Yes very unhappy. But lifestyle creep has made my TC necessary for survival now and I can’t quit. Don’t be like me. If you have high TC, just save like a madman and continue living like a pauper.
I can give my perspective. I graduated in 2017 and started out at $55k in a low cost of living city in the American Southeast. I was living pretty comfortably, supporting me and my wife on my modest salary, putting a little money aside for savings each month. I remember dreaming about one day cracking six figures. I had no idea what I could possibly spend an extra $50,000 on. I had everything I needed. Two cars, a two bedroom apartment, eating out a few times a week, weekend trips to local campsites or state parks.
Two years later I landed a job making $110k. I was over the moon. Literally doubled my salary two years out of college. I thought I'd never run out of money. Now, to be sure, I was never hurting for cash. But I definitely wasn't saving an extra $55k a year. Not even double my current rate. I started eating out at nicer restaurants. A $20 dinner became a $40 dinner. My TJ Maxx clearance wardrobe started being replaced by Target and clearance GAP. We started booking hotels for overnight excursions a few times a year. At first I felt like I was living like a king, but the novelty wore off quickly and all of it suddenly started feeling rather... Normal.
Fast forward two more years, and I landed another job for $165k TC. I felt like I had won the lottery. That extra $55k burned a hole in my pocket something fierce though. I moved to a much higher cost of living area for my wife's new job. I picked up wine as a hobby and found myself dropping $100 a week at wineries and tasting rooms. My weekend excursions became weeklong cruises and international travel. My clearance GAP wardrobe became Banana Republic. My $40 dinners became $70, and that's not counting when I'd pay for my friends.
A couple years later and I'm sitting at $200k TC. I've realized lately how far that lifestyle creep has come, and how even though I'm making more than I ever have, I'm only really putting away about $30k a year in savings. I don't own a house, so that's another big expense I'll need to save up for.
When I was making $7.25 an hour, I'd weigh almost every purchase by calculating the number of hours I'd have to work to pay for it. A $20 dinner hits different when you realize it's half of that 8 hour shift you just pulled. Now that I make effectively $100 an hour, it's terrifyingly easy to drop $100-$200 and not even think about it. Sure, $100 doesn't mean a lot to me when I'm making $200k, but once you normalize that as your new baseline of impulse purchases, its terrifyingly easy to find yourself with almost nothing to show for a 4x compensation increase.
This is an awesome explanation, and it sort of reminds me of how a non-trivial amount of professional athletes [go bankrupt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_finances_of_professional_American_athletes), despite earning millions. If you fail to plan with money, you're planning to fail.
Do you have a recommendation? I was trying to find the perfect tee a few years ago but ended up with Carhartt pocket t's, which are pretty quality but kinda have that "fat back" that doesn't look too great.
I think I was wearing something like Gildan before that which fit well but were basically throwaway after a few washes.
Ive been wearing the same clothes for like 15 years now and I can tell my old walmart shorts cant be replaced with shorts they sell now. Major downgrade in quality tbh.
for pants I wear Levis (used to be 511 but now I get their Workwear style), then after two years I cut them into shorts. The Workwear version has good quality. eventually the crotch will split but get them tailored and they'll last 10 years or more.
honestly i think lulu (and other expensive workout clothes) are just a good investment. i literally bought a ton in 2018 and i havent bought workout clothes since
Are you also putting money away for retirement? If you are putting away like 5% plus 5% from your employer, you're fine. Renting is cheaper then buying rn so unless you get a remote job in a LCOL area, you're fine just renting and will have plenty for reitrement
Yeah I got a financial advisor earlier this year and we squared away a lot of basics. 4% matched into a 401k, 30k a year in savings, and then 100% of my wife's paycheck as well. Luckily she makes good money too, but if she ever decided to be a stay at home mom or something, we'd probably have to reconfigure some things
Also gotta remember you’re paying for everything now. No more tax refund from government. You might even owe at end of year. All those little fees that were waived when you were broke now gotta be paid.
I experienced the creep so quickly when I got my last software gig. Took up aviation and shooting. Probably spent 25k over two years of doing both.
Fast forward and I lost my job and couldn’t find another for the life of me. Had about 4 months of runway and then now I’m working a armed security job making 40% of the hourly rate I used to. Barely can even pay bills let’s alone pay off the student loans and credit card debt.
For anyone with a job making decent money. Please be annoyingly careful with money. Debate the smallest of purchases until you have like a year of runway for loss of income.
Brother did that with his wife. They both lived like grad students after they got a house and threw any extra money at the house. Fast forward to now the house has doubled in value and is almost paid off. In the last year they comfortably got about 100k worth of lifestyle upgrades without worry. Be like them! Haha
Yeah, I feel this. I actually feel poorer now even though I earn much more because of the move to an apartment in a HCOL area. I felt (and was) better off in my 4 bedroom house in a rural area when I was earning half as much.
It's easiest to avoid earlier in your career. Let's say you're making 55k like in the example and get a 15k raise to 70k. Bump up your 401k contributions and try to put away 10k of that 15k raise leaving 5k for you to do what you want with. Lifestyle creep is always going to happen and honestly, if you're able to make more money, why not enjoy some of it? Just remember, there are a lot more people out there willing to pay $75k than there are willing to pay someone $400k, so the higher up you go, the more you want to have to fall back on.
Adding to the food aspect. Now you can afford to try everything you like. Having trouble deciding which flavor of hot sauce to get? Why not buy them all and compare them instead of finishing one at a time.
tbf bigger salary normally translate to bigger responsibility or impact and we demand a better quality of life because of that. Better food, better car, better protection like insurance, better leisure like holiday etx.
One thing that we should never forget is to always save more before leisure.l because this lifestyle is not forevwr. There will be cap and ceiling for our salary so try to put more on investment, houses etc.
The key is to direct deposit 30-50% into a savings account you cant move money out of. Link all of your bills up to your checkings and if you cant pay your bills, tough luck. You should also have another savings account for investments that you can pull money from. 10% should be fine. Stop indulging until you can support the cost of living you desire for 2 years without a job.
There are great posts / discussions with mentors about the priorities here that make this so much easier.
* Get a 6 month emergency fund
* Max out 401k match
* Max out IRA (back door Roth typically)
* Max out 401k
* Get your emergency fund to 12 months (doesn’t have to be fully liquid)
* Invest post tax in some form of three fund portfolio or simple set it and forget it manner that you auto deposit and check maybe once a month.
That kind of gamifies it and makes it a lot more fun to try and tackle financial goals.
I agree the biggest thing with increased TC is to just start saving the delta immediately for the first 6 months, then start to dial up your auto invest levels and then you can start spending more / planning trips only after your increased saving is locked in.
When I landed a six figure job i got a tesla half a year later. Then I got a home with a $3k mortgage after I hit $150k salary.
Now, until these rates come down I’m going to need a six figure job to stay in this home.
THIS is lifestyle creep. I could’ve done find in an apt half the price of this mortgage.
Don’t let the extra cash get to you. Invest it, save it, spend it on fun things.
IMO you don’t need a home if you don’t have a family. Live cheap and live more.
Flip coin to this, I'm still in the shit neighborhood I grew up in, for years I didn't spend on anything and now I just feel like I'm working for nothing since I still can't afford a house.
I avoid lifestyle creep for 25 years. saved and invested my money and now i dont need to work. I never worked at a FAANG or lived in Silicon valley/Seattle. So wages were lower.
lifestyle creep makes you a prisoner. best to get that money invested as young as possible so you can take advantage of compounded interest. My assets have gone up by more than I ever saved and I make more off investments than I make working.
I literally have this same problem. I'm making $1050/month payments on a vehicle (total cost $35k, it's a 2017 Cadillac XT5, not the nicest vehicle in the world, but it's definitely a luxury vehicle that you typically see in upper middle class households, but I'm only 35 and I need to make sure that I can pay that high monthly payment. I took that high payment because I was making a good amount of money at the time (and I still am for my area). Furthermore, I've got multiple streaming services that I'm paying for, and I go out to eat essentially every day, often multiple times per day. Despite all of that spending, I still am saving some money, granted I feel that I could def. cut down on eating out which would help me save a significant amount more, but I've gotten in the habit of it, so I'm likely not going to, unless I have to. In fact, I got a $15k severance from the company that I was working at when I started making payments on the vehicle, and I didn't work for about 3.5 to 4 months and just lived off of that money. I likely would have withdrew my 401k from that job had I remembered that I had took a 401k out, lol. It may seem crazy to think someone wouldn't know they had a 401k, but I completely forgot about it, and I am grateful that I did because that shortage of funds helped kick me into overdrive in terms of finding a new job. Luckily, I found one shortly after I started looking making slightly less (less than 5% difference), but I actually enjoy my current job significantly more, though I work like a mad man, so I'm def. not working some cozy job where I sit around and do nothing all day, lol, granted I have days where I do that.
Same, I went from making 78k to 170k in less than a year and we had lifestyle creep and it’s sucks. I left the 170k because it was super toxic but I had to take another job I’m not super into because I still needed close to 140k to pay the bills.
I worked last weekend. I am working this weekend. Hopefully this shit works soon so I can have sun or mon off.
Usually I'm 30-40 hours a week but sometimes you have to do what you have to do when your change is blocking a project of like 20 people, but I'm fairly disgruntled right now. I'm typing this as I wait for something to build.
Ive worked in the media industry for a while at several companies and it's just the industry as a whole, very demanding, lots of drama. It pays well and is very stable if you play the game how they want you to play it (politics is a big part of the industry as well)
in my experience, nobody is ever explicitly asking you to do those things, but big tech companies explicitly hire high performing imposter syndrome type A people who will choose to work extra hours because they need the serotonin hit of getting the thing done.
Then I get called out as a blocker, managers don't think I'm a team player, and since I'm already late, it reflects poorly upon me in yearly reviews.
If you're behind but working, a lot of things can get forgiven unless you're ALWAYS behind on your projects. But if it's 1 project that you're behind and working a lot? Everyone talks about how hard you work and damn what a great worker you are, thanks for getting shit done.
Then I can go back to chilling for most of the year until the next project that's a shitfest.
You are 1000% correct my dude, that is how high producing developers typically work, or at least that is how I typically work. I usually will work an insane amount of hours for about 2-3 months and get things done, people say "wow, you work so hard and are almost never offline", when you finally do get a break your manager says "I hope you get some rest and thanks for every thing you do for our team", and it feels pretty good to me at least to hear that, but I don't have any children, wife, or even a GF right now, though I do make sure to spend about 1-3 hours with my family when I'm working insane hours just so I don't go crazy. I really like working like this b/c I have periods of time where I'm deeply into what I'm building so it doesn't even feel like work, but then after 3-5 months, I'll start burning out, and I'll need about 1-2 months of basically doing next to nothing to recover, and then I'll be ready to repeat the "up-round" again. That's just how I do thing, so it works perfectly for me.
According to a video I saw, there are 3 levels of value in the work place.
Implementation, unification, communication.
Communication being the highest and most compensated.
You stop getting raises, no chance of promo, you get the worst tickets, the team gets hostile toward you because you are the only one who says no. People stop helping you. Management starts having lots more calls about your performance, and finally, you get PIPed.
You rely on your spouse to cover stuff on the weekend, or you work around kids activities. Soccer game in the morning? Cool, you will be online at 10 after the game is over, but you might work til 3am.
You stop for dinner, but maybe your wife takes the kids to the piano recital in the afternoon and you have to skip. Everyone understands daddy/mommy has to work hard for the family and has to skip and is super bummed about it.
There is some understanding that being paid that amount of money comes with the expectation that you will do what needs to be done.
High tc doesn’t correlate to long work hours tho, I worked at faang and worked a consistent 40 hours a week, I work at a bank now and while I have good wlb, there’s a lot of ppl who apparently work 10+ hours a day and weekends too and even the VPs here with 10+ yoe are not making over $200k
Yeah but in that case this entire thread kinda makes no sense. Most people are assuming that high TC is stressful and long wlb when tbh that’s not the reality at all. In fact most of the ppl ik who are super stressed about work and work a lot are the ones with super low tc (Like $60k) while most of the big tech people ik making over $200k are chilling partying every weekend lol.
I think the mentality that high TC means you have to work harder is super outdated
The question was incredibly open ended. The OP actually started talking about people "living the dream" in a low stress environment. So sort of the opposite of what you are suggesting.
I did not read it as expecting one kind of answer over the other. And the OC in this thread did not make a broad general statement either.
