My choices would be very different if I didn't think I was more or less on my own.
Yes, there is really another option, because most people don't even have the option of taking Google-level compensation.
Indeed, it's very likely that working as a software engineer for less than BigCo compensation will still put you ahead financially of most people.
"How is it an option to live like 99% of the people actually do live?" seems like a very strange idea to me.
Medicaid covers the cost of nursing homes, and it's not necessarily an advantage to have money saved just for that, because they'll just take the money anyway. Some people try to give away their assets to their families beforehand so that Medicaid will cover the costs, which is a legal no-no.
> Just because it’s possible
This is an understatement, when the subject is how 99% of the people live.
Of course it can be great to be in the top 1%, but it's not "unreasonable" to be outside the top 1%.
I do not want to end up in a Medicaid paid for nursing home or family home.
Even the stories of her residents coming from other expensive family homes were horrifying.
Elder care is horrifying.
People die in pain all the time from neglect and incompetence. People who came to her were regularly on their way to a painful death and she brought them back by just not being an idiot and putting in some effort.
Broken bones and many other conditions went undiagnosed or improperly diagnosed/treated. Doctors prescribing medication after medication to deal with the side effects of the medications they already prescribed that weren’t needed in the first place. Dosages all over the map that are inappropriate for someone in the given age and condition.
You better hope you keep your brain to manage your own medical care or have someone who can do it for you.
You just made my point for me. The money you've saved won't actually "reduce tail risk".
To the contrary, your best strategy for that is to focus on your family rather than on your job, to ensure that there's someone on the tail end who cares enough about you to take care of you if you can no longer take care of yourself.
You can live just fine -- hell, still be in a top income percentile -- on half of what a well compensated big tech SWE gets in their total comp package. But just as software expands to fill the hardware available, so do lifestyles expand to fit the budget available.
So you might need to move to a cheaper house, apartment. Take fewer vacations. Lower your savings rate. You might even need to -- shudder -- budget and plan your spending in advance.
Even if you come out the other side still comfortable and financially stable and working an interesting, rewarding job, it's still a whole thing, a stressful transformation that takes a large investment of time and energy to achieve.
We use the language of conflict and courage in making moral choices for a reason, it is an acknowledgement of the real costs, the allure of doing the remunerative thing. You won't go to jail or be ostracized for being a coward and building killing machines because it pays well. But you should not lie to yourself about there being a justification other than cowardice.
Almost no one actually gets to choose comfort over the safety of others, most people get neither. The few of us who have this choice and choose their own benefit deserve at least our contempt.
Unless you're born with a silver spoon in your mouth, I wouldn't call it a "transformation". I would call it "normal". If there's a transformation, it's from a person who has to be concerned about budgets to a person who makes so much money that they don't need to care.
I guess I'm just "lucky" that I've never had BigCo compensation, so I don't have to worry about the stressful transformation.
We're not playing "who has it worse" here; I'm not asking you to shed tears for the poor SWEs going from mid-six-figures to low-six-figures.
I'm telling you that changing jobs is already stressful, and very few people are going to chose even more stress by moving houses or cities, etc, over just getting another soulless corporate job that pays well enough to make everything go back to normal, if they're given the option.
The big tech companies do that too, which is kind of the point of the submitted article.
> We're not playing "who has it worse" here
That wasn't my point. My dispute was with "I also see it as the only logical outcome" and "In a country with not much of a social safety net and runaway medical/elder care costs is there really another option?"
> very few people are going to chose even more stress by moving houses or cities
It should be noted that living in Silicon Valley is obscenely expensive, and you could buy a much bigger and better house for much less money in most other areas of the country. And lately I've heard constant complaints about San Francisco going downhill, yadda yadda. (This is also related to the issue of WFH vs. RTO.)
> over just getting another soulless corporate job that pays well enough to make everything go back to normal
You're conflating two different issues here. One, which you explicitly mention, is changing jobs, but the other, left implicit, is getting the soulless corporate job in the first place.
Of course I'd acknowledge that someone who strove to obtain and took a soulless corporate job is likely to take another one. But I think it says something about their personal values that they voluntarily entered that category of business, knowing what we know about it, and given other options. Did they not already "sell out"?
Let's be super explicit here: you're arguing that risk reduction is your top priority, above any moral or ethical concerns. (And that risk reduction requires maximizing compensation.)
Can't really fault ya, but yeah, there is another option.
I suspect this is well understood by the forces that shape social structure in the U.S., and that the current state of affairs is largely by design.
That's why you don't have public health system, or maternity leave, or you have high student debt. To take way your freedom and power where to work.
But a lot of people did not want to work for a big company, like Microsoft, and open source was a much more heralded movement.
Wow was I wrong.
So current tech gens are making a killer salary as early and often as possible are making the wise choice. I do also thing the class of grads who used to go to investment banking and consulting now go to tech, and they were always “mercenaries”.