>By what standard? What does that life look like? It seems so foreign to me. It seems like a lot of HN is comprised of this sort of folk or people who know them

>By what standard? What does that life look like? It seems so foreign to me. It seems like a lot of HN is comprised of this sort of folk or people who know them. That life looks like living in Seattle or the Bay or New York, making somewhere between $180-$230k a year first year out of undergrad, being able to travel for concerts and live in luxe Airbnbs with your similarly elite and pedigreed friends. >Even the people that I do know who went off to work at Amazon, Apple, or Google aren't even that great of engineers. In fact, they're probably worse engineers than the ones I know at Fortune 500s which aren't even tech companies. I think this is a reasonable viewpoint if you believe society (or even people) cares about how skilled you are in your craft. Unfortunately, society doesn't, and rather only cares about how much you make. As such, society will always consider a jet-setting Facebook or Google new grad making $250k her first year because of a signing bonus or negotiation skills superior to someone who graduated from ASU working at Amazon/Cisco/HP/etc companies making $150k or god forbid, even less. There's a lifestyle difference that I'll never be able to match.