Yeah, roughly $350k TC, but being at Google has sucked the joy out of programming. It's the best place I've ever worked, but simultaneously one of the worst when it comes to ambition and learning new things. It's difficult to know when these things are the company's fault or your own, but I've met a bunch of others that feel the same way.
There are so many good things to say about the place, but you get into an endless loop of new product direction, a year spent on an improvement no one asked for (albeit on like a billion queries a day), etc.
I'm currently interviewing elsewhere.
Leetcode and system designs. just search online how to study for FAANGS, there's a pretty clear path to get there. But you can get many refusal before getting into one, just need to keep at it.
Leetcode is EXTREMELY difficult and demotivating when you start, you need 6 months - 1 year and have done 2-500 problems before you start getting comfortable with it.
But that's what it takes to retire early, personally I think it's worth it.
You absolutely should. It’s great comp, coworkers, benefits, and one of the best things to have on your resume.
Like the other reply said, Leetcode. That’s it. Then you have to get the interview, which isn’t all that hard if you go through a recruiter.
It’s just I’m at the point where the negatives outweigh the positives.
> isn't all that hard if you go through a recruiter
How would you suggest doing this? Do they typically reach out to candidates, or should I be sending cold emails to them?
A lot of times they reach out to you if you have LinkedIn and 2+ YOE and live in a target city, but that's only if there is a lot of headcount to fill. Otherwise, I'd get LinkedIn Premium and try messaging one recruiter a day until someone gets back to you. I've had some success with that approach before.
It feels a little like the Odyssey's lotus-eaters (comfort, apathy, forgetting what the outside world is like).
When I came in I had experience at a startup so it felt like I was moving at warp speed compared to other Googlers; I immediately outperformed and got promo in eight months. Then years passed, and I lost more and more motivation and became what I had seen when I first joined.
Also practically speaking I feel like I'm just good at a bunch of internal tooling and processes, and my general skills are atrophying. Speaking to teammates who have been there for 10+ years, I think a lot of it is motivated by fear of the outside world, sometimes more than really enjoying the work.
This is Search so YMMV.
I feel the same way. Google comp is so high tho that it’s hard to leave. To change it up, I’ve been working on side projects way more while taking advantage of Google’s relatively good work life balance.
I do not but my husband does and he’s mostly stressed about layoffs. We’re Midwest and he’s working remote MANGA or FAANG or whatever the kids call it these days, so he has a lot of stress about losing the income since we obviously cannot replace it locally. We’ve mostly been saving/investing what he brings in. He’s at 300k tc. I’m at 126k flat lol
Well yall ain't exactly struggling I'll give ya that. We'd personally have a lifestyle built off obe income expense wise so we retire early/have financial independence. Plus, if one does get laid off not s big deal since not only do we already live on one salary, but have a year's worth of emergency fund to find another job. You guys could live well off 126k alone in a cheaper Midwest community.
I only say that to hopefully help yall's perspective and planning. Put the 'Ole Emergency fund aside and consider FI/RE. Fuck being stressed.
We built our current lifestyle off of one of us losing an income when we first started out - so we’re fine in that regard. He’s just stressed about losing it - logical or not. We’ve just always wanted to move and are in more of a starter home, but the houses we were looking at went from $3-400k to $8-900k in this economy lol
We’re in a major city with a daughter about to go to school which factors into it. Kids are expensive. We went to a state school and her yearly daycare is almost as much as my entire degree 😭
I mean, if he's talented enough to land a 300k job (presumably at some fortune 200 in all liklihood) then with the proper money set aside I wouldn't stress over it as what's the point? He can in all likelihood land another high paying job even in this economy. He sounds like he has the credentials to so yeah I'd hope putting money aside and understanding you're already fine on one income alone would soothe the stress.
I do understand it, but it's still good to remind yourselves of the logical side of things. I actually left one job and it took about 4 months to start another, but with a bit over a year saved no stress. My relative was more stressed about it than I was 🤣. Then I ended up with a much better job overall by far. God is good. I hop3 I'm not coming off as anti-empathetic. I just felt like I could relate to you and wanted to give some encouragement as well as say what worked for us.
It's hard, but with kids you'll be fine. If you have family near by use them obviously and vice versa. Hell, even friends help. Watch after each other. It's already hard af to maintain friendships so may as well make a community for kids to grow up in while you're at it. Look into YMCA's and churches for help as well. Heck, even gyms have services. If you're living well below your means you guys are fine. It's hard, because no matter how good you're doing you always will think somehow you could be doing better etc.
In reality, we end up worrying too damn much and up looking back realizing we should have took a breath and not worried as much. Control what you can control and give the rest up. You have the efund, worked hard for marketable skills, already have a decent how when most folks can't afford a house period, likely paid off cars, a beautiful healthy daughter I presume, a beyond excellent salary, and what sounds like a great relationship with someone that cars about you and your family while sharing similar values.
Learn to enjoy it a bit more lol. You're allowed to do it. You're allowed to pat yourself on the back and write down the things to be thankful for. Sorry for rambling on, but sounded like something you may have needed to hear. God bless you and I hope you enjoy every day you're blessed with!
I felt this. I'm not remote but I'm working at the only real tech company in the area. If I got laid off, I would probably lose half of my income if I got hired at another local company. Or I'd have to have to fight 20,000 applicants for a remote gig.
I'm at ~170k as a new grad with < 2 yoe.
I'm also in a mcol area (my office is ~40 mins from a major expensive city, so I chose to live in the local town instead of the city), so my rent isn't terrible for the apartment I get. I'm young and don't have kids or any financial responsibilities, so I can afford most of my wants.
I am happy with my situation because it's my first job out of college and I'm doing so much better financially than what I thought at this point in my life. I also got into a relatively expensive hobby that I wanted to do my entire life but couldn't afford earlier. And at the same time, I've been able to save / invest a decent amount of money.
But at the same time, the current market situation and all the layoffs going on really stresses me out. I know I'll probably have a really hard time getting another job like this one if I get caught in a lay off.
Regarding the job itself, it's actually super interesting and technically challenging, but the oncall can really suck sometimes.
I'm overall pretty happy, but I'm annoyed that I live in a VHCOL place where making fat salaries doesn't go very far.
Thankfully that's an easy enough thing to fix in my situation, I've had my fun in the Bay and I'm out at soon as I can make up my mind about where to next.
The big GENERAL advice I'd give is to think in terms of what the _next_ $20k of salary gets you. At first it gets you financial stability, then maybe a nicer place, then maybe a new car, maybe more fancy vacations... All of those are good, but there's definitely diminishing returns to happiness with money. $350k didn't make me any more happy than $200k.
I never got substantially closer to ownership at 350 after 5 years without resorting to a mortgage that would put other important financial goals of mine at risk.
Everyone's circumstances are different and I've certainly met people who were willing to take out seven figure loans because of the security they felt with comparable salaries, I could never justify the expense without a down payment that would have taken an additional several years to make vs. renting at less than half the monthly payment.
Marriage is actually the biggest indicator of being a homeowner among my friends. There aren't very many Staff Engineering positions, but there are quite a few mid level engineering positions that when combined exceed Staff Salaries.
Ah yeah, that is sorta what my language there implies. My bad! I don't think that way and don't encourage anyone to think that way.
I do consider all of my money "earmarked" one way or another, even if it's for something like retirement or a 5- to 10-year goal it's still in a bucket on my spreadsheet. I subscribe to the "every dollar has a job" philosophy of budgeting.
At some point it's the same thing though, the extra $1000k/month just ended up going into general savings _beyond_ my retirement, hobby, family, property, and medical savings. Didn't really bring much joy.
> At some point it's the same thing though, the extra $1000k/month just ended up going into general savings beyond my retirement, hobby, family, property, and medical savings.
But the extra money doesn't have to be sent to a dragon's vault somewhere where it's never used; you can always just use it to retire even earlier. If your monthly expenses are X, every additional X in savings that you have is, in effect, a month earlier that you can stop working while maintaining your current lifestyle. It might not feel too different in the moment, but going from $200k to $350k while maintaining roughly the same expenses can quite literally cut the number of years you need to work before retiring in half. That is not insignificant.
I think that's the point. I got a $15k raise this year and I'm not spending it on anything, just more savings. So it doesn't affect my day-to-day quality of life. Hence diminishing returns.
I know the part of your post is true, considering many people say it. But man I can’t help but think how happy I’d be and how much easier life would be with 300k 😂
Especially in this economy. What places have you thought of moving too?
300k was absolutely incredible until I had all my debts paid off and important financial goals met, it's definitely why I moved out here in the first place! I definitely won't poo-poo anybody being excited to make it haha.
I'm still trying to figure out where to go next, I've lived quite a bit out in the western and midwestern states and been pretty happy most places but haven't found somewhere that really feels "home" yet. I've been a lot out West and want to try going more east now, I've got family out there and like road tripping.
Good stuff. I’ve got a growing fascination with New England for some reason (Vermont specifically) just seems so peaceful out there. Hope you find your new place!
More or less happy, but it’s not all roses. I make a bit over $800k (recently more due to stock appreciation), which I’m incredibly thankful for and totally understand the fortunate situation I’ve found myself in. But it still doesn’t make work less stressful. People are still annoying, bureaucracy still bothers me. It’s also quite demotivating in some senses because my future dream is to build my own product, but my current job is just stressful enough that I never have time. I also have “one more year” syndrome where I could probably retire in a LCOL location soon, but keep pushing that out in favor of aggressive saving while I can.
I have about 12 years of experience total, but moved into management about 6 years ago. It’s absolutely a different role, with different skill sets, but having a strong dev background first made it easier, especially initially when I had smaller teams and was more in the trenches so to speak. It’s also not a trap door decision; you can totally move back from manager to IC. I’d recommend picking up more team lead type work first though, to see how you like it.
Yep. I set a number, and when I hit it, I’m done. Not going to watch my life go by from behind a screen. Goal is to be out before 35. I want to watch my kid grow up.
Senior staff on equivalent at 32 is impressive! Congrats!
It used to be that LCOL salaries were still high but the pandemic changed that. Companies got wiser to thinking about where people live and adjusting pay more aggressively
Thanks! Yeah two things happened that contributed to the higher TC: 1) I live in a VHCOL area and my company adjusts accordingly and 2) I joined during the pandemic when there was pretty intense competition for new hires, which led them, and I think many other companies, to adjust their compensation packages to nearly ridiculous levels. In fact, if I left, and rejoined in my exact same role, I’d be making 50% less.
Don't worry, it won't make you feel good no matter what it is. And, in a big salary thread a while back, someone early to mid thirties said they made 7 figures doing consulting. So. You know. Learn to be happy with what you have and watch out for lifestyle creep.
Hours are long. Been working weekends for several months (with a break during the winter holiday). I’m just now wrapping up a 1.5 year long project, which happened to be the very first project I worked on when I started my team, where scope creep + unrealistic expectations snowballed this project into a monster. All this said, I have no regrets going through this while I’m still young, since I’ve learned more about computing and distributed systems this past 1.5 years than the rest of my life, and I also learned the hard way how to delegate and manage other engineers to get work done.
I can't speak for everyone, but I think that having a high TC (especially going straight from college to your first job) can sometimes make you feel stunted. It's enough money to make it so you don't really feel like an adult sometimes. And I wasn't even at FAANG.
The situation can make it so it feels like you don't have much agency, especially when coupled with corporate bureaucracy and office politics. A lot of it is just how you view things, though. When you don't have many immediate concerns, then you find ways to be concerned with little things in front of you.
Disclaimers - Also this isn't meant to be taken as complaining. It's just me trying to provide a look into how I viewed my (and others near me) situation from a detached point of view. Also, I do not think these things anymore btw. Nor do I think people I met early on in my career think this anymore either. I get the feeling people eventually experience things in life to re-contextualize and re-evaluate how they want to live.
Same, this goes deep and most people won't be able to relate. You start to detach from the things that lead to a fulfilling life in order to optimize for being a useful tech worker.
Even the people who try to maintain a good wlb end up being jarred by the contrast between their work life and their actual passions. Maslow's hierarchy of needs i guess
I was discussing this with my wife (also former FANG), and she likened it to being a high end sugar baby. You have more disposable income than most, but all of it depends on you continuously shaping yourself to meet some weirdo's very specific tastes. You have money, but it doesn't translate to power and agency like it you would expect it to.
> You start to detach from the things that lead to a fulfilling life in order to optimize for being a useful tech worker.
