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Comment by jambalaya8 | Hacker News Reader

I remember taking pay cuts of 35-65% for a few jobs I thought sounded more cool or less stressful when I was younger, only to find out some of my coworkers were making far more at the same place. They placed me still at or above the median wage, and I learned a lot (I never vested, and stocks weren't a factor in the jobs).

In my personal experience, the jobs I have taken which paid less treated me as cheaper and more disposable. This is not to say all companies are like this, and indeed many do value tech employees they could not afford otherwise more, but making a blanket statement about any pay figure is sort of a bad idea.

The FAANG workplace environment is something you will pay for. There are reasons it pays well, and I never really understood this until I left. I do not mean merely 'doing your job'.

As for the last part of your reply, I am guessing it was meant to get reactionary replies (touché).

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“ In my personal experience, the jobs I have taken which paid less treated me as cheaper and more disposable. ”

That’s my experience. The more I have made in my career, the better and with more respect I got treated. As freelance I did some projects with non profit “do gooders”. They didn’t pay well and treated people horribly. On the other hand, successful companies will treat you well and pay well.

I worked for all kinds of companies. They all treated me as a disposable resource. There is no difference beyond the amount of money they pay me. This is in Scandinavia so that might be different from what you experience in your part of our world.

Is it possible that the causation is the other way? FAANG doesn't pay well because its dispiriting and toxic, its toxic because it pays well. This attracts all sorts of behavior.

I mean, it paid well in the early-mid 2010s also and was way less toxic.

Out of curiosity, what has changed over time that has made it more toxic? I left Google in 2015.

It certainly had its share of toxic traits, but it was at the "what place doesn't?" level.

My feeling was multiple generations of optimizing for promo packets had made the entire culture cynical at G and Amazon. It's one thing when people give lip service to the right things but sometimes the wrong things are rewarded. It hits another level when leaders are actively coaching and advocating cynicism. Throw in layoff fear on top of that and now it's a political mess.

Mmm. The way users are talked about at web and software companies now is almost nothing like 20-30 years ago. Aside from a few times when things got a bit too annoying (like maybe a few hours every month or so) I barely remember the negativity at all. We almost never talked about users, just the product. There was wayyy less cynicism and anger in the workplace.

Perhaps you just didn't push it far enough: I took a 90% pay cut and am happy with it :)

The happiest a was when our entire team was laid off and my whole balance was 10k dollars and I went on to live off that from r a year and a half in Thailand.

That must have been a long time ago.

When I lived abroad and was going for cheap, since I was so damned burnt out, most of the people who did not manage to totally convince locals to treat them like a local paid way more for things like rent (though still very cheap by American standards). I mean, you could find cheaper places, but I wouldn't expect not to pay for it in other ways. I mean unless you were just sort of roaming around, couch surfing (easier a couple decades ago, before AirB&B got so popular probably).

The most I could imagine ten thousand lasting, even scrounging, anywhere I lived, was probably around half a year at most (much less if rent was not factored in, or if you are sharing a place of course; I was not). That'd mostly include parts of Asia, and Central America. And most places like that, connectivity came at sort of a premium price. The internet between a vps in the states and southeast asia was damn slow fifteen years ago.

Couldn't have been too fun when that ten thou ran out. I would never have left the country with no modicum of a guarantee of income upon returning. Gutsy move.

It was some time ago (2012), and the rent on Ko Pa was less than 500 USD I believe. I'm not sure how much more expensive it is now, but cheap places are cheap.

Yeah, I was operating on the idea of a Southeast Asian or Central American range of around $500-650ish a month rent depending on the size (these are like prices from a decade, decade and a half ago, no clue how much they have changed just sure they did not go down). For sure a lot of places were better and cost more though still cheap by American or EU standards. But you still need clothes, food, utilities, fun, basic essentials, money to get from place to place, and some padding for an emergency, etc. And the cheaper places, you would be competing with locals. $10k a year to them was and often is a lot. And if you were local it would be for you also since you would have local connections and family etc. You would not live as an American would, though.

The part about living on that $10k was not so much what threw me (I mean, you CAN live on $1k a month, and I know people did it, certainly back in 2012, but you are not going to be eating much Western food, or springing for many extravagances like Western brand liquors, probably). What threw me was how, halfway or 2/3rds of the way through that year, without that ongoing idea of replacing that $1k a month, anything going wrong would seriously suck. Locals work and replace spent money with money. So do expats.

Not eating fancy and not drinking at all was a big part of it of course. The idea was to freelance a bit here and there to stretch it out, but eventually I did run out of money, packed my shit and flied back to places where getting a job was an option. Finding jobs was much easier back there and back then.

> You would not live as an American would, though.

yeah, not being American was definitely contributing factor too.

The part about it being easier to find work and make money fast back then is the part I also miss. I used to just feel it was safe to believe the worst case scenario was I would have to just do temp work briefly if I couldn't find a tech gig fast enough to pay my rent or eat, since few people typed nearly as fast. Now even that is rife with competition and those places are overflowing with CVs.

Getting work in tech 15 years ago after a break was hella easy compared to now. Guessing you, like I, are also deep into the years of maybe being called overqualified.

I guess the crypto bros and influencers have taken over a lot of whatever you wanna call what existed during the few decades when tech expats had it. Sorta changed forever when all the betting platforms became legal in America (whether you are or were American), too. The mood changed. So did the local populaces.

I worked remote when I traveled.

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