Ask HN: When do you give up on Silicon Valley?

If making a 1%er's income and having status at a Silicon Valley FAANG company is a key part of your identity, then leaving will likely cause psychological damage. If you are able to dissolve that part of your ego first and then either keep your identity small[0] or replace it with something else you feel is just as important then you will be better prepared to evaluate other opportunities and places to live.

Perhaps first take a vacation to decompress and get perspective. In the likely event you still want to quit, cut back on your spending as much as possible. Create a plan and set a deadline and or savings amount where you will feel comfortable leaving. If this takes more than 3 years at $800k income you are doing it wrong.

A word of caution appears in the next paragraph as I write from personal experience. Long ago I told myself I will quit in 3 years based on my assumed savings rate. I then spent the next 3 years evaluating cities where I'd like to live, actively listening to people who have ideas in case they want to partner later, thinking up business ideas, etc. This secret mission gave my work/life a renewed level of enthusiasm.

Then the day came and I couldn't do it. I felt pathetic and I called my girlfriend to confess my failure during my lunch break. But she reminded me this is a life defining moment from which my ego may never recover. "If not today then assume never". So I quit according to plan that afternoon.

The highs have been high and the lows have been low since then but I have had a rich, full, and memorable life. It's still going great almost 2 decades later.

[0]"Keep your identity small" is a Paul Graham quote and great advice.

Lots of people saying "at that pay grade you should be retired by now." I wish I would did not mention the pay grade. It wasn't always that much and not all of it is liquid income. Before I moved to silicon valley I earned low, so I guess I'm HENRY (high earner not rich yet). I can't just retire and I am not so certain that I would even want to retire as I would probably go stir crazy if there was no technology work to do.

I do appreciate your advice and your anecdote you sent. Thank you and I hope your life continues to be rich and full and memorable.

I would take some small issue with the Paul Graham quote only since it's easy for a rich person with a big (famous) identity to say that, when he is probably set for life and has no stress about money. I think that money will not buy any happiness (as the beatles famously say) but having lot of money is sure a lot less stressful than not having it. And not having stress is necessary for top level happiness. but the point is that Paul Gram's philosophy is biased by his hindsight thru the lens of being wealthy and powerful and as such not stressed about money (or influence I guess).

with apologies for bad writing, reasons

This all sounds very vague and soft. You either have a clear vision for what you want to do, and how to pay the bills and an exit plan or no amount of wishful thinking will remotely recreate your income.

Escaping, really escaping requires learning survival skills such as how to sell, design activations and projects that customers can be sold on, paying your own money to hire designers, developers, etc.

I wished to escape for years. Then I stopped wishing and started trying to claw my way out. And failed. For years. Then I started building a side project and learned how to sell, hire, present, project manage.

I had to do all that by working twice as hard or more. I recommend closely studying Alan Weiss for the mindset you need to have.

And now I’m almost out but not quite.

The gap in skills is tremendous. You simply cannot learn the key skills you need while working at these companies. Their employement agreements specifically prevent you from developing them.

I recommend organizing something small that forces or requires you to sell, hire a designer, programmer. The goal is not to quit, just a sandbox. Something outside of work, something fun, something you can make a little money on. Do a little three month project that actually requires you to get money from customers.

You will learn more in three months that can enable you to escape than you will learn staying at faaang another five years.

I recently did such a small project, and in three months I have learned almost everything I need to know to run my own business. I did it on the side in a low key way, but it taught me survival skills. Now I’m actively planning my exit.

You seem to be operating under the assumption that leaving SV means starting your own business. I didn't get anything from OP that even hinted in that direction. On the contrary, they referred to getting off the treadmill, not building their own replacement treadmill.

Even with the crazy house prices and general expensiveness of the bay area, you find yourself sweating when you make 800k a year? This is crazy to me.

You learn to spend what’s in your pocket.

To be fair, like half of that goes to taxes.

To be fair half of $800k is still four hundred fucking thousand dollars a year.

People forget it very quickly. I'm not on $800K,but I make about 10 times more than I did 12 years ago. You get used to it and it becomes your baseline. It's not very healthy though.