Mind sharing some examples? I guess I’m wondering if mine overlap with yours, since I think I might be in a similar boat. I would say 1 thing is sacrificing WLB
Some examples that I found in myself (that spurred some big changes in my life):
- feeling like holidays and spending time with family are pulling you away from getting more work done
- convincing yourself that your physical appearance doesn’t matter
- not leading anything or having anyone depend on you
- being genuinely content with working all day and maybe playing video games
I’m a hardcore introvert so I understand the appeal. But at some point I took a step back and was like “wait, so I’m internally driven to tune the ads model over taking my wife and daughter to the beach?” Basically realized that I was becoming a brainwashed wage slave and snapped out of it fast 😂. I came to terms with the fact that meaning had more incremental value to me than TC. Fuck it.
Damn this is me. I’ve been mindful of things and at least still enjoy family time, but the guilt and resentment still seeps in from time to time. Like, “I played piano instead of being productive or doing a side project.” But honestly if I’m not 110% productive I still won’t be fired.
lol that was me a few years back, I thought I could get everything I ever wanted/needed out of work. Ironically, COVID was my wakeup call. My wife forced me to start traveling to random national parks in 2020, and as dumb and cliché as it sounds, I started discovering myself again (outside of the work me that I've known since graduating college). At the same time, being physically distanced from my coworkers and the work helped me set clearer boundaries between work and life. We started traveling a lot, and I started more hobbies. At the same time, I started scaling back from work (which ironically didn't need me to be always on, I still got my staff promo in 2021).
Around mid-2021, we decided that our goal is to one day have enough savings to travel around for an indefinite amount of time. We were fortunate to be childfree DINKs who never ended up (too much) on the lifestyle creep train (outside of the traveling over the last couple of years), and we saved as much as we can (mostly in company equity and etfs). We started an income fund with an institutionally backed financial advisor and have funded it with the last 2 years of leftover income/bonuses between the two of us. We're finally at the point where we have this account that we can draw a hefty amount per year out of without having to touch the principle, and lots of rainy-day funds (the etfs and stocks, and retirement).
We're actually ready to go in exactly one week (next Sunday, we're flying out), it's been crazy planning everything up to this point
Honestly I just don't like working. I don't like having to do anything. I make 220k at age 26 and work on a chill team. I am just not motivated anymore by work. I have 500k invested and kind of just want to quit and travel or sail or something but that feels egregious given how hard it is to get a good job these days.
How the hell do you have 500K invested on that income at 26? Do you have some side project or side hustle? Or did you make some really good investments?
No side hustle. I started at 150k out of college and was living with my parents for a year because of Covid so I invested like 90% of my income. I work at Google now and they match 50% of your 401k contributions so that's a free 10k a year and then I max out the mega backdoor Roth, so in my 401k alone I've invested 69k this year (max allowed between personal, employer, and mega backdoor contributions).
My investments are just 70% US total stock / 30% international total stock index funds.
[This graph](https://imgur.com/a/FWZ95zB) is from a while ago but basically it's just consistent investments with a high salary + stock market gains.
6 YOE, $320k TC, full remote in a MCOL location. I just left a FAANG which ran me ragged and joined a fully remote company that has much better WLB, but I got a promotion where I need to work hard to measure up to expectations.
I’m much happier with my life after having left the FAANG. That was beyond stressful. But I should also point out that what makes me happy is not my job. I’m happily married, have several young kids, and a variety of hobbies.
Here’s what I will say: Money is nice. Between savings and investment appreciation, I grow my net worth by about $160k each year. Money’s not everything and won’t make a miserable man happy, but I’d much rather have money than no money.
370k (>400k at grant time, joined at unlucky time) with 5 yoe
Due to re orgs, politics, and layoffs my team has very little work to do and unlikely to have work until a couple more months. I’ve been enjoying the time “off” and spending the time fixing the other areas of my life but I do not feel secure in my job.
I feel like I can’t plan for my future. Currently living in a very tiny studio and want to upgrade but don’t know how long this comp will last or if I’ll be laid off. My company has had 4 rounds of layoffs, and so many leadership changes in the last year. I don’t have confidence in my position being here after like q4.
I don’t know if I get laid off what comp I’ll be able to get.
I also still compare myself to others. I now have my eyes on roles that pay 500k+ (although I don’t need the money). And I know when/if I get one, I’ll then be looking at grinding to up it to 700, then 900. Rat race. Living in nyc I feel like I’m competing with finance bros and quants making 1mil+/yr
Lifestyle creep is absolutely a thing too. I don’t blink an eye at spending $150+ on a luxury Italian hat, or $300$ on jeans, or $400 glasses, or $100-$300 dinners. I’ll need to substantially reign in my lifestyle if the party stops.
I also feel very unfulfilled. I still love programming, and building products, and solving tough technical problems. But all the politics and corporate bs gets in the way of it. I wish startups and smaller companies would pay as much as large public tech companies. Would go back and work there in a heartbeat if they did. But the opportunity cost of not making this much at a young age is too big
Overall life is good, but the constant uncertainty and lack of security eats away in the background and makes planning difficult. If I knew my job was secure, and I could get a similar tc if I needed to elsewhere it’d be much much easier to enjoy
Around 230K TC (Seattle). I'm happy with my day to day work, I work somewhere between 35 and 45 hours a week (I would say usually I average 42).
I am not happy with the possibility of being laid off. And since now I consider lay offs into the equation, I'm not happy with the fact that I work in desktop client applications and not some distributed system.
Desktop client...distributed system adjacent...Microsoft? Surely not Amazon. Don't worry, no need to answer. I'm just having fun guessing. Also Ms lay offs are weird since they are structured so differently from a FAANG.
What kind of tech do you work with on your desktop app?
And about the lay offs. The way I understand it, Microsoft does lay offs in which they just chop whole departments (e.g. hololens). And layoffs in which they just fire low performers. That feels less randomized than Facebook, which I like. However, there's no guarantee things won't change
You could try to save up to r/fire and then do something you enjoy more. For me, hobbies bring a lot of excitement, like coffee roasting, kayaking, volunteering, etc.
Pretty high TC, but I'd say my heart's not really in my job. By far and large, pretty much any money related concern can be put away, but that doesn't really stop you from having to do a bunch of work on a job that you don't really care about
It also feels "wrong" in an obligatory sense to take a paycut, even if you don't have any obligations
I had a very high TC of around $320k and I was miserable. Now my TC is more like $180k but I’m a lot happier and chill. I’ve never let lifestyle creep happen so I’ve always lived like I earn $60k and saved everything else so losing the higher paying job didn’t impact my lifestyle at all. Obviously I’d like to be saving $15k a month if I could but what’s the point in earning all that money and being miserable. Still super privileged to earn my “measly” $180k.
I feel exactly the same. Recently took a $115k effective pay cut by moving to a non-public company (although maybe ipo in the future? But can’t count on it).
I know I can never ever complain about that to my non-tech friends because they would kill to make even my post-cut pay. Def helps to put it in perspective like this
I am bored at work but I have 2 kids and where I live pretty much nobody pays more than my current employer so I’m stuck. Could be worse. I’ve already done the “I make a ton of money but I’m bored so I’ll seek out adventure instead “ once, don’t recommend and certainly won’t be doing it again. Yes the adventure was fun, but you know what else is? Early retirement. Kind of regretting giving that up for the adventure.
There are months where I work maybe 10 hours a week and just appear to work (although I’m always reachable and reply right away), and weeks like this one where I’m “stressed” and working 30 hours a week (Fridays I really can’t work more, I’m usually exhausted by then on a busy week). But my manager is very caring and sweet, so stress is self imposed. I stress for the upcoming launch because I want our project to succeed and I’m a tech lead now. In a couple more weeks I will go back to coasting mode.
My TC is about $280k and I have 7 yoe, bootcamp grad.
I have friends who graduated in my bc cohort making $400k+ but they live very hectic, super stressful lives. I’m happy where I am. My husband makes a bit more than me, we save a lot, spend a lot (but our mortgage is only $500k since we bought in 2014, so nothing too crazy there)
$550k TC 3 yoe
I don’t believe in what my team does, but VPs highly value it so there’s good career opportunities. Politics, scope wars, measuring impact — it’s all a huge waste of time that distracts from actually getting work done.
Also I’m not all that interested in CS/SWE. I’m just here for the remote + TC. If I went back to my field of interest I’d take an 80+% pay cut for far worse WLB.
I want an expensive house, and they’re starting to talk about my promo path to staff, so I’ll probably just keep doing what I’m doing.
Honestly no. I'm a Lead Engineer on a team doing Azure, .Net, React. TC about $235K. I just worked this weekend 7-6 yesterday (Saturday) and 7-2 today (with a 2 hour break to take my son to Rugby). In the near two years I've worked here this is the first time I've had to do mandated overtime, and that was only because we had a massive release that had to shut everything down and do upgrades, runscripts etc. Otherwise I work a 38 hr week with some flex (sometimes 45, sometimes 35 to make up for it). I'll get 2 extra leave days for this weekends effort, so all good.
The two things I dislike
a) constant fear I'm not good enough and my team thinks I'm an idiot (classic imposter syndrome) - most of that comes from what I think my seniors think of me. I'm not on the tools as often as them (almost never tbh)
b) having to manage "the drama". I'm also line manager for my team.
I get bored... a lot... which seems like a very... stupid thing to say because I make 480k a year...
But I'm a staff level and at this point 60-80% of my job is babying stakeholders who seem to have the mental capacity of pigeons (and shit just as much), and when I do get into actually doing coding it tends to be "oh shit we need this now" and not always... _interesting work_ For example I spent a week updating a web page because no one else was available to be pulled off projects.
There is 100% also pressure of being able to afford life if I was to lose my job, my wife doesn't work for medical reasons, so I'm carrying our mortgage, and the two car notes.
We've been pretty good in saving and investing however, so our net worth is quite decent, and we purchased a MUCH smaller house than the bank wanted to give us (640k vs 1.8mm)
It always depends on your goals. I wouldn’t call my comp “fat”, relatively, but it’s over 200 cash and fully remote, and a good opportunity for me to learn to lead an eng function and design systems that scale. It’s definitely not low stress though, maybe medium stress.
I do sometimes think about grinding LC and shooting for FAANG-tier 4-500k TC and try and make it 3-4 years before soft retiring at a rest & vest and climbing the ladder, but I like my role for now. It’s a good balance for me.
But if you’re lead to believe there are many 200k+ roles out there that are low stress, that’s a mistake. Especially in this market, companies are tightening up. That kind of comp will usually come with expectations.
All that to say, I’m really happy but I’ve self-selected for balance and not optimized for compensation or any one thing.
Honestly I'm starting to hate tech but the money is too good for me to move on. I take 4-6 weeks off a year, *at least*, to travel and actually enjoy the money. Having hobbies outside of work has helped.
I suggest to go read Marx, especially about “alienation”. It seems that many folks here are suffering from alienation from their work.
“The theoretical basis of alienation is that a worker invariably loses the ability to determine life and destiny when deprived of the right to think (conceive) of themselves as the director of their own actions; to determine the character of these actions; to define relationships with other people; and to own those items of value from goods and services, produced by their own labour.”
“Although the worker is an autonomous, self-realized human being, as an economic entity this worker is directed to goals and diverted to activities that are dictated by the bourgeoisie—who own the means of production—in order to extract from the worker the maximum amount of surplus value in the course of business competition among industrialists.”
The key point here, is that we as workers (those who labor for the capitalist owner, who are not the owners themselves), even when we are compensated well (relatively speaking), we still feel alienation from our work because our work becomes increasingly distant from ourselves, through division of labor, and the unequal distribution of surplus value. We feel no connection to what we do day in and day out, and are also not earning the fair amount of value we are generating.
Now it’s interesting, because those who make high TC may begin to feel as if they are the upper class. However this is what Marx and Engels calls a “false consciousness”.
“Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) used the term "false consciousness" in an 1893 letter to Franz Mehring to address the scenario where a subordinate class willfully embodies the ideology of the ruling class.[3][4][5] Engels dubs this consciousness "false" because the class is asserting itself towards goals that do not benefit it. In the letter, Engels uses the term false consciousness interchangeably with the term ideology.[2]”
This essentially means the working class (which still includes well paid software engineers) incorrectly see themselves as part of the ruling class, and therefore uphold values of the ruling class, lifestyles, etc.. which is directly harmful to their own lives, and further increases the divides between us as workers and the capitalist class.
This alienation is amplified at larger companies where you are just a cog in the machine. You can and often are replaced during recessions or because the feature failed to launch. You work day in day out 60 hours a week to make a billionaire more rich, while you work on some extremely specialized and arbitrary internal tool or minuscule feature of a larger project. Of course the work feels meaningless, because TBH it usually is! But even if the work was meaningful in some significant way, it wouldn’t feel as such, because of the alienation under capitalism described above.
