 2 million millionaire flunkies working for them.
> this type of trajectory is only possible for a very limited few
We are talking 0.1% of human population if not less.
I would truly disagree; tech is transforming lives across the class spectrum, globally.
In fact, what you should be concerned about is how other industries think it’s acceptable to significantly underpay their average employee. And the ironic part is that tech companies still pay managers and executives way more than the average SWE - at FAANG, often directors make more than their entire reporting chain.
Thanks for making this article and sharing all of that, it's precious information.
If everyone thought and lived like this. Save everything, don't spend too much, don't have kids etc. Would it not lead us into a world where there is not enough economic activity and growth.
And the money that you do have in that case would not be worth much anyway..
Both channels are by Canadians so have a world focus (not just US), and talk about financial literacy in general.
its a variant on the general rule that the best way to become rich is to start with rich parents
I feel like living within your means makes sense both ways. Don't obsess materially and go into debt. But also don't obsess about the future enough to sacrifice the best possible present for yourself.
At the same time, regular people have had their salaries continuously diluted and are now losing jobs by the millions. I think it's not good to brag about ones' income when it is based on the theft of others'.
Good for him. He got a good hand but he also clearly played it very well.
Adults whining that other adults make amounts of money that they dont like is cringe worthy
I guess everything IS bigger in the USA
The biggest takeaway is, of course, in-flow over spending.
If you'd like to pick a different username we'll be happy to rename it for you.
https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
I'm attempting a much slower version of this. But hope to retire well off by following the Dave Ramsey method.
Hey, you know how to make a million dollars? Start with 10 million.
If you absolutely must start with nothing but a master's degree, just get high paying jobs and don't spend _all_ your income.
I spend 40k per year on housing alone, and my apartment isn't particularly luxurious.
Even you are a mediocre developer, you can make above average salary because you are so lucky to born in US.