I made more than 800k last year and spent around 200k (also have wife+kids I support). So spending 400k does seem a bit crazy. But I guess a lot of people think spending 200k is crazy too

> And on the other hand I feel incredibly ungrateful and entitled to be even considering giving up a paycheck that's 10x what a lot of people would be grateful for.

How do you feel bad about stepping aside so someone else can have that? It seems generous to let someone else take that job, and you'll go do the same for less elsewhere. (Or maybe just retire)

If I were you, I'd make a plan to leave, and once you have the plan and move along it, you'll likely feel better about the job (because it's a step in the plan) and you can stay longer if you're happy, etc.

If your end goal is to move somewhere else when you have enough money, you need to figure out how much is enough and where you want to be. Of course, how much is enough kind of depends on where you want to be as well.

If you're thinking of moving, you also want to consider when is good or bad time to move for your kids. You probably don't want to move during the school year, if the kids are school aged, and you may have thoughts about what grade you might want to have moved by.

You also need to figure out where your salary is going. Sure, let's lop off half for taxes, that leaves you with $400k/year. Even if you spend half of that on housing (which seems high, but I left the bay area in 2018, so I dunno), there should be a lot left over.

Use your vacation time to visit places you might want to live. Check out the neighborhoods, check out the weather, check out the traffic, check out the food and entertainment, etc.

A sibling comment mentioned remote work. That's something to explore too, but you need to figure out where first. There are also some other areas with lots of tech offices, but maybe not quite as concentrated. You might earn less, but not that much less.

Personally, I left, the bay area is crazy and high stress, but I left to early retire after a windfall; so I don't have the working for less experience, I just don't work.

There is not a finite number of jobs. All the FANGs would gladly hire many more top tier engineers if they could find one.

When I worked at Yahoo and Facebook, my departments certainly had an assigned headcount. We wouldn't interview if we didn't have an open req. Sure, if we had one open slot and two qualified candidates, we'd go and fight to hire both, but we couldn't hire infinite people. And if we had an open req for too long, it would be eliminated. I'm not sure if Facebook has had to do any belt tightening hiring 'freezes' yet, but I think there was wind of one coming at some point while I was there (I don't think it actually happened though), and I'm pretty sure most of the FANGs have gone through that at some point.

"I think to some degree the crazy pay and the crazy costs are a treadmill."

What is your net income after expenses? How much equity do you have in your home?

It's possible that the actual value you're receiving could be higher in other locations, even if your salary is significantly lower (1/2 even). I'm guessing you could sell your current home and buy a similar one in a low cost area for cash (not that you should use cash) and have some left over.

I have no interest in SV and never have. But if I had a do-over in life, I would have moved there for maybe 5-8 years and left for a low cost area.

If you haven't saved enough to retire on 800k per year for a few years, something is horribly wrong. I say move.

You need a good 5-10 mil to be secure right now so 800k would take you over a decade

How is it even possible to spend that much money on "basic needs"? If your rent is 10k and you spend $250 a day on food, that still comes to less than half of your after tax takehome. That leaves you with 20k to burn after food and housing. Id be really interested to see a breakdown on that.

Throw in 5k / month on vehicles. You now have 15k after food housing and transportation. Are you really spending that much on child care and insurance?

I have a feeling this person is really saying that they are only saving 20k a month but thats not a lot to them.

I reached this point a lot earlier. After a few years out of college in software and making $250k in the Bay, I also felt "what I'm doing isn't worthwhile but everyone around me would kill to make this $ with the level of effort I do." Ultimately, I didn't get into computers to make the most money possible, I got into it because I found the original problems interesting and was astounded by the amount of impact they have on the world. Like going into college, I again chose to pursue interest, passion, and positive impact by leaving the high pay FAANG job and figuring out something else.

With Covid you can even find Staff jobs remote now. Pick a spot with good schools for your kids that's rural. Move and reduce expenses to less than $100k/yr. Buy or rent a cheap place and read kindle for entertainment.

Do that for 3-4 years. Congrats! You're flyover country retired now. From here you can move somewhere else, keep working for FAANG, do startups, volunteer, start a band, write a book, goof off, teach people to code, attempt things people insist are impossible.

