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Comment by thierrydamiba | Hacker News Reader

Cash rules everything around me has been the slogan for this generation. Why wouldn’t they chase the biggest dollar?

By this generation please clarify you mean the ones that started this campaign in the 70s, not the subsequent lost generations of people who can barely envision owning a home with a graduate degree in engineering

Come on. How can you not be able to buy a house with an engineering degree? It's one of the best degrees out there.

Define buying a house.

For instance, buying a house in Bay Area. Realty around NYC is not very affordable, too. But such places is where the engineering jobs are.

If you get a real engineering degree instead of computer science slop, then your options for where to live and work (without relying on WFH trends going the right way for you) open up substantially.

a real computer science degree from a good school is a real engineering degree. And you can do a lot of things with it. Pivot quickly.

an "information technology" degree that teaches React and stuff is not engineering.

This is the last website I would imagine people complaining they can't buy a house.

> an "information technology" degree that teaches React and stuff is not engineering.

Lol, is that really what you think I meant by real engineering? You have tunnel vision for computer tech.

i don't know cause there's a ton of nonsense here so explain what you meant. and also what not being able to buy a house means.

>This is the last website I would imagine people complaining they can't buy a house.

Even Senior+ level SWEs at FAANG's in Silicon Valley have trouble buying homes there. The costs are absurd.

I guarantee you, it's harder in 90% of places in the world (accounting for buying power/price of real estate). You guys don't understand our privilege.

You can buy an f'ing house. In places like Ukraine people make $100/month and apartments are $50k(and I'm talking before the war). There, it's LITERALLY impossible.

What people here are describing is that things should be better, and I agree, but words matter.

Google tells us:

In 2021, the median annual salary for software engineers in Ukraine ranged from $30,000 to $48,175, depending on location and experience. Some specific figures include $30,000 in Kyiv, $29,000 in Lviv, and $24,000 in Kharkiv. Remote software engineers in Ukraine had a median salary of $48,175.

It's quite below the EU median, but definitely not $100 a day.

BTW $100 a day is $12.50 a hour, which is more than the federal minimum wage in the US ($7.50 or so), and only $4 below California's minimum wage, $16.50.

I'm sorry but who is out of touch here?

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1460-Latham-St-Mountain-V...

$1.6M 894 sqft 2b1ba

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/4609-E-Mountain-View-Dr-S...

$1.1M 930 sqft 3b3ba

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1763-Fordham-Way-Mountain...

$3.5M 1527 sqft 3b2ba

That last one would be considered a small starter home in my MCOL city and is literally 10x the cost for 300 less sqft of my current home. It's a total joke.

2 FTE Sr SWEs at Google would struggle to even get the downpayment for that last one. The mortgage is like 80% of their after tax salary.

CS is a real degree, but it's more math than engineering. CS and engineering have nothing in common beyond math and physics prerequisites.

Here in the UK:

Average mechanical engineer salary (mid-career) = £45k Max mortgage based on salary = ~£200k Average house price = ~£292k

-> Most people with an engineering degree cannot buy a house

Most people with a mechanical engineering degree cannot buy an _average_ house - not quite the same

Extrapolating your answer, Most mechanical engineering firms are not in the same areas as the cheap houses. So on your point, most mechanical engineers cannot buy a house that they can live in and get to work.

There are several counter arguments here.

Most people with an engineering degree are probably in a relationship, so they don't need to buy a house on a single salary.

There are plenty of houses for sale below the average price, just as there are plenty above.

Buying isn't necessarily the best option anyway. House price returns in the UK are somewhat below stock market returns, so as a pure investment it doesn't make sense. Unfortunately, we have the narrative in the UK that we should aspire to own houses, but that doesn't mean it's necessarily correct!

> Most people with an engineering degree are probably in a relationship

This doesn't feel like a valid assumption.

Over half the UK adult population is married. According to the ONS, 61% of the population aged 16 or above is living with a partner. [1]

Unless the demographics of those with engineering degrees is significantly skewed towards singles, this feels like a very valid assumption. Of course, you might have access to better statistics by profession.

[1] https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populati...

That means you can buy a house a little below average. With a spouse straight up can.

here in the coastal West US, a mid-career policeman does not make enough money to buy a house and have children. A credentialed school teacher does not make enough money to pay RENT in many desirable places, and nowhere near enough to have children of their own and buy a house.

Major city police are typically some of the highest paid public employees of any area. Often with a more generous pension tier than what is given to other public employees. Ie starting pay for SFPD is $115k-$164k https://www.joinsfpd.com/entry-level-program

164k isn’t enough to buy a home in SF.

starting pay.

Also, it's 164k a year, not ever. So whether or not it can buy a home in SF kind of depends on how long and how fast you save.

you cited the top of the range, in the highest paying city in the West.. its not enough to buy a house there.

Because they literally don’t need to, there is so much more in life than money. Current tech culture is garbage in terms of defining success, whole social media is filled with posts defining success as working 24/7, exploiting people around you and making exorbitant amounts of money.

A hardworking and smart person in tech really doesn’t need to try hard or sacrifice much to live a comfortable life in terms of finances. Hard part is the rest of the things in life really.

There is so much more in life only if you have money.

Dollar, dollar bill, y'all.

Those with the power will use it. So much for the "invisible hand" making everything "fair and efficient".

Of course they would. And by doing so, society collapses.

Aligning incentives so that what's good for the individual is also good for society is a politician's job.

The criticism is largely of the system. The mechanism by which capitalism can improve society is by having pay be a incentive to create things that improve society, which people will then choose to purchase.

When the incentive instead rewards "how much money can you extract from others without improving their lives at all" we've headed in a very dangerous direction. You get the "we can make more money by making our product more aggravating" motivation that leads to dark patterns and all sorts of problems.

This sort of market manipulation stuff is just a very clear example of this pattern. Smart people not building useful products but instead fighting to crank a machine so that it spits more money in their direction.

> Smart people not building useful products

worse, those are the active smart people doing that.. for each one of them there are a hundred others trying to do everything and anything to become one of those.. its a pyramid. The competition between individuals is a feature. You bet it is on the lips of every one of those individuals their "top" credentials that sit them in that trading seat. In other words, for every quant geek on that trading group, there are a thousand other "almost top" people using their time, talent and effort to try to be one of those inner circle ones.

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