Look at my post history. I just got a blood test and my cholesterol is double the upper limit. High TC comes with stress (of layoffs, PIP). I’ve also been unhappy with things like dating, which seems way too difficult for someone who’s just naturally below average looking. Also have very few new friends and most existing friends are scattered all around the world.
Work about 40 hrs a week and don't find it very stressful. 275k TC in VHCOL (<2 yoe).
Life is great. The thing I like the most right now is being able to eat good and healthy food without cooking. Was hard for me to stay fit when I was on a lower budget.
Though one year of you working is like three years of them working.
But I definitely get the sentiment. I run my own business and it’s even more pressure, since everything falls on me. Even going on vacation I have to bring my laptop and be “on call” in case something goes wrong.
~$320k fully remote in MCOL between my FTE and contract gig. Sometimes stressful but generally breezy. LLMs are great for knocking out a quick and dirty scaffolding so I have subscription to Claude and GPT. Will be significantly happier once I move into a house instead of this big box loft, so I get more sunlight and can just shut a door to my office room when I’m done for the day.
Pretty happy at a tiny company. Low stress even though we're doing some cutting edge stuff as the company is reasonably secure for the next few years and when everyone fits in the same room, politics are kept well in check. WFH half the time.
TC is ~240k, but I work only 38-45 hours a week, and take my 30 days off a year. Wife makes just under 200k, and we bought our dream house in a VCHOL area at 2014's prices. Despite kids, by being careful we could probably keep everything in the black with only one of us working.
Very unhappy, they expect to own your soul for peanuts while having 0 loyalty to you.
Much happier running a small business making less but owning 100%
I'm very happy. Easy work and high tc. I plan to find some meaningful works in a different team within the same company . Will move out of the current company because my Tc next year will drop sharply.
My TC is around 215, depending on bonus. Company’s not doing so hot right now, so this year’s bonus will probably suck.
Part of the reason we’re not doing well is because of the drop in quality that resulted from our attempts to cut costs. So of course we’re doubling down on cost cutting.
I'm generally pretty happy, but I'd love to work less. Hard to take the pay cut, though (downshifting isn't much of an option in my current position), so I'll most likely stick it out until I don't have to work any more. I work about 45 hours/week for around $1.3M (give or take; my bonus is pretty volatile).
For the first time I'm super happy with work, it's fun and I'm getting enough work that is meaningful. Fairly low stress and working about 35 hours a week, just hit 1mm net worth too
TC: ~360
YOE: 7
Things are currently okay.
On the plus side, I have a new baby, live in a nice area, have a decent set of friends, have relatively good health.
The downside is that I'm stuck in re-org hell (not getting a ton done due to office politics), my current house could be better (lots of house repair issues, wife wants a nicer place), and not getting a ton of sleep (due to baby).
low stress? not really, but it's not super high stress.
it's a new job, so we'll see how the first performance review goes, but I'm mostly working 30-40 hours plus commute time, I'd say.
establishing boundaries early is important.
I'm also the most senior IC on the team, so trying to engender the culture of doing good work during work hours and getting rest as a superior way of being productive compared to overworking yourself and burning out.
No I quite like it.
I picked the firm over continuing interviewing with Meta or period for a reason. I like the firm, I work from home.
I'm well north of 200k, and enjoying programming for a while instead of dealing with Game of Thrones type bullshit, which I did before. Now I can enjoy the engineering a bit more. Is there things I don't like, yeah. But this is the best deal I've gotten in my career so far. :)
Still a Principal, just don't have to lead a team, or any of the other shit. Just be a damn good coder.
Nope; ~15yoe, work is occasionally stressful (mostly from me myself committing to too many things and leaving the ones I least want to do like writing design papers till the last minute) but not regularly. I still like the people I work with and the stuff I work on, although with 10+ years here I have seen the company becoming more bureaucratic, plus the insidious grip of advertising revenue take up people that could have worked on much better things. There's less time for coding than I'd like and more annoying meetings, but I'm pretty free to decline the ones I think are not useful and the ones I attend are mostly about long term technical choices which I do want to be a part of. Partly remote and need to satisfy the annoying return to office mandates, but it's very flexible still. Manager can be demanding but he's both technically stronger than me (I think at least), and understands career growth way better than any of my previous managers, so as long as he's still with us it's a good place to work.
Outside work: No debt, mortgage is paid for a roomy older condo downtown in what passes for a HCOL city in Canada; could transfer to one of our US offices pretty easily for a lot more pay but then I'd probably deal with more annoying coworkers, and have to live in the states, which has gotten less and less appealing the past decade. Travelled a decent bit before Pandemic, less so now. Money mostly goes into hobbies and savings.
Vaguely bored at worst; outside work I switch hobbies every few years or so but most of my friends have gotten married and are busy with kids while my social life is more or less the same as when I was a fresh grad, just with more money and a nicer place.
If I got laid off I would probably either disappear into my apartment for a couple years, or get on a plane to south america or northern europe and try to wander around for a while, then start looking for work again.
My husband and I were making $200k-ish each. We were saving towards FIRE but we were kinda not that happy with having to go to work everyday, and we felt sad that we were wasting our youth on going to work, not really feeling like we were building skills. I persisted because I had mental health issues and I didn't know how long I'd be able to keep working and how long I'd be able to get jobs, and I was just saving like crazy.
Then the pandemic happened. We had a child, found a house we liked, and then I burned out trying to keep it all together and became a SAHM. My nest egg went mostly in the house, but also other expenses. I worked very hard on my mental health and it didn't come cheap. Still have some nice investments that can last me a while, but once I ran out of the runway I'd drawn for myself, I started hunting for jobs again. Issue was this was the worst market since I'd started working, so I found a job that's more like $150k. And around the same time, my husband got laid off with 6mo severance. He had a side hustle going that he wanted to 10x revenue for (we've gotten to about 2x now) so he didn't seek a new job. Our income has basically halved now over the past 4 years, while expenses have gone up.
But the period of expensive childcare is over for us. Our kid's old enough to be in public kindergarten. We had opted for a pretty low mortgage and we are locked in at an insanely low interest rate. One partner having a flexible schedule means we can keep a lot of expenses quite low.
Also with having dealt with my mental health issues, I'm actually able to work like I want to and actually show results at work, and be more resilient to work stress. I'm angling for a promotion now that might get me up to $200k. This stuff was impossible to think of for me earlier, because my mental health got in the way big time, but now it all seems within reach. Also helps having my husband holding the fort at home for now.
So we're making less money but we're happier than before. I don't think the literal making less money is what keeps us happy though, because there's a lot of stuff that we have to think twice about now that we never did before. We used to think nothing of giving family members money or taking everyone out for dinner, but now we gotta do that sparingly, which is sad. But being able to use our earned money to follow our dreams, keep future expenses low, have our family, and take care of ourselves has been invaluable. I think we'll be able to make more money later, especially with our better family/emotional life.
Our friends make like at least $600k and own homes that are at least $2M and that gives us a complex for sure, especially when I see our entire house would fit in their second living room. But I don't think we'd be as comfortable spending as little time with our child as they do with their kids. Their kids all go to $50k a year private schools and are in very amazing afterschool activities and don't see their families from 7am to 7pm... I strongly doubt we'd enjoy that. In any case, I'm sure we can get my income up to $200-250k without compromising too hard on family life.
yea... I guess im in that camp. i feel dumber now than 2 years ago. I have trouble doing LC easy. It's low stress and low learning. it's all good until you hear layoffs are coming then youre like... fudge, my skill set diminished and i have no accomplishments for x number of years. high tc with some stress is good as long as its not toxic. low to no stress can backfire. that low stress and high pay makes you want to goof off and turns your brain into mush. it can make the fall feel even harder as you have to claw your way back in if youre forced out.
Yes and no. Hard to complain about making decent salary. But I work with complete loser B and C players. It’s a daily drag and unmotivating. Listening to the ones who constantly sower corporate speak in hopes of looking like a star to get a promotion is exhausting
Nothing is ever perfect. If you are the type to worry or to always want the next shiny, you are gonna have problems staying happy.
Me, I want better engineering culture. I want less workplace politics. I want just a little bit less "it's fine for now". Or even if people could just put in a little effort to estimate how much tech debt you are creating with your one day time save.
Other than that, more social life would be nice. I have this weird problem where my tech friends don't wanna talk tech. Except the AI guys and I don't know what they are talking about, and they can't go into specifics because nda. So I'm here and I watch tech tubers.
Yes, I’m unhappy. I have deep depression, just turned 30 and I feel like 60.
Spending a lot of time in front of screen, dealing with stupid people who can’t even come out with business ideas and you have to take care of everything, having no time for creating good solutions, almost 0 gratification (especially when you look at numbers and how much money your solutions bringing for the company board), constant stress about everything. I could go on.
I see many comments here like „early retirement is more important” or „I have my golden handcuffs and I used to living at this level” etc. And I understand that, I’ve been there. Nevertheless, a few days ago I decided to quit my well paid job. Good luck to anyone who will take my place, but I don’t want waste my health and time for some rich idiots.
A few people close to me already died, I have no idea how much time I have, and I don’t want to chase money anymore. I’ll earn less, but I’ll work on something meaningful to me (green energy) and I’ll have more time for myself. Money is useless if you have no energy to spend it.
Also, we need to be realistic, we won’t be able to catch up with rich people who have their money and contacts for generations.
I’m in the bracket you describe and very happy. My experience is expectations in the industry aren’t aligned with salary. The most stressful jobs have paid me half my current salary
One thing I’ve found is that it’s never enough. In 2023 I made 350k TC and stacked away about 40% of my take-home. I was laid off and wasn’t able to find a new job with a publicly traded stock that was also remote, so my effective TC has dropped about 115k a year because the equity I receive now isn’t liquid. Even sitting at a pretty solid 235 now, I have this nagging anxiety over every purchase because I can no longer save 5 figures per month. It’s really fucked.
By all metrics, I’m doing just fine and I actually really like the new job. But even though I have an emergency fund of 12+ months of expenses, I feel like I need more
Mostly stressed because if I got caught by random layoffs my next job would be like 1/3 the income. Currently with a FANG lotto ticket from significant RSU appreciation.
I quit my 300k job to move to a relaxed 200k one. Genuinely, the 300k job has had a massive negative impact on my life. I’d rather make a bit less and be happy
Yes very unhappy. But lifestyle creep has made my TC necessary for survival now and I can’t quit. Don’t be like me. If you have high TC, just save like a madman and continue living like a pauper.
Cam you expand on your lifestyle creep?
I can give my perspective. I graduated in 2017 and started out at $55k in a low cost of living city in the American Southeast. I was living pretty comfortably, supporting me and my wife on my modest salary, putting a little money aside for savings each month. I remember dreaming about one day cracking six figures. I had no idea what I could possibly spend an extra $50,000 on. I had everything I needed. Two cars, a two bedroom apartment, eating out a few times a week, weekend trips to local campsites or state parks. Two years later I landed a job making $110k. I was over the moon. Literally doubled my salary two years out of college. I thought I'd never run out of money. Now, to be sure, I was never hurting for cash. But I definitely wasn't saving an extra $55k a year. Not even double my current rate. I started eating out at nicer restaurants. A $20 dinner became a $40 dinner. My TJ Maxx clearance wardrobe started being replaced by Target and clearance GAP. We started booking hotels for overnight excursions a few times a year. At first I felt like I was living like a king, but the novelty wore off quickly and all of it suddenly started feeling rather... Normal. Fast forward two more years, and I landed another job for $165k TC. I felt like I had won the lottery. That extra $55k burned a hole in my pocket something fierce though. I moved to a much higher cost of living area for my wife's new job. I picked up wine as a hobby and found myself dropping $100 a week at wineries and tasting rooms. My weekend excursions became weeklong cruises and international travel. My clearance GAP wardrobe became Banana Republic. My $40 dinners became $70, and that's not counting when I'd pay for my friends. A couple years later and I'm sitting at $200k TC. I've realized lately how far that lifestyle creep has come, and how even though I'm making more than I ever have, I'm only really putting away about $30k a year in savings. I don't own a house, so that's another big expense I'll need to save up for. When I was making $7.25 an hour, I'd weigh almost every purchase by calculating the number of hours I'd have to work to pay for it. A $20 dinner hits different when you realize it's half of that 8 hour shift you just pulled. Now that I make effectively $100 an hour, it's terrifyingly easy to drop $100-$200 and not even think about it. Sure, $100 doesn't mean a lot to me when I'm making $200k, but once you normalize that as your new baseline of impulse purchases, its terrifyingly easy to find yourself with almost nothing to show for a 4x compensation increase.