What do you think are still good places that fits above criteria? Not so expensive Town/City with decent schools and diverse population.

I look around for this all the time trying to decide what the next best place to live is. A place I like to look is Nomadlist. You can filter by region, price, and other interesting factors. I have the paid version from some sale though I don't know if it's more limited now in the free version. Another trick you can do is to look for college towns. Usually these are quite pleasant to live in if not a little rambunctious (but just the right amount usually). This usually keeps you in good restaurants and airports.

So you can do something like google search[0]

and then start filtering ones that sound interesting through nomad list and Zillow or another real estate site.

Pretty much everything is going to look cheap compared to SF but you can get even cheaper by moving your search out by one suburb. Then it gets novelty cheap. Obviously you still want to check out the area and make sure it's a place you'd want to live. Google maps street view is a good way to start getting clues. Subreddits for the town are a good place to check too.

[0] https://www.bestcollegereviews.org/50-best-college-towns-ame...

Thank you, appreciate your response!

I've always picked _where_ I want to live first, _then_ found the job around that.

Fresh out of college I still wanted to be an (actual) rock star so I moved to Los Angeles instead of SF. Instead of bussing tables when I was trying to "make it" though I had had a couple of nice tech gigs where I learned a lot.

I wanted to shift my focus to learning Chinese so I moved to Taiwan and found some remote startup tech roles. As a side effect, I've managed to escape the treadmill entirely (since a "good" salary in Taiwan is about $35k-$40k USD/year). My goal wasn't to _save_ money though, it was to learn Chinese.

Figure out exactly what you want first than go down that direction. Emphasis on what _you_ want, not what society wants. Maybe you want to spend more time with your family. Maybe you want to work with some cool esoteric programming language with a small team. Maybe you want to career shift entirely and pursue a career as an English speaking stand up comedian in Asia (OK, maybe that's just me ;-)).

The point is you're already set financially. Even if you lose ALL of your money tomorrow, you'll _always_ be able to earn in the top 10% of _any_ region by picking up random Wordpress website fixes at the bare minimum.

It's not about the treadmill, it is about what makes you happy. Your questioning implies that you are no longer truly happy. A key question is how much wealth (home equity, savings, investments) you have created. If you have minimal wealth, then you have simply been running fast on the treadmill. Living it up. Which is fine until it no longer makes you happy. You will need some significant wealth to make a comfortable transition.

Before you make a decision, look at where your net income is going. Assess what you are willing to give up and of those that you retain, how much you would be spending in a lower cost location. You need to involve your wife in such an analysis and discussions. If you are still interested, take a vacation and visit some of the places you are considering. See if you do like the environment and what it has to offer.

Does your FAANG support you working remotely?

I moved to Vegas from CA and twisted some arms in upper management/HR of my company to keep my salary.

Most HR's has abusive practices to cut salary if you move to cheaper place but if you have personal connections and good relationships in upper management you can solve it.

Benefits are clear.

For me I’m stuck in this area because of family/friends. I can’t uproot my family and lose all my connections like that. So I have to stay at my high paying job and work the treadmill.

I’m not actually complaining. I’ll still be able to retire around 40 so that’s definitely better than most. Still feels bad to be trapped and not have the freedom to change.

You are probably underpaid like most FAANG senior eng staff. (Anything less than 1 mil is highway robbery.) I’d go to a startup or start your own where you can work on something more fun and potentially impactful. Nothing has impact at FAANG even the craziest super projects don’t rise to the level of footnotes in the earnings reports.

"I have a certain amount of ennui lately."

When exactly did that start happening? How do you know the treadmill is the cause?

> giving up a paycheck that's 10x what a lot of people would be grateful for.

Make that 15x. I wish I was born in the US and not in Europe. Then again, I'm happy I'm born in western Europe and not in India (when it comes to earning opportunity).

Be careful for what you wish. As OP alludes, much of your income is taken up by housing, childcare, healthcare, retirement funding, etc. Just about everything is "out of pocket". In terms of safety nets or other societal benefits (e.g. family leave, vacation time, etc) that Europeans take for granted, the US has none to very little. As a result, Americans work non-stop and more than half the country is stressed out on a daily basis [0]. It's really not a sustainable way to live IMO.

