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Comment by globular-toast | Hacker News Reader

Welcome to the HN bubble. Over the few years I've been here the talk about salaries have been getting more and more ridiculous. It started off as "three figures" then rapidly turned into 300-400k and now 110k is very low and considered poverty.

There's something about money that causes even intelligent people to lose all sense and perspective.

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For a high cost of living area such as New York, with a family to support, it is unfortunately very low - couple that with their title and years of experience, it is just factual compared to the market that they could be earning near double. At $110k a year, you are looking at a $6k monthly take home; over 1/3rd of that is going to the mortgage OP posted, and they have three children. Once you add insurance, groceries, and other obligations (such as perhaps a car + insurance), it becomes very easy to fall in to the paycheck-to-paycheck life.

Yes, $110k is a lot of money, but it quickly disappears depending on where you live - for perspective, based on cost of living, this would be equivalent of earning $41k a year in Kansas City, KS/MO, or $37k in Birmingham AL -- cost of living plays a huge factor, and not accounting for that is the actual loss of sense and perspective.

For a tech director, 14 years experience, in one of the most expensive cities in the country, yes, $110k is incredibly underpaid. I make (and so do my friends) the same amount, remotely, as a new-grad, not at a FANNG/MAGMA/WHATEVER.

We have goof perspective. If he were a teacher, our advice would be different.

I basically did a career reset in 2008 - a little over 12 years ago. By changing jobs and working at mostly a bunch of no name companies until 2020, I switched jobs 6 times and went from $80K -$150K and was entertaining offers at other no names companies by 2/2020 as a regular old back end C# CRUD developer - in a place much cheaper than NYC.

I did a slight pivot in 2020 that’s not relevant to the discussion.

Inflation, plus the goalposts have genuinely moved, plus, again, these salaries are reported from SF and NYC. Things would be different if we were talking about Austin, or even LA.

$110k for a director is low even for Europe, so this doesn't hold water IMO.

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