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Comment by aprilthird2021 | Hacker News Reader

aprilthird2021

That's a huge amount even in San Francisco. Sometimes I'm shocked what working in big tech does to people's ideas about what a normal annual salary is.

Burning Man is a once a year event. Being a c level for that is not comparable to being c level for a lot of other even non profit orgs not to even mention for profit orgs

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I think you can argue, as the author does, whether the nature of the event has changed but Burning man attracts about 80k people at this point. That's comparable to Wacken, the largest annual metal festival in the world. I know people involved in that one and it's definitely a year long job to organize.

300k is a lot of money but for someone overseeing an event that size, doesn't seem that extraordinary. In particular given the responsibility for the safety of people.

No opinion on the salary, but just because it's a once per year event doesn't mean the work isn't year round.

I mean she is the CEO title, but even then she's still making more than MOST of the non-profits getting city contracts in SF. She makes 400k. The revenue for Burning Man is about 40 million you can compare here too.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/nonprofit-ceo-co...

Ex: Healthright 360 has 1600 employees and makes $145 million in revenue and it's CEO is still paid less than her. They provide healthcare and other types of care for people without insurance.

Nawh, not even. The truth is it takes 550k/yr TC to buy a basic house ($1.6M) in exactly the neighborhood where I grew up in scrubby yards and broken sidewalks south San José. In SF, it takes 720k TC to afford a regular house ($2.5M). Boomer and Greatest generations got Prop 13 extra low property taxes (like $1064/y because it's 1.4% on $76k valuation) and then everyone else pays 1.4%/y (14k) on a million+ house at market value.

No it does not take $550k/yr to buy a $1.6M house. But all this will vary based on your timelines what your nest egg currently looks like, etc.

But also, you don't have to buy a house. Median rent, groceries, car payment, etc. in San Jose aren't gonna run you more than like $7k/mo. After taxes on your income you should have about $100k after essentials are all paid for. That's more than enough to basically live whatever life you want.

300k is a huge amount of money if you have no dependents. Otherwise it's comfortably middle class, but that's it.

Entry-level rich here in the South.

300k would put you in the top 5% of households and 3-4x the median household, let alone single earners. You are absolutely beyond “comfortably middle class” with that salary.

Where? Not in the Bay Area. $300k is middle class there.

I would bet that’s still top 5% for individual earners in the Bay Area. Do you think 300k is anywhere near average?

It's double the median income of the most expensive cities in the bay area for a 4 person household

$300k HHI is 200% of the SF median income for a 4 person household in 2026: https://media.api.sf.gov/documents/2026_AMI-IncomeLimits-HMF...

And we have not included the spouse's income at all (assuming with kids there is a spousal income)

Unless you don't define middle class as the percentile between 25 and 75, then it's markedly above middle class.

Incomes in SF are skewed though because housing costs vary wildly. Some people are below the median income but have rent control or property tax so low that they pay basically nothing for housing.

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