[0] https://news.gallup.com/poll/249098/americans-stress-worry-a...

> Be careful for what you wish.

Thanks for the warning. I wish I could change perspectives with a few people who've worked on both sides. Thanks to your comment, I feel this should be obligatory.

I was in a similar situation. I felt all the things you describe. Unlike the common advice you'll hear to "just take the leap", I didn't.

After much soul-searching I found I couldn't reasonably justify quitting from an economic perspective. So I stayed some more years, living quite comfortably but intentionally under my income level to bank more money. The timing turned out well for me because, during this period, the company's stock increased even more than the overall market (which was doing quite well). Bonuses were higher than expected too. Some projects were satisfying. Then some weren't. I got bored again and became "less happy" (because it's hard to even say "unhappy" given the circumstances).

But now with several million banked in diversified long-term investments my perspective changed, though it was still hard to reasonably justify just quitting. I finally decided to intentionally increase my career risk-taking within the company. I sought out nascent projects which were more speculative and in business units that were considered less career "safe". The first couple projects luckily worked out well and I banked even more cash for a couple years while enjoying the challenges and feeling of "living on the edge".

I kept scaling up the career risk-taking and eventually joined a cool new project that didn't work out. I actually had more fun than I'd had in years because the project concept was quite bold and different. But luck ran out mostly due to bad timing. Macro economic turbulence collided with a political shake-up at the SVP level. The executive appetite for funding explorations in unproven new markets dried up. The project was cancelled. And the next week the whole group was cancelled. As a now-senior person with a proven track-record, I was given the option of taking a few months to find a new project somewhere in the company. I looked around for something interesting but, frankly, I didn't look that hard and everything I did see wasn't very exciting. I finally decided it was time to leave. It had been almost a decade since my initial dissatisfaction. My diversified investments had done very well. The company's stock had done even better. So I decided to retire early. It's surprising how inexpensive a very comfortable, even luxurious, life can be in other states compared to astronomical bay area costs.

It's been a couple of years and so far it's been working out very well. Loving time with family and especially the time for myself. Sure, sometimes I miss the go-go and challenge of the valley grind. But not very often.

If you have direct reports, ask yourself as to what you can do to better prepare them for life after FAANG, in terms of career development, opportunity, etc.; from that, you'll distill your own answer.

If there is something else you'd rather be doing, at least figure out what steps you need to take to do that thing. I'm not sure random internet people can figure out those steps for you.

Why not work remote? You keep the pay and give up the costs.

does that work? i thought FAANG lowers your salary if you move

Not by a meaningful amount. Worst hit that I've heard of was 15%.

i wonder what the typical conversation is like when it comes up after you moved unnanounced from the bay area to somewhere in the midwest.

Remote is not a real option at FaceAppleMicroNetoogle. In case that makes a difference.

What’s your net worth? I think this is key to decide your next steps.

Just do it.

Giving up on something is not the same as quitting. Just stick around, what else are you going to do?

In the big picture, $800k/year is not that much. It's good by any standard, but there are younger people pocketing more money by running a snack factory.

Money is a tool to achieve your goals, but should not be the goal in the first place. Once you have a certain amount of money, your goals and identity tend to revolve around that money.

There are plenty of other goals to achieve - creating works of art, making lives better, physical accomplishments (winning a sports medal/Ironman/climbing a mountain). At a certain level of wealth, you tend to add traveling, eating at Michelin restaurants, buying cool stuff... but you should check whether that's what truly makes you fulfilled or is it just the low hanging fruit?

Personally, I like to climb the skill tree, just building stuff better/faster/cheaper. I always admired people who could build stuff well. I somehow don't feel that Silicon Valley is the path to doing that -- you're just likely to end up spending your days dealing with PRs and building features around some focus group rather than listening to what users really want.

As the OP, I regret you got downvoted. Because this was a really helpful comment for me. I voted up your comment, for what ever that's worth but I don't think it will help you much.