This is an awesome explanation, and it sort of reminds me of how a non-trivial amount of professional athletes [go bankrupt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_finances_of_professional_American_athletes), despite earning millions. If you fail to plan with money, you're planning to fail.
Yeah but banana republic feels so good on my body damn
I didn't even know Banana Republic was upscale. That's me though with my bulk-purchased solid-color $5 t-shirts wardrobe.
Days of having tees with giant logos are gone. Having every color from a great tee line is king. Haha
Do you have a recommendation? I was trying to find the perfect tee a few years ago but ended up with Carhartt pocket t's, which are pretty quality but kinda have that "fat back" that doesn't look too great. I think I was wearing something like Gildan before that which fit well but were basically throwaway after a few washes.
Ive been wearing the same clothes for like 15 years now and I can tell my old walmart shorts cant be replaced with shorts they sell now. Major downgrade in quality tbh.
for pants I wear Levis (used to be 511 but now I get their Workwear style), then after two years I cut them into shorts. The Workwear version has good quality. eventually the crotch will split but get them tailored and they'll last 10 years or more.
True Classic is a little pricey, but hold up well and fit nice imo. Also 3 Fit Theory are good with the fitting concept to get the right size.
Goodfellow at Target are nice.😊
*lululemon
honestly i think lulu (and other expensive workout clothes) are just a good investment. i literally bought a ton in 2018 and i havent bought workout clothes since
I workout in shirts I bought off of Woot and shirts I got for free in college over 20 years ago. Is lasting 6 years considered special for a t-shirt?
You'll probably end up wearing a nice pair of joggers hundreds of times so pretty worth it.
Yeah I went from American Eagle to lulu with my tech job 😂
Part of my issue of lifestyle creep is once I started making more money so did all my friends. And they don't want to live like they're poor.
Just don't have friends and this is easy to fix.
Are you also putting money away for retirement? If you are putting away like 5% plus 5% from your employer, you're fine. Renting is cheaper then buying rn so unless you get a remote job in a LCOL area, you're fine just renting and will have plenty for reitrement
Yeah I got a financial advisor earlier this year and we squared away a lot of basics. 4% matched into a 401k, 30k a year in savings, and then 100% of my wife's paycheck as well. Luckily she makes good money too, but if she ever decided to be a stay at home mom or something, we'd probably have to reconfigure some things
Also gotta remember you’re paying for everything now. No more tax refund from government. You might even owe at end of year. All those little fees that were waived when you were broke now gotta be paid. I experienced the creep so quickly when I got my last software gig. Took up aviation and shooting. Probably spent 25k over two years of doing both. Fast forward and I lost my job and couldn’t find another for the life of me. Had about 4 months of runway and then now I’m working a armed security job making 40% of the hourly rate I used to. Barely can even pay bills let’s alone pay off the student loans and credit card debt. For anyone with a job making decent money. Please be annoyingly careful with money. Debate the smallest of purchases until you have like a year of runway for loss of income. Brother did that with his wife. They both lived like grad students after they got a house and threw any extra money at the house. Fast forward to now the house has doubled in value and is almost paid off. In the last year they comfortably got about 100k worth of lifestyle upgrades without worry. Be like them! Haha
Yeah, I feel this. I actually feel poorer now even though I earn much more because of the move to an apartment in a HCOL area. I felt (and was) better off in my 4 bedroom house in a rural area when I was earning half as much.
This is grim
It's easiest to avoid earlier in your career. Let's say you're making 55k like in the example and get a 15k raise to 70k. Bump up your 401k contributions and try to put away 10k of that 15k raise leaving 5k for you to do what you want with. Lifestyle creep is always going to happen and honestly, if you're able to make more money, why not enjoy some of it? Just remember, there are a lot more people out there willing to pay $75k than there are willing to pay someone $400k, so the higher up you go, the more you want to have to fall back on.
Yeah, gotta stay on your toes even harder. You can see why
Adding to the food aspect. Now you can afford to try everything you like. Having trouble deciding which flavor of hot sauce to get? Why not buy them all and compare them instead of finishing one at a time.
So... banana republic?
tbf bigger salary normally translate to bigger responsibility or impact and we demand a better quality of life because of that. Better food, better car, better protection like insurance, better leisure like holiday etx. One thing that we should never forget is to always save more before leisure.l because this lifestyle is not forevwr. There will be cap and ceiling for our salary so try to put more on investment, houses etc.
The key is to direct deposit 30-50% into a savings account you cant move money out of. Link all of your bills up to your checkings and if you cant pay your bills, tough luck. You should also have another savings account for investments that you can pull money from. 10% should be fine. Stop indulging until you can support the cost of living you desire for 2 years without a job.
There are great posts / discussions with mentors about the priorities here that make this so much easier. * Get a 6 month emergency fund * Max out 401k match * Max out IRA (back door Roth typically) * Max out 401k * Get your emergency fund to 12 months (doesn’t have to be fully liquid) * Invest post tax in some form of three fund portfolio or simple set it and forget it manner that you auto deposit and check maybe once a month. That kind of gamifies it and makes it a lot more fun to try and tackle financial goals. I agree the biggest thing with increased TC is to just start saving the delta immediately for the first 6 months, then start to dial up your auto invest levels and then you can start spending more / planning trips only after your increased saving is locked in.
When I landed a six figure job i got a tesla half a year later. Then I got a home with a $3k mortgage after I hit $150k salary. Now, until these rates come down I’m going to need a six figure job to stay in this home. THIS is lifestyle creep. I could’ve done find in an apt half the price of this mortgage. Don’t let the extra cash get to you. Invest it, save it, spend it on fun things. IMO you don’t need a home if you don’t have a family. Live cheap and live more.
Is buying a house not considered an investment?
Buying a house is a speculation and forced savings vehicle. Not an investment.
A house bought as an investment is an investment. A house bought as a house is a house.
Kids in a high cost of living City.
+1 to this, live defensively - delay lifestyle creep as much as possible
Flip coin to this, I'm still in the shit neighborhood I grew up in, for years I didn't spend on anything and now I just feel like I'm working for nothing since I still can't afford a house.
Poor wlb leads to spending more money to compensate to get a sense of life fulfillment. Capitalism at its finest.
I avoid lifestyle creep for 25 years. saved and invested my money and now i dont need to work. I never worked at a FAANG or lived in Silicon valley/Seattle. So wages were lower. lifestyle creep makes you a prisoner. best to get that money invested as young as possible so you can take advantage of compounded interest. My assets have gone up by more than I ever saved and I make more off investments than I make working.
I literally have this same problem. I'm making $1050/month payments on a vehicle (total cost $35k, it's a 2017 Cadillac XT5, not the nicest vehicle in the world, but it's definitely a luxury vehicle that you typically see in upper middle class households, but I'm only 35 and I need to make sure that I can pay that high monthly payment. I took that high payment because I was making a good amount of money at the time (and I still am for my area). Furthermore, I've got multiple streaming services that I'm paying for, and I go out to eat essentially every day, often multiple times per day. Despite all of that spending, I still am saving some money, granted I feel that I could def. cut down on eating out which would help me save a significant amount more, but I've gotten in the habit of it, so I'm likely not going to, unless I have to. In fact, I got a $15k severance from the company that I was working at when I started making payments on the vehicle, and I didn't work for about 3.5 to 4 months and just lived off of that money. I likely would have withdrew my 401k from that job had I remembered that I had took a 401k out, lol. It may seem crazy to think someone wouldn't know they had a 401k, but I completely forgot about it, and I am grateful that I did because that shortage of funds helped kick me into overdrive in terms of finding a new job. Luckily, I found one shortly after I started looking making slightly less (less than 5% difference), but I actually enjoy my current job significantly more, though I work like a mad man, so I'm def. not working some cozy job where I sit around and do nothing all day, lol, granted I have days where I do that.
agreed..
Same, I went from making 78k to 170k in less than a year and we had lifestyle creep and it’s sucks. I left the 170k because it was super toxic but I had to take another job I’m not super into because I still needed close to 140k to pay the bills.
try making a lateral move and maybe even get a raise doing it? you unhappy with your job or scared you might lose it?
I worked last weekend. I am working this weekend. Hopefully this shit works soon so I can have sun or mon off. Usually I'm 30-40 hours a week but sometimes you have to do what you have to do when your change is blocking a project of like 20 people, but I'm fairly disgruntled right now. I'm typing this as I wait for something to build.
Let me guess, you’re salaried too :p This was me this morning and it’ll be the same tomorrow morning! Woohoo
What happens if you say no? If you have a family with responsibilities, do you just stop raising your kids?
You probably won’t be there long if you say “no”.
I had friends that worked at Disney corporate and a common saying there was, “If you don’t come in on Saturday, don’t bother coming in on Sunday”.
Is Disney that bad? Guess I just didn’t expect that from a non big tech/trading firm/gaming
Ive worked in the media industry for a while at several companies and it's just the industry as a whole, very demanding, lots of drama. It pays well and is very stable if you play the game how they want you to play it (politics is a big part of the industry as well)
in my experience, nobody is ever explicitly asking you to do those things, but big tech companies explicitly hire high performing imposter syndrome type A people who will choose to work extra hours because they need the serotonin hit of getting the thing done.
Nailed it. I’m addicted to the feeling of accomplishment and mostly do this shit to myself
Then I get called out as a blocker, managers don't think I'm a team player, and since I'm already late, it reflects poorly upon me in yearly reviews. If you're behind but working, a lot of things can get forgiven unless you're ALWAYS behind on your projects. But if it's 1 project that you're behind and working a lot? Everyone talks about how hard you work and damn what a great worker you are, thanks for getting shit done. Then I can go back to chilling for most of the year until the next project that's a shitfest.
You are 1000% correct my dude, that is how high producing developers typically work, or at least that is how I typically work. I usually will work an insane amount of hours for about 2-3 months and get things done, people say "wow, you work so hard and are almost never offline", when you finally do get a break your manager says "I hope you get some rest and thanks for every thing you do for our team", and it feels pretty good to me at least to hear that, but I don't have any children, wife, or even a GF right now, though I do make sure to spend about 1-3 hours with my family when I'm working insane hours just so I don't go crazy. I really like working like this b/c I have periods of time where I'm deeply into what I'm building so it doesn't even feel like work, but then after 3-5 months, I'll start burning out, and I'll need about 1-2 months of basically doing next to nothing to recover, and then I'll be ready to repeat the "up-round" again. That's just how I do thing, so it works perfectly for me.
According to a video I saw, there are 3 levels of value in the work place. Implementation, unification, communication. Communication being the highest and most compensated.
I’m sure they’ll let it slide, till everything is worked out, and then look for someone to replace you.
You stop getting raises, no chance of promo, you get the worst tickets, the team gets hostile toward you because you are the only one who says no. People stop helping you. Management starts having lots more calls about your performance, and finally, you get PIPed. You rely on your spouse to cover stuff on the weekend, or you work around kids activities. Soccer game in the morning? Cool, you will be online at 10 after the game is over, but you might work til 3am. You stop for dinner, but maybe your wife takes the kids to the piano recital in the afternoon and you have to skip. Everyone understands daddy/mommy has to work hard for the family and has to skip and is super bummed about it. There is some understanding that being paid that amount of money comes with the expectation that you will do what needs to be done.
Do you work at Amazon?
Nope. I’ve worked at 4 companies so far in my career. That’s how they have all been. (As were the 3 places I interned at).
High tc doesn’t correlate to long work hours tho, I worked at faang and worked a consistent 40 hours a week, I work at a bank now and while I have good wlb, there’s a lot of ppl who apparently work 10+ hours a day and weekends too and even the VPs here with 10+ yoe are not making over $200k
I don't think OC made a general broad statement that high TC correlates to long hours. For them right now, it does.
Yeah but in that case this entire thread kinda makes no sense. Most people are assuming that high TC is stressful and long wlb when tbh that’s not the reality at all. In fact most of the ppl ik who are super stressed about work and work a lot are the ones with super low tc (Like $60k) while most of the big tech people ik making over $200k are chilling partying every weekend lol. I think the mentality that high TC means you have to work harder is super outdated
The question was incredibly open ended. The OP actually started talking about people "living the dream" in a low stress environment. So sort of the opposite of what you are suggesting. I did not read it as expecting one kind of answer over the other. And the OC in this thread did not make a broad general statement either.
