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Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

If they're that high why are you looking for a job?

I could have $20M in the bank and there's a very high chance that I'd go apply for a SWE-3 level position somewhere in retirement.

In this context "kind of high" might be only a couple of million in profits. Enough to not want people to know, but not enough to retire on.

Couple million is enough to retire. I don't know why people on the internet always think you need so much money to retire.

I have semi-retired without needing anything like that! It helps not to have expensive hobbies nor own a flash car...

A couple million of profits from trading doesn't translate to a couple of million in your retirement account, with all taxes paid.

After taxes and after paying for living expenses for MB and family for the last 3 years, $2M could easily be around half-a-million. Depending on where they live, that might be more like a downpayment on a house rather than a funded retirement.

First of all, taxes will be what, a quarter or a third of it. So ok, north of 1M, still enough to retire. Second of all, if you bring in more than a million and spend most of it, down to 500k, in 3 years, then that's on you..

If most of those hit in one year and as short term gains (which algo trading will be), taxes in my state would be around 12% and federally would be around 35%. You're down to just over a million. Paying yourself a salary means 15.3% on whatever your salary is for FICA/Medicare. For a $130K salary for each of 3 years, that's another $60K, taking you to right at a million before you've spent a dime on anything except taxes. Your first box of ramen makes you not a millionaire.

> $130K salary for each of 3 years

We have totally different ideas about this, lol..

You're going to have to comply with the "reasonable and appropriate" standard. What's "reasonable and appropriate" for an engineer/trader who, through his sole efforts, built a system which produced $2M in profits? It's going to be hard to argue that it's much less than the figure I proposed, but feel free to.

No you misunderstand, I have no idea what you're talking about. If I bring in 2 million I think worst case for me is I declare it all income in which case I have just north of 1 million after tax. Then I keep investing that so it's not sitting cash obviously so then I retire on the returns which is bare minimum of 40k per year if all I could find to invest my million in was a measly 4% per year for some reason. I don't think I'm missing anything and I think it's pretty silly that people think you need more money than that to retire. Inevitably I'm going to get interested in working in some kind of job after a while so then I will have a real income on top of it. In summary there is zero percent chance that I could not retire having brought in one million after tax. Perhaps the main impedance mismatch here is you are talking with an extremely frugal midwesterner..

Exactly. Guess it doesn't matter how much money you have in the bank account. SWE-3 level position can be fun, so why not.

Because it is boring. I'm not ready to retirement. It doesn't make sense. Maybe start my own start up would be something interesting. But right now love to gain some more skills, see what cool stuff I can learn and get rid of responsibility.

Ok, in that case I would strongly advise against advertising your net worth with your prospective new employer because they probably aren't going to hire you if they are aware of the fact that you are doing it just so you're not bored. Try to be as normal as possible if you want to get hired. What you could do is find a way to show your capabilities without directly revealing your net worth, even though I don't know what that would be. Another option is to turn some of your money into a small investment fund and to manage that. It's anything but boring.

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