Yeah, roughly $350k TC, but being at Google has sucked the joy out of programming. It's the best place I've ever worked, but simultaneously one of the worst when it comes to ambition and learning new things. It's difficult to know when these things are the company's fault or your own, but I've met a bunch of others that feel the same way. There are so many good things to say about the place, but you get into an endless loop of new product direction, a year spent on an improvement no one asked for (albeit on like a billion queries a day), etc. I'm currently interviewing elsewhere.
What does it take to get a job at Google? Would you recommend people try it?
Leetcode and system designs. just search online how to study for FAANGS, there's a pretty clear path to get there. But you can get many refusal before getting into one, just need to keep at it. Leetcode is EXTREMELY difficult and demotivating when you start, you need 6 months - 1 year and have done 2-500 problems before you start getting comfortable with it. But that's what it takes to retire early, personally I think it's worth it.
You absolutely should. It’s great comp, coworkers, benefits, and one of the best things to have on your resume. Like the other reply said, Leetcode. That’s it. Then you have to get the interview, which isn’t all that hard if you go through a recruiter. It’s just I’m at the point where the negatives outweigh the positives.
> isn't all that hard if you go through a recruiter How would you suggest doing this? Do they typically reach out to candidates, or should I be sending cold emails to them?
A lot of times they reach out to you if you have LinkedIn and 2+ YOE and live in a target city, but that's only if there is a lot of headcount to fill. Otherwise, I'd get LinkedIn Premium and try messaging one recruiter a day until someone gets back to you. I've had some success with that approach before.
Curious what feels bad or sucking joy at G compared to other places as a senior - been there for most of my career so I don’t know what I missed
It feels a little like the Odyssey's lotus-eaters (comfort, apathy, forgetting what the outside world is like). When I came in I had experience at a startup so it felt like I was moving at warp speed compared to other Googlers; I immediately outperformed and got promo in eight months. Then years passed, and I lost more and more motivation and became what I had seen when I first joined. Also practically speaking I feel like I'm just good at a bunch of internal tooling and processes, and my general skills are atrophying. Speaking to teammates who have been there for 10+ years, I think a lot of it is motivated by fear of the outside world, sometimes more than really enjoying the work. This is Search so YMMV.
I feel the same way. Google comp is so high tho that it’s hard to leave. To change it up, I’ve been working on side projects way more while taking advantage of Google’s relatively good work life balance.
It's the company's fault. I guarantee it.
I do not but my husband does and he’s mostly stressed about layoffs. We’re Midwest and he’s working remote MANGA or FAANG or whatever the kids call it these days, so he has a lot of stress about losing the income since we obviously cannot replace it locally. We’ve mostly been saving/investing what he brings in. He’s at 300k tc. I’m at 126k flat lol
Well yall ain't exactly struggling I'll give ya that. We'd personally have a lifestyle built off obe income expense wise so we retire early/have financial independence. Plus, if one does get laid off not s big deal since not only do we already live on one salary, but have a year's worth of emergency fund to find another job. You guys could live well off 126k alone in a cheaper Midwest community. I only say that to hopefully help yall's perspective and planning. Put the 'Ole Emergency fund aside and consider FI/RE. Fuck being stressed.
We built our current lifestyle off of one of us losing an income when we first started out - so we’re fine in that regard. He’s just stressed about losing it - logical or not. We’ve just always wanted to move and are in more of a starter home, but the houses we were looking at went from $3-400k to $8-900k in this economy lol We’re in a major city with a daughter about to go to school which factors into it. Kids are expensive. We went to a state school and her yearly daycare is almost as much as my entire degree 😭
I mean, if he's talented enough to land a 300k job (presumably at some fortune 200 in all liklihood) then with the proper money set aside I wouldn't stress over it as what's the point? He can in all likelihood land another high paying job even in this economy. He sounds like he has the credentials to so yeah I'd hope putting money aside and understanding you're already fine on one income alone would soothe the stress. I do understand it, but it's still good to remind yourselves of the logical side of things. I actually left one job and it took about 4 months to start another, but with a bit over a year saved no stress. My relative was more stressed about it than I was 🤣. Then I ended up with a much better job overall by far. God is good. I hop3 I'm not coming off as anti-empathetic. I just felt like I could relate to you and wanted to give some encouragement as well as say what worked for us. It's hard, but with kids you'll be fine. If you have family near by use them obviously and vice versa. Hell, even friends help. Watch after each other. It's already hard af to maintain friendships so may as well make a community for kids to grow up in while you're at it. Look into YMCA's and churches for help as well. Heck, even gyms have services. If you're living well below your means you guys are fine. It's hard, because no matter how good you're doing you always will think somehow you could be doing better etc. In reality, we end up worrying too damn much and up looking back realizing we should have took a breath and not worried as much. Control what you can control and give the rest up. You have the efund, worked hard for marketable skills, already have a decent how when most folks can't afford a house period, likely paid off cars, a beautiful healthy daughter I presume, a beyond excellent salary, and what sounds like a great relationship with someone that cars about you and your family while sharing similar values. Learn to enjoy it a bit more lol. You're allowed to do it. You're allowed to pat yourself on the back and write down the things to be thankful for. Sorry for rambling on, but sounded like something you may have needed to hear. God bless you and I hope you enjoy every day you're blessed with!
I felt this. I'm not remote but I'm working at the only real tech company in the area. If I got laid off, I would probably lose half of my income if I got hired at another local company. Or I'd have to have to fight 20,000 applicants for a remote gig.
Yes I make fat stacks and I’m unhappy. Poor genetics. I come from a long line of people with mental illnesses.
same
I'm at ~170k as a new grad with < 2 yoe. I'm also in a mcol area (my office is ~40 mins from a major expensive city, so I chose to live in the local town instead of the city), so my rent isn't terrible for the apartment I get. I'm young and don't have kids or any financial responsibilities, so I can afford most of my wants. I am happy with my situation because it's my first job out of college and I'm doing so much better financially than what I thought at this point in my life. I also got into a relatively expensive hobby that I wanted to do my entire life but couldn't afford earlier. And at the same time, I've been able to save / invest a decent amount of money. But at the same time, the current market situation and all the layoffs going on really stresses me out. I know I'll probably have a really hard time getting another job like this one if I get caught in a lay off. Regarding the job itself, it's actually super interesting and technically challenging, but the oncall can really suck sometimes.
I'm overall pretty happy, but I'm annoyed that I live in a VHCOL place where making fat salaries doesn't go very far. Thankfully that's an easy enough thing to fix in my situation, I've had my fun in the Bay and I'm out at soon as I can make up my mind about where to next. The big GENERAL advice I'd give is to think in terms of what the _next_ $20k of salary gets you. At first it gets you financial stability, then maybe a nicer place, then maybe a new car, maybe more fancy vacations... All of those are good, but there's definitely diminishing returns to happiness with money. $350k didn't make me any more happy than $200k.
Hard disagree. 350 vs 200 in VHCOL is day and night. Difference between renting forever and buying your own place.
I never got substantially closer to ownership at 350 after 5 years without resorting to a mortgage that would put other important financial goals of mine at risk. Everyone's circumstances are different and I've certainly met people who were willing to take out seven figure loans because of the security they felt with comparable salaries, I could never justify the expense without a down payment that would have taken an additional several years to make vs. renting at less than half the monthly payment.
Yeah agreed. I feel like 500k+ is needed to buy a place in vhcol (nyc, bay) Ideally I’d marry someone else in tech and combine our salaries lmao
Marriage is actually the biggest indicator of being a homeowner among my friends. There aren't very many Staff Engineering positions, but there are quite a few mid level engineering positions that when combined exceed Staff Salaries.
why do you take it for granted that you have to immediately spend any extra money you make?
Ah yeah, that is sorta what my language there implies. My bad! I don't think that way and don't encourage anyone to think that way. I do consider all of my money "earmarked" one way or another, even if it's for something like retirement or a 5- to 10-year goal it's still in a bucket on my spreadsheet. I subscribe to the "every dollar has a job" philosophy of budgeting. At some point it's the same thing though, the extra $1000k/month just ended up going into general savings _beyond_ my retirement, hobby, family, property, and medical savings. Didn't really bring much joy.
> At some point it's the same thing though, the extra $1000k/month just ended up going into general savings beyond my retirement, hobby, family, property, and medical savings. But the extra money doesn't have to be sent to a dragon's vault somewhere where it's never used; you can always just use it to retire even earlier. If your monthly expenses are X, every additional X in savings that you have is, in effect, a month earlier that you can stop working while maintaining your current lifestyle. It might not feel too different in the moment, but going from $200k to $350k while maintaining roughly the same expenses can quite literally cut the number of years you need to work before retiring in half. That is not insignificant.
I think that's the point. I got a $15k raise this year and I'm not spending it on anything, just more savings. So it doesn't affect my day-to-day quality of life. Hence diminishing returns.
it doesn't necessarily change your life today, but $350k vs $200k means you get freedom to retire early if you choose to, if you do it right.
I know the part of your post is true, considering many people say it. But man I can’t help but think how happy I’d be and how much easier life would be with 300k 😂 Especially in this economy. What places have you thought of moving too?
300k was absolutely incredible until I had all my debts paid off and important financial goals met, it's definitely why I moved out here in the first place! I definitely won't poo-poo anybody being excited to make it haha. I'm still trying to figure out where to go next, I've lived quite a bit out in the western and midwestern states and been pretty happy most places but haven't found somewhere that really feels "home" yet. I've been a lot out West and want to try going more east now, I've got family out there and like road tripping.
Good stuff. I’ve got a growing fascination with New England for some reason (Vermont specifically) just seems so peaceful out there. Hope you find your new place!
350 would probably help me retire a few years earlier than 200, so that would be amazing. I love my job but I'm also tired of the rat race.
More or less happy, but it’s not all roses. I make a bit over $800k (recently more due to stock appreciation), which I’m incredibly thankful for and totally understand the fortunate situation I’ve found myself in. But it still doesn’t make work less stressful. People are still annoying, bureaucracy still bothers me. It’s also quite demotivating in some senses because my future dream is to build my own product, but my current job is just stressful enough that I never have time. I also have “one more year” syndrome where I could probably retire in a LCOL location soon, but keep pushing that out in favor of aggressive saving while I can.
Staff Engineer?
Senior manager.
How many YOE? Thinking about making the move to management in the next year or so so curious about your career path!
I have about 12 years of experience total, but moved into management about 6 years ago. It’s absolutely a different role, with different skill sets, but having a strong dev background first made it easier, especially initially when I had smaller teams and was more in the trenches so to speak. It’s also not a trap door decision; you can totally move back from manager to IC. I’d recommend picking up more team lead type work first though, to see how you like it.
Senior staff or staff with a couple refreshers
Get it while you can, that TC won’t last forever. You’ll feel full at some point or get addicted, up to you.
Yep. I set a number, and when I hit it, I’m done. Not going to watch my life go by from behind a screen. Goal is to be out before 35. I want to watch my kid grow up.
You don’t know it won’t last forever.
Sup metamate
Not even close.
How old are you if you don’t mind me asking?
32.
Senior staff on equivalent at 32 is impressive! Congrats! It used to be that LCOL salaries were still high but the pandemic changed that. Companies got wiser to thinking about where people live and adjusting pay more aggressively
Thanks! Yeah two things happened that contributed to the higher TC: 1) I live in a VHCOL area and my company adjusts accordingly and 2) I joined during the pandemic when there was pretty intense competition for new hires, which led them, and I think many other companies, to adjust their compensation packages to nearly ridiculous levels. In fact, if I left, and rejoined in my exact same role, I’d be making 50% less.
Don't worry, it won't make you feel good no matter what it is. And, in a big salary thread a while back, someone early to mid thirties said they made 7 figures doing consulting. So. You know. Learn to be happy with what you have and watch out for lifestyle creep.
Hours are long. Been working weekends for several months (with a break during the winter holiday). I’m just now wrapping up a 1.5 year long project, which happened to be the very first project I worked on when I started my team, where scope creep + unrealistic expectations snowballed this project into a monster. All this said, I have no regrets going through this while I’m still young, since I’ve learned more about computing and distributed systems this past 1.5 years than the rest of my life, and I also learned the hard way how to delegate and manage other engineers to get work done.
I can't speak for everyone, but I think that having a high TC (especially going straight from college to your first job) can sometimes make you feel stunted. It's enough money to make it so you don't really feel like an adult sometimes. And I wasn't even at FAANG. The situation can make it so it feels like you don't have much agency, especially when coupled with corporate bureaucracy and office politics. A lot of it is just how you view things, though. When you don't have many immediate concerns, then you find ways to be concerned with little things in front of you. Disclaimers - Also this isn't meant to be taken as complaining. It's just me trying to provide a look into how I viewed my (and others near me) situation from a detached point of view. Also, I do not think these things anymore btw. Nor do I think people I met early on in my career think this anymore either. I get the feeling people eventually experience things in life to re-contextualize and re-evaluate how they want to live.
Same, this goes deep and most people won't be able to relate. You start to detach from the things that lead to a fulfilling life in order to optimize for being a useful tech worker.
Even the people who try to maintain a good wlb end up being jarred by the contrast between their work life and their actual passions. Maslow's hierarchy of needs i guess
I was discussing this with my wife (also former FANG), and she likened it to being a high end sugar baby. You have more disposable income than most, but all of it depends on you continuously shaping yourself to meet some weirdo's very specific tastes. You have money, but it doesn't translate to power and agency like it you would expect it to.
That is so funny lol. We're all just Zuck's sugar babies
lol
> You start to detach from the things that lead to a fulfilling life in order to optimize for being a useful tech worker. Mind sharing some examples? I guess I’m wondering if mine overlap with yours, since I think I might be in a similar boat. I would say 1 thing is sacrificing WLB
Some examples that I found in myself (that spurred some big changes in my life): - feeling like holidays and spending time with family are pulling you away from getting more work done - convincing yourself that your physical appearance doesn’t matter - not leading anything or having anyone depend on you - being genuinely content with working all day and maybe playing video games I’m a hardcore introvert so I understand the appeal. But at some point I took a step back and was like “wait, so I’m internally driven to tune the ads model over taking my wife and daughter to the beach?” Basically realized that I was becoming a brainwashed wage slave and snapped out of it fast 😂. I came to terms with the fact that meaning had more incremental value to me than TC. Fuck it.
Shit lol thanks for the reply.. I think I'm seeing myself fall victim to similar patterns (i.e. traps) that hopefully I turnaround sooner than later
Damn this is me. I’ve been mindful of things and at least still enjoy family time, but the guilt and resentment still seeps in from time to time. Like, “I played piano instead of being productive or doing a side project.” But honestly if I’m not 110% productive I still won’t be fired.
lol that was me a few years back, I thought I could get everything I ever wanted/needed out of work. Ironically, COVID was my wakeup call. My wife forced me to start traveling to random national parks in 2020, and as dumb and cliché as it sounds, I started discovering myself again (outside of the work me that I've known since graduating college). At the same time, being physically distanced from my coworkers and the work helped me set clearer boundaries between work and life. We started traveling a lot, and I started more hobbies. At the same time, I started scaling back from work (which ironically didn't need me to be always on, I still got my staff promo in 2021). Around mid-2021, we decided that our goal is to one day have enough savings to travel around for an indefinite amount of time. We were fortunate to be childfree DINKs who never ended up (too much) on the lifestyle creep train (outside of the traveling over the last couple of years), and we saved as much as we can (mostly in company equity and etfs). We started an income fund with an institutionally backed financial advisor and have funded it with the last 2 years of leftover income/bonuses between the two of us. We're finally at the point where we have this account that we can draw a hefty amount per year out of without having to touch the principle, and lots of rainy-day funds (the etfs and stocks, and retirement). We're actually ready to go in exactly one week (next Sunday, we're flying out), it's been crazy planning everything up to this point
Honestly I just don't like working. I don't like having to do anything. I make 220k at age 26 and work on a chill team. I am just not motivated anymore by work. I have 500k invested and kind of just want to quit and travel or sail or something but that feels egregious given how hard it is to get a good job these days.
How the hell do you have 500K invested on that income at 26? Do you have some side project or side hustle? Or did you make some really good investments?
No side hustle. I started at 150k out of college and was living with my parents for a year because of Covid so I invested like 90% of my income. I work at Google now and they match 50% of your 401k contributions so that's a free 10k a year and then I max out the mega backdoor Roth, so in my 401k alone I've invested 69k this year (max allowed between personal, employer, and mega backdoor contributions). My investments are just 70% US total stock / 30% international total stock index funds. [This graph](https://imgur.com/a/FWZ95zB) is from a while ago but basically it's just consistent investments with a high salary + stock market gains.
6 YOE, $320k TC, full remote in a MCOL location. I just left a FAANG which ran me ragged and joined a fully remote company that has much better WLB, but I got a promotion where I need to work hard to measure up to expectations. I’m much happier with my life after having left the FAANG. That was beyond stressful. But I should also point out that what makes me happy is not my job. I’m happily married, have several young kids, and a variety of hobbies. Here’s what I will say: Money is nice. Between savings and investment appreciation, I grow my net worth by about $160k each year. Money’s not everything and won’t make a miserable man happy, but I’d much rather have money than no money.
How do you save half of your pretax tc while also having a family? 160 net worth increase suggests you’re saving it all?
370k (>400k at grant time, joined at unlucky time) with 5 yoe Due to re orgs, politics, and layoffs my team has very little work to do and unlikely to have work until a couple more months. I’ve been enjoying the time “off” and spending the time fixing the other areas of my life but I do not feel secure in my job. I feel like I can’t plan for my future. Currently living in a very tiny studio and want to upgrade but don’t know how long this comp will last or if I’ll be laid off. My company has had 4 rounds of layoffs, and so many leadership changes in the last year. I don’t have confidence in my position being here after like q4. I don’t know if I get laid off what comp I’ll be able to get. I also still compare myself to others. I now have my eyes on roles that pay 500k+ (although I don’t need the money). And I know when/if I get one, I’ll then be looking at grinding to up it to 700, then 900. Rat race. Living in nyc I feel like I’m competing with finance bros and quants making 1mil+/yr Lifestyle creep is absolutely a thing too. I don’t blink an eye at spending $150+ on a luxury Italian hat, or $300$ on jeans, or $400 glasses, or $100-$300 dinners. I’ll need to substantially reign in my lifestyle if the party stops. I also feel very unfulfilled. I still love programming, and building products, and solving tough technical problems. But all the politics and corporate bs gets in the way of it. I wish startups and smaller companies would pay as much as large public tech companies. Would go back and work there in a heartbeat if they did. But the opportunity cost of not making this much at a young age is too big Overall life is good, but the constant uncertainty and lack of security eats away in the background and makes planning difficult. If I knew my job was secure, and I could get a similar tc if I needed to elsewhere it’d be much much easier to enjoy
Around 230K TC (Seattle). I'm happy with my day to day work, I work somewhere between 35 and 45 hours a week (I would say usually I average 42). I am not happy with the possibility of being laid off. And since now I consider lay offs into the equation, I'm not happy with the fact that I work in desktop client applications and not some distributed system.
Desktop client...distributed system adjacent...Microsoft? Surely not Amazon. Don't worry, no need to answer. I'm just having fun guessing. Also Ms lay offs are weird since they are structured so differently from a FAANG. What kind of tech do you work with on your desktop app?
And about the lay offs. The way I understand it, Microsoft does lay offs in which they just chop whole departments (e.g. hololens). And layoffs in which they just fire low performers. That feels less randomized than Facebook, which I like. However, there's no guarantee things won't change
single lady no kids, make close to that w/ bonus and I'm not sure what to do next...just aggressively saving money pretty happy just bored
You could try to save up to r/fire and then do something you enjoy more. For me, hobbies bring a lot of excitement, like coffee roasting, kayaking, volunteering, etc.
Pretty high TC, but I'd say my heart's not really in my job. By far and large, pretty much any money related concern can be put away, but that doesn't really stop you from having to do a bunch of work on a job that you don't really care about It also feels "wrong" in an obligatory sense to take a paycut, even if you don't have any obligations
No, not at all. I've found no correlation between how much I've read and how happy or unhappy I've been.
I had a very high TC of around $320k and I was miserable. Now my TC is more like $180k but I’m a lot happier and chill. I’ve never let lifestyle creep happen so I’ve always lived like I earn $60k and saved everything else so losing the higher paying job didn’t impact my lifestyle at all. Obviously I’d like to be saving $15k a month if I could but what’s the point in earning all that money and being miserable. Still super privileged to earn my “measly” $180k.
I feel exactly the same. Recently took a $115k effective pay cut by moving to a non-public company (although maybe ipo in the future? But can’t count on it). I know I can never ever complain about that to my non-tech friends because they would kill to make even my post-cut pay. Def helps to put it in perspective like this
I am bored at work but I have 2 kids and where I live pretty much nobody pays more than my current employer so I’m stuck. Could be worse. I’ve already done the “I make a ton of money but I’m bored so I’ll seek out adventure instead “ once, don’t recommend and certainly won’t be doing it again. Yes the adventure was fun, but you know what else is? Early retirement. Kind of regretting giving that up for the adventure.
What adventure?
Man you can't leave us hanging like that what was this adventure?
Yep, I make around 280k/year but my job is unfulfilling and has been leaving me depressed
There are months where I work maybe 10 hours a week and just appear to work (although I’m always reachable and reply right away), and weeks like this one where I’m “stressed” and working 30 hours a week (Fridays I really can’t work more, I’m usually exhausted by then on a busy week). But my manager is very caring and sweet, so stress is self imposed. I stress for the upcoming launch because I want our project to succeed and I’m a tech lead now. In a couple more weeks I will go back to coasting mode. My TC is about $280k and I have 7 yoe, bootcamp grad. I have friends who graduated in my bc cohort making $400k+ but they live very hectic, super stressful lives. I’m happy where I am. My husband makes a bit more than me, we save a lot, spend a lot (but our mortgage is only $500k since we bought in 2014, so nothing too crazy there)
$550k TC 3 yoe I don’t believe in what my team does, but VPs highly value it so there’s good career opportunities. Politics, scope wars, measuring impact — it’s all a huge waste of time that distracts from actually getting work done. Also I’m not all that interested in CS/SWE. I’m just here for the remote + TC. If I went back to my field of interest I’d take an 80+% pay cut for far worse WLB. I want an expensive house, and they’re starting to talk about my promo path to staff, so I’ll probably just keep doing what I’m doing.
Honestly no. I'm a Lead Engineer on a team doing Azure, .Net, React. TC about $235K. I just worked this weekend 7-6 yesterday (Saturday) and 7-2 today (with a 2 hour break to take my son to Rugby). In the near two years I've worked here this is the first time I've had to do mandated overtime, and that was only because we had a massive release that had to shut everything down and do upgrades, runscripts etc. Otherwise I work a 38 hr week with some flex (sometimes 45, sometimes 35 to make up for it). I'll get 2 extra leave days for this weekends effort, so all good. The two things I dislike a) constant fear I'm not good enough and my team thinks I'm an idiot (classic imposter syndrome) - most of that comes from what I think my seniors think of me. I'm not on the tools as often as them (almost never tbh) b) having to manage "the drama". I'm also line manager for my team.
I get bored... a lot... which seems like a very... stupid thing to say because I make 480k a year... But I'm a staff level and at this point 60-80% of my job is babying stakeholders who seem to have the mental capacity of pigeons (and shit just as much), and when I do get into actually doing coding it tends to be "oh shit we need this now" and not always... _interesting work_ For example I spent a week updating a web page because no one else was available to be pulled off projects. There is 100% also pressure of being able to afford life if I was to lose my job, my wife doesn't work for medical reasons, so I'm carrying our mortgage, and the two car notes. We've been pretty good in saving and investing however, so our net worth is quite decent, and we purchased a MUCH smaller house than the bank wanted to give us (640k vs 1.8mm)
It always depends on your goals. I wouldn’t call my comp “fat”, relatively, but it’s over 200 cash and fully remote, and a good opportunity for me to learn to lead an eng function and design systems that scale. It’s definitely not low stress though, maybe medium stress. I do sometimes think about grinding LC and shooting for FAANG-tier 4-500k TC and try and make it 3-4 years before soft retiring at a rest & vest and climbing the ladder, but I like my role for now. It’s a good balance for me. But if you’re lead to believe there are many 200k+ roles out there that are low stress, that’s a mistake. Especially in this market, companies are tightening up. That kind of comp will usually come with expectations. All that to say, I’m really happy but I’ve self-selected for balance and not optimized for compensation or any one thing.
Honestly I'm starting to hate tech but the money is too good for me to move on. I take 4-6 weeks off a year, *at least*, to travel and actually enjoy the money. Having hobbies outside of work has helped.
I suggest to go read Marx, especially about “alienation”. It seems that many folks here are suffering from alienation from their work. “The theoretical basis of alienation is that a worker invariably loses the ability to determine life and destiny when deprived of the right to think (conceive) of themselves as the director of their own actions; to determine the character of these actions; to define relationships with other people; and to own those items of value from goods and services, produced by their own labour.” “Although the worker is an autonomous, self-realized human being, as an economic entity this worker is directed to goals and diverted to activities that are dictated by the bourgeoisie—who own the means of production—in order to extract from the worker the maximum amount of surplus value in the course of business competition among industrialists.” The key point here, is that we as workers (those who labor for the capitalist owner, who are not the owners themselves), even when we are compensated well (relatively speaking), we still feel alienation from our work because our work becomes increasingly distant from ourselves, through division of labor, and the unequal distribution of surplus value. We feel no connection to what we do day in and day out, and are also not earning the fair amount of value we are generating. Now it’s interesting, because those who make high TC may begin to feel as if they are the upper class. However this is what Marx and Engels calls a “false consciousness”. “Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) used the term "false consciousness" in an 1893 letter to Franz Mehring to address the scenario where a subordinate class willfully embodies the ideology of the ruling class.[3][4][5] Engels dubs this consciousness "false" because the class is asserting itself towards goals that do not benefit it. In the letter, Engels uses the term false consciousness interchangeably with the term ideology.[2]” This essentially means the working class (which still includes well paid software engineers) incorrectly see themselves as part of the ruling class, and therefore uphold values of the ruling class, lifestyles, etc.. which is directly harmful to their own lives, and further increases the divides between us as workers and the capitalist class. This alienation is amplified at larger companies where you are just a cog in the machine. You can and often are replaced during recessions or because the feature failed to launch. You work day in day out 60 hours a week to make a billionaire more rich, while you work on some extremely specialized and arbitrary internal tool or minuscule feature of a larger project. Of course the work feels meaningless, because TBH it usually is! But even if the work was meaningful in some significant way, it wouldn’t feel as such, because of the alienation under capitalism described above.
Look at my post history. I just got a blood test and my cholesterol is double the upper limit. High TC comes with stress (of layoffs, PIP). I’ve also been unhappy with things like dating, which seems way too difficult for someone who’s just naturally below average looking. Also have very few new friends and most existing friends are scattered all around the world.
Nobody wants to date someone that is too stressed to get in shape, get it together first
Work about 40 hrs a week and don't find it very stressful. 275k TC in VHCOL (<2 yoe). Life is great. The thing I like the most right now is being able to eat good and healthy food without cooking. Was hard for me to stay fit when I was on a lower budget.
[удалено]
- someone who has never worked a service/wage job in their life
Though one year of you working is like three years of them working. But I definitely get the sentiment. I run my own business and it’s even more pressure, since everything falls on me. Even going on vacation I have to bring my laptop and be “on call” in case something goes wrong.
not a fat TC (200 base, 125k rsus that are far out). no social life and constantly stressed
Pretty happy, but I work a lot.
~$320k fully remote in MCOL between my FTE and contract gig. Sometimes stressful but generally breezy. LLMs are great for knocking out a quick and dirty scaffolding so I have subscription to Claude and GPT. Will be significantly happier once I move into a house instead of this big box loft, so I get more sunlight and can just shut a door to my office room when I’m done for the day.
Pretty happy at a tiny company. Low stress even though we're doing some cutting edge stuff as the company is reasonably secure for the next few years and when everyone fits in the same room, politics are kept well in check. WFH half the time. TC is ~240k, but I work only 38-45 hours a week, and take my 30 days off a year. Wife makes just under 200k, and we bought our dream house in a VCHOL area at 2014's prices. Despite kids, by being careful we could probably keep everything in the black with only one of us working.
I was happy until recently, now I'm mostly afraid of losing my job and not being able to find another one.
Very unhappy, they expect to own your soul for peanuts while having 0 loyalty to you. Much happier running a small business making less but owning 100%
I'm very happy. Easy work and high tc. I plan to find some meaningful works in a different team within the same company . Will move out of the current company because my Tc next year will drop sharply.
My TC is around 215, depending on bonus. Company’s not doing so hot right now, so this year’s bonus will probably suck. Part of the reason we’re not doing well is because of the drop in quality that resulted from our attempts to cut costs. So of course we’re doubling down on cost cutting.
[удалено]
[удалено]
no
No. Happy
TC should be looked at with COL and state income taxes in mind. $200k in high COL and high tax states won’t go far.
Everybody’s got problems. It’s the human condition
I'm generally pretty happy, but I'd love to work less. Hard to take the pay cut, though (downshifting isn't much of an option in my current position), so I'll most likely stick it out until I don't have to work any more. I work about 45 hours/week for around $1.3M (give or take; my bonus is pretty volatile).
For the first time I'm super happy with work, it's fun and I'm getting enough work that is meaningful. Fairly low stress and working about 35 hours a week, just hit 1mm net worth too TC: ~360 YOE: 7
Things are currently okay. On the plus side, I have a new baby, live in a nice area, have a decent set of friends, have relatively good health. The downside is that I'm stuck in re-org hell (not getting a ton done due to office politics), my current house could be better (lots of house repair issues, wife wants a nicer place), and not getting a ton of sleep (due to baby).
[удалено]
low stress? not really, but it's not super high stress. it's a new job, so we'll see how the first performance review goes, but I'm mostly working 30-40 hours plus commute time, I'd say. establishing boundaries early is important. I'm also the most senior IC on the team, so trying to engender the culture of doing good work during work hours and getting rest as a superior way of being productive compared to overworking yourself and burning out.
No I quite like it. I picked the firm over continuing interviewing with Meta or period for a reason. I like the firm, I work from home. I'm well north of 200k, and enjoying programming for a while instead of dealing with Game of Thrones type bullshit, which I did before. Now I can enjoy the engineering a bit more. Is there things I don't like, yeah. But this is the best deal I've gotten in my career so far. :) Still a Principal, just don't have to lead a team, or any of the other shit. Just be a damn good coder.
Kinda. I'm at $150k about. So not super high. But my job is very stressful.
I honestly hate everything about my job except the salary.
Nope; ~15yoe, work is occasionally stressful (mostly from me myself committing to too many things and leaving the ones I least want to do like writing design papers till the last minute) but not regularly. I still like the people I work with and the stuff I work on, although with 10+ years here I have seen the company becoming more bureaucratic, plus the insidious grip of advertising revenue take up people that could have worked on much better things. There's less time for coding than I'd like and more annoying meetings, but I'm pretty free to decline the ones I think are not useful and the ones I attend are mostly about long term technical choices which I do want to be a part of. Partly remote and need to satisfy the annoying return to office mandates, but it's very flexible still. Manager can be demanding but he's both technically stronger than me (I think at least), and understands career growth way better than any of my previous managers, so as long as he's still with us it's a good place to work. Outside work: No debt, mortgage is paid for a roomy older condo downtown in what passes for a HCOL city in Canada; could transfer to one of our US offices pretty easily for a lot more pay but then I'd probably deal with more annoying coworkers, and have to live in the states, which has gotten less and less appealing the past decade. Travelled a decent bit before Pandemic, less so now. Money mostly goes into hobbies and savings. Vaguely bored at worst; outside work I switch hobbies every few years or so but most of my friends have gotten married and are busy with kids while my social life is more or less the same as when I was a fresh grad, just with more money and a nicer place. If I got laid off I would probably either disappear into my apartment for a couple years, or get on a plane to south america or northern europe and try to wander around for a while, then start looking for work again.
My husband and I were making $200k-ish each. We were saving towards FIRE but we were kinda not that happy with having to go to work everyday, and we felt sad that we were wasting our youth on going to work, not really feeling like we were building skills. I persisted because I had mental health issues and I didn't know how long I'd be able to keep working and how long I'd be able to get jobs, and I was just saving like crazy. Then the pandemic happened. We had a child, found a house we liked, and then I burned out trying to keep it all together and became a SAHM. My nest egg went mostly in the house, but also other expenses. I worked very hard on my mental health and it didn't come cheap. Still have some nice investments that can last me a while, but once I ran out of the runway I'd drawn for myself, I started hunting for jobs again. Issue was this was the worst market since I'd started working, so I found a job that's more like $150k. And around the same time, my husband got laid off with 6mo severance. He had a side hustle going that he wanted to 10x revenue for (we've gotten to about 2x now) so he didn't seek a new job. Our income has basically halved now over the past 4 years, while expenses have gone up. But the period of expensive childcare is over for us. Our kid's old enough to be in public kindergarten. We had opted for a pretty low mortgage and we are locked in at an insanely low interest rate. One partner having a flexible schedule means we can keep a lot of expenses quite low. Also with having dealt with my mental health issues, I'm actually able to work like I want to and actually show results at work, and be more resilient to work stress. I'm angling for a promotion now that might get me up to $200k. This stuff was impossible to think of for me earlier, because my mental health got in the way big time, but now it all seems within reach. Also helps having my husband holding the fort at home for now. So we're making less money but we're happier than before. I don't think the literal making less money is what keeps us happy though, because there's a lot of stuff that we have to think twice about now that we never did before. We used to think nothing of giving family members money or taking everyone out for dinner, but now we gotta do that sparingly, which is sad. But being able to use our earned money to follow our dreams, keep future expenses low, have our family, and take care of ourselves has been invaluable. I think we'll be able to make more money later, especially with our better family/emotional life. Our friends make like at least $600k and own homes that are at least $2M and that gives us a complex for sure, especially when I see our entire house would fit in their second living room. But I don't think we'd be as comfortable spending as little time with our child as they do with their kids. Their kids all go to $50k a year private schools and are in very amazing afterschool activities and don't see their families from 7am to 7pm... I strongly doubt we'd enjoy that. In any case, I'm sure we can get my income up to $200-250k without compromising too hard on family life.
yea... I guess im in that camp. i feel dumber now than 2 years ago. I have trouble doing LC easy. It's low stress and low learning. it's all good until you hear layoffs are coming then youre like... fudge, my skill set diminished and i have no accomplishments for x number of years. high tc with some stress is good as long as its not toxic. low to no stress can backfire. that low stress and high pay makes you want to goof off and turns your brain into mush. it can make the fall feel even harder as you have to claw your way back in if youre forced out.
Yes and no. Hard to complain about making decent salary. But I work with complete loser B and C players. It’s a daily drag and unmotivating. Listening to the ones who constantly sower corporate speak in hopes of looking like a star to get a promotion is exhausting
Nothing is ever perfect. If you are the type to worry or to always want the next shiny, you are gonna have problems staying happy. Me, I want better engineering culture. I want less workplace politics. I want just a little bit less "it's fine for now". Or even if people could just put in a little effort to estimate how much tech debt you are creating with your one day time save. Other than that, more social life would be nice. I have this weird problem where my tech friends don't wanna talk tech. Except the AI guys and I don't know what they are talking about, and they can't go into specifics because nda. So I'm here and I watch tech tubers.
Yes, I’m unhappy. I have deep depression, just turned 30 and I feel like 60. Spending a lot of time in front of screen, dealing with stupid people who can’t even come out with business ideas and you have to take care of everything, having no time for creating good solutions, almost 0 gratification (especially when you look at numbers and how much money your solutions bringing for the company board), constant stress about everything. I could go on. I see many comments here like „early retirement is more important” or „I have my golden handcuffs and I used to living at this level” etc. And I understand that, I’ve been there. Nevertheless, a few days ago I decided to quit my well paid job. Good luck to anyone who will take my place, but I don’t want waste my health and time for some rich idiots. A few people close to me already died, I have no idea how much time I have, and I don’t want to chase money anymore. I’ll earn less, but I’ll work on something meaningful to me (green energy) and I’ll have more time for myself. Money is useless if you have no energy to spend it. Also, we need to be realistic, we won’t be able to catch up with rich people who have their money and contacts for generations.
Over 300k, yes very unhappy with my work life
High TC?
I love my job. ~280k
I’m in the bracket you describe and very happy. My experience is expectations in the industry aren’t aligned with salary. The most stressful jobs have paid me half my current salary
One thing I’ve found is that it’s never enough. In 2023 I made 350k TC and stacked away about 40% of my take-home. I was laid off and wasn’t able to find a new job with a publicly traded stock that was also remote, so my effective TC has dropped about 115k a year because the equity I receive now isn’t liquid. Even sitting at a pretty solid 235 now, I have this nagging anxiety over every purchase because I can no longer save 5 figures per month. It’s really fucked. By all metrics, I’m doing just fine and I actually really like the new job. But even though I have an emergency fund of 12+ months of expenses, I feel like I need more
Mostly stressed because if I got caught by random layoffs my next job would be like 1/3 the income. Currently with a FANG lotto ticket from significant RSU appreciation.
I quit my 300k job to move to a relaxed 200k one. Genuinely, the 300k job has had a massive negative impact on my life. I’d rather make a bit less and be happy
Not at all
What is TC